#but the idea of that version just feels so foreign

[fairsweetlonging]

new idea: shen yuan transmigrates into a pidw version with abo dynamics, but he doesn't know about it.

he knows what abo is, but it's so far removed from his expectations that it simply doesn't cross his mind at all. with that, cang qiong is a respectable, upstanding sect, so there is no growling, claiming, scent pushing or primal instinct stuff going on. people also don't mention it, as it's simply not relevant most of the time, and is considered rude to discuss unprompted.

shen qingqiu, of course, is an omega (the characters who make the best omegas are the ones who would hate it the most), but he has suppressed it with his qi for most of his life because he doesn't want to be seen as weak. the other peak lords assume he's a beta.

now, i'm not a traditional abo dynamic fan, but, there is something very appealing to me about the nesting and scenting aspect of it.

it starts out slow and painfully oblivious, with shen yuan assuming cultivators must have a really good sense of smell, and it's simply book logic that every character seems to have a signature scent. all those romance novels always mention characters smelling of pine and flowers and scotch and leather, so this isn't a foreign concept. liu qingge, for instance, is the bai zhan war god, girls fall for him left and right, it's only natural he smells of musk and deep woodsy notes, like the earth after it rains. right?

besides that, shen yuan has always been a homebody who loves his creature comforts, so him getting extra blankets and pillows and soft fabrics for his bed to curl up in isn't odd at all. or him collecting soft pretty things. shen qingqiu already has fans and night pearls and hair ribbons and silky clothes, so nothing changes.

then without-a-cure hits.

the poison breaks down the suppressors that the original shen qingqiu put in place, and his body starts restoring the balance. this worsens the cravings, and sets off his omega instincts.

he gathers more blankets, but it doesn't fill the need, like there's something missing. then liu qingge forgets his outer robe in his house after a meridian cleansing to deal with an emergency, and that robe ends up in his bed. he tries to reason it's a comfort thing—he wore his dad's sweater when he was young and had nightmares, and liu qingge does smell very nice, so is it really that strange that he holds it at night and presses his face against the collar where the scent is the strongest to soothe himself?

his own scent starts to develop as well, much stronger than the mild, watery green tea flavor from before, and people notice.

thing is, though, that there are many formalities and rules of conduct around omegas, one of which is not to bring up their status in any improper or unbidden way. so even though the alpha lords now notice a very distinct omega scent coming off their shixiong, they can't mention it out of societal pressure. so, they don't.

shen yuan still doesn't notice a thing.

the first time liu qingge smells it is during their bi-weekly cleansing session, when shen qingqiu leans in and liu qingge gets a mouthful of green tea, bamboo and honeyed jasmine, soft and sweet and pleased and so very content it sets off his alpha brain and he has to rein himself in before he starts releasing his own pheromones like some inexperienced teenager—

he's only just grown used to their amity and their habit of sharing tea and cakes after the cleansing, but now shen qingqiu is sitting there smiling at him and smelling like—like liu qingge is spoiling him and, making him feel safe...

he doesn't bring it up, downs his tea, and leaves.

meanwhile shen qingqiu keeps happily nesting away, filling his bed with all kinds of soft fabrics, some clothes of other people that he's trying really hard not to think about. everything is going well, binghe just turned sixteen and the girls are calling him an 'alpha', so his little bun is growing well into his protagonist charms! yue qingyuan comes by more often, acting a little strange but shen qingqiu is used to that by now. he looks very bashful offering him a ribbon of his, a pretty silver one that smells of incense and ozone, and shen qingqiu happily accepts it.

one time binghe comes back bruised and scuffed from a fight with bai zhan disciples, and shen qingqiu tsks at the strange smells on him, do those brutes ever bathe?? he rubs his hands over binghe's sleeves to try and get some of it off, and his poor bun must still be in shock because he stares wide-eyed at his shizun. he must also be getting forgetful because shen qingqiu finds that same robe still unwashed a week later in binghe's bedroom.

he also loves it when people brush or play with his hair, it's his favorite part of the evening when binghe helps him take down his hair for the night. the combs feel so nice on his scalp, if he could purr he would! (binghe's heart sobs quietly behind him, in complete disbelief his master is purring at him).

his icy, lofty demeanor has all but shattered, because now every time he tries to act aloof, like when yue qingyuan gives him a present or liu qingge shows up on his doorstep, his sweet, pleased scent betrays him.

the opposite is true, as well, when without-a-cure flares up and he's in pain and his scent goes sour and distressed, even when he's waving everyone off saying he's fine. the entire house smells of burnt tea leaves and ash after a nightmare, and shen qingqiu is very confused when liu qingge comes to pick him up for a meeting but then refuses to leave.

anyway he doesn't find out until after the conference when airplane tells him to keep his acrid scent under control, his house is starting to stink.

[autumnday19]

.

[unstable-samurai]

Instructions

Irene x Male Reader

word count: 3.2K

—

You drive up to Irene's mansion, where every inch of the lawn looks meticulously manicured, and the fountain at the entrance shoots water in a pattern that can only be described as "obscenely expensive." You still can't believe you were hired to train a woman who doesn't seem to need a single day in the gym, but money is money, right?

You step out of the car and walk to the front door, a massive wooden structure that probably weighs more than your car. Before you have the chance to knock, the door opens as if the house has been eagerly awaiting your arrival. Irene appears, and the first thing you think is that the photos simply don't do her justice.

She's like an upgraded version of a classic diva, someone with a beauty that would be admired in any era of humanity, now enhanced by all the improvements time could offer. Black hair cascading in soft waves, feline eyes that devour you in a fraction of a second, and a posture that makes you wonder if you're standing before a queen or a trap disguised as a woman.

"Oh, I was excited to finally meet my personal trainer," she says.

"Ms. Irene," you reply, offering your hand in a gesture that feels outdated in her presence. Her hand is soft and firm, and the grip is just enough to make you feel that you are, without a doubt, in foreign territory.

"Come on, I'll show you the house," she says, turning quickly without waiting for a response. You follow her, walking through a house that is a maze of marble, stainless steel, and glass. Every piece of art on the walls screams in a flamboyant way, "I have more money than you can imagine," and the faint scent of fresh flowers lingers in the air, as if even the aroma of the house was custom-made.

"This here is the living room," she says, passing through a room larger than your entire apartment, and you pretend not to be impressed. "And over there is the kitchen. You might need something to drink after the workouts. Or during, if I decide to tire you out too much."

She smiles again, and this time you can’t help but smile back, with that kind of irony that only arises when you know you're in trouble.

"This is the bedroom," she says, stopping in front of a closed door. You feel the tension rise a bit, and she notices it. "Not that you’ll need it, but I thought you'd like to know where it is." She opens the door and reveals a room that looks like it came straight out of a decor magazine: an immense bed, silk sheets, and a view of the garden that seems hand-painted.

"Nice place," you say, more out of politeness than anything else.

"Thank you. Now, the gym," she says, as if this was the true purpose of the entire visit. She leads you to a room where all the exercise machines seem to shine with newness. "I need to stay in shape, after all," she says, leaning casually on a treadmill, her posture suggesting that the idea of sweat is something completely alien.

"Shall we begin, then?" you ask, already pulling out the water bottle from your bag, trying to appear professional.

You decide to start the session with the basics, which seems like the best approach when dealing with someone whose idea of physical effort probably consists of reaching for the remote control.

"So, Irene, have you trained before?" you ask, but in your mind, she doesn’t exactly look like the type who frequents a gym.

She smiles, that smile you're already beginning to associate with trouble. "Only if you count marathon shopping trips and half-hour Pilates sessions with my instructor who told me to breathe deeply and think of happy places. Does that count?"

You smile back. "Well, let's start with something simple. A warm-up. Just to prepare the muscles."

"Oh, I love a good warm-up," she replies.

You guide her through some basic stretches, and of course, she starts asking for help. "Can you show me how to do this one? I've always had trouble with it," she says while trying to touch her toes.

You approach, placing your hands on her waist to guide her, trying to ignore the fact that she’s perfumed for a workout. "Like this, push a little further forward... That’s it."

She lets out a soft sigh, almost inaudible, but you notice. "I don't think I've ever had someone help me like this," she says, making you realize that "help" has multiple connotations for her.

"Practice makes perfect," you respond, trying to stay focused.

After the warm-up, you lead her to the weight machines. "Let's start with something simple, like the leg extension machine. This will work your quadriceps."

She looks at the machine as if it were some kind of medieval torture device. "Quadriceps... Right. And this does what exactly? Makes me gain muscles?"

"Exactly. You sit here, adjust the weight, and lift your legs to extend the knee. It’s great for toning the thighs."

She sits down, but instead of following your instructions, she just pretends to be confused. "I don't think I'm getting it. Can you show me again?"

You lean in to help her adjust the position of her legs, and you feel her gaze fixed on you. "Like this? Is it good now?" she asks, her voice softer than it should be for a simple exercise instruction.

"Yes, it's perfect," you reply.

"So, have you been training for a long time?" she asks as you guide her through the exercise. "It’s noticeable, you know... by your physique, the way you explain…"

"I’ve been training for a few years. It’s a passion of mine."

"Passion? Interesting," she says. "And are you single? Or is there someone waiting for you at home after you spend the day helping women like me stay in shape?"

You hesitate, realizing that the conversation is veering off course.

"I'm single. I guess my work takes up most of my time. What about you? You told me your husband is always traveling, right?"

"He's away most of the time, yes. His work is... demanding. But luckily, I know how to take care of myself," she says, lifting her legs on the machine with a little more enthusiasm. When Irene was done, she paused to drink water, then walked between the machines until she chose the next one. “Hey, help me here. I don't want to mess up the movement, I need your guidance." She says, standing in front of the lat pulldown machine.

"Oh, great. This one’s for your back and shoulders," you explain, adjusting the weight. "You hold here, pull the bar down, and then release slowly, feeling the resistance."

She looks at the machine as if it were an abstract art piece.

"Looks complicated. Show me how it's done?"

You demonstrate the movement, feeling her eyes on every motion of your body. When you finish, she positions herself, but instead of pulling the bar, she holds it for a second, looking at you with a false expression of confusion. "I think I’m not doing it right. Can you guide me?"

You approach again, this time placing your hands on her arms, helping her execute the movement. "Like this," you say, your voice a little lower. "Pull with your back muscles, not just your arms."

"Since you’ve been working out for a long time, you must be very strong," she comments as she pulls the bar, her muscles tensing softly under your hands. "And you must be used to lifting heavy, right?"

"It depends on the workout," you respond, trying to ignore the fact that every word she says seems to have a double meaning. "But it’s always good to vary, to do a bit of everything."

"So, how many of these should I do?" she asks, as if she’s genuinely interested in the answer, but her eyes say something else.

"Let's do three sets of twelve reps," you reply, trying to keep a professional tone. She does the first set with you close by, watching every movement, and then asks for your help with the next machine.

The dynamic continues until, by the end of the workout, she’s sweating, but in a way that looks more like a healthy glow than discomfort. She stretches, her muscles relaxing, and looks at you with that same smile that started everything. "I think you made me work pretty hard today. Maybe I’ll need a massage afterward," she says, her tone provocative.

You smile, unsure whether to take her seriously or laugh. "Massages aren’t part of the package, but we can talk about a relaxation stretch."

"We’ll see," she says, stepping closer with that smile that always precedes trouble, the kind you should have learned to avoid. “It seems like I’m the only one sweating here,” she says, with a sweetness that’s pure venom, before leaning in and, without warning, licking your cheek.

You take a step back, your heart pounding in your chest. "Ms. Irene, what is this?!"

"I told you, you’re not very sweaty. And I licked you to prove it," she responds with the casualness of someone asking the time.

"But what the hell does that mean? I came here to work—"

"And you’ll get paid at the end, of course!" she interrupts, her smile widening in a way that only makes things worse. “I just want… to have a little fun with you. Include that in the deal. You could earn a bonus for it, if you’d like.”

She takes another step forward.

“Irene, you’re married. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not a good idea.”

“No one needs to know, sweetheart,” she whispers, as if it were a secret you truly wanted to hear. “You’re too young to be so worried about life.”

You try to speak, but the words come out jumbled, as if your mouth forgot how to work.

“I-I… This isn’t right.”

She laughs, a sound that makes you feel like a mischievous boy caught in the act. “I bet I’ll make you change your mind once you see what you’re missing.” With a quick, decisive movement, she removes her top, revealing small, pale, perfect, and provocative breasts. Her smile widens, and you feel your face flush with heat. Worse than that—you feel your cock pulse in your pants.

“What do you think?” she asks, each word dripping with irony and certainty.

“Cover yourself, please!” Your voice comes out louder than you intended, but the plea is almost pathetic.

“Oh, don’t play the saint with me,” she retorts, suddenly stepping closer, grabbing your hand with firm resolve and placing it on her breast. The touch is warm and soft. You swallow hard, but it feels like the lump in your throat is stuck there for good. And the worst part? You can’t pull your hand away.

“What do you think? My boobs are small, but they fit perfectly in your mouth,” she teases, her voice lower, more intense.

“This isn’t right, Ms. Irene…” you try, but your resistance is fragile.

“Shh! Just call me Irene,” she orders, and before you can protest again, she seals any chance of escape with a kiss—warm and commanding, as if she already knew you wouldn’t say no.

Before you could even process what was happening, Irene had already wrapped her hand around your cock. With force. With a desire that you felt reverberate down your spine. “You’re so hard for me,” she whispers, her lips pulling away from yours, but the heat of her proximity still clinging to your skin.

“Irene…” you murmur, the name escaping as a whisper, almost a plea, but for what? For her to stop or to keep going?

“That’s right,” she continues, giving you no room to regain control. “I want to hear you moan my name while you fuck me good.”

Before you could refuse—or worse, agree—she pulls you toward a weight bench like she’s practiced the move a thousand times. It’s astonishing how a woman so small, so delicate, can exert such absolute control over you. You feel like a toy in her hands, powerless to resist.

You take off your shirt while she kneels to untie your shoes, making sure every detail is perfect, that you’re comfortable—but not for you, for her. When she asks you to take off the rest, you comply without question, feeling the cool air caress your exposed skin. She compliments your physique, her words sliding over your skin like hot oil. Her hands roam over your muscles, her fingers tracing the contours of your biceps.

“You’re so hot,” she murmurs, kissing your chest, her lips warm and soft. The excitement builds within you, uncontrollable, wild.

You sit back down on the bench, Irene kneels between your legs, her smile a mix of wickedness and pure desire. She takes your cock with a confidence that makes you hold your breath, her touch firm, almost possessive. “Wow… you’re much bigger and thicker than my husband,” she murmurs, licking the tip, teasing, while her eyes remain fixed on yours. “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to have something like this… I’m going to love gagging on this cock.”

She slowly opens her mouth, her lips stretching around the head of your cock, and the sensation is mind-blowing. You watch, mesmerized, as she starts to take you in, inch by inch, until her mouth is completely full. “Oh, yes,” she mumbles with difficulty, her words muffled as she struggles to accommodate your size.

She begins to move her head up and down, faster and faster, the wet, warm sound of her mouth creating a steady rhythm. Her small mouth adjusts to your cock, fighting the instinct to pull away, but instead, she pushes forward, making it clear she wants more.

The sight of her, drowning on your cock, is almost unbearably arousing. You can’t resist, your hands go to her hair, pulling to gain more control. With a decisive move, you push deeper into her throat, and the muffled moan she lets out is a mix of pleasure and challenge. “Just like that,” she moans, tears welling in her eyes from pleasure and effort, but with no intention of stopping. She wants this as much as you do.

You feel her throat tightening around your cock, each movement sending waves of pleasure through you as she takes you as deep as she can, not giving up even when her air becomes scarce. The mix of pain and pleasure on her face only fuels your desire further, and you continue, deeper and deeper, until she finally has to stop to breathe, gasping, but with a satisfied, lascivious smile on her face.

Irene stands up, her gaze burning with a desire that mirrors your own. She starts to take off her leggings, revealing she’s not wearing any panties. The sight of her like this, naked and ready, is enough to take your breath away.

Without a second thought, you grab her firmly, your hands holding her slim waist as you lift her off the ground with an ease you didn’t even know you had. Irene lets out a low, sensual moan as she wraps her legs around you, locking her ankles behind your back, pulling the two of you even closer. With a decisive movement, you press her against the nearest wall, the cold concrete contrasting with the growing heat between you.

“Ohhh, yes,” she moans as you penetrate her for the first time, her head falling back, hitting the wall, but she doesn’t seem to care. “You’re so thick!”

With each thrust, Irene responds with louder, more desperate moans. “Just like that, baby… more, please, more!” Her voice is a mix of command and plea, her nails digging into your shoulders, pulling you closer, as if she wants to merge with you.

“That’s it! Oh, God! You fuck me better than my husband!”

That somehow spurs you on, every movement becoming deeper, stronger, as if you’re trying to shove every inch of yourself into her. Irene bites her lip, her face in pure pleasure, and then she starts babbling, as if facial expressions weren’t enough to describe what she’s feeling. “Yes… fuck me… fuck me hard… do what my husband never could…”

But she’s not the only one on the edge. The heat of her body, the almost painful tightness around your cock, every moan and sigh, it all makes you want more, makes you lose control.

After what feels like both an eternity and an instant, you feel like you need more. With a quick move, you pull away from the wall and carry her to the bench. Irene drops to the floor, turns around, positioning herself on all fours while you sit down. She positions herself, slowly lowering onto your cock, moaning as she feels you stretch inside her, filling every inch.

She leans back against you, her head resting on your shoulder, her body sinking even further into your lap. Your hands immediately move to her small breasts, squeezing them, while your lips find her delicate neck, biting and sucking the soft skin. Irene lets out a loud moan, the sound of pure satisfaction, and arches her body, pushing herself even deeper.

“Yes… leave a mark… mark that you were here… that you fucked me like no one ever has,” she pleads, her words breathless, interrupted by moans that only grow louder as you squeeze and thrust into her.

You don’t hesitate, biting harder, leaving a visible mark on her neck, a testament to what’s happening. Irene shudders in response, her pussy tightening even more around you, each of her movements sending waves of pleasure through you, making you forget any shred of morality. She moves against you, her rhythm frantic, the need for more, always more, evident in every gesture.

“Yes… yes, baby… fuck me until I can’t take it anymore,” she moans, her hands reaching back, grabbing your neck, pulling you closer as she continues to move, to lose herself in the sensation.

Irene, breathless, leans in closer, and with a soft voice, almost a whisper, says in your ear, “I want you to fuck my tight ass.”

Her words are like a match striking the box, igniting something fierce within you. Irene rises off your lap and walks to a corner of the gym, where she grabs a bottle of lube. She returns with a mischievous smile, shaking the bottle in the air. “I brought this just for this moment,” she says.

“You had this in mind from the start, didn’t you?” you ask, already knowing the answer.

Irene doesn’t bother replying. Instead, she kisses you before lying down on the padded floor, her pale skin contrasting with the dark material, her body exposed in a posture of pure submission, but with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what they want. “Come here, you naughty boy,” she calls, her voice like poisoned honey.

You kneel beside her, your hands trembling with desire as you reach for the lube. Irene smiles at you, then gets on all fours and arches her back. With steady movements, you pour the gel into your palm and begin applying it to her ass, feeling the warm, soft skin under your fingers. Irene lets out a low sigh, closing her eyes, savoring the sensation. "That's it... get me ready, I want to feel every inch of your thick cock inside me."

You don’t waste any time. With one hand, you spread the lube around and inside her ass, your fingers gently penetrating to prepare her. Irene bites her lip, her body slightly writhing, a mix of pleasure and anticipation. "Feels good, keep going... make me ready for you."

When you feel she’s sufficiently lubed, you apply the rest to your cock, rubbing it until it’s fully coated, hard and throbbing.

Irene changes position, lying on her back on the floor. You position yourself between her raised legs, and she looks at you with eyes full of desire. "Come on, don't wait any longer," she begs, her voice low and sweet. You press the tip of your cock against her tight entrance, pushing slowly, feeling the initial resistance. Irene lets out a moan of pain mixed with pleasure, and you keep going, advancing inch by inch, feeling the heat and pressure around you.

"Ahhh… yes," Irene moans, her eyes closed, her hands gripping the padding beneath her as you penetrate her slowly. "It's so big… so tight…"

You keep pushing, feeling her ass open up, millimeter by millimeter, her body adjusting to your size. The heat, the pressure, the sensation of filling her completely is indescribable, and the low moan she lets out only fuels your desire. "Yes, yes, yes! Fuck me deeper," she pleads.

You obey, pushing deeper until you're finally all the way inside her. Irene lets out a muffled moan, a sound of pure satisfaction, her body arching with pleasure. "Yes… like that… don’t stop," she begs, her eyes shining with wild desire. You start to move, slowly at first, savoring every second, every contortion of her body, every moan that escapes her lips.

As you gain rhythm, Irene’s moans grow louder, more desperate. "Yes… fuck my ass… do what I never let my husband do… ahhh… harder… please," she moans, every word an encouragement for you to go deeper, to push both of you to the limit.

And you do, increasing your speed and force, your hands gripping her thighs firmly, guiding each thrust with precision, feeling her body tremble with pleasure until it all comes down to heat, sweat, the pure desire consuming you both.

Irene then begins to tremble, her body stiff with imminent pleasure. She looks at you, her eyes burning with lust and urgency. "Mmm, I’m about to cum, babe… Let’s cum together?" she asks, her voice broken by moans.

You feel her body pulsing around you, each contraction almost pushing you over the edge.

"Do you want to come inside my pussy? Fill it with your cum?"

The desire and madness of the moment take over you. “Can I?” you ask, your voice tense, almost disbelieving.

“Of course you can,” she replies with a wicked smile, "I'm on the pill, darling. I want to feel you unload everything inside me."

With that, you both move into the classic missionary position. Irene spreads her legs and bends them, her feet planted on the floor, while you kneel between her thighs, your cock positioned exactly where she wants it. Irene wraps her legs around your waist, pulling you closer. The warmth and tightness of her pussy confirm your decision: you need to cum inside her.

You start thrusting into her, each stroke deeper and faster than the last. Irene moans loudly, the sound of her moans echoing through the gym. “Ahhh, yes… more… harder…” she screams, her eyes closed in pure ecstasy. “Fuck my pussy… Make me your cum dump.”

You’re on the verge of exploding, your entire body tense with the anticipation of climax. Irene feels it and, between moans, murmurs, “I’m almost there… I’m going to cum…”

“Me too… I’m almost there…” you reply, your breathing fast.

She opens her eyes, her gaze burning with intensity. “Have you ever cum inside a stranger before, huh? Ever filled a married woman with cum, you pervert?” She asks, her words hitting you like a wave of heat.

Those words make you lose control. With one last, powerful thrust, you bury yourself deep inside her, feeling your cum release into the depths of Irene’s pussy. She screams as she cums at the same time, her body writhing beneath you, her legs tightening around your waist.

“Ahhh… I can feel it all… it’s so warm… so good…” Irene moans, her words loaded with pure pleasure, her breathing ragged as she feels every hot stream filling her. You keep moving, even as the orgasm leaves you breathless, prolonging the pleasure for both of you.

When you finally pull away, your cock slipping out, cum begins to slowly drip from her pussy.

Irene smiles, a satisfied and wicked smile, as she looks at you, her breathing still uneven. "That was… exactly what I wanted," she says, her eyes gleaming with contentment, as the cum drips between her thighs, and you watch, fascinated, as she uses her fingers to spread her lips, letting the cum flow freely. She collects some of the semen with a finger and brings it to her mouth, tasting the result of your mix.

Irene kneels beside you and leans in for a deep kiss, her lips warm and moist against yours, while her hands glide over your body, caressing you with a certain tenderness.

“So, handsome, what did you think of the workout?” she asks.

You, still with your body pulsing with residual pleasure, respond with a smile, “I loved it. It was… incredible.”

Irene smiles back. “Good to hear that,” she says, with a note of amusement, “you can consider yourself my official personal trainer now. And the best part, you’re still getting paid for it. Isn’t it the best job in the world?”

You laugh, a mix of incredulity and amusement, realizing that your concept of ‘job’ will never be the same. “So that’s it? Daily sex with a gorgeous woman and I’m going to get paid for it? What are the downsides?”

“There aren’t any. As long as my husband never finds out, of course. But that’s my problem. Your only requirement and concern is to keep me satisfied.”

With that, she gets up nonchalantly, and starts gathering the clothes scattered on the floor.

You also get up, and as you’re dressing, you can’t help but think about the absurdity of the job you’re accepting.

When you’re almost ready to leave, Irene approaches, casually adjusting her hair.

“Don’t forget, tomorrow is training day again,” she says, her voice full of light arrogance. “Same time. Don’t be late. I want more of that… energy,” she adds with a smile.

You nod, laughing to yourself as you try to regain some of your composure.

“Sure, I’ll mark it on the calendar.”

