#but i believe in magic is up there for me!

[laserbobcat]

A WIP i'll never finish, i tried! I started this before march and will never finish it properly. I'm glad I had the energy to at least clean the last panels enough. I was trying a new style/process and it doesn't stick. Anyway, I'll just tell the rest of the story since I (probably) won't draw it, and maybe some of you like to read:

Nari turns into a god again, to his surprise. Turns out it's because the Lamb fucked up a new age reversing ritual they're trying out, and turned themselves into a baby. Too weak of a vessel, so the crown had to jump ships back to him. Narinder enjoys this IMMENSELY. Makes a dramatic evil laugh and give some kind of speech about how the Lamb is stupid and he's the boss now. He tells Aym and Baal to babysit the Lamb until they're old enough to be trained like they both were and "Maybe this time around they will learn obedience" and exits- also dramatically. The cultists start to panic, what the hell is that giant god, what do you mean it's Narinder are you kidding me? The tsundere Lamb's friend? The grumpy fisherman? Oh no what are we gonna do without the Lamb etc etc... Until Leshy laughs out loud and says "Just ignore him and wait a day or two, he's gonna get tired of bossing people around and miss his precious Lamb. He'll find a solution." Aym deadpan says five, Leshy says five days seems too long he'll cave in sooner than that, but Baal says "No we mean five minutes." And BAM the temple's door open again and Narinder is here yelling MORTALS I need you to remember EXACTLY the words they made you chant, I need it to reverse the ritual!

He quickly realized that this Lamb will not be HIS Lamb, HIS lamb is gone for good if he doesn't cook some good magic real quick. And that's the start of a period of time where Nari has to bust his ass trying to undo the Lamb's failed magic. I had bunch of stuff in mind, including: -Lambie being the worst and most insufferable baby ever. No one sleeps on their watch, and no one gets to be distracted for a second otherwise they start eating rocks. their yell is the loudest noise ever heard. The goat is a joke next to them. Everyone has the tired parent trait now. -Narinder smashing people to death when they're annoying and distracting him from his research. He adds their name to "the resurrection list" for the Lamb to deal with later. The followers somehow get used to it. -Morgan trying his best to keep Leshy away from his irritated brother, despite his intense need to annoy him at the worst time possible. -Narinder yelling "Fetch me my thinking Lamb!" and then squishing the baby between two fingers like a squeaky toy to help him focus (the baby enjoys that) -Saleos and Irene forcing a huge ass exhausted and irritable 19 feet god to take a rest, maybe go fishing to get some air. -Narinder accidentally hitting his head on the door frame of the temple. A lot. -Narinder reluctantly having to officiate the important rituals "I don't care about your damn crops but let's get this over with- NO we're not having an exhibitionist dance go back to work!" -Thena having to read most of the Lamb's writing for him because they write in cursive that is so pretty it's unreadable -Thena making him realize how much work the Lamb is doing everyday. Narinder keeps in mind that he will have to make him rest later. The end would be Narinder finally managing to reverse the ritual, and a butt naked, befuddled adult Lamb appearing on the floor of the temple. Narinder takes the crown off of his head and throws it at their face, and yells at them while changing back into his mortal form and stomping out of the temple: "You IDIOT baby god trying to CREATE new magics when you're not even able to master the old ones completely I CAN'T BELIEVE you would try something so stupid do you even realize how much of a pain in the ass it was to understand your weird logic and clean your mess I SWEAR if you ever do something like that I'll let you rot in whatever pit you dig for yourself AND DON'T YOU DARE SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE RESURRECTION LIST-" And slams the door on his way out, leaving the lamb astounded.

Cut to Narinder getting back to his house in his tree, and flopping on his bed, exhausted. He massages his arms, visibly relieved to have them back to normal, without the pain. He sighs with a little smile, stretches, curls into a ball and falls asleep.

That's how the lamb finds him later when they carefully come to talk to him after hearing about all of what happened. Except the black cat loaf on the bed changed into a baby.

Rinse and repeat.

[xjulixred45x]

Imagine an adult Yuu who arrived at Twisted Wonderland PREGNANT.

This could be considered part of the Yuu! Parent variables (?). Perhaps the poor woman was returning from an early ultrasound (at 2 or 3 months old) when the black carriage hit her, scaring her to death upon her appearance in TWST. She must have thought she was about to be sacrificed to a cult.

I can definitely imagine the Squad characters being much more understanding/soft of this Yuu, especially Ace and Deuce. Ace wouldn't be so malicious at the beginning of the game (I'd like to believe that not even he would be capable of laughing in the face of a pregnant woman), and instead feels obvious guilt because Crowley has entrusted her with a mediocre job.

Deuce, my sweet boy, will set off all his alarm bells. He's the most outraged that the headmaster is forcing a pregnant woman to work ALONE, and if his dorm leader hadn't been so strict in the beginning, he definitely wouldn't let Yuu sleep in a dorm that's falling apart. Has Crowley gone crazy? Does he have no shred of decency?!

Grim probably thought at first that Yuu had eaten her baby, haha, and had to receive the wonderful "birds and the bees" lecture (much to Ace's amusement at Grim's horrified reactions). Let's just say Grim now insists on standing sentry in case Yuu decides to do anything too "dangerous for the baby" (humans are fragile even with magic; he has to take care of his minion!).

Jack, bless him, also tries to help make the ramshackle dorm safer alongside Epel, whether by removing the most rotten parts of the structure, helping clean, assisting with Yuu's errands, etc. Especially when she starts showing more of her bump.

GOD, IMAGINE THE DORM LEADERS!

Riddle was probably the only one who didn't realize Yuu was pregnant until the events of the Savanaclaw episode. And when he found out he almost seriously hurt a PREGNANT WOMAN? Trey and Cater practically had to keep him from banging his head against a wall for half an hour out of embarrassment and shame. He also drafted a LONG apology for Yuu, which was delivered with a giant strawberry cake (and one of those exaggerated bows I KNOW Riddle would do).

Thanks to his mom (for once in his life), Riddle is the most knowledgeable about useful pregnancy stuff! Whenever Yuu goes to Heartslabyul, she has access to calcium- and iron-rich meals (prepared by Trey), and teas that boost her immune system and combat morning sickness. Riddle is careful not to give her things like black tea or rosemary tea, knowing they could have negative effects (if it were up to Riddle, Yuu probably wouldn't walk unaided).

Leona is much more respectful to a female Yuu, we know that, but I don't think he has the energy to be rude, or be especially , well, Leona, to a PREGNANT woman. This ends up bringing out a side of Leona no one thought existed: an almost delicate side. Sure, he's still lazy and sarcastic, but he doesn't say no to Yuu when she asks for help with something, whether it's bringing something to her dorm or dealing with a difficult situation. he dosent even COMPLAIN. what did he do to the real Leona??

We all know Crowley doesn't give Yuu and Grim enough money to live comfortably, let alone considering they could soon have a new member on ramshakle. Yuu is now surprised to find extra money in the dorm after certain visits. Not that he'll admit it, but it makes everyone feel more at ease.

Again, I want to believe Azul wouldn't be capable of leaving a pregnant woman homeless, at the very least he offered her a place to stay in Octavinelle. It turns out the twins (especially Floyd) quickly took a liking to Yuu.

A cute scenario I came up with, when Yuu already has a prominent baby bump, is that she tries to joke with the Leechs that the nickname "shrimpy" doesn't suit her anymore, and that maybe they should change it to "whaley."

AND FLOYD IS LIKE, "Why are you saying that, Koebi-chan? :( Is someone calling you that? Come on, tell me :)"

I think the Octavinelle folks genuinely don't know how human pregnancy works, so they're surprisingly gentle and caring with Yuu (even when the baby is born, I can see Monster Lounge having a kids' menu for them).

Kalim, my god, Jamil is going to have to stop him from giving Yuu a completely equipped nursery for both her and the baby. Ironically, the one who's the most normal about pregnancy (the guy has 30 younger siblings, so he KNOWS about these things) and genuinely knows some home tricks that helped his mother when she was pregnant.

offers to organize a baby shower/gender reveal party! The bad thing is that it ends up being a whole festival with all of Scarabia participating. But hey, it's the thought that counts.

There's no way Yuu, who's already 6-7 months along, will wear the school uniform simply for comfort, so if you need help finding comfortable AND cute clothes, Vil will gladly help! Obviously, he's not as strict or harsh with Yuu due to the circumstances, but he still wants the best for her. Who knows, maybe they can pick out some clothes for the baby in advance.

Idia is afraid to get close to Yuu, not only because of social anxiety, but because of the thought that he might "ruin" the baby in some way. He needs a lot of support from Ortho and Yuu to even allow himself to have normal physical contact with Yuu, and just as he does, the baby kicks. Idia's heart is gone (everyone wants to feel the kicks now, especially Ace, Floyd, and Malleus).

They probably use some STYX or Ortho equipment for some of the baby checks, and he even gives an approximate due date, which feels bittersweet. Even if everyone does their best, Yuu still hoped to have his baby at home, but he doesn't complain when the boys do all this for them. It feels like Home.

Malleus is another who doesn't fully understand human pregnancy and is incredibly intrigued. It doesn't help that Lilia's answers to his questions are even more confusing, so he ends up going straight to the source of his intrigue, Yuu. Malleus is completely mesmerized the first time he hears the baby's heartbeat, completely fascinated by what human life is like compared to fairies/dragons.

That said, he proceeds to "scold" the baby when it kicks Yuu for "hurting its mother," not quite understanding the concept, but he has the spirit. Malleus is very scared of the idea of childbirth once he's educated on it (WHERE will the baby come out? HOW!?) and will probably try to improve his healing magic SOLELY because of that.

All I can say is that if the baby is born in Twisted Wonderland, they'll have a wide array of adoptive siblings, father figures, babysitters, and weird and eccentric uncles who will take very good care of them and its mother. So you can rest easy.

__________

(ESPAÑOL)

Imagínate una Yuu adulta que llego a Twisted Wonderland estando EMBARAZADA

Esto podría considerarse parte de las variables de Yuu! Parent(?)Talvez la pobre mujer estaba regresando de un ultrasonido de los primeros meses (2 o 3 meses) cuando el carruaje negro le paso por encima, dándole un susto de muerte cuando apareció en TWST. La pobre mujer debio pensar que estaba a punto de ser sacrificada a un culto.

Definitivamente puedo ver a los personajes del Squad mucho mas suaves con esta Yuu, especialmente Ace y Deuce. Ace no sería tan malicioso al principio del juego (digo, quiero creer que incluso el no seria capaz de reírse en la cara de una mujer embarazada) y más bien siente una obvia lastima de que Crowley le haya metido en un trabajo mediocre.

Deuce, mi dulce niño, le disparan todas las alarmas. Es el más obviamente indignado de que el director haga trabajar a una mujer embarazada SOLA, y definitivamente si su líder de dormitorio no fuera tan estricto al principio, no dejaría que Yuu durmiera en un dormitorio que se cae a pedazos ¿¡que acaso Crowley perdió la cabeza, no tiene el mínimo de decencia?!

Grim probablemente al principio pensó que Yuu se había comido a su bebe lol, y le tuvieron que dar la maravillosa charla de las “aves y las abejas” (para diversión de Ace por las reacciones horrorizadas de Grim). Solo digamos que ahora Grim insiste en actuar como centinela en caso de que Yuu se le ocurra hacer algo demasiado “peligroso para él bebe” (los humanos son frágiles aun si magia ¡tiene que cuidar a su secuaz!).

Jack, bendito sea, también trata de ayudar en hacer el dormitorio destartalado mas seguro junto a Epel, ya sea quitando las partes mas podridas de la estructura, ayudando a limpiar, ayudar con los mandados de Yuu, etc. Especialmente cuando empieza a mostrar mas la panza de embarazada.

DIOS, IMAGINENSE LOS LIDERES DE DORMITORIO.

Riddle probablemente fue el único que no llego a darse cuenta que Yuu estaba embarazada hasta los eventos del capítulo de Savanaclaw ¿y cuando se enteró que casi lastimo gravemente a una MUJER EMBARAZADA? Trey y Cater tuvieron que físicamente detenerlo de que se golpeara la cabeza contra la pared por media hora por la vergüenza, también redacto un documento LARGUISIMO de disculpa a Yuu, que fue entregado con una gran tarta de fresa (y una de esas reverencias exageradas que SE que Riddle haría).

¡Gracias a su madre (por una vez en la vida), Riddle es el que sabe más de cosas útiles para el embarazo! Cada vez que Yuu va Heartslabyul, tienen acceso a comidas nutritivas en calcio y hierro (hechas por Trey), Tés beneficiosos para el sistema inmune y para combatir las náuseas matutinas, aparte de que Riddle es cuidadoso de no dar cosas como Te negro o romero, sabiendo que podrían tener malos efectos (si fuera por Riddle, Yuu probablemente no caminaría sin ayuda).

Leona es bastante más respetuoso con una Yuu mujer, eso lo sabemos, pero no creo que tenga la energía para ser grosero o especialmente, bueno, Leona, con una mujer EMBARAZADA. Esto termina sacando un lado que nadie creía que existía de Leona, un lado casi delicado. Claro, sigue siendo perezoso y sarcástico, pero no le dice que no a Yuu cuando le pide ayuda en algo, ya sea llevar algo a su dormitorio o con una situación difícil.

Todos sabemos que Crowley no da ni de lejos el dinero suficiente para que Yuu y Grim vivan bien, mucho menos pensando que PODRIAN TENER UN NUEVO INTEGRANTE PRONTO, por lo que Yuu ahora se sorprende después de ciertas visitas, aparece algo de dinero extra en el dormitorio. No es como que lo vaya a admitir, pero todos están más tranquilos de esa forma.

De nuevo, quiero creer que Azul no sería capaz de dejar sin hogar a una mujer embarazada, aunque sea le ofrecería una estancia en Octaville, ya que, además, resulta que los gemelos (especialmente Floyd) se encariñaron con Yuu muy rápido.

Un escenario lindo que se me ocurrió, ya cuando Yuu tiene una panza de embarazada prominente, es que ella trata de bromear con los Leech de que el apodo “camarón” ya no le queda bien, y que a lo mejor tendrían que cambiarlo a “ballena”

Y FLOYD ESTA COMO “¿Por qué dices eso Koebi-chan?  ¿alguien te está diciendo asi? Vaaaamos, dímelo ”

Creo que genuinamente los de Octaville no saben muy bien cómo funciona el embarazo terrestre, por lo que son sorprendentemente gentiles y cuidadosos con Yuu (incluso cuando nace el bebe, puedo ver el Monstre Louge teniendo un menú infantil para ellos).

Kalim, dios mio, Jamil tendrá que detenerlo de regalarle a Yuu absolutamente toda una guardería completamente equipada tanto para ella como para el bebe. Irónicamente el que es el mas normal al respecto del embarazo (el man tiene 30 hermanos menores, el SABE de estas cosas) y genuinamente sabe algunos trucos caseros que le sirvieron a su madre cuando ella estaba embarazada.

¡ofrece organizar un baby shower/ fiesta de revelación de genero! Lo malo es que termina siendo todo un festival en el que participa todo Scarabia. Pero hey, la intención es lo que cuenta.

No hay forma en la que estando ya en los 6-7 meses Yuu use el uniforme de la escuela por simple cuestión de comodidad, por lo que si necesitan ayuda en encontrar ropa cómoda Y bonita ¡Vil le ayudara con gusto! Obviamente no es tan estricto ni duro con Yuu debido a las circunstancias, pero sigue queriendo lo mejor para ella. Quien sabe, talvez puedan elegir algo de ropa para él bebe de adelantado.

Idia tiene miedo de acercarse a Yuu, no solo por la ansiedad social, sino por la idea de que podría “arruinar” al bebe de alguna forma. Necesita mucho apoyo de Ortho y Yuu para siquiera permitirse tener contacto físico con Yuu de forma normal, y justo cuando lo hace, el bebe patea. A Iidia se le salió el alma del cuerpo (ahora todos quieren sentir las pataditas, sobretodo Ace, Floyd y Malleus).

Probablemente usan algo de equipo de STYX o Ortho para algunos controles del bebe, incluso el da una fecha aproximada de nacimiento, lo cual da una sensación agridulce. Aun si todos hacen su mejor esfuerzo, Yuu esperaba poder tener a su bebe en casa, pero no se queja cuando los chicos hacen todo esto por ellos.

Malleus es otro que no entiende el embarazo humano completamente y esta increíblemente intrigado, no ayuda que as respuestas de Lilia a sus preguntas son aún más confusas, por lo que termina lleno a la fuente de su intriga, Yuu. Malleus se queda completamente hipnotizado la primera vez que escucha los latidos del bebe, totalmente fascinado por cómo es la vida humana en comparación a las hadas/dragones.

Eso sí, procede a “reprender” al bebe cuando patea a Yuu por “lastimar a su madre”, no entendiendo bien el concepto, pero tiene el espíritu. A Malleus le asusta mucho la idea del parto una vez que se educa al respecto (¿Qué el bebe saldrá DE DONDE? ¡¿COMO!?) y probablemente trate de mejorar en magia curativa UNICAMENTE por eso.

Solo puedo decir que si el bebe nace en Twisted Wonderland, tendrá un vasto abanico de hermanos adoptivos, figuras paternas, niñeros, tíos raros y extravagantes que lo cuidaran muy bien a él y su madre. Así que pueden estar tranquilos.

Shares, reblogs and comments are very welcome!

[shrimpradar]

12 shrimps and one partial shrimp!

12 prawns and one partial prawn!

... the worst bit is I know several people this could be, especially given the 'in Australia' clarification If you know them then there's a chance I might know some of them and that thought will keep me up at night. This wasn’t the guy who we all know who used to spray his jeans with Mortein and then light himself on fire, was it? He used to sit at the back of the bus, cup his hand, spray deodorant into it, then open it and light it on fire with a lighter in one fell swoop to try and impress girls. He had to stop because the bus company begged our school to tell him to stop bc of legal liability. His hands never actually got damaged after doing it for about a year. I reached out to my old friend in question here, because I've been thinking about him all day. I do not know what "the amulet" is. I have no idea what "the amulet" is referring to. I instantly remembered when he said that. While we were all at the local park doing legal things that teenagers would do back in the late 2000s, my friend here found a rock at our old smoke spot that was unusually smooth and flat. He liked it so much that he took it to the woodwork classrooms at school, drilled a hole in it, and hung it on a necklace. When we asked why he weanwearing this dinky-ass pebble on his neck, he claimed it prevented him from ever getting food-related illnesses: wouldn't get food poisoning, couldn't over-eat, was able to ingest anything (prior to him finding The Amulet, a few of us used to play a game called "Devil's Piss" where we would take turns shoving random food bits into a bottle of coke, and the first person to take a sip would get two dollars from the other players). When we all asked him for the proof that this rock is magical—because nobody believed him, obviously—he said to meet him behind the History block at lunch, where he said he would drink two litres (or half a gallon) of milk in one go and not puke. We met him there, and about ten of us all watched him down a whole bottle of strawberry milk in two or three breaths. He didn't puke. He jumped up and down and punched his stomach to prove it. He still didn't puke. I'm so glad I'm alive. @iloveleeks2

VOTE FOR SHRIMPRADAR IN THE GIMMICK BLOG BRACKET WE WON THE FIRST ROUND BUT ITS NOT OVER YET

[mysterymachine67]

Concept.. grumpy!reader (male, obviously we don't have enough </3) and Dean ending up riding him 'n praising him a ton because it's the easiest way to calm down his pent-up, grouchy, boyfriend n make him feel better.

PAIRING: Dean Winchester x M!reader

SUMMARY: Dean riding you to calm you down.

NSFW. MINOR’S DNI.

Apologies that this came out late. Also I’m trying different layouts until I find the one I like 👍🏻 So a few fic layouts probably will look different

It really wasn’t your day. You woke up in a bad mood—irritated that you didn’t get enough sleep and a lot more other reasons. They were good reasons, though. Not stupid ones. You thought it’d pass as the day progressed, but it only got worse.

Everything seemed to know you were having a bad day. You tripped on the door while coming into the bunker, missed putting your bag on the table which resulted in it falling to the ground (you swear the table moved), and that’s only two. Sam understood you were irritated, so he tried to be more patient and calm with you. Dean on the other hand still kept fucking with you, but only sometimes, not all the time. At the moment, you were unpacking your bag from a hunt from a week ago. You don’t blame yourself for not unpacking it straight away, the hunt was exhausting. Anyway, you reached for one of your T-shirts but failed to pick it up. Completely missing it. So you went to pick it up again, but failed a second time. Just as you were about to cuss out a fucking shirt, Dean walked in.

“Woah— wrong timing?” He said, with a hint of tease. You picked it up, obviously.

“Dean—“ You started, irritation clearly rising in your tone.

“Okay, okay. That one’s on me,” he said, raising his hands in the air as a sign of defeat and surrender. “What’s got you so angry anyway?” You then set your now half-full bag on the floor, and turned to face him. Starting to rant about why the day has gone so horribly. After your long conversation, Dean got closer to you and wrapped his arms around you. In an attempt for a huge. Then he kissed you, soft and gentle. “I know a way to help you calm down.” He smiled against your lips. You had a feeling of what it could be, and you were right.

—

Dean’s lips pressed against yours again. Capturing them in a kiss. His hips went down, slowly. Walls hugging your cock. You broke the kiss to look down, taking in the sight of him taking you. And once you were bottomed out the both of you took a moment. Letting each other’s hands roam while nearly making out. Dean moaned—best believe it went straight to your cock. It twitched and he felt it, letting out a small grunt. When you broke the kiss the both of you panted lightly, lips swollen and hands stopped somewhere. Yours were on his hips, helping guide him. His were on your shoulders.

“Alright— c’mon, move,” you grunted. If anything getting impatient more than feeling better. But the truth? This was in fact going to calm you down a lot more than you think.

“Be patient,” Dean whispered while slowly starting to move himself up. He kissed you again. This time more light and gentle than the previous ones. “You,” he started and pushed his hips down. “Need to really calm down.” Focusing on his face, you notice his slight smile and a small laugh. Which you rolled your eyes to.

“Yeah, well, it’s kinda hard to when you—“

“Ah, ah, ah!” He said quickly. His goal being to silence you and it worked. “This is what I’m talking about. Just be quiet and let me work my magic. Okay?” You agreed with a quiet hum, but bucked your hips.

Minutes into it, he rode you nice ‘n slow. Praises pulled from his mouth and into your ears. Was this helping you? Of course. You loved it. Rubbing your thumb at his side, and kissing him every so often. You’d try to assist him but every time he’d tell you otherwise.

Dean slowly worked you up to the edge. Lips pressing against yours; eventually to your jaw, near your ear, and your neck. With him moving up and down on your cock, the feel of him hugging you perfectly, and the praise that left his mouth, you’re sure you’re gonna have to return the favor at some point. Maybe not. Who knows?

“Watcha thinkin’ ‘bout?”

“Nothin’.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

A groan pulled from his throat when your cock prodded at his prostate. Hands gripping some place on your body to stabilize himself. You tipped your head back, sucking in a shaky breath. Eyes shutting and letting yourself relax a bit. You cursed under your breath, hips bucking up instinctively and tightening your grip on his hips. “‘M gonna cum,” you breathed out. Speaking of breathing, yours quickened and so did his. Though he kept his more controlled than you did. So, with the information that Dean was just given, he worked quicker. He leaned back in, pressing his lips to yours. It was passionate, sweet. But only lasted for a few seconds. Though he made up for it by whispering words of praise.

“Doing so good, keep focusing on me, alright? Non of that angry stuff.” The more he kept doing it the more closer you got. In only a matter of minutes did you buck your hips up, and came with a moan. Painting his walls white with your cum. Dean whimpered from the feeling. The both of your breathing soon becoming louder. He kept moving till it overwhelmed the both of you.

“Feel better?”

“A lot better.”

[lovetei]

Hello! I love your writing! Are the requests open? If yes, could you do the headcanon MC/reader married life with Lucifer, Diavolo, Barbatos, and Simeon? (these four are my biases) Thank you! 😘💜

Yey!! I'm answering requests again let's go!!

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Married life with them, how does it go?

Versions: Lucifer, Diavolo, Barbatos, Simeon

Warnings: Grammar errors, spelling errors, no proofreading, readers gender is not specified

Links: Masterlist, Rules

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LUCIFER

People know you as 'THE SPOUSE' because whenever he's about to blow up, you will be there to stop him

Your relationship is the type where Lucifer will put you to sleep first then secretly wake up to do his work

Then he will be hit by a flying slipper

Then he'll look to his side and saw you sitting up on the bed

Brows twitching out of annoyance and eyebags under your eyes

You HAVE to be fierce at times

Lucifer is known to be under Diavolo's control most of the time, he works for him.

So, there are quiet a few restrictions on his actions.

He could be fucking popping a nerve and will still not be able to fight back because he has to keep up Diavolo's reputation good.

So you do it for him.

One time, someone gave a rude comment to Lucifer

Imagine being rude to Lucifer bruh

And that person was in a quiet important position

So of course, he has to laugh it of like "Ha.Ha.Ha.Ha."

And que MC suddenly clearing her throat giving the most fake laugh while wide eyed staring at the man like "HA HA HA HA HA" with the most fake smile

Yeah

He's the type to ignore murder but draw the line at disrespecting his spouse

And you're the type to look at him while eating and think "Look at my man, ain't no way he's a murderer."

He is.

If Lucifer will SOMEHOW be charged of murder, which he really committed, MC would hold up a large sign outsid the prison, if it hasn't burned yet, with the words "FREE MY MAN"

To be honest, his whole thoughts on you just revolves around "Baby, you're freaky and strange. It's freaking me out." but continues watching and supporting you anyways.

You're just messing with him

Like, let the man have a break

You're the type of spouse to make a jerking hips movement while he's lecturing you tbh

DIAVOLO

So fun

Just shits and giggles

You don't argue, you bashes his head on concrete and he takes like a man with a smile

One time, he saw you struggling with gardening and he went outside to mess with you.

He asked, "Is this guy bothering you?" and pointed at the soil

You looked at him confused but nodded

Then he started punching the soil

He refuses to do extra paperwork now because he believes you're like those dog like

You know

Those dogs that know when their owner is coming home

And he believes that if he doesn't come home on time

You'll start howling like a pug on anesthesia

Yeah

And your vibes to him is like

"You poor thing." (Deregatory) (Sexual)

But you're his dream spouse

When he was a child, he likes those spouse that protects their BIGGER spouse

And he said "I like my spouse scary. Maybe I'll marry someone like them and they'll kill everyone who's ever said a bad thing about me."

He did marry one

You guys are a power couple though

You would attend the parties on matching clothes, especially tailored for the two of you

And he would be smiling like a puppy and you would be beside him glaring at whoever tries to be rude to him

But YOU know that HE knows who's naughty and nice

He'll deal with them when you're asleep

BARBATOS

"Yes, Baby. Your emotional wall is high and impenetrable. Can we kiss now?" — MC

It's just like that

I don't make the rules

Yeah, he's calm and collected

He's so stressed with you, everytime.

You're the menace and he's the leash

After using your magic, you would be leaning sexily on a wall in front of him

Coughing out BLOOD

Saying, "How do I look? Do I look good?" *Cough* "Was that hot?"

It wasn't.

