#autumn leaves collab

[hyukascampfire]

THE TERRIBLE HALF-TRUTHS OF THE UNDEAD ҜING

⠀(🍂 ) 𝓡EVENANT in folklore, a revenant is a spirit or animated corpse that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living ... ( 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 )

1︎5.5k revenant!yeonjun · ƒ ! r ft. soobin ⸺ ✴︎ 𝖿𝖺𝗇𝗍𝖺𝗌𝗒 ... smut, violence, angst, death, animal death & vivid descriptions of animal death, major character death, unprotected sex, cumming inside, dry humping (because bring it back), biting, dom yeonjun sub reader, mentions of death in childbirth, reincarnation, teasing, breast worship, yj calls reader ‘my love’, def some typos

🪶 ⦂ how fun is this collab? :,) this fic was so fun to write. i personally believe that tsfawc enjoyers will love this one,, but you'll have to read it to confirm that, right? hehe. and of course, go read everybody else's if you love this one! they're all set in the same world, and everybody worked so hard on these fics. send some love their way!

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

𝒪𝑁𝐶𝐸 𝒰𝑃𝑂𝑁 𝒶 𝒯𝐼𝑀𝐸, in a land far, far away, where the treetops touched the soft clouds of the sky and the water sparkled under the glowing sun, where mountains rose high, and long, deep caves ran through them, where the sea met shore in collisions of swirling, foamy punches, where the undead walked among the living, where the winged flew above the finned, there was a land where things beyond reason and rhyme existed perfectly true. Among those strange beings and within the veils of Aethera, there was a girl loved by death. 

He sits on your shoulder, a dark, boding shadow and glared at those around you with promise in his eyes.

That’s how it seems, anyway. That’s how everybody looks at you. They dodge you, whisper about you, evade your gaze as if he might reach his claws for them next if they linger for too long.

Crows with dead eyes arrive at your doorstep like some lover’s cheeky gift, other poor creatures like fat grey mice are left to rot in the wheatfields, and yarrow stocks wilt outside the wall of your room. If Death thinks that you are flattered, he misunderstands you. You are terrified of nothing more than dying. The first time, it was a sly joke. Then it happened again, and you watched their eyes change. And it happened again and again, and your people are a suspicious type. Something can only be a coincidence so many times.

When you began to sneak into a little shack with a village boy, you thought that maybe, somehow, this would all pass. He died too. There’s really no coming back from that, is there? You don’t blame them. You’re not the freak that they all believe you to be—none of them get close enough anymore to know that, though.

The wickerbasket’s handle creaks under your fist. You usually only forage along the shallow line of the forest; you pluck from bramble bushes topped with plump berries that crawl between trees during the summer, and when the crab apple tree’s branches hang heavy with the fruit, you snatch those up too. You’re more useful to your family out here, in the woods that they deem just as cursed as you. Where you won’t be their burden.

Crisp autumn leaves crunch under your boots. You scan between them—more grey and rotted this late in the season than fresh and orangey—for the edible mushrooms and roots that you usually forage at this time of year. The basket’s already pretty heavy with a variety, black morels and sorrel and burdock, as you bend down to pull a truffle from the dirt against a tree.

You drop it down with the rest of your finds. The basket smells like earth, no doubt your hands do too. You dust your palms off on your skirts and go to rise back from your squat.

A deep, billowing horn pierces the forest’s silence. It’s both far away, wiggling between the whispers of rustling leaves, and much too close. It draws out. Long. Bone-chilling. You freeze, scanning between each tree trunk and praying that you won’t find what you fear you might.

You are much deeper into the woods than you usually are. Than you ought to be. And you know what that horn means—you know that it means something far worse than what you’d been afraid of, coming into these woods. Much more primordial than the hide-behinds you were scared you might find this deep, much less avoidable than the faerie rings you stepped around.

Why would The Wild Hunt be here? A shudder runs down your spine, and you curl your fingers into your skirts and lift them as if to prepare to run, but you don’t. Your feet find root in the forest floor and all you can do is stand terribly still in catatonia. Their horn sounds again, and a procession of wicked whoops and howls follow. Wild hoofbeat rumbles under it all—the hunt and their rides. You hope that they’re just passing through, and you won’t so much as see one of those wild riders. There were plenty of folktales that the matrons of your village would bolster to terrify you as children, but you knew even then that their stories of the riders, with their flesh falling away from them and their pale or beady eyes and their gnarled maws and frightening figures as they rode on the backs of equally terrible steeds, were not fabricated. They are not a bogeyman or a wailing banshee; they are death made in the flesh, and they are here. In your forest. 

Your legs won’t work. You curl your clammy fingers tighter around your basket and lean into the tree beside you. How deep had you wandered into the forest? Hopefully not too far; when you gain the courage to run, you hope that they do not send their hounds to snap their foul breath on your heels. Maybe just standing here and blending into the trees is best. The Hunt would love a chase, and you don’t want to become their next.

The next call comes and you throw that all to the wind. Your heart pounds against your ribcage as you let your basket clatter to the leaves and you take off. You fly over roots and shrubbery and between the trees, your blood roaring in your ears faster. You’d oblige if you could.

Above the loudness of your frantic mind, the harrowing whinnies and The Hunt’s ruckus dulls until it’s faraway again, and then it’s gone. Well, you don’t stop to check if they’ve really passed through the forest. You just run.

“There you are, love.”

His voice cuts through your frantic escape and stops you dead in your path. You almost go crashing down over the ground with the force that you dig your heels into it. Though the voice is non-threatening, you don’t turn to face the source.

He speaks again. You already know who it is. He, old as the earth you stand on itself, leads that band of wild riders. Is the king of the undead, collects souls for reaping.

And he’s the one who’s plagued you with his attention. Death.

“Why do you keep your back turned to me?” he says. “I frighten you. That hurts.” His voice lilts with amusement and sharpness. “I wish that you would face me.”

You’re not fond of the way that he speaks to you with a familiarity. But then again, you’re not fond of dying, either. Your legs are boneless beneath you. Turning, you slowly indulge him, though it takes a great amount of willpower to not run again like your jittering jaw and trembling hands ask you to.

The King of Death stands tall and utterly preternatural, leaned against a crooked tree in the woods behind you. His smile cracks across his face in a jagged way that suggests he finds you amusing, but none of that meets his eyes. They’re the color of the greyish, rotted leaves beneath you. The dark shadows beneath his eyes are the only thing belying the weight that his infinite life might have on him. That, and the hollowness that rings from him.

And though he sounded entirely playful, you are shaken by the sorrow that you find in him now that you’ve turned. Even more so, you’re not sure why you feel it echoed somewhere in the hollows of your bones. “I’m sorry,” you say. It trembles terribly. You want to say that you’re sorry you caught his attention, but it seems you’ve always had his attention. It’s more that you are petrified down to your marrow that the time’s come that you face this… strange infatuation. Here he stands: the one who leaves hollowed out husks of creatures at your doorstep. Should you run or thank him? Is Death as prideful a creature as the other kinds that inhabit Aethera? “I don’t mean to…”

He pushes off his tree, fixing his cape that cascades over only one of his shoulders. It’s tattered and falling apart like the rest of his clothing, though you think that the bronze stitching and swirling oakleaf patterns in the black say that they might have been immaculate at some point. Or maybe they weren’t, and they had started that way. He is Death, anyway. “You’re sorry?” he says. “Why are you apologizing to me? You’ve hardly done a thing to warrant it.”

Faltering, you wet your chapped lips. You’re not really sure. Holding back another apology for fear that you’ve offended him and he’ll now strike you down for it, you say, “I thought that, maybe the hunt was…” Wow, you sound stupid. You can see in the sly smile his lips form that it amuses him. That’s almost worse than angering him: intriguing him. What you really should be doing is boring him so that he’ll find you a waste of his time. Then, maybe, he’d give up haunting you.

“After you?” he finishes. Shaking his head, he says, “My hunters only answer to me.”

“Oh,” you say plainly. Part of you wants to ask why that should comfort you, especially when you’re the one that he sends little bits of death to, but rationality keeps those words in the back of your throat. You don’t really want to know. “Why are you passing by here?”

Something akin to old longing passes through those witty eyes, and then he eats up the distance between you with languid steps of his long legs until he’s nothing more than one last step in front of you. The closeness consumes the air in your lungs, leaving nothing for you but short and shallow drags. The forest has gone dead silent aside from the sound of it. His voice is even more magnetic now that he’s so close.

You recoil when he brings a hand up to brush the pad of his thumb over your cheek and then cup your jaw, as if afraid that he might snuff you out here and now. His fingers are softer than you thought they might be, and the lines of his face sharpen into what you think is hurt. Hurt that you flinched?

“We go here and there,” he says, “but it’s been a very long time since we came here.” There’s a certain thickness to his words; a certain tension coiled over them from something that you’re not privy to. And yet, there’s a farawayness, too. You bet he’s full of a lifetime of secrets. Lifetimes of secrets. “But I think I’ve found myself a reason to finally return.”

Breathy and still struggling to flatten out your breathing, you ask him, “Why?”

The Undead King’s smile turns wicked once more, and he doesn’t answer you. It’s awfully eerie.

“Do you have… business here?” you try again. It’s a roundabout way of asking, do you have someone to take away?

“I have business wherever the living go,” he says, letting your face go but not giving you any more room. You narrow your eyes. He’s quite good at non-answers. “Nothing is more certain than that I will greet every living thing eventually. I’ll come to take you, too, when the time comes.”

Your mouth dries up. The entirety of your home, all the people you’ve ever known, fear you for all the death you bring. Not one of them fears it more than you do. You’ve seen it enough to fear its frightening finality.

The drop of your face must’ve told him how much that scared you. “Dying is not such an awful thing, love. Living pales in comparison.” Searching your eyes, he adds, “But I’ve not come to take you.”

That’s easy for him to say: that death isn’t something to fear. His words don’t calm your thundering heart, but you offer him a, “Thank you…” It trails off toward the end when you realize that you don’t have his name. If he has one, anyway.

“Yeonjun.” He tilts his head, strands of sparrow hair brushing over his watching eyes. “Most don’t know it, but you’re not most people, are you?”

Your breathing had just begun evening out. It’s a shame, the way that it kicks back up at the way he looks at you. “What do you mean?” you say, but of course you know. Nobody else is given dead things like you. It’s not like you yourself are very strange; you like pretty dresses and sharing gossip with friends just as much as any other girl your age.

Giving you another one of those knowing smiles that he uses just like words, he steps back. “I’m sorry that I scare you how I do.”

You don’t answer him. What could you say to that? That he doesn’t? That would be a lie, and he would know it.

Yeonjun’s eyes flit over your face, over your cheeks made pink by the autumn cold, lingering on your lips for a few unexplainable beats, and then landing on your eyes where he searches and finds something that sends his throat bobbing with a thick swallow. “I don’t mean to be your monster. It’s only that…” He steps back again. “You remind me a terrible amount of someone I once knew.”

“Who?” Though your shoulders relax a bit with some distance between the two of you, you do your best to not let your guard down. All the stories that you recall being told, all those cautionary tales passed down through word of mouth around a fire, end with some stupid girl thinking that the monster could be changed or tricked. You’re willing to bet that the man in front of you, no matter how human he looks or how enchanting his words are, could be neither.

That doesn’t explain the ache in your chest when he holds your eyes for too long. But you shove that feeling way, way down. It’s nonsensical.

His voice takes on a parting tilt when he says, “It doesn’t matter anymore. Death takes us all.” Yeonjun dips his head at you. His smile wavers. You’d think that crooked smile on his mouth was indelible had you not seen it twitch down at the corners only for a moment. If you’d have blinked, you’d have missed it. “You think I’ll hurt you,” he says, “well, don’t let me stop you. Go ahead, run. I apologize for your basket.”

Death takes us all. You’re not sure what that’s supposed to mean, coming from him, but it sends a cold wind up your spine and goosebumps crawling over your skin.

He watches you go. You don’t look back when you do, but his gaze sits on your back until you’re sure you’re out of his sight. When you return to your home, your mother asks where the basket full of ingredients for supper went.

You imagine what her face might look like if you told her the truth. But that was impossible, so instead you tell her some stupid story about a wolf that startled you so bad that you ran home paying no mind to where your basket was. It’s close enough to the truth.

༺ ꘏ ༻

It doesn’t matter what you do; you can’t get his face out of your head. While you cut butter into flour and then roll out dough, simmer fruits over flame and you slice cheese off blocks, you replay that meeting in the forest. The memory spins and turns over no matter how hard you try to put it away from your thoughts.

It’s not every day that somebody meets the likes of him. You can’t blame yourself; he had such captivating eyes. Dark, playful, and endless. There they are again. You sigh and dust your hands off. Maybe you are just as strange as they all think that you are. Morbid curiosity is like that, though. Taking the most normal of us and making you wonder what you absolutely should not wonder about.

And you absolutely should not wonder about him.

The sun has begun to hang high in the sky, but the breeze that crawls through the window you pulled open before you got to work is a crisp one. Autumn’s really come, now. Outside the window, a huddle of children play around in the leaves that you’d raked up. You’ll have to rake those back up, but you hardly have the heart to tell them to take their playing elsewhere. Their giggles and small voices waft in with the breeze, and a traitorous part of you yearns for a family that you know you’ll never have. No man would risk that fate, not after what happened to the last man who paid you any attention. You grit your teeth at the memory.

Having a face for the thing that’s made your life the way it is is strange. Seeing him in the flesh, with handsome eyes and a taunting mouth, looking something near human, you think you’ve come to resent him for it. How dare he ruin your life? He, more than anybody, should know how fleeting life is. What is in it for him to deface what little time you have? You keep going back to that thought: why did he ever even appear to you in that forest? There is not one story in which you remember Yeonjun showing his face to those he hasn’t come to claim. Death makes his visits swift and purposeful.

Moreover, why on earth would he even look your way? You wish there was a plain way to ask him why, or even to plead with him to stop. Whatever it is he’d ask of you, you think you might give him. To get back to living, you would.

A deep, familiar voice from behind you gives you pause. “Want some help with that?” Soobin says. He stands  in the doorway, his head nearly brushing the top of the frame. It’s made too small for him. Most things in your tiny village were made too small for Soobin. There had been a time where you’d been taller than him, that had hardly lasted long enough.

“As if,” you dismiss and gesture at his dirty hands. He’d no doubt been out working his family’s field, his tunic sleeves rolled up to his elbows.  “Cow shit isn’t an ingredient.”

Anybody else might’ve scoffed or taken offense, but he just laughs and invites himself in anyway. It never fazes Soobin. He doesn’t let you push him away.

It’d be better if he did. How long before he ends up dead, too? Alive one moment, and then a husk without a soul next. You don’t think you could handle seeing cold, dead eyes where the annoying, warm shine should be. Of course it would be better if he stayed away, if he had half the mind to. Even most of the children have heard enough from their mothers to stay a healthy distance. He’s not too much better than a child, though.

“Isn’t it?” he says. His cheek is smudged with whatever sort of dirt he’s got on his hands and under his nails. “I’m done with work for the day. Want to go out to the field?”

You two have always ran off and avoided your life in between willowy, flaxen wheat stocks. They were just tall enough at this time of year to hide you away. But, for some reason, your stomach does a quick flip at the thought of being outside. It’s silly; couldn’t he find you here, too? “I’m busy,” you say. You’d already kneaded this roll of dough plenty, but you dig your fingers into it and begin again.

“Busy?” he scoffs, “Since when are you too busy to get away from work?”

Gritting your teeth, you let the sounds of your kneading answer. Now, more than ever, he should keep his distance. You know one thing that you’re sure nobody else does: Death’s come to visit. 

His brows shoot up in your peripherals. “I don’t get answers today?”

“I’m sorry,” you say, giving up working the over-kneaded dough only because your arms ache. “Why don’t you go talk off the ear of some other poor village girl? I’ve heard as much as I can handle today. And then when that one’s tired, you can bother the next, I’m sure.”  You soften the words with a quick smile his way. No matter how many times you say something sour in hopes that it’ll send him away, as soon as you glance up at his face, you reel it in.

His company is all you’ve ever had. The least you can do for him is make sure he doesn’t end up like carrion, even if he chooses to take that risk himself. You don’t know why he does.

Voice playful, he says, “I’m glad to hear that you believe I’ve got ladies falling at my feet, but I’d rather not annoy a pretty girl, so you’re my only option.” He pokes at the sleeve of your simple cotton dress. “Should I drag you out of here? Don’t your arms hurt doing all that?”

“Oh, you are a refined man, aren’t you?” you say, shuffling out of his reach. Damn him, he makes it difficult. “Well, I am a pretty girl, so you should take yourself elsewhere.”

Soobin smiles easy. “I’m bored out of my mind. You’re just going to let me suffer?”

“That’s not my issue.”

“I’d argue that it is,” he says. “Come on. Why are you giving me a cold shoulder?” Leaning, he tries to get a look at your face. “Did I upset you? I wasn’t aware that you cared much about what I thought.” When you spare him a sharp glance, he says, “I think you are very, very beautiful. Would you stop ignoring me, now?”

You wish you could fall into the easy banter that comes with being around Soobin, but you can’t. You can’t let him be around you. “Soobin, stop it,” you say, draining your voice. You don’t look at him while you say it.

Going quiet, he seems to notice that today’s different. His gaze is heavy as he stares at you for a few long moments. Crossing his arms over his chest, he asks, “What happened?”

You swallow. “Nothing. I’m just doing something.”

“Oh, alright,” he says, tone inflicting in a way that says he doesn’t believe you one bit. He pushes off the counter. “I’ve put up with you pushing me away for years. You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

“Soobin,” you warn. If you look at him, you fear you’ll be forced to watch the only one who never cared much what a risk it was being around you leaving. So you don’t.

Your friend raises his hands in the air defensively. “Okay, then.” He makes for the doorway with languid, lingering steps. As if he doesn’t want to leave. “Tomorrow..”

That’s both a threat and a promise, knowing him. Sighing and watching the rowan tree out your window sway, you bid him a curt goodbye.

If only that jerk took offense to things. It would make things an awful lot easier for you.

༺ ꘏ ༻

Being out in the wheat fields brings you peace when you’re alone, but you find it to be terribly lonely. The earthy, sweet scent of it wraps around you, and the stalks whisper against each other in a soothing way.

When you look beside you, the patch of wheat imprinted with the shape of your bodies is empty on his side. You are quite weak; it makes you want to go knocking at his door for his company. But that would be the selfish thing to do, so you card your fingers between the golden straw instead.

A chill trickles down your spine. You feel his presence before you even see him; it’s a feeling that you used to get fleetingly, as if something far away was tugging at you. But then he became real, a living thing in front of you that can touch, and that is much different.

“Why is it that I always find you out in the wilderness?” Yeonjun says. His voice comes from behind you.

Has he been watching you? You stand and dust your bottom off, heart kicking to life. “It’s nice out here,” you say. In truth, you haven’t come outside since that day. You’ve dodged Soobin and made a million excuses as to why you won’t go anywhere past the fences of your home. “I like to… watch people go about their days. It’s interesting.” It’s true—you always watch from afar how the village folk interact. How groups of girls your age link arms and whisper to each other, how neighbors come together to fix up a shoddy fence. You watch them be a community that you are not a part of. Watching it tastes bitter sometimes, but mostly you take pleasure in imagining yourself there with them. You’re not sure why you try making small talk with him, but what else? Should you go running again? If you were to listen to your pattering heart, maybe that’s what you’d do. He’s hardly shown you any bad will, though, and he’s the one that’s come to you. Maybe it’s silly to wait until something bad happens to be cautious.

A thousand pounds in stones sit at the center of your chest, though, and his voice makes them feel lighter. Why on earth that is, you’re not sure. It’s a nice relief regardless.

He smiles. It's different from the ones he showed you before. It’s knowing; more sweet than cracking over his face like the smile you would expect from the likes of him. What use might he have in being sweet? “Could I join you?”

Blinking dumbly at him for a second, you nod. “Oh, uh… Yeah.” Settling back down into your spot, you spare him a few curious sideways glances.

The breeze billows over the gold stems, moving them like gentle waves over the ocean and blowing your hair in it too. The flattened bits rustle under his weight. He doesn’t even turn his face toward the village; instantly, his gravitational eyes are on you.

“Do you come here often?”

“I do,” you answer. Mostly when you and Soobin have too much to do and not enough will to do it. “It’s nice. The village doesn’t like me much, so it’s easier out here.” You don’t mention that mostly you don’t come here alone.

Yeonjun’s face becomes far away. It looks strikingly like somebody forced into an old, unpleasant memory. “Don’t like you?” he asks, “What reason would they have for that?”

“They fear me. Things go wrong around me, that’s all.” You pluck at the hay absentmindedly. “Things die. They’re smart to stay away.”

The hay whispers much louder for the long moment he remains quiet, digesting what you’ve said. Maybe deciding what to say, considering that it’s his fault.

“Die?” he asks, voice inflected with surprise.

Turning to him, your brow creases. Shouldn’t he know? He’s the one that’s done it to you. “Everything that gets too close ends up dead. Everything,” you say, resting your temple on your knee. “So, I guess, I just keep it all at arm’s length.” You look back at your tiny village, a collection of familiar, un-familiar thatch-roof homes. 

Continuing to blink at you, his eyes narrowed in a strange grimace, Yeonjun says, “Death follows me, too.”

What? A laugh of disbelief bubbles up in your chest. Of course, death follows him. You cover your mouth with a hand to obscure your laugh, but you just giggle at him harder.

A laugh twitches at the corners of his mouth, too. “I mean it,” he says. The lines of his face become distant again, eyes both trained on your face and melancholic as if the sight reminds him of something.

It ignites a question in your mind about something he said in the forest. “You said that I reminded you of somebody,” you say, testing the waters. “Who?”

A muscle feathers in his jaw. He looks away, as if he can’t look at you while he says it. “I loved a girl from this village once. When I was human, no less than you.”

You falter, mouth falling open to ask all the questions that flurry through your thoughts. You settle on one. “You were human?”

“I was,” he says ruefully. “And I had everything. I had the love of my life. I think that even the most bitter of creatures on this island had envy for our love. She would braid dandelions into my hair, and then I’d braid them into hers.” He swallows thickly and pauses, as if the wound was still festering and fresh. “And then she died. She died starting our family. She died because of me, in my arms.”

You don’t know what to say, so you just look into his shining eyes as if that’ll help. You’re not very useful with people, much less comforting them.

“I couldn’t accept that. I wouldn’t. So I went where I shouldn’t have gone, and angered something much bigger than myself. They thought it would be a fitting punishment for me to live an eternity, the King of Death who could not bring back his dead lover.” The harrowed look that he gives you, only briefly, has your chest heavy all over again. “They have a sense of humor, the forces.”

You imagine what it would’ve been like for him to lose his lover in that way. How far he’d gone to try and have her back, but death does not give back. Where had he gone to have been turned into this? An immortal thing, forced to roam the world and scoop up the souls of the living for an eternity? To be bound in ancient bones and made to remember forever how you had lost your lover?

The grandness of what you want to say is too big, but all those words feel pitying and patronizing in a way that you don’t think will actually bring him any comfort. Rather, you doubt anything you say will be able to patch up a wound older than you could imagine. Simply, you offer him a raw, “I’m so sorry.”

Yeonjun lets a crooked smile replace the trembling at his lips. “As long as I live, so too will she,” he says, placing his palm over his heart. “Death doesn’t so much happen when we leave behind our bodies, but when we’ve left the minds of the living.” Narrowing his eyes at you, he brushes hair behind your ear with his knuckles. “I know she lives on, somewhere out there. Somewhere. I’ll find her.”

That intrigues you. “Is there some way that you could bring her back?”

The grim light in his eyes tells you his answer. “My curse is to take life,” he says, “not to give it. But the one who made me this, he is cruel in a twisted way. If I were to find her, as a human or an animal or a blade of grass in the forest, only then could I rest.”

It is cruel. “You’ve been searching, then,” you conclude. “When you find her, you’ll both be able to rest.” But how could he find her, if as he says, she could be any living thing? Where would he even begin?

Slowly, he shakes his head, throat bobbing. “Death needs a farrier.”

She would become what he is. You swallow thickly. Was it not him who caused the deaths that follow you? Or, at least, it was not on purpose?

Opening your mouth, you go to tell him that you’ll help him look. You’re sure you’ll be of no help. He’s spent an immortal lifetime searching, and he still hasn’t found his dead lover. Nobody would know better than him where to look.

The ground shakes beneath your palms with impact, and something cuts through the wheat. The noise of its bleating becomes nearer until the both of you scramble up to find out what’s in such distress.

A deer stumbles around wildly. It looks lame, but you don’t see anything wrong with its legs. Your throat tightens at the awful sound, piercing and sad. Frozen, you watch it try to stay upright before it finally collapses down, legs still kicking as though it still wants to run but its body has begun weakening on it. “Oh my god,” you say, stumbling back. The sounds; its sounds are awful, echoing in your bones and constricting your thoughts until they’re a pinched panic.

There’s an arrow lodged into its ribcage, deep and at a terrible angle. You already know that it’s pierced some vital organs, if not its heart. It continues to writhe on the ground, not ready to give up. You’re not sure if you should approach it—you don’t want to scare it, and you can tell by the look in its wet eyes that it already wants to be away from you.

Or, maybe it had come to you. How else had it found the two of you in the middle of this field?

Yeonjun’s already on it. He puts his knees into the dirt and dried wheat to kneel by it, running his hand over the beast's pelt in long strokes. The small buck flinches at first but relaxes once he learns that his touches are gentle, not the gnashing of hungry teeth ready to make him a meal.

Blood runs like lead through your veins. You say, “Can we help it?”

He shakes his head. “He’ll die.”

Whip-lashed, you swallow thickly. He says it so unphased, and you’re sure he is. You can hardly make yourself mirror that serenity that he exudes as he runs his hand over its flank, but you get on the ground beside him anyway.

The buck’s breaths slow to desperate drags for breath. For a few long minutes, the two of you sit in silence and stay with him until he no longer fights, until his breaths are ragged. You feel his side, still warm and alive, but you see the life going from his eyes. You sit here, talking to each other about nothing just so it hears gentle voices as it goes, for a while.

Eventually, he’s gone. Quiet and at peace, no longer hurting. This time, when you look over to Yeonjun who still smooths over the deer’s skin even as he goes, guiding him delicately into whatever greets us when we go, you see death as a gentle thing.

༺ ꘏ ༻

Though you never seek him out, Yeonjun always finds you. In hidden places, away from prying eyes, he appears behind you and makes himself known. Well, you have a feeling that he watches you for a while before saying anything. It’s hard not to feel the strange tingling of his gaze over your form. It’s akin to the sixth sense that’s supposed to keep you safe out in the dark hearts of forests, an innate feeling that tells you some beast with a rotten, pale maw watches you between the trees.

Yeonjun doesn’t feel rotten, though, preternatural and eerie as he is. As you shirk your duties and talk with him for hours, you stare into ancient eyes and watch his crooked mouth move around his words and you feel an odd comfort. As if he’s the only one who’s ever understood you, or maybe that your strangeness pales beside him and for once you’re nothing but who you are. So many nights, the sun fell on your talking until the night insects buzzed from the grasses and your eyes were heavy.

Sometimes, as you dozed off with your back to a hay bale or a hardwood wall of the abandoned home beside yours with its sagging thatched roof, you caught such festering longing in his his eyes that you’d let your lashes fall and pretend to sleep so that you could imagine what it was that he longed for. No doubt his lost lover. When you imagine him, bound in bones and coming back to haunt the living for an eternity as he mourns her infinitely, searching for her in impossible places, your chest aches with a gnawing intensity.

It’s a terrible, cursed existence. Even the nothingness of death becomes a paradise beside it.

“Is it scary?” you ask into the air, sat criss-crossed on the thick duvet of the bed. He sits across from you, looking perfectly lazy. Moonlight pools in like sterling mist through the shutters.

“What?” He watches you, sitting in your plain dress, as though you’re the only thing in the world.

You’ve begun to wonder. Wonder about those looks he gives you.

Shifting, you fix the shoulder of your soft chemise where it’s slipped down when you catch his eyes lingering on it. His throat bobs. “Dying,” you elaborate. “Is it really nothing? After we go, all of it was for nothing?”

A slow smile tugs his full lips, made a bit red in the middle where he likes to worry it. It’s such a human habit to see on something so far from human. “Hardly,” he says. “It’s like going home, right where your soul is supposed to be. Who do you think rides with me?”

Furrowing your brows, you tilt your head toward one shoulder and let your hair pool there. “The riders are dead?” You had thought they were undead in some way like Yeonjun, other sorts of revenants come back to life with their own purposes. Then, are their creepy horses dead, too? A chill goes down your arms. Sometimes, sitting here with him when his face is made soft by the orange glow of the fire he puts on, you forget what he is.

“They are.” He nods, leaned back onto his elbows, his eyes alight with a hunger that makes your insides feel funny. “It doesn’t stop once we’ve died. You don’t need to be scared, my love. So many things end, but then so many things begin. The earth no longer holds you down, the weight of being is gone. You don’t know anything like it; you don’t know leaving behind the pleasures of earth to know the ones that only the afterlife can show you.”

His eyes laced with something entirely else, he adds, “And it’s not the end. Not for everything. For some it’s only the beginning, and for others, those who have not yet fulfilled their purpose, they come back to the flesh. They return.”

You can’t tell if he means himself, or something else. The weight in his eyes, dark, endlessly swirling pools, makes you wonder again why it is that he’s lingering here: the place that he had not visited once since the death of his lover, for the fact that it still hurts too much. Why his shadow of death, his fault or not, was tangled in your soul enough to brush its fingers over the things around you.

“It’s scary,” you say, breathy. The thought of eternity.

Soft hairs brush over his eyes as he tilts his head at you. “Do I scare you?”

“No.”

“No?” he echos, pushing himself up so that he leans back onto his palms. “Isn’t that strange? Pretty little thing says she’s not afraid of death, but her heart races when I’m near. Her sweet heart jumps at just the brush of my leg. Are you sure you’re telling me the truth, love?”

Your blood roars in your veins, inflaming your cheeks and making your head dizzy. Nobody’s ever looked at you like that before. Hair prickles on your skin. “Yes,” you breathe.

Feral delight sparks in his eyes, black as pitch. His smile turns up all feline at the crooked corners. “Crawl to me, then.”

Like how fire licks up oxygen in any room it is in, his words steal the breath right from your lungs. What does he think you are? You blink at him wide-eyed and dumb for a moment.

How can he say that as though it were nothing? Moreover, how does the ravenous flare in his eyes, his head tilted back as he watches you down his nose expectantly, do that to your belly?

Your mind glazes over with something thick and heady, and you damn the nerves in your belly and begin to crawl from your end of the bed to his. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, making sure you feel every inch of the taunt in his eyes as he trains them on you. When you’ve gotten to him through the thickness in the air, you settle into his lap and bracket his waist with your thighs.

Yeonjun takes the soft fat of your hips in his fingers. “Fuck,” he says. It sounds like he’s barely holding the gates on something endlessly consuming. Something that might break loose on the two of you, and leave you changed forever with its hungry, gnashing teeth. His head hits your collarbone. “Tell me to stop. Please, tell me to go. Because I don’t know how.”

“Don’t,” you say. “Don’t stop. I want it, Yeonjun. I want this.”

He straightens, pupils blown and eyes as tense as his set jaw. “No, you don’t understand what you’re asking for. All I’ve ever done is ruin. All I’ll ever do is ruin. I won’t ruin you; not again.”

That rings bells somewhere outside the heavy fog that’s infiltrated your mind, but they don’t sound too alarming when he looks as though he wants to drag his teeth over your heart to taste its beating. It doesn’t touch the ground, when you want him to, so badly. So badly that you taste it on your tongue and it tinges your words as you tell him, “I do know what I’m asking for. I want you. Yeonjun. Don’t you want me too?” Voice and confidence wavering, you pull back. Maybe you’ve read this all wrong. A tickling shame crawls over your skull. “Do you not want me?”

“You think I don’t want you?” he says, straightening up and meeting your gaze. His breath is hot on your mouth. “I want you so fucking bad. You are in the marrow of my bones. Fuck, I have done nothing but want you, but I am foul. I will only hurt you.”

He takes your hand and places it over his chest, where a heart should be. Beneath your palm, you do not feel the thumping of an alive thing. Yeonjun has no heart. You knit your brows and examine the strain of his features. Does he think that you’ll be disgusted? Maybe the girl you were in that forest might’ve been, but being near Yeonjun has changed you in ways you couldn’t start to put your finger on. “I’m asking you to,” you say. “Show me what you want to do to me. What you’ve wanted to do to me.”

Searing silence burns between you as he drinks that in, and then he shoves you onto your back. Supporting himself with an arm beside your head, he curls his fingers into your hip and nudges your thighs wider. He doesn’t lift the hem of your chemise like you expect him to. No—Yeonjun begins to grind himself into your cunt through all the layers of your clothes. Though your dress is bunched up and his pants lay between any real contact, Yeonjun’s hard and that friction tastes fleetingly sweet.

“I want you to beg me for it,” he says, grinning down at you with cruel intention. “Beg me, and make it so pretty.”

You let little sounds linger in that back of your throat and become hungrier each time he grinds against you. It’s so much, mind swimming and sparks spraying up your spine, and yet each time it is not near enough. Damn that foxish smile on his face; you beg for him anyway. “Yeonjun,” you breathe, curling your fingers around the wrist of that hand with which he pins your hip. “P…lease, will you help me? It feels so good; I want more, please.”

He raises his eyebrows at you and an eager grind comes right over your throbbing clit. 

You know he wants more than that, but mortification already is making your voice unsteady and your cheeks burn. “Yeonjun,” you huff, hips wiggling.

The king of the undead delights fully in your shame and rewards you with more of those pointed, dry grinds. Your legs tremble; he’s giving you so little, and yet your need takes it and magnifies it into something grand.

Though he pretends he’s on some high ground, you hear his shuddering breaths each time his fucks his hips against you. He feels that roiling, liquid need in his belly just as vehemently as you do. The room fills with your breathy pants and grinding bodies. You catch your lip in your teeth and begin to meet him half-way. Your moans are low and sweet, and each one sends his jaw tighter. 

You twist and grind against each other like fumbling teens until you’re coiled up so tight that he has to pull himself away. Your throbbing cunt protests, but you know he doesn’t want you cumming like this.

“You want me to show you what I’ve wanted to do to you?” he says, working at his pants. His eyes are so drunk on you, and his cheeks betray his state. “Open your legs, my love. Let me show you a little death.”