[chuusmuts]

imagine innocent!kabukimono being needy

smut(?) afab reader (mentioned of tight walls), needy kabukimono, male masturbation, corruption (kabukimono).not proofread.

you can see this as part two of kabukimono finding out you lactate (where he found out about sex/ read a book about it) or another version of innocent kabukimono going wild. kinda want to make this a series, ngl.

when he opened the door to your room, he expected you to be in your room, but he was greeted with silence. he suddenly hit the realization that you were supposedly out to buy some grocery. this scent in your room, it's your scent. he missed it so much, he missed your scent, he missed you. you were just here a few minutes ago, how could he has had miss you so bad already?

he sighed, realising you would be gone for a while. he hated when you were away, even if it was only for a little bit. he needed you here with him, always. he sat down on the floor near the door, resting his head against it. his heart raced at the thought of being alone, it reminded him when he was being thrown away. he wanted to be with you, hold you, touch you, kiss you. but most importantly, he wanted to be held by you. he didn't know what else to do but wait for you to come back home. he tried to calm himself down, he couldn't let his emotions control him.

his eyes roamed all over your room as he missed your presence, and eventually, his gaze fell on a book beside your bed. out of curiosity, he got up and took a look at the book. a book about... oral and sex? what even is that? he'd never heard of it. the cover of the book was very erotic, it's a picture of a man pounding himself into a woman's pussy. since he was an innocent puppet, he was clueless about all of this, but at the same time, he felt like getting to know about this thing called 'oral' and 'sex'.

kabukimono looked at the book with his eyes widened in confusion. he had no idea what oral and sex meant, he didn't even know what a vagina was. out of curiousity, he grabbed the book and flipped through it, feeling both intrigued and uncomfortable. he felt his face heat up as he read through the pages, it was all just too much for him to handle. he started to feel nervous, unsure of whether he should keep reading or not. nevertheless, he continued to read, trying to make sense of everything he saw and read as he was still puzzle about it.

ultimately, he stopped at a page whereas the top of it was written 'how to pleasure yourself when you're missing them'. wasn't that... what he's feeling right now? he missed you so much he felt like dying. but the question was, what's this thing called 'pleasure'? he read this thing so-called masturbation and as he read further, he began to feel a stirring in his lower region. this was all so new to him, yet he found himself wanting to learn more, his inquisitiveness got the better out of him. he had no idea where he was going with this, but he felt like he needed to do something, something toward his cock. should he follow the instructions and actually try to do it?

his hands trembled as he read the next paragraph, which explained how to perform a self-handjob. he felt his cheeks turn red as he read as he felt embarrassed and nervous. he wondered if it was normal for people to masturbate. the fact that he was reading and thinking about doing it made him feel dirty, but he wanted to know if it would really make him feel better or if it would help him forget about his loneliness. glancing down at his crotch, he saw how his cock was starting to become erect. this was all so strange and foreign to him since he'd never experienced this, but he decided to give it a shot. he took off his boxer and noticed the tip of it was already leaking with precum; a clear, colorless, viscous fluid that is emitted from the urethra of the penis during sexual arousal, was what it was written in the book. placing one hand on his cock, he gently stroked it, trying to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do.

step one, find your stroke. it said in the book, to get things started, use your hand to find a rhythm you love. and so, he continued stroking his cock in a slow pace. the longer he stroked it, the more he felt like groaning as his breathing got heavy. he must has had found the rhythm he loved. as he masturbated himself, his gaze fell on your picture that was hanging on the wall, and it only aroused him more. his heart pounded even faster as he unconsciously started to call out your name, groaning and moaning. it felt so good, so amazing that he began to visualize you were the one who was giving him the handjob. he imagined your voice, your soft touch, your gentle caresses, and the way you'd look at him with your cute and gentle smile.

the sensation was incredible, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. he felt like he was melting inside as his body shivered with pleasure. he kept stroking faster and harder, not realizing how much he was moving his hips and how loud he was becoming. the sound of his voice filled with need and desire grew louder and louder, filling the silent room. he called out your name, begging for you to return and hold him, to touch him, to make him feel good. he was lost in the moment, completely unaware of the world around him. he was only focused on the pleasure he was feeling and the fact that he needed you to be there with him.

he continued to follow the instructions as he next rubbed and squeezed his balls. they were (not) surprisingly very sensitive to him and packed with nerve endings. he rubbed them gently with one hand while the other maintained a stroke on his penis. at last, he placed the book aside when he felt he could masturbate himself without guidance.

at one point, he could barely breathe properly, and his whole body tense and started shaking. "ngh... ah... y/n..." he threw his head back and opened his mouth wide as he kept moaning, tears welling up in his eyes, feeling the urge to cum. "need you so bad... i miss y– ngh..." his bangs sticked to his forehead and his neck was shining, glistening as a bead of sweat rolled down while he speeded up the pace and kept squeezing his balls. "w– wanna fuck you... fuck..."

he could feel the muscles in his pelvis tighten and contract as he neared his climax. his cock throbbed and pulsed against his palm, the sensations growing stronger and more intense. he could feel his entire body shake as a stream of precum dripped down the length of his cock. his breathing became ragged and uneven, and his heart raced as he struggled to maintain control. he couldn't hold it in anymore, and finally, he screamed your name, his voice echoing throughout the room, his body convulsing and twitching. he came hard, his cock pulsing and spurting with a hot, sticky fluid.

the hot liquid dripped from his tip onto his thighs, pooling the sheet beneath him. the feeling of cumming was so good, but it wasn't nowhere near enough. oh, how he badly wished it was you who made him cum. he collapsed on the bed, smelling your sweet scent, and all he could think was having your tight walls around his cock as he fuck you dumb. he couldn't wait till you come back to relieve his needs.

[rafecameronssl4t]

Thinkin’ bout me || Rafe Cameron x fem!reader

gif by @chenslucy

Summary: inspired by the lyrics of “thinkin’ bout me” Morgan Wallen 🤗🤗

Warnings: slight angst ig

Word count: 1,964

A/n: I rlly wanna do one with a Zach Bryan song but the ideas aren’t coming to me 😔

MASTERLIST

divider by @h-aewo

Don't know where you at, don't know where you've been. Don't know nothin' 'bout that boy you're into.

It had been two months since you’d left, pulling yourself out of Rafe’s orbit so completely that he’d almost started to believe you’d vanished for good. Then tonight, here you were, mingling at the yacht party like nothing had happened.

Only now, an unfamiliar blonde had his arm wrapped casually around your waist, his fingers tracing lazy patterns against your hip as you leaned in close to hear him over the music, a bright, carefree smile lighting up your face. Rafe’s stomach twisted at the sight.

He couldn’t hear what you were saying, but he could see the way you laughed at something the guy said, your head tipping back as if his words were the funniest thing you’d heard all night. The version of you he saw now felt almost foreign to him—like he’d been replaced by someone who wasn’t weighed down by your shared past.

Maybe you really were happier, but seeing you with someone else so soon cut deeper than he’d anticipated. It was the smile that got to him the most—the one he remembered as his—now aimed at someone else.

Don't feel bad for you, but I feel bad for him. And all the hell you gon' be puttin' him through. Probably tell him we're a burnt out flame. Probably tell him that I ain't been on your mind. How I ain't nothin' but a long gone thing. You can cuss my name, but baby, don't you lie

The unfamiliar blonde looked wildly out of place in the gleaming luxury of the yacht party, as though he’d just wandered into the wrong scene altogether. He had a wholesome air about him that felt like it belonged more to a Kildare bonfire than this slick, exclusive gathering. Rafe’s jaw clenched as he watched the guy, wondering what you could possibly see in someone so blatantly average.

“Who are you staring at?” Topper’s voice broke into his thoughts, a teasing chuckle in his tone as he followed Rafe’s gaze. He spotted you almost immediately, his eyebrows lifting in mild surprise. “Oh. She looks good—”

“Shut the fuck up, man. Don’t wanna hear it,” Rafe muttered, not breaking his stare. He didn’t need anyone telling him how good you looked; he already knew. Topper just threw his hands up, backing off with a smirk. Before Topper could throw in another comment, you shifted, turning around just enough to spot him.

Rafe’s lips curled into a smirk, catching the way you froze for a split second and in that instant, he saw the flicker of nerves in your expression. Rafe’s lips curled into a smirk, watching the way you subtly fidgeted under his stare. He could practically see the wheels turning in your mind as you quickly turned back to the guy beside you.

The blonde followed your gaze, catching sight of Rafe and Topper watching. His expression tightened just slightly, his eyes darting back to Rafe every few seconds, clearly trying to size him up. Rafe’s smirk widened; he knew exactly what was going through the guy’s mind. You were probably telling him some watered-down version of what you and Rafe had been—a burnt-out flame, a chapter you’d left behind.

Maybe you were painting Rafe as the villain, the one you’d gotten over, glossing over the parts that didn’t fit. Even cussing him out just to make it seem like you’d moved on. But he saw right through it. He knew the kind of hell you’d probably put this guy through, the stories you’d tell him, the ways you’d pretend you’d forgotten.

He’d been in your life long enough to know you, and he couldn’t help but feel sorry for this poor bastard. He didn’t feel bad for you—not anymore. But for the guy who thought he’d won you over? Rafe almost pitied him. He had no idea the hell you’d eventually put him through, just like you’d put Rafe through.

When you're tastin' what he's drinkin', are you thinkin' 'bout me? When you're ridin' where he's drivin', are you missin' my street?

Rafe’s eyes lingered on you, the smirk slipping into something colder as he watched you lean closer to the blonde, your laughter ringing out over the music. But he saw right through it. He knew you well enough to pick up on the tiny tells—the way you glanced over your shoulder just slightly, probably checking if he was still watching.

You were putting on a show, and he knew it. He could almost picture it: you, lifting a drink to your lips, tasting the same burn of bourbon he used to pour you, and wondering if it would ever hit the same. Or maybe it was later, on some midnight drive as the blonde took you back home, the car turning down familiar roads but never quite the right ones. He could almost feel that ache settling in you when his road, the one leading up to Tannyhill, passed by without a pause.

You might be so close, just one turn away, and yet still missing that feeling of belonging you’d only ever felt pulling into his place, the street you’d once called home. He could feel Topper glancing his way, but he didn’t care, didn’t let up. He wanted to make sure you knew he was still there, that he was watching you, and that no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t just erase him. Not from those old habits, not from those half-forgotten memories that clung to you like shadows.

And even as you turned back to the blonde, pretending you didn’t care, he could tell. Somewhere, deep down, he knew you’d feel that same hollow ache—the same one he was feeling right now—whenever you tasted what he was drinking or found yourself driving down a street that just didn’t feel the same.

Every time you close your eyes, tell me, who do you see. Comin' over tonight, wish that truck in your drive was mine. Just like you know it's supposed to be

Every time you closed your eyes, he wondered if it was his face you still saw, if memories of him filled those moments you tried to shut out. He imagined you lying awake, maybe with that blonde by your side, but when you let your guard down, it wasn’t him you’d see. It was Rafe, pulling up to your place, the sound of his truck rumbling in the driveway as he walked up to your door, familiar and steady as if he’d never left.

He could picture it so clearly—his truck parked outside, headlights washing over your front porch, the way he’d make himself at home in your space without a second thought. Rafe knew you could pretend all you wanted, but when you closed your eyes, he’d be there, waiting in those memories you could never quite shake. And somewhere, deep down, he knew you’d feel that pang of regret every time you wished that truck in your drive was his.

When you're up in his bed, am I up in your head? Making you crazy, tell me, baby, are you thinkin' 'bout me?

He couldn’t help but wonder if, in those quiet hours of the night, when you were lying beside him, it was his name that slipped into your mind uninvited. When you were up in that guy’s bed, was it him who filled your thoughts instead—if the memory of his hands, his voice, his presence stayed just beneath the surface, making it impossible to forget. He wanted to know if he’d left a mark, lingering even now, pushing you to the edge of madness as you tried to convince yourself you’d moved on.

Rafe moved in quietly, blending into the crowd, making his way closer as he watched the blonde step away, leaving you alone for the first time all night. He didn’t hesitate, just closed the distance, eyes fixed on you with that knowing look you’d tried to ignore. Reaching for a glass, he pretended to pour himself a drink, but his attention was fully on you, his voice low and taunting.

“Tell me, baby,” he murmured, just loud enough for you to hear, “are you thinkin’ ’bout me?” The words hung in the air between you, his gaze steady, daring you to look away. He didn’t need to say anything else. The challenge was in his eyes, his tone, the slight smirk playing at his lips as he watched your reaction. He knew he was under your skin, that no matter how hard you tried, memories of him had a way of creeping back. And now, standing close enough to feel the tension humming between you, he was waiting, pushing just enough to make you wonder if he’d ever really left your thoughts.

You swallowed, eyes narrowing as you tried to brush off the effect he still had on you. But the heat of his presence was unmistakable, almost magnetic, pulling you into that familiar territory you’d been trying so hard to avoid. His eyes searched yours, unreadable, but you caught the flicker of something darker beneath the surface—a mixture of anger, curiosity, maybe even the smallest hint of longing.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you replied, keeping your voice steady, forcing a smile that you hoped would mask the way your pulse quickened. But Rafe’s smirk only grew, as if he could see right through your act. He leaned in, close enough that his breath brushed against your ear, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “Sure, keep tellin’ yourself that.” He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in as he stared at you side profile before chuckling to himself.

“But we both know who’s really on your mind tonight.” You felt a shiver roll down your spine, his proximity making it impossible to ignore the pull between you, the way his presence filled every corner of your mind despite the months apart. He lingered there, eyes never leaving yours, daring you to deny it, to keep pretending he was just a part of your past.

“You look good,” he added, voice soft, with just the slightest edge. “But maybe that’s ’cause I remember how you used to look at me.” The words hit harder than you’d like, his eyes holding yours with an intensity that left no room for anything else. You wanted to come up with something quick, something sharp to throw back at him. But for a second, you just stood there, caught in the moment, feeling the weight of every memory between you—the late nights, the laughter, the arguments, the way he’d looked at you like no one else ever had.

[the-s1lly-corner]

Calling various CRP pretty boy

Yoinking this prompt from the slasher version of this post because i kind of enjoy this prompt a more than normal amount and I like feeding all my followers regardless of what fandom they follow me for

Characters: Slenderman, Masky, Hoodie, Ticci Toby, Eyeless Jack, Laughing Jack, Jeff the Killer

Notes: reader is GN, written on mobile

CWs: none

SLENDERMAN

He gives little to no reaction to you, as expected as a lot of forms of affection dont mean all that much to him

Not that he doesn't treat you with love and care, he does because he knows you like it

Receiving is just a little odd for him, possibly because it's so foreign to him- but at least he doesn't reject you!

Asides from his lack of response, there isnt much else to note! Over time he does begin to respond to it if you keep calling him that

MASKY

He doesnt talk all that much so the lack of verbal response doesnt surprise you all that much

He prefers being called handsome, if you insist on saying something about his looks

Mild confusion because hes never taken his mask off around you, the most hes done is lift it up to eat or kiss but even then...

Suspicious that you've peeked when he wasnt aware or conscious- probably not the best nickname

HOODIE

Doesnt talk at all, so once more the lack of verbal response doesnt come as a surprise

You haven't seen his face yet you call him pretty boy... you might actually be able to convince him to take his mask off for you so you can confirm if he really is a pretty boy

He does respond to the name and seems to at least enjoy it a little bit

Will occasionally ignore you until you call him pretty boy, not a common occurence though

TICCI TOBY

Mix of leaning into the name and calling you pretty in return, but I can also see him slightly rejecting it

He knows you mean it, more than likely- but hes so used to not being treated nicely that he cant tell if you're secretly making fun of him or not

Brings it up passively and hides it behind jokes but it's so obvious hes a little suspicious of you

Firmly reassure him that you really do think hes pretty, bonus if you point out specific parts of his face that you like!

EYELESS JACK

He considered himself average before the cult, nowadays he cant look in the mirror... though that's less of a self confidence thing and more of a trauma thing

He has mixed feelings about being called pretty boy, in general and due to the circumstances

Let's you continue calling him pretty boy, quietly keeps his thoughts to himself

He may grow onto it with enough time

LAUGHING JACK

Giddy, he already has the idea that hes cute but the thought that you think hes pretty really does it for him

Returns the energy and says he thinks you're really cute, he could just eat you up!

Takes the sudden nickname really well and adopts it as a new pet name between the two of you

He kind of perks up like a dog when you say a word they like around them

JEFF THE KILLER

Honestly he would expect you to call him pretty boy, though be doesnt need to remind you of something he already knows as fact

Pretty, handsome, cute, beautiful... call him any of those and hes going to let you know he already knew he was attractive

WILL notice if you stop calling him pretty boy, making it a habit... and you just stop calling him that out of the blue

A little huffy about it but hes going to act like hes not pressed about it- he doesn't want to come off as desperate for attention

[alicedrawslesmis]

(sorry this is from a week ago but) Wait, what's going on right now that's complicated with Amazonian farmers' land rights?

Not farmers, indigenous people

See, recently they put a new law through congress that severely reduces indigenous land to the borders established during the late dictatorship, or immediately post-dictatorship, in 1988. An absolute joke of a border that was dreamed up by some military assholes. People in america may recognize this type of society from the times of westward expansion and think this is a thing of the past because for you guys it is. But here it is a reality. Murder is rampant. The reach of the law is incredibly limited. Government is just too weak and landowners basically run things. THAT'S WHY it's so important to donate directly to the native peoples instead of random NGOs because native people are fucking there and the more power they hold in the land the safer the land will be from agroindustrial expansion.

Well the law was vetoed by the the president and the Supremo Tribunal Federal, aka supreme federal court, labeled it as unconstitutional. Which it is, because our 1988 constitution describes native american land rights in some of its first articles. We thought this would be it for the law

But then the senate (that already overrepresents landowners in rural states) just went along and approved it anyway. I had no idea they could approve something unconstitutional. The progressives and particularly the socialists are fighting this in court. But it happens that for now the legal border is the severely reduced version.

Doesn't mean they'll just give up, because as it happens we don't have any stand your ground laws so even if you own a piece of land, you cannot legally speaking just shoot everyone there. Or attack or threaten them in any way. They'll just have long legal battles individually for the rights to occupy land based on use. Also the Xingu national park, the largest preserved land of the Amazon described as 'larger than Belgium', is being encroached by huge farms that are poisoning their water supply. The border is Visible. I'll try to find video of it but essentially you have a forest and a desert separated by a strict line.

Just last week in the south of Bahia (not the Amazon, let me explain more about the Amazon situation in a bit) Hãhãhãe leadership Nega Muniz Pataxó was shot and killed by an armed militia group that invaded and occupied the Caramuru territory.

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A post shared by SOMOS PATAXÓ HÃHÃHÃE (@somoshahahai)

The situation in the Amazon, specifically the yanomami territory in Roraima our northernmost state, aka deep forest, is more dire than average given difficulty of access, sheer size, and government abandonment. It's a place that depends on government aid for medicine. It's land that is being systematically invaded by gold miners, pandemic, toxins from nearby farmlands, wood extraction etc. (wood extration is rampant everywhere tho). Early 2023 saw a massive federal government operation by now president Lula to empty the mines and try to look for where funding comes from. Yanomami land is still being invaded to this day, the struggle is ongoing.

The yanomamis need support right now more than any other. Last year saw a massive heat wave that (well, one, caused a girl named Ana Clara Machado to die during the Taylor Swift concert. This is unrelated but I feel like not enough foreign media covered this, Taylor even lied about it as well.) dried up a lot of rivers, killed a LOT of fresh water animals including an unprecedented amount of pink dolphins. Access that was already hard became damn near impossible without boats. I cannot overstate how many pink dolphins were found dead.

Another technique that landowners use to clear space for farms is to just set things on fire and then occupy the empty land, which they legally can do to land that was naturally burned in a forest fire. It happened that Pantanal, another national park of swampland, was massively devastated by fires last year too

this article is from 2020, the year that the worst fire happened, but in 2023 there was another one. It's been happening yearly now due to a) deliberate action and b) climate change aggravation.

And this is not nearly all. Just off the top of my head. If you speak portuguese I recommend following the APIB or the COIAB on instagram to keep up with the news. The FUNAI is the government branch of indigenous organization, but it's not generally that well liked. Still.

[hyukascampfire]

𝒯𝑂: 𝑆𝑂𝑀𝐸𝑂𝑁𝐸 𝐹𝑅𝑂𝑀 𝐴 𝑊𝐴𝑅𝑀 𝐶𝐿𝐼𝑀𝐴𝑇𝐸 ༉

𝓘N THIS STORY 〃 a life lived as a human among the fae is one hard-earned. the folk are built of indescribable beauty, and of debauchery and mischief. for some, a life lived subservient to the folk is just fine; but to those who dream of something more, they would spend their lives clawing and biting to make it happen.

you, looking for a way to escape a life as a faerie’s human servant, put a new foot forward thinking that any life could be better than that. but, when your first assignment as a king’s spy is alongside a brooding, icy faerie man, you begin to wonder what your place in this foreign world really could be.

wc ➳ 23.2k

pairings faerie!taehyun x human!reader, faerie!yeonjun x human!reader

warnings angst, unprotected sex, voyeurism, orgasm denial, jealousy, angst again, dubious intentions of multiple main characters... poor mc has no idea who to believe

playlists ⑊ yeonjun ˒ taehyun ˒ series

…🪶ashlynn's note this part, i put my heart and soul into! i rewrote so many parts and agonized over following the path that i most wanted the story to go down—i hope it shows! xoxoxoxo, love ya! again, this is a long one, so pls let me know about spelling mistakes :,)

← ⑊ →

You had hoped that learning of Yeonjun’s relationship with the same crowd who have made attempts on your life would be enough to rattle your brittle heart into sense. You really had. As you watch Taehyun, bent over the war strategy table, though, you wish you had more time to sort it out in your head. You hate the thought of settling on half-baked answers and information all for the fact that time is not on your side. When had time ever really been kind to you, though? It had not made exceptions when you were small and innocent in your cradle, had not slowed down to allow you to at least cherish your final moments a normal child with her human parents. You can only fantasize who you would be if you had been given just enough time to know that gentle love. Even now, time makes your choices for you.  

Taehyun looks over those metal figurines as if searching for something in them. There are more of them stood and strewn out on the map. It reminds you how you are now faced with a plethora of newer, more powerful players.  

You miss when this had been a simple spying mission—when your path forward had been unobscured and clear. You envy that version of yourself: able to believe that bad things presented themselves as such. The world had been clean-cut. Evil had jagged teeth and foul breath, and good had soft edges and sweet smiles. You’re not sure where that distinction lies anymore.  

“How’s your shoulder?” you say, making your presence known. You’re sure he had been keen to your presence from the moment you’d entered the estate, though; not only thanks to his better hearing, but also because Taehyun is constantly assessing his surroundings. The smallest insect could hardly sneak up on him. You push off the doorframe and enter the room. 

He nods his head once in greeting, but he doesn’t tear his gaze away from the table’s ensemble. “It’s doing fine.” 

Sighing, you decide not to push it. The sight of that puncture had been ghastly, and it wreaks havoc in your belly every time you replay it, but the tick in his jaw when you mention it tells you enough of how he feels about disclosing whether or not anything might hurt him. How many times in the past few weeks had you forced him to do just that? It’s no wonder that the two of you butt heads so terribly. Allowing you to stitch him up must’ve been the extent of how far he’d let you see him in need of help. 

You gesture toward the table. “Have you decided when we leave?” 

Taehyun answers you with a strained sigh out through his nose: a testament to how he’d been mulling it over. He levies those figures a few more moments of his gaze as if they might speak an answer for him. They don’t. He concedes to their lack of direction and turns to you. “Every moment we spend here, we risk our identities further,” he starts, crossing his arms over his chest.  

You wince. He still believes that you’d at least contained some of your identity by taking out those three faeries. You know better. Even the bard in that tavern had known what had happened; it’s why Yeonjun ended up finding out in the first place. Even if not all of them had been a part of that rebellion, it’s reckless to assume that there were no more than that. 

Continuing, he says, “And judging by what we’ve picked up, we need to get it all back before the solstice.” He doesn’t pace as he thinks. Only the faraway look in his eyes betray the noise in his head. 

You hate the way it sounds like he’s going to demand that you leave immediately, and you hate how it sieges your tongue and makes it dance into a pitiful ploy to stay. To give yourself some credit, it’s better that Taehyun knows every bit of information you have. This moment is desperate for informed decisions. 

“I saw Yeonjun this morning,” you blurt. The words bubbled and bubbled behind your lips until they’d found the tipping point and spilled out. You’d agonized over what to make of it all for hours: that Yeonjun had been as deceitful with you as you’d been with him, that you are a sorry human girl that had wedged her way into the cross-firings of a war much beyond yourself, that you still have the gall to consider your own feelings despite its grandness... None of that worrying had led you to a conclusion that both your heart and mind would agree on.  

Taehyun’s gaze snaps to you, contained and remote aside from the twitching at the corners of his lips. The intensity of it makes you waver, but you have no time for wavering.  

“He’s... been made aware of our purpose here. He knows that we’re spies,” you say. As you watch him try to piece that together, you add, “He’s part of their rebellion.” 

Now he laughs, barbed and full of mock and disbelief. “The prince is rebelling against his father? He thinks he’ll find the throne like that? What’s his plan for when this falls through? For when his father hears of his mutiny? The prince will lose his head.” 

The thought makes you nauseous, despite how Yeonjun’s image has grown to be something murky. You don’t know what Yeonjun’s intentions are in aligning with the rebellion here. You hardly know anything about his relationship with his father and the High Court aside from the fact that he feels suffocated by his life back there. You’d assume that there’s a lot more to his reasoning, but you’ve learned your lesson about assuming that you know who people are. The inability to lie comes with the need for secrets. The thought that perhaps Yeonjun is only making a shady attempt for power crosses your mind, but either your own reasoning or your own stubbornness shoves it down. Nobody in faerie would hand their fealty to a prince who’d taken the throne of a long-standing king by those sorts of means. He’d be a king with no denizens to preside over. 

You interject Taehyun’s parade of scoffs. “He told me that war is coming, that it’s been coming.” 

His face drops, and he straightens up. “Of course it is. It’ll begin the moment we return with what we’ve found.” 

Your lips go a bit numb, and then your fingers follow. You know that this is your duty—it’d been this all along. It should come as no shock to you that he intends to relay this all to The King. But that was before you allowed your heart to make its home here. How simply he demands that you return to those lands with information that would kill Yeonjun... it has acid crawling a path up your throat. 

You make your best effort to ensure that your voice doesn’t falter as you speak. “He offered us protection as long as we stay here,” you say. “We don’t have to leave now.” You try to catch his gaze as you add, “We don’t have to leave at all.”  

You know that Yeonjun plays a part in the rebellion, but you don’t know how deep his devotion goes, and you also don’t know to what ends you can trust his intentions. How far do his loyalties to the rebellion go? And, where do his loyalties to you stand? The thought that he may have never loved you at all... it’s been a plague to your heart and mind from the very moment he’d revealed the truth to you this morning. Your guilt has chipped away at you without mercy—you’ve spent so many awful nights wishing you could unload your deceptions in front of him. How had it ended up so trivial in the grand scheme of things? How are you the one left feeling betrayed? 

You really, really cannot imagine having Yeonjun’s blood on your hands. He is one of them—a creature deception, and yet you still cannot shake those stolen nights from your bones. He had been your first. He’d made this place a home for you, where you had never had a home. It’s pitiful to search so deeply in someone else for your own strengths; even you can see that. Nevertheless, you do it. You suppose that a pair of warm arms and sweet words will do that to someone, no matter if you know that they could rot you like sweets do the tooth. It’s not unlike drunkards who find their day’s comfort in their drinks, even as it rots their body and mind away. Anything for a stretch of belonging and bliss. You're desperate for it. 