He stands with his canceled spouse

Like

If everyone else is standing in front of his door, bloodied and bruise

He'll open his door IF and ONLY IF you're the one who knocked, or Diavolo

Then he'll open it

Grab you

Close the door

Open it again

Grad Diavolo

And let the rest of them bleed to death

He just loves you so much

Sometimes... ONLY SOMETIMES

When you tripped on the stairs and a lot of people saw it

He'll turn back time

ONLY SOMETIMES

Maybe not so sometimes

And by the way

If he has to move to another timeline

He will marry you

Over and over again

SIMEON

If you think you can bat your eyelashes at him and get whatever you want

Yes

Yes you can

He's so soft for you it's insane

It's so hot how his ring would shine when the slightest bit of life bounces of it

How it's cold metal would hit your skin when he cups your face and kisses you

How he absent mindedly fidget with it when he saw anything that reminded him of you

He's so soft

Like a cushion

Ready to catch you everytime you fall

He's also kind of clingy

But

Yeah, clingy

Everytime he wakes up and you're not there

He let's out the MOST dramatic sigh and think "The world is quiet cruel."

Chill, MC's in the kitchen making you guys food

But if you're indeed not there

He takes his suffering out on his book characters

Sexy evil bad bitch × quiet shy Boi (that can be a psycho)

He's a 10 but he doesn't mind that you're crazy so he's a 20

If you ask him the "What would you do if I turned into a worm?"

He'll answer the softest shit, "I'll build you a worm sanctuary, and take care of you."

Of course, after he said that you'll look up to the sky and thank father for his magic seed or whatever

[arc-misadventures]

It's My Turn

Jaune: Okay... we've got another demon to defeat... Based on the reports I got from the guild, they're a mid level demon, specializes in wind magic.

Ren: A wind demon? Those are rare. Most demons tend to specialize in dark, and shadow magic, but rarely do they specialize in one type of the four primordial elemental magics.

Jaune: Which is why were adventures were called in.

Ren: The Demon Hunters couldn't beat this demon?

Jaune: No, the Demon Hunters specialize in anti-demon magic. Mainly light magic, and fire magic.

Ren: Cleansing, and purging?

Jaune: Pretty much. They couldn't deal with a demon that flies, can avoid their attacks with wind magic, and even deflect them back at them. Well, mostly the other two part, most demons can fly after all. Most, Demon Hunters, don't have similar training that we paladins have. We are trained to have a much more diverse list of skills, and magic in at our disposal.

Ren: Do those skills involve bard levels of seduction?

Jaune: Not everyone demon we fight we sleep with, Ren. We have standards.

Ren: Sure, whatever. Let's go kill this demon.

~~~

Ren: The winds picking up.

Jaune: We must be getting close.

Ren: Alright, how are we going to do this?

Jaune: Lighting magic. It's too fast of an attack for most people to doge, even a demon in flight that specializes in air magic would have a tough time dealing with it.

Ren: Bow, and Shield? Only this time I'm the shield?

Jaune: Think you can do it?

Ren: I can try.

Jaune: Alright then... Let's do this!

Jaune: Prepare to die foul demon!

: Oh~? The Demon Hunters failed so now they send in a pair of adventurers? How cute~!

Jaune: You should be careful! A paladin is leagues above some puny little Demon Hunter!

: Oh~? I've never fought a paladin before~! Alright then... Come one puny paladin! I Reese Chloris will kill you!

Jaune: Bring it bitch! Let's go, Ren?

Ren: ...

Jaune: Ren, let's do this.

Ren: ...

Jaune: Ren?

Ren: ...

Jaune: D-Did you...?

Reese: I didn't do anything...

Jaune: Okay? Hey, Ren! (Snap! Snap!) Oi! Snap out of it!

Ren: Hu, wait what?

Jaune: What happened, you just spaced out on me?

Ren: Ahh... uhh... Time out! I need to have a word with my friend!

Jaune: Time out?! Do seriously think demons will allow a time out?!

Ren: Shut up, and come with me!

Jaune: Whoa hey?!

Reese: Okay...?

~~~

Jaune: Okay, start talking, why did you call a timeout in a literal battle with a demon?!

Ren: How do you do it?!

Jaune: Do what?

Ren: How do you seduce a demon!

Jaune: Excuse me... the fuck did you just say?

Ren: You've seduced several demons before, how do you do it?!

Jaune: Okay, hold up... You... want to smash that demon?

Ren: Is that hard to believe?

Jaune: You wanting to smash a human is hard enough as it is, but a demon?!

Ren: What, I'm an elf we don't have sex drives like you humans do!

Jaune: Elves don't have a sex drive until they enter in what human years would be in there thirties. And, from my experience, elf woman have a hell of a sex drive!

Ren: That's not true!

Jaune: Not true?! Ren, in the eleven kingdom, The Everwood Dynasty, one third of the population are half elves!

Ren: Well, I want to smash the demon girl! Are you going to help me, or what?!

Jaune: ...

Jaune: Haa... Okay... here's what you do... This is the secret elven male seduction technique, so pay attention!

Ren: How do you know a secret elven male seduction technique?

Jaune: Elven courtesans. Now pay attention!

Ren: Yes!

Jaune: Okay... Take off your hood, and show off your face. Give the demon a side eye glance, and throw her a wink.

Ren: And, then what?

Jaune: Smash.

Ren: Hold up... The secret elven male seduction technique: Is to show my face, give her a side eye, and wink at her? That's it?!

Jaune: Elven males have an unfair advantage... Now, shut up, and smash the demon!

Ren: Okay, okay...

~~~

Ren: Hey, Demon! Uhh... Reese?!

Reese: Oh, your back... Where's your friend?

Ren: He left me behind to deal with you!

Reese: Oh? Tell me then you rouge, how do you plan to defeat me~?

Ren: Okay... take off my hood, and show my face...

Reese: Oh, you're an elf?

Ren: Side eye glance...

Reese: Oh~? Such vibrant pink eyes~!

Ren: And, the wink!

Reese: EEP~?!

Ren: ...

Ren: Did that work...?

~~~

Glynda: You told him the secret elven male seduction technique?

Jaune: The guy has never shown romantic interest before, he need advice, so I gave him some.

Glynda: Do you think it will work?

Jaune: It doesn't seem to effect elven woman such as yourself, Glynda. As for it's effects on other species of woman it seems to work. As It seems to have worked for, Ren...

Glynda: Oh my?!

Ren: Hey, Jaune...

Jaune: Ren. You look like shit, did you two smash, or did you have to kill her?

Ren: We... smashed!

Jaune: Oh, good for you, aaaand your falling...

(Thud!)

Jaune: ...

Jaune: You okay bud?

Ren: W-Worth it!

Glynda: I'll call for a priest.

Jaune: Good call...

///

Another art piece inspired from, @lar-mx

Link to ART

[mylovesstuffs]

bro. BRO. the way i was kicking my feet and giggling every two seconds, you don't get to judge me. you don’t understand. hansol being all soft and blushy and magical and playful but also soooo gentle and so clearly in love?? i’m gonna bite a snowflake.

also, the chrysanthemum tea callback is literal cinema and like i genuinely cannot believe how tender and fluffy and GORGEOUS this was. thank you for this! really thankssss. 11/10 would let hansol frost my windows and my heart again.

If you like falling into a love that feels destined by the stars, this one’s for you. Five daffodil petals out of five. Would absolutely reread and cry again.

Under the cut are some of thoughts/comments that I wrote while I was reading this. This took me a bit of time to read since I'm sick but, obviously it was worthwhile.

it’s also not something that your magic can fix, or something that needs to be fixed, so— — the way she just said not my problem with full magical authority. Queen behavior.

“Oh, darling,” you whisper, kneeling down beside him, tracing a finger across the yokai’s cheek...— my heart 🥺 the tenderness... I can’t—she cares so much.

“Please tell me you killed that thing.” HELLO??? Sir this is not a Marvel movie, calm DOWN. Seungcheol pls, read the room.

so you can take any thoughts of me killing him and shove them up your ass.—AHHHH she ATE that. Left no crumbs, I love her!!!

“Give the demon my wishes for his speedy recovery,” he says at last.— I see the sarcasm but I respect it.

“My name is Hansol,” he says, “and I think you’re the prettiest person alive.”—STOP IT. Feverish confessions is my guilty pleasure. Protect him at all costs.

Hansol looks at you, worried that you’ll suddenly hate him for what he’s just said, but you just laugh, flattered, and bring your hand up to his forehead. The touch is cool against his skin, like a soothing balm. The touch is cool against his skin, like a soothing balm.— My chest is TIGHT.

It’s difficult to pull coherent sentences out of him, and anything he says is a mixture of your name, his name, and also how pretty he thinks you are.— this man’s entire vocabulary is just “you, me, pretty” That’s poetry atp.

“But you’re very pretty,” Hansol says. “Are you sure?”— STOP THAT. Her heart doesn’t stand a chance and neither do I.

Now you can feel the thrum of it under Hansol’s skin, it’s easy to realise how unwell the yokai was before, when his hands had been deathly cold with no fizz of magic in them at all. You’re just endlessly relieved that you can feel that fizz once again.— Omg the imagery here is so good!!?!!???!!! This is romance meets Studio Ghibli levels of soft.

“Thank you,” he says, so very sincere that it melts your heart.— no because I melted too...

...ears twitching pleasedly…— SIR. Stop being adorable or I will combust.

“I’m leaving,” Hansol says, like it’s obvious. “You took care of me. And I’m now better. So I’m going to go.”— EXCUSE ME??? Boy if you don’t sit your half-healed tail DOWN—no.

No because this is so cinematic and emotionally rich, I’m actually in love—

"Like hell you are," you say— YOU TELL HIM. Soapy hands and all, this is caretaker dominance and I support it fully.

your cottage, shimmering with gold magic and warm lights is the only beacon they recognise.— I want to live in that cottage so bad :(((

“He’s a demon, Y/N...”—okay Van Helsing, you can sit down.

You’re quite proud of your library. It’s an open secret that the bookshelf in your living room leads to it, which is cool all by itself, but your library is also made of magic. What appears as a normal, small study behind the bookshelf turns into a large and sprawling library with high ceilings and mahogany shelves and rows upon rows of books when you step inside.— WHERE IS MY PORTKEY I need to go here IMMEDIATELY. My dream place 🥹

“Is this one of the humans?”— oh no baby, not the guarded voice + tail-tuckinh...

“I used to have one too... don’t hurt anything that doesn’t hurt you first.”— excuse me WHILE I WEEP.

yeoubi. // chwe hansol

여우비 (yeo-u-bi) : noun. literally “fox rain” — when sunlight filters through rainfall, creating a golden shower.

PAIRING : vernon x f!reader

INFO : east asian historical fantasy(ish. i kinda made up my own mythology), fox demon!vernon, silver!vernon, immortal!witch!yn, fluff, magic, strangers to lovers

WORD COUNT : 22.3k+

WARNINGS : blood mention, injuries, slight discrimination against yokai, cursing

NOTES : for the @camandemstudios winter with you collab! i had so so so much fun writing yeoubi and it's genuinely one of the best things ive done this year. writing a fantasy au soft vernon fic was never something that i thought i needed to write, but now i have, and i love him and i love this and i hope everyone loves yeoubi just as much as i do too <3

SYNOPSIS : living as a magic, immortal healer in a rural, human mountain village means most of your existence has been rather peaceful. that is, until one cold winter when an injured yokai stumbles into your life; and though everyone else is terrified of him, you take him in, nurse him back to health, and show the others that some demons aren’t that scary after all. (...and maybe, just maybe, you end up falling for the pretty fox yokai too.)

For the first time in years, the river freezes over.

During winter, it’s often a lot harder for you to notice things like this, as the cold dulls your senses and numbs your fingers, so you’re only informed of this fact when the village children come to your cottage in the morning, their high-pitched voices blending with the mismatched beats of their fists knocking against your door.

“Miss Witch! Miss Witch! There’s something wrong with the river!”

“The river is all solid, Miss Witch!”

“Miss Witch, we can’t play in the river! Can you fix it for us, Miss Witch?”

Blanket wrapped around your shoulders, you open the door with a groggy smile, squinting down at the children on your doorstep.

“Hello, little kids. What are you doing here?”

“Miss Witch!” one of the children chirps. “Good morning!”

Despite being half-asleep, you can’t help but laugh a little at their chipperness. The children are, undeniably, your favourite people in this entire village.

“Good morning,” you say, bemused. “How may I help you?”

Their voices rise in volume again, all of them clamouring to be heard over each other. It can’t be any later than five in the morning, and your fingertips prickle with the cold grey of the mist as you blink down at them, surprised at their energy.

A girl tugs at the end of your blanket, wide-eyed. “Miss Witch, the river is all hard. We don’t know what’s going on.”

“Ah,” you say gently. “I see.” Crouching down so you’re at eye level with the kids, you ask, “If the river is hard, solid, and cold, what do you think that means?”

The children blink at you. 

“What else is hard, solid, and cold?”

One of them brightens. “Ice!”

“Exactly,” you say, smiling. “The river has turned into ice. It’s nothing to worry about, but it does mean it’s very, very cold right now, so why aren’t any of you wearing any hats or scarves, hm?” 

You ruffle the hair of the nearest child, and she shakes her head, giggling. “We were helping the grown-ups, of course! Something happened at the river, an’ they told us to go away.”

“So we came to you,” another boy pipes up. “They said something’s wrong!”

You tilt your head. Whilst it’s certainly been several decades since the river last froze over, it’s no reason for the villagers to worry that much about it. It’s also not something that your magic can fix, or something that needs to be fixed, so—

“Y/N!”

You look up at the call, and see a man in the distance, jogging down the pathway towards your cottage. It’s still far too dark to see clearly, but you smile at the familiar voice.

“Soonyoung,” you call back. “Good morning! Are you here to tell me about the frozen river, too? Don’t worry, it’s completely normal and not dangerous at all.”

His reply, if he has any at all, goes unheard as one of the children suddenly cries out, as if he’s had an epiphany.

You look down at him, amused. “What’s wrong?”

“I just remembered, something else happened at the river,” he says brightly. His remark makes some of the other children perk up too, as if they also remembered this other thing that had happened.

The kids are all at the age where something like a leaf falling onto their heads would be remarkably significant, so as you wait for Soonyoung to come closer and deliver the actual news, you decide to humour them, smiling and tilting your head interestedly. “Oh, really? What was it?”

 “There’s a man in the frozen river, Miss Witch!”

“A—” The smile turns to stone on your face. “A what?”

“Not a man,” Soonyoung says. He’s finally reached your doorstep now, and you notice that his usual easy smile is nowhere to be seen. He frowns down at the children, displeased. “What are you all doing here? We told you to go home, not to Y/N.”

“They thought I could help,” you say placatingly. “It’s okay. And if there’s a man stuck in the river, you might need my help after all.”

“Not a man,” Soonyoung repeats, his face darkening. “It’s not a man.”

You raise an eyebrow at the graveness in his tone. “Well, then you certainly do need my help, it seems. What is it?”

Soonyoung sighs. His exhale clouds the air, and your fingers prickle even more at his next words, like invisible icicles piercing through your skin.

“It’s a demon.”

───────────── ‘✽, 

You are not exactly a human.

Certainly, you look and dress like one—and you have to eat and sleep like one too, otherwise terrible things happen to your energy levels—but that doesn’t mean you are human. There are some things which make you slightly different.

One of those things being that you live forever.

“What do you mean you don’t know if it’s hostile?” Soonyoung demands, struggling to match your strides as you hurry towards the river. “Of course it’s hostile. It’s a fucking demon!”

“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you come to realise that some yokai aren’t hostile,” you respond, frosted-over leaves crunching under your feet. Soonyoung squawks back something unintelligible, too out of breath to make an argument. 

After encouraging the children to return back to their homes and sleep—since it really is five in the morning, and none of them should be awake—you and Soonyoung began making your way to where the rest of the villagers were. 

The river flows down from the mountain that the village is located near. The further up you go, the more dangerous the terrain becomes, and you pause on a jagged rock to frown down at Soonyoung, who’s gasping as he tries to keep up.

“Did you really find the yokai over here? Why were any of you up here in the first place?”

“We didn’t,” Soonyoung said hoarsely. “I’ve been trying to tell you for ages. The demon was found near the edge of the woods.”

“Oh.” You blink. The two of you had marched past the woods a decent while ago. “Okay.” And then you float down from the rock, lightly hopping over frozen patches of land, past Soonyoung again. “Come on, let’s turn back, then.”

Soonyoung sighs, turns around, and begins his clumsy, human descent. “You could at least use your magic to help me down too, you know.”

And that’s the other different thing about you. Magic. It’s such a flimsy, weak word for what you can do, but it’s also the best way to describe it. There are certain things about you, certain things you’re capable of in the way that no human can ever truly be.

Without even looking back, you wave a hand, and a glowing stream of wind nudges Soonyoung’s feet towards the easiest path down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And hurry up before those villagers aggravate the yokai even more.”

Demons, or more traditionally, yokai, aren’t something you’ve encountered in countless decades. As technology and weapons developed, and the human population expanded, many yokai simply faded out of existence, unable to sustain themselves in the less wild, less natural environment that humans created. Others were smart enough to recognise they now had less of an advantage over humans, and tended to stay away from densely populated areas, preferring to target any lone travellers who ventured too far into their territory.

Yokai values and morals are vastly different to humans, and they are so incomprehensible to mortals that yokai gained a reputation for being vindictive, vicious, vile, and all other negative ‘v’ words. That doesn’t necessarily make them so, however, and over your lifetime, you’ve encountered some who don't quite fit the stereotype that humans are all too eager to place on them.

It takes you and Soonyoung long enough to get to the river that the sky has lightened ever so slightly, but the lacey edges of morning mist are still blurring the edges of your sight, and you can only barely see what the villagers are looking at, especially with them all crowding around and pushing against each other to get closer to the river.

You crane your neck, standing on tiptoe, before huffing. Scratch that, you can’t see anything.

“Move out of my way, please,” you say sharply, adding a little volume magic to your voice so that it carries over the whole crowd. 

Most of them instantly look back at that and clock your presence, eyes widening. Some of them begin rushing towards you, looking almost like their children as they begin talking over each other all at once.

“Y/N, there’s a demon—”

“Absolutely vile creature, is there any way—”

“—river’s all frozen, how did it even get here—”

“Okay, okay, okay!” you interrupt, adding even more volume to your voice to be heard. “Minah, yes, I know there’s a demon. Soonyoung told me. And no, Joongseok, we don’t know if it’s truly vile yet. And Woongri, yokai often work with magic, so it could’ve gotten here in a variety of ways. But if you want me to do something, you have to let me through. Yes?”

You’re tired, and cold, and dealing with stressed adults is not the best way to start the day, so you're more blunt than is perhaps necessary, but it gets your point across. The villagers look sufficiently contrite and finally shuffle to the side, making way for you to get through. Seungcheol, the village leader, nudges his way through the crowd until he’s by your side, face solemn.

“Good morning,” he says. “Sorry about the chaos.”

“Good morning,” you say back, voice now normal volume once again. “It’s okay. Everyone’s scared. You don’t call me at ungodly hours unless it’s serious, so I don’t mind.”

Seungcheol nods, looking both grave and apologetic. “We only ever want you to use your magic for good.”

It’s a terribly human thing to say, and you  smile dryly. “Of course. What can I help you with this time?”

“Well… You can help with that.” Seungcheol points to a mound of warped ice a little ways down the river. “How can we get rid of it?”

You squint in the direction Seungcheol’s pointing at, peering through the tendrils of mist, and then gasp. Half-buried into the ice of the river, you can make out a blurry, pale-coloured figure clothed in pale silk. Dark liquid pools in all directions surrounding the motionless body, and anyone can tell the yokai is very badly hurt. 

“It’s already bleeding half to death, so it shouldn’t be too hard to finish— wait, Y/N!”

Ignoring Seungcheol’s shouts, you step onto the frozen surface of the river and rush towards the yokai, and your blood runs cold as you take in the sight before you.

The yokai is a fox demon, you notice, with white ears and soft silver hair and a gorgeous white tail, which is partially being crushed by a river’s worth of ice. He’s waist-deep in the frozen water, and a thick layer of more ice has begun to form around the yokai’s torso from where he’s slumped against the surface of the river at an almost unnatural angle, causing his poor tail to be twisted and buried both in the river and the new ice.

“Oh, darling,” you whisper, kneeling down beside him, tracing a finger across the yokai’s cheek. Your finger comes away stained dark with blood, and you swallow thickly, heart constricting.

The crushing ice isn’t the end of the damage: there’s blood pouring from seemingly unknown sources, matted into the fox demon’s hair and streaking down his neck. He must have been in some sort of fight before getting stuck in the river. 

Gently, you thumb over the yokai’s cheek, taking in the pale skin and delicate eyelashes. This fox demon is devastatingly pretty, and seeing him so badly injured makes your heart hurt even more.

Something rustles near the riverbank, and you look back to see some of the children hiding amongst the leaves, peering curiously at you as you kneel next to the yokai. Further up the river, Seungcheol is approaching you, wanting to know your thoughts on the demon, and his eyes widen as he also notices the children in the bushes.

“What are you doing here?” he says in their direction, the disapproval clear in his tone. “It’s dangerous! You shouldn’t be looking at this. Where are your parents? Didn’t Soonyoung tell you to go home?”

“But we wanna see Miss Witch,” one boy says, eyes wide. “Please, can’t we stay?”

You frown and open your mouth, preparing to reprimand them, but then the yokai makes a soft, pained sound beside you, and you instantly return your attention to him, bending down even closer to his face.

Seungcheol cries out, this time in your direction as you lean towards the yokai. “Y/N, what are you doing? Stay back!”

You ignore him, reaching out a hand to brush matted hair out of the yokai’s eyes. “Hello? Hello, can you hear me?”

The yokai scrunches his eyes up, whimpering in pain. The moment he’d returned to consciousness, he’d started shivering intensely, struck by the cold of the river. 

“Hello?” you repeat, gentle. You move your hand away from the yokai’s face, directing it towards the ice surrounding his back instead. Silently reciting an incantation, the ice begins to glow orange under your palm, slowly beginning to melt away. “Can you tell me your name?”

The yokai shivers, mumbles something unintelligible. Then he looks up at you, golden irises shuddering in fear, every movement of his face telling you it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. 

One of the children lets out a shriek, and you whip your head up in alarm. They don’t look hurt, but the yokai notices the sound too, raising his head to look at them with wide, unsettling eyes, and the children shriek again, all of them frozen in fear. You can kind of understand why: the fox demon is covered in blood, and anyone unacquainted with the supernatural would find his slitted golden eyes petrifying. 

But before you can say anything, do anything to reassure them, the ice around his back makes a cracking sound as it melts under your hand, and the yokai’s mouth drops open in pain. He coughs, splattering blood over the ice, more of the black liquid dripping from the corners of his lips as he starts writhing and scratching against the river, hauling himself up onto his elbows, eyes fixed on the children in the distance, and all hell breaks loose.

The children are screaming, ear-piercingly loud, and Seungcheol is screaming too, and the yokai starts writhing even harder, yipping and gasping like a distressed fox, his hands sticky with his own blood as he tries to push against the ice. 

“No, it’s okay— don’t do that—Cheol, let me think!” 

It’s obvious Seungcheol wants you to kill the demon, especially with the way he’s screeching at you right now, but the yokai looks so pitiful, ears shaking, eyes wide, still bleeding from gashes all over his body.

“Think about what?” Seungcheol yells, children cowering behind his legs, and he shields their eyes from the river. “Y/N, please, you have to get rid of it!”

You look at him, and then down at the helpless yokai beside you, and really, it takes you less than a second to decide what to do.

“I’m so sorry,” you say, getting to your feet. Seungcheol tenses, sensing something wrong in your tone as you look down at the yokai again, leaning down with your hand outstretched. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Your fingers come into contact with the yokai’s forehead, and there’s a golden glow before his eyes flutter shut and he freezes up, before collapsing against the ice.

Hidden safely behind the village leader, the children stop screaming. Seungcheol also doesn’t make a sound, still staring wide-eyed at you, and now the yokai is no longer moving, the early morning air is frozen still once more. You look back at Seungcheol, and he blinks, his face unreadable.

“Please tell me you killed that thing.”

You smile weakly, dried-up demon blood on your fingertips. At your feet, the yokai’s shoulders move up and down ever so slightly with every shallow breath he takes, unconscious.

───────────── ‘✽, 

“Bad idea,” Seungcheol admonishes loudly from outside your window, and even though there’s a whole wall and a thick pane of glass separating him from you, his disapproval is crystal clear. “This is a bad idea. Y/N, let me in. We have to talk about this.”

You don’t look up from the boiling pot on the stove, simply lifting a hand and giving Seungcheol the finger.

“How dare— Y/N, you cannot let that thing live. It’s a danger to us. Especially the children! Y/N, think of the children, please, it could hurt the children.”

Seungcheol raps against the glass insistently, but you ignore him, humming to yourself as you ladle some of the boiling concoction into a wooden bowl. Gently, you blow on the steam, inspecting the lilac colour of the liquid before nodding, pleased, and heading over to the yokai asleep on your couch. 

It’s been some hours since that moment on the frozen river, where you’d decided to save the yokai trapped in the ice rather than kill him. None of the humans agreed with your decision, however, so you’d had to make the tiring trek down the mountain yourself, a heavy, unconscious yokai in tow. That’s partly the reason you’re so tired right now, arms aching as you set the bowl down on the coffee table, where you’ve laid out bandages and various dried bags of poultices and face towels to help clean up the yokai. 

Said yokai is still unconscious and bleeding all over the fabric of your sofa, the golden threads of magic you’d used to briefly staunch his wounds already beginning to fray open once more. You sigh, settling down beside him, and begin inspecting the more serious injuries on his forehead and down his arms.

“What happened to you, hm?” you say softly, ignoring Seungcheol still rapping against your window. “Why are you so hurt?”

Living as the only magic user-slash-competent doctor in a rural village means that you have plenty of experience in patching up the particularly nasty injuries that the villagers sustain, and your hands are careful and practised as you dip a towel into the warm, disinfectant potion you’d made, swiping it over the yokai’s skin. He’s injured practically everywhere: deep gashes are scored along his arms, his hands, and there’s one slashed across his chest. Not to mention his definitely-broken tail, the still-bleeding head wound and, judging by the way blood had been pouring from his mouth out on the lake, some internal injuries you can’t see. 

You wince, taking a towel into your hands. “Sorry,” you say, heart twinging in sympathy for the yokai. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. But don’t worry, I’m here to help.”

Ideally, you’d run a bath first and scrub the yokai clean of all the grime and blood before getting to tending his wounds. But he’s a fox demon—ridiculously tall and with a fluffy tail and delicate ears, so he won’t fit in your tiny tub and it’ll end up being more troublesome than anything else.

So, you’ve resorted to magic, dipping a cloth in the potion you've made to melt and dissolve all the dirt into thin air.

The wounds are all worryingly deep, most notably the still-bleeding one on his forehead, and if he were human, you’d be concerned that he’ll suffer a serious concussion afterwards, along with an inability to use his hands for a long while. But as it is, the ancient demon-magic that he’s made of will mean that he’ll heal pretty quickly, and there should be no grave threat to his life.

Hopefully. As long as he doesn’t develop an infection from the open wounds. 

You finish cleaning up the blood and then wipe down his face with a cool cloth, frowning slightly at how his skin still feels unusually hot. Infections will make his healing process much longer and much more arduous. The poor yokai looks like he’s already been through more than enough, so you really hope the fever dies down soon.

Seungcheol is still yelling at you from your window when you finish your preliminary clean-up, and you sigh heavily, beginning to develop a headache from how annoying he's being. So you walk over to the window, wrench it open, and jab a bloodstained finger in his direction.

“Seungcheol. Kindly, please, fuck off.”

Seungcheol blinks, both startled by your abrupt confrontation and a little affronted, but before he can say anything, you carry on. 

