#and then that’s when they’re getting into the van and then will just adds to the awkwardness even more by sitting on the icebox 😭 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

husbandhoshi · 2 months ago

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title: royally screwed [m]

pairing: joshua x f!reader

wc: 30.8k in total; part 1: 15.4k, part 2: 15.4k summary: between remembering last night’s party and pleasing your unrelenting family, you think being a princess is hard enough. then you’re thrust into an arranged marriage to royal darling joshua hong—straight-laced, infuriatingly obedient, and everything you’re not. pretending to be the perfect couple? impossible. notes: romcom + smut (part 2), modern royalty!au in which yn is the princess of cotria/joshua the prince of acros (both fictional), enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, quarterlife crisis/coming of age, very very slow burn. lots of swearing, lots of alcohol, lots of feelings. smut tags: oral (m!receiving), mirror shenanigans, unprotected sex, softdom!shua, mating press, idk. they're in love your honor. [read part 1 here!] (please)

You decide June looks good on Acros. Unlike in Cotria, now sure to be perspiring with tourists, the downtown here is comfortable, inviting, even. At home, you’d be shoulder-to-shoulder with three other people right now.

This is one of the things you like about this country: it seems to be intentionally idyllic. It’s becoming more clear to you that Joshua’s parents weren’t actually in need of anything from you other than a status boost. You suppose they’re learning the hard way what exactly that comes with.

Jeonghan’s car, or rather, the car Jeonghan happens to be in (he couldn’t drive his way out of a paper bag, try as he might), pulls up to the curb. He’s fresh off a stint of good press, meaning months of speeches, ribbon cutting, and run-ins with parliament and journalists and business moguls all vying for a bite of a future king. You’d add yourself to that list, but you know you’re at the back of the line—you practically live there now, but you’re not sure if things could have happened any other way.

You watch him step out of the van, never windblown even though he likely just got off a flight. Always with a smile, too, one tired but recognizable, so different from the plasticky ones he wears on TV.

The first thing he does when he gets out is throw his arms open for a bear hug. “Hey, cricket,” he says, voice wrought with jet-lag. “Missed you.”

“Glad you had time for one more stop,” you murmur, squeezed into the million-thread count of his shirt.

“I always have time for you,” he replies, which is decidedly untrue, but you don’t have it in you to say that. All you do lately is get into arguments, and you’re not looking to add your brother to your hit list.

(He hugs Jihoon, too, since you all practically grew up together. Is that your gun, or are you just happy to see me? Jeonghan jokes. Jihoon’s reply: It’s my gun. It’s always my gun.)

The second thing he does is push the brim of your baseball cap down.

“The paps,” he warns, as if they were the boogeyman.

“If they can’t recognize us, they need to get better at their job.” Jeonghan rolls his eyes. “For God’s sake, Jeonghan, we’re all wearing matching hats.”

No, you are not kidding. Jeonghan, blue, you, red, and Jihoon, green, a la The Powerpuff Girls, which was a joke you made about six years ago and could not let go of.

“Whatever,” he laughs. “Aren’t you supposed to be showing me around? This is your domain now.”

“Don’t get excited. I just got here.”

“What do you need to go shopping for, anyway?” he asks, now walking side-by-side with you.

“I ask that question every day,” Jihoon replies, glancing at Jeonghan as if to say Women, right?, save for the fact that the both of them have exactly zero game.

“Somi’s birthday!” you exclaim, two ticks too loudly. “Stuff, I dunno. Just trying to get used to this place.”

“This isn’t exactly Rodeo Drive, you know.”

That, Jeonghan is right about. You’re sure there must be a shopping district somewhere in Acros, but definitely not here. Here, the streets are lined with dense cherry plum trees, wine-stained and fragrant. They frame driftwood-paneled shop windows housing kitschy art galleries, mom-and-pop bakeries, and patioed bistros with striped awnings.

An elderly couple passes you. They smile and wave, visible even under the shade of their parasol, either blissfully unaware of your status or too wise to care.

“I know,” you waver. “Whatever. I'll just get Yunjin to find me something for the party.”

Your eye wanders to the jaunty facade of a music store. The sign flaunts handmade, cursive letters with a curly treble clef in the lacquer of old paint. In Cotria, the same sign would be neon, Hollywood-esque, vain.

“Party?”

“Let's go there,” you interrupt, hoping to run your big mouth over with some more talking. Of course Jeonghan wouldn’t be cool with any party, nonetheless the one Somi was planning on throwing, but, either by habit or wishful thinking, the news just tumbled right out of you.

“Party?” Jeonghan repeats. He trails close after you, hoping to grab the door before you can. Such is what he had been taught, after all, which came more naturally than navigating big-brotherhood. “Jihoon?”

Jihoon shrugs, and opens the door before the both of you get there. You’ve trained him well.

“It’s a small thing,” you tell him. “Close friends only.” It’s not technically a lie—small is relative, and it’s not your fault Somi has two hundred-some close friends.

Inside, you notice the shop is bigger than it looks from the outside. In the front, their nicest pianos: the glossy Yamahas, the baby grands. a lone drum set, on sale, the hi-hat sparkling under the LED lights. And finally, guitars hung from the wall like posters, some lime green and child-sized, others sanded down so the mahogany glows.

“You already know what I’m going to say,” Jeonghan says, the lilt of his voice verging on not-so-casual.

“Then don’t say it,” you reply flatly. “You went to those parties too, by the way.”

“Used to, but—” Jeonghan sighs because he’s beat, and he knows it.

You absentmindedly flip through a book of sheet music—Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory. behind it, 40 Taylor Swift Songs for Piano.

“You’ve been good, I hope?” you cut in. “Not too tired?”

“No,” Jeonghan says. “I've been great. You?”

You can’t read his expression. Old Jeonghan would tell you that he’s ready for a nap, that he hates sleeping on airplanes, that his hands still get sweaty when he gets in front of a crowd and the camera flash hurts his eyes. New Jeonghan never complains, either because of some drastic change in his character or because he feels like he can no longer complain to you. Both hurt your feelings in equal measures.

“I called, you know.”

“I was busy, cricket.” He holds up a copy of Complete Advanced Piano Solos and wrinkles his nose. He's hoping you’d laugh with him about it, but you’ve already moved on, now fixated on the shining columns of electric guitars. “I wanted to ask about, you know, all the new stuff going on.”

“You mean my arranged marriage?” The words feel stiff in your mouth.

The arranged marriage I'm doing for you? I split my heart open for you, and that’s the thanks I get?

You avoid Jihoon’s tentative glare to look at your noodled reflection in the polish of a red Fender. You think of Joshua, of a corny rendition of Here Comes The Sun and a pick between his teeth, cradling a guitar held by a linty, ten dollar strap.

Then you think of what he said on that piano bench—that somehow he could have prevented this. Actually, this might have been all your fault. One too many shots, and you ended up setting feminism back five centuries.

“Y-yeah.” You watch Jeonghan’s silhouette appear behind yours. “Has it been okay, at least?”

Okay is a complicated word to use. It’s hard to say, even for you.

It would certainly be TMI to tell Jeonghan that you’ve been kissing a lot more often. First it was under the flimsy guise of practice—We have to be ready for our dinner tomorrow, Joshua had said, to which you readily agreed. You couldn’t be the unwilling victim of another headline like KISS OR MISS! It would be terrible for your ego, even more so than your public image.

Yesterday, though, as you were winding down for bed, Joshua had come out of the shower, damp white tee and all. A sorry, unspeakable part of you willed you to posit—Hey, maybe we need a refresher? You couldn’t even get halfway through your sentence. Hell, his glasses even came off.

You really only liked each other past 9 PM—you still couldn’t quite manage to get through a conversation like normal people. At this point, you had a 50/50 split in terms of who would cast the first terrible stone of petty disagreement. The only thing we have going for us is a dubious physical attraction, seemed like way more of a mouthful than okay, though.

“Yeah, it’s been okay.” You look around. There's a decent amount of mediocre acoustic guitars on the back wall, more than enough to scratch the itch of someone too afraid to defile something more honorable. “Hey, don’t wait up for me. I think i might buy something.”

—

[august 10, 2:57 pm; a dress fitting.

In the ten-foot mirror of the boutique dressing room, you watch Yunjin yank the ties of your corset into a punishing knot. Your mother watches behind you, perched on the chaise.

“Regal and radiant,” she reads aloud, the shiny cover of a magazine between her hands. “Finally, some good news.”

“About you and Joshua?” Yunjin asks.

“Ye–ow!” you wince. “Yeah. We went out to dinner yesterday.”

The dinner: an exhausting, stuffy affair at an Italian restaurant with two Michelin stars. You came in a nice dress, Joshua in slacks and his best button-up. Smile, wave, a kiss on the cheek. You fed him a spoonful of dessert, a stiff, too-sweet panna cotta. It was either raspberry or strawberry—you were too distracted to really notice. Instead, you’d been practicing the steps, the motions of a true love.

Should we hold hands over the table? Joshua had asked.

I don't think we have to. Your hand had curled over the napkin on your lap, as if the thought of his touch physically stung.

“This is a nice color,” your mother interrupts. She pinches the fabric of the skirt up at your waist, watching the way it bunches over your hips. “It's suitable.”

Suitable. Right. The dress for your engagement ball, suitable. Just like you, newly suited for the engagement.

You watch your image in the mirror. It’s taller, more regal, likely the product of Yunjin squeezing all the air out of you, Or worse, the penetrating gaze of your mother over the top of the tabloid.

You blink hard; you waver. ]

[august 20, 10:13 pm; a quiet return to acros after a day at the beach with somi and soonyoung.

The castle sleeps, warm under the soft glow of candlelight on marble. You pad through the halls, carefully, as to avoid waking the entire country with the thwacks of your still-wet sandals. Hopefully Joshua is sleeping. He'd certainly ask questions, either about if bikini tops really need all that padding or what the SPF of your sunscreen was.

You approach your room, where the lamplight from the cracked door oozes into the hallway. There's a determined rustling noise coming from the interior. Incriminating. Holding your breath, you cast a long glance into the thin slice of bedroom you can see from where you’re standing.

There sits Joshua, cross-legged on the bed. Between his legs, the guitar you bought him. It must have finally shipped. He’s tied the gift ribbon it came with to the guitar strap, a woven linen with an offensively bright jacquard pattern.

A hesitant A major chord, then G major, offkey. Hm, he hums aloud. Then you notice his phone propped on a pillow, a Youtube tutorial rumbling in the background. He tries the G major again. Better, he says, pumping a fist into the tired air.

God, what a dork, you think. But you don’t walk away.]

–

From the garden, the Acrosian moon renders the city blue, like ink from a spilled well.

It’s quiet out here, you notice. The forest spills into the sky, and the scent of roses lies heavy on your skin. You’re seated on the bench beneath the sculpted gazebo, a worthy centerpiece, and you revel in the coolness of the granite, the bated still of the air. You like this garden better than the one at home, although it’s entirely possible that you’ve been conditioned into hating all topiaries, no thanks to your parents.

It's only when you hear the quiet click of footsteps behind you that you realize you’ve lost track of how long you’ve been outside. You’re now able to tell them apart–these, Joshua’s, steady and purposeful, sound like they have a heartbeat.

You don’t turn around to greet him. “So you finally had enough, huh?” you ask instead, sliding to the left so he can sit beside you.

“How'd you know?” he chuckles.

“I'd like to think I know at least a little about you.”

“I appreciate it,” is his reply, surprisingly warm.

Just a few hours earlier, your parents had come to visit. They cooed and giggled and connived alongside Joshua’s parents before launching into a very long, very serious discussion about your engagement ball. You’ve learned not to sweat the small stuff, the small stuff being the color of the napkins, the members of the string quartet, the hors d'oeuvres. But then it got weird: the symbolism of the color of your nail polish, which journalists were allowed to watch you make out, when and how Jeonghan was supposed to announce his presence during all of this.

Then things got critical, which really sucked. No one was safe this time, not even Joshua. You lasted about an hour, Joshua about forty-five minutes more. You wonder what his breaking point was. Maybe it was his mother finally telling him off for having more than three buttons undone whenever he wore a dress shirt.

In the silence, you feel an inexplicable peace. Maybe this is the only time you can get along; underneath the same moon, the same stars, the divide doesn’t feel quite as wide. You let your mind clear, first, past the fog of Somi’s birthday bash, glittery and blinding in your mind’s eye, past Jeonghan’s tired shoulders in the music store, past all the magazine covers and photo ops. The heavy reality feels heavier in your stomach, but you’re no longer as scared, although resignation looks like acceptance when you whittle it close enough to the bone.

“Have you ever been in love before?”

Joshua’s voice is so low, it takes you by surprise. You look to your side and see his eyes, shaded by the long curl of his lashes, trained on the sky, his expression unreadable. There’s a piercing sincerity to it, one you haven’t seen before.

“No,” you reply, the answer coming to you faster than any regret ever could. “How could i?”

“So all the boyfriends before, just…?” he trails off. He's referencing the magazines, all the covers with full size photos of you and the model of the month holding hands by the riviera, sharing a martini, kissing outside a nightclub. There are too many to remember, but you’re surprised he’s aware of any at all.

“It was just stupid fun. I dunno. We hung out, had sex, whatever. It was never serious. I didn't tell them about anything at all; I was okay with them not really knowing me, at least, not as anything other than a party girl, the runaway princess, etcetera. We didn’t owe each other anything.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“Sometimes,” you answer. “But it was fun. I don't regret it. I just never saw room for them in all of this.”

Joshua hums, low and deep.

“And you?” you ask, incredulous. “In love?”

“In university,” he says after a brief pause. “There was a girl. I think I loved her more than I had ever loved anything else before.”

“What? Who?” you interrupt. “Do I know her?”

“No.” Then, a quiet chuckle. “No one did. She was a civilian, a normal girl. She wanted to be a biologist, I think. it was either that, or a nurse. We snuck around a lot. Probably more than you did.”

“Can I ask what happened?”

“I told her I'd marry her. I thought if I wanted it enough, it would happen. I'd go to my parents, profess my love, and all our rules would fall away somehow. Just like that.”

Suddenly, it feels like there is a gaping wound in your chest. Every new word seems to draw the bloody edges of your skin further apart.

“Well, they didn’t,” Joshua continues. “I broke her heart. and I learned that all of this would never go away. Not for love, not for anything.”

There is an impossible hollowness inside you. You imagine Joshua, twenty-one and bright-eyed at Cambridge, hiding beneath the arch of the cobblestone bridge, the long one behind the quad, to carve hearts into the limestone. There's a girl wrapped in his jacket, her laughter like bells. She draws him close, runs a delicate hand through his hair, a shorter cut, more sporty than it is now. The night is still just as kind, forgiving, as it is now, and the moon still round like a young pearl.

“And that’s why you’re…you know.” You pause. The words all feel stuck to the roof of your mouth. “You like the rules.”

“Because it would mean that it didn’t end in vain. That it wasn’t really my fault.”

“You don’t want to mess up again. I get it.”

“Yeah.”

You notice your arms are touching, that they have been touching. Somehow, you don’t want to move away.

“Why are you telling me this?” you ask.

“Not sure.” Joshua sighs, having fully abandoned the filter he normally speaks to you through. “I don't think we’re so different. I don't know. It feels good to tell someone.”

“Do you still love her?”

“No. I don't think I can.”

“I'm sorry,” you swallow, feeling the familiar lump in your throat.

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”

It’s getting cold, the twilight breeze now coming in from the sea. A silence, now sticky, caustic, settles between the two of you. The thought of Joshua, hopelessly in love, a line you hadn’t even dared to cross, seems to wind itself deep into your neurons.

“No really,” you insist. “I'm sorry. I gave you a hard time—no, I've been giving you a hard time. I didn't know.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“What?”

“Be nice to me. No one’s watching.”

“I know,” you say, a foolish conviction rising in your stomach. You almost feel silly, juvenile, for never really baring your heart like how he had. You’re not sure which was worse.

You turn to look at him, really look at him. He's framed by the haze of the violets, the gentle curtain of the willows.

“Says the real you?” Joshua asks.

“Yup,” you laugh. “Usually is. You probably get the worst of it, to be honest.”

“She’s not so bad.” He returns your gaze; it’s honest, unsearching. “According to the real me, by the way.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

There are no words left. In fact, nothing quite says more than the way you now sit together, hands close enough to touch, without quarrel, complaint, or a yearning to prove yourself to some invisible standard. Instead, you enjoy the quiet calm, the way it drapes itself across the garden, the city, the quick of your heart. Now that you think about it, it’s the first time you’ve been able to do this without feeling like you were putting on a show.

This time, you think it’s real when you lean against his shoulder, and he leans back, chasing your warmth.

And it certainly seems to stay real when your hands find each other. You realize he does it the same way every time—the gentle skim of his fingertips down your hand before your palms meet, gently, forthright.

And it’s here, in the uncertain glow of the summer moon, where you think you’re the closest to ever knowing just what Joshua had been talking about earlier.

His hand curls around your cheek, holding you, wanting to see you clearer still, and he kisses you. It's not the practiced motion of an ill-conceived love, nor a hungry, blind stumble in your unlit bedroom. No, this time, it's as if you are being drawn back, wonderfully, slowly. Joshua kisses you as if it's the first time, as if to undo all the other times.

And somehow, almost by magic, the fountain song and the phantom photographers, the parents and the press, the world and everything in it, finally draw quiet.

–

“So,” Jihoon says, reloading his pistol. “You ok? Don’t you hate the range?”

You push your earmuffs aside to hear him better. “What?”

“I said, don’t you hate the range?”

“Well,” you balk. Jihoon puts the gun down and leans against the booth, looking at you from behind the glare of his safety glasses. Behind him is the paper target of a man with five bullet holes through his head. “I think I've gotten used to it.”

This is all true—you did hate the range, but it’s where you can always count on finding Jihoon on a Sunday afternoon. Better people went to church, but Jihoon preferred to terrorize the poor center circle of a bullseye.

“Hm.” He picks up the pistol again, stares down its iron sights. “Somi need anything for her birthday?”

“She needs a new man,” you reply, and Jihoon laughs.

Bang. Bang.

“But, no, I'm getting her that vintage Cartier watch she’s been wanting forever. They were auctioning it off in Paris.”

“Right, since it’s time for her to get a new boyfriend,” Jihoon deadpans, although he can’t quite get it out before he chuckles. “What about Soonyoung?”

“They cannot get together. You’re just being messy.”

“Sure, I'm the messy one. Didn’t they sleep together?”

“That was, like, two years ago. Drunk.”

Bang. Then a click–the clip’s empty. “By the way—you decided if you’re going to Cotria this weekend? Jeonghan will be back again, you know.”

You pause, watching Jihoon reload the magazine, shiny bullet by bullet. You definitely know Jeonghan’s coming home—minus all the time you spend on Find My Friends, you were always acutely aware of when he was in town. The real question is if you wanted to see him again. Usually, you’d count down the days, make plans at all your favorite restaurants, buy a bottle of cheap wine to split over a shitty Godzilla movie. That was when you still talked.

The last time you saw him was when he visited you in Acros. After the music store, you milled around a couple shops, walked through an art gallery. (Remember when you got lost at the Prado? he had asked. You were staring at that painting with all the butts.

Kinda, you had replied noncommittally. All Jeonghan did lately was start his sentences with remember, like he wanted you to forget who he was now.)

“I dunno,” is what you land on. “I'm busy.”

“Well, Jeonghan asked me.” Jihoon takes down his old target and sets up a fresh one, another formless, black silhouette.

“Asked you what?”

“If I could ask you to come.”

“Does Josh know?”

“He actually already helped with arrangements for you to go back,” Jihoon replies, palming the gun again. “He said only if you wanted to, though.”

The tightness in your chest seems to coil over itself once more. Joshua had asked you about Jeonghan over breakfast one morning, before handing you a coffee and a croissant to soften the blow. You had been talking a lot more lately, which, somehow, you didn’t mind. If he wasn’t making fun of you, he was actually a decent listener.

You watch Jihoon steady his arms.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

–

Like all of your great ideas, it began in the back of a car.

Surprising, maybe. Accidental? Never.

You’re getting ahead of yourself, though. It really started earlier tonight, at the charity event you attended with Joshua.

Lesser beings would blame the wine, a cheap chardonnay only fit for sorority girls on a Friday night. Naturally, you and Joshua were responsible for downing about half the bottle—a fun amount, you’d like to say, although you admit you were surprised at your date’s ability to hold his alcohol.

You, however, can peg the real culprit: a reasonably slutty dress, removed from the annals of Somi’s closet, back when she was less of a Paris Hilton and more of a Princess Diana.

The evidence: damning. As you were getting ready—Can you zip me up? you had asked Joshua, fiddling with the rollers in your hair, already a generous ten minutes late. Then the slow, lingering skim of his touch, molasses up the hollow of your spine. At dinner, a warm hand on your knee. You didn’t hang around much longer after that, but walking to the car was a wondrous excuse for the flat of his palm to find the small of your back, fondly, comfortably, as if you had known each other for years.

Since you had spoken in the garden, certainly you had acted like more of a couple. It came more naturally, likely due to the fact that you had no idea if you were actually a couple or not. You suppose it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. Well—sort of.

Now, you’re just being obtuse. What you’re really trying to do is explain how your hand found its way down Joshua’s pants in the back of your limousine. And still, found is too generous of a word. But you digress.

The short version: you kissed Joshua. Jihoon parked the car out back, you had gotten tired of Joshua glancing at you through the side of his eyes, and you kissed him. Regrettably, this hasn’t gotten boring yet. You enjoy the way he searches for your touch, the part of his soft lips.

Sometime between the third and the tenth time your tongue found its way into Joshua’s mouth, Jihoon removed himself from the situation—he was always good at that part. Two wandering hands later, your palm skimmed over the front of Joshua’s slacks. No big deal, except he was half-hard and he moaned in your mouth like he was doing the ad-libs in a Cupcakke song.

“Whoops,” you had babbled. This whole night, you’d been searching for the brakes on the clown car winding through the horny fog of your horrible, vexed mind.

“Fuck, sorry,” Joshua replied just as quickly, the words seeming to slip back down his throat.

Then you had stared at each other and blinked, hard, as if that would erase the fact that, one, the prince of Acros had just cursed approximately half an centimeter from your face, and two, you’d now crossed a bridge that could not be uncrossed.

You could no longer lie to yourself about the fact that you are hopelessly attracted to Joshua. You don’t even know if you want to lie anymore. You still thought of the time you ran into him, birthday suit and all, all those weeks ago in the bathroom. And, yes, you had wondered how big he was, although you blame Somi for planting that evil idea in you.

Hence, with God as your witness (since Jihoon was no longer there), you had said, “I can help, you know. If you want.”

You didn’t expect Joshua to nod so quickly. Then again, you now know yourself to be a poor judge of most things, especially ones relating to whatever this is.

“Do you want to?” he had asked, eyes fogged over.

“Yes. really.” Then you stopped. “Is this your first—”

“No. Does it really seem like it?”

Okay. You’ll have to unpack that later.

So, finally, here you are. Somewhere along the line, your shame had fallen to the wayside, and a new desire now rocks you.

“Could’ve just asked earlier,” you tease, thumbing the buckle of Joshua’s belt.

“Should’ve known you’re not one for subtlety,” he laughs softly, his eyes fixed on how you undo the clasp. It’s a silly comment, but all the blood still rushes to your cheeks at the idea of him wanting you not just now, but all night. “Next time.”

“Really now.” The button at his waistband proves difficult with your new nails, so you instead sit your hand on the tent in his pants, palm him over the fabric. “You’d let me do this in the washroom of a charity ball?”

Delightfully, you watch him squirm. He doesn’t fight you, instead, uses his hands to bring you closer so you can feel his voice on your skin. “You’d be surprised,” he replies.

“His highness,” you say before returning to the wretched button, “Fooling around at a formal event? Scandalous.”

“Says the walking scandal,” Joshua laughs again, nipping at your earlobe. Then a sigh, breathy and tortured, as you finally peel back his slacks.

“Isn’t this about the time where you be quiet and let me do my thing?”

“Is that an order?”

“Yeah, since you seem to like them so much.”

He opens his mouth to complain, but you’ve beaten him to the punch. Skin meets skin; you watch his eyes flutter shut, the slow fall of his shoulders as he exhales.

Fuck, you think to yourself. If that’s all it takes for him to get hard— you force the thought back to where it came from. You’re getting ahead of yourself. Already, you’re reveling in the lewd image before you: the nation’s darling prince, legs spread and slack-jawed in the back of a limo, dizzy at the thought of a pretty girl playing with his cock.

Your hand wraps around his length, pulls it out of his briefs. Feeling the weight, heavy and warm on your palm, makes your skin prickle. He is big, but even if he wasn’t, the way he gasps into your ear when you start pumping him is enough to satisfy.

You start slow, just to be a little mean. He's longer than you expected, you realize. A turn of the wrist at the base, a little more pressure, and you hear him groan, loudly, shamelessly, as he tips his head back.

“Feels good?” you ask, voice lower than a whisper. You know it does—you’re not inexperienced by any stretch of the imagination, but something about turning the prince into putty makes the months of horrible foreplay worth it.

“Yeah,” he says, part sigh. “Really good.”

“Good.” Then you hold out your palm in front of his mouth. You tell yourself it’s a litmus test for his freak-o-meter, but there’s a part of you that wants to make this the best handjob of his short, unexciting life.

First, he looks at you, wide eyes unblinking. There's already a flush, pretty and pink, across his cheeks, the column of his neck. Then, it clicks. He spits into your hand, and you watch it trail down the plush curve of his lips, his chin, the ridge of his adam’s apple. The color spreads to his ears; his mouth twists shyly. Oh, he looks perfect, maybe even more than perfect like this.

As if drawn by a magnet, you kiss him, and your hand finds his cock again. The friction alone draws out a low whine from Joshua’s chest, enough for you to feel the sound on your own tongue. Emboldened, you pump faster, harder, loving the way his hips kick up to meet your touch.

Still, he gives no indication that he’s close. Something tells you he has more stamina than you think, which surprises you. Thirty minutes ago, you thought he was a virgin.

“Josh?” you murmur, your lips brushing over his. “Wanna taste you.”

He meets your gaze, expression unreadable. You think maybe you’re moving too fast, that you’ve crossed some sort of boundary, until you feel the shadow of his hand move, first on your waist, then up the back of your neck. He gathers your hair in one hand, easily, as if he’s done this many a time before, and you get the message.

You wet your lips, swollen at this point, and bow your head. You’re running on something crazier than adrenaline at this point—even seeing the bead of precum at his tip is making your jaw feel heavy.

The first taste, always thrilling, sends sparks to your cunt. You seal your lips around his cockhead, feeling its weight on your greedy tongue, and he pulls your hair just enough to make you moan.

“Were you thinking about doing this all night?” Joshua asks, voice deceptively innocent.

You can’t answer. You don’t want to. He tastes good, he even fucking smells good, and you want him bad. Instead, you take him to the base, feel him bump against your palate as you try not to gag. You can’t fit him all the way, so your hands make up the slack. He's even bigger fully hard, and already, you feel the ache in your cheeks, your temples.

“Fuck, you must have been.” A groan, low and slutty. “Doing so good for me.”