Taehyun’s sinewy words rattle your wandering mind back to reality. “He tells you that he is a member of the same group of people that have tried multiple times to kill you, and you believe him when he says he’s going to protect you? Still?” he spits, shaking his head. “What makes you so sure that he’s not just keeping us from running? That he isn’t handing us on a platter to his rebel friends? You’re going to get us fucking killed.” 

Blood roars like frothy-white rapids in your ears, warring with the echoes of his honey-glazed exclamations of love. To some capacity, he had to have meant those words. Faeries can’t lie, and he had said it so plainly. He loves you. 

“We can’t leave yet,” you say, stepping toward him on legs that you fear might collapse beneath you. “You said it yourself; we can’t return without the whole story. If we return now, we could be missing something.” You study the frosty set to his face and suck in a stabilizing breath. “Please, Taehyun. Please trust me on this.”  

You sound desperate and pleading, but you don’t reel it in at all. You are desperate and pleading. You have no intent of returning as some successful spy and continuing a life of deception and violence. It’s not who you are; it’ll never be who you are. Maybe this world tries to ask it of you, but you refuse to concede to it. 

“Part of our job is staying alive,” he says, his body rigid. He doesn’t like where you’re going with this, you can tell that much. 

“Is that what you want? To be a pawn of war? Isn’t that what we are if we bring this information back?” you challenge. “Don’t you think that if the prince of all people has turned against him, then serving at his hand is the wrong choice? I don’t know The King—I’ve never even seen him! Why should I be excited to serve him?” 

“The prince has more reason than anybody to want his father off his throne.” 

“That’s not what I’m saying,” you say, stepping further toward him. Though, it does make you revisit those thoughts. If vying for the crown is really Yeonjun’s intention, you suppose he’d have no problems pleading with you to stay in order to tie off loose ends. You wish you could see it all from somebody else’s untainted eyes. “What I’m saying is, do you want to be a spy? What has The King ever done for you to earn your loyalty?” 

Taehyun looks at you with disbelief, the corners of his mouth tilting down. “I don’t care about the damn king,” he snaps, and then gestures down at the table with all those figures. “The Queen operates on necessary evils. Where she can find a string to pull, she will pull it. My father was her general for a reason. Do you think she would keep him unless she approved of his violence? There is no good side to this war—just sides. If you’re suggesting that we stay here and try to forget that we came as spies, then you can forget it.” 

You glance over at the war table and wonder how you’ve become a moving piece in ancient faerie politics when all you’d set out for was a purpose. You’d been so warped by your bitterness with your upbringing that you’d failed to see how anything could be worse than that. You’d been so excited that you jumped willingly into dark water without knowing how deep it was, and now your feet can’t touch the ground. Is this the purpose you want? 

“Leave, then,” you say, stepping back. “You can leave. Just let me stay here. Please.” 

Something in Taehyun’s expression flips, so subtle that you can’t name it. It unsettles you, your hair standing on edge. There is something in his eyes that you do not like.  

“So, that’s it?” he says, his voice odd too. “That’s all it took for you to hand your future over on a leash to him?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you stammer. The only ones with a collar around your neck are the spies. They’re the ones who insisted on that geas—the ones who needed to compel you with their faerie magic to ensure your obedience.  

“It means that you got all the way here, uncovered a whole rebellion, and made a life for yourself, not handed to you by a prince, and you’re going to trade it in. It means that you’ve let him convince you that you are weak and need to be coddled.” 

Your fists curl tight and dig your nails into your palms. “I never wanted to be a spy,” you grit out. Yeonjun is not the reason you want to stay here. He may be part of it, but you’ve come to be utterly unwilling to return to that spy den like it’s your home, or something. It’s not. You’d slept there for one night. Beyond just your word and that geas, what reason do you have to return? 

“You didn’t? And yet, it’s what we are, isn’t it?” he says. “Do you think that I dreamed of being a spy? That I do it because I love it? Actions have their consequences.” 

“Then, what do you do it for, Taehyun?” you say. “When do you begin living your life for you? Doing what you do because it’s what you want?” 

Taehyun seems to consider your words for a few long heartbeats before settling into something in his head. You allow yourself to let go of some of the tension in your shoulders as you watch his expression morph into something much less poisonous. 

You hadn’t expected him to react like that. 

“Do you have any weapons on you?” he says. 

Faltering, you sputter out, “What?” You look over the room. The last time you’d been in here, you’d sparred. Does he intend to properly fight you in here now? Had you pushed him too far? Shaking your head and feeling at all the places you usually tuck your blades away, you say, “No... I don’t.” 

“Get some. Where we’re about to go...” he trails off, as if reconsidering, but then he continues, “I’ll get you a hag stone.” 

You furrow your brows, not taking off to do so. “A hag stone?” you echo, thankful that he isn’t trying to duel you, but wary at the need for such a faerie ward. Hag stones are of the more serious class of wards used to protect humans from faerie enchantment or glamour. Most often, humans would string theirs up with a bit of thread through the hole of it and wear it around their necks as a pendant. Unlike turning one’s clothes inside out or taking red berries on your person, hag stones protect against the more devastating faerie magic. You shudder simply wondering what you might need a hag stone to protect yourself from. 

He nods a bit solemnly. “Kelpie do not let a meal or trick pass them by when they wait so long to have them.” 

You look at him with wild eyes, hoping to see him laugh or play his words off as a joke. He does not, but of course he doesn’t. Taehyun doesn’t waste his words on jokes. 

“Why... Why would we be going to a kelpie?” you ask him, laughing around the ball of fright in your chest. 

He lends you a wretched look. “I have old debts to call on.” 

❆

The forest in which Taehyun leads you is untamed. At some point, the sound of nature’s buzzing tapers off, and you know that you’ve entered a deeper forest than you ought to be sticking your nose in. When the forest goes silent, it’s only for one reason.  

You’d grown up here. Maybe you’d been born elsewhere, but that does not negate the fact that you had grown up scared every day of the powerful creatures that inhabit this world. Your fear has ruled you for your whole life, and you let it. You’d be a fool not to. It’s how you survive in this world. Your limbs tremble; they plead with you to listen to everything you’ve ever known—do not mess with what is bigger than you.  

You step around frost-capped puddles and dance between briars, careful not to snag yourself on their claws. It unsettles you further that this part of the forest is so untrodden and overgrown. With no folk coming through, you fear how the kelpie might behave when you make an audience before it. Will it climb straight from its frosty swamp and drag you back down with it? Is the hag stone you clutch at your chest enough to keep you safe? 

“I don’t understand why we’re doing this, Taehyun,” you say, delicately avoiding any tumbles as you speed up to gauge his feelings by his face. You’re not fond of the remote blankness in his eyes, nor the staunch determined set to his jaw. “That thing might kill us, and your shoulder is hurt. You shouldn’t be out here; you should be letting it heal.” 

“I know my limits,” he says. 

Grimacing, you return his curt tone. “Taehyun.” You grab at the material of his sleeve with urgency. When he stops to look at you, you continue. “I want you to actually listen to me. You’re being unreasonable. Yeonjun said he’d use his pull to protect us. Both of us. We have no reason to be out here, you’re just putting us in danger.” 

He lets your words stew in the air for a moment before saying, “I’m the one putting us in danger? Me?” He scoffs. “We are about as safe dealing with a kelpie as we are living off his promises. I’m doing what’s best for us. Trust me.” 

You’re winded by his choice of words. You’ve become wary of dealing out your trust so frivolously. Those two words ring alarm bells. 

“But where is this coming from? You didn’t want to stay.” Your breath furls out in a plume of white smoke in front of your face as you speak.  

He looks as if he doesn’t want to answer that. It only makes you more apprehensive. Your limbs fill with lead, planting you where you stand. “Taehyun, I’m scared,” you say. “Isn’t finding help from a solitary faerie a bit too far? How is trusting Yeonjun any more dangerous than that?” 

Taehyun steps toward you. “He is going to kill us. It’s not if, it’s when. That bastard is going to hurt you. This... This is for us. We are self-sufficient; we don’t need his protection shit.” A bitter tang colors his words. “I know that you’re scared. I won’t let it hurt you; I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise that you’ll be okay. You want to stay, don’t you?” 

You nod. You would even make deals with a kelpie for it.  

“Okay, then, let’s go,” he says, taking off with those words, effectively punctuating the conversation.  

You follow him. 

You grow more anxious the deeper you trudge into the forest without any consolation as the daylight begins creeping away. Following behind Taehyun, the wind whips at the perfect angle so that his form takes most of its terror, allowing you a respite from at least some of the brutal cold. You don’t feel any remorse using him as a shield against the elements—frost runs through his veins. He doesn’t shiver or wince at it. 

Taehyun stops a few feet before a wintry mire framed by crystallized cattails and reeds. Your heart stutters as he looks around to ensure that this is the right spot. The water is dark and deep. You stay a healthy distance away from it. You do not want to find out just how deep it is. 

“Where is it?” you say, keeping your voice low as if the beast might lunge from the water and snatch you up if you don’t. 

Taehyun surveys the forest surrounding you and then the body of water as he always does, and when he looks to you, you already know he’s calculated and planned. He doesn’t face a situation without thought—that notion soothes you, even if it’s to the slightest degree.  

“It won’t come until I call it,” he says, gesturing at those murky and horrible watery depths. Swallowing hard, you consider how close you stand to it. You take a shuffled step back. “When you see it, you need to stay calm. Don’t let it see your fear. It’ll find it amusing and latch onto you. Do you understand?” 

A rush of heavy dread spreads from your core and seizes your lungs at his words. You’ve made it this far. You want to stay. You want to stay, bad. If this thing outsmarts you, you will not go down without swinging this time. You have your daggers, and you know how to wield them. Bravery is most of the battle, isn’t it? 

You muster a nod, trying to give yourself a brave heart, but Taehyun shakes his head. Your eyes must betray how stricken you are. “Do you understand?” he repeats, his voice sharp and grave. 

“I do.” 

He accepts your words, pressing on. “It will try to trip you over your words and spin you into a trap with tricky words. Do not entertain it, even as it tries, okay?” 

You’ve been terrorized by faerie tricks your whole life. You can handle their schemes just fine. “Okay.” 

Taehyun frees a blade from its hiding place and brings it to his palm. He slides it there, slicing it open. Crimson creeps from the slit, running in between his fingers and trickling onto the snow. He’d cut pretty deep. 

“Why are you—Taehyun?” you say, stepping toward him as he curls his wounded hand into a fist over the water, shaking it so as to let the droplets down into the black water. You regret those steps you’d made toward him as something comes crashing through the surface. 

No, rather than emerging from under the surface, the beast is born from the water, manifesting from it as something gangly and wretched. From its pointed ears to its hooves, it pushes up from nothingness until it is standing there, real and terrible before you. Its skin glistens with a thickness like oil and its hair and tail hang in heavy, seaweed-like tendrils, plastered against its body. The scum floating on top of the water clung to its hair and pelt as it rose, twigs and the like poking from its withered body. A bridle cages its head, leather reins dangling down. Of all its awful things, you believe that its eyes are the worst—bone-white and piercing, they send a terror down your spine that solidifies in your bones. You know you will not soon forget the ancient soullessness that lives there. The folk do sometimes resemble the places in which they hail from; you suppose that the kelpie bares striking resemblance to the swirling water that sits at its feet. 

You try not to choke or gasp or react in any way at all, but it isn’t easy. You focus your adrenaline on keeping your breathing as even as you can manage. 

“It has been a long time since I’ve found a human at my doorstep,” the creature says, steam blowing from its nostrils as it snorts. How long might a long time mean to a faerie, especially one you know is so ancient? You hope that your presence does not intrigue the beast at all. 

Taehyun swoops in before you can speak, and you are boundlessly thankful for it. “I’ve come to call on the debt you owe me,” he says. He doesn’t leave any room for any familiarity or playfulness. 

“Is it that time?” the kelpie says, placing one hoof down onto the snow. It had looked so incorporeal and liquid that you half expect it to burst and turn to water as it does, but it climbs out just fine. Very real.  

Taehyun eyes the kelpie as it makes land, dribbling with water and its kelp hair swinging. You swallow hard as it disregards his presence to observe you. You’re used to the folk disregarding you, not this. How many years had you yearned for their attention? Right now, you scare under it.  

“For what do you need my help, boy?” it says, voice gurgled, “And why do you bring this human along? Is it for her? Or, rather, have you brought her as your peace offering?” 

Your legs tremble beneath you.  

“I don’t owe you any peace offering, kelpie,” Taehyun says, his head held righteously high. “You’ll offer me what I ask, or you’ll suffer for it.” 

Shifting under the tense atmosphere, you still don’t speak. In Faerie, debt is law. The folk live by a law that is, like many other things about them, foreign to you. Whatever natural laws by which they govern themselves are vastly lost on you—but of keeping promises and respecting debts, you are very aware. They hate to be indebted—you’re sure it’s why this kelpie is so peevish. You hope that the folk’s need to balance their debts is enough to keep it hospitable.  

The kelpie makes a rumbling and throaty sound that mimics that of a laugh. It rumbles the ground below your feet. “Just as rigid as the last time we met like this,” it says. “I wonder if it's because you’ve inherited your father’s stone heart, or because you fear me?” 

The kelpie remains playful with its intonation, but tension lies thick and dangerous beneath both of their words. You know well enough that the beast is not being light-hearted.  

Taehyun holds his face firm. He refuses to give an inch. “Do not try that with me. You have your word to upkeep for my help.” 

Shimmering under the moon’s light now, the beast treats us with a long moment of hostile silence. You can feel its malintent despite how hollow those eyes remain.  

“What do you ask of me?” it finally says, whipping its drooping tail behind it. 

“There is a rebellion here,” starts Taehyun, shoulders relaxing to the slightest degree as the kelpie defers, “The north is uneasy. I’m optimistic that you’ll lend us your protection and hand, whenever I call on it. Regardless of it being in my interest, I’m sure that you aim to keep your lands peaceful, no?” 

“Rebellion? For what would anything of the courts be in my interest? Of their rebellion or even just their ridiculousness, I do not care. I’ve left your gentry to you, leave me to mine.” 

Taehyun’s nostrils flare. “I’m not asking you to care about the courts, I’m asking you to lend me your help when I ask of it,” he grits out, “Or, rather, I’m not asking. I am informing you that I am expecting you to uphold your debt to me, and you’d better be ready to do so. This is just courtesy.” 

You feel the kelpie’s offense in the hollow quiet that follows Taehyun’s demands. Among many things, the fae are prideful creatures. Your stomach is in terrible knots. Taehyun is just trying to regain the power in the situation. You know that. It doesn’t make you any less scared for your life. With an ancient creature like a kelpie, it is paramount to earn its respect, or else it will push you around. 

Worse than that. It will drag you down into its waters and make your soul into a meal. 

“It’s a pity you think that hag stone will save you from me, human.” The kelpie turns its attention back on you. You bade your knees not to crumple. “It takes much more than that to protect you in places like these. Perhaps you’ll be safe from petty enchantment, though.”  

Taehyun shoves his words in before you can give the kelpie any sort of reaction. Not even a tremble. “Understood?” 

“You’ve made deals with our kind before. The magic reeks on you. It’s lousy enchantment, I could dissolve that geas for you. All you’d have to do is climb up on my back, and I’d grant you your freedom.”  

You can’t help but perk up. The prospect of ridding yourself of the geas placed over you is a painfully delicious one. 

Bristling, Taehyun steps between you and the kelpie. Whether he does it to fight off the beast should it lunge at you or to prevent you from approaching it, you’re unsure. “Do not,” he says. 

“Wasn’t going to.” You say it, and of course it’s true. The kelpie is poking around to see what will most entice you. Regardless, you can’t deny how awfully you wish that geas were gone. It’s the one thing that you fear will tether you to The King’s bidding. No matter how you armor yourselves from the rebellion here in the north, what’s to stop the spies from tugging on the enchanted leash? One command from Cricket, and your body would betray you and walk the whole way there itself. 

Though you don’t verbalize your interest, the kelpie no doubt sees the interest alight in your eyes. It pounces accordingly. “Unless you’d prefer that I give you a whole other enchantment. Protection against any of our kind’s glamours? Permanant true sight? A touch to my pelt would be all it would take for you to make yourself free.” 

Taehyun clicks just the hilt of his sword free from the sheathe. “Stop with the tricks. You can find your fun elsewhere.” 

Like the swampish water behind it, the kelpie stands there totally still, studying Taehyun. You really wish this altercation could wrap up at any pace faster than it currently is. You’re itching to escape those white eyes. They’re much more intimidating as night settles in. What sort of thing had Taehyun even done to indebt a creature like this to him? Once again, you’re left confronting how little you know of him and his past. By the time you’ve come to terms with the last thing, the next arrives to remind you that the folk lead much longer lives than you do. 

It finally speaks again. “Why have you brought this human with you, Lord?” Its furls out the term like a weapon. This bitter intonation that you’ve seen be used multiple times to speak of Taehyun’s title sticks with you. The title is a taunt. In this case, the you know it comes from the kelpie’s place of utter indifference and lack of obeisances toward whatever sovereignty the Courts may claim. The kelpie only answers to the land.  

“Because I needed you to know that your protection will extend to her. Know her face, learn it so that when I call on you, you’ll play your part correctly.” 

“I fail to see why you dote over her safety. Who is the human to you?” The kelpie takes a step forward, its powerful muscles rippling with the moon’s white light on its ink pelt. You mirror it with a step back. Taehyun stays put. “I owe her no help. That’s not how this works. I concede that I am bound to your help, but I do not repay double. You overestimate my generosity.” 

You watch as Taehyun takes on a posture that you’ve come to recognize as his offensive posture, potent adrenaline twisting up your stomach and sending your heart into a fit so fierce that you feel it in all your pulse points. You’re sure that swords are a laughable matter to the kelpie. Iron, though, you’re sure would still burn. Turning your hands to fists, you make a conscious effort not to find your iron weapons. If the kelpie were to see that, it may escalate things. You do not want to escalate.  

It’s only smart for you to consider your disadvantages: Taehyun is wounded. He had literally been struck by an arrow last night. You’re so far into the woods that running would consist of stumbling over roots and avoiding thorny bushes. Taehyun might know them, but you’re fully unfamiliar with a kelpie’s weaknesses, or if they even have any at all. You’re better off appeasing the beast.  

“Taehyun,” you warn. 

He pays it no mind. “I said,” he snarls, “stop with the tricks. You owe your very ability to draw breath to me, and beyond that. It was my neck on the line to grant you that. What I did for you was worth many debts. If you want to settle it all to even, you’ll do it. Don’t play this like a fool.” He doesn’t address the kelpie’s first question. 

Taehyun creeps toward the kelpie. You’re not sure where he sources all that fearlessness from inside himself. He’s way too close for your comfort. “What are you doing?” you hiss, quiet and meant for just him. There is no way he intends to fight this thing right now. You’d prefer taking the risk of trusting Yeonjun’s word over this any day. 

“Even the general”—the kelpie spits that word with a similar distaste as he had Taehyun’s title—“knew when he was in over his head. Ask a more respectable payment of me.” 

You suck in a breath. “Let’s just go,” you tell Taehyun. “We don’t need to do this; we didn’t need to in the first place.”  

As Taehyun takes one last step toward the kelpie, he reaches a sword’s distance from it.  

Really? Is this happening right now? 

“I’m giving you grace right now, kelpie,” he says, his voice pure warning, “My father is the one who landed you like that. It’s humorous that you’d even speak of him while we’re sorting out the debts that you incurred because of him. I suggest that you give up the sly act.” 

Once again, a charged and meaningful pause rings throughout the forest. The silence speaks volumes of how the kelpie takes his words.  

It’s a flash of movement, the two dark figures like blurs as Taehyun’s hand flies out to grab a hold of the reins that hang from its head and the kelpie rears back with a bone-piercing, harrowing whinny. He braces himself on its side and uses its flank to push off of. The creature bucks fast, but Taehyun is faster.  

The rage that it bellows with guts you. The forest ground trembles with its frantic clambering, hooves battering the snow.  

The kelpie’s frenzy ends as Taehyun takes the reins in both hands. It doesn’t make any more attempts to send him off, nor does it stumble about wildly. It settles. The kelpie bows its head. Your hands cover your mouth. They’re ready to muffle your scream. You wait for Taehyun to become one with the beast’s figure and for it to drag him down to the depths of its water that don’t see the sun’s light. Nothing happens. Instead, he slips off the back of the kelpie without any trouble, landing with a thud back on the ground.  

“Fix your appearance,” Taehyun commands.  

You allow a sound of surprise to slip as the beast melts down, shedding water to the ground and crumpling over. You watch it shrink all the way down until, where once the gangly beast had stood, the form of a faerie man stands. He unfurls from the forest floor to his full height, taller than Taehyun and reedy in his limbs. His hair cascades down from his head in shaggy, damp brown locks with twigs and leaves tangled in. Sharp faerie ears protrude from it. It confirms to you that this is just another form of the kelpie, not someone else entirely. 

“You’re a fool,” the man says, turning on Taehyun with wild eyes.  

You join his confrontation on Taehyun. “What the hell is going on?” you say. You’re still jittery with the urge to run. 

Taehyun entertains only you, saying, “I hoped that he’d just make things easy in the first place.” 

The man, dripping with water from his tattered, sopping rags for clothes, sneers. “I would not serve you if you fucking killed me. Of course you had to take my bridle.” 

You give Taehyun an expectant look. You’re in dire need of being filled in. 

“His bridle,” he says, grabbing the reins that still hang from the man’s face even in his human form and tugging him into a walk into the forest, “I grabbed it. He serves me, now. He can hate it all he wants, but he’ll do what I ask.” 

The thought makes you deeply uncomfortable, but you can’t pin exactly why. It lives somewhere around the place inside you that loathed the way the folk made your kind into their glamoured servants.  

“We’re just going to bring him back with us?” You trail them tentatively back through the woods that you had arrived from. “Like a prisoner, or something?” 

“Exactly like a prisoner,” the man says, excited to get a hit in on Taehyun. Of course, he’s unhappy.  

He stumbles as Taehyun tugs him forward by his bridle. “Shut your mouth,” Taehyun says. It’s more commanding than angry. “What’s your name?” he asks him.  

The man looks as though he wants to deny him that knowledge. Names are a powerful thing to a faerie. They spend their lives hiding them away—to give away their real name would make them totally vulnerable to the whims of whoever knows and uses it. However, you assume that whatever hold Taehyun has over him now works in a similar way, and his lips move despite his revolt.  

“Beomgyu,” he answers, eyes full of bite. 

You climb between a pair of close-resting, gnarled trees. “Does he have to keep that thing on, Taehyun?” you say, struggling with the sight of him being dragged along. It’s unsettling. “Like, does it work without that?” 

Stopping, Taehyun reaches up to pull the bridle off and around from Beomgyu’s head. He lets it fall to the snow. “You can use his name if you need to command him and I’m not around. He’ll have to do what you say.” Pushing Beomgyu into a walk, he says, “You’re going to protect us if in any case we need it. That includes her. You’re going to stay within my estate, unless one of us brings you somewhere. You won’t try your hand at any escape, and you won’t make any attempts to harm us either directly or by omitting something you are aware will do so.” 

You rub your hands together to generate heat as he lists his commands. Why would he even need those precautions, if Beomgyu is supposed to be his compulsory servant now? Would that not mean that he’d be unable to harm him? Either Taehyun is being extra precautious, or the command he has over him is weaker than you had thought at first. Beomgyu scowls the whole way through. Perhaps if Taehyun had not spoken those exact words, he would have lunged at him. 

As the kelpie stalls, Taehyun urges him forward once again with a shove. “Walk,” he snaps. “You did this to yourself. If you’d been a respectable man, I’d have only asked for your help when we needed. Now, you’re following us everywhere.” He allows him to stew on that for a little before saying, “You do your job well and I’ll let you return to your waters. I’ll forget I even made you my servant, and you’ll live knowing you’re no longer in my debt. You’ll not have to worry that someone might tame you again, because I already had, and I won’t even utilize it. We’ll never even make each other’s acquaintance again. You’ll be free to toil in your forest, and I will stay far away. All I need is for you to keep us alive and unharmed.” 

At least he doesn’t intend to keep him forever as an eternal servant. Most faeries that fall into debts work their long lives as living servants. Your years as Nut-hatch's worker taught you how that life whittles your soul down. Hundreds of years of just that is unfathomable. Maybe that is the cost of betraying honor here, though.

“So be it,” Beomgyu says, teeth gritted.  

You continue to trudge through the forest behind them. 

❆

Once you’re within the walls of the estate and Beomgyu is given a place to stay, you turn to Taehyun. “What part of that was safer than trusting Yeonjun?” you say.  

His eyes drop closed and he sighs. “It was worlds safer,” he grits out. “I knew what I was doing. You had that hag stone, and I’d have cut him down if he tried anything.” 

He stretches out his shoulders, shifting them uncomfortably under the fabric of his tunic. You know that his sewn-up wound bothers him. Could it be getting infected? You hope not—an infection this early on would most definitely mean it would be a nasty one. If only he weren’t insistent on pretending that it’s nothing. “I don’t think you could”—you gesture at your own shoulder—“you’re going to infect your shoulder. I don’t know how to treat an infected wound that big.” 

“I wouldn’t have even gone there if I thought I couldn’t handle it. I had a plan. I can protect us just fine.” 

Us. You’ve been wondering what your purpose here might become once you abandon returning to your duties. Would you be staying with Yeonjun? If he betrays you, and Taehyun were to push you out now that you’re no longer partners in duty, where would you go? Crawl to the doorstep of some random faerie to place yourself in their services, just to find yourself a warm place to stay? Taehyun now makes it clear that he still sees the two of you as a pair, but why? You still can’t understand why he’d suddenly switched up the moment you said you’d stay here even if he left. Realistically, he should’ve killed you for being a traitor to the king that he serves. You know that his intentions are more complex than that, but you fail to grasp where they lie. His actions and his words clash.  

“And when Yeonjun doesn’t betray us? What will all of this be for?” 

“This doesn’t stop at the prince,” he says, “there are more players than just him and The Queen. Any one of them could determine that we’re liabilities. Don’t you think that we should prepare for that? We came here as spies infiltrating their court from the very king that they rebel against; of course they’ll have plans for us. It’s still best that you stay your distance from the prince from this point on, regardless, unless you bring the kelpie.” 

