#and also maybe i should read outside the fantasy genre more often

[howtofightwrite]

So. There is no safe place (in the body) to be shot. There are places that are slightly safer than others to be stabbed (i.e. being stabbed in the meat of your calf is less likely to be lethal than your torso). For the purposes of an arrow wound, which feels like a combination of shot+stab for a swords n sorcery world, is there a “less lethal” place to take an arrow? My character is traveling with companions and gets into a fun little goblin skirmish. I need her to catch an arrow somewhere that will be concerning, but not immediately fatal. Magic Bullshit™️ will keep the wound from healing properly for a few days, but I’ve accounted for field wound care (cleaning and bandaging and such) as she’s being taken on horseback to get proper treatment.

Not deeply.

So, the problem with all of these is tissue disruption. If the injury gets deep enough, the chances that it will hit something vital (especially on the torso) increase dramatically. So, getting stabbed and having the blade catch bone, instead of getting in deeper is “relatively” safe. Similarly, getting stabbed (or shot) in the hand or foot is unlikely to kill you (though, those injuries are likely to result in permanent damage impairing the use of injured appendage.)

Arrows are a little different, in a couple of ways. First, if you get shot, you do not want to pull that off (nor break it off and push it through.) That will increase the risk of bleeding out. Arrows make fairly large holes in people, but if the arrow sticks in the wound (which, it should) it will actually limit the amount of bleeding. Effectively the wound has a partial plug in it. Pulling out the arrow means that plug is no longer there, and they can happily bleed to death on the spot.

The second thing about arrows is that they actually pin muscle together. Think of it a bit like holding two pieces of meat together with a toothpick. If the toothpick isn't there, the pieces can slide across each other without issue, but that's not possible when there's a wooden shaft running through them. Your muscles are a complex web of meat, that slide over each other as you move. Pinning those together means that part of your body will actually lock up. For example, if you're shot in the shoulder, you won't be able to adjust the position of your arm. It's been toothpicked, and it's not going anywhere.

Arrowheads can get wedged in bone. If it's a broad head, or hunting tip, that will be obnoxious to get out.

At the risk of reading too much into your setting, goblins often means poisons, or other nastiness. Though, really, even just getting a tetanus infection (it used to be called “lock jaw”) from their blades is a pretty horrific potential fate. Even if the wounds themselves were relatively minor (cuts and scrapes, maybe a graze or two), a couple days might still result in some pretty horrific harm after the fact.

Also, remember, it's unlikely that bacteria will be understood by the medical science of your setting. So, first aid would still run a real risk of secondary infections.

Depending on their skill in first aid, anything outside of a severed artery or catastrophic organ damage should be (technically) survivable, though the wounds could easily result in permanent impairments, depending on exactly what was hit. A punctured lung might not kill her, but it could result in permanent respiratory issues, such as a cough, and chronic pain while breathing heavily from then on. It could also result in pneumonia and death, which is also, usually, pretty permanent.

Some of this depends more on where you want to land on a spectrum between dark fantasy and swords & sorcery. The genres are similar (and potentially overlapping), but can scatter out into dramatically different works. But, you do have some options on how you want to proceed.

-Starke

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[daydreams-after-dark]

Pairing: musician!Han x reader… bartender!chan x reader … security guard!Changbin x reader.

Synopsis: Han asks you to meet him in the corridor at a bar. Chan and Changbin join in for the fun.

About a 7 minute read.

This story is moderately unhinged. Porn without plot.

Unhinged level: 🤡🤡🤡🤡

A/n: I couldn’t sleep the other night and thought to myself “what’s a naughty fantasy I could write about that isn’t realistic in the slightest?” but also not fantasy genre (one day I’ll write a non human Han story, promise).

This is what I came up with. Please be safe when having sex. The following isn’t recommended except in delululand where anything goes. 😜

CW: unprotected p in v sex with multiple strangers in a semi public space (a bar) and ppl see // voyeurism // exhibitionism // sub reader // 3Racha cum dump situation // gagging with underwear// mating press kind of// oral sex m rec// slight degradation- they talk like reader isn’t there // size, stretch kink// mild pain kink// I don’t offer a safe word option in this story but I promise reader wants it all (cos I made her up)// like I said it’s not realistic // if you are uncomfortable with any CW please don’t read.

A/n (again): Okay so now that’s out of the way… the scenario that got me hot and bothered…

Oh and by the way way if you want to be tagged in my after dark content because you’re as filthy as me, please let me know 😘

Really… let’s get started… I’m writing this 3 wines in 🤪 so who knows where we’ll end up. 🫣

You sit on a stool at the bar watching the musician on stage. His name’s Han, and he is singing a love song whilst playing his acoustic guitar. He’s fucking gorgeous and you can’t keep your eyes off him.

The bar itself is pretty empty. There’s the bartender. His name tag says “Chan”, a dozen or so patrons and a security guy pacing the entry way. You’re dressed up far more than anyone else here tonight in your short, tight, stretchy boob tube style dress and strappy stilettos.

Han finishes his song, and apparently his set list because he leaves the stage and some random music comes through the speakers. You turn back to face the bar and concentrate on your drink.

That’s when you feel a hand on your thigh. You turn to see who has the audacity, the nerve, to just come up and do that and find it’s none other than Han himself. Your breath catches in your throat. But he doesn’t actually acknowledge you. He just reaches over the bar, grabs a pen and scribbles something on the back of a coaster and pushes it in front of you. Then after a knowing, silent exchange with Chan, Han is gone.

You look down at the coaster to see a note, an invitation, just for you.

Meet me in the corridor in three minutes.

Corridor? You look around the bar.

“He means the corridor outside the bathrooms.” Chan informs you, like he’s seen this play out before. Oh? So Han does this often? You wonder for half a second, until your feel your pussy throb. You’d better listen to your pussy, you tell yourself.

…..

He’s waiting against the wall outside the bathrooms. Just like Chan said.

You take deep breath and bravely walk up to stand in front of him. He smells intoxicating.

“Hey?” You say quietly.

“Hey, baby.” He replies in a deep, husky voice.

You take a step towards him but in one swift move he turns you around and presses you against the wall.

You cry out in surprise at the forcefulness, then moan into his mouth when he crashes his lips on yours. His hands slide down your sides and then grope your ass as he presses himself against you.

You feel your body spark with arousal as he makes out with you in a rough, urgent way. His hands move down to then reach up under the hem of your dress. He slowly inches it up beginning to expose your ass. You pull away from the kiss and he moves his mouth to your neck.

“M-maybe…we should…take it to the bathroom?” You say.

Han nibbles your ear, his hands cup your bare ass cheeks. “Here’s just fine, baby.” He whispers.

“What?” You yelp.

“I’m gonna fuck you right here, not in a filthy toilet.” He grinds against you again and he’s so fucking hard it makes your cunt ache.

You see two women come out of the ladies room and glance over to where you are in the hall. They throw you an encouraging glance and throw a fist in the air to say “you go girl.”

“W-what about protection? You got something?” You pant. He’s really getting to you, and if he were to touch you right there, he’d know how ready you are for him to fill you with his cock.

His hands pull your dress up further exposing your red thong, and he hooks his hands into the sides of your underwear and peels them down your thighs.

You can hardly believe what’s happening when he’s dropped down momentarily to pick them up off the floor.

“Baby,” his voice is serious as his mouth inches closer to your cheek. “You’re asking too many questions. Just do as I say.” He shoves your panties into your mouth. Your eyes widen in surprise.

“Now listen.” He kisses your neck softly and his hands come back to squeeze at your ass. “I’m gonna fuck you raw.” Another kiss to the corner of your mouth this time. “And I’m not gonna pull out.” He yanks your panties out of your mouth. “You understand?”

Your body feels like jelly. His words are turning you on far too easily. You nod vigorously. “Yes. I understand.” You gasp. The panties are pushed back into your mouth and Han smirks at you.

“You’re such a good girl.” He caresses your body. You’re melting under his touch. “I saw you watching me.” His fingers tease the edge of your pussy. You need him to touch you so bad. You feel a thrill knowing you’re naked from the waist down and your dress up around your waist - In a public hallway for fucks sake. Anyone could stumble across you. It makes your pussy squeeze.

You wrap your arms around his neck and begin to grind yourself against his clothed crotch, trying to get him to touch you already.

He slips his fingers between your legs and slides his finger along your pussy. “Fuck baby. I gotta fuck you right now.”

His hands leave your body to undo his pants and release his cock. You don’t even get to see it because he’s lifting you up and your legs automatically wrap around him. He presses you against the wall at the same time he manages to plunge deep into your cunt. You cry out around the panties in your mouth.

He’s inside of you. Fucking you raw just like he said he was going to. He fucks you deep and slow, leaning in close against you and breathing ragged breaths. “Fuck, you feel good… knew your pussy would feel perfect around my cock.” He panted.

Your eyes roll back into your head as this man you’ve barely exchanged two words with is fucking you better than anyone has in a long time.

A few minutes pass and you’re feeling delirious from the relentless pace Han has built up to and you close your eyes, relishing the feeling of being used like this.

You open your eyes to see two men approaching, and you’re startled for a second until you realise who they are.

Chan and the security guard, Changbin is what his name tag says. Fuck you’re going to be kicked out. Banned for life.

But they’re not here to kick you out. Chan comes up to your left, Changbin on your right.

“So you’ve found Han I see.” Chan notes as he breathes on your cheek.

“She’s an eager one. Look at her with her pussy out on display.” Changbin growls.

“Does she feel good, Han?” Chan asks.

“Fuck, yeah! She’s so tight. Such good pussy.” He pants and thrusts harder causing you to whimper.

Chan and Changbin start to kiss your neck, nip your earlobes, breath hot heavy on your skin. The additional physical contact, and just the scenario itself, makes your core tighten. Your orgasm is approaching, you can feel it building rapidly.

“Fuck, look at her responding! She likes the idea of three guys huh?” Changbin notes.

“Hey Hannie, let’s help you out a bit, yeah?” Chan smirks.

Chan and Changbin hook an arm under each of your legs, holding you up and essentially pinning you to the wall behind you. Your arms automatically hold onto their shoulders, as they continue to bury their faces in your neck.

Han pulls out of you the whole way and takes in the sight before him.

“Fuck! Look at her pussy. It’s dripping.” He says.

The two others look down and moan and curse under their breath. Han runs his hands along your inner thighs, pushing them wider. Chan and Changbin pull your legs out as far as they can and then push your bent knees up higher. It’s like they’re trying to get you into as close as a mating press as possible.

“Han, you should get her tits out too.” Changbin suggests. Han obliges and yanks down your strapless dress, spilling your breasts out. It causes a commotion as their hands start to grope and knead them.

Han steps closer, ready to penetrate you again. “This is gonna be so deep, baby.” He pushes his cock back inside you and cups the underside of your ass for leverage.

It is so fucking deep that you swear you can feel him in your throat. He slams into you time and time again. It hurts, but in the most satisfying way. Tears prickle at your eyes from how good you’re being fucked and then you cry out around your panties as you orgasm.

“Shit…shit…fuck…baby…so…slippery…” Han pistons into you frantically. “Fuck I’m cumming, baby.” You feel his release deep inside you, against your cervix, leaving you both panting as you try to catch your breath.

He pulls out, removes your panties from your mouth and uses it to catch his cum that starts to seep out of your hole. Once he’s satisfied, he balls up the underwear and shoves it back in your mouth.

“My turn.” Says Changbin. He swaps places with Han. They continue to hold you in this position as Changbin lines his cock up with your entrance. He’s thicker than Han and the stretch makes you moan a deep guttural sound.

“Yeah, you like Binnie’s cock, hmm?” Chan cooes. “Didn’t know she’d be such a cockslut when I served her drinks.” He added.

“I could tell.” Han replies and licks the skin on your neck.

You’re loving the way they’re talking about you like you’re not there or can’t hear them.

Changbin sets a slow and steady pace, but the way he angles his cock at the end of each thrust sends jolts of pleasure through you. He doesn’t change pace or intensity the entire time he’s fucking you. It’s relentless, excruciating, frustrating that he won’t go faster. You can’t do anything about it because you’re pinned in place.

You sob around the panties in your mouth and your mascara is running down your face as you cry. You need to cum again.

You feel fingers encroach your asshole and start to explore you there. Please don’t tease me. You think to yourself. You don’t know whose fingers they are, but when one squeezes into your tight hole, you cum instantly.

“Fuck! She’s cum again. Such a good girl.” Han praised you.

“Shit, she clamps down hard doesn’t she?” Changbin growls. He suddenly pulls out and coats your inner thighs with his cum.

Again, your panties are removed and used to wipe up as much cum off you as possible and then it’s put back in your mouth.

They release you and help steady you on your feet. Han and Changbin continue to kiss and caress, squeeze and nip at your body.

“My turn now, babygirl.” Chan says pulling a chair into the hallway. He sits himself on the chair, holding his erect cock in his hand. It’s enormous, and you’re not sure how you’re going to manage it.

“Come, sit on my cock. I want to feel if you’re as tight as these two are saying.”

You carefully straddle Chan, facing away from him so the other two can get a full view, and lower yourself over his cock. He stretches you so wide as you slowly sink down. Once you reach halfway you stop. It’s not going to fit.

“You’ve got a bit more to go, sweetheart. Do you need help?” He grabs hold of your hips and pulls you down the rest of the way. You whimper. It’s too deep. He’s too big.

“Now babygirl, you’re gonna fuck yourself on me. Make me cum.” He growls.

You press your stilettos into the carpet and start to bounce on Chan’s cock. The impact against your cervix is brutal and you cry out each time his cock makes contact with it.

You’re not sure how much you can take, but you want to be a good girl, you want to please them. You want to show them you make Chan cum. You ride him wildly with all the enthusiasm you can. Just like in the porn you love to watch. You reach down and rub at your clit, and your other hand comes to your breast. You want to put on a show.

“Fuck, look how red and swollen her cunt is!” Changbin stares at where you and Chan are connected, dick in his hand.

“Makes me want to fuck her again.” Han declares as he pumps his own hardening cock. “Bet it’s twice as tight now.”

They’re right. You are swollen and sore, but it feels so fucking good and you can’t stop.

You reach out, ushering Han and Changbin closer. They step forward and you wrap your hands around their cocks.

Chan’s hands wrap around your front so he can grab onto both of your tits, and Han reaches down to play with your clit.

“That’s the way baby. Your hand feels so good around my cock.” Moans Han.

“How does her cunt feel, Chan?” Asks Changbin.

“Tiny. Feels like I’m gonna split her in two. Fuck, I wanna break her little cunt.”

That was enough. Those obscene words took you over the edge and you were cumming again. Harder than ever.

“Babygirl, I’m close! Fuckin’ milk me. Make me cum. Yes. Yes. Good… fucking pussy…suck it all out me… There you go. There you go.” chan groans, filling you up.

“Quick. Kneel on the floor.” He’s is quick to shove you off his cock.

You kneel on the floor as instructed, and continue to pump Han and Changbin as they stand in front of you. Han rips your panties out of your mouth only to stuff it with his cock. Changbin holds the back of your head while Han fucks your throat. He’s not gentle and you gag. It seems to spur him on, each thrust deeper into your throat. Then he pulls out to tell Changbin do the same.

They take turns like this for a while, even attempting to stick them both in your mouth at once, with Chan slouched on the chair working on getting himself hard again.

Han and Changbin release you and admire the saliva, tears and smeared mascara all over your face.

Then the the three of them stand in front of you pumping their cocks.

“Okay, baby. You ready? Keep your mouth and eyes open for us.” Chan says.

You open your mouth wide and do your best to keep your eyes open as Han, Changbin and Chan shoot ropes of cum all over your face. Some gets in your mouth, but most of it lands on your cheek, eyebrows and caught in your eyelashes.

Fuck you looked like a cum dump with a bucketload on your face, and Chan’s cum running down your leg.

“So fucking pretty.” Han smears the cum around your face.

Your panties are again used to wipe your face, but they are so wet that it can’t absorb anything else.

Chan comes behind you and scoops up some of the leaking cum and pushes it back inside you.

Then they get you to stand up and put your cum-filled panties back on. They feel so wet and dirty. You fix your dress, pulling it back down over your ass and up over your tits.

You look around to find the men are gone.

“Well fuck me!” You say out loud.

“Well I hope I can again.” Han says a he comes out of the bathroom with paper towel. He wipes your face to get the remaining cum off your skin.

“I’m hoping you’ll come back to mine. I still have one more hole to fuck, and I really want to take my time with it.”

@kangnina @noellllslut @channieandhisgoonsquad @weareapackofstrays @itshannjisung

[vergess]

Okay actually I would LOVE to hear your summary of what the Dresden Files like. actually is, as a series. Because every so often some guy will demand that I read it while insisting it's Superior Literature and the best fantasy series ever (unless maybe second to Lord of the Rings, but usually not even that)

They also like to insist that well of COURSE the main character is extra sexist and never improves but it's a FLAW, the AUTHOR knows it's wrong, therefore girls should LOVE reading his sexism. So like I was not buying this any degree to begin with, but I would love to know what's actually going on here

Bro, these books are Bad(tm). Do not fucking buy them. I cannot in good conscience suggest anyone read them, ever. But I especially, immensely cannot recommend purchasing them. This is "skulking around the library not making eye contact" material.

These are bodice rippers For Men(TM).

They're also, (and for obvious reasons they aren't advertised like this) High Camp Melodrama Fantasy Where Everyone Is Bisexual. But I repeat myself.

With that in mind, they are easily the best written urban fantasy fetish pornography I've ever seen outside AO3, and frankly better than most of that stuff too. It's just... you need to be aware going in that these are serialized porn mags. They happen to have exceptionally written combat and freakishly well considered fantasy elements, but they nonetheless use the same racial and sexual shorthands seen in the bulk of heteronormative, white gaze pornography.

Also, the main guy is an obnoxious asshole on purpose from second one and he does not ever let up on this, so if you don't immediately get along with his sense of humour walk away.

Now as for whatever dipshitted asshole is telling you they're superior literature.... mmmm.... no.

They're REALLY GOOD porn. I understand how really good porn is going to emotionally confuse the highly repressed (and oh BOY do these books appeal to the repressed) into a sort of pavlovian "this is the best thing ever" response.

But like, mmmmm no.

If you do elect to read these books, I suggest casting the main guy with a Black actor in your head. That change alone makes the immense amount of police presence and abuse more palatable.

OH THE COP SHIT

I FORGOT TO MENTION THE COP SHIT

Absolutely bonkers copaganda levels.

Also, the books were um.... progressive for 2005. They are not progressive for 2024. Let's put it like this; Supernatural (TV series) was a contemporaneous peer in the same genre. If you are damned set on subjecting yourself to one of these White Boy Monster Serials, pick this one at least it fucks.

Nevertheless, the writing is surprisingly charming, the Christian fantasy elements are genuinely competitive in a post-LOTR world, and the fetish shit is fucking immaculate.

I don't think Jim Butcher is aware he's written fetish porn, but whatever, he's REALLY good at it. I cannot recommend the sex scenes and the combat highly enough.

It's just unfortunate about the everything else.

Did I mention they're Christian fantasy elements? They are. They really really really aggressively are. These books are set in a Christian-centric universe and they do NOT let you forget that. There's like... so many Christian angels in this shit.

Anyway, if you choose to join me on this cursed journey (do not join me on this cursed journey), some other stuff to note:

Lots of underage and youth fetishism

Like, I cannot emphasize enough how hot and cool all The Youths think the Main Guy is and how aggressively the book lusts-and-guilts-in-turn over The Youths

So, so, SO much incest

Gay incest also

Mafia wedding guy is there, the guy from all the mafia wedding fics on wattpad, he's canonically the main guy's soulmate (no homo) (unless..?)

Main guy has too many soulmates btw, several are gay and some are blood relations, but most are muscular blonde women because he has a serious muscle fetish; fuckin gym gay behaviours

Undiagnosed bisexuality on the majority of the characters (I'm calling it; Jim Butcher thinks bisexuality is the normal POV and this is totally how Normal Guys talk about each other's dicks)

Exorbitant amounts of racism, some of which is "on purpose" and the most of which is horrifically unremarked upon; includes plenty of racial stereotypes. Nevertheless, the cast is diverse enough (outside the circle of main love interests) that these stereotypes can come up at all, so weigh that carefully

Special shoutout to the first major love interest, a Latina woman who dies spectacularly halfway through the series after having the main guy's secret baby

Extremely confusing relationship to psychosis as a mental illness

Melodrama that would make the desperate housewives sit back and stare

Fascinatingly good about homophobia actually, in that queerbaity 2005 way

*slaps the main guy like he's a car* You can fit so much dysphoria in this cis guy

In conclusion: I see why so many AMAB bisexuals of various genders who were part of the target demo latched the fuck on to this series so hard. I myself was fooled into believing these books were "for" Straight Men, and to be clear they are. But they're also Pulpy Gay Camp Bullshit that we the faggots of the world deserve to mutilate and recreate in our own image.

Together, I believe we could fix them.

Oh right, the plot:

The Main Guy, Harry Dresden, is a private detective Wizard Cop (serial plot is investigation based) who may also be the chosen one destined to defeat some elder gods (long term plot), and along the way starts several major supernatural wars and at least 2 arms races.

[fangbangerghoul]

✨Writing Interview Tag Game✨

Tagged the other day by @roguishcat Sorry this is so late I turned off my notifications at the start of my semester. I've been really stressed lately.

When did you start writing?

Kindergarten. Jk. Um...fanfiction? 2007/08? It was personal writing with a friend in a bunch of notebooks. Didn't start posting till 2022 when The Batman came out. (dont look into this fact)

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I almost exclusively read Vampire/fantasy Romance. So, there is a difference. There have been a few books outside of that category I tackle but its normally related to my college work. I do think those horror/goth themes seep into my writing.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I do not think my writing has been compared to any other writing, at least not to me directly. I do really love the world building Charlaine Harris created. It is so lovely and to be able to write such an addicting 13 book series is something I hope to achieve as well.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

I'm lazy so here's a picture:

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

It used to be absorbing other content by other artists but lately I couldn't tell you. I've been considering quitting writing for some time because I just don't enjoy it as much as I was.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Yes, angry violent woman. No it does not surprise me. There have been some themes of sexual assault and abandonment. Also doesn't surprise me.