“Currently, this yokai is injured, and it’s my job to take care of injured people, regardless of who they are, so you can take any thoughts of me killing him and shove them up your ass. It’s not happening, and it’s never happening, and you’re also disturbing my patient with the racket you’re creating, so please go away.”

If it were anyone else talking to him like this, Seungcheol would have blown up with anger a solid thirty seconds ago—as it is, he simply stares at you, still looking affronted, before he sighs, and all of the energy drains out of him. He knows how headstrong you are, and when you get like this, he knows there’s no way he can sway you. He’ll have to wait until you’re no longer brimming with obstinacy to get his thoughts across.

His gaze drops from yours to your bloody finger, and then he sighs again, folding his hands behind his back.

“Give the demon my wishes for his speedy recovery,” he says at last. “But we still have to talk about this later, Y/N. Okay?”

You huff, and lower your hands. “Fine. Later.” With a resolute swish of magic, you shut the window once again and turn your back on Seungcheol to return to your patient.

As village leader, you can understand why Seungcheol may have concerns regarding a yokai entering a human village, but that doesn’t mean you like how he has no qualms with telling you to just kill it in an instant. Discrimination against magical creatures is half the reason they’re so hostile to humans, anyway, and you’d know firsthand how painful it is to be targeted and attacked purely for being who you are.

It’s not like you ever asked to be magic. And yet, people end up hating you for it.

You look down at the unconscious yokai, with his silver-white fur and gentle eyelashes and those heart-wrenching injuries. Then, wordlessly, you pick up one of the poultices and get to work.

───────────── ‘✽, 

Hansol wakes up to the strong, warm smell of chrysanthemum.

It’s an unusual scent to wake up to, and his ears prick up, alarmed—only for him to cry out a few seconds later, upon realising the action sends a sharp bolt of pain throughout his entire body.

“Oh!” 

A voice sounds from somewhere above his head, and he startles even more, trying to open his eyes and locate the sound, before realising he can’t see.

He cries out again, panicking at the pitch black that surrounds him, flailing around before realising that that action also causes him debilitating pain, and he begins panicking even more. How did he end up here? What happened? All he remembers is being chased through the forest and then tripping and crashing into a river, and then hard ice and the cold water and the throbbing in his head and then— and then—

Something damp and heavy gets lifted from his eyes and he gasps, freezing up as bright white light almost blinds him.

“Sorry, sorry,” the voice from before says, sounding terribly apologetic. “I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you before doing that.” 

Hansol scrunches his eyes, and then squints, vision all blurry from having been unconscious and now being blinded by bright light. He can’t see who’s speaking, but whoever they are, they carry on, the words steadily flowing out faster and faster as the person rambles. He can barely keep up with the onslaught of noise, twitching confusedly and trying to see what’s going on. The world feels like it’s spinning. He’s pretty sure the world isn’t meant to spin this fast.

“That was probably really scary when you woke up, huh? I’m so sorry. The towel slipped from your forehead and covered your eyes, and I’m sorry I didn’t notice. I didn’t expect you to wake up now, but I guess that’s a good thing, ‘cause you’ve been out for a whole day, and any longer and we’re veering into coma territory, which would mean that you were really, really hurt. Which is, like, definitely not good, you know? But you did wake up, thank goodness, so that means there’s a chance you’ll get better very soon. Plus, your fever isn’t that bad anymore, so it seems you really are on the road to recovery, which is all very—oh, wait. Sorry. It’s still too bright, isn’t it?”

Another wave of chrysanthemum hits Hansol’s senses and a hand comes up to his face, creating a shadow over his eyes so he’s no longer squinting furiously up at the disembodied voice.

“Sorry,” the voice says, apologising yet again. “Is that better?”

Hansol blinks, slowly opening his eyes fully to look up, and then, the whole world abruptly stops spinning as he finds himself looking at the most beautiful being in the entire history of the universe. He doesn’t say a word, mouth falling open in shock.

You smile down at him, made anxious by his silence. “Hello,” you say, hand still shielding his eyes from the brunt of the winter light. “My name is Y/N. What’s yours?”

Hansol squeaks, a small, high-pitched sound that instantly floods him with mortification when it accidentally slips past his lips, and he screws his eyes shut and curls into himself, knocking your hand away hurriedly in his rush to hide his face. He tries to bury himself into the couch, shaking. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” you say, gently, worried you've scared him. “I promise. I want to help.” Perched on the edge of the couch, you lean over and slowly lower the yokai’s hands from his face, coaxing him to look at you again. “Can you please tell me your name?”

You smile, again, and Hansol feels a little faint as he looks up at you. His vision is still slightly blurry from his eyes being shut for so long, and the way you’re backlit by the light makes you look like you’re glowing, a gentle halo of silver light surrounding your form. That, coupled with the way you have the prettiest smile he’s ever seen, is making him feel all dizzy. And a bit warm. The air feels like it’s suffocating him, actually, but all of that is made irrelevant by how pretty he thinks your smile is.

There’s a possibility he’s still in the process of getting rid of his fever, because he blinks slowly, focused, and when he opens his mouth to speak, the next words spill unbidden from his lips.

“My name is Hansol,” he says, “and I think you’re the prettiest person alive.”

Your eyes widen at his words, a flush rapidly creeping up your cheeks. Hansol looks at you, worried that you’ll suddenly hate him for what he’s just said, but you just laugh, flattered, and bring your hand up to his forehead. The touch is cool against his skin, like a soothing balm.

“Thank you, Hansol,” you say. “Your fever seems to still be pretty high, if you’re saying stuff like this, huh? I’m currently brewing some chrysanthemum tea, and I think it’ll be a good idea for you to have some too.”

Hansol blinks slowly again. “Chrysanthemum tea,” he muses. He looks up at you. “That must be why you smell so warm and pretty.”

You laugh again, flustered, subconsciously brushing his hair back from his forehead and cupping his cheek, your fingers feather-light. “Perhaps. So would you like some tea?”

“Yes, please,” Hansol says. “I’ll have anything… you… give m…” His eyelids and ears slowly droop, and before he can even finish his sentence, he drifts back off to unconsciousness once again, head leaning into your hand.

Open-mouthed, pink-cheeked, you look down at the one-more unconscious yokai in your hands. 

“Wow,” you breathe out. And then you smile. “You’re adorable.”

───────────── ‘✽, 

Over the next few days, the yokai—Hansol—constantly drifts in and out of consciousness, his fever fluctuating in intensity the entire time.

It’s difficult to pull coherent sentences out of him, and anything he says is a mixture of your name, his name, and also how pretty he thinks you are.

You chalk it up to his fever.

His demon-magic must have taken a serious blow from the extent of his injuries, as it takes him a lot longer than you’d like for him to finally shake off the infection. A whole excruciating week goes by, and you almost cry with relief when, as you get up to check his temperature in the middle of the night, you find that his fever has finally broken, and he’s able to breathe easily once more.

When the weak sun finally peeks out from over the horizon, you enter your spare room to check on Hansol. Sometime after his first bout of consciousness, you’d gathered enough energy to move him from your couch to the spare bedroom in your cottage. It had taken a lot of work, and a lot of magic—weakened by the stress of taking care of a dying fox demon and trying to fend off any curious and judgy villagers, it takes a lot of energy for you to do anything strenuous lately—but you managed. And it certainly seemed to help, as he slept a lot better in an actual bed.

Humming absentmindedly to yourself, you make your way over to the guest room, fingers dancing and causing golden threads of magic to tidy up the state of your house as you go along. 

To your surprise, the yokai is wide awake when you enter the room, and he startles when you noisily open the door and step inside. The moment you make eye contact with Hansol, you freeze, the song dying off your lips at the same time as your magic drops a partially-fluffed up cushion in the living room.

“Um.” You blink, hanging off the door handle, staring at the yokai picking his bandages in bed in the middle of your guest room. “Good morning?”

Hansol doesn’t respond, continuing to stare at you, wide-eyed.

You cough, feeling terribly awkward, attempting to adjust your stance and take your hand off the doorknob in the most natural way possible. “Hello. I’m, uh, Y/N. How are you feeling?”

There’s another beat. Then Hansol finally opens his mouth, only to completely ignore your question to say, “You’re the one who smells like chrysanthemums.”

“I— Sorry, what?” You blink, taken aback by the abrupt and unrelated question, before nodding. “Oh, yeah. I guess you remember the chrysanthemum tea I made you?” You smile slightly. “I can’t believe you remember that. That was when you were the most unwell.”

“Oh.” Hansol’s ears twitch, and he continues to look at you with his golden eyes, somewhere between bewildered and amazed. (Amazed by what, you aren’t entirely sure.) “I do remember, though. I remember you.”

You blink rapidly, trying to push down the blush that threatens to rise up your face. Having a handsome yokai stare at you with such focus, saying that he remembers you even when he was deep in the throes of a fever is such a heart-fluttering thing to experience early in the morning. You aren’t nearly awake enough for this conversation. If you aren’t careful, you could accidentally fall in love right then and there.

“That’s nice,” you croak, and then shake yourself. You have a job to do. Hansol’s a patient under your care, and you need to check his condition. “Um. Sorry. But, uh, I do have to check if you can remember anything else,” you say, slipping into healer mode as you step further into the room, walking towards the bed. “Do you remember your name?”

Hansol nods, intently following your movements as you draw closer. “My name is Hansol,” he says.

You smile, relieved by the coherency of his answer. The fact that the yokai remembers his own name is a very good sign. “Yes, you are. Do you remember how you got here?”

“Yes,” Hansol says obediently. “I was in a river. Trapped in the ice. And you… saved me.”

That makes you smile a little wider. “I took care of your wounds, yes! It’s really good you’re finally awake and able to answer questions, ‘cause it’s a sure sign there’s no lasting internal damage. I do have to check your bandages, though, so… may I?”

You make a gesture towards Hansol’s bandaged arms, and the yokai obliges, raising his arms to let you see. 

You take Hansol’s hand in your own, preparing to lift his arm up higher—but the moment your palms brush, you gasp, fingers tightening around the yokai’s at the sudden sensation. Hansol, too, lets out a small noise of surprise, looking up at you.

The yokai’s hands are firm, strong, and perfectly healthy, but they also thrum with magic. You can feel every spark and fizzle of the magic as it dances under his skin, spinning and zipping back and forth like a cloud of hyperactive fireflies. Like the magic can talk, and when it noticed the magic that lives inside you, it seems to yip with recognition, spinning itself around in excitement in the yokai’s hands.

“It’s so strong,” you say, amazed. “I didn’t realise magic could be this powerful.”

Hansol’s also staring up at you, similarly in awe. “You’re magic too?” he asks, looking like he’s never fathomed such a thing is possible. “You’re like me?”

You laugh slightly, made a little giddy by the feeling of how alive the magic is under Hansol’s skin. “Not exactly,” you say, releasing Hansol’s hand to finally reach for the bandages, feeling around to see whether his skin is still tender underneath. “I don’t have the ears or the tail, do I?”

Hansol’s ears flick. You’re decidedly focused solely on the yokai’s bandages, but you can feel Hansol looking at you intently as you work. 

“But you’re very pretty,” Hansol says. “Are you sure?”

Fuck. Hansol has to stop saying things like that, because they’re very bad for your poor heart. Very bad.

“I’m sure,” you say with a smile, straightening up once again. “I think all your wounds are healing nicely. Now your magic’s come back to its full strength, it’ll help you heal the rest of the way in no time.”

You can’t help but reach for Hansol’s hand again, once more feeling pleasantly surprised by the light zap of magic when your hands touch. Now you can feel the thrum of it under Hansol’s skin, it’s easy to realise how unwell the yokai was before, when his hands had been deathly cold with no fizz of magic in them at all. You’re just endlessly relieved that you can feel that fizz once again.

Hansol looks down at your intertwined hands, and then up at you, a smile lifting up the corners of his lips. “Thank you,” he says, so very sincere that it melts your heart. “Thank you for looking after me.”

You can’t help but smile back, squeezing Hansol’s hand once. “Of course. It’s my pleasure. Really.”

Hansol smiles even wider, ears twitching pleasedly, and you once again have to try and valiantly fight away your blush. Fuck. This yokai really needs to stop making you blush so easily, and fast, else you’re going to start having problems.

───────────── ‘✽, 

It turns out, the blushing thing ends up being the least of your problems, because later that day, Hansol tries to leave.

Sometime after bringing Hansol a breakfast of soup and chrysanthemum tea (since he really seemed to like the tea), you’re drying away the breakfast dishes when a blast of cold air slices through the cottage, and you look over to see Hansol holding open the front door, looking like he’s about to step out.

“H—wait! Hansol, what are you doing?”

The yokai looks over at you, still holding the front door, confused. The bottom half of his tail is still bandaged, making it difficult for him to move it around, but it still sways from side to side unsurely as he blinks at you.

“I’m leaving,” Hansol says, like it’s obvious. “You took care of me. And I’m now better. So I’m going to go.”

You gape, jaw almost dropping to the floor at the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard.

“Like hell you are,” you say, marching over to the front door and firmly shutting it with your still-soapy hands, and then ushering Hansol back to the guest room and into bed. “You are very far from being better, Hansol. Your tail is still all bandaged up! I’m not letting you leave until you’re back to full health, so don’t you dare think for a second that you get to go before then.”

Hansol makes a noise of confusion as you fussily tuck him back into bed, fluffing up the pillows behind his head and arranging the covers around him. “What? Why would you let me stay?”

“Why wouldn’t I let you stay?” you counter, patting down the duvet and absentmindedly brushing away the strands of hair that fall in his eyes. “I want to take care of you. I want you to get better. I can’t exactly do that if you go off into the woods all by yourself and get up to heaven knows what, can I?”

Perched on the edge of the bed, you smile and pat his head. 

“I’m not letting you out of my sight for a long while yet, mister,” you say, the faux-scolding adding a light playfulness to your tone. “You’re going to stay with me and get better until I say so.”

Hansol looks up at you, tilts his head, and scrunches his nose just slightly as he smiles, shy. “So you’ll let me stay as long as I like?”

“Obviously,” you say, smiling back. “However long it takes you to heal, and then some, if you want. Of course, unless you have somewhere else to go.”

The yokai hesitates, ears flicking unsurely. “Not really,” he admits, lowering his gaze. “I’ve never actually had anywhere real to stay.” He looks back up at you again, golden eyes glinting hopefully. “So if it’s okay…”

“Oh, of course you can stay here,” you rush to reassure him. And then you pause, deflating a little. “Although…This is a human village, so they don’t really like… your kind. It might make life a bit difficult, but since you’re with me, they shouldn’t bother you too much. Though I understand if that makes you hesitant to stay.”

Hansol shakes his head, smiling slightly. “That’s okay. I like it here, so I don’t mind staying with just you.” 

“I’m glad,” you say sincerely. “Seriously, you can stay here for however long you want.”

Hansol ducks his head shyly. “Thank you. Genuinely, thank you.”

You awkwardly pat his hand where it lays on the covers, a little embarrassed in the face of his obvious gratitude, and instruct him to rest up before exiting the room. You’re glad that the brief misunderstanding had been cleared up, because you don’t want Hansol to feel anything less than welcomed. Being a yokai, he won’t have received similar acts of kindness in the wild, and as a magical being yourself, you know how that can feel. No one deserves to feel unwanted, least of all an injured yokai who’d obviously been hurt intentionally before you found him.

Unfortunately, though, the trials of Hansol’s first weeks of consciousness do not end there. Some days later, at some point during the afternoon, Seungcheol comes knocking on your door.

You hadn’t intended on inviting Seungcheol in. But afternoons are always a miserable time during winter, when the sky darkens far too early for anyone’s liking, and it’s difficult to find one’s way through the cold, barely-lit paths. That’s why you often get people coming to your door during the late afternoon, lost or confused or panicked because they’ve lost their way, and your cottage, shimmering with gold magic and warm lights is the only beacon they recognise.

So that’s the only reason why, when Seungcheol turns up, you accidentally open the door for him. Not that you have anything against the village leader, but—Hansol’s only been awake for a week at this point, and you don’t have the mental capacity to deal with a talk about getting rid of him.

Unfortunately, when Seungcheol already has one foot in a door, he will not go. Literally.

“Get your foot out of my door,” you say exasperatedly, struggling to push the door shut as Seungcheol pushes back. His foot is still wedged in the doorway.

“Let me in,” Seungcheol says. 

“No. You’re gonna tell me to hurt the yokai again.”

“I’m going to tell you to get him out of here.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Seungcheol says, finally giving up on the little game and pushing his way through the door like it’s no difficulty at all, making you let out an indignant hey!. “We need to talk about this, Y/N. You cannot harbour a demon in our village without discussing this with anyone. He needs to go.”

“He’s hurt,” you say. “He can’t go anywhere! And he won’t hurt anyone, I promise.”

“You can’t know that.” Seungcheol furrows his brow, his tone grave. “He’s a demon, Y/N. You don’t know what he’s capable of. You can’t keep him here.”

“Yes I can,” you insist, “because he’s a fucking real-life being with feelings, not this scary, evil harbinger of doom that you’re making him out to be, and I know this, because he’s been here with me, in my own home, and he’s quite possibly the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

Over the last several days, Hansol has been healing rapidly, so much so that most of his bandages have been removed and he practically glows with magic every time you see him. It’s incredibly relieving to see, and it’s also allowed you to get to know him better: sometimes unintentionally, as a natural side effect of living with him now, but also, sometimes quite on purpose. Because he’s pretty, and he’s interesting, and you want to know who he is.

Turns out, one of the key things about Hansol is he’s the most adorable being you’ve ever met.

He’s adorable, in an awkward sort of way, from the way he hovers hesitantly in doorways to the way his tail always fluffs up with contentment when he feels the tendrils of your magic brush across the room.

Unlike yokai, who simply have ancient magic embedded in them from birth, you are born of magic and made entirely of magic, so the stuff practically spills out of you wherever you go. The magic can’t only be felt from under your skin, but extends out and away from your being. You’re not used to having guests in the cottage, so you weren’t aware of the extent of how much you let your magic run free when in the safety of your home, until you noticed how Hansol reacted. He always blinks in surprise, lifting his hand palm-up, fingers curling inwards, as if your magic is some elusive silk strand that constantly evades his grasp. It’s as if he can truly feel it, and he always seems to like it.

“Can you actually feel my magic?” you ask one day, and he looks up from his hand, surprised. His tail is all fluffy and big, lazily waving from side to side and creating static against the decorative pillows on your couch. You’re sitting on an armchair next to him, smiling at him amusedly from over the book of hexes you’re reading. He doesn’t even seem to notice what his tail is doing, too occupied with the invisible tendrils between his fingers.

“Yeah,” Hansol says after a moment, closing his hand and resting them both back in his lap, a little awkward. “It feels warm. Nice.”

“Really?” 

You can’t help but smile at that, oddly flattered. To you, your magic is just… yours. It doesn’t feel like anything in particular, nothing more than a familiar tingle in your hands and a weight against your skin. Though you like describing it as gold, in reality, your magic doesn’t have any colour or any real tangibility to it apart from a fleeting pressure. The idea of it being “gold” is just how you feel about it. It never occurred to you that others could feel it, let alone feel differently about it—living amongst humans, your magic has always subconsciously curled tighter around your arms when you interact with the villagers, not wanting to weird them out with your abnormality or make them feel intimidated by you.

Hansol nods, tail swishing once more. The static has caused all his white fur to stand on end, making him look even more fluffy and adorable. “Yeah,” he says again. “It’s so much calmer than the way my magic feels. It’s really cool.”

He’s looking at you earnestly, as if expecting you to totally agree that your magic is “calmer” than his. And even though you’ve only felt his magic twice before, you nod along in agreement anyway, and Hansol nods back, satisfied with your assent. Then he lowers his gaze back to his lap, opens his hand again, and goes back to playing with your magic.

An endeared laugh bubbles up into your throat, and you smile at the top of Hansol’s head before turning back to your book. Goodness, Hansol is so ridiculously cute.

That interaction only happened some days ago, and whenever Hansol smiles at you or stiltedly asks if he can help you around the house, the surge of affection comes back even harder. So you cannot stand Seungcheol standing here, right now, frowning at you like you’re being unreasonable in your decision to treat Hansol like a normal being.

Seungcheol continues to frown, and you simply stare defiantly back, arms crossed. You don’t let him walk further into the cottage, and a stare-off commences there in the front hallway, neither of you willing to back down.

That is, until there’s a loud crash from further inside the house, and both of you flinch in alarm.

“What was that?” Seungcheol asks, and you look back to where the sound had come from. Connected to the living room, behind a door disguised as an unassuming bookshelf is your own personal library, filled with all the tomes and books on magic and alchemy you’ve collected over the centuries. That’s where the sound’s originated from, which is definitely a cause for concern, but you don’t say so, lest Seungcheol uses this to fuel his argument against Hansol.

“Probably nothing,” you say, though you still glance over in the direction of the library. “You know my cottage. Everything’s old and falling apart.”

Seungcheol looks at you suspiciously. “That’s a lie. You always keep everything in perfect condition.” He begins to move past you. “I bet it’s that demon, isn’t it?”

“No, I—” You try to stop Seungcheol from investigating, but it’s a futile effort. “Cheol, come on, you shouldn’t go see him, he’s still unwell and you could end up distressing him—”

Hurriedly, you trot after Seungcheol through the bookshelf door and into the library, only to end up slamming face-first into his back when he stops abruptly, stunned at the sight before him.

You’re quite proud of your library. It’s an open secret that the bookshelf in your living room leads to it, which is cool all by itself, but your library is also made of magic. What appears as a normal, small study behind the bookshelf turns into a large and sprawling library with high ceilings and mahogany shelves and rows upon rows of books when you step inside. 

You’d allowed Hansol access to the library when he’d asked what was behind the bookshelf, and as far as you know, he’s been peacefully situated there the entire day. But, as you peer over Seungcheol’s shoulder to see why he’s suddenly stopped, you realise you can’t see the yokai at all.

In the middle of the floor, there’s a large… fort of books. A book fort. With four walls built of books piled on top of each other, complete with battlements made of upright books and towers with open books as turrets, it’s actually quite amazing to see. The only drawback is how some of the walls are falling down, books tumbling from where they’re piled up. 

Also the large spread of ice coming from under the fort, that’s very slowly continuing to pool further and further outwards.

Seungcheol blinks. “Uh… Y/N… you wouldn’t happen to be doing this, would you?”

You shake your head. “Weather magic is my weak point.”

Suddenly, two white ears and a head pop up from behind one of the crumbling walls, and Hansol’s eyes widen when he realises you’re here with a guest.

“Oh!” He ducks his head down, and then straightens once more so he can fully see over the walls of the fort. “Hello. I was just building a castle. One of the walls fell down, ‘cause I sneezed, but I can fix it.”

The tip of his nose is slightly dusted with glittering frost, but he doesn’t even seem to notice that or the ice that’s creeping across the wooden floor. His eyes are shining as he looks at you, infinitely more relaxed than when you’d first seen him, and he inclines his head respectfully in Seungcheol’s direction, looking as humble and polite as possible even when half his face is covered by his book fort. 

“Hello to you too. It’s nice to meet you.”

You’re not sure what Seungcheol is most flabbergasted by: Hansol’s gentle manners, or the book fort he’s quite amiably making in your very respectable-looking, very grandiose library, or the circle of ice that’s very clearly coming from the yokai. Hansol is very close to giving the village leader a heart attack any time soon, it seems.

“I— This is— You’re using Y/N’s books to do this?” Seungcheol eventually manages to ask, looking both confused and horrified. “She let you?”

Hansol’s ears droop just slightly, but there’s no obvious change to his expression. “Well… no. But none of the books are damaged, and I’m going to put them back once I’m done with them.”

“It’s fine,” you interject. “I could probably fix a few ripped pages. You can do what you like.”

You couldn’t, probably, fix a few ripped pages, because each book is nearly as old as you. But you’re not going to say that, because you don’t want the confusion on Seungcheol’s face to turn into grim disapproval, and you also don’t want Hansol to feel guilty for what he’s doing.

“Although,” you say, looking down pointedly at the floor, “do you think you could stop the ice?”

Hansol peers over the wall, eyes widening when he realises what you’re talking about. “Oh, sorry. It just happened when I sneezed, I think. Everything is still going haywire… I think I’m still sick.”

The movement of the ice slows to a halt, until only a spattering of frost manages to creep over to where you and Seungcheol are standing. It covers the whole expanse of the floor, now, and there’s not a single patch of the warm brown that’s not frosted over, but it’s okay. That is definitely something you can fix.

Ignoring Seungcheol, who’s still standing there like he can’t believe he’s looking at a walking, talking yokai, you move forward and make your slippery way over to the fort. Hansol moves away a column of books, allowing him to step out of the fort and meet you.

“Is this one of the humans?” Hansol asks in a low voice before you even say anything. The sweetness in his face has disappeared, replaced with an icy look of anxiety. “He’s one of the mortals who don’t like me, isn’t he?”

You try not to wince. “Yes. He’s Seungcheol, the village leader here. He… wants me to get you out of here.”

Hansol regards you for a moment. “You make it sound a lot nicer than what he actually means,” he says. “He wants me killed, doesn’t he? At the very least, badly injured and banished from here.”

“Well… no,” you try to say, but yes, that’s actually exactly what Seungcheol wants. “He doesn’t want you badly injured. He’s just… scared. Of your kind.”

“Hm.” Hansol nods, expressionless. “Same thing, really. He wants me out.”

“Okay, Y/N, stop whispering with the… him,” Seungcheol says, and you look up to see the village leader making his slow way across the ice towards you. “We need to talk. Discuss what you’re going to do, because you are going to do it, for the safety of our village.”

You frown, frustrated. “Hansol’s not a threat to our safety,” you argue. Seungcheol continues to slide gingerly across the ice, and he sighs and shakes his head as you carry on. “He doesn’t have anything against humans. And if he did, he’d have been dead long before we found him at the river, because—Hansol. Tell him why you ended up there.”

Hansol hesitates, looking at you unsurely. The other day, you finally managed to ask him why he’d been so injured and how he’d gotten trapped in the river. It was nothing unexpected, but it still had broken your heart, and hopefully, hopefully, it’s enough for Seungcheol to feel a little bit of empathy towards the yokai. Seungcheol’s a good man, a kind man, and all he needs to do is realise Hansol’s not evil, and he’ll warm up to him faster than anyone could think possible.

“Some other yokai attacked me in the forest,” Hansol says slowly. “Really old yokai. Older than me. And… I got hurt.”

Seungcheol raises an eyebrow, looking at you like he doesn’t get the point of this. You simply glare at him, silently telling him to continue listening.

“It wasn’t bad. Just a broken tail and some scratches,” Hansol says, and Seungcheol blinks, surprised at Hansol’s nonchalance. “But then some demon hunters found me, and tried to get me to… attack them? I dunno. They were picking a fight, and when I didn’t give it to them, they also hurt me.”

Almost imperceptibly, Seungcheol’s face softens a fraction, and you feel a flicker of hope. You know he’s weak in the face of innocently victimised stories like this.

“And so I was trying to run away from them, but everything is kind of in pain at that point. So I end up tripping down the mountain and into your river. My magic goes haywire when I’m sick,” he adds, “so that’s how I end up accidentally freezing ice all over me, too. It kind of responds to my feelings I guess? So when I’m scared, it starts acting up even more, which is why the ice was so thick, too. Like it was trying to protect me, ‘cause it knew I was scared of someone hurting me.”

It’s the most that Hansol’s said in one go, uninterrupted, before. Seungcheol’s face softens even further, and he straightens slowly. He’s been standing still, a few metres away the entire time Hansol’s been talking, like he’s been frozen by his tale.

