#but when i do i am the only person in the universe who understands that wet dog mkay that old man is mine | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shehungers · 8 days ago

Text

IMPOSTER

possessed!scholar husband x reader |18+| 3.8k

in an act of self-preservation, your family marries you off into an exorbitantly wealthy family. it's a loveless marriage to a reclusive and reticent man. one day, he informs you of leaving to handle the last affairs of his deceased uncle's estate. when he later returns, you're convinced this man is not your husband...

story warnings; dark content, dubcon, explicit sexual details, masturbation (mc), mirror sex, implications of sadism, classism, animal death (mentioned briefly), grotesque details + body horror, murder, pseudo-victorian setting, I am well aware that this is not how Victorian marriages would've gone — bite me 👊🏻, detail + prose heavy, roughly proofread

this is a concept piece #1 for my upcoming project: the lord of phantasm. please let me know if you'd like me to post the other concept pieces!

reposted from my deleted blog: theoxenfree.

if you enjoyed, please leave feedback + reblog to help your girl out 💓

In the airless dark of your bedroom at night, you knew the man lying next to you under covers was not your husband. Once he had been, but now he no longer was.

The revelation had come to you before noticing the stillness of his broad frame in bed, certain stiffness which seemed more alike to rigor in a days old corpse rather than a man wrapped in the comforting spell of deep sleep.

His breaths were silent, if he even breathed at all, reminding you of childhood where the floorboards wouldn't creak so loudly if you sucked all the air out from your lungs into your throat, snagging it, holding it firm. Suddenly, you'd be lighter; effervescent; floating across the wooden slabs towards the kitchen past midnight, or out the front door during the years where testing your parent’s patience and fraying the head maid’s nerves was your favorite thing to do.

You’d learned later on, after the loveless vows and complicated legality behind joining your two families, that your husband had a knack for slipping away at night as well. Only, he wasn't at all the sort for flirtatious gallivanting and loquacious rendezvous with secret lovers in dim rooms, smells of mildew masked by a numbingly sweet, perfumey fog.

He was reclusive and reticent; one of those outstandingly brilliant scholars who believed the rest of the world was below him because he hadn't found an equal in conversation or thought. Social obligations—no matter the occasion or person—pained him to where he intentionally brought you as a buffer between himself and whomever was trying to speak to him.

Some of the talk was so astronomically beyond you that parroting the long-winded answers he spoke softly into your ear back to his audience made you burn under the collar from embarrassment and his proximity to you. His peers could not understand why he simply wouldn't talk for himself; meanwhile, they also wondered why someone without their level of formal education had even accompanied him.

At night, he became one with darkness and retreated to the depths of his study across the massive house you shared together. It was part of one of his family’s various estates dotted across the country and his favorite, due to its location near the university where he worked (at his leisure), and its closeness to his only relative he actually cared about.

“My uncle—he has passed. Of complications caused from tuberculosis, I've been told. I was the only family member placed in his will, therefore it falls to me to settle all remaining affairs he may have overlooked,” he said, letting you help him into his heavy, wool coat he left on a hook near the front door. At his side was a hulking suitcase; one he often used for trips that were days—weeks away from home, from you. “He was a far more private man than I, so there's no telling what I'll come across while I'm there. I cannot tell you how long I'll be away. I'm sorry.”

You expected nothing less from him. This man who had only ever touched you once, on your wedding day. He did everything that he was supposed to: tonelessly regurgitate scripted vows he committed to memory, hold your hands, and kiss you at the altar for more than two seconds but less than five, and then gently lead you away once both families were pleased with the performance.

Right after, now as newlyweds, he poured bourbon into exquisite crosshatch crystalware and examined the glistening amber under wan lamplight. He apologized for kissing you, that he wouldn't have had at all if it hadn't been so important for your families.

At the time, it made you feel very ugly and undeserving of the silk and ornate lacework decorating your body. The gold band fitted around your finger was a lofty symbol of acquired wealth, heavy and unforgiving.