What is your reason for writing?

Community. When I started writing in 2007/08 it was with a friend and the comradery filled a need I didn't have. I started again last year and found some community. It was great for the time being. Now I am not sure. I know most people say you should write for yourself but being a depressed person since the age of 9 it hard to center yourself like that. Another reason I am thinking about just quitting for some time at least till I find that spark again or reason.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

When the parts I had the most fun writing get complimented. I also appreciate the comments that pull favorite quotes. They are really wholesome and make me feel like my writing is appreciated.

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

I am okay with being the writer of the story that lives rent free in the back of your mind because it had such a mind-blowing event. Or maybe just a story that is thought of fondly occasionally.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Perhaps character psychology?

How do you feel about your own writing?

Right now, I am not my biggest fan but that's okay. I really wish I had a more poetic approach to writing or at least better with descriptions. I worry sometimes my writing is all events and no emotion.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

Though my reason for writing is community at the end of the day when I can write I try to focus on stories I will enjoy or need to get off my chest. There have been a few fics in the past I wrote solely for mutuals, and I do not mind doing that because it brings me a lot of joy to create for others.

(I know some of the answers may have sounded a little sad. I want to clarify I am not looking for sympathy this is just truly how I feel at the time being and that is okay. I am okay with it.)

Tagging with no obligation:

@bearlytolerant @interplanet--janet @staticpallour @lisa-and-shadow @therealgchu

@soloavengers @arisenreborn @dryad-of-the-dogwood @eridanidreams @kimberbohwrites

[gimmequeerbooks]

Before We Disappear by Shaun David Hutchinson (review/rec)

Genre: Historical Fantasy

My rating: 7/10

Alright, now we’re on to books that maybe not everyone know about! Shaun David Hutchinson has been one of my favorite authors since I read one of his first books, We Are The Ants, when it came out in 2016. I will probably be reviewing each of his books at some point or another as nearly all of his books are about LGBTQ+ people and only a handful of his main characters are ever hetero cis and as a bonus he usually includes people of color and/or queer people of color, and disabled people to his stories.

This one features two boys, Jack and Wilhelm, both of which are gay. Other queer or potentially queer characters to note include Ruth and Jessamy they are both lesbians or possibly bi. Lucia, presumably a woman, also often wears men's clothing.

Jack and Wilhelm work as assistants for rival magicians at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific World’s Fair Exposition in 1909. Jack, a talented thief, assists the Enchantress and at times steals tricks from other people for her to perform. At the fair, he sees Laszlo, an amazing magician with impossible tricks. After some digging, he discovers that behind it all is a boy named Wilhelm, and he can perform a real sort of magic and that he does not assist Laszlo by choice. The pair fall in love, and Jack must find a way to free Wilhelm but in doing so he will turning his back on the Enchantress, the woman who took him in when he had nowhere else to go.

The thing that I really love about Hutchinson’s works is that the focus is never really on the fact that the characters are gay or queer. Instead, the characters typically just accept how they are and move on with the story. He doesn’t write coming-out stories or anything like that. So, I would say that this story is actually about manipulation and abuse, trust, found homes, and what freedom means.

See, while Laszlo is an absolute piece of shit, abusive “guardian” to Wilhelm that is definitely not above horrendous acts, the Enchantress is not wholly in the clear either. She uses Jack and while both seem to care about their wards in some sort of way, neither treat Wilhelm and Jack well. The dichotomy between the two magicians is something to behold. Wilhelm also has to trust Jack with a lot of secrecy, that he will stay safe as they go behind the Enchantress’s and Laszlo’s backs, and that Jack knows what he’s doing and can help Wilhelm escape. Jack has to put his trust in Wilhelm that he knows what’s best for himself and that his friends will pull through for him. Both Jack and Wilhelm have to define for themselves what home is and what it would like if they were to leave the magicians. To them, leaving would mean stepping away from everything and everyone they know.

Seeing Jack and Wilhelm as foils for each other through the lens of what their freedom looks like is was interesting to see as well. Jack is practically required to be devoted to the Enchantress mentally. He is allowed to have a life and friends outside of his job, but he is constantly at the Enchantress’s beck and call. He’s ready to risk his life for her, follow her around the world, and do whatever she asks out of both gratitude and admiration. Wilhelm on the other hand, is trapped physically. He doesn’t like Laszlo at all, but he has no choice other than to do as he’s been ordered. Both are under some sort of confinement by the adults that raised them, but in different ways.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. However, I will admit that Wilhelm and Jack were possibly a little too perfect to each other. We didn’t get to see them mess up with each other often, but again, I don’t think that that was the point of the book, so I’m not too upset.

I wouldn’t say that it’s the very best of Shaun David Hutchinson’s books, that would probably go to his memoir, Brave Face, but more on that at a different time. Before We Disappear was a solid book and a good read.

I should mention that this book does come with a fair number of trigger warnings such as: physical abuse, emotional abuse, and gaslighting. All of which are listed on his website. The physical abuse can be quite graphic at times. There is also some racism and homophobia.

[veliseraptor]

for the fic meme, would love to hear about 😎 and/or 📗

What fics do you prefer on a scale of canon compliant to wildly original?

I tend to read mostly canon divergent or canon compliant fics - these days often canon divergent so that my favorite characters get to live (womp womp) but canon compliant is also good for me. I prefer fics overall where maybe one major event or outcome gets tweaked and then exploring the ripple effects of that change; when alterations start to get too drastic such that the characters drift way away from their original context, I tend to get less interested, because as I think I've said before often a lot of what I like about a character has to do with their context and how it shapes/impacts them. change the context, change the character, I'm somewhat likely to be less interested because now it's a different character and that's not what I read fanfiction for. I like fanfiction for exploring different scenarios, or different facets of a character, but the point at which they feel transformed beyond recognition for me I lose interest.

this is why I tend to not read a lot of modern/non-magic aus for fantasy settings (with the weird exception of yi city, still don't know what that's about), but also don't read a lot of genre aus (i.e. sci-fi/fantasy/royalty/etc.). if things feel pulled too far outside of the canon setting/context it starts to feel less like reading fanfiction and more like reading something, well, original - and that's just not the what I go to fanfiction for.

however, that can also go for canon divergent aus if the divergence is significant enough or in a place to drastically change something about a character. it just depends on how likely that change feels to change the character at core as opposed to bringing out a new side of them; it's why I'm not actually terribly interested in aus where Xue Yang is saved/rescued off the streets as a kid, particularly if it happens pre-hand maiming.

there are exceptions, of course! I'm speaking purely in generalities.

Do you want to write something outside of fanfiction? If so, what about?

puts face in hands. yes, yes I do, periodically I stare wistfully at my own original project and then I get scared off by my nemesis (worldbuilding) and the fact that I have to figure out a bunch of things that are proving difficult to untangle in order to make a premise I really like with characters I'm already very fond of work. I'll - get back to it at some point, or at least I really hope so.

until then I've kind of accepted that this is just kind of what I like to do and I might as well do what I am enjoying regardless of the little hissing voice that tells me I should be trying harder to do my real writing (bleh).

oh I do also periodically enjoy writing overly verbose essays about things. it doesn't happen all that often but I do it sometimes and I enjoy it a fair amount when I can pull my brain together for it

[cadencekismet]

Once again I am here to post about ten books I especially loved in the last year, in no particular order. In the interest of not picking ten books from two authors, and rather than forcing myself to pick one between several favorites, I am shouting out a couple of authors and series.

In no particular order:

Victoria Goddard’s books have been the backbone of my reading this year. I read one or two of them last year, but I ran through the majority of her books this year. Shout out especially to Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander for giving me a character who had vitiligo (and called that vitiligo by name!). If you enjoy books about queer indigenous elders, I cannot recommend it highly enough. The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul was also fantastic, and gave me one of my favorite protagonists of the year. It’s about an older woman setting off to find adventures once again and learning to admit to scarier feelings and mistakes she has made. (Shout out also to her Greenwing and Dart series, whose characters are my absolute favorites. It’s a rollicking series of unfortunate events, as long as you don’t mind the Christianity that peeks through in this particular series.)

Alexandra Rowland’s books have also shaped my year in delightful ways. You might know them as ariaste of fanfiction fame, in which case you should check out their published fiction too! Special shout out to Lights of Ystrac Wood, which is a delightful novella about an unlikely friendship, dedication, and fear, and to A Taste of Gold and Iron, which in spite of several other strong contenders (Lights among them) was my favorite book I read this year. If you enjoy beautiful prose, humor, so much textual queerness, a carefully thought-out fantasy world based on the Ottoman Empire, and the best portrayal of anxiety I’ve seen in fiction, you should check it out.

The Afterward by E K Johnston was an excellent book. If you enjoy a book about people who fell apart reconnecting, if you always want to know what happened after the quest was completed and everyone went home, and if fantasy student loans pique your interest, check this book out.

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree is the coziest coffee shop AU story I have read in a long time. Read this for people (and other creatures) stepping outside of their comfort zones or their stereotypes (an ogre opening a coffee shop!) and building a community for themselves.

The Murderbot series By Martha Wells was just. Y’all, I’ve seen people posting about Murderbot forever and somehow didn’t bother picking it up? I love Murderbot so much. What a perfect character it is. If you love watching a character insist that it doesn’t have emotions and it doesn’t have feelings while making all of its decisions based on emotions and how much it wants to rewatch its favorite show, this is the book series for you. I was wrong to wait so long to read it. Don’t be like me.

I also read several romance novels this year (look at me branching out into new genres) starting with Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch. If you, like me, were a horse girl and took it really hard that books for grownups don’t revolve around horses the way books for middle schoolers often do, this is the book for you. If you like a canon queer kinky relationship, this is the book for you. If you like a story about a washed up working class hero saving the day, this is the book for you. It was a delight the whole way through.

Sailor’s Delight by Rose Lerner was. Umm. Reading a book that centered around a High Holiday the way that Hallmark Movies center around Christmas was really special to me. The fact that it was also well-written and sweet and queer certainly didn’t hurt. I don’t think I have a pitch for this one because I’m still feeling a little exposed by how much I like it, but if you’re interested, send me an ask in a month or two when maybe I’ll have processed a little more.

I read several books by Alexis Hall this year and had a great time with all of them, but a special shout out to Paris Daillencourt is about to Crumble which also had some excellent anxiety portrayal. His books are just really fun and really queer and really enjoyable, and if you want well-written queer romance, you should check him out.

Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell absolutely killed me. It’s just so excellent. I love the characters a more-than-normal amount, even for me. Winter’s Orbit was a solid 3.5/4 star book for me. Ocean’s Echo is five. Everything got tighter in this book. The characterization, the plot, the spot the main characters are stuck in and trying to get out of... (To clarify: this is set in a different world from the author’s first book, with different characters, but in the same universe.) I just absolutely adored this book, and you should too.

Lastly, I did read A Sentimental Education by Hannah McGregor, which is my token non-fiction book for the year. I’ve long been a fan of her podcasts, Witch Please and Secret Feminist Agenda, and A Sentimental Education was everything I expected it to be from listening to her podcasts. That is to say: I don’t always agree with everything she says, but she always makes me think. Sometimes I like her end argument but not the way she gets there. However, if you’re interested in musings on fatness, whiteness, (lack of) indigeneity, sentimental novels, and queerness, I definitely recommend this book.

[paintedbutton]

Writer Interview Tag

The dear @writernopal tagged me in this. Thank you!

When did you start writing?

I can't give an exact age, but probably somewhere around 10 years old? I still have the old "epic" stories I would write on the family pc on word 2003 (including word art for title pages and everything) on an external harddrive somewhere. They were epic tales that involved a lot of pirates because I was obsessed with Kai Meyer's Wellenläufer trilogy, and also a lot of horses. I should see if I can find them again ...

I switched from original stuff to mainly fanfic somewhere in my teens and only seriously picked up original writing again somewhere during my Masters degree. And I'm really happy that I did.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I'll admit I'm mainly a fantasy enjoyer, but I try to read stuff that's outside my preferred genres at least some of the time. The last book I really enjoyed in that vein was Murakami's Afterdark. I also like the occasional nonfiction. And I read a lot of children's books for work.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I recently made a post where I said if I wanted to emulate anyone it'd be KJ Charles, and I stand by that. But really, I just want to write my own stuff. It's more about the way she writes than the themes she writes, I guess.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

I'm a PC girlie, so I do have a pretty good rig (mainly for gaming although ironically I mostly play a 20-year-old game rn). I'm bad at working away from my desk, so I've tried to make that as good as possible.

My desk is currently fitted into a niche in my living room because my apartment is pretty small. It has coloured LED strings on the wall behind it as well as a pinboard just for aesthetic purposes. On the wall beside it is one of my great treasures, which is a woodcut piece of a windswept tree by an artist from the baltic sea. He's lovely and I own several of his pieces.

I have a Keychron K8 mechanical keyboard with some dupe botanical keycaps, which I wouldn't miss for the world. It is so nice to type on.

Colourwise, the setup is very dark green.

I'd love to have a standing desk, and I am currently looking into it, but it's a bit of a problem with how my desk is located, so we'll see. Maybe I'll wait until I'm finally able to move into the house, but that might be years yet.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

Music mostly. There's just something about a good song that gets the creative juices flowing.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Home. Just home. Finding it and making it and the meaning of it as a place or the people surrounding you.

I'm not overly surprised by this, but it was a bit of an "Oh" moment, when I figured it out. I'm a very rooted person. I need to feel not just familiar but at home with the place I am in, and that very much colours my writing I think.

What is your reason for writing?

I've been telling myself stories my whole life. Sometimes getting them out into the "real" world feels like a necessity.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

Honestly, any. But I like when I feel like people actually engage with my writing. Like they mention a particular moment that happens or something.

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

I'm just some guy. I would preferably always like to be just some guy to others. I personally don't think much about the authors when reading. I don't know if others do.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

I honestly don't know. Tell me?

How do you feel about your own writing?

Warm and fuzzy. Writing is a hobby to me, and one I enjoy greatly. I like reading what I've written.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

Nope. Again, this is my hobby. I write for myself. If others like it, that makes me so happy. But it's not a necessary component for this, the same way it isn't with cooking or gardening.

Tagging: @anyablackwood , @malimaywrite , @charlesjosephwrites and leaving an open tag for anyone else. :)

[proto-language]

1,2,4 for the ship asks? (Also I hope you’re feeling better now!)

thank you very much!! (and yeah, i’m good! i think my mum’ll have cooled down by tomorrow evening so it’ll be okay!)

1. What was your first OTP? 

WHY would you ask me that!! i think it was dan and phil, because 10-year-old me was an embarrassment. alternatively, it could have nico di angelo and will solace, but i can’t remember when blood of olympus came out so i’m not sure!

2. What is your current OTP?

that’s a surprisingly hard question! i don’t know if i have anything i’d describe as an OTP, exactly. i still associate the phrase with the way i shipped back when i was kinda 10-13, where i was very consumed by a lot of ships, and would describe them all as my OTPs. nowadays i’m a little more laid-back about it all (and my interests last a little longer, thank god), and it’s less OTPs in the way i used to have them and more just... relationships that i think about A Lot. by that definition, i’d probably put rudolf and death from elisabeth up near the top (i was actually engaged enough with them to,,, write a fic,,, which,,, never happens ever), as well as ferius and rosie from the spellslinger series because WOW sebastien de castell really pulled through for the wlw with that one (and i expect full clarification and backstory if/when sdc writes the ferius novels he mentioned on his goodreads page!!!!). also, on a less canon note, mateo & quentis & antrim from the greatcoats series - i really have very little to go on there other than that mateo and quentis apparently became besties during tyrant’s throne and antrim just seems like he’d fit in well with them but like,,, whatever it’s not like anyone else knows what i’m talking about anyway so!

also not really OTPs either, but lately my “shipping” has had a lot more focus on platonic & familial relationships too - in that respect, my faves would have to be kellen and ferius (and reichis too lbr) from the spellslinger series because WOW gimme that adorable mentor/parental relationship and devoted friendship (*cough* business partnership) with a squirrel cat!! also kellen and ferius gave us possibly the sweetest bit of dialogue i’ve ever read during charmcaster, which i remember verbatim:

“See, that’s what I love about you, kid.”

“The fact that I’m always scared?”

“The fact that nothing scares you more than the thought of lettin’ your friends down.”

also falcio and kest and brasti from the greatcoats series (kest’s love for falcio!! his willingness to stand aside for others who falcio loves even though it hurts him!! falcio awkwardly hugging brasti on like three separate occasions!! whatever the fuck it is that kest and brasti have going on!!), and locke and jean from the gentleman bastard sequence (jean constantly saving locke’s dumb ass, mostly from the consequences of his own actions!! “i must look really bad jean, you’ve got that motherly concern in your eyes”!! i miss the sanza twins and bug so much and so do they!!!)

4. What is/are your favorite trope(s)?

1. Found family

2. Found family!

3. Found family!!!

not really sure Why i have such a big thing for this but i just... do, and it really shows in my favourite books lol (the three musketeers has the inseparables, spellslinger has kellen ferius and reichis, greatcoats has falcio and literally everyone under 20 he ever interacted with + kest and brasti, the gentleman bastard sequence has the bastards in question, rivers of london arguably has peter, nightingale, and molly!)

sorry this is incoherent and tumblr has fucked up the formatting and also it isn’t really about shipping skskdkdk

[duckprintspress]

Ten Things We Hate About Trad Pub

Often when I say “I’ve started a small press; we publish the works of those who have trouble breaking into traditional publishing!” what people seem to hear is “me and a bunch of sad saps couldn’t sell our books in the Real World so we’ve made our own place with lower standards.” For those with minimal understanding of traditional publishing (trad pub), this reaction is perhaps understandable? But, truly, there are many things to hate about traditional publishing (and, don’t get me wrong - there are things to love about trad pub, too, but that’s not what this list is about) and it’s entirely reasonable for even highly accomplished authors to have no interest in running the gauntlet of genre restrictions, editorial control, hazing, long waits, and more, that make trad pub at best, um, challenging, and at worst, utterly inaccessible to many authors - even excellent ones.

Written in collaboration with @jhoomwrites, with input from @ramblingandpie, here is a list of ten things that we at Duck Prints Press detest about trad pub, why we hate it, and why/how we think things should be different!

(Needless to say, part of why we created Duck Prints Press was to...not do any of these things... so if you’re a writer looking for a publishing home, and you hate these things, too, and want to write with a Press that doesn’t do them...maybe come say hi?)

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1. Work lengths dictated by genre and/or author experience.

Romance novels can’t be longer than 90,000 words or they won’t sell! New authors shouldn’t try to market a novel longer than 100,000 words!

A good story is a good story is a good story. Longer genre works give authors the chance to explore their themes and develop their plots. How often an author has been published shouldn’t put a cap on the length of their work.

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2. Editors assert control of story events...except when they don’t.

If you don’t change this plot point, the book won’t market well. Oh, you’re a ten-time bestseller? Write whatever you want, even if it doesn’t make sense we know people will buy it.

Sometimes, a beta or an editor will point out that an aspect of a story doesn’t work - because it’s nonsensical, illogical, Deus ex Machina, etc. - and in those cases it’s of course reasonable for an editor to say, “This doesn’t work and we recommend changing it, for these reasons…” However, when that list of reasons begins and ends with, “...because it won’t sell…” that’s a problem, especially because this is so often applied as a double standard. We’ve all read bestsellers with major plot issues, but those authors get a “bye” because editors don’t want to exert to heavy a hand and risk a proven seller, but with a new, less experienced, or worse-selling author, the gloves come off (even though evidence suggests time and again that publishers’ ability to predict what will sell well is at best low and at worst nonexistent.)

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3. A billion rejection letters as a required rite of passage (especially when the letters aren't helpful in pinpointing why a work has been rejected or how the author can improve).

Well, my first book was rejected by a hundred Presses before it was accepted! How many rejection letters did you get before you got a bite? What, only one or two? Oh…

How often one succeeds or fails to get published shouldn’t be treated as a form of hazing, and we all know that how often someone gets rejected or accepted has essentially no bearing on how good a writer they are. Plenty of schlock goes out into the world after being accepted on the first or second try...and so does plenty of good stuff! Likewise, plenty of schlock will get rejected 100 times but due to persistence, luck, circumstances, whatever, finally find a home, and plenty of good stuff will also get rejected 100 times before being publishing. Rejections (or lack there of) as a point of pride or as a means of judging others needs to die as a rite of passage among authors.

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4. Query letters, for so many reasons.

Summarize all your hard work in a single page! Tell us who you’re like as an author and what books your story is like, so we can gauge how well it’ll sell based on two sentences about it! Format it exactly the way we say or we won’t even consider you!

For publishers, agents, and editors who have slush piles as tall as Mount Everest...we get it. There has to be a way to differentiate. We don’t blame you. Every creative writing class, NaNoWriMo pep talk, and college lit department combine to send out hundreds of thousands of people who think all they need to do to become the next Ernest Hemingway is string a sentence together. There has to be some way to sort through that pile...but God, can’t there be a better way than query letters? Especially since even with query letters being used it often takes months or years to hear back, and...

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5. "Simultaneous submissions prohibited.”

No, we don’t know when we’ll get to your query, but we’ll throw it out instantly if you have the audacity to shop around while you wait for us.

The combination of “no simultaneous submissions” with the query letter bottleneck makes success slow and arduous. It disadvantages everyone who aims to write full-time but doesn’t have another income source (their own, or a parents’, or a spouse’s, or, or or). The result is that entire classes of people are edged out of publishing solely because the process, especially for writers early in their career, moves so glacially that people have to earn a living while they wait, and it’s so hard to, for example, work two jobs and raise a family and also somehow find the time to write. Especially considering that the standard advice for dealing with “no simultaneous submissions” is “just write something else while you wait!” ...the whole system screams privilege.