“And yeah,” Hansol finishes awkwardly, ears twitching. He’s sensed the change in atmosphere, Seungcheol’s empathy tangible in the air. “Then I ended up here.”

“After several, painful weeks of healing,” you add, and Hansol nods jerkily.

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Seungcheol says gently. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were so scared. But…” And then he sighs, straightening up further, the softness melting away from his face. “That doesn’t mean you’re not a harm to the others, now you’re all better. Who knows how you might feel when you’re hungry, or angry. You said your magic acts up according to your feelings, and I can’t have it acting up and hurting people here.”

Hansol’s face scrunches up in confusion. “When I’m hungry?”

It’s a bit absurd that’s the thing he’s focusing on, so you feel indignation over Seungcheol’s whole speech on his behalf, crying out at the injustice.

“What do you mean?” you argue. “You’re saying that like he’s some mindless beast.”

“He may as well be, for all I know,” Seungcheol sighs. “He’s not human, Y/N. We don’t know how he’ll act. And I need to think about the villagers. They’re… they’re like family to me, you know that.”

“I’m not human either,” you point out angrily. “And yet I’m also a part of this village. What are you saying, Cheol? Do you not consider me family?”

Seungcheol’s eyes widen, and he shakes his head instantly. “No, you are. But still, you’re more human than he is. And… there are days where I’m a bit wary of you too, Y/N.” At your outraged look, he rushes to continue, “Because you’re so powerful! But you’ve been with us for so many years, during the time of my father and his father, and his father before that, so I know you’re good. You’ve saved their lives. Saved everyone’s lives. Hansol, on the other hand…”

You scoff, beyond furious. “That’s absurd. There’s no such thing as being ‘good’, just as there’s no such thing as being ‘evil’. We don’t live in a fucking fairytale, Seungcheol.”

“I know. Maybe if you’d made different choices, I’d think of you as less good, too, but…” Seungcheol trails off, shrugging helplessly.

You stare at him, eyes so impossibly wide that it’s actually hurting your eye sockets, astounded by what he’s just said. Seungcheol? Thinking of you as evil? Just because of your power? 

Beside you, Hansol stiffens just slightly, and during the course of the conversation, he’s somehow ended up so close to you that you can feel his magic simmering frantically under his skin. You don’t know why he’s so worked up, and distantly, you wonder whether it’s on your behalf.

Seungcheol, noticing how irate you’re getting, takes a step forward to try and placate you. But he misjudges his balance on the ice surrounding the fort, leg twisting and his eyes widen and he yelps as he falls forward, on course to crashing face-first onto the hard, frozen ground. Your eyes widen, and you reach out to him, before then—

There’s a blur of white fur and Hansol catches him before he falls over and breaks all the bones in his knees, gripping him loosely around the torso, getting to Seungcheol before you can even blink. He gingerly helps him back into an upright position, and you wave a hand to whisk away the rest of the ice with streams of gold before another accident like that happens again. Hansol’s still holding Seungcheol when you’re finished, but by the shoulders now, looking the village leader right in the eye, golden irises soft and determined at the same time.

“I get you have a responsibility,” Hansol says. “I used to have one too, in the wild. To keep myself alive. But my rule, and this should be yours too, is to not hurt anything that doesn’t hurt you first. I haven’t hurt you. You shouldn’t hurt me. And Y/N—” He looks over at you, eyes flashing, before looking back at Seungcheol. “Y/N has never hurt you. So don’t act like you’re preparing for the day she one day will.”

Seungcheol’s face doesn’t change, but you’ve known him long enough to detect the minute shifts in the air around him as he digests Hansol’s words and, grudgingly, accepts it.

“I apologise,” he finally says, reluctant but sincere in the way only Seungcheol can be. “That was cruel of me. To you and Y/N.”

He looks at you, and Hansol’s hands fall away, allowing him to walk towards you.

“Sorry. But you have to understand where I’m coming from,” Seungcheol says, almost pleading, and you realise that, whilst his stance on Hansol’s existence has wavered, his overall reluctance over him being here hasn’t changed. “At least don’t let others see him, if he’s going to stay. They’ll be terrified.”

“That doesn’t sound like Hansol’s problem,” you retort. “I know these villagers, Cheol, and they’ll warm up to him, they really will.”

You look over at Hansol as you say your next words.

“Hansol is sweet and kind and really rather funny, and it breaks my heart to hide him from others because he might be seen as scary. That’s just people’s prejudice talking.” You smile. Hansol’s eyes are wide, lips parted slightly, and a fluttering warmth unfurls up inside you as you continue to smile at him. “Because I’ve seen Hansol, and he’s the sweetest person I’ve ever met.”

Hansol’s entire face goes pink, and he looks away.

“Maybe so,” Seungcheol says heavily, and you look back at him. The warmth in your chest fades at his tone, dropping to the depths of your stomach. “But I can’t risk them being near him. Don’t let him out.”

You sigh, disappointed. “No. He can leave the house if he wants to, Seungcheol. He’s not some kind of housepet you can impose rules on just like that and expect me to follow through with them.”

“Y/N—”

“Get out of my home,” you say, evenly. “Go. You can take your rules and go piss off out of my sight.”

───────────── ‘✽, 

You stew in your anger towards Seungcheol for several days. 

He comes to your door every so often, either with a letter or a plea to talk through this, but you refuse to let him in and instead tell him to, not so kindly, fuck off. 

Hansol looks at you with a mixture of affection and disappointment each time you do so. You don’t really understand why he looks at you like that—neither the affection nor disappointment—but he doesn’t say anything and goes back to what he was doing soon after, either playing with your magic, or his own, or reading your books.

Having him around the house is quite like having a very adorable, very shy, fox. You might’ve gotten furious at Seungcheol for treating Hansol like a pet, but you don’t mean it like having a pet fox: it’s just like having an inquisitive, cute being around the house who quite likes following you around as you go about your day.

It’s cute. He’s cute, with his swishing tail and his sudden bursts of frost when he’s fiddling with his fingers, and the way he stays perfectly still whenever you gain the courage to slowly inch closer to him on the sofa until you’re laying on his shoulder, at the perfect angle to peer down at the book in his hands so you can read it with him. They’re all your books, of course, so you know what they’re all about, but it’s quite nice leaning against Hansol, feeling his warmth through the silk of his clothing, and the pleasant hum of his magic under your ear.

He never initiates physical contact, but he seems to like having you near. He’s never protested when you’ve held his hand or laid on his shoulder or (very, very gently) touched his ears, so.

He’s quite like a fox, in that way. But he’s like a fox in other ways, too: namely, how it appears that he’s a bit nocturnal.

Sometimes, you’ll awaken at three, four, five o’clock in the morning to someone clattering around in your house. It always turns out to be Hansol, trying to occupy himself without waking you up, but always failing to do so.

“Hansol?” you murmur blearily, shuffling into the kitchen where the flurry of clatters had emitted from earlier. It’s dark, and all the curtains are drawn; nevertheless, his dim silhouette looks distinctly guilty as he whirls around to face you, pots and pans in his hands. “What’re you doing?”

“Sorry,” he says apologetically. “I read some potion in your book, and I wanted to try it out.”

“At three in the morning?”

“Five,” Hansol corrects. You fix him with a look, and he winces, demon magic-enhanced night vision meaning he can see you perfectly clearly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

You shake your head, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes. It’s cold in the kitchen, and being exposed to the chilly night temperature is gradually waking you up. “It’s okay. I guess you don’t sleep a lot, huh? You’re wide awake, even though it’s so early in the morning.”

Hansol shrugs. “Dunno. But I always just feel like I have so much energy. Like it doesn’t have anywhere to go, and I can’t sleep for too long before it tells me to do something.”

“I see.” You purse your lips thoughtfully, pondering why Hansol’s feeling like this and what could cause it. And then, a realisation strikes you and your eyes widen. “Oh. Oh, I get it. I understand why you’re feeling that way.”

The yokai tilts his head. “Really?”

“Yeah, and it’s totally okay,” you reassure, nodding your head. “Totally understandable, too. But don’t worry, it’s easily fixed.”

You wave a hand and turn all the light fixtures on so you can see Hansol properly. The yokai literally does look like he’s vibrating with extra energy, holding your cooking utensils in his hands, ears perked upright and tail fluffed up to the max. Yeah, he’s definitely understimulated and frustrated with it right now, even if he doesn’t realise that’s what it is.

You smile. This is a good way to help him and piss off Seungcheol at the same time.

“Come on, Hansol. Let’s go outside.”

───────────── ‘✽, 

Not even an hour later, you’re making a trek up the mountains in your warmest clothes, lagging behind Hansol even with your magic-aided agility helping you up the hardest of the steps. The yokai is bounding on ahead, nimble and quick-footed even in the darkness of the early winter morning, and you can hear the light crunch of snow under his footsteps as he moves.

This is what Hansol needed. Some time outside, where he can finally breathe.

Some minutes later, as you’re sitting on a log on the path to catch your breath, Hansol comes back down the mountain to meet you, settling down by your side.

“It’s so quiet,” he whispers. The air around you is lit with a faint glow, courtesy of a visibility spell you conjured so you wouldn’t fall flat on your face as you walked. It makes Hansol’s face look golden as he smiles at you, eyes shining. “Everything is so quiet out here. I can hear the animals.”

You smile back, finding joy in how relaxed he looks. “Doesn’t that make it noisy?”

Hansol shakes his head, and then looks away from you, ears cocked to the side, listening. “No. This is like a familiar buzz of noise, so familiar that it becomes silent.” He looks back at you again, smiling. “Down in the village, it’s so noisy because of all the people, but up here, it’s all gone.”

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” you say with a smile, and Hansol nods so quickly that you laugh, endeared. “I’m glad. You can go off for a bit, if you want, and I’ll wait for you here.”

Hansol beams. “Okay.”

And like that, he’s off, nothing more than a faint swish of a silver tail before he disappears once more.

He doesn’t come back to you for some time, which gives you a chance to sit there and breathe in the cool air. It’s so cold that it feels like inhaling clouds of peppermint, but it’s… relaxing. 

You haven’t had a chance to properly rest this winter. Winter’s a tricky time for you: the cold numbs your senses and makes your magic more sluggish. This year feels much colder than usual, and now the prolonged adrenaline that came with bringing Hansol back from the brink of death is fading, you’re beginning to anticipate feeling more worn out more often, the warm fizz in the tips of your fingers not as present as it ought to be.

Strangely, though. It hasn’t happened yet. Maybe being around Hansol and his frost-related magic has built up your resistance to the cold.

Or, he’s just so lovely and comforting that you don’t feel the effects of the winter.

That’s always a possibility. You look down at your hands, still glowing slightly with the visibility light you’ve put on yourself. It hasn’t faltered even once, a brilliant gold, and when you think of the colour of Hansol’s eyes, the light seems to glow even more.

You breathe in, and then exhale, kicking your feet out in front of you, looking down the dim mountain. You’ve been up here, thinking, for so long that the weak sunrise is beginning to peek its head above the horizon. Hansol still hasn’t come back. Though, you find you’re not too worried about that: somehow, you know that he will come back to you, though you can’t find ears nor tail of him while he’s gone.

It’s incredible how much you’ve come to trust and believe in Hansol, though he’s only been with you for several weeks. He’s been so reserved, anxious and afraid at times, especially during the early days, when he’d been bandaged up and newly healing in an unfamiliar environment, but now it’s clear how earnest and gentle he is. Something in your chest tightens and then relaxes with happiness whenever you see him smile. He’s just so—genuine, and you really like that about him.

You like him. A lot. He’s certainly an unexpected new part of your life, but now he’s here, and you can’t imagine living without the silver-furred fox yokai by your side.

There’s a rustle in the evergreen bushes to your left, and, as if he’s here answering your summons, a familiar silver head of hair pops out, golden eyes shining when he sees you. 

He blinks at you, ears flicking curiously, twigs in his hair like he’s been rolling around on the forest floor. His tail is out of sight, but you can imagine how it’s waving from side to side in contentment, the morning dew slowly turning into frozen crystals in his fur. You smile.

“Hey,” you greet, the moment you see Hansol’s face. “Are you gonna come over?”

Instantly, he stands up, hops over the bush and makes his way to you. His footfalls are light, looking like he’s dancing over the rocks before he settles next to you once more, looking like he never left your side.

“Hey,” he says. “There are so many rabbits in these mountains, you know? Like I’ve never seen so many rabbits gathered in one place before, because normally they get killed by hunters or there’s just not enough food in that area to sustain so many. It’s actually insane how many rabbits you have up here.” When you just smile, his eyes widen, ears pricking upright. “Oh, is it you? Do you do something to help them stay alive? With your magic and all that?”

Hansol then launches into a flurry of questions for you, so eager and animated that it surprises you a little, before melting your heart.

At the sight of sunrise, you’d taken down your visibility spell, but Hansol is still glowing, looking so alive with his cold-dusted cheeks, shining eyes, wind-fluffed hair and the frost dusting the tip of his nose, which must have accidentally happened when he’d gotten too excited and lost control of his magic.

Hansol’s positively lit up, now he’s surrounded by all this nature. He must’ve been so cooped up and nervous before, when he was just in your house, barely anything to do. Now he’s healed, and outside, and you can tell that being out of the house is where he’s meant to be.

“It’s not me,” you admit after Hansol’s finished conjuring up crazy theories. “Well, kind of. I messed around with the mountains about eighty years ago and did something by accident so we get a lot more winter flowers than normal. The rabbits love eating them, so we get a lot of them too.”

“Oh,” Hansol says, amazed. “That makes so much sense. I saw so many flowers. I thought that was a little bit weird, but I just chalked it up to Mother Nature having fun, or something.”

You laugh. “Yeah. I guess Mother Nature was having fun,” you say, gesturing to yourself, and Hansol grins too. His eyes crinkle as he does so, the corners of his lips spread wide so his pearly whites are fully visible, the tips of his yokai fangs slightly on display. Even his big, bright smile is as cute as he is. You’ve never seen him smile this widely before. It’s… pretty.

Even though he’s all warmed up to you now, even though it’s clear he trusts you, it’s obvious he’ll always be most at peace out here in the big, wide world.

His gaze slides away from yours, looking at something behind you, and he gasps.

“What is it?” You turn to look back, trying to find what had caught his eye, but Hansol doesn’t respond. He jumps up, diving into the bushes without a word.

A moment later he emerges, and in his hands is…

“A daffodil?” you say, amazed. “What’s this doing here? Spring is very, very far off.”

“I guess it’s because of you,” Hansol says, handing you the flower. 

You accept it gratefully, tracing the edges of its buttery yellow petals, such a warm, golden colour in your hands, in stark contrast to the cold white of the snow around you. It’s so pretty, so pristine, and it’s amazing it managed to survive in the freezing winter temperatures. Must be due to your magic, like Hansol said.

“It looks like you,” Hansol says suddenly, and you look at him in surprise. 

“Really? How?”

“You look like spring, to me,” he says. The frosted tip of his nose looks pink, as do his cheeks. A decidedly warmer, blushier pink than they’d looked before. “All warm and gold and pretty. Like the daffodil. And I…” He pauses, and then seems to change his mind, shutting his mouth and blinking at you like he wasn’t about to say anything else.

You smile, so endeared that you’re practically glowing with it. “Thank you,” you say, touched, and look back down at the daffodil in your hands before raising your eyes to the definitely-blushing yokai once more. “That’s so sweet.”

Hansol shrugs, a little bashful, before standing up abruptly.

“I’m gonna go find the rabbits again,” he says, and before you can even reply, he’s disappeared.

You laugh, breathing in the crisp air and then releasing it in a sigh, feeling warm all over despite the cold. You shake your head, fond. Hansol is just so…

That’s it, you decide. You’re not going to let Seungcheol dictate where Hansol can and can’t be. You’ll let Hansol do whatever he wants, and encourage him to do whatever he wants. 

Whatever makes him smile.

───────────── ‘✽, 

From that day on, you make it a point to take Hansol to the mountains as often as you can.

He loves it—he’ll never say it in so many words, extremely shy when it comes to voicing his preferences for reasons you cannot discern, but it’s so obvious that those few hours he gets to spend with you, in the fresh air, away from all the people, are his favourite hours in the day.

It’s another one of those mornings when you’re up in the mountains with him. You can’t come here every day: you’d collapse from exhaustion if you had to wake up at four in the morning every day, but today, it’s a particularly clear-skied day, and you wanted to watch the sunrise with Hansol.

He’s sitting shoulder to shoulder with you, looking silently down at the village below. It’s still not sunrise yet, but the sky’s beginning to lighten gradually, and you can see some of the windows beginning to light up with orange lights, everyone slowly waking. Hansol hasn’t said a word for a while, so you haven’t either, content to just look down at everything in silence.

The entire experience is rather humbling. From the mountain, the village looks so small, like it’s merely a miniscule dot in existence, something that could be missed in a single blink. Like each mortal is worth next to nothing. Like each could be destroyed in a second.

That’s what a lesser immortal would think, anyway. For you, however, rather than how fragile life is, being this high up makes you marvel at the intricacy of it. Every person, every soul, despite being so small, is filled to the brim with so many unique experiences that no one else can ever live through as that person did. They live, and they die, but almost magnificently so. Like a one-of-a-kind snowflake that melts as soon as it lies in your hands.

You look at Hansol next to you. His eyelashes flutter thoughtfully as he looks down at the village, delicate against his pale skin. 

Every life should be cherished, you think. Because if even the fleetings lives of humans are that complex, then what of the immortal creatures, who live forever? No one should tell them to hide themselves away.

“I can hear you cursing Seungcheol in your head,” Hansol says abruptly, pulling you out of your thoughts. He’s staring at you, now, no longer focused on the village, and he tilts his head bemusedly when you meet his gaze. “You’re still mad at him, aren’t you?”

You blink, and then smile. You were kind of cursing out Cheol in your head, you admit, and it’s kind of funny that Hansol picked up on it.

“I am,” you sigh, looking down. “Well, now I’m more annoyed, really. I know I should be glad that he’s not going to extremes, like some other people in the world, but…”

Hansol nods slowly. “I get where he’s coming from, though,” he admits, and you look up. “What? Seungcheol cares for his village. These people… they all mean a lot to him, and he doesn’t know me, so I guess it’s natural for him to be cautious.”

You roll your eyes. “That’s no excuse. These people all mean a lot to me, too. I watched them all grow up! And Cheol should know I wouldn’t suggest anything that puts them in danger.” You frown. “It’s frustrating. It feels like he doesn’t trust my judgement, even though he’s literally known me his entire life.”

The yokai hums, and reaches over to pat your hand placatingly where it rests in your lap.

“Also, it pisses me off that he’s saying all this without ever making an effort to get to know you, and see if his judgement is right,” you say, looking at Hansol, catching his hand in your own when he begins to move away. “You’re just—you’re just so lovely, and how dare Seungcheol try to hide you away, like you’re something taboo, or something to be ashamed of?”

Hansol’s eyes widen, and he blinks rapidly, before averting his gaze to your intertwined hands. “Oh,” he says, after a moment, clearly embarrassed by your sincere compliments. “That’s… nice.”

You laugh, fond, squeezing his hand comfortingly. “I’m always nice,” you tease. “I’m the nicest person in the entire world, actually.”

To your surprise, Hansol doesn’t smile back at your joke, and simply ducks his head shyly. “You are.” 

And then he keeps lowering himself down until he’s laying in your lap, the tips of his flickering slightly at the contact as he adjusts himself until he's practically lying down in the log, head in your lap. You stiffen in surprise, and Hansol slowly shifts so he can blink up at you with innocent, gold eyes. 

“Can I lie here?” he asks, even though he's clearly very much lying there already, and you smile, relaxing. 

“Yeah, I guess,” you say, and Hansol smiles, closing his eyes as your hand goes to his hair and begins to gently run through the strands with the tips of your fingers. 

You stay like that for some time, running your fingers through Hansol’s hair and over the soft fur of his ears. Abruptly, he playfully flicks his ears as you trace a finger through the fur at the base of them, making you yelp in surprise, and he smiles, pleased at having made you jump. You lightly tug at a few strands of hair, teasing, and he smiles wider, eyes still shut, the slight points of his canines visible.

Too distracted with Hansol’s face, you end up completely missing the full sunrise, and eventually it becomes late enough in the morning that the village fully awakens, bustling with noise as people go about their day. But curiously, you can’t hear a single thing. It’s like your world has narrowed down to you, your hands, and the yokai laid comfortably in your lap.

He really is very pretty. You notice the small spattering of snowflake-like freckles on his cheeks, and smile. He’s so pretty that it isn’t even fair.

You trace a thumb over his cheekbones, opening your mouth to comment on them before Hansol’s eyes snap open, and his ears suddenly tilt towards something down the mountain, listening. Your hand freezes, and you let him turn his head, alert.

“What’s wrong?”

Then, you hear it: the crunching of twigs underfoot, and the telltale huffing and puffing of a human making their way up the mountain. Your hand falls, and you get ready to stand up before—

“Y/N?”

Soonyoung, clad in winter furs and holding a woven basket in his hands, blinks at you in confusion, and then he glances to the yokai in your lap, and shakes his head, his expression becoming even more mystified than before.

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” you ask back, equally confused as Soonyoung. “You literally hate climbing the mountains. What are you doing?”

Soonyoung looks at you oddly, lifting up the empty basket. “I’m here to collect wildflowers for you,” he says. “I asked you the other day if you could make some of that non-dangerous magic fire you did last year. You said you needed wildflowers harvested at sunrise to make that potion, so I’m here to get those.”

“Oh. Did you really ask me that?”

“Yes,” Soonyoung says. “You said you’d make them for me. And also complained for like five minutes because I tried to pay you, and you wanted to refuse ‘cause you said I was paying you too much. As if there’s such a thing as being paid too much money.” He rolls his eyes for emphasis, and you laugh.

The conversation comes back to you now, and you shrug sheepishly. “Yeah. Sorry. I forgot about that.”

Soonyoung makes a disgruntled sound, feigning annoyance before his eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Don’t worry about it, boo. Just as long as you remember to make the potion, it’s all fine. The children’ll love it for the bonfire tonight.”

Your eyes widen. “You want me to make it for tonight? There’s a bonfire tonight?”

“Yes,” Soonyoung says. “I specifically told you when I asked, as well. Goodness, you’re forgetting everything today, huh?” Then he gestures casually to Hansol, who’s still lying in your lap, looking unsurely at the villager. “Don’t tell me, you also forgot you have the injured demon in your lap, too?”

He points to Hansol so naturally, so calmly that you look down in surprise, as if you really had forgotten the yokai was there. Soonyoung laughs, shaking his head as he bends down near a bush, poking through the dirt to see if there are any flowers. He turns his back on you and Hansol, craning down towards the ground to see better as he continues to talk.

“Cheol told me all about the demon and how he disapproves of you keeping him alive,” Soonyoung says. He manages to find a few wildflowers, and lets out an aha! of pride, putting them away in his basket. “Not gonna lie, I agreed with him a bit. But then I come up here and find him in your lap as you pet him like a cat, and now I’m thinking, maybe not so much.”

Soonyoung turns back to face you once again, and somehow, during those thirty seconds, he’s managed to get dirt all over his nose.

“Plus, you seem to like him,” he carries on. “So he can’t be bad, can you? Because you’d kick his ass if he was.”

You quirk a grin at that, proud. Then you nod down at Hansol. “He has a name, though, you know. And he can hear you.”

Soonyoung’s eyes widen in realisation, and he stands up quickly, brushing down his clothes. “Oh, sorry, you’re right. Sorry. Hi, I’m Soonyoung, one of the villagers who live here. It’s nice to meet you.”

He extends a gloved hand towards Hansol, and Hansol looks at the hand for a long moment. Then he slowly sits upright again, and grasps Soonyoung’s hand in a firm handshake, the corners of his mouth relaxing slightly.

“Hansol,” he says. “It’s nice to meet you.”

And then he must do something, because Soonyoung lets out a small yip in surprise, withdrawing his hand quickly as Hansol observes him amusedly, eyes glinting. 

“Did you…” Soonyoung starts, wide-eyed. “Did you just. Give me an electric shock? On purpose?”

Hansol cracks the slightest smile, evidently pleased with Soonyoung’s reaction. He’s in a playful mood today, you muse, smiling as Soonyoung stutters, clearly not sure what to do when a yokai plays a prank on him like this. It makes you smile too, amused.

“You have to show me how to do that,” Soonyoung eventually says, going from surprised to confused to full of amazement. “Can you show me? Is that something which can be taught?”

That makes Hansol smile properly, lips curving upwards. “You’re funny.”

“I’m being serious!” Soonyoung says, but something about Hansol’s smile must make him smile too, because eventually he laughs, shaking his head. “Goodness, you magic people need to stop messing with me. One day, I’ll accidentally set myself on fire, and it’ll be your fault.”

“You’d do that anyway,” you tease, and Soonyoung rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I have to get going, I think. Jeonghan’s coming over for a poultice for his back pain, and I need to get to my cottage before he does.”

“Okay,” Soonyoung says. “This is a hell of a way up the mountain, by the way. I might go down with you as well, and see if I’ve missed any flowers.”

“Cool.” This is definitely not that far up the mountain, and even though Soonyoung hates climbing, it shouldn’t have taken him more than twenty minutes to reach where you are. It’s clear he wants to walk with you for a moment to tell you something, so you look at Hansol, and offer him the chance to stay up in the mountains by himself for a bit.

He agrees, so you and Soonyoung begin your slow descent.

“What do you want?” you ask, when you’re out of Hansol’s hearing range.

Soonyoung just smiles, shaking his head. “Nothing bad,” he says. “I meant it when I said Hansol seems like a cool guy. I just…” He pauses, thinks over his words, and then leans in closer. “Bring him to the bonfire tonight.”

You reel back. “What? Are you crazy?”

“Hey, if you’re worried about him getting hurt, you shouldn’t be,” Soonyoung says placatingly. “Hansol’s a demon. He can hold his own. Plus, the people aren’t as against yokai as you might think. Cheol’s just overly cautious, and the elderly might have traditional views about it, but it won’t be hard to make them like him. He’s cute.”

You raise an eyebrow.

“He is!” Soonyoung argues. “I saw him in your lap, Y/N. He’s adorable. And very… docile? Like, he’s so quiet. But also very silly. The kids would love him, you know. So would everyone else.”

“Even Seungcheol?”

Soonyoung thinks about it for a second. The cold air has made his cheeks all ruddy red, and he looks like a very earnest, very red-cheeked schoolboy as he nods firmly. “Yes. Even Seungcheol.”

You hum, still incredibly sceptical. “Well. I’ll think about it. We’ll have to see.”

───────────── ‘✽, 

Unfortunately, even though you were slightly swayed by Soonyoung’s words and his instant kindness and all-round chillness in Hansol’s presence, you ultimately end up not bringing Hansol to the bonfire night. It’s not your decision, though: it’s Hansol’s.

“Are you worried about the humans?” you ask, when Hansol tells you that, respectfully, he doesn’t want to go. “You don’t have to worry about that. I could blast them all to pieces for insulting you, if that makes you feel better.”

Hansol smiles a little, before shaking his head. “No. It’s actually just… I’m not really a big fan of all the noise and stuff. And how hot bonfires are.”

“Oh.” You soften, concerned. “Have you been… hurt by fire before?”

“Huh? Oh, no,” Hansol says. He shrugs. “I just don’t like being too warm. Makes me uncomfortable.”

You raise an eyebrow, amused. Because even as he says this, he’s cuddling up into your side, head on your shoulder, his tail curled comfortably around him. “Really?” you say. “You don’t like being too warm?”