You can’t tell if he’s being genuine or if this is his version of dirty talk, but it’s working. His hand is gentle, restrained behind you, letting you lead. The worse part of you wonders what it would take for him to break, but that’s a project for another time.

Honestly, he doesn’t need to do much—again and again, you chase the feeling of his cock deep in your throat, enough to bruise. You don’t even care if you gag around him; when you do, he pulls your hair back, just enough to make your scalp prickle wonderfully, seemingly oblivious to the fact that you like it.

You feel heady with arousal. You start to wonder how he is in bed, if he’d hold your hair like that, run his mouth like he is now. He's vocal, more than anyone else you’ve been with, and every little noise goes straight to your core, makes your thighs squeeze together pathetically. By now, you’re sure you’ve ruined this set of panties.

“ ‘m close,” he says between breaths. “You don’t have to—”

Stupid, stupid boy, you think. You don’t think you’ve wanted to do anything more. So instead of answering, you look up at him, eyes big and watery, and you suck hard. with your tongue nestled underneath his cockhead, right by the vein, it’s almost too easy.

He groans, loud, satisfied, and you feel his release fill your mouth. Even after swallowing, it’s enough to run down your chin, get your makeup all smudged, and you like it. If you weren’t in trouble already, you are now.

“Ah, I made you a mess,” Joshua says, gravelly and intimate. With one hand, he takes the handkerchief out of his suit jacket and cradles your jaw with the other. “Hold still.”

“You,” you manage after clearing your throat. “You don’t have to sacrifice your pocket square.”

“Yes, I do,” he chuckles. He wipes the corners of your mouth, your aching chin, and it almost makes you cry. “You literally gave me head in the back of a car. The pocket square can go.”

He draws you up to his chest so you can rest your head on him. There’s a warm, melty feeling between your ribs, minus what you had just swallowed. Inexplicably, even as the horny fog clears from your brain, you still want to be close, closer than close and then closer still.

“Head? I don’t like hearing you use normal people slang.” You pout, and you feel his laugh radiate from beneath his skin. “Good head, at least?”

“Oh, please. Better than good,” he answers. “You’re perfect. perfect.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you start. Then he shuts you up with his mouth over yours, and you forget to think about liking him, loving him, or marrying him—this, you think you can do.

—

“We’re in Barcelona!”

You’re greeted by a pocket sized Somi and Soonyoung as they grin at you from your phone screen. They look to be on the balcony of a hotel suite, both wearing their matching silk robes.

“Wow,” you reply. “And where was my invite?”

“We did invite you, bitch,” Somi says, pulling down her sunglasses to look at you. “You said you were busy.”

“Well, I mean…” you uncap a bottle of nail polish. “That's not untrue.”

“The ocean needs you,” Soonyoung whines, clutching his chest. “We need you.”

“I'm sorry! Josh and I have been doing engagement stuff.”

“Josh? Since when were you on a nickname basis?”

“Whatever,” you interrupt. “What are you guys gonna do today?”

“Beach,” Soonyoung responds brightly, with Somi’s Don’t let her change the subject! loud in the background.

To be honest, you don’t even know the answer to her question. It just sort of happened, which seems to be the new normal for you. You’re also trying to pull apart last night–the freak-o-meter test came back inconclusive, and, for some reason, Joshua fell asleep with his arm over your middle. (Actually, you can think of a few reasons why he did that, but you’re not really sure how to feel about any of them.)

“Ugh, I miss you guys.” You wipe at your pinkie toe, having smudged the polish beyond repair. “Drink a little extra sangria for me. And by little, I mean a lot.”

“You’re still coming to Somi’s birthday, right?” Soonyoung asks.

“Yes, of course she is,” Somi replies. “Unless you can’t. Which I totally understand.”

“I still can,” you lie. “It just has to be more low-key than usual.”

“No paparazzi,” Somi says. “And I'll tell everyone to keep you on the down low. Super duper down low.”

“No way.” Damn, you curse to yourself—you keep screwing up painting your big toe. “Seriously?”

“Anything for my queen,” she giggles. “Pitbull is also confirmed, by the way. Secret Pitbull now.”

“Good, because that’s the only reason I’m coming.”

“Boo, you whore.” Somi wrinkles her nose at you playfully. (Is she being serious? Soonyoung asks in the background.) “Also, I'm still waiting for my update on the whole prince thing. I've been very patient.”

“No updates. Nothing to report,” you insist. Frustratingly, your cheeks are hot, like you’re in secondary school all over again.

“You fucked him, huh?”

You bite the inside of your cheek.

“Halfway. Maybe.”

The combined sound of Somi and Soonyoung’s gasps rips apart your phone speakers, and you draw in a big breath. I did it for the plot doesn’t quite seem like the right justification, not like it used to be. The plot never used to involve the M word, love, or any sort of feelings at all. Now things are more confusing than late-stage Grey’s Anatomy, but good luck explaining that over the phone.

“So you do like him,” Soonyoung says, saucer eyes sparkly on-screen.

“I don't know,” you answer. It’s true, you don’t. To you, like was flirting over text and french kissing. Paradoxically, you had told Joshua all of that, and he still decided to do whatever he did to you on the ledge of the fountain all those days ago. It felt like he ate the heart right out of your chest. Then you had to go and suck his dick, which never made anything less complicated.

“Oh please. Look at you,” Somi laughs. “Yeah, you do.”

Fuck. You’ve smudged all the polish off your big toe again.

–

Not much surprises you these days, but you can’t say you were expecting to see your riding boots to be the first thing you see when you arrive home in Cotria.

The second thing you see is Jeonghan, smiling at you in his big, stupid riding helmet, camo-printed because he bought it when he was 15 and his head never grew much bigger since.

“For old times sake?” He then holds your own helmet up by the straps, and whatever twinge of annoyance you had felt earlier makes way for something softer, more forgiving. “Everything's set up outside.”

It doesn’t take you much time to take him up on the offer. If anything, a long ride usually solves all your problems, and you definitely have problems that need solving.

You saddle up in the stables, wordlessly, moved by habit. It seems to be the same for Jeonghan, too. Even Peanut acts like it hasn’t been years since he’s seen him, and he noses at the box of sugar cubes like he always does. Then again, horses don’t hold grudges, at least, not like you do. Even Joshua seemed more optimistic about this encounter than you did.

“So you're back back,” you say, hooking your feet in the stirrups. “Or do you have more jet-setting to do?”

“Back back,” Jeonghan replies. “Missed home too much.”

He cocks his head towards the old riding trail, the one that loops the long way through the woods. The gesture is but a formality—it’s the only path you ever take. Still, you follow behind his horse, watching the beige swoosh of Peanut’s tail the same way you did when you were a little girl and things were far simpler than they are now.

Under the cornflower sky of a near-autumn, the forest seems endless. A flock of geese split the sky in two; a warm breeze haunts the canopy, scattering the afternoon light. The dirt under you is soft, peaty from the morning rain. The hoofbeats are silent today.

Jeonghan’s horse slows so that you ride side-by-side.

“Hey, cricket?”

“Yeah?”

“I…” Jeonghan clears his throat and pauses, quite unlike him. “I wanted to come out here to talk.”

“Everything ok?”

“Yeah, I…” Another pause. “I know things haven’t felt normal between us. For me, at least.”

You almost drop the reins. A strange, floating feeling is set off in your body, like a flare.

“Yeah,” you reply. “I was kinda hoping you would say that.”

“I'm sorry.” A hard swallow. “I haven't really been the best brother, have I?”

“Well, not…not really.” Quickly, frenetically, words bob up in the back of your mouth like you’re playing whack-a-mole. You had been waiting for this conversation to happen for so long, you realized you hadn’t planned much further than that. “It felt like you’d changed. A lot.”

The wind feels like ribbons around you. You sway back and forth on Astrid, as if on a boat.

“Was it the birthday party thing?” you ask. “I didn’t mean for it to…you know.”

“Actually, that was my fault.” Jeonghan smiles bitterly. “I shouldn't have let Mom and Dad run me over like that. You should’ve been there. It was never really the same without you.”

“Well, I should've come,” you admit. “So we both fucked up.”

“Maybe,” he chuckles. “But the rest—definitely my fault. I made myself busy because I felt like I had to.”

You’re growing to really hate that word. Jeonghan had to grow up, Joshua had to break up with his first love, you had to learn to pick up all the pieces of both of these things and try to fit them back into your life.

“You didn’t even look back.”

“I was scared, cricket. That if I kept looking back, I wouldn't be able to go forward. And I didn’t want to leave you behind, but I did. I think there was a happy middle somewhere, I just couldn’t find it.”

“Jeonghan, you’re not really making sense right now,” you say, flattened, and he laughs.

“I don't even know what I'm saying. I think I'm trying to say that I just want you to be happy. And that I'm sorry.”

You bite your lip, as if to distract yourself from the strange pressure in your throat. You think you want to cry, but you’re not sure.

“But are you happy?” you ask. “With the coronation and everything? Did you even want this?”

“I am, believe it or not. I know you don’t, but I'm not lying. Somewhere along the line, I started liking all of the talking, the traveling, the interviews. I like that I can help people. Some of it sucks, but not all of it.” He laughs, finally one that sounds like something you can remember. “Not everything you have to do is bad.”

“Jeonghan, I'm getting married because of you. Because of this,” you say, trying to keep your voice from cracking. “I don't know how to do this. Any of this, not like you, not like Mom, or anyone.”

This, in fact, does make Jeonghan stop. He stills and falls silent. At once, it seems the forest goes quiet too.

“Don’t get married, then.” You don’t respond, so he says it again. “You don’t have to go through with it. Not for my sake, at least.”

“What?”

“I've been thinking about it ever since it happened. I can talk to everyone. You’d rather not be with the guy, right?”

Your tongue freezes in your mouth. You thought you had an answer, but it refuses to come out.

“I have a duty to protect you, too. I’ll be fine with or without the press.”

“Jeonghan,” you say quietly. Many moons ago, you would have laughed at the word duty, but instead, your stomach turns over and over and over. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” is his simple answer. “I want to because I care about you. We can figure out the rest.”

Something in your bones feels heavy. You’d also been waiting to hear those words, but it didn’t feel as freeing as you thought it would. You think about Joshua, his books and his perfectly placed bookmarks, his dumb dad jokes, the way he reaches for your hand, fingertips before palm.

“Can I think about it?”

“Of course. The engagement ball is probably happening either way, but it’s no big deal. Bigger engagements have been called off in far worse circumstances.”

You’re having trouble believing him, but you have no other choice. Your life would certainly get a lot easier if everything were to just end. No more press releases, scripts, or awkward pictures. And no more worrying about if you could go out on the weekends or just how much of yourself to give up to make things work.

“There's no rush.” He turns to look at you with the same wild shine in his eyes that you’d grown to miss so much. “Truce?”

That, somehow, you’re much happier to hear. You thought you’d be angrier than this, feel the usual metal-red of your gut, but all that’s left is a sobering feeling of relief, of home. At last, things feel close to normal.

“Truce.”

So you ride and ride, but a decision doesn’t come to you as easily as you thought. The sunset breaks; the word duty clings to you, unshakable, unrelenting.

—

Somehow, you have gone full circle: at the end of a long day, you find yourself back at the piano, much like you did when you were seven, and the only thing you could do right was play Hot Cross Buns.

Joshua had bought an unreasonable amount of music books, half guitar for him, half piano for you. You’d forgotten just how much you had liked playing until that night, many nights ago, when you and he had first muddled through that duet.

Yesterday, you and your parents had tea at the waterfront before you had left the country. You were still undecided on the engagement; frustratingly, the needle hadn’t moved much in either direction since Jeonghan had raised his proposal to you.

Congratulations, your mother had told you, right over her cup of oolong.

For what?

You’ve risen to the occasion. You’ve grown up.

To you, this was not a compliment. You didn’t know what it was. You had twisted the ring on your finger, back and forth, a habit you picked up after all the time you spent wearing it. You wondered if somewhere, you had become exactly like Jeonghan, molded and spun into someone unrecognizable. Maybe that was why Joshua finally seemed to like you.

Have you practiced for your first dance? your father asked, and you no longer had time to worry about the state of your personality—you had other fires to put out.

Really, that’s why you’re at the piano today. You thought you could play the damn tune and somehow remember all the ballroom dancing lessons you had taken when you were younger. Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t worked yet.

There’s a knock at the doorframe. “Come in,” you say, already knowing that it’s Joshua. No one else does that; Jihoon barges in and just starts talking, and you can hear Joshua’s parents from a mile away because of all the jewelry they have on.

“Just wanted to see what you were up to,” Joshua says. He leans against the frame of the piano, already dressed down for the night.

“Nothing,” you reply. “Just magically hoping that I remember how to ballroom dance.”

“Well, first things first, you can’t dance sitting down.” He chuckles, and you pull your lips tight.

“I'm serious, Josh,” you whine.

“You really don’t remember?” He gives you one of those looks, one that you’re quite used to now, with the judgmental wrinkle of the brow. “Didn’t you take lessons?”

“Yeah, like…fifty million years ago.”

“I couldn’t tell,” he says, grinning something foolish. “You don’t look a day over fifty.” Then he offers you his hand, which you take, and he easily pulls you from the bench.

“Flattered,” you say, unable to push down the corners of your smile. “You gonna teach this senior citizen a few moves?”

“Perhaps, as my good deed for the day.” He holds your hand, still firmly in his, and slides it up his arm to rest on his bicep. “Left hand here,” he tells you.

“Are you flirting with me?”

“Not yet,” Joshua laughs. “The ballroom hold ring a bell?” His other hand finds your free one, and you interlace fingers simply, easily. Then, the warmth of a hand between your shoulder blades, one that draws you to his chest.

“I think the only dancing I know how to do is half drunk in the dark. Can’t exactly throw it back on you in front of God and country.”

Joshua grins, a big one, and you, traitorously, feel your cheeks get prickly.

“I wouldn't want God looking at you like that,” he teases.

“And country’s already seen it all.”

“They should consider themselves very lucky, then.” His eyes meet yours, lit by the scattered light of the chandelier. “It's my turn to ask you to let me lead.”

“Fine,” you pout, noticing that familiar warmth in your stomach.

Joshua begins to count your steps off (one, two, three—ow, that’s my foot! —sorry!). He’s patient with you, more patient than you think you deserve. His hand seems to slot perfectly into the curve of your back; his gaze settles onto you in a way that makes your chest feel heavy, molten.

“For someone who goes out so much, you have a terrible sense of rhythm,” Joshua says, teasing.

“Hey,” you object. “Maybe I just have a bad teacher.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault now?”

“Well, I'm not about to blame Britney Spears.”

Joshua laughs, and the sound is so close to you, you can feel it on your skin.

“I still think it’s the student’s fault.”

“Me?!” Perfectly timed, your sock-clad feet collide (yours, striped and fuzzy, his, plain white). “Impossible.”

“Too distracting,” he murmurs, and you notice how unfairly pretty his eyes are. “You bump into me, criticize me, you look at me like that…”

You feel dizzy. You don’t know what Joshua’s doing to you, but it’s mean. Your face is warm, and normally you’d blame it all on the alcohol but you haven’t had any. Worst of all, the soft part of you, the lizard-brained, impulsive part, can’t stop thinking about his lips and how they would feel on yours.

It’s a thought you don’t let linger, much like all of the other half-thoughts you have, and you kiss him, as if it was a reprieve from the terrible, horrible way he’s making you feel. (It isn’t.)

“You talk too much,” you tell Joshua, right against his lips. “Not enough teaching.”

“I'm putting you in remediation.”

“Devastating.”

“And giving you homework.”

“Whatever shall I do?”

Joshua answers that question for you. He kisses you, once, twice, still not enough, and, somehow, things feel more simple than they ever had before.

—

Jihoon’s eyes are dark, dagger-sharp in the rearview mirror.

“We’re coming up,” he says. “A few minutes out.”

“I know,” you answer. Yunjin was successful, almost too successful, in her task of finding you an appropriately revealing dress for a newly engaged twenty-something at the party of the year. The filmy silk stretches around your thighs; the cowl neck flirts with the neckline of the bikini top you have on underneath.

You look good, probably better than how you’ve looked in months. And yet, for some reason, you don’t feel good, at least, not how you’d thought you’d feel on the way to the only event you’d been looking forward to this year.

Somi’s gift rattles in your lap. It’s covered in this loud, hot pink wrapping paper unbecoming of something you had spent years tracking down on the antiques circuit. Normally, you’d have a laugh with Jihoon about it, maybe take some selfies in the car, but instead, you find yourself spinning your ring around your finger like you always seem to do these days.

You think of Jeonghan, of Joshua. Of course, what you do or don’t do on your best friend’s birthday is none of their business (although, very inconveniently, Jeonghan did have some event this weekend, and Joshua was traveling). But still, you think of the boldface headlines, the whispering gossip forums, the washed-out image of you in your little dress on the cover of a cheap magazine. This wasn’t exactly a tame party, and things weren’t just about you anymore, not like they used to be.

Marking your arrival isn’t the GPS nor Jihoon, rather, it’s the firefly buzz of the cameras outside your limo as it’s forced to come to a stop. You squint, trying to see past the tint of your windows, and see Somi, radiant in her birthday tiara, as she pushes through the crowd. Behind her is the villa she rented, illuminated by pink and gold strobe lights.

You crack open the car door and are met with a stifling deluge of camera flashes. Music pulses through the air, enough to feel beneath your heels.

“Who's my favorite princess?” Somi exclaims, throwing her arms open. “You made it! you look hot.”

“Not as hot as the birthday girl,” you reply, and you let her squeeze the air out of you in a wonderful, bone-crushing hug. “What's with all the cameras?”

“Professional photographers. Just wanted something to remember the night by, because we are blacking out.” She giggles, already tipsy. “Come, come, we’re doing shots inside.”

“Without me?”

“We’ll catch you up.”

Somi drags you by the hand through the sea of people, and you watch the cameras follow as they always do. She leads you up the stairs, underneath the towering balloon display, and into the foyer, already darkened, lit only by a disco ball chandelier and the neon backlights.

You spot Soonyoung by a champagne tower that seems twice his size, as promised. He's in a leather jacket, no shirt under, and you watch his eyes light up as they meet yours.

“A shot for her highness,” he shouts over the music.

“I thought this was champagne.”

“Tequila's close enough.” He laughs, eyes upturned, bright like gemstones.

The first shot goes down easy. It always does. So does the second, unsurprisingly. Around the third is when Somi tells you that the strippers are coming in an hour. (—Strippers?! —Not everyone has a fiancé, you know.)

And, just like that, you’re back to the beginning. It’s hard to think over the ridiculously good Kesha mix the DJ is playing, but, terribly, you think you’re starting to understand what Jeonghan was talking about. You’re still not sure how you feel about duty, responsibility, sacrifice, those heavy words that feel impossibly heavier in your mouth, but all you know is that, as much fun as you’re having now, it comes at a fair price.

Somi told you nothing, no compromising pictures, no drama, would reach the press, but, as hard as she may try, you feel like enough people have laid eyes on you already that someone was bound to hear something. If not now, then definitely in a few hours when everyone’s on at least two and a half substances, and all bets are off.

Briefly, you recall your appearance at the derby, the memory like a shard of glass. You had stood guileless next to Joshua, tripping over your words because you hadn’t cared enough to read the damn briefing, and he had covered it up with a dad joke or two. Coming up with those abominations must have been hard enough for someone whose first book was the Oxford Dictionary, but you don’t even think God and all his angels could cover up this. More than that, the thought of everyone having to try anyway makes your gut twist.

Someone tells you to smile for a selfie. You recognize her, but you don’t remember her name (Amelia or Alicia, one of Somi’s friend of a friends. On second glance, there are definitely more than 200 people here). Let's dance! another voice shouts in your ear.

Your head hurts. You hate the idea that Jeonghan might be a little right, but you hate even more that you’re starting to agree with him. Maybe you need another shot.

“Your gift,” you say, fighting over the chorus of Your Love Is My Drug. “Somi!”

“Oh my god, you did not!” she squeals. She clasps her hands over yours, wrapped around the box, and draws them to her. “Let me take it to the table. I’ll meet you by the pool—oh, oh, there’s a hot dog stand out there too!”

“Actually,” you start. You’re not that drunk, not yet, but now you think you can feel the ground start to sway under you. It wouldn’t be too far a stretch to say that in half an hour, after a little time at the bar, you’d probably be spending the night, no question. “I think I have to run.”

“Aw, really?” Somi tilts her head and squints, as if trying to read your mind.

“I am so sorry,” you tell her, as sincerely as one can over a pop song from the 2000s. “Swear I'll make it up to you.”

“Life stuff, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It's ok,” she says. “Really really. Go home, figure your shit out, and we can have our own party.”

She holds your joined hands to her heart. Whatever look you gave her, she believed. That, or she knows you better than you think.

So you leave. The car ride home is silent. Jihoon doesn’t ask questions, and you can still hear the sound of the music ringing in your ears, on and on and on.

—

You think the worst thing you’ve ever woken up to was the Crazy Frog ringtone of one of the guys you had slept with during university.

The second worst has got to be five voice memos and three consecutive missed Facetime calls from Somi, which is the first thing you see upon opening your eyes.

“Oh fuck,” you murmur, still coming to. Your bed is empty, but you see Joshua's suitcase in the corner of the room. He must have come home early this morning, while you were still sleeping.

You crack open your text messages.

–OH MY GOD.

–I AM SO SO SORRY.

–someone must have gotten paid off for last night’s pictures…i had no idea i swear

Then a voice memo. Then another voice memo. then a PopCrave Twitter screenshot: YOU CAN TAKE THE PRINCESS OUT OF THE PARTY–OR CAN YOU? followed by the worst, most incriminating photo of you and Soonyoung, arms linked, throwing back a shot.

“No, no, no, no.” You squeeze your eyes shut, feeling the stone-cold drop of your heart to your feet. “Fuck. Fuck.”

Shit. You have to find Joshua and make it right.

Somehow, you thought it wouldn’t matter, that you didn’t care what did or didn’t get out as long as you were able to have a good time—you desperately search for that same feeling, knowing that it’s long, long gone. You don’t even think you truly ever believed that.

You race down the palace hallways, ones that feel far more familiar than the rigid bastions they were when you first got here, but it’s Joshua who finds you before you find him. Or rather, it’s his voice you hear, trickling out from behind the library door.

Suddenly, you’re five again, and you’re spying on Jeonghan talking to your parents. You peek through the crack of the doorframe. As Somi would say, nightmare blunt rotation: there stands Joshua, surrounded by both sets of parents, and no one looks happy.

“We knew it,” another voice says—your mother. “We’re sorry, but we said this would happen.”

“It’s no matter. There’s nothing left to do but call the engagement off.”

The room goes quiet. You notice your hands are shaking. Your face feels numb.

“You’re right. I don't think anyone’s getting what they want out of this, anyway.”

“We’ll cancel the ball. There’s no way around it. Likely a relief, right, Joshua?”

The moment seems to squirm, suspended in time. This is what you were waiting for, right? Your parents were right—no one wanted this anyway. You certainly didn’t, and now you get your get out of jail free card. On top of that, you get to hear what you’d been expecting all along—that Joshua never liked you, that this was fun and all, but he’s ready to stop playing pretend.

“I…I disagree.” You freeze. “She's my fiancée. I made a commitment to her, and I'm not going to walk away.”

“Joshua, my dear, this arrangement was never going to work. You can be honest.”

This is the part where Joshua nods, does his perfectly symmetric smile, and agrees. This is what he does, what he’s been doing since forever. The story always ends the same way. That was the point.

Instead: “I am being honest. Since when was it illegal to go to your best friend’s birthday party? I don't care what the rest of the world has to say. She’s not who they, or you, think she is.” Through the door-gap, you watch the pursed, resolute draw of Joshua’s lips. “You didn’t even invite her here to talk about her own engagement. You never once gave her a chance.”

A stunned silence falls over the room.

“I’m sorry, but this is how I feel. I won't let you take another girl I love from me. Not again.”

Your hand flies over your mouth, and something twists deep in you, like you’re drowning from the inside out. You can’t, won’t, believe what you just heard. That somehow, beyond all the fighting, the quiet nights, the snide remarks and the fake smiles, that Joshua loved you? Loved? Enough to say all that to the people that ruled his life with an iron fist? None of this made sense, but nothing’s made sense since you got here.

The room erupts into noise, peals of voices all colliding into each other, and you do what you do best—you leave.

—

No one talks about that morning. You don’t even think anyone knows you were there—part of you wishes that you actually weren’t, so you didn’t have all this on your mind. (Joshua, later that day: I got you something from Seoul. From his suitcase, a bottle of soju. Just kidding. Then a jade bracelet, so vibrant it looked like the ocean.) No one talked about Somi, and no one talked about the party.

In fact, everyone had just rolled on as usual, all the way to the end of the week, the day of your engagement ball. Even you did. The word love felt so big, so burdensome, when Joshua had said it to his parents, but you didn't mind it on you.

The lingering touches, late night talks, tea made the way you like—nothing really had changed much since shit hit the fan, but now you knew that was the label. You guess that when you told Joshua you had never been in love before, you were really telling the truth. Either that, or he was just saying whatever the hell he needed to stop your engagement from imploding.

Still, you found yourself still reaching for him. There was an unfamiliar comfort about his nearness. You woke up this morning cradled to his side, and, for once, it wasn’t a scene you wanted to erase.

Now, your hairstylist hoses your blowout down with hairspray. You’d spent the better part of this morning sitting in different chairs, hair, makeup, nails. A part of you waits for the other shoe to drop: Joshua’s mother would waltz in and tell you, Surprise! You’re a single woman again, just as you should be.

It never happens. You’re wrapped in various mists and creams and powders, all the while fielding all the same questions about the ball (—Excited for tonight? Yeah, of course. —How does it feel being the surprise couple of the year? Surprising.)

It’s not until Yunjin comes in, wheeling in your giant, sparkly engagement gown, all Italian lace and satin brocade, that things feel real.

The dress itself is beautiful, a pale champagne number, gathered at the waist with a smattering of crystals down the train. Earlier, when you’d first tried it on, it looked like a costume fit for the girl playing wife. It was another smothering thing that hung on you, just like everything else in your life.

Today, you watch your form tall in the mirror. You meet her eyes, her uncertain mouth. It’s you, for sure, but there’s a stillness about you that you can’t quite put a finger on. Maybe Joshua’s demeanor was contagious.

Yunjin laces your bodice up, careful eyelet by eyelet—“You’re nervous, huh?”

“Is it really that obvious?”

She laughs. “Breathe. You’re not getting married. Not yet, at least.”

“Yunjin, isn’t it weird that no one has talked to me about Somi’s birthday? Everyone on the planet saw the leaks.”

“Maybe they finally learned to stop giving a shit. You looked hot, you had a good time, end of story. It’s not like anyone died.”

True. She grabs your shoulders and looks at you through the reflection of the mirror.

“Smile. Enjoy yourself. You look so, so beautiful.” You take a deep, soaking breath. You think about Joshua and all the sharp edges of his voice when he said he loved you. You had argued with him a lot, and you had never heard him like that. “You want this, right?”