“Write to me every once and a while,” was all you could think to say at present, managing your composure well enough as he gripped the handle of his suitcase and leaned into its heftiness on that side. “It'd just be nice to know how you're doing. If you find anything interesting. When you'll be coming home. It gives me something to look forward to.”

“I'll try to,” he said, but looked through you, pierced you, as though trying to see something else. You saw this look most often at events or parties where he'd fixate on a specific point (usually you) and seem to recede inside himself, into his thoughts, perhaps trying to dissect them or make them congeal into something linear.

“Uncle was an eccentric man. There's no telling what he's left behind for me to find. I must go. Be well, my dear.”

Once again, he left you behind without remorse.

Four months passed with agonizing, gripping slowness from the crisp mornings of late autumn into the icy vise of winter and a shimmering white-blue landscape outside your windows. In those days, you occupied yourself as best you could with guests and alcoholic merriment, whisked yourself away to parties and dinners after wringing out the invitations from friends, and spent many sleepless nights sprawled across the floor beside the fireplace coveting self-pleasure.

You imagined it was your husband there with you, immediately a renewed man after his return and finding you boundlessly desirable, fucking you with his cock rather than the freezing metal dildo you thrust inside yourself.

Even once you were finished, fucked out by your own hand and the object gaping you wide, you kept masturbating until you lost sensation, the motions and metal numbing you inside—until the intimacy and thrill of self-discovery had lost meaning to you.

Sometimes, you were found the next morning by a maid like that: thoroughly debauched with the phallus having rolled away nearby or still shallowly pressed inside. You only needed to threaten her livelihood once for her to never speak of it, pretend each time she hadn't witnessed a regrettable case of personal depravity.

It'd eventually become a frequent enough sight to her that she knew better than to look directly at you when she entered the room. Rather, now, she carried a laundered pair of trousers in with her. They were draped neatly over a bent arm, along with a warm and soapy rag in her hand, which she used to lightly clean you of dried fluids. Afterward, she helped you into the new garment.

“You have received a letter from the Master,” she said unexpectedly one morning, after fastening your pants and tucking your blouse inside them. “It's strange, though, because it doesn't feel like a letter. Not enough… substance. Shall I open it for you?”

“No! No, that's alright.” You took the long, pale envelope from her once she revealed it to you, realizing that she was right. There was nothing to it. Light as a feather, but completely sealed on the back with his personal emblem hastily stamped, or more appropriately, smeared, with red wax dribbling away from center towards the bottom of the envelope as if sudden jerkiness had unsteadied his focused pour.

You flipped the thing front to back several times, testing the way the opposite ends fluttered from nothingness within, and glanced aside to your maid.

She looked to be just as thrown.

“You're sure this is from him?” you asked, bemused. “Who delivered this?”

“Why, a courier on horseback, of course!” she said with conviction, so you knew she wasn't lying to you at that moment. It wasn't her habit to weave tales to get a rise out of her employers, anyway. “I even spoke to the courier for a while because I made a comment about it being so light. He wasn't sure about it, either, but the description of the man who hired him matched the Master almost exactly.”

You had found a letter opener on the desk nearby and made a quick cut under the wax to break the seal without ripping the envelope itself.

“Almost? What does that mean here?” you raised the intact flap with the messy seal attached, freeing all of the residual tracks of wax from the paper so that they fell to the hardwood below like pebbles shaken out of a shoe after a stroll through the yard. “The man was either my husband or he wasn't.”

The maid tried to subdue her intrigue of the envelope, turned, and moved onto bunching up the soiled sheet you'd spread out on the floor last night. “Please don't misunderstand. It was him. But, the courier described him as ‘a very interesting and friendly fellow to converse with’.”

“What?”

You were responding to two things simultaneously right then: what your maid had just told you, and the fact that the only content inside the envelope was a single shred of paper torn from an unlined journal.

The maid fluttered back over to your side as you plucked out the slither of paper, letting the envelope fall freely from your hand to the floor. Leaning into your proximity, she read aloud the same three words that your eyes skimmed:

“Father Marius DuMonde.”

Just as you had done before with the envelope, you flipped the scrap back and forth as though trying to magically flip something into existence. Your husband's handwriting was recognizable in the lettering, but it was impatient; scrawled across a page in one journal in his vast collection like he hurriedly walked past, and then ripped it out.