Hansol’s ears flick. “Yeah. My magic originates from winter, as you might have noticed, so…”

“Oh, I hadn’t realised,” you say teasingly, tapping the tip of his nose lightly. “I thought the white fur and random bursts of frost on your skin meant you were a summery fox.”

Hansol scrunches his nose, and you laugh. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it does mean I don’t like being all warm, so fires are a no-go for me. Especially bonfires, where there are many people. That’s way too much warmth for me, for sure.”

“I see,” you say, reaching a hand up to tuck some of his silver hair out of his face as he nestles closer into your side. “That’s cool. But I am going to have to go, even if you aren’t. Will you be okay if I leave you here by yourself in the evening?”

“Yeah. Can you make me dinner before you go, though? Last time I tried, I almost destroyed your kitchen.”

“What? When was that?”

“Oops. Did I not tell you?”

Anyway, the bonfire night ends up being a bit of a disappointment. Several of the villagers have cottoned on to the fact you’re housing the yokai, and express their concerns to you over the matter several times over the course of the night. You love these people, you really do, but hearing so many of them advise you to send him back off into the woods for your own safety really wears you down after a while.

“I think Y/N understands what you’re saying now, imo,” a gentle voice butts in, right when you’re in the middle of having a particularly exhausting conversation. This tricky older woman’s insisting you let the yokai go… only, she’s using much more unkind words.

You were very, very close to losing your cool with her—respect the elders be damned because hell, you’re way older than she is—before she’s interrupted mid-sentence by a villager appearing over his shoulder, and you smile in relief as you recognise him.

At the call of “auntie”, she looks up and comes face-to-face with your saviour, Joshua, and all it takes is another gentle smile and some sweet words before he successfully convinces her to leave your side and rejoin her friends on the other side of the bonfire.

“Don’t worry about it,” Joshua says when you thank him for his help. “You know how they are. Once they latch on to you, it’s impossible to get them to leave without using some sort of witchcraft to pry them away.”

You laugh at that. “And yet, it seemed to be you who helped get them off me. Maybe you’re the real witchcraft user out of the two of us.”

Joshua laughs, light and melodious, magical fire reflecting in his eyes. He doesn’t say anything to your joke, however, and nods into the distance behind you, down the darkened paths that lead to your cottage. “You need to bring him out, though,” he says. “Whilst he’s still unknown, they’ll continue conjuring theories that become wilder by the day. They need to see the yokai so their suspicions can be wiped away once and for all.”

“Wh—Hansol?” You blink. “It’s dangerous, Shua. They might hurt him.”

“They’re hurting him now,” Joshua says. “They’re hurting you and hurting him by making stuff up. Just introduce him to them, okay? He can’t become part of our village if he never meets our villagers.”

At your stunned look, Joshua smiles. 

“What? I know you, Y/N. You’re attached. You want him to stay. And honestly…” His smile turns a little more secretive, a little more knowing. “I think he wants to, too. The yokai will stay for you, but to truly bring him in, you have to bring him out to us.”

Joshua smiles again, the colours of his irises swirling together, before he pats you on the shoulder and gets up, leaving you there speechless.

He isn’t… wrong. But hearing it like that sounds insane.

You shake your head. Hansol will have to meet everyone sooner or later, you suppose. You very much do not want to go ahead with Seungcheol’s idea to let him be hidden, like a secret, so of course, you need to bring him out into the open.

You shake your head again, mystified. Joshua’s correct, but how does he know so much?

Honestly, you really do think he’s more of a witchcraft user out of the two of you. His incredible timing, his knowledge of all your thoughts, the fact he’d called Hansol a yokai rather than demon…

Also. How old even is he, anyway? 

Too confused and befuddled by all the thoughts in your head, you end up playing with the children and run through the fire all night instead. It’s a lot safer than having to deal with all the grown-up stuff of thinking about things.

───────────── ‘✽, 

Both Soonyoung’s and Joshua’s words linger in the back of your mind for days after that, and you contemplate how to get Hansol out of the house. Hansol had never really shown signs of wanting to be part of the village, which had made you reconsider this whole thing, wanting to brush away the villager’s words, before you actually asked the yokai, and—

Hansol shrugs. “Yeah. I’d like to get to know everyone. I want to be part of the village.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” he says again, smiling at you. “This village is your village, and I want to be with you.”

Oh. You smile back, touched. Hansol smiles wider, brightening at the eye contact, all sweet and lovely and really quite cute, before ducking his head and disappearing back through the shelves of your library once again.

So Hansol turns out to be not as against the idea as you thought, which makes you feel a lot better about thinking of how to get the villagers to trust him and how to get Seungcheol off your back for taking care of Hansol in the first place.

However, it ends up not being you who makes the first steps into getting him known. Oh, no.

Instead, Hansol does that all by himself.

It happens during the first snowfall of the year. You’d woken up to the beautiful sight of the white crystals floating down and covering the entire village with a soft, muffled coat, and the equally beautiful sight of Hansol, who had already woken up, practically pressing his nose against the window to look at the snow in awe.

He’d clearly wanted to go out and be in the snow—as a winter yokai, that made sense—but you’d had some errands to run that day, so you’d told him he could stay only in the front yard of the cottage and go no further.

Hansol had smiled at you, an amused quirk of his lips that acted as all the reassurance you needed.

So he’s sitting in the snow in front of your cottage, legs out in front of him, the silk of his clothes getting damper the longer he sits on the cold ground, but he hardly notices, more focused with tracing a finger through the soft white that is steadily building up.

Snowfall is Hansol’s most favourite wintry thing. It’s a perfect, wondrous phenomenon: the intersection of the perfect time and the perfect weather and the perfect temperature that makes the sky release soft handfuls of the white stuff down on Earth. Even nature falls silent when the snow falls. In Hansol’s opinion, that’s proof enough that it’s something to be appreciated beyond belief.

His robes, his old robes, used to have silver snowflakes embroidered into them, intricate and sprawling patterns that he could run his fingers over and almost feel the cold gust of wind that accompanied the snow. They’re not on the robes he’s wearing now—he’s wearing ones you’ve given him, after his old ones were ruined by his own blood—but he traces his fingers gently over the sleeves, letting frost spread out from his fingers like the feathery patterns that used to adorn the cloth he wore.

He quickly grows bored of that, though, and turns to the real snow in front of him, ears flicking absentmindedly to get rid of the small pile-up gathering on his head. He absentmindedly gathers the stuff in his hands, patting it into shapes and then leaving them out on the lawn. 

This carries on for some time, and eventually there is an army of misshapen snow clumps in your front yard, all frosted over with a touch of his magic, and he grins, satisfied. And then his ears twitch again, and he feels… eyes. Watching him.

Hansol turns around, and some houses away, peeking from over a well-trimmed, leafless hedge, he sees three children clad in fluffy winter clothes staring at him, curious.

He doesn’t have much experience with human children. Or any children, for that matter. But he’s pretty sure that, when a yokai makes eye contact with them, they’re not meant to light up with glee and come running over with absolutely no regard for the icy paths or the danger that said yokai could present.

Surprised, Hansol jumps up to his feet, reaching out hands to steady the little kids as they skid over the snow and come to a stop right in front of him, eyes shining, expectant. He doesn’t know what they’re expecting, and being so close to these mini humans is a very awkward experience for him. He’s not sure what to do.

So he lifts a hand, and waves. “Hello?”

The three children beam, and one of them, the girl, practically vibrates with happiness when he speaks.

“Hello!” she chirps, and waves back. “I’m Yeowon! What’s your name?”

Hansol blinks, taken aback by her enthusiasm. “I’m Hansol.”

“Hansol!” Yeowon keeps speaking in exclamation marks, and it’s honestly kind of amusing. “It’s nice to meet you! This is Junghoon, and this is Minjun!” she says, gesturing to the boys on either side of him, who also give Hansol equally enthusiastic waves.

“Hello,” he says unsurely. How old are these kids? He doesn’t know much about human years, but they look… very young. Where are their parents?

He doesn’t get to voice his concerns before Yeowon starts speaking again, going a mile a minute and he can hardly get a word in edgeways.

“We were watching you from Minjun’s house,” she says, and picks up one of the snow balls that Hansol was making, lifting it up so he can look at his own handiwork. “These are so pretty! We wanted to come over and play with you, ‘cause we’ve never seen you before, but you live with Miss Witch, right?”

Hansol opens his mouth, but it’s apparent that wasn’t an actual question when Yeowon barrels on.

“So you must be a good guy! So we wanted to come say hello and play.”

She blinks big, innocent eyes up at him, as do the two boys, evidently begging him to play with them, or something. He doesn’t know what play entails, but… there’s no harm in entertaining these fun-sized humans, right?

So Hansol nods, says they can play with him, and sits down in the snow again. And then, before he knows it, they’re all shrieking and climbing over him and asking him to make figurines out of ice and snow and patting his hair in amazement and asking if his ears are actually real.

Children are very overwhelming, Hansol quickly learns. But he also kind of likes them: likes the way their eyes light up when he makes them the little ice characters they want, likes their fascinated smiles and the way they very gently touch his ears and accidentally get damp suede of their gloves in his mouth in their excitement. They’re bubbly, full of life, and so friendly with him that it honestly makes him so delighted that it surprises him.

“Make me one too! Make me one too!”

“Your ears look super fluffy! Can I touch your tail?”

“Why are your eyes yellow?”

“Can you make me something out of magic too, Mister Fox?”

“Mister Fox! Mister Fox!”

Hansol doesn’t know how it happens, but he blinks and suddenly he’s surrounded by what seems to be every child in the village, clamouring around him and asking if he could play, Please, Mister Fox, won’t you?

Your front lawn is quickly becoming a gathering place for the little humans who had swarmed towards him so quickly that Hansol’s starting to think they were waiting in the background for his very opportunity, and he makes more ice figures and listens interestedly to their babbling as they conjure stories for the figurines on the spot. They’re all so very noisy, but Hansol smiles, brimming with a similar sort of energy as his magic fizzes and pops with glitters of snow and makes the children laugh.

There’s no other way to describe it. He’s feeling happiness, pure and simple.

Unbeknownst to Hansol, there’s one human who’d been watching the entire scene right from the beginning. Coming down the path, on his way to visit the village’s magic-user, Soonyoung had noticed Hansol sitting by himself and had prepared to go over, extend a hand and a friendly word before Yeowon, Junghoon and Minjun had run over.

As a result, Soonyoung retreated a little ways round the bend to watch from a distance, which is where he is now, smiling at the innocent joy of both the children and Hansol.

From the opposite end of the path, he spots you walking back to your cottage, and clocks the exact moment you realise what’s happening in your front yard. Your eyes widen, and you stop in your tracks, before your eyes slowly lift further and you notice Soonyoung standing there too, smiling.

See? he seems to say with your eyes, meeting your gaze. They love him. 

One of the children shrieks with laughter as she grabs Hansol’s tail and he playfully gasps in shock, scooping her up and lifting her into the air until she’s giggling and burbling for him to put her down. At his feet, one child is patting snow into the hem of his robes, and another is playing with a fox-eared figurine that Hansol had made him.

It looks so natural, and you watch them for a moment before looking at Soonyoung again. Soonyoung smiles even wider. You have nothing to worry about.

You laugh, a little bit in disbelief, warmth spreading across your face as you smile back, looking fondly at the sight in your front yard. Finally, you really do believe that that’s the truth.

───────────── ‘✽, 

“Let’s go out,” you say, and Hansol looks up from his book, tilting his head inquisitively.

“Hm,” he says in reply. “Are you sure?”

It’s been a few days since the first snowfall, but the wintry precipitation has not let up, and it continues to softly drift down from the sky even as you speak. The blanket of snow covering the earth has also blanketed your senses, and your magic is nothing more than a gentle hum beneath your skin. A month ago, this would have stressed you greatly, but with Hansol and his winter-attuned magic singing happily around the entire room, you feel nothing but peace. 

Nodding in reassurance, you smile at Hansol. “Very sure. Let’s go out today.”

Hansol blinks, once, and then smiles back, closing the book and getting up from the couch. “Okay. Where are we going?”

You smile wider. “To make you some friends.”

That was the plan, anyway. Ever since the first snow, when Hansol had been accosted by the children and ended up playing with them for a good part of the day, you’ve had several villagers come to your door, either complaining about the yokai or wanting to know more about him. So, you figure, today you should get him out to the village square so he can finally meet everyone. Regardless of their opinion of him. 

Because you have trust in Hansol. Now, you have confidence he can turn their opinion around. 

Hansol, despite having all the appearances and mannerisms of an introvert, doesn't seem to mind leaving the house for so many days in a row, and eagerly agrees as you urge him to get dressed and head out to the village square. There's the daily market taking place, and most people will be there, so it'll be a good opportunity to introduce him. 

But, like you said, that was the plan. 

Unfortunately, you're whisked away by some of the villagers who need help with their sick relative, leaving Hansol stranded in the village square. 

“You don't have to stay,” you insist to him, as you're rushed off to deal with the medical emergency. “Seriously, Hansol, you can go home. Especially if anyone starts throwing insults, then just go, okay? I'll be with you as soon as I finish.”

Hansol watches you go, head tilted, slightly amused. It's kind of cute that you think he needs protecting. You know, since he's an ancient demon, and all. But before he can say as such, there's a small voice near his knee, and he looks down to see a small child, piping up in favour of him. 

“Don't worry about Mister Fox!” the small boy chirps brightly. “We will look after him!”

And as if out of nowhere (seriously, where do these kids come from?) several children come up to him and cling to his robes, waving at you as you leave the market square. Hansol waves too, mystified by the miniature support latching onto him, but also a bit touched by their loyalty. They're really sweet. 

“So what do you wanna do, Mister Fox?” the first little boy says, and Hansol recognises him as one of the first children to come up to him a few days ago. Minjun. “Are you hungry?”

Without even waiting for Hansol's answer, Minjun and the rest of the children start ushering him to the food stalls, fiercely advocating for their choice of what Mister Fox should eat first. 

“Wait,” Hansol says, interrupting the particularly fierce fight over having hotteok or bungeoppang first. “Kids. Do you have any money?”

There's a short silence, and all the children look down, which is how he learns that they don't, and so they don't end up buying anything at all. Except, Yeowon, who joined the discussion partway through, manages to wheedle some of the stall-owners to give her free food with her big puppy eyes and innocent pout.

It’s like a magic trick, Hansol has to give her that. And when she happily tells the vendors that she’s sharing the food with Hansol, the villagers do nothing other than blink in surprise and then smile, polite and awkward, well. That’s also an incredible magic trick too. 

They sit on the outskirts of the village market, pillowed by the mounds of snow all around them as they eat their steaming hot snacks. They’re delicious, and sticky, and very sweet, so it’s not too long before Hansol has several super-hyper, sticky-fingered children on his hands, who are all practically launching themselves into the snow with the bounding amounts of energy they have.

It becomes very noisy very fast, and Hansol starts panicking slightly, before he loudly suggests they ought to go and make some snowmen, and all the children whip their heads around to look at him, wide-eyed, and then—

“That’s such a good idea!”

“Yes! Let’s do that!”

“I’m gonna make the best snowman!”

“No, me!”

“No! Me!”

And then they go tumbling off into the snow, and Hansol slumps back down, relieved. He can still see them, and he can still sense them, too, so there’s no worry in any of them getting lost. At least he can now have some peace and quiet.

Twisting his lips thoughtfully, he gathers handfuls of the white snow, turning it over. He turns it over again, and then begins patting and shaping it in his hands until he has something that resembles a little snow duck.

It’s terribly misshapen, and the beak is a bit too long to be a duck, but it’s cute, and Hansol’s pleased. He swirls his fingers in the air, and uses some magic to add finishing touches, trying to rectify the wonkiness. It doesn’t work, but he still thinks it’s cute. You’d probably find it cute, too. Right?

Probably. Hansol hums to himself contemplatively. You like everything he does. It’s very sweet, he thinks, that you’re always so receptive to him, and it’s even sweeter that you genuinely enjoy his company. You brighten like a blooming chrysanthemum, spring-like in your warmth whenever he says something to you, and it makes him feel all warm too. Ever since the first time he woke up on your couch, out of his mind with a fever, and he’d noticed your floral chrysanthemum tea scent and accidentally called you the prettiest person ever, you’ve always been so gentle and kind and oh, Hansol likes you so much.

You’re just—lovely. You’re the loveliest being he’s ever met in his entire life, and that’s saying something, because Hansol’s been alive for a really fucking long time.

“Hello.”

He’s startled out of his thoughts by a light, melodic voice coming from over his shoulder, and Hansol looks up in surprise to see a villager bent over him, warm brown eyes glinting and the corners of his lips curving upwards in a seemingly permanent smile.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump. I just saw you, and thought I’d say hi,” the villager says, smiling properly, extending a hand. “I’m Joshua. You’re the yokai, right?”

Hansol manoeuvres his body around awkwardly and shakes Joshua’s gloved hand. “I’m Hansol, and yeah, I am the yokai. How could you tell?” His ears flick pointedly as he talks, and Joshua’s eyes immediately go to them before he smiles wider.

“Yeah, I guess it was a silly question,” Joshua says, and his fur boots crunch in the snow as he climbs over a mound and crouches down next to Hansol. “But I don’t wanna seem impolite, you know?”

Hansol shrugs, but he understands. “Yeah. I get it.”

Joshua smiles.

They say nothing for a moment, and Hansol lifts his head up briefly to check on the children. He can still see all of them, actually, dotted about the edges of the market as they build their snowmen. He watches them thoughtfully, and then down at the snow at his feet.

It only takes a moment for a snowman of his own to begin to form, aided by his magic as the snowballs roll themselves to become bigger and more round.

“That’s really cool,” Joshua comments, and Hansol had almost forgotten he was there. He’s so quiet, feather-silent, but when he catches Hansol’s eye and smiles, there’s a twinkle to his presence that makes him wonder how he could have ever forgotten him. “I’ve never seen anyone other than Y/N be able to do that.”

“Hm?” Hansol looks at the snowman that’s slowly being built. “Oh, well, it’s nothing, really.”

Even as he says so, his tail fluffs up in pride at Joshua’s words, and he begins adding more and more intricate frost details to the snowman. The feathery patterns wind through the body of his creation, like embroidery, and Joshua whistles, amazed.

“It’s very cool. Your magic is very cool.”

Hansol shrugs, bashful. “Thank you. But really, it’s nothing.” As the snowman continues to construct itself, he leans over to Joshua as if confiding a secret. “In the wild, there are yokai who can create literal monsters out of ice. In about five seconds flat. But I mostly just deal with frost and snow, so it’s a lot more difficult for me.”

Joshua tilts his head, genuine interest written all over his face. “Oh. I didn’t know there were differences in yokai magic.”

“Of course there are,” Hansol says, like it’s obvious. “Like there are differences in humans’ skills, there are differences for yokai, too. We are not unlike you, you know.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Joshua says thoughtfully. And then he looks Hansol in the eye again, smiling. Joshua is honestly so friendly, and even though they only met two minutes ago, he feels like he’s known him for years. “So you won’t object to being friends with a human, right?”

Hansol blinks, surprised, and Joshua’s smile just widens. It’s obvious what he’s asking, and Hansol feels… touched, that he’d even suggest such a thing.

“Yeah,” Hansol says, and his magic finishes off the snowman with an intricate flourish of frost. “I’d love to be your friend.”

“Joshua!”

The calling of the human’s name makes both Joshua and Hansol turn around, and they see one of the elder villagers coming over to them, the skirts of her robes swishing as she walks. She’s terribly intimidating, greying hair pulled back into a bun with a pointy hair stick, marching over with incredible grace even through the ankle-deep snow that has gathered. She squints at the yokai and how close Joshua is sitting to him. 

“Mrs Choi,” Joshua greets, apparently oblivious to the sharpness of the woman’s gaze. “Hello. It’s very cold today, isn’t it?”

She eyeballs Hansol for a moment before nodding at Joshua. “Very. Frightful weather, but at least the children are enjoying the snow.” Mrs Choi lifts her gaze and squints into the distance, where the children are playing. “I hope someone is supervising them.”

“Oh, well, Hansol is, so don’t worry about it,” Joshua says with a smile. 

Mrs Choi snaps her gaze back to them. “Is he really?” Hansol nods, doing his best to look as earnest and trustworthy as possible, and she hums. “I see.”

“He has them doing a snowman competition, actually,” Joshua says. “He’s very good at making them himself, too. Look. Don’t you think his creation looks amazing?”

He points to the snowman in front of them, glistening with frost and embroidered with thin ice, clearly a work of his magic. Hansol swallows, expecting Mrs Choi to fly into a tizzy over the presence of such witchcraft, but she just scrutinises the snowman, and then—

She smiles.

“It’s very pretty,” she says, and in the blink of an eye, her expression has turned warm. She’s smiling so nicely at Hansol, and then she leans down and brushes a hand over the top of his head, gently dusting away the snow that had landed in his hair. “Just like you, my dear.”

Hansol blinks up at her, open-mouthed. “I— thank you, ma’am.”

She chuckles, straightens, adjusts the skirt of her robes. “No need to thank me. I’m simply telling the truth.” Mrs Choi nods in the direction of the children, before turning away. “Thank you for taking care of the children, also. Keep up the good work.”

Hansol watches her go, feeling a little dazed. She had looked so sharp and stern at first, but something about him sitting there harmlessly and making a harmless snowman with harmless snow gathered in his hair must have done something to convince her that he’s, well, harmless. Which is good. Very good. Hopefully she’ll let everyone else know, too.

“Yeah, she looks scary, but Mrs Choi is anything but,” Joshua says with a laugh, when Hansol directs his wide-eyed gaze to him.

“She’s terrifying.”

“Her son takes after her,” Joshua chuckles. “Choi Seungcheol. He looks scary, but he’s a right softie on the inside, trust me.”

Hansol’s eyes widen further. “She’s Seungcheol’s mother? The village leader?”

“The one and only,” Joshua affirms. He laughs. “Don’t worry about him. His own mother found you cute. I’m sure he’ll be won over by you in no time. Especially if you keep making snowmen that rival Y/N’s in their intricacy. Seriously, I think yours are the best I’ve ever seen.”

“Shua, I hope I didn't just hear you dissing my amazing snowman building skills.”

Hansol looks up at your voice, and sees you slowly treading over to them, a drawstring bag dangling over your shoulder as you pick your way through the snow. The tip of your nose is red from the cold, cheeks a pretty pink with an amused smile on your face, and the moment he sees you, it’s like you’ve stolen his breath away.

Whilst Hansol’s too busy being starstruck, Joshua laughs, leaning back on his hands.

“So what if I was?” he teases, and nods to Hansol’s snowman. “Doesn’t it look amazing?”

You look away, directing your gaze to the snowman. Humming thoughtfully, you eye Hansol’s creation, and he begins to grow a little nervous under your critical silence, fiddling with his fingers and digging them into the snow, wisps of cold air seeping from his skin.

And then you smile, a lopsided smirk that makes Hansol feel a little dizzy.

“I can certainly do better.”

Before he can say anything, you set down your bag, and with a flick of your wrist the snow begins to swirl and gather itself before you. Under your command, golden streaks of magic begin to press the snow together, creating larger shapes that you obviously plan to sculpt into a showstopping piece.

You look almost relaxed in your movements, the entire process taking nothing more than a slight twitch of your fingers as magic sparks zip around the sculpture that’s gradually beginning to form. Hansol can only watch in awe, amazed at the fluidity and effortlessness of your power. By his side, he thinks he hears Joshua chuckle softly.

After a few short moments, the three of you are staring at a large, smoothly finished sculpture of a winter fox, and you smile and cross your arms, satisfied.

“What do you think?” you say, smug, confident in your belief that you’ve proved yourself.

Hansol’s jaw is on the floor. Delicate pointy ears, a fluffy-looking tail all made out of snow, and wow, are those whiskers? Did you really make whiskers?

“Wow,” is all he can say, staring at this lifelike fox that’s made entirely out of snow. “Wow.”

Just then, there are high-pitched exclamations from somewhere in the distance, and the children that Hansol’s been supervising come bounding over, shouting in amazement at the fox that you’ve made. 

“Hi, kids,” you say when they’re close enough, laughing when Yeowon barrels into your legs to give you a hug. “Quick question, which snow sculpture do you think is better? The fox, or the Frosty the Snowman?”

They all look very thoughtfully at the two snow pieces in front of them, before unanimously pointing to your creation, and you grin triumphantly at Joshua and Hansol. Hansol just smiles back, totally expecting such an outcome. You’d beat him any day when it comes to stuff like this, and he’s totally fine with that.

“That’s not even a snowman,” Joshua protests, but it’s clear he’s arguing just for the fun of it. “Y/N, that’s not a fair competition.”

You shrug flippantly. “I’d win anyway.” And then you wink, pleased, and Hansol feels like burying himself in the snow just to try and get rid of his red cheeks.

“Mister Fox, we wanna play with you now,” Minjun says, and he looks up to see the children standing around him, red-cheeked and damp-haired but still eager to play more. “Can we play a game with you?”

“It’s getting late,” Hansol tries to say, but apparently, that had been a rhetorical question, because they’re hauling him up to his feet so they can play with him. “The market’s already closing. Shouldn’t you all go back to your parents now? Joshua? Y/N?” He looks back pleadingly as he gets dragged away, and you and Joshua just laugh, waving him goodbye.

“Have a nice time!” Joshua calls, standing up from the snow and brushing down his clothes. He stands closer to you, smiling as you both watch him begin to play. “He’s good with them, isn’t he?”

You smile too. “He really is.”

“The best,” another voice adds, and you look over your shoulder to see some of the villagers also watching Hansol. They’re all the parents, and yet they seem perfectly content to let their children play around with the yokai, any trace of hostility gone from their faces. 

That makes you smile wider. “I’m glad you think so, Mrs Lee,” you say, and the woman smiles back. “Don’t worry. He’ll keep your children safe.”

Mrs Lee bows her head in acknowledgement, eyes turning soft as you all watch Hansol let the children punt tiny clumps of snow at him. “We know.”

They stay with you for a little longer, chatting about Hansol’s gentle nature and how wonderfully he gets along with the children, before eventually they disperse and begin packing up the market for the day. Next to you, Joshua is also smiling, looking fond, which is really weird because he barely knows Hansol but there’s definitely a clear look of admiration and affection in his face. Before you can comment on it, though, he pats you on the shoulder, and begins to step away.

 “I better go,” he says. “Cheol’s coming your way. I think he wants a talk.”

He bids you goodbye then trudges back through the snow, and you look over your shoulder to see that Seungcheol really is coming your way. Instead of greeting him, however, you look back out at Hansol, and wait until the village leader is by your side.

“Hello, Y/N.”

“Hello, Seungcheol.”

You don’t offer him anything else, and so the two of you stand there in silence, continuing to watch Hansol play with the children. It is an adorable sight, though, and makes the corners of your lips twitch upwards the longer the silence goes on. He’s totally lenient with them, letting them pull his tail and ambush him with damp gloves and shrieking laughter. His head whips back and forth constantly between the two sides of kids that have inexplicably formed, somehow finding himself in the crossfire as snowballs get flung around him.

It’s cute, and it makes you laugh, heart warming with fondness. You can feel Seungcheol watching you out of the corner of your eye, and when it’s clear he’s not going to say anything until you do, you sigh and turn your back on Hansol at last, raising an eyebrow.

“Well?” you prompt. “What’s up? You didn’t come find me just to say hello.”

Seungcheol pauses, and looks down. “No. I didn’t.” A beat. “My mother actually told me you were here.”

“Okay. And?”

“She talked to Hansol,” he says, and both your eyebrows raise this time, in surprise. “She said to me that she liked him, and she wanted me to open my eyes and finally realise how much of a good person he is.”