Throat gone dry, you slowly let your thighs fall open. The dull throbbing between your thighs roars to life. He slides your skirt up your leg, stopping when he frees your knee to pepper a few hot kisses into it. Once he’s got it bunched up at your ribcage, he runs his tongue over his dry lips to wet them. “Fuck. Such a pretty pussy. I want to fucking eat you up.”

“Yeonjun,” you whine. His name is all you can muster out, anticipation sharpened to a knife point.

Flashing his teeth, he purrs, “You like that, you filthy thing. I bet you’d like for me to fuck you till your brain’s gone and all that’s left is my name. Isn’t that right? Is that what you want?”

Your thoughts stall and you nod, making your mouth into a filthy pout. God, how you want that. Maybe he’s right about you being filthy. Coming from him, it sounds like a delicious thing to be.

The pretty, leaking tip of his cock brushes your clit as he slides it up and down your slit to collect the mess there. Your thighs jump to close before your mind gets the better of it. He does this a few times—up and down, letting you feel and get used to the size and length of him all the way till his cockhead kisses your clit and you squeak.

“Are you comfortable, love?” he asks, shifting your hips with strong hands. “Do you need anything from me?”

It’s so at odds with his other, nastier words. Your head spins, the moonlight blurring. “I’m okay,” you tell him. “I… just want you. Want you to put it in, want to feel you.”

His cock catches on your hole, and he begins to push forward with promising pressure. But then he pulls back, smiling downturned. You whine; why can’t he save his capriciousness for later? You’d almost had it…

“I could give it to you, or I could not…” He hums. “Wouldn’t that be so cruel of me? To leave you wanting?”

You flutter around nothing. Every inch of your body buzzes. Alive. You are more alive now, at the promise of Death’s touch, than ever before. The irony might be something to wonder about if you weren’t dribbling down onto the bed sheets with crude need. “Stop it,” you say. Your voice is whiny. You’re glad you can hardly hear yourself past the pounding in your bloodstream.

That delights the King of Death. He wrinkles his nose at you, burning you alive with his eyes as he presses his palm to your belly and guides himself into you with his free hand. You wrap around each inch of him slowly. The air between you bows under the weight of your gazes; he holds your eyes the whole way, inch by inch until he’s seated fully into you with his groin flush to your body. He stretches you to fit, and yet it’s just right. You could ask for no more or no less; you might even think your body was made for him, were you not too busy circling your hips to feel him.

“Good?” he says, squeezing your hip. “Do you need a moment?”

Pursing your lips, you test out the shape of him with another wiggle. “Maybe… Maybe a second.” Truth be told, you need a moment to grapple with the sparks sprinkling over your mind more than you need a moment to adjust to his stretch. You let out a shuddering breath.

He traces circles into your belly, just beneath your navel. The pad of his thumb goes round and round, warm on your flesh. “As long as you need,” he says, but it’s more like a triumphant, playful coo. There’s that lopsided smirk. One day, you’d like to kiss it off him. Taking that hypnotizing finger, Yeonjun trails it up your stomach, over your ribcage. He hooks it beneath your dress and drags it higher, revealing the soft swells of your breasts to the air. You shudder, body so, so hot that your nipples peak and tighten against the cool air.

“Such pretty tits,” he says, brushing his knuckle up the underside of one. “Everything about you. Such a pretty, pretty body. God, I don’t know if I want to worship it or ruin it.” His breaths fan over your skin as he bends down and pops an eager nipple into his mouth, lavishing it before releasing it with a lewd pop and letting his mouth fall all over your breast. Lick here, nip there, until you’re squirming adequately and squeezing him like a virgin. Then he blows cool air over it and watches with eyes like a cat toying with its prey as you shudder harder, your chest jumping. “Fucking look at you,” he sneers.

“Junnie,” you say, lost for breath. You think you’ve walked yourself into the lion’s den.

His breathy laughs fall over your breast. Taking his teeth, he drags them over your skin, right over where your heart thunders a rhythm fully for him, and then he bites. Nothing more than a shallow mark, the shape of his teeth in your soft tit. He lingers there, admiring the sight before he straightens himself up again.

“Fine.” He pulls out of you slowly, but you know what comes after that, so you savor every second of it. “I suppose you’ve wanted after it long enough. Let me hear your sweet voice again, my love.”

Yeonjun fucks you just right. His cock nudges right up on your sweet spot as if he’s done this before. Like he knows where to find it. You gasp and whine—you’re just happy he’s finally giving you something. 

“Oh, fuck,” you mewl. His shoulders wear the red crescent marks of your nails. “That’s—so good right there.”

Ever egotistical and cocky, he croons, “Yeah?” Rolling himself back, he makes it his mission to hit it ruthlessly.

A sharp, pitchy sound comes tumbling past your lips. You bring your hand up over your mouth, letting your eyelids dust your burning cheeks so that you can brave the flipping in your spine and deep in your belly. It’s nearly insufferable—the way pleasure licks up your spine, how it spreads out into your veins and takes control of you.

“No,” Yeonjun growls. “Don’t you dare close your eyes. Let me see that look in your eyes when you cum.”

Your eyes are heavier than they’ve ever been, but you open them. The sight that greets you is worth the effort. Yeonjun’s lip twitches and then he throws his head back, the column of his neck on display as his Adam's apple jumps around a thick swallow.

If that sight wasn’t enough to send you teetering down into whatever depths of lust and ecstasy that he crawled out from, then the angle he hits as he pushes one of your thighs to your chest is. The world frays, deep tremors starting at one small point in your cunt and then exploding up through your stomach and down the back of your thighs. Your chest arches off the bed and you mewl helplessly, fighting and embracing your orgasm in an intoxicating death.

“Oh, fuck,” Yeonjun growls, strained with something whinier as he watches you shake beneath him. “Fuck. I’m gonna—fuck, I’m gonna cum…” His voice chokes as his hips become stuttered more than pointed, the slick sounds of your own release tangling up with his grunts and pants until he shudders and stills, cumming into your puffy, fluttering cunt.

You both catch your breaths as if there’s no air in the room left for a while. His hair’s damp on his forehead, as is yours on your neck, and his eyes droop lazily. More lazy and content than you’ve ever seen him.

Collecting you to his chest, where only your heart thumps away frantically, he presses his mouth to your ear and says, “Do you think death is so scary now?”

With your limbs nothing more than boneless and liquid pleasure floating slowly through your thoughts, you smile.

A little death can be more visceral than living, you think.

༺ ꘏ ༻

The tree stump beneath you makes your tailbone ache. You sit criss-crossed, watching Soobin work away at the soil and tend to that section of the fence that’s begun to rot and sag. Your mouth moves endlessly, filling the space that would otherwise just be made up of his grunts of hard work.

“You know, you ought to help me if you’re just going to sit and watch,” he says, straightening to swipe at his forehead, sweaty despite the cold in the air.

“Totally improper,” you say, smiling at him cheekily. “Are you saying that you can’t handle yourself, strong man?”

He glares at you with the venom only somebody made to put up with hours of chatter could muster. “What’s got you so talkative?” he says.

You know he means why you’re suddenly not glaring him away. You can’t tell him that you’ve spoken with Death himself, so instead you say, “Nothing.” Letting your legs dangle down, you smile at him.

Yeonjun hadn’t done any of it. It’s a comfort, to some degrees, to know that. It’s not your fault that they died. Being around them, being around Soobin, won’t make them turn up dead. The rest of them still don’t know that—and they wouldn’t believe it, anyway—but the black shadow hanging over your shoulders dissipates.

For the first time in so, so long, you do not feel marked by death.

“Sure.” His smile tilts. “A week ago, you wouldn’t even look at me.”

Rolling your eyes, you decide to give him a hard time. “Not true. You just have a way of getting on my nerves.”

“I take pride in that.”

“Take pride in what? Being insufferable?”

Crinkling his nose, he says, “Knowing how to bother you best.”

“Get back to work, stupid.” Your heart soars. It’s good to have friends. To let yourself have friends is an ever better thing. Is this how it is? To be with others and not feel like their burden, or like they’re crossing their fingers behind their back to ward off whatever bad things you might bring onto them? He’s made it his mission to hover around you no matter what, but this feels different.

Maybe, for so long, part of it has been your own gloom that’s obscured it all. Maybe if you didn’t bare your teeth to anybody who got too close, it could’ve been like this always. You hate to think that your own isolation could be some part your own fault. But how were you not to show your teeth when someone tried to reach their hand out to you?

It doesn’t matter now. You shove that all down and let yourself feel the slight warmth of the sun’s glow on your skin where it peeks through the clouds. It’s a nice day, you shouldn’t ruin it with those thoughts.

The sun’s begun making its descent when Soobin’s done. He takes a long drink of water, hissing with relief and crumpling down to the ground with his back to your stump.

“Are you making any way with that girl you were talking to me about?” you prompt.

Giving you a long look over his shoulder, he says, “Don’t.”

“What?” You laugh a little, raising your brows down at him. “I’m not doing anything.”

“You know what you’re doing,” he says, voice flat as he picks stickers out of his fingers.

Soobin’s had a thousand different crushes. There was that daughter of the shepherd, and then the wealthy merchant’s daughter and her long pretty hair, and then the neighbor… Well, you could go on. None of them ever really came to fruition for the poor guy. He thinks that it’s because he’s a poor farmer’s son, but you always tell him that it’s because he’s got an insistent mouth, and that he should be more grateful that you deal with him. Your lips turn up at the corners a little thinking about it—he’ll find the one eventually, but you like the indignant look on his face when you say it.

“I mean it!” you say, nudging him with your leg. “Tell me. I want to know.”

“You won’t even tell me what’s happening with you. Until one of us quits keeping secrets,” he says, placing accusation heavy over the words, “I’ll keep my dealings to myself. What’s it to you, anyway?”

Feeling the weight of his head as he lets it loll lazily against your thigh, you decide that it couldn’t hurt to tell him. The itch to tell somebody crawls under your skin. Especially to tell him. “You know the other day? When I was… being awful?”

His body shakes with a vindicated laugh. “If you’re nothing else, at least you’re self-aware.”

You skirt around that with your own, more awkward, laugh. It’s nice that he thinks so, but you don’t feel it. “Stop,” you huff and nudge him again. “I was foraging out where I usually go. But I guess I wandered out farther than I thought I did. You remember when they used to tell us stories, right? Like the bogeyman. That he’d come snatch us up if we didn’t listen.” Your mom especially had loved that one, back when she cared what became of you. Would she care again, if you told her that everything was fine? “Well, I don’t know if you remember the one about The Wild Hunt, but… Anyway, I was picking some stuff, and…”

Sitting up from his exhausted slouch, Soobin looks like he’s suddenly come back to life. “What?” he interrupts. His voice is strangely serious.

“What?” you say, brow creasing. “They travel here and there… but they were here. In the woods. Like, I heard them.”

Tersely, he asks, “What were you doing that deep in the woods?”

“I mean, I just kept on finding nice stuff until I just… was deeper.” You survey him. You hadn’t thought that he’d react like this. “So I ran, and then there was this guy,” you say, watching realization fall over his face. He knew those stories as much as you do—knew where you were going with this. He is as starkly superstitious as the rest of your people, you forgot. Pushing past the grimace on his face, you say, “And I knew that he was the king. The one from the stories. It was so weird; it’s like you can feel it. And I spoke to him, and then…”

Stood up now, he cuts you off once more. “Are you kidding?”

“Why are you being like that?” you say, messing with your skirts to quell the defensive bite in your tone. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t do anything? Are you trying to get killed?” He throws up his hard-working hands. “We have rules for a reason. Don’t go out into the forest, don’t make deals with faeries, don’t follow a banshee scream. And then you go and talk to the king of death? How am I not supposed to be upset about that? You know that…” Soobin blinks a few times as if second-guessing what he’s about to say, but he says it anyway. “You know that he’s the reason that they treat you how they do. You know that he’s the one who ruined your life. Why would you ever mess with that?”

You push yourself up from the ground, eyes burning. That stings like a cut. “He didn’t do it. None of it is his fault,” you say, furrowing your brows. “What are you trying to say, Soobin? Just say what you want to say. Come on.”

“He didn’t do anything?” He scoffs, letting a heavy silence hang suspended in the air for a moment before saying, “Is that what he told you? And you just believed it? Listen to yourself, does that make any sense? He’s played with your life like it’s some fucking toy, and now he’s come to rub it in your face. Think about it: do animals just fly into anybody else’s windows and die? Do the trees that they pick from just end up dead? It’s his fault that they all treat you the way you do.”

Mouth opening and closing, you don’t know what to say. 

He sees the hurt in your burning eyes and tries to reel it back in. “What I’m trying to say is—”

“I know what you’re saying,” you say, grabbing up the lunch you’ve been nibbling on. “I know exactly what you’re saying. I just never thought you’d say it out loud.”

“Say what?” Soobin says, his voice raising behind you as you storm off.

That you think it’s my fault, you want to say. That they all die because I am a plague, and you are a charity worker for being my friend. Instead, you just leave and try to choke down the tightness in your throat.

༺ ꘏ ༻

You curl your arms around yourself, the night biting cold. Yeonjun had dragged you from bed, and who knows what hour of the night it is? If the heaviness beneath your eyes is to judge it by, it’s far too deep in the dead of night to be outside with your boots half-laced and nothing but your sleep chemise on.

You might’ve just stayed wrapped up in your blankets if you weren’t so lonely as you’ve been. Soobin’s been scarce. The most you see of him is in the fields from morning to afternoons. You hope that he’ll stop by your doorstep and knock so that you can groan about it but swing the door open anyway each time, but he doesn’t. He thinks that you won’t want to see him, and so he allows you your space.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s hard to be the one to come back after a conversation like that, though. You watch him from the windows and hope he understands at some point instead. It’s an awful lot easier.

Other than preparing meals and window watching, you’ve been up to nothing much at all. You hadn’t realized how much you had, but you feel him in his absence. 

“It’s cold…” you say. The fog of breath that punctuates it makes your point. Whatever he’s brought you out here for, you have no doubt it’ll be something strange. The grin on his face tells you as much.

Leading the way, he heads for the Darkwood. “Only you would come rushing out without a cloak for your shoulders.”

“Well, only you would drag me from my nice, warm bed at this time of night. For what?”

“Can’t anything be a surprise with you?” he says, shooting you a cheeky glance over his shoulder. “Surprises are fun.”

“Surprises!” you say, working your legs to catch him. “Not surprises that involve you bringing me out into the woods. You know, it’s awfully suspicious. Somebody who sees this might think that I am the type to… sneak out with men.”

“Aren’t you now?”

Your lips tug down. “You know what I mean.”

He laughs in his airy way, a twig snapping under his foot. You’re well in the woods, now. Probably somewhere near where you’d first met him.

Lifting a brow, you look at him expectantly. Maybe a will-o’-the-wisp will come floating through with its light bouncing off the trees. That would be a nice surprise, you admit.

Yeonjun circles you. His presence behind you tingles in the way it always does, but true chills erupt when his breath puffs against your ear. “Close your eyes. I have something I want to show you.”

Your mind wanders back to what Soobin had gotten so twisted up about. It might be naive and reckless and against everything you ever learned, but you let your eyes fall shut to blackness. If he was going to hurt you, you imagine he’d have had that opportunity a mind-numbing amount of times before.

“Are they shut?” he asks, waiting for your nod. His voice comes from in front of you now. “I want you to keep them shut. You can’t open your eyes, or it will all go away. Okay?”

“Okay,” you breathe, mind full of a bounty of questions. You don’t even know where to begin to assume what he’s got going on, so you stand there shifting your antsy feet.

There’s a strange, rustling sound that catches you off guard with your eyes closed. It drags on for a long moment. Curiosity pries at your eyes; you want nothing more than to just crack an eye open to spy the source of the ruckus. 

It’ll be gone if you do, anyway.

You let out a surprised squeak as something rises up beneath you, as if risen from nothing more than the dirt and roots of the forest floor, bringing you up from the earth. You wobble and send your hands out to find a perch.

A horse. It’s a horse, its mane so tangled and windswept, but matted and clumped with leaves that crunch under your palm when you find them. It reeks of mud—everything around you begins to smell of earth and decomposition.

You know that if you open your eyes, you’ll find yourself sat upon the pale white steed of the Undead King, its eyes white and its knobby knees almost as famous as the leader of The Hunt himself. It chuffs beneath you.

“Are you ready?” Yeonjun says over your shoulder. You can hear the feral grin in his voice. It’s the leader of The Hunt, a creature of folklore, that sits behind you now. He curls an arm around your waist and tugs you closer to him, securing you against the wall of his chest. “Hold on tight, my love.”

The call of the wild, that horn, bellows again like it had the first time you heard it. Rather than coming from nearby as you thought it would, it dances between trees far off just like it had that time, too. Your heart jumps up into your throat.

Taking off with a howl, the Wild Hunt follows it.

You dig your fingers into Yeonjun’s at your waist. Weight melts away, and you know you’re in the air. Your belly swoops in tandem with the howls and hoots of the riders, heart palpitating to the hoofbeats. How there’s hoofbeats as you ride through the air, you’re not sure. The ghostly fleet manifests around you in vivid imagery, though you squeeze your eyes shut. They are wild enough to imagine just what they might look like: with their clothes and flesh in tatters, with their eyes beady or pale, with their hounds piercing the air with their calls and running alongside them, they are a perfect personification of freedom.

Whip-lash sends you reeling, body going rigid. You grit your teeth and squeeze your eyes harder, wishing that you’ll touch ground soon and that everything would become real again.

Yeonjun feels you go stiff. Bringing his head back to your shoulder from his own delight, he says, “It’s okay. You’re okay. Let it into your bones. Do you think I would let it hurt you?”

He is their leader. If it got too much, you know Yeonjun would be there to catch you. Curling your fingers into his, you release that tension and allow their drumbeat to echo through you.

And when it does, your blood begins to sing along. The wind whips your cheeks and your hair, and you begin to laugh with them. The Hunt twists and turns and dances through the air, an apparition in the night, but nothing more than that.

It comes to a slow, eventually, until the noise and even your steed crumbles back down into the dirt it appeared from. Your eyes pop open hoping to catch at least a glimpse of them, but only the dark forest and pale moonlight answer. Your legs threaten to give out on you, veins still thrumming, but, oh, do you feel alive.

You feel more alive than you ever have, more than you ever could have hoped to have known. Mind spinning, you stumble. Yeonjun catches and steadies you before you can go scraping your knees on a rock.

“Oh my fucking god,” you say.

The laugh that Yeonjun breaks into has you sending him a glare, but you break too. Everything about him is ironic; and how ironic indeed that Death himself should show you how to be alive, rather than to just live?

༺ ꘏ ༻

The air is so fresh in your lungs when you step outside that it nearly burns. You clutch your basket of warm fig tarts. Songbirds trill and fly between tree tops that slowly become more bare the deeper you fall into the season, singing their sweet songs that sound like new beginnings.

Raising your hem from the ground churned up into mud from the afternoon’s trickle, you prance into town with a lively pep in your step. You spent all last night making these—Yeonjun had kept you company, watching you how he always does as you pored over making them just right. His cruel snicker when the jam had simmered over flame for too long and became too thick bounces off your bones in a sweet melody. You’ve come to adore his wicked delight, the way his smile cracks over his face and the facetious raise of his brows, more than you fear it.

Sending small smiles to the people that you pass, you stop by a huddle of kids digging sticks into the mud. They look up at you with curious eyes, stopping to gawk.

“Hey, guys,” you say, pulling back the cloth laid over the sweets. “I’ve made some fig tarts. Do you like fig? I bet you’ll like them; they’re sweet.”

The kids stand up, eyes big as they share a look. They don’t let out so much as a peep before they scurry off home.

You blink. Well, you’re used to weird reactions, but that was… different. Picking up your deflated shoulders and hesitant limbs, you make a shoddy attempt at not letting it dampen your good morning. You were expecting wary looks, anyway.

You head down a little further toward the far side of your home village, the side that breaks off after a fenceline into a great, grassy field. There’s a bustle, mothers washing their clothes in pails and hanging them up to dry and a few others whispering at each other lowly as they go about their days.

An old woman so old her back curves and her fingers have gone knobby makes her way to wherever the day’s duty demands her to be. Your neighbor—an eccentric old lady bound in her times. You decide on her: the elderly are forgotten by the young. She might enjoy knowing that her neighbors still know she exists.

“Hello,” you say, showing her your basket with a hopeful, excited heart. “I have some treats that I was wanting to give out. I know they might not be much, but would you like one? I’m not the best baker, but I do it often enough.” A face like that, dragged down by her years on this earth and not long to death, has no doubt spent many years making meals for her family. You imagine your goods would be nothing beside hers, but it’s the gesture, no?

“Oh, girl,” she says, voice crackling as she clutches her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I’m afraid it’s best if you found yourself missing from this place. Hurry yourself up and spare the drama.”

The incessant cawing of a crow from a clawed tree fades into the background as you furrow your brows and lower your basket to ask, “...Huh?” Your belly goes up in knots; terrible knots done up tight and fast. You haven’t got a clue what she’s talking about. Elders always did speak a bit strange, though. It could be nothing much; she’s a stern old lady.

But her eyes are not angry and glaring in the way that a harrowed old hag might turn her nose up at the youth. They drag down with a cold pity.

“Listen to me, girl.” She points at you with one of those worn, sun-spotted hands. “You had best leave. The boy’s gone, and they are already not fond of you. Who will they point their fingers to?” the woman says. “I hardly know you, but I would hate to see it.”

The rest of her words fade into the roaring in your ears, the feral drumbeat of your heart like a wardrum in the cage of your ribs as it beats against them as if to escape from you. You don’t feel the basket in your hands, don’t feel the solidity of the earth beneath your feet, and don’t feel a single one of your thoughts like tangible things. They flit as if liquidated into a rotten, sick mush.

Nothing. You can think of nothing. Nothing real; nothing holding you to the earth.

“What?” Your voice hardly reaches your ears, but what does is weak and broken and like a plea for her to tell you that it’s not really what you think it is.

And if you could see or hear anything beyond your fraying little rift in reality, you would’ve heard the man coming up to you. You would’ve heard the words coming from his angry, sneering mouth, and would’ve done something when he picked up a pail of water, and you would’ve been shaken by the nasty ice water that runs down your frozen body and plasters your hair and clothes down as he pours it over you. But none of it cuts through your stupor.

He yells some awful, stabbing things at you, and a few others join him. They tell you that you are nothing but a plague, tell you to leave and to not come back here.

But this is your home. Where else would you go?

With your sopping wet dress clutched in your shaking fists as though that might keep you grounded, you choke down the tightening of your throat and sift through their faces, searching for his face. Those brown eyes, brown and always shining with nagging playfulness, do not come up anywhere. Jaw trembling, you search harder. Out on the field where he should be at this time of day, at your doorstep demanding that you go spend the day doing nothing with him, in someone’s yard helping them fix up a broken fence, no matter where you look, neither his broad silhouette nor his cheeky, dimpled face is there. You continue to stand stricken dumb, looking for him even though you know by the churning in your belly that it’s true, and you’re just hurting yourself trying to find him right where he should be.

Fine. Alive. Untouched by your disgusting, destructive presence.

When you can no longer fight the strangling tightness in your lungs and your dress is as heavy as your heart, you take off. The hem of your dress drags in mud and sticker bushes and catches on stray twigs, and you don’t know where you’re going, but you just run. You’ll give them what they want. 

You stumble, probably like some lost, undead thing, until you find yourself at the edge of the forest. Only then do you let the wall of whittle-edged tears roll down your face. And you assume you sound like a choking, dying animal with how you choke and heave on them, but he was the one you might’ve dropped your head and cried to, so what’s the use of making it pretty? No; you let it all fall as it is.

Soobin’s dead. Soobin’s dead, and it’s nobody else’s but your own fault. You clutch your chest to staunch that old ache that’s grown teeth and tears at your heart; you have and will always be the end of everything that comes near. You are just as much the plague that you began to pretend, to believe, you weren’t. It was your stupid hope that maybe you could have something and not watch it become carrion that drove that pick. It was by your hope that he’s gone.

The hair on your arms begins to raise. You pick your head up and find Yeonjun standing in front of you.

There’s a few beats of long, dreadful quiet as he takes in the state of you. He drags his eyes down and they become liquid flame—something different from the impious delight that he is made of. He becomes the King of Death.

“What happened?” he says. The chills on your arms prickle furiously at the words, furling out distant and yet furious like the center of the fire.

You shake your head, wiping your soaked cheek.

“What the fuck happened?” he growls again, taking your face into his hand. “Who did this? Who did this to you, my love? I need you to tell me who the fuck did this to you.”

Letting the venom in your mouth out, you shove his chest and say, “Get away from me. Don’t fucking touch me.”

Yeonjun’s face twists up, looking scalded. Not surprised, though. “Don’t do this,” he says. “Let me hold you while it hurts. Don’t push me away. I can’t… I won’t lose you again.”

All the pieces that you had been putting into the corners of your mind snap together at that. As many suspicions as you had, though, it feels sour hearing it confirmed from his mouth. That you are his dead past lover, reincarnated or whatever you are. That it was his presence—because even though he stayed away for centuries, a part of him still lingered with you—that now has torn down everything you ever thought you could love. He, standing there in front of you like a kicked puppy, is the ruination of your life in the flesh. The flipping of your stomach is nauseating.

“I hate you,” you spit. “I hate you so much.” You repeat it a few more times, and you sob it into his chest as he takes you into his arms. “Is this what you wanted? You’ve been waiting for this forever, haven’t you? To find me again, so that you can die and fucking leave me here. So that you can make me exactly what you are, while you get your peace. You are a liar and a thief. All you’ve ever done is steal and take. How could you do it? Huh? Tell me…” Your voice trembles and staggers off. “Tell me how you made love to me, how you made me believe that you loved me, and all you ever wanted was to save yourself? You betrayed me.”

Pulling back, Yeonjun says, “No.”

“Yes,” you say, stumbling back away from him with a shaking, accusatory finger pointed at him. “Yes you did.”

Fingers itching to reach out to you, he holds them back by curling them into fists. “No. That’s not fair. I have spent an eternity loving you. I spent the entirety of my immortal, monstrous life searching for you, just so that I might find you in any form. I would have been glad to find you as a leaf in a tree, as long as I found you. But, then, I find you alive. Alive and back, as if… it never happened.” He steps toward you, aching to be near you. His voice wavers. “Please, don’t do this to me, love. Please, just let me have you again. I’ve waited… I’ve waited and I’ve waited, and I finally have you, and now you’re looking at me like I… Like I’d ever hurt you. Finding death—finally getting to die would be worth nothing if you weren’t there with me. It was never about that.”

“I could never love you,” you say, matching his steps forward with steps away from him. “I could never love a monster that does… Does nothing but kill. Take.”  You know your words are cruel, but you need them to be. You need him to hurt, you need him to go so far away from you that never again will you cause another living thing’s death. 

“You did.” Yeonjun’s mouth cracks into a pained smile, sharp at the corners. “You loved me just as much as I love you, once.”

“Just leave me. Leave me, and I wish to never see you again. If you love me, then you’ll give me that.” 

He looks at you, clever eyes intense and glassy, for a long time. And then he says, “Would that make you happy? Would it make it so that you could live a happy life, and find yourself something to live for?”

What’s left for you? A small village that won’t ever embrace you? No, it wouldn’t fix your life. But you open your mouth and tell him, “Yes.”

“Okay,” he says, brushing his knuckles over your cheeks reverently. He swallows in your features, running over them for what he knows is the last time he’ll be seeing you—the very last time he’ll see the face of his undying love. When he finally opens his mouth again, his voice is gentle. “I’ll leave you. If my being here hurts you, then I won’t be selfish. I love you, darling.”

Don’t go, you want to tell him. Please don’t leave. Please, hold me. But your mouth is dry, and you let the radiant hurt in your chest stop you. You let him go.

༺ ꘏ ༻

There’s only one place you can think of going to. It’s the only place your vagrant feet take you.

His spot still is held sacred by the flattened, gold wheat stalks. Your best friend, still living here on Earth in at least one way even if he’s not here to listen to your stupid rambling. And he would maybe complain, but he’d always listen.

The last thing you’d done was fight with him. What an awful thing—what an awful way to repay him for being the only one who ever dared to get close.

You sit in your spot, beside his, and rest your chin on your knees. If only the ground beneath you would open up and swallow you whole. You’d deserve it.

What’s left for you? Is there a place in the world that would keep you happily once they see what you do? No. There is not. You wish you knew what to do; you wish you had somebody to ask.

Releasing a long, tight breath, you just sit and wait for something to give you answers. A gentle breeze makes your hair dance, but it does not whisper anything to your ears. Something’s circling over head, but it doesn’t caw in the cadence of his laughter.

The day moves along without you. You’re not sure how long you sit, but it stretches somewhere between a few minutes and eternity. No matter how long you wait, there are no answers. No matter how long you mull over it.

Conceding, you begin to push yourself up from the ground. A rustle in between the foliage stops you before you stand.

A tawny hare leaps out in front of you. It sniffs around you, nose twitching. Then it stands back on its haunches. It stares straight at you, an intelligent light in its eyes that knits your brows. The wild thing stands there with a purpose that is uncharacteristic of a forest animal.

But entirely familiar in the face of your best friend. That shine in its eyes as it stands there, nose still twitching, makes your chest tighten up.

“Hey,” you say, as if it might answer you. Your eyes well up with hot tears again. Of course, it doesn’t. 

Maybe you’ve gone mad, but you know that it’s him. That idiot, coming to show you that he’s okay in the afterlife—to visit one last time and to let you know that you shouldn’t worry for him or cry for him. Look at me, full of life once again, he seems to say. The hare blinks its beady eyes. It lingers there for a long time, the ease of peace found in his gaze that Soobin hadn’t had in this life, saying that there is still something waiting out there for us once we go. You reach out a hand. He does not flinch as you scratch behind his ear.

“Okay,” you whisper. “I’m glad to know you’re alright. I know what I need to do, now.”

He blinks.

You laugh a hoarse, breathy laugh, familiar in only the way that Soobin could achieve. “You look stupid.”

Indignantly, the hare stomps a bratty foot in a way reminiscent of one of Soobin’s huffs before it settles back down onto its forelegs and scurries off. He goes to live out this new form of life, because it’s true: life does not end in death. He’s shown you that.

Maybe, like this, he’ll find that pretty lady that loves him the way he deserves. That loser.

༺ ꘏ ༻

You spend only one night in your home and you know that what you’ve chosen is right. After spending your day out in the field, you sneak under night’s cover into your husk of a room and let yourself sleep there under the covers one last time. When morning breaks through the window, you gather your weary bones up and leave. 

You run into your mother on the way out. She doesn’t yell at you to leave, but her eyes have gone cold. Colder than you’re used to. You’ve killed again, in every way that counts. So you don’t bother with bidding her or any of them any grand goodbyes. You couldn’t handle the relief you might find falling over them, should you.

Plopping down to the floor, you take a few bites of the cheese and bread lathered in sweet jam that you’d swiped from the kitchen. The grass is long and willows in the wind, bending and dancing prettily. It’s so soft; you enjoy the feeling of it beneath your fingers in your quiet serenity. The scent of it, fresh over the baseness of dirt, you breathe into your lungs.

It would be the loveliest place to spend the rest of eternity.

For the first time, Yeonjun appears in front of you rather than behind you. He materializes from nothing, his elbow on his knee as casual as if he’d been sat there the whole time. The darkness beneath his eyes seems heavier, but then again you know that exact heaviness. It sits right in the very center of you.

You both are quiet for a bit. You let the tall grass whisper, instead.

“Bread?” you say and slant your lips into a smile. Bringing it up, you offer it to him.

His smile wrinkles his nose and curls at the edges. Entirely him. Yeonjun accepts the bread, ripping a bite out before throwing it away into the sea of green. Once he’s chewed, he leans in and captures your lips in a kiss that’s utterly at odds with his sharp mouth. Your lips move over each other gently, save for an indulgent nip or bite here and there.

He pushes you back into a bed of sweetgrass, never letting your lips go. Not to breathe, not to say something that’ll pale in comparison to the sweetness of your mouths on one another. He kisses you until he’s had enough to fulfill a lifetime without it, and then some more.

“My love,” he whispers into your skin, his breath hot on your collarbone. “Mine,” he says, pressing a kiss into the column of your neck, and then he says it again with a hot kiss to the place where your dress suggests your breasts. He says it a handful more times as he pushes your skirts up your thighs. “My love forever. I waited for you so long, and I would do it again.” Lowering his voice to a honeyed whisper, he adds, “I would find you no matter what.”

Laughing softly, you run your fingers through his raven hair to better see his eyes. You know he would.

Gently giving you one more of his lingering kisses that make your skin tingle, right into your bare shoulder, he presses into you. You loose a soft breath, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. The beating in your chest slows to a content purr as he begins languid thrusts in and out of you, rolling pointedly and unhurried.

Yeonjun makes love to you in a thousand dusted kisses and sweet words, your hands holding each other’s soft edges. Yeonjun traces the lines of you, taking the pads of his thumb down your cheeks and your lips and then his hand over the swell of your breasts and down your belly and over your thighs. Clamping down on him as your belly grows tight in the way it had the first time you had done this, your thighs begin to shake.

 Breathlessly, as you hurdle over the edge, all that you can say is, “I love you, ‘Junnie.” 

Yeonjun smiles at you and then presses his face into your neck. He doesn’t even brace himself against the grass to chase his own peak. Neither of you want this to end; you want to hold on to this moment and let it span forever. Slowly, Yeonjun rolls up into you until his hips finally stutter and he cums into you, his cheeks pink. The weight of him above you as he shakes with your shared ecstasy, and even as you both have come down and are nothing but lazy, is the only thing in this world. He is the only thing in this world.

Once you’ve both evened your breathing out, you roll apart and face each other, still just two forms bending the grass into your shapes. Blinking slowly and digesting his features one at a time—the angle of his eyes, softened but never tamed, the line of his nose, the line of his mouth always so proud and playful, and that pretty dot below his left eye—you let them solidify fully in your mind.

“Yeonjun,” you say, finally meeting his eyes across from you. “I want to go. I’m ready.”

The gentle, knowing look that he gives you soothes over the way your heart begins to race in your chest in rebellion. “I know,” he says.

Of course he had known. Yeonjun had been called here to ferry you into the afterlife. He had known the moment he appeared in front of you that his last soul to reap would be you; an ironic circle of karma that should be cruel, but you two make it something sweet. Chewing on your lip, you will your hands to not shake as you curl toward him. You’re no longer scared of going. You know that if you’ll be with him, it will be okay. It won’t be so scary. A hot tear rolls down your temple and then drops into your hair. “Will you be with me? I won’t be there alone?”

He tucks some hair behind your ear reverently and then leaves his hand there. “I don’t know,” he answers. “But I won’t leave you. I’ll stay right here with you.”