Nothing else was revealed to you in the seconds after, nor in your long, contemplative stare.

“Who is that?” you asked the maid to alleviate a fast yawning gap of uneasiness beginning to make you fidget and fluster. “A priest?”

The maid beamed in awe of your fast deductive skills and nodded eagerly. “It would seem that way! The city has more places of worship than it does homes for the hungry and sick. Although, I suppose a church offers some of those services.” However, the lightness sank out of her face when you didn't reciprocate that enthusiasm whatsoever. “You’re unhappy? What's wrong?”

“My husband is a scholar. A rigid man of science,” you said, bending over to pick up the discarded envelope to closer examine the disastrous wax seal. “He denounces faith in all forms. Why did he write a priest's name to me?”

That maddening thought followed you for days afterward, sufficiently distracting you from all the regular vices you'd come to rely on to fill the void of your husband's absence. Fulfill the needs he'd never tried to meet even while he was around.

You spent your days brooding in the window seats in whichever room was warmest, molding against their domed shape while leaning a cheek flush to frigid glass, eyes bloodshot and watering against the sun’s searing neon reflecting off of a lawn of undiluted, glittering white.

Seldomly, a finch or small vermin would come into your view—hopping or lunging through the snow, making tracks, digging holes, disturbing your beautiful wonderland and almost arousing you into unreasonable outbursts which then inevitably became the servants responsibility to contend with, should any be nearby to provoke you.

It was the early evening during one of your normal watches, just after dinner and a glass of red wine, when a great clamor carried swiftly to you from the foyer of the main entrance. The servants’ voices were a feverish amalgam of nonsensical babbling, high-pitched, and accommodating in a way that made you think of groveling dogs with flattened ears, wagging and tucked tails, bellies upturned to their masters.

“Come! Come quickly!” called your maid from the sitting room door, her shrill, excitable voice a violent jostling in your head, scrambling your thoughts and anger with it. “Master has returned! He's asking for you.”

You delayed the reunion, waiting several minutes after she had gone before standing. You realized that the anticipation you felt swelling in your chest, rising like growth—a malignant tumor into your throat, thickening your tongue and fouling your taste and smell, was because you were uneasy, haunted by the cryptic message he had presumably sent you weeks ago.

A while later, you entered the foyer to see most of the staff had already dispersed and the ones left behind were your husband’s most loyal. There among them, speaking so unremarkably, so casually in a way you'd never witnessed, was your husband. His good spirits and animated gestures as he handed off all his things to many hands were an odd sight, staggeringly unlike his typical dour.

So, the rumor was true. There was something discomforting in that.

Whatever topic he'd been engaged in fell wayside once he took sight of you: standing, waiting, subtly shifting your weight, picking your overgrown cuticles to remedy how nervous you truly felt in that moment. You'd always been a little uncertain of how to deal with him as he was hardly affable, but this—

“Oh my… there you are, my sweet!” his voice was exactly the same, but his way of speaking was too jarring, almost lilting. Unnatural. No one else seemed to notice. “I was worried you may have been cross with me for being away for so long. As it turned out, uncle had far more beneath the surface to find than I once thought. But, all is well! The old man has been laid to rest forever. The estate is in the right hands. I've come back to you.”

Could this man really be your husband?

He came to you in brisk strides with a certain clumsiness to the way he moved, somewhat off. You thought about seasoned drunkards who could walk along a path, but never on a straight line without gently swaying on and off of it. Mostly in control, but never so well to appear normal.

But, you didn't detect that stiff, hot, fermented reek of alcohol on his breath nor any subtle odor sticking to his clothes as he gripped you tight in an embrace. The only one he'd ever given you. Where you should have been over the moon in joy at his profound change in heart, the little sweetness was like an anchor—arms of a sinewy willow pinning you to an even stronger trunk.

“God, you're breathtaking.” He even sounded winded as he spoke, lifting your face up with both hands to see his dark, dark gleaming eyes. You startled from his cold touch, fingertips pinpricks of pure frost and ice as they pushed into your skin, but you felt trying to reach much deeper than that. “Come with me, my love. Let me show you just how much I've missed you.”