Your mouth drops open, brows pinching. You don’t like the thought of being chaperoned at all. If Yeonjun is to betray you, then it’ll be your own fault. You can take the consequences of your actions just fine. “I think I can make that decision for myself,” you say, voice low. “And I can protect myself, too. Are you saying my skills aren’t up to your standards? Well, I didn’t spend that time working on them for nothing, and I don’t plan on stopping. I know I’m not perfect, but I think I can at least use a dagger adequately.” 

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Taehyun says, eyes flat with frustration. “You can protect yourself well. I know that. What I mean is that you shouldn’t rest your life on his integrity. I have no doubts that you’d be able to protect yourself from him alone. He’s delicate. The King doesn’t pamper his children, but I have no doubt that the prince hasn’t wielded a sword anywhere other than in sparring. But you don’t know if you’ll ever truly be alone, and you don’t know whether or not he’s setting you up. I think you can at least agree that it’s best that you can acknowledge that and behave accordingly, no?” 

“I rested my life on your integrity today. Am I supposed to trust you blindly, too? What if you’re just stringing me along until you kill me for my treason to The King? You were his spy, no? How many years did you serve him? Why have you given it up so easily? Why are you staying here? None of it makes sense to me, but I still trusted you. Was I wrong for that? Are you a liar, Taehyun? Does your tongue tell lies?” 

His eyes crystallize, a few degrees colder than you’d seen them all day. “I can lie,” he says. “But would I have done what I did today if I intended to kill you? It’s time that you see that actions tell you so much more than words ever will.” 

Again, he treads around your questions about his intentions. “Why are you staying here?” you repeat, studying him with your suspicion.  

He’s quiet. 

“Answer me,” you demand. 

“Is this not my home?” he says. 

Unsatisfied, you press more. “I thought you hated this place. Why would you want to stay here? Don’t you have an awful reputation here?” 

His eyebrows shoot up, but his face stays hauntingly blank. You’re used to his blank mask, but this feels different. “If you think that I left here because of my reputation, then you’ve fooled yourself.” He begins making for his quarters. “I have obligations to fulfilling my father’s role as Lord of this estate,” he says before turning and ending the conversation on his terms. 

That leaves you just as confused. If he cared about his responsibilities here, he would’ve never left them in the first place to become a spy under The King. It makes no sense. Whether or not it’s true, you’re positive that you aren’t getting the whole story. You sigh and drag your feet bed-bound. You hope to never have another day as unending as today again. 

❆

You dodge Beomgyu for the entirety of the day, not sure what to make of a new presence around the estate, even if it’s an indebted servant beast of a presence. You’d half expected Taehyun to rope him up in the horse stalls outside, making that his permanent residence, but he’d given Beomgyu a place somewhere in the servant’s quarters. You’re glad of it—you may be wary of him, but you don’t wish anything like that for him. Now that he has a more human form, you find yourself able to empathize with him more than you were when he was a hulking, killer water horse. He doesn’t necessarily run around much—without a doubt because he’s not the happiest about being forced into Taehyun’s servitude. You don’t blame him. 

Despite your efforts, he enters the kitchens while you’re alternating between chomping on a slice of bread and a platter of dates. He eyes you. Though in this form his eyes are not as piercing, they’re still heavy.  

You offer him a slice of the bread and push the platter toward him. “Hungry?” 

He shakes his head. “I don’t eat the way you do.” 

Then why’d he come to the kitchens? Either he’s exploring, or he came looking for you. “Not even like this?” you ask, gesturing down to his form. 

“I eat when someone is foolish enough to come to my waters,” he says. “I thought I’d be eating yesterday, but the Lord subverted those plans, didn’t he?” 

You laugh a bit, though it’s absurd to laugh about being eaten with the same creature that had intended to do so.  

“I sometimes go for more years than the entire span of your human life without eating,” he says, tilting his head to one side. Shaggy locks of hair follow his head with it. It’s unkempt and in dire need of a washing to rid it of dirt. 

You gesture at his dirt-smudged cheek. “Do you want to clean up? I’m sure Taehyun has some clothes to spare for you. There are some pretty nice bathing quarters, here, too. The kind that makes you reluctant to get out.” 

A wry smile cracks across his face, a bit feral like the rest of him. “I’m not afraid of some dirt. These are my clothes. I’d go naked before dressing myself in his.” 

“Okay, then,” you snort, shrugging. “No baths.” You rip a bite out of the wrinkled fruit in your hand. “How did you even end up... in debt to Taehyun?” you ask, eager to fill yourself in. If Taehyun insists on not telling you anything, you’ll find it in other places. You’d picked up that it had something to do with his father, but you need to know more. The more you’re able to piece together, the better you’ll be able to make sense of Taehyun’s behaviors. You hope so, at least. He holds is truths very close to himself, and almost everybody else seems to harbor a poignant distaste for him. 

Beomgyu’s face sours up again. “I had a dispute with his father. The General was going to raze my forest and kill each one of us. I’d called on him and asked for his help. I’m not sure what he did, but The General never came. If I knew it’d land me like this, though...” He grimaces. “I’d have just let him make me history.” 

Reigning in the laugh that bubbles in your chest at his resentment, because you’re positive that you finding humor in his misfortunes would ruffle him, you nod and pocket that information. “Then, why didn’t you just agree to help when he tried to collect your debt in the first place?” 

“I was going to,” he snaps. “He’s just a prideful creature. No patience. If he’d waited a few moments, I’d have agreed.” 

Humming, you don’t tell him that he’s definitely the one who wound himself up like this. Taehyun had made it clear multiple times that Beomgyu needed to stop playing around.  

Taehyun’s voice comes from the doorway, cutting into the conversation with its matter-of-factness. “Speaking bad on my name while I’m away, kelpie? Should I amend your list of commands to include watch your mouth?” His tone is bare and humorless. 

Beomgyu bristles beside you, about to rebut him before you spy the weapon at Taehyun’s hip and interrupt before they can come to verbal blows. “Where are you going?” 

Taehyun rips his icy gaze from Beomgyu to you. “To Court,” he answers, plain and as if it were obvious. 

Furrowing your brows, you say, “Court? Why didn’t you tell me we’re going? I don’t want to get ready in a rush.” Your mind turns. You weren’t even sure what you’d be doing now that you’re no longer here as spies. There’s no need to infiltrate Court, now. Would you just be attending as revelers? Not to mention that Yeonjun no doubt has no clue that you’re even staying. You hadn’t seen him since you’d ran to him yesterday morning and had your world thrown for a loop as he revealed his truth. How had so much happened in one day?  

His mouth hardens. “You’re not attending with me,” he says, knuckles turning white over the pommel of his sword. “You’ll stay here with him today.” 

Your heart thrums in your chest; not with fear like it had been doing so much over the span of the last few days, but with anger. “What?” you say, shock straining your voice. “No. I’m getting ready; wait for me, or don’t. I don’t care.” You spin on your heels to do just that, gritting your teeth. He thinks he can tell you what to do? Is that it? You don’t care what he’s done for you, or what power he thinks he has over you because of it. You’d left your life of taking commands behind for a reason. This was supposed to be new beginnings, not just your past life under a new skin. 

He catches your upper arm frantically. Whipping your head to him, you rip yourself away from him and back off. “I said, no,” you grit out, lips twitching into a heavily emotional scowl. It’s not just that he’s telling you to stay back today: you know that what he’s doing is much bigger than that. It sends memories of a life in a seamstress’ cottage flooding back. You struggle to keep your head afloat, to keep yourself from drowning in it, but they’re old and deep wounds. 

“Oh, look at that,” Beomgyu croons. “You are just like him. Except, your father was a general, so at least he had some reason to believe that folk would obey him. You? Not so much.” 

Taehyun’s head snaps to him. He barks a command. “Leave.” 

His eyes flash and he reels against it, but Beomgyu’s body moves against his own will. There’s a spark of ravenous hate smeared across his lips and in the glare he gives Taehyun as he leaves. 

“So, you’re just going to hand out commands and expect them to be followed now, huh? Because you’re suddenly just... taking up this role as Lord? Well, you’re not my Lord. You’re not his, either.” 

He crosses his arms over his chest. “Stop that.” 

Laughing a bitter laugh, you spit, “Stop what? Oh, I’m sorry. I should just obey you like a good human does, huh? ‘Cause that’s what we’re for, right? My bad, I’ll get a head start on working around the estate—what would you like for dinner, my lord? Or, do you need me to press your clothes? Go ahead and place your glamour over me, so at least then I won’t have to serve you consciously.” Your words are angry, but you choke toward the end around the lump of emotion in the back of your throat. 

He takes both your arms into his hands, his brow furrowed hard. “Stop it,” he snarls. “Stop it, damn it. Don’t do that. You’re not a servant here. Don’t you try to cry to me, I expect better than this from you. That’s not it at all.” 

You shove back on his chest, putting some distance between you. “I’m not crying,” you say. “And, so what if I was? There’s nothing wrong with it. Really, I think it’d do you a little good to cry some time.” 

“It’s weak,” he says. “Pitying yourself just ends up making you into a fool. If you just sit around and wallow, you’ll stay where you are. The only thing you can do is act.”  

That sounds about right coming from his lips. “Is that what your father taught you?” you ask. “Well, he was wrong. You can cry and try and take care of things at the same time. Crying is not the weaker emotion.” 

“I’m just asking you to stay back today,” he says. 

“Why?” you say, throwing your hands up in exasperation. “Tell me why? It’s not like we’re spying around or have some sort of mission to keep secret. Why can’t I just go enjoy it like that for once?” 

“Can you just do this for me?” Taehyun says, jaw tight. “I just need you to stay.” 

You’ve become sick of him not telling you things. Being in the dark never feels good, but it especially feels like shaky ground now. If he thinks you’ll be attacked, so what? You’re the one who wanted to stay here. Let you come. You’re better off being attacked as a group of three than he would be by himself, no? 

You decide to lean into his own concerns to appeal. “What if they’re waiting for you? Wouldn’t it be better that Beomgyu and I are there? Isn’t that why you did that whole thing yesterday?” 

He shakes his head. “If they are, then it’ll be easier for me to slip out if it’s just me.” 

Crossing your arms over your chest, you determine by the solemn lines to his face that he’s not going to give. “Fine,” you say. “I’ll stay here today. If it’s so necessary, I’ll stay here. Do you want me to stay inside the estate, too? Could I go see Yeonjun?” 

“I’d prefer that you stay here,” he says, slow and measured and veiling tension. 

You shake your head, pairing it with a tired laugh. “Yeah, right, I forgot. He’s a threat too. Well, you have fun then.” Turning and departing from the kitchens, you leave behind your bread and dates. So much for lunch. 

❆

Reaffirming Taehyun’s ability to lie, it was not just that one day. The next day, Taehyun slipped out for Court, sword on hip and pleading with you to stay in the estate on the terms that he believes they still might have an attack planned for you. It turned into a week that you were cooped up in the estate, and then two. The same walls you’d once looked at in wonder for their beauty became the ones you stared at mindlessly during the most boring of hours. 

You spend most of your time listening to Beomgyu drone on and on about the ways he’d tricked faeries and humans. He’s quite odd, but it’s not like you can blame him for it—most of the folk are odd to you, and he’s an ancient beast among them. You feel like that warrants a spunky personality like his. He’s nice company, anyway. Such a long life lends you an impressive wealth of stories. 

You can’t help but think about Yeonjun. He’s got to have seen Taehyun at Court by now. If there haven’t been any incidents at this point, doesn’t that mean that he doesn’t intend to betray you? The images of him thinking that you’re avoiding him makes you want to slip out to see him. You not sure why you don’t. Maybe the lies that sat between you affect you more than you thought they did. You’re quite the hypocrite, though. You’d kept secrets just as much as he had. 

You miss those stolen nights you two had shared. A knot, queasy and pessimistic, sits in your belly each time you lay in your bed and remember them and tells you that you’ll never see anything like that again. You’d allowed a girlish part of you to blossom beside him—a part of you that could throw caution to the wind and melt into the fun things in life.  

As you rot your days away in that estate that has become more like a dungeon than an estate, you allow yourself to miss him only a little. Once it begins transforming into a certain impending doom about how you’d thought that staying here would be everything you’d ever wanted, you find something else to do. If you aren’t toiling around by yourself or listening to Beomgyu drone, you’re practicing your combat skills. The times that Taehyun stops in to help you, it ends with you insisting that you’re fine to make appearances in Court by now, or at least see Yeonjun with Beomgyu in attendance. He never agrees. Each time, it’s the same awful excuse: Tensions are worse. He doesn’t know if they’re planning something. When you ask why he demands that he can attend, but you and Beomgyu can’t join: He’s a lord. It’s his duty to attend Court. 

The solstice is nearing, too. You’d looked forward to it, honestly. Hopefully Taehyun will let you attend by then. 

You sit crisscrossed on the hardwood flooring, running your fingers through your hair. Beomgyu is stood a couple feet away, and makes big gestures as he explains the one time he’d been called to attend Court as a solitary faerie. Moments like this have kept you grounded over the weeks. 

“And the stupid crone tried to say that I was wrong for catching him,” he exclaims, crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head as if the ancient memory were still as fresh as day one.  

You laugh. “What did you even do to end up there, anyway?” you ask. You can hardly picture Beomgyu in the setting of Court, even more so meeting with The Queen and her council. Moreover, you’re intrigued to know what he’d said to talk himself out of trouble. You’re amazed that he managed to make a sufficient enough case to save his life. 

“They said that I’d been taking too many of their folk—hah! I must eat too, you know? Oh, the pretention! Do they expect me to starve? If a fool lands themselves on my pelt and then in my waters, it’s only natural that they’re eaten. I’m simply freeing them from one more mud-brained fool. The Courts are full of those, too. It’d take me a millennium to eat them all. What are they so worried for, I wonder? They do the very same to their own people.” 

“Aren’t they ridiculous?” you say. Like you, he’d been an outsider in Court. Though you’re sure that it’s just as, if not more, intricate to those well-versed in it, to the ones like you two... It’s odd to see. You had grown used to it in the time you spent there, but you still know what the first day had felt like. Anyway, you hadn’t spent as many days there as you feel you had. All that had happened had bloated that time in your memories. “To be quite honest with you, your kind are all so odd to me. I grew up among you, but still... my instincts are always kinda at odds with my surroundings, you know?” 

Beomgyu considers that for a moment, as if trying to view the fae from a human’s eyes. “Even when we look so similar?” he asks you, grabbing at a lock of his hair and making a round gesture over himself. 

You nod. “Even in this form, you just... I don’t feel like I’m looking into the face of another human. Maybe that’s because I watched you turn to this from a horse, though.” 

“A kelpie,” he corrects. “What gives it away?” 

“Sorry, a kelpie,” you snicker. You look over his face. It’s so close to right, but somewhere in your mind you can decipher that something is not right. Like all of the fae, though, there’s an unspeakable beauty there, beyond explanation. It demands your human attention. Even the most terrifying are beautiful. “Well, for starters, your ears. They’re pointy. All of you have that, and none of us do. And then... I guess”—you narrow your eyes—“your eyes? They’re just different. And your limbs are pretty lanky, too.” 

He frowns as if he’s unable to see it. “You don’t sound so sure,” he says, joining you on the floor. “I’ve had quite some time to look at myself in my life. I don’t think I ever saw any of that when I was in this form...” 

“I’m sure you did,” you say, lips turning up in a playful mock. A water creature no doubt has an eternity to stare into the water at themselves in its rippled reflection. “Did you do a lot of that?” 

Scowling, he huffs. “No. But I’m sure you would, if you looked like this, huh?” 

You roll your eyes. “You’re ridiculous.” His face morphs from dismay to careful concentration. Frowning, you look around and ask, “What?” 

“I hear somebody,” he answers, pushing off the floor. 

Your spine tingles, but you search for the logical explanation. “Like... Taehyun?” 

“No... the walk is definitely different.” He strains to listen. “He’s usually pretty quiet. This one... they don’t conceal their footsteps.” 

Neither of you can get to a window to scope anything out before there’s three heavy knocks from the door, the metal knocker ringing. You shoot him a wary look and tilt your head toward the door. You mouth the word, answer? 

He considers for a moment and then nods. Well, he’s the one able to hear their approach. You trust they’re at least not imminent danger. You pull the door open. A breeze of frost comes rushing in as you do, blowing your hair and as jarring as a hit to the face might be. You’ve been cooped up in here for so long you’ve forgotten how bitter the cold here is.  

Behind the door your eyes lock with a pair of inky ones, settled into a pinched and snooty face. “Letters from the palace I have for you, my lady,” she says, her voice mousy. She holds out a stack full of letters to you, all held together by some twine. 

An errand runner. You furrow your brows down at her and accept them. The little hob wrings out her long fingers. “From who?” you ask her.  

She bows her head to you hurriedly. “Oh, from the prince, my lady! He sends these for you!” 

You look down at the stack in your hands, and your heart begins to run amok in your chest. He’d sent to you? You thank her. She scurries off in the snow and you close the door, sharing a look with Beomgyu. 

“The prince?” he says, brows shot up. “Meaning, The King’s son? He’s sent letters for you?” 

Nodding, you hold the stack close to you. Your feet ache to find your quarters and to begin tearing into each one; you’re ravenous for any sort of word from him. Does he hate you? Does he miss you? At least he still thinks of you. You’d worried that he might’ve found another lady of the court to dote on in your absence... 

“Yeah,” you say over your shoulder, more interested in tearing the letters open than explaining to him why the prince would be sending you letters. Curiosity sits in his furrowed brow. You hadn’t exactly prattled on about Yeonjun to him. Had you even mentioned him at all? 

He tags along as you head to your room and plop onto your bed. You don’t tell him to leave you; opening these letters alone... You appreciate his presence in some odd way.  

Unstringing the pile, you pull the first one out and run a thumb over the wax seal that identifies it as definitely from the High Prince—a fine silver dusted over white wax and branded with the image of Yeonjun’s insignia, the fox. It’s uneven and dribbled, clearly sealed by Yeonjun himself with the insignia ring he often wears on his finger. You pry it open and then unfurl the parchment inside. 

𝒟𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝓊 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝒹 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝐶𝑜𝓊𝑟𝑡? 𝑃𝑒𝑟ℎ𝑎𝑝𝓈 𝑤𝑒 𝑘𝑒𝑒𝑝 𝑚𝒾𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟. 𝑇ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝒾𝓈 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒. 𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝓃𝒹𝑒𝑟 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒. 𝐼𝑓 𝑚𝑦 𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒𝓈 𝑦𝑜𝑢, 𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑎𝓈𝑒 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑒 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘. 𝑀𝑦 𝑑𝑜𝑜𝑟𝓈 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝓊.  

𝒯ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝓈 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛.

����𝑒𝑜𝑛𝒿𝑢𝑛

Beomgyu’s gaze burns holes through you as you read this first one. You sigh, pressing your lips into a thin line as you reach for the next one. This one twists a hot knife of guilt into your belly and up into your heart. 

𝐻𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝓈𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔?   

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙'𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝓃𝑑 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝐼 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝓇 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝓈𝑖𝑑𝑒 ℎ𝑖𝑠, 𝓎𝑜𝑢'𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝓇 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒. 𝐼'𝑚 𝑢𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝓈 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑒. 𝐴𝑙𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ, 𝑝𝑒𝑟ℎ𝑎𝑝𝓈 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝓎𝑜𝑢𝓇 𝑎𝑏𝓈𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑖𝓈𝑒.

𝐼𝑠 𝑖𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝓈𝑒 𝐼 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝒾𝑑𝑒𝓃𝑡𝒾𝑡𝓎? 𝐼𝑠 𝒾𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝓊 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝑢? 

𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝓊𝑡𝑚𝑜𝓈𝑡 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟: 𝐼 𝒹𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡. 𝐼 𝒹𝑜𝑢𝑏𝑡 𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝓊𝑙𝑑 𝑖𝑓 𝐼 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑑. 𝑌𝑜𝑢'𝓇𝑒 𝓆𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝒶𝑟𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑒𝓇.   

𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝐼 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝑏𝑖𝑡 𝑟𝒾𝒹𝑖𝑐𝓊𝑙𝑜𝑢𝓈, 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝓎𝑜𝑢 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢, 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑤𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑘𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑜𝓇 𝓈𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔. 𝐼 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝓇𝓈𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡. 𝐼𝑡'𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝒶𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑏𝓇𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝓇𝑡, 𝑟𝒾𝑔ℎ𝑡? 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑡. 𝑁𝑜𝑡 𝑢𝓈.  

𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑚𝒾𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝓎 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑎 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝓊𝓃𝒹 𝑠𝑜 𝑒𝒶𝑠𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝒾𝑐𝑘𝑙𝑒. 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛'𝑡 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝓈𝑡. 𝐼 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝓈, 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑒𝑙𝑡 𝑖𝑡.

𝒟𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝓇 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝒾𝑡 𝑓𝑒𝑙𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝓉 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝓇 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝓈 𝑚𝑒𝑡, 𝑡𝑜𝑜? 𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑜𝒹𝑑 𝑖𝑠 𝒾𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝓈𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑜 𝒹𝑒𝑒𝑝 𝒾𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝓎𝑜𝑢, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝓈𝑜 𝑓𝑎𝓇 𝑏𝑒𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝓎𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑜𝓉 𝒶𝑙𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝓊𝑟𝓈𝑒?

𝑃𝑙𝑒𝒶𝑠𝑒 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑒, 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑡𝓉𝑦. 𝐼𝑓 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛'𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝑢𝓇 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒, 𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝓈𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑎𝓈𝓊𝓇𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝓉 𝑦𝑜𝑢'𝓇𝑒 𝑜𝑘𝒶𝑦. 

𝑌𝑒𝑜𝑛𝒿𝑢𝑛

“What do they say?” Beomgyu asks, timbred voice whipping you from the words that had settled a quaking ache in your chest.  

You’re not entirely sure how to tell him that they’re desperate letters of the High Prince’s love for you, a worthless human girl that had avoided him on purpose. He probably wouldn't believe you, anyway. Leaving behind your old life, you had pleaded with the sky to make your life something worth note. It seems that it had answered. Fate works in odd ways like that, granting your wishes in the last way you might expect.  

“A lot,” you say, brushing him off. Your voice cracks with it, though,  

Hearing the veiled emotion, he frowns, inching forward to take a peek. “Why are you upset?” he pries, and then gasps as a thought formulates in his head. “Have they called you to be tried by the council?” He considers his own suggestion for a long moment and then shakes his head. “You hardly have gone anywhere enough to cause that degree of trouble, though.”  

You let your face drop into your hands. Is the tremor in your chest from laughter, or from crying? You couldn’t say. Maybe it’s both. 

The kelpie makes an unsure sound, clearing his throat. “I... uh, I jest...” 

Collecting yourself, you say, “No. I’m not being called in for trial.”  

Dried up rose petals come fluttering out with the next letter. The flower of love. 

𝐻𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝑙𝑒𝑓𝓉 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝓇𝑡ℎ? 𝐶𝑜𝓊𝑙𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑛𝑜𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝓈𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝓈𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑎𝑡 𝓎𝑜𝑢𝓇 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝓈𝑜? 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑠𝑜 𝑝𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑐, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑚𝓎 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑒𝓈𝑜𝑚𝑒. 𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑤𝑒'𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒. 𝐻𝑎𝑑𝑛'𝑡 𝓎𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝓈𝑡𝑎𝑦 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑒?

𝐼𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝓈𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝓇𝑒𝑠𝑖𝒹𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝒾𝑠 𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒶𝑡𝑒, 𝐼 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝓇𝓈 𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢. 𝐼'𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑠𝓊𝑟𝑒 𝒾𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦'𝑙𝑙 𝓇𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝓎𝑜𝑢, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑑𝑜, 𝐼 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢. 𝐷𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼'𝑑 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑛𝓎𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔?

𝑃𝑙𝑒𝑎𝓈𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝓈𝑒𝑒 𝑚𝑒. 𝐼 𝑏𝑒𝑔. 𝐿𝑒𝑡'𝑠 𝓉𝑎𝑙𝑘. 𝐼 𝑗𝑢𝓈𝑡 𝑤𝒶𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 𝑤𝓇𝑜𝑛𝑔. 

𝑌𝑒𝑜𝑛𝒿𝑢𝑛

Why hadn’t you at least gone and told him that you’ve stayed? How had you allowed yourself to feel fear when you think of him? You don’t deserve his love. You don’t even know if you deserve love at all. All it would’ve taken was one night of slipping out. He deserved to know that you’re okay. You don’t remember being this selfish. When had it happened? Maybe selfish is what becomes of you when you’ve wasted a lifetime expected to serve others before yourself and then are granted the freedom to consider yourself first. You don’t want to be selfish, though.  

The one you pull open now is more raw. Hurt. The paper, scrawled in writing that becomes less elegant and more frenzied as you read down it, crumples in your hand. 

𝐼𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝐼'𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝓈𝑜𝓇𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝒶𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑙𝓎 𝑓𝑜𝓇𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑒'𝑣𝑒 𝓈ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑑, 𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑡. 𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊. 𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢. 𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝓊. 𝑃𝑙𝑒𝑎𝓈𝑒 𝓇𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑦 𝒶𝑟𝑚𝓈. 𝒯ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝓇 𝑦𝑜𝑢. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝓇 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝓈𝑜𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑡.   

𝐷𝑜 𝐼 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝓈𝑎𝑦 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑚𝑜𝓇𝑒?   

𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝓊, 𝑑𝒶𝓇𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝐼𝑡'𝑠 𝑚𝒶𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑒 𝓈𝑖𝑐𝑘  

𝑌𝑒𝑜𝑛𝒿𝑢𝑛

You stuff the letters back in their envelopes and shove them into a box in your wardrobe. If you don’t, you’ll read them over until you’re ill. Once over was enough for you. 

❆

“The Lord would have my pelt if I let you leave,” Beomgyu, crossing his arms firmly over his chest, says. “Let alone by yourself.” Realizing that his words insinuate that Taehyun holds any true power over him, he backtracks. “If it weren’t for the harness, I’d be unconcerned with his anger, but... Of course, you know, I’m obligated by my imposition to his word, so...” 

Tugging your boots on, you say, “So, tell him I commanded you to stay. You’ll be fine.”  

You had waited for Taehyun to leave for Court, anyway. You have hours of the night to sly-foot your way around him. 

You’d moped around for a few more days, your gut heavy with stones each time you remember Yeonjun’s letters. Stuffing them into a box, no matter how deep into the corner of your wardrobe, still could not wipe those words from your mind. You’d turned them over and over until you couldn’t handle imagining him writing those letters with a hopeful heart any longer.  

The solstice is only a few days away now, too. You’d been bound to the estate for weeks. Although you’re unsure what Taehyun’s real intentions are in boarding you in, you can no longer even care if leaving will end up getting you attacked. You’ve become a bird with clipped wings.  

Even if your wings are out of order, you’ll walk your way to your freedom. Hell, you’d crawl there. It just so happens that Yeonjun’s doorway feels like freedom in this moment.  