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6. Genres are boxes that must be fit into and adhered to.

Your protagonist is 18? Then obviously your book is Young Adult. It doesn’t matter how smutty your book is, erotica books must have sex within the first three chapters, ideally in the first chapter. Sorry, we’re a fantasy publisher, if you have a technological element you don’t belong here…

While some genre boxes have been becoming more like mesh cages of late, with some flow of content allowed in and out, many remain stiff prisons that constrict the kinds of stories people can tell. Even basic cross-genre works often struggle to find a place, and there’s no reason for it beyond “if we can’t pigeon-hole a story, it’s harder to sell.” This edges out many innovative, creative works. It also disadvantages people who aren’t as familiar with genre rules. And don’t get me wrong - this isn’t an argument that, for example, the romance genre would be improved by opening up to stories that don’t have “happily ever afters.” Instead, it’s pointing out - there should also be a home for, say, a space opera with a side romance, an erotica scene, and a happily-for-now ending. Occasionally, works breakthrough, but for the most part stories that don’t conform never see the light of day (or, they do, but only after Point 2 - trad pub editors insist that the elements most “outside” the box be removed or revised).

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7. The lines between romance and erotica are arbitrary, random, and hetero- and cis-normative.

This modern romance novel won’t sell if it doesn’t have an explicit sex scene, but God forbid you call a penis a penis. Oh, no, this is far too explicit, even though the book only has one mlm sex scene, this is erotica.

The difference between “romance” and “erotica” might not matter so much if not for the stigmas attached to erotica and the huge difference in marketability and audience. The difference between “romance” and “erotica” also might not matter so much if not for the fact that, so often, even incredibly raunchy stories that feature cis straight male/cis straight female sex scenes are shelved as romance, but the moment the sex is between people of the same gender, and/or a trans or genderqueer person is involved, and/or the relationship is polyamorous, and/or the characters involved are literally anything other than a cis straight male pleasuring a cis straight female in a “standard” way (cunnilingus welcome, pegging need not apply)...then the story is erotica. Two identical stories will get assigned different genres based on who the people having sex are, and also based on the “skill” of the author to use ludicrous euphemisms (instead of just...calling body parts what they’re called…), and it’s insane. Non-con can be a “romance” novel, even if it’s graphically described. “50 Shades of Gray” can sell millions of copies, even containing BDSM. But the word “vagina” gets used once...bam, erotica. (Seriously, the only standard that should matter is the Envelope Analogy).

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8. Authors are expected to do a lot of their own legwork (eg advertising) but then don't reap the benefits.

Okay, so, you’re going to get an advance of $2,500 on this, your first novel, and a royalty rate of 5% if and only if your advance sells out...so you’d better get out there and market! Wait, what do you mean you don’t have a following? Guess you’re never selling out your advance…

Trad pub can generally be relied on to do some marketing - so this item is perhaps better seen as an indictment of more mid-sized Presses - but, basically, if an author has to do the majority of the work themselves, then why aren’t they getting paid more? What’s the actual benefit to going the large press/trad pub route if it’s not going to get the book into more hands? It’s especially strange that this continues to be a major issue when self-publishing (which also requires doing one’s own marketing) garners 60%+ royalty rates. Yes, the author doesn’t get an advance, and they don’t get the cache of ~well I was published by…~, but considering some Presses require parts of advances to get paid back if the initial run doesn’t sell out, and cache doesn’t put food on the table...pay models have really, really got to change.

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9. Fanfiction writing doesn't count as writing experience

Hey there Basic White Dude, we see you’ve graduated summa cum laude from A Big Fancy Expensive School. Of course we’ll set you up to publish your first novel you haven’t actually quite finished writing yet. Oh, Fanperson, you’ve written 15 novels for your favorite fandom in the last 4 years? Get to the back of the line!

Do I really need to explain this? The only way to get better at writing is to write. Placing fanfiction on official trad pub “do not interact” lists is idiotic, especially considering many of the other items on this list. (They know how to engage readers! They have existing followings! They understand genre and tropes!) Being a fanfiction writer should absolutely be a marketable “I am a writer” skill. Nuff said. (To be clear, I’m not saying publishers should publish fanfiction, I’m saying that being a fanfiction writer is relevant and important experience that should be given weight when considering an author’s qualifications, similar to, say, publishing in a university’s quarterly.)

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10. Tagging conventions (read: lack thereof).

Oh, did I trigger you? Hahahaha. Good luck with that.

We rate movies so that people can avoid content they don’t like. Same with TV shows and video games. Increasingly, those ratings aren’t just “R - adult audiences,” either; they contain information about the nature of the story elements that have led to the rating (“blood and gore,” “alcohol reference,” “cartoon violence,” “drug reference,” “sexual violence,” “use of tobacco,” and many, many more). So why is it that I can read a book and, without warning, be surprised by incest, rape, graphic violence, explicit language, glorification of drug and alcohol use, and so so much more? That it’s left to readers to look up spoilers to ensure that they’re not exposed to content that could be upsetting or inappropriate for their children or, or, or, is insane. So often, too, authors cling to “but we don’t want to give away our story,” as if video game makes and other media makers do want to give away their stories. This shouldn’t be about author egos or ~originality~ (as if that’s even a thing)...it should be about helping readers make informed purchasing decisions. It’s way, way past time that major market books include content warnings.

Thank you for joining us, this has been our extended rant about how frustrated we are with traditional publishing. Helpful? No. Cathartic? Most definitely yes. 🤣

*

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[bump1nthen1ght]

I’m Still Hurting (F!Reader/M!Orc)

Pairings: Fem!Reader/Male!Orc

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Angst

Warnings: (Almost) Infidelity

Word Count: 3376 words

Summary: Your boyfriend does something he’d never thought he’d do, and you’re left to try and pick up the pieces.

Request: can I make a request? About an angst story between an m!orc and f!human. I like the idea of like maybe the orc sorta misses being with other orc women or like she can't fulfill his needs and she hears this. I like the idea of almost infidelity

A/N: Surprise bitches! I’m alive! And back with some delicious angst for y’all!! I really loved doing this request, as I don’t often write full on angst. I am also working on a fluffy request  at the moment, if some of you would like some nice comfort after this haha. Hope y’all enjoy!

Honey ❤️: Babe

Honey ❤️: Babe please answer the phone I need to talk to you

Honey ❤️: I know you’re angry, you should be angry, but please talk to me

Honey ❤️: Baby please

“____? Is that my phone?” Brynn yells from the kitchen, already mixing another cocktail for you to down. Her bright red horns peek over the living room divider, bouncing back as she grabs the alcohol from the fridge. Still looking at your bright screen, you don’t even have the energy to respond.

“____?” You throw your phone away as she peaks her head over, giving her a shameful look. Brynn furrows her brow, pulling away from the kitchen island and putting one hand on her hip. “Was that him?” With your eyes darting back and forth from the pillow you shoved your phone under and Brynn’s face, you nod.

“Y-yeah, it was him.”

Brynn sighs, fiddling with her hands.

“Listen, I don’t want to tell you what to do, especially not tonight, but I just think-”

“No, no, it’s alright. You’re right, you’re right.” A jolt hits you as your phone vibrates, the vibrations rumbling through the fabric and stabbing right into your stomach. You force yourself to look away, fiddling with your fingers. Brynn shoots you a pitiful look, you’re sure of it, even as your efuse to meet her gaze. “I shouldn’t talk to him tonight. Not right now, not when I’m like….this.” A slow, tired breath escapes you. “I’ll make him wait, just like he did.”

The coach cushion bends as Brynn sits next to you, rubbing your shoulder as she leans in for a side each. You accept it, your body like a deadweight as you let yourself go slack in her arms.

“Do you want anything? Chocolate, maybe a movie? I’ve got some leftover cheesecake?”

“A movie sounds nice.” You murmur, nodding against her chest. Brynn hums, her tail coming up and massaging your lower back as she kisses you on the forward.

“Of course, your choice. Do you want me to get your drink?”

You nod once more, letting Brynn untangle herself from the hug and laying back on the couch, grabbing the comfiest blanket and the remote. You quickly flick through you and Brynn’s ‘most watched’ section on Netflix. You need something new tonight, something to get your mind off.

All your regular comfort movies are romances, after all.

By the time Brynn comes back, a rum and coke and a carton of ice cream in hand, you’re already snuggled into a blanket burrito. She hands you a spoon and the glass, which you wordlessly accept. She sits down and throws a hand over your shoulder, trying her best to massage the left over tension in your neck. You sink into the feeling, pressing on your movie of choice.

“Mad Max: Fury Road, huh? I’ve heard this movie’s great.”

“Yeah,” you whisper, “It is.”

And chocked full of shitty men getting what they deserve.

As the opening title plays, the deep voice of Tom Hardy kicking the movie off, you snuggle into Brynn’s side. Your phone buzzes again, but it’s drowned out by screaming men and loud engines. Just how you like it.

Honey ❤️: Could you call me in the morning?

Honey ❤️: I’ll leave you alone for the night, I’m sorry

Honey ❤️: I love you

--------

Waruck sighs, his fingers shaking as another small ‘message delivered’ shows up on his screen. No response, just like the last 15 texts. He finds himself typing out another anyway.

I love you so fucking much

It reads, but is quickly deleted. Waruck clicks off his phone, but it stays in his hand, taunting him. The black mirror shows a sad, pathetic boyfriend, getting the silent treatment.

He falls back onto his bed, exhausted from a day of doing nothing. Nothing but worrying and feeling guilty, with the occasional flicking through TV channels and texting his girlfriend.

It’s getting late, his bedside clock cutting through the dark of his room to remind him he’s been up for almost 16 hours now. Waruck slides a hand through his hair and gets up. He’s going to have to camp out in front of the TV, because he knows he won’t be able to sleep tonight.

Not after what he did.

--------

He had gone out with friends. Friends from highschool who he still occasionally chatted with, friends he didn’t even really like anymore. But the past two weeks had him feeling oddly...nostalgic, like something was out of place. So when his buddy Simon had invited him to the bar, he had eagerly accepted.

He remembers grabbing his coat, you sending him a text to have fun, and him not replying. He didn’t know why he didn’t respond, he still doesn’t. The two of you had been going strong for almost 8 months now, with only the occasional hiccup that most couples have. So why didn’t he respond? What made him casually throw your sweet remark to the side like that?

Waruck shakes his head, trying to focus on the movie in front of him. Now isn’t the time to get existential over tiny shit like that, not with how the rest of the night went.

When he met up with the group, Waruck immediately knew that tonight was going to be different. His current group of friends are quite different, less rowdy, than his old posse. At only 10 PM, three of the guys we’re already halfway drunk, saving a spot in line from him outside the noisy bar. The electronic music that thrummed through the concrete and out onto the street reminded him of how much time has passed, how different his usual party-scene is now, and he revels in that feeling of former good-times.

Simon greets him with a hug, the guys shouting his name as he joins them. From the corner of his eye, he sees a gaggle of girls giggling.

And that's where it started.

An orc woman, dressed in a beautiful black dress, winks as she passes him at the bar. Simon nudges his side as Waruck takes a drink.

“Dude, that chick is totally sending you the look”

Waruck furrows his brow, stirring his drink.

“What’s ‘the look’?” He says, taking another sip of his scotch.

Simon rolls his eyes. “The ‘come hit on me’ look dude! That’s the sign you need to go for it!”

“I have a girlfriend, Simon.”

Simon scoffs, throwing his hand out dramatically. “What, that human chick?”

Waruck has half of mind to set down his drink and ask Simon what he means with that sarcastic tone of voice. It pisses him off, but he says nothing, just rolls his eyes.

“No offense, bro, she looks cute and all. But is she really worth missing out on some great ass?”

Waruck grimaces and shoots Simon a dirty look. “Jesus, Simon, are you serious?”

“I’m serious! When was the last time you had fun, y’know? Everyone knows an orc chick can throw down, wild-style.” Simon nudges him in his side, playfully, but it only serves to make Waruck more annoyed. “C’mon, you seriously don’t miss it?”

Waruck should tell him a firm ‘No’, finish his drink, and leave. He should call a cab and go home, call you and rant about his gross misogynistic friend from high school.

But he doesn’t.

The part of him, the part of him that feels slightly off, wonders if this is it. It had been a long time since he had been with another orc. You were a great girlfriend, but so different from in so many ways. Is that it?

Maybe relieving the old days will satisfy whatever longing he has, and then it will leave forever. Would that be so bad, to let loose for one night?

Waruck feels a tap on his shoulder, and turns to see the orc girl from earlier; The one who sent him ‘the look’.

“Hey handsome, can I buy you a drink?”

Between the boosted bass of the music and the orc woman pressing up against him, Waruck doesn’t notice Simon slip away, giving him a pat on the back.

Leave, say no, tell her she’s got the wrong guy, you fucking idiot. His consciousness yells.

“U-uh, sure.” He stutters.

She introduces herself as Naz and says she noticed him the minute he walked in.

“Hard not to notice the best-dressed guy in the room.” She flirts, pressing herself closer and up against him.

He has a thousand little moments like that, to say something; To pull back and apologize, but he doesn’t.

Instead, he slips into a corner booth with her, purposely ignoring the texts you send to check up on him. You had remembered that he wasn’t sure how much fun this night would be, and routinely checked in if he needed a convenient excuse to leave early. You’re sweet like that.

Naz is sweet too. She's a great conversationalist, with a good head on her shoulders and an interesting career in zoology. Waruck could see the two of you being good friends.

Is that why she seems so alluring? Because she’s so similar to you? Waruck’s mind does mental gymnastics to try and justify his hesitance, his compliance in believing that maybe she has something different after all, even though he knows that isn’t true.

The two of them talk for a solid hour and a half, Naz slowly inching herself closer and putting a hand on his knee. His body screams in resistance, his stomach tying up into knots, but he doesn’t push her away.

“So, I’ve got a room not too far from here. What do you say we go make ourselves a bit more comfortable?”

This is his final chance to find an excuse and say goodnight. To run back home and forget this ever happened. But the words are caught in his throat and he’s further silenced by the nearby whooping of his asshole friends.

“Yeah, Waruck! Get some!”

Naz chuckles and mistakenly reads his seething anger at himself with embarrassment for his friends. She leans in, grabbing his jaw, and whispers.

“Let's give them a show, huh?” Then, she kisses him.

The noises of the bar, his friends, and Naz all drown away as her lips mold into his. Waruck’s body goes rigid, terrified as time seems to freeze as he kisses someone who is not his girlfriend.

But all of that stops when your ringtone begins to blast in his pocket. It should be near silent when compared to the pounding bar music, but that familiar jingle seems to cut deep into his skin and skewer his heart. Waruck pulls away with a quick jerk, Naz almost falling over as he pushes himself into his seat and away from her body-heat. Every nerve is a light with tension as he quickly pulls out his phone.

There on the screen is a picture of you, your contact name, “Sweetie❤️”, shining through the dimmed light of that bar. Waruck breathes heavily, feeling like he’s just run an emotional marathon, stuck in his own head until Naz slides away from him.

“Wait, hold on, do you have a girlfriend?”

Waruck looks at her, then looks at his still-ringing phone, then back to Naz. He nods.

Naz's face curls up into obvious disgust, quickly directing her body to be as far away from him as possible. “Fucking hell, dude. What the fuck?” She grabs her handbag and stomps out of the booth, not before throwing her drink in his face and telling him to go to hell.

He almost watches her move across the bar, most likely to go complain to her friends about the asshole she just wasted the last 2 hours chatting up, but all he can focus on is your picture on his phone.

--------

Waruck practically runs out of the bar, his whole body covered in sweat and his mind racing a mile a minute.

What the hell was wrong with him?

He felt like a 15 year old, goaded into another shitty prank just because he wanted to look cool in front of his friends, buying into their weird bullshit about humans. Was he seriously going to throw away your wonderful relationship over one night, over one urge?

Naz had been strikingly beautiful, in all the ways he was taught an orc like himself should look for. She could probably get any guy in that club tonight, but she wasn’t you. You’re different, but in so many cool, inconsequential, uniquely-you ways.

Waruck doesn’t know how long he walks before he sits down outside a cafe, trying to collect his racing emotions. He feels gross, sticky with the kind of sweat you only get after too much alcohol and too many people. The screen of his phone seems to reflect every smudge and finger-print as he swipes it to unlock it, finally getting the courage to read your text messages.

They start off normal, spread out over several hours. The occasional “How are the guys?” and “Hope you are having fun! Just let me know when you get home safe.” before dropping off into nothing. Right up until 20 minutes ago, where you send a short and curt text that has his heart dropping to his stomach.

Sweetie❤️: Can you call me right now?

Sweetie❤️: Waruck, I need to talk to you

Sweetie❤️: Are you still at the bar?

After that is a notification of your missed call from earlier and Waruck can’t help but feel  guilt stir in his gut.

It could be nothing, something unrelated to what he almost did tonight. But the notification he gets from his Instagram says otherwise. It says a mutual of his tagged him in a photo 30 minutes ago.

Waruck feels like vomiting when he opens up Simon’s story and sees a shaky picture of Naz, draped over him in the corner booth, with him looking all too happy to have her there. The caption reads

“At least someone’s getting lucky tonight 🤣🤣 #BoysNight20XX”

But what comes next is even worse; An even blurrier photo of Naz kissing him, both of their eyes closed as she almost sits in his lap.

Waruck can’t even look at the caption, quickly exiting out of the app and calling you.

He needs to explain himself.

But what will he say?

The phone rings, rings, rings….

Waruck waits with bated breath, thinking you’re going to let it go to voicemail, but you answer. There is no cheerful “Hi Babe” or even a tired and drawn-out “Hey.” Instead all Waruck hears is a shaky sigh, waiting for an explanation.

The words stay caught in Warucks throat, trying to find a way to maneuver and swing around to a solid excuse, a lie he hopes you won’t catch.

But he can’t, he can’t. Not to you.

So you make it easy for him, like you always do, and start the conversation off instead.

“Were you flirting with that girl?”

Waruck’s mind doesn’t give him a choice, the truth already spilling out like a tidal wave.

“Yes.”

Waruck hears you suck in a breath, before you shakily ask once more,

“Did you kiss her? Did you kiss her back?”

“Yes.”

There's 15 seconds of brutal silence as Waruck sits with his confession. In the moment, Waruck feels like he can hear your pounding heartbeat through the receiver.

You hang up.

---------

You hate the weather outside for two reasons.

One: You had far too much rum last night to enjoy any amount of sunlight. And,

Two: On a terrible morning like this one, it feels unfair that there aren't any dramatic thunder storms.

The bell rings on the cafe door as you walk in, causing you to wince as you pull down your sunglasses.

Thank god for the low lighting of these cafes.

You rub your brow, eyes scanning the menu above the bar. Some caffeine should do you good, at least with your headache.

But when you spot him, tucked away at a table, tapping his foot, all that aching pain seems to fall to your subconscious. Before you can meet eyes, you look away, forcing yourself to re-read the menu and blink away your tears.

You face the inevitable when you put in your order, turning to walk towards Waruck. He’s locked his gaze into the wood grain of the table, his large body hunched up and small, like he wants to sink into the shadows. He looks like shit, with large bags under his eyes and a nervous tension in his face.

He startles when you pull out a chair, sitting down across from him, but quickly curls back into his ball of shame. He looks so guilty, a small part of you wants to comfort him and tell him it’ll be alright.

You punch away that part of you with a baseball bat.

“Why did you flirt with her?”

Waruck says nothing. He looks at you with his tired eyes, big and racked with guilt.

I don’t know. They whisper.

Your fingers dig into your jeans, anger boiling up and through your nerves.

That’s not a good enough answer.

“Were you,” You suck in a breath, trying to control your volume, “Were you going to sleep with her? If I hadn’t called you, would you have-”

“No!” Waruck nearly shouts, shaking the table as his knees bang against the bottom, but he recoils once he sees the way you flinch. “No, I wasn’t going to.”

Those pesky tears press against your eyelids once more. You can feel your nails digging indents into your thighs.

“I don’t know if  I can believe that.” You whisper, failing to catch the crack in your voice.

Waruck’s brow furrows as he nervously chews his bottom lip. He tries to meet your gaze, but you seem to look right through him.

“I know.” Waruck sighs, bringing his hand up to rub the back of his neck.

There's a tenuous silence; Waruck tries to find the words to fix things  while you focus on the details of the cafe walls, examining every nook and cranny as you try not to sob.

“I-I understand if you don’t trust me. I understand if you hate me, or you want to break up. But please, please know that I love you, and that I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I’ve been kicking myself over flirting with that girl because I love you so fucking much. I-”

You hold up your hand, stopping Waruck in his tracks. He realizes how loud he’s been talking and that people are beginning to stare. He huddles back into his corner, tucking his hands into his lap. You let out a long breath. Waruck takes the risk and looks up.

When his eyes finally meet yours, he realizes just how sad you look. A treacherous tear has begun falling down your cheek, sending a lightning bolt of remorse into Waruck’s chest.

You take in another deep breath, wiping away the tear with the back of your hand. You look at Waruck, exhausted.

“I don’t,”  You falter, but catch yourself, “I don’t want to break up with you. I just don’t know if I’m ready to forgive you yet.”

Waruck nods, fiddling with his fingers.

“Of course, I get it-”

“I’m not done.” Waruck quickly shuts his mouth. “You hurt me, Waruck. Hurt me in a way I don’t think I’ll ever forget. So I need time. Time before I can even see you again without thinking,” You hiccup, but this time you let the wave of emotion hit you, full force.  “Without thinking about that night.”

A lady calls out your order, but neither of you makes a move. You sit in each other's presence, trying to wrap yourselves around the mess of emotions, trying to read the others mind without seeming too obvious.