As if fantasy had become real, he fucked you relentlessly that night next to the fireplace, consuming you so completely that every orgasm made your insides churn in agony.

He laved at you with his entire mouth, tongue and teeth hardest at work while his hands bruised and fondled you, fingers thrusting up into your tight hole oozing his saliva and your arousal. It was shameful to think that it took this sort of handling from another person to get you off, squeal like a sow.

He fucked you however he could, wherever he could. Rutting you from behind and against furniture, pressing your bare chest flush to frosted over window panes to make your nipples erect and ache from the cold biting them. Then, you were settled on his lap in front of a mirror hanging adjacent across the bedroom, his thighs spreading you wide open before your own reflection where you watched his cock plunge deep, filling you to the base of his shaft, balls slapping your sticky skin.

“Touch yourself, darling.” His throat rumbled, turning over stones and shards of glass, overall sounding very husky. There was something of wheeze that trailed the end of his every word, like he’d been patched for a long time. “Touch yourself. Watch yourself while you do it. Fuck yourself like the whore you are.”

Although the things he said were horribly uncouth, unbefitting of a man of his status and who you'd known him to be, there was great allure in hearing him, obeying his wants. You'd only had one glass of wine that evening, but your head and body warmed and buzzed like you'd had several.

His voice was a raspy whisper in your ears, seeping deep into your mind; spreading; fitting the grooves of your brain like the slow sprawl of sap through the gaps in bark. You were hardly yourself those minutes, those hours onward where you witnessed your reflection stroking throbbing parts, moaning, weeping, cumming until it hurt, and then doing it all over again.

The person in the mirror seemed to be someone completely different, whether simply disassociation from yourself or some hallucination evoked by exhaustion and ecstacy. Your husband had faded into the background, his voice creating sounds and noises, holding the cadence of language while seeming entirely unprobable, unknowable to you.

You couldn't understand him, yet you could, and the things he said were vile and disgusting and moralless. He told you of every way he'd like to fuck you, watch you be fucked; but, mostly, he wanted you to fuck yourself with the bulbous bedposts, the metal phallus held under lashing flames to be inserted next to his own cock.

He suggested orgies where the servants could take turns with you. He had almost convinced you to call for your maid so he could watch you suck on her breasts and lick her clit, while he rammed you from the back. He suggested drugs and whores, robbing the mortuaries, and worse and worse and worse and worse…

The next morning, you were stiff and immobile, bedridden unless two servants came into your room to help you squat on the commode. Your abdomen was tender and your genitals were untouchable, forcing you to lie in bed without undergarments to alleviate the raw chafing that could happen with fabric.

“I'm sorry, my darling. I—I lost control of myself. I got carried away,” your husband confessed later on, his sallow complexion keeping a weird, waxy sheen to it. A mask that fits, but not quite perfectly. Some of his former somber nature had returned to him as he sat on the edge of your bed, caressing the side of your face. He was still ridiculously cold. “Forgive me. I never meant to hurt you. I didn't realize just how desperate I was to see you again until you were in my arms. And then—and then, it was like it was all a dream.”

You thought the very same. You could believe he forgot himself in an uncharacteristic blaze of lust, as men were never taught to be any other way, and most men couldn't fathom the level of restraint he’d had until last night.

Everything else, you'd wanted to believe, was simply imagined after drinking more than you once thought and getting inside your own head full of sinful indulgences.

Still, one thing bothered you: Father Marius DuMonde.

“I need you to go to the city and find him. And show him this paper. Explain to him everything that you know, you hear?” You'd handed your maid the old envelope and scrap of paper, and handed her a generous bag of coins from your own safe. She looked at you, everything else, in bewilderment. “Don't ask questions. If you're able, bring him back here. Beg him if you must. If it's all nothing, he will simply be an honored guest we feed well, house, and send off gracefully the next day. Should it be something…”

“Are you afraid of him? The Master?” asked the maid, perhaps out of faithfulness to him. Perhaps out of devotion to you the most. “What do you think happened at his uncle's estate?”