You lay there for a long time. Chatting and giggling and just looking into each other's eyes, until your heart becomes slow and all you feel is the wind singing in your blood. Yeonjun presses one final kiss to your forehead.

Maybe, in some years, somebody might dig up your bones and find you immortalized like this in your love. Your bones bowing toward each other, as if even death were not enough to stop you from reaching for each other. Or maybe they’ll just find yours, and Yeonjun still curling into them how you know he will for an eternity more.

Either way, the going is still slow and gentle, as death always is.

🪶 ⦂ tears. omfg i cried writing this which could totally be me being a bitch baby but it DAMN. omfg.

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

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[tarotbyjam24]

Pick a pile :Describing you through poems

Likes , reblogs and feedbacks are very much appreciated 💗

Disclaimer: this is general reading . It may or may not resonate . If reading doesn't resonate let it fly and choose another pile or simply there were no messages for you through this reading 😊 Take the reading lightly as nothing's set in stone until you believe so 🕊️

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pile 1 pile 2 pile 3

Pile एक

A WALK

A meadow smiling in the sun,

Cows knee cleep in the stream, An elm tree waving in the wind, A silvery birch's gleam, A long white road, a rustic bridge, A brooklet gliding through, And with the sunlight on Your hair, Coming toward me-You.

DEATH

By Clarence E. Flynn

WHY do you fear me? I am your friend.

I but guide trav'lers Rounding the bend-Lead them to freedom From time and age, Help them start writing On a new page....

Seek for me never, Keep your course true-When I am needed In come to you, Then I will show you Roads without end-Why do you fear me? I am your friend.

Pile दो

i write when

i write when my heart gets too heavy to hold i write about my scars new and old. i write when i have a lot to share, but to hear it out, no one has time to spare. i write when i feel as lonely as one could be, when not tears, but the well dressed smile is what one could see.

i write when thoughts in my

mind begin to sink.

i write to share whatever i think.

i write, not with thr desire of being known, but to know the voice within my soul.

~bhoomika

I Sit Beside The Fire and Think by JRR Tolkien

I sit beside the fire and think Of all that I have seen Of meadow flowers and butterflies In summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamer In autumns that there were With morning mist and silver sun And wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think Of how the world will be When winter comes without a spring That I shall ever see

For still there are so many things That I have never seen In every wood in every spring There is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think Of people long ago And people that will see a world That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think Of times there were before I listen for returning feet And voices at the door

Pile तीन

Beauty

I like simple pleasures, Like wet hair & Clean sheets.. Pomegranate sourness, & the sweetness of ripe peach..

I like contradictions, Like rainbows after rain.. The glittering eyes of happiness, after days of pain..

A cup of hot tea, during a storm.. Living wildly and out of the norm.. I like good hearts, good art, the warmth of the sun.. The days you gave your self power, When you had none..

I like solitude, serenity, The thoughts in my mind.. And how in every tragic thing, Beauty I can find..

-Alethea Spark

Each of us are given a white canvas Some may be smaller than others. But the fact remains that it is pure, With not a single drop of colour.

As the days go by, the amount of strokes grow, With different colours and shapes. Some may be sharp and jagged And others smooth and clean.

You cant erase it or start over, But you can always cover it with a better strokes. You may even give up and want to stop at times, But you keep trying so desperately

And in the end, you can step back and look at what you have created And see that it was beautiful all along.

A masterpiece painted by you.

- C.

I hope you liked the reading . Thank you so much for letting me read for you . Wishing you best ahead . 🎀Bless you and have a nice day🌸🐰

Loads of love , jam ✨

Exchanges : open , collabs for paps : open

[aieroartstudios]

⋆˚｡⋆୨✧୧˚ HELLO! I’M AIEROART ˚୨✧୧⋆｡˚⋆

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: 𝙸 𝚊𝚖 𝚊 𝚜𝚑𝚎/𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚖𝚞𝚕𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖 𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚜𝚝! :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

⋆·˚˚°✦ You can call me Aiero for short ✦°˚˚·⋆

I also go by They/them pronouns if you don’t know what to call me 😋

Simply a silly little goober

A lot more info about me under the cut ⬇️

Current projects include:

Autumn’s Hollow (my pilot episode) It is a horror/comedy show about a 15-16 year old girl named Autumn cursed to be a half-demon in a town with dark secrets called Hollowfield. With the help of her friends Basil and Clover, she works to find out the mystery of whom, or what cursed her and why. As demons and ghosts hunt her for her soul, she realizes there’s more to her hometown than meets the eye. It’s been my passion project for about 4 months and I would love if you guys gave any sort of support!

Storytime Animations (on my YouTube channel)

I have 3 separate accounts, my reblog account titled AieroReblogs! And my ask the cast account titled Autumns Hollow Ask Blog. Feel free to check those out too!

My birthday is February 23 (ENA DAY!!!)

(I’m 15 so don’t be weird)

I have an ArtFight and Magma account! Both go by the name AieroArt (it’s literally my name for everything)

My blog is a safe space for everyone! Just give me an ask if you don’t like something I’m doing (but please be kind about it)

Uhm…. I have Autism and am an INFJ

If I don’t respond I’m prolly asleep or busy with school.

Join my community 😋🎀

I support Trans Rights 🏳️‍⚧️ and LGBTQ+ PRIDE 🏳️‍🌈

PLEASE DO NOT DIRECT MESSAGE(DM) ME! It’s just a boundary I have to make clear! Thank you for understanding!

DM ME ONLY FOR COLLABS BETWEEN ARTISTS!

What I like/ enjoy!

My original characters

Gravity Falls

ENA (Dream BBQ or the show 👍)

The Owl House

The Amazing World of Gumball

FNAF

TADC

Moominvalley

Jentry Chau VS the Underworld

Mitchell’s VS the Machines

One Piece ( I’m in Punk Hazard arc)

The Last Of Us

Birds(I just really like birds, as in the literal animal)

Coraline

Sally Face

How to Train Your Dragon(my favorite childhood movie)

Undertale/Deltarune

The Legend Of Zelda (I WILL YAP TO YOU ABOUT ZELDA CHARACTERS)

Rain World

My Hero Academia (only the manga I can’t handle their voices or how their drawn in the show)

Helluva Boss/ Hazbin Hotel (I’m not in the fandom and I don’t like the way it views specific topics. I just watch the show for the plot and characters.)

I think that’s it for what I like!

Now for what I hate 👹heheheheh

I Hate/ do not like/ will not tolerate. DNI if:

NSFW art or anything of that sort(ew ur yucky if you like that)

Proshippers(leave me alone I’m not a shipper)

Ship art that is between two characters that CLEARLY DONT WANT EACH OTHER IN THE SOURCE MATERIAL (I’m looking at you radioapple shippers and bakudeku shippers)

Pedos (leave me alone im a minor you will get blocked AND reported many times)

People who are rude for no reason (I put a pipe bomb in your mailbox 😘😃)

CREEPS! (I will report and block you multiple times)

Freaky furries (just why please stop)

Homophobes (don’t hate on someone by what they choose to like)

Transphobes( I’m not trans but I hate when people hate on people like that)

DO NOT TRACE OR USE MY ART FOR AI

I think that’s it for what I hate!

This was my 100th post!

Tysm for reading all of this lmao I wrote a lot!

Hope you stay safe and have a great day!

Love you pookies!

Follow me on YouTube as well as tumblr to keep up with what I am working on!

[cheolism-archive]

✧ UNDER THE SKIN

✧ werewolf!choi seungcheol x reader ✧ synopsis: walking through the autumn forest you know you're not alone. there's a predator after you. but can you really be considered his prey if you're more than willing to be caught? ✧ wc is approx. 4.6k ✧ tags: supernatural au, smut, slight horror? prey-and-predator roleplay except your boyfriend is literally a werewolf. ✧ warnings: minors do not interact. feelings of being watched/stalked, being watched/stalked; prey-and-predator dynamics, mentions of being eaten; power dynamics, strength kink, overstimulation. one mention of breeding. consent !! sex without a condom, sex in the forest; multiple rounds n multiple positions. mean!seungcheol, possessive!cheol. pet names (baby, princess, babygirl) ✧ part of the svthub fall-ing for you collab!! make sure to check out the other works!!!!

the silence of the forest tries to convince you that you are completely alone. 

it was as if the entire wood was holding its breath. no breeze filtered through the leaves; no birds flew overhead. it was just you and the trees. 

it was completely still and you appeared to be alone. 

but you know you’re not. 

you wrap your flannel tighter around your body, the autumn air biting gently at your flesh. it wasn’t so cold that you found it intolerable, wasn’t so cold that you were searching for warmth. instead you sought comfort from your flannel, as if the fabric could shield you from whatever lurked in the forest. 

because you weren’t alone. 

you know that. you know that just as you know night would be falling in a few hours, just as you know that the full silver moon would soon begin creeping into the sky. 

you weren’t ignorant enough presume you would be lucky enough to escape the notice of whatever lurked in the depths of the forest. 

so you walk through the forest, looking up at the trees. their foliage was far prettier than the dull brown of the shrubbery. the trees boasted their beautiful colors, shades of vivid crimson and deep gold; there was an amber leaf on the ground larger than your hand, and you wishes that you had your phone so you could take a picture. 

instead you contine to walk. 

deeper and deeper you walk into the forest. it’s quiet except for your movements. even when you pass a brook, its cold waters rushing over smoothed stones, its song seems muted. 

maybe it was because you are all too aware that you were being watched. 

you can’t see your stalker. but you could feel them. you could feel the weight of their eyes on your body, could feel how the hairs at the back of your neck were rising. 

turning around only meant that you would be walking directly into their path. and so you continue onwards, deeper and deeper. 

you wish your boyfriend was here. 

seungcheol isn’t extraordinarily brave; he isn’t necessarily a hero. he didn’t push you in front of him when the two of you dared to go into haunted houses during halloween but he still rushed through them, his hand clamped tightly around yours as he tried to find an exit. 

he isn’t a physical fighter either. but there is something about seungcheol’s presence that humbled those around him. from his broad stature to his thick brows, seungcheols’a aura just said that he wasn’t someone to mess with. 

but you know him beneath that exterior. his cute pouts, his boyish laughter and charm. his devotion to you. that was who you wanted at your side right now, walking through the forest with that feeling of being watched never leaving. 

it would be nice to even hold his hand, you think. to feel his warm. even if you just linked your pinkie through his you would be all right. 

you pause beneath a maple tree. it is large, its leaves a gradient that shift from bright yellow to a fiery orange. 

a bird sings overhead. and you listen. it stops quickly, and you watch as it breaks from the treeline to fly away, abandoning you to whomever watched you walk through the forest. 

seungcheol wouldn’t abandon you. he would keep watch over you while you rested, would grab your hand and reassure you before leading you back through the forest. 

you continue on your way. 

eventually you come across a river. it is wide enough to where you don’t dare to swim and you know better than to think that you could wade across. fallen tree leaves float along, and you wish for a fleeting moment that you could be a leaf and just float away. 

but you weren’t a leaf. 

you follow the river alongside its muddy edge, walking quickly so your shoes won’t sink too far. there’s a bridge ahead, it’s black metal vivid against the beautiful and serene autumn scene. 

there is a gravel path that leads to the bridge. as soon as you step onto it, rocks shifting beneath your feet, you hear something. 

you can’t be sure of what it is. you couldn’t really make anything out, the noise quiet and muffled. but you know there’s something out there. 

you go still. 

you hear a bush rustling behind you, hidden, and that’s all you need to continue onward. you go onto the bridge, reaching for the cold railing. you slide your fingers along its surface as you walk, its frigidness biting at your fingers. 

you are halfway when you feel it. your entire body freezes, heart hammering so loudly in your chest that it almost sounds like thunder. you can’t move. you imagine this was what your ancestors felt like when they came upon a saber-tooth tiger or some other sort of apex predator. you imagine them frozen with horror; paralyzed with it. 

“look at me baby.”

as if his words were a commandment given by a god, you are powerless to do anything but obey. you turn on the bridge. 

and he’s standing there. 

he is stocky with broad shoulders and hips. his hair is a mop of black waves. you can’t make out his features, but you knew him and knew there was a smirk playing on his dark cherry lips, knew that his lips were twinkling underneath his thick brows. 

“you’ve walked awfully far, princess,” he says. he steps onto the bridge entirely. you watch him the way prey watches their hunters; fearful and observant. “don’t you think it’s time to stop? time to give in?”

for another horrifying moment you can’t speak. pure horror freezes your entire being. you were right, you had been followed, had been stalked through the forest. you wish you had been wrong. 

you knew him, knew the danger that lurked underneath his skin. 

your thigh twitched from being held so tightly for so long. you became alive again. 

you make a step back. he takes several more towards you, walking casually, uncaring of your fear. you can only move a little compared to his broad, relaxed steps. 

he continues to talk as he moves towards you. “i thought you would’ve given up by now, baby. would’ve turned back to the car before now.”

“you --” your voice breaks. “you’re -- you leave me alone.”

“aw,” he says, now close enough that you can see his grin. “it’s cute that you think you’ve got any authority here, princess.”

it’s horrible the way that his words electrify you. they send shocks of fear and something you refuse to name through your system; make your entire being alive with something other than fear. 

he looks up to the sky. you can’t help but follow his gaze. the sun was sinking, the light blue of the sky making way for sweet pinks and soft oranges. 

“the full moon is tonight.” he puts his hands into his coat pockets, looking back at you and still grinning. the two of you are still too far apart for you to make the fine details of him, such as his eyelashes but you swear you can see his canines; see hos abnormally long they were and how they glinted in the light. 

“the sun’s going down.” he keeps his gaze on you as he continues across the bridge, his footfalls striking fear further into your heart. “looks like we’ve missed supper, princess. but don’t worry. i think i see something temping in front of me . . . “

“and i just can’t wait to eat you up.”

his words seem to get you back into motion. you turn on him and begun to run to the other side of the bridge, footsteps loud, every fiber in your being screaming at you to get away. 

get away, get away, get away from him, get away from that wolf. 

you can hear him running after you. you need to go quick, need to go faster. 

“come on princess!” he shouts. you try to pick up speed. you need to go and go and go, needed to find your way back to your car. need to get in and lock the door and go far far away. 

the wolf was going to get you. and he was going to devour you. 

“stop running babe!” you leave the gravel path behind, breaking into the treeline and into the forest. “I’m gonna get you! running will just prolong it!”

the trees blend, and your breath becomes harsher. your heart hammers in your chest. 

you can’t keep running. you can’t hide either, not with his superior sense of smell due to his nature. 

you conclude that you will have to try and fight when you feel something grab you. you’re yanked back and you can feel arms wrap around you before the combined momentum of his body hitting yours makes you strike the ground. 

you don’t land on the ground but on him. for a moment you are breathless, hands clenching at his flannel as you fight for breath. he’s not out of breath at all, and his thick eyebrows are high on his face as he watches you. 

“told you i’d catch you,” he says, smug. his eyes flicker over your face, drinking you in. “now you’re mine, princess.”

you push back against him, trying to tear yourself out of his arm, thick arms. he lets you go for a moment, letting you think that you can get away. then his arms are wrapping back around you, pushing. 

he traps you against the ground. you can hear leaves crinkling underneath your body as you lash out against the man, trying to push his body away. but he’s sturdy, his thick thighs framing yours and his hands pressing against your shoulders and keeping you down. 

“come on, baby,” he says, thick lips pushed into a pout. “stop fighting me. i’ve got you.”

you nearly have your breath when he begins to lower his face to yours. you can’t help but look at him, take in his striking features. the set of his eyes, the sweet brown of them. his smirk and how his lips are slightly cracked. 

his breath ghosts over your face as he takes you in. his lips hover over your cheeks; your temple. his body is warm and heavy on you, to the point where you can no longer feel the bitter autumn air. 

he moves his hand to your face. he presses his palm against your cheek, thumb rubbing over your bottom lip. he has you in the literal palm of his hand and you were helpless. all thoughts of fighting has left your system and you can’t help but bask in his presence now that he’s here. 

“see?” he is smirking. his thumb tugs at your mouth. his canines look awfully sharp. “all the fight’s left you, baby. you’re in my arms, where you belong.”

that sends the fight back into you. you wrinkle your face, hands releasing their grip on his flannel to push at him again. “fuck you!”

he laughs. “come on, princess. just a taste, babygirl. just a bite.”

he shifts on you, weight going to your thighs. he moves his face back to yours, lips skimming over the curve of your cheek and the line of your jaw. 

“just a bite,” he echoes. as soon as you feel his teeth against your skin you freeze, hand going back to his coat and twisting. 

it’s horrible, you think. horrible that you’re so eager for him. 

you tilt your head back, baring your neck. 

you can feel his smile against your throat. he bites at your neck weakly, without any real intent. you can’t help but whine. 

“see princess? you’re so eager for me, so willing.” his words send a flood of warmth through your body and you can feel it as they settle in your cunt, could feel the way your juices begin to wet your panties.

you whine something that sounds like a name. he exhales against your skin, one of his hands moving against your body. he moves his hand up underneath your shirt. you can’t help but jolt as your body is exposed to the chilled autumn air. 

“don’t worry, baby,” he soothes. he presses his nose against your throat, breathing you in. his hands settles against your stomach, thumb swiping at your skin. “i’ll take good care of you, princess.”

it’s horrible, you think. your boyfriend is such a sweet man. he buys you more clothes and jewelry than you know what to do with, spoiling you relentlessly. he treats you as if you’re a princess. he loves you with every fiber of his being, loves your fiercely and treasures you more than any diamond. 

and here he is, body settled over yours. he stalked you through the forest, used his werewolf senses to track you down and make you feel like you were being hunted. he has you trapped beneath him, has you wishing so desperately he would just devour you. 

he was your kind, sweet boyfriend.

and here he is reminding you that underneath his skin he’s a predator. 

and you are his prey. 

seungcheol's hand moves further up your shirt as his mouth diligently works against your neck. he nibbles at your skin, alternating between biting gently and sucking. he's teasing you, you know; teasing you and making you nothing but putty beneath him.

"get off," you mumble, words quiet and body moving against him, trying to feel more and more of him. "leave me alone."

you can feel seungcheol grin against your skin. his fingers skim along the underside of your breast and through your bra, but you can feel the scrape of his nail against you. your mind focuses on the tingling sensation, and when he shifts on you again, his knee coming up and pressing against your cunt, you can't help but get truly desperate.

immediately you're flattening your cunt against his knee, rubbing against it through the layers of fabric.

he laughs at you. "see? i've barely even done anything to you and you're so desperate for me, princess. you could cum from just this, can't you?"

you shake your head in denial. seungcheol moves his hand over your breast, tracing your nipple through your bra. his begins sucking at your skin in favor, grinding his knee up against your cunt.

"cheol," you sob out, fingers grabbing at him. "need more."

"so much for pretending," he laughs. he pulls his face from your neck. "chasing you really got you all bothered, didn't it?"

"don't make fun of me!" you can't help but whine at him.

seungcheol chuckles again. he's grinning at you, eyes sparkling with affection. "what do you want to do? keep playing?"

you sniffle. "please."

his smile hardens into something more cunning. he takes out his hand from underneath your shirt, letting the cold air hit your stomach again. "hm? what's that, baby? want me to be the big bad wolf? want me to be mean and rough?"

you want it. horribly, you want it. the thought of your boyfriend, your big strong werewolf boyfriend, loosing himself.

"come on babygirl. use your words."

"please," you beg.

seungcheol laughs again. "fuck, princess. such a fucking slut, aren't you? so fucking desperate. you don't care what's going on as long as i'm fucking you."

"just want you," you agree. and you did. you wanted seungcheol so fucking much. wanted him, his strong hands pressing you against the forest floor, his fat cock fucking into your cunt. you wanted him in a way you never wanted anything else, a way completely foreign to except for when you were with choi seungcheol.

"cute." seungcheol moves off of you just enough so he could begin working at your pants. he pops the button of your jeans quickly, pulling your jeans off just as fast. you can't even despair at the cold air before he's moving his body back over yours.

"can't believe you ran from me." he pushes his knee back up to your cunt. now that your jeans were out of the way you could feel him better, could feel the scratch of his jeans against your cunt and through your panties better.

and it feels so fucking good. grinding your cunt down on his knee, using him. it sends sparks to your gut and cunt, and your hips move on their own, searching.

"ran from me and here you are, fucking yourself on my knee." seungcheol lowers his face back to yours, lips skimming over your cheek. he doesn't kiss you. normally his lips are constantly against yours, devouring your mouth. but he keeps his mouth away from yours, and it does something to your mind to know that your boyfriend, the man who would give you the world, won't give you this one thing.

"my hands are cold, baby," he says. seungcheol moves his hand back along your chest, letting his fingers skim over you. "guess i'll just have to use you to get warmed up."

you shake your head, trying to remember the plot. "nnn -- no -- pervert --"

but then you grab his hand and push it down. seungcheol slips his hand into your panties, finding your cunt and molding his hand against it naturally.

"fuck, princess," he sighs, lashes fluttering. "cunt's so fucking warm. gonna feel so good milking my cock."

your cunt tightens at his words, wishing it was his cock. he grins, mouth to your neck. he mouths at your neck, kissing sloppily while his hand slowly moves at your pussy.

he works his hand against you, fingers slow. he draws his fingers against your cunt and clit over and over and over, playing your pussy through your panties languidly; as if you were in the comfort of your bed and not on the forest floor, bodies surrounded by fallen autumn leaves.

seungcheol works you to orgasm slowly. satisfaction escapes you -- you want more. you want him fucking you, want him rough against you.

but seungcheol refuses. he bites and licks at your neck, marking you. he maneuvers his fingers so his thumb is pressing flat against your clit through the fabric of your underwear. he focuses on your clit, dragging his thumb over it.

and you hate it.

his hand at your cunt has you whining, hips bucking up and begging for more. your panties are soaked through, warm from the heat of your pussy. you can't feel him the way you want to, can't feel all of him the way you so desperately need.

"need," you rasp out. one of your hands moves to the forest ground beside you, grabbing. leaves crinkle in your grasp. "more, please. more, need more, cheol."

seungcheol removes his hand from your cunt. you whine high at the back of your throat. you wanted more, didn't want him to take his hand away completely.

"such a little slut for me," he laughs. he moves back, sitting. seungcheol grabs your panties in both hands and pulls. your underwear is ripped, and he tosses them aside. "all i had to do was get you beneath me, huh? just had to show some dominance and you're nothing but an eager little slut."

"not," you protest. his hands smooth over your thighs and then he's pushing them apart. "not a slut."

"no?" he moves his hand along your skin, fingernails dragging and sending sparks through you. "then what would you call it, princess? running from me only to give up as soon as i get my hands on you?"

"you're mean."

seungcheol raises a thick brow. he doesn't disagree. his hand finds your cunt naturally. two of his thick fingers hook into your pussy just as quickly, familiar with your body.

"i'm mean?" he slowly feeds his fingers into you, sliding them until you've taken their entire length. you can't help but let your eyes roll back, mouth parting in a wordless moan. his fingers were always so thick, stretching out your cunt and making it burn in the most delightful way.

"i'm mean and yet here i am, fucking your little cunt with my fingers on the forest floor."

"you're not," you argue, voice tight. "you're just sitting there. not moving them, just fucking using my -- my --"

he grins. "your what, princess?"

you refuse to say it, twisting your fingers against the leaves on either side of you. the autumn air bites at your skin but you can't care, can't care when seungcheol's body is framing you and his thick fingers are up your pussy.

"say it." with one hand in your cunt he uses the other to push back his hair, showing off how he has one eyebrow cocked. "gotta use your words, baby. or i'll just leave you here. make you walk all the way to your car with no panties, cunt wanting more."

you whine. "i -- cheol."

he hums, shifting. the movement has his fingers sliding, just slightly, in your pussy. it's just enough to remind you of how desperate you are.

"please," you beg, "please cheol. i want -- i want you to fuck me, want you to fuck -- fuck my pussy."

seungcheol laughs, and then he's pulling his fingers from your pussy. you don't have a chance to miss his fingers before he's shoving them back in. he isn't gentle, and he's fucking your cunt with his fingers the way he would use his cock.

the pain of being opened isn't pain so much as it is that pleasure-pain that you crave. the sort that you seek out after a long day. it's the sort that has you moaning and letting your legs fall all the way open, allowing seungcheol to move closer.

you could cum like this.

but then seungcheol moves his hand from your pussy entirely. you groan, hips still moving up in hopes of him sinking his hand back into your pussy. you want, you want and want and want and here he was, depriving you, turning you into this wanton creature.

seungcheol then works at his jeans and all the protests vanish. you watch hungrily as he discards his jeans and underwear.

his dick makes you drool as soon as you see it. thick and long and pretty. he wraps his hand around it, rubbing at the head. you can't help but watch, greedy, as a white pearl of cum begins to bead at its tip.

"want it?" he asks despite knowing you do. "should make you beg, shouldn't i? make you beg for my cock."

you open your mouth to do just that but then he's on you. seungcheol's large hands are on your body, moving you, manipulating you. he flips you onto your front, moving you to rest on your knees. you can feel him press his cock against your ass, and, like a slut, you push back against him, hoping he'd fuck into you.

seungcheol does. he fucks into your cunt, shoving his dick into your pussy and mounting you like an animal. as if you were both animals. he allows your pussy to adjust for just a moment, just long enough for you to grab at the ground and bury your face against the cold dirt.

and then seungcheol's fucking you. he rams his cock into your pussy, relentless. the angle due to the position has you drooling, has you biting your lips and moaning.

"take it," he commands, hands grabbing at your hips. he holds you still, making you take his cock. "running from me like you're not mine, like you're not mine to fuck. like your cunt isn't mine, princess, like you're warm little pussy isn't mine to fuck and breed and your body isn't mine."

and seungcheol fucks you like you're his. fucks you like you're his and nobody else's, like he owns you, owns you just to fuck you.

you could nearly cum like that.

but he doesn't let you.

because choi seungcheol looks like a cute, doting boyfriend. but underneath underneath that he's a mean, greedy wolf that wants.

seungcheol draws out of you, the slide of his dick making your toes curl. he manipulates you again, arms wrapping around your waist and lifting. he uses his strength to bring snap his dick into your pussy over and over, relentless in his search.

"fucking princess," he growls. and then his fingers are back to your cunt, sliding against your wet pussy and finding your clit. he matches his pace with how he rubs at your clit, and soon enough he's bringing an orgasm that comes crashing through your body.

he doesn't stop there of course. seungcheol continues fucking you. he rams into your pussy, shoving his fat dick into your warm pussy.

"mine," he says, voice low in the back of his throat. seungcheol ducks his head, pushing you back to the ground and covering your body with his. you can see his canines, long and white, glinting; can see the ring of golden that had begun to grow around his pupils.

"yours," you agree.

you quickly become oversensitive. each thrust in and out has you whining, has you wiggling in his grasp. seungcheol doesn't care. you don't protest and so he continues, fucking into you.

you orgasm again. seungcheol grins, teeth sharp. "that's it," he says. "milk my cock, pretty girl."

he's moving you again. you're light underneath his hands, his strength allowing him to move you however. he's moving you back onto your front, one arm looping around your middle to keep your ass pressed against him and his cock sheathed deep in your pussy.

but it's not satisfying. not to him.

and so he moves again. he pushes you, his hand between the blades of your back and keeping you still. each slap of his hips against you leaves a sting, but it's so delicious you can't, and don't want to, do anything other than take it.

in this new position he seems to find what he was searching for. seungcheol growls, something that sounds more animal than human. he rams into you, cock striking your core with each thrust, harsh and strong and rough.

you know you're making loud, obnoxious whines. but you can't stop. not when he's fucking you like he wants to breed you, when he's fucking you like this.

"fuckin' running from me," he hisses, "running like you're not mine. i've got you, princess. fucking got you."

when seungcheol cums he's filling you to the brim. he's painting the inside of you white with his spunk, marking you. when he pulls out he's still hard, and he takes himself in hand. seungcheol fucks into his fist as he looks at you, eyes roaming over your body as you lay against the forest floor.

when he spills again it's on your bare ass, marking you on the outside. you don't think he'll ever stop cumming. eventually, however, he does.

seungcheol drapes himself over you, ignoring the mess. he pants into your ear, arms wrapping around your body and holding you.

you don't know how long the two of you lay on the ground. the front of your body, the part pressed against the dirt, is cold. everywhere seungcheol touches is warm, and when he finally goes to pull away you whine, not wanting to loose his touch.

in the end seungcheol carries you back to the car. he holds you like you weigh nothing. you can see the gold begin to eclipse the brown of his eyes, and when he speaks its in a rasp.

he tucks you into the car, pulling the blankets around your body. seungcheol presses kisses to your face, lingering, not wanting to leave.

when he finally does move from you he's at the edge of transformation. he can barely speak, sweat beginning to dot his hairline.

but seungcheol darts forward for one more kiss despite this, clingy and wanting. because despite the werewolf exterior, despite the fact that he is, by all appearances he is a monster, seungcheol, under his skin, yours.

[cheollipop]

☂˚.⋆｡ 𝙨𝙬𝙚𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣 𝙥𝙞𝙚𝙨

navi | taglist | part of svthub's fall-ing collab

pairing: lee seokmin x afab!reader

w.c.: 5.0k

genre: smut, fluff, established relationship, apple picking and pie baking and some sweet lovemaking <3

a lovers’ retreat—golden rays cast shadows over high, blushing cheekbones, flour-kissed noses and eye smiles as warm as the oven’s embrace, secrets and tender kisses shared with the starry night, and in a wooden cabin fragrant with the aroma of cinnamon and caramel, the love shared was sweeter than the finest apple pie.

☂ warnings: food/eating mentioned, unprotected sex (👎), creampie, praise, edging, some begging, some cockwarming, overstimulation (m), multiple orgasms (f), nicknames (min; baby, babe, love), some aftercare, seokmin is so fucking whipped (so is reader), there's so much love talk in this, I hate myself.

☂ A/N: nobody come for my inconsistent pie recipe, I didn't use one (also idc if you don't knead the dough, i needed it to describe seokmin's bulging muscles tyvm). other than that, this fic means a lot to me and despite struggling for the most part, I really enjoyed writing it. happy reading! :]

nsfw under the cut—minors dni 🔞

Slender fingers rounded the hanging fruit, examining for imperfections with eager eyes and the tip of a tongue held between pearly whites. The crisp air contrasted the solacing warmth of the morning sun under which you basked, strolling between green leaves and bright reds with a near-empty basket dangling at your side. You wanted him to work faster, to disregard whatever negligible bumps lay on the apples’ exterior, but you opted to remain silent, simply watching him from the sidelines while he carried on with his meticulous inspections.

Seokmin was spring. Smiles that could bring a barren land to life, vivid flora and singing birds fluttering around within the glimmers decorating his irises. But spring had long since ended, now treading deeper into the cooling weather of autumn, and yet, Seokmin still offered verve to everything he touched. Even as green turned to yellow then amber, and tanned skin rested beneath thick layers of cashmere and fleece, he still wore his spring smile—a reminder that the season of life will come again. He carried warmth wherever he went, and the biting chill attempting to penetrate thick layers of clothing stood no chance while his towering figure remained by your side.

You watched him throw the fallen end of his scarf over his shoulder, a woven cream he’d worn on your first date. Hoary yarn ends peeked out along its length, and you reminisced the store tag he’d forgotten to remove while he fiddled with his fingers and laughed anxiously before you all those years ago, so young and eager to impress. You’d mused over the giggles shaking his tense shoulders, the pretty pink painting his face and ears when you failed to rip it off in a discreet manner, and though the embarrassment was debilitating in the moment, the worry weighing down on Seokmin’s shoulders faded away as you laughed. It was well into winter when you’d walked alongside the river, steaming cups of hot chocolate resting between your palms—going cold before you had the chance to sip on them, only there to fight off the bleak midwinter breeze numbing your appendages. Young and dumb, you both were, walking by the river on a chilly day, but young and dumb brought upon you years of easy smiles and hearty laughs, unconditional love and unending happiness, all sprouting from sharing arbitrary details about yourselves with that same cream scarf draped around you both.

Dark locks now dyed the colour of changing leaves, the morning rays casting their golden hue over the wavy strands and reflecting off the specs perched over his nose bridge. Seokmin was a few inches taller now, and his shoulders broader, but the smile he wore, the sparkle in his eyes as he laid them on you were no different than those from that day by the river.

Chatter at your side dragged your attention off Seokmin’s profile and onto the family walking past you—two curious children and their parents inspecting the ripe fruit hanging before them. Scripts of late-night conversations you’d had with Seokmin flooded your mind, your face flushing and butterflies swarming your lower belly at the thought of starting a family with the man. Seokmin's fascination with learning how to braid your hair, his whispered comment—’for the future’—did not go unnoticed as he brushed gentle fingers through the stands he’d tangled in his attempts, a hint of a promise in his tone. He also promised to never leave them alone with Hoshi, which you appreciated. For obvious reasons. You were still young, and had much to experience together before taking a step that significant, but part of you was ready to offer Seokmin the world. A man who’d brought nothing bliss and warmth into your life, how could you not?

Turning your head back to the man in question, your eyebrows raised as you watched him eying the passing family alongside you, and you wondered whether the same thoughts were running through his head as well. But then his attention shifted back to you, and the amiable smile while he took you in told you everything you needed to know.

The curve of his lips persisted as he reached a hand to push the stray strands blown by the chilling breeze off your face, pinching the fat of your cheeks between his pointer and thumb before dropping them back to his side. A gentle gesture, but it lit your insides on fire, blinking quickly as you processed an action so natural to him, yet one that set you ablaze. Swallowing nervously, you redirected your gaze to the three apples resting over Seokmin’s palms as he presented the flawless, shiny Honeycrisps with a proud grin.

You giggled, “those look great, Min.”

“Only the best for you,” he leaned forward to plant a kiss onto the cheek he’d just pinched.

Flustered, you watched him throw the apples into the basket you held, his fingers brushing against yours as he swiftly pulled it out of your hand and carried on walking through the orchard. You might have missed a few additions to the small pile while you pondered about a lifetime by Seokmin’s side, and yes, the basket was significantly more weighed down now that he did. But it wasn’t that heavy.

You skipped a few steps to catch up with him, your bottom lip jutting out in protest. “Min. I can carry it myself.”

“Mm, I know,” he hummed, eyes trained on the novel batch of apples swinging gently at his eye level. “Don’t want you to, though.”

You pushed away the fondness warming your chest, capturing his coat’s sleeve between two fingers as you sulked at his side, his attention still set on those damn apples. He moved the basket to his other hand absentmindedly, allowing you more space to come closer to his side, his free arm wrapping around your waist, and head twisting to look over your moping features with tender adoration gracing his own. Leaning down, he pressed soft lips to your forehead, their warmth seeping into your skin and fluttering your eyelids shut.