You both sit here, in the presence of something that's been broken, damaged in a way that’s cut the heart of your chest and slams them on the table. There’s a crack that runs down between you two, inching open more and more with each breath.

But somehow, somehow, you both think you have a chance of fixing it.

[youn9racha]

I Know (Part I)

Pairing: Changbin x fem!reader

Genre: suggestive

Word count: 1.9k

Warning: slight adult content, swearing, suggestive actions, elements of stalker behavior

Extra notes: characters mentioned are all above the age 21 years, a lot of hatred towards the male figure lol. Also this is my first time writing on tumblr, so please bare with me, it may not be the best, but I still hope you enjoy it :)

And baby, I know, I know whatever city you’re in, you’re still the boy that I’d pick…

part ii is up !!!

—————————————————————————————————

This is no way representative of the way Stray Kids act. They’re nothing but references of character, and in no shape or form is this how they act. And I am in no way romanticizing or glamorizing any toxic behavior exhibited, they’re just stories that is meant to be read. Readers discretion is advised

—————————————————————————————————

Men…

Truly the scums of the Earth, who do no good for no one, and are an absolute menace to society. But oh, do I enjoy the looks of their faces at times. The way they would look at me with full hope and infatuation, with full beliefs that I would step down and give them all they want from me.

Hmph. How cute… and pathetic. How pathetic to assume and lower my standards for them. They all are the same. All but one however.

All that men hating… and yet, only one I’d be willing to go down to his level.

Yes, its him… He whom a lot would have not sought to be with, not many would expect a bombshell like myself would be with. But I do not see that in him, not an ounce of what many insecure individuals would see. I see something striking that not many could see, an underrated dignified beauty that anyone could wish to admire. A fanciable and irresistible personality and face.

He was a man.. but a pleasant one.

It all started when I moved in into a new flat for myself. I previously left the old complex due to the cramped environment I had that left me feeling uneasy and stressed, as well as it wasn’t even my apartment, it was for my partner, well, ex-partner. It was simply wasn’t working out, due to our seeming never ending conflicts. But enough of the past, let us move on..

I found this flat that is comfortable and the rent pays well, its only downside is that my room’s window is faced to the next door’s flat, however it’s not a big detriment or big turn off for me so it was fine by me, and also it was prone to have random, yet rare, blackout, but then again what neighborhood doesn’t have that. Anyhow, I was set to take the complex, but before I did, I have noticed something about the neighbor’s window next to me. It was a man. A really good looking one too. Giving his side profile, he was laying on his bed, his black hair covered head bopping with earphones placed in ears, laptop placed in his revealing shorts adorned lap. My eyes began started to stare into his arms then onto his naked well built chest, which indicates that he likes to keep up with his health, as his ring adorned hands was tapping away in his keyboard. I quickly looked away when I saw him repositioned his laptop, and walked out of the soon-to-be my room.

Great… I’ve entered Hell.

But I didn’t let it affect my decisions and got the apartment nonetheless, here I am now, weeks after the incident, sitting in my car, outside of the building, still thinking about the man in his laptop. Has he noticed that I was staring at him? Does he know that there’s gonna be someone living next to him? I hope not. And if he has, I must apologize to him. But before that, let me unload my car. I have gradually put my stuff into the complex as the days go by, it seems dragging, but it felt like the time went by fast, so I’m glad I have done that. However, today was different, as I took stuff more than I usually did, as I desperately do not want to go back to my ex. Typically, I never had assistance, as usually my best friend would join in and help out, but at a time I needed them the most, they had to be really sick. They still were willing to help, but I insisted that they shouldn’t and should rest.

After thinking, I sighed and got out my car, ready to fight the battle that is putting my stuff into my complex. I opened the trunk, eyes meeting my stuff, and I begin to groan. ‘Dammit, (y/n), why do you have that many stuff?!’ I thought to myself. I really should’ve had at least one more visit to my ex, but alas I picked to just take all all together in one day. I picked up a box until..

“Need any help?” I heard someone behind me asking me. I turned around and looked at the source. ‘God damn, is it just me, or does this town just bring out more attractive people?’ I thought to myself, as I see a man that looked like he could be at a museum. He had a sandy brown curly hair, slightly tanned skin, really plump and a crazy jawline. He donned a tank top that barely covered his side torso, and basket ball shorts that complimented his really nice, thick… thighs… yeah… Needless to say he was really attractive.

It seems that I was ogling him, rather than responding, as he shyly smiled and waved his hand in front of my face, “hello,” he softly said as I shook my head and looked back at his face apologetically.

“I am so sorry, I am just really tired, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” I cringed at my pathetic way of justifying of me literally internally lusting over him. I really am turning into someone I dread to be. How can I forgive myself?

“That’s okay, I know how moving can get tiring, and I sense that you’re alone, so please let me and my friend help you out.” He said, sympathetically smiling a sweet smile, already grabbing a box out of my hand. God, if this man has a partner, then they’re the luckiest person ever, and if he’s single, I’ll gladly hand him a ring. What am I saying? (y/n), what the hell has gotten into you?!

“I’m Christopher, but you can call me Chris or Chan, whichever you prefer is fine, what’s your name?” The generous man’s voice interrupted my inner battle and I found myself looking at him again. “(y/n)” I smiled at him, which he nodded back.

“Nice to meet you,” Chan said, looking back and see that his friend showed up, meanwhile, I went back to my trunk and got out more stuff from my car “oh, there he is!” Chan enthusiastically announced.

“(y/n), meet my friend and roommate, Changbin.” Chris said, while I got out the box and looked at the other man, my face shifted from contentment to horrific.

Its the man with the laptop.

“Hello? Chan, are you sure she’s okay?” Changbin looked at Chris with worry. “Yeah, she’s just tired, just nudge her.”

It’s like Chris knew me too well, despite meeting for less than 10 minutes, as Chris slightly pushed me with the box, not enough to hurt me, but enough to put me out of a trance.

“huh? I did it again, did I?” I looked at Chan, worryingly, which he nodded. I looked back at Changbin and the pathetic act was brought up again.

“I am so sorry, I don’t know what has gotten into me.” I apologized once again, which Changbin only smirked. “Don’t worry about it,” He said, carrying a box. Something about that smirk and tone seems off. Not off in a menacing way, but off in a… coy way. Maybe not the best term to use, maybe I am just over analyzing, but I am for sure either winning the lottery tonight, or convinced that the sun will rise from the west tomorrow, since I have two very attractive men helping out, one of which is someone whom I may have an odd fascination for a while now.

~~

The two have been nothing but a delight to interact with, their help with the stuff had done me even more than just a solid. However, I still in a way feel a bit unsettled by Changbin. It wasn’t that he was a creep, or did anything to make me uncomfortable, its just this feeling of guilt I carry with me. Meanwhile, I didn’t attempt anything, and I just simply just admired him from afar, it still felt wrong that I was just looking at him while he was barely wearing anything, let alone while not him paying attention. Despite this, it seems that he doesn’t know that I did what I did, which is why I chose to confront him about it when the time is right, which is probably when we start getting even more comfortable. I have exchanged numbers with both men, even though I could probably just go out my window and yell out their names, but I’d rather not disturb the peace.

Two good looking men are now my neighbors… Who would have thought? Whichever entity that is in existence have decided to play with me, because to them, my humiliation would be their laughing stock, because they definitely would have seen what is to become of me.

Its been a week in since I moved, and interacted with the two Chans, and I am glad that a curtain was installed onto my room, just so I wouldn’t carry even more guilt than I already do. But the thing is, I would lie that I still haven’t thought of Changbin. While I would have thought that Chris fitting into more of my ideal type, Changbin however held a mysterious power that Chan didn’t.

Ever since the time I first laid eyes on Changbin, he has never left my mind. He has started to creep up in my fantasies and dreams in every way shape of form. I couldn’t stop thinking of how his arms would look around my waist, how his lips would feel in my skin, or how his hands would wander around, exploring places that many men often fail to find to make me feel good, or how his voice would be like when talking as he puts his mouth by my ear— God, this is getting out of hand, I would think.

What if he had a girlfriend? What if he wasn’t attracted to women in general? What if he finds you a creep?

So many more endless questions would come in to ruin me, but its not like i have a choice, he just happened to settle into my dreams and thoughts, and went with it.

I decided to take a shower to try and distract myself from these thoughts, which didn’t help at all, as the hot water cascading my skin did nothing but accelerated my lustful thoughts. I decided to get out of the shower, as it didn’t help my case.

Damn you, Changbin.

I sighed, put on some underwear and a robe while having a towel wrapped around my hair. I got out of the bathroom and back to my room. It was dark out, and in my room, the only light came out of it were my night lamp, which barely lit up the whole room. I checked the window, making sure Changbin wasn’t there, or at least not facing the window, only to see his window being covered with curtains.

Great timing, could’ve used that when I first saw you, dipshit.

But nonetheless, I was really glad at least he wasn’t visible. I laid back on my bed, and decided to look through social media, as anyone should. While in the middle of a instagram scroll, I see a caller popping through at the top of the screen…

It was Changbin.

[gohyuck]

pairing: head knight!jeno x monarch!reader (reader has genitals attributed to those considered biologically female but no pronouns are actually used)

genre: fluff, mild angst (they discuss an oncoming battle they must prepare for), smut (it’s mostly smut)

word count: 6.5k

warnings & notes (nonsexual): mentions of war/battle, mentions of injuries retained from past skirmishes, jeno is as tall as you need him to be in order to rest your head against his chest without leaning down, it’s kind of cheesy tbh they are disgustingly head-over-heels in love with each other, also a peryton is a fantasy creature that’s essentially a stag + a bird, also i know y’all must be tired of royalty aus but i swear this is almost pwp (except there’s context so there’s plot) so give it a chance (if you’re legal) i guess

warnings & notes (sexual): oral (giving and receiving for both parties), fingering (reader receives), spit kink (lmao sorry), general messiness honestly, mild knife kink (no blood drawn, he just uses a dagger to tear apart clothing), gratuitous usage of the name ‘lionheart’, jeno has a big dick because i cannot stop myself from doing that to y’all for some reason, some choking

special thanks to @moonlit-jeno​ @domjaehyun​ @waithyuck​ for reading parts of it/all of it beforehand!

the soft hours of twilight have their holds on you, chilling you to your bones even as you pull the heavy fur cape tighter around your body. you should’ve pulled something over your thin nightgown, you suppose, something to act as a middle layer between silk and skin and peryton fur, but it’s too late for that. you’re already out on your private balcony, overlooking a kingdom you’d do anything to see the sun rise on day after day. 

far, far past the outskirts of your humble realm, barely visible to your own eye, an unsettlingly large camp of soldiers is finishing setting up camp for the night. you watch as tiny, tiny orange pinpricks - no doubt the fires they’d set to make food, to alert you of their presence - begin to get snuffed out. finally, they sleep.

if you were any worse of a person, of a ruler, you would send your army after them now, hours before the battle is set. perhaps, if you were any less selfish, you would do so regardless of keeping your status as a good and just monarch. if you were any less selfish, you would shake awake the love of your life and hand him his cape after shedding it from your shoulders. you would tell him to rouse his men and women, to arm them to their teeth, and to fight for what is right using means that are entirely wrong. 

as if privy to your thoughts, your head knight stirs in the too-large bed behind you. you turn just in time to see him sit up and twist his body left, right, left as he stretches to rid himself of sleep. it’s too late - or maybe too early - for either of you to be awake. maybe you should have stayed within his warm embrace rather than gotten out of bed to size up the army of the kingdom of crithage. 

even now, you can’t help but strategize, at least on a basic level. crithagians are unused to the cold of your beautiful - but often frigid - ekoria. they won’t expect your people to fall upon them from the icy cliffs that surround their camp, nor will they be able to see over the oncoming blizzard your royal sky-reader has predicted. she has not been incorrect in many, many years. ekorians have, over the years, grown accustomed to heavy snows, among other weather phenomenon, so your army’s visual acuity is not to be questioned. 

that, and your troops are in the hands of the best warrior ekoria has ever had.

jeno. your jeno. your lionheart. you rein your thoughts in just as he pulls open the balcony door, closing it behind him with a soft click as he steps over the threshold separating in from out and warm from cold. goosebumps rise across his bare flesh the moment his skin meets air, and you don’t hesitate to slide his cape off and thrust it towards him, knowing full well that his arms will provide more than enough heat for you. he fastens it with ease, seeming slightly amused at how you’d been using it as a blanket, and gently grabs ahold of your wrist before pulling you into his chest and wrapping an arm around your waist. with his other hand, he takes a corner of his cape and wraps it around you, leaving you enveloped in both his hot-to-touch skin and the comforting fur. 

“they’re out in the valley, aren’t they?” he finally murmurs, leaning to place his mouth against your ear. jeno’s voice is thick and sleep-ridden, still raspy in a way that settles around you, inside you, within you. you lean back slightly, raising a cold hand to rest against the tattoo of a lion that adorns his left pectoral, mane stretching up to his collarbone and encroaching on his bicep. the lion has a scar on its right cheek. you pull away more, eyes landing on the thin discolored line underneath your lover’s same eye. 

it had been a longsword, meant to slash across your throat. jeno, with the speed of a star falling from grace and enough adrenaline to fuel a hundred men, had leapt across you in order to take it across the face. for crown and for country, bard’s songs later regaled of him. for you, he’d whispered to you that same night as you’d stitched him up, using the threading tactics you’d learned from the castle medic as a child. for you. always for you.

“my love?” jeno prods, and you realize you haven’t given his rhetorical question any acknowledgement. you hum, meeting his eyes with your own, and watch as he allows one corner of his mouth to turn up. 

“they only just put out their fires.” you finally respond, moving to be against his chest again. you rest your head against the intricate ink against jeno’s skin, finally letting out a breath of what one might consider worry. the air that leaves your lungs manifests into wisps out in the cold world that surrounds you. your lionheart pulls you ever closer. 

“you need not stress.” he says simply, and an outsider to your relationship would see no cohesion between your statement and his. still, you know precisely what jeno means, why he’s said what he’s said. you turn, pressing your lips against the lion’s forehead. above you, your own lion brushes his lips against your temple. 

“i have an army, a kingdom, even, to worry about, and yet i only fear tomorrow for whatever outcome befalls one man.” you whisper, and even you are surprised to find tears catching in your throat. you do not cry easily, not when you know firsthand how cruel the world can be. 

you only reign because your parents no longer breathe. 

tomorrow’s battle could easily bleed into next year’s war, and while your kingdom is prepared for such a thing, your heart may not be. your people are not belligerent, and neither are you. crithage had been the one to throw the first stone, had sent word that if you refused to relinquish your throne and bow your head, they would aim the first arrow, draw the first blood. no tears had been shed then, not even when you’d paced around your bedchambers, reading and rereading the note signed with blood red ink until jeno had physically pulled it out of your tight grasp. you hadn’t cried, not even when he’d said that he was willing to die if it meant keeping crithage out of ekoria, out of the kingdom you’d both built from ground up after the war that had taken your parents, out of the home you’d created together. 

“wherever you take us, i will follow. wherever you need me, i will lead.” he’d murmured the words against the lobe of your ear, standing beside and slightly behind your throne as you’d written out your reply to crithage in a room full of your advisors. nobody else had moved a muscle then, not even as you closed the envelope with hot wax and the royal seal. 

you’d sent back a much, much shorter letter than their own in response. 

a time and date for battle. nothing more and nothing less.

that had been so many months ago, so far away that the concept of time dissipates when you attempt to organize it in your harried mind. with a hostile army on your doorstep, everything suddenly feels far more real than it has before. your people have been evacuated, your troops have been trained. your lionheart is unafraid to the world, standing tall and proud at your side as he always has.

a sigh that starts from deep in jeno’s chest brings you back to the present. tomorrow is it, you’re reminded. crithage has seiged almost every other state between themselves and your beloved ekoria. if they get to you, they’ll have your head, raised high on a stake they’ll erect outside of the gates they’ll install to the place you call home. if they get to you, it means they’ll have gotten through jeno.

you can’t live in a world without him. it’s a dangerous attachment for a ruler to have, you’re well aware. if other kingdoms find out that your weakness is a person, one that lives and breathes, you’re not likely to ever see your love again.

it’s little comfort that jeno can’t live in a world without you, either. 

“i worry about not being here, at the castle, to protect you,” he mumbles into your hair. “i know that you are perfectly capable, and that you’ll have your own faction of our knights with you, but i- it feels as if i’m about to open my chest and leave my naked heart unguarded, right there for any arrows to pierce.”

jeno’s confession is simple, beautiful in the way the most ornate of daggers are: that is, you feel as if he’s just dragged a sharp edge down the length of your sternum, taking you apart piece by piece. his words cage you in, force you deeper into your own head in a way you can’t afford, not right now. 

“eloquent,” you hum, unable to resist teasing him even as the moment does not call for it. it’s to save yourself from your heavily beating heart. “it isn’t too late to make you my poet laureate, you know. no need to wield a sword tomorrow then.”

“and who would be your head knight then, hm? the current laureate? you want renjun to lead the charge against the crithagians? to be your lionheart?” your lover draws back to ensure that you can see his eyes, glimmering with mirth. renjun is an able man, and one of your best friends, but he is not the warrior jeno is. 

nobody is the warrior that jeno is. 

“such a foolish thing to say,” you smile up at him, lips folding from joking to earnest within moments. the merriment fades a little from jeno’s eyes at recognizing the change in your expressions. “you’re my only lionheart. always have been and always will be, even when you’re too old and gray and slow to be my head knight.” 

“someone seems confident of that happening.” he says quietly, raising the hand at your waist to come up and rest over your own hand that lies against his chest. you swallow, your own spit feeling too heavy for you to stomach, your throat dry and scratchy. 

“who else can have confidence of a victory rather than a monarch?” you ask, a smile that isn’t quite sad - but isn’t quite self-assured either - resting on your lips. jeno raises your hand to his lips, pressing one, two, three chaste kisses to the back and then repeating the pattern against your palm. he does not let go.

the two of you stand there for a stolen moment. you lay your head back against his chest, listening to the thundering of his heartbeat below the ink and skin and muscle and bone. he is real, and he is here. 

he is real. he is here. 

“the monarch’s lionheart, of course,” he murmurs, finally dropping your hand to reach back and push open the balcony door. “we only have four more strokes of time until i must go, my love. is this truly how you want to spend it?”

it’s evident that jeno no longer wants to mull over the what-ifs, not when he prefers living in the present more than anyone you’ve ever known. unsurprising, you suppose, for someone whose livelihood involves strategizing away his own mortality. you allow him to pull you back into your bedroom, immediately more comfortable when the door closes behind you, keeping you in with the body heat of your lover and the warmth of the crackling fire on the hearth in the corner of your room. jeno sheds the cape, draping it over the nearest chair, before bringing you back to his chest by placing his large hands against your waist.

it takes feeling his fingers against your skin through the thin silk of your slip to remember that jeno has nothing on. he’s always preferred to sleep naked, unlike you. though you hardly have any undergarments on, you at least wear a sheer gown most nights. 

you’d ridden him passionately before bed, tiring both of you out in order to get any semblance of sleep. as your lionheart pulls you flush against him, though, it’s difficult to avoid the way his cock hardens against your hip once more. you want to quip about how jeno’s insatiable, but he trails a hand up, up over your body to swipe a thumb over one of your hardened nipples, and you can’t help the sigh that escapes through your prettily parted lips. 

“will you get on the bed for me, love?” jeno’s voice is smoother now that he’s more awake, though you can’t help but miss the low growl that had come with the earlier rasp. he may be asking you a question, but you know that it’s an order in disguise. wordlessly, you step back, back, back until the wood of your bedframe presses against the soft plushness of the back of your thighs. jeno has not moved, choosing to stay put and appraise you instead. his eyes are hooded now, and as his gaze trails from your neck - he’d marked it up earlier, the kiss-bitten bruises not yet having faded from your skin - down to the curve of your chest, over the expanse of your thighs, he can’t help but reach one hand down to his dick, swiping two fingers over its head to collect his precum on his skin. 

jeno says nothing else, makes no other move. it’s to give you an illusion of control, you suppose. not that you need one. 

“should i rid myself of this, lionheart?” you ask, the words coming out breathier than intended. the nightgown leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, and you’re sure he can even see the slick wetness that’s pooling against your inner thighs. jeno adores seeing your body more than anything, but the gown does not inhibit that. 

it’s no surprise, then, when he shakes his head no, instead finally moving to stand at the edge of the bed, slotting himself between your thighs as they naturally move apart to fit him in. his clean hand slides up under your gown, resting just above your cunt, as he raises his other hand to your face. 

“lie back, and open.” jeno states, no air of leniency about him anymore. you oblige, and your love leans over you, his dark gaze centered on your parted lips. 

he lays his two precum-coated fingertips against your tongue, pressing in and then down and revelling when you don’t gag but instead run your tongue over his fingers, cleaning them off for him. you haven’t gagged in a long time, your reflexes getting used to him in the way the rest of you is. when he withdraws his hand, your mouth stays open, and jeno can’t help himself as he leans over you and, after gathering it in his own mouth for a moment, allows his own spit to fall from his own tongue and onto yours. 

your eyes go wide at the action, and you know that he notices it even as he does not acknowledge it. even so, you don’t miss the smirk that crosses his face upon hearing your breath hitch. jeno has you in his palm.

satisfied, he stands, and you close your mouth and swallow a part of him with a part of you. jeno’s no longer looking at your face, but you can’t bring yourself to care, not when he’s ruching up your nightgown with growing hunger, not when he’s kneeling on the stone ground just to make himself eye-level with your pretty, pretty pussy. 

“i took you hardly any time ago,” he murmurs, breath hot against your skin as his mouth nears where you so desperately need him. “and yet here you are, laid open once more, all for me. only for me.”

“always you, jeno, please - ” you can’t get any more words out, the air being pulled out of you as he dives in and circles your clit with his tongue, bringing his two spit-soaked fingers up to press into you with almost no resistance. your reaction is instantaneous, walls clenching like a vice around his fingers as he lays a filthy kiss against your bundle of nerves, hips jumping up only to be kept down by jeno’s other hand, pressing down against the bottom of your stomach. 