It would all be speculation and unjustified gossip without proof, of which you had none. So, you told her that you couldn't be sure of anything right now. “Wait until sundown. Take the old pony in the stables, the one that usually lags behind all the rest. Be silent. Be careful.”

The maid did as you asked and left right before the final light was extinguished by indigo nightfall. You were able to move to one of the windows, seating yourself gingerly, watching her lead the sluggish old pony into cover of tree tops and then nothing else.

But, five days later, the maid hadn't returned from her mission, nor had you received any correspondence from her, nor the priest that she was supposed to retrieve.

A week after that, it was revealed to you that neither she or the old pony had made it out of the woods. The details of the old pony were so gruesome you couldn't bear to remember them. But, the maid was found nearly decapitated, head twisted around to face backwards, her pale skin hideously purple and black and swelled where it had been stretched like a strap of wrung leather. It was mentioned she had been disemboweled as well, but you promptly burst into tears and ran from the room before the visiting coroner could finish speaking, leaving him to discuss the rest with just your husband.

That night, you lay next to your husband in bed. The deep silence of night filled your ears with static and crunching cotton, whereas a hum resonated inside your head, your chest, seeping into your bones like a cold blanket of rainfall. The black air took on weird shapes: imagined appendages curling, reaching across the ceiling towards the bed, towards you. Your eyes couldn't focus enough to ward them off, nor the depth of dark your husband's silhouette had at your side.

He was faced the other way, his clothes back to you, completely unmoving. You ventured closer to listen for the thin breathing of sleep, the automatic rise and fall of his body, and yet he could've been mistaken as one of the dead. As dead and gnarled as your maid.

“Who are you?” you asked him. Asked the swirling nothingness in the room. “Where is my husband?”

“You've nothing to worry about, my sweet,” he said readily, so clearly anticipating to have your voice ring out at some point in the night. “He is here with me. Such a selfish, unlovable man. I am the one worthy of this vessel and you. Not he.”

Then, he rolled on top of you and kissed you deeply. Your bedclothes were shucked from your bodies and he pushed your thighs apart to seat himself inside of you. He took you with greedy thrusts, face fitted against the arch of your neck where his breath left a moist film across your skin, but the rest of him was freezing.

Your whimpers of pains were dwarfed by his hot moans into your flesh, teeth suddenly sharper and sinking deep when he bit into your neck. You were trapped staring at the ceiling, wrapped in agony and pleasure, feeling his body under your fingertips beginning to distort and change into something far more monstrous.

a/n; the upcoming story is meant to be my take on the whole possession subgenre in horror. if you're interested in reading it, I suggest you stick around my blog bc I do intend to start working on the actual story here in the next month or so!!

also, father marius dumonde is the same priest from my vampire priest x reader fic—of flesh sin. so, father shaw will be making a reappearance in it.

480 notes · View notes

sailorsoons · 17 days ago

Text

Vengeance (c.hs)

Pairing: Vernon x f. reader

Summary: You always knew you were different from a young age. The only person who has ever been able to understand you is Vernon. When things take a turn for the Choi Syndicate, your long-term relationship is put to the test.

Full Fic Word Count: 21,528

Genre: Mafiaverse, Cyberpunk, Childhood Friends/Exes to Lovers

Type: Smut, Heavy Angst

Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging in and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately.

Warnings: Because of the nature of this fic, I have placed them under the cut. Please read them carefully before engaging with this fic.

A/N: This fic is a part of my Syndicates Collection. This will the second installment under the Syndicate Universe, but you can always read this fic on its own. I hope everyone enjoys Vernon’s story as much as they enjoyed Hoshi’s!

A/2: Thank you @daechwitatamic for being an amazing beta reader. I love you to the moon.