Well, when she puts it like that? Yeah, you do. You think you really do.

—

The Great Hall is unrecognizable when you stand before it; the pink and white zinnias have been replaced by bouquets of calla lily and eucalyptus, the arched ceilings, once cold and imposing, now are bathed in the buttery, warm glow of candlelight. And the too-big space, usually empty, is now filled with partygoers, radiant in their best dress.

You stand at the top of the grand staircase. A thrill, anxious and skittering, runs up your bones. You’re reminded of your last big public showing at the derby, of the sea of microphones and the eye of the camera and the crowd, all staring you down.

You run through the cruel motions. First, a curtesy, so slow you think the audience can see you tremble. Then you take the first step down the stairs, and you watch them turn to you like the tanned halo-faces of sunflowers.

There, in the center of the crowd stands Joshua, unwavering. He's wearing a deep blue tuxedo, unfairly flattering (though, the lone curl of hair falling into his eyes is strong competition). Meeting his gaze, you watch the corners of his mouth fold up in a way that reminds you to breathe. In, out. You’ve got this.

Every step, you feel like you’re learning to walk for the first time, like you've lost your sea legs. Amongst the guests, you spot Jeonghan, next to him Jihoon. Then back to Joshua, like your eyes can’t stay away. He shoots you a covert thumbs up—you’d expect nothing less from the corniest man on Earth—but, nonetheless, it makes the long walk to the center of the room feel much shorter, despite the torture devices on your feet (Louboutins, not broken in).

One, two steps, and you’re face to face with your fiancé. Your heart is still racing, thrumming against the cage of your bodice like it's trying to escape. You’re sure the whole congregation could hear it if not for the quartet that’s come to life, now playing the opening notes of Blue Danube.

Yes, that’s right, you tell yourself. You still have to dance in front of the whole fucking country.

Before you crash out and make this a national emergency, you feel the warmth of Joshua’s touch. Fingertips before palm, always the same, he finds your hand, like he manages to do every single time.

“I’ve got you,” he says, low enough for only you to hear. And for the first time, you believe him.

—

Really, you could have gotten away with saying nothing. It would be much easier, to be honest.

The ball had gone off without a hitch so far. The music was good, the food even better, and your parents were somehow silenced, instead opting to dance among the crowd like they were young again. Still, you can’t seem to put your mind at ease. With everything that had happened this week, Jeonghan’s offer only seemed to weigh heavier, more urgently upon you. And of course, there was the matter of Joshua choosing to opt into your engagement, against all odds.

You realize you had gotten quite good at running away from things—your family, your responsibilities, the media, even Joshua—not knowing how to bear the weight of an impossible duty. Actually, you thought it was a royal failing until you had seen Joshua in the library that morning, jaw set, unbending.

“Hey, Josh?” you ask, with a few bats of the eyelashes to soften the blow.

He tilts his head in that way he does, and his gaze softens. Damn you, you think. Trying to distract me with those horrible, pretty eyes.

“Can we talk about Sunday?”

“What about Sunday?” He still looks confused, and you know the look well enough at this point to know he’s not faking it.

“Um…Sunday morning. After the party,” you say slowly, as if giving yourself time to back out, just in case. “I heard you talking with our parents.”

In an instant, his expression changes, and his eyebrows roll into their usual furrow. You feel his hand falter behind your shoulder blades.

“Oh,” Joshua’s voice drops. “That.”

“I’m sorry,” you say, realizing all you do is apologize. “It was supposed to be a small thing, no cameras, I barely even stayed—.”

“Hey, it’s ok,” Joshua interrupts. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“I-I know,” you fib. The thing about pretending is that you’ve both become so good at it that you have trouble believing him. “It’s just that I also heard what…what you said.”

Somehow, the wrinkle between his brows grows deeper.

“I said a lot of things that morning.”

You press your lips thin, feeling what you’re about to say ball up on your tongue. Easily, you could change the subject; you didn’t have to know anything, really, you could stay silent and let the world work around you, just as you had been taught. But you watch the soft twist of Joshua’s gaze, how he studies your expression, and you know you can’t go back to how things used to be.

“You said you…” You take a hard swallow. All the blood in your body only wants to exist in the apples of your cheeks, away from your brain where you need it most. “You loved me.”

At once, the world spins off-axis. You feel the anxious flutter of Joshua’s heart under your palm, and your own stomach flips in its cage. The L word coming out of your mouth seems ten-thousand times more ridiculous than anything he could say, probably because you can’t remember the last time you actually said it and it came out all wrong.

He must feel the same way. For once, he can’t meet your eyes. His mouth opens and then closes, as if hoping to delete what you had just said. Maybe you would just keep dancing, beat by beat, and this would all go away.

Silly girl, you think, traitorously. Pick a damn side. Either he likes you or he doesn’t. The problem is that, somehow, both options hurt your feelings.

“I mean, I totally get it if you just said it to keep up the act,” you cut in. “There are a lot of reasons why this is a good idea.”

“The act?”

“Well, yeah,” you reply. “Isn’t that what this is? Haven’t we just been lying to everyone? To ourselves?”

Joshua’s hand at your waist stiffens before he draws you closer to him. You expect him to roll his eyes, do one of those exaggerated sighs that he does when you’re being difficult.

Instead he leans in, close enough for you to feel his voice against your skin.

“Do you think I was lying back there? Or now?”

Your heart lurches.

“I—no, but.” You pause. Every single coherent thought you’ve ever had scatters to the wind. “Well.”

“Because I’m not,” Joshua says, this time, more softly. “Not about this. Or us.”

“But how? Why?” You bite the inside of your cheek, feeling your chest swell in a way it never has before. “You’re perfect, and I'm…I’m me.”

“That’s why,” he answers, simply. “You’re smart, funny, honest—sometimes too honest, even. You reminded me there was a better version of me that I had left behind. One that wasn’t perfect, but was happy.”

He holds you in his gaze the same way he did in the garden, carved by moonlight. An impossible warmth fills your skin; at once, it feels like, in your vision, there is only him, like you're in a cartoon.

“At the same time, I understand if—” Joshua starts.

“I feel the same,” you blurt out. “I…I don’t know what this is, and I don’t think I ever really did, but I want to try.”

You watch the surprise write itself all over his doe eyes, his unfairly rounded cheeks. From by the hors d'oeuvres, nosy Jeonghan peeks over the shoulder of another guest, already familiar with your lack of volume control. You watch him grin something stupid, triumphant.

“You’re uptight, judgmental, and you make the worst jokes. But I…I think I might be falling for you too.”

Saying it is like getting peeled back, terrible layer by layer, like you wrapped a hand around your heart and ripped it out your chest. And yet you’re glowing, newly-bitten with something that feels like freedom.

“I thought you said I was perfect,” Joshua says, the pink of his lips already unraveling into a smile. This one, you think, finally reaches his eyes.

“Shush, you—” And amongst a chorus of Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! (which would be, quite frankly, humiliating in any other scenario), you finally give in to your adoring public, and kiss.

—

The walk back to your bedroom is a blur. All you remember are hands—hands on the small of your back, hands riding up the length of your thigh, hands in your hair, pulling at your roots. You remember hands, and the taste of Joshua’s mouth.

It’s a walk you are not proud of, one that you’re glad happened in the dark, with all the guests gone home.

“Did I tell you how beautiful you are?” Joshua says, pressed to the hollow of your neck as you fumble with the handle of the door to your room. “Couldn’t take my eyes off you. No one could.”

Then his lips on yours, before you finally remember how to open a door.

“Fuck, Josh,” you breathe between kisses, stumbling backwards until your back hits the vanity. “Need you, need you so bad.”

He bites your lip, lets you sigh into his mouth.

“Dress, off,” you tell him, and you lean forward on the table. Obediently, Joshua gets to work. His touch feels fiery, electric on your skin.

In the mirror, you’re able to see the damage: your lipstick, smudged beyond repair, your blown-out pupils under your heavy lashes. There’s a hickey on your collarbone.

“Now you have me wishing you'd wear one of those party dresses,” Joshua murmurs, still working at the lacing at your waist. “Far easier to take off.”

“Really. The same ones that got me in big trouble with you lot?"

"For what it's worth," he replies, before kissing the back of your neck, then the ticklish space under your ear to make you laugh. "I always liked you in those. Even before we met."

"No way." He’s finished with the lacing; your dress falls to your feet in a glorious heap of silk and lace, leaving you in your slip. Another kiss to your jaw, your cheek. "You hated them."

"I almost bought a copy of Insider, the one with the cover of you in the black dress with the long sleeves."

"Shut up," you laugh again, somewhere in between kisses. He’s talking about Soonyoung's New Year’s Eve party, a few years back. You were getting out the back of a cab, alcohol-flushed and on a phone call with God knows who. "I still have it, you know. I could wear it for you one of these days."

"Don't tempt me." Joshua kneels, bending down to undo your heels. You feel him press his lips to the back of your knee, your thigh. “Friday. Dinner?”

“Done.”

Then he stands back to full height and leans into you, just so you can feel him. Like clockwork, your skin prickles wonderfully even just thinking about blowing him in the back of the limo, that night he had held you down on his cock.

Joshua must see how you squeeze your legs together. He pushes your slip up over the curve of your ass; you feel the rough of his hands over your skin, over the flimsy lace you have on for underwear. Then, before you can say a word, he pulls the waistband back, meanly, enough to tug on the hood of your clit, and lets it snap back against your skin.

“Oh, fuck,” you keen. You had no idea you were so sensitive, but Joshua’s foreplay game was way better than you thought. “Please, Shua.”

“Oh? So you like when I'm a little mean?”

You watch your face in the mirror flush pink, your bitten lips fall open in surprise. He pulls tight on your panties again, loving how your eyes squeeze shut.

“Maybe.” You pause, humiliated. Fuck it, the cat’s already out of the bag. “Yeah.”

Joshua’s hands are warm, so warm, when they peel the fabric down your trembling thighs.

“Legs apart, darling,” he tells you, mouth pressed to your shoulder. “So you like to boss me around the castle, but now you want me to tell you what to do? Is that so?”

Before you can answer, you feel a finger along the seam of your cunt. You can’t see Joshua’s face in the mirror, but you can sure see yours, and you hate how even the smallest of touches has you drooling. Then a touch to your swollen clit, just rough enough to draw a gasp from you.

“I-it’s different,” you protest. Two fingers now, both rolling your clit under them. A whimper tumbles out of your chest, and your hips seem to be moving on their own accord. “Didn’t know you had…experience.”

“Still not sure what made you think otherwise.” A quiet chuckle, then the slow, agonizing push of one of his fingers inside you. “Fuck, you love that, huh? Soaking my hand.”

“Yeah…” The vanity table suddenly feels too crowded to support the weight of your body, especially like this, as Joshua continues to work your clit with his other digit. Feeling your body surge again with heat, you push aside your makeup bag, all your stupid little bottles, so you can prop yourself up on your arms.

Another finger, and your legs are shaking. Quickly, he seems to have figured out how to hit your g-spot every time, every pump of his hand knocking into you just the way you like.

“I think it was how annoying you were that did you in,” you finally answer, trying your best to put up a fair fight. “Kinda detracts from your sex appeal.”

“Annoying?” Joshua asks, right up against the shell of your ear. Like this, you can see him in the mirror, and it almost sends you over. The dark hair in his face, the insatiable look in his eyes. Then a third finger, and your eyes roll back. “Am I annoying you? Doesn’t really seem like it.”

Your body answers for you. You feel yourself tighten around his fingers, fuck, you’re so close, you feel your head start to spin. You watch your reflection shake her head, glassy-eyed and dumb.

He laughs cruelly. His free hand reaches up to find your tits, and, over the slip, he grabs one, rough like he’s a meaner man, like he’s slutting you out.

At once, you feel the lightning heat of your release. You cry out, airy and high-pitched, and feel your body rock against Joshua’s as he pins you between himself and the vanity.

“There you go,” he murmurs. His hand slows, letting you ride out your high, before he pulls out. “Wanted to do this ever since I kissed you that night.”

“Which night?” you ask, catching your breath. A kiss to your shoulder blade, the nape of your neck.

“The night you taught me to kiss. Or rather, tried to.”

Ah, yes. The night you told him what Shark Tale was, and the night you made out for so long, you felt it on your lips in the morning. Dumb fucking Joshua, stupid and in love. The affection that surges through your body makes you mad.

“You needed lessons.”

“Not really, don’t you think?”

“Bed. You’re talking too much,” you insist, turning around to see him. “Also, you’re wearing too much.”

“Back to arguing with me, I see. Can’t stay away.” Joshua’s shit-eating grin prompts you to yank his tie impatiently, shutting him up. It comes off easily, just as his belt and the waistband of his slacks. (You weren’t about to let them best you a second time).

“Maybe ‘cause you find a way to be difficult about everything.” You wrinkle your nose, and Joshua’s grin only grows wider. “Don’t make me give you another order,” you warn, fully aware that since you guys got here, it’d been him doing the orders.

You pull your slip over your head, now only in your bra, and lay back in the bed. You think of all the sleepless nights, then the ones spent talking, the ones in his arms. To think they would all culminate to this, to you now watching Joshua undo button by button with a desire unlike any other you’ve felt—it would almost be unbelievable if you weren’t doing it right now.

Like a striptease, you watch his chest peek out between the linen of his shirt. He's wearing a necklace today, one that settles meanly between his pecs. As he moves lower, you can’t help but notice the outline of his cock in his briefs, the spot of precum on the fabric.

Traitorously, you feel your mouth water. The shirt comes off, and your lungs fill with another shaky breath.

You know you’re both letting your freak flag fly (one of you more surprising than the other) but it’s in this moment, caught in the lamplight, that you realize how much things have really changed. Still, you’re not able to tell Joshua that this is the first time you’re sleeping with someone you might be in the L word with, but you think he sees it too, or at least, reads the look on your face.

You feel the dip of the bed underneath as he joins you.

“Are you ok? That wasn’t too much, right?”

“No, it was…it was good. really good,” you admit, feeling your face heat up again. “I just…I dunno. I like you a lot, that’s all.”

“Hm?”

“I—” you stutter, and your mouth freezes up again. “I said I like you a lot.”

“Sorry, I just wanted to hear you say it twice.” He sees the dismay on your face and smiles. “Hm…I like you an adequate amount. On a good day.”

Against your will, you crack the fattest smile you think your body is capable of. “You are the worst. The absolute worst, and I still want you to fuck me.”

Upon hearing this, Joshua does not waste time. That he does—it isn’t long before he has your knees hiked to your chest, cock between your pussy lips.

“Say you want it,” he whispers. You feel the cold kiss of his chain on your chest, the slick rock of his length between your legs. He's so hard, so big, your cunt already aches at the thought of it.

“Want it.” Your voice comes out small, breathy. You would fight back, but you’re realizing you quite like this side of him. “Please.”

When the head of his cock presses into you, there is no hiding. Already, you moan, sweet and loud, feeling the familiar pressure in your gut.

“K-keep going,” you babble. Fuck, he barely fit in your mouth and now he’s stuffing your cunt. You wrench your eyes shut, listening to him talk you through it (—Look at you taking me so well. Feels good, huh? You’re so beautiful. Honestly, it’s a miracle Joshua’s ex never had a royal baby with how much they must have fucked.)

Your second orgasm comes quickly, not long after Joshua bottoms out. He groans right in the space where your neck meets your shoulder, and it’s the best noise you think you’ve heard in your life.

The third comes slowly, more intensely. With your knees to your chest, you think you can feel Joshua all the way in your stomach. Every stroke fucks the sound out of you, his cockhead right up against your sweet spot as he fills you again and again. Sometime between orgasm two and three, he’s pulled your tits out from your bra, left marks across your chest.

“Want you to touch yourself,” he tells you, voice low.

Mindlessly, you listen. One hand finds your nipple, the other your clit, and you let yourself get lost in the feeling.

“F-feels good, Shua.” He enters you again, all the way, and the pleasure is white-hot. “O-oh, fuck,” you warble.

“You’re so good at listening to me, you should do it all the time,” he murmurs. “There you go. Take it, take it, just like that. This must be what I have to do to get you to be nice, hm?”

All you can do is stare up at him, positively fucked dumb, and take it, just as he told you to. One, two strokes, and you feel yourself get impossibly tight; “Fill me, need it, need it,” you whine, delirious. Everything from the look in his eyes, the flushed sweat over his brow, his collarbones to the way his expression responds with every word you say, makes you wonder why you wasted time fucking anyone else.

When he comes, he bites your shoulder, hard, and it’s what you need to follow soon after. You feel so fucking full, so satisfied, you think you could die happy here.

Joshua flops down on the bed next to you, boneless. You think he’s about to say something akin to that you should have put a towel down, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls your body to him, lets you feel the warmth of his skin play against yours.

He’s murmuring wonderful things to you, which you would gladly reciprocate if words weren’t coming to you one letter a minute. It’s not your fault though—you need to recover physically, emotionally, spiritually after getting the soul fucked out of you.

Then, “Me or you shower first?”

You groan as a response.

“I’m serious.”

“Together?” you offer weakly.

“Fair chance we won’t just be showering then.”

“Oh nooo.”

That’s all Joshua needs to whisk you to the bathroom, where, indeed, he seems to be right yet again.

—

The spring morning washes over Acros like a second skin. The birdsong rouses you; through the curtains comes sunlight from the garden, spackled on the wall as if spots on a doe.

It’s been almost a year since your parents had told you that you were marrying Joshua Hong, prince of Acros. Six months since he had told you he had loved you. Two months since you and Jeonghan had pulled off your first joint production at the youth theater (a roaring success). One month since you were fully, fully moved in, Astrid and Jihoon included.

After your engagement ball, you and Joshua had agreed to take it slow, as slow as two people who had very publicly announced their wedding could. But still, somehow your parents, both sets, could tolerate the two of you wanting to do things the right way. Perhaps they were still shocked things worked out as well as they did.

“Morning,” you call out. The bed beside you is cold. “Josh?”

You’re surprised he’s up. Last night, he went out with you, Somi, and Soonyoung. Somehow, he had drunk enough to get up and solo karaoke a Whitney Houston song, although you’re suspecting the alcohol was just a cover for his true intentions.

Then you look out the window. You spot Joshua, seated on the bench overlooking the garden. This time of year, the roses are in full bloom, their bright heads reaching for the sky in brilliant red and gold.

When you go to join him outside, he’s no longer at the bench. You actually don’t know where the fuck he went, but it’s no matter. Here, you’re able to appreciate the beauty of the season, the rolling green of the country you’re now calling home.

It was also here where you had your first real conversation with Joshua without fighting, funnily enough. Now, you’d say the both of you were more agreeable, but that’d be a lie—somehow, you think you actually enjoy bickering with him, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Behind you, someone (Joshua) clears his throat.

“Now, what are you—” you say, spinning around. It was too damn early for games, but Joshua had no shortage of bad ideas.

It’s then that you see Joshua behind you, on one knee. His smile tells you everything you have to know, and every thought in your mind freezes in an instant.

“When I first saw you, I knew I would marry you,” he starts. That's a joke he’s probably been saving for months now, but instead of rolling your eyes, you can’t help but laugh, like you’re a broken soundboard. “No, really.”

You stand there, immovable. Of course you had to be in your pajamas (his shirt and boxers, really), no makeup, hair untouched. And yet, you can’t imagine anything more perfect.

“You drive me crazy,” Joshua continues. “In every way possible. I can't imagine life without your laugh, or your thinking face, or how you always need to have an answer for everything.”

He produces a small box. It’s different from the first one, the one he used all those months ago when nothing mattered. Inside it, a new ring, something far simpler and more beautiful.

Joshua says your name, wonderful and reverent in his mouth. “Darling princess of Cotria, I'm asking you to marry me. Again.”

And you say yes, for the very first time.

[END]

#mine #joshua x reader #joshua x you #joshua imagines #joshua scenarios #seventeen x reader #seventeen x you #seventeen imagines #seventeen fanfic #seventeen scenarios #joshua #joshua hong #seventeen smut #joshua smut

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usedpidemo · 4 months ago

Text

Diplopia (Itzy Chaeryeong)

You don’t recognize these roads anymore.

Uncertainty continues to cloud your mind as you closely follow the car in front. Most days, it’s the typical van housing the stars—down to the model, the wheels, the black paint job. In your time following them, the vehicle never changed, to the point where you have the plate number on speed dial.

Tonight is different. Instead of the usual activities, be it a fansign, festival or radio program, you’re following her home.

—————

The moment you step forward to have your album signed, the four girls’ eyes immediately light up.

It isn’t the usual fan excitement idols have to put on in public. Instead, an excited energy coming from a place of recognizing something familiar—someone that they’re close with.

Except you’re neither family nor friend. By all accounts, you’re just another fan completely indistinguishable from the rest.

Even as they’re preoccupied with catering to the others’ requests, they’re exchanging glances, whispers among one another.

You take a seat in front of Yeji, the first in line, curious.

“What’s going on? Am I missing something?”

She brushes it off nonchalantly, only casually smiling, a professional in masking her facade. “Not much. Just happy to see you,” she says, before adding her signature on the page and sending you off.

Same question, same result when it comes to Lia. You could have sworn they were all eyeing you intently moments ago.

Even the charismatic Yuna is playing coy with you.

To be fair on their end, this is the fourth time this promotional cycle that you’re doing this song and dance. And there’s some within that crowd who are basically seeing them every other day. You’re not the most egregious fan in that audience.

“What’s going on? Am I missing something?” you ask Ryujin, confused by her humorous expression, a stark contrast. The others didn’t budge in the slightest when you tried questioning them, only telling you the same thing: that your presence makes them happy.

Fortunately, Ryujin is in the business of self-sabotage today.

“Ask Chaery—ow!” is her reply before getting cut off by a swift elbow to the rib from her seatmate, Yuna. She starts laughing along too.

“Christ—will you shut up? You’re gonna ruin the surprise! Wait—ah shit.”

Yuna realizes the mistake she’s made, and she can only grin and blush in embarrassment, falling face down on the table. To the untrained eye, it’s an amusing scene. None of the audience, not even the ones beside you understand what the commotion is about other than typical member to member playfulness and tomfoolery.

Finally, you come face to face with Chaeryeong, unbothered relative to the others. Her eyes light up upon recognizing you once again.

“Ryu can’t help herself, huh,” Chaeryeong remarks teasingly, her brows crinkling in playful annoyance at her senior as you slide forward the album. Shifting her quiet, unassuming frown into a subtle grin, she adds her respective signature, slipping a thin sticky note beneath the signed page. “Secret’s out. Check it once the fansign’s done. I’ll be waiting.”

Curiosity immediately gets the better of you as you try flipping the page, only to be stopped by Chaeryeong’s slap of your hand.

Well aware of the cameras and her audience, she maintains character while whispering a warning to you, a secret only shared between two close acquaintances: “After the fansign, dum dum. Don’t make me regret this. The managers don’t know.”

“Can you at least give me a hint?” you ask, your nosiness growing bigger by the second.

She leans forward, her eyes glinting with anticipation. Noticing the camera hanging from your neck, she points her finger forward, saying, “Make sure you hold on to that camera for me, will you?”

The managers and staff lead you back into the audience. Her eyes don’t linger as you’re dragged away, focusing on the next fan in line, acting like this conversation never happened.

—————

For the most part, the rest of the fansign proceeds as usual, with you taking your usual pictures of the members—especially Chaeryeong. Most of your gallery is dedicated to her. Apart from a few fleeting moments of shared eye contact with your camera, she pays no attention to you, posing primarily for everyone else.

Finally, the members bid farewell and leave to the back. As you and the other fans are guided out of the auditorium, you open the newly signed album, peeling the sticky note wedged on the photobook.Two important instructions are written in cursive, strictly meant to be read by you and only you alone:

> Look out for a gray four door once the vans drive by. Follow me

> DON’T TELL ANYONE OR BRING ANYONE ELSE

Heading outside, you and the crowd watch several black vans driving off, presumably containing the members. Being that it’s already nightfall and with the cars having heavily tinted windows, no one can call their attention aimlessly trying to wave them goodbye.

For a good minute or two, you thought you were being played. As the crowd disperses, another vehicle stops at the red light, perfectly fitting the description given on the note. It passes by completely unnoticed and undetected—except by you.

You anticipate the car to drive away too, and it does—until it pulls over to the side in the distance, far enough to be overlooked by everyone else.

And then you remember something else from that note, a third instruction:

> P.S. Only five minutes or else I’m leaving without you

Thankfully, you’ve parked your own car right in front of the theater, a walk across the street away. Getting out proves to take longer as several other vehicles are trying to leave at the same time as you. You’ve never been more tempted to blast that horn; this is more stressful than the usual late afternoon traffic jam. There’s a greater sense of urgency. Higher, more personal stakes. Every second wasted waiting in line is another second separating you from Chaeryeong.

Even after escaping the parking area, there’s the red lights. One after another, you’re forced to stop, slowing your already short sprints. More time being wasted. To make matters worse, the road you’re taking is glaringly quiet. You’re cursing these signs, cursing the government for stalling for time, as if their primary design and purpose is to fuck you up.

You end up running past these lights, unable to take another second longer. No one’s stopping you, nor is there anyone in the vicinity who can. There are cameras catching you breaking the law, but you don’t care anymore.

Mercifully, the car is still there, sitting idle with the lights on. Pulling up beside the vehicle, you flash your blinkers, roll the windows down, hoping she recognizes you. You earn no reaction, instead the car merely drives off, leaving you to follow close behind.

The next hour and a half has been spent driving and driving. Passing through avenues then motorways, you’re leaving the city far behind in your rearview mirror, until you’re the only pair of cars traveling along a quiet suburban neighborhood. Considering they’re wrapping their latest promotional cycle today, logic would dictate that the group stay together a little more before dispersing, but you didn’t expect them to branch off right away.

No wonder the members were already sharing vacation plans and destinations earlier.

Cruising past one street after another, every townhouse looks the same, down to the layout, dimensions, everything. Based on all the utterly dark interiors, it’s safe to say barely anyone lives here.

Even some of the apartments you’ve been in look nicer compared to how barren and lifeless this neighborhood is.

It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of celebrity homes.

Eventually, the car ahead pulls into a driveway of a distinctly nicer villa, one that has moderately rich written all over it. Anyone can tell that a celebrity, or at the very least, some wealthy person retreats here, but perhaps that’s the point: you’re in the heart of the suburbs, free from the fast-paced chaos of city living.

From the driver’s seat, someone emerges. You can recognize that familiar sharp glare. It’s none other than Chaeryeong herself.

She’s staring in your direction, at your car. Though you’ve been following her tail closely throughout the lengthy drive, you pulled back once she pulled into the driveway, leaving quite a considerable amount of space to maintain privacy. Then, she walks in. Lights open throughout her house, the only home brightly illuminated on this street.

Figuring that it’s an invitation, you pull up directly in front of her house.

Rolling your window down, you take the camera resting on the passenger seat. Shaky fingers right on the trigger, her house in center view, you end up not taking a single picture. Not for lack of storage, but rather an unwillingness to have something personal in your collection. The girl who shows out in the public eye is one thing, but addresses and private homes are entirely separate matters.

You feel it’s best to keep those two aspects apart.