“patience.” he pulls off of your clit just to growl the word out against the skin of your inner thigh, and the wet heat of his mouth directly against your flesh has you practically gasping out. when jeno sinks his teeth into your thigh as he’s often wont to do, you let out a full-bodied whine, the kind that starts in the back of your throat and rises up through the inner column of your neck, meant only for your lover’s ears. jeno laves his tongue over the marks he’s just created, as if to wash the pleasurable pain from your body. 

he does not reattach his mouth to your core, choosing instead to fall back and watch, eyes trained, as he scissors you open. with hardly any warning rather than his gaze jumping up to meet your own momentarily, jeno presses his thumb into your clit, using your slick wetness to eliminate any raw friction as he rubs slow circles against your nerve endings. he’s never failed to bring you to the edge with ease, and now is no different. you’d be embarrassed at how easily you fall apart just from his simple simultaneous motions, in and on you, but it’s jeno, and he knows your body maybe even better than he knows his own. 

keening, a loud, gasping wail, falls from your lips only for jeno to rise from his place in between your thighs and swallow your sounds with his open mouth, his clean hand coming up to cage you in against your sheets. the way you raise your arms to loop them around his neck is akin to the way a drowning man would grab on to a lifeline, and once he rises you pull him back into a longer, filthier kiss, where your teeth click against his and his tongue opens up your mouth the same way it feels like his touch opens up your body. 

you feel as if you’re being flayed, as if hellfire is the only thing comparable to the heat against your skin. jeno steps closer, just by the tiniest bit, and you feel his hand - the one shining with your arousal - brush past your hip before he uses it to wet his cock with one, two, three firm strokes. copious amounts of precum arise from the tip before being pulled down against his flesh with expert downstrokes. your mouth waters as you watch.

“my mouth, lionheart, please?” you finally gain the courage to ask what is on your mind, sitting up on your elbows as you begin to slowly find your strength. your love raises an eyebrow, and not without reason: jeno is a big man, making even you - a literal monarch - feel small at times, and this does not end with his personality or his person: you have never been able to take all of him into your mouth. the ache borders on painful, frankly, and jeno himself refuses to harm you in that way. 

“this, now, is about you.” he responds, and your heart cracks as you register that as a ‘no’. still, you speak again. you need him in your mouth, suddenly. it isn’t just a want. something has to anchor you to the here and now, it may as well be the head of his cock, heavy against your tongue.

“what is about me is about you as well,” you respond, and before he can lay his refusal down out flat, you slide onto the floor - warmer than expected - and tuck your heels behind your bare ass. “i need this. please.”

you’re directly in front of him now, face parallel to his strong thighs. jeno strokes up, squeezes tighter just below his frenulum, and you watch, struck, as precum beads at the tip and then splits into two streams, half sliding down his hard dick and the other slowly-but-surely falling to the ground, hardly a quarter of a step from one of your knees.

“give me your hand, then,” your knight murmurs from above you, drawing your gaze from his leaking cock up past the dainty curve of his lip to his hard eyes. “now.”

when you raise your hand up, you only put it up limply, unsure of what he means to do with the limb he’s asked for. your eyes must be swimming with questions, because jeno gives you a hint of a sweet, reassuring smile before allowing his expression to become stoic again… right before he grasps your given hand and straightens it out, gentler than expected from such a great warrior but harsher than he truly ever treats you. 

he’s passionate. this demonstrates it. 

before you can react, your body following your hand up off of your heels, though only slightly, as he yanks up your hand, jeno leans down and licks up your hand, from the bottom of your palm to the top, all while maintaining eye contact with you. he lets go, though you keep your hand raised, your gaze obviously dumbfounded. 

“a dry hand would rub me raw,” he explains, though the smirk that’s tugging at one corner of his mouth shows that he finds your wide-eyed expression at least mildly amusing. “we do not want that, do we?”

it’s amazing how easily he can get you under his thumb when you give out orders that hold his life in the balance on a day-to-day basis. maybe that’s why he finds taking charge in private so easy. maybe it’s his way of evening your dynamic out. even now, as he asks you an innocent question with no hidden meaning or reaction, you find yourself shaking your head along enthusiastically. no, of course you don’t want to rub him raw. of course you and him don’t want that. 

you raise the hand now deemed ‘not dry’ up as jeno watches, finally, finally wrapping your hand around it. your thumb and middle finger do not meet, no matter how tight you squeeze. your lover lets out a fulfilled groan at finally feeling a touch other than his own on his hard cock, and it’s a beautiful sound. you want more of it. you want more of him. 

as if mesmerized, you lean closer, darting out your tongue to lick experimentally at his slit. he holds his breath, a large hand coming to rest lightly against the back of your head and base of your skull, waiting. you take this as a sign to stretch your lips wider, engulfing the entire tip of his cock in your hot mouth. his grip tightens in your hair, and, in return, you clench around nothing. 

as you struggle to take more of jeno in your mouth, you do your best to stroke the rest of his cock with a tight enough grip to make him feel everything, but not tight to the point where you’re hurting him. regardless of how little you can take on your tongue - not your fault, by any means - jeno seems happy, barely able to stop himself from bucking up into the back of your throat. at this point, you’re essentially just warming his cock, so you pull off with a slick pop to look at him with slightly watery eyes. a string of precum and saliva connects your bottom lip and his tip, and when it breaks, you’re acutely aware of the mixture dripping down your chin and onto your nightgown. it’s no matter.

jeno’s thumb runs over your scalp, just above the bottom of your skull. you close your eyes momentarily to take in a deep breath. 

“you can force yourself down my throat, you know,” your voice is raspy when you speak, eyes fluttering open almost drearily. “i’m not too delicate for it.”

there’s something simultaneously raw and pure about the way you speak, and jeno recognizes that your headspace has changed, just a little. your need truly is all-encompassing now. he must tread more delicately than usual.

there’s so much love, so much adoration in your wide-eyed gaze. he only wishes to return it with the same intensity and double the care. 

“i know, love,” jeno responds, finally moving his hand in order to place two fingers under your chin. he tilts your face up, taking note of the way your eyes run over his tattoo before looking at his chin, then his jaw, then his nose, then his forehead, until, finally, you land on his eyes. you’re a tad bit unfocused, full of need, but that’s okay. you’ll always come back to him. he continues speaking. “you’re so strong. always so strong for me. that’s why you deserve to be rewarded, yes?”

“rewarded?” you’re confused, to say the least, though you do not dislike the direction jeno is suddenly moving towards. he only smiles, gentle and kind and good and yours. all yours. 

“on the bed, (name).” he tilts his own head, jutting his chin towards the bed you’d slid off of earlier. you don’t hesitate to follow, pushing yourself up onto your feet and all but scrambling backwards to be seated against the soft mattress. the blankets are all haphazard and the pillows aren’t straight, but that’s the least of your worries right now. jeno gives no other orders, only stepping closer and, without warning, winding his arms underneath your thighs and propelling you backwards, causing you to land, back flat, in the center of your bed. 

it had always felt inescapably large when you’d slept in it alone. now, it feels welcoming. safe. 

“you’re ready for me, yes?” the tone of voice jeno uses is soft, even as his rough palms push apart your thighs. you nod, murmuring a small ‘yes’ once you realize he’s waiting for you to verbalize your thoughts. this is all jeno needs to climb onto the bed and move in between your spread legs, settling back on his calves as his hands smooth over your hip bones and waist. it’s evident that he’s bent on taking his time with you tonight, likely under the illusion that that is what you want. 

it is not what you want. it is most definitely not what you need. 

“i need you within me, lionheart,” one of your hands clutches at the sheets beneath you while you stretch the other towards your lover, imploring. “soon. now. please.”  

“absolutely impatient,” jeno only chuckles in return, drawing an indignant whine forth from the base of your throat. he looks over your barely covered body once more before finally - almost in slowed motions as if to tease you further - rising up onto his knees. his hands stop moving against your skin, finally circling around the soft meat of your upper thighs. swiftly and fluidly, jeno pulls your body towards his, wrapping your legs around his own waist. his wet cock lies heavy against your pelvis, leaving slick precum against the apex of your thighs and the bottom of your stomach. he smirks. “is this what you wanted?” 

the motion of being pulled into your knight had forced the air from your lungs in a surprised yelp, and the feeling of his warm skin - he’s always supplied so much heat, it baffles you to no end - against your own momentarily blanks your mind. jeno repeats his question twice, cocky grin growing with each utterance, before you nod vigorously and sputter out something vaguely affirmative. yes. yes, this is exactly what you wanted, exactly what you want. 

you’ve been growing steadily wetter the longer your foreplay had drawn out, but jeno, ever-caring, still pulls back - his cock sliding against your thigh has you moaning - to slip two thick fingers into you, adding a third when he’s absolutely sure that you can take it. in no time at all, you’re grinding your clit against his rough palm, the friction absolutely heavenly. jeno makes no move to stop you, only gently forcing his fingers in deeper. 

a fourth finger is added just as your abused clit can’t take anymore, and you spasm on his hand as you fall past the point of no return. your second orgasm of the night washes over you, and you can’t help the muted but harried gasps you let out as your hips buck up, driving your head back into the mattress. jeno draws his fingers out slowly, licking your essence off of them with practiced ease. once your body has calmed down, you can only let out a small whimper, still basking in the intensity you’ve just experienced. 

jeno knows your limit, and knows damn well that you haven’t reached it yet. it’s because of this that, even as your walls are still clenching around nothing due to aftershocks that wrack your body, he places the fat head of his cock against your hole and slowly but surely slides in. the hands on your thighs move up to wrap around the sides of your waist, and his grip is bruising as he pushes deeper and deeper. even as he goes at a snail’s pace, you feel as if you’re being pulled apart only to be pieced back together again. you hold your breath.

jeno is halfway in when he realizes you still aren’t quite wet enough. he shifts slightly, carefully moving one of your legs up just a little bit higher, before swiping over your raw clit with a thumb he’s wetted with his own tongue. a moan flies forth from your mouth immediately, and a gush of wetness coats jeno’s cock anew as he circles over your bud with abandon. he’s finally free to surge forward and bury himself within your warm walls without fear of repercussions on your own body… so he does. the breath you’d been holding in is punched out of you, replaced with an honest-to-god wail. tears bud at the corners of your eyes at the stretch, falling as he pulls out almost entirely and slams into you again. 

jeno does everything in his life in order to live up to the name you’ve given him: lionheart. he is just and loyal and thoughtful as an advisor, and analytical and fearsome and ruthless as a warrior. sex is where both sides of him meet. it is where he is not just the kingdom’s bravest knight, or the crown’s right-hand man. it is where he is your lionheart, and yours alone, where your souls intertwine at the place your bodies meet. 

he notices how your hands come up to reach for him, leaning down so you can place one hand against his heart - against his tattoo - and throw the other one over his other shoulder. jeno’s nose is almost touching yours, though your bodies shift continuously as he keeps drawing back and driving his hips into yours with force.

he never ceases to make you feel full. 

your walls grip his cock tightly, amplifying every movement jeno indulges you in. the slide is slick and wet and perfect, but it is not easy. the head of his dick catches on your clenched walls every time he pulls out just to slam back in, forcing you to feel him with everything you have. it’s exactly what you want. 

he slows down his thrusting for a moment as he moves forward slightly, leaning closer still as he places one forearm against your head and raises his other hand to fondle your chest over your sheer clothing. somehow, this is no longer enough for you. jeno’s cock is fully sheathed within you as he swipes a thumb over one of your nipples, and the feeling of his skin pushing the cloth against one of your most sensitive areas has you shuddering in a way that causes you to squeeze even tighter around him. his hips stutter slightly, driving him impossibly deeper into you.

“jeno,” you rasp out, tongue heavy and dry. “my pillow. beneath my pillow.”

his eyes go wide as he processes what you’ve just said, his shallow thrusts slowing down. jeno gulps audibly. 

“your- love, your dagger?”

“need you to touch me.” you respond, holding his gaze and watching it clear up from confused to comprehending you entirely. he pushes himself up from his forearm to his hand, sliding out of you in the same movement. you whine sadly at the loss of contact, but jeno mutters a good-natured ‘be quiet’ almost immediately. 

“you know,” he starts, voice teasing, even as he pulls your dagger - black steel, quillions and hilt encrusted with blue jewels, black tempered glass at the pommel - out from beneath your pillow using the hand that had been fondling you earlier. he moves back down to his prior position, and your breath hitches as he presses the apex of the knife against the collar of your nightgown. “i’m already touching you.”

“more,” you moan out, the end of your word coming out almost breathlessly. one of your hands slides against his tattoo once more, as if feeling the lion will make it roar to life. “touch me more.” 

jeno chuckles, albeit darker than he had been earlier, and digs the dagger into the cloth in front of it without any further ado. you hold your breath willfully this time, not wanting to actually nick yourself on the blade, as he moves down your body, cutting the sheer gown open down its direct center. your lionheart dots his lips against your flesh in a trail in his wake, scraping his teeth against your skin as he sees fit. 

he leaves a quick, but filthy, kiss against your clit for good measure, eyes lighting up as you attempt to close your legs around his head on impulse, only to have them pushed apart even farther than before by his strong hands. once he gets to the hem of the slip, he throws your dagger somewhere on the stone floor - neither of you pay any heed to where it clatters - and rips it apart with his bare hands, hardly able to bear not feeling you around him for much longer. 

before you can do anything or say anything or even think anything at all, your lover surges forward and presses himself back into you with a grunt that sounds almost like a growl. his hands knead at your thighs as he finds his rhythm with ease, pounding into you with practice as if you’re an art medium and he’s a skilled master. he’s everywhere, all around you and inside of you and in the air and in your skin, and it’s all you’ve ever wanted.

“touching - ha - touching you enough now?” he asks, resolve crumbling bit by bit as he fights to keep himself from tumbling over the cliff’s edge before you do. you can’t dignify him with a response, unable to do anything but claw at his back and pin yourself further against his chest as if it’ll make even more room for you in his heart than there already is. he doesn’t need a response, anyways. jeno already knows. 

he knows just how close you are, too. just as close as he is. it’s because of this that jeno moves a hand up to curl around your throat just as he circles your clit with two fingers of the other hand, continuing to fuck into you at the same rate as best he can. with a sharp cry and the arching of your back off the bed, you clench around him for one final time before he comes to a halt, barely holding himself up over you as he releases within you with a shuddering, gasping groan. 

moments pass, stretching into longer than they typically are. jeno takes care as he slides out of you, climbing onto the bed and flopping down next to you right after. the feeling of his release, sticky and wet against your inner thighs, is unpleasant at best, but you can’t bring yourself to clean up just yet. instead, you turn your head to your side, your nose immediately brushing against jeno’s sternum as you realize that he’s turned his entire body towards your own. he lets out an airy laugh at the sensation, pushing half of the sliced cloth off of your body in order to run a wide open palm down your naked side. 

“good?” he speaks first, asking an arbitrary question. ‘good enough to make you forget?’ is what he means, knowing full well that you could never lose thought of what awaits the two of you. the sentiment is what’s important, though, and you let out an agreeable hum as a reply. the sex itself was great, of course. he’s well aware. 

“sleep, lionheart,” you say just as silence attempts to cloak the two of you. “we must be ready soon, as it is.”

jeno gives you no response, and you do not require one from him. instead, he pulls you even closer into his chest as if doing so will protect you from the crithagians across your kingdom. his entire world rests between his arms. you are both tired enough that sleep forces your eyelids closed swifter than expected, and as you fall asleep to your lover’s slowed breathing and muted heartbeat, you can’t help but, just this once, allow your worries to slip off your body as your torn nightgown does. 

just before the rise of the sun, jeno will have to get out of bed and clean you up as best he can before donning his clothing, his armor, and his cape. you’ll put his helmet upon his head, pull his visor down over his face after sharing a kiss that could be your last. it is always like this. jeno will rouse the army, you will dress and arm yourself, and meet with your own private troops. 

as the sun begins to take its place in the morning sky, luckily opposite your gaze, jeno will lead his people into battle, riding his steed far, far from you. you will watch him go, but he will not look back. doing so is unfortunate luck at best. you’ve ingrained this into his mind. 

you do not know whether he will be back or not.

you desperately need him to come back.

all of that will happen in due time, but now, you drift to dreamland, safe in the arms of the man you’ve sworn to be with until the end. he tightens his hold around you, and that is how you spend the night before battle, in total comfort and full of love. no matter what tomorrow brings, at least you have this now. at least you will always have this moment. 

the lionheart and his liege. your lionheart and his love. 

for now, you are at peace in the calm before the storm.

[sooblvr]

dreaming of you

pairing choi soobin x gn!reader // genre fantasy au, fluff // warnings none // word count 1.6k

after yet another sleepless night, you turned off the alarm. tall, dark hair, a gentle expression and an awkward laugh. you knew his deepest secrets and comforted his sobs, yet he remained nameless.

the, literal, boy of your dreams visited you every once in a while since you were less than fifteen years old. he was no more than a couple years older than you and had somewhat grown together.

from imaginary friend to mystery man, it was hard to describe your relationship.

“i saw him again,” you began, “but it was different.”

yerin, who you had known for just over a year, listened attentively. enthusiastic and lively, she made a love story out of your odd situation. “did you get his name this time?” “he was crying. we were, i don’t even know where. it looked like a bedroom, could’ve been his.” “and what was he crying about? he does that quite often.”

you evaded talking about his personal problems. he confided in you, and even though you didn’t even know if he was even a real person, it didn’t feel right to spread his business. “his friends leave him out. he’s very sensitive, and they make him feel like the odd one out. plan things without him, constantly interrupt him, stuff like that that builds up over time.”

“if only you guys could meet,” she sighed dramatically, “you should ask him if he lives in seoul. for all you know he’s in the class next door. get his name too, full name, so we can look him up on social media or something.”

night after night you hoped to see him, but your meetings were sporadic and random. sometimes you were at an amusement park, others in a classroom. around your early teens you began keeping a journal. every dream you could remember from the first to the most recent was written. some dates as specific as ‘04/26/2012’ and others as vague as ‘spring of 2019.’

your most memorable one had a bookmark. he visited you the night before your birthday.

“your present is on my nightstand, but i’m afraid i wasn’t able to bring it with me.” “so you can control when you see me?” “well, no, but i had a feeling i would see you tonight. you’ll be eighteen by the time you wake up.”

both of you stood outside an elementary school. you sat on the swings and bet on who would go the highest. it was strange that no one had complained about your loud laughs and stubborn bickering. having known each other for so long, it always felt weird to ask anything remotely personal. it was like you were ashamed- if you were as close as you acted, shouldn’t you know this already?

“did you actually buy me a present?” “i was hoping i’d show up with it since, you know, our situation is weird enough to where i wouldn’t be surprised if i could bring stuff from my regular life.” “i guess that’s valid. what did you get me?” “remember the time we were at the museum? you liked one of the mood rings.” “go on.” “i found a similar one, and i got it for you.”

his birthdays tended to go by unnoticed. when you asked how he had spent his special day his voice got quiet, murmuring that he didn’t want to talk about it. as much as you wanted to know more about him, you were uncertain of his impression of you.

would he find it creepy if you asked where he lived? what he did in his regular life? did he have a job? was he studying? you figured he had to at least live in the same city as you. all your dreams took place at local places.

your questions were answered on none other than his birthday, which he spent in the tutoring center at your school. he sat by himself, and you saw him from afar. it would’ve been weird for you to just go up to him as if you were best friends. perhaps it was weirder to act as if you were total strangers. he returned his books to the front desk while you signed in.

he smiled at you with his characteristic softness, though you weren’t sure if he had recognized you. acting on an impulse, you caught up to him before he left, “happy birthday.”

there was the slightest blush adorning his cheeks. he laughed nervously, and you felt a sense of comfort from his familiarity. “thank you. i’ll tell you about my day later,” he was gone in less time than it had taken him to respond. and just like every other night, you hoped you would see him again.

“yerin, you don’t understand. he’s much cuter in person!” “i knew you liked him. i haven’t known you for long, but you’ve never talked about someone the way you talk about him.” “no, i couldn’t like him. we don’t even know each other-“ “yeah, yeah, that’s everyone’s excuse.” “we’ve only seen each other in our dreams, but there’s so much more to our lives than that. i act differently with you, and he probably does too. what if he’s a horrible person? what if he doesn’t want to meet me here? and if i never see him again?” “calm down with the mental cartwheels, i’m sure he’s just as great in person.”

you read through your journal, hoping that thinking about him before going to sleep would help you meet him. it didn’t. 

and even then, you wouldn’t see him through your dreams but through the campus counselors. sitting next to each other in silence felt excruciating, but you figured if he wasn’t talking it was because he didn’t want to. if only you could’ve noticed he was thinking the same thing.

as soon as you turned to each other, both hoping to make the first move, the receptionist called his name, “soobin, you’re up next.”

“soobin, no last name,” you told yerin during lunch.

“i don’t know anyone by that name, is he in our grade?” “probably not, he’s older than me.” “i could always ask around if-“ “don’t, i don’t want him to think i’m trying to stalk him or something.” “you’re never getting anywhere with this mister no last name soobin.”

it took months for you to coincide again. it was as if you had broken the biggest unspoken rule of all. though you were content with the newfound knowledge of his name, you regretted it as soon as you realized he had evaporated from your dreams too. 

“happy valentine’s day,” you were at a local park near the school’s campus. you were thankful this was a dream since the place was always incredibly full of people- mostly tourists. “it’s been so long since i’ve seen you.” he looked down, feeling guilty even though he had no control over your meetings.

before you could run out of time, you agreed to meet at the library you had met at. something about the plan felt familiar though. you looked for your dream journal when you woke up. you needed to settle your doubts.

sometime in 2012,

our first dream together was at a library, one much bigger than any of the public ones.

was that it? had your first dream shown where you would meet? you couldn’t remember exactly if the library from the dream had been the one at your university, but it was certainly odd that you remembered to make the distinction between the dream library and the public ones.

even if you were right, you didn’t know what to do with that information. did the other dreams mean anything? were they predicting the future? it didn’t make sense. you were so young in the dreams, how could they represent an adult relationship?

you brought your journal with you to school, ready to show him the coincidence.