Main Masterlist | The Syndicates Collection | Ask | Playlist

Warnings: Because I am trying to overwarn due to subject matter, please read these carefully! General violence associated with criminal empires and criminal underground, mentions of murder and depictions of murder, depictions of punishment from parent to child, depictions of attempted murder (reader’s mother to reader via drowning, vernon’s father to vernon via choking), themes of religious trauma, themes of dealing with a parent that experiences undisclosed/ambiguous religious psychosis, mentions of dealing with a parent who is fighting addiction, kids arguing and getting into a fight (it’s honestly kind of funny, not violent at all), depiction of patricide (cool motive, still murder), heavy internal angst for reader/repressed feelings, grieving the loss of a loved one, explicit language, references to drugs and recreational alcohol use, Vernon does drive a motorcycle after drinking - it is implied he’s using a stimulant to combat that, some puppy love scenes/vernon and reader making out and being teenagers, brief interrogation scene where reader/Soonyoung are harming someone (stepping on their fingers) for information, explicit sexual content including oral (f. receiving) mild ass play, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, implied breath play, reader experience something adjacent to subspace post-sex.

God doesn’t like strange girls.

Well, you don’t know what makes you strange and you’re not entirely sure you believe in God. You’re only eight, and even though your mother prays to Him with a reverence reserved only for him, on her knees until they’re bleeding, her body shaking with exhaustion, you don’t think you want to believe in God.

God is the only man your mother loves. For you, it’s your father. You can’t understand how your mother can pledge herself so wholly to someone she can’t see, someone who doesn’t seem to do much for her.

Your father is tangible and real, and he does everything for you. He takes you to school in the mornings, he brushes your hair, he buys you the books you need for class, he protects you from her, when she is screaming that you need to purge your sin for Him, that you should prostrate for Him, that dirty nails offend Him.

Uncooked grains of rice bite into your knees. You try to maintain your balance, not wanting to shift on them any more than you have to. Every time you wobble or try to adjust to lessen the pain, it only gets worse.

Behind you, your mother’s voice comes out in staccato, her murmurs feverish: No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

The sin this time were the honey cakes the neighbor brought over for your birthday. They were perfectly golden, flaky and brown on the edges and moist on the inside, filling your mouth with sweet, honey flavor. They’d left your fingers a little sticky, the corner of your mouth a little flaky.

You’d only eaten two of them when your mother discovered you in the living room, shrieking when she saw you indulging. Coveting. Full of gluttony.

Licking your lips, you shift on the grains of rice. It stings, making your eyes water. Your shoulders ache, neck tight where you hold your hands behind your back. Time moves inexorably as you kneel there, the prayers for your mother’s God washing over you as you pay penance for a sin you don’t understand.

When the front door opens, you nearly weep with relief. Salvation is here, and it isn’t in the form of God shepparading his followers into heaven. Relief comes in the form of your father storming toward where you kneel, picking you up off the ground and asking your mother what she’s doing.

Deliverance comes when he gently wipes the grains of rice from your knees while you sit on the bathroom counter. He rubs a rag softly over the dimpled skin, wiping away a little bit of blood where the grains cut through the flesh. He applies a salve and presses a kiss to your head, apologizing.

“Do you want to open your gifts, Angel?” You nod eagerly, forgetting all about the honey cakes that your mother threw out or the pain in your knees.

Your mother sleeps in the bedroom, muttering feverishly. You and your father creep out to the kitchen where he lets you open the boxes in the privacy of four walls. He leans against the counter as you tear open the crinkling wrapping paper, liking the way it feels beneath your fingers, the way it crackles, like it’s telling you a secret.

Popping the lid to the box, you reveal a beautiful gold necklace. The chain is thin but feels strong. It’s long and on the end, there’s a flattened coin charm with a figure of an angel etched into the face. You rub your thumb on it, mouth opening and grinning.

“Do you like it?” Your dad asks. You nod your head early and he laughs. “Here, let me put it on.”

You hand it over to him and he loops the necklace around your neck, fastening the necklace. When he pulls away, his grin is bright as the sun. “An angel for my Angel. As long as you have it on, I’ll always be with you and it will protect you.”

Your mother has her God, but you have yours. And you’re his messenger, his follower, his angel.