Placing another one at your temple, playfulness mingled in his tone as he spoke, “Stop complaining, you’re not getting it back.”

And this time, all you could do was laugh.

The hours hurried by while Seokmin’s endless chatter kept you company, and perhaps you wish it hadn’t, wanting to treasure each passing second you shared in the presence of the man with the unwavering smile. You walked between the endless trees with leisure steps, the fingers entangled with yours occasionally dragging you with them to inspect the gradient of red and green. Some apples made the cut, thrown into the pile of spotless fruit he’d gathered over the past few hours, while others remained swaying with the gentle breeze, bruised exterior reflecting the golden rays.

A particular shade of green caught Seokmin’s eye, leaving your hand behind at your side to wrap slender fingers around the glossy circumference, rotating it gently to inspect it, going as far as leaning forward to get a closer look. Nodding to himself, he snapped its stem off and placed the weighted basket down, wrapping the apple in his cream scarf to give it a good wipe. You felt yourself salivate at the satisfying crunch sounding as Seokmin’s teeth breached the unblemished skin, and you watched the pucker of his lips as he chewed with wide, expecting eyes. A breathy chuckle contained within tightly pursed lips echoed in the back of his throat upon viewing the anticipation etched into your expression, and he moved the unbitten side towards your already-parted lips. Too focused on the apple nearing your waiting mouth, you’d missed the sly smile, the giggle he’d nearly failed at suppressing, and bit into the polished green.

A stream of its juice slipped past to flow down your chin, bitterness overwhelming your tastebuds and forcing your eyes firmly shut. A shiver ran down your spine as you struggled to chew on the unripe fruit, tears prickling in your eyes as you willed them open to glare at the man before you, hints of guilt mixed in with amusement on his face. Underneath all the kind smiles and caring gestures, Seokmin loved being an asshole.

He’d watched you persist and push through finishing the bite, too many people around now to spit it out. He even leaned forward to kiss away the tangy juice cooling over your skin, scrunching his nose at the sourness he’d willingly stolen another taste of. At least he was aware enough to take a step back once you’d swallowed the unpleasant bite down, what you thought was fear flashing across his features.

“Hey,” he put his hand up in defence before you could speak, “we share everything, right?” He took another step backward while giggling anxiously, and he nearly tripped over the apple-full basket he had resting over the soft grass. “Why should I make an exception for fruit?”

“Bad fruit,” you corrected, an eyebrow raised.

“Babe,” he started, but didn’t know how to continue, perhaps hoping the sparkling brown of his irises would do the trick.

And it almost did, you admit. But the bitterness lingered over your tongue, and Seokmin found himself scurrying away and out of the fire zone of the incoming apples you’d launched at him, laughing while you entertained the couples and children harvesting their own fruit with your lively act of revenge.

--

You smoothed your hands down the fresh set of clothes you’d thrown on, the fleece warm against your skin. The ligneous scent of your rented cabin added to its coziness, gentle winds blowing against closed windows and floorboards creaking with every socked footstep guiding you to the small kitchen.

Said footsteps quickened upon spotting bright green reflecting off the sharp metal of the very large knife in Seokmin’s hand, eyebrows furrowed as he focused on dividing the apple into even crescents. The hurried shuffling drew his attention, twisting his head just as you reached for the sharp tool, gently untangling his fingers off its handle to set it down over the cutting board alongside the botched fruit.

“Baby?” Tilting his head to the side, he stared at you in confusion.

You held both his hands in yours, flat over your palms as you inspected the tanned skin. Running your thumbs over polished nailbeds, you followed the protruding veins lining his slender fingers, all the way down each knuckle until you’d made sure he was unharmed. You enclosed his fingers within your palm, bringing them up to press your lips against, finding his pointer to plant an especially tender kiss over the scar stretching across its side.

“I was being careful,” he spoke through a melodramatic pout.

You smiled. “I know you were, Min. But let me handle the chopping this time, okay?”

Averting his eyes to the side, pretending to focus on the yellowing trees past the windowpane, Seokmin nodded, his hands limp in your hold. You lowered them to his side to cradle his jaw, tilting his head down to meet your eyes once again and staring him down in hopes of breaking his composure, but Seokmin’s pout persisted. And so the kisses began, soft and delicate over his cheekbones, forcing his eyes shut as you trailed your lips over the trembling skin. Leaning your head back, you watched his evident struggle against a betraying smile, finally curling the corners of his mouth when you’d dragged his head down with a forceful kiss to his cheek, the skin stretching under your lips while you kept them pressed there for a few more seconds. You moved away with an audible smack, Seokmin’s pout nowhere to be seen as he stared down at you with an uncontainable smile.

“Why don’t you make the dough instead?”

You picked up where Seokmin left off—half an apple chopped sloppily, which you ended up munching on while you worked—going through the washed apples to pick out the greenest, cutting them into even pieces and throwing them in a bowl of cinnamon and sugar. You remembered the nutmeg later on, after the frustrated noise at your side caught your attention, confusion raising your eyebrow when you’d noticed the powdery dough Seokmin was working with. He’d forgotten the eggs.  The embarrassment on his face was adorable, rose-tinted cheeks and restrained smile while watching you crack an egg into the crumbly mess he’d been working on for a shameful amount of time. A quick kiss to his jaw and a whispered ‘it’s okay, Min’ seemed to do the trick, though.

Tossing the last of the apples into the seasoning bowl, you sprinkled nutmeg over the shimmering crescents before grabbing a clean spoon from the dishrack, the spices’ aroma wafting in the air around you as you mixed them in with the fruit. Glancing over at Seokmin, you realised he’d begun kneading the dough, flour dusted over the marble counter as he rolled the raw crust in on itself, and as you took in the hard muscle bulging against the sleeve of his t-shirt, your fingers unconsciously loosened around the spoon you held. Your eyes wandered over flexing biceps and defined, broad shoulders, veins protruding from tan skin as he worked the dough under his palm. Bottom lip tucked between a set of pearly whites, his eyebrows furrowed occasionally while the ball gradually smoothened in his hands, growing less crumbly and eventually forming a near-perfect sphere.

Absentmindedly tumbling the apples with a limp grip around the spoon, you followed Seokmin’s movements, lower belly fluttering with every faint, airy grunt sounding in the back of his throat as he worked the dough.  Your thoughts strayed as you eyed the distracting flex of his muscles—the smile he wore, so sweet and tender, contrasted broad shoulders and the strength to manhandle you without much thought. You were almost certain Seokmin had no awareness of the fact, going about what he was doing without much regard to the blushing mess he’d left behind, the butterflies violently thrashing around within your stomach. The sparkling orbs with which he gazed at you, with charming innocence, oblivious to the effect he had on you. Perhaps that was for the best; you weren’t sure you’d want to find out what would become of him should he learn of the hidden power he’d been holding this entire time.

Sudden eye contact dragged you out of your daydreams when the man before you turned in your direction, the smooth doughball resting over his palm, and a proud smile on his lips. You held back the one threatening to break out on yours when you’d spotted the white dusting the pointy tip of his nose, some lightly powdering his cheeks as well. Instead, your chest warmed at his wordless flaunting as he slowly moved the undented dough towards you, sparkling eyes fishing for praise. And sure, you basically made the dough for him, and yes, all he did was mix the ingredients together with firm, hard-earned muscle, but the slight falter in his smile the longer you remained silent was enough to sway you.

“It looks great, Min!” You stepped closer, inspecting the roundness with wide eyes for a few seconds before straightening up to meet his eyes, “I’m proud of you, my love.”

Though a simple gesture, Seokmin’s face lit up, all but hurling the dough onto the counter to pull you into his arms, grinning into your shoulder while he squeezed your laughing frame closer to his chest. His arms still around you, he pulled away slightly, stars dancing in his eyes as he gazed at you gleefully, smiling against your lips as you got onto your tiptoes to kiss him lightly. But that didn’t satisfy Seokmin, his arm wrapping across your back to pull you back into him, locking his lips with yours once again, this time with hunger and hints of desire laced into the action. He kissed you once, twice, until he’d had a taste and realized he’d never have enough, needing sweetness and plush lips to forever bless his senses. While you held on to his biceps for balance, Seokmin was everywhere—hands up your back, over your arms and waist, and suddenly he was kissing you harder, deeper, tongue swiping across your bottom lip and teeth digging into it with a fervent want that sent waves of heat soaring through your body.

Pulling away for air, your chests heaved in unison, flush against one another as Seokmin peered down at you with hooded eyes, a spark of lust igniting the dark irises. And suddenly you were back in the present, the forgotten apples browning in their bowl, and the dough witnessing the heated exchange from its place on the counter.

“T-the pie!” you quickly diverted, pushing Seokmin away to shift your focus back to the task at hand, but you could feel his eyes boring into the back of your skull. “Can you preheat the oven please?”

An amused laugh sounded behind you at the shakiness of your voice, “yes, boss.” Just as you were about to sigh in relief, you heard him take a step towards you, his chest bumping into your shoulder and a gentle whisper blowing against the shell of your ear. “You have flour all over your face, by the way.”

And your pants, you thought, as his palm landed a playful slap onto your ass before he made his way to the other side of the kitchen.

The heat coursing through you dwindled as you fixated on the unfinished pie, save for those resulting from the not-so-hidden glances you’d stolen of Seokmin’s defined biceps as he moved the rolling pin over the dough. It was smooth sailing after that, though, missing the heart eyes directed at you as you spooned the filling into the rolled-out crust, perfectly fitted into the baking mould. You attempted to control your expressions as Seokmin tried and failed to cut straight lines out of the leftover dough, begrudgingly allowing him to place the uneven lattice in a questionable pattern, the chipper smile stretching his lips while he worked more than enough to excuse an ugly pie.

Carrying the raw pie over his head like Simba, Seokmin made his way to the oven. You held the door open for him, eyes following the baking mould as he transferred it onto the rack, gasping when his finger met the scorching metal. He placed the pie down and pretended nothing happened, ignoring the forming mark on his knuckle as he swung the oven door shut. And despite the whining and attempts of reassurance, you dragged Seokmin to the sink and ran cold water over his hand, once again kissing his pout away while you stood with barely any space separating your bodies.

His free hand slid across the small of your back, his other leaving its place under the running water to shut it off, wiping the droplets over his sweats before holding onto your hip. Leaning down, he met your lips once more, then again, until short pecks deepened, and a sharp nose nuzzled into the side of yours as he pulled you further into his body.

You pulled away with a gasp, startling Seokmin away from your lips, “the sweet potatoes!”

The initial shock replaced by softening eyes and a breathy laugh, Seokmin squeezed your waist once before releasing you. He stood to the side while you wrapped foil around the sangria exterior, offering to put them in the oven for you, but backing down at the disapproving glare you threw at him. Perhaps Seokmin had unintentionally caused a case of Pavlovian conditioning, one you remained unaware of, because the very second his bottom lip jutted out, yours were pressing consoling kisses over its plushness. Sometimes it took a few tries, but that’s only because you enjoyed watching the man—broad shoulders and all—sulk and whine when he didn’t get his way, only to lighten up and grin once your lips met his. It’s unclear who the winner was in this game, both parties working with a motive and ending with a satisfying result. Peculiar, really.

You settled down on the creaky floorboards across from the oven, your back to Seokmin’s chest and his thighs on either side of yours. His arms rested comfortably around your waist, hands limp at your hips, occasionally squeezing at the clothed flesh. Watching the pie crust brown through the glass, you basked in the cosy aroma circulating the cabin, the heat emanating from Seokmin’s body gentler and more comforting than that caramelising the sugar drizzled over the wonky lattice. Delicate fingers smoothed down your hair, and a silky voice lulled you to a tranquil state of comfort, strong arms holding you within the aura of warmth until a sharp click sounded, with the nostalgic scent of cinnamon and caramel to guide you out of slumber’s enticing grip, and back to toothy smiles and a cordial embrace.

--

The night’s breeze was crisp against slick skin, the warmth encased within the confines of the thick blankets now infiltrated through a window forgotten open. Seokmin noticed the raised goosebumps over your arms, and lowered his body until your chests laid flush, his forearms on either side of your head keeping his weight off your form.

“Cold?” he asked, lips pressing against your jaw and up to your cheekbone, over the frosty tip of your nose.

You shook your head, “not anymore,” and wrapped your arms around the soft skin of his waist.

Seokmin smiled, gentle features illuminated by the moonlight peeking through the cracked-open blinds—a cool-toned hue casting shadows over his face, moving as he pressed his pelvis closer to yours with an exhaled moan. Moving his weight over to one arm, he slid the other down to your core, splaying his palm out over your lower belly to thumb at your clit.

He’d been teasing you for so long—his cock filling you up the way you wanted, but only barely teasing your g-spot, refusing to move despite your repetitive whines; instead, he occasionally reached two slender fingers between your legs to relieve some of the arousal burning underneath your skin. This time, though, you’d reached your limit, clenching around him as a sudden high rushed through you, shaking your body within his hold.

Despite a day’s worth of lingering touches and heated kisses, a hand placed a little too low on your back, and eyes lit with unconcealed glints of want, the patience Seokmin exhibited as he guided you through your orgasm was not surprising. He’d always enjoyed giving—curling his fingers just right to take in the elegant arch of your back, your sweet taste on his tongue while he nuzzled his nose into your soaked pussy. But most of all, Seokmin savoured the tight squeeze around his cock as he fucked you through an orgasm, his breath heavy and eyes lidded with the pleasure your walls lavished upon him.

Slowly fading back into the present, you peered up at the man atop you, the column of his throat stretched as he took in the violent fluttering of your walls. But you wanted more, pent up and restless with his scent, his warm touch, occupying your every sense. And he still won’t move.

You rolled your hips experimentally, a startled hand rushing to stop you, fingers digging into the flesh to stifle the motion. “Please,” you whined, “Min, please move.”

Groaning at your tone, cock throbbing between your walls, “oh baby,” he breathed out, bumping his forehead with yours and allowing his eyelids to fall shut. “I’ve been thinking about having you like this all day. I wanna last for you, my love, ‘wanna make you feel so good.”

Arousal boiled in your lower belly, eyelashes fluttering and a shaky breath escaping your parted lips at the words whispered in the air between you. “Min-”

“Let me be good for you.”

A kiss to your temple and a few inhales were all it took Seokmin to regain his composure, his forehead still pressed to yours as he tugged you closer by the hips, languidly rolling his own into your heat. The leisure glide wasn’t much, but it sent a shiver through your body. It was as though Seokmin could read the wordless pleads sparkling in your eyes, pulling his face away just enough to adjust the angle before settling back down onto your body. Fingers tangled in your hair to keep your eyes on his, blinking in unison while you breathed the same air, gentle waves of pleasure drawing breathy moans out of the both of you, his cockhead brushing against your sweet spot every time he drove it inside your cunt.

Sliding a hand over his sweat-coated nape, you dragged Seokmin down to your lips, the sweetness of a pie forgotten outside enriching your tastebuds, the single remaining piece left over the picnic blanket alongside crumbled foil—the unintentionally discarded dessert serving as breakfast for the blackbirds to nip at when the morning came.

The hand lost in your hair found its way to your jaw, cradling your face while he devoured you, the kiss growing deeper the farther Seokmin sunk down the blazing pit of lust growing within him. His cock twitched erratically within you, pace picking up until the echo of skin-on-skin danced between the four walls, hips slamming against yours with fervour as his eagerness finally won over him. Unable to focus on anything but the mind-numbing heaviness of his cock pounding into you, your lips parted to release a staccato of ah’s, his own relentless as they peppered wet, open-mouthed kisses all over your face.

“God, you’re perfect,” he grabbed your cheeks with the hand previously on your jaw, squishing them together to lay his lips onto the forced pout on yours, “all mine.”

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head at the repetitive abuse to your cunt, squelching obscenely every time Seokmin fucked his entire length inside. “All—hngh—all yours,” you repeated, exhaling a breath you’d been holding when sudden warmth spread through your abdomen.

“I—hah—‘m sorry,” he stuttered as his rhythm turned sloppy, shuddering when he finally came. Sheathing himself deep withing your heat, he fed ropes of translucent white into your womb while attempting to keep his eyes on you, long eyelashes fluttering while ecstasy flowed through his body.  “Felt so good, I couldn’t…” he paused to lower his head, interrupted by a string of airy moans as the last, weak spurts of cum emptied out of his twitching cock. “I couldn’t help it,” he muttered.

The reassurance died on your tongue when the sensitive cock drew out halfway, only to slam back into you as though the arms bracketing your head didn’t continue to tremble with the continuing effects of his orgasm. Lifting his head back up to meet your gaze, he lowered his hand back down to play with your cunt, dipping down to feel around your stretched hole and back up to circle your clit with the slick he’d collected, a silent promise of “I’ll be good” glimmering in his lidded eyes while he watched you fall apart under his touch.

And he was, so good.

You tumbled over the edge unexpectedly, cockhead pounding into your cunt while he rolled your clit underneath his fingertips until your features contorted gracefully, fireworks exploding behind your eyelids as you shut them and tilted your head back to welcome a stupefying orgasm. You tensed for a moment, then began spasming uncontrollably in his arms, hips simultaneously jerking towards and away from his touch as he guided you through your high, languidly gliding his cock along your dripping, clenching walls, both hands now gripping the soft flesh of your hips.

And when the stimulation sent pangs of pain up your body, a whispered repetition of his name paired with limp tugs at his wrist finally broke Seokmin away from you and the bewitching melody he drew out of the perfect circle shaping your mouth. He slid his softening cock out of your heat to allow thick dollops of pearly cum to stream out of your pussy, watching as your hole clenched uselessly until your abashed whine dragged him out of his thoughts.

You found yourself tucked in under layers of thick blankets while running water sounded in the bathroom, bare feet padding over the floorboards until Seokmin—with his boxers on backwards—reached under the covers to blindly drag a warm washcloth over your skin, hoping it would catch all the sweat and cum without having to expose you to the chill air. You drew your lips into a straight line to avoid laughing at the concentration furrowing his eyebrows, cheeks flushing as he washed your middle. Any other day, Seokmin would make a big deal of cleaning you up properly, but you could see the hair on his arms raising, the autumn night’s chill piercing through his skin.

He didn’t even bother with returning the rag to its place, tossing it over his shoulder to dive under the cosy blankets with you, limbs tangling as soon as he made it there—arms circling your tired frame and legs pushing between and over yours. The momentary frigidity dissipating, his body heat seeped into your very being, and you inhaled the fresh scent of laundry mixed in with remaining hints of his cologne. Nuzzling the pointy tip of his nose into your hair, he planted a kiss onto your crown, the gesture faint as his steady heartbeat lulled you to much-needed slumber, the serene trip to dreamland occupied with solacing thoughts about a forever home within Seokmin’s tender embrace.

reblogs/feedback are greatly appreciated!! ^^ apply for my tag list here (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

[crownedinmarigolds]

We have entered the month of August, which means Autumn is steadfast approaching! The Gangrel are roving out to perhaps watch the leaves change, enjoy the nights as they begin to grow long, feel the spirits in the air.... whatever gets them going! Trixie - business operator/mother wolf/bodyguard of the Wolves Den strip club - is smiling with her friend Damaris - your classic adventurer scholar who may have his hands on too many ancient artifacts.

If you'd like! I'd love for everyone to try and drop their Gangrel here, let's make a new pack!! :D Like the other collaborations, I will take all submissions at the end and smush them all into one final collab piece - the deadline will be September 6th!! (A Friday!) I tried to answer how to submit here in case you were curious! (For reference, Damaris is 5'10" and Trixie in heels is 6'3"!) IF YOU WANT TO DRAW AND FEEL LIKE YOU CANNOT DRAW DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE THAT IS THE DEVIL DECEIVING YOU! Please draw your OC next to them if you want to I would cry and love to see it!

[lavendermin]

disasterology | boothill

boothill x reader, mad scientist reader

wc | 1.7k

genre | light banter, ambiguous relationship

warnings | nsfw, artificial cyborg guts, suggestive, body horror, love bug (literally via data transfer), mentions of giving boothill a womb, boothill bluescreens

note | my piece as part of the autumn festival collab hosted by @owlespresso ^^ I’ll probably make a part two to this to squeeze in more banter and get some actual freaky stuff in

“You’re back at my lab… A little soon, no?” The question is thrown at Boothill without a spared glance as you are engrossed in several tasks at once. The Galaxy Ranger makes his way over to your mess of screens and tools by your main work desk, his strides reminiscent of someone a little too comfortable in your bubble.

“Annual checkup. Don’t tell me you forgot already, doc?” Boothill teases with feigned hurt, sharp teeth flashing with his playful grin.

“Not a doctor,” you correct him flatly.

A holo-screen appears before his face, stopping him from nearing your concentrated form. A flurry of data scrolls by and a pop-up appears with a few dates.

With a few final taps you swivel toward him and the screen. “According to your record in my data bank, you’re not due for your checkup for another nine weeks,” you state matter-of-factly. With a few taps and a swipe, the screen is gone and you meet Boothill’s gaze for the first time. “So, what’s the actual reason you’re here? Surely not just a friendly visit to the resident witch or whatever they’re calling me these days on this planet.”

“Recent scrap didn’t end too well. Leg’s been acting up.”

Your eyes scan him briefly, humming in thought as you enter new data and access his file.

“I definitely noticed a few new scratches to your outer shell armor,” you note, speaking more to yourself as you log the new data. “I’ll run some tests and analyze further.”

You roll back in your chair near him, gathering a few tools here and there and holding an emesis basin in front of him. Boothill squints at you in confusion, a frown pulling down his lips in a glimmer of dangerous, sharp teeth.

“Here. Spit them out—all the ammo you have. Now.”

His eyes sharpen, but he relents with a grunt. The metal of the bullets hitting the basin is all that fills the silence as you return to some screens and rummage through rows of drawers and drawers that line the walls.

It’s a chaotically organized yet unorganized lab, to say the least.

“There’s an empty box near you. Go ahead and remove all of your outerwear and any other weapons so we can get started,” you instruct as you prepare a table nearby.

Boothill begins to protest. “Doc, it’s just my leg. I don’t need–”

When he turns back to your desk you’re gone from sight. It unnerves him and you appear behind him seemingly from thin air.

“Hey–!”

You plug several chords into a few outlets on his hip. The feeling of the data processing through multiple base drives makes his entire body feel like numbing static courses through it.

Your face is close. Too close.

“Let's get a base-read on what’s going on here for now. I’ll leave the room so you can get undressed if you’re modest like that.” Your eyes flit down and you smirk. “Not like I haven’t seen your full model before.”

His face flushes a bright crimson and he sputters, shoving you away. You laugh out loud, unsettling and loose as you go back to your screens. It’s become more apparent with each visit that you aren’t entirely sound of mind.

“I still wonder why your face flushes red when your synthetic blood is blue. Perhaps I’ll find out today,” you grin, looking up and being met with a metallic click and the barrel of a gun between your eyes.

There’s a fierceness in Boothill’s glare, red cheeks betraying his threat. Though his hand is steady, your monitors signal increased levels of core maintenance and adrenaline. He doesn’t know how to handle your teasing— never will.

“I don’t have time to be yer forkin’ lab rat,” he sneers.

Your expression remains calm, unbothered as a lazy smile makes way to your lips. It’s an irksome sureness that makes the ranger’s eye twitch and teeth grit. Perhaps that’s simply your insanity creeping into him as well.

It draws him in like a moth to a flame. And he convinces himself that he hates it.

“You wouldn’t hurt me.”

“And what makes you think I wouldn’t put a bullet in yer head for crossing me?”

“Plenty of reasons. But really I only need one.”

“Yeah? And what’s that, sweets?” He scoffs, patience running thin.

You gently tap a knuckle over his heart core, the area making a soft metal clank as you do so. Boothill falls silent for a moment as you say nothing more. The mental gears turn a little harder than usual and suddenly his face is hot. Too hot.

“Wh– What– Who ever said I liked ya like that?! A ranger doesn’t get wrapped up in those feelings, ya hear?!”

And you fucking smirk.

“I’m not sure what you’re insinuating. All I meant was that you wouldn’t get rid of your one and only mechanic on this side of the galaxy, would you? Who else would be stupid enough to take all your last minute tuning appointments and repair jobs after reckless battles? You need me, ranger.” You pause and shift your gaze directly at him. “No reason to get so defensive. Unless… you have feelings for me?”

“Negative feelings,” he seethes.

But you’ve seen right through him. It’s an act of pity that you just chuckle and resume your work on diagnosing some of the sensors around his midriff. Still enough to keep the cowboy grumbling and red in the face.

“Feelings nonetheless,” you chuckle under your breath as you swivel back to the flurry of incoming data. “I’ll head to the back to grab a few things I’ll need and see if a few spare parts are lying around that are similar to some of your fractured hip joints. Do not touch anything.”

Once you’re out of sight, Boothill grumbles and removes his hat and jacket. The bright industrial lights only serve to irk him more— never was one to like hospital settings.

It’s a bit more of a predicament when the wires attached to his hip get in the way of removing his bottoms. He clicks his tongue and listens as your fumbling in the distance remains constant.

Whatever. Damn cables are in the way. What is he to do? He yanks them off and removes the last of his articles, shoving them in the box off to the side you left for him.

“Fork me,” he grumbles. There’s an unruly mess of cables on the floor, most of which look the same and range in color. Naturally, none are labeled.

Just his luck.

One of your monitors beeps and a few pop ups come up as the data flow abruptly ends. In a panic, Boothill grabs a red and a black cable and plugs them in. He clicks a few of the pop ups to make them go away and resume whatever they asked. He didn’t have time to read whatever jargon it said, not that he would have understood it anyway.

He’s seated and on the examination table by the time you walk back in with a few boxes stacked in your arms.

A warm hum settles in his core with his data processor kicking in. It’s pleasant, albeit an odd sensation.

You set down the boxes and glance at the screens, humming with thought. The pause is a beat too long and Boothill can only hope you don’t prod. You tap a few things on the screen and approach him with a smile.

“Alright. Pain receptors are off and your maintenance mode is on. Let’s get started.”

—

Only about forty minutes have passed but it’s becoming increasingly clear to Boothill that something is clearly wrong. He’s used to certain processes being shut off while you work on him— that part is normal.

Right now, he can’t seem to take his eyes off you. And you won’t spare him a glance as you work, much too engrossed in his guts— literally. He huffs and you don’t bother looking at him. It pisses him off.

“If you’re feeling discomfort use your words, ranger,” you mutter without missing a beat. “If your pain processors kicked in due to something that went wrong I need to know before you blow up on me.”

Your tug at a particular wire makes him gasp, his grip on the edge of the table warping the metal.

“Fork– Watch it!” His breath shakes with a gasp, face flushed.

“You didn’t exactly come with a manual.”

“Please don’t say that while yer hands are in my guts.”

You snicker, ignoring his glare as you continue to work methodically.

“I could always give you new insides if I mess these up,” you tease smoothly, fingers deeper still in his abdominal cavity. “Would you like it if I gave you a womb?”

Boothill huffs with a shiver as you tug at that same wire again, his back arching slightly off the cold, metal table. His mouth hangs open, unable to say a word. It’s overwhelming, an intense sensation that he feels in every artificial nerve end.

You call his name once more— so sweet and full of concern. The auditory hallucinations have begun from the wrong dataset he hooked himself up to earlier. Your voice in actuality is much more nonchalant than he processes.

“Booth? Ranger? Are you still with me?” You tap his cheek, his eyes darting shakily around the room. Red hearts for irises replace his usual programmed eye setup when he blinks to glance at you. You sigh. “I told you not to touch anything didn’t I?”

“Yer… my soulmate.”

“No,” you deadpan, flicking your wrist to bring up a holo-screen before you. Seems the neuro-processors couldn’t sort the wide range of the artificial emotion dataset and developed a love bug. “Boothill, if you can still understand me beyond the love bug, I’ll be turning on your standby function for a few minutes to finish.”

You’re not sure if he heard you at all, watching as whatever he heard in his bugged brain makes him red in the face and shiver.

Then, he blue-screens and all is quiet after his metal body clangs against the table.

You heave a sigh, a smile still on your lips. “Only your soulmate would put up with a ranger this obtuse.”

[trash-shrike]

Eris' goat balls were so powerful they got my first post flagged within 15 minutes.

@azrisweek VERY LATE entry for Azris Week 2025's Day 1 Prompt - Creature Feature! This is a collaboration between me and one of my favorite authors, @highlordofkrypton, who wrote an accompanying fic. I've never drawn Azris before but I could never say no to a collab or the chance to draw monsterfucking. Anyway, we present:

the burden of high lordship

For hundreds of years, Eris thought becoming High Lord would be as simple as killing his father. He's wrong—he's so terribly wrong. With great power comes an equally great curse, one that Azriel is determined to save him from.

You can read the preview below, or the whole thing on Ao3 (which also has the full uncensored artwork)!

Note: The full fic has a lot of warnings, but the following snippet and the art are pretty tame in comparison.

The war is over.

Eris withdraws his blade from his father’s abdomen with a wet sound. Beron’s innards spill to the floor. The smile on the High Lord’s face is not one of horror, but rather a grin of maniacal joy. He grips his son’s arm, baring his bloodied teeth for all to see. He pulls his heir close with the last vestiges of strength within his dying body.

“Finally, I am free.” His warm, moist breath hugs Eris’ ear. “And now you will see the curse that is being the High Lord.”

“I will never be like you,” Eris snarls and drives the tip of his dagger into his chin, and straight through his father’s skull.

His father’s eyes glow, despite the faerie’s death. Flames ignite in Beron’s eyes, and they break free from their last host, boring into Eris’ amber eyes. Molten, molten —the High Lord’s power is molten hot and it sears his mind. Eris falls to his knees, covering his face, but he does not scream. He does not howl. His father taught him that weakness must be bitten down, chewed up and swallowed back down, never to be seen again. 

A hundred thousand voices cry out inside of him—every male that has come before him, cursing him with their regrets and their ambitions so deeply intertwined with their power, their Court. They claw at him from the inside out, their hands branding his soul with what could have been, and what should be. Their sins are bared to him, crimes committed in the name of being better than the one before them and yet, they were always worse. They seize him from the inside, shattering him piece by piece. His fingers find new awkward angles, and his skin stretches and tears to accommodate the grandeur of this curse. Tatters of tailored civilization  fall away from him, embers of the good Lord he dreamed of being.  To be High Lord is not a claim to power, it is to be remade in the image of the Court, its needs and the ghosts of its history. Horrors needle into his mind swirling in a maelstrom of—

“Eris!”

Steel clatters against stone as Azriel drops his sword. He falls to his knees, catching Eris before he cracks his pretty skull on the ground and cradles him in hopes of halving his burden. Eris will not scream. The silence terrifies him, and the crunch of Eris’ teeth grinding against one another even moreso. His love’s body trembles within his grasp, and heat radiates from him—climbs towards dangerous heights—but Azriel will not pull away. These hands were burned long ago; they can bear much more than this, what’s another set of scars? These ones, at the very least, will have meaning.

“Get—Get away from me.” The words are masticated through Eris’ sharp, sharp teeth, frothed with saliva.

“No.” 

‘I will never leave you,’ remains unspoken. It’s a promise hidden in the Night, buried in the fallen leaves of Autumn. It had taken them so much to get here, and the last thing Azriel will ever do is leave.

“No!” Eris roars, shoving Azriel with a strength unknown and a new clawed hand. It cuts through the straps across Azriel’s chest and mars his warrior’s leathers. Azriel catches but a glance of his faerie, the way his face has changed, and the—

The horns ?

“Get out !” Eris screams once more, doubling over, as the room trembles with the weight of his growing power. “It’s too much,” he whispers, as if Azriel would not hear it—as if Azriel has not heard every confession whispered in the darkness. He is good for nothing if not listening. If not for seeing past the monsters they needed to be to save those they love.

“I won’t.”

The shadowsinger tips his head in defiance from his spot on the floor. Whatever is happening to Eris, he will stay by his side and they will go through this together. His brows furrow, but his eyes never leave the rising, rising form before him. Oh, he knows this tactic well. He and his brothers have done it in some form or other. Rhysand with his dragon form, Cassian with his broad, dark wings and Azriel with his command over the shadows. It is an intimidation tactic. Fire could not make him cry out when he was a child. Torture has never broken him. He will not leave.

“I’ll kill you.” Eris threatens.

Azriel does not move. He says nothing. His mind remains unchanged.

Face shrouded in shadows, all Azriel sees is Eris’ new silhouette—much taller than any faerie he has known with curved horns atop his head, and new, strong powerful furred legs atop cloven hooves—and his eyes made of burning embers. Great red wings unfurl, a true warrior’s width, as Eris towers over him. Between his muscular thighs, a long horsecock hangs framed by heavy, hairy balls. This version of Eris is unrecognizable. Fear prickles across the back of his neck, making Azriel’s fine hairs stand on end.  Were it not for the trust he had in the soul before him, he might have doubted his decision to stay, but this is Eris.

Eris, Eris, Eris —the faerie owns Azriel, heart and mind. He’d given it all willingly to him.

“I… I can’t control it.” Eris grinds the palm of his clawed hand against his eyes. His mouth parts in a silent scream as his bones bend and crack, forcing him to grow even bigger. Taller. “Get away from—”

“Use me,” Azriel cuts Eris off. He stands, barely reaching Eris’ chest. He looks up at him, made of determination and unwavering loyalty. “Take it out on me.”

Link to Ao3

[moonlightisdancing]

Lips Like Sugar/j.t.k

Pairing: Jake Kiszka x Female Reader

Word Count: 3465

Warnings: NSFW MINORS DNI 18+ drinking, protective jake, touching, fingering, edging, oral (m+f receiving), food play(?), unprotected sex (wrap before you tap!), butt stuff, soft aftercare jake

PLEASE LMK IF I MISSED ANY WARNINGS

A/N: this fic was a collab with @starcaughtsam she sent me the sauce and i wrote this ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~🖤~~~~~~~~~~~

The cool autumn air sends chills across your barely covered legs as you walk up the driveway, hand in hand with your lover. The music is so loud that you can feel it rumbling the ground beneath your boots. Jake reaches for the handle and gives you a peck on the forehead before opening the door.

“Y/N! Jack! Looking good!” Your ex-coworker, the host, James greets you at the door dressed as a vampire.

“It’s- Jake…” Jake reaches his hand out, to which he’s completely ignored.

“Whatever you say, big guy.” James moves his gaze to you, looking up and down. “And what are you guys supposed to be?”

“Oh, Jake and I are pirates.” You smile wide pointing between the two of you, resting your head on Jake’s shoulder.