“we’ve been to museums, gardens, cafés, even ballroom dances, and all while in our teens,” he went through every page. “do you think maybe they’re hinting at something?” “do you?”

you looked around while collecting your thoughts. both of you were clueless. until he recalled, “you know, i always found it odd that we never asked anything personal. we knew each other in our dreams. in every one except for the first.” “right. for some reason we also never questioned where we were. maybe we already knew.” “except for the library.” “because that’s where we were supposed to meet.”

the more you kept seeing each other, the more you kept finding similarities to your dreams. it was never intentional, but there’d be instances like sitting at the same table, the music playing being the same, or even the date being the same except for the year.

“do you remember this place?” “have we dreamed about it?” “the only dream where we didn’t really do much, we didn’t even talk.” “you kept saying there was something you wanted to say but you never did.” “i knew i wanted to say something, i just didn’t know what.”

he handed you a piece of paper. it was an ad for the place, “this was outside my door this morning.” “and do you know what you want to say now?” “i like you.”

[doiefy]

blue // na jaemin

“The winter has passed and the spring has come We have withered and our hearts are bruised from longing”

- blue, bigbang

In which one ceases to age until they find their soulmate, with whom they then grow old. In which everyone has moved on without you.

genre: soulmate!au, fluff, angst, slow burn

pairings: jaemin x female reader (written with a female character in mind, but it can easily be gender neutral!), features relationships with other dream members, briefly mentions haechan x jeno

word count: 11.6 k

warnings: language, mentions of alcohol and smoking, mentions of war, mentions of death, discussions of Korea under Japanese occupation, some of the historical references may be inaccurate.

taglist (DM, comment or Ask to be added): @simplicitysbabe Big thank you to @neojaems​ for beta reading this for me !! <333

spotify playlist

Your test comes back blue.

When you rip open the envelope containing your results, you find the little coloured square hidden between pages and pages of lab protocols, testing procedures and other nonsense you know no one actually has the time to read. Then there are the stupid pamphlets, the ones with overtly bright and bubbly messages reassuring people that they’ll find their “special someone” soon, slogans most likely written by people who found their soulmates before they even turned twenty. You scoff, shoving the useless papers back into the envelope and recalling the first time you tested back in 1945, right after the war. The receptionist wrote your results down on a piece of paper and nonchalantly told you to have your emotional breakdown outside.

Now you stare at the blue marking on your paper blankly. It simply means you haven’t aged biologically in ten years, but when you haven’t aged in decades, it means nothing. While the world progresses, you remain frozen in the same body, playing a cruel game with fate. And as with any game that one cannot win, you’ve slowly become bored with it, allowing it to take its course while you sit idle nearby. You feel only disappointed, and not even perplexed or surprised in the slightest. Something about meeting Jaemin just seemed too good to be true; after a lifetime of misfortune and failure, something about the bad news feels… expected. Inevitable. As if unconsciously, you knew he wasn’t the one.

Na Jaemin is not your soulmate. And you spend the walk home contemplating how you’ll tell him this.

When you unlock the door to your shared apartment, you know he’s already home, and earlier than usual: his shoes are placed meticulously on the rack by the door and his jacket is hung up next to the messenger bag he takes to work. The living room smells faintly of the pine and vanilla candle you bought last month, and you smell traces of shampoo and bodywash from the bathroom.

“I’m home!” you call out as you kick your shoes off and put them neatly next to Jaemin’s. There’s a muffled response of your name before the door to your room opens. Then his arms are around you, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he mumbles a tired greeting.

“Bad day?” You ask softly, pushing all your other thoughts to the back of your head. He looks exhausted. His hair is tucked messily under the hood of his navy sweater, still damp from the shower he took earlier. His eyes lack the usual brightness you often find yourself so immersed in, replaced with the fatigue and weariness he almost never brings home.

“I hate this company,” he sighs as you run your fingers through his hair. You feel him relax in your arms a bit. “My boss is a dick, everyone in my department hates each other and the coffee tastes like actual ass. Maybe I should just quit while I still can.”

You frown. “Jaem, you’ve been with them for literally a month. You can’t possibly be thinking about quitting already.”

“A month! A month in and I’m already having mental breakdowns under my desk at lunch. Imagine what will become of me if I spend a year there,” he scowls, but his expression softens when you kiss him reassuringly on the cheek. “Alright, alright, fine, maybe not quit, maybe I’ll just take a long, long, vacation and then retire… Move to the countryside with you…” He trails off dreamily and for a moment, you lose yourself in the fantasy he’s painted for you. The mental image of a quaint house by the ocean is quickly shattered when you remember the test results hidden in your bag. The sunflowers you envisioned surrounding the cottage are blown away in the wind, their bright yellow petals swallowed by the blueness of the sky.

“Oh, you wish,” you laugh, quickly pressing your lips to his in hopes that he won’t see your expression, that he won’t see the sadness and regret you’re fighting to suppress. “Maybe, baby, maybe one day we can do that.”

“Maybe,” he laughs, his face lighting up with the energy and liveliness that has been missing. “But enough about me. How was your day, love?”

“Mm. The same old,” you say, pulling out of his arms so you can finally take your jacket off. You crash into the couch where you fold up your scarf and toss it aside. “Stressful.”

He stares at you for a hard moment, visibly concerned as if he can tell there’s something troubling on your mind. “Is something the matter?” He asks carefully, sitting down next to you. He holds you at arm’s length so he can look at you properly. “Is this about the test?”

“What? Oh, no, not the test. I doubt the results will come in until sometime next week.” The lie slips out easier than it should, and you feel guilt slowly start to twist your insides. Just a white lie, you tell yourself. It can’t hurt anyone but yourself. He’s been through enough today. He’s tired. Not tonight. It can wait. “I’m just tired,” you shrug. “I need some dinner and a nap, then I’ll be all good again. Do we still have anything in the fridge or should we order takeout?”

“I already ordered chicken from Yong’s. I had a feeling that today would be a bad day for the both of us,” Jaemin grins. His smile is smug at first, then endearing when he sees your shock.

You practically pounce on him in excitement, and the two of you go crashing into the couch cushions until you have him pinned beneath you. “Oh my god, I fucking love you, you know that?”

Jaemin groans, curling into himself as he gives you a wounded look. “And that’s how you show your love? By trying to break my bones?”

“Besides the point,” you huff. “You aren’t going to say it back?”

“Yes, of course. I love you too.”

Unsatisfied with his answer, you lower your face so your lips are hovering just inches above his. He looks up at you starry-eyed, his fingers ghosting over your cheeks; you can’t help but notice the way his gaze travels briefly to your lips.

Then you realize how dangerous this is. You know that he’s not the one. You know that you’ll eventually part ways with him when he finds out, no matter how reluctant you’ll feel. Every moment you spend with him like this will come back to haunt you when he’s gone. It will become another reminder of what you’re about to lose, yet here you are, falling deeper into his embrace, intoxicated by his scent and lost in the depth of his eyes. You are only tying more strings between the two of you, strings that will need to be stretched and snapped. You are only making it more painful for the both of you.

But for tonight, you don’t care.

“Say it like you mean it,” you whisper.

He holds your face gently, and those sparks you felt upon your first meeting with him are still there, igniting each time he looks at you, blazing into an open flame when he tells you, “I love you.”

You kiss him with more urgency this time, your lips meeting his in a clash of teeth and tongue. He puts his hands around your waist and pulls you impossibly closer to him. For just a moment, you’re focused on only him and his presence. For just a moment, you forget about everything; the sheet of test results is just another piece of paper in your bag, the blue mark just another colour. Because tonight, he is all that matters to you.

You met Na Jaemin almost three years ago.

Though the details have faded with time, you remember your first conversation well. It began at a friend’s art show beneath the golden glow of the studio lights, the two of you surrounded by brilliant splashes of colour and bold strokes of texture. Renjun had insisted on introducing you to Jaemin before you even arrived at the gallery, and you couldn’t have possibly refused. Your friendship with Renjun goes way back to the 40s, and you often think he knows you better than you know yourself. “I think he could be good for you,” he told you quietly just before leaving to speak with his other guests.

At first, Jaemin seemed timeless. It was as if he didn’t belong to any particular time period, as if he had lived to see several generations rise and fall, but had never risen or fallen with any of them. Dressed elegantly in a fitted turtleneck and a wool coat, he appeared youthful and contemporary; yet the way he spoke hinted at a certain maturity, at wisdom and sagacity. There was something charming about him too, something about the way he recounted events of the past and drew you in with only his words.

Next to a breathtaking oil painting of the sea, you discovered your commonalities. He was almost two decades younger, but like you, had spent his entire life searching for a partner without much success. You were delighted to learn that he had also worked in teaching—though he mentioned changing careers frequently whenever things became too mundane. He was effortlessly intriguing, and every word he spoke was lively and animated. He infused your conversations with colours, painted everything in bright yellows and aquamarines that matched the swirling paint strokes of the artworks around you, left you wanting to know more without even trying.

You left the gallery that night with his number in your coat pocket. Needless to say, Renjun was thrilled.

Weeks passed before you saw him again. Your busy schedules always managed to get in the way of your plans, but the two of you still kept in touch, chatting late into the night and well into the early hours. As the months went by, you dared to hope that maybe he was the one.

You immediately scolded yourself for being naive. With all your past partners, you had been hopeful in the same way, only to be let down in the end. Your test when you were with Donghyuck came back blue, as did the one with Mark. Both have since moved on, found their soulmates and written their happy endings. Even if you still stay in touch and meet up for an occasional coffee, you know that you are only a distant memory to them in some way or another.

The prospect of the same thing happening with Jaemin had never occurred to you—you’d been so caught up in getting to know him, so blinded that you’d completely forgotten. And then you saw him differently. As if he were a flame that could be snuffed out in an instant, a feather that could be sent flying with the slightest breeze, the slightest breath. You mulled over it for weeks and always did so silently, until it finally came up in conversation.

Almost a year had passed since you’d met him. With the summer coming to an end, the two of you had driven down to the Han River where you sat in the open trunk of his car, sharing a can of cheap beer from the convenience store. There were no words, only the faint melody of an old pop song buzzing from your phone and his hand around yours.

“Move in with me,” he said at last, glancing at you expectantly, trying to gauge your reaction. It wasn’t completely out of the blue—you’d been searching for a new apartment for weeks—but it still took you by surprise. “Too fast?” He asked when he registered your shock.

“No, not at all,” you shook your head and squeezed his hand. “Don’t get me wrong Jaem, I’d love to. It’s just, I don’t know about any of this. About us. If we’re actually…”

He hummed a quiet response, his brows furrowing slightly in contemplation. “Soulmates,” he said with a melancholic sigh. “You don’t want to go any further before we know for certain. I understand.”  

You nodded. “It always hurts, you know? You think you’ve finally found them only to realize you’ve been completely wrong the whole time.”

“I know,” he said, and his empathy flooded you with warmth and reassurance. “You always think you’ll be prepared for the next time. You always think it will hurt less as time goes by. But it doesn’t.”

“Exactly.”

You tipped the last of the beer into your mouth; it tasted faintly sweet on your tongue before dissolving into a pleasant bitterness that hit the back of your throat. When you were finished, Jaemin took the empty can and fiddled with the tab, bending it back and forth until it snapped off.

“I want it to be you,” he told you after a few minutes of silence. “I want it to be us.”

“And if we aren’t?”

He kissed you, hard enough for you to see stars. It wasn’t desperate or longing, but it seemed to convey a hundred different thoughts all at once, a hundred different emotions for you to decipher. When he finally pulled away, his voice was thoughtful and he was seemingly lost in a pleasant daydream. “Oh, love, the universe has already cursed us to search eternally. We may as well spend eternity together.”

“Seriously, Jaemin, what if we aren’t?”

The tremor of your voice snapped him out of it. The glimmer of hope disappeared from his pupils and the dream slipped from his hands.

“We’ve been alive for so long,” you continued, trying to keep your voice steady. “I don’t think I can go on like this. What if we aren’t meant to be? What will we do?”

You didn’t regret your time with Donghyuck or Mark or Jungwoo or any of the people you were lucky enough to have met, but you’d watched all of them from afar, watched them grow while you stayed frozen in time. Each new generation that came along was only a reminder of your loneliness. You felt a certain emptiness each time you invited new people into your life, one that deepened when they eventually left you behind. Or worse, when they gave you their pity. You couldn’t stand it when people told you that it was unfair or that you deserved better, all while they lived comfortably with their soulmates. You weren’t jealous, nor could you ever be angry at them for something beyond their control. Your anger was directed at the invisible forces that toyed with the world, the mischievous hands spinning the universe in some strange direction that left only you disoriented.

His expression took on a faint sadness and when he spoke again, his voice was calm, barely a whisper. “Then so be it. If you need to move on, it would be selfish of me to stop you from doing so.” He stared out at the waters wistfully, at the yachts sailing downstream. “And besides, you’re right. Maybe it’s time we settle down… even if it’s not with each other.”

Your birthday came a few months after that night, but you held off on testing. The bus you took home from work passed by one of the labs, but you never got off at the stop, always watched the doors open and close from your seat. The test isn’t that accurate anyways, you told yourself; it could produce only an approximate biological age, so maybe the longer you waited, the better.

But in the end, it was simply an excuse to escape reality, to avoid your confrontation with fate itself.

You moved in with him just before the end of the year.

New Year’s Eve wasn’t a big deal for you (you’d lived through too many for it to be exciting), but you spent the last minutes of the year with him, surrounded by cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked. Jaemin had still made some sort of effort at festivities despite your indifference: pale pink and gold candles lit around the living room, golden champagne in delicate glasses set on the table.

You were almost asleep when the clock struck twelve, wrapped up in one of his oversized sweaters and a white throw blanket. The celebratory music blaring from the TV was muffled in your ears, a pleasant symphony that lulled you deeper into sleep until Jaemin awoke you with a kiss.

“Happy New Year, Y/N.”

“Happy New Year, Jaem,” you mumbled, a smile ghosting your lips as you focused on the comfort you felt in his arms; on the new year, on your new home, new hope.

You know something’s wrong.

Jaemin doesn’t come out to greet you, even after you announce your arrival. He’s home—his shoes and coat are put away neatly like any other day—yet it’s deathly silent, terribly still. No music playing in the living room, no voice down the hallway. Only the occasional chirp from your broken smoke detector, which you’ve been meaning to fix for weeks. As you bend down to unlace your boots, you can’t help but worry.

You find him in your shared bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the comforter. The sun has almost set and the shadows stretch across the room, blanketing him in darkness and masking his expression with ambiguity. He doesn’t move when you turn on the lamp on the bedside table. He doesn’t move when you sit next to him.

There’s a familiar sheet of paper in his hands.

“Jaem, I…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

It isn’t accusatory or hostile; his voice is laced with nothing but sadness, yet you feel so much guilt, guilt that closes around your throat and squeezes the air out of your lungs, leaving you breathless. You kept it from him for days, and now this is the way he must find out about it. From a piece of paper you were careless enough to leave where he might find it. From a piece of paper detailing the DNA extracted from a sample of your blood. You should have told him.

“I didn’t know how to,” you let out a shaky breath. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Are you serious?” There it is, the cold edge that begins creeping into his voice as he stares down at you. He flicks a finger in the direction of the date printed at the top of the paper. “It’s been a week, Y/N. You kept this from me for a week. Why?”

“I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you, okay?” It comes out sharper than you intended; you immediately begin to drown in guilt as soon as you see Jaemin’s expression fall. You didn’t mean to lash out, and now you make up for it by taking his hands in yours. They're ice cold. “Look, the day I found out, you were already tired from work. I didn’t want to bring it up and make everything worse—”

“So you lied. Said the results hadn’t come in yet,” he says flatly and you rush to defend yourself, only to realize that he’s right.

“I’m sorry.”

The rest of your words don’t come. With a tired exhale, you bury your head in your hands, too overwhelmed to say anything else. You can only hope that he’ll understand, that he’ll empathize and that he’ll forgive you, even if you don’t exactly believe you deserve any of it right now. You hold back the tears. Only when he pulls you into his arms do they fall. He takes your hands, gently pulling them away from your face so he can wipe your tears despite your protests. There’s no coldness in his expression now, only concern.

“I needed time to process everything,” you continue, but you choke on the words. “I couldn’t even accept it myself, I couldn’t—”

“I know, love,” he says quietly as his thumb brushes against your cheek. “I know. It’s alright.”

Your silent sniffles turn into unrestrained sobs as he pulls you into his embrace, your pent-up emotions finally released in the form of silvery streams on your cheeks. You aren’t sure how much time passes. The sun meets the horizon in a hazy line of faint pink and orange. The sky darkens. Outside, the city lights up in a multitude of hues, the amber light from the street below seeping into your room. The minutes go by, but Jaemin never lets go of you until your tears have run dry.

“Better?” He asks, albeit his voice is shaky, his gaze trembling when he looks up at you. You nod.

“We’ll figure this out,” his eyes seem to say. You can tell he’s just as terrified as you are, just as unsure and as lost. Though for now, you simply hold each other. You say nothing about the paper that lays discarded on the floor or what it entails, even if you both feel the need to address it, to face its implications. In this moment of brokenness, neither of you have the strength to do so.

You eventually collect yourselves. You make dinner and force yourselves to eat before passing a meaningless hour in front of the TV. You clean up, wash up. Sleep early in preparation for tomorrow. Jaemin never leaves your side.

“Where do we go from here?” You whisper into the darkness of your bedroom.

“Tomorrow, love,” you hear him say just before slipping into unconsciousness, into restless sleep.

According to Lee Donghyuck, the chances of meeting your soulmate are 1 in 10 000. Or at least, scientifically. Theoretically. Donghyuck was a man of logic and reason, and had your lives not revolved around soulmates like the earth revolved around the sun, perhaps he wouldn’t have believed in fate at all.

“Remove fate from the equation,” Donghyuck mumbled to himself thoughtfully, jotting a few numbers down on a paper napkin. “And let’s assume your soulmate is around your age.”

“Can’t you rule that one out too?” You pointed out,  but he was too busy, already lost in his thoughts.

“If your soulmate is determined at birth and instantly recognizable at first sight… And they’re actually alive somewhere in the world…”

You watched the quick movements of his blue pen with intrigue. He spun the pen restlessly, allowing its barrel to cross over and under and between his fingers, at times so quickly that it became nothing but a blur of colour. Finally, he scribbled a final verdict and inked two definitive circles around it. “If fate hadn’t been so kind, the chances would have been one in ten thousand. One lifetime out of ten thousand.”

“That slim? Ten thousand lifetimes, that’s nearly impossible,” you said, skeptical but amused at his train of thought nonetheless. You took the napkin from him and looked over his calculations, though some of the numbers were too big for you to check without a calculator. You trusted that Donghyuck had done them correctly though. “You know, if you told that to someone who’d spent a century searching for their soulmate, they’d probably beat you up. You’re lucky I like you.”

He giggled. “We’re lucky it’s only hypothetical.” He took the napkin from you and crumpled it, smudging the neon blue ink on the tips on his fingers.

With Donghyuck, things were simpler. He was young, young enough to not be in a hurry, young enough to speak his thoughts so freely. He never pitied you or worried about offending you, and he never treated you as if you were out of place among the new generations. He offered you perspective. You knew that you weren’t meant for each other, but you were still content to spend your time with each other. To wait together.

“So… I might have found a new place.”

You don’t miss the surprise on Jaemin’s face when you tell him over dinner. His eyes widen a bit in curiosity, his brows arching upwards and his mouth falling slightly agape. He sets his fork down against his plate, folding his hands together the way he does when he’s deep in thought.

“Already?” He inquires. Maybe you imagine a hint of disappointment in his voice, a slight dip in his tone. He looks at you with a sort of sadness, as if trying to imagine what it would be like with you gone, to come home to an empty apartment every night. “Seriously, Y/N, you’re welcome to stay if you need to. We said we would take the changes slowly.” His words aren’t just out of consideration for you.

More than a month has gone by silently, and within that time, the frigid cold of winter has finally given way to spring. Nothing has really changed when you think about it, as if your test results are meaningless. And you suppose that they have become just that, a meaningless scrap of paper at the bottom of the recycling bin in the kitchen. Jaemin still holds you the same way, though his touches are just a little bit more fleeting. Your conversations still extend late into the night, though they feel just slightly melancholic. You hang onto his every word even while telling yourself not to, that maybe there is no point in doing so when everything is already coming to an end.

“I don’t know if I’ll take it… at least not for sure. And even if I do, I won’t be moving in until April. I just thought I’d tell you ahead of time,” you tell him, reaching across the table to take his hand. “I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I think I need some time alone. So I can adjust to all of this.”

“No, I understand. It’s just a little jarring, you know? Don’t know what it’ll be like without you here.”

“It’s literally only a block away,” you giggle, and he smiles. “I’ll still be here.”

After the coolness of February comes grey skies and a drizzly March, heavy rainfall washing the white snow to grey slush. Eventually, the clouds part across the sky for the sun, allowing the brilliant blue of the sky to peek through. April comes sooner than expected, producing blooms of yellow and white in the flowery courtyards of your new apartment complex, bursts of bright colours along the cobblestone paths.

You stand surrounded by boxes in the middle of your new studio apartment, watching the people pass by on the streets below. The windows are cracked open for air and you can hear the bustle outside, the yells of the street vendors, an occasional shriek of a child’s laughter. The new bedframe and mattress you ordered stand leaning against the wall in the corner, waiting to be assembled. Jaemin stumbles through the door with another box and sets it down before dusting his hands off on his jeans.