Like he’d always said, the doors remain unbarred. You don’t even have to use the metal knocker; you just push through the doors of swirling white engravements. Just as if nothing had changed. He’d been waiting for you. 

Instead of Yeonjun in his quarters, you find a brownie diligently working on doing up Yeonjun’s bedding. When she turns to you, her hands continue their efforts. 

“The prince is not here right now, dear,” she says, snout twitching. Round eyes recognize you before you can introduce yourself. “He’s only just made for Court, though. You should catch him quite quickly, if you mean to.” 

It seems he hasn’t given up searching for you in Court, either. You offer her your gratitude and slip out from his room. Picking up the hems of your dress, you race to catch Yeonjun before he’s arrived at Court. Once he does, things get more sticky—if Taehyun spots you... Pushing down the anxiety that bubbles up at the thought, you cross your fingers. Let luck be on your side.  

Your Court dress, though heavy, feels nice on your skin. Although you often look down on court goers for their pompousness, you can’t deny how good it feels to fit in. That’s perhaps the reason you cling to Court the way you do; you’re beyond desperate for belonging. 

On the plush, snow-dusted bits of the forest’s floor, you spot a set of footsteps. They’re quickly being filled with the flurries. You clasp your hands in an overwhelming bout of gratitude—luck had listened, this time. Those tracks are as fresh as can be. You double your pace. 

Around a bend, you’re overjoyed to see his figure walking there. Finally hearing you coming over the roar of snowfall, he spins. His face pinches and then drops as he recognizes you. 

“You... You came?” he says. Disbelief flips his lips into a frown. “You got my letters?” 

“I did,” you answer, catching your breath. “I’m so sorry.” 

A few feet float between you, the space not yet closed but so magnetic. His cheeks are tinged pink with the cold. Yours must be too.  

“I’d thought you left. I thought I’d never see you again.” 

Your chest caves in a little at the hurt in his voice and the way it clashes with the longing in his eyes. He wants to be angry; he wants to yell at you. He can’t do either when he’s just thankful to see your face. You had missed his just as much. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeat. “It shouldn’t have happened.” 

Yeonjun approaches you and takes your face into his hands. His fingers are ice on your skin. He swallows in your face, soft black eyes darting from your eyes to your lips and around the rest of it; just like he’d begged you to let him do in his letters. 

“Why?” Yeonjun asks you, brushing your hair back with his fingers like he’s just testing the feel of it. 

You don’t know how to answer him. You could tell him a lot of things: Taehyun told me to stay away. He had told me that you’d hurt me. I’d started to believe him. I became scared of you. We had lied to each other. None of them feel adequate in this moment, so you shake your head. 

His eyes harden to a degree as you don’t answer. “Why wouldn’t you come talk to me, pretty?” he urges. “If something was wrong, why couldn’t you come to me? We can’t leave things broken. I sent you weeks of letters. Weeks.” 

Weeks? You’d only seen four.  

“Finally, I got smart enough to send them when he’s at Court. And then you show up here. Tell me, how am I to think that you’re okay? When he won’t even let you speak with me?” 

You blink once. Twice. Taehyun had been intercepting letters. A pit of anger flares in your belly. Whatever this protecting thing he’s doing really is, you’re sick of it. Since when had he become your keeper? He’d demanded that Yeonjun was trying to do just that, but here he is, and you have no clue why he’s doing it. 

“I didn’t know you’d sent letters until yesterday,” you tell him. “I should’ve come and seen you.” 

Running his thumb over your cheek, he murmurs, “You’re not going back there. Please, tell me you’ll stay with me. If you’re to stay here in the north forever, let it be with me. We can’t slip around like this forever.” 

Shaking your head in his hands, you pull back. You can’t decipher the dread that washes over you at his suggestion once again. Your heart is wary with the need to do just that—to not return to the estate where you’d become some sort of prisoner. Something washes over you and tells you that it won’t go the way you’d wanted, just as most things in your life hadn’t. 

Seeing the way you retract, Yeonjun becomes more desperate. “Please,” he says, hands finding your shoulders to hold you as if you’ll leave him there.  

“We’ll figure it out,” you say. “Just give me a few days to think about it, okay?” 

His face stays drawn as if he wants to argue it, but he relents. Taking your frozen hands into his own and wrapping them up in attempts to warm them, he says, “Okay. Okay, let’s get away from this blizzard, then. I’ll wait for you, love.” 

Your chest sizzles. The cold isn’t so bad, today. In a way, you’d missed it. You nod.  

Yeonjun brings you to his chambers and urges you to settle into a plush seat. You run your hands over the embroidered whorls of thread on the cushions as you watch him rummage through a chest. “What are you looking for?” you ask him, drinking in his figure. He’d switched his Court shirts for some more comfortable wear, but even in those he looks princely. He’s so pretty. Your heart flutters as he fishes out what he’d been searching for and turns to you with a smile. He settles beside you carrying a leatherbound book and a miniature wood sculpture of a girl. 

“These,” he says, setting them down on the cushion between you.  

You pick up the wood thing, looking over its painted pink cheeks and feeling the carvings that make its face. It’s fitted with a dress; one unlike any you’d ever seen. Your brow furrows. “What’s this thing?” you ask. 

“It’s called a doll,” he says explains. You feel his eyes on you, watching your reaction, not on the thing in your hands. “Human girls carry them around to play with. They change the dresses and stuff. They even make things for them to hold, but... I couldn’t get ahold of any of those.”  

Heart stuttering, you look at the wood-carved thing. “Human girls?” you ask, imagining a life where you too could have worried only about what dress your toy would wear. You revere the resilience your younger self had to have. At least you didn’t know any better; you didn’t know how you could’ve had it. That ignorance saved you. The painted eyes of the doll stare back at you. 

“Kinda cute, huh?” he says, smiling and scooting closer to fiddle with the thing’s hair. “They even do their hair up all pretty.” Looking back up to you, he says, “It’s a shame that no human who has ever grown up here knows of things like these. Simple joys.” 

You nod, a little choked up. “Yeah. I wish I had. It would have been nice to have something like this as a girl.”  

He tucks some hair behind your ear to get a better look at your face from the side. “How did you ever end up being a spy?” 

Tearing your gaze from the doll to meet his, you find a sadness there despite you not even having told him yet. It’s as if he knows it’ll hurt him already. You fiddle with the little doll’s dress as you recount. “I was a servant to a seamstress,” you start. “A royal seamstress, too. She was favored well by the gentry. She brought in hordes of clients and made dresses and Court clothes for them—but, really, her work mostly ended at being there to hear what they’d want and inlaying the dresses with her magic when they’d ask for it. The rest was my work. Taking their measurements, making their dresses... I worked her shop as soon as I became able to.” Memories of cruel and wicked faces that snickered at your expense or those who found it entertainment to scare you come back, as fresh as ever. Those memories never leave you; the ones so early on that they’d calcified into permanent parts of your personality. That terrified little girl will always be somewhere in your mind. She surfaces quite a lot, these days.  

“There was this one time...” you say, trailing off to trudge up a more awful memory. “A Lady had come in to have a dress made. She brought a guard along with her. He was this massive troll with grey skin like a toad.” You’d recall his details without any trouble for the rest of your life, you think. “I’d ran off to grab some fabric for the Lady, and he followed,” you say, voice wavering just how your little heart had wavered as you had turned around from the bolts of fabric to see the goblin stood there. “He yanked me around by my hair until I sobbed, and then he had me get on the floor and beg him to let me live.” You know now that of course he wasn’t going to kill you—he wouldn’t want problems with Nut-hatch—but you hadn’t known it then. You thought you were dead. “When he had enough of his fun, he let me go. When the other two saw how hysterical I was, all I got was being asked why I’d left them waiting so long.”  

Yeonjun asks, voice soft and tender, “The seamstress allowed that?” His eyes are heavy with a mixture of emotions. You see sadness and anger there, but also something a bit more. 

“Nut-hatch?” you say. “Of course.” They’d known what he was doing in there, of course. Even a human could have heard it. As long as you served your purpose, the folk could not care less. 

He looks taken aback at that, recognition turning his brows up. “Nut-hatch? You worked for Nut-hatch?” he asks. 

Nodding, you hum. You had no doubt he’d know her name. Her work was well-renowned in his father’s court and beyond. “I did.” 

His eyes rake over you for a long few beats before he turns your face up. “Their names?” he asks. 

“Huh?” 

“The goblin and the Lady. What are their names?” 

You try to tug at the threads of that old memory. “I don’t remember,” you say. Much of it is fresh, but you hadn’t committed their names to memory. Inconsequential in the grand scheme of it. “It’s okay. It’s passed now.” 

He doesn’t look very convinced, mind wheeling behind his eyes. You don’t want to stay on this memory for too long. Pushing it back into the dusty corner where it stays, you continue explaining. “I accepted that as my life for a long time, but... At some point, I just wanted more. I imagined all the ways I could find a new life as a human here. There are so many other things I’d preferred, but the only one I could manage was that. Even that, I was wrong about. I’m not really made for that, you know?” You lighten your tone in hopes that it’ll make your chest feel lighter as well.  

He listens intently and then leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead. Pulling you into his chest and keeping you notched under his chin, he says, his voice smooth to your ears, “I’m so happy you’re here now, pretty.” 

Letting out the weight in your lungs in a long, meaningful sigh, you melt into his touch. It’s difficult not to when his body is so warm against yours. You revel in it for some time, just letting him smooth over your hair and rub your back. You try your best not to let any old, sad emotions pour out through your eyes; this is a happy moment. You’ve made it. Perhaps things had been harder than you imagined they’d be, but you knew it’d be a long journey when you escaped that sewing cottage anyway. 

Peppering a few last kisses to the top of your head, he releases you to pick up the book he had also grabbed from that chest. On the front it reads: Pride & Prejudice.  

“A book?” you say, looking over the brown leather and gold printing. It’s an unfamiliar name to you, but you never read much anyway.  

He nods and pries it open. The spine crackles with age. “It’s also from the human world.” Thumbing through the pages, he adds, “It’s a story. I read it often, it’s quite a nice one. I want to give it to you so that you can read it too; it’s a beautiful love story.” 

You lean in to take a look at the words, too perfect to be handwritten. “Where do you get all this stuff?” you say. It reminds you of he’d brought you to that market for human goods. He seems to be interested in things that are human. Perhaps that includes you. Either that or he continues to show you these kinds of things for your sake. 

“I lived in their world for some years,” he says, flipping through the pages. “It’s quite different. Though... I found myself not wanting to leave. When the time came, I brought these back with me to remind me of that time.” 

Lived? Not just visited, but Yeonjun had lived in the human realm? Your heart flurries with a lifetime of wondering what your true home was like. How ironic is it that he knew more of humans than you? That you’re the one asking him questions about your kind? “How long?” you ask first. “And why were you living there?” 

“Just for something my father wanted me to do,” he answers, “Somewhere around a decade, I believe.” 

He’d spent ten years there. Multiple things click into place—no wonder he’s so able to understand your human emotions. No wonder it feels as though you’ve been seen to a different degree by him than you’d ever known before. He’d spent years with your kind. “What is it like?” you say, not sure where to begin with your questions. 

He smiles fondly. “You wouldn’t even be able to believe me, pretty. You’ll just have to see it.” 

See it. “You’d take me there?” you say.  

“Of course,” Yeonjun says, frowning. He takes one of your hands into his, pressing a kiss to it. “You deserve to see it.” He presses another kiss to your skin, now at your wrist. The hair on your skin raises at the contact. His eyes find yours as he begins a slow ascent of kisses up your arm. Each is warm and sends your spine blazing. Once he reaches your shoulder, he slows down, leaving a long moment between kisses. He continues this pace—one that both makes you wish he’d slow down and that he’d hurry and quell your want—right up the juncture of your neck and up the column, too. His controlled breaths puff out like fire on your skin where his mouth lingers. You let your head back to help his path up. He places one final kiss at your jawline before his lips land on yours, drunken and in no rush at all.  

You can’t help the visceral urge to run your hands over his soft skin, to check if the warmth there was real or if you’d manifested it in your longing. Yeonjun breaks this lethargic kiss just to laugh, but he’s quick to recapture your lips. He meets your hand and brings it under his silken shirt, guiding you up the soft planes of his abdomen. 

Pushing you back, he whispers into your mouth, “I missed you so much, pretty.” 

You rememorize the gentle muscles of his stomach beneath your palm. “It was only so many days,” you tease, “you’re just horny.” 

He lets go of your hand to begin slipping down your dress from the shoulders. “Yeah?” he hums, gobbling up each inch of skin that he reveals. “I suppose I am. It’s a gift to be able to love you in this way.” Once the fabric is clear of your hips and he’s tugging it down your legs, his face turns sly. He studies your wettened core. “I think you missed me too, though, love.” 

You drag your bottom lip into your teeth. You had. Your chest thumps rhythmically in your chest, syncing like symphony with the throb between your thighs. 

Blood sings in your veins when he places his palm right on the boundary between your lower belly and your cunt. Your stomach soars, too, so excited by his touch so near where your body craves it. He runs it up, feeling the curves of your body, up to your breast. You expect him to stop and pay attention to your chest, but he presses his hand down right over your heart and feels its beating against his palm. His eyes flutter to a shut, and he leaves his hand there for a few moments, relishing in it.  

“What other purer form of love can I show you?” he says, tapping on your hip. “On your hands and knees, baby.” 

You flip, your limbs a bit clumsy in anticipation. Once you’ve found your way there, he dances his fingertips on the small of your spine. 

“Did you think of my touches while we were apart?” 

“Mhm,” you hum. Especially on the nights when the estate seemed the emptiest. Some nights, your fingers were just not enough to save you, and you’d contemplate making a big escape to find him.  

“Well, I shouldn’t make you wait too much longer then, huh?” he coos, running that hand down to ghost touches over your slit. Though minimal, you jolt. You’d been so ravenous for this. He’d worked his shirt off so that when he leans forward to meld his chest to your back, it’s his skin that touches yours, not fabric. His hand stays ghosting touches that leave you softly gasping. 

He teasingly pinches your clit, laughing in your hair at the sharp hiss it draws from you. “So reactive,” Yeonjun muses. His fingers find their way to your hole. He dips the middle two in. “Just like the first time we made love like this. Your lovely face is burned into my mind, pretty. You have such hungry eyes.” As he pushes his fingers in, he uses his free hand to tilt your face against the cushion so that he can better see your eyes. 

You sigh, shuddering and breathy, as he begins to curl his fingers. It only takes him a few curls to rediscover that spot that has sparks flying behind your eyes. 

“There?” he asks, chin on your shoulder. “That feel good, darling?” 

Your muscles tremble at their own accord, rendering your huffs trembled as well. “Yes,” you answer. Each meaningful curl hits its mark, knees unsteady pillars that dig into the cushions. “So—so good. Please don’t stop.”  

He maintains a sickening pace—your muscles twitch around his giving fingers, just enough so that your entire body buzzes and your stomach twists, but not enough to send you shaking yet. You collapse down from your elbows, chest in the cushions. He brushes back the hair that obscures your face with the movement, adamant to see your face.  

He eggs you on by curling deeper; faster. Your answering groan is shaky and tense—you can’t get enough of the knot he curates in your belly, but at the same time, it’s daunting. He sits back, but his fingers don’t falter. His free hand explores, feeling your body up for all the time he couldn’t.  

Stomach taut and brimming on your peak, you suck in a breath. Your orgasm sits so close, running a line of electricity from between your legs up to your spine, raising goosebumps on your skin.  

Your eyes fly open, mouth ready to scold, as Yeonjun pulls his fingers from you. Your chest bubbles up with frustration, your orgasm drifting off to somewhere else. “Why?” you ask, cheeks burning. It slips and slips away from you, hole twitching around nothing as if seeking out just enough stimulus to bring it crashing back. “I was so close.” 

His hand soothes the loss ever so slightly by circling your cunt, but he does not make the mistake of offering you any touch where you most need it. It only prolongs the float down, keeping you suspended. You abhor it.  

“Please,” you whine. 

He doesn’t entertain your whines. He only continues to deliver just enough to torment you until he’s sure that you’re not so wound up that you’ll cum the moment he touches you, and then he slides his fingers back in and begins building up a more tense knot with pointed curls. Your insides delight in the return of attention, falling almost instantly back into a brutal climb. Yeonjun doesn’t bother with languid, teasing strokes now. He aims for your ruining. 

You writhe against the cushions. Your heart is a fluttering bird in your chest, trilling at the prospect of your release. It’s so close—so close that you might be able to just touch it. It tastes like honey on your tongue, painting your words sweet. “Love you,” you tell him. “Love you so much.” 

Yeonjun rewards your sweetness with his free hand on your throbbing clit, sending your hands gripping at the cushions. You wiggle your hips helplessly in search of just the right amount of friction that it’ll finally give you want you’ve been wanting. “Yes,” you mewl. “Yes, so close—” 

“Wait, baby,” he commands from behind you. “It’ll feel so much better. I promise. Hold it back.” 

He reins in his touches once again, not stopping like last time. It’s not enough to put a stop to the orgasm rippling right under your skin, right at the edge of ripping through you. You can’t hold it back; it’s right there. 

“No,” he says, once again ripping his touch from you. It doesn’t stop anything—you go rigid just before it crashes over you, and then you’re shaking without his hands even on you. You cum with a vengeance—body reclaiming twofold what he had denied you.  

“Holy shit.” Yeonjun groans watching you come unraveled without his help. “So riled up that you’re cumming by yourself, pretty,” he says, running a hand around to feel your belly muscles twitching and the way they roll along with the twitches of your hips. He eggs on your orgasm with gentle touches at your clit, sending you jolting, until you’re a panting mess and he can tell that you’ve had enough. 

You attempt to push yourself off your chest, but he gently guides you back down with a palm against your back. “Stay there, pretty. You can handle a little more, right? You did so well, I know you can. Let me make love to you, darling.” 

The cushions are awfully warm against your skin and you’re still dealing with the waves of pleasure that drift up from your cunt, but you nod your head for him. “’Kay,” you say. 

The rustling behind you tells of how he’s slipping out of the rest of his attire. You lay boneless as he does, focusing on the waves running down your thighs. It’s ecstasy in its purest form. It floats through your veins, addling any consciousness and breaking you down into what you are at your core. 

The familiar prod at your entrance jolts you back to life. As he presses in, he presses a hand to your flushed cheek. It’s a welcome temperature difference—you feel set ablaze in some sort of languid flame, one that takes its time to consume you. He laughs softly. “You’re burning up,” he says as he bottoms out, as if the feeling of him filling you up isn’t rendering you jittery in anticipation. “Ready for me, pretty?” he teases, taking your hips into his hands. ��I need you to make those pretty sounds for me. I want to know that they’re just as sweet as I remember them.” He punctuates his sentence with deep rolls of his hips, aiming where he knows will have you singing. 

You’re helpless to the chorus of ‘Oh's and ‘Yes’s that he draws from you, the smacking of his hips and your sweet moans much too loud for you. You dread the thought of his servants hearing you and push your face into the cushions, muffling the array of sounds that bubble over. It’s all you can do—you could hardly contain your sounds. 

Your scalp strains as he tugs your head back, tugging your face from the cushion. “None of that, love. I waited too long for that. Don’t hide your pretty voice.”  

You shake your head. “Too loud,” you pant. “They’re gonna hear.” 

“I don’t care who hears you. Let me hear how good I’m making you feel, or I’m going to stop. Do you want me to stop?” His fingers cling to your soft hips, betraying how much this is affecting him. You know that he hardly wants to stop. 

You’re turned to mush, though. In this moment, being heard feels nowhere near as awful as Yeonjun ceasing those dizzying thrusts. You shake your head, scalp aching against the movement. “No,” you say, breathless.  

“That’s what I thought,” Yeonjun taunts, letting your cheek drop back into the fabric. “Let them hear our love. Let them hear how real it is, darling. Louder.”  

You tentatively let your sounds out into the thick air, but he decides that it’s not enough for him. Taking his hand off your hip to brace himself on the seat’s plush armrest, he doubles down his thrusts, feverish and desperate to guide you both to a beautifully explosive end. Your mouth drops open, unfiltered words and sounds spilling out from your chest as you grab at the cushions for help. With the hand that he doesn’t use to deliver those wild thrusts, he encases your hand in his own, threading his fingers between yours.  

For a few more incandescent moments, Yeonjun’s room only consists of your unabashed cries, his alternating grunts and whines, the rhythmic and hollow smacks of his hips to your skin, and the musk of your passion. Frantic bodies dance against each other, skin against skin in the purest way. Your thighs tremble pathetically, his cock brushing against your sweet spot until you squeeze your eyes shut and ride out the quivering of your cunt around him. You squeeze his hand as you shake. 

“Yes,” his pretty voice whines, “Just like that.”  

Picking up his pace, he chases to join you in your orgasm. He pants behind you, desperately fucking into you until his hips stutter and he stills, falling into your shoulder to deliver needy rolls and shooting warm spurts of his release into you.  

You two stay like this for some unhurried moments. You focus on his heartbeat; feeling it thudding against your back reminds you that he is real, and he is love. You hold his hand in yours a little tighter. 

❆

“I doubt that this will go exactly as you believe it will,” Beomgyu says, watching you do your hair up. Your eyes meet his in the vanity’s mirror.  

Arms burning as your hold them over your head, your words come out clipped with the ache. “It worked yesterday, didn’t it?” you say. You push a filigree comb into your hair to secure it up. “I got back hours before he did.” 

“I’m not saying that Taehyun is right,” he says, “but I think that it would do us both a favor if you practice a bit more precaution.” 

“What, are you afraid of Taehyun?” you ask, raising your brows at him in the reflection.  

Your taunt hits its mark, Beomgyu shifting in your bed and scowling. “Of Taehyun, never,” he parries, “of the fact that he could ask me to do anything and I’d do it, yes.” He shakes out his lightly matted tresses, a habit you’ve noticed over the passing weeks. “I played a little too closely to the fire with him once, and it landed me like this: no longer the owner of my being. I’d sooner chew off my own fingers than become his obedient dog, but I believe you also know that it’s best to soar low with this, no? Are we not together in this?” 

You press your lips into a thin line. In a way, you’d come to an alliance of sorts with Beomgyu. Despite his being a kelpie, the two of you are not so different now. Both confined to these walls, listening to Taehyun when he commands it. You don’t want any of your actions to snap back on Beomgyu, though. With you attending Court today, it’s almost definite that Taehyun will see you. You turn to face him. “Why don’t you join us, then?” you offer. “I’ll tell him myself that I commanded you to come with me. I’m sure he’ll be less upset if I have you there with me.” 

He gives it a thought, his eyes looking as tired and sunken as they always do. “I’m not one for Court,” he says. 

“But I’ll be there,” you plead, unable to help the twitching of smirk on your lips. “If we do it together, it can’t be so bad.” 

He frowns, but you can see that you’ve won. “I grieve for how the forest left me to my own,” Beomgyu grumbles. 

You surge up from your seat, eyes bright. “You’ll go?” you say, giddy to return to the thrill of faerie revelry and also to see the strange kelpie in the center of it. 

Grimacing, he answers, “I will join you.” 

You take his hands into yours and press a cheeky kiss to his forehead. “You’re not so scary as you try to paint yourself,” you tell him, watching as he catches bait. You laugh as he glowers. 

“Don’t push it.” He climbs off your bed. “I’m scarier than you should imagine, girl. I do this for my own reasons.” 

You pull a patronizing frown and nod. “Of course, I know.” 

You don’t have to wait for him to get ready to any capacity; he tells you that he has no intentions of making any impressions, and you’ve seen faeries in far more drastic states of disarray. Many show up for their reveling in just their skin. 

Beomgyu drones on about how he detests the audaciousness of the gentry folk while you make for the hall. The forest around you is as quiet as you remember it being when you’d first met him. It reminds you that, no matter how used you become to him, he is a creature to be feared. The little folk are right to hide away. For you, though, his might is a relief: should Taehyun be right, you’ll be safe. He moves at your beck and call. Though, the thought of forcing the kelpie to carry out your will is an uneasy one that you do not strive to fulfill. 

Once the buzzing of Court comes into earshot, wonderful faerie music along with it, you breathe it in. “First time in... how long since you’ve shown your face here?” 

“Perhaps four-hundred-something years,” he answers, looking over the scene with as much distaste in his face as his voice. “We solitary folk don’t make ourselves known here unless to bow to a crown. I do not bow to any crown.” 

Itching to find your prince, you gesture toward it. He should be fine—Court is supposed to be an insouciant place. “Don’t they host anybody who decides to come? Faerie hospitality, and all that? You’ll be fine.” 

“It’s all hospitality until you step foot from those trees,” he says. “And even hospitality is sometimes betrayed. You know how capricious we can be, I’m sure.”  

You approach the warm lights, but his words remain with you. It beckons you to remember that their minds are fickle and fundamentally different from yours. However you think they may act, they might act in the complete opposite way. You should at least let that guide how you conduct your actions a little bit. 

As you breach the pillars of trees and are finally surrounded once again by their pinched faces and gangly limbs, you search for both Taehyun and Yeonjun. You see neither, and so you make your way to the tables to seek snacks. You scour them for something sweet to chew over as you wait for him to appear. He’d said he’d be coming around this time, right? You surely hadn’t mistaken the time he’d told you? 

Beomgyu speaks from beside you, observing a hag that loiters nearby. “Is he not here?” he asks. 

Shrugging, you say, “He’ll be here soon.”  

You watch the hag inching closer, bent over with age; though, you assume that’s she’s been old for the entirety of her life. Her pointed ears droop from her thin tresses of silver, cuffed with gold.  

Turning from her, you gesture over the cavorting crowds, more frantically chasing their merriments than ever before. The solstice arrives tomorrow; they welcome its presence with their excitement. “This is all for the solstice?” 

He offers you an affirmative nod. “Just some excuse to entertain themselves like this,” he explains, “the solstice will arrive whether they encourage its coming or not. I believe that they just enjoy this debauchery too much.” His hollow eyes rake over the throngs. “Anyway, many of them are just here because it’s the only time that they’ll see Court. Otherwise, only the gentry gather here.” 

“What makes you any different than them?” you ask. “What makes you so averse to offering your allegiance to the High Courts? Would it not be nice to have their protection, and to keep them off your back?” You seek Yeonjun once more in the crowds, but still, he doesn’t appear. “You know, so they don’t call you in for things like eating too much?” 