“Hm. Imagined the skirt to be a little… longer.” James shrugs his shoulders.

You let out an awkward giggle as Jake pulls you closer to his side, walking with you towards the kitchen for drinks. James turns to watch you from the doorway.

“Here, baby.” Jake hands you a cracked Topo Chico, grabbing one for himself.

“No whiskey?”

“Keeping it light, gotta drive.” He places his hand at the small of your back, guiding you to the crowd of dancing bodies.

The two of you were never big on dancing, instead finding your way to the opposite side of the crowd, plopping onto an old couch. You cross one leg over the other, ankle resting on Jake’s thigh. He places his free hand on your calf and rubs soft circles with his thumb. You share a few drinks over the course of an hour, keeping casual conversation and innocent touching. Jake had cut himself off after three drinks so he could drive, but encouraged you to have some fun.

“Feelin’ good, doll?” Jake asks, bringing his cool hand to your reddened cheek.

“Very good.” You smile stupidly with half lidded eyes.

“Would you like another drink?”

“Mm, maybe one more.” You reach to grab his hand, placing a kiss on the back of it.

“I’ll be back.” He gives you a kiss on your temple as he gets up to get you another drink.

He saunters into the kitchen, you watch him like he’s the only one in the crowded room. In a sea of costumes, your pirate is all that exists. He makes sure you’re watching before he cracks open another seltzer, licking the foam off the side of the can, undressing you with his eyes. It’s taking everything in you not to touch yourself under his gaze, slick pooling in your panties. You’re snapped from your trance as James emerges from seemingly nowhere, taking Jake’s place on the couch.

“Hey, Y/N. Where’s John? He leave?” James places his arm on the back of the couch as if he’s going to wrap it around you.

“Jake? No, he’s right there.” You point at Jake, who’s standing at the counter looking at you.

Jake trusts you, only watching for any signs of discomfort. You smile and wave at him, earning a little smirk and wave back.

“I don’t get why you’re with him. He seems like a dick.”

“I’m sorry?” You rip your eyes away from Jake to look at James.

“He seriously can’t be that good.” James inches closer to you, reaching his hand toward your knee.

You look back over to Jake who’s now making his way back to the couch empty handed.

“Not that it’s your business, but I can assure you he’s perfect at everything.” You move your leg away from his reach.

Jake finally makes it over to the couch, your knight in shining armor.

“That’s my spot.” Jake points to where James is seated.

“Move your meat, lose your seat.” James remarks.

“What are you fucking twelve, bro? Move.”

“See? Told you he was a dick, Y/N.”

You reach for Jake’s waist, hoping to diffuse the situation before it gets ugly, fast. “Baby, I’m getting tired.” You whine, dipping your thumb into his belt loop.

Diffuse the situation, Y/N. Diffuse.

“Already? I was just getting ready to start a game. Can’t have Halloween without candy!” James tries his best to persuade you, but he’s painfully unsuccessful in his attempts.

You look up at Jake through lustful eyes, images of him in the kitchen playing through your head like a melody.

“It’s up to you, my love.” Jake gently squeezes your hand in reassurance, looking down at you with his brown doe eyes.

You pull yourself up from the couch and stand in front of him, leaning over to whisper into his ear.

“I wanna go home. I have something for you.” You trail away, leaving a kiss below his ear.

“Mm, getting tired, myself. Think we’re gonna go home.” Jake pulls you into him by your waist, sliding his hand down to cup your ass before placing a kiss on your jawline. “Besides, with someone as sweet as her? Who fuckin’ needs candy?”

“Really?” James sucks his teeth, shooting Jake a dirty look.

“Awh, stop being such a downer.” Jake chides as he pulls you away with him, heading for the door.

The car ride is filled with teasing touches, his hand constantly alluding to something more but never giving into your desires.

“Just touch me already!” You tug his hand towards your center, hoping he’ll cave.

He shakes his head and gives in, he’s never been one to restrain himself from pleasure. Jake runs his calloused fingertips up and down your leg until chill bumps rise on your soft skin. His fingers carefully dance along the expanse of your thigh before sliding them under your skirt, meeting with the hem of your panties. He pushes the lacy fabric to the side, running his fingers through your folds before curling his digits into you. He presses his thumb against your clit, working languish circles until you teeter the edge.

“You’re soaked, doll. All from me?” Jake questions tenderly, taking his eyes off the road long enough to catch a glimpse of you falling apart under his touch.

Just as your walls start to tighten around his fingers, he removes them leaving you empty and hungry for more.

“Why did you stop?” You ask quietly, redness failing to dissipate from your cheeks.

“Wanna fuck you right, make you feel so good.” He mumbles, bringing his slick coated fingers to his mouth, licking them clean.

You reach your hand over to his visibly hardened length, palming him through his pants. You unzip the zipper and reach your hand past the waistband of his pants and briefs, rubbing the pads of your fingers slowly across his sensitive tip. Jake wraps his hand around your wrist, restraining you from stroking him any longer.

“Don’t, not yet.” His eyes flutter back as he removes your hand from his length.

He locks his fingers in yours before placing a kiss to your knuckles. He holds your hand pressed to his lips for the rest of the ride, the air from his nose tickling your skin. Upon pulling in the driveway, Jake’s barely in park before rushing you both inside. He rustles for the keys, unlocking the door to your shared home. Jake wastes no time getting his hands back on you, pressing his body against yours forcing the door shut behind you. His hands move up and down your body, squeezing and rubbing on all his favorite spots, as he peppers heated kisses on any and all exposed skin.

“Jakeyyy, hold on!”

“Sorry, sorry. You okay, my love?” He pulls away, grabbing your hand as he steps back.

“Yeah, but remember? I have something for you?” You drag him towards the hall closet with you.

“Damn, I’ve been that bad? Gonna lock me in the closet?” He giggles, waiting for your response.

“No, you weirdo. Gotta get something.” You let go of his hand to lightly smack his shoulder before you open the closet door.

You stand on your tippy toes and shuffle around on the top shelf until you find the little black bag you’d tucked away at the start of the month. Jake’s hands rest on your hips to help balance you, his calloused pads gently pressing into your skin.

“You got us matching costumes… so I got us something matching!” You watch the curiosity wash over Jake’s face as you remove the contents from the bag.

CANDY g-string

“We don’t have to, I thought it would be fun for Halloween.” Your voice grows quieter as you watch Jake’s face for some sort of reaction.

Silence washes over the room, the only thing to be heard is the pounding of your heart behind your chest. The nervousness continues to build up until you watch his lips part in response.

“Am I wearing them too…?” He points to the boxes and then to himself.

“Only if you want, I got two incase you did.”

“Do you want me to?”

You wait a second before nodding yes.

“Okay.” He reaches for one of the boxes, inspecting the packaging.

All you can do is stand in disbelief, his willingness to try new things always astounds you.

“What are you waiting for? Let’s go, sugar lips.”

You practically run to the room, Jake hot on your heels. You start to open the boxes as Jake gets undressed, handing him a pair of the candy panties.

“Don’t think my dick’s gonna fit in this…” He says, hanging the panties from his index finger.

“Oh, it’s coming right off anyways.”

Jake comes over to you at the edge of the bed, laying you back.

“Let me do it?” He asks, reaching for your pair of candy panties.

“Okay.” You whisper in response.

Jake’s hands trail up your legs, fingertips dragging across your calves and thighs until they slip under your skirt to meet the waistband of your thong resting on your hips. He slips his fingers past the band and leaves them there for a moment. He’s hovering over you, staring into your eyes.

“You okay, Jake?” Your brows furrow.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re just so beautiful, had to take you in for a second.” He leans in and places a few heated kisses to your lips before working his way below your skirt.

Jake places soft kisses to your thighs before removing your thong. He slides them down your legs and off your ankles followed by unzipping your boots and tossing them to the side. He reaches over for your matching pair of candy panties and slides them up your legs, adjusting them over your center. Jake’s kneeling between your legs at the edge of the bed, looking down on you.

“Y’know, these things feel weird.” He giggles, snapping the band of the panties against his hips.

You push yourself up off the bed, meeting his lower abdomen with your face. You pepper kisses across his supple skin, making way to his prominent hip bone. You snake your tongue under the string resting on his hip and pull a piece of the candy between your teeth, biting down to break it free. One of Jake’s hands find their way cupped around the back of your neck as you continue kissing the expanse of his stomach. Center with his navel, you start kissing in a line down his body until your lips are against the candy holding his cock. You adjust your hands to hold onto his hips as you start to break off pieces of the candy covering his length. Each time you go for a piece, you snake your tongue between the candy and his flesh to avoid biting him, the feel of your tongue against his cock earning you soft moans. You bite off a few pieces before you grow impatient, pulling the panties to the side to free his length. You drag your tongue up and down his cock a few times before taking him in your mouth, pushing him as deep as your throat will let him. You get about a minute into pleasing him before he grows hungry for more of you. Jake places his hands on yours, removing them from his hip as he lays you back and puts them above your head.

“My turn, sweetness.” He moves his hand down and unzips your corset, laying it flat on the bed behind you, letting your breasts feel the cool air.

Starting at the hollow of your neck, Jake kisses a trail down the valley of your breasts until he meets your lower stomach. He tucks his thumbs into the panties resting on either of your hips before reattaching his lips to your skin. He lightly bites the soft skin of your tummy, your hands resting on top of his at your hips. Jake bends his wrists back enough to intertwine your fingers with his as his lips work their way down to your center. He brings a piece of candy from the middle into his mouth and breaks it off the string. He uses your hips as support to push himself up, bringing his lips to yours in a heated kiss. He licks his tongue along your bottom lip and slips the piece of candy into your mouth. Lips still on yours, Jake presses his hand over your mound and moves it side to side, stimulating your clit with the hard candy. You lift your legs up and wrap them around his back, trying to push yourself into his touch more.

“I know, baby. Just let me take care of you.” He removes his hand from your center and wraps his fingers around your ankles.

Jake brings your knees to your chest, placing kisses along the back of your thighs before he reaches your candy covered center. He moves them over with his teeth, exposing your slick heat to himself. He licks a wide stripe from your entrance to your clit, adjusting his lips to suck on your swollen bud. He lets go of your legs to free his hands, allowing them to rest over his shoulders. His hand comes down and replaces his lips, thumb now pressed to your clit as he teases you with his tongue. He dips his tongue past your entrance, pushing it as far as he can. Once you grow wetter under his touch, he moves two fingers to your entrance, slipping them inside of you as his thumb continues working fast circles over your bud. In a matter of seconds you start to tighten around his fingers.

“Go on, sweetheart. Cum for me.” He curls his fingers up more to aid the process.

“Fuck… Jake, don’t stop.”

“I’m not, baby, I’m not.” He whispers.

You watch his eyes intently watching you writhe under his touch.

“Jake, please.” You reach down to hold his wrist stopping him from moving.

“Are you okay?”

“Just wanna cum on your cock. Wanna make you feel good, too.” You reach further down to wrap your hands around his thick length, stroking and guiding him to your center.

He places his hand over yours and follows your stroking motion, dragging his tip between your folds before pushing into you. Your walls flutter around his width as he gently works himself inside fully. He lays on top of you, hands wrapped around your torso holding you into his chest. There’s not a single part of you going untouched by Jake’s body in some way. His fingertips pressed into the skin of your back and his chest laying on yours, you wrap your legs around him again. Jake’s face is nuzzled into your neck, lips against your ear allowing you to hear every obscenity mumbled from him. A mantra of fuck’s and oh my god’s leave his mouth as he slowly engulfs himself in your touch. Your arms are wrapped around his torso, pulling him in as hard as you can. The pressure of his weight rubbing against your nipples combined with him inside of you forces your own breathy moans out, creating a one of a kind melody just for the two of you. His body so close to yours has allowed the candy panties to rub against your clit, bringing you closer to the edge. Just as you start to tighten around him, he stops again, eliciting a groan from deep inside of you.

“I know, I’m sorry, had an idea.” Jake pushes himself up and pulls out of you, making you groan at the loss of contact. “I promise this time I’ll make you cum. I’m sorry, baby. Can you flip over for me?”

You weakly roll over onto your stomach, body growing tired and sore from Jake’s consistent edging.

“Can I take these off now? Kinda getting in my way.” He asks, toying with the string on your ass.

“Only if you’re gonna make me cum this time.”

He answers by removing the candy panties from your hips and slipping them between your lips.

“Give that mouth something to do other than talk back.” He mumbles as you hear his pair hit the floor.

Jake pushes your legs together and situates himself around you before you feel the tip of his cock against your ass. He leans his torso into your back and brings his lips to your ear.

“Ready?” He whispers.

All you can manage is a nod and Jake slips his cock back inside of you. A few strokes in and Jake’s already pushing you to the edge again. He leans back up and places his hands on your hips, pulling you up to your knees. He adjusts your legs around his frame, spreading out the view for him. He begins thrusting into you again, hands on your hips and his fingers digging into the skin. He moves one hand from your hip and runs it over the swell of your ass. His thumb rests over your back entrance, rubbing in circles for added stimulation.

“Is this okay? You like that?”

“Yeah…” You moan. “Put it in.”

You hear spit leave his lips and make contact with your ass as he uses his thumb to spread the manmade lubricant over your entrance. He slowly pushes his thumb into your ass, resting his palm against your lower back. He slowly moves his thumb in and out of you as he works his cock inside your pussy. Jake removes his other hand from your hip and wraps it around to toy with your clit. Chasing his own release, he starts thrusting into you harder, the tip of his cock hitting your cervix every so slightly. With all of the added stimulation, you start to tighten around his wide length again, this time with the promise of finishing. Jake removes his thumb from your ass and brings it up your back to grab your hair in a makeshift ponytail. He wraps it around his hand and pulls your back into his chest. You bring your arms behind you, pressing your hands into Jake’s sides, squeezing his love handles. He fully pushes you over the ledge, gifting you your promised release as he himself comes undone. The two of you fall to the bed, Jake’s cock still buried deep inside of you. After falling, you both catch your breath, Jake pulls his now soft length out of your aching core. Jake rolls off the bed and collects the candy pieces from around the room, tossing them into the bathroom trash can. You turn your head to watch him as he leans over the tub and begins to draw a hot bath. He shuffles through cabinets under the sink and pulls out a handful of bath products.

“Rosehip or coconut?” He shouts out into the bedroom.

“Rosehip is good.” You mumble just enough for him to hear.

Jake saunters out of the bathroom and over to the bed, picking you up in his arms and bringing you to the bath.

“I’ll be back, just relax a little, okay?” He says, lowering you into the water and placing a kiss to your forehead.

You watch him enter the bedroom several minutes later with a cup of chamomile tea and an assortment of snacks. He comes back to the bathroom with your mug and hands it to you before climbing into the tub with you.

“Nightmare on Elm Street is ready on the tv when you are.”

After the bath grows cool, you guys get out and dry each other off before making your way to the bed.

“Wait, don’t lay down yet.” He walks to the closet and grabs fresh sheets, stripping the bed of the old ones and discarding them in the dirty laundry.

Once the bed is done up with clean sheets, Jake gets you settled with the snacks before climbing in next to you and starting the movie.

[spade-riddles]

Who else decodes you? Me. Let's decode Karlie's latest posts...

This is the second time in a row now that Karlie has posted on her story just a couple hours after Taylor made a tour stop post.

I've been doing math lately between important gaps, and so when I saw the first thing she posted was a vending machine with "Route 66" on it I knew exactly what the reference was already.

Taylor's entire NOLA stop post focuses on her collab with Sabrina which was on Oct 26th 2024.

Karlie's first story post is directly in response. Because exactly 6 weeks and 6 days after Oct 26th is... you guessed it. 12/13/24. Taylor's birthday. The alleged coming out. Done through Reputation TV via the KARma the album vault tracks. Double 6 albums. Twin albums.

"Karma is the fire" (quote from KARma the song)

"The Reputation vault tracks will be FIRE" (quote from taylor)

And it is important to note that in Taylor's post for NOLA she used "flare" instead of flair. Flare as in a sudden burst of flame that is used to send a signal and draw attention. Taylor does not make spelling mistakes. The 11th slide she included, when Karma is track 11, shows orange flames burning behind her as she is in her full 1989 yellow/light orange toned outfit head to toe twinning with the flames. Engulfed. Burning so bright.

But this wasn't the only bread crumb trail she left. She redirected us to Derek Blasberg's insta page. Where he posted something very suspicious... and very current to what's been going on lately.

On October 18th, Karlie's stunt "wedding anniversary" date, and the first day that the Eras Tour returned in Miami Florida, Derek posted:

"Some people call it fall, some people call it autumn, and some people call it black velvet tuxedo jacket weather 🖤"

So call it what you want Derek?

To highlight the significance, Taylor played call it what you want exactly 1 week later. And going anon posted the emoji message that decodes to call it what you want, the day Taylor played it. I am unsure of the time going anon posted this, whether it was before or after Taylor played the surprise song, so feel free to clarify Spade.

Call it what you want was also played the day right before Oct 26th 2024 when Sabrina joined Taylor on stage. None of these things are coincidental or happenstance. They are all telling the same story if you look closer than what meets the eye.

For instance..... how playing Espresso was not just a surprise song. No, that was not it's purpose. Rather, it was a plan in advance coming full circle that's been in motion since the Karma MV released. Not everything is what it seems on the surface. Shift your perspective. Look to the constellations. The truth is Karmic.

I will explain soon if it is in your wishes for me to do so, but that will need a post of its own. For now, I will leave you with this.

"I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee" - Carly Simon ☕ ☕

[oftenderweapons]

Bourbon Bossa Nova | MYG | Pt.1

This story is part of the Blue Crush Collab

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader (nicknamed Sunny)

Wordcount: 7k

Rating: 18+ (This part is pretty innocent, but Part 2 will feature mature content)

Genre: strangers to friends to lovers, composer!Yoongi x lifeguard!YN

Content warning: swearing, alcohol, allusions to sexual thoughts. Allusions to death, child abandonment and family loss.

Synopsis: when you start your summer at Honeycomb Cove, you're only expecting sunshine, waves and annoying teenage bravado as you work as a lifeguard. What you don't expect is Min Yoongi. He wasn't expecting you either. Soon your morning walks are your favourite part of the day, until you realise it's not really the walks, maybe it's always been him you are, after all, waiting for.

Shoutout to the incredible folks who helped me find courage to keep believing in this fic - and finally posting it. To Mars (@joheunsaram), To Bells (@youtifulhobi) to Yannie (@ressjeon), my power squad who believed in this fic (and in my writing skills) more than I did. Here's to me finally breaking my dry spell!!! And to some of my old and new supporters and cheerleaders @lelegzem0, @aanncchhuu, @blushingatyou and @percheee (other people are most definitely in this list but Tumblr is limiting my access to previous notes so I can't find you all) You folks are part of the reason I'm still rolling in the dust here on Tumblr

Part two out now!

Here's my masterlist, just in case you're new

Also: disclaimer! (very important, I should have put this first) I'm not Brazilian, and I have very little familiarity with Brazilian culture, but I really wanted to do a shoutout to this incredible country, its people, its art and its music. If you have any notes you would like to leave regarding Antonio's characters and Yoongi's attachment to Brazilian culture, you are the most welcome, both here in the comments and in my blog. I'd love to learn more 💜

Enjoy the fic!!!

May is a great thing. Flowers everywhere, the smell of sunscreen starting to spread in the air, orange dawns, hair getting frizzy with salty air and too much time in the water. Sand under your toes, loose linen garments, wearing a sports bra and a pair of shorts all the time, throwing an oversized sweater on when the night gets too cold, the smell of citrus and geranium to keep mosquitoes away. 

Early summer is great. Way better than midsummer and August. May and mid-September had always been your favourite times of the year: the beginning felt like sparks starting to burst, and the end felt like the natural conclusion of things, that languid nostalgia sweeping in gently, like the soft wind ready to carry in autumn days and blow the leaves away. 

The smell of rosemary and lavender and juniper accompanied you to the beach as you walked down one of the side alleys. 

“Good morn’ Earl!”

The old man turned to greet you as he kept watering the hibiscus bushes before the sun became too blinding, burning the poor flowers. “Morning Sunny!”

“Remember your heart pill!”

“Sure! Already took it!” Earl shouted back, his voice bubbly and bright. 

You waved at him as you kept walking, ready to meet your next friend. “Hello Rosa!”

“Hi Sunny!” 

The old lady already had her cocker spaniel on a leash, ready for her morning walk. “When’s Mindy coming around this year?”

“Mid-July. And she’s taking her children too!” The woman looked ecstatic about her daughter visiting. 

“That sounds amazing! I really have to rush, bye Rosa! And bye Lemon!”

“Lemon say bye!” Rosa told her dog, making her bark just in time before you started your jog. 

Being a lifeguard was great. It was the life you had always dreamed of. You had always worked out to fit in the lifeguard guidelines requirements, and a good ninety percent of your decisions had been oriented to making sure that you could be a lifeguard from the second week of May to the first week of October — that is the entirety of tourist season. Once autumn arrived, you would resume working at the retirement home: it was only your second year with that working arrangement, and you weren’t sure it would work at first, but your grandmother being the godmother of the director of the elderly institute guaranteed you would always find a spot working there; plus, they were also constantly in need of an extra set of hands, especially if those hands came with a degree in nursing. 

You’ve always known you wanted to work in elderly care just as much as you’ve always known you were made to be a lifeguard. Your parents were worried over the sort of sacrifices and strains that such an occupation would entail: all the caregiving, and the cleaning and the affection you spend on people you’re inevitably going to lose; yet it felt natural to you. Sure, some people can be antagonistic and diffident, in some cases you end up being more of a nanny than a nurse, but most of the time, it’s worth it. After two years in this field, the ups are definitely brighter than the darkest lows, and you’re under the strong impression that it will keep being so. 

Back to the glorious morning in front of you, you took off your flip-flops as you reached the best place in the world: the golden beach of Honeycomb Cove. Smiling, you fixed your cap on top of your head and walked to your tower, depositing your stuff in the cabin before going for your morning run. As you were opening the umbrella, taking in the blue infinity of the ocean before you, you spotted an unfamiliar figure below, a big fisher hat on its head, a long-sleeved white shirt covering its arms, a stick in one hand while the other was pressed to his lower back in a fist. 

“Hi, hello there!” you greeted, a wide smile for the small, old man walking on the shore before your tower. The bizarre figure lifted his head up, eyes squinted, his button nose curiously pointing about as he looked for the voice. 

“Over here! Good morning, sir!” You waved energetically at him, the man frowning — not that you could notice that, because of the distance and the hat. 

“Morning?” he greeted back in confusion before continuing his walk. 

Yoongi was extremely confused when he heard the voice. His night had been too long for him not to suppose he was hearing voices. Maybe his time had finally come and that was the call of some deity summoning him to whatever comes after the struggles of the living. 

What he didn’t expect was for the voice to call again, this time the source clearly identifiable. He squinted at the lifeguard tower and offered a small wave in greeting. 

She — that had to be a she — seemed to be set alight in sunlight, the early morning light making her glow in something brighter than gold. 

He had a precise image in his mind for a second, something his grandmother had told him when he was a child. Something like mythology, like Achilles’ halo of hair, or Helios who carries the chariot of the Sun. 

He shook his head and continued walking, turning around only once he was several feet ahead and her long legs had carried her in the opposite direction, her wide strides amazing Yoongi, who could just stare at her golden, looped locks bouncing as she played with the back-and-forth of the tide, running along it. 

For a second, Yoongi thought of The Girl from Ipanema, shortly before remembering all the controversies behind it, and how much his grandmother hated the song because of “the male gaze”. With chastised pupils, he let his gaze fall back to the fragments of seashells at his feet, the distant fall of her feet meeting the sound of the tide calling to his ears in a hypnotizing beat. 

All the way back to his home, Yoongi let it ring and echo through all the empty halls of his brain, until he could finally — although artificially — recreate it in the calm of his home, and let it resonate through its corridors.

Yoongi would define himself quite a reserved man. He had his home — an old Victorian-style house in the more quiet and deserted part of the bay, too inhospitable for tourists, still linked to the naval history of the cove. He had renovated the house after his grandmother had left it to him, replacing the old wooden axes with new, not rotten ones, repainting the walls and repolishing the floors, installing soundproof panels on the room he had decided to turn into his studio. 

It had only been a short while since he’d moved into the beach house; his college in San Francisco and his scholarship and research in New Orleans had sent him spiralling between opposites, diving deep into sounds he wasn’t entirely familiar with, and in a bout of homesickness and confusion, he’d decided to return to his true roots, to his true north. 

Here he could daydream of green hills and golden beaches of a faraway place that he could only imagine through the saudade of an old immigrant. He could feel the beat of that city that was nothing but an overgrown village, the roaring of cars on dirt roads, and that open-armed man that seemed to be every man, every woman, every human being in that open-armed city — that all-forgiving man that seemed to welcome strangers, with their weary feet and guilty souls. 

He knew the place that inhabited his wildest dreams, his most romanticised visions, no longer existed. It had been erased by decades of progress and politics and human greed. That place where all his bedtime stories took place was no longer, and maybe it had never been. Yet Yoongi longed to reach that all-forgiving stone man and feel, just feel how the rolling waves carried all the nostalgia and the sins and the tears of those lost souls that reached a new land hoping for fortune and maybe a brand new start. 

He too was something in between worlds. Son of a woman adopted by a foreigner and a man lost in time, somewhere. And there was nothing more foreign to him than the woman who had raised him, the same woman who had given him the house he was living in. He had always been drifting in something somewhat estranged. His mother had been a nobody, abandoned before an orphanage, the only known facts were her name — Moonbae — and that she had been abandoned as the last of sixth children, her family too poor to afford her. As a twist of fate, she had then been adopted by an American anthropologist — Yoongi’s grandma — who had always respected her will to stay away from her past. Still, loss persecuted her, her loving, if a little taciturn adoptive father passing due to a mysterious disease somewhere in Guatemala. 

It took several years for Beatrice and Moonbae to settle in the old colonial house in Honeycomb Cove; Trice had returned to her great-grandmother to assist the incredibly old lady to her last breath. Needless to say, she then inherited the house. The women lived sheltered, quiet lives until Moonbae got pregnant. A summer fling, that was all it was, the man a fleeting tourist who took a risk too many, fathering a son he would never take care of. 

His absence was filled by someone who looked the exact opposite of the little moonbeam of a child, laying pale and tranquil in his cradle, lulled by strange, exotic songs that his grandmother had perfected for him. 

Beatrice fell in love with a man who became everything to Yoongi — someone Moonbae never approved of, so much so that she decided to leave town when her son was maybe four years old. She never returned. Beatrice never looked for her either. 

Antonio was eighteen years younger than Beatrice, his skin a rich cinnamon shade, his accent so thick that it took a while for Yoongi to decipher the heavy Brazilian cadence in the man’s English. 

Yoongi preferred when Antonio spoke Brazilian Portuguese, anyways. By the time the boy was fourteen, he and his acquired grandfather easily conversed on the wooden patio, drinking lemonade, a guitar in the man’s arms. Antonio taught Yoongi everything, the boy so taciturn, so eager to listen, that the nationless musician let all his woes and nostalgia pour out. And maybe the man was no citizen, something in between an exile and a fugitive, but in that old house, he found a home, with Trice constantly refusing to marry him and loving him like a madwoman at the same time. 

Yoongi doubted love like that could exist anymore. A love so strong that when she had passed, Antonio had magically drifted away together with her a few months after, disregarding his significantly younger age. What the not-so-old man would never say was that he passed in tranquillity, knowing that he had taught his spiritual child all he had to offer. 

And just so, Yoongi won a scholarship, all because of the easy, wordless afternoons when Antonio taught him to play three instruments and speak that language that reminded Yoongi of his old cat, Sweeper, and the way he lazily rolled around in the sun. 

Now he was just a young man graduated from a prestigious music academy in San Francisco, two of his compositions had been featured as soundtrack in a couple movies, and he was already producing for a small recording studio specialised in chamber music. He didn’t make much money out of it, to be true, but sometimes he managed to have an extra income with royalties, and he was currently composing his first mixtape — for which a studio had already contacted him, and the fact that Antonio had introduced him to some of the most influential artists in the San Francisco scene had quite definitely jump-started his career. 

He was living a cool life, the kind of life he had always seen himself living. He worked at night and finished his day at seven am; then he would head out for a walk, when the sun was still gentle in summer and when it would be barely up in winter. And next, he would sleep. Wake up around five pm. Get some food ready and start all over again. He’d returned to Honeycomb Cove only six months prior, so he hadn’t yet entirely reconnected with his local social circle, plus most of his friends were still in college, which meant that it wasn’t that easy to arrange a get together. But to be true he was quite excited about Seokjin being back in town and spring break approaching. By summer come, they would all be a great team again and he would feel like he had all the time in the world. 

His musings were interrupted by the doorbell. That had to be his pizza. It was almost eleven and Gerry, the old Italian man who owned the pizza place at the end of the street, always knew that Tuesday night meant late night pizza for Yoongi. 

He grabbed the money — already perfectly calculated so he could pay for the pizza and leave a tip for the delivery boy, Pippo. But tonight it wasn't the delivery boy knocking at his door. As he opened it, he found a wondrous mass of blond curls right in front of his eyes. “Oh, hi!” 

“Hey!” The voice sounded chirpy, familiar. 

A sudden breeze pushed the stranger’s perfume past the doorway, the scent crashing over Yoongi like the surf. God she smells good, Yoongi thought, lips agape as he stared at the woman in his doorway. It was a mix of coconut and papaya, the scent overpowering the tasty smell of his pizza. 

You put on your friendliest, warmest, brightest smile, then said: “We met on the beach right? You must be Min Yoongi. I'm _____. Gerry said you always dine alone and told me you could use some company.”

“I'm not a charity case,” Yoongi replied before realising how rude he'd just been. 

“Well, that's a funny introduction, Not A Charity Case. Is that the name you chose to go by? Like Jenny From The Block?” You shook your head and looked away. “What told you it's not me who could use a friend. May I?” You asked, pointing at the door, asking if you could enter. “You can ask Gerry. He sent me. I've just arrived for the season and I could really use a friend. He told me you're a good person and you're always alone too.” 

Yoongi was almost outraged by your insolence. Were you always so blunt? He was also confused: what kind of setup was this?!

You passed him the pizza and he lifted the lid, checking that it was actually his and that you weren't an imposter, or a serial killer. 

'Take the golden retriever girl. She needs a smart friend. -G,’ read a note left inside the box.

“Yeah, I’m Yoongi,” he said, almost defeated. “Come on in, then.” If he found his house entirely stripped of anything worth money, he would sue Gerry. 

“Oh. Thank you.” You flashed him a grin. 

Yoongi's knees almost caved. What a smile. It was like… like staring at the sun. But in a good way. It was like a blue sky. Soothing. Serene. Cloudless, pacific. 

You placed your own pizza box next to his on the counter while at the same time you looked around. “Wow, your house is so pretty. Your family lives here?” 

Yoongi opened his pizza and grabbed a beer from the fridge. “I don't have a family anymore.” 

You froze. “I'm sorry.” You were already failing at this. That's why your friends all had fake teeth and a medical record thicker than your cookbook. Not to mention the average age.

“It's okay. I got used to that. You should be the lifeguard, right? Wait, would you like some beer?” 

You shook your head. “I'd like some water please.” 

Of course you would, he realised. You had to be one of those health freaks. He could already anticipate how easily he could make you run from him with his suicidal diet. 

He placed a glass beside your pizza box before sitting down and getting ready to dig in. “I still owe you the money. From the pizza.” 

“I already paid for both. I thought that since I wasn't bringing you a housewarming present, I could at least buy you some food.” You took a slice and started eating up, humming and nodding at the taste. “I get why he works so much. This pizza is heaven.”

“Yeah. All the kids here grew up on sunshine and Gerry's pizza,” Yoongi mentioned casually. He liked that you talked with your mouth full. He did, too. Beatrice had never liked that. 

“Are you from the neighbourhood?” He asked before wolfing down another slice. 

“Kinda. I live a bit farther into the mainland. I used to come here on holiday when I was little. With my parents.” You took a sip of water as Yoongi learned one more thing about you. 

“I thought so. I don’t really remember you from growing up, and me and my friends know all of the locals.” Yoongi studied your face, trying to dissect any detail that could make you familiar. 

“I see. You’ve been raised here, I assume?”

“Yup.” The silence is heavy, but at least you can distract yourself with food. “So, lifeguard? That your dream job?” He said it sarcastically, almost evilly before he realised you were nodding eagerly and happily. 

“My great-grandpa was a sailor. I've always wanted to live by the sea.” You munched on the crunchy crust, Yoongi blinking rapidly. 

Making fun of you felt like shooting a dead body. There was no use — and no mercy — in doing that. “Shouldn't you be in college or something?” 

“I took nursing school. And I'm old enough to be out of college.” Yoongi’s tone had really made that sound like an insult, but you tried your best not to assume the worst.

Yoongi tried to get on his better behaviour. You were a new person, you wouldn’t understand his sardonic tone. “I'm sorry,” he said, contrite. 

“For what? Me being a certified nurse and a person in charge of other people's lives? I know I look stupid, no need to rub it in.” You arched an eyebrow, rather fed up with the weirdness of this exchange, of the man sitting before you. You stood up and closed the box of your pizza, still half uneaten. “Sorry I disturbed your night. Enjoy your meal—” 

“Wait, no! Don't go, please.” He didn't know what suddenly convinced him to make you stay. “I was a dick, I'm sorry, let's start over.” 

You hesitated for at least three seconds and then, despite your better judgement, you sat back. “I'm ____. But my friends call me Sunny. It's my middle name. Really. My parents thought it funny.”

It suited you so damn bad. Yoongi wanted to bask in your aura in a hammock with a slight breeze and a samba playing in the distance. “It's a really nice name. It really suits your appearance. And I mean that as a compliment.” 

You breathed out the tiniest laugh. 

“I'm Yoongi and that's the only name I have. We don't use middle names.” He relaxed once you opened your box once more. 

“Where is it from?” You asked, recognising the name being foreign. 

“My mom's name is Korean. She picked a Korean one for me too. Just to remind me we're not entirely American.” He was vaguely bitter about that. Maybe just indifferent, you told yourself. That must have been tough. 

“That's interesting,” you mused, drinking some water. “How old are you?” 

Your question was naive. Childlike. “I'm twenty-three. And you're…?”

“Twenty-four. Twenty-five in a couple weeks.” You smiled and he was once more lost in how radiant you looked. 

Once you were finished eating, you rinsed your hands at the sink, helping him get rid of the boxes before shyly following him as he moved to the living room. 

“Wow.”