“That’s the last one,” he says. He collapses on the couch that the previous owner left behind, out of breath. You sit down next to him, allowing him to rest his head on your lap. He finally looks around, then at you. “Everything you hoped for?”

You nod happily. “I’ll miss having you around though,” you chuckle, playing with the soft strands of his hair, freshly dyed—after losing a drunken bet to Renjun a week ago, he reluctantly let the latter bleach and tone his hair bright silver. But you think it suits him; it accentuates the darkness of his eyes and paleness of his skin, gives him a cold and chic edge offset by the gentleness of his smile.

“I’ll still be here,” he repeats your words from two months ago. “And you’ll be much closer to work, right? No more crazy subway routes and early mornings. At the cost of me being your personal alarm clock, of course.” He grins, and you smack him with a red throw pillow.

“I won’t miss that,” you roll your eyes teasingly.

“Whatever you say, love.” He lifts his head off your lap to press a kiss against your cheek.

You spend the rest of the afternoon with him, unpacking boxes, hanging up clothes, building the bedframe and fitting the mattress with clean sheets so that at least you’ll have somewhere to sleep tonight. When the sun sets, everything is lit in an ethereal glow, and you stare out the floor-length windows, admiring the sky. Jaemin joins you after a moment, wrapping his arms around you as the two of you rock back and forth to the steady rhythm of the music playing from his phone.

When he leaves in the evening, he gives you a final hug, jokingly telling you not to miss him too much. When he’s gone, you find yourself staring out the window once more, at the blocky silhouette of Jaemin’s building a few blocks away. He pointed it out earlier, thrilled that you could see so far from this high up.

You quickly learn that on cloudy days, it is nothing but a smudge of grey in the distance.

While Donghyuck always tried to ease your worries with reason and strokes of pen ink on his skin, Mark took you on long drives around the city, hoping that the wind blowing through your hair would clear your mind.

On late nights when you couldn’t sleep, you often found yourself in the passenger seat of his 1975 Hyundai Pony, listening to static-laced 80s rock music while he drove you around the streets of Seoul. He would always roll the windows down in the summer and watch the contentment on your face, one hand around yours while the other guided the wheel.

Mark Lee was even older than you—and with all the wars and tragedies he’d lived through, he understood what it felt like to be kept awake by the nightmares. To be kept awake by thoughts of loved ones being blown to bits, to be haunted with memories of the past. With how long he’d been searching for the right person, he knew the urgency you felt and the longing to finally settle down with a soulmate. He understood.

The stories he told you were woven between puffs of cigarette smoke and gentle kisses on your forehead. He told you about Canada and the mountains that surrounded Vancouver, where he’d spent some time in the 40s. He told you about his family, about his brother’s grandchildren who looked older than he did. It was strange, he’d admitted with a small laugh and sadness in his smile.

The two of you often pointed out buildings along the side of the road, reminiscing what stood in their place before the bulldozers and big trucks rolled in. Just down the street from his apartment, the old drive-in cinema was being replaced by an upscale theatre. Next to it, a park was being cleared for a new shopping centre. Even the studio he’d rented out last summer had been demolished so a new entertainment agency could build its empire. Once in a while, he would drive by and stare ruefully at the construction site—the classical compositions he’d once recorded there were being replaced by a new type of music, with catchy beats and pretty pop stars dressed in shiny outfits.

His music had been drowned out by a new industry, and likewise, many of the things you remembered from your childhood have been lost to time. Talking about the past with him helped you remember. It was a sort of reassurance even as you moved on.

Mark eased a bit of your pain, staying out with you until the early hours of morning to make sure that you were alright. The next morning, he would almost always call to ask if you’d slept okay, unless there was an issue with the old landline phone in his office. All concept of time disappeared when you were with him, along with your memories and the demons haunting your dreams. But eventually, he would drop you off at home and bid you goodnight, leaving you to watch him drive away. Eventually, the night came to an end.

He couldn’t stay with you the whole night, nor could he stay with you forever.

Your evenings are often interrupted by Jaemin’s messages asking you to come over. Sometimes he says that he misses you, or he wants to see you for dinner. Other times, he kisses you breathless against the closed door as soon as you’ve stepped inside, always with an unmatched fervour and urgency as if you might slip right through his grasp and disappear.

Tonight, however, it’s neither.

It’s half past midnight when your phone is set off in a series of quick vibrations. Wrapped in nothing but a towel with your hair still dripping, you type in a reply, hesitate, press send. You get changed, slipping into a pair of jeans and an oversized T-shirt before grabbing your keys.

Jaemin is uncharacteristically quiet when he opens the door for you, his gaze downcast so you can’t see his expression. He’s deteriorating; you can see it in the way he turns his back to you after locking the door, the way he walks inside with a halfhearted invitation for you to follow.

“What’s wrong?” You ask when you’ve sat down across from him.

“I think I found them,” he mumbles and you notice how he averts your gaze. “My soulmate, I mean. I think I found her.”

“Wait, then why with the long face? Jaem, that’s great—”

He cuts you off with a sharp bark of emotionless laughter. His expression turns bitter when he pulls his sleeve up to reveal a mark along his wrist: two linear streaks of dark purple that twist together like the centre petals of a rose. He stares at it, almost with contempt. Apart from the standardized DNA tests, markings are the only other way to identify soulmates, though they almost never show. No one has any proper explanation for them and you have no explanation for why Jaemin has one now.

“Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s great. She’s smart. She’s funny. We have the same mark so I know it’s her,” he says shakily. “But god, I must have really fucked up in a past life to deserve this.”

You feel dread. It hits you all at once, because the way Jaemin speaks is so distant and unnerving, as if he’s lost himself in a trance and forgotten all about you. You’ve seen this dazed look before, only twice, when he was truly distressed and truly lost. This isn’t like him.

He found her. He should be happy. You should be happy for him. He should be happy.

“What is it?”

“I think I’m broken. Something’s wrong with me.”

“What do you mean?” You ask, and you try to keep the urgency out of your voice for his sake. He doesn’t say anything. “Jaemin?”

“I don’t feel anything when I’m with her. Nothing.”

You don’t register his words. They don’t make any sense to you. They are barely coherent. No, you think. That can’t be possible.

“Maybe we rejected each other in a past life and then both offed ourselves. Or maybe this is just the universe’s way of saying ‘fuck you.’ Maybe—”

“Stop that,” you tell him firmly. “Whatever this is, there has to be an explanation for it. Marks don’t just appear out of nowhere, right?” You pause to take a shaky breath, suddenly realizing that your words aren’t meant to comfort only him. “We can look into it. We can figure out what’s going on. This is the 21st Century, remember?”

“But what am I even supposed to tell her?” He demands, his tone exasperated and his brows furrowed together. “‘I know you’ve been looking for me for your whole life, but I can’t see you as anything more than a friend, sucks for you’? What do I do, spend the rest of my life drowning in guilt and self-pity because I couldn’t love her the way she wanted me to? Because I could only pretend?”

You have no answers for him. Perhaps he hasn’t felt anything for her because he hasn’t let go of you. Perhaps it really was a mistake, a freak accident in the cosmos that put the wrong marks on the wrong people, designating a pair that was never meant to be. Your thoughts run wild, but you can’t put anything into words for him. Even if you could, you don’t think you would have the strength to say anything aloud.

Instead, you hold him in your arms, wiping away the tears of frustration that have formed at the corners of his eyes, running your fingers through his hair. You can only hope that his soulmate will do the same for him some day, perhaps in some future where the cruel forces watching over you cease their endless games. Genuinely, you hope.  

The tone goes off a third time. You glance at the clock across the room: 11 AM. He has to be up by now, you think to yourself as your fingers continue drumming a repetitive rhythm onto the kitchen counter.

“Hello?”

Just before the automated voice can tell you to leave a voicemail, he picks up. Donghyuck’s voice is groggy, as if he’s just woken up—or maybe he’s just about to go to bed. With his disaster of a sleep schedule, you can never be sure.

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Oh hey, you, I know you.” You hear him chuckle on the other end of the line. “How are you, Y/N? I haven’t heard from you in ages.”

“I’m alright, the usual, I guess. How about you? How’s Jeno?”

“Jeno adopted another cat because he’s fucking insane, so now we have three little furballs running around the house. But yeah, it’s going great! So great,” he drawls with a familiar bite of sarcasm. You smile to yourself. “If he brings home another one because ‘Oh Hyuck, look it’s so cute, can we keep it?’ I will literally choke him in his sleep. Anyways, what’s going on? You never call me.”

“You never pick up,” you huff, earning a small laugh from him. “Okay, I wanted to ask you something. What do you know about soulmate marks?”

Thoughtful silence. “Not much. I mean, I’ve got my theories, but nothing has really been proven. Why, did you get one?”

“No, not me. Jaemin.”

“Oh, Y/N… then that means…”

“It’s alright, don’t concern yourself with me, Donghyuck. I’m more worried about him, honestly.”

“Hm?”

“He found his soulmate recently, but it’s not exactly… it’s not going as expected, let's just say that. He said he feels almost nothing when he’s with her, and to make things worse, apparently now it’s mutual. God, Donghyuck, they’re so awkward with each other, it physically hurts me.”

Donghyuck is silent again, and you hear the faint clicking of his keyboard. You can almost see his contemplative gaze and the soft blue glow of his computer screen lighting his face. “Did they know each other at all before the marks appeared?”

“Yeah, they were coworkers.”

He hums. “Okay… that could be why. Marks have a tendency to appear if soulmates have been around each other for extended periods of time without realizing it. It’s like nature’s way of telling them that the person they’re looking for is right in front of them. As for why they haven’t felt anything for each other? I dunno… reincarnation can really fuck with people. Any previous sentiments for your soulmate stick with you as you pass on, even if you’re both reborn completely different people.”

I must have really fucked up in a past life to deserve this. Jaemin’s words echo in your head.

“Obviously, there’s still opportunity to fix things,” Donghyuck adds quickly before you can get too lost in your thoughts. “It just takes time. Honestly, I wouldn’t be too concerned”

“I know, I know,” you groan. “I’m just upset that after everything he’s gone through, this is the shit he has to deal with.”

“Yeah. I can’t even imagine.” He pauses. “You know, a lot of people would just run off if they were in the same situation. He’s lucky to have you.”

You give a breathless laugh and shrug. “I feel like it’s the least I can do.”

“You never give yourself enough credit,” Donghyuck says, a hint of melancholy to his voice. There’s a sudden noise in the distance that cuts him off, and he curses beneath his breath. “Shit, the new cat’s not trained yet and I think she’s doing something stupid in the kitchen. Jeno will kill me if anything happens to her.”

You suppress a giggle. “Go ahead. We can catch up some other time.”

“Of course. See you, Y/N.”

The line clicks.

If Donghyuck taught you to be hopeful and Mark taught you to be strong, Jungwoo taught you to be brave.

Kim Jungwoo was your first love, and in many ways, you consider him to be irreplaceable. Perhaps it had simply been the result of young naivety back then, but you thought he was unlike any other person you’d ever met. In hindsight, he was different. A bright light dancing his way into your life when you were only a child in the 30s, a free-spirited boy who went where he pleased despite living under such an oppressive regime.

The Kims lived only a few doors down. You frequently saw the boys in their front yard kicking a beat-up soccer ball back and forth between them. Jungwoo was the middle child, and he sat right in front of you in class, his back always perfectly straight against his wooden chair so as to avoid the teachers’ chastisement. He was a quiet boy, and he never said a word unless it was to answer a question. But even then, his voice was small—not exactly shy or scared, just quiet. He quickly learned to raise his voice when the teacher hit him on the back of the hand with a ruler and demanded he speak up, when the wood scraped apart the skin of his knuckles.

At the time, when Japanese was all too foreign on your tongue and you struggled to understand anything taught in class, you thought he was a genius. He always had the right answers when he was called upon and there wasn’t a trace of an accent in either of his languages. Not that you heard him speak Korean much; you didn’t dare speak it unless you were hidden in your own homes, where your parents could discuss the uprisings without having to worry about the police roaming freely outside. Though, they still spoke in hushed voices as if anyone could hear them, as if terrified for what could happen if someone did hear.

The first time you spoke to Jungwoo properly was in middle school. After a humiliating incident at school that left you in tears, he ran to catch up with you on the way home and spoke to you in timid Korean, offering to help. You were still teary-eyed and beyond upset, but you let him guide you through your homework. He rambled to you about the Japanese grammar you couldn’t understand and explained the mistakes you’d made for your teacher to lash out at you the way she had. It didn’t stop you from making the same mistakes the next day, but at least he was patient, unlike the adults at school.

“You’re not stupid,” he told you one afternoon on the way home. Again, you were in tears.

“But the teachers think I am,” you grunted. “And I feel stupid. I can’t understand a word they say. I never have the right answers. Everything I say is wrong. If that’s not stupidity, I don’t know what it is.”

“Y/N, all we do at school is memorize meaningless facts that don’t really matter,” he replied with a shrug. “Just because you can’t shove all that information into your head doesn’t mean that you’re stupid. Look at Doyoung. He was failing school but he’s still one of the smartest people I know. He just… learns differently.”

“So? That doesn’t make me smart either. They still think—”

Jungwoo scoffed. “Who cares what they think? I think you’re wonderful, and they’re the real freaks. Miss Ito, especially.” He wrinkled his nose. “She smells funny.”

“Hey, be nice, Jungwoo,” you chided, but you were laughing. He was effortlessly funny and it was such a pleasant contrast to the way he acted at school. He was always so disciplined and perfect when the adults were watching, but he seemed to let loose around you. It made you feel… special, in a way. Validated, accepted. Something you never felt at school.

You walked home with him almost everyday from then on. You became inseparable, even when your school shut down and sent all the students to gender-segregated schools, even when your parents worried that you were spending too much of your time with him instead of studying. Even when war arrived.

The Second World War plunged your lives into darkness; Jungwoo quickly became the only light to guide you. He was there for you while your parents were away, while they laboured in the factories making helmets and guns and bullets so that they could at least put food on the table. He was there when the light at the end of the tunnel went dim, though he was miles away from home.

Jungwoo had never struck you as a fighter or rebel, even if he had the physique of a soldier. He had the drive and the courage and the steel to fight, but you only saw gentleness in his monthly letters to you. The last letter you received from him still sits in a drawer somewhere, the last words he wrote sealed in a plastic envelope so that they won’t fade away.

You took the test a few months after the war ended, only because he had pleaded with you to do so. Even if I don’t make it home, he wrote to you in the same curving script he’d used to teach you years ago. Promise me.

When the receptionist gave you a piece of paper with an X marked next to your name—there were no colour indicators back then, only X’s and hollow circles—a part of you felt relief that you couldn’t quite explain. Another part of you was disgusted, convinced that you were being selfish and apathetic. You thought that maybe you had no regard for him; that you only cared for yourself and a stranger you were still searching for. He’d risked his life to join the rebel army, fought on the frontlines with the Allies, and you repaid him with nothing.

It would take you years to come to the conclusion that your reaction was only natural. It would take you years to heal and start seeing other people. In due time, you would stop frequenting the church in your hometown and your fingers would cease to brush against the memorial stone in the yard, upon which his name was carved. Just one name among many.

Jaemin’s hands are all over you: in your hair, around your throat, pushing you against the wall as he kisses you. His fingers tangle into your hair and he pulls on the strands, forcing your head back a bit so he can continue trailing his lips over your neck and collarbones.

“We can’t be doing this,” you tell him when you manage to pull away. His arms come around your waist anyways and he buries his head in the crook of your neck. You can smell the alcohol on his breath, and you glance behind him to see empty soju bottles on the kitchen counter.

“I’m not with Jieun,” he snarls. “Besides, like I said. I think we’re fucked. We aren’t meant to be.”

“Don’t say that,” you hiss, taken aback by his sudden coldness. “This isn’t fair to her.”

“It’s mutual, remember? I bet she’s out there doing the exact same thing with some other guy. She doesn’t need me.”

“Jaem—”

“We’re fucked. She told me she doesn’t need me, and I told her the same.”

You’re horrified. “You did what?”

“Hilarious, isn’t it? We had our first fight, and we aren’t even together yet.” He scoffs, pushing a hand through his hair in irritation. “Some type of soulmate.”

You’ve never heard him talk like this. He’s out of his mind. He’s lost it. “Fuck, Jaem, how much did you drink?”

“Not enough to feel better, clearly,” he snaps.

“Alcohol and whatever this is between the two of us isn’t going to make you feel any better. This isn’t going to fix your problems.”

“Then what do you want me to do?!” His words are sharp, his expression hard when he glares at you. “You tell me to move on and to give her a chance and to stop doing whatever—” he motions frantically. You’ve never seen him so wild, so out of control, and you’ve almost never seen him lash out at anyone like this. “—whatever the fuck this is, but do you even know how it feels? Do you even care?”

A sharp intake of breath, and then the world is crashing down around you.

The feelings you fought to suppress re-emerge, rising up to crush you and force you into relapse. Doubt. Regret. Guilt. The little voice in the back of your head is a raging monster now, and it shouts at you, screaming at you in a blind rage. Telling you that you’re heartless and self-absorbed and indifferent, everything you believed you were when Jungwoo died. Reinstating what you know isn’t true. You know he doesn’t mean it. You know that it’s just alcohol fueling the words spewing from his lips and nothing more, but they still bring back unpleasant memories, a sense of dread you can’t shake.

He realizes, albeit a bit too late. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

If you knew how much it hurts me to watch you do this to yourself. If you knew how much it hurts me knowing that there’s only so much I can do for you. “Don’t. I get it.”

For a few seconds, the room is silent, save the ticking of the clock behind you. It reminds you briefly of a memory that you can’t quite grasp, like a flash of deja vu before you spiral back down to the present reality where you stand in cold, frigid silence. The broken smoke detector chirps.

“I should go,” you say at last. You go to grab your keys from where you left them on the counter but he quickly stops you, his hand coming around yours. You look up at him in irritation, pulling away sharply.

“It’s late,” he says shakily, almost pleading. “You shouldn’t walk home at this hour. Not alone.”

“I’ll call a cab,” you shrug before slipping into your sweater and pulling on your shoes. You bid him goodnight and leave him dumbfounded in the living room.

You return home to a sleepless light and endless thoughts in a cold bedroom. A broken record replays his words in your head again and again, until you see Jungwoo’s face floating above you in the darkness. His features are faint, like wisps of smoke that loosely form sad eyes and lips pulled downwards in a frown. And then he’s the one asking, “Do you even care?”

You have no answer for the annoying voice in your head. You stare at the lines of light drifting across the expanse of the ceiling, wide awake as the sky brightens outside.

“How long will you be gone?”

It was the 3rd of August 1995. You knew because the next day would mark 50 years since Jungwoo’s death. The next day, you would be going back to your hometown and laying flowers on the altar in the Kim family home, revisiting the memorial you’d left behind when you moved to Seoul.

You shrugged as Mark passed you his lighter. The old zippo produced a small spark between your fingers, and then the sting of smoke was filling your mouth and nose. You didn’t smoke regularly—you’d stopped years ago—but you sure as hell felt like you needed one tonight.

“I dunno,” you said, taking a long drag from the cigarette. “A couple more days after the ceremony? If I stay any longer, Doyoung might get upset.“

“Upset?”

“He doesn’t like seeing me. Said I bring back bad memories. I think I remind him of Jungwoo too much.”

Mark grimaced. “Well it’s scary, seeing a childhood friend who hasn’t aged in fifty something years… Must he like seeing a ghost.” He paused, tucking a stray piece of your hair behind your ear so that he could see your face. “My nephews feel the same way about me.”

“You remind them of something?” You asked.

“Their father, I guess,” he explained. “My brother… wasn’t the most understanding of them when they were younger. Whenever they see me, all they can think of is their childhood and his abusiveness.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

He took a moment of contemplative silence “No, not really. I mean, maybe it did at first. But it’s not like I go out of my way to avoid them just because of the memories they associate with me. That would be unfair for me.”

“It would be,” you agreed.

“So then why avoid Doyoung? What he thinks of you is beyond your control. If you remind him of painful memories, that isn’t exactly your fault.”

You sighed. “I don’t know. I just feel like staying out of his way might help him heal. Maybe it’ll help him move on from everything he’s trying to forget.”

“Oh, Y/N.” Mark took your hand with a breathless laugh. His smile was both sad and endearing, as if he were in awe of you—what for, you weren’t too sure until he murmured, “You’re too kind sometimes.” He paused to exhale, smoke escaping his lips and bleeding into the atmosphere, dispersing into the starry sky. He stared into the sky for a few moments, silent.

“But it’s not always up to you to heal their wounds. At some point, they have to learn to heal themselves.”

“What the hell happened to him?”

Jaemin looks like a mess. His hair is disheveled and swept messily all over the place. His skin is unhealthily pale, unusually warm to the touch beneath your fingertips. You can tell he’s had a little too much to drink; he sits on the couch in a daze, his eyes fixated on an invisible point in front of him as if searching for something that is no longer there. He yelps in pain when you wipe at the cut on his lip.

“We bumped into a couple guys at the bar. One of them took a swing at him,” Renjun explains as he passes you the bottle of disinfectant. You carefully apply a drop to a cotton swab. “And it didn’t help that he was also drunk. Thank god Lucas was there to break up the fight.”

“I wasn’t drunk,” Jaemin groans in protest. “Just tipsy.”

“Tipsy? You couldn’t even tell me Y/N’s number.”

“I don’t remember anyone’s number.”

“Well, you couldn’t tell me your own name either. Got any excuse for that one, smartass?”

You ignore their bickering and continue cleaning the cut on Jaemin’s cheek, holding him firmly by the shoulder so he doesn’t move. The cotton quickly turns light pink between your fingers. You briefly examine the red marks along his jaw where he’d been hit, frowning. Jaemin has never been one to get into fights and especially not while under the influence, but the bruises on his cheek and his knuckles suggest otherwise. Hell, he rarely even gets drunk, but it’s becoming more and more frequent, to the point where Renjun makes sure to watch over him whenever they go out together. He’s derailing, you think to yourself as you brush his hair into some sort of order.