“I do not surrender my sovereignty to any. Come they to my doorstep and demand that I do, I could not care. I’m content with the way I make my life.”  

His refusal to do just that must be why Taehyun’s father had come to claim his life. You’re sure that it’s also why the coming of the General’s son to steal his autonomy must’ve made him so angry. You don’t blame him.  

Why would The Queen demand fealty from the solitary folk? You’d thought that, like the High King, she’d leave them to their forests. If they’re all as adamant as Beomgyu, it seems like a lost cause. 

“Well,” you say, “I’m glad that—” 

A gnarled hand, fingers knobbed against your skin and skin about as soft as tree bark, tugs your arm. You spin to find who owns it.  

The hag’s eyes remind you of Beomgyu’s, piercing and dull with the weight of a long life. Though, hers are much more unsightly than his mud-brown ones, saggy eyelids drooping over a pair of eyes with ink-black where the whites of her eyes should be. She pulls you toward her by your skirts.  

You tug yourself back, pinching your brows. “Who are you?” 

She points her clawed, grey hand out at you, bangles of gold and chunky beads jingling as she does. “You, girl,” the hag says, urgent. Her voice is harsh and it crackles as she speaks. She reaches inside of her furry robes and produces a wood trinket from it. In her palm that she shoves at you lays a bit of wood carved into the shape of a wolf, painted in black. Its shaggy black fur reminds you of the kind Taehyun would sometimes wear over his shoulder.  

“I don’t need that,” you say, rejecting her hand. Nothing in faerie comes for free—the hag just sees a human girl that she can offer free things to in hopes that you’ll know no better and take. Then, you’d be in her debt, and she’d demand something from you. You do know better, though. 

“Oh,” she says, shaking her head as she draws out the word. “You do, girl. Take it, take it. You need it, I know it. Take it, I won’t hold it to you, girl, just have it.” Razor teeth appear behind her curled lips. “It is dormant with me. But, in your hands... Take it.” She shakes her jousted hand out at you each time she demands that you take it. “It offers you protection. It would do no good in my possession. It beckons me to give it to you, its pleas are so loud—loud, loud, loud! Take it off my hand, won’t you?” 

Her urging unsettles you, but so do her words. You assume that it’s inlaid with some sort of protective enchantment. Why would you need protection? Although, she could also just be fooling you. She could be holding a perfectly plain hunk of carved wood in her palm for all you know. You shoot a look at Beomgyu. If she were any trouble, he’d tell you. 

He looks about as lost as you do, shrugging. 

“Oh, sakes!” the hag grumbles, clutching her robes to her body. She takes Beomgyu’s hands and places the thing there. “There. I have no reasons to be here fooling humans. Useless debts, what could you give me? Nothing I need.” She points a sturdy, twiggy finger at you. “Keep it on you, girl, else it won’t do its work.” 

With those final ill-boding words, the hag hobbles off, her curved back disappearing between the gaps in the crowd. 

“Here,” Beomgyu says, regarding the trinket with his observation. “That hag really wanted this to be yours, so I think it ought to be in your hands.” He tries pushing it off to you. 

Laughing, you don’t reach out to take it, darting his hand with your whole body. You hang your hands in the air. “I’m not taking that thing,” you say. “She handed it to you, so I really think it ought to be in your hands.” 

He deadpans. “I’ve just been collecting myself a heap of debts, haven’t I?” He closes it into his fist for his lack of pockets. “What’s this one to add?” 

“Does it... feel like it has anything bad on it?” you ask, remembering how he’d identified your geas. “Like a curse, or a bad enchantment, or something?” 

Shaking his head, he says, “No. I feel it does have a protective purpose, but the magic there is... odd. Hard for me to decipher. Probably that hag’s.”  

You purse your lips, nodding. Regardless, whatever protection that thing might have offered you, you’ll be fine without it. 

Shaking off the odd interaction, you resume perusing the snack platters in your wait. You skip over glazed pinecones. Those would be terrible on your human stomach and teeth. You can only imagine how they’d jab at your gums. You opt for a helping of braised fiddlehead ferns. Chewing on the furled thing, you entertain yourself with the revelers. Littler folk dart in and out of legs. Long-limbed gentryfolk with flowers in their hair spin with interlocked hands at the center of the clamor. Sharp-eyed faeries with even sharper mouths speak in clusters, no doubt scheming. In all its oddness, you’d missed it.  

 A silk-smooth voice steals your attention. “A kelpie?” Yeonjun says, regarding Beomgyu beside you. “Now, how did you manage to befriend a kelpie? Even better, how did you drag it here?” 

Your chest lights up. “Long story,” you say, brushing his curiosity off. “What took you so long?”  

He’s dressed in his Courtly best—cuffs made of ruffle and an array of rings decorating his fingers. They catch light as he brings his hand up to run a hand along the expanse of your collarbone. He hesitates to answer for a split second. “I ran into Kai on my way,” he explains. “He’s performing here today and for tomorrow's solstice.” 

Accepting his answer, you go to tell Beomgyu that you’re going off, but he’s not even there as you turn. He must’ve wandered off as Yeonjun had arrived. 

“Want to join them?” he asks, tilting his head toward the dancing bodies. Soft black strands drift over his eyes.  

Shaking your head, you offer him some of the sweets you’d been eyeing, knowing that he’s got a knack for sweets. “Not today. I think I want to remember all of tonight, and, well...” Memories of the way you’d danced uncontrollably until it’d fade to black lick at your mind. You want to revel in your return to normalcy fully, not with a buzzing mind. You can’t deny the allure of that tingling in your bones as you hear the faerie music, though. It curls a wild finger at you, beckoning. 

An uncomfortable look passes through his eyes, gone as fast as it had come. “All right, darling,” he hums, accepting the sweets. “Does the Lord know you’re here?” 

Lips tugging into a faint frown, you say, “Not yet, I think.” The quick expression doesn’t go unnoticed by you. Unlike the ice the Taehyun offers you, Yeonjun wears his feelings all over himself. It’s just one way that they are fundamentally different. “Is something wrong?” 

Yeonjun looks taken aback at your asking. “I’m doing just fine,” he says. “Why do you ask?” 

He does not say nothing wrong. You know it is because he cannot lie. You look him over. What had happened? And, why is he averse to telling you the truth? “Just thought you looked a bit upset.” You shrug. “Did you want to dance?” 

His nose crinkles with a laugh. “No, pretty. I’d be in your presence doing nothing and still be content.” He takes your hands into his, the metal on his fingers biting cold against your skin. “How about we go listen to Kai play?” 

He leads you to where the musicians work at concocting their works, claiming a chalice of some drink from a table on the way. Kai, of course, stands away from the rest, back to a tree while his fingers dance on the strings. You look around for Taehyun from here, but still, you don’t see his face. 

Yeonjun holds the chalice’s neck between his middle two fingers, sipping from it. “It’s nice to know that even as this season ends, I won’t be forced to go back there.” 

His pretty lips wrap over the edge of the chalice as he drinks from it. “Won’t your father know something is up when you don’t return?” 

Nodding slowly, he grimaces. “I suppose that time has finally come.” 

You squeeze his hand in yours. “We both sacrificed things to be here, huh?” you say. You don’t know a lot of what Yeonjun’s life back in his home court was like, but you know that it would be hard to revolt against your own family for anybody. Even for the prince of Faerie. 

He captures your eyes, his soft brown ones making crescents with his gentle smile. “We did,” he muses. 

“Remember our first night in Court?” you say. You’d been so uneasy, searching for a place to fit in. Then, from the crowds of overwhelming faces, he’d appeared, all charm and welcoming smiles. How couldn’t you have let your heart fall? 

Another flash of disconcertment, his smile faltering. He hides it behind another sip of his drink. Swallowing, he nods, laughing off-kilter. “I do. I think watching you dance that time was the best thing I’ve ever seen.” 

Odd, but you don’t push the issue. If he says that he’s fine, it must just be something to little effect. “What made you come up to me that night?” you say, remembering how confused you’d been when such a pretty gentry boy had taken interest in you. You’d agonized over why he’d done so for long, and sometimes you still, but you’ve made some peace with it by now.  

His lips are tight. “I... It’s hard to explain.” 

You accept that answer at face-value and let your head fall into his shoulder while you watch Kai dutifully work at his songmaking. Among those making the music for Court, his contributions stand out as the most enthralling. Faerie music is too elusive for you to decipher why, but perhaps it’s just his lazed passion. “I understand,” you say. His shoulder is tight and less cushy than you expect it to be. Looking up to him, you frown to see how he’s looking down at you, eyes stormy. He looks like he’s sick to his stomach. You go to ask if he’s going to be okay, but he speaks before you can. 

“Pretty, I... I have to tell you something.” He pulls you off of him to look into your eyes. He’s always been so steadfast and sure, but now his gaze wavers. “I’m so sorry.” 

Your stomach drops. You don’t like the way he’s looking at you. “What?” you say, a tingle in your spine telling you that something isn’t right; that you’re not going to like what he’s going to say. “Yeonjun, you’re making me nervous. Is something wrong?” 

You know it’s awful and you’re not sure why you do it, but for a split second, you inspect the hall for possible attackers. A terrible bout of potent adrenaline makes you want to run or cry. Beomgyu is here, right? 

He swallows hard, face a ghostly pallor. “I can’t keep doing this,” he says, voice trembling. “I need to tell you the truth, it’s... it’s been eating me alive. I can’t look into your sweet face and know...” 

Acid climbs up your throat. Your heart joins it, thick in your throat and choking you. “What? Know what Yeonjun?” you ask, lips trembling. Your skin prickles, hair raising. You may throw up. He looks stricken in place, not answering you. “What?” you demand. 

“I didn’t come up to you for no reason that day.” 

Your heart, still caught in your throat, bursts. It’s a horrifying, bloody affair. “No,” you say, shaking your head. You feel so removed from your body that you can almost envision how your blood-drained face might match his. 

“I knew that you were the spies the moment I saw you. It was....” He sucks in a breath. Your world spins around you as you wait. “I was supposed to determine who the spies were. I was supposed to have them killed, but pretty, I knew I couldn’t do that the moment I saw you. I thought it was just going to be some... some random faerie that I’d...” 

If your world was spinning before, it’s now flipped upside down and inverted. “No,” you repeat, a guttural plea that you know won’t change anything. It’s the only word that your mouth will make for right now, though. 

You’re hurt. You’re scared. You’re angry. You’re frozen. 

Yeonjun grabs for your hands, but you rip yourself away from him, your glaring eyes so at odds with your wobbling lips. “It doesn’t change anything,” he says. “It doesn’t change how I love you now. You know I love you. You know I love you, right? I’m so sorry. I would never hurt you. I did my best to protect you. Please, I never wanted to hurt you,” he rambles, frantically grabbing for your arms as he falls down to his knees before you. 

A few faeries around you gasp, and a blur of their commotion forms around you. The crowned prince of Faerie just went to his knees. Your eyes dart wildly around their guffawing faces, and between a space you spot a familiar face: cold eyes and a cracked mask of indifference. He looks right at you. 

What on earth is going on? How is this life right now? You snap back to Yeonjun in front of you. 

“Please, don’t look at me like that, pretty,” he pleads. “Please.” His voice cracks, eyes frantic. “Slap me. Tell me you hate me for it. But please, don’t look at me like you’re scared of me.” 

Tears scald your cheeks. 

“I know that it’s selfish of me to ask you that; I know, I know it—but please, I can’t handle it, love. I was never going to let anything happen to you, I knew it the moment I saw you. I felt it right here”—he gestures to his beating heart, the one your hand had felt and cherished so only last night—“I knew that no matter how big my ambitions were, they would never be bigger than that.” 

You can’t listen to any more. His words pour out onto your skin, but they all slip off like rain upon a beast’s winter pelt. None can penetrate the ringing in your ears. 

Yeonjun sees how retracted you’ve become. “Pretty, please,” he says, slower and more dire now. “Say something." 

You don’t know what to do. Your feet are rooted fast to the ground, but you know that you have to leave, or else you’ll start creating excuses for him. You know yourself too well to let that happen. 

Picking up your skirts, you manage only a few words to part him with. “Though your kind can’t lie,” you say, “you have been the biggest liar I have ever known. You said you loved me.” 

“I do,” he says, shaking his head, eyes twinkling. “I do.” 

Maybe love is a different thing to a faerie. 

You take off. He calls for you, but it’s muffled by the restlessness of the folk around you and the still-playing music. You dart between openings and bounce off bodies, lights and angry faces a blur in your frenzy. Most folk don’t spare you even a glance; nothing could pull them from their merriment. But others gawk at you like you put on a performance, greedy eyes drinking in any amount of fanfare. Their eyes itch under your skin. Crossing the expanse of the hall has never felt so arduous.  

You’ve become their spectacle. 

Breaking into the cold night air, you don’t run home or collapse to your knees in a sob. You hold your dress hard in your hands, the one he’d gifted you among so many others, its fabric bunching in your fists, and stand there as if frozen staring into the tree line ahead. You don’t move and you don’t think; both would remind you that this is real and that you are a fool. You just allow the bitter air to swaddle your skin. 

You don’t even know if you doubt that he loves you. You don’t even know if he actually never intended to hurt you. Had there been times where all you’d done was look at him with starry eyes, and he’d look at you deciding whether or not to have you killed? 

Why are you even here? There is nothing left for you. Whatever simple joys you thought you’d found, they’re gone. You’re so far away from home, and you’ve nobody to call home. You’d left behind your beginnings of a purpose, and now the only purpose you serve is to rot away in Taehyun’s estate because you demanded that you stay here. 

All that time you’d spent worrying, and still, you walked yourself into this. You’re a joke. And now, you’re fully serving your purpose as one—to be laughed at.

White breaths unfurl into the night air before you, floating off to join the snowflakes and heavy fog. You just watch those fluffy flakes fall for a while. 

Snow creaks under a few footsteps behind you, someone letting you know that they’re there. “You’ve gotten awfully good at sneaking around,” Taehyun says. 

You let your head fall back, sighing slowly out through your nose. Turning to him, you spit, “I understand. You were right. I got it, okay? I don’t need you to come here and rub it in.” 

Beomgyu approaches from behind Taehyun. 

Taehyun doesn’t say anything for a bit, ice-hard eyes darting all over your face. “Take her back to the estate,” he tells Beomgyu. 

Glad to escape him, you begin your way on your own. You know that he’s only looking at your break down as pathetic. Perhaps it is, but recognizing that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Wind lapping at your wet cheeks have them stinging as you walk. 

Beomgyu awkwardly trails behind you as you follow the path that had become trodden in the time that you and Taehyun have been here, foliage and shrubbery broken down to make somewhat of a path. 

He doesn’t speak; you don’t expect him to. Instead, you break the quiet yourself, unable to stand only the sound of wind twirling between trees. “I should’ve taken that ridiculous charm thing,” you say, laughing through your tears. That hag had absolutely been able to feel what was coming with you with whatever intuition that the magic in her bones lends her. 

“But then,” Beomgyu says, “you wouldn’t know the truth.” 

That’s true. Not knowing the truth doesn’t make it untrue, but at least it spares your fragile heart. “I don’t know if I’d mind that,” you tell him. “I think I’d prefer it.” 

Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes. 

❆

You don’t remember falling asleep. You remember climbing into your bed, dreading that you’ll be in your head all night, but to some mercy, you’d found sleep not long after that. 

You’d pulled yourself from bed, no matter how it had grown a gravitational pull and insisted that it’d hold you warm while you weep. If you hadn’t, you might not have gotten up at all. As a girl, you’d force yourself into the day’s routine when you had your worst days. It’s the only way that you live through it. You’d also made an effort to walk past your wardrobe. It carries so much of him: the lovely things he’d gifted you, his letters, and that book he’d lent you. It’s not that you don’t want any of these things; to wither away in your bed, to go through his things and wonder how someone who’d showered you so had meant to be your killer, to drag your feet... It’s that you can’t. 

You poke your needle through the fabric. On the cut of white fabric stretched inside the embroidery hoop, you’ve embroidered a dozen woven wheel stitch flowers of different colors and types. Your bottom aches against the hardwood flooring and your lower spine strains, but you don’t pay any mind to their complaining. You just continue to embroider the little flowers. Some are poppy, some rose, and some you’d made up just to have more to stitch. 

A knock resounds through the war room from the doorway. You look to see Taehyun there. He’s dressed in his Court attire. 

“You should get dressed,” he says. “It’s almost midnight. If you want to make it in time, you’ve got to get ready now.” 

Since when had he decided that you’re okay to go? It’s as if this elusive threat that’d he’d been so careful has up and disappeared. “You can go. It’ll take me too long to get ready.” 

Truth be told, you’d go sick seeing Yeonjun’s face, and you know without a doubt that you would. 

“It’s the solstice,” Taehyun says, stepping into the room. He looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. 

Despite how much you had wanted to see it, your heart is too apathetic for it to be worth anything now. Returning to the same faces that had seen your demonstration and no doubt now talk of it... You’d rather finish your fifth rose. “I know.” 

He hesitates, studying you while gears turn in his head. “Hadn’t you thought that something would happen on the solstice?” he says. “Come on. It’s worth seeing how this unfolds.” 

“Why? We aren’t spies anymore. I don’t care what happens in their conflict. It’s well beyond my control as a human here.” 

He grimaces, but you don’t recognize the look there to be anger, more a rigidness. He rests his hand on his sword as he always does. “Then we’ll stay here.” 

You furrow your brows. “Huh?” 

“We can celebrate the solstice here,” he elaborates. “We don’t need to do it there. Plenty of folk celebrate on their own.” 

It dawns upon you that this is his stilted attempt at comforting you. It’s the only way he knows how. You push off the ground. You couldn’t ignore this sliver, however little, of tenderness. You’re not sure if you’d ever see it again if you did. You’ll take anything to distract your mind, as well. You can’t escape the image of Yeonjun’s eyes as he’d pleaded with you from the ground. “I’m not sure Beomgyu will join us, though. He doesn’t believe in the need to celebrate the solstices.” 

“He will if I command it,” he says.  

“What, you’re going to command the poor kelpie to sit and watch a bonfire with us?” you say, imagining how he’d brood. 

The north is wickedly cold at all times, but it’s especially so after night falls. You shuffle closer to the bonfire that Taehyun had built. It’s multitudes smaller than the bonfire you’d sat around with Yeonjun, but it’s warm enough for just the two of you. You quickly shove down those tainted memories before they sting. A lump of emotion forms in your throat before you can, though. You clear it. “Is there anything special that you’re supposed to do?” 

Feeding one last log into the flame, he watches it catch. “We started this really early,” he says. “The fire is supposed to keep you warm and represent the sun’s warmth until sunrise...” He trails off, sliding the cuffs of his shirt that he’d slid up to his elbows to tend to the fire down and sucking in an awkward breath. He looks between the fire and you as though he’d not fully thought out his offer when he’d made it. 

You face your palms to the orange flame, letting the roiling waves of heat warm them. “It’s nice like this.” 

The flame sizzles and pops, spewing sparks and eating up the wood, for a few long moments. You’re not in a talky mood, and Taehyun doesn’t seem to know where to begin on conversation with you that isn't functional. No snow falls around you, and any wind is cut by the estate. This—a place to lose yourself to your mind—is both the thing you need and what you most should not have. 

Taehyun stands watching the fire twirling, his arms over his chest.  

“Is your shoulder healing fine?” you ask, once the air starts feeling a bit heavy with the weight of the prolonged quiet. “Are my stitches holding up fine? No infection, or anything?” 

His gaze flicks up to you. “You stitched it up pretty well,” he answers. “I saw the flowers you were making. You’ve got a good hand.” 

Frowning, you say, “You didn’t say it’s not infected...” 

“It’s not infected,” he says. 

That could be a lie or the truth, you know. But... this sort of deception, you’re more comfortable with. Your human mind can pick up on these subtleties, can catch the careful intonation of somebody trying to hide something behind a lie. “Could I see it?” you ask him. 

He hesitates, expression flat as his eyes convey the extent of his consideration. “You can.” He grabs at his tunic, the fabric the only thing his frost blood even needs to wear out in the cold, and pulls it over his head. 

You swallow hard and fight the flush to your cheeks at the sight of his scar-flecked flesh, his muscled abdomen disappearing as he turns around to show you his back. When you’d last seen his bare skin, you’d been so high on your fear and adrenaline that you’d barely flinched.  

Blinking, you focus on the arrow puncture at his shoulder blade. It’s done some healing, but tinged by an angry red and visibly swollen around the stitches. You curse. 

Of course, he’d rather let his shoulder rot away than admit that he needs any more of your help than he’d been forced to allow. That would require admitting that he’s not just an impenetrable wall of ice. “That is definitely infected,” you say. “Were you just going to let that kill you? Infections like that are beyond help once they get in your bloodstream.” 

“I’ve had infected wounds before,” he says, preparing to put his shirt back on. “This one is nothing. It’ll take a bit longer, but... It’ll heal up fine.” 

You grab his arm. “Just let me clean it a bit,” you insist. “It’s not that big of a deal. You’re not scared that it’s gonna hurt, are you?” 

Sighing, Taehyun says, “I thought you wanted to enjoy the solstice.” 

The hopeful girl you’d been had wanted that, but now it’s just a reminder of everything you don’t want to remember. You wave your hand in the air dismissively. “We did. Come on.” 

You find a bucket to fill with water and cloth along with some stash of ancient spirits in the kitchens, their containers lined with a layer of dust so thick that you know they’re left over from Taehyun’s father. He watches you gather it all. 

You beckon him to turn and show you his shoulder again. He does, bracing his arms on a counter and letting his head hang. You spill out some of that strong liquor into the wound. You’re not really sure if it’ll work as a disinfectant, but as a girl you’d seen an older woman pour it over her wound once, and it’s all you know. 

Gently dabbing at his shoulder now with the water-soaked rag, swollen except for where the stitches sinch it, you say, “You should’ve been going gentle on this thing.” 

Taehyun doesn’t make any fuss as you prod at the wound. “I had more important things to concern myself with,” he says plainly. You press the wet rag to the wound and hold it there, and he begins to try and redirect the conversation to anything other than about himself. “What did the prince say to you at Court?” 

Your stomach drops. “It was nothing.” 

“I know that’s not the truth,” he says, picking up his head to try and look over his shoulder at you. “Tell me the truth.” 

You take the long, torn strips of cloth and begin wrapping it around the expanse of his broad shoulders in a sloppy and amateurish wrap. As long as it shields the wound, it’ll work. “That’s rich coming from you,” you say. “There’s plenty that you lie to me about. You even lied about this.” You tap his shoulder. 

Turning now that you’re done, Taehyun eyes you. You don’t know if he’d been able to hear anything over the sounds of Court or if he’d heard it all with his better hearing ears. You can’t tell which it is.  

“I’ll hear it from some Court gossiper anyway. I think you’d prefer to tell me it yourself.” 

The thought of that scene being a topic of Court gossip makes you ill, but you know that it’s true. The folk love the show, especially one that includes a prince of Faerie on his knees in front of a human. Red-hot embarrassment takes a leisurely stroll up your spine. Your biggest fear has taken flesh in the cruelest way possible.  

Well, if he’s going to end up knowing anyway... You’d prefer it’s from your mouth. You don’t know what sort of conflated half-truths the folk might come up with, since they have no more idea what happened than what they saw. “He was supposed to kill us,” you say, chest too tight to explain it in any depth. “Or, at least, find out who we are, so that we could be killed.” 

Taehyun doesn’t look shocked. He nods. “So, they anticipated our arrival, then. The odds had been stacked against us from the beginning.” 

You nod. Would you have been able to escape? If things had never become entangled between you and Yeonjun, would you and Taehyun lived beyond the first day? Taehyun is strong and you know that he’s no doubt survived plenty in his life, but you’d have been caught completely unaware. “Yeah.” 

“I told you that he’d show you his colors eventually.” 

You want to fight him on that, but you can’t. You have nothing to say. He’d been right. 

What’s left for you now that he has?  

…🪶 ashlynn's note RAHHH! like i said, this part gave me a bit of grief because part 3 was left so open ended—i had so many options and paths i could follow, but ultimately, i chose this one! how do we feel?

﹙🏷️ ﹚ @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444 , @linqed , @serenityism00 , @immelissaaa , @luv4cheol , @lickingan0rchid , @20-cms , @hhoneylix , @beestvng , @sanshiningstarhwa , @hyucktapes if your tag isn't working, check the mentions part of your settings!

[natewriteslol]

hi! could you please do a kabru version of that “dungeon meshi having a crush on you”? i’d like fem! reader but neutral reader is good too! you can add any characters you like! (if you want to) 💓

Delicious in Dungeon Characters Having a Crush on You HC's Pt.2

Summary: Just like the title says it's how these characters would react to having a crush on you!

Characters: Kabru, Sharon and Falin

Reader is gender-neutral :)

Kabru:

-He is a person who doesn't really understand his feelings and WILL put them off to the side because he does not want to confront them

-And I mean he heavily avoids those romantic feelings because he does not want to become attached to someone who either one, won't reciprocate or if something happens to them would cause such heavy devastation to his mind

-Kabru does not know if he wants you, or if he has the urge to kill you for the first couple of weeks of developing romantic feelings. In order for him to have a crush on you he would have to find you highly interesting, which is what he originally thinks, you're just unique that's why he wants to know more.

-He grapples with his feelings, both hating that he barely understands himself and also loving succumbing to these emotions of his.

-After some processing by himself and asking a couple "inconspicuous" questions to some of the members of the party, he realizes that the strange foreign feeling he has is love and fondness for you

-Highlt observant of your likes and dislikes and occasionally gifts you something you've had your eyes on

-He is REALLY protective whenever anything goes down, Kabru is there right infront of you and ready to sacrifice his life for you blade in hand

-You find out that Kabru likes you when you and him were bashed inside the walls of a castle, and although the party won, the battle did not come without consequence

-You had been stabbed from the back of your head by a Marilith, the sword peaking to your forehead. The serpentine demon with her free arms grabbed your head, throwing you into the wall of the dungeon.

-Kabru's eyes had went cold, almost immediately slaying the beast, cutting into her scaly skin. Again, and again and again.

-And once the creature had been beaten into a pulp, he ran without a word to you despite being called repeatedly by the rest of the team. All he could think about is you and if you would be alright.

-As he scooped you into his arms, away from others' eyes, he was genuinely scared. Scared for you and if you could even be revived, let alone with no catch or consequence.