Seungcheol clasps his hands behind his back, rocking on his heels. He looks over your shoulder, at where Hansol is undoubtedly doing something silly to entertain the children, and his eyes go gentle. They don’t soften, and they certainly don’t melt, but his gaze becomes a little more mellow, like a layer of hardness has finally given way.

“And he is a good person,” Seungcheol says, looking at you again. “I’ve been watching him all day. All week, in fact, and even if my mother hadn’t said anything, I would’ve sought you out to tell you this, because I think I owe you an apology.”

You breathe a laugh. “You certainly do,” you say, but there’s no real bite. Seungcheol’s actions were understandable. You’ve already forgiven him.

Seungcheol seems to know that too, because his lips quirk up into a half-smile. Nevertheless, his words are genuine when he says, “I’m sorry. I was too rash, and too harsh. Any worries I had over yokai did not excuse the way I talked about Hansol. Do you think you can also tell him how sorry I am?”

You draw in a long breath, cross your arms and lean back, staring down your nose at Seungcheol. His smile wavers, a little, but then you relax, breaking out into a grin.

“You can tell him yourself. He’d love to talk to you,” you say, and Seungcheol smiles too. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. You’re just looking out for the village, like you always do. But…” You shrug. “I was looking out for my kind, also. I was frustrated that you were treating Hansol like that just because he was a yokai.”

Seungcheol breathes out, wisps of white spilling from his lips. “I get that. It makes sense that you felt that way.” His eyes lighten with mischief suddenly, his smile taking on a teasing edge. “Especially considering the fact you’re in love with him, too.”

The world grinds to a halt. You stumble, taken aback by Seungcheol’s words. “I’m sorry, what?”

Nothing else gets to be said about the matter, though, because a small child goes zooming past you right at that moment, brushing against your side. And then, half a millisecond later, a fat clump of snow hits you square in the back.

The child continues running off, bubbling laughter fading into the market square. Slowly, very slowly, you spin on your heel and come face-to-face with the culprit.

Hansol’s still frozen in his throw position, one hand incriminatingly covered with snow. The moment he sees your face, his face breaks into a wide grin, that beautiful, big grin that shows the slight point of his yokai fangs. His eyes are glowing, alight with amusement and another, warmer emotion you can’t quite name.

He tilts his head to the side, eyeing the snow gently tumbling down your back. “Whoops?”

“Whoops?” you echo, breathing a laugh. You look at Seungcheol, as if saying Can you believe this guy? before turning back to Hansol, a handful of snow magically making its way into your hands. “Oh, you’re going to be saying a lot more than ‘Whoops’ in a minute.”

Hansol laughs, holding his hands up placatingly. “Now hold on a minute—”

Abruptly, his head jerks back, and he gets knocked off his center of balance by the force of the snowball you’d just lobbed at him.

You burst into laughter as Hansol, sitting on the ground and with snow in his hair and up his nose, wipes his eyes with a grin. “Now you’re just asking for it, I think.”

Still laughing, you snap your fingers, and several more balls of snow float up around you. “Oh, it’s on.”

Cut to several minutes later, and somehow, the snowball fight between the two of you has devolved into a village-wide thing, children slipping and sliding in the snow alongside their parents as Seungcheol yells at his team to close ranks and you yell at yours to focus their sights on Hansol. The icy air stings your cheeks, and at some point it begins to snow again, hard, blurring your sight, but the whole thing still continues, the square filled with the laughter of the villagers.

And throughout it all, Hansol manages to find your gaze no matter where he is, gold eyes seeking your gold magic, and the beautiful sound of his laughter leaves you breathless every time.

───────────── ‘✽, 

All things considered, perhaps it’s totally expected that you end up falling for Hansol.

You don’t get to truly mull over Seungcheol’s last words until much later, when you and Hansol have both changed out of your sopping wet clothes and are sitting curled up together on the sofa, both of you blinking sleepily at the fire you’ve lit in the fireplace.

The snowball fight ended incredibly amiably, with everyone agreeing that Seungcheol’s team had obliterated everyone else’s, despite the lack of magic users in his group. You’d helped some of the villagers dust themselves off, and used magic to dry off the people who had gotten the most wet. Soonyoung, inexplicably, looked like he’d been dunked five times in a swimming pool, rather than emerging victorious from a snowball fight.

Finishing with Soonyoung, you’d looked back, and of course—Hansol was playing with the children, again, as if he had endless reserves of energy to spare. But in between letting the kids climb his legs and play with  his swishing tail, he was chatting with the rest of the villagers, helping them tidy away their things.

It made you smile. 

And then Hansol had looked back at you, as if sensing your gaze, and his entire face had lit up, brighter than the brightest summer’s day, and he’d quickly said goodbye to the villagers before coming bounding over to you, face so open and comfortable and warm and—

Yeah. You like him a lot. And you’re sure that he likes you a lot too.

Hansol yawns, big and wide and content, his tail flicking lazily as he rests on your shoulder. Outside, the snowfall has increased to a snowstorm, complete with howling winds and dark, looming clouds, but inside, your cottage is warm, and you have a sleepy yokai pressed against your side, and life is, admittedly, kind of perfect.

There’s just one thing, though.

You need to tell him.

Lost in thought, you shift around absentmindedly, and Hansol looks up questioningly at the movement. The warmth of your magic prickles softly in the air around you, and when he takes your hand, you can feel his own magic murmuring softly in tandem with your own. 

He continues to look at you, and then smiles, eyes glowing. Goodness, he really is so pretty.

“I like you,” you whisper, the words falling from your lips as if he’s enchanted you, bewitched you into saying how you truly feel for all to see. “I like you, Hansol.”

Hansol blinks, slow, cat-like. He lifts his head up, pulls away slightly from your shoulder so he can sit up and look at you properly. His eyes are shining, slitted pupils widening and rounding in adoration.

“That’s good,” he says. “Because I think you’re the prettiest person alive.”

It’s almost a direct copy of the first words he’d said to you, almost a lifetime ago, when he had been out of his mind with a fever, red-cheeked and hazy-eyed and fixated on the way you smelled like chrysanthemums. The memory makes you laugh, heart squeezing with fondness, and you reach forward to cup Hansol’s cheeks, smiling wider when his eyes flutter shut briefly and he leans trustingly into your touch.

“That’s funny,” you say. “Because I think you’re the prettiest person alive.”

Hansol’s eyes crinkle as he smiles, showing those yokai fangs that you adore so much. His ears twitch with happiness, light speckles of frost covering his cheeks as he blushes. He’s so pretty, and you love him so much.

Slowly, you inch closer until the tip of his nose brushes against yours. So close that you can count the snowflake-shaped freckles on his cheeks.

“You forgot to say it back, though,” you murmur. “Hansol, you didn’t say you like me back.”

Hansol breathes a soft laugh. “I thought it was obvious.” His smile widens, so enamoured that it warms your heart. “Y/N, I like you too. In fact, I think I’m in love with you.”

You beam. “You know what? I think I’m in love with you too.”

And then you lean forward, and Hansol leans in too, and your lips meet in the softest, sweetest kiss. He tastes like magic, like love, like soft snow that numbs your senses but leaves your heart alive and alight and oh, this is everything you never knew you needed and more.

Hansol’s silver-white hair is falling into his eyes when you pull away, his golden irises shining brightly through them like dazzling, gorgeous sunlight peeking through the translucent colours of snowfall. The sight makes you instantly lean in to kiss him again, dizzy with adoration because goodness, this happiness is for you. He looks like this because he loves you.

And you love him too.

fics tags: @jeonginssa @weird-bookworm @minhui896 @slytherinshua @haowrld @belladaises @moonlitskiiies @mirxzii @zozojella @kawennote09 @a-wandering-stay @abibliolife @doublasting @wonranghaeee @icyminghao @sweet-like-caramel @your-yxnnie @odxrilove @kyeomyun @crackedpumpkin @jeonride @kellesvt @eightlightstar @onlyyjeonghan @aaniag @starshuas @raevyng @isabellah29 @hrts4hanniehae @mcu-incorrect @dokyeomkyeom @suraandsugar @haodore @tulsa24 @melodicrabbit

[rex-rambles]

➤ THIS COULD BE LOVE | MAX VERSTAPPEN

pairing: max verstappen x not!soulmate(?)reader

request: more soulmate aus?

summary: when you and max meet in the middle of a monaco night, max doesn't want to believe in soulmates. he wants to believe in something real. 

wc: 7.7 k

warnings: angst with a happy ending! some suggestive content (not explicit), villainization of jos verstappen and reference to poor childhoods and past injury

➤ MASTERLIST - OSCAR'S SOULMATE STORY

When you and Max meet in the middle of the night, it's the sort of serendipity that makes Max believe less in the universe. He'd lost his faith in it in his childhood, of fate, of something set, of something magical, of soulmates. His parents were soulmates, anyway, and he knew how well that story went. He knew all the tales of those who gave up dreams and aspirations for magical nudges from something greater, none of which he found convincing compared to the reality of the world, the hard concrete ground of the racing track, and the voice of his father. 

Soulmates were just another distraction in a world full of them. To pursue your dreams, to want something bigger, you couldn't believe in fairytales fed to you by the delusional. It didn't stop Max's 18th birthday from rolling around anyway, waiting with baited breath for some sign, some magic name on the inside of his wrist, anything. It took a few days for his soul mark to be spotted on the back of his right shoulder, over his shoulder blade. It took a few days after that for Jos to notice and to continue his rants on the distractions of love in the path of greatness. 

After that, after everything his father put him through, everything Max did to earn his love, he stopped caring about soulmates. He'd meet the love of his life someday, surely, even with his soul mark bandaged, hidden from flashing cameras. It was through his fame Max realized how right his father was, of those attempting anything to copy his soulmate to pretend to be his love, a warning straight out of whatever textbook his father used to learn how to raise his children. If it was still in publication, Max was pretty sure he'd pay good money to have every copy burned. Soulmates, magical connections, they were just another distraction. He didn't want someone loving him because of a mark, because of how fast he went around a track and how much money he made, he wanted something real. Someone to look at him and think that he was meant to be theirs for no other reason than Max himself. 

It didn't stop the whole thing from getting to Max every so often, when someone close to him found their supposed one true love, when it made the headlines. Tonight, it was some bartender seeing colour for the first time, their soulmate a patron. The whole bar exploded with drunken excitement for them, forcing Max out into the night air because there were some things even a man as strong as him couldn't stand. 

"-and don't fucking follow me!" A man calls, slamming the door to a cab as it rips off into the hot Monaco night, and Max finds that the words are not directed at him, but rather you, sitting on the curb, looking entirely unenthused. 

Without thinking much of it, Max finds his place beside you. "Trouble in paradise?" He finds himself saying, scrubbing his hands over his face. Just because people were soulmates didn't mean it mattered, didn't mean it would last, didn't make both parties nice. 

"I wish," You breath out softly, "They're not my soulmate. Just a date." 

"A date?" Max echoes, sparing a glance your way. In the mixture of moonlight and streetlights, there's a sort of warmth from you that has Max wonder why you'd go on a date with someone who isn't your soulmate, even if he understands it perfectly well. 

"Surprising, isn't it?" You muse, sparing a glance up at the night sky. "Dating someone who isn't your soulmate, how terrible." 

"No, no." Max is quick to correct. "I understand." 

And then, in the middle of the heated Monaco night, you lock eyes with him for the first time, and if it were meant to be something, Max would feel something. Instead, he takes in someone pretty, warm from the night, flushed softly, probably from the drinks at the bar. He takes in someone who went on a date without their soulmate, and he feels a little bit less alone in this strange, awful world. Your eyes are slow to part from his, only breaking his stare when a car drives by too fast. "My soulmate passed away, I think." You admit quietly, almost hidden under the dragging noise of the car as it passes. "It's not worth being alone the rest of your life because you missed out on the perfect match. I'll settle for second best." Then, with a soft laugh, "Third, even." 

"I have a soulmate." Max says, and you turn to look at him again, that softness slowly slipping away. "And I don't want them. Don't know who they are." 

"So you're leaving some poor soul all alone for nothing?" Max shakes his head, trying not to think of whatever 'poor soul' matches with him. It was always a selfish thing to try and explain, but that was how Max was raised to think, and some habits die hard. 

"I want someone to want me for me." He says then, the words so often unspoken. He'd rarely talked about this to any of his teammates, and to admit it to a stranger somehow felt better. Your soulmate had passed; there was no threat of a matching symbol. You would just understand what it was like to be alone, to be othered and date anyway. "Not because I'm supposed to be a soulmate, or for some random choice that we don't even understand. For no real reason." 

You don't answer immediately, just staring at him intently, before you nod slowly. "You want someone to fall in love with you for the sake of loving you." 

"I don't want to hurt my 'soulmate' in the process," He says with air quotes, "But them loving me for a mark is just not what I want, in the end." He doesn't tell you about how he also doesn't want someone to fall in love with him for the fame, and he realizes only in this moment, it's because you could fall in love with him. 

For him. 

Your soulmate had passed, you were already going on dates. You could get to know him for no other reason than to know him, and he could make it work. The warmth he gets when he looks at you isn't magical: it's something realistic. "And how has that gone so far?" 

"Haven't got a single date." Max jokes, but it's the truth. No one wants to date a random stranger when their soulmate might be out there. "For obvious reasons. And you?" 

"They don't last." You say quietly, "Like I'm a stepping stone before they find who they want." Then, because that's not the kind of thing to admit to a stranger, you duck your head with a soft blush, and Max scoots closer, leaning to nudge his shoulder with yours. 

"You're the finish line for someone out there." He says, an unfortunate race reference he doesn't think about until later. 

"Thought you didn't believe in soulmates," You answer back softly, rocking your shoulder into his, and Max finds himself grinning down at you. 

He didn't believe in soulmates, he believed in this. Real connection, with real people, no magical, mystical interference necessary. "Didn't say that person had to be your soulmate. Could be anyone." His eyes flicker down your dress, stuck on the open back of it, the perfect curve of your spine, and he has to take a slow breath. "Some stranger on the street." 

You turn to look at Max with something so close to hope that he can't think too much about it, or he'll start to fall sooner than he can prepare for the landing. He just wants proof that he can love, and be loved, without needing a soulmate or matching mark. He doesn't need you to be the answer to all of his problems; he just wants a chance. "You're really sweet." You say, that look of hope flickering, "But I'm only here a week." 

"And?" He rises off the curb and extends a hand to help you up. "Doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves while you're here." 

"You're not a tourist?" Your hand slips into his, and if you were his soulmate, if they were real, it would be something magical. Every story has the first touch being something so important, the final connection of a soul bond, but when your soft skin glides against his, nothing remotely fantastical happens, and Max loves it all the more for it. 

"I'm a veterinarian here," He answers, the first fake profession he could think of as he helps you up. Might make the fact that he owns three cats more normal. He lets your hand drop, a terrible thing, and he gestures for you to follow him on the sidewalk. "I can take you for a midnight tour of Monaco if you like?" 

"You know, this is typically how people end up kidnapped or dead, or something." Without much thinking, Max pulls his wallet from his pocket and hands it to you, and you blink up at him. "What?" 

"If I was going to do something to you, why would I give you my wallet? It's got all my identification in there." You open the wallet, staring down at his driver's licence and flipping through the few cards he keeps in there, more out of curiosity, he thinks, than scrutiny. 

You spare a glance up at him, folding the wallet up and tucking it into your purse. "Now it feels like I'm robbing you, Max." 

"Well, I'd rather you take advantage of me than the other way around." You saying his name trips him up in a way he didn't expect, sounding so nice in your voice. It's just Max, he knows, but still. 

It does something to his heart that he didn't realize it could do. "You're one of the strangest people I've ever met." 

"Welcome to Monaco?" You laugh, another beautiful sound that has Max realizing he's more screwed than humanly possible. A week, he tries to remind himself, but with you by his side in that dress, it's hard to think of anything but the present. 

-

You're not sure how you end up on the beach with Max, heels in hand, but it's a pleasant change of pace. If it hadn't already screwed you over, you'd say it's fate, to be here with him, but that wasn't possible. Not when whoever bore your matching soul mark had faded out, or at least the soulmark had, splotchy and scratched out in a way you could only imagine meant death. 

It had happened so young, too, that it had never felt like you were able to pursue love or a soulmate seriously. Sure, there were online groups for widows, though you didn't consider yourself really a widow at this age. So, instead, you focused on all the other great things in your life, hoping for that miracle to come someday, and currently, it was in the form of a Dutch veterinarian in Monaco. 

Not how you expected your night to go. "They're named after clubs?" 

"Jimmy and Sassy are, but Donatello is not." Max answers very seriously, sparing a small grin your way, and you try to think what kind of experience he must have gone through to not want his soulmate, to want love from anyone, just for being him. You understand the thought of not wanting someone to just automatically stick with you for the sake of being a soulmate, but Max had so much to offer. You kept trying to find faults, but all you found were cats and a sweet tooth. "What would you have named them?" 

"Three cats? You should give them all names with the same first letter, like Jessica, James, and John." A laugh bubbles out of Max at the suggestion, a bright thing that has you blushing, luckily hidden in the dim light of Monaco's nights. 

"I am not naming a cat Jessica. Or James." 

"But John works?" You tease, stopping to stare up at a crystal clear night that, even with the light pollution, reveals a sky littered with stars. Max comes to stop at your side, saying nothing for a moment as the two of you just stare out into the night, and your hand brushes his. 

It shouldn't be this electrifying. Shouldn't be something so intense from a stranger, some truly random man you met in the night, but it was the sort of adventure you wouldn't mind pursuing. You only had a week here, but maybe you wouldn't mind spending that week with Max. "For the right cat," Max finally continues, still happily enthralled with the cat conversation, "John would work." 

"Do you think the water would be nice?" You ask, stepping closer to the shore. The water barely reaches your toes, and without much consideration for his pants, Max pulls his shoes and socks off, and wades in shin-deep. You laugh, watching him practically stomp around, and there's an evil glint in his eye that has him charging at you. You don't even try to run, letting him grab you by the waist and haul you into the water, spinning you around and sending water flying around with it. Your hands brace against his shoulders, and for working with so many different animals, he'd have to be strong for that, surely. 

Or maybe he just likes to work out in his free time, your hands smoothing against his biceps as he sets you down into the water, a pleasant thought you tuck away for later. "Does that answer your question?" 

"You are ridiculous." Then, you realize Max hadn't let go of your waist, and you hadn't let go of his arms, wrapped up together and standing in the water like it was normal. 

Because it could be. 

This could be your future, if you really think of it. Love was something worth pursuing, even if it wasn't the perfect match set out for you from the universe. You had spent so long mourning your soulmate you hadn't stopped to realize that maybe, just maybe, there were other people out there for you. 

That there could be a Max, after it all. And you could kiss him, if you wanted, looking up at him in the moonlit night, on a random beach, but fear stirs in your stomach too quickly to let you. There was little evidence this could ever be more than a pleasant night, that it would last, and Max notices your hesitation, very gently letting your waist go. "We, uh, don't have towels." You say, trying to direct the conversation away from your spiralling thoughts. "We're going to have wet feet." 

"Well, I might have wet feet." Max makes his way back to his shoes, using his socks to wipe off his feet before putting his sneakers on, and then he finds you at the edge of the shore, and holds out his arms. "But I could carry you?" 

"Carry me?" You echo, blush rising to your cheeks, and you realize Max is waiting for permission. "I mean, I might be heavy, I-" 

"Oh, heavy!" Max then proceeds to scoop you up, bridal style, like it's nothing. He marches up to where the beach meets a cobblestone road, and gently sets you on the low stone fence seperating the two. 

And then, like it's normal, like it's something people do, he squats down without a word and helps put your heels on, a Cinderella moment that has you considering if maybe he really was your long-lost soulmate. 

You'd never asked what his trait was, never got to see what it could be. Maybe you had matching, scratched-out marks. Maybe he got into an accident that damaged it. Maybe, by the way he's looking up at you, it didn't matter. "What brings you to Monaco?"  Max continues, as if he didn't just do the sweetest thing anyone has for you in a long, long time. 

"A break from it all." Max leads you down the street toward your hotel, and you don't want the night to end, both for your enjoyment, and the concern that it all might be over tomorrow.

Max doesn't realize you'd stopped infront of your hotel, sparing a glance to your side and then doing a small spin to face you again, lopsided smile revealed in the streetlight above him. "You should come back," He says, coming to lean on the wall of the hotel beside you. "I'm not sure I can show you all you need to see in just a week." 

"I might need more convincing than that." You joke, and Max smiles down at you, a sight that has your stomach flipping, and this time, before you let your emotions truly get in the way, you lean up on the tips of your toes and press a quick, chaste kiss to his cheek. "Thank you for all this, Max. It really means a lot." 

Max's hand hovers over his cheek, shock plain on his face from the kiss, and you're worried you've overstepped before he's blushing deeply, a perfect pink colour picked up in the lights of the hotel. It's a view you could get used to. "Oh," He breathes out softly, a small, giddy smile breaking out across his face. "You're most certainly welcome."

You take a step up the hotel stairs and Max calls after you, making you pause above him, and he stuffs his hands in his pockets, as if some kind of non-chalant defense for whatever he's about to say next.

"Think I could convince you to give me your number?" You half-heartedly roll your eyes, coming back down the stairs to put your number in his phone. You send off a test text, and you hope it's enough to make him want you tomorrow, because the more time you spend with him, the more you try not to get your hopes up. 

He's not your soulmate, and this isn't fate, but god, do you want it to be. 

You move back up the stairs and step into the hotel, leaving the door open to look back at Max, and you know you can't invite him up, can't jump through that many stages yet, and Max respectfully waits on the sidewalk, that stupid smile still on his face. "Goodnight, Max." 

"Goodnight," He says, along with some word in what you assume to be Dutch. You try to figure out what he possibly could have said when Max waves a hand, ushering you toward the elevator. "Forget it, it's Dutch. Go get some sleep." 

It's only when you get to your room do you realize you still have his wallet.

-

Max awakes to the sound of his phone buzzing. Glancing at the screen, since he came home and crashed, he's missed a handful of texts.

unknown 

hey! i still have your wallet

Then, about half an hour later, 

unknown

I really needed that tonight, thank you 

Maybe you can give me a tour sometime?

 

Then, this morning, 

unknown

me again, if this is the wrong number, can you let me know?

Glancing at the time, Max realizes he's slept in until noon. With a curse, he drags himself out of bed and quickly tries to type out a response that doesn't make him seem like a degenerate. 

max 

sorry, I passed out after I got home 

not used to staying out that late 

i could give you that tour in return for the wallet today? 

Your answer is almost instantaneous. 

unknown

that sounds wonderful 

sorry for keeping you up late

max

it was worth it

unknown 

I'm on a run currently, do you want me to pick you up some breakfast to start our tour?

max

you are perfect

and waffles?

And it was the start of something perfect. 

Without really putting too much thought into it, partially because it's early, partially because if he does, he'll start to crack into a million little pieces, he sends his address, and spends the next twenty minutes furiously cleaning everything he can. It's only once there's a knock on his door and he answers that he realizes he hasn't changed out of his pyjamas, left standing before you in an oversized t-shirt and boxers.

Somehow, though, it's not quite embarrassing. You just smile up at him, shaking your head with your arms full of take out boxes, his wallet balanced on top. "Give me a minute, and I'll get changed." He says, taking the boxes from you and setting them down on the counter, and you take in his space, almost presentable now with his frantic tidying. 

He disappears into his bedroom, trying not to think too hard about whatever outfit he throws together, something nice and casual, nothing to get him noticed in the streets. Considering you had his wallet, and knew his name, there's a chance you might have searched him, which ruins the whole fame aspect of this, but for some reason, he has faith. 

He steps back out to the kitchen to find you sitting on the ground, Donatello in your lap, and Max has to pause to take in the moment. It's so deeply domestic, of you curled up with his cats, boxes of waffles left open on the counter above you. He couldn't remember the last time he shared breakfast with someone outside of work, let someone into his space, like it was normal.

If he had his phone on him, he'd take a photo to remember the moment, but then you're looking up at him and smiling, and the memory will be better than any photo could be. "Who's this one?" 

"Donatello, or Donut." Max moves to the counter and gathers up the boxes of waffles and watches you struggle to pick Donatello up to join him, but the cat just lets you awkwardly cradle it like a baby. "He likes you," Max admits as he falls onto his couch and promptly tears into one of the boxes of chocolate waffles. "He doesn't let me hold him like that." 

"You're a vet!" You exclaim, coming to sit beside him, like this was normal, like you had always shared mornings, like it was meant to be, even if it never was. "Shouldn't you be an expert at this stuff?" 

"It's not about me, it's about the animal." He extends his arms to try and take Donatello, who leaps off his lap and disappears somewhere into the house. "See?" 

"Maybe that's what you get for naming him Donatello." You take one of the boxes, cutting up some crepe thing with a plastic knife and fork as Max takes his first bites of food. "Are you a car guy?" 

Max's heart stutters in his chest before you gesture to his shelf, where some replica cars and car books stand out, glaringly obvious. "Oh, yeah. My dad's a big racing fan. Do you know anything about cars?" 

"Not really, no." You answer truthfully, taking a bite. He waits for you to finish eating to continue asking questions, but then you're gesturing to his waffles. "Are they any good?" 

"Want a piece?" Without another word, you cut some crepe and give it to him as he offers up a piece of the waffle, trading like it's nothing, and Max finds that he doesn't really care if you figure out who he is, because so far, you've treated him perfectly normal. You're curled up on the couch, by his side, trading pieces of fruit and breakfast, an unspoken thing that you do the entire morning. 

When he slowly extends an arm over the back of the couch, letting you lean into him, you do, and you talk about the night before like it's nothing. 

Because it was nothing. It wasn't some big, meaningful thing, some soulmate bond, it was just you and him. You don't ask to see his soul mark, and he doesn't ask to see yours. You just sit in each other's company, laughing over the cats being idiots, and Max unfortunately realizes that he could really, really get used to this. 

A week wouldn't be long enough, so mentally, he decides to pull out every stop. Yachts, restaurants, hikes, anything that might convince you to stay, or at least stay with him. 

Anything to convince Max that something like this could last, and that it could be love. 

-

"What's your favourite colour?" You ask Max, taking your time as you wander through the Japanese-style garden he'd brought you to. For a veterinarian, he somehow had access to some of the best places in Monaco, apparently due to all the wealthy people whose pets are his patients. 

"Blue, I think." Max answers absent-mindedly, stopping to study a bush of flowers intently. "Here, come look." 

"What did you say in Dutch, the other day? Sounded like cat something." You join Max's side to see a butterfly perfectly perched on a flower, and distracted, you don't see how red Max gets at your question. 

"Nothing," He repeats softly, his hand gently brushing against yours. Without much thought, you link your fingers together, and walk the rest of the garden like that. "Just means good night." 

-

You are currently lounging on Max's yacht in a blue one-piece bathing suit, and Max has never struggled to look at a person more. It's sort of the opposite, really, that he wants to stare at you, to keep looking at the way your curves lay out perfectly on the blanket he provided, that you might have bought that suit for him, because it's his favourite colour. 

"You know," Max says before he can stop himself, "Wearing a blue bathing suit can be dangerous. You might not be spotted in the water." 

"What?" You say, rolling over to look at him, and Max has to stare intently down at the book he's trying to read to not look in your direction. "But I've worn this for years, no one ever said anything." 

I've worn this for years. 

His shade of blue, like it was meant to be, but it wasn't, because this was just something real, something two people could share without anything else influencing it. "I can take you shopping for something brighter? Just in case." 

"You just want to see me try on bathing suits, that's what this is." You tease, and Max flushes red. Then, to his surprise, you rise, coming to sit on the end of his lounger in the shade, and he ever so carefully looks up, so that he only looks at your face. "Do you need any sunscreen? You're getting pretty red." 