You end up putting the camera away, curious about its purpose, about what she really meant about the need for it.

Staring up at her villa, you finally spot her again. Chaeryeong’s standing near the balcony, curtains open, giving you a clear view of her figure from the side, as well as her profile. Even from a distance, you recognize all the details about her. So incredibly pretty. She doesn’t seem to notice your presence outside nor does she bother to care.

Still in her fansign wear, her last performance outfit, consisting only of jeans, a skimpy top, and a thick jacket. Going against your oath, you try reaching for the camera again, but you suddenly stop.

To your surprise, she slips the jacket off, revealing her bare shoulders.

Your eyes widen, then your jaw slowly drops. She fiddles with her jeans before walking out of sight, much to your dismay.

Now you realize the purpose. What a wasted opportunity. And yet, you’ve already taken dozens of mental pictures off that little show alone. This is meant to be for your eyes only.

Looking on, Chaeryeong reemerges into view, this time strutting around the living room. She’s hardly wearing clothes, only covered by skimpy black lace, matching colored suspenders holding up thigh high stockings. The windows are just as open, curtains similarly drawn back, granting you full access to her unbelievably tight, slender body.

She puts down a platter of snacks on the coffee table before taking one from the pile, holding it up for display.

Your mouth is watering, craving not the delicacy in her hand—but for her.

The first snack she gives a slow, deliberate lick. A popsicle. Her tongue slowly glides up the frozen morsel, stimulating your mind, leaving nothing to the imagination. She repeats the motion a few more times before taking it into her mouth with an intentional hollowing of her cheeks, eventually sucking and munching down on the treat. All while flaunting her toned figure as if it were a photoshoot, which is probably what the camera was meant for. Your hands are nowhere close, instead pulling on the zipper of your pants, moving of their own accord.

Even though she doesn’t seem to pay attention to you, she clearly knows what she’s doing.

Next, she takes the second snack, one with a much more obvious connotation: a banana. She playfully wonders what to do, slapping it across her cheek before peeling the cover and eating from the exposed tip. She positions the fruit in a way that it's tilted up, mirroring the growing tent in your pants. Her fingers coil around the sides, her eyes fluttering close as she slowly indulges on the snack, slowly driving the length into her mouth till it’s completely consumed.

It may have only been a minute, maybe less, but you can imagine how the sensation would linger. Maybe hours.

Finally she grabs the last snack: a hotdog. She lays back on the couch, crossing her leg as she casually nibbles away, foregoing her natural seductiveness for a quick bite before wiping all the crumbs off her finger before getting up and leaving.

Meanwhile, you’ve spent the whole time just watching her in awe, utterly speechless.You don’t regret not taking a single photo, knowing this little private scene is permanently seared into your memories.

You can never look at Chaeryeong the same way ever again.

Moments later, the front door swings wide open, with Chaeryeong standing there in all her glory. She stares you down, her gaze sharp and hypnotic, before walking away without uttering a word.

You fell under her spell a long time ago. Now you’re following her like a moth to a flame.

Without care for guest etiquette, you enter the house, losing sight of Chaeryeong as you continue to struggle with your trousers. Looking left and right, you try to find her to no avail, when suddenly you’re dragged into one of the rooms, feeling a tugging, inescapable tug on your arms.

“Did you enjoy my little show?” she whispers, tone sultry, a leg naturally wrapping around yours. She’s breathing on your neck, softly nibbling your skin.

Cornering you, you fall backwards and onto the couch.

It’s a different couch, different room, with the curtains covered, hidden away from the outside world.

You merely glance up, still utterly speechless. Her sexy glow is on full display, feeling herself like she always has, perhaps even more so in private than in front of the flashing cameras. Based on her subdued reaction, this isn’t the first time she’s seen this exact reaction.

“Where’s your camera?” Chaeryeong quickly changes conversation right as you’re about to hit your tipping point, her hands gripped to your knees, leaning forward and closing the gap between you two, her sharp glare freezing you in place. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you holding it just now. What did I tell you earlier?”

“Shit, I—I didn’t think this would happen,” you sputter, swallowing your throat. Even blinking proves to be impossible under her suffocating control.

Chaeryeong narrows her eyes. Stares right into your soul. Her usually soft, little smile on her lips disappears in real time. You can feel her nails dig sharply through the fabric of your trousers, scratching you. Deathly silence permeates longer than you can imagine. It’s a terrifying position to be in.

She bites on her lower lip, thinking of what to do.

Then, the idea hits her like lightning.

“I’m normally a lot more ruthless towards people like you. I mean, simple instructions. Hold onto that camera. Easy! A kid could do it without a second thought. Why can’t you?”

If you could open your mouth right now, you would justify that it was under extraordinary circumstances—such as this one—but you recognize the wrong answer could send you to an early demise.

“I would ask you to leave and tell you to forget this ever happened. But since I’m in a good mood today, I will let it slide tonight.”

You still can’t breathe a sigh of relief; her ironclad grip has spread to your crotch.

As soon as your lips quirk ever so slightly, her nails burrow deeper into your skin, almost forcing you out from your seat and yielding out a cry of pain that could have been ear shattering, if not for your self-restraint. “However—I can’t let you go completely unpunished. You must face the consequences for disobeying me. Got it?”

“Got it,” you spit, frantically nodding along, begging through your eyes for her to loosen the grip as the pain becomes unbearable. She acquiesces, drawing her hands back.

Now you can actually breathe.

But the freedom lasts for merely a moment. Chaeryeong struts around the room, putting on music through some speakers, her hips swaying in a natural yet hypnotic rhythm. From behind, you get a close-up view of her plump ass peeking through an incredibly thin thong. She then returns to you, shoves you back against the couch before squatting down on your lap in an abrupt manner, leaving you gasping for air.

“Just because I let you watch doesn’t mean you have to be a sitting duck,” she says, grinding her hips slowly against your helpless erection, aching and throbbing beneath your pants. Sultry as it sounds, it’s a serious matter, one with so much on the line. “You didn’t seem all that lazy when you were taking pictures of me earlier. What happened? Do I look too sexy for you now?”

Chaeryeong lifts herself off you again, her waist and flat tummy presenting themselves in your face. You try to grab, but she quickly sideswipes you, teasing and playful. She spins around, her plump cheeks raised up in your direction—and then she smothers you on the couch.

Pulling back, she looks over her shoulder, completely by surprise, gyrating her hips, giving you exactly what you want. “Well? Are you just gonna sit there or what?”

Truthfully, yeah. You can sit back and admire her in this position all night long.

As you try to dive headfirst into her plump cheeks, she lunges forward, leaving you sucking on air. She then grabs you by the chin, tilting your face up. There’s a contemptuous, disgusted air on her face, judging your patheticness. The contrast between you couldn’t be any more clear. She’s so well refined, even in her most risque appearance. Meanwhile, you look hungry, down horrendous, foaming at the mouth—literally.

“Maybe I really should take a girl home one of these days,” she mutters to herself, thinking of other ways to drag you down. “But since you’re tired, I’ll spare you the extra effort, sleepy head.”

Chaeryeong shoves you down on the couch, lifting your legs off the ground and onto the sofa’s arm. The control she has on you cannot be any more overstated. Crouching on her fours, arching her back, she hovers atop you with a coy smile. Sexiness looks natural on her, but behind that fatal sultry attitude, her idol sensibility rears its familiar head, perfectly balancing the line between entertaining an imaginary audience and one person.

It’s a lovely, surprisingly sweet view before the lights completely go out.

Climbing over your defenseless body, her thighs close in between your face. Slamming down without care, pressure builds—and builds—until you’re kicking and squirming. She hears your muffled cries, your helpless groans, and mocks back, not letting up.

“What’s that? Can’t hear you over the sound of your tongue shoved up my pussy.”

At first, everything proves to be a struggle. You have no control over your movement, hands included. She’s forcing you to bear the weight of the world: countless hours of practice, interviews, and fanservice, including now. If she wanted, she could crush you with her thighs alone, and she wishes she could; she’s not going to outright tell you. Mercifully, upon closer inspection, she’s wearing the thinnest line of panties imaginable, it barely qualifies as underwear.

With the meager space you’re graciously provided, you slip your tongue between the narrow line between fabric and skin–and Chaeryeong keens.

Even her little cries are as pretty as her too.

The edges of her nails dig into the fabric of the couch, barely scraping your arms. She hisses sharply as you gradually acclimate to the tension she’s forcing on you, burying your tongue into her aching core. Her nectar tastes incredible, like water in the desert. You’d tell her that if you weren’t so preoccupied taking all this glistening sheen generously into your hungry, greedy mouth. The way her body trembles, quivers with every little touch, every swipe at her throbbing cunt, setting off one fire after another, it’s enough to drag her down with you.

“Oh—fucking shit—fuck—”

Her thighs hunker down, reinforcing the already airtight lock you’re imprisoned in between her legs. She’s one wrong move away from snapping your neck by sheer force alone if you weren’t dying from asphyxiation already. It proves to be nothing but a mild inconvenience. You’re hungrily eating out her intoxicating cunt, drinking away at her alarming flow of juices, maintaining a pace that feels just right.

Desperately trying to find some semblance of stability, she rolls her hips, but that only worsens her state—and better for you.

Gripped to the sofa’s headrest and on the cushions, the friction makes it easier to make a grander mess of her. You match her frantic pace, lapping away at her folds without a care, a retaliation of sorts. Her cunt is an addicting vice you can't get enough of, regardless of her juices spilling relentlessly past your mouth.

Overwhelmed by the pleasurable sensation coursing throughout her lithe body, Chaeryeong twists and contorts into a stretched out figure of limbs and cries. Furniture is easily replaceable. The position you’re in happens once in a lifetime. This idol, whom you’ve dedicated your personality and entire life around, meeting her dozens of times and taken countless photos of for the world to see, is now reduced into a helpless, melting pile of flesh and moans, keening in ecstasy, her echoes bouncing endlessly in the comfort of her personal home, and it’s all thanks to you.

Very few can say they’ve made Lee Chaeryeong cum.

“Fuck!”

A single word is all she manages, and it’s perfect.

Letting out this thunderous cry, her body goes rigid and tense, as if something has snapped within her. Right then and there, a fresh wave of arousal gushes over your face, falling all at once.

The throbbing never ends. You lap it all up. Every last drop.

Despite the endless amount of slick you’ve consumed and time drinking from her well, it’s not enough. You’re left wanting more.

“Jesus—” she mutters, heaving between deep breaths, slowly peeling herself off you then collapsing to the floor. “I didn’t think you’d be this good.”

Despite her orgasm ripping through her body to shreds, Chaeryeong is the first to recover. She surveys the damage. Slick all over your pressurized face, so much more on the couch, your tongue actively licking up whatever mess it can clean, which doesn’t go far.

There’s no shame on your lips when she looks at you. Contentment is etched on your lips. You could die happily right then and there.

Her cheeks are completely flush, taken completely aback by your effort. Her panties are in tatters, utterly soaked, more valuable being thrown away than as actual clothing. “Maybe you’re not as bad as I thought.”

Satisfied as you are, her gentle, sincere compliment makes your heart race faster than the pressure being crushed beneath her ass.

But the sweetness lasts only for a moment. She can’t settle down. There’s so much you have left to give—and she’s going to force everything out till you’re an empty husk. You’re only getting started.

“Get up,” she says, less of a command and more a call to action, lifting you off the sticky couch with her resounding strength, leaving you behind to stand on your two wobbly feet. “Now strip.”

Her words seemingly fly through deaf ears. You stare aimlessly back, stuck in a neverending daze, unable to come to your senses. Chaeryeong is not having any of that, glaring you down with piercing daggers. The night is fleeting; time is of the essence.

She pulls you by the hand and drags you to the bar counter across the room, facing you to remove your shirt in a few swift motions. The pants come off faster, already unbuttoned and unzipped, leaving only your boxers.

“Fucking slow fuck,” she spits, nearly ripping your undergarment while pulling down, giving your now freed cock a punishing, ironclad squeeze, forcing an agonizing groan from your lips. “Just because you did one thing right, you think you can have it your way now? Pathetic.”

Chaeryeong drops to her knees, pressing her tongue against the tip of your throbbing cock. The brief, feathery contact is enough to send mind numbing chills down your spine. It’s no surprise that when she takes you into her mouth, you almost crumble immediately. The feeling is too overwhelming, you don’t even get a glimpse of the filthy sight.

It shouldn’t be this dangerous.

The pull on her long, raven hair happens impulsively, as if you had some control—which you desperately need.

A flick of her tongue here, a swirl there—Chaeryeong is a meticulous worker, slowly picking you apart in calculated, intricately designed moves. Every little thing she does is performed like there’s so much weight behind them, no different from dancing and singing on stage. It’s all in the little details: the tilt of her head, the satisfactory hum from her lips, the cold, unforgiving glare she gives when she’s sucking you dry, seeking your approval, refusing any answer other than ‘fuck yes.’

If you could function as normal, you would reason to her that you’re relishing the moment, savoring every second—but she seems to have your mind read like a book.

“Thank your lucky stars you seem to have everything I need.” She slides her tongue up your length, kissing the tip again. You’ve been off the ground ever since with no way back down. “Good ass mouth, big fucking cock—”

She suddenly stops when you tug on her hair again; it’s a harsh pull. Momentum grinds to a complete halt. Your heart drops at the realization. You anticipate her to retaliate appropriately, especially when she rises from her knees.

Instead, she mostly relents, but not without gripping your balls tightly, yielding another heavy groan out of you. A warning.

“You wanna pull on this hair? Fine. I’ll give you this one then.”

Spinning away from you, Chaeryeong unhooks her bra, tossing it aside to be forgotten. Leaning forward, she bends over the counter, back arched, ass up, her swollen lips in clear view. Her favorite position.

She doesn’t need to say a word to tell you what to do.

The invitation leaves you more hesitant than excited. You’ve realized just how frightening Chaeryeong can be. That is why you’ve been relatively silent and are quietly following along since entering her house.

Looking over her shoulder, knowing she isn’t railed at this point, her eyes glare at you with a raging fury, one borne of annoyance, as if you were testing her patience—and you are, to some degree. “Where’s that fucking bravado, huh? I’m letting you hit this pussy from behind, and now you don’t wanna do it?”

“Well—”

“Zip it. Now you want to talk?” She snaps, facing you again to grab your cock. Pressing your shaft up and down the entrance of her folds, she grits her teeth, gasping and sighing. Staring daggers into your soul, she continues between deep breaths, “Look at this,” she says, pertaining to your cock, slick with her saliva, slowly entering her dripping cunt with her guidance. “It’s not rocket science. Does this look challenging to you? Never had sex with anyone before?”

You can only shake your head, as much as you want to refute. Her house, her rules.

Chaeryeong slams her eyes shut as your cock impales her to the hilt. She’s leaning back on the counter, screaming out loud to prove her point. “See? Not—that—difficult.” she whines, her aching cunt stretching against your cock, engulfing you in suffocating heat. Slowly pulling you back like a sword plunged to your abdomen, you watch helplessly as your shaft reappears, lathered in slick and saliva, with time moving at a dangerously slow pace.

She hurls you forward that you’re leaning together on the counter, your naked bodies creating irresistible friction. It’s not as romantic as the movies or shows make it out to be.

“Stop staring at me like that.” Chaeryeong pushes you away before turning around, irate from perceiving you, having to guide you through your first sex session. “Just—fuck me already, dip shit.”

Grabbing her by the waist, you take your sweet time to admire her delicately crafted curves and her supple ass, bright red from crushing your face. Still, it only serves to upset her; she can’t stop herself from making snarky remarks about you. “Pretending like you want to appreciate me now when you’ve been jerking to all those photos you’ve taken of me. As if I don’t know—”

She suddenly yelps, her body dragged forward on the counter as you enter her from behind like she wanted it: hard and fast.

“Never thought you’d be such a mouthful Chaery,” you comment, hooking an arm around her shoulder, the invigorating warmth of her pussy making you shudder. “And I always saw you as the quiet one.”

“Just because—you’re fucking me—doesn’t mean—” Chaeryeong struggles to get her point across as you get into a steady rhythm, your hips crashing into hers, her ass creating this wet, audible wave as you pound her. “Ah—oh fuck—”

“Doesn’t mean what, Chaery?” you hiss against her ear, giving her ass a rightful slap.

She lifts her head, her hands gripped on the table’s surface, keening—and moaning.

“I—ah—this feels so fucking big inside me—”

You lean forward, whispering in her ear, before giving her ass cheek a well-deserved slap that ripples through the room. “This is nowhere near my first. Didn’t you hear me and Yuna backstage that one time? I should have known something was up the second she was blushing at me.”

“One time? Shit—I guess I forgot—o-oh fuck—dammit Yuna—”

“It’s on me for not figuring out everything right away,” you remark, holding her tight as your personal lifeboat, pushing yourself deep into her, foregoing any sort of foreplay or pleasantry for hard, relentless pounding. “Not the first time I’ve been inside an idol’s house and left with their panties, either.”

Chaeryeong is unable to respond, mostly due to your cock rendering her speechless, reducing her to a pliable mess of moans and screams. Her fingers drag across the wooden surface of the counter as you take her body to use at your leisure. You have absolute control, a stark contrast to where you were only mere minutes ago, and you’re going to reinforce your authority.

To think you were scared of her. The real Chaeryeong is right in front of you. Ass up, face down, bent over, screaming all sorts of profanities and lewdities that would have burned at the stake.

You’ve got her raven locks wrapped around one hand, the other on her ass. It’s a difficult balancing act. One minute you’re pulling on her hair between thrusts, making her cry out in pain and pleasure, the next you’re slapping her ass in retaliation for her attitude, having seen just how easily she folds at the slightest touch, whether it be your mouth or your cock. Either action leaves you so addicted, you have to remind yourself to slow down and focus on the important matter at hand: fucking her.

It shouldn’t be said, but here it is: her pussy is so intoxicatingly tight. Even with how copiously wet you are, gliding in and out of her feels like an impossible challenge. To make matters worse, she meets your every thrust with the crash of her hips, sending you further down a dizzying spiral. Chaeryeong loves it—loves the feeling of both dishing out punishment and receiving it. You pull on her hair again, another reminder of who’s currently in command, but you both know that’s not gonna last long.

Especially when you feel so close—your own undoing happening a lot sooner than you hoped.

Still, she feels so good that it’s not any bit worth stopping—not that she’d ever want that, anyway. You’re resorting to other measures to keep some semblance of control alive: you’re squeezing her chest, feeling her taut nipples,lifting her leg off the ground, biting on her nape—anything to stave your mind off the very thought of cumming, because any sign of weakness is her opportunity to ruin you.

“Are you gonna cum yet?” Chaeryeong asks—innocent in sound, but in your heart, a taunt. A challenge.

You respond by slamming into her cunt like you always have: rough and merciless. She’s your toy, after all.

Her echoes remain louder than your grunts and moans. It’s a good thing her neighbors are completely nonexistent. The houses around might as well not be there.

So much runway to fuck, to cry out in pleasure.

“Almost,” you shamefully admit, against your own wishes—and to her delight. “This fucking pussy—Chaery—oh my God—”

You seize her by throat and face her down on the counter, your thrusts unceasing, unrelenting. You’re winding down; the end is in sight. She smells of sweat, sex, and active perfume from earlier, and it’s a perfect concoction. Slapping away at her ass, watching it ripple with each hit and thrust, her back arching in new, twisting angles, your cock perfectly sandwiched between her slick folds, you’re taking all the mental pictures you can get before this lovely view disappears for good. It really is a damn shame, but here’s your silver lining: no camera can truly capture how glorious this scene looks, especially from your eyes.

“Gonna cum,” you sputter, pouring on the vicious strikes on Chaeryeong’s supple cheeks, desperate to cling on. You can’t deny it any longer; your body is in absolute rapture, begging for release.

“That’s it. Use my fucking pussy,” she snaps, her voice airy and hoarse from all the moaning and screaming. “Fuck all your cum into me. Don’t waste a single drop.”

You have no intention to, especially with a cunt that’s so tight, so hot, it’s practically inviting you to unload everything.

And so with a handful of strokes, you finally fold. Burying deep inside her wanton cunt, your cock throbs violently, blasting thick shot after shot of sticky, white cum just as she wanted. Chaeryeong’s name burns through your lips like a permanent mark as you climax. The release feels more like a consequence than relief. She’s something you can’t clean yourself of—and probably never will. A stain that will follow you for the rest of your life.

Still, she welcomes you with open arms. Her pussy milks you worth of every little drop, squeezing and quivering in your wake. You end up letting go of everything: her hair, her waist, your entire load. The only thing willing to stay is your cock impaled deep inside her soaked cunt, but even that thin connection snaps. Even though she’s bent over, having taken all the pounding, pulling, and punishing, she’s the one that ends up on top.

Pervading silence fills the house, in place of the unrelenting noise. Slumping forward, you lay on top of Chaeryeong, meeting her in the middle: your bodies intertwined, filled and satisfied.

Brushing her hair aside for a better look at her sweaty, flushed profile, you both look into each other’s glazed eyes with a warm smile. You prepare to give her a kiss, when suddenly, little footsteps can be heard.

Someone’s standing in the hallway.

Her voice echoes throughout the house. “You left the front door open again, sis. You should really close them before going down on your guests.”

A woman stops directly in front of your room, her appearance cut close in Chaeryeong’s image. The girl beneath you waves at her with an innocent smile. The pornographic position you’re in is anything but.

She doesn’t look too surprised.

“Fucking me wasn’t enough, huh? You just had to fuck my sister too.”

Climbing up the stairs, Chaeyeon sighs wistfully, exhausted from her own busy activities. Chaeryeong slips away from underneath, following her sister closely. She can’t help but shoot a playful grin at you upon realizing your secret.

“I’ll fire up the showers. You can join us if you want.”

—————

The shower wasn’t meant to provide some form of reprieve. In reality, it’s an excuse to keep the fire burning, especially down in your loins.

The faintest contact leaves you weak, nearly crumbling to your knees as you join the two women in the shower, leaving you open for their enjoyment. Even with the hot water pouring over you, you remain frozen in place, trapped beyond saving. The Lee sisters take you in as a guest should be: with all the touching, kissing, and teasing you so desperately crave. Running water fills in background noise as the two siblings drop to their knees, taking one side for themselves, each with a stake in your cock.

You get hard again. Impossible not to be when they seem to have a gauge of what makes you tick. Two girls who have firsthand experience handling your cock in their mouth: one who can effortlessly go through the motions, the other still fresh and eager to find new ways to break you in half. Both tilting up with a pair of lust-filled eyes, eager to get your approval. They don’t really need it; you had already given them your soul the moment you walked into their house.

“Fucking hell,” you manage to groan out—your eyes and head rolling all the way back as far as they can—as the two sisters take turns filling their hungry mouths with cock deep down their throats. The girls each let out a satisfactory hum of their own, pumping and squeezing you for a share of your load, certain you’ve still got plenty for two. To think you were insatiable when it came to eating out Chaeryeong’s pussy and ass. It was only scratching the surface of how rapacious they can be.

Even with all the space the showers provided, you still feel small before Chaeyeon and Chaeryeong. More importantly, it was clear that, in their eyes, you were mainly an outlet of release and nothing else.

“Was he always like this?” Chaeryeong watches her elder sibling busy pumping your shaft away with her deft fingers, drawing more cum out of you, making up for lost time. Watching you this vulnerable—this whipped—makes you all the more intriguing in her eyes.

“Sure enough, yeah.” Chaeyeon laughs. It wasn’t that long ago you were held in a position like this: same girl, same scenario, but in a bathroom stall of all places. Now in the comfort of their home, you were clear to let out all that pent-up desire with cries of pleasure. You moan her name like it’s a prayer, and both girls chuckle at your wanton cry.

“How long?”

“Since I debuted solo. He’s always present in my fansigns. Didn’t he tell you?” Chaeyeon gives this cheeky look to her younger sister, an approving nod. “One time he told me he was now following this girl group, and I asked him who it was. Didn’t specify anything. I should have known right from the start.”

“Wasn’t only me he was fucking, I just found out,” Chaeryeong remarks, tone degrading. You’d be so red with shame right now, if it already weren’t the case. Whether it’s because of the steam or their unpredictable touch is up for interpretation. “And no, he’s never brought it up. I’m just finding out right now. But if so, he gets around—and he gets around good.”

“If there’s anyone you should trust, it’s me. He thinks he’s clever hiding this from you. I can hear that moan of his a mile away.” Chaeyeon smiles as she turns off the water, your bodies barely touching soap and shampoo, focused on leaving kisses and scratch marks instead. The soap in your eyes forced them shut to tell what’s happening, other than their near-indistinguishable voices and the blurriest of movements. All you know is their presence creeping up when you least expect it. “Come along, dear.”

Before you know it, you find yourself shoved onto a flat yet bouncy surface. A bed. It rumbles for a few moments before you feel your body tearing apart. In the midst of this uncertain commotion, their combined laughs and whispers fill the air.

“Open your eyes, baby.”

Even when you can hardly tell who’s giving the command, you comply. Lo and behold, your arms are stretched and tied on opposite ends of the headboard. Your legs are spread wide, your cock glistening with spit and sheen, hard for the second time. The Lee sisters are kneeling on parallel sides of their own, around the edges, laughing at your precarious, defenseless position.

It’s in your instincts to try and break loose. Of course, it fails miserably. Their laugh grows more uncontrollable and hearty.

“Not a chance. We’ve covered all bases so that even if you escape, you’re not making it far.” Chaeryeong speaks with a heightened air of arrogance.

You furl your brows. “What? What do you mean—escape?”

“Don’t even try to run,” says Chaeyeon. “You—you’re not going to run?”

As if that was ever part of your plan.

“Why would I ever? I like you both!”

You’re speaking the truth, and it might just end up saving your life.

“I don’t think he’s buying it. You know, maybe he just really wants us.” Chaeryeong tries to whisper in her sister’s ear, but you can still hear it all.

Chaeyeon nods. “You might be right.”

The older sibling crawls up the bed, tracing a path to your neck with her nails, leaving a lengthy trail on your skin. It’s as every bit sexy and seductive as the first time, even more when she’s completely bare. Chaeryeong mimics her, her arch more eye-popping. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree when it comes to their bloodline. “Since you want to stay, I propose a little game. Are you with me?”

“Yes,” you nod, tense and nervous, sweating starting to pour down your face.

“Let’s play a game I’d like to call, ‘Guess the Sibling.’ I’m gonna place a blindfold and you’re gonna have to guess who’s bouncing on this cock,” Chaeyeon continues, going down your chest and giving your erection a playful slap. A little more force and she could have ended you. Mercifully, it’s only one flick. “If you guess right, then you get the rest of the night with us. Use us any way you want. But if you don’t—”

“—Then we’re gonna have our way with you,” Chaeryeong interjects. “And trust me, you wouldn’t want us to have our way with you.”

“What did I get myself into?” you mutter, wondering if the situation you’re in is a consequence of your actions. You’re not a bad person, per say; even the two girls would admit this. You’re just like any other fan—mostly: enjoying their songs, spending alarming amounts of money into merch and events, buying your way into fansigns, and taking photographs of the idols you love. You’re so spoiled, you end up sharing that love with others.