- "I...can't do this dungeon without you Y/N. I need you..."

-He took a deep breath before letting the words leave his throat, "I love you, Y/N."

-And then you began screaming, holding your head in your hands, and crying out to every God possible to come and save you.

- Holm had activated healing for your party by injecting his magic through the ground of the surrounding area, you had just started healing your stab wound with the common side effect of feeling that exact pain and being conscious right as Kabru began his confession.

-And yes, that would mean that you heard every word of adoration and passion from the once "mysterious non-emotionally vulnerable" Kabru

Shuro:

-I mean this in the nicest way possible, but if you didn't get the slightest hint that this man is head over heels for you...please get checked out

-So extremely obvious everyone has no idea how you didn't understand nor expect it as he is obsessed with you and does not care as much for literally anyone except you.

-Every time he would save you, protect only you, gift something to you, provide and be there on foot for you, you thought he was just being kind out of the goodness of his own heart. And sure that could be a justified reason, honestly.

-The onyx haired samurai only speaks highly of you when it comes to everything and can be found right by your side at all times. He was essentially your own personal guard if you wanted him to be, whenever he was questioned about it he would say that it us just his duty as a warrior to protect.

-But there would be times that were completely unjustifiable that you would just think the samurai was just being silly and making a joke!

-Was it silly when the old party was still together, you came across some furniture you absolutely loved and this man said, "I'll ensure that piece is in in our home once we're together, Y/N."

-Is at your beck and call constantly yet every single time without fail his confession would be interrupted ranging from casual, everyday duties to life or death situations.

-Shuro was praying to every God above for an opportunity to tell you how he felt. Until one day the party was separated into small groups to find different maps to easily found, non-dangerous treasure unlocked with puzzle games within a magical forest.

-Your section of the woods was absolutely beautiful, wisteria trees were spread throughout the landscape, almost making every object have a purple hue to it. The name bestowed upon it was, "The Heart of Eros" and solving the puzzle was a breeze and once you finished you were given a treasure chest that mimicked traditional jewelery boxes and a glass jar, mimicking the human heart with flowers grown all over it.

-It had a mystical, pink glow to it and inside was a scroll that Shuro took out to read for himself, as his eyes laid on the paper, ink began to appear on it before him,

-"Your soul is brave, yet you fear what your heart wants. Take the leap that you need."

-He reached a point where he absolutely could not take it anymore, and this was his final assurance to say what has been on his mind for months.

-He mustered up all of his bravery despite his anxiety making it hard for him to breathe (on the bright side there is no shame to be had as there was no one to hear him). Shuro began his speech but you began to look at him as his dark eyes studied the mysterious scroll, catching your attention completely.

-The sight of your attention being on him made a lump form in the long haired mans' throat, however he persisted, "Y/N, I need you to know that there is something I've been holding in for a while."

-"Shuro are you okay? You look like you have a fever-"

-As much as he enjoyed your silly inquiries, the samurai spared you no time to reply fully and held your hands as he looked at you, "I love you. I-I was never scared to love you, but I was frightened about the thought of letting you know. Your love, your gaze, your smile, your everything means the world to me and I know that I need to spend the rest of my life with you."

Falin:

-Very subtle as although she may not appear it, she is amazing at keeping secrets, especially her own.

-But there is one thing that is critical that differentiates you from the others which is A. How Falin talks about you and B. How touchy she is with you. When the blonde speaks about you, her eyes get a twinkle and would always throw in compliments from how talented you are, how you're so strong, and accidentally would trail off talking about your appearance.

-Now Falin being touchy is not out of the question for many but usually at the campfires, battles and walking she can always be found right next to you

-She likes to bring you small gifts such as a cute, small flower or a pearl from a giant mollusk

-How you find out she is in love with you is through her own journal that she takes with her everywhere. Unfortunately due to your injuries you had to be teleported by Marcille back to the surface of the dungeon, separating you both. Your last words were to Falin who despite her soft voice, was losing her mind as she held your injured head in her hands.

-"I promise I'll meet you soon down here, I promise I won't die again," you replied to her tears, trying to make her laugh despite the metallic taste of blood making it's way on your tongue.

-You were travelling with a party you met on the first floor, they heeded to your terms of wanting to find your friends and as you were in the deeper depths of the dungeon, you encountered a familiar navy blue book with flexible leather twine wrapped around it.

-At first you were cussed out and reprimanded for picking up a random book on the floor of the dungeon but you quickly explained as you opened the first page and gazed upon the beautiful handwriting enscripted in black ink.

-"Property of Falin Touden"

-Although you tried to resist, and she most likely could have it magically locked reading it further, curiosity was eating you up like a hungry goblin. After all, what's the harm in just reading a bit and finding some cool secrets about her.

-So during the campfire, you cleaned off your hands after eating and got to reading which recounted your days of adventure, happily talking about past memories and some sketches of creatures she saw. You chuckled at the sight of them, it was a trait her and her brother carried all too well.

-But...you began to notice you would make so many appearances in these journalings. Even containing a well drawn picture of you on a page about you and Falin's solo mission to a foresty part of the dungeon.

-You felt so overjoyed that your friend Falin thought you were amazing, and had so much awe and respect for you.

"It might be forbidden for party members to feel this way over one another but I cannot stop myself. Them saving me today, it just makes me fall more deeper in love. I don't exactly know where their heart resides or where they may be right now, but I just want them to be mine more and more every single day. I curse myself every hour for not telling Y/N how I felt before they left for the healers above."

-The date sketched at the top proved two things, one it was only two days old meaning that they couldn't have moved extremely far and also that snooping is never too bad of an idea.

[gladoswantscake]

You're so handsome when I'm all over your mouth - Dracula x Reader

Summary: Dracula will do everything to keep you safe. Even when you try to escape.

Warnings: Blood, gore, and possessiveness (Not over the top possessive. He's just really obsessed and wants to be with you :3 )

A/N: You can read this with any version of Dracula you want, I chose the Castlevania version of Dracula because I am respectfully down bad for him

Available on AO3

"𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥. '𝘊𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘐'𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶." (𝘞𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴, 𝘌𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘭 𝘊𝘢𝘪𝘯)

You lose track of how long you've stayed within the castle walls of Dracula's home. You remember falling very ill before you were taken in by Dracula. It was supposed to be until you recovered back to health. It must have been a month or two, maybe longer since you last saw home.

The longer you stay, the more you discover his intentions. He's expressed how much he wanted you and has been doing everything he can to win your heart. He's also been carefully monitoring you but still keeping his distance. He's been alone for a very long time, and he couldn't let his feelings of possessiveness get the best of him.

Every time you left your bedroom with him by your side, you scrutinized what you've seen so far from the time you've spent in the castle and memorized what possible exits might lead you to the outside world.

Soon you would plan your escape.

---------------------------------------

You were sitting in bed when gentle knocks on your bedroom door causes you to look up. The door opens to reveal Dracula checking up on you.

Seeing you up at this time made him concerned. "It's rather late, darling. Shouldn't you be asleep by now?" He closes the door behind him.

"It's one of those nights where I can't sleep." You lie.

"I see." He walks up to you, gesturing in request to sit next to you on the side of the bed. "May I?"

You scoot over to give him plenty of room to sit. The weight next to you weighs down a bit deeper. His cold hand finds your clothed back, slowly running up and down in a soothing manner.

"Is something troubling you?"

You shook your head. "I'm not sure what could be keeping me awake." You pause, thinking of an idea. It was a bit risky, but you had to ensure that he'd be asleep by the time you made your escape.

"Is there anything I can do to aid what ever trouble you are having?" He offers.

"Would you…stay with me? Maybe some company is what I need."

His brows raise with surprise. His fangs could be slightly seen through his grin. "Of course."

---------------------------------------

You lift your head from his chest to see if he is asleep. "Vlad?" You whisper. No response came from him. You slowly remove his arms from your waist and quietly make your way to the door. You turn around one last time to check. He was still asleep.

You watch his sleeping form as you pulled the door closer to you. The bedroom door closes with a faint click. Now was your time to escape and you did so with whatever little time you had until he awoke.

Squishing sounds of wet leaves and crunching of branches being crushed underneath your shoes as you ran further from Dracula's castle. The night air was crisp without the feeling of the chilly weather sending you to shiver due to how fast you were running. You ran as far as your body could take you.

Was it a dumb decision? Perhaps. You were stuck in a foreign place, but there had to be someone or a place to find help. That was your idea once you escaped. The problem was where could you find help. The only option you had was to run until you could find something.

Within your distance, a slightly elder hiker was seen, walking on a trail equipped with a flashlight.

You express a weak smile from exhaustion as you stumble towards the man. "Sir! Please…help me." You pant, you hunch over with your hands resting on your knees.

The man expression was worrisome. His gaze fixates on your sweated and tired face.

"What happened?"

"I was kidnapped in that castle." You point in the direction where you ran from.

The man's eyes widened when he heard the word 'castle' from you. The rumors were true.

"We shouldn't stay here any longer." He quickly grabs your hand. "There's a town perhaps a mile from here."

As the man's head turns around, a dark figure pounces on the man. He begins screaming as his neck is being ripped open by a rabid dog's mouth. The man violently kicked and squirmed underneath its body. You stood in shock as the hiker's hands desperately attempted to push the dog's head away from his throat. Blood covered the man's hands and face, and his body was slowly moving. Eventually, his body went stiff.

The dog turns to face you. The hiker's flashlight was knocked to the ground now illuminating the crime scene. You could see bits of flesh stuck in between the canine's red bloodied teeth. You began backing up against a large tree as it started walking towards you. Its form shapeshifted into a human figure.

It was your captor.

Dracula wipes off the leftover blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, flinging droplets of blood to the side.

"I admire your ambition, but you should have known that I would have caught up rather quickly." Irritation arose from the tone of his voice. He turns to look at the mutilated corpse. "Although, I was feeling ravenous, however, your escape attempt cost the death of a human." He turns back to you.

You were trapped between the tree and him as he approached you closer. He moves strands of hair away from your face to see you better. "I'm quite displeased with what you tried to do." His face is mere inches from yours.

"I don't understand why you run from me. I have offered you my home and my devotion, so why must you turn your back on me?" He lifts your face to force you to look into his eyes. "Am I not worthy enough to care and love you?" His voice was filled with dejection.

The way you were leaning up against the tree made him tower over you. It made you feel anxious with the lack of space he was giving you. "All I wanted to do was to protect you. That's all, my love."

You wince as his bloodied fangs peak out from his half-closed mouth. "You're right. I should have known. I'm really, really sorry."

"I simply cannot express how worried I was when you were nowhere to be seen." His hand gently cradles the side of your face. You could sense how distraught he was rather than angry with you. "Promise me you will not do anything foolish as this again." He examines your exhausted face with both of his hands now cupping your face.

"I-I won't do it ever again. I. Promise." You whisper.

He gives you a half smile; relieved to hear your compliances. "I understand this is still new to you, but I promise to show you how much of a good husband I can be."

Then he brings his lips to yours. His fingers intertwine within your hair, gently balling your hair. His kisses become affectionate and possessive. He becomes more acquisitive as his bloodied tongue drags against yours. He loved feeling the warmth of your skin rubbing against his and the taste of your sweet saliva; how much he enjoyed tasting you on his tongue. He could only imagine what your blood would also taste like.

He pulls away to rest his forehead against yours with his eyes closed for a moment. "I will do everything in my power to keep you from harm's reach." He says with a shaky breath, then slowly pulls away.

"You must be freezing. Let's get you back. home."

[kidsinsaturn]

Can I plz rq hcs for being married to both shisui and Madara? Like how would they be with their s/o, domestic vibes, etc?

uchiha bride

[🗼] yesss I love this idea!! I've been in the madara feelings lately hahah I wanted to post this yesterday but I ate way too many tamales I felt sick

characters: shisui uchiha; madara uchiha

genre: sfw

warnings: gn!reader; possessiveness; mentions of discrimination ?; mention of manipulation; stalking; obsessive traits

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-shisui husband of the year!! hellooo, this uchiha is just so sweet and mindful of you all the time

-your wedding was probably very traditional although very small. both shisui and you didn't want a lot of people there. he is a very private man after all

-if you are not uchiha, you must learn all to their customs and their culture, im sorry. shisui may disagree with some of his clan's ideals, but he still finds some of them very important and he loves them

-but of course he will also be very very open to learning more about your clan's traditions and if your clan has something special (like a kenkkei genkai or a physical feature), he wants to learn all the history behind it

-as we all know, the uchiha can be a bit hostile to foreigners, so if you were of another clan or even another village, shisui can even feel a bit pitiful that you have to go through all of this because of his dumb clan

-he assures you all the time that you are the perfect person for him, regardless of the loud, rude words that you can hear on your way to his house. which may lead to shisui and you moving to a house a bit secluded from the others, but still in the compound

-yeah im sorry but I sincerely do not see shisui dropping his duties as an uchiha and as a villager of konoha just for you. yes he loves you tons, but he always manages to divide equally his commitments. he will stay in the compound because he is an uchiha and has his own obligations in the clan

-even though it was a bit hard at the beginning because you were expecting different, shisui will not treat you any different. as a boyfriend, he was the best the version of himself, and now as a husband, he still is the best version of himself. he believes he shouldn't treat his spouse worse or better just because they are married. he always gave his 200% ok

-very domestic husband although he is out for work a lot. there are times he feels guilty for leaving you alone too much, but he is a provider okayyy he needs to work hard enough so you have everything

-which is why he will try to convince you to stay home if you are a shinobi. if he succeeds, he is deeply happy and relieved that you are safe now. but if you decide to keep your job as a ninja, he just lectures you to always be cautious and blah blah blah he is just worried okay? he doesn't want to lose his boo

-shisui will come with you to the gates of the village to bid you farewell with the longest, knee-dropping kiss. you only wish to end the mission soon so you can come back to have another one of his amazing kisses

-on canon universe, you only knew half of what was happening with the village and the clan. but on his final day, he made time to tell you everything, and just love you one last time oh no im not ok

-other uchiha and of course other villagers would respect you a lot of course. you are the spouse of sunshin no shisui hellooo. people will know of you immediately since shisui was quite the popular in the village. and ohh!! I am convinced many girls would be jealous of you because you took shisui first aughhh I wanna elaborate on this idea more haha

-madara is the most sensible and sentimental uchiha out there istg. he does not fall in love, and if he does, then i'ts over for the person, either they die or they both get married

-no but seriously, I don't want to get too much into this, but I deeply believe canon madara would not really get married because he is way too traumatized and obsessed with peace and war and dreams. so let's pretend this is another kind of au where madara is kind of normal and sane

-as much as you both wanted a small, quiet wedding, you just couldn't get it. madara is the clan leader and let's not forget he has the most booming, extrovert, and simple-minded best friends so of course it couldn't be a simple wedding

-hashirama wanted your wedding to be very special, and even though it was a bit too extravagant for your first ideas, it ended up being very cute and nice. madara is deeply in love with you, and from now on, you become his

-not that wasn't like that before. you were his everything the moment he realized his wanted you, and you were his from that second too. it's just that now he can say it out and wouldn't be called weird haha silly guy

-you gained the title of madara's spouse and by no means is that to take unseriously. all the uchiha clansmen respect you, at least in front of you. if you were from a different clan, you are to be judged there sorry. at least they are not dumb and do not say it out loud, but there are still whispers and well-masked judgmental faces every time you walked through the compound

-madara decides it is best for you two to live in the compound, and you can't really complain since he is clan head. however madara makes sure you are satisfied every day. always obtaining what you want thanks to the servants madara assigned you. and of course when he is home with you, he is very attentive to you

-you are never alone. if you're in your house and if madara is not there, there is always someone there with you, either the housekeeper or your servant. if you are out, there is someone there following your every step. when you realize this, you get mad at madara. he promises he will stop though he only reprimands the shinobi for being too noticeable and replaces him

-you get to know two faces of Madera. the one he shows everyone else, and the one he is with you. at first you are a bit taken aback by his sudden changes of demeanor and personality. he is firm, dominant, and stoic in front of others, even of his clansmen. his essence is dominant. but with you? he still is but a lot less lol

-he just can't help it at first, he says some things so bluntly that they even hurt. but he learns that you are no enemy, that you are his temple, he shouldn't be harsh to you. he ends up being very soft, you become his weakness, if you say something, he complies

-BUT the only thing he can't get rid of is his possessiveness, you are his, why do you need to go with someone else? you have him, is he not enough? do you want him to make some shadow clones so he is always your first choice? madara doesn't like seeing you with a lot of people; he has a mental list of the only people he is okay with, please respect his list

-he always needs to know what you do, where you will be going and what you will do. if you don't dare to spare any details, he will find out himself, though he will be hurt and disappointed

-and lets be reals guys... madara will at some point, manipulate you. either he doesn't like something you're doing or someone you are seeing, he will be very subtle with his words and just guide you toward a decision he wants you to make. he isn't stupid and tells you right there, no. he wants you to feel some sense of control of your actions when in reality, he is in charge of them

-he is a great husband though lol a bit insane but he deeply deeply loves you. he fears somethings happens to you and that's why he wants to control your life

[yeyinde]

oh my god, i was just rewatching mandela catalogue when i remembered you were into horror. and adding to my brainrot, i just had the biggest (worst?) idea shoot straight into my head, and i thought:

what if— doppleganger/skinwalker au! for the 141?

a mix of horror and just that feeling of are you truly who you say you are? or is it just another trick in your mind when he touches you oh so carefully, saying sweet nothings but the look in his eyes says otherwise?

goddddd i love analog horror! i haven't seen the Mandela Catalogue, but i'm huge fan of LOCAL58 and Midwest Angelica so i'll def add it to my list!

i really love this idea!!! i could do something similar to the concept art for Toothsayer by Tanya Tagaq—a walrus with a brain floating above it's head, attached by these tentacle-things. you're the only one who can see it, though. this mass clinging to them like a leech. but then the thing— the brain, the mass—opens its eyes and stares at you.

but i've also been kinda wrapped up in the winter soldier au, so maybe a doppelganger version of that would be fun!

like, maybe they go missing in the mountains and you mourn them, visit their empty graves. but on the anniversary of their disappearance, you visit the mountain they went missing on, staying in a hunter's pass/cabin.

the forest is strange. it makes you uncomfortable. you close the curtains over the windows and pretend it's just to keep the chill from getting in, and not the prickle on the nape of your neck that sometimes rears when you know you're being stared at. odd things. unexplainable things, but you make excuses for them, anyway.

until there's a sound in the dead of night. a familiar smell on your pillow. you call out into the dark, but nothing answers you back. just the muted rustle of bushes in the opposite direction of the wind. another excuse: elk. moose. bear. you close the door but it has your voice now.

(you try not think about that. why did you think about that? the thought is foreign and wrong in your head, and you can't deny that it doesn't sound like your own. it chisels in like a pickaxe, something else whispering into the hole—)

there's a knock on the door next. something says not to answer it. leave it. hide. run—

you move to the sound like a moth to a flame, and pretend there's surprise when you see that it's him.

he doesn't speak for a long time, just stands there and stares. but when he finally does, you wish he hadn't because what he says is this:

"did you miss me?"

but it comes out like a cartoonish ransom note. cut up words from a magazine glued down on the page. strung together in sequence but they don't belong. something is missing.

did you. miss me. it's said in three different tones. terror. fear. anger. a recording spliced together.

and that—

that scares you to your core. chills you to the bone.

but it's him.

and when he says let me in—firmer this time, sounding more like himself now (excuses, excuses—he was missing for so long; he's thirsty, he needs to something to drink—)— you step to the side and let it (him him him) pass.

he's back, after all. he finally came home. grief and shock and the cold are all just getting to you. you just need to lay down, he wants you to lay down with him. tugs you toward the bedroom on fawnlegs, stumbling around the room like he forgot how to walk. come, he says. sleep, sleep—

everything will be fine in the morning.

(just ignore the way he walks. talks. and how he stares at you sometimes with a naked, primal hunger on his face like he's trying, with all his might, not to tear you apart—)

[meraki-sunset]

This is a long letter of gratitude. Embrace my endless words of pure gratefulness.

Dear Autor of the most amazing thing I've ever read.

I was writing this letter from the moment I reached the middle of your Crow Strider AU fanfiction. There is so many things I want to say and I'm so happy that I can say it to you all here without words limit. Forgive me for exuberance, I'm squeezing out all my abilities to express what I feel in this foreign language that's not of us first language.

Let me list all the things I'm grateful for, because I'm autistic and I love listing:

1. Crow Strider

The arc of Davesprite you created is masterpiece of writing. The process of deconstructing his personality, forgiving and letting his part behind as well as embracing his new identity and new body is written so thoughtfully with such a care of details. I love how you made him so different from Dave as well as still kept his Daveness in full glory of Striderness. You made him happy and more emotional available and open, at the same time it felt so natural for him to be that way because of the proper build up you gave him. Thank you so much for creating Crow Strider and letting us read his well written arc.

2. There's a Dave for everyone

THERE'S LITERALLY DAVE FOR EVERYONE. You have no idea what struggles I went through trying to understand what person Dave ended up with in canon, and then being sad of what happened in epilogues. I wanted Dave for Karkat. I wanted Dave for Jade. I wanted them to be happy. And you did it. You made it possible. You made them all happy. I love it so much. Thank you so much for making them happy. You even gave Teresi one Dave for her. I can't believe it. It's so beautiful it's unreal.

3. More Davepeta

This part is simple, I simply love Davepeta and you gave me a lot of good Davepeta content. Thank you for that.

4. You made me like characters I didn't like

I wasn't big fan of Tavros. I got tired of Vrisca by the end of Homestuck. I didn't really see Hal as an interesting character. I honestly hated Gamzee. And Jasprosesprite squared was so annoying for me

Well, not anymore! You somehow managed to write these characters more compelling for me than Hussie did. Now I love Tavros and Hal, I mean, cat Hal? Is there anything more cute and cool at the same time?

And NGL I genuinely wanted Gamzee to die and I can't believe that now I'm not, because I just read a very good redemption arc of this clown. I also love the way you dealt with Vrisca. Heck I love all characters written by you!

5. God tier Karkat

I've dreamt of seeing a good piece of god tier Karkat. I was so curious how does it even work to be Knight of Blood, we didn't see any version of Blood god tier in canon. I'm big fan of your version, it fits the character and the aspect so well, and the execution of his arc as he is chosen to open the door... Honestly? I prefer that over canon, though it wouldnt make as much sense as in your fanfiction. It just feels like you took a much better care of Karkat than official ending of Homestuck. Don't get me wrong, I love Homestuck an it's ending, your fanfiction wouldn't exist without it. I honestly think that Hussie didn't really have as much time and space to give his characters as extended arcs as you gave them without losing the dynamic of his story. But you could. And you did. Thank you so much.

6. So many people got better, more extended arcs

Like above. You made Jas much better. You gave Nanna much better, more compelling arc than she had in canon. You made Hal and Tavros much more relatable and gave them very well character development plot, even if short. You took your time to write very needed and wanted dialogues between characters than didn't have their time to interact in canon. Like Jake and Dirk (ESPECIALLY THEM OMG). Like Erisol and Feferi. Like Jas and Rose. And I didn't even know that I needed the last one. Thank you so much.

7. You made ships that I didn't know where even possible and I like them????

Seriously, Tavros and Jane?? Erisol and Arquius??? Josh and Dirk??? I love how your brain works

8. You absolutely nailed the delicate topic of transgender

I used to not be a big fan of June, because there were no realistic signs of John having any kind of thoughts or doubts about his gender in canon. You made a very much needed and really great thoughtfully written arc from June and Josh, even caring about the topic of transition and executing it really great. Thank you so much for yet again being so good at writing arcs.

9. Eridan and Sollux

I love them both and their weird toxic rivalty, and I absolutely love that you gave them some attention and let Eridan grow and try to redeem himself while also helping Sollux with hii2 p2iioniic problem2. I download almost every single frame of it.

10. YOUR ARTSTYLE

You're artstyle. I don't know where to begin with that. It's so amazing. Expressive, dynamic, cute, beautiful, colorful. I love every line of your comics. Your style is the way I always wanted to draw. It's just perfect. And also perfect for Homestuck fanfiction. It's just so similar, yet gives it a bit of softness as well as the kind of expressiveness I love, that makes every single shot more appealing. Warm scene are so warm, sad scene are so sad, dynamic scenes are so epic, it's like so delicious. Yes, I just ran out of words. Let me grab a dictionary...

Your style is outstanding. It gives me this feeling of familiarity, it's similar of Homestuck style, yet so different, its fresh and new while also feels like home.

I wish you have a printed version of your fanfiction (but I probably can't afford it sadly). There is something so soothing in this simple colors, it's not too loud, not too many colors, yet so many and smooth colorful lines. I will learn to draw like you, I'm sorry for adapting your style, but I really want to draw like that and you even posted some tutorials how to draw like you.

Thank you so so much that you put so much time and effort into making this wonderful comic and then share with all of us completely for free. You drew so many expressive pages, sometimes even 10 pages per static dialogue, which means you officially outbested the master of overdoing Andrew Hussie himself, that did maximum of 3 pages per 1 static dialogue scene. I noticed you slowed down a bit at the end and drew much more simplified panels as well as you started using same panels many times. Good. It's okay to go the easier way. No one wants you to overwork yourself and burnout. No one wants you to have trauma with drawing and not wanting to draw comic ever again. It's extremely generous of you that you posted for absolutely free such a wonderful and huge piece of art. I'm endlessly grateful.

11. The plot

I love how you started from one simple idea of giving Crow more arc, and then gradually extended it into a whole huge fixfiction. It went so smoothly it looked like really one different decision of one person can change the whole timeline. It went so naturally, it felt so realistic as if I read something that Andrew Hussie wrote as a coexisting canon.

I have to admit, the whole idea of not doomed and not canon timeline is pretty ridiculous, and I love every bit of it. Paradoxally, it sounds so much like something that could actually exist in Homestuck canon. I love it

A few little things I didn't like that much

I wouldnt be myself if I didn't comment on some stuff that wasn't perfect. I'll be bery brief with that, because these things didn't really bothered me that much, I just want to share a little bit of criticism I have.