“It's a bit overwhelming, I know.” He looked around, analysing the room through a stranger's eyes. “My grandma was an anthropologist, my grandpa too, though I never met him. She travelled a lot and always brought back fancy things.” 

“What's this?” you asked, watching a strange fork of sorts. 

Yoongi sat down and grabbed a bizarre little stick, no bigger than a pen, with a large ball at the end. He hit the fork, a soothing, metallic sound coming out of it and the box at its base, amplifying the cold dong. “It's a diapason. It gives a specific note. This one sounds like la. Or A, whatever notation you prefer. We use it to tune instruments like guitars.” 

You nodded. “That's interesting. I like it.” 

Yoongi chuckled. “It's very soothing, right? It resonates at a frequency that has positive effects on humans. My grandma used to play it when I needed to calm down as a baby.” 

Thinking that the coarse man before you had been a baby felt baffling. “And it still relaxes you?” 

“It does. But I think it's more of a reflex. I think they trained me. Like Pavlov's dog… Wait, was that Pavlov?”

“Yeah,” you confirmed with a giggle. 

“Sometimes I think I was a strange experiment. That's what happens when you have two scientists in your home.” He shrugged with a funny grin on his face, his cheeks going puffy as he did so. 

“It's okay. You lived through that. You're not doing bad for a lab rat. You could be having bald spots by now,” you joked, almost expecting him to get confused or disgusted. Instead he laughed. 

His laugh was so soft. He actually looked soft, with his gums out, his cheeks puffed up, his nose curled up cutely. Yoongi was cute. Very much so. 

“So, what do you do for a living?” 

He blushed to his ears. “I'm a musician. And a producer.” 

“Wow. That sounds cool! How does that work?” Your voice was filled with wonder, making Yoongi understand that after all it wasn't like you were dumb. You were just unashamed of not knowing things. 

“I make songs. Spend too much time on the computer fixing songs for other people. And then spend a little bit of time with my instruments, going through riffs and melodies, finding little things that inspire me for longer songs or pieces.” Yoongi stopped himself from dumping all of his artistic worries over you. 

“You studied at UCLA?” you asked, knowing that was the best place for a person like him. 

“Actually, no. My grandfather got me into an academy in the city. I mean, my granny's boyfriend,” he corrected himself. Considering Antonio his grandpa had always come natural to him, but he'd never substituted himself for Trice's husband. 

“It's so cute that she found a boyfriend. You mentioned your grandpa passed so I guess she met the guy after?” You posed the question gently, wording it accurately. 

Yoongi nodded. “Yup. I was a toddler when they met.” 

You hummed. “With all respect to your grandpa, I like when old people find a partner — or at least, someone meaningful to them. It brings a lot of joy and newness in their lives. Partnered old folks have a way less lonely life. And it seems they live longer too! I read a paper for a course back in college.” 

Yoongi was pleased to receive confirmation of you being an old people's person. Hopefully you also hated kids so he could actually deem himself safe. “So you actually liked nursing school.”

You bobbed your head enthusiastically. “I’ve always liked the idea of working in a retirement home. Old people have so many stories and so little audience. I like staying with them, helping them write memories they can pass to their overly busy children and grandchildren. And they learn about technology, they play cards. They crochet! Isn't that amazing?!” you exclaimed with a radiant look on your face. 

Yoongi realised you were a genuinely generous person. You reaching out to him wasn't just Gerry forcing you to Yoongi's place, but hopefully you needing a friend. It really seemed you could use a pal your age. “And how does that pair up with your lifeguard position?” 

You shrugged. “I've always loved the beach. And splitting it with caregiving helps me from taking nursing too seriously. It helps me worry less about people… passing, you know.”

Yoongi nodded. He hadn’t thought about what it means taking care of someone day after day after day, and then suddenly they’re gone. He also thought about the different weights of a job: probably that was the same reason why it had taken him so long to work on his music while delivering piece after piece for commission. He had lost the passionate side of it.

“So, your granny's boyfriend got you into a music academy and then?” 

Yoongi smiled, then he started telling you everything about that. 

The two of you talked way deep in the night, the initial strangeness turning into easy chit-chat about school, life, family and work… It was almost one in the morning when you realised it was time for you to go. Once Yoongi noticed how long he’d been talking to you, he blushed and understood it was time to say goodnight, no matter how warm and welcome he felt at your side. 

He accompanied you to the door, then stood on the porch, waving at you before wondering whether he should accompany you home. “You’re staying here in town, right?”

You nodded. “Yeah, don’t worry. I’m just five minutes away from here. I have my bike.”

“You don’t want me to drive you?” He rubbed the back of his neck as he waited for your reply. 

You shook your head. “I’m okay, don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

Yoongi realised the reason why he felt sad about you refusing was exclusively because he wouldn’t be able to spend more time with you. He was struggling to let go, after only a couple hours of chatting, and at least half of that being awkward acquainting with someone new. 

And to further increase his struggles, he could almost hear Antonio scolding him for letting go of someone that made him feel good. “Will I see you tomorrow morning at the beach?”

You were ready to leave when you heard Yoongi’s question. It sounded vaguely insecure, as if he was testing the waters. “Come meet me at seven. I’ll be there.”

Yoongi nodded to himself. He should have asked for your number. Stupid social anxiety. 

“Goodnight Yoongi!” You waved from the gate before leaving.

He stood there, arms crossed, shrinking inside his striped polo shirt, its long sleeve doing very little in keeping him warm. So unexpectedly his night had changed. He thought about the percussion riff he’d jotted down that morning around nine, laying in bed, sleepless. For all he knew, you could have possibly changed his life. 

He would remember tonight forever. 

The following day, Yoongi left his house at six forty-five. You had given him a when, but not an exact where. He was nervous. And he was somehow hoping that seeing you in broad daylight would somehow lessen your magic. 

How wrong he was. 

He waited for you at the feet of your tower, leaning against it nonchalantly while he almost ran to get there in time. Watching you arrive in sunglasses and a white sundress was definitely something. You looked like the kind of girl that could have starred in Dirty Dancing. 

“Good morning, sir!” you greeted, waving. 

“Stop treating me like an old man,” he complained, however you heard some irony in his voice. 

“Not my fault you behave like one!” you bit back, amused and maybe a little cheeky. “Hello Yoongi,” you tried again, more calmly now that you were standing before him. “I’ll go get changed quickly so we can go on a walk.”

He nodded and looked at the horizon before him, his ears blushing at the thought that you were half naked just a few steps away. You looked so lean and fit and tall and he was… He was struggling not to let his mind run wild. After all you were just a prettily shaped woman. No more, and no less. 

All the months that had passed since he’d last slept with someone weren’t a valid reason for him to think of you half naked.

“Let’s go!” you exclaimed, basically throwing yourself down the stairs and taking a few small jumps on your spot — like a golden retriever too excited about going out. You started with a jog, only to watch Yoongi’s panicked look. 

You exploded with laughter. “See, I told you! You’re an old man!”

Yoongi hid his smile with a pout before catching up with a few quick steps. “Do you need to run or can you just walk?”

“I’ll walk in the water. Helps me burn more energy and work on my stamina,” you replied, entering the water to the point it reached your knees. “You can walk on the shore. Did you sleep well?”

He looked away.

“Oh, right. You work at night. So— Did you… produce?” You looked down, careful about not splashing him. 

“Oh, yeah. The conversation with you was very inspirational,” he conceded. He hadn’t worked half as much in the last four weeks. Listening to the little riffs and chords hidden in your voice was like experimenting with a new genre. It was as if he was building a new theme for you. Something that signified your presence, but at the same time conveyed the fits and starts of meeting someone new, and getting to know them, and discovering something new about oneself from all the analogies and differences they could see with the other person. As much as he was composing about you, about the little bits he’d learned about you, he was in some way also composing about himself. 

The process had been thrilling and once he’d finished the first, roughest draft, at dawn, the music felt so vibrant that it could properly and proudly accompany the rise of the sun. It was of course still only a draft, but the way you’d talked deep into the night, the way you’d circled around things until they’d come out right, had inspired him to give it all a try. It didn’t need to be perfect, it only needed to work. And work, in the end, it did. He only wished he had sampled a piece of your conversation — that joke about him being a lab rat… the laughs that followed. It would have been great for a skit. 

“You know, I really wish I could listen to your music. I'm kind of curious about what such a quiet person considers noise worth listening to.” You looked at him. “After all, music is just very tidy noise right?” 

He smiled. “Yeah, I would agree to that.” He looked at the seashells on the shore. “I'll make you a playlist. I'll include random stuff I like listening to.”

“Oh, I'd love that!” you replied enthusiastically. “We can make a playlist for our walks!” 

Yoongi’s ears perked up at that: “walks”, plural, which meant you would do this again, soon. He was pleased at the way you had so casually hinted at creating a routine. He had someone to share music recommendations with. Someone who would maybe recommend pieces to him in return. He realised he was excited about this. So many new sensations, and none of that as unpleasant as he’d thought. He could get used tho this.

Once the two of you said goodbye, he realised he couldn't go to sleep. He was too excited about making a playlist and sharing it with you. Walking with you in the gentle morning sun. Hearing you laugh. 

Yoongi understood: he was making a new friend. 

Having walks with Yoongi became extraordinary. You started associating him with the tender colours of the shyest sunshine, and the sweet cotton scent of his shirts in the gentle morning breeze. The way his soft locks danced in the ocean air, tangling together, the way his cheeks turned into little ice cream scoops when he smiled at you as you greeted him good morning. 

Likewise, Yoongi started adoring sunshine. You ended each of his nights, bringing him into the reign of soft morning light, introducing him to a brightness he'd always much preferred doing without. Truth was that his ears had become acquainted with your vintage summer bops, with the way your steps would automatically sync up with the beat of Pumped Up Kicks when the song started playing, and your little blonde baby curls would end up bouncing by the time the first chorus came around. Sometimes you looked like one of those strange horses trained to match the rhythm of music. Dressage, wasn't that? 

And then, you loved his calm acoustic ballads, the relaxing guitar riffs that accompanied the rise of the sun. 

Once your shared routine of morning walks was sufficiently cemented, you trained him, like a stray cat, to stick around some more after your walk, convincing him to join you for a morning snack. You always brought him iced coffee and a peach jam sandwich while you drank your aloe and matcha drink before indulging in an avocado toast. He liked your mornings as much as you did. You also probably liked each other too. 

Your perfect sunny streak was tainted only by a mildly cloudy morning, during which Yoongi showed up at your tower anyway, an extra sweater on top of his long sleeved shirt. He knew you'd probably be cold. 

The striped black number seemed to be big enough for you to fill it up comfortably. After all, you were half a head taller than him, and your arms were significantly longer. At least by three or four inches, he had to admit. 

When you showed up, you looked drowsy, your hair was half low and you were carrying a different bag from usual. “Morning old man,” you called, placing your bag at the feet of the stairs. 

“Morning, Sunny. Wait. Are those actually knitting devices in your bag? Wonder Woman ____ knits?” 

“Shut up. Linda taught me. It's just something to share with the ladies at The Orchard,” you justified yourself. “We'll see if you still joke about that once you get your soft, handmade cosy sweater this winter.” 

Yoongi blinked, suddenly realising his expression had been shifting to a pout. “Are you still going to be around this winter?” 

You invited him upstairs, avoiding the question for now. Could you wait from September to May to see him again? Could you go so long without him? 

As you picked up a half knitted torso from your bag, pressing it to his face, you realised you couldn't. You also realised you had made a naive mistake. You had thought you were domesticating a stray but in the meanwhile you had opened him your home, your heart. You had invested your time in him and that made him much more than a stray. You were giving him a forever home.

“Is this for me?” he asked innocently, gently, rubbing his face against the soft, airy fabric. 

“It’s alpaca wool,” you commented drily. You already knew you would give up on your long-term dream sweater only to see him all fluffed up in the pastel mesh of colours. You smiled as he pressed it closer to his face.

“So soft,” he murmured, nuzzling up against the small piece of knitwork. The moment he opened his eyes, you realised his nose was just a tiny bit red from the chilly breeze coming from the sea, carrying a storm in its wake. His cheeks were rosy and puffy, his eyes big and dark. And his eyelashes, so dainty and insanely… flirtatious? He looked like he was seducing you for the slowest of seconds. 

You looked away, cheeks aflame. “Let’s go. Before the rain comes.”

Yoongi startled at your tone, cloudy for the first time since that night when you’d known each other too little, and he’d been unforgivably too sarcastic. He followed you like a confused pet down the stairs, then grabbed his earpods and passed one to you. 

You were especially thankful for the music now that your thoughts were too scattered for you to form sentences and make some conversation. 

“It will rain in a bunch of minutes,” Yoongi commented. “There’s no use walking today.”

You ignored him. Would he leave if you agreed with his statement? Would he think walking was pointless, and therefore there was no reason for the two of you to spend any time together today? Too lost in trying to find a meaning to how sad you felt at the thought of being apart, you didn’t realise a raindrop had hit your nose. 

The storm was coming. 

An angry guitar riff came on, The Neighbourhood blaring from the earphone as Yoongi grabbed your hand. One drop followed the other, his hand around your wrist as he tugged at your arm, running fast, faster, to a speed that felt ridiculous considering how lazy he always was. 

‘I’m going back to 505, if it’s a seven-hour flight or a forty-five-minute drive. In my imagination you’re waiting lying on your side, with your hands between your thighs, and a smile…’

You ran, faster, short of breath, the music carrying you across the sand. You didn’t even realise you were trusting Yoongi completely, even as he led you past your tower, even as he kept running while the downpour broke loose, even as The Beatles came on, singing about jars by the door and lonely people, even as the morning got so dark, the sky like a purple shiner after a rowdy pub fight. 

You kept running, Yoongi panting as the two of you finally recognised the fence of his house, the tower barely visible behind the thick cover of rain and mist. “Come on!” he gasped out. 

You kept running until you were under his porch. “What the hell, Yoongi! Why didn’t we stop at the tower!?” you scolded him, barely alive, barely breathing — how had he worn you out like this? He was way less trained than you, and yet he’d managed to run by your side, keeping your pace, ending up winded, sure, but in way better a state than you’d thought he would be.

He shook his head, bent in two, his hands gripping his knees. “I was distracted! I wasn’t thinking!”

You shook your head, too busy pulling oxygen into your lungs to fight him back. After a few breathless minutes, you sat down on the first step of the staircase. “You knew it would rain. Why did you come?”

Yoongi felt called out all of a sudden. “I— I thought you were expecting me to come. I don’t have your number so I couldn’t text you. Or call you.” He sat down beside you, his hands pressed in between his knees. “I didn’t want you to worry or think I had forgotten.” He took in a large breath. Somehow the little effort of a confession required way more air than the makeshift marathon under the storm — it was definitely shorter than a marathon. Probably not even a tenth of it. He just knew that was the longest and the fastest he’d ever run, but you were running, and you were so majestic and he just wanted to be part of it. 

Yoongi paused, gathered his courage, then murmured, “I didn’t want you to feel lonely.”

You recognised the guitar strums immediately, the song changing once more. You looked at Yoongi, Hozier’s soft voice crooning at your ear. “What about you? Were you feeling lonely?”

He looked away, too shy, too old, too used-to-it to admit it. He had no right to feel lonely when you weren’t around. He had been alone for so long, but loneliness? It had been a stranger to him until he’d learnt your name. “I don’t—”

You pushed his hair off his face, your index finger casually following the handsome curve of his jawline. “Yoongi?”

He finally turned to look at you, once more innocent in the way he seemed to seduce you. He looked so pure and for the first time you felt so desperate to taint him. You needed him to look normal and mundane and you prayed for your crush to fade, for his sinless charms to be washed away so he would show his true colours, because no man should be allowed to be perfect the way he felt perfect to you. 

“Yoongi,” you whispered, your heart tied up with pining.

‘Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips, we should just kiss like real people do.’

You hadn’t realised your eyes were closed until it was too late, the lyrics making you open them only to notice Yoongi leaning towards you, his lips protruding in the most imploring pout you had ever seen. 

You were ruined. 

You tugged the earpod off, almost throwing it to the ground before hollering a ‘see you ‘round’ and running off in the cold rain. 

Yoongi, confused, afraid, sat on his porch as he watched you disappear. 

Part 2 will be out now!!

[writingmingyu]

Fade Into You

Title: Fade into You Pairing: Joshua x Gender-Neutral!Reader Genre: Fluff, childhood friends to lovers Summary: After drunkenly agreeing to meet an online friend in real life for the first time, you discover this wasn’t the first time you’d met. Word count: 4.8k plus 2

Author’s Note: This was part of the @svthub Fall-ing for You collab! I had fun writing this as it's something different for me. I wanted to give off Gilmore Girls vibes with this and I think I achieved it.

I hope you enjoy reading! And don't forget to check out all the other fics that are part of this collab!

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ

You double-checked your appearance in the rearview mirror before taking a deep breath and leaving the car. You were about to go on your first blind date in forever and you were freaking out. 

Well it wasn't entirely blind, you had been talking to JH48536 for about a month now and finally had the confidence - or too much wine - to agree to meet in person. You were just worried it was going to be a disaster. 

Everyone had warned you that meeting up with someone from an online chat room was dangerous. You had about six friends in a group chat on standby ready to jump in and save you at a moment's notice. Even as you walked through the parking lot towards the cafe you spotted Soonyoung and Minghao chilling in Soonyoung's car. 

Subtle. You texted Minghao as you opened the cafe door. 

Just say the word and we'll create a diversion. Was the response you got back. You shook your head with a smile before pocketing your phone, imagining Minghao running into the cafe with ketchup on his face yelling that there was some kind of crash outside. Soonyoung would be lying in the middle of the street. 

You open the door to the cafe and are immediately hit with the warmth and smell of coffee beans. You loved coming into a cosy space after being out in the autumn air, no matter how little or how long you were outside. You approach the counter and read the specials board, just as someone is calling out the name of the next person’s order.

“Joshua!”

You’re head turns on instinct to look for who this Joshua might be. It couldn’t be, you thought to yourself as you scanned the room. But sure enough, it was as if you had materialised him from thin air.

Joshua Hong stood up from the corner of the room and made his way to the counter. He was taller and his hair was darker, but there was no mistaking this man. It was Joshua, your Joshua. The same Joshua you had been best friends with when you were ten years old. The one you had kind of had a crush on but were too afraid to admit and then his family moved out of town and you never saw him again. Until now.

He smiled as he thanked the waitress for his coffee, and you couldn’t help but smile to yourself. He still had the same mischievous smirk that used to get you two into plenty of trouble as kids.

“Joshua?” You say, catching his attention before he heads back to his seat.

“Y/N? Is that you?” Joshua walked over to give you a hug. It had been ten years, but he still smelt the same as you remembered, like toasted almonds and sandalwood.

“What’re you doing here?” You were still in a bit of a daze when you separated. Your heart beating faster and a flush coming to your cheeks. You hadn’t really thought about Joshua since he’d moved away but now he was standing in front of you and memories came flooding back.

“I just moved back into town, I was actually thinking about you the other day.”

“Really?” You cursed yourself for sounding hopeful.

“Yeah, I was wondering if you still lived here. And here you are.”

“Here I am,”

“Do you wanna hang out for a bit? I’m supposed to be meeting someone but they’re not here yet.”

“Yeah sure, let me just order some coffee first.”

Joshua headed back to his seat and you ordered a pumpkin spice latte. As you were waiting at the counter, your phone pinged with a message. It was just Soonyoung asking if everything was going okay, but you’d been distracted by your childhood friend reappearing that you’d completely forgotten why you were there.

Yeah, everything’s fine. He’s not here yet but ran into an old friend. You texted back.

You got your latte and went to sit down opposite Joshua. You still couldn’t believe he was back after all this time. But as you fell into conversation, it was almost as if you two had never been apart. You were instantly reminiscing about the past and all the adventures you had together.

“So I’m thinking I have been stood up,” Joshua says after a while. You had both finished your coffees and time had been ticking on.

“Oh, I totally forgot you were meeting someone!” Come to think of it, you were supposed to meet someone too. You check your phone to see a few messages in the group chat - Minghao had done a drive-by of the cafe window to scope out your ‘childhood friend’ and everyone was wondering if he was cute.

Pics??? Soonyoung had asked.

He’s definitely her type. Minghao had reported back to the group.

You rolled your eyes and opened up the app where you had been talking to your mystery man. Your heart almost stopped when you saw he was online, and you felt like time had slowed when you could see he was typing. This was definitely going to be a ‘sorry I can’t make it’ message. You had been talking with Joshua for at least half an hour, there was no way this guy was going to show up now.

“Is something wrong?” Joshua asked.

“Everything’s fine,” you say, the guy had stopped typing and you looked up to see Joshua had pulled out his own phone. “It’s just, I was supposed to meet someone too, and I was just checking to see if he had messaged, it looked like he was typing so I think he might’ve changed his mind.”

“Oh no, that sucks,” 

“It’s fine,” you tried to brush it off. It wasn’t the first time you’d been stood up, besides you had your friends outside so you wouldn’t be lonely. “Did you hear from the person you were supposed to meet?”

“I’m actually just going to send them a message now,” Joshua turned back to his phone and began typing again, you watched as he typed out his message and pressed send. Maybe he was having better luck than you were. “Maybe they didn’t see me in the corner.”

As Joshua puts his phone away, you’re phone pings with a message. Your heart is beating in your ears as you glance down, prepared for the worst.

Hey, I’m here but I got caught up talking with a friend - I don’t know if you’re here yet but just wanted to let you know I didn’t forget about our meeting today 🙂 We are in the corner of the cafe, just come over and say hi.

“Oh my God,” you whisper to yourself. You read the message a couple of times over before looking up at the man in front of you. Was Joshua the person you were supposed to meet today? This didn’t make any sense. You had been talking to this guy for weeks, surely you would have pieced together if you were talking to someone you knew? 

You looked at the username again and suddenly it clicked - JH48536 - Joshua Hong. How it hadn’t occurred to you before you had no idea. You had never asked this man his name, he had never asked for yours either and most of the time you just thought it was a random username with letters and numbers. You didn’t think it actually stood for anything.

“Joshua, is your online username JH48536?”

“Um…yes?” He responds looking confused.

“And did you just send a message saying you are with a friend and you didn’t forget about your meeting today?”

Joshua’s confused face turns to one of realisation as he pieces together what you’d just told him. “So you’re HopelessRomantic24893?” Your username was not your best, but you hated being put on the spot for that kind of thing.

You nod still in shock, thinking about when Joshua was talking to you online. He had mentioned something about his childhood best friend, he was sad that you’d never kept in touch after he moved and you had related to that saying you missed the old boy next door. It’s crazy how you never made the connection about each other before.

“That’s wild,” Joshua leans back in his chair. He was probably doing the same thing you were doing, trying to see if there were hints in your previous conversations about who you were. “I had no idea,”

“Me neither,” you wanted to laugh, it was a strange coincidence but you were relieved to know that you weren’t stood up and grateful that the person you met online wasn’t a total stranger.

“So what now?” 

“Well, I should probably text my friends and let them know you’re not a serial killer.” 

Joshua laughs, “how do you know it’s been a long time,”

“I feel like if you wanted to kill me, you would’ve lured me into a dark alleyway by now. Besides you didn’t know I was your mystery date,” you typed out a message to your friends that you were fine before stowing your phone away.

“True, but now I know, there’s still time.”

“Well, my friends know who you are now so I’d say reschedule the murder plans for another day.”

“I guess I’ll have to go with plan B.” Joshua gets up from his seat and holds out his hand. “Y/N, would you like to come with me on a trip to the town’s autumn fair?”

“I’d love to,” You take his hand and you head out of the cafe.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ

You hadn’t been to the annual autumn fair since you were sixteen. It was the kind of thing that only appealed to families and elder people. It was held at the farm on the edge of town and the whole community came together to celebrate the harvest season. 

Before you step out of the car, you begin swiping away messages from the overactive group chat. Once you had told the boys, Joshua was your blind date they started freaking out and wanting more information. All you told them was you were safe and they could go home. But you couldn't help looking over your shoulder to see if Minghao and Soonyoung had followed you. They had to be around here somewhere, they weren’t going to leave without photos for the group chat.

"Wow, I haven't been here in forever." Joshua yawned, stretching his arms above his head. You couldn't help but notice his sweater ride up when he stretched, revealing some of his stomach. 

"Me neither," you replied, taking a breath and looking around. "Still looks the same though."

You had loved coming to the farm with Joshua as a child. You would compete in apple bobbing and he always won, chase each other through the corn maze and spend hours in the pumpkin patch choosing the perfect pumpkins for carving. 

"Where do we start?"

"Well, I don't know if apple bobbing is still your thing," you say as you pay for your entry fees. "But I think you still hold the record."

"No way, really?" Joshua's eyes lit up. "Let's go see."

You approached the apple bobbing stations by the barn. There were a group of kids huddled around a barrel trying to grab apples with their teeth. Looking back you realised it probably wasn't the smartest thing to be doing growing up, but it was tradition. 

The leaderboard was pinned to one of the barn doors and Joshua walked ahead to read it. 

"Joshua Hong, twelve apples." He read. "I was good."

"Y/N, three apples," you pointed at the bottom. "I shouldn't even be on there."

"Three's pretty good, considering." Joshua tilted his head toward the group of children. They probably had one apple between them.

"Apple bobbing is hard, you just have a big mouth."

"Nah you just didn't wanna get wet." 

"Getting a little wet never hurt anyone, you wanna go again?" The words come out of your mouth before you realise what you've said. It wasn't exactly the first date activity you had in mind, and you usually wouldn't be so forward but being around an old friend made things easier. If anything, it was your childhood competitiveness coming out. 

"I'm game if you are," Joshua was already shrugging out of his coat and scarf.

You rolled your eyes. "Game on," you pull your own scarf off and knelt down in front of a free barrel. 

"Y/N? Joshua Hong?" The woman who was supervising the apple bobbing came to stand in front of you. 

"Mrs McDonnell! Nice to see you!" Joshua smiled, he always was a charmer to people of authority, your old principal especially. 

"Don’t tell me you two are really going apple bobbing,” the principal looked down disapprovingly at both of you but there was a hint of a smile on her lips.

"Absolutely, we are. I came to defend my title.”

"Well, you know the rules, you have two minutes to get as many apples as possible. You can only use your teeth, no hands! I know you used to cheat Joshua.”

“So that’s how you have managed to get so many apples,” you should have known he was cheating but you were always too busy focusing on your own apple-bobbing attempts to notice.

“That’s not true! And I’ll prove it, right here, right now.” Joshua put his hands behind his back. 

“All right, I’ll be keeping a firm eye on you then.” Mrs McDonnell opened her phone to set a timer. “Your two minutes starts…. Now!”

You and Joshua both lean down towards the apples in the water, immediately being brought back to being ten years old, you begin to work an apple over to the edge of the barrel to try to bite into it. Joshua’s head was next to yours and you could feel him struggling next to you, he definitely cheated when you were children.

After what felt like an eternity, you finally had a good enough grasp on the apple with your teeth to pull it out of the water and you dropped down next to you. Before heading back in, you took a few seconds to watch Joshua. He was trying the same technique as you and was furiously biting at an apple trying to get enough of a grip to lift it, but it kept floating away.

“Not so easy without your hands, is it?” You smirk.

“You’re just a square for playing by the rules.” Joshua shot back, finally managing to grasp the apple with his teeth and pull it out of the water.

“Thirty seconds left!” Mrs McDonnell calls.

You both dive back into the water and almost bump heads, but you work hard to get a second apple. All you needed was one to beat Joshua and that was something you could hold over his head forever.

Thankfully, you were able to spy a smaller apple and were able to get a good hold of it and you pulled it out of the water just as the timer finished.

“Ha!” You said triumphantly. “I win!”

“Congratulations Y/N! I knew you could do it.” Mrs McDonnell handed both of you towels to wipe your faces. “Now, go cause havoc somewhere else. I have children to supervise.”

You dab your face and pick up your belongings. “Don’t feel too bad for losing, it’s your own fault for cheating years ago. There was no way you were going to live up to that.”

“Well, there goes my plan to impress you with my apple-bobbing skills.”  Joshua reached over to wipe some water from your chin. He lingered for a second and your cheeks flushed at the intimate gesture.

“Oh please,” you brought yourself out of the moment. “It was never your apple-bobbing skills that impressed me.”

“Then what was it?”

You thought about your answer as you both left the barn. There were a lot of things that Joshua did to impress you as a child. He was an adventurous kid, and he never backed down from a challenge. The confidence he emanated was contagious and he pushed you out of your comfort zone. 

“The way you were so fearless as a kid.” 

“As a kid? You mean I’m not now?” 

“Well, we only just got reacquainted I don’t know if you still take risks like you used to.”

“I definitely do,” there was a twinkle in his eye, he had a plan.

“Like what?” you were curious, so you played into it.

“Like meeting up with a stranger I met online,”

You rolled your eyes, “I did that too, doesn’t count.”

“What about this?”

Joshua turned to face you, his hands coming up to cup your face and tilting your head up to kiss you. The kiss was soft and only lasted a few seconds, but the spark you felt when your lips connected was electric. You’d never imagined kissing Joshua Hong, you only realised you had feelings for him after he’d moved away but even then, you never pictured anything coming from the crush. You never thought you’d see him again, but here he was, standing in the middle of the fall fair with you, kissing you. 

When he pulled away, you only wish he’d stayed longer, closer to you in your space. Your face felt cold from where his hands had been.

“It was a mistake wasn’t it?” Joshua said, interpreting your pout for him stepping over a line.

“No! The opposite,” you rushed to say. “I’m just surprised.”

“Surprised because I’m still a risk-taker or because I’m an awesome kisser?” 

You rolled your eyes, “Surprised that you think you’re an awesome kisser. Come on, let’s go check out the rest of the fair.”

The rest of the afternoon passed by peacefully, you walked together through the vendors selling trinkets and produce. Both of you willingly taking any free sample that someone offered, just like when you were kids. Though this time, you felt a little guilty so ended up buying a few items from the sellers.

At the end of the stalls, you see someone selling hot chocolate, so you both decide to stop to have a cup. It was the same stall you had always begged your moms to take you to, and they rarely said yes, but now as adults you were not going to deny yourself the pleasure.

Once you had gotten your cup you turned to try to find a place to sit amongst all the people in the makeshift food court area when two people in the corner caught your eye. “I’ll be back,” you tell Joshua.

Your hunch was right about your friends following you to the fair. You headed towards Soonyoung and Minghao.

“What are you guys doing here?” You demanded trying to keep cool.

“Making sure your friend isn’t a murderer,” Soonyoung replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “Just because you knew each other when you were twelve doesn’t mean anything, he could have turned into a murderer since then.”

“That’s funny, he said the same thing. But as you can see, I’m still alive.”

“Look, we’re just enjoying the fair like everyone else, what’s the big deal?” Minghao asked.

“It’s just weird for you to be stalking me on a date. I don’t stalk you guys on your dates.”

“You asked us to,” Soonyoung had a point.

“I guess I did initially. But I told you guys everything was fine.”

“Yeah but if we hadn’t come we wouldn’t have seen the kiss!” Minghao exclaimed, pulling out his phone. It was zoomed in and very blurry, but there was no mistake that was your first kiss with Joshua caught on camera. Had they really been following you that closely?

“Oh my God, tell me you didn’t tell the group chat?!” You pull your phone out to see a LOT of unread messages.

“Sorry, we’re excited for you. This guy seems like a keeper!” 

“That’s great but could you leave us alone now?”

“Fine, but you better text us to make sure you get home safe,” Soonyoung said.

“Sure thing Dad.” 

“I’m just saying, the murderer thing has yet to be disproven. There’s still time for him to lure you into the woods to your death.”

You sighed, Soonyoung was always one for dramatics. “When do you think he’ll pass that test?”

“Maybe by the third date, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“Okay, I’m leaving now. You guys should too.”

“We love you too!”

You turned back to your date and hoped you didn’t look too flustered. Joshua had found a table and was just scrolling on his phone. You couldn’t help but get butterflies as you made your way back towards him. It was a strange feeling, one that reminded you of when you used to see Joshua as a kid. You thought it was just excitement for seeing your best friend but maybe there had always been something more there.

“There you are, I thought I’d lost you.” Joshua put his phone away.

“Sorry I just ran into some friends, I just wanted to say hi.”

“That’s cool, so what next?”

“I’m not sure, I’m just glad we were able to get some hot chocolate.” You take a sip of your drink, it had cooled down while you were talking to your friends but it still tasted just as you remembered. Sickly sweet and smooth like silk.

“I think I have an idea.”

Joshua wrapped his hand around yours as he pulled you towards the corn maze. You protested as you were sure to get lost since you hadn’t been there in ten years. “Muscle memory,” Joshua had said, walking backwards as he pulled you in. “I bet I could get us out of here blindfolded. 

You let yourself be dragged into the maze but you didn’t think anything good was going to come of it. The maze was giant and even as kids you usually had to be rescued after getting lost in there. It was one of the only times you were allowed to use your cellphone as a kid and while Joshua always put on a brave face, he was just as scared as you were back then.

“You know, I don’t think we’ve ever made it out of this maze,” you remind him as you begin making turns, left and right, right then left.

“Not with that attitude we didn't. I'm pretty sure we go right here…”

You let Joshua take the lead as you navigated your way through the maze. You were surprised at how well he was doing, or at least amazed at his confidence. You two didn’t speak much as you passed by families, groups of children and other couples. 

A few times you hit dead-ends but Joshua didn’t let you dwell on it too long before he was taking off in a new direction. Even if you were going to be stuck here for a while, you didn’t mind watching Joshua’s broad shoulders and his behind as you followed him around.

“Ah ha!” Joshua exclaimed as you made your way out of the exit. Or rather…the entrance. Somehow you had gone in a huge circle and ended up at the beginning again.

“At least we made it out,” you laughed. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, is it possible the place got bigger since we’ve last been here?”

“Probably, I mean they have to do something to keep people coming back year after year. Still, your navigation skills were very impressive. I wouldn’t have been able to get out of there without you.”

“You’re welcome,” Joshua smiled.

“So we’ve conquered the maze…sort of. Now come on, there’s one last thing we have to do before we leave.”

You led the way this time as you made it to the merry-go-round in the middle of the grounds. It was one of your favourite things about the fair and the place where you always imagined you would have your first kiss.

When you told Joshua this he leaned over from his horse and kissed you on the cheek. “I know we had our first kiss earlier, but we can pretend this was our first.”

“I’ll tell everyone, we had a magical day at the fair and he kissed me on the merry-go-round.”

“That's all I ask,”

You look over at Joshua, but this time not as the boy you once knew but the man he is. It was different now, knowing that all the things an online stranger had told you now applied to the same person you knew as a child. He wasn’t that boy anymore and while you might have had a crush on the boy he was, you were wondering if you could love the man he is now.