At best, this was stuff of urban legend, of myths, of over the top fantasies. None of this was meant to happen.

Yet here you are, tied up on a bed by your two favorite idols in the world, ready to be used like a toy for their personal use—and pleasure. In the little time you’ve personally known these two, you didn’t expect them to be this obscene and assertive. You won’t be able to look at them the same way after this—if you can even get out alive.

Chaeyeon wraps a thick cloth around your eyes, completely blocking your vision. The last thing you see is Chaeryeong kneeling before you, spreading them wide, rubbing her hands up and down your legs.

“I would say good luck, but I’d like to think you’re familiar with us that this should be easy for you,” Chaeyeon remarks before giving you a quick peck on the cheek. “Look at that. Your friend over here is a little too excited.”

You wince at the airy touch. Unsurprisingly, you can’t tell what’s going on, guided only by familiar sensations, patterns and recognizable sounds. Still, you can’t really tell their voices apart. It doesn’t help that they both have long flowing dark hair either.

Taking this deep breath, anxious about what’s about to happen, they still catch you off-guard. You scream a guttural cry, feeling the weight of the world crash on your hips. “Oh f-fuck!”

Right there, you hear a sharp, ear-piercing whine—a shout that rips through the bedroom. Your cock is bulging through something far tighter than normal. Not even your previous experiences with Chaeyeon ever went this far. “O-oh shit! S-so fucking—tight!”

“You heard her. Deeper, babe.”

Your hips move instinctively, as if activated by her voice. Either of them works. They live in your mind rent-free. It’s only natural to follow them like your life depends on it, and considering your situation, it’s quite literal.

Despite how slick and wet you are, it proves to be a struggle at first. It resists, pushing back as hard as it can, but you don’t relent. Feels good enough to be worth saving. An impossible challenge at first, you eventually feel it—your tip sinking deeper into her hole, inch by inch. As it penetrates the girl on top of you, her whine climbs a pitch higher, then higher, until she’s outright shrieking.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit—so fucking big, so fucking big—”

She’s running her words fast, as if her mouth’s aimlessly mashing on a keyboard. The same harsh feeling stretches through her tight, smaller hole, until eventually you bury yourself to the hilt, and she keens.

“Oh my God—o-oh God—fuck!”

She struggles to acclimate to the new presence deep in her ass. She can’t stop it, nor can she ever hope to contain it. There’s only person who’d want it this bad from behind.

“Feels good, right Chaeryeong?” you guess, gritting through your teeth as the suffocating sensation also overwhelms your senses.

Right then and there, she begins to move. Lifting herself off you, dragging her plump cheeks along with brute force, threatening to tear your cock off too—until she squats down on your hips and creates much needed friction on your end.

There’s no denial or direct admission, but you know in your heart of hearts that you’ve won. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree when it comes to the Lee siblings. Both dangerously hot sisters with toned bodies worth admiring and worshiping. Such a shame that your hands are bed bound right now, otherwise you’d be all over them. Chaeyeon or Chaeryeong, it doesn’t matter—they’re equally deserving of every lick, every touch, every thrust out of you.

For now, you will have to settle with her ass.

“Harder—a little more—right there—” she manages to spit between hip thrusts and grinds. You happily oblige, relishing the sensation of her tight hole, vigorously flexing and pulsing against your cock. She moves frantically, as if desperate to shake you off. All the more reasons to be loose and free, so you can feel her slinky waist with your bare hands. Still, she’s compliant enough to keep bouncing on your lap, drowning in her own ecstasy to care about comfort, only more pleasure.

“God, this ass feels so fucking amazing—Chaery—” you tell her, a statement so obvious, but worth saying regardless. The slick, satisfying sound of flesh slapping flesh bouncing off the four walls, the shockwaves of her skin rippling on your groin, and her elated, blissful moans more than makes up for the lack of sight. And perhaps if you can cum sooner, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel quicker.

But it’s not enough. Chaeryeong can—and will—drain you of all your worth, especially at the frantic pace she’s going. Her ass owns your cock with a vice grip; again, she feels incredible, and you’re bound to each other, down to your souls.

There’s only one way you’re getting out.

“Get on top of me, Chaen.” You call to her, knowing she’s lurking around the room. You can also tell that she’s eager to get her share of cock.

Chaeryeong continues to bounce relentlessly, , your pace leisured and measured for maximum longevity. She lingers for a few moments, till you feel that weight on your lap suddenly disappear without cause.

“My turn,” says Chaeyeon, landing her tight asshole straight onto your cock. No preamble, no preparation, just crashing out. This time, with a much smoother, more effortless entry compared to her sister’s. She lets out this whiny, feathery moan in response to being filled for the first time, with you only mildly groaning in response.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” you remark.

“I don’t think so.”

“Yes you are.”

The room goes silent for a moment—except for the heavy breaths of one collapsed Chaeryeong.

Light immediately pervades your newly freed eyes, having the blindfold taken away. On your right, Chaeryeong slumps on the bed face down ass up, her puckered hole glistening and freshly leaking. A bottle falls off the edge and onto the floor. Elsewhere, Chaeyeon’s body rests on your waist, your cock buried deep inside her tighter entrance, clearly demanding your attention.

Except she’s completely facing away from you.

“Was she—”

“Yes.” Chaeyeon sounds annoyed—devastated even—that you’ve managed to outsmart her at her own game. “I can’t believe you really went after my sister. Was I not enough for you?”

“You are. It always meant to be you two from the start. You’re both hot.”

She sighs.

“Can you at least—at least—fill my ass up?” Chaeyeon looks over her shoulder, frowning. “Please let me have one over her.”

“What do you mean? I’ve given you everything,” you reply, recounting all your previous experiences with her. “Backstage, in your apartment, in your car—hell, even in a goddamn public bathroom stall. What else do you want from me?”

Just as Chaeyeon is about to open her mouth, her sister interrupts. Voice hoarse and cracking, she says, “Just go. You were his first. You deserve it.”

“Yeah, you heard her. I don’t mind. Besides, I’ve got the rest of the night to take her as I please, right? Like you said?”

There’s not much else to say. You can see the faintest smile on her lips as she looks away.

Likewise, your smile fades when she lifts herself and slams into you, hard. Filling her needy, wanton hole with your cock. Just off this one swift motion alone, you recognize that Chaeyeon is much more desperate.

Using all that pent-up need and desire as fuel to power every ram onto your cock. Her mark lingers on—far longer than Chaeryeong’s. It’s much more personal. You can feel how badly she wants you—needs you—beyond sexual pretense. The idea of you taken away by the one other person she loves the most—it sets her off, motivates her to prove that she’s worth more.

Unlike the playful and fun Chaeryeong, every thrust, every roll, every grind Chaeyeon does is intimate, passionate. Pounding into her tight ass, you can see pleasure course throughout her body, trembling in one violent aftershock after another. She’s uttering these little pleas, gentle desires while riding you hard. “More—like that—please—please—don’t stop—please—”

Chaeyeon knows you’re the one responsible for making her feel this way, make her feel all sorts of emotions. Love, hate, jealousy, anxiety—they’re only scratching the surface of just how much you mean to her. She’s unraveling, and fast. The only way she can find release is, as you expect, through you. An outlet for all her feelings.

You’re quite literally stretching her out, both physically and emotionally.

As you watch your first love fall apart like this, you can’t help but feel remorse. Chaeyeon is pretty, and so is her sister. They’re the splitting image of each other, and you wouldn’t feel like a fool for mixing them apart, despite the repeated statements from them not being twins. It’s only because of your strange obsession with the two that you can tell them apart.

That, and your complicated relationship with Chaeyeon, as idol and fan.

Ultimately, she can take it. She’s been through a lot, way more than anyone else you know, and she’ll get back up again. Including now.

So it stands to reason that she can take your pounding better than anyone else.

Gripping her hands on your knees, she rides you vigorously, dictating the pace, without much care for comfort. The clench is asphyxiating, borderline inescapable, but you’re still gliding in and out effortlessly, watching your cock disappear and reappear in her ass. As the flesh ripples and slams down with each thrust, the lewd sight alone is enough to upend you prematurely, if not for your resolve keeping you fastened to the earth.

“God—you’re too good, Chaen—” you hiss, closing your eyes in a last-ditch effort to avert your thoughts elsewhere. Anywhere but her ass and the tension suffocating you—but it’s not enough. The sloppy, wet sound of your bodies colliding penetrates even the most fortified parts of your ears.

“So fucking good, right?” Chaeyeon tries to straighten her voice in an effort to assert herself, only to find it crack, much like her idol facade. “Say it—I’m better than Chaeryeong. Say it!”

Even though her sister is lying beside you, every word is spoken loud and clear. You’re terrified.

“Do I have to repeat myself, baby? Say it!”

You don’t really have a choice. She’s riding you hard and fast, threatening to pull the plug two different ways, one far more unsatisfying than the other.

“Say it!”

“You’re better! Better than Chaery!” you shout, matching her erratic pace, dangerously treading on the line of no return.

It finally sets Chaeyeon off—and ultimately ends her.

Everything rolls into one emphatic word.

“Fuck!”

Her body goes rigid, fingers still gripped to your skin as she unravels on top of you. She’s screaming your name up to the sky—or in this case, the ceiling—and she cums. Hard. Freely flowing clear slick gushes around and past your cock, shredding through the last of your already broken defenses, urging you to let go.

Through the madness, you’re still relentlessly pumping into her, until you’ve fallen back into darkness again. It’s what she would have wanted.

Impaled to the hilt, you let out the deepest groan from the depths of your stomach as you cum into Chaeyeon’s ass. Blast after blast, you shamelessly empty every last drop inside her tight, sensitive hole, partly relieved—but mostly frustrated because your hands aren’t gripped to her supple flesh right now, ensuring she receives it all.

Despite her orgasm shredding through her body till now, she lifts herself off you in a single swift motion, much to your agony and despair. Resting on the edge of the bed, she’s positively glistening from her ass, dripping and leaking with your cum.

You helplessly watch your cock throb and throb till it withers again.

“God,” is the only word Chaeyeon can muster after everything, still unwilling to face you directly. Chaeryeong lazily rolls out of bed to rejoin her, resting her head on her shoulder, their hands intertwining.

Silence fills the room after a tense, lengthy period of sex. None of you are willing to break it.

You can only wonder what’s on Chaeyeon’s mind.

After a while, the two sisters get up and try to leave the bedroom, presumably to clean up—but not before stopping and realizing the elephant in the room.

They’re a far cry from when you first gazed your eyes on them. As you watch Chaeyeon and Chaeryeong free you from their binds, there’s this tired expression in their eyes. Not the typical post-coital gaze you’re all too familiar with; there’s a sense that they’re just about done—with everything.

Including you.

Chaeyeon offers you the same invite she gave previously when she first saw you with her sister in the living room. “Join us if you want to clean up. I’ll fire up the showers.”

—————

You pretty much spend the next hour doing that.

Beneath the running water, your bodies are cuddled up together, hardly cleaning up as intended.

Chaeyeon’s softly embracing you from behind, while Chaeryeong’s right in front of you, her chest pressed against yours. Both women lazily rest their head on your shoulders, their fingers tracing lines all over your skin. Beneath all the soap and shampoo lie kiss marks, nail scratches, and everything else in between to make you theirs.

They’re not asking for much, only for you to stay.

You first give Chaeyeon a kiss on her forehead, then Chaeryeong on her cheek.

Perhaps you’ll find a way to make room for both.

You have the rest of the night to figure that out.

—————

(A/N: Fuck yeah hiding a threesome as a surprise tactic/for shock value. I had a version of this that I scrapped during my slump month but decided to revisit it. It's been a long while since I've done one of those fan x idol stories. Sometimes you just want to write shameless pwp, but even this ended up taking a rather unexpected and emotional turn. Yikes. And it's all because I forgot to add one kink. Glad Itzy are five again, title track kinda lukewarm on. Thank you for reading!)

#kpop smut #itzy smut #chaeryeong smut #itzy #chaeryeong

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crushmeeren · 1 year ago

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Bakugou / Fem Reader ☠

☠ Everyone involved in this fic is aged up/18+.

Warnings; making out, pussy eating, hickies, choking, bit of dirty talk/praise, not so vanilla vaginal sex/anal sex, aftercare.

☠ Master List Link

Katsuki who constantly paints his nails midnight black. Who has piercings adorning his lobes all the way up to the cartilage on both ears. Who decided to add a tragus on the left and a daith on the right because why the fuck not. Who gets an eyebrow piercing. Who exclusively wears black or silver jewelry.

Katsuki who is littered with tattoos. They span across both his arms, his chest, and a few on his legs. Who looks drool worthy with the black and gray ink coloring his skin.

Katsuki who is left handed and takes pride in the fact. Who consistently will rest his calloused right hand on the soft, sensitive skin of your inner thigh whenever he’s driving. Who squeezes too hard when someone cuts him off, the road rage is real with Katsuki.

Katsuki who chooses to specifically listen to Japanese rock and heavy metal at full volume. Who enjoys the breeze during summertime and rolls the windows down in the car anytime he can. Who blasts the music when he drives, if only to force others to “listen to decent fucking music.”

Katsuki who religiously wears all black. Who loves Doc Martens so much you tell him he should marry them. Who wears Vans and Converse, and who has an unbearable amount of SiM band T-shirts. Whenever you steal them he only protests half heartedly.

Katsuki who plays the drums like a prodigy. Who learns your favorite rock songs just so he can play them for you. Who melts your heart with the sweet gesture, plus you think it’s the coolest fucking thing ever to watch him play.

Katsuki who legitimately curses like a sailor. Who seems he says fuck every other word.

Katsuki who introduces you to Eijirou and Denki. The two easily become some of your closest friends, much to Katsuki’s disdain. They’re always at your house and you can’t complain.

Kastuki who flushes the sweetest peachy color all the way to the tips of his ears when you call him Katsuki for the first time.

Katsuki who bakes you any desert you could ever wish for. Who cooks dinner for you just about every night, and packs lunches for you with fruit cut into cute little shapes.

Katsuki who encouraged you to get into fitness in the first place. Who’s been your rock every step of the way. Who loves you no matter what you look like, but wanted to share his passion of working out with you. Who often invites his red headed best friend to tag along.

Katsuki who helped you learn how to love yourself. Who has always been your weight lifting/running buddy, even if you complain about cardio more often than not. Besides, seeing Katsuki in his gym attire, sweating so hard it drips down his jaw, is more than enough of a motivator to work harder.

Katsuki who pushes you outside your comfort zone. Who is stern, but never mean when he’s encouraging you.

Katsuki who’s terrifyingly observant and intuitively knows when you’re getting overstimulated at the grocery store. Who makes haste, leveling anyone in the way the bitchiest look he’s capable of. Who holds your hand and whispers comforting words to help settle your nerves.

Katsuki who falls harder in love with you each day. Who you trust with your life. Who is your best fucking friend, who you say yes to when he proposes. Who is the best dad to the kids you inevitably have. Who is your one and only.

Katsuki who you drive insane when you make out. Who shivers, hard cock pushing into your thigh when you suck on his tongue. Who actually whimpers when you frame his face with your hands, tilting his head slightly to get a better angle when your tongue glides over his.

Katsuki who loves pulling your soft nipples into his mouth one at a time, flicking and tugging gently with his teeth until your nails threaten to scratch his scalp open. Who makes sure you can see his warm tongue swirling, plush lips mouthing until you’re pushing at his forehead.

Katsuki who bites hickies into the underside of your tits. Whose teeth make your skin ache, a dull throb making itself known. Who doesn’t stop there, marking you any place he wants to.

Katsuki whose voice is gravelly, husky when he whispers to you that you’re his needy little bitch. Who assures you you’re his sweet princess in the next moment. Who gives you whiplash from the mixture of praise and degradation, but who knows it pushes you over the edge.

Katsuki who eats your pussy until you see stars. Who eases two fingers inside you, tapping them over your g-spot and licking your clit steadily until your thighs tremble.

Katsuki who gets your pussy drooling so eagerly that his cock meets no resistance pushing in. Who shifts his weight, the curly blonde hair at the base of his shaft brushing up over your clit. Who sends a blistering pleasure to your toes with each glide of his cock.

Katsuki who hooks one of your legs over his shoulder. Who digs his teeth into your calf until there’s an oval of imprints in your skin. Who bends until he can brace his hands by your shoulders, snapping his hips forward with sharp thrusts.

Katsuki who gets so sweaty during sex it trails down his jaw, down his neck and pools lewdly at his collarbones. Who laughs when you can’t resist the urge to lean up and taste him.

Katsuki who loves anal. Who’s feral about how tight your ass is, about the obscene way your rim stretches for his cock. Who will fuck you from behind while he opens you up with his fingers.

Katsuki who allows you to set the pace. Who lets you guide his cock gradually past your rim. Who pants excessively, voice hoarse as he complains about how hard it is not to flex and split you in half.

Katsuki who has a lilting moan wrenched from his throat when he starts to move. Who pushes down on your upper back, throwing his weight into each thrust.

Katsuki who fucks you so overwhelmingly your nails almost shred the sheets. Who has you screeching Katsuki! so deafeningly you shove your face into the sheets to muffle the noise. Whose hips bounce off your ass so roughly it turns your skin red.

Katsuki who nails your g-spot this way. Who forces you to cum so harshly you get chills. Who has you screaming out that you can’t take it, but who doesn’t slow his pace because he knows you’d say the safe word if you meant it.

Katsuki who is so mean. Who grips your hips rigidly, yanking you back to meet his thrusts. Who speaks condescendingly when he demands to know where the fuck you think you’re going, because “I know your slutty little ass can take my cock.”

Katsuki who rips an orgasm out of you, halfway to snarling when you squirt all over the sheets below. Who falls over the edge shortly after, bending over your back with a throaty moan and filling you with his release.

Katsuki who cleans you with a warm wash cloth afterwards. Who aids you in getting dressed in one of his oversized shirts. Who trades sweet kisses with you in the dark, snuggling you into his chest until you fall asleep. Who shrouds you with the feeling of safety and security while you dream of bright explosions.

#bakugou x reader #bakugou smut #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou katsuki smut #bakugou katsuki #mha x reader #mha smut #katsuki bakugou #bakugou headcanons #bakugou fanfiction #bakugo x reader #bakugou x you

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shanastoryteller · 10 months ago

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Happy birthday!!!! More FMA!

He’s fucking tired.

In Xerxes, he’s Van Edris. In Xerxes, he’s the son of a former slave, having narrowly escaped being born into his father’s fate by virtue of him being awarded freedom by the time of his birth. In Xerxes, he’s an uncommon commodity, an alchemist with a skill that hasn’t been seen since his father fucked off to who knows where.

In Amestris, he’s Edward Elric. In Amestris, he’s the son of Trisha Elric who was born free and died free because while there are lots of different forms of freedom, in Amestris there’s one that everyone shares. In Amestris, he’s unknown and unremarkable and no one gives a fuck about what he does.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says flatly.

This is what he gets for visiting his father’s country. It’s just fucking unfortunate that the really good alchemical texts are here.

He should have let Al (Van Altun, as they know him, even though the two of them having been using their Amestrian names almost their whole lives, regardless of what country they were in) do it. They’re not nearly as weird about him.

Pakor is alright, as far as kings go. He’s freed a lot of people, is poking at the laws of ownership that has governed his country for centuries to see if he can do anything about them without getting beheaded for it. He’s also known Ed since he was a barely able to walk, back when his father still made court appearances and brought the family along with him. Former slave against most talented alchemist in the country, and people tended to politely ignore the former. Hell, Ed’s been counting on the same thing since he was twelve.

Of course, now it’s coming back to bite him. People say he’s a genius, but if he was really smart he would have stayed far, far away from court. Like in Amestris, perhaps.

“You’re fluent in both languages,” Pakor says, coaxing.

“So are you,” he says accusingly. “We’re speaking Amestrian right now!”

Pakor sighs and switches to Xerxian. “You also speak Xingese and Drachman. You’re a difficult man to keep secrets from.”

“I’m also Amestrian!” he shouts. “And free, might I add! You can’t sell me off to slavery just to get some intel!”

“It’s not like we’ll brand you,” he says, affronted, and Ed is reminded that alright for a king is still pretty shitty. “We just need someone to do a little – double checking. To ensure the situation in Amestris is as it’s advertised.”

“You want to gift me to the Fuhrer to spy on him and you’re, what, just hoping he doesn’t notice that I understand everything and know everything and am, oh yeah, one of his citizens? I’ve been to Central before! With my luck, I’ll get recognized the first day here and then run out of Amestris! And, again, Amestris doesn’t have slaves! The leader of the country really can’t have one.”

Pakor sighs. “You’re very dramatic, Edris. It won’t be so bad. Here, I’ll say you’re my personal slave and that you’re on loan. It’ll be for cultural exchange purposes. He speaks Xingese, so you can communicate in that language without letting on you know Amestrian.”

Ed pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is a stupid fucking idea.”

“If you do this,” Pakor says, “I’ll give you the key to the royal library.”

Ed slowly lowers his hand, eyes narrowing. “I’ve been asking you to let me in there for years.”

“I figured I’d need to bargain it away eventually,” he says. “I was hoping you’d marry one of my daughters for it.” Having even light court obligations is bad enough, he’s in no way stupid enough to marry in. “You’re very difficult, you know. I’m your king. I shouldn’t have to bargain with you.”

“Tough shit,” Ed says, because Pakor may have known him for nearly twenty years, but that knowing goes both ways. Besides, he can’t piss him off because then he and Al will stop reparing all their shit bridges and infrastructure. “Fine. But if I lose my Amestrian citizenship over this, I’m going to be pissed.”

“Noted,” Pakor says brightly.

Uhg.

It doesn’t help that everything he’s heard about Fuhrer Mustang makes the man sound insufferable.

#ling shows up halfway through this deception and is like hi ed why are you dressed like that and why are you talking like that #and ed has to strangle a prince of xing to keep his fucking mouth shut #every second he's ever spent at court was a mistake #al and winry are pulled between being appalled about this whole thing and thinking it's the funniest thing they've ever heard #prompt answers #prompts are closed #asks #anon #fma

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dinogoofymutated · 4 months ago

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Nightcrawler/GN!Reader The first Fic of the season is here!!! I'll go ahead an outright say that the other fic will NOT be this long and this in-depth. This one took me literally the whole month of september when it was only supposed to take me two weeks. I'm going to do my best to make sure that the other fics come out on time, but please have a little patience with me ;-; Also, This fic has not been beta read bc it is an absolute beast at 8k words (at least for me), so if anything seems off, or the ending was too abrupts, don't be mean lol.

You've recently moved into an old, spooky mansion that your great-aunt left you in her will. It's been uninhabited for years but is strangely well-kept. You're sure you live here alone, but every once in a while you can't shake the feeling of being watched…

Tws: Demons, stereotypical witchcraft, Alcohol consumption, Graphic depictions of blood and wounds for a minute, I'll add more if I can think of any.

When the keys are plopped carelessly into your hands, they’re cold. They’re still cold, two weeks later when you finish moving in. It wasn't a fancy affair, no movers or big trucks, just some friends and the van they borrowed from the school. Truthfully, you didn’t really have a lot anyway. Most of them had honestly only shown up to offer their condolences for your loss.

Your groceries feel heavier than normal when you set them on the kitchen counter, stepping back with a sigh. Never in your wildest dreams would you have even imagined of living in a place like this. You’d never even visited Aunt Maude’s house- Your, house. Sure, you and the rest of the family all knew she was well-off, but no one had a clue that when the will was read she had left you a Victorian-era mansion along with her estate. Even you hadn’t until you googled her address after the lawyer gave you the keys.

As surprising as it was, it was definitely your Great-Aunt Maude’s house. Every bathroom, bedroom, living space, You could see her in all of it. She was kooky and eclectic, with a love for all things strange and unusual. It was comforting, almost. To be wrapped in a house filled with the remnants of your aunt. Your eyes sting as you begin to fill up the long empty fridge, organizing it to your liking. You close the door and see your graduation photos stuck to it, along with a photo strip from the photo booth she dragged you into at your sweet sixteen. You suck in a shakey sob, tears welling in your eyes for what feels like the millionth time that day. You’re sad, and exhausted, and you haven't even unpacked yet, most of your belongings set in boxes in the Sitting room and Hallway. But you just… couldn’t bring yourself to bother. Everything that was cold was already put in the fridge, so you decided the rest can wait till the morning.

You trudge up the stairs with as much energy as you can muster, and when you finally make it to the master bedroom, you’re ready to pass out. The room is decorated in a way that feels much more like you than it felt like your Aunt, and you notice that the quilt on the bed was one she had shown you at Christmas one year. One you told her you very much envied. It was like she had made the room your own before she even stepped foot into the nursing home. The thought is enough to choke you up again. You crawl underneath the soft covers in a pretty pitiful manner, falling asleep almost immediately.

It’s only when you wake up the next morning that you start to notice something strange about this house.

The kitchen is a somewhat long walk from the upstares bedroom, and you’re basically starving by the time you get downstairs. You yawn as you grab the milk out of the fridge, still feeling half asleep as you turn around to grab the cereal off the counter only to find it… gone. In fact, all of the groceries you had left on the counter yesterday were gone.

The realization is like a shot of ice through your veins. What the fuck?… You must have put them away last night, right? But you knew they were on the counter when you went to bed. You feel like you’re going to throw up, thinking about the chance that a burglar had broken in last night and you hadn’t heard it because you were upstairs. You sprint to the sitting room taking note of all your boxes and things, making sure to double-check that your TV was actually there and not a figment of your imagination, but it was definitely solid. You cautiously walk back to the kitchen, staring at the pantry door for an anxious moment before biting the bullet and swiftly opening it.

All your groceries were in place. All are organized neatly exactly where you would have preferred them to be. Strange. You must have woken up last night and done it. Right? It wouldn’t be too absurd to assume you had put the groceries away half-asleep and forgotten about it. That had to be it. It’s not like someone broke in last night just to put your groceries away. Now that was just plain ridiculous.

From then on out, The strange things only seemed to continue.

Sure, a house this old wasn’t without a general peculiarity about it, but after being told it hadn’t been inhabited since Aunt Maude put herself into inpatient care, it should be dusty, right? A home of this size, cluttered with the many odds and ends she had collected over the years? You’d never heard of a house that could dust itself. Your hands wander more than ever as you traverse the mansion, they run down the banister, across the pretty wallpaper, even taking a swipe at a shelf or two, and still, they’re clean. Not a smudge or spec of dirt on your fingers.

Strange, but not unexplainable. Maybe she had scheduled a cleaning service to take place after her death or something. You didn’t know. But a week goes by. Then two and then three, and everything is still spotless. And that was the least of it. Lights seemed to turn off by themselves at night. Things that you’re sure you heard fall were placed upright. If you forgot to turn the oven off, it would already be cool by the time you ran back into the kitchen- and the house constantly smelled like sulfur and brimstone. At this point, you’ve called the fire department so many times worried about a gas leak that they think you’ve gone crazy.

You just felt… Uneasy. Like you were being watched.