“Okay, let’s get you to bed.” You put his arm around your shoulder and help him up to his feet, nearly staggering beneath his weight. Renjun rushes over to help you move him into the bedroom.

“You should probably go home. It’s getting late,” you tell him when Jaemin has been settled in bed. You glance at the clock hanging in the kitchen as you clean up the first aid kit on the table: almost 2 AM. “I’ll stay with him… make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“I really tried to keep him away from the alcohol tonight. I swear I turned away for only a second to deal with Yangyang and he— Ugh, I’m so sorry,” Renjun apologizes again, shaking his head. “This whole soulmate ordeal is really getting to him. I’m worried, Y/N.”

“You know how he is. He always figures it out one way or another” you reassure him. “I’ll talk to him again though. Maybe he’ll actually… listen this time.”

“Well, call me if anything happens. I probably won’t be asleep anyways.”

“I will. Thanks, Jun,” you nod appreciatively.

By the time Renjun has gone home and you’ve finished cleaning up, Jaemin is already asleep. He stirs when you switch off the lamp and reaches out for you in the darkness, fingers intertwining with yours. “Stay,” he mumbles, pulling you a bit closer.

“I’m not going anywhere.” You say as you admire the way the moonlight filters in through the windows and draws pale lines across his cheeks. Despite the cuts marking his skin, he looks so much softer now, innocent, in a way. Again, you’re reminded of the Jaemin you met at the art gallery. He was none of this. None of this pent-up frustration released in empty beer bottles, none of these crimson bruises marking his otherwise smooth skin.

“You have to stop doing this to yourself,” you murmur. There’s no reply at first, and you wonder if he heard you at all.

“I’m sorry,” you finally hear his voice: small, feeble in the darkness. His words become more urgent as he keeps speaking, spilling from his lips uncontrollably. “I shouldn’t have said those things about you. I wasn’t thinking. You know I could never mean it.”

You hush him, wrapping him in the security of your arms. A single tear brushes against the back of your hand, then another. “It’s alright,” you assure him as you rub soothing circles against his back. “You were going through a lot. I understand, okay? It’s okay.”

He shakes his head frantically, his tears falling in steady streams now. You let out a low hiss when you see them stain pink with the blood from the wound on his cheek. “Still, that shouldn’t be an excuse. I’ve managed to fuck up everything since all of this started. I hurt Jieun, I hurt Renjun, I hurt you. I can’t even go to work and look at Jieun without feeling like such an idiot and getting mad at myself for being such a child. Without feeling like maybe I deserve this.”

Your heart drops, then shatters into a million pieces at the bottom of a dark abyss.

“Look at me,” you plead as you take his face in your hands. “Look at me, Jaem, please.” He finally lifts his head, his eyes meeting yours in the stillness. All you can see is brokenness, defeat and regret, a look you knew well. It’s an expression that once followed you around for years, appearing in every mirror and reflection you passed by. An innate, intimate part of you that you despised so much until you came to accept it. “Listen to me, Na Jaemin. You are one of the strongest, bravest and kindest people I’ve ever met, and nothing will ever change the way I see you. You don’t deserve any of this bullshit. You don’t deserve this.”

“If you knew what I told her, Y/N,” he lets out a shaky breath. “If you knew what we told each other when we found out neither of us had any feelings for each other… maybe you would think differently of me.”

“If that’s truly what you believe, fix what you broke,” you say firmly. “Apologize to her. Make things right between the two of you, unless you want to go through this all over again in another life. Things will only get worse if you don’t address them now.”

“And if I can’t?”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you, Jaem.” Trembling, you press your lips to his temple. “Whether or not you end up with her, whether or not you think you deserve this, I love you. And that will never fucking change.”

He leans forwards, his forehead touching yours, his nose brushing against yours and his lips just inches from meeting yours. But he never comes any closer, and you feel no urge to close the distance either. Perhaps it’s a sign that both of you are already starting to let go, to drift apart; this moment is nothing romantic or lustful, nothing more than comforting each other in your brokenness. Nothing more than trying to help each other numb the pain.

“I love you.” His voice trembles, but his words are steady, deep-rooted in sureness.

“Then promise me you’ll try, Jaem. You’ll try to set things right, for both our sake.”

“For you, love,” he murmurs, so quietly that you can barely hear him. His voice is lost to the faint rumbling of the air conditioning unit somewhere outside and the distant noises of traffic. “For you, I would do anything.”

You wonder if he’ll remember any of this in the morning. You wonder if he’ll take your words to heart, or if they’ll simply be enveloped in dreams fueled by drunkenness, reduced by sleep to nothing but a blur.

...it’s not always up to you to heal their wounds. At some point, they have to learn to heal themselves

You’ve done everything you can for him, you decide. Even if you continue to walk by his side, the rest is up to him.

One Saturday morning, Jaemin shows up at your door dressed in black jeans and a button-down shirt, his hair swept up neatly. There’s a kind of brightness to him; it’s not necessarily hope or excitement, but certainly a change from what you’ve seen the last couple of weeks. He’s meeting Jieun for lunch, he tells you nervously. He wants to see you before he goes. You tell him you’re proud of him. That genuinely, you admire him.

The next time you see him, it’s at a floral shop. He’s in the middle of picking out flowers, and he flushes when he sees you. A single rose seemed too cliche, he tells you sheepishly, and asks your opinion. He thinks she’ll prefer something a bit more unique but equally tasteful, equally elegant. You recommend orchids or gerberas. They last longer than roses, but they convey the same message. When he’s gone, you buy a small vase of irises for your apartment; your living room needs a bit of colour.

Weeks later, you find a small package in the mail: a parting gift, you realize when you tear open the padded envelope. It’s nothing too special, nothing fancy or expensive—just a piece of blue glass wrapped in silver accents, attached to a delicate chain that you loop around your neck. When you hold the pendant up to the sun, its blue tint shatters into infinite colours, tossing specks of luminous yellow and orange all over your bedroom. More than just a singular colour, it reflects the other hues around you. And for just a brief moment, you think you see your own reflection.

You watched Jaemin move on just as you’d watched Mark and Donghyuck: from afar, with reserve but at the same time, excitement. Close enough for him to know that you were still there for him, but allowing some sort of distance that grew as the days melded into weeks and then months.

For the most part, he seemed to be alright. His texts were always cheerful, covered in happy emoticons—he used them when he was too giddy with excitement to type actual words. “We figured things out,” was all he said one night, and it was all you needed to hear to know that they’d be okay.

You started to notice the fondness he’d developed for her; it was subtle at first, just a hint of affection in his voice when he told you about her over the phone. Though slowly, it developed into something more. It was just as Donghyuck said: time had forged a relationship out of nothing, out of empty words and empty emotions, growing a garden from a barren piece of wasteland.

The first time you spoke to Kim Jieun, it was over the phone during one of your calls with Jaemin. She’d chimed in on your conversation at some point to say hi, and the way she spoke almost reminded you of Donghyuck: bright, cheery, a little sarcastic in a playful manner. You quickly learned that she was easy-going though brutally honest at times, well-mannered yet well-humoured. Most importantly, she wasn’t judgemental, and she didn’t treat you any differently from Jaemin’s other friends just because you’d been with him previously.

Of course, there was still a sense of yearning, a bittersweetness whenever you saw the two of them together. Your fingers always danced fleetingly along the screen of your phone before pressing like on the photos he posted to his social media. You saw him less and less, only occasionally running into him at the bakery you used to frequent together or at a friend gathering. For the most part, you let the past stay in the past. He seemed happy. And honestly, you were happy for him.

“I told you he’d be fine,” Donghyuck murmured to you at one of Jeno’s rampant parties, once most of the guests had trickled out for the night. The two of you sat on the balcony, watching everyone stumble around in their drunken stupor: Jeno was passed out on the couch with two cats sitting perched on his chest. Renjun was trying to braid flowers into Jaemin’s hair, which he’d recently bleached yet another shade lighter to match Jieun’s platinum locks. Out of the corner of your eye, you watched Chenle and Jisung exchange a few bills and bicker over a bet—Chenle was still in denial that Jisung had won, apparently.

“I didn’t doubt you for a second, Hyuck.”

“But you were worried,” he grinned smugly.

“Why wouldn’t I be worried?” You sighed and knocked back the rest of your wine before motioning for him to pass you the bottle. You swiftly poured yourself another glass. “If I couldn’t have my happy ending, at least I wanted him to have his. As… cliche as that sounds.”

Donghyuck raised a brow at you. “What’s to say that you won’t get yours too? They can’t keep you waiting forever. The longest it ever took for someone to find their soulmate was 241 years.”

“Goddamn, are you trying to make me feel better or worse?”

“Better, of course! Okay, what I’m trying to say is that it’s rare for anyone to wait longer than two centuries. If everyone lived for up to three hundred years, we’d have a lot of dictators and other crazies running the world. The universe would spontaneously combust.”

“I know I’m barely even halfway there, but come back to me when I set a new world record,” you rolled your eyes, to which he responded with a small chuckle.

“So what now?” He glanced at Jaemin, who sat across the room with his eyes half-closed, an empty red solo cup in his hands. Jieun had her head on his shoulder, rambling drunkenly about something to Renjun. If you hadn’t known any better, you would have thought she’d been a part of the group all along; she fit in so seamlessly, and it warmed your heart to see her getting along with everyone.

“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “Nothing for now, I guess. Just waiting.”

“Whoever it is, I’m sure they’ll be worth it,” he hummed in reply.

“You think so?”

“People say that the longer you wait, the better. It’s all in your head, of course, but they have a point.”

You sighed, lifting your head to gaze at the stars hanging overhead. “I suppose they do. Maybe someday I get to find out.”

He patted you on the shoulder reassuringly. “You’ll figure it out. You always have.”

Donghyuck left a little later to get a drunk Jeno to bed, and then you had only the quietness of night to keep you company. Your mind drifted and you contemplated his words, repeating them silently to the wind. The night sky replied with nothing but a gentle breeze against your skin.

You could be patient, you thought as you watched the others inside. You fished the pendant out from beneath your shirt and stared at the reflection in the glass. It was as if you were grasping a piece of the night sky between your fingers: the stars and a crescent moon captured in a single, translucent oval. In the dark, the pendant appeared deep indigo, not too different in hue from the four coloured markings you’d acquired over the years.

But the sun would rise in due time, you thought to yourself mirthfully. Beneath the brightness of morning, you’d hold a different colour in your hands. You tucked the necklace back into the fabric of your shirt. You could wait.

read the epilogue, yellow

[hearts-hunger]

early morning lover || dave york x reader

Read on AO3 || Masterlist

Summary: He’s your early-morning lover, and he wants to give you another baby.

Pairings: Dave York x Wife!Reader

Genre: Smut, fluff | Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, talk of pregnancy

A/N: This one's for my sweet nonnie who sent a very soft ask about baby-making sex with Dave. Nonnie, thank you so much for your patience - I hope you like this fic! ♡ (Also, in my little fantasy world, we're pretending Dave isn't a scary assassin. He's just a soft suburban dad who loves his wife and kids ♡)

It was barely light outside when the alarm on Dave's phone went off. You felt him roll over to turn if off; a moment later, his face was nuzzled against your neck as he pulled you against his chest.

“Morning,” he mumbled. 

You gave a sleepy groan. “I don’t wanna get up.”

He laughed softly, his breath warm against your skin. “I know, honey.”

He placated a bit of your grumpiness with his gentle kisses, his big hands roaming over your body as both of you woke up. Even though you both got up at the same time - him for work, and you to get the girls ready for school - he had always been more of a morning person than you were, and often spent the first few minutes of the day cajoling you out of bed.

“Do you ever wish I’d just spring up out of bed like you do?” you asked.

He chuckled and pulled you closer. “No, because then I wouldn’t get my morning cuddles.”

You smiled. “You do like your morning cuddles, don’t you?” Dave’s love language was physical touch, and from sunup to sundown, he could be counted on showing you how much he loved you. It was something you loved about him, and you especially liked how affectionate he was first thing in the morning, like he was giving you as much love as he could before he left for work.

Despite your best intentions, though, this morning routine frequently found Dave easing into the day while you eased into a few more minutes of sleep. He was just so warm, and you were so cosy cuddled up against him, and surely it wouldn't hurt to sleep a little longer...

“You’re falling back asleep, aren’t you?” he asked, his tone affectionate and much more awake than you felt.

You huffed and buried your face against his chest. “No.”

“It’s ok if you are, honey,” he said sweetly, and you could hear the smile in his voice. “But I think I know a nice way to wake you up.”

You considered that. “A shower?” you asked. That was one of his tricks, inviting you into the shower with him to help you wake up, and it usually worked.

“No,” he said. “But we can take a shower afterwards if you want.”

You frowned. “After what?”

“After this.”

Untangling himself from you, he ducked under the covers and tugged off your pajama shorts and underwear, leaving you in nothing but his well-loved Dallas Cowboys t-shirt.

“Dave!” you squeaked, already feeling yourself respond to his warmth.

He peeked out from under the covers at you, an impish smile on his face. “Do you think this’ll work?”

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t help an exasperated smile. “Well, if you’re already down there, you might as well give it a try.”

He grinned. “Atta girl.”

He worked his way over your thighs and skilfully eased into your heat, kissing everywhere, sloppy and sweet and hungry for you. Dave was nothing if not enthusiastic in his lovemaking, and his tongue quickly had you pulling at the sheets, squirming under the heady flood of stimulation.

“I’m already - oh fuck - Dave - ”

You were fleetingly concerned about being too loud and waking the girls, but damn if your husband wasn’t determined to make you cum before you could even register it happening. You didn’t really have time to be loud, so quickly did he bring you to the edge; you let out a sharp gasp of pleasure as he groaned against your heat, cumming on his tongue as he drew your orgasm out as long as he could.

“Jesus,” you managed as you came down.

“Uh-uh,” Dave said, giving your thighs a few last kisses. “Just me.”

You breathed a laugh as he wiped the back of his hand on his mouth and laid on top of you, his head and chest resting on your tummy. 

“That ok?” he said. “I know it was a little fast.”

“You’re apologizing for being good at eating me out?”

He laughed. “No, I - ” He shook his head. “I won’t apologize, if you liked it. It just occurred to me that it was a little too fast, maybe.”

Compared to how he usually went down on you, it had been fast - most of the time he liked to draw it out, teasing and torturously slow, leaving you absolutely spent afterwards. But you would have been worn out before the day even started if he’d done that, and his fast pace this time had done the trick.

“No, I liked it,” you assured him.

“So you feel good and woken up now?” he asked, raising his head to give you a cheeky smile.

“Yes, thank you,” you said, combing your fingers through his hair. “I’m downright bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

He chuckled and laid his head back down, kneading his fingers into the soft parts of you that you often didn’t like, reminding you how much he loved them.

“Hey, honey?”

Your fingers trailed down to the nape of his neck. “What’s up?”

You felt him take a deep breath.

“I think... we should have another baby.”

Your fingers stilled. “You... you do?”

He pushed himself up until he hovered over you, leaning down to give you a kiss before he met your eyes. His face was warm and gentle with sincerity as he studied your face, and you couldn’t help a bashful smile.

He smiled too. “What?”

“Nothing,” you said. “I like it when you look at me like that.”

He hummed in agreement, pressing soft kisses to your jaw, your cheeks, your nose. “I love you.”

You let your hands drift over his shoulders, his neck. “I love you too.”

“I think we should have another baby,” he said again.

You smiled. “So you said.” 

You thought of what it had been like to find out you were pregnant with Alice. Dave had been so excited and proud; you wouldn’t have been surprised to know everyone in the CIA knew Dave York was a dad-to-be. He’d been the same way with Molly, fairly glowing with happiness at the news.

Everyone knew Dave loved being a dad, especially his daughters. He was goofy and gentle with them, firm when he needed to be; he helped coach their soccer teams and came home after long days at the office to help them with their school projects. He always said the worst part of his job was leaving the three of you, his best girls; he called home every night he was away and took all of you in a bear hug as soon as he was back.

You pictured Dave with another baby in his arms, being chased around the house by three giggling little ones, telling everyone in the office of another baby York - maybe David Jr., this time. You smiled.

“Why the sudden baby fever?” you asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just..." He gave a soft laugh. "I love having kids with you. I love you, and I love our girls. I can't believe how lucky I am to be their dad and to be your husband."

You ran your thumb over his mouth. “Dave.”

“I know, I know. Since when is your husband so sentimental?”

You smiled. “That's not what I was going to say. I think it’s sweet.”

He kissed your fingers. “I think you’re sweet.”

You softened as he worked his way over your fingers, kissing the tip of each one.

“Dave?”

“Hm?”

You drew him down to kiss you. “I think we should have another baby too.”

You could feel his smile as he kissed you deeply, his hips lightly pressing against yours, nothing between you but his boxers. You were already warm from his earlier lovemaking, and you felt your body ease back into that languid, comfortable desire you felt every time he took you to bed.

“What if we start trying right now?” he said against your jaw.

You glanced at his phone on the nightstand. “Do we have time?”

“Plenty of time,” he said, not turning his attention from you.

His kisses were heady, and you felt your legs widen to draw him closer as you pushed his boxers down. Every part of Dave was as familiar as it was lovely to you now, after ten years of marriage, but you would never tire of the feel of him, broad and warm and safe against your body.

He eased into you slowly, taking his time, kissing your face and murmuring words of praise. It always surprised you, a little, when he kept your lovemaking slow without having to be asked - he usually liked it a bit rougher, a bit faster. You liked it when he had his way with you, but you loved it when he was gentle with you, and both of you took turns indulging each other’s tastes and enjoying what the other liked.

“Let me give you another baby, Mrs. York,” he said tenderly, hovering over you, kissing your face. “You do make mighty pretty ones.”

You tilted your head back as he moved in you, gasping softly, basking in the feel of him. He kissed your throat and gave a soft groan.

“Do you think it’ll be a boy or a girl?” he asked.

You cradled his face in your hands and kissed him. “Maybe a boy. It’d be nice to have a boy, wouldn’t it? I bet he’d look just like his daddy.”

He smiled. “Yeah, it would be nice to have a boy. But I hope he’d have your eyes.”

He dipped his head and kissed your collarbone, leaving love marks across your skin.

“Fuck,” you gasped. You knew you needed to be quiet, but you couldn’t help it - you bit your lip and gave a desperate moan as he angled himself deeper.

“Dave,” you keened.

His whole face lit up in delight and surprise. He moved his hand over your mouth even as he laughed.

“Shh, sweetheart,” he said gently, adoringly. “You’ll wake the girls.”

You gave a choked sigh against his hand as he rolled his hips; he moved his hand down to your breast and kissed you deeply.

“I love you so much,” he said. “You’re so beautiful. I love you.”

He took his time with you, letting your pleasure be the focus of everything he did. He cooed soft love words to you, gently reminding you to try and stay quiet, delighted when you weren’t able to. He told you he loved you when you came for him, your fingers gripping him tight enough to leave bruises as you drew him close. His sigh was choked with pleasure as he came deep inside you, kissing all over you, praising you for how lovely you were.

You curled up next to him afterwards, wanting his warmth; he propped himself on his arm next to you, tangling your legs together, tracing his thumb over the hem of your shirt where it had bunched up under your breasts.

“You look pretty in my old shirts, Mrs. York,” he said. He kissed you tenderly. “You think we made a baby?”

You smiled and ran your hand over his bicep. “Maybe. But we could always keep trying, just to be safe.”

He chuckled and kissed your jaw. “Yeah. Just to be safe.” 

He kissed you for a few more minutes before his phone buzzed, and you felt his body shift against yours as he made to get up.

“No, don’t go,” you said, pulling him close. “Just stay in bed with me all day.”

“What if it’s a national emergency?” he teased.

You brushed your fingers over his cheekbone. “What’s a national emergency compared to your wife?”

You felt his smile under your hand as you saw it brighten his face.

“Can’t argue with that,” he said. You drew him down to kiss you again; you didn’t know how long you would have kept him if his phone hadn’t buzzed again.

“Maybe it is a national emergency,” you conceded. “You should probably answer it.”

“Probably,” he agreed. He gave you a quick kiss before he turned to reach for his phone. “You want to get the shower started while I see what’s going on?”

You untangled yourself from the sheets and his warmth, already missing them as you took off your shirt and put your pajamas in the laundry. You blushed under the affectionate way he watched you even as he answered the phone, his tone all business like it was every time he answered a work call.

The sound of his voice drifted across your bedroom, but the conversation was lost to you as you turned on the shower and stepped in when it was warm enough. You didn’t have to wait long for Dave; he joined you after a few minutes, wasting no time soaping up and getting ready for the day.

“Was it a national emergency?” you asked.

He smiled. “No, but I do need to get going. Apparently there’s a bunch of high-schoolers coming in for a shadowing program, and I’m supposed to be in charge of them.”

You couldn’t imagine anyone better suited to the job - most of the people Dave worked with would have nothing but disdain for a group of nervous high-schoolers, but Dave would be kind and friendly and get them where they needed to go.

“Well, in that case, you better get a move on,” you said. Your morning shower together was usually a more leisurely affair, but you kept your hands to yourself - a valiant effort, considering how much you wanted to kiss every inch of him - and let him get cleaned up. He was out of the shower before you’d started on your hair, and he was nearly dressed when you got out.

“You look very handsome,” you told him, watching the way he straightened his tie in the vanity mirror.

He smiled. “Thanks.” He turned and kissed you, a brisk, passionate goodbye.

“Sorry I can’t help you get the girls together,” he said.

“That’s ok,” you said. You patted his chest. “Go wrangle some high schoolers. The girls and I will be right here when you get back.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, affection warming his expression.

You smiled. “What?”

He smiled back. “Nothing. I’m just glad we’re having another baby, that’s all. I love you.”

“I love you too.” You kissed him goodbye, already thinking about how much you’d like to try for a baby again when he got back home.

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