As you exited the merry-go-round the fair was shutting down so you made your way back to the car. 

You were sad the day was ending because it had been so perfect. You didn't think you'd ever have a first date like this again. Hopefully, you won't have any more first dates at all. 

When you pulled up to your house, Joshua insisted on walking you to your door, you rolled your eyes but allowed him to anyway.

“You know, no one has ever done this for me before.”

“That’s because you wouldn’t let them.”

“No, it’s because no one has ever offered.”

“Well that’s silly, how else are they going to get their goodnight kiss?”

You blush, knowing that’s what the end of the date was coming to. Even though Joshua had already kissed you a couple of times today, this was the one you had mentally prepared for, and even then you weren’t sure you were ready.

“I guess they don’t get one,”

“And do I?”

“Of course,”

You close your eyes and lean in as Joshua does the same, your lips gently brushing against each other as you feel the jolt of electricity you felt earlier in the middle of the fair. This time Joshua’s hands found their way to your waist to pull your body flush against his, his tongue parting your lips to deepen the kiss.

It lasted minutes, maybe hours, you couldn’t tell the time when you finally pulled apart. Remembering that you were on the porch and any one of your nosy neighbours had probably seen you.

“So?” Joshua said when he stepped back.

“So what?”

“Now will you admit I’m an awesome kisser?”

“Please, that was all me,” You laughed.

“As if,” he laughed too. “I definitely contributed at least 75%.”

“Hmm, let’s agree it was 50/50.”

“Fine, so when can I see you again?”

There was a glint of hope in Joshua’s eyes that made your heart flutter. He was nervous as if you would deny him the chance to see you again.

“Tomorrow?” You bit your lip hoping it didn’t sound too eager. The day had been so fun and you didn’t want to go without seeing him for too long either.

“Sounds good,” Joshua leaned in to give you another kiss, this time on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight,”

“Goodnight, Joshua.”

You stayed on the porch until Joshua had disappeared out of sight before heading inside to warm up. You had desperately wanted to invite him inside but based on the kiss you had had on the porch things probably would have escalated a lot faster than you were ready for. But given the fact you were seeing him tomorrow, you weren’t sure how much more self-control you’d be able to have.

You went upstairs to run yourself a bath and finally let yourself wrap your head around the events of the day. You opened up your phone to reread messages you had sent to Joshua before you knew who he really was. Rereading the texts, you began to read between the lines and piece together the Joshua you knew before with the one you saw today. It was easy now that you knew what you were looking for.

As you reached the end of your messages you saw a new one had appeared while you were scrolling.

Hey, glad to have met you today. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow holds. 🙂

You smiled before typing a reply and sinking into your bath. Another message arrived on your phone and you checked to see yet another message from Soonyoung asking if you got home yet, he had sent at least five in the last half hour. You rolled your eyes at the messages before texting back that you were alive and then opened up the group chat to fill them in on your date.

“You guys will never guess what happened today…” You started, knowing they’d be hanging on to your every word.

[zorosdimples]

pairing ⛧ creepy medical student! law x gn! reader

warnings ⛧ minors: please do not interact! i will block you. while there’s no smut, this is suggestive, and everything that happens is nonconsensual (law is gross). mentions of masturbation, fucking inanimate objects, bruises, and death. additionally: cum sighting, cursing, knife play, a little blood, some spit, manhandling, and general grimetown weirdness.

word count ⛧ 1132

notes ⛧ this is another installment of the garden of earthly delights series, as well as a contribution to @bastardblvd’s house of slimy horrors collab—my prompt was “pumpkin patch”! the plot is nonexistent… just go with it <3

something isn’t right.

the early evening sky is hazy, the sun obscured by a leaden film that shrouds grimetown’s pumpkin patch in a deathly hue. the barren field before you is more of a squash graveyard than anything else—the vast expanse of dirt is littered with a few dozen orange carcasses.

this is certainly not what you were expecting when your date suggested a fun autumnal outing.

“this has to be the world’s most depressing pumpkin patch,” you grouse, craning your neck to look up at law’s stony expression; as usual, his face doesn’t betray his thoughts. you can never get a good read on him. you don’t know him well enough to tell if he’s simply awkward or if he genuinely doesn’t emote. “we should go somewhere else.”

the jet-haired man places a firm palm on the small of your back, urging you forward. “c’mon, we’re already here. we can’t make jack-o-lanterns without pumpkins. toji joe’s is out of ‘em.”

there’s a peculiar lilt to his words—a faux positivity that makes you hesitate for a split second. but you move forward anyway.

the blustery air ruffles your clothes as you drift across the dark earth with law, searching for a pumpkin that isn’t in some state of decomposition. this is exactly the sort of scenario you hear about on your favorite podcasts and documentaries: a careless person accompanied by a man they barely know in a remote area, not so much as a whisper of nearby life on the wind.

all you really know about law is that he’s a handsome medical student who shares similar interests, namely in true crime and literature. that, and he had been unusually pushy about this outing.

“hey, that looks like a good one.” law points to a suitable carving prospect. crouching down to get a closer look, a gasp leaves your lips when you find a hole a few inches in diameter bored into the side of the pumpkin. what appears to have once been a pale cream fluid is now a flaky crust, caking the opening. “is that—”

“probably,” law cuts in, resting a cold, tattooed hand on your shoulder. startled, you nearly topple over, but his strong arms catch you and pull you to his chest. now standing, you jerk in his embrace; he releases his hold and you take a few steps back. “it’s one of kappa upsilon mu’s fall festival activities.”

it’s impossible to hide the disgust that furrows your brow and creeps into your voice. “they mutilate pumpkins and fuck them like fleshlights as a frat tradition?”

law shrugs. you swear you see a glimmer of humor flit through his amber irises. “it’s not even close to the weirdest thing they do. ever heard of a ‘cum fountain’?”

you hold up a hand to stop him. “i don’t even wanna know.”

but something isn’t adding up you think with a frown. “if you knew all the pumpkins were going to be cut up and…violated, why did you bring me here, law?” you tried to measure your words carefully, but now that they hang in the open, your accusation is evident.

your date’s lips curl into an ominous smirk. the familiar chill of dread nips at your heels and paws at your chest. “well,” law starts, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a switchblade. your eyes rivet on the tool—the weapon—as he fiddles with it, nimble fingers gliding along the handle before flicking it open with ease. his bored, yellow gaze unnerves you; his words ooze calculated confidence. “i’m gonna practice my carving skills with you.”

his statement rips the breath from your lungs. unsure of what to do, you chuckle uncomfortably, praying that he’s still talking about the goddamn pumpkins.

law edges closer to you, a hunter testing his prey. you don’t move—you don’t think you could if you tried. your mind is racing in countless directions, but you can’t settle on an action, a plan. and this freak—your date—is one small thrust of the blade from you, crowding your space. so you stare down the predator’s maw.

“you’re beautiful,” law states, though it doesn’t sound complimentary; it’s an observation. there’s a clinical coldness to his words that makes you feel like you’re trapped in a microscope slide. he gestures to you with the knife, the unspoken threat palpable.

“oh. um, th-thank you,” you stammer, eyes darting wildly, cornered prey.

you force yourself to think: how do you escape this fucker? you had to take a shitty taxi to get to the pumpkin patch, but the driver could barely keep the car in its lane and tried to proposition you for sex. is everyone in grimetown a slimeball? you don’t realize your nails are biting so deeply into the skin of your palms that blood is dripping onto the dirt.

as though he can read your thoughts, law says coolly, “i wouldn’t run if i were you.”

options dwindling, you remember your lifeline. slowly, you inch a hand toward your back pocket where your phone sits. but your opponent is perceptive; law cracks a wide smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, running his tongue across his sharp teeth. he raises the knife and presses the flat side of the blade against your neck.

it’s an effective warning.

“there’s no signal out here—the only cell provider that services grimetown is slime mobile. you can check, though, if it makes you feel better,” law taunts.

to your horror, your phone reads “no service” at the top of the screen. your skin itches, nerves buzzing with adrenaline. your hands shake, fear and rage coalescing into an unshakeable tremor that has sweat beading at your temples. hot tears of frustration singe your cheeks. but the cold steel of the blade against your throat saps the fight from your body.

your final resort?

“fuck you,” you hiss with all the venom you can muster. and, before you can stop yourself: ptui. you launch a glob of spit that lands squarely on law’s cheek, punctuating your insult.

law doesn’t flinch. rather, he swipes two calloused fingertips through your precious gift. he holds his wet digits up, admiring the glistening pads of his fingers, then pops them into his mouth. the groan he emits while enjoying your taste makes you lightheaded. he pivots his blade so that the honed tip scrapes an angry line up the column of your throat. the pressure isn’t enough to slice your flesh—yet.

you shriek when law forcefully grabs your jaw and pulls you to him. bruises in the shape of his fingers will bloom on your face tomorrow—if you live that long, anyway. for the first time, his wide grin crinkles his hawkish eyes.

his voice is thick with desire as he murmurs, “i’d like to fuck you first.”

[aimfor-theheart]

|| zhongli x afab!reader || E/18+ || smut/a touch of angst/comfort || wc: 7k || ao3 ||

minors and ageless blogs do not interact, 18+ only

You have never been patient enough for worship. Sometimes, he thinks you always expect to be scorned or feared or hated. As a god of hunger, you are not beloved or worshiped by many, if any at all.

You’ve never known the sort of worship that he gives you. 

✧ meet fruit collab masterlist ✧

a/n: this is apart of @willowser 's house server summer collab, meet fruit!! i took plums as my prompt!! this really got away from me and i had a lot of fun with this dynamic and i WILL be writing more of godly wife!reader and zhongli. i have a whole backstory. a huge massive fic i shouldn't work on but will fjdkslfdk i also need to give a special thanks to @itoshisoup , @lorelune , and @petrichorium for helping me with brainstorming and riffing earlier! also finding some godly names for the reader! in particular, mao came up with the name Tanai Zhenjun, which i will leave a note at the end about!! i hope you enjoy this sweet taste!! thank you for reading and let me know your thoughts <333

tags: afab!reader referred to as wife, and has several godly titles that mortals have called her, etc., a complicated relationship between zhongli and reader, mentions of past fights/canon typical violence, erotic fruit eating and feeding, finger sucking, biting, oral sex (f!recieving), some over stimulation, praise, maybe a little sex pollen because the reader causes feelings of hunger/lust/etc. but its consensual and zhongli can withstand it if he wanted, scratching, unhealthy godly dynamics, let me know if i missed anything!

In the shadows of his home, he would know you anywhere. 

(He would know you even if you didn’t appear to him like this, fully formed, and in the visage of mortals. He’d know you in the thunder and the wolves’ howl. He’d know you in autumn’s bitter wind and the fox’s cry. Across all of time, he’d know you.) 

You slip, serpentine, slow and with the easy grace of a predator into the last falling light of the sun; bronzed, honeyed, and appearing before him like you did decades ago, perhaps a hundred of years ago. 

Has it been so long already? 

The sight of you–perhaps simply you, yourself, spark an ache in his chest. Fierce. Hunger pains. 

And after all these years, he welcomes it, savors the pit in his stomach like a sweet fruit. 

You, his god of hunger. 

You, his divine wife. 

He tips his head back, leaning further into the chair at his deep, mahogany desk, as if he could fix his eyes to better see you. As if he could take in more of you, somehow, greedily, hungirly. 

“Hello, my Morax.” You hum and the sun catches in your eye as you step into his life again, after so long without. 

“Hello, my love.” He responds, as if it could’ve just been yesterday.

As if you are his wife and you’ve come home to greet him. As if he is your husband and he’s been working all day without you. 

“It’s been a long time,” he says then, “you’ve been away a long time.” 

You meander closer, on the other side of his desk, peering at the scrolls and papers there. His hands are stained in ink. He catches the downturn of your lips, the small quirking of them in displeasure. Such mortal things, he can hear your voice, the little hiss you get when you dislike something. 

But then your eyes roam to the bowl of fruit, now untouched, that had been brought to him in hopes of eating;

Slices of plum, gold and orange and tender on the inside, their moon-dark skins still curved to them. One still has the pit attached to it, carefully nestled within its flesh. 

Plums always remind him of you. 

(In truth, anything with pits, with bones, with something that can be picked clean and left behind reminds him of you.) 

In an instant, your fingers, nimble–adorned with his jewels, the jewels of his earth, snag a slice.

He watches as you sink your teeth into it, juice bursting, caught on your lip. 

You chew only a moment, swallow slowly as you watch him. 

“I thought I wasn’t allowed around Liyue Harbor,” you begin, “I thought I wasn’t allowed around your precious mortals.” 

His voice, low and soft, rumbles in affirmation. “Yes, that is true.” 

“And yet you speak to me like I’m welcome.” You hold the last bite of your slice to your lips, speaking against it, “like I should’ve visited sooner.” 

You bear down into the fruit again. 

“You’ve come to pick a fight?” He asks, “I can feel you’re trying to stir trouble.” 

And it's true; your ability as a god of hunger, to spark it in others. To sharpen and change it from starvation to bloodlust to desire to despair to greed–to any form of hunger. 

You caused whole towns to be decimated, driven mad with just the residuals of you, the feeling of you too near, like a wraith haunting their doorway. You turned tides in the Archon war for him and against him. You have always been one of the biggest threats to Liyue’s peace—to the world. Perhaps even beyond.

You perch on the corner of his desk prettily. 

“I can’t visit my husband?” You purr.

He quirks a brow, “you only ever call me husband when you’re trying to kill me.”

Your grin is a wild slip of excitement, a fissure of heat in the clash of your gazes.

“I am trying to kill you,” you agree, but perhaps you have always been trying to kill him. The battles between you two carved the very land of Liyue and at the end of them, no matter what had transpired, he was still your husband. And you, his wife. “But I don’t feel like fighting tonight.” 

You pluck another slice of plum from the bowl and bring it to your mouth. He watches your lips part to take the fruit in again. 

He thinks of replacing your hand with his own. He thinks of the sticky sweet taste he would find if he licked into your mouth, he thinks of being between your teeth again like the little piece of plum.  

Something inside of him yawns open. 

You’re toying with him. 

“You’re in rare form, then.” he hums and does not deny your draw. He has long since stopped trying not to be swept up in you–he realized it was inevitable at some point. You would always pull at parts of him none of the world had, and like a puppeteer did you play with those strings. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

You gaze down at him, almost lovingly, if he didn’t know better. 

Then you shift slightly, adjust yourself. 

And the first touch he has of you in decades, perhaps a century, is just a brushing of your calf against his forearm from where you sit atop his desk. Your bare skin beneath the pooling silks of your skirts. 

Heat rips through him like a tearing wound. 

His gaze flicks up to yours. 

“Did you know I was in Liyue?” You ask. 

“I always know the moment you enter my land again.” 

I always know the moment you come home. 

You shift your leg again, this time, a steadier press to his arm. 

He can’t help himself–he shifts his arm, opens his palm up against the curve of your bare calf to fully feel you, to hold you, in any minute way you might let him. Rough calluses scrape up  against the soft skin of your leg, the silk of your dress pooling around his arm, cool and like spun moonlight. 

You let him hold you like this, curl against the contour of you. His hand moves, dips down almost to your ankle, and back up to the bend of your knee. 

“You missed me,” you accuse, your voice a teasing lilt. 

Perhaps it’s you and the heady rush you cast on a room, on him, “yes,” he agrees honestly, “I always do.” 

“So sentimental in your old age. You’ve spent too long around these mortals.” You tell him, looking away so all you give him is the profile of your lovely face. The upward tilt of your chin, the haughty way you look down your nose. 

“Did you miss me?” He asks and he isn’t looking for you to placate him, but his hand is broad and inching up the back of your thigh. He pulls at you, urges you to the edge of the desk, where his other hand fits around the curve of your waist. 

“Don’t get greedy,” you chastise gently, but you still go with the pull of his hold. 

You slip into his lap like you were always meant to be there, fitting to him the way the moon fits into the sky, or the land against the sea. It’s an ancient feeling, bone deep, soul-cut. 

You let your arms fall around his neck loosely and to have you again in his embrace, after so long, does in fact, make him feel greedy. 

“I can feel it,” he says instead, perhaps just to spite you a little–to move another piece in this eternal chess game with you. “I can feel how you ache. I can feel the way you missed me.” 

“I always feel like that,” you snip, deft fingers slipping the band in his hair out so that it all falls free, loose and flowing over his shoulders in a wave of inky black. “I am always hungry like that.” 

“No,” he says and his voice is low like a wolf’s growling, a tiger’s purr, “I know your hunger. And I know this hunger of yours. You missed me.” 

“If you’re looking for a heartfelt confession, you won’t find it in me.” You tell him, proud little god that you’ve always been, “perhaps you’ll find it in your precious mortals.” 

Your voice takes on an edge, just shy of a sneer.

He laughs, a low rumble from his chest, amused, and pleased.

“Oh, that jealousy of yours. I missed that, too.” 

“Don’t get full of yourself,” you hiss like an asp and now, he worries you’ll bring your claws out. Your eyes glint in the last rays of light, like a bolt of lightning, like a spark of flame in a cold night.

He reaches up to touch your face, thumb sweeping over the arc of your jaw bone in a possessive hold. He forces you to look at him. “Come now, I thought you said you weren’t in the mood for a fight.”

“Then don’t test me.” You snap.

He fights back another fond smile in order to not test you further than he already has. 

He leans closer, his nose almost nudging against yours, “if you’re not here to fight. What are you here for?” 

“To eat through all your land until it is barren again.” You murmur and he knows it is just to pester him. Your fingers are winding in his long, silky hair and your eyes have gone half-lidded, so he knows you are not nearly as waspish as you’re pretending to be.

“If I could satiate your hunger, I would.” He murmurs darkly, lips brushing against yours as you carefully hold yourself back, a dog on a strained leash. At your best, you have always been a caged beast, pacing and desperate for escape. At your worst, you have been nothing short of desolation, teeth upon the earth in a vicious grasp, shaking hard, tearing it to shreds. Your bite never compared to your bark. You’d threaten destruction and deliver devastation; even you, surprised with your own vitriol, your own capability for demolition. 

He threatened to muzzle you once, long ago. 

You rear back slightly to look at him, “no, you wouldn’t. What would you have me be? Content?” 

He laughs softly again, low and warm, terribly fond of you despite it all, “yes,” he says very frankly, and then, “soothed, for once in your life.” 

“I won’t ever be soothed while you walk this earth.” You tell him and he cannot tell if you mean it with vengeance or with love. Are you being romantic? Or threatening him? Sometimes, he felt that your violence was supposed to be more like a kiss, and your kiss the type of violence that leaves him ruined for decades after. 

“And you would be after?” He asks, “I don’t think you’d know what to do if you finally managed to kill me in a meaningful capacity. You’d be bored.” 

You move to pull away from him with a snarl but he fastens his hold onto you tighter to get you to stay, he touches your face again, coaxing. “I only tease you.” 

“I said don’t test me.” You respond, but again, there is nothing nearly so vicious in you tonight. 

No, he knows the hunger in you tonight is a soft creature, a warbling, tender one. He’ll be kind to it, he will feed it and tend to it, even if he knows it will only grow larger still. Like caring for a tiger cub, only for it to grow into all those teeth and muscles, to bite the hand that fed it. 

“Forgive me,” he rumbles, and this time, he angles your head so that he can skim the strong line of his nose against your jaw, “let me make it up to you.” 

“You will not be able to,” you say indignantly and his own smile now feels sharper with the challenge, with your throat so near. He settles himself into a burning kiss against your pulse. Inside of him, something catches and sparks. Your hands curl around the muscles of his shoulders. 

“I know,” he coos, low and soft, almost sympathetic. “Then at least indulge the hunger you’ve caused in me.” 

This, in the least, you settle into. 

He pulls away barely to sit back, to look at you fully in all of your glory a moment. 

You look back at him, perhaps taking him in as well. 

The smoldering turns into a flame. 

The decades of years unspool inside of him and give way to a racing mind, images of what he wants, how he wants you. 

It is always like this, he thinks, eternally, desiring you, and never getting enough.

He thinks he must know how you feel. 

And then he gives into one of several of his desires that are rearing their large, horned heads inside of him. The beasts of his desire are all chained to you, he thinks. He reaches for the bowl of fruit. 

Perhaps it's your turn to be amused as he brings a slice of plum to your lips. You must know how he was looking at you earlier, you must know his desires if you are the one to stoke them. 

Still, you accept the fruit easily, minding your teeth as his finger slips against your lips. Sticky and soft and warm. You draw his finger into your mouth briefly, closing around it. He can feel the edges of your teeth as he pulls it out. 

The moment you swallow around the piece, he surges up to kiss you. 

To finally kiss you. 

He wishes he could call it something of a greeting or reunion, but it is too desperate and too vicious for that. Your teeth click together, coming up against one another, like an old key coming up against a lock. 

He tastes the plum in your mouth, sweet and a little tart, and can’t help the groan that rumbles out of him. 

Your hands disappear into his hair, tangle in the strands so that he can feel the press of your nails against his scalp. He feels the way you arch into the slide of his hands along your torso, bending to them, as if he is a sculptor. It pulls you closer, opens your hips wider in his lap in a way that makes heat rip through him.

When he pulls away, you’re already hazy-eyed, heady with the quick-burn of this sort of hunger, this lust. 

It pulls at him like the tide on the shore to drag him under. 

This time, when he places his lips to your throat, he sinks into a bite at the tender flesh there. 

Sometimes, he wishes he’d treat you more tenderly. As if that might be all you ever needed; more gentleness, and less teeth at your throat. 

But you arch and from your mouth spills your own moan finally, fingers tightening in his hair as if to hold him there. He feels your hips twitch forward, into him, an aborted rock of them, perhaps unknowingly or subconscious.

He wishes you inspired patience in him. 

(Usually, he claims to have a great deal. Unfortunately, he cannot claim the same with you in his arms again. Forgive me, he thinks again, but I haven’t seen you in nearly a century.) 

He stands suddenly with you still wrapped around his waist, hands fit beneath your thighs to lift you and place you on the broad expanse of his desk. Papers get pushed aside, some topple onto the floor in a fluttering mess. You laugh when the bowl of plums rattle precariously, but his mouth covers yours again, and he swallows the sound eagerly. 

He kisses you hard again, hitching your hips up to fit snugly to his, fitting his broad hands over the curves of your waist. You respond in kind, though, and twine your leg around his waist to pull him closer, arch your back to press your chest up to his.

When he pulls away this time, he takes you in, splayed out beneath him. 

“I did miss you,” he gets out roughly.

“Then show me,” you respond, stretching out beneath him, as if to tempt him. 

His hands move over the silk of your dress, bunching parts of it, tangling it. He decides in an instant that he doesn’t actually wish to deal with it, so he sets his hands on the bust and simply pulls. It tears like paper beneath him. And again, you laugh, amused with him now, with what you do to him.

“So impatient.” 

“It’s been a long time, my love.” 

And this time when he kisses you, perhaps you give into him more, feed what he wants. You mewl into his mouth, arch against him, drag your nails down his covered back. 

“Touch me,” you get out, demanding, a little fussy. 

“So impatient.” He mocks dryly. 

For his trouble, you pull harshly on the hair at the nape of his neck, baring his throat to you. 

His broad palm roams up the expanse of your side, your bare stomach, and to your chest. He cups your breast, thumb brushing against the peak in a way that makes you hum and squirm beneath him eagerly. 

You bury your face in his now exposed neck, nudge your nose there, which turns into your warm, open mouth. 

For a moment, surprisingly gentle, until he feels the quick flash of pain from your teeth. He rolls your nipple between thumb and forefinger with a little more pressure than necessary, just to hear the little noise of pain you make. 

He drops his face to the crux of your chest, lips dragging along the skin there, above your beating heart. And for all your bite and bark, you still offer yourself up to him for the taking. You still draw your hands over his shoulders, pushing at the clothes still on him. He doesn’t indulge you, but draws lower, hair spilling over your chest as his mouth opens against your breast. 

He nips and marks, sets his teeth against the tender flesh and sucks a bruise into you. 

“I miss your sharp teeth,” you admit.

He huffs, breath fanning against your skin. He raises his eyes, molten gold, to meet your own, “there’s no pleasing you.” 

And then he captures the bud of your breast in his mouth and at least manages to pull another sound from you, meandering, growing in your own desire. You squirm beneath him again but something inside of him (old and draconic) blinks its eyes open and he seizes your waist to still you the way a predator subdues their prey, sharply, and with a slow rolling of muscle, a flex of their strength. A serpent squeezing down around a mouse. A tiger bearing down on the deer. 

You don’t go easily, though. 

And the moment you feel his resistance, you squirm and push harder, straining. Arching and impatient. 

He nips, he fights back the more base urge to growl, and readjusts his hold on you.

“Stop squirming,” he commands.

“Stop teasing,” you reply, stubborn, and disobedient. 

“Let me enjoy you.” Zhongli responds, watching his own hand sweep over your breast, cover it, and toy with you. 

“Enjoy me later.” You snip, fastening your legs tighter to his waist, hitching him closer. 

And he feels a head rush of your ability pour through him, the tightening of your desire and lust, of your hunger spilling from you. It’s purposeful. He feels the dull thud of his heart kick upwards, the warmth that simmers beneath his skin. He blinks hard with it, but does not succumb. 

“You’re so insolent.” He finally gets out, just shy of a growl, “now hold still for me.” 

His lips skim the top of your stomach as he lowers himself to his knees in front of you. 

You sit up onto your elbows, eyeing him, inching your hips to the edge of the desk eagerly. 

“I’ve always liked you best on your knees, Morax.” 

He sinks his teeth into your inner thigh in a more ruthless bite, forcing your legs open even as they threaten to close with the sudden jolt of pain. Hard enough that you hiss through your teeth, twitching towards or away from him, he can’t tell. 

(Images of days long past flash hotly in his mind, in another form, with those sharper teeth you’d said you missed.) 

He feels your hunger burst open like a ripe fruit, like the plum between your teeth. 

He soothes the bite with a slow, lingering pass of his tongue. 

His eyes flick upwards towards you. 

You look a little shaken finally, eyes glassy, teeth stuck in your bottom lip. 

He drags you closer, pulls you flush so that your hips are almost off the edge. You fall back with the movement and he doesn’t give you a moment. He isn’t feeling generous or very kind anymore. 

His mouth opens against you in a crush of heat, eager, perhaps impatient himself. 

A groan, low, from the back of his throat, works out of him at the first taste of you. 

Again, you try to squirm, and something ancient and vicious in him squeezes hard enough on your waist that if you were a mortal, he might sincerely hurt you. He doesn’t care if you’re trying to squirm closer or away, he realizes, he doesn’t care if it hurts a little, as long as he can have you like this. Open. His. 

Ah, he realizes, perhaps he isn’t ignoring your sway as well as he thought he was. 

He delves between soft folds, already slick, but he’ll make it worse still. 

(Perhaps, at one point, he had ideas of being a gentleman of some kind with you. Perhaps, at some point, he thought he would carefully work you open with mouth and soft tongue. He’d be loving and gentle with you. But you’ve always done something horrible to him, something he can’t tame, something he wishes he feared more.) 

You whine a little and the sound pools straight into his own desire for you. 

He fits himself closer, keeps your legs wider apart with his shoulders. 

“Morax,” you gasp and it’s with more heat and desperation than he is anticipating.

His eyes, heavy and gold, flick up towards your face, looking up at you beneath the dark fan of his lashes. 

Oh, you’re closer than he thought, he realizes. 

He doesn’t slow or stop or lessen himself, groans a little, and fits himself tighter to you. He digs his fingers into your skin and keeps you close. 

To his surprise, that is all it takes. 

Your gasp is strangled, perhaps a little surprised, as you arch off the desk in a bow-curve, poised to snap.

You fall to pieces as a cry loosens from your throat. 

He feels you pulse against his tongue and without thinking, he growls a little, a pleased rumble, and doesn’t stop.

He tastes you, savors it, and doesn’t let you hide or pull away from him.

Your hips twist and he follows the movement, wrestling you still, so that he can still enjoy you. 

You’re out of breath, hiccuping a little, trying to squirm away from him but there’s nowhere to go.

He won’t let you go.

He pulls away to rest his head on your inner thigh a moment, “so quick.” He teases, “you must’ve been pent up for it to be that easy.” 

He thinks, I wasn’t even doing that for you yet—I was still enjoying myself. I was being greedy. Hungry in my own way, in the way that you inspire.

“I should leave you now.” You huff, picking yourself up on your elbows to gaze down at him, but your eyes are simmering.

He squeezes at your thighs, “you’re not going anywhere tonight.”

And before he can hear your protests, he dips forward again and flattens his tongue against your folds. Slow, broad licks that make you twist and twitch. 

“Morax—“ 

“I’m not finished with you yet, my love.” He says lowly, somewhere against where you’re most tender and sensitive. 

He takes his time teasing now. 

Enjoy me later, you’d said, and he doesn’t think this is what you meant. 

You have never been patient enough for teasing–for worship. Sometimes he thinks you always expect to be scorned or feared. You were always Deus Inanis, Tanai Zhenjun, and later, Rapax Regina to the people. You have many names from them, none particularly kind or cherished. You were always the ghoulish god, the bad omen, the drooling maw of a starved predator. Your myth is not a beloved one by most. 

And some dare not even speak your name at all, for fear of inviting you. 

You are not a welcome god in the home and hearth, you are not for protection or courage. You are feared and warded off. You are, at best, used as a condemnation. 

(To him you were always softened with affection, even at your worst; little god, my curse, my love, keeper of my heart.) 

You’ve never known the sort of worship he gives you. 

You struggle with it, keen sharp and broken when he gives it to you. 

Sometimes you have all-out tried to refuse him or hasten him, poured your lust and impatience into him to get your way, to sway him to your own will. He can feel it again now but it never manifests in him the way you’d like it to. You assume his desire is one of his own pleasure. But it has always been this; 

You, belly-up and vulnerable, only for him, delicate in a way the rest of the world will never know. Pleasure-drunk and hazy. Lost to what he can give you–he wants to gorge you. He wishes he could fill the empty place inside of you. 

He’s spent an eternity trying. He’ll spend an eternity more. 

He focuses his intentions, strengthens the pass of his tongue with what he wants. He wants your pleasure. He wants it again and again. 

You curse a little, an ancient word, from when the land was Archon-less and free. 

He lifts his mouth from you briefly, “you are already cursing like that? This will be a long night for you then.” 

He opens his mouth again to taste you, to suck gently, your legs twitching over his shoulders as your breath hitches. 

This time you curse him, hissing through clenched teeth.  

He laughs against you in amusement, low and dark, and smooths a broad hand over the soft plain of your tensing stomach. As if he might soothe you, or perhaps because he wants to feel all of you, have you in his palms, in his arms. Against his mouth.

The next time you fall apart, he doesn’t let up once. His eyes have gone half-lidded and burning, a flint-strike of amber. You try to fight him again, wrestle out of his hold, but he strengthens himself. He steels himself, even, to your pulling of his hair, to your fussing and snapping–all of that melts to whining, to near-crying, as he continues. 

You’re too stubborn to cry for him now–there have been only a handful of times he’s broken you down that much. 

Perhaps if he were feeling crueler, he would try. 

(These instances have always come in the wake of something worse; your largest fights, or worst transgressions where he felt the need to punish. To strip you bare. These are saved, not for his desires, but for your catharsis after all your grief.) 

But your voice has gone higher with desperation, more broken, and he is pleased with that. 

Pleased enough that when you burst on his tongue again, your nails digging into the back of his hand as he holds you, he finally rises. 

Instantly, you twine yourself around him, legs around his waist, arms pulling at the front of his clothes to drag him down into your arms. You are always more desperate for affection like this, softened by pleasure, hungry for more. 

He goes down easily for you.

 Kisses you hard and open, so that you’ll taste yourself from his mouth, the way he tasted the plum from yours. 

You groan weakly and manage to gasp when he pulls away, “please–more. I need more. Need–” 

Always need, you say, when you get like this. Never want. 

“Need you.” 

He hums, the noise lumbering from his chest in a pleased, dark sound. 

“You have me,” he soothes, even as he feels dizzy with your own desire, a headrush of desperation–of need that rushes from you to him. 

Feed me, need me, fill me, possess me, take, take, take me. Fill. Aching–so empty, I’m so empty. Please, please, it hurts– please, I need more, need, need, need–

He lets out a harsh breath. It aches, almost sharply, almost on the wrong side of pain and pleasure. 

He does not torment you any longer. He does not torment himself, either. 

With fingers far more nimble than he feels, he loosens his slacks, he pushes his clothes out of the way just enough, enough to take himself in hand and hiss through his teeth as the head of his cock touches your slick folds. 

Molten. Fluttering still with sensitivity, with desperation. 

Your hips roll, eager, trying to urge him closer, inside–

“Morax–” you cry and the sound twists something in his chest, blooms like a bruise being pressed on. 

 He presses inside you and fills you in one, deep thrust. 

You gasp sharply, you pull at him, force him to collapse over you nearly, cover you completely. You cling to him, you wrap yourself around him like a serpent, now constricting him–

(He’s never been able to tell who is the serpent and who is the mouse, anyways. Who is the tiger or the deer? Was he capturing you? Or were you always capturing him?)

You hold him so tightly, calves flexing around his back, that he can hardly pull out from you to thrust.

He groans, almost in frustration, or maybe some form of defeat. 

“Darling,” he gets out roughly, “my love. My little god.”

The old, affectionate nickname burns through you and he can feel the desire like a knife’s blade in his own stomach. You moan– a soft, warbling sound. 

He manages to move his hips, barely leaving the hot clutch of you, to push back in deeper, harder. 

“Please–” you gasp, “more–kiss me. Touch me.”

“So demanding,” he scolds, but he kisses you hard, with too much teeth and roughness, and fits his palms over the sides of your body. He takes handfuls of curves, of your waist and your breasts, rough hands bending over the lines of you the way the light of the moon bends over the hills and valleys of his land. 

His next thrust is harder, a little rougher. You turn your face into his throat after you break the kiss and your teeth sink down into him hard. 

You always draw blood. You always have to leave your mark on him, on all that you’ve touched. 

But then you draw your tongue over the wound, licking softly, perhaps in apology. Perhaps to satiate another need that winds around inside you. 

Your hand tangles in his hair again and he bites back another raw groan as he thrusts, in and out, on a slow, rough drag. You’re clinging to him, tight and so wet that it’s making his thoughts bleary and clouded. Your lust shadows any rationality; your hunger possesses him. 

“Harder,” you gasp, you beg, you plead. 

And he thinks who am I to deny you? Who am I to deny the god of my hunger? 