“I feel like I’m losing my mind, Jean.” You watch as the redhead tries to hide a smile on the other side of the Facetime call, and you can’t help but pout a little when she inevitably laughs. Your little image on the top part of the camera must look rather ridiculous, hands tangled in some string lights you had found in the closet. As strangely organized and spotless as everything was, it seems that the Christmas lights in the back of the closet weren’t so lucky. Yay for you.

“Look, you’re just overthinking things. Don’t stress out about it.” Jean says, ever the voice of reason. You know she’s probably right. “Besides, you’ve been through a lot lately. It’s not abnormal for stress to do weird things to the mind.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” You mumble. Detangling these lights is beginning to be a bit trickier than you first expected them to be. Each tangle and loop seems to be interconnected, and no matter how gently or firmly you are with the cords, another knot seems to form with every probable success. You sigh in annoyance, and Jean raises an eyebrow at you.

“Do I need to ask about the Christmas lights?” You’re about ready to give up on them when she asks, dramatically dropping them in your lap.

“Well, remember how I was gonna throw that big Halloween party this year?” Jean hums in response. “Well, turns out that all the decorations I had for the apartment only cover like, an eighth of the house. I’ve been rummaging around in the closets all day to try and find something that might work and all I’ve been able to find is this.” You hold up the old, tangled lights for her to see.

“That’s weird. With what I know about your Aunt, you’d think that she’d have a ton of decorations.” Jean mentions. You groan loudly, pressing your palms into the round edges of your eyesockets in frustration.

“Exactly! She loved Halloween, and with a house like this, there’s no way she’d just leave it bare. I’ve raided practically every closet and storage room in the house and haven’t found anything at all.” You almost shout the words, exasperated at this point. You knew for a fact Aunt Maude had to have something. It didn’t matter if it was even one of those awful animatronic jumping spiders at this point, you’d take anything if it meant you wouldn’t have to tap into your inheritance to decorate this big ass house (because there was no way in hell you weren’t going to decorate, you’d never disgrace your Aunt’s memory like that.). Jean is quiet for a moment, looking sympathetic through the screen. To be honest, as much as you value Jean’s advice, you’re beginning to think she’s got nothing to help you until-

“Are you sure there’s not an attic or anything?”

The thought makes you pause.

“Oh my god, I’m an actual idiot.” You practically shriek the words, quickly standing from the floor and shoving the Christmas lights to the side as you run to get some shoes on. The attic! God, you feel so stupid for not thinking of it before! All you had to do was find the access hatch!

“Just be careful though! Even though the house is renovated, that doesn’t mean-”

“I’ll call you later, Okay? I’m gonna go look upstairs!”

“No no no, don’t-”

It takes you forever to find that damn attic. You’d think that it would be easy to find, seeing that it’s sort of an important structure in this house, but nooo. It’s been almost a month since you moved in, and yet you still feel like you’re lost while you wander around the third floor. How hard could it be to find a simple hatch? You feel like you’re looking in all the wrong places, and you know you probably are. You’re pacing around one of the third-floor bedrooms looking at the ceiling when a noise from the billiards room across the hall makes you freeze.

Were those footsteps?

No, you were home alone. It couldn’t be.

Still, the sound leaves you on edge. You stalk across the hallway, stopping at the door to the other room as you briefly debate on how to open it. A small shuffle from the ceiling makes you jump a little, and you quickly decide, Fuck it. We ball.

You swing the door open with a bit more force than necessary and find the room… empty. Right. Of course, it was. You sigh in relief, running a stressed hand through your scalp as you take in the sight of the room for the first time since your original walk-through of the home.

In your brief scan of the room, you manage to spot a small string hanging right above the pool table, swinging back and forth. You slowly look up, and there it is. The fucking attic hatch.

“Oh god damn it. Was it really that easy to find?” You mumble to yourself, wondering if you really were just that stupid.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to move the pool table over so that you can open the latch and pull the rickety old ladder down. It looked more modern than most of the house, but it was easy to tell it was about as old as you were. You take a moment to just stare into the black hole in the ceiling, wondering if all this was really worth it. Well, you already spent all this time looking for the thing, so…

You’re a little extra careful as you climb the ladder up into the attic, using the flashlight in your phone to light the way the further you go. The attic is a little bit dustier than the rest of the house, but to be honest, it was cleaner than you were expecting. It's dark and cramped, but once you fully enter you find that you can at least stand up to your full height. The excitement of finding the place has begun to wear off, and you start to feel a little flighty as you look around and the light from your flashlight shifts. This is okay. It’s fine. You’re fine. Maybe she had lights installed, right? You look up at the roof and are thankful to see those long, industrial fluorescent lights screwed to the ceiling. Thank god.

It takes a minute of stumbling and carefully following the wires to a corner of the attic, doing your best not to trip over anything along the way, and you find a small light switch in the corner of the room. You breathe a sigh of relief as you flick it on, and the lights overhead blink and light up. That’s a bit better!

You find that Aunt Maude’s attic is cluttered with various random items, some older, others a bit more modern. The exercise bike and the Zumba tapes made you laugh a little as you passed them by, while some older cloth dolls and bunnies just made you uncomfortable. You’re not really sure where to start the search, so you just walk around for a minute. One of the lights overhead is starting to flicker a little, and you’re inwardly hoping that there’s no faulty wiring or anything that might start a fire when your foot catches on something.

“Oh Shit!”

There’s not a lot of time for you to catch yourself when you fall, eating absolute shit as you fall face-first into a stack of boxes. You smash your nose into something particularly hard when you land, and there’s a variety of shapes sticking into your sides that have sprouted from the smashed boxes below you. Ow, ow ow! God damnit! This is what you get for not listening to Jean. You feel a little dizzy as you sit up amongst the boxes, holding your nose tightly while you wonder if you just broke it. Your eyes are blurry from the pain, and it takes a second for you to fully come to.

“What the hell did I just fall into?” You’re blinking away the blurriness as the sight in front of you finally starts to clear, A bunch of broken boxes now greeting you. Boxes that now had a bunch of plastic bones sticking out of the torn sides. You make a fairly embarrassing noise of excitement when you realize you had found exactly what you were looking for in the first place. The Halloween decorations!! Thank god! You were so unbelievably happy to find them that you couldn’t help but reach forward and look through the boxes immediately.

After thoroughly inspecting the contents, you realize that there were about eight large boxes of Halloween decorations in total. Motherfucking eight! This was perfect! The only thing was that there was still one little issue: getting them downstairs. You try not to think about those rickety ladders too hard as you move each box to a place a little easier to get to. Your back is already aching when you’re done for the moment, so you decide to sit down on the floor and lean back a little, catching your breath while looking at those eight, somewhat heavy boxes you were gonna have to fool around with in just a moment. Your foot nudges something as you do so. Hm.

Sitting up a little bit, you can see that it’s a floorboard, just sticking out a little bit. Oh! Guess that’s what you tripped over earlier. You try and press it back down with your foot, and that definitely doesn't work. Damn. Hopefully, you could find a hammer or something to tack it back down. You scoot over to get a better look when you notice that there’s something underneath, a dark blue color just faintly catching your eye. Curious, you lift the board a little, and after a tug or two, it gives way.

You find an old, leatherbound book underneath. It’s got no clear name on the cover or the spine, simply a rune or emblem of sorts burned into the upper left corner. Finding it a bit strange, you flip open the cover, thinking that it must be a diary or something left by the original owners as a time capsule of sorts- but it’s not. Every page in the book is blank except for the very last one. This book is not what it has been. When the Veil strains thin will the ink be seen.

Weird, but okay. You assume it’s a novelty or a trick or something, but it looks spooky enough, so you gently set it in one of the more empty boxes of Halloween decorations. Now it was time for the hard part.

You drag one box at a time to the ladder, and looking at the size of them vs. the skinny steps below you, you wonder just how the hell Aunt Maude got these up here in the first place. Just thinking about getting these downstairs is intimidating, but you were never a quitter. One by one, you carefully take each box down, making sure to never carry more than you can handle and to keep a good grip on the ladder no matter what. After about 20 minutes, you get about halfway through. Four boxes down, four to go. Your arms are getting a bit tired and you’re a bit sweaty from the lack of AC in the attic, but you think you’ve got it.

On the fifth box of decorations, your foot slips. You gasp in shock, your stomach flipping as you fall backward- a split second of absolute terror as you fall. You’re terrified that you’re gonna die, and that Jean will never forgive you and you’d never get to throw that stupid party you were doing all this work for in the first place.

The air is knocked from your lungs from something that felt much more like a catch than it did the floor. You don't know what’s going on for a moment, eyes shut tight as the shock begins to wear off and you realize that you’re fine… Wait. Hold on. Someone had definitely caught you, and unless Jean had snuck in…

To be honest, whatever you were expecting when you opened your eyes was very, very much wrong. Your heart is beating a million times a minute, a chill running through you when you finally register who is above you. Or what, rather. The first thing you see are his eyes. Yellow from pupil to scelera, almost glowing in the low light of the billiards room. He’s more fuzz than skin, blue in color, with devilishly sharp canine teeth he reveals with a sheepish smile.

“Hallo?”

He flinches when you shriek, doing his best not to drop you as you squirm out of his arms. Your knees give out the moment your feet hit the floor, and you scramble back, grabbing the first box you can and throwing anything you can find at him.

“Sorry- Sorry! I had not mean to scare you!” He holds his arms up to block each decoration you throw at him. A few plastic spiders, a zip lock of polyester faux webbing, and a little floral crow or two. You can hardly even think at the moment.

“Stop! Please stop! I didn't want to let you fall!” He flinches at each item although none of them are very heavy. You’re running out of things to throw, stalling for a moment as you debate lunging for one of the other boxes.

“WHAT ARE YOU?!” You shriek again. He opens his mouth to speak as he takes a step back, and you flinch as you see something move in the corner of your eye- a tail. A spaded fucking demon tail. You had to be losing it. Having hallucinations or a nightmare or something- but as it turns out, you are definitely a fight-over-freeze kind of person, and your body kicks in before your brain has caught up. The box of bones was next to go. A hand, and then two small rib cages and a slightly heavy bundle of newspaper fly through the air.

“Careful!” He flat-out ignores the other items, going wide-eyed at the ball of newspaper and lunging to catch it in time. He takes an audible sigh of relief when he does, and says something that makes you pause from pelting him with any more Halloween shit.

“You’re certainly Maude’s kin, but I doubt she’d appreciate you throwing her breakables.” He halfheartedly jokes, an awkward smile on his face. You’re mid-throw with another bone, hand frozen in the air with a range of emotions going on in your head.

“Excuse me?” You ask, possibly a little overdramatic at the moment. He goes to move, probably to set the wad of newspaper down, but you raise your hand again as if to throw, making a face at him that’s a little more goofy than it was intimidating. He hands the newspaper off to his tail, raising his hands to show that he means no harm.

“Maude? The woman who lived here before?”

“Yeah, I got that part!” You cry out, hands shaking a bit from adrenaline. “How do you know my Aunt Maude? And what are you!? Why are you here!?” The rapid-fire questions seem to interrupt him every time he opens his mouth, but he doesn’t seem to lose his patience with you. He very calmly places the wad of newspaper on top of a box that happens to be near, and you eye him suspiciously as he does. He sits down next to it, the tip of his tail swaying just slightly.

“Maybe we should take a step back, Ja? I can explain everything, I promise.” He says, patting the space next to him. “Herkommen. It might be better to sit for this.” His smile is polite, and if this situation were any different, you might find his kind demeanor charming. But the situation isn’t different. He was a stranger in your house. A blue, possible-demon stranger, with a tail and what you think looks like small, pointed horns sticking out from the thick curls that cover his hairline. You eye him suspiciously, halfway wondering if this was a trick of sorts. He’s looking at you expectantly, waiting for you to sit. Eventually, you do, but not next to him, definitely not. You sit down right where you are, hesitant and fidgety as he begins to speak.

Of course, it would be your Aunt to summon a demon to aid her with her ridiculous (lovely) house in her failing health, instead of hiring a fucking nurse, or an assistant, or just selling the damn thing. Of course, it would be your Aunt to leave you the house with said demon in it, and not tell you. OF COURSE, It would be your aunt to tell him to take it slow while introducing himself so he wouldn't freak you out, and OF-FREAKING-COURSE, it would be you who almost killed yourself on accident and completely derail that plan. Jesus, what was worse? The fact that your aunt was apparently an actual witch who summoned demons in her elderly years, or that she didn’t explain any of this to you before leaving you the house. You didn't know how to unpack all of this, hell, you weren’t even done unpacking all of your things.

Well, It’s not like you could (or would) kick him out really, but in the coming weeks, you notice that Kurt is really more of a butler than a roommate.

He’s been cleaning even before you knew he existed, but now that the grand reveal was over, you see him around the house much more often. He helps you with groceries, cooks for you when you’re exhausted, he takes the trash out sometimes too, when the sun goes down. He doesn’t go outside in the front yard very much to avoid being seen, but every once in a while, he’ll take a walk with you in the backyard. You were hesitant of him for a good bit, but you’d be a liar if you said he didn’t have a way of worming his way into your good graces. He’s… sweet. And easy to get along with. He effortlessly fits into your life, and you find yourself excited to see him when you wake up every day. You get along so well that it makes you wonder if your aunt had known that you would when she summoned him, or… you know what, probably not.

You learn more about him as the weeks go by. His past, his hopes for the future. You learn that his father is a demon lord of some sort, and his mothers are a bit more complicated. All three are dangerous, and all three are trying to find him.

“Is that why you took the pact with my Aunt?” You ask, late one night. Both of you have drinks in hand, leaning back on a pile of pillows and cushions you found in the tower room. It’s comfortable, if a bit warm. The two of you are a little flushed, words surprisingly clear as you speak. Despite being a demon, you find that Kurt is a bit of a lightweight. An accident on your part, having poured the drinks a little stronger thinking that he had a bit more tolerance.

“Mostly.” Kurt hums. He’s fully leaning against you, head resting snugly against your own with his tail curled around your abdomen. His horns are resting against your temple in a rather uncomfortable manner, but you don’t mention it. He takes another drink.

“I don’t know how she knew. Or if she knew, really. Magic is specific to each demon, like a fingerprint of sorts, just a bit easier to track. When a demon makes a pact, their magic is filtered through the pact-bearer- which creates a different kind of magic. I needed a place to hide, she was offering me a home. It was easy.” His words slur a little where his accent tends to come out a bit stronger.

“Was that all she offered you? A place to stay?”

“That and…” He trails off for a quick moment, clearing his throat to change the subject. “Well, anyway. I was desperate, and she seemed kind, so I agreed.” You nod as you think it over yourself. You can’t tell if he’s just drunk or it's a sensitive subject, but he can’t just have accepted the many tasks of cleaning and caring for an old woman for something less in return. Was it that easy for demons to make pacts like that? Surely, she wouldn’t have offered him her soul or anything.

You open your mouth to ask him more questions, but when a light snore reaches your ears, you know he’s fallen asleep. You can't help but smile, a warmth in your chest that you don’t really think is from the alcohol.

A few days later, it’s Saturday, October 31st. After some long weekends and late nights, you finally have the whole house decorated, inside and out! You were so beyond excited. The whole place looked like it had come straight out of a Halloween catalog! You were so proud of how amazing it looked, but you could never have taken all the credit. Kurt was a big help, both with the placement and creativity of the many decorations. Everything that had to be put outside had to be done so at night so that Kurt wouldn’t be seen, and sure, sometimes you would wake up and see a few things were crooked, but at least it was fun! You’ve never felt so invigorated and filled with Halloween spirit, especially now, a few hours before the party. You’re shaking some full-sized candy bars into a big-ass plastic cauldron, and Kurt walks in with his arms full of Party favors for tonight.

“You know, I’m not sure you could give away all of these if you tried!” Kurt laughs, setting them all down on the coffee table in the sitting room. It's a bunch of plastic spider rings, vampire teeth, squishy skeletons, slap bracelets, and more. All sorted into their own neat ziplock bags. The apartment complex you used to live at never really got any trick-or-treaters, so you had a lot of leftover goodies you were happy to finally use. You let out an excited giggle, taking one of the bags and emptying it into the cauldron.

“You’ll be surprised! With the neighborhood that’s just around the corner, I know for a fact that we’ll have plenty of kids come by!” You almost sing. Kurt smiles at you, taking a bag of his own to empty.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Schatz. It’s an old building, and rather scary from afar. Maude never really had a lot of visitors on Halloween.” You pout at his words, before tilting your head like you’re considering them as you continue to fill the cauldron.

“True, but Aunt Maude never tried posting on neighborhood Facebook groups and hyping up PTA moms before. Besides, the house is scary, but that's what the lights are for!” Kurt shakes his head, laughing as you voice the thought. You mayyy have gone overboard this year. A few extra strands of lights, blow-ups, and animatronics never hurt anybody, right? I mean, with most of your expenses taken care of due to the paid-off mansion you live in, you were able to spend a little bit more of your personal spending money on Halloween. Your new home was a whole-ass Halloween attraction, and a good bit of the neighborhood thought so too! After posting online, you were pleasantly surprised with the positive feedback from the surrounding neighborhoods, and had even personally met a few kind neighbors since!

Kurt however, couldn’t risk being seen, and had to hide every time. Most people would freak out, just like you did, and the attention isn’t really a good thing for him. The thought sends you on the same spiral that you had been on for the past week, and the smile slowly slips off your face as Kurt takes the pot from you and begins to mix the goodies all together.

“...You’re sure you don’t want to come tonight?” You ask, vulnerability shining through your voice. Kurt looks up from the task, brow furrowed. He opens his mouth, then closes it, then looks back down again.

“I don’t want to scare anyone.” He says softly, making your frown deepen.

“You won’t! I promise you won’t. None of my friends scare easily- and besides! It’s Halloween. Everyone will just think you’re in a costume!” You try to make the last bit of the plea happy and convincing, but it doesn’t seem to work very well. Kurt doesn’t look at you until he’s done with the pot, placing it back on the coffee table. When he does, his smile doesn’t seem to reach his eyes,

“I’ll be fine, Schatz. I promise. It will be easier for me to just hide. I can easily enjoy the party from a distance.” The words aren’t very convincing, but before you can say anything else, the doorbell rings. Kurt dusts himself off as he stands, tail swaying as he pulls you to your feet.

“Looks like your guests are early. Make sure to have fun tonight, Ja? I’ll see you later.” Kurt squeezes your hands, and you try not to look too disappointed. After all, it was his decision, and you don’t want him to feel forced to show himself when so much could go wrong. You give him a moment to head back upstairs, disappearing like he used to do back in the beginning. You can’t help but sigh a little, but there’s a hesitant knock on the door instead of the doorbell this time, and you know you can’t just stand here and ignore it.

You don’t really know who is going to be on the other side of the door, with it being mid-afternoon and still a hot minute before the party actually starts, but the bloody, red-haired Carrie on the other side of the door brightens your spirits the moment you see her.

“Jean!” You cheer, rushing to give her a hug that she warmly returns.

“Happy Halloween!” Jean says before pulling away. “I hope you don’t mind, I thought I’d come by a little early to help you set up.”

“Are you kidding? I have a whole ass kitchen of food I still need to plate.” You step aside to let Jean in as she laughs. You were originally to do most of the prep with Kurt, and although Jean is technically interrupting, you try not to let it get you down. This is the first time you’ve seen her in a long while, and you were already rather lucky that Halloween was falling on a Saturday this year- most of your friends/guests all working at the prep school nearby.

“Am I the first one here?” Jean asks as you lead her to the kitchen, and you hum in response.

“Yup, It’s been just me all day.” You’ve never been the best liar, but you think you’re a little convincing at least.

“Funny, I could have sworn I heard a man’s voice when I rang the doorbell.” Jean’s smug tone almost makes you stop in place. If you were even a little convinced that some of this house was soundproof, those hopes were dashed instantly. You smile nervously, trying to play it off as you pass the sitting room, the TV giving you an idea.

“Whaaaattt? No. I mean- I’ve had the TV in the sitting room running all day, so maybe that’s what you heard.” You say, trying to wave her off. Unfortunately, Jean had the ungodly ability to pick up your anxiety like a goddamn bloodhound.

“Really? There’s not some mystery boyfriend you’re not telling me about?” Jean teases. You get stiff and quiet immediately, biting your lip as you reach the kitchen. She takes the silence as an affirmative answer, and she’s not exactly far off. Jean cocks an eyebrow at your nervous stance, chuckling at the sweat that practically beads at your brow. You try to hide the flush of your cheeks by busying yourself with setting out different snack foods to organize and avoiding her eyes, but it doesn’t work.

“Oh come on, I’m not blind. You’re over there blushing like a student. Who’s the lucky guy?” Jean asks, helping you with the task. You begin to open a back of chips, looking away from Jean’s knowing gaze.

“I- We’re- We’re not really a thing. He’s just a friend.” You say, heart thundering in your chest as you pray Kurt isn’t lurking nearby. You’re struggling with the bag still, and Jean holds her hands out as an offer. You hand it to her without a second thought, and she opens the bag easily.

“And is this friend coming to the party tonight?” She asks. You stall for a moment. All you can hear are the soft clinks of the chips hitting the inside of one of the bowls you had set out. You’re not quite sure what to say to that, or even if you had anything to say. Your hesitance makes her frown, looking up at you cautiously. When she puts the bag back down, she reaches out to take your hand.

“Well, if he does stop by, I’ll be glad to meet him.” Her tone is reassuring, and you muster a small smile for her. Tonight was supposed to be fun, so you’d do your best to enjoy it.

The night goes by busier than you ever would have expected. Everyone comes dressed to the absolute nines in their costumes, and although a few were lacking in imagination in your opinion- Logan specifically- everyone looked amazing. You quickly realize that It’s harder to be a good hostess in this big ass house than you would think. Between the food, trying to catch up with friends, and the doorbell constantly ringing with practically a line down your driveway of more trick-or-treaters than you’ve ever seen, you were constantly busy. Lucky for you, you had good people around you. Logan and Scott thankfully took over cooking hamburgers and hotdogs- and Jean promised to keep them from butting heads. Ororo and Xavier happily volunteered to hand out the candy when you couldn’t, and you had Jubilee to count on when it came to the music. The house was busy, people were smiling, and overall, everything was going really well.

The only downside was that you hadn’t seen Kurt since Jean arrived. Sure, it was busy, but every time you managed to pry yourself away from the crowd and look for him in his usual hidey-spots, you never found him. He’s good at being sneaky, I mean he has to be, right? Being blue and all, but his consistent absence makes you a little nervous. He’s probably just being extra cautious, and you can’t blame him for that.

After a few drinks have been had, spirits are high, and some different party games you had planned were finished, it was time to vote for best costume. Almost everyone had gone outside, enjoying the yard and the house in all its festive glory, but you stayed inside to count the votes. Kitty and Illiyana had volunteered to help you, and it takes a surprising amount of time to count the various strips of colored construction paper. In the end, it seems like it was really more of a “most ridiculous” costume contest instead. Jubilee, dressed as the one in only Kool-aide-man in the biggest plastic fishbowl you’d ever seen, won best costume by a single point, with Kevin’s fantastic costume of Professor Xavier himself a single point behind. You try your best not to laugh, knowing that they are not going to be too happy about that. You had bought a light up-sash and a plastic crown for the winner, stopping to grab them before stepping outside to try and find the teen.

Somehow, you can’t find her. I mean, You think it would be easy to find a huge red bowl with a face on it, but she’s not outside at all. When you ask Hank, he says he’s pretty sure she went back inside, so inside you go. You’re starting to get a little anxious at this point, not finding her on the first, or second floor. The third floor is completely dark, aside from the colorful light coming from the windows. You call out her name with no response, and then thinking that Kurt may have seen her, you call out his name next. Nothing. He’s never done that before. Sure, there was a lot going on, but normally he’d at least try to answer you. You creep from door to door upstairs, without any luck, when a muffled sound from the tower room falls on your ears. It makes you pause for a moment. It might be nothing, but you remember telling Jubilee about the room earlier, so you figure it wouldn’t hurt to check.

You’re hesitant, but then there's another muffled cry, and this time, you know it’s him. You slowly creep up over to the door, and then up the stairs to the room. Minutes feel like hours, and when you finally get there, you find Kurt, on his knees and doubled over in pain with his hands pressed to his chest.

“Oh my god, Kurt!” You cry out, running over to him. His face is scrunched up in a wince, his eyes shooting open when you try to help him sit up.

“No, no- You can't be here- You need to go,” Kurt’s voice comes out between heaving breaths. Your hands are shaking, panicked as you spot the blood seeping through his shirt. He hisses in pain when you touch the spot, as if he’s been burned, and when his hands quickly tug your wrist away- his neckline shifts. There’s a brand over his heart. Etched into him as if it were carved with a scalpel.

“What happened? What's happening?” The words come out faster than your brain can catch up. His nails are elongated, razor-sharp points almost digging into the skin of your wrist as hold hold shifts. The brand glows as another wave of pain washes over him. Those small points that normally hide in his curly hair have grown, too. His horns sweep over his head, prominent and black at the very tips. He cries out, slumping forward onto your shoulder as the pain passes.

“You need to go. Bitte- I need you to leave.” Kurt almost whimpers, practically limp against you as he tries to catch his breath. “It’s Azazel, my Vater. He’s found me. He’s using the brand to track me down. It’s too dangerous for you to be here.” He stiffens as another wave of pain hits him, and you do your best to keep upright. There’s so much running through your head, concern, confusion. You don't know how to help him besides holding up up and it's killing you to see him like this.

“I don’t understand- I thought he couldn’t find you unless you used magic?” Kurt looks ashamed when you ask the question, tucking his head further into your shoulder. It's only then that you actually take a look at the room around you. There's an open book on the ground, runes and lettering you don't understand scatter the pages, along with a diagram of a devil that seemingly shifts into something more human and back at every shift of your eye. When you see the worn cover, you recognize it as the book beneath the floorboards- and you finally understand that it's a spellbook.

“I… I wanted to join you.” Kurt whispers, unable to look you in the eye. “My Mutter was skilled in transmutation so I…” He trails off, shaking his head and wincing when another sharp pain shoots through him.

“It was stupid. I’m sorry. I should never have touched it without a pact.”

“If you make one now, will the brand disappear?”

Kurt visibly pauses. Sitting up as best he can to get a look at your face. You're still panicking, but overall you feel mortified. Ashamed. Did you do this? Were you so instant that he came tonight that he would risk everything just to do so? What was wrong with you- and why on God's green earth would he actually try to go through with it? You're beginning to tear up, swallowing down your thoughts as you offer the only thing you can think of. Kurt doesn't answer you at first, his yellow eyes wide with shock as he stares at you.

“If you make a new pact, will you be able to dispel the tracker?” You repeat, trying so hard to seem confident and self-assured through your shaky voice. Kurt’s face shifts into something you can't quite place, and he shakes his head.

“I can’t ask that of you-”

“Kurt, just answer me!” You’re too stubborn to let it go. A trait that you and Maude often shared. Kurt takes your hands into his own, squeezing them, and shakes his head. He's insistent in his own right, conveying his worry and fears- not for his own future, but yours.