"It's not the sun." Max blurts, before quickly trying to return to his book. Then, your hand comes to pull the book down from his face, and the joy in your expression is something evil. 

"You really do like blue, hm?" Max tosses his book to the side, uncaring where it lands before he's picking you up. "Wait, Max, Max! Not the water, not the water!" 

"Perfect day for a swim, no?" He teases, and you smack his chest. 

"I thought you said people couldn't see me if I was in blue." You do have a point there. Without letting you go, Max settles back into his lounger, you in his lap, and without needing any instructions, you happily bury your face into the crook of his neck, letting Max hold you there. 

At some point, your breathing evens out, and in the only chance Max has, he gently presses a kiss to your forehead and lets himself fall asleep too. 

-

The last day doesn't quite feel real. Max had gotten you dinner reservations at a Michelin star restaurant, and you had tried to teach him yoga in the morning, and somewhere in between, you'd gone for a hike and gotten gelato, and Max had fallen into what he realized now might be love. 

"You know," He finds himself saying, watching as you curl up in his side, Donatello in your lap and his suit jacket around your shoulders, "I think Donut might miss you more than me." 

It was a perfect mirror to your first morning here. You had come back from dinner, not even thinking about returning to Max's apartment instead of your hotel. At this point, he should've told you to bring your suitcase, to spend the week here, but there were some boundaries you had yet to cross. "I can't say the same for Jimmy or Sassy," You say up to him, both cats nowhere to be found. They'd always been more territorial over Max anyway. You shift further into his side on the couch, hand reaching up to adjust his jacket before remembering that you had to give it back, and before remembering that you had to go. 

Max watches both thoughts occur to you in real time, the smile slowly fading from your features. "I suppose this is it." He says softly above you. Neither of you had talked about what this was, what it meant, and frankly, Max was terrified to bring it up on his own. 

He loved you. It was a strange conclusion to come to in only a week, but you were living, breathing proof that someone could care for him without a mark, without the fame, his identity perfectly tucked away the whole time. You could've searched him up, could've done a lot of things, but he's not sure you ever did. 

"Can I ask a question?" Max asks, hand coming up to gently brush some loose hair away from your face, a domestic moment that might haunt him forever. "Did you ever search me? My name, in the wallet?" 

"What, Max Verstappen?" His full name haunts him, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it doesn't seem to come. "No, I didn't. Should I have?" 

"I'm not a veterinarian." He answers softly, and the confusion on your face morphs into something closer to fear, and very gently, Max finally admits what he's been keeping from you. "Another reason I don't want to pursue a soulmate is because I am a Formula One driver, and enough people have pretended to love me for that. That's why there's so much car stuff." 

"Max," You breath out softly, shifting up to look at him more directly, "I know why you didn't, but you could have told me." 

"You are proof enough that I was right, though." You were here, curled up in his home like it was yours, with no strings attached. He trusted you when you said you didn't know his identity, because he trusted you entirely. "I don't need a mark or money to make someone love me." Your eyes widen, and Max realizes rather quickly what he just said aloud, scrapping all the progress he made to drop that word on you after only a week. "I didn't mean, as in I thought, after the week, I-" 

"Wait, Max-" 

"I'm sorry, I didn't think of-" 

"Max." You sit up properly now, facing him, and if this were another fantasy, Max would drag you into his lap, hold you there for a while, but now, he lets his hands ball up into useless fists at his side, waiting for you to tear a strip off of him for saying that you loved him after a week. Instead of the coming anger he expects, however, there's a softness as you gently place a hand on his chest, smoothing down his tie. "I don't think either of us can call this love yet." You say, and Max tries to get something out before you can continue. "But you're right. You don't need a soulmark or money to make someone love you, because I have spent the most incredible week with you, and the only thing I've cared about is needing to get to know you more. Not more about your soulmark, or about your secret identity, I just wanted you." 

You just wanted him. 

God, this could be love. It's all Max can think as he leans in, kissing you before he can stop himself. It starts out as a soft, simple thing, but Max could never truly describe himself as soft, if not maybe only for you. His hands find your waist, pulling you into him, and you deepen the kiss as your arms wrap around his neck, slotting together like you were always meant to be here, even if you weren't. You pull apart for a breath, staring up at Max with so much knowing in your eyes that Max can't help but immediately loosen his tie, flinging it off to some far corner of his apartment before continuing. 

He doesn't want to rush you, doesn't need to rush this, but god, all he can think is that this could be love, and all the ways he might be able to make you stay, to make you his. He doesn't care how many jets he has to charter, how many rules he had to bend, because you cared for him, the closest thing he's ever known to love. 

Your hands begin to undo his dress shirt, beating him to his own game, and he practically rips it off himself to get to you, and your hand smooths over the bandage on his shoulder, and you still.

Desperately, Max wants to ignore it. He wants this moment to be his, he wants you to be his, and for this all to disappear. 

But that's not how life works, unfortunately. That's not what Jos allowed. Someday, he'll have to talk about it, and as you slowly pull away, Max swallows thickly, trying to think of how he could tell you all that he did, all that he's done, to get rid of this damned mark. To make his father proud. To be the driver he needed to be. 

"You don't have to show me," You say, somehow unexpected. Throughout this whole week, you had never rushed him, never tried to make him talk about soulmates again. Still, with this much tension between you, with that damned bandage under your hand, he didn't expect you to happily ignore it. "We don't have to talk about it." 

"It's ugly," Max says quietly, leaning back to press a hand to his eyes, the other still holding onto your waist, gentle but firm. "Shouldn't be seen anyway." 

"No soulmark is ugly," You answer, a knowing to your voice. "I would never judge you for it." 

"I scrubbed it off." The words hang in the air, a quiet admission that Max had never dared to tell another soul. 

That after the hundredth race belittled by his father, tormented by this stupid mark, by a love that served no one, Max had found some solvent invented to get rid of soulmarks, and to the best of his ability, he scrubbed it off. It hurt like hell, the scar worse than the soulmark was itself, but Max got rid of it. "What?" Your confusion answers everything Max needed to know, slowly leaning back to put distance between the two of you. 

"I was raised in a household where soulmarks didn't work. The universe didn't pick lovers, it just didn't...they didn't...work. And because I was determined to race, I was convinced love would get in the way. Didn't help that everyone kept throwing themselves at me, faking marks to try and convince me they were my partner. I scrubbed it off permanently, and I don't regret it." 

He does. 

It probably hurt his soulmate. It probably tortured him more than he needed at his age. You pull back even farther, a mix of emotions that Max can't read as you stare at him. Disgust, he's pretty sure. That he would do that to someone else. "That's why real partnerships matter to me. Not soulmarks that can be burned off." 

"God, I'm sorry Max." The apology comes easily, despite Max's experience that it should be difficult. No one ever apologized to him sincerely, but it came to you like breathing. "I'm so sorry anyone ever made you feel like you had to get rid of that to succeed. I'm so sorry they convinced you it wasn't worth it." 

"That doesn't matter now." 

"Doesn't matter now? Of course it does, Max." Your hand smooths over the bandage on his shoulder. "If I'm the proof you need that love doesn't need to be scrubbed away, then so be it. Soulmarks be damned, you are so worthy, Max. You never should have felt the need to do...to do all that." 

The tears come in waves that Max isn't used to, normally fighting them with all his might, but right now, he couldn't care as he lets them fall, your hands gently coming up to wipe them away. He was worthy. 

That was all he was ever waiting to hear, he thinks. "I'm sorry," He says as he presses his face into your neck, your hand gently sliding into his hair, soothingly parting his hair this way and that. "That you never got to meet your soulmate. They were one lucky, lucky person." 

"I got to meet you, didn't I?" You weren't his soulmate, he knows. But it was still a nice admission that has Max laughing sadly into your collarbone. "I never have to see your mark if you don't want, but never feel the need to hide it from me." 

Without much thought, Max leans back and awkwardly reaches over his shoulder, tearing off the bandage in one clean rip, but he doesn't let you see right away. Instead, he finds himself stuck, staring at you through slowing tears as you begin to pull your dress over your head, a shock that has Max's eyes squeezing shut tight. "Wait, wait, you don't have to-" 

"If you want to show me yours, I can show you mine." Max's eyes flutter open, and he never thought he'd be more distracted by a mark than by you, in your underwear, in his lap. 

But he is, because it's his. 

There, tucked on your ribs is his mark, the little lion-looking head, a symbol Max carried for years in homage to the one he scrubbed off. It's a matching scar, more faded now, but it's his, and instantly, his hand clamps over it to hide it from his sight. 

You're his soulmate. 

All that fighting, trying so hard to not need a soulmark to fall in love, and you were still his. "What, Max?" 

"Don't move." Max manages to say under his breath, the next round of tears coming. "Please, god-" 

Your hand smooths over his shoulder, fingers gently tracing over his scar, and once you make the full way around, you freeze, because of course you'd recognize a matching scar. All this time, you thought your soulmate had died because Max had scrubbed off his soulmark, making it look like he'd passed. "But I...I never felt the bond." 

"I told you," He answers through gritted teeth, "I scrubbed it off. It must have broke the bond." 

"Max." God, you should be so angry at him. He expects a tantrum, a fight, you storming out and ending this perfect week with all of Max's terribleness. 

Because if the universe was right, you were his soulmate, and he'd ruined it all for you. You and him had fit so perfectly, and he had just fucked everything up to a degree that even he didn't know how to fix. "Changes how you think of me, huh?" He jokes softly, unable to meet your eyes, and to his surprise, you gently take his head in your hands and press a kiss to his forehead. 

"Just confirms my suspicions, actually." You answer as Max's eyes flicker open, looking up to see you smiling at him. 

Smiling. "What?" 

"You might have destroyed our soul bond, but we still fell in love." You gently pat his chest as you lean back, taking a deep breath. "We were perfectly capable of falling in love with strangers, but something in me knew we were more than just...strangers." 

"You're not mad?" 

"This wasn't your fault." Oh. "You made some very, very poor decisions, but this...I couldn't blame you for this. I found my way back, didn't I?" 

Oh. 

Max pulls you into the tightest hug he can manage, holding you perfectly still as he finally comes to terms with the fact that once upon a time, you were his soulmate. He'd hurt you, scrubbed the mark and bond and made you believe he was dead, and you kept going. You kept trying to find love, and you found him, and maybe it all wasn't real. 

Maybe it wasn't the universe. Maybe it wasn't fate. Maybe it wasn't soulmates. The bond had broken, after all, and you had both proven you were able to love each other without needing an inch of proof of forever. You just needed him now, and Max has to fight the tears he'd had built up inside him since he was eighteen. 

He's not sure how long he holds you there, but it's long enough for him to be sure that you're going to miss your flight tomorrow, and long enough for him to be sure that no matter what this is, no matter what connects you, it's real. 

And that's all he ever needed it to be.

-

-

-

"So you're not soulmates?" One of Max's mechanics ask, stood beside you infront of the monitor. You almost don't hear them with your headphones on, but the words have been said enough times to get the essence of it. 

How could you possibly date someone who isn't supposed to be yours in the eyes of the universe? It was a hard thing to explain, that Max was your soulmate, but he had severed the bond, and you had repaired it anyway. You decided to keep all that from the world however, soulmarks tucked away to only be shared between the two of you. What the world didn't know wouldn't hurt them. "We don't have a soul bond, no." 

"But don't you think about your soulmates?" The final laps approach, Max having a fair advantage as you watch his car whip around the track. "Finding someone better?" 

"Better?" The best possible option was right here, shining in the night like he was meant to. You wouldn't lie and say that it didn't hurt, knowing that Max had purposefully tried to break the bond, but that didn't dampen your feelings for him. You were children back then, and he was hurting, and he thought this was the best way forward. 

Maybe, if he had kept the soulmark, you'd have found each other somehow, in some way, but that's not the love story you needed. Your love story started on the streets of Monaco in the middle of the night, falling for a man for no other reason than he was Max, and he was yours, and it was perfect. 

"Soulmates are not the be-all end-all. There is other love out there for us, and it's no better or worse." The only thing this could be was love, you think, soulmarks be damned. You believed, deep down, that something more than just coincidence connected you and Max, but what you had was built on a foundation of your own making, not the universe's. "Max is the best partner I could ask for, whether he was my soulmate or not."

The mechanic doesn't have time to question it further, because Max crosses the finish line, and your heart begins beating so fast that it has to be love. It was meant to be, even if at one point, it wasn't. You were meant to be here, and on that street with Max, and in his arms, and with his cats, and in each other's lives, and there was no explanation needed for why. 

It was love, when you rushed down toward the parc ferme, past all the garages and the flashing lights, that you were here for him. The headlines hadn't known what to do with you, and Max hadn't bothered to indulge their rumours. You were his, and he was yours, and nothing would come between that. 

Because you were soulmates. 

It wasn't a fact you let yourself indulge in too often, considering what you had wasn't built on the assumption of loving someone, but the growth of learning how to do it.

But, once upon a time, you were soulmates, destined to be here, and it felt like something finally clicked into place as Max meets you at the barrier, helmet and sleeve ripped off to kiss you senseless, because this is what you built, together. 

It was something real, no magical, mystical interference needed. 

You were healing each other in the ways only you could, and as you pull away, you find yourself picturing the young Max, who went through so much torment to be here, to be with you. To think this wasn't an option was impossible. "I'm so proud of you." You say, the few words that you knew Max needed to hear. 

That he was worth it, that he was loved, that there were other things in this world besides racing to devote yourself to. If you were somewhere more private, Max might let you know how he really feels about it, but instead, he gently cradles the back of your head as he presses a kiss to your forehead. "I told you," He says softly, "You'll be the finish line for someone." 

"Didn't realize you meant that literally." Sometime later, when the crowds disperse and the interviews stop and the night slows, you and Max drive away into the night for the hundredth time and end up back at the hotel, where a glimpse of his soulmark confirms your suspicions.

And, sometime later, after the room service gets delivered and the adrenaline of the day slows, you fall asleep on Max for the hundredth time, and as you shift in your sleep, he gets a glimpse of your soulmark as the shirt you'd stolen from him rides up on your chest.

Repaired, unscarred, and perfectly whole.

And, for the first time, in a long time,

Max starts to believe in soulmates again.

a/n: saw this request and tried to write something small and cute and ended up writing 7 thousand words of what it means to be loved - enjoy?

[prettygirl-gabi]

Title: No Credit to Fate

Pairing: Juju Watkins x Reader

Fandom: USC Women’s Basketball

Summary: she believes in us… and that’s what matters the most.

🏷️: @paigeshirleytemple , @paige05bby , @unknowgirlypop , @yailtsv , @nicebellee , @sitawita , @thatonesuschix , @vamptizm , @elalfywhore , @starfulani , @authentic-girl03 , @paxaz535 , @azziswrld , @jadasogay , @paigeluvvr , @melpthatsme , @lessi-lover , @courtsidewithlani , @imnotkaizer , @italyyy , @lightsgore , @private-but-not-a-secret , @aubreygriffin , @issilovesherself , @graceeeeeesblog

Living with Juju meant learning to love chaos.

Not the dramatic, emotional kind—but the kind where there were basketball shoes in the kitchen, protein bar wrappers under couch cushions, and Deuce, our chunky little Frenchie, somehow snoring louder than a grown man at 3 a.m.

It also meant waking up next to the softest version of Juju—the hoodie-still-on, hair-in-a-bun, drooling-on-the-pillow kind of soft. The kind I fell in love with our freshman year when we were just two USC athletes pretending not to notice how often our paths “accidentally” crossed.

Sophomore year hit different, though. We had our own apartment now. A cozy two-bedroom off-campus with string lights on the balcony and a pink ceramic dog bowl that said “Deucey” in cursive.

That morning, she was sitting on the couch, hoodie pulled over her head, with Deuce curled against her thigh. She was scrolling on her iPad, lip tucked between her teeth, headphones half-on. I walked out of the bedroom holding her water bottle and her keys.

“You forgot these.”

Juju looked up and smiled, reaching for both.

“My savior,” she said, then leaned over to kiss my cheek. “And the only person Deuce likes more than me.”

“He’s literally obsessed with you,” I said, reaching down to ruffle his ears. “I’m just the second mom who feeds him when you’re at practice.”

Juju grinned. “Second? Nah. You’re tied for first. Dude cries if you’re late coming home.”

“Just like you, huh?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Wow. Okay.”

I laughed and plopped down beside her. “What’re you watching?”

She showed me the screen—highlights from her last game.

“I missed three open looks in the first half,” she mumbled, annoyed. “Need to fix that.”

“You also had nine assists and twenty points.”

“Still.”

I kissed her shoulder. “You’re ridiculous.”

She turned to face me, head tilting slightly. “You love it.”

I did. God, I did.

Our day unfolded like most do. She went to lift, I went to class. She texted me midday asking if Deuce pooped, and I sent her a picture of the evidence (she’s very hands-on about parenting, okay). By evening, we were both home, sprawled across the couch, half-watching a movie while Deuce snored between us.

Juju had one sock on, her hair down now, and I was curled under her arm with my hand resting on her stomach.

“Remember when we used to sneak into each other’s dorms?” I murmured.

She smirked. “Yeah. And Nika caught me climbing out your window and called me Spider-Man for a month.”

“She still does.”

We laughed, and then I got quiet.

She noticed immediately.

“What’s up?”

I hesitated, playing with the string of her hoodie. “Do you think we’re soulmates?”

Juju blinked at me like I’d just asked her if she wanted to move to Nebraska and live off the grid.

Then she scoffed.

“The fuck?” she said. “After all the work I’ve done? Nuh uh. Fate gets no credit.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

She sat up a little, lifting Deuce so she could face me directly. “Soulmates implies we were just meant to be. Like some magical shit just made this happen.”

I tilted my head, curious. “You don’t believe in that?”

“No,” she said firmly. “I believe in the fact that I spent three weeks figuring out how to flirt with you without looking like an idiot. That I learned how you take your coffee, your sandwich order, how you like your notes color-coded. I didn’t fall into this—I chose you. Over and over. Even when it was hard. Especially then.”

My throat tightened. She wasn’t yelling. She wasn’t even mad. Just…passionate. Juju was always passionate.

“So you don’t believe in fate?”

“I believe in us,” she said, eyes locked on mine. “But I’m not giving fate the win for something we built with our own damn hands.”

I smiled. “That’s actually kind of beautiful.”

She leaned in. “I’m kind of beautiful.”

I kissed her. “Yeah, yeah. You are.”

Later, we were making dinner together—well, I was making dinner while she danced to SZA with a spatula in her hand. Deuce sat on the floor like our little sous chef, occasionally sneezing at the smell of garlic.

“Y’know,” she said between dances, “it’s weird how normal this all feels.”

“What do you mean?”

She leaned against the counter, eyes soft. “Like… we’re twenty. Sophomores. But it feels like we’ve been building a life together forever.”

I turned down the heat on the pasta and joined her, wiping sauce off her chin.

“I know,” I said. “But that’s how you know it’s real.”

She nodded slowly, then asked, “You ever think about after college?”

“All the time.”

She raised an eyebrow. “With me?”

“Who else is gonna co-parent Deuce?”

She laughed and hugged me from behind, her chin resting on my shoulder. “You’d come with me if I go pro?”

I turned to face her fully. “There’s not a version of my future that doesn’t include you.”

Juju didn’t respond immediately. She just leaned in and kissed me—slow, certain, grateful.

When we finally pulled apart, she whispered, “You know, if I did believe in soulmates… you’d still be mine.”

“Same.”

Deuce sneezed again like he was annoyed by the romance.

That night, curled up in bed, her legs tangled with mine and the sounds of the city humming in the distance, I whispered:

“I don’t care if it was fate or hard work. I just care that we’re here.”

She didn’t open her eyes. Just smiled, half-asleep, and replied, “Here is my favorite place.”

■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■

                 -Thank You For Reading!🩵🩶

                             -prettygirl-gabi🎀✨️

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Any tips for someone who completly stuck in writeblock with no actual reason? I wasn't writing in years but i can't let it go either.

Hello! You are not alone, believe me. Many, many writers (famous ones!) have been in this boat. The good news is that it's never too late to try to get back into writing! Here's a few things you can try:

Write without purpose. A huge part of writing block, to me, is the overwhelming pressure to produce something meaningful. But the more you try to create something intentionally, the harder it can become. Some ways to do that include:

Writing prompts. Love them, hate them, the internet is full of writing prompts. If you're struggling, picking a writing prompt to tackle for about fifteen minutes a day can be a good way to ease into writing daily.

Journaling (with purpose). I must confess, I've never been successful at keeping a journal. I've always found it boring. But an easy way to beat this (without stressing out) is to give yourself one thing to journal about today. Describe a meal you ate. Talk about some flowers you saw. Describe how the weather affected your mood. Combining journaling with some loose prompts can help you reconnect your writing brain to the world around you.

Set writing times. As I said above, if you're really, really stuck, settle for fifteen minutes a day. No word count, no goal, just fifteen minutes that you have to write in. If you only get five words in, fine, that's five more words than you had before. If you wrote something you can't imagine ever looking at again, fine! The goal is to loosen up and write.

Fanfic (seriously). Write a drabble. Write a songfic. Write something that is OOC as hell and only appeals to you. That's the magic of fanfic! You can use it to gear up into writing things you care about without that pressure that comes with original work.

If you have dozens of projects you want to launch into, hold on a moment on that. You need to stretch your writing brain a bit before you can get back on the writing wheel. If you try some of the above and get a burst of inspiration, take it slow. Remember the muse comes and goes, but building back up the habit of writing will help you keep moving forward even on the days writing is a slog.

There's also a lot of books out there by writers for writers that can help you keep going. Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down The Bones is a classic for a reason. Matt Bell's Refuse to Be Done is another good one. Your local library might have a bunch of good writing books to check out, so don't forget to check there too!

Also, check out our writer's block tag.

[heraxic]

sketch redesigns of LI’s from fictif: last legacy (individuals and notes below)

ANISA

I never really liked that Anisa looks more like a magical girl than the strict but kindhearted soldier she’s written to be. It seems more like her to be practical in her choice of style to allow more movement when fighting (the sheer cloth on the arms looks like it’d get in the way).

For a clearer sense of the ambition and authority she carries the outfit is less casual and more proper/officious —vaguely resembling equestrian uniforms— plus the extra shoulder frills exaggerate her shoulders, pronouncing her strength and leadership.

One of the first things said about her is that she’s the secret love child of a tabaxi(?) woman ie Ayanna Anka and the Lord of Shadows; I think they should’ve made her stand out more appearance-wise with that kind of heritage. I had a more intense design in mind when coming up with ideas but I didn’t want to break the believability of her as a tightlaced soldier. I opted to darken the highlights in her hair; make her ears and facial features more cat-like and bestial; make the eyes purple to match her father’s color scheme; and make her tabby stripes more occult looking.

FELIX

I think they really missed the chance to make their spellcaster (a necromancer even)—who has canonically died before multiple times and can see spirits— more interesting.

I wanted to make him look more gaunt and wraithlike, slimming his face and draping him in a ragged dark cloak. I also wanted a higher visual contrast between his upper class background and his living situation (grief/melancholy/too focused on his work to take care of himself): the bottom layers of his outfit are very fine and clean with velvet red and gilded edges, while the top is weather beaten and hangs over him like a shadow.

Lastly, his facial markings are in the shape of a skull and he has a blaze of ghostly white in his hair.

SAGE

It might just be my love of monsters but I’m disappointed that Sage doesn’t look more like a wolf/beast man. As much as I thought to give him a snout along with the fur and digitigrade legs, I didn’t want to break the mold too much and I haven’t drawn enough furries to make it look natural.

One of the main things that bother me with his design is the jacket; it’s too simple and doesn’t exactly scream ‘sexy dangerous’ as his bio says. I added triangles to give him more shape and make him more broad and intimidating.

Also, his midsection with the belts and the random handkerchief confuses me, so I added plate armor to make him look more like a fighter.

More on armor, I removed the ones on his left arm to emphasise the width of his shoulders and made the armor/gauntlet on his right arm more realistic (it also fits his character that he only protects his fighting arm and not the rest of his body).

[overadores]

༉‧₊˚. haunted by you

pairing.ᐟ daniela avanzini x doctor!strange reader about.ᐟ  daniela doesn't remember their love. The curse took that away, but when she looks into the stranger's eyes—the woman who won't stop staring at her like she's something lost—she feels something aching, something empty. genre.ᐟ heavy angst. no comfort. cw.ᐟ language. three dimensions. a/n.ᐟ drabble only. currently working on the one-shot. not proofread. just gonna post this cuz its been staring at me in my docs. pls someone tell me if this is good or not so i could edit it in the final fic :D. 4k words

dimension one - soul severance curse.

They tell you not to fall in love when you study the arcane.

Not because love makes you weak, but because it makes you choose.

And I chose her.

Even when I swore I wouldn't. Even when I whispered oaths in a language older than the stars, carved words into my soul, anchored myself in silence—I still chose her. Every day. Every hour.

Her name is Daniela. Not Lady Daniela, or Seer of Light, or anything like the others I met through the Sanctum. Just Daniela. Just…her. And she has no idea who I really am.

She thinks I’m a surgeon who switched to theoretical physics after a bad accident. She doesn’t know. About the Sanctum. About the texts hidden under my bed wrapped in illusions. About the magic that leaves bruises on my spirit. About the way I wake up sometimes not remembering which timeline I’m in.  

She doesn’t know what I keep in the second drawer of my desk, or that I once stitched a bleeding tear in the fabric of space while she slept two rooms away. She doesn’t know I’m on a first-name basis with demons who speak only in riddles and lies.

But she knows me.

She thinks I’m just…Y/N. A little odd. A little secluded. Always curious. Always hers.

The real me. The one I forget sometimes when I get too close to the edge of whatever revelation I’m chasing.

When I’m with her, I forget the multiverse. I forget fate. I forget that I’ve read the end of too many stories.

We met on a Tuesday.

Not the kind of day stories are usually built on—there were no omens in the sky, no signs carved into stone—but I remember it clearer than I remember most of my magical training. She was standing in line at the café on East 73rd, scowling at the menu like it had personally offended her.

“I don’t trust anyone who names a drink Soul Latte,” she muttered under her breath.

I laughed. She looked at me. And that was it. That was the first spell I was ever caught in.

She never knew it, but she was already starting to save me.

We don’t talk about fate.

She hates the idea. Thinks it strips people of their choices. “If fate’s already made the decision for us,” she’d said once, “then why bother loving anyone? What’s the point of falling if you didn’t choose the edge yourself?”

I remember wanting to agree with her. But I also remember the way her hands felt wrapped around mine that night, like maybe fate wasn’t a villain. Like maybe it had done one thing right—one thing good—when it placed her on that street, in that café, in front of me.

But lately… I’ve been studying fate anyway. Quietly. Behind her back.

Because if there’s even a chance that someone like her could be taken from someone like me—by a timeline, a breach, a paradox—then maybe the answer isn’t to trust the universe.

Maybe it’s to control it.

I see it in her eyes sometimes. A flicker of worry. She doesn’t say it, but she feels it—that I’m slipping. That something in me is spiraling further away.

“You okay?” she asks, brushing her fingers through my hair, tucking it behind my ear the way she always does when she’s trying to feel closer.

“Yeah,” I say, kissing her wrist. “Just tired.”

She smiles like she wants to believe me. God, she always wants to believe me.

The first time we kissed, it was raining. Not the dramatic kind. It was the sort of rain that just existed—soft and constant like a heartbeat, more background than plot device.

She was soaked. Her curly dark hair stuck to her cheeks, and she looked up at me like I was the only thing in the world worth standing in the rain for.