I hope it won't sound rude when I say that I didn't really felt like you understand the character of Nepeta very well? She didn't felt that like Nepeta in your fanfiction, at least for me. I felt like some stuff were explained a bit too many times. I know that characters needed that, yet we as viewers already know some stuff and didn't need to read it again. Also, I really missed the type styles of characters. I know how hard it is to keep it through entire fanfiction, especially writing some of the characters with quite complicated type style. I just missed it a bit. On the other hand it made a few characters much more comprehensive.

I hope I didn't hurt you with this few words of critics. Now I want to share a few of my favorite pages, I hope you don't mind if I end this letter with fangirling over your drawings. I actually wanted to do a lot of comments during reading your fanfiction, but the website didn't let comments. Sadly. That's why I'm writing here. And now is time I will do what I wanted to do back then:

This scene, my fav scene in Homestuck, got so extended in your fanfiction, I felt so gifted and it wasn't even my birthday

I cried.

This. Made me laugh so hard. And it's even funnier without context.

I just reached photos limit. Sadly. I'm so grateful for your comic. I love it so much. Thank you again for making it. You're a wonderful person

Hey there! Thank you so much for the letter, and for taking your time translating it to English for me to understand. Since it’s in a list format, I guess I’ll answer as list as well! So:

Crow strider

It was challenging writing Crow because I needed to basically write Dave but with a twist in his personality due to living with the Harley-Egberts and their grandma, in a very cozy and caring environment.

Honestly I don’t think I managed to portray enough Daveness, his personality is very particular and difficult for me to replicate, but I did the best I could and my friend and editor will help me reach the right amount of striderness in the epilogue

2. A Dave for everyone

Indeed, there’s Dave for everyone. The homestuck epilogues made me realize how lonely Jade ended up, and I always loved Davesprite and jade, but with one being human and the other one a Sprite the relationship was bound to fail, and even tho I wasn’t fond of JadexDavepeta, still i would’ve prefered it to jade being all alone and Davepeta dying fighting Lord English. So now, not only Jade has Crow, and they’re happy, but the Karezi – davekat – daverezi mess all got fused into one, because I love them and their trip was a Little different from in canon. And also Davepeta is around, I don’t think they’ll end up with anyone, but they’ll vibe on EarthC.

3. More Davepeta

They’re alive, and I like showing the craziness that comes from them knowing all timelines but being above them and detached from them. 

4. The characters you didn’t use like

I like exploding underused characters. Because with them, you’ve only seen the Surface, but at the same time you have info about them that can be used to make them more profound. If Tavros got revived, why isn’t he mad at Vriska? What was he doing those 3 years in the bubbles? If Jasprose is a seer and has knowledge of all timelines due to being ultimate self, doesn’t that make her the ultimate clairvoyant? Doesn’t that mean she’s the key to winning? Does she miss the mother like rose does? If there’a already an Arquius, why make another? Why not have just Hal as a Sprite and have him figure out what being alive is actually like?. You get the Surface of the characters and knowing what you know about them, you dig deeper, until you find their humanity and write about it.

5. Godtier Karkat

I love Karkat on Homestuck, but I feel like the character lost weight towards the end of the story, he stopped being the leader and while everyone went and fought someone important like the Condesce, the jacks, the dogjack, or Lord English, he was just somewhere else doing whatever. I wanted to give him his hero moment that closes his development.

As for the door, I feel like in canon john was the right choice to open the door, he’s the hero and the leader, not to mention it’s a human session, it makes total sense and I wouldn’t change it

Every story has things that don’t get to be explored, because that would make them too long and cut the flow, making it unreadable. That why we love fan fictions and AUs so much, they take the pieces and reassemble them into something new, filling the empty spaces.

What makes the events on AUs fun is that they didn’t happen in canon. So if John opened the door in canon, and it was right, then Karkat can open this one, and it can be right on this specific timeline. He gets closure from the door he never got to open, and takes back his role as a leader, even if it’s just for a moment, since the battle is over by now. He’s the leader once again, but this time he understands the weight of it in a way he couldn’t grasp when he was 13, claimed he was in charge and let everyone down. He now understands it’s not just something you ask for, it’s something you earn, he’s now the Knight of blood, god of bonds, he took down the Condesce in the name of his species, and will open the door for his peers to enter the new universe they created together where they’ll create a free society, he became what the signless predicted, his rightful successor. His arc is completed.

6. Extended arcs

Jas was planned since the beginning to close crow’s arc about his rose and his regrets about leaving her behind. It’s only when he’s made peace with losing her, has left his old self behind and is ready to face the battle and his future, that he gets his reward. He gets her back, in the strangest way

With Nanna, i just though nobody ever focused that there was an actual adult around during the whole adventure, Nanna would’ve spent a lot of time around john and jade, them being each others remaining family. So I tried to give her the role of a guardian, breaking a Little with this “orphaned children on their own” that all characters have.

Honestly I tried to make it as interesting as I could, sometimes I would take characters that didn’t have any screen time and think, what can they do? What’s in their mind at this moment that they could tackle in conversation? And with whom? Who else needs screen time?. And that’s how you get, Jake and Tavros bonding, Nepeta, Fefeta, Davepeta and Feferi ship-chat, Arquius telling Terezi and Karkat about Erisol, Hal comforting Eridan, ect.

It’s actually a really cool writing exercise I do sometimes. I grab two characters that have nothing in common, and write a conversation between them. What’s the common ground? Are their stories alike in some way? Do they have a common hobby or worry? It’s really cool because you find stuff about the characters you never paid attention to before

7. Unlikely ships

Tavros and Jane came from me wanting Tavros to be more assertive. In canon Vriska instructed him to not interact with the Alpha kids during those 6 months, but since this Tavros doesn’t listen to her because he took self-esteem lessons from Rufioh, I felt like he probably spent that time actually being a guide to Jane and then becoming Friends while solving puzzles, Jane being a fan of mysteries and Tavros probably missing his flarp days. Also theres a funny thing about Tavros and Jane, and it’s Tavros is supposed to represent Peter pan, while Vriska is supposed to represent both Tinkerbell (she dressed up like a fairy for him and later became an actual fairy) being attracted to him but being short fused when rejected, and also represent Captain Hook, Peter pan’s enemy (with her flarp persona and her ancestor being a pirate), but she’s not Wendy in any way, and I feel like Jane is, she’s the homeschooled girl, with blue eyes who looked through her window waiting to be free because her father wouldn’t let her out (also Wendy’s brother was named john who used big glasses). She’s a normal girl coming in contact with this fairy boy from a world of only children. Idk, makes sense to me. (besides, Wendy darling’s daughter, who Peter pan later takes on adventures too was named Jane, who also has blue eyes)

Erisol and Arquius was a crack ship that suddenly made sense, because it’s one-sided, and I feel like arquius is a caring person, he just has a difficult time socializing like a normal person. He’s just really happy to be a sprite and is pissed by Erisol’s insistence on wanting to explode.

Also, Arquius promising Fefeta that he wouldn’t break Erisol’s neck unless he had a good reason ( he kinda wanted to) and eventually having to break his neck for the good reason of god tiering him (he now doesn't want to and feels bad about it) was something I planned for months

Josh and dirk, i think it’s funny. Dirk wouldn’t have dated jade because she’s a girl, but Josh is a boy so it’s good, AND, he’s like a more direct, version of Jake who takes no bullshit.

8. The topic of transgender

Originally the second spaceship post retcon was supposed to arrive empty, or with only Davesprite, but I saw an opportunity to solve a division in the audience. Some people were interested in John remaining as he was, while others wanted to see June. Since John never showed any doubts about his gender in canon, it wasn’t in my original plans for June to make an appearance during CSAU, because the comic only covered the same period of time as canon. But when it came time to write the retcon I realized I had an opportunity to make them both coexist, making a shift in the timeline, but said shift being there both since the beginning and for the purpose of surviving the recon. Making June and Josh a reality since the beginning, so the timeline would survive the consequences of the two Egberts crossing paths post retcon.

It’s nice to hear you liked it, I know not everyone did. I tried to be respectful but at the same time be true to the nonsensical nature of canon Homestuck that makes timelines twist and change to the story’s convenience, making the events real but chaotic. Also since i knew John’s dad wasn’t coming back and Jane’s dad wouldn’t make it, June would be the last remaining conection to John’s old home and so John would be June's, relying on eachother for comfort when it comes to the loss of their father and home.

9. Eridan and Sollux

I want to cover Eridan’s redemption in the epilogue, since all we know is he grew as a person during his time in the bubbles, leading to his change of heart interacting with Sollux and Kanaya

10. Art style

Thank you! I like to give the characters a full range of emotions and for the surroundings to accompany that

No need to be sorry for learning through my art, in the end my style, like everyone else’s, is bits and pieces from other artists we’ve seen, admired and/or learned from. Just make sure to add your personal touch to make your artstyle trully yours

It’s true that by the end I reused more static panels for dialogue, both because there was a lot for the characters to say, not that much action left, and my battery was running low haha

11. The plot

I tried my best for the story to be a big butterfly effect steaming from crow’s decision to ascend, working towards the most possible outcomes like Crow getting grimdarked by the Condesce too, the sprites surviving because of Nanna and so on

I wanted this timeline to coexist with canon because I don’t like the idea of overwriting it, canon happened and was important, CSAU just happened to be taking place close by

12. Things you didn’t like

I do in fact not understand the character of Nepeta very well, I reread Homestuck in order to get the original troll's personality better, but Nepeta is a character I don’t get. On top of that, she doesn’t appear much in CSAU so didn’t have much time to develop her.

I do struggle with over explaining, I think is stems from not wanting the reader to be confused (it has happened on discord that people come and ask me what was going on in the story when i thought I had written it in a way people could understand with no problems), which leads to me explaining everything too bluntly sometimes, so the characters sometimes ramble TOO much, and I wish I could go back and reduce the dialogs, but that would involve going back to the page’s codes to delete certain pages and replace others, and also changing the programming for the page’s backgrounds, not to mention my computer crashes when I try to modify pages too far back, since they’re 4000 of them. It’s one of those things I can only learn from and try to do better in the next project

The character’s typing was a core part of Homestuck because it was mostly portrayed as blocks of texts and the quirks made it easy to know who was talking even with people having the same typing color. The reason I didn’t use them it’s simply because I could barely write good enough in English, let alone add quirks. My friend offered me to add the quirks at some point when we were revising the dialogs, but I declined because some people found it easier to read without them and I didn’t want to add another step to the render of the pages.

13. Favorite pages

I also cried with that Gamzee panel, I planned it for months and i waited a long time to draw those last panels, I’m glad they made people laugh

Haha, also yeah, the Strider reunion got really extended with so many extra striders. Davepeta, Crow and Hal making the reunion complete

Thank you for this message! i'll do my best to write a good epilogue (which by now is actually a secuel) and i hope you have a great day🌻🌻🌻

[rainba]

Desperate Kairos ❤

I mentioned some of the kinks of my sillies in a previous ask, but I wanna write/expand on them just a little bit.~

For this one, I wanna focus on Kairos’ praise + worshiping kinks. ((Mostly praise.)) So... Same as always, Kairos being Kairos.

To be honest, this is kind of just me rambling lol

There are two versions here! First one is a fem darling, the second one has a male darling.

18+ NSFW, MDNI

Kairos would typically imagine himself being the one to do the worshipping, but he absolutely loves the idea of his love worshiping him, too. The thought of being praised for anything still sounds like such a foreign concept to him– so when you do it, he becomes instantly obsessed.

If you praise him once, he’ll beg you to do it some more, asking you to repeat yourself over and over just so the sentiment can settle in. And if you worship him during sex just once, he’ll do absolutely anything to have you do it again. He’ll get on his knees and plead with you, he’ll give you all of his money, draw you anything you’d like– whatever you want from him, he’ll give you it.

Just… Please, please, please, worship him again.

Let him sit on the edge of the bed with his cute cock out as you toy with him. He’ll wear whatever you want– thigh highs, cat ears, a bunny suit, literally anything. Kairos gently pets you as he begs you to praise him.

“I’m… I’m your good boy, right..? Y-you love me, right? Only me?”

Call him your master. Call him your owner. Call him an angel. Tell him he’s the only person in this world for you, and that nobody else can compare to him. Those words alone might be enough to make him cum on the spot.

“P-please, keep going,” he’ll pathetically whimper as he tries to guide your mouth to his throbbing cock, desperate for you to give it love and attention. If you tease him too much, he might grip the back of your head and force you to take his entire length at once. He’ll be apologizing while he does so, but the guilt doesn’t outweigh the carnal need to fuck your tight throat.

Part of him so badly desires for you to tell him just how much you love it. If you tell him something along the lines of, “your dick looks so tasty, so perfect,” he won’t be able to stop thinking about it for weeks after. And every time he thinks about it, he becomes incredibly hot and bothered.

Sucking on the tip and licking up and down his length will have him gripping the sheets and mewling. It just feels so, so good. He’ll beg you to kiss it as well, and he’ll also tell you to lick up the precum that’s leaking from his needy cock. Then he’d ask you if it tastes good.

And when you answer with a yes, his entire body will tense up as he stifles a high-pitched moan.

Kairos won’t make you do all the praising, though. He can’t help but praise and worship you as well.

“G-good girl, you’re… You’ll b-be a perfect wife! I… I love you s-so much!” 

When he’s desperate to make you feel good, he’s always quick to use his mouth rather than his hands. He just loves to taste you– it feels so personal, so loving. He absolutely loves eating you out, but there’s also something else he loves: sucking on your breasts.

The first time you let him suck on your tits, it’s like he gets addicted. They’re so soft in his hands, and so soft in his mouth. Kairos gets all hot and shaky as he sits on your lap and loves on your tits… It’s one of his deepest fantasies coming to life.

Kairos closes his eyes in bliss as he warmly sucks and licks them, occasionally leaving tiny love bites. He moans sweetly the entire time, all while grinding his cock against your thigh. If you ever want him to stop, you basically have to force him off of you. When you push his head away from your tits, he’ll immediately dive back down and start sucking on them again while mumbling the words "n-no, please, more."

The only times he pauses is when he wants to praise you.

“Th-they’re so beautiful,” he’ll mumble as he softly flicks one of your nipples with his wet tongue. “A-and they’re mine… All mine.”

Right before he’s about to cum, he’ll ask you permission to do so. 

When he genuinely wants to fuck you, though, he’ll become a reckless mess. Kairos will fervently push you into the bed and pin you down as he practically tears off your clothing. He loves all the foreplay, truly, he does– but sometimes he yearns for more. He can’t help but feel that he needs to be deep inside of your soaking wet pussy immediately.

Oh, and… Please, pretty please, praise him as he fucks you senselessly into the bed. When he’s desperate, his thrusts become messy, and his pace is inconsistent– he’s just doing what feels good at the moment- but he’s trying his best...! 

All he craves is to feel your inner walls squeezing his cock and milking it dry. He desperately needs to fill your cunt to the brim with his seed.

“So warm.. So t-tight… Ah…” He harshly bites down on his bottom lip. “Please, tell me you love this… P-please.” 

The more you praise him, the more erratic he becomes. His small hands will grip your shoulders as he ruts into you like crazy. He might wrap his hands around your neck and choke you instead– if you’ll let him.

“S-such… Such a perfect pussy… You’re so… So perfect.” Kairos leaves little kisses all over your chest as he keeps going.

His left hand will then reach down and lovingly rub sloppy circles around your clit. There’s nothing more he wants in the world than for you to both cum at the same time. It’d just be so romantic!

He’ll do anything to please you. He’ll do anything to be worthy of your praise.

Since he’s not that experienced, he might accidentally make you cum first– which makes him tear up, because he so badly wanted to cum in unison with you. So, if this happens, he might just end up overstimulating you until he climaxes himself.

But if he cums first..? God, he will be extremely embarrassed.

He mumbles a long line of apologies as he cums deep inside of you, panting heavily as he still tries to make you climax too.

If his hand isn’t enough, he’ll spread your legs apart and bury his face between your thighs, excitedly and sloppily eating you out. It doesn’t matter that his cum is dripping out of your pussy as he does so– in fact, he secretly likes it. He’ll try to push his cum back inside of you with his tongue as he looks up at you for encouragement.

And as a way to apologize, he’d make you cum twice, all while praising you. He’d also be thanking you for letting him fuck you.

But he’d also be begging you to forgive him.

 “Y-you’re so kind to me… Y-you’re like an angel, I… I don’t deserve you,” he slowly runs his tongue over your slit as he pushes two fingers inside of you, curling them and gauging your reactions the entire time. He’s determined to memorize all of the things that make you come undone.

And Kairos also loves watching you orgasm on his fingers– the sight of it drives him crazy. Plus, it gives a tiny boost to his ego.

For weeks and weeks after that, he’ll constantly find himself replaying lewd scenes of you in his head, sometimes even drawing it on paper. Then he won’t stop thinking about how he’s gonna make you cum even harder the next time he fucks you.

(Male Darling)

Kairos would typically imagine himself being the one to do the worshipping, but he absolutely loves the idea of his love worshiping him, too! The thought of being praised for anything still sounds like such a foreign concept to him– so when you do it, he becomes instantly obsessed.

If you praise him once, he’ll beg you to do it some more, asking you to repeat yourself over and over just so the sentiment can settle in. And if you worship him during sex just once, he’ll do absolutely anything to have you do it again. He’ll get on his knees and plead with you, he’ll give you all of his money, draw you anything you’d like– whatever you want from him, he’ll give you it.

Just… Please, please, please, worship him again.

Let him sit on the edge of the bed with his cute cock out as you toy with him. He’ll wear whatever you want– thigh highs, cat ears, a bunny suit, literally anything. Kairos gently pets your hair as he begs you to praise him.

“I’m… I’m your good boy, right..? Y-you love me, right?”

Call him your master. Call him your owner. Call him an angel. Tell him he’s the only person in this world for you, and that nobody else can compare to him. Those words alone might be enough to make him cum on the spot.

“P-please, keep going,” he’ll pathetically whimper as he tries to guide your mouth to his throbbing cock, desperate for you to give it love and attention. If you tease him too much, he might grip the back of your head and force you to take his entire length at once. He’ll be apologizing while he does so, but the guilt doesn’t outweigh the carnal need to fuck your tight throat.

Part of him so badly desires for you to tell him just how much you love it. If you tell him something along the lines of, “your dick looks so tasty, so perfect,” he won’t be able to stop thinking about it for weeks after. And every time he thinks about it, he becomes incredibly hot and bothered.

Sucking on the tip and licking up and down his length will have him gripping the sheets and mewling. It just feels so, so good. He’ll beg you to kiss it as well, and he’ll also tell you to lick up the precum that’s leaking from his needy cock. Then he’d ask you if it tastes good.

And when you answer with a yes, his entire body will tense up as he stifles a high-pitched moan.

Kairos won’t make you do all the praising, though. He can’t help but praise and worship you as well.

“G-good boy, you’re… You'll be s-such a perfect husband! I… I love you s-so much!” 

When he’s desperate to make you feel good, he’s always quick to use his mouth rather than his hands. He just loves to taste you– it feels so personal, so loving. He absolutely loves sucking you off. The feeling of your cock invading his small mouth is one of the best feelings ever to him. And when you choke him with it? It makes him so fucking hard. But there’s also something else he loves: sucking on your nipples and leaving marks all over your body.

The first time you let him suck on your chest, it’s like he gets addicted. Every time he leaves a small mark on your skin, it feels like he’s marking his territory. He’s letting the entire world know that you belong to him.

Kairos closes his eyes in bliss as he warmly sucks and licks your chest, occasionally leaving tiny love bites and large hickeys. He moans and whimpers the entire time, all while rubbing his cock against your thigh. If you ever want him to stop, you basically have to force him off of you. When you push his head away from your body, he’ll immediately dive back down and start sucking on your skin again while mumbling the words, “n-no, please, more. I… You look so p-perfect, covered in marks.”

The only times he pauses is when he wants to praise you.

“You’re so perfect,” he’ll mumble as he softly flicks one of your nipples with his tongue. “A-and you’re mine… All mine.”

Right before he’s about to cum, he’ll ask you permission to do so. 

When he genuinely wants to fuck you, though, he’ll be a reckless mess. Kairos will fervently push you into the bed and pin you down as he practically tears off your clothing. He loves all the foreplay, truly, he does– but he craves more. He can’t help but feel that he needs to be deep inside of your tight ass immediately.

Oh, and… Please, pretty please, praise him as he fucks you senselessly into the bed. When he’s desperate, his thrusts become messy and his pace is inconsistent– he’s just doing what feels good at the moment. But he’s trying his best...! 

All he yearns for is to feel your inner walls squeezing his cock. He desperately needs to fill your hole to the brim with his seed.

“So warm.. So t-tight… Ah…” He harshly bites down on his bottom lip. “Please, tell me you love this… P-please.” 

The more you praise him, the more erratic he becomes. His small hands will grip your shoulders as he ruts into you like crazy. He might wrap his hands around your neck and choke you instead– if you’ll let him.

“S-such… Such a perfect body… You’re so… So perfect.” Kairos leaves little kisses all over your sweaty skin as he keeps going.

His left hand will then reach down and sloppily stroke your cock, occasionally squeezing and giving extra attention to the tip. There’s nothing more he wants in the world than for you to both cum at the same time. It’d just be so romantic!

He’ll do anything to please you. He’ll do anything to be worthy of your praise.

Since he’s not that experienced, he might accidentally make you cum first– which makes him tear up, because he so badly wanted to cum in unison with you. So, if this happens, he might just end up overstimulating you until he climaxes himself.

But if he cums first...? God, he will be extremely embarrassed.

He mumbles a long line of apologies as he cums deep inside of you, panting heavily as he still tries to make you climax too.

If his hand isn’t enough, he’ll simply flip you onto your back and ease your cock into his ass, happily riding you until you cum. He tells you to just relax as he bounces up and down, a look of pure ecstasy plastered on his face.

And as a way to apologize, he’d make you cum twice, all while praising you. He’d also be thanking you for letting him fuck you.

But he’d also be begging you to forgive him.

 “Y-you’re so kind to me… Y-you’re like an angel, I… I don’t deserve you,” he tightens around your cock as he tries to play with your nipples, pinching and rubbing them between his fingers. He’s determined to memorize all of the things that make you come undone.

One of his favorite things in the world is the feeling of your hot cum filling him up. It’s borderline addicting. So, please– use him all you like. He’ll worship you even more if you fuck him until he can’t move.

For weeks and weeks after that, he’ll constantly find himself replaying lewd scenes of you in his head, sometimes even drawing it on paper. Then he won’t stop thinking about how he’s gonna make you cum even harder the next time he fucks you.

[merchen-aeravellae]

What if the royal family is from the modern world?

I feel compelled to answer this with a little headcanon

•°•°•°•°•°��°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°

Yandere Modern Family are celebrities, they are one of the few royal families that still exist in the world and they actually still have power over their territory and not just a facade for the public.

Yandere Modern Family control what you can see on the Internet, many applications and pages are blocked so that you can never access them, anyway you don't know of their existence and what you don't know won't hurt you.

Yandere Modern Family are just as strict about your outings to the outside world, although there are now methods to locate you anywhere in the world.

Yandere Modern Family who put a tracker on you without you noticing, under the excuse that it's for your safety, they have to know where you are all the time, even if you're in the palace.

Yandere Modern Family are more cautious about the arrival of the true princess, many are obsessed with them and this could be a trick to enter their family or harm you.

Yandere Modern Family have mixed feelings about the new princess, but it slowly fades when they discover that she is just like them about you and your security, it runs in the blood after all.

Yandere Modern Family their country is more closed about the arrival of foreigners, they don't want their people and you to be contaminated with silly ideas brought by outsiders.

Yandere Modern Family are worse than their other version regarding you going out with someone, they are always alert and paranoid that someone will use you to become popular.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hi,

I am very much not american so I must admit that my first impulse when seeing all the rap/racism discourse was something like "do I really need to consume more american culture, it's fucking everywhere already". Idk but to me it feels like american/english-speaking culture absolutely dominates a lot of the world, sometimes at the cost of out own cultures and languages, if something is in English it is "good", if it is in own own languages it is "bad". Musicians often start singing in English and more american-like after a while to get bigger. We value American culture and music, they mock our accents (and languages sometimes) and best case scenario see us as funny and silly.

Then I started thinking. Do you think that americans kind of see rap kind of like foreign music still? Like low-brow unexotic foreign music.

I don't know this is a really fresh thought and I'm not sure if I am explaining it very well.

hey first off I just want to say -

you are entirely correct in your reaction that people outside of America/the English-speaking world do not need more American culture thrust upon them! this discussion is extremely centered on Americans, the reception and reaction to rap within America, and excuses that white American use to avoid interacting meaningfully with Black culture, art, and ideas. while anti-Blackness as an issue obviously extends far outside of America, this particular conversation is deeply tied to American culture. I appreciate you pointing that out!

I also think you're point about rap, and by extension other Black artforms, being Othered in American pop culture. certainly in terms of language, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which is utilized by many rappers, is still heavily disputed in its validity as a "real" language, with many dismissing it as a bastardized version of "proper" English and associating it heavily with those who are lower-class and uneducated. in a similar way to many international artists having to work in English to gain wider recognition and validation, many Black Americans are proficient in "code switching," the practice of switching between AAVE that they likely grew up speaking and an English dialect that is considered more "professional."

similarly, I think your use of the term "low-brow" is very apt. Black music has always been met with distrust and disdain by white audiences. there's a reason that so many people feel the need to bring up sex, drugs, and violence when they talk about rap; to many white cultural gatekeepers that was all rap was. (and, like, we should very much talk about why that is in and of itself a bad thing, when white crime is so often glorified in pop culture. why is the Godfather a classic masterpiece but Black men making art about their own experiences with racism, violence, poverty, and survival don't deserve serious consideration?) and that didn't start with rap! in the early 20th century jazz, also a Black creation, was seen as dangerous for promoting promiscuity among nice white teens. no matter what Black people make, white cultural gatekeepers will find a way to start a moral panic about it.

the reverse also happens as well, with Black people being treated as foreigners even in music genres that they helped pioneer. Black Americans were hugely formative in the early days of country, but are met with hostility in the contemporary country scene. Lil Nas X's Old Town Road was one of the biggest songs of the year it was released and undeniably country but was largely snubbed by country music community, and Beyoncé's new country album, Cowboy Carter, is a direct response to her hostile reception at the Country Music Awards in 2016.

the point being, yes, I don't think it's off-base to say that, to many Americans, rap and Black music and art generally are like... very optional and avoidable parts of pop culture in the way that more white-dominated genres are not, similarly to a lot of international and especially non-English art.