“This isn’t the way you want to gain a pact! Maude had made preparations. She had charms and protections and rules in place! There’s no time for us to do the same. If you make a pact with me now with nothing? It would bind your soul to mine for eternity. You would have no rest, no peace- no Heaven. I won’t-”

“I love you!” Kurt sucks in a sharp breath at your exclamation. Tears have started to roll down your face no matter how hard you were trying to blink them away.

“I don’t care about eternity, or rest- or any of that. I love you. Fuck- I know I haven’t even known you three months- I just…” You trail off, looking away from him in embarrassment that all of this had to come out in such bullshit circumstances.

“Please just make the pact.”

Kurt’s eyes soften, almost scanning your own as if he’s trying to figure out if you’re telling the truth. He uses the back of his hand to wipe the tears from your face, careful of his claws, and then suddenly, he kisses you. It’s easy for you to melt into his desperate kiss, a hand coming up to cup his face as he pulls you closer with his tail. The strong limb pulls you into a straddle across his lap as he takes your free hand in his own. When he breaks the kiss, he does so with a mumbled apology as he takes your free hand. You feel a sudden stinging pain as a careful claw slices across your palm, and he apologizes again as he presses it over his heart, directly against the bleeding brand. Both of you hiss at the sudden, blinding pain as his hand continues to press your palm tightly to the wound.

There’s an energy that begins to fill your body, like an electric current that links the two of you together. Your skin is buzzing, your head spinning as you fall against his shoulder in a mirror of his own position earlier. Kurt’s new claws dig into his own skin, and he grits his teeth as the pain from the brand grows more and more- before everything stops.

You wish you could say there was some spark, or spoken words, or something, but it all ends almost anti-climatically. Everything stops. Everything is quiet- almost too quiet. Whatever vertigo you are feeling begins to wear off, and when you feel like you can finally lift your head, you look at Kurt.

He’s smiling at you, horns reduced, fingernails shortened, with your hand still pressed over his heart- the brand gone and the skin healed on both of you

“Is it over?”

“It’s over.” He confirms, and you sigh in relief, pressing your forehead against his own. Kurt doesn't take long before he’s pressing kisses all over your face, holding you still as you giggle and squirm. You know there’s more to be said between you, but it’s been one hell of a night, and right now you’re enjoying the comfortable silence between Kurt’s fluttering kisses- until someone calls your name from the tower stairs.

“Hey, You in there?” Jean’s voice echoes through the space, and you sit straight up, heart given a jumpstart as Jean comes into view- you don’t have time to move before she gets there.

“You’ll never guess where we found Jube….” She trails off when she sees you and Kurt. “Oh?” Your face is as red as it can get, panic shooting through you at the realization that she’s seen the actual demon living in your home. All he does though is smile and wave, although a bit nervously. Jean raises an eyebrow, beginning to smile just as you realize the position the two of you are in.

“Nice costume,” Jean says, and after a moment of confusion, you realize she’s talking to Kurt. Kurt looks relieved, shoulders relaxing underneath you, and you clear your throat.

“Jean, this is Kurt.”

The air settles in the Tower room once it’s empty, the sound of the party downstairs is muffled through the floorboards, but still present nonetheless. There’s almost a giggle in the air, and the book flips from page to page before it closes shut, and the ink fades as the grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway strikes midnight. A pact is completed, and the energy in the air begins to fade. After all, a soul can’t leave the mortal plane until its final business has been finished, and Maude had not promised her own soul to the friendly blue devil, but no one said she couldn’t offer something else- a soulmate.

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alligator-tearzz · 10 months ago

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R.I.P Van Der Linde Gang 💔 You would have loved:

(seen a few ppl do this,, if you started this definitely lmk and I’ll credit u !!)

updated to add Kieran and Sean

Dutch - Self help books, those podcasts where people give you terribly incorrect health information and claim that they’re doctors

Uncle - The massage chairs in malls, Frank Gallagher, insane reddit stories that definitely never happened, scamming disability cheques from the government

Abigail - iPhone’s share your location feature, the Parent Teacher Association, audiobooks

Arthur - Remote control racing cars (aarwh it’s a toy boat!), the catch and cook youtube videos, Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé, free healthcare mayhaps…..

John - Maury, The sassy man apocalypse on TikTok, Sitting and watching Bluey in a trance with Abigail after Jack has already gone to bed

Miss Grimshaw - Supernanny, Judge Judy, Spas, Massages, Bear Grylls probably, Bed Bath and Beyond

Sadie - Streetwear, absolutely bodying men on FPS games, Rage rooms

Charles - Axe throwing to get the frustration out, wildlife protection acts, David Attenborough, ATLA

Javier - The head massage you get when you get your hair washed at the salon, edibles, Guitar Hero, collecting vinyls

Hosea - Game shows like The Chase and Deal or No Deal, Dolly Parton probably, cruises, community libraries where you take a book and leave a book behind

Strauss - Cryptocurrency, whatsapp scams

Mary-Beth - Wattpad, Ao3, Booktok, you name it. Those fanfic movie adaptations like After, 50 shades of Grey etc, Cottagecore aesthetic, Taylor Swift, TikTok edits, Bridgerton

Tilly - Those ‘Day in the Life of’ Tiktoks, Jazz bars, Chloe x Halle, cruises as well

Karen - How To Get Away With Murder, Bottomless brunch, Reality shows with a bunch of drama like Love Island or Married at First Sight, Ru Paul’s Drag Race

Bill - Mardi Gras, Brokeback Mountain 😋, Home Depot, probably, those giant American cars that are on the verge of being trucks, Call of Duty

Pearson - Those late night infomercials that show random kitchen utensils like a garlic mincer or a nutribullet blender, Reddit, Spending money on E-Harmony, standing in the club and staring awkwardly at a woman, Dungeons and Dragons

Lenny - Online self paced university, Jordan Peele movies, Studio Ghibli movies, Noise cancelling headphones, The Last of Us

Kieran - Animal crossing, Saddle Club, the Wikihow “how to talk to girls” page, taking horrible advice from tik tok just because the person who posted it sounded trustworthy, astrology probably

Sean - Getting drunk at local football games and heckling the other team, claiming he’s not into Karen’s reality shows but then standing there watching the whole episode with his arms crossed while asking her about every single person and their drama, would most definitely be famous for yapping on Twitter, Derry Girls would be his fave show

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floralcyanide · 7 months ago

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― ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ sᴛᴏʀᴍ

In which your best friend, Javi, saves your life when a project goes wrong.

↝ pairing: Javier "Javi" Rivera / Gender Neutral!Reader

↝ warnings: tornadoes, disasters, storm chasing, injury, near-death experience, death, some language, SPOILERS FOR TWISTERS (2024)

↝ word count: 1.2k

↝ author's note: I saw Twisters (2024) on Thursday and knew I had to write something for the fandom. I love the OG Twister (1996) movie and disaster movies in general, so I enjoyed Twisters for sure. if anyone has any requests for Tyler Owens, Javi Rivera, or even Bill Harding just send an ask! enjoy this little fic (:

masterlist ⋇ divider credit: @saradika | @cafekitsune

this fic has been cross posted to ao3.

ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴄᴏᴘʏ, ʀᴇᴘʀᴏᴅᴜᴄᴇ, ᴏʀ ᴄʟᴀɪᴍ ᴍʏ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ᴀs ʏᴏᴜʀs ᴏɴ ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ, ᴀᴏ3, ᴡᴀᴛᴛᴘᴀᴅ, ᴏʀ ᴀɴʏ ᴡᴇʙsɪᴛᴇ. ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴘᴇʀᴍɪssɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ᴜsᴇ ᴍʏ ᴡᴏʀᴋs ɪɴ ᴀɪ ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀᴛᴏʀs ᴏʀ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀʀᴛɪғɪᴄɪᴀʟ ɪɴᴛᴇʟʟɪɢᴇɴᴄᴇ. ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀʏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴜsᴇ ᴍʏ ᴡᴏʀᴋs ᴛᴏ sᴇʟʟ ғᴏʀ ᴀs ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴏᴡɴ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛɪᴏɴ

You always seemed to be getting yourself into situations. It didn’t matter what the nature of the problem was; you were just constantly getting into trouble of some kind. Whether it was a lame guy you were seeing, your car continually breaking down on the way to class, or, in this case, storm chasing, you were dealing with something. Sometimes, your faults lead you to better things, like a better guy in your life or a new car. Hopefully, for the storm-chasing part, an assured spot in graduate school for your project would be the outcome. Your fingers were crossed.

However, right now, more than just your fingers are crossed. Your toes and everything are crossed in hopes of finding a viable tornado today for your theory to be proven. You and your best friends have worked on the assignment for weeks. And it all comes down to how today goes. A breakout of severe weather is expected in your hometown, so there’s no better time than now to test your work. While Kate, Praveen, Addy, and Jeb go into the field, you and Javi hang back to watch the radar and communicate with the group.

“How are things looking out there?” Javi radios in after everyone is settled where they’re supposed to be.

“Lookin’ good,” Kate says, “The winds are crazy out here.”

“That’s what we like to hear,” you respond.

You and Javi hover over the laptop, and the radar shows a large moving storm around where the group is currently.

“Guys, there’s a huge cell over you. Is it anything good?” you radio.

“We’re driving through it now,” Jeb shouts over the sound of pelting sheets of rain, “It’s insane. It’s like the sky opened up.”

“We just have to get through the rain wall, and it should clear out enough for us to see if there’s formation,” Praveen adds.

Commotion is heard over the radio, “Tornado spotted!”

You can see the tornado hook on the radar and become worried as the wind where you and Javi are parked becomes more violent as minutes pass.

“Is everything all good over there?” you ask, and you don’t receive an answer immediately.

“I think it’s too big,” Kate says, a tinge of worry in her voice, “Maybe we should try another time?”

You step out of the van to look ahead at the tornado, and it’s pretty large from a distance.

“I need you guys to get the hell out of there now!” you shout over the walkie.

“You don’t have to tell us twice,” Addy says in a panic.

But, little do you know, it’s too late. The tornado continues to grow quickly, the winds ravaging the car the group is in. They decide to bail and head for the overpass despite being the worst shelter option. But, it’s either that or get sucked up into the monstrous storm and tossed around, or worse. Praveen flies away into the tornado despite his best efforts to run. Addy struggles up the ramp, not far behind Kate and Jeb. Kate tries her best to grab a hold of Addy, but she slips, and the wind takes her into the violent storm. Jeb clings to Kate, shielding her from the whirlwind of debris and ripping gusts. He eventually slips away like the others, much to Kate’s horror.

When a few minutes pass without any communication from the group, you decide to climb into the driver’s seat of the van and book it down the road in their direction. You keep speeding forward despite Javi shouting at you to stop or slow down. You get far enough away to see the overpass as the tornado goes through it and hop out. Javi clambers out of the vehicle, chasing you as you run as fast as your legs can carry you to where you think you see Kate.

“Stop!” Javi calls your name, barrelling toward you.

“Kate!” you scream out, but the sound of the wind drowns out your voice.

The tornado’s path turns toward you and Javi, and you skid to a complete stop. You immediately turn around to see Javi hot on your heels, and he’s also turning to run away. He looks back every few seconds to see if you’re gaining on him. He realizes you aren’t running fast enough and turns around to grab you. Javi puts you on his back and begins running as fast as possible. But the tornado isn’t letting up, and it’s getting closer. Javi spots a deep ditch on the side of the road and makes a run for it. He lays you down in the grass and covers your body with his, shielding you from the tornado that just nearly misses you both. It flies by, taking the van with it. You’re hyperventilating with your eyes squeezed shut as you cling to Javi. The roaring of the storm makes your ears feel like they’re going to burst.

Suddenly, it’s over. Silence fills the air with an occasional clap of thunder in the distance. The howling tornado has dissipated at last. You’re still clutching Javi for dear life. He pulls off of you, his body still over you but not pressed to you.

“Are you okay?” Javi asks, and you can barely hear him through the ringing of your ears.

“Yeah,” you wince, “You?”

Javi sighs, “I’m as good as I can be for surviving a tornado.”

The two of you jog to the overpass, where Kate is still wrapped around a steel rod tucked under the concrete. You don’t see any of the others, and dread fills you.

“Kate!” you call out to her, and she cries out your name in response.

You and Javi help her slide down the ramp and notice she has a large gash in her thigh. You both help her walk through the somewhat clear path in the debris. There’s mud, grass, splintered wood, and other various shards of what used to be cars and houses covering the road. Kate explains what happened to the rest of the group the best she can, but you and Javi don’t have to ask any questions to understand what occurred. It’s not something any of you want to think about right now. The three of you finally stumble upon the town closest to where you are, and first responders help Kate with her leg.

“I can’t thank you enough, Javi,” you say, standing next to him as you watch the paramedics tend to Kate, “You really saved my ass out there.”

“It’s no problem,” Javi shrugs, “You know I’d do anything for you.”

You look over at your best friend, a grin growing on your face. You lean over and gently kiss Javi on his cheek. His face burns underneath his freckles, and you chuckle at his reaction.

After all that happened, there’s a lot of rebuilding and healing to do. And with the help of each other, you and Javi eventually move on. Kate goes off to the east coast and doesn’t really keep in touch. Javi’s new career needs expertise you can provide, but you refuse unless Kate is there to help. She can sense things you can’t. So, you and Javi fly to New York City, and a new adventure begins with Kate. Hopefully, this time, there will be success in yet another difficult situation you’ve been put into.

#javi rivera #javier rivera #javier “javi” rivera #javier rivera x reader #javi rivera x reader #javier “javi” rivera x reader #twisters #twisters 2024 #twister #twister 1996 #twisters movie #anthony ramos #anthony ramos x reader #floralcyanide writes

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novelconcepts · 2 years ago

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There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets spoilers #yj meta #long post #shauna shipman #lottie matthews #taissa turner #van palmer #misty quigley #natalie scatorccio #the question not being how do you survive the wilderness. the question being how do you come BACK.#the way each of them tries so hard to keep moving forward #unable to untangle the girl in the woods from the adult suffering in polite society #how the world doesn’t want to hear about the pain or the night terrors or the sleepwalking or the addiction #the world wants the bright colors and the flash-bang headlines #the world doesn’t want who they are. who they had to be. it wants pretty perfect tragedy #that specialized environment lives on in each one of them every day #but it’s not a place anyone else can ever go #how do you feed that for so long and then just…stop?#constantly thinking about nat saying we didn’t make it out. none of us.#because no. no they didn’t. the girls died the minute that rescue chance did. what came back was risen from those ashes

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cowboylikeyouu · 3 months ago

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i finally watched the making of deadpool & wolverine and wrote down every thought that popped up into my mind while watching, have fun lol

god hugh jackman is gorgeous

they’re talking about all the different ideas they had for this movie and honestly??? i would eat up every single one of them they should still do it lol

god hugh jackman is GORGEOUS

man i missed them sm i haven’t watched dp&w in TWO MONTHS?????

i will never shut up about the deadpool suit in this movie it’s SO AWESOME it’s a blessing for my eyes every time it’s on screen

"that’s what we were striving for with rdj in endgame, is to give this iconic fictional character an amazing ending." yeah well only that endgame‘s ending SUCKED and i will never forgive anyone for it <3

ugh hugh jackman is gorgeous

i could watch him speak forever

i‘m SO glad ryan made that "i should use his body as a weapon" pitch bc GODDAMN that opening scene will never get old

ahhhhhh i love that we‘re getting some insight in the stunt/fight stuff, SO interesting !! the shitty iphone test videos are hilarious

they should’ve made a "he ACTUALLY broke his toe when he kicked that helmet!!!!" reference when ryan kicked logan‘s skull lmao

the marry puppins SNOGGING ryan bts clips will never get old lmao funniest shit ever

THE SUIT LOOKS SO GOOD UGHHHH am i having a gender or a sexuality crisis over it???? guess we’ll never know

EMMA CORRIN ILYSM

shout out to british people gotta be one of my fav genders fr

all the different lines ryan screamed out of the honda????😭😭 honestly they should’ve just kept all of these idc about logic

EMMA CORRIN

"and i knew the fans would love it" ohhh hugh i think we all love it a bit too much

"and yet, i wouldn’t say wolverine is a straight man" awesome, thanks, case fucking CLOSED.

"which i don’t recommend, sending a 10 minute voice memo to anyone"

*me looking at the five 10-20 minute voicemails i send my friends every single day*

THE SUITS LOOK SO GOOD TOGETHER (their asses do as well)

GOD hugh jackman is gorgeous

"what we refer to as the van fight" no babe that’s the honda odyssey sex marathon actually!!

"violence is our love language" ITS CONFIRMED (everyone knew. BUT STILL)

choreographing this scene (all the deadpool vs wolverine fight scenes really) must’ve been SO FUN like UGH just coming up with all this violence knowing that it won’t affect your characters in the long haul and you can add of many of it as you want????? THE DREAM

THEM HUGGING IN THE HONDA???😭😭 brb gotta cry

I LOVE YOU EMMA CORRIN

CHRIS EVANS LOML

it’s unfair how attractive he is i‘m gonna throw up

reminder to myself to finally learn johnny‘s monologue i wanna be able to randomly hit people with it

OHHHH i actually did NOT realize that was hulk‘s bed from ragnarok??? which is weird bc i used to watch that movie religiously. but hey that’s so cool!!

channing tatum talking about gambit is so heartwarming man so happy for him😭

jennifer garner is so pretty i‘m so gay lord help

dafne keen‘s voice sounds SO different when she’s not playing laura, CRAZY

EMMA CORRIN MY LOVE

just once just ONCE i wanna walk through a street filme set like this UGH it looks so cool & surreal

"this is our baby yoda" i have to be this annoying person i‘m sorry but HIS NAME IS GROGU

i don’t know shit about music but i could listen to people talk about movie scores for hours on end (how did you know sideways is my fav youtube video essayist???)

good fucking god hugh jackman is gorgeous

lmao they should’ve kept the "zoooombies wake uuuppp" again, idc about logic

EMMA CORRIN ‼️‼️‼️

ohh hugh jackman is gorgeous (put your greasy tits away you preening slut)

ugh i‘m getting emotional help

well that was awesome, gonna cry myself to sleep now byeee

(have i mentioned how gorgeous hugh jackman is?)

#deadpool and wolverine #deadpool & wolverine #deadpool 3 #the making of deadpool & wolverine #assembled #poolverine #deadclaws #peanutbub #ryan reynolds #hugh jackman #emma corrin #wolverine #wade wilson #shawn levy #channing tatum #xmen #mcu #marvel #amy talks

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mothmantoaflame · 10 months ago

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Prompt: The Beemer

Word count: 377

characters/ships: Steddie

Pulling into the trailer park Steve is not at all surprised to see that Eddie is in fact not ready and waiting out front like he had promised yesterday when he’d asked (read begged) him for a lift. Parking the car he presses the horn once and waits for the metalhead to appear.

After a few minutes Eddie spills out the door of his trailer looking like he’d only just woken up. Stumbling towards the Beemer he pulls the front door open.

“You’re sitting in the back.” Steve tells him, meeting his eyes. Eddie freezes a confused frown on his face as he tries to figure out if Steve’s joking or not.

“Why?”

“Robin sits in the front.” Steve tells him mater of factly turning the key in the ignition, the beemer jumping to life.

“But you picked me up first.” Eddie says still standing in the open passenger side door.

“It’s not me you need to fight it’s robin.” Steve tells him and something about that sentence makes Eddie draw his cheek into his mouth and squint at Steve as he thinks.

“But I’m your boyfriend.” He says

“So.” Steve asks, meeting his eyes.

“So I should get to sit in the front, not Robin.” He argues and Steve glances at his watch checking how late they’re going to be picking her up.

“Look it’s not me you have to convince. Just get in the car.” He says placing his hands on the steering wheel.

“Ugh fine.” Eddie huffs out throwing his head back dramatically before slamming the front door.

“Hey don't slam my door.” Steve calls as Eddie pulls open the back door.

“Just cause your van broke down doesn’t mean you need to take it out on mine.” He adds as Eddie throws his back pack into the seat before sliding in and sitting in the backseat behind the passenger seat.

“This is unfair.” He grumbles

“Yeah yeah it must be such an injustice to have to sit in the back seat.” Steve meets Eddie's eyes through the rear view mirror, a smirk on his face, he laughs when Eddie sticks his tongue out at him. Shaking his head Steve slowly turns around and starts the drive to pick up Robin.

#stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #drabble #stwgdailyprompt #ficlet #writing prompt #stranger things ficlet #stranger things drabble #steddie ficlet #chaos writes

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starshideurfics · 10 months ago

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Thirsty Thursday - Mer-May

steddie, omegaverse, mdni🔞, inspired by Emma’s (crybabyao3 on twt) mersteve and pearls

Eddie didn’t believe the kids at first when they said they found a mermaid. Especially after Dustin explained that he didn’t have a tail.

“He said he got it taken away by a sea witch. That she’s helping him find his alpha.”

“And just where is this tailless mermaid anyway?” Eddie asks, arms crossed over his chest.

“We’re hiding him at Hopper’s beach house for now,” Lucas starts.

“Yeah, he’s not exactly dressed for us to bring him out in public,” Max adds with a smirk.

Eddie shakes his head, rubs at his eyes. “Please tell me you don’t have a naked omega sitting in Hopper’s place. He’s gonna freak.”

“That’s why you need to come with us, get him out of there. You’ve gotta bring him to your place,” Dustin says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Eddie wants to argue, but instead he grabs the keys for his van. “Fine. But I need to meet the guys in an hour, Joyce got us a gig down at the Surf Shack.” It’s a big step up from the high school beach parties they usually play, since they’re getting paid in more than shitty beer and enough money for gas.

“Thank you, let’s move!” Mike yells, grabbing Dustin to lead the group out to the parking lot.

The kids yell the whole way, recounting how the found Steve—the mermaid’s name is Steve for chrissakes—wandering the beach, completely unsteady on his feet. Max thought he was drunk, but El was worried he was hurt, so they asked him what was wrong and he spilled everything.

He probably found the best group of 12-year-olds possible, since they believed him.

Reaching Hopper’s beach house, Eddie cuts the engine, doesn’t bother waiting for the kids as he heads inside; they catch up almost instantly anyway.

“Steve! We’re back!” Dustin yells as he walks through the side door behind El, since she’s the one with a key.

“We brought our friend Eddie, he’s got his own place so you won’t need to hide there,” Max adds, right on Dustin’s heels.

Eddie is prepared for nudity as he hears awkward shuffling from down the hall. But that’s not what he gets.

Steve walks into the kitchen covered in pearls. The bits of fabric they’re attached to fit perfectly around his torso, but have been tied to cover his bottom a bit haphazardly.

The pearls must be worth a fortune, what with the size and color, but all of Eddie’s focus is drawn by the man’s beautiful face, flecked with moles, his eyes the rich brown-green of sea kelp.

More importantly, his face lights up with his smile. “Thank you! I don’t want to be any trouble, but I’m so grateful for your help!” At first, his smile is just for the kids. But then he looks up, and his eyes go soft.

When his eyes lock with Eddie’s.

“Hi,” Eddie manages to make his stupid mouth say.

“Hello,” Steve answers, not as dumb, but just as soft. “I’ll be staying with you?”

“Yes!” Dustin answers for him. “Eddie has his own apartment, you’ll be safe there.”

“Okay, shitheads—and El—get on back to whatever you were up to before, I’ll get Steve settled.”

The kids try to protest, but Steve agrees, says he won’t be interesting the rest of the day since he’s tired. It’s true, since he dozes off in the van on the way to Eddie’s. He looks so peaceful it pains Eddie to wake him.

But he does, gently, gets another soft smile as he escorts Steve up to his second-floor apartment.

“I’ve got clothes you can borrow for now, then we can find you something you like. But I’m pretty sure you’d get a citation for indecent exposure if you went out in that again.”

“Oh,” Steve says, sadly looking down at his chest. “I wanted to be wearing it when I found my alpha. My pearls show I am ready to be claimed, that I have my dowry for my mate.”

“Did you harvest them all? That’s a lot of oysters to open, especially for the colors,” Eddie says, unable to hide the awe in his voice.

“No, they’re my pearls,” Steve says, like Eddie should understand more than he does. “Mers lay eggs, and if they aren’t fertilized they become pearls. These are the pearls from my heats.”

Eddie suddenly feels the need to readjust himself. “From your heats,” he repeats softly.

“That’s why they’re for my alpha, to show I’m ready for pups.”

“But your alpha is here, on land?”

“Yes!”

“Then you aren’t going to be laying any more eggs, sweetheart. That’s not how heats work for humans.”

Steve’s hand rests low on his belly, covering the perfect circle of pearls. “I know.”

“And how do you know your alpha is here? You can’t have gotten close enough to scent him.”

“I heard him, playing my heartsong. I hear it every so often, coming from the shore, fast like my heartbeat, like he needs to scream to the world. Like he’s calling for me.”

That really piques Eddie’s interest. “He’s playing on the beach? Is he alone?”

“Not always, but I can still pick him out, that’s how heartsongs work.”

Eddie’s mouth feels too dry, and he swallows hard. “Can you hum any of it? Maybe I’ve heard it before, can help you find him faster.”

Steve smiles, hums a melody Eddie knows all too well. One he based on the songs his mother would sing him when he was little. Without a word, Eddie reaches for his acoustic guitar, easily taking over the melody from Steve, playing on as the omega falls quiet.

When Eddie stops, he looks up to see Steve’s big eyes, tears on his cheeks. “It’s you,” he whispers, reverent as he steps closer, far more sure on his new legs now.

“I guess it is.” Eddie puts down the guitar and pulls Steve close, finally scenting at his neck and feeling like there are new colors in his world as he smells waterlilies and coconut and fresh salt air.

Steve leans in first, kissing his mouth, awkwardly guiding Eddie’s hands to tease at his nipples through the gaps in the pearls. Then he grips Eddie’s hips, pulls their groins together and moans at the feeling of his alpha’s cock pressing against his new, human pussy.

“Alpha, please!” he groans. “Want to feel you.”

Eddie obliges, pulls at the ties over Steve’s ass, lets the fabric fall from between his legs, and carefully traces his fingers along his seam, already wet with slick.

He doesn’t have time to knot Steve. Not if he wants to make it to the gig. So instead, he guides Steve to sit on the couch, Eddie kneeling between his thighs, using his mouth to make his omega come.

————

Steve accompanies Eddie to the gig that night. He’s wearing his clothes: a black band tee and ripped jeans that cover a bite high on his thigh.

Eddie has a single, blue-grey pearl added to the chain around his throat.

part 2

#steddie #omegaverse #fanfiction #alpha eddie munson #omega steve harrington #mermay #stranger things fic

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ladykailitha · 3 months ago

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A Love For Christmas Part 2

Here we are already with part two!!!

Eddie takes Steve out on his first taste of real Christmas! Snowpeople making!!!

Part 1

The first job I tried for the Last Little Elf was making and decorating the snowpeople that would add a festive cheer to the front of the workshop.

It was a simple enough task, I thought.

It was not meant to be.

I came back from feeding the reindeer to a bunch of unhappy elves and the Little One in middle looking lost and upset. They had tried so hard to make them perfect. Too hard. The elves parted and revealed the misshapen, half-melted creatures that would have been more at home at Halloween or a long-running Sunday morning comic.