I hadn’t planned it. I never do with her.

It’s terrifying. All my life, I’ve been a woman of plans. Of contingency. If A, then B. If B fails, then C. I learned the layout of every sanctum before I ever set foot inside one. I learned how to make people think I wasn’t afraid of anything.

But her? I never planned for her. I just—fell.

She leaned up, her breath warm and shivering against mine, and said softly, “You always look like you’re about to leave.”

That was the moment. The shift. The crack in my armor.

Because she was right. I was always ready to vanish. To portal out. To fix something. To stop a war before it began or speak with time itself. I was always half-here.

But not with her.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered.

And for a while, I meant it.

She doesn’t know about the mirror dimension. The place I go when the world is too loud. Where gravity bends sideways and I can scream without anyone hearing it. That’s where I’ve been spending my nights lately. There, and the library beneath the Sanctum, trying to decipher ancient incantations written in languages that died before memory existed.

I tell myself it’s all for her. That if I just understand the weave of the multiverse enough—if I find the right pattern, the right key—I can keep her safe. I can keep us safe.

But there’s a cost to knowing too much.

I’ve started to dream of her face…fading.

She doesn’t believe in magic.

She likes science. History. Real things. She tells stories with her hands when she talks about her job—archival preservation. She’s the kind of person who protects the past so it doesn’t disappear. And I’m the kind of person who tears open time just to see what’s hiding behind it.

���I think you like breaking rules,” she told me once, her head on my chest.

“Only the ones worth breaking.”

“So…all of them?”

I laughed, kissed her forehead. “Not yours.”

She smiled then. I remember that smile. She believed me.

I don’t think she would now.

Tonight she’s curled up beside me on the couch, her legs over mine, a book resting on her stomach. Something by a dead poet. Her hair is falling into her face and I can’t stop staring.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks, her voice barely louder than the crackle of the fireplace.

“I just…I love you.”

It slips out. Too raw. Too sudden.

She freezes for a second. Not because she’s surprised—I’ve said it before—but because of how I said it. Like it’s a goodbye.

She sits up. “Hey. Hey, what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “I just—I wanted to say it.”

Her fingers cup my cheek. “Y/N. Whatever you’re holding in, you can tell me.”

I want to. I ache to. But I can’t tell her the stars are aligning in patterns they never have before. I heard a whisper from a guardian of the multiverse last week saying I was too close to something sacred. That I cast a spell last night that burned the edge of my soul just to see what would happen—and what I saw was her, looking at me like she didn’t know me.

“I love you too,” she says, pulling me into her chest. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it.”

Her heartbeat is steady. Mine isn’t.

I start writing things down.

Not spells. Not maps of potential timelines. Not warnings from the old texts.

But memories.

Little ones. Dumb ones. Her face the first time I made her pancakes and set off the smoke alarm. The way she laughed until she cried when I tripped over my cloak (she thought it was a costume). The time we stayed up talking about whether ghosts get lonely. The way she smells in the morning—like cedarwood and coffee.

I write it all because I’m scared I’ll forget. Or worse—scared she will.

The curse is only theoretical. That’s what I tell myself. I haven’t cast it. I haven’t even spoken it aloud.

But I’ve read it. And when you read something forbidden, it doesn’t leave you clean. It leaves residue. Whispers. Echoes that follow you even after you swear you’ve put the book away.

It was an accident, really. I was looking into soul bonds. Into tethered fates. Into what binds people across dimensions.

I didn’t expect the price to be so specific.

“You will remain. They will forget.”

I laughed at first. Thought it was a metaphor. A romantic tragedy from another realm.

But last night, I heard the mirror speak back to me. As if it already knew.

Daniela leans into me while we sleep. Her body naturally finds mine. Like we’re planets drawn to each other by instinct, by gravity.

She doesn’t know I watch her. That I memorize the way she shifts in her sleep. That I count the freckles on her shoulders because they’re more permanent than anything I’ve ever summoned with a spell.

“Don’t go too far,” she mumbled in her sleep last night.

I don’t think she was talking about the room.

Today she asked me what I’d do if I lost everything.

I said I’d find a way to get it back.

She laughed. Thought it was bravado. “What, you’d fight the universe?”

I didn’t answer.

Because I already am.

And yet.

With every spell I read, I feel it. A pull. A tug from somewhere beyond this world—like fate is daring me to challenge it. And I’m tempted, every time, because I’ve never met anything I couldn’t try to fix.

But maybe love isn’t meant to be fixed.

Maybe it’s just meant to be held, fiercely, until it slips through your hands.

Tonight, Daniela is reading in bed, her glasses slipping down her nose.

I stand in the doorway, just…watching.

“Come here,” she says, smiling.

I walk over. Slide into the sheets beside her. Kiss her like it’s the last moment before the storm.

Because maybe it is.

She hums against my lips. “You always kiss me like I’m going to disappear.”

“You’re not,” I whisper, clutching her like a lifeline.

“Good,” she murmurs, curling into me. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”

I close my eyes.

But the universe never needed her to leave.

It just needed her to forget.

dimension two - temporal curse.

She doesn’t know.

That’s the first thing I always remind myself of when I look at her. When I watch her sleep, cheek pressed lazily into the pillow, lips parted just slightly, one arm dangling off the side of the mattress like she didn’t wage war with her own blanket hours ago.

She doesn’t know who I am. Not really.

She knows I like my coffee strong and my silences softer. She knows I’ll always steal her side of the blanket even if I’m not cold. She knows I flinch a little at loud thunder, and that I hum under my breath when I think no one’s listening. She knows the mundane pieces. The unremarkable ones. The kind of things you learn when you love someone in the daylight.

But not the rest. Not the reason I sometimes leave in the middle of the night, not the reason I clutch my wrist like it’s bleeding when nothing’s there. Not the weight in my gaze when I watch her—like she’s a countdown, and I don’t know when the clock started ticking.

I didn’t even know which version of her I saved.

Not at first.

The timelines blurred so violently when I did it—when I pulled her from the moment death reached for her, when I bent time so far it nearly snapped.

It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t noble. It was grief in motion.

One second, she was lying there—her blood on my hands, lungs struggling, eyes unfocused.

And the next…she was alive. Standing in front of me. Whole.

But she was already different.

And I’m not sure I could ever bear the way she’d look at me if she did.

There was a moment once—two weeks ago maybe—where I almost told her everything. We were on the rooftop, just after midnight, and the city was silent in that eerie, stretched-thin way. Like the world was holding its breath. Like it knew I wanted to say something dangerous.

She had her knees pulled up to her chest, hoodie too big for her, sleeves half covering her hands. The stars had lost their fight to the city lights, but she looked up anyway. Like she believed in them just the same.

“I had this dream,” she said, softly, not looking at me. “That the world ended, but we didn’t die. We just...forgot.”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.

Because I’ve seen it. Variants of that dream. A thousand ways the world ends and keeps on spinning anyway. Some with fire. Some with silence. Some where I lose her. Some where I find her too late.

She tilted her head then, rested it on her knees, and blinked at me. “You ever get that? Like...something’s coming. And you’re already grieving it.”

She always does that. Says something that guts me without knowing she’s twisting the knife.

I think I touched her cheek then, just to make sure she was still warm. Still here. I kissed her slowly—slow enough it could have meant goodbye.

But I didn’t tell her. Not yet. I told myself it wasn’t the right moment. That she deserved normalcy while she still had it.

Really, I think I was just selfish.

The thing about loving someone as someone else—someone fictional, someone edited—is that you get really good at lying to yourself.

You tell yourself the parts you gave them are enough. That the secrets are protecting them. That it’s love, even if it’s in a cage.

And she does love me. I think.

No. I know.

She loves the version of me that forgets to charge their phone and can’t cook pasta to save their life. The one who gets too intense sometimes, too still, too far away in the eyes—and she just reaches across the table, grounds me with a touch. She never asks where I go when I go quiet. She trusts me without needing to understand.

Which is maybe the most painful part.

She never asked for magic. Or war. Or fate. She just wanted someone to stay.

And I’m going to break her heart. I know it.

It’s already started—the ripples. Little shifts in the air. Loose threads pulling at the seams of the life we built. The kind only I can see. The kind I shouldn’t ignore.

But every time I think about acting, about stopping the momentum of what’s coming, I see her laughing in the morning, barefoot on cold tile, humming some pop song she pretends not to like. I see the little love notes she hides in the fridge, the way she sings to plants when she waters them, the way she lets her guard down only for me.

And I tell myself: Maybe there’s still time.

I don’t think she notices the way my hands shake when I hold hers sometimes. Or the way my breath catches when she says things like, “We should plan a trip.”

Trips require a future and futures are fragile.

Especially when you’re me.

I’ve bent time before. Ripped it clean in half to protect the other version of her. I paid the price. I always pay the price. The universe is cruel, but fair.

And I know—deep in my bones—that if something happens to her, I’ll do it again. I won’t hesitate.

Which means I’ll destroy everything just to keep her breathing.

Even if she hates me for it.

Even if she forgets.

She brought home sunflowers today. Said they looked “obnoxiously hopeful.”

“I thought they’d balance out your broody vibe,” she teased, poking my side.

I smiled like I always do—crooked and weak—and watched her arrange them in the chipped mug we both pretend isn’t a vase.

She looked so proud. Like placing bright yellow petals on the windowsill was enough to shift the axis of the world. And maybe, for a second, it was.

Maybe, in that moment, I wasn’t the Sorcerer Supreme. Maybe I wasn’t the harbinger of the end. Maybe I was just hers.

And maybe that’s why I kissed her like I was drowning.

Because I knew—I knew—I wouldn’t get many more chances.

We lay on the couch that night, limbs tangled like vines, half a movie playing in the background. She fell asleep first, as always, breathing slow and even against my shoulder.

I watched the screen flicker. I listened to the faint hum of the fridge. I stared at the ceiling and tried to memorize the way she fit into me.

And then I whispered, so quietly it hurt,

“I’m going to lose you, aren’t I?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

But I think the universe did.

The lights flickered. Just for a second. Barely noticeable.

But I felt it.

A shift.

A warning.

There’s this concept—chronomancy. Time magic. Dangerous, unstable, almost always fatal in the wrong hands. I’ve only used it twice. Both times it almost broke me.

But I would do it again. For her.

If it meant she got to keep laughing like that. If it meant her hands stayed warm.

If it meant I didn’t have to bury her.

Because I’ve seen what’s coming. I’ve seen the moment she dies.

And I won’t let it happen.

Even if I have to tear open the fabric of time itself. Even if it fractures everything. Even if it breaks her.

She won’t understand.

She’ll never forgive me.

But she’ll be alive.

Right now, though—right now she’s curled up in bed, face buried in my chest, arms loosely around my waist. Her breath tickles my collarbone. She makes this soft sound when she dreams—half sigh, half content hum.

And I hold her like she’s already gone.

Because in some version of time, she is.

In some timeline, I wasn’t fast enough.

In another, I didn’t choose her.

But in this one, this fragile and beautiful and doomed one, she’s mine.

For now.

And if the only way I can keep her safe is by rewriting the rules of love itself...

Then so be it.

She’ll wake up tomorrow, same as always, maybe kiss me sleepily, maybe ask what I want for breakfast.

She’ll have no idea that the world is already unraveling. That the spell is already forming. That I’ve already started the process.

But she’ll live.

And maybe that’s the most I can ask for.

Even if she forgets how she loved me.

Even if I become a stranger.

dimension three - dimensional drift curse.

She always forgets me by morning.

No matter what I say, what I do, how long I stay—every time I cross into her world, it resets.

A curse, layered through time and dimensional faultlines. One that clings to her like dust in sunlight. Not her fault. Never her fault. She didn’t ask to be loved by a woman who breaks universes.

But God, she was loved.

And I keep going back.

I don’t know how many times I’ve met her now.

Could be a hundred.

Could be a thousand.

Every time, it’s different. A new version of her. A new variant of the same soft soul, living a life untouched by the war I fight across stars and spells and sleepless nights. Sometimes she’s an artist. Sometimes a teacher. Sometimes she owns a flower shop that always smells like spring.

Sometimes she’s wearing the same earrings I once gave her in a universe that no longer exists. And she doesn't know why.

But every version has her smile.

That same one. Like dusk settling over the ocean.

And every version still stuns the breath out of me.

I never tell her everything.

What would be the point?

She won’t remember.

By the time I cross back into my own dimension, the tether of memory unravels behind me. Like it never unfolds at all.

The curse is designed that way. Not by me. Not by her.

For a moment.

By a mistake in battle, a spell hurled with such fury it fractured the truth of us across existence. A sorcerer’s curse spoken through cracked teeth:

“The cost of power is always love.”

And I didn’t believe them. I thought I could fix it.

I always think that.

I’m not even sure why I keep trying.

Maybe it’s ego.

Maybe it’s hope.

Maybe I just want one more hour with her before the world resets. Just one moment where she tilts her head and says, “You look like you haven’t slept in years,” and offers me tea like I’m not wearing the weight of every timeline I’ve failed to save.

Maybe I like pretending—for a minute—that I’m not Doctor Strange.

That I’m just Y/N. And she’s just Daniela.

And we’re just…us.

Yesterday—whatever “yesterday” means in this spiral of slipping worlds—I told her something small.

I said, “Your voice sounds like spring rain.”

She blushed. Looked at me like I’d pulled that sentence from some long-lost poem.

She doesn’t remember that I said the same thing in Dimension One, on the first night she cried in my arms.

Doesn’t remember how I held her hand as she forgot me.

How I watched her fall in love with me in one universe, only to lose the ability to feel love in the next.

Here, she’s new.

Fresh.

Alive.

And I’m the ghost.

I know the spell exists.

The reversal.

The one that could fix it.

It’s buried deep in the Book of the Broken Star—pages bound in silence and consequence. A forgotten ritual that rewrites memory across dimensional planes.

It requires something.

A trade.

Not blood. Not time.

A soul.

One soul in return for another’s remembrance.

I know what it means.

If I cast it…she’ll remember everything. Every kiss. Every touch. Every laugh and grief and joy.

But I will be gone.

Not dead. Not erased.

Just—

Unraveled.

Like a name no longer spoken.

She’s sleeping now.

I found her again three hours ago.

This version works in a bookstore that smells like ink and wood. She keeps her hair up with a pencil. She laughed when I asked if she believed in magic.

“No,” she said. “But I believe in feeling like something matters. Isn’t that the same thing?”

I didn’t answer.

My hands were shaking.

Because even though she doesn’t know who I am, and doesn't remember anything, she still says things like that. Still feels like her.

Still is her.

I sit at the edge of the bed now, watching her breathe.

Her face is soft in sleep.

I can cast the spell.

Right now.

And she will wake up with every memory. Every version of us stitched back into her chest.

She will know me.

Will finally remember the love we once shared so loudly, so fully, that it split reality when it broke.

But I won’t be here to see it.

I’ll be lost to her.

She will wake up crying for someone she knows by heart and can no longer find.

That’s the price.

A reverse curse. A reverse cost.

She remembers. 

I forget.

I close my eyes. Hold my breath.

And I cast it.

There’s a stillness in the universe when magic like this takes shape. A pause. Like the world knows what it’s about to lose.

And then—

A whisper.

A shift.

Her name, Daniela, whispered through a thousand timelines.

A thread, snapped and re-intertwined.

She gasps.

Her body jerks upright in bed, eyes wide, tears already falling.

“Y/N?”

I don’t respond.

I can’t.

Because I no longer know that name.

I no longer know her.

And somewhere else—in another city, another time, another morning—I wake up in a world I’ve saved a thousand times, with a hollow in my chest I don’t understand.

A woman passes me on the street. She stops, suddenly breathless.

Looks like she’s seen a ghost.

Her lips tremble as she reaches for me.

But I just smile politely.

And keep walking.

Daniela remembers everything.

And I remember… nothing.

But the universe never forgets.

And love, even when fractured across dimensions, always finds a way to echo.

maybe a manon or fic next lol

[tsukuharuko]

Haruko spent her whole bath time with a heavy heart, trying to come up with the nicest, most delicate way to explain to Inosuke why she couldn't say. No wonder how she put it, it never felt gentle enough for that innocent boar-boy.

Once she put on her clean clothes, registering how that might be the last time she'll ever wear the pretty kimonos the old lady prepared for her, she walked to the bedroom to be welcomed with yet another surprise. Once again, it seemed like the owner of the house could read her thoughts: the kotatsu had been prepared with treats of any kind, all clearly hand-made, two cups of tea and a whole full teapot waiting for them. Another little magic she would have had to say goodbye to.

... And to make things even worse, Inosuke showed up looking more proper than he had ever been. Not only he was dressed nicely, with the sleeve dangling from his waist giving him a casual, nonchalant look, but he had even patted his hair dry. Haruko stared at him dumbfounded, her heart shriking at the sight. He had grown up so much in such a short time...

"Yeah... It all looked delicious," Haruko agreed with a hestiant smile. She sat next to Inosuke, and gently rested her hand on his wrist as he reached for another mochi. "But... Can we talk first?"

She cleared her throat, closing her eyes for a moment to collect her thoughts. This wasn't going to be easy. No -- it was going to be terribly, unfairly hard.

"... Okay, so." She gently closed her fingers around Inosuke's hand. "Before we start. No matter what I'm gonna tell you, you have to know this."

She looked at Inosuke and smiled fondly at him, trying to ignore the weird tickle at the corner of her eyes.

"First of all, I really, really care about you," she said. "And I'm happy I met you. And I'm so proud of how much you've learned over these few days. I know it's been a short time, but I truly got fond of you, and nothing will make me forget about these days." She took in a deep breath, staring at Inosuke with a firm look. "Do you believe me? I need you to, before I go on."

It took a moment for Inosuke to notice her hesitation. His eyes narrowed in focus, as if he was trying to find meaning in every crease on her own traits. Human expressions were becoming less and less mysterious to him with each passing day.

"What? You're having cold feet now?" He sneered. "I know that yokai can be scary sometimes, but it's not like anything's gonna happen to you! I'll have their heads rolling at your feet before they can touch a single hair on your head!"

He raised a hand by his side, and slammed it on Haruko's shoulder in an attempt to cheer her up. A chance that he remembered to measure his strength, or he might have dislocated her poor joints.

"Alright then. Don't stay in the bath too long, alright? Or your brain's gonna get even mushier from the heat!"

He parted with a burst of laughter, his voice echoing down the corridor as he hurried to the baths. Clean clothes awaited them both at the exit, and Haruko would return to her room with her wish granted. A table and two cushions had been laid out in the middle of her room, laden with delicacies aplenty, and two steaming cups of tea.

Inosuke would arrive shortly after Haruko, half-decently dressed. He had only slipped one sleeve of his kimono on, the other dangling by his side, his belt loosely tied around his waist. Long locks of hair danced with each of his motions, but they didn't spill water everywhere as he entered the room. Someone must have insisted to dry his hair tips... perhaps to buy the other guest some time to prepare her speech.

"Oh! There's snacks here too!" He practically leapt at the table, his hand immediately reaching for a plump mochi. He couldn't hold back a little noise of delight as he bit into the red bean flavored treat, the heaviness that hung in the air momentarily forgotten.

"You gotta try one of these, Haruko!!"

[sweetdispatch]

Request! :) 4 pieces of panna cotta or carrot cake(whichever you want) with pineapple and crushed nuts

Strategy - J. Hughes

v' bakery pairing: Jack Hughes x fem!reader summary: One night stand with Jack turned into fwb relation but what Jack didn't know is that you were related to a coach of his rival team warning: NSFW, graphic sex (+18), swear words note: i choose the forbidden love trope but i got carried away with the idea and i don't know if this counts as forbidden love haha hope you'll like it anyway love❤️

You’ve met Jack in one of the bars in New Jersey. He was a fun guy to be around and he kept you company. After a couple of drinks, he proposed to move the party to his apartment and you happily agreed. When the doors of his place closed, he started kissing you passionately. Your hands were pulling the clothes from him. 

When you two were kissing, Jack was slowly leading you into his bedroom. You reached his room and both of you were already naked. The clothes were laying all over the floor. He pushed you on a bed and in a quick move, he entered your pussy with his whole length. You pulled him into another kiss. 

This sex was messy because both of you were pretty drunk but it was something you two needed. No thinking, just action. Jack was placing kisses all over your body when your nails were dragging his shoulders and back. You were a moaning mess underneath him but you loved every single minute of it. 

Jack was pounding into you. You felt like he’s trying to mark you as his. You cum around him but he didn’t stop. He was searching for his own release. He pulled out of you and cum on your stomach. You two had been too drunk to clean each other and just fell asleep in each other’ arms. 

Something that you thought was one night stand became routine. You and Jack had a lot in common and you hung out many times. Sex was always a nice addition to your relationship. There were feelings but you never labeled what you are. Although he always felt hurt when you never showed up at his games even if he invited you. 

The reason behind it was that you were the daughter of a Rangers coach. You never told him that because you knew that Jack would cut ties with you. But your father knew about your hookups with him and wanted to use you like a spy. You couldn’t say no to your father and you did what he asked you for. 

Thankfully for you, Jack was already talking to you about hockey and his team. You learnt a lot about their tactics and game plan. You said everything to your father and thanks to your help, his team could beat Jack’ team. You felt bad for this but you knew that your family is more important than this relationship. 

Jack could feel that something was wrong. He wasn’t mad about this lost match but he was mad that Rangers knew every move of his team. This loss stuck with him and the realization hit him. The only person except his teammates who knew about the tactics was you. He didn’t want to believe that you could have anything to do with it. 

Jack left the stadium. He saw you and felt confused. You never went to his games but now, magically you were there. He wanted to talk with you but he spotted you talking with the Rangers coach. Everything pieced together in his head. You were just with him to help the Rangers to beat his team. 

Jack didn’t react at that moment but later. He sent you a text if you have time to see him. You answered that he can come to your place if he wants. While he was driving to your apartment, he was thinking what to tell you. He felt betrayed by you and he was furious with himself that you played him the whole time. 

“Hello” You answered the door happily. 

“Was it fun to play with me the whole time?” Jack asked you when he closed the door behind him. He didn’t want to have this argument in the hallway. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about” You were confused by his words. 

“I saw you after the game talking with the Rangers coach. I knew that it’s weird that they know everything about our system but I didn’t expect that you were the one who told them” Jack said furiously.

“Look, I’m sorry but he’s my dad. I couldn’t say no to my dad” You tried to explain yourself.

“Sorry doesn’t fix anything. You played with me just to help your father” Jack raised his voice at you and suddenly you felt small. 

“That’s not true. You were the one who told me everything. I didn’t even ask you. Yes, I said it later to my father but you can only blame yourself for talking about it” You fought back. 

“I trusted you” Jack said coldly. “I really liked you and trusted you but you played with me. I can even look at you. Fuck you” He said and left the apartment with a loud slam of the door. 

You sighed. You felt responsible for the whole mess but deep down, you knew that Jack is the one who said everything to you. Maybe you shouldn’t repeat it to your father but at the end of the day, your family is more important than Jack who wasn’t even your boyfriend. You two had feelings for each other but it was just friendship with sex. 

Jack was mad. He knew that he should never tell you about the strategy of the game but he trusted you. He felt like he finally found someone who’s a perfect match to him. But this relationship with you taught him to never fully trust and every other game against Rangers he treated very personally.

[bunnyclawzz]

Opposites!

Mohawk Mark x Hyperfem!Reader

A/N: veryvery self indulgent, but I do think this variant specifically would love a girly girl!

He has no idea how he got into this situation. He’s never cared that much for getting into a relationship. It's just too much to deal with! Finishing school, training his powers, reading and rereading Seance Dog comics..he does not want to deal with some girlfriend on top of all of that. A girlfriend would be too demanding of him; forcing him away from his reading to do what she wants, just another person he'd get into arguments with. That was what he thought, what he thought before you sprouted into his dull life.

You two first got to know one another from being paired together for some AP Bio project, and since then...you just sort of didn't leave him alone, and for once, he wasn't annoyed with somebody bothering him at school. He swore to himself that you were temporary. Just a little something to entertain him and a person he could actually talk to instead of keeping all his thoughts in his head.

And yet here he is paying for your nails every three weeks, spending hours inside of a mall to carry your bags, and having to give his input on outfits, hairstyles, jewelry, perfume, ect. All for you. He only did it for you. Anyone else asking for all that is an instant hell no. For you? You don’t even have to ask, he’s the one asking when your next nail appointment is and the next time you’ll need his help carrying bags around the mall.

“Maark! You gotta help me, I dunno which gloss to get, you gotta help me pick one!” You whined softly while staring down to the two choices in each hand with a pout. “..I thought I got you new glosses last week?” “Those were liners.” He pauses to think back on your little makeup lectures. The little rants he pretended not to listen to despite wanting to learn the differences. “Right, liners, whatever-does it really matter which one you get if I’m the one paying?” You look up at him with a irritated expression, as if it was the stupidest thing he’s ever said to you. “Which would you rather have staining your skin and clothes?”

…

“..the darker pink one.” who would've guessed the punk with a mohawk prefers hot pink on his girlfriend's lips

He never really believed in love before you. It all looked so fake-finding someone who's magically your other half? Called it all fake until he found himself with you in his thoughts every second of the day. Always thinking about you, whatever ruffled blouse you had worn with that tiny mini-skirt to school that day. Always texting you barely ten minutes after he had dropped you off at your house to tell you what time he'll be finished training so you could call him before he passed out in bed for the rest of the night. Always doing whatever you asked him despite acting like you asked the most of him daily.

And just thinking about it all makes him reconsider you being temporary.

[inkstainedpages]

Twisted Wonderland fun facts

CONTAINS SMALL SPOILERS FOR BOOK 3 AND MALLEUS LAB WEAR VIGENETTE

Ace and Deuce are in the same class and Ace comes right after Deuce in the numbering. (Most likely because they have it based off surnames and T(rapolla) comes after S(pade)

Azul yells at Floyd and just straight up smacks Jade. This is probably because physical violence entertains Floyd and merely speaking to Jade would just amuse him more, so he has to do what annoys them whenever he is frustrated with them. Evidence of this is voice lines and a scene in book 3 where Azul gets mad at Floyd because he left a dent on the safe.

Vil dislikes mayonnaise. Based on what I've heard, it had given him acne/pimples after eating it for three days straight.

Malleus has a tamagochi. Common knowledge, I believe. In his lab wear vigenette, he went to Deuce to know if he could fix it. At first, Deuce thought Malleus was about to challenge him or smth and he was really ready to go up against Malleus Draconia

Cater is the only Heartslabyul character we have whose homeland is not the queendom of roses. His homeland is the shaftlands.

Speaking of the shaftlands, Vil and Jack are also from the shaftlands. The two are on good terms and are possibly friends (considering how Jack is in most of if not all of Vils vigenettes)

Ruggie would eat anything as long as its not rotten. (He also gave me the highest scores in the cooking event thingy)

All of the housewardens are middle class or upper. They're all fucking rich. Riddle's parents are doctors, Leona is a literal prince, Azuls mom owns the most famous restaurant in the coral sea, Kalim is the heir of merchants, Vils father is an A-list celebrity and he is one himself, Idia's parents are the heads of STYX, and Malleus is the future king of Briar Valley.

Rook has freckles. That he covers with make up.😢

American football does not exist in twisted wonderland. They have magic frisbee instead.

Yuu/the prefect/player is a wholeass photographer. The cards are the photos we snapped with the fuckass camera Crowley gave us b4 lowkey forgetting about us

This one is kinda more of a personal take; Neige is considered more beautiful than Vil because he's an approachable kinda pretty. Whereas Vil is the kind of beauty that could come off as intimidating.