“You are a demon!” Your mother shrieks, her voice raw and cracking. You ignore her as she leaps at you, slamming the door shut and holding it hard. She twists the knob but you hold fast, pulling your weight against the door so she can’t open it. “Demon! Demon! Scourge of the earth! You are the darkness! God will prevail against you! He will rise up in his righteousness-”

“Is this bathroom taken?”

Looking over your shoulder, you see a boy around your age looking at you. He’s standing a few feet away down the hall, fingers twisting together nervously as he looks at you and then the rattling door. He’s pretty, with soft brown hair that hangs in his dark eyes. His face is round and his cheeks are flushed pink from hiking up the stairs.

“Um,” you look at the door as the pounding subsides, followed by wailing. “Yeah, you can’t come in here. I’m sorry.”

“Do you know where there’s another bathroom?”

You shake your head. “I don’t live here. It’s Daddy’s friend's house.”

“Your dad is friends with the Tower too?”

You nod and he smiles. “Me too. I’m Hansol, but everyone calls me Vernon. Only my mom calls me Hansol ‘cause I love her.”

You give him your name and pause before adding, “My dad calls me Angel.”

Vernon grins. “I like it.”

“Thanks.”

He glances at the door. “Do you need help? I can keep you company.”

You blush. “No, I’m okay. Thank you, Vernon.”

Vernon toes the ground for a second, the tip of his shoe creasing the carpet. He tucks his hands in his pocket and chews on his lip before he bows a little and says, “Well I’m going to find another bathroom. It was nice to meet you, Angel.”

“You too, Vernon.”

When he walks back down the stairs, he pauses halfway to look at you. You’re watching him with a grin, butterflies in your stomach when he grins back and waves again before descending the stairs back down to the party - where you’re supposed to be, instead of containing your mother as she cries on the other side of the door.

The party had started off fine with her smiling and having a good time. Somewhere between the first drink and her last, she felt Him again, dragging you to the bathroom to make you choke up the shirley temple you’d had.

Gluttonous. Greedy. Indulgent.

Unfortunately, your father had been busy somewhere with the Tower and some of the other men. He has no idea she dragged you to the bathroom for one of her episodes. But even at nine, you know how to fight her off now. She gives up just as easily as she starts, so if you can trap her long enough, usually she’ll scream herself into exhaustion.

It’s not a good look. Even as a kid you know this. Parties are an important social setting for members of the Choi Syndicate, especially when they’re held at the Tower’s home. The Tower is the most important member of the organization, the boss, the king - that’s how your dad describes it. The Tower is owed loyalty and reverence, and being invited into his family home is very important.

As a Sword, your father owes his loyalty to the Choi family. You don’t know what a Sword really does, other than it’s supposed to be exactly what it sounds like - a weapon. Your dad doesn’t talk much about his work, but on nights like tonight, he’s on duty circulating the party while you and your mother attend as guests.

Well, you were supposed to attend as guests until your mother felt the call of God again. It wears on you, having to constantly be responsible for her. You’ve missed so many parties holding her hostage in a room and away from eyes, trying to protect yourself but most of all, protect your dad. If people knew… you don’t know what would happen, but you feel the need to hide her anyway.

That’s how your dad finds you, leaning against the door and half asleep. He sighs heavily, crouching down as you blink up at him. He touches your cheek lightly and asks, “Ready to go home, Angel?”

You nod and he grins, scooping you up and tucking you against him. Your savior comes at last.

Afternoon sun bakes on the back of your head. You reach up, pressing your palm to your scalp, feeling the warmth. Sweat slicks your back and behind your kneecaps, running down your legs and making you squirm as you look around the yard, uncertain.

The yard is filled with tables, beautiful floral centerpieces in each of them. Flowing ribbons decorate the backs of the chairs with balloons tied to each, their center filled with dancing lights that look like butterflies. Servants move about the party dressed in all white to match the birthday theme, holding silver trays with various confectionaries and fizzy drinks.

Adults filled the yard but there’s a good dozen kids around your age. You only know some of them - specifically the birthday girl, who is the daughter of the Tower. She’s in the far corner of the yard, crouching down near a pond to look at turtles with a round-cheeked boy you don’t know.