With a little bit of love and lot of magic we were able to salvage about half of a dozen of the snowpeople and got them looking fresh and festive.

“I’m sorry, Santa sir.”

I shook my head. “It’s all right. We just haven’t found your talent yet.”

Steve had taken his own car down to Hawkins instead of having Murray take him in the company car because he honestly didn’t know what Eddie had planned. All he was told was to dress warm and wear the warmest gloves you owned. He pulled up to the tree nursery and Eddie was waiting for him out in front.

He was bundled up in all black, which Steve thought a little strange for a man who loved Christmas, but he didn’t say anything.

Eddie bounded up to the car and Steve rolled down the window.

“You made it!” he said brightly. “Nice car. You have a couple of options. Follow me to location or come with me in my van?”

Steve blushed darkly. “I’ll just follow you if that’s okay?” He really didn’t know this guy and not having a way to get away if things went wrong, didn’t sit right with him.

“Sounds great!” Eddie enthused. “We’ll be meeting up with some of those friends of mine, so I hope you’re fine with a bunch of teenagers.”

“Teenagers?” Steve asked, gripping the steering wheel tightly.

“Yeah, they’re a bunch of great kids,” Eddie said warmly. “First you’ll be talking to one of the moms. Claudia Henderson runs a catering business so she’ll help with the food side of all it.”

Steve instantly relaxed. “Oh okay. Sure. Lead the way.”

Eddie just smiled and patted the roof of the car. He walked back into the office and then came back out carrying a small grocery bag and a box. He opened the passenger side of his van and put the items in it before hopping in himself.

Steve watched all this wondered how ridiculous he must look, creepily watching this guy. Then he pulled into traffic behind him.

He was led to this beautiful house with a ginormous yard. There were a couple of cars out front and loud, rambunctious laughter. He pulled to a stop behind Eddie and took a deep breath. He stepped out of the car when Eddie came up to it.

“Let’s go meet the Hendersons!” Eddie said gleefully.

Steve followed him up the house and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Tell my why I had to be all bundled up if we were just going to someone’s house?”

Eddie burst out laughing and then knocked on the door. “After you get the catering squared away, we are making snowpeople. It snowed the good stuff last night and it’s perfect packing snow.”

“Snowpeople not snowmen?” Steve asked with a raised eyebrow.

Eddie opened his mouth to answer when the door opened. There stood a kid with even wilder curly hair than Eddie. He smiled broadly and gave Eddie a hug.

“Hey, man!” the kid said brightly. “You made it!” He looked over at Steve. “You must be the one who’s coming to see about Ma’s cooking. Come on in. She’s got everything laid out in the kitchen for you.”

Eddie rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Dusty! Did she do the sample testers again?”

Dustin just shook his head and led them further into the house and the first thing Steve noticed was how good everything smelled. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the smell was, it just smelled like Christmas.

When they got to the kitchen it was filled with teenagers of every stripe. There was a pale, freckled, red head cuddling up with a tall black boy. Two even taller, gangly, dark haired youths lounging against the counter deep in conversation. The final pair were the volunteer from the tree nursery and another girl, again dark curly hair and all too knowing eyes.

Eddie introduced them around. Max and Lucas, Mike and Will, and Ellie and of course Robin, he remembered.

They were all waiting on Steve to go through the samples because whatever he didn’t like they got to feast on the rest. Which that part took no time at all. Steve went through any allergies or food sensitivities people at work might have. There were no religious exceptions, thankfully.

Then once the food had been consumed, the check and contract signed, and the mess cleared away everyone piled out of the house into the backyard.

It was even bigger than it looked from the road. It was Calvin and Hobbes dream. Just one and half acres of pure white snow. And it was about to be defiled by teenagers. Steve felt a pang of regret at that, but he pushed it away. It was meant for them to have fun.

Eddie goes back to his van and pulls out the box and grocery bag from earlier and marches up to the kids. “All right I brought all the supplies, it’s time to make our snowpeople. The rules are as follows pick a buddy or two but no singles! You’re going to need help lifting the second ball on to your first. No stealing someone else’s patch of snow. So if looks like they’re moving forward, you don’t get to cut in front of them. Then when everyone is done we decorate them with the stuff I brought. I have carrots and radishes for noses, cool rocks and things for the eyes...” he started going through the box, “hats and scarfs and things like that. But if you want arms you’ve got to go hunting for your own. Again! No poaching!”

There was some grumbling but everyone agreed. Mike, Will and Ellie were one group, Lucas and Max were another and Eddie picked Steve. Which left Robin with Dustin.

Steve didn’t know either of them but from the looks of dismay on everyone’s faces when they realized was a pretty clear indication this was not going to go well. For either of them.

And Steve was right. Immediately they started arguing about proper rolling techniques. Robin was for roll for a few feet and then turn. Dustin was livid. He was shouting that she had to turn the ball every time it was pushed forward.

“That was a mistake,” Eddie said with a sigh. “But it’s too late now, I don’t know of anyone who would be willing to swap.”

Steve looked over at them and shook his head. “I’ve got a couple of co-workers like that. Too smart for their own good, louder than anyone else.”

Eddie laughed and clapped Steve on the shoulder. “Have you ever built a snowman before?”

“No,” Steve said shaking his head. “My mom wanted a pristine lawn and I wasn’t even allowed to go roll around in it and they always removed the snow from the schools I went to stop us kids from starting snowball fights.”

Eddie blinked at him for a moment. “That’s really, really sad. So buckle up, buttercup! I’m going to show you how to make the best snowman possible!”

Steve just shrugged. Winter time was always stark white or grey sludge.

Eddie started telling Steve about all the snowmen he used to make growing up. And how he had this one neighbor who liked to take a baseball bat to the middle snowball and wreck the hell out of it.

“So I got a bag of charcoal wrapped up into a nice round shape,” Eddie said with barely contained glee, “and rolled it in the snow. So that when he hit again he got an explosion of black dust everywhere!”

“Oh my god!” Steve cackled. “What happened next?”

“He tried to sue me and my Uncle Wayne,” Eddie said with with a wide grin. “For emotional distress and damage to his bat and clothes. We counter-sued for him trespassing and all the other snowmen he destroyed. It’s how Uncle Wayne was able to buy the nursery.”

“Was that something you wanted or...” Steve hedged. He bent to help Eddie push the ball in the snow as it had just gotten big enough for two hands.

Eddie chuckled. “Thank you for your concern. But no, we both are really good with plants. Sometimes better than with humans and being able to open up our place was a dream for both of us.”

Steve smiled. They kept working on their snowman and finally they were done. They looked around and saw that other than Robin and Dustin who were still arguing about how big their second ball should be (Dustin was yelling something about the proper ratio), Eddie and Steve were the last to finish.

So when they went to the box it was pretty picked over. They could make a face, but nothing to truly decorate it with. So Eddie added his beanie.

“There!” he said proudly. “Now he has a hat!”

Steve cocked his head to the side. “I think it needs something else.” He took off his dark blue, cashmere scarf and wrapped it around the snowman.

“Perfe–” Eddie began but was cut off by snowball hitting him square in the chest.

He looked down at his chest like he had been shot and then up at the culprit. Dustin had a wide-eyed frightened expression on his face.

“Oh shit!” he muttered, covering his mouth with his hands. “I wasn’t trying to hit you, man. I swear it. I was just–”

Then he was cut off by Steve throwing a snowball at him. That startled a laugh out of Eddie and then suddenly an all out war broke out.

Allegiances were made and broken. Allies lost and found. Snow flying everywhere!

Eddie couldn’t stop smiling at the laughter that was coming from Steve. For someone who had never had a real snowball fight, he sure was getting into it.

They ducked behind the Max and Lucas snowwoman for cover.

“Damn, Stevie,” Eddie huffed, trying to catch his breath. “You’ve one hell of an arm. Where did you learn to throw like that?”

Steve laughed out loud, his eyes crinkling with mirth. “I was like in almost every sport available in public schools. Basketball, swimming. Tried out for football but I was too light and the coach thought I would get pulverized. But the one I had the most fun, was being the pitch hitter and pitcher for my school’s baseball team.”

“A jock, I should have known!” Eddie said mournfully. “Well, our opponents include another basketball player, a skateboarder, and the rest are nerds. So... in theory we should be able to win no trouble.”

“What about you?” Steve said with a huff of laughter. “What do you bring to this partnership?”

“I’ll have you know that I’m a guitar player for my very serious metal band,” he said with a low whistle, “and let me tell you those things are heavy. Plus all the lifting I do at the nursery.”

Steve nodded. “You’re a heavy, short range hitter and I’m a light and fast speed hitter. Got it.” He poked his head around the snowman for a a second or three and then ducked back down. “When I say go, jump straight up and throw it as hard as you can. Okay?”

Eddie nodded, packing together another snowball.

Steve ducked around the snowwoman again and then turned to him. “Go!”

Eddie jumped up and threw two balls in rapid succession, pelting Lucas in the chest, dead center of mass. Eddie cackled when he saw the shocked expression on Lucas’s face. “Well done, Stevie!”

Steve grinned as he rose to throw his snowball, then it happened like it was in slow motion. Robin drew her arm back as far as it would go and let it fly. As it sailed into the air, its intended target, Dustin bent down to scoop up more snow for his own ammunition. The snowball flew over him and continued its arc. Straight into Steve’s face with a sickening smack.

Everyone froze.

Steve reached up to wipe away the snow and it came away red.

“Shit.”

Eddie looked up at him and muttered, “Shit.”

He leapt to his feet and grabbed Steve’s hand, hauling him inside for tissues and ironically an ice pack.

His coat was ruined. The tan overcoat was sprinkled with blood like a ritual sacrifice. Claudia had tried to rescue it bit it was no use.

“Oh my god,” Robin was babbling, “I’m so sorry! I wasn’t trying to break your face. I’m really sorry. Let me pay for a new coat at least. Oh my god!”

She had apparently spotted the river of blood in the skin as Claudia work tirelessly to get the worst of it out so Steve could go home. Claudia rushed to grab her before she fainted.

Robin put her head between her legs and was forced to breathe rhythmically to stop her from hyperventilating.

“Well shit, Stevie,” Eddie said shaking his head, “I guess your first snowman and snowball fight was a bust.”

Eddie and Steve stared at each other for a moment as they both realized what he just said. And then both broke out laughing.

Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

1- @itsall-taken @redfreckledwolf @zerokrox-blog @sadisticaltarts @dolphincliffs

2- @gregre369 @a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @cryptid-system @kultiras

3- @maya-custodios-dionach @goodolefashionedloverboi @val-from-lawrence @carlyv @wonderland-girl143-blog

4- @bookbinderbitch @bookworm0690 @forgottenkanji @dreamercec @blondie1006

5- @yikes-a-bee @awkwardgravity1 @genderless-spoon @fearieshadow @thesecondfate

6- @dragonmama76 @ellietheasexylibrarian @thedragonsaunt @useless-nb-bisexual @disrespectedgoatman

7- @counting-dollars-counting-stars @tinyplanet95 @ravenfrog @swimmingbirdrunningrock @lingeringmirth

8- @gutterflower77 @a-lovely-craziness @just-a-tiny-void @w1ll0wtr33 @beelze-the-bubkiss

9- @steddieislife

#my writing #stranger things #steddie #ladykailtiha writes #hallmark christmas au #christmas tree farmer eddie munson #businessman steve harrington #christmas fic

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piss-pumpkin · 8 months ago

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🩸What doesn’t kill you leaves you wounded 🩹

(Older)dipper pines x reader, Douce amere chapter 21, ~3.4K words Masterlist prev

Tw- blood, hospital

“Y/n!” Dipper yelled. Oh god. Holy shit. He was across the circle in seconds sliding to his knees by Grunkle Fords feet, to the spot where you now laid unconscious. Jesus Christ. His hands flew to your shoulders and he resisted the urge to shake you. He wanted to do anything to wake you up, but his brain was in overdrive. Don’t shake a head injury, that makes concussions worse, he thought. So instead he stared at you, trying to think of anything to do.

Your eyes had fallen shut, so he didn’t even know if Bill was gone. He had to be. Clearly the zodiac worked. But was that good, or bad? Fords words echoed in his mind. They’re the boat, he’d said.

Dipper didn’t realize Ford was kneeling beside him to, and checking your pulse, until he looked up and declared, “They’re alive.”

Okay. That’s good. That means things are okay. But he still felt frozen. Your hair was plastered to your forehead with blood, and with shaky hands Dipper tried to brush it aside to get a better look at the gash.

He shuddered. The blood was streaked across your forehead from the hair, and dripped down your face, even catching on your lashes. Dippers hand flew to cover his mouth, and he reflexively stumbled back. Mabel caught him. He hadn’t realized she’d been there.

He was half aware of people yelling. Wendy was by your head, applying pressure to the wound. Figures she’d know first aid, or something close to it. Though Dipper wanted to scream and nitpick. Pressure on a head wound? What if that makes it worse? But the bleeding needs to be stopped, that’s priority one. Could Bill have damaged the skull? Dipper was shaking, and Mabel was trying to steady him, to little avail. There was a commotion of sorts. As it should be, where you were concerned.

You were alive, that’s all that mattered. A cruel part of him wanted to add a for now to that statement. Alive, but with a bloody face.

Somewhere in the chaos he head the word: hospital. That seemed like a good idea. Dipper tried to get to his feet, but his legs betrayed him, and he crashed back down on his knees. In an instant, Mabel and Pacifica were heaving him up by the arms. The sudden motion sent the world into a blur around him as his head grew light, heart pounding. He managed to echo the word he’d heard, “Hospital.”

People were already moving. Stan was scrambling around, but his car was gone. Car. Shit. You’d- Bill had left it somewhere. Somebody had to call an ambulance. He wasn’t sure if anyone had done it already, so he gave it a shot. His trembling hand dipped into his pocket, and his hand was almost too sweaty to type his passcode.

He didn’t managed by the time you were being scooped up, and put into somebody else’s car, Robbie’s van, laid across the middle row. Right. Yeah. Other people had cars. He cursed himself for not knowing how to drive. Would Robbie go fast enough? There was no traffic law that had to be obeyed in a time like this.

Robbie was in the drivers seat. Wendy buckled you in, even as you laid down, just in case. First your chest, then looped around the van to your legs. There was a cloth, a ripped piece of her shirt on your head to soak up the blood. Dipper stumbled up to the car, throwing open the door beside your head. He looked up at Wendy, “Pressure?” He managed.

Wendy nodded coolly, “yeah.” How she managed to be so calm, he’d never understand. A few more people jumped in the car. Mabel in the passenger seat, Ford in the back, Stan was still away searching for his own keys. Dipper gently picked your head up to rest on his lap so he could sit on your row.

He winced looking down at your face. The cloth was almost soaked through, and left red blotches on his hands when he applied pressure.

When the passengers had seatbelts, Robbie floored it. Good. Fast. Dipper was half aware of Wendy on the other side of the seat, near your feet. His eyes were stuck on your nose, and how it seemed to be painted with the dripping blood.

He blamed himself. And the days he spent upset at you ached like a hole in his heart. All his issues seemed insignificant, now. You’d finally done the exorcism, but…

You’d once told him; no more possession. You were talking about Mabel. It was what, less than a month ago? It felt longer than that. Like he’d fumbled an entire lifetime with you. He might’ve.

Dipper barely noticed the entire car ride. He kept pressure on your head, and he watched the stop signs zip by without the hint of a break in the van, and heard the piecing shriek of car horns in response. That was good. They’re fine. They’re fine. You’re fine. You weren’t moving much.

He hadn’t been to the gravity falls hospital before, never had the need. It was small, really more like a doctors office, and on the outskirts of the town. Dipper didn’t know about the back ambulance entrance until Robbie pulled into it. Suppose Dipper had only seen it from the front and in passing.

Mabel was the first to run out of the van, booking it to the door. Probably to get help. He didn’t see her pass through the doors with the van in the way. Dipper was careful to keep the cloth hard pressed on your head even as he unbuckled his seatbelt and slid open the door. The cloth was wet, and it sent shivers down his spine.

We’re here at the doctors, he thought. This is the best place to be right now. There were people in there who could fix this. Dipper stood by your head, and you were still resting on the seat. He glanced up at Wendy across from him at the vans other door. “Sh-should we get them out?” He sputtered.

Wendy paused, and looked back behind her. “Wait, I think they’re-“

Then people came running out. People in scrubs came, and pushed him and Wendy out of the way.

Dipper watched as they worked, and then took you. They brought a gurney. And in a rush you were off, and Ford was talking to somebody who looked important. Robbie and Wendy were together, Dipper couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Eventually, they were piled into the waiting room. It must have been a slow day besides this, because there were only two other people sat down. One guy looked to have a twisted ankle. One guy was Toby Determined. Dipper was staring at the tile floor. It was white, but old. Specks of old stains or new dirt marked all of it, and the space between the tiles had plenty dust.

He sat with his head in his hands. Your blood was still streaks across his forehead. The nurses asked about it, but he wasn’t hurt.

They’d been there a while, now. Others left, some popped in. Dipper could feel his phone buzz now and again with texts from busy people asking if you’d been let out yet. He didn’t respond.

Your aunt Susan got called in, being your guardian. That was an awkward conversation. Dipper didn’t know what to say when she zeroed in on all of them and asked what had happened. Maybe she expected him to protect you. He didn’t have an answer. Dipper was more than glad when Stan did it for him, said you’d hit your head. It was Ford who mentioned why.

It was him, Mabel, Ford and Stan, Pacifica, and Susan. He’d been holding Mabel’s hand for comfort earlier, but he needed both now to keep his head off the floor.

Each time a nurse or doctor walked in or by or down the hall and he caught a glimpse of them, he thought it might be good news. Or bad. He was halfway aware of Stans hand patting his shoulder. The waiting room was quiet, just the full hum of a fan behind the receptionists desk, and the occasional cough from somebody waiting. People drifted in and out. Toby was still around. Twisted ankle guy got seen by his doctor.

Pacifica had to go. Her parents needed her at home, and even with her protests, she had to leave. She squeezed Mabel’s arm, and tapped Dipper on hand on her way out.

It was maybe mid afternoon when somebody finally came. A doctor this time, not a nurse. She asked for Susan, and your aunt said it was okay that the rest hear the prognosis, too. Dippers hands were cold, he fidgeted with his fingers to try and warm them up, but it didn’t work.

The doctor took a breath. “So, our patient is alright,” she started. Dippers fingers started to twitch as they tapped faster on his palm. “They suffered a pretty bad hit to the head, though, we’re looking at a concussion, but it could be worse. Their records indicate no previous serious head trauma, which is good, we’ll have to wait and see about any symptoms, but there’s a few we can expect, at least for a while,” she said, handing lazy Susan a paper. She scanned it with her good eye while the doctor kept talking.

Dippers hands were sweaty. You were okay. He wanted to yell, or celebrate, but he was still scared. He hoped so hard that there wouldn’t be lasting effects. But you were okay. And Bill was gone. Win-win. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so sick to his stomach once he saw you, and saw you were fine.

The weight of the room seemed to lift a bit when the doctor left. You were alright, so some things were well.

Eventually, they told him to leave. The staff urged the pines family and Susan to go home, to come back tomorrow when you were in better condition. Dipper frowned, “are you sure we can’t stay until we can see them again?”

Mabel nodded along.

The nurse bit her lip, and tapped at her clip board, and told them all you’d be in better shape tomorrow. Dipper wanted to fight, but a hand landed in his shoulder to hold him back. Stan shot him a soft look, “Kid,” he started. “Get some rest.”

Dipper hesitated, brow furrowing. How long had they been sitting in the hospital? He felt dead tired, it was like the waiting room drained the life out of him. He sighed, “Fine.”

And then he left.

…

Eyes crusted shut, you came too with a headache. Both in the sense that your brain hurt, maybe from stress or tiredness, and in the sense that it felt like your skull was throbbing. However that worked. But you were you. You thought. You thought some more, taking in the sensations around you. Bed. Sheets. Pillow. Lights. Even if eyes closed you could feel them. All that, and no trace of Bill. Holy fuck it actually worked.

You tried to open your eyes. They had a hard time adjusting, the hospital light seemed brighter than the sun. Hospital. You were in a hospital, it seemed. what happened- right. It took a few moments, but it came flooding back, and your head seemed to ache and throb at the memory. Bills attack. You resisted the urge to touch your forehead. You must have been bandaged.

When the nurses saw you were awake, they were nice. Gave you water, ice chips, asked if you were alright. As soon as it was allowed, they let Dipper, Mabel, and Susan into the room.

That was nice. When with them, fussing over you and holding your hand, it didn’t feel real, like it was really done that easy. Easy? We’re calling that easy? At least nobody died. You could almost laugh, you at least smiled. You nearly had, died that is. A couple more good hits and maybe you would have.

They told you the damages. They changed your bandages. You’d be good to leave eventually. Soonish, maybe.

Dipper held your hand. You didn’t know how long he’d been there, or how long he was waiting for you. His head was rested on his elbow as he laid it on the thin and uncomfortable mattress. He had a little smile, a shy one halfway hidden behind his arm. You’d asked him to stop inquiring if you were alright, you’d heard that enough. Every once in a while though, he snuck the question in. You could always tell it was coming by the way his eyes hung on your bandaged head.

Mabel brought a weird raunchy werewolf romance novel. That was unexpected. When she came to see you, she grinned when she walked in and pulled it out of her bag like a dramatic reveal, and despite your protests, read it with you. But it grew on your pretty fast. Mabel was right, it was a little funny. Though you halfway suspected that it wasn’t entirely ironic for her.

They gave you meds: antibodies to prevent infection of the wound, something to help you sleep, pain killers. They gave you spare bandage rolls, to change with. Your head didn’t feel great, but the drugs helped. And then they gave you less of them.

Eventually, you were discharged. It might’ve been a few days. Aunt Susan took you home. Her home, that is. And had time off to see to it that you were rested and taken care of. Your room felt weird. The last time you’d slept here, it wasn’t you. It was possession, and all your drawers, files, and items had been snooped through and prodded around by Bill looking for any secret that could kill you, physically or otherwise. You gulped as you stepped inside. Bill had left your laptop on the bed.

Sighing, you moved it to the side table, and sat down on the mattress. It was much softer than the hospitals. You stared at the wall. With headache and a body that wasn’t yours, you’d studied the wall a while back. Looked and memorized every little stain or crack in the paint, and every notch of the trim. You could see this wall if you closed your eyes, probably.

You slumped back on the bed. This sucked. The sun was high in the sky, maybe midday. And you were here, forced to take it easy.

You stood slowly, to help the head, and drifted to the bathroom, and eyes caught on the mirror. It was you. You still had a bandage from the roll over your forehead and wrapped around. You couldn’t even see any red marks on it, on the outside it seemed clean. Soon, you wouldn’t even need the roll, and you could switch to one more akin to a big bandaid. Who knew if that would be more or less comfortable. At least you barely noticed it anymore as it was now.

It was hard to resist the urge to touch it. Pursing your lips together, you gave in, and ghosted your fingers across so softly you could barely feel it. That accomplished nothing.

Taking it easy wasn’t all that easy. You realized that much as you leaned on the counter to stare at yourself, with nothing to do.

Oh shit. You had embarrassing death note-y letters just sitting in Soos’ break room. You could go move those. It would at least get you outside. If they found that, it would be so embarrassing. Yeah, that was something to do.

You put shoes on.

“Y/n?” Susan called from the kitchen. Right. She made her way to the doorway. “And where do you think your going?”

You bit the inside of your cheek. “I was going to stop by the shack,” you started. “Go for a walk, get some fresh air.”

Susan made a face, and you could tell she wasn’t entirely happy. She looked at you, then at the door, then back to you. Sighing, she leaned on the wall. “Y/n, I’d rather you stayed and rested,” she said, worlds clinging to her lips like she wanted to keep them to herself.

She might’ve been right. “Please?” You asked, shooting a weak smile with brow raised. The way it creased your forehead felt funny under the bandage. You might need to take another painkiller on your way out. Or when you get to the shack… the doctors said you shouldn’t be alone while you were on them. Or drive.

Susan sighed. “You’re going to be back by dinner time, okay?”

You nodded, and tried not to let it show that the motion sort of hurt.

“Okay, go tell them you’re alright,” she relented.

You smiled, offered a “thanks,” and left with a bag that had a sweater and a bottle of pills.

It was bright. Despite the summer weather, you’d spent so much time locked up indoors lately. That should probably change, you thought. Soon it would. When you were better.

When you got to the shack, you went to the front door to sidestep the gift shop. You glanced at the spot on the grass where the shacks magical barrier had taken affect before, the threshold between freedom and possession. You were over it.

Approaching the door, you were startled when it swung open in front of you.

“Y-y/n?!” Dipper exclaimed, hovering in the doorway. His jaw has fallen open, eyes wide as they flickered from your forehead to your gaze. “You’re out of the hospital?”

His eyes were burning through you, but mostly you were just glad to see him. Second, you noticed Mabel behind him, and she bounced over to the doorframe, too. “Why didn’t you say anything? We were like, going to see you?”

”Now?” You managed. Had you really not mentioned you were discharged? “It… slipped my mind, I guess,” you mumbled, looking at the wood panel floor.

Dipper raised his brow, and was doing a bad job hiding his concern. Mabel, too.

“Well, I’m here now, so…” you said, trying to recover from the silence. The state of your head and the after effects of the concussion were a matter for later. You gestured at them in the door, “are you gonna let me in?”

They did not let you in. In fact, they blocked you even more. Dipper and Mabel, breaking from their stunned silence, stepped out to hug you. It probably shouldn’t have caught you off guard, but it did. It took you a moment for you to wrap your arms around them in turn. Wow. Both their hair ended up in your face, and it almost made you sneeze.

Your eyes stung, and for a moment you thought that hair or fuzz got in them, but no. Your visions grew blurry for a moment as tears threatened to spill. You guys all made it. You were all fine. All friends. You squeezed them, and pressed your eyes shut to try stop the waterworks. You wrapped one arm around Mabel, and one around Dipper, and couldn’t cracked their backs the way you pulled them in.

They didn’t need your grim death bed letters. They didn’t have any new scars from the possession. You were still here. The last few days had blurred together in the hospital. And your bedroom was just the way Bill left it. But the shack was yours. Theirs, too. More theirs than yours in the physical sense. But more than anything it felt safe, just for you.

You’d blinked back tears by the time you let go of your friends. You collected your letters without opening them to read again. Their contents were better left forgotten. But you didn’t throw them out.

The shack was safe. So was outside, you could go anywhere now. Dipper held your hand, and not in the sad way he did at the hospital. Mabel finished her gross werewolf book. And you had the strange feeling that you could, potentially, be okay now.

Hey fellas. Anyway this is like the epilogue to the angst arc me thinks. I’m not even like satisfied with this chapter but like. Posting. It’s whatever.

And man I’m glad the angst arc is done 😭😭 tell me why I decided to write a long ass angst arc and a death fakeout in my silly gravity falls x reader rom com. I have no idea what I’m cooking sometimes😭

Taglist: @dead-esque @cipheress-to-k-pop @phobo-ss

#x reader #my writing #douce amere #dipper pines #dipper pines x reader #gravity falls #gravity falls x reader #dipper x reader

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