His hand slips over your arm, your free one clawing at his clothed back still. He knows you will mourn not getting your nails into his skin after, but he will let you satiate the need all you like later. He’ll savor the way you try to tear him apart, like he always does. 

(And sometimes, he swears, you’re just trying to tear down his skin to be closer. Deeper in him. Scratching at his ribs and his sides like you want in, in, in. A bad dog at his door. A wraith that claws at his soul.)      

As he pulls at your forearm, flattening it out against the desk beneath you to pin you beneath him, he knocks into the bowl of fruit. 

The last of the plum slices tip out onto the desk and the remaining juice at the bottom of the bowl pools in a sticky mess over the wood, some over your forearm and wrist, over his own, too. 

He thinks you move without thinking, bringing his wrist up to your lips where you lick up a stripe up into his palm, against his thumb. 

You take his thumb into your mouth with ease and he cups your cheek in a possessive hold as he lets you suckle, tongue soft and warm and gentle against the pad of it. You groan, lashes fluttering, and this seems to please some part of you. 

His thumb in your mouth, cock lodged deep inside you. 

He pushes himself deeper on his next thrust, enough that you whine a little, eyes going glassy, cheeks hollowing around his thumb. 

He can feel the spit pooling in your mouth, wet and slick, can feel the way your walls squeeze and flutter around him desperately. 

He presses on your tongue, thrust growing a little faster, but still hard, deep–a little ruthless. 

But it’s what you need–so it’s what he gives you. 

You hold his wrist, little nails digging into his skin, desperate to keep his thumb between your lips. He can feel the press of your teeth in the meat of his hand. 

He readjusts, tries to draw his thumb out barely, only for you to latch down tighter on his wrist, and slide it back into your mouth with a noise of protest. Saliva spills a little, slick and messy against your bottom lip, against his hand. 

He coos, but it’s too dark to sound reassuring, and sounds more like a rough purr, just shy of a pleased growl. 

“I won’t go anywhere,” he soothes lowly, but it sounds like less of a comfort from a husband, and more of a promise from the beast you shouldn’t have let in in the first place. It’s loving in the same way a possession is. “My little god, I have you now.” 

Your peak this time makes something inside of him roar open. He feels your inner muscles bear down on him, fluttering desperately. 

Your eyes tip behind your eyelids, hiccuped breath against his hand as it twists into a guttural sound that he feels against his palm. 

“That’s it,” he murmurs, turning your face so that he can press open mouthed kisses against your throat, suck a bruise there, turn the flesh tender, “I’ve got you. Good girl–that’s it.” 

Perhaps he draws blood when he bites you this time, too. Tastes it sharp on his tongue, the blood of a god. He lifts his head from your neck and finally draws his thumb from your mouth, spit slick as he traces your bottom lip. He pulls himself up from you to gaze down at you, slack jawed and messy, near feverish with your lust. 

His hips quicken, harder, and you reach out to splay your hand out against his tensing stomach, to push at him a little. 

But he doesn’t stop, feels you nip at his thumb, still making a mess of your lips and chin. 

Your legs are still hitched tight around him, drawing him in, keeping him close. 

He squeezes your hip with his free hand, he loses his rhythm when you draw his thumb back into your mouth, suckling softly on it. 

He groans, feels his own pleasure in a rush down his spine, a burst of heat that unfurls like a supernova. Collapses inward. Expands outwards. He buries himself inside of you, as deep as he can manage, deep enough that you make a little noise of pain maybe, but you hold him tight to you. Again, you constrict around him, dragging him back down by his clothes to slot your mouth against his as he fills you. 

It’s your turn to hum, pleased, almost purring, tightening your hold around him, locking him against you.

The kiss this time is slower, but dirtier, all tongue, open and messy. He groans into it, holding your jaw, feeling himself twitch inside of you, his own eyes fluttering with pleasure, lashes against your cheek. 

When you both pull away, you’re out of breath. Chests rising and falling against each other. 

You seem subdued now, heavy-lidded, but your lips drag to his cheek, down to the curve of his jaw. 

You roll your hips a little.

“More–” You murmur, “I want more.” 

His laugh tapers into a moan. He flexes his hips a little, heat simmering beneath his own skin. 

Your hands pull at his clothes finally, tugging at them, pulling at buttons until they snap and burst beneath your fingers, until you reveal bare skin. Instantly, your hands are on him, nails scratching into his chest gently, over his shoulders. 

(He’s going to take you to bed after this and he’ll rid you of the scraps of your clothes and the rest of his. He'll get rid of anything between you.) 

The ache in him builds again and suddenly he’s rocking into you again, deep and slow, watching the way he disappears inside of you. The mess he’s already made of you, the way he wants to make it all worse. He feels feverish himself now, a little lost to the sight– his desire suddenly feels inhuman. Monstrous. Too big for his own skin. 

You always seem to remind him of his divinity. 

“Hold me,” you demand now and as if commanded, he goes to you. 

He gets his arms around you and he tucks his face into the crook of your neck. His desire unwinds. Time unspools from him. He loses himself in the pull of you, in the undertow of desire and hunger. He tries to satiate the ache you have carved in him. The ache you always have nestled inside of you. 

You beg him of more–more pain and more pleasure and more of him–until he feels near mindless with it. Gone with it. 

Shuddering with sensitivity and feeling you tremble with it, too. 

He doesn’t regain himself until another peak has been reached and fallen from, until he realizes the hour; the moon hanging in the window of his study like a copper penny. He forces himself to slow. To lodge himself deep and go still inside of you and let his head fall to your chest.

You cradle his skull, fingers slipping into his hair, catching your breath as the haze fades for a moment. 

He picks his head up barely, shifts only so he can catch your gaze. 

“Stay for a while.” He demands now. 

 You let go of a sigh, deep, perhaps tired. 

“I thought I wasn’t allowed.” You hum softly. 

“Will you behave?” He asks and you lean down to kiss him–sweeter now. Perhaps apologizing. He accepts your affection with warmth, though. 

“You know how I get restless.” You respond, fingers tracing along the nape of his neck, one of them trailing down the bend of his jaw. 

You are softest now, like this. It’s a rare sight; one he savors, one he will stay hungry for his whole life, he thinks. 

“Yes,” he agrees, perhaps fondly, perhaps sadly. “If you could keep mortals out of it, I wouldn’t mind.” 

“Even if I tried to kill you again?” You ask, finger tracing the bow of his upper lip. 

He smiles faintly and you touch the corner of his mouth, ���yes,” he agrees, “even then.” 

“Or tried to steal your Gnosis again?” 

He snorts softly, picking himself up further to hover over you, to gaze down at you with more love than you have ever known what to do with. “You can certainly try again.” 

“Perhaps I should try harder this time.” The threat is fangless this time and you are at least soothed somewhat for now. He knows it won’t last long. 

But for now, he takes advantage of it. He cups your cheek, brushes his thumb along your jaw affectionately, and for once, you nuzzle into the touch. You rub your cheek into his palm like a cat. 

A flash of your teeth. You bite down into his hand. 

He laughs softly, but pulls his hand from you, dislodges your teeth from his flesh. 

Slowly, he tries to detangle himself from you. You are reluctant, but he appeases you with promises of more, of his bedroom. Of a bath and whatever you want. 

“More plums,” you say, letting him carry you to his bedroom like a young bride, cradled in his arms. “I’ve always loved plums.” 

He smiles, “I know. They remind me of you.” 

The admittance is a tender one, one that he has held for centuries that has finally loosened from his mouth like a bird taking to flight. 

In the morning, when you have slipped from him and his bed and his life once more, all that’s left are the marks you left on him, the deep scratches and latches of your teeth on tan skin–

And the pits of plums you devoured before you left. Not one is spared and he thinks his heart never has been, either. 

Not from you, his wife, his curse, his love–not from his god of hunger. 

***

a/n part ii: thank you for reading!! here are those notes on the reader's godly names:

There are three titles the reader is referred to. Two of them are latin, similar to Rex Lapis, and the third is from @itoshisoup, and is Tanai Zhenjun, which mao explained as such: "贪爱 (tanai) is a Buddhist term that is often translated as "craving", and refers to desire for both physical and mental things. From my understanding, tanai is sometimes considered a cause of suffering (苦 or ku), but is sometimes considered closely related to suffering in other ways. Given the motif of hunger, I would name the god Tanai, and additionally give them the honorific "Zhenjun" (a title associated with Taoist gods - much like "Dijun", which is the honorific in Zhongli's Chinese title, Yanwang Dijun; however, it is a lesser title than Dijun). Tanai Zhenjun is therefore what I'd call them."

The other two are Deus Inanis and Rapax Regina, which mean "empty god" and "rapacious/ravenous queen" in Latin.

i plan to write more of this reader and use these godly names again soon &lt;3

[marvelous-llama]

BTS recs

most of the mentioned works is 18+ NSFW, MINORS DNI

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pls don´t hesitate to hmu, if any of mentioned links doesn´t work or you have suggestions for more fics... thank you so much for all the love and comments

OT7

Room For Rent collab by @m-yg93

Euphoria Series by @persphonesorchid

Sons of Midas by @joheunsaram

high-class by @chateautae

guarded by @xjoonchildx (Yoongi, Hobi, Namjoon)

here come the f***boys by @kithtaehyung

Autumn Leaves by @bangtansmauyeondan (Seokjin, Yoongi, Hobi, Jimin, Taehyung, Jungkook)

Life Goes On by @oddinary4bts

Jingle All The Way collab by @kpopfanfictrash

Kim Seokjin

Min Yoongi

Jung Hoseok

Kim Namjoon

Park Jimin

Kim Taehyung

Jeon Jungkook

[thus-spoke-lo]

A Hayride for a Hayride // slimeball Taxi Driver!Zoro x afab!reader // NSFW/18+ Written for @bastardblvd's House of Slimy Horrors Collab

Synopsis: Your date to the Grimetown Halloween festival cancelled on you last-minute, leaving you with nothing to do. Luckily, a certain moss-haired taxi driver lifeguard hayride operator offers you a free ride to get your mind off things, and you're soon in for the ride of your life. CW: slimeball au; afab!reader; no pronouns used for reader; mild action violence; vaginal fingering; unprotected vaginal intercourse; mild degradation WC: 5.4k // Fictober Masterlist

The sun descends in the evening sky over Grimetown, glowing through the permanent haze that hangs over the city and painting the landscape in tangerines and golds. You make your way around the festival grounds, sipping at something that tastes close enough to apple cider—you know better than to ask too many questions about the contents of beverages around here. The autumn leaves crunch under your boots as you traipse around, stopping to watch a fistfight that appears to be the result of a rigged pumpkin pie-eating contest—you’re rooting for the guy in the McDonald’s uniform.

The smell of all things greasy and sweet lures you towards the food stalls, and you almost consider trying the rat on a stick (rat isn’t in quotation marks but it’s gotta be a joke…they wouldn’t, would they?) when a noodly blonde man with a curly eyebrow poking out from his mop of blonde hair leans over the counter of the Flapjack Shack’s stall and begins to explain the complicated history of the humble omelet to you in between thinly-veiled innuendos. You nod and smile and wait for another customer to walk by in order to make your escape, plunking down at the edge of a fountain in the middle of the square, thick, white, foamy substance sloppily bubbling away inside. You would think they would have dyed the goopy substance green or something given the occasion, and you run a finger through the viscous liquid, wondering why the texture feels awfully familiar.

A sudden buzzing in your pocket pulls you away from thinking too hard about what you just dipped your hand into, but a quick glance at the message preview sends your fluttering heart right into a meat grinder.

[Soggy Man]: I’m still stuck at work, I’m so sorry. I don’t think I’ll make it tonight.

[You]: Yuuta noooo ☹ how come you’re stuck? Aren’t you closed?

[Soggy Man]: last minute customer came by for an inspection

“An inspection?” you mutter, narrowing your eyes as though he’d feel your questioning glance through the screen.

[You]: I thought you only did those in the morning

[Soggy Man]: well you know how it is, sometimes I have to make exceptions

You wonder if this is the type of exception that all DMV employees were inclined to give, or if it’s more like the exception he made to waive your registration renewal fee when you offered to blow him behind the counter after hours. Either way, this isn’t exactly the best way to start off your attempt at a real first date, not after weeks of back and forth, navigating your ever-changing shifts at the coffee shop, and his abrupt late-night work hours.

[You]: No worries! I understand!

[Soggy Man]:  I’m sorry cutie, hope you have fun without me

[You]: it’s ok! I know how to entertain myself.

[You]: we’ll try again some other time!

“Well, shit.” You shove your phone back into your pocket with a sigh that turns into a groan that turns into a momentary existential crisis—this was the seventh first date you’d tried to set up recently, and the sixth first date where you got ghosted before ever getting to try to disappoint them in person. Not waiting to see if Yuuta has anything else to add, you wander off, glancing around the packed festival in search of something—anything—to occupy your unexpected free time.

As you pass the shoddily assembled Ferris wheel, watching it shimmy with every rotation, threatening to come unbolted and roll away at any moment, a light fog starts to accumulate at your feet. It stinks, and not like how you remember fog machines to smell from your glory days as a stagehand at the Grimetown Community Theater; no, this is thick, and pungent, and a little nauseating. You walk deeper into the foul-smelling haze, and glance down to see the cause—a stubbed-out cigar rolls towards your feet, a few stray embers spraying out across the dirt.

“You alright, honey?” a low voice rumbles from just beyond the dissipating vapors. “You look like something’s wrong.”

You cough and sputter, waving your hand in front of you to clear the remaining cloud of smoke and see a man with green hair and a tanned complexion standing with his back against a wooden wagon, his extraordinarily muscled arms crossed over his broad chest, a thin white t-shirt straining to contain his brawny form. Three gold earring jingle softly as he cocks his head to examine you with his one good eye, and you wonder if the scar over his other eye is real or fabricated for the occasion.

“I’m fine, thanks,” you fib, stuffing your hands in your pockets as you stroll towards him. The last thing you want right now is some burly stranger trying to play therapist when what would actually solve your problems is guzzling pumpkin-spice flavored alcohol and stuffing your face with candy apples, then passing out in that weird gloopy fountain ‘til sunrise.

“Come on now.” He raises an eyebrow and gives you a pitying grin. “You sure you’re okay?”

You kick at the ground with the toe of your boot and huff a sigh. “Fine. I, uh—I got stood up.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Dude texted me after I already got here saying he couldn’t come, and I don’t want to waste my ticket, so now I’m just kinda in limbo and not really sure what to do.”

“Pretty thing like you gettin’ stood up on a nice night like this?” He gestured towards the darkened sky, the moon covered in a dense mess of clouds, silver beams poking through and illuminating the space between you. “It’s a damned shame.”

“Tell me about it,” you chuckle in agreement.

“You know,” he says, running his tongue over his lower lip, “I’m technically supposed to wait until there’s a big group before I head out, but—I could give you a ride. A private one.”

“A private ride, huh?” You inhale sharply through your teeth and your eyes flit over his muscled form. A private ride with some grimy eye candy doesn’t sound like a bad way to recover from a hefty blow to your ego. “How much is it?”

“It’s free. Comes with your ticket.”

“You know what? Sure, why the hell not?”

“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” he grins, giving an exaggerated wink. “Don’t you worry—I’ll make you forget all about that loser.”

You head towards the back of the wagon, expecting there to be a step to hoist yourself inside, when a strong hand grabs your wrist and tugs you back.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks as you stumble backward into him, your back pressing against his firm chest, sending a little spark down your spine.

“I—I was getting in the cart.”

“Oh, now that’s just for regular, everyday hayrides.” He grasps your hand and leads you towards the front of the cart, gesturing towards the bench that sits just behind the horses; he places his warm hands on your shoulders and gives them a gentle squeeze. “Private tours get the best seat in the house.”

You climb aboard and he follows, letting out a quiet, satisfied-sounding groan as he settles in beside you, scooting closer until his warm body presses right against yours. The bench is more than long enough to afford you both some personal space, but it seems the private tour also comes with the bonus of physical affection and suggestive flirtation—not that you’re complaining. The hayride operator reaches over and pats your thigh. “Alright. Where to?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” You shrug and gesture vaguely in front of you. “Where do you normally take this thing?”

“Oh yeah.” He furrows his brow. “Sorry, I’m just used to my day job.”

“What do you do for your day job?”

“Lifeguard.”

“Wait, wh—” Your inquiry is cut short as the horses take off, jostling you and pitching you forward, then back. As you try to right yourself, something shiny catches your eye; you glance over and see three sheathed swords nestled in the hay just behind you.

“Say, hayride guy,” you ask, reaching over to poke at them, “what are these for?”

He grunts and brushes your hand away without looking over. “Protection.”

“Protection from what?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Ah, he must be doing a bit—they’re props. You smirk, settling back onto your seat, leaning your head against his sturdy shoulder as you listen to the steady clip-clop of the horses and the rhythmic squeak of the wagon’s wheels, the only sounds in the depths of the darkened forest. The festival is low-budget, to say the least, but they cared enough about attention to detail to have the hayride operator carrying swords; you start to wonder if this is supposed to be a haunted hayride, and perhaps your beefy driver will be showing off his faux-sword skills before the end, fighting off a zombie horde or two.

You sigh as you press your cheek against his bicep and try to ignore the troublesome feeling inside you—that maybe Yuuta was trying to get a hold of you, that you should have just waited longer to see if his late-night inspection was over quickly enough he could join you. The phone in your pocket has been silent for some time now, and you carefully pull it out, just to check; no signal at all, and no texts, only a notification about your rent being overdue again.

“Hey. Don’t let him get you down, sweet cheeks.” He covers the screen of your phone and pushes it down into your lap, leaving his hand there for a moment, precariously close to the apex of your thighs. His touch is warm, radiating a kind of animalistic heat—one that feels a little too raw, and little too dangerous. He smirks, making some clicking noise at the horses as you wind your way through the deepening woods. “You know, I think you could do better than him, anyway.”

I bet you do, you grin to yourself as your limbs flood with heat and your stomach twists in knots, chewing on your lower lip at the way his muscles flex with every flick of the reigns. You feel a fire lighting at the base of your spine the longer you stare at him, the longer your body seems to melt into his as you snuggle closer along the trail—perhaps you’ll have to pay him a visit after the festival closes and see if he offers any after-hour tours. He certainly seems amenable to the idea, and it had been a while since the last time you’d been bent over a piece of farm equipment and railed in a spooky, secluded wood after all. You start to wonder if he’s all bluster, or if he’s adept at putting his big hands and his smart mouth to good use.

The fog of lust in your head starts to clear a little and you glance around, not recognizing the trees and landscape in front of you, the horses trotting over a layer of decaying leaves instead of the paved path that had been stretching out ahead of you. No, the woods directly behind the festival grounds aren’t this dense, the branches don’t hang this low, the air is never this still.  You sit up, a sense of dread creeping up into your throat, and tap the driver on his forearm with a shaking hand.

“Hey, uh, hayride guy?”

“It’s Zoro,” he grouses.

“Right. Zoro.” You swallow hard, an icy shiver running down your spine as a cold wind whips through the trees. “So…where are we, anyway?”

“Tch, we’re on the trail,” Zoro scoffs as he glances around. He suddenly sits up straight, his mouth opening and closing, only faint sounds of confusion coming out. “Or, uh…we were.”

“What do you mean ‘we were’? Don’t the horses know where to go?”

“They don’t have built-in GPS, they just go straight until I tell ‘em to not go straight.”

“So where the hell are we, then?” The skin on your arms prickles underneath your thick sweater and acid roils in your belly, that sense of dread that sits in your throat threatening to push its way out.

“Well, we’re in the woods.”

“I know that!”

“Don’t worry your pretty head about it, okay?” It feels like he’s reassuring himself just as much as he’s trying to calm your frayed nerves, as if the machinations in his mind are just starting to turn, to decide where you go from here. Zoro stretches and wraps his arm around your shoulder, pulling you into him; he smells like stale cigars and sweat and too much cheap body spray and it’s the most intoxicating thing you’ve inhaled all night. “Look, I can get us out of this. They don’t call me the world’s strongest hayride operator for nothin’.”

You slowly look up at him. “Is that—is that a thing? Do people actually call you that?”

“Ha! Exactly.”

A scream abruptly fills the air, cutting through the eerie quiet, followed by another, then another—the strangled cries for help of someone, or something, in distress. Zoro pulls you in closer, his fingers digging into your shoulder as you bury your face against his chest. It’s just part of the show, you tell yourself, choking on a shuddering breath. It’s just part of the show, and some dude in a shitty costume is gonna run out of the woods any minute and try to scare me. After a few agonizing moments, the bloodcurdling shrieks finally die down, the pained noises reducing to pathetic whimpers and then…silence.

“You know, you’re pretty cute when you’re scared.”

Before you can say something equally flirtatious back, the horses come to a sudden halt; they whinny and stomp in place, clearly disturbed by something that only they can sense.

“Zoro…what’s going on?” It’s just part of the show, it’s just part of the show…

“I dunno,” he says, making soft noises at the horses to soothe them, his hand moving down and settling on your thigh protectively. “Something’s got them all riled up.”

The quality of the performance is good, you force yourself to think as he squints into the near-darkness, but his delivery could be more authentic. You join him in his scan of your surroundings, searching the foggy woods for whatever had frightened the horses, their heads bobbing and nostrils flaring at something in the distance. Leaves crunch and branches crack as something approaches, its pace slow and hesitant, a low growling emanating from the darkness—the sound effects are impressive, and you try to find the hidden speakers within the foggy haze.

“Zoro,” you mumble quietly, as you wrap your arm around his waist and cling to him, “I think there’s something up there.”

“Where?” He leans forward, peering into the shadowy distance.

“Right—right there.” You gasp as you see the source of the noise ambling out of the woods. “Oh my god, it’s a dog—it looks like it’s hurt!”

Without another thought, you hop down from the cart and carefully approach the dog, who slinks closer to you, eyeing you cautiously with each step. The moonlight peers through the clouds and illuminates the creature, its dark grey fur stained with blood, bits of viscera clinging to the matted hair around its face.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Zoro shouts from the cart. “Get back here and stay on the wagon.”

“What? It’s fine, it’s all part of the show isn’t it?” Surely this was just someone’s pet, doused in red corn syrup and set loose as part of the haunted hayride.

“What show? This is just a hayride.”

“Sure, I got you.” You wink and snap finger-guns at him confidently, and turn your attention back to the injured pup. “Here doggie! C’mere sweetie, let me—oh my god.”

Your mouth drops open and a gasp pushes its way out of your lungs—the dog, you realize, is no dog at all.

The creature that stalks out of the woods appears to be a wolf, its eyes burning bright like smelted gold, teeth bared and lips curled back into a snarl, its fangs dripping with strings of blood-reddened saliva. You freeze in place, arms outstretched, hoping your vaguely threatening posture is enough to keep the wolf at bay as your heart hammers in your ribcage and your breathing comes in fits and starts. It senses something in you—fear, hesitation, weakness—and approaches slowly, one carefully placed paw at a time, sniffing the air and growling more desperately with every whiff of you that it catches.

“Get back.”

A strong hand on your shoulder jerks you back and shoves you towards the wagon. Zoro now stands in front of you—his shirt is gone, revealing a smooth expanse of streamlined muscle and sinew rippling under bronzed skin, a black bandana is tied around his head, and he wields his three swords, one in each hand, and the third held between his teeth. He widens his stance and maintains his position as the wolf approaches more boldly now, barking and growling, steam from its warm breath rising into the air. The creature leaps at him and he quickly crosses the two swords in front of him to block its attack, the metal shaking as he grunts and shoves the wolf back.

“Three-Sword-Style,” Zoro shouts, the words muffled by the sword still clenched between his teeth, “Grime Tornado!”

A strong gust of air suddenly swirls in front of him and disburses with great force, pushing the wolf backward as it struggles to stay standing until it’s shoved to the edge of the woods. The air settles, and the wolf pauses for a moment, teeth still glimmering in the moonlight, eyes glowing like embers, before it runs off into the trees again, its howls lingering in the still air. Zoro lowers his arms, letting the tips of his blades point towards the ground as he walks towards you, his broad chest heaving with every panting breath.

“I told you to stay in the damned wagon,” he mumbles through the sword still tucked between his clenched teeth. He walks over to the cart and carefully sheaths the three swords again, giving them a reassuring pat before turning to glare at you. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“It—it was all part of the show, right?” Your hands tremble, the wolf’s glowing eyes still appearing behind your eyelids with every blink; the way they pierced you was unnerving, almost as if there was something human about them.

And the blood. The blood looked so—so real.

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grunts as he walks over to you, scooping you up with startling ease and carrying you back to the wagon. He plops you down in the back like a sack of rice, your backside landing in a soft pile of hay, and he glowers at you. “Don’t get back out again. Not for anything. Understand?”

You nod, and the desire to jump into his burly arms again courses through you. As frightened as you are, the sight of him, shirtless and flexing, moving with a grace and speed you hadn’t expected from him, has a stranglehold on you—if he’d asked to bend you over right then and there, you would have gladly thanked him for his hard work and offered him payment in the form of whatever part of your body he most preferred.

“Thanks for saving me, Zoro.”

He grunts in response and jostles the reigns, the horses taking their cue and trotting off into the depths of the woods again. You pull your knees up to your chest and lean against a hay bale, your eyes focused on Zoro the whole time; he glances back now and again, quick looks of concern at first, then of something else, something that feels far less virtuous.

The horses seem to find their way back onto the path with some degree of ease, and before long, you can see the festival off in the distance, smell the greasy mystery meats-on-sticks, hear the noise that passes for music as some local band plays royalty-free Halloween music.

The wagon comes to an abrupt halt, the festival almost within reach—you can almost touch the goopy fountain again. Zoro heaves his arm over the divider that separates the two of you, leaning his bare torso towards you. “Listen. We need to talk.”

“Look, Zoro, let me be the first to say—I think the ride was spectacular,” you start to ramble, your hands gesturing wildly as you speak. “And I promise I won’t say anything to anyone about the—well, whatever the fuck happened back there. Or the, uh—the flirting. Not that I minded! I mean, I don’t know if it’s the most professional way of giving private rides, but it was, you know…appreciated. If you need me to fill out a survey about your services, I can certainly—”

“You talk too damned much, calm down.” He places a thick finger over your lips to shush you, leaning in until his face is just inches from yours. “Now listen to me very carefully, honey—you owe me.”

Your breath quickens, your chest rising and falling rapidly, and an aching heat that you had been trying to ignore begins to grow in your core. “For—for what? You said the hayride was free.”

“It is.” He licks his lips and raises a wide hand to your face, cupping your chin. “But the saving your life part is extra.”

“I—I’m sorry, I don’t have any money to give you,” you stammer, your voice a husky whisper. Your gaze flits over his face, noticing a certain predatory glint in his eye, a hunger lingering on the upturned corners of his lips. “I left my wallet at home.”

“Oh sweetheart,” he coos, stroking your cheek with the rough pad of his thumb, “I don’t want your money.”

“What do you want then?”

“Same thing you do.”

You bite your lip shyly, looking up at him through half-lidded eyes in your best approximation of an innocent glance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tch. I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me since you found me. The way you wrapped your arms around me when you were scared—and even when you weren’t.” He climbs over the wooden divide and into the wagon with you, kneeling in front of you and placing his hands on your thighs. “You’re really gonna try to play the coy thing? Because it’s not workin’ for you.”

“No?” He’s big—so big—and his body almost engulfs you as he leans in and grips the edge of the cart behind you, his massive arms caging you in on either side, his broad chest almost pressed to yours.

“Nah. See, I what I think is,” he murmurs into your ear, warm breath spreading across your chilled skin, “that you want the big, strong guy who saved your life to make you forget all about that little shit that stood you up.”

Without another thought—your mind drained of all rational notions, left only with fleeting images of how he’d look on top of you, behind you, underneath you—you lean up and kiss him impulsively, your lips crashing against his hard and fast, trying to satisfy a need that had been growing all night. He inhales sharply at the sudden kiss, then places one hand at the back of your head to hold you in place as he claims your mouth, parting your lips with his tongue before plunging it into your mouth and entwining it with yours. His free hand roams up the hem of your sweater, groping at your breasts, tugging at the fabric of your bra until his thumb finds your hardened nipple. He makes firm circles over it and your back arches as warm, gentle waves of pleasure move through you, and he groans at the way you writhe under his touch.

“Bet you wanna get fucked, don’t you?” he growls against your lips, his grip on the nape of your neck tightening. He lets out a low chuckle as you nod and whimper, your hands moving down his bare torso towards the waistband of his pants, palm brushing against the sizeable bulge that strains against the fabric. “Mm, somebody’s needy. Lay down for me, then—let’s settle up what you owe.”

You obediently recline in the hay and kick your boots off, stripping yourself of your jeans with a frantic urgency; Zoro moves down between your legs, nudging them apart to kneel between them. He drags two fingers up your clothed slit, his fingertips catching on dampened cotton, and a satisfied hum vibrates in his chest as he finally takes in the extent of your arousal.

“This for me?” he purrs, pressing down against your clit, rubbing you through your panties until your legs tremble and your hands grasp at flimsy pieces of straw.

“D-don’t flatter yourself.”

“You sure? I don’t see anyone else around here to make your pussy this wet.” He grabs the waistband of your panties and pulls them down over your hips, stripping you of them and tossing them behind him. He quickly undoes his trousers and slides them down his lean hips, his cock springing forth from the confines of his pants. Your jaw goes slack at the sight of it—thick and veiny, sitting heavy in his palm as he slowly strokes himself for you, the head growing redder and more swollen with every vulgar caress. 

“Think you can handle it?” He lets a wad of saliva drip from his lips and onto his cock, spreading it over his impressive length until it glistens in the moonlight.

“Think so,” you whimper back, spreading your thighs a little wider to accommodate him as he moves on top of you, aligning his hips with yours. Zoro wastes no time in collecting his payment for his earlier heroics and slowly pushes into you, stretching you with every agonizing inch that slides inside; little sparks of pleasure ignite in your limbs, and that deep ache in your core grows with every bit of his fat cock that he bullies inside you.

“There you go,” he growls as he finally fills you completely and his pelvis presses against yours. “Took it all like a good little whore.”

You wrap your arms around his neck and nip and kiss at his jaw. “Not a whore.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” he coos condescendingly, his hips rocking just enough to give you a few tentative, shallow thrusts. “Would you prefer ‘slut’ instead?”

“I’d prefer you sh—” Your words are quickly cut off by the gasp that shoves its way out of your lungs as he pulls out and plunges inside again, knocking against something inside you that makes your eyes go bleary and your fingers tingle.

Zoro’s thrusts are quick and feral, the kind that make you pulse and press your thighs into his hips, the kind that make your hands grasp for anything within reach—his bulging biceps, his mossy hair, a handful of hay underneath you—anything to ground yourself as he fills you again and again until all he is all there is. He drives into you over and over, and you lift your hips upward to meet his, deepening every plunge until you’re bucking and arching and colliding in a seamless rhythm.

“Touch yourself for me,” Zoro grunts as he slows his movements to angle his hips, and his cockhead drags against that sweet spot inside of you. “I bet you look so fucking good when you cum, pretty little slut.”

Your eyes flutter shut as you reach down and move your fingers over your clit, already swollen and pulsing with need. A moan of pleasure claws its way out of you and you writhe and thrash under him while he watches closely, his gaze focused on your face, his jaw hanging open the more your expression twists and contorts in pleasure. That tension in your belly winds tighter and tighter with every plunge of his length inside you and every swift movement of your fingers over your sensitive bud, until your body is trembling and your muscles are seizing and you mumble something unintelligible about being close, so close, so very, very close.

“That’s it,” Zoro rasps, his cock throbbing inside you as you start to tighten around him, “now cum on this big cock for me.”

A profound heat spreads throughout your lower half as you tense and release in waves of shaking spasms; you wail his name, not caring who or what that may lurk in the forest hears you, as your cunt pulls him further in. Zoro moans quietly and fucks into you with messy, erratic thrusts, hitting you so deep that it almost hurts, bordering on that delicious line between pain and pleasure. His breaths are shallow and fast, his teeth clenched, his body beginning to shake as your fluttering cunt urges him towards his climax.

“Fuck, sweetheart—you feel so damned good, gonna make me cum for you.” A long, low groan carries in the air as he quickly pulls out of you and jerks himself off, his hips tensing and shuddering as his aching cock throbs, coating your stomach with his thick, white spend. He bucks into his fist, milking every last bit of cum from his pulsating length, and collapses next to you, heaving a satisfied moan in between deep, panting breaths.

As you begin to reassemble yourself and pull hay out of random crevices, you feel a vibration against your foot—your phone is buzzing in the pocket of your discarded jeans.

[Soggy Man]: Hey I made it! did you still want to meet up?

“Aw, shit.” You glance over at Zoro, busy catching his breath, his chest rising and falling as his hands settle on his stomach. His toned body glistens with sweat in the moonlight, his half-hard cock laying against his thick thigh, leaking onto his bronzed skin; if it weren’t for the fact he was technically on the clock and you were technically now on a date, you would gladly spend the rest of your night right here, just outside the noise and the lights and the people, indulging in a little more holiday hedonism.

[You]: in a little while. I’m on a hayride right now

[Soggy Man]: that sounds fun! we should go together when you get back

“Hey, uh…can I ask you something?” You sit up and fumble for your jeans again, pulling your wallet out of a back pocket. “How much would you want to, um—to keep quiet about what just happened?”

“Hm.” He puts his hands behind his head and stares up at the night sky, considering his options for a moment. “Give me a taste of that slutty little pussy of yours and we’ve got a deal.”

“I suppose I can’t say no to that,” you whisper under your breath, your cunt fluttering at the thought of him between your legs again.

“Hey…what’s this?” Zoro rolls over and snatches the wallet out of your hand, using it to point at you accusatorily. “I thought you said you left this at home.”

“What? Wow, that’s so weird, why would I say that…”

“Careful now. Lies are gonna cost you extra.”

He moves down between your shaking legs, shoving them apart and grunting something lewd about how good you look the way your slick spreads out across your thighs. He lays down on his stomach, hooking his thick arms under your legs, and lets out a satisfied groan as he nips at the inside of your thigh, lowering his head down to give your slit an exploratory lick.

“Extra?” A low moan tumbles out of you as his wide tongue licks a thick stripe up your cunt, then plunges it inside you, shallowly fucking you with it. “Then how about, after you’re done down there, I ride you—then you give me a ride back?

“A ride for a ride, huh?” Zoro murmurs against your skin, stopping his movements for a moment to glance up at you. He smiles, high on the fucked-out expression etched into your features, before flicking his tongue over your aching clit, groaning as you softly rock your hips into his face. “Man, I fuckin’ love this job.”