Worst of all is the heat. It is sweltering outside and though there are powerful fans circulating cool air around the yard, nothing is enough to reach you through the layers of fabric your mother has stuffed you in, gushing about how you looked like God’s perfect angel, dressed in white and covered to the eyeballs in fabric.

“Hi, Angel.” A soft voice makes you turn and you can’t help but smile when you see Vernon. It’s been a few weeks since you last saw him, but you’re delighted and a little shy when you wave. He looks at your dress and frowns. “You’re very frilly. And… covered.”

That you are. The dress is beyond itchy, the white material reading all the way to the middle of your hands and the collar up to the jaw. You are covered from head to toe in the white, restricting material, the skirts of the dress falling in layers of chiffon to the floor.

You huff and cross your arms, feeling the sweat drip down your neck and back. “My mom made me wear it. I hate it.”

“Do you want different clothes? I have a room here. I bet I have pants and stuff that could fit.”

That makes you brighten. “Really?” He nods. “Yeah, that would be cool. I hate this dress.”

Vernon beckons you toward the main house. There are multiple houses on the Choi property, which has more land than you’ve ever seen. Even the concept of a yard blows you away. The Choi family are the kind of rich that is confusing to you, but you like going over to their house, especially when it’s not busy.

“Why do you have a room here?” You ask Vernon, who opens a door. The security team lets him, ignoring him as he enters the house proper. “I thought it was just the Choi family.”

“It is but sometimes…” He trails off as he leads you through a massive living area toward a foyer with stairs. “Um, it’s hard to explain.”

“That’s okay. That’s cool, though.”

He nods. “Sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?”

On the second floor, Vernon leads you down two different carpeted hallways until he stops at a door, opening it up. It’s a nice room, if not a little simple. It smells like clean linen and there’s an AetherLink in the corner with a paused game.

Vernon walks over to the closet, opening the door. The lights turn on automatically, showing how deep the rows and rows of clothing goes. You raise your brows, trailing behind him. Your house is a decent size - and it’s impressive you live in a house, not an apartment - but this is something else.

Grabbing stuff off the hanger, Vernon hands it over to you. He’s given you white pants and a white flowy shirt to match the rest of the party. You take it tentatively, feeling how soft the fabric is between your fingers.

“Sometimes I fight with Seungcheol,” Vernon admits. “He’s older and thinks he’s the boss. His mom doesn’t like me much.”

“Tell them to shut up.”

Vernon’s mouth twitches, an almost smirk. “Yeah, maybe. The bathroom is there if you want to change.”

The bathroom is just as grand as the rest of the house. You change quickly, folding your dress and tucking it into your arm, coming out to stand hesitantly. He’s leaning against the dresser, hands in his pocket as he stares at the ground. When you come out, he gives you a small smile and holds out his hand for the dress. You give it to him and he puts it on his dresser before turning to you, appraising your outfit.

“Hopefully you won’t sweat to death now.”

Your smile is small. “Thanks.”

“Do you want to see the turtles?” You nod early, pressing your sweaty palms against your pants - Vernon’s pants - to dry them. “Come on.”

Afternoon sun beats down on the back of your neck as you lean over the turtle pond. There are so many of them, their shells have different shapes and sizes with bellies that are different colors and patterns. Your knees press into the dirt, uncaring if you stain them as Vernon does the same.

Vernon knows all about the turtles. He picks up each one delicately, letting it grow accustomed to him before placing them in your palm. He tells you their names, their scientific species name, how old they are, when they came to the Choi Estate, and their likes and dislikes.

It’s like a bubble has formed around you. The party continues onward, but you only have eyes for Vernon, who picks up a small turtle, cradling it in his palm. The turtle is dark green, with thin yellow striating its body and coral red spots blooming on its head. It cranes up to look at Vernon, blinking twice.

“This is Blush,” Vernon says gently. He brings his other finger up and runs it along the back of its shell delicately. It flinches for a second before it extends its neck upward, as though it wants more. He smiles and continues, eyes fixated. “She’s the newest turtle added to the pond. She’s a red-eared slider, which is why she has this red here. Baby named her Blush.”

“I love her blush.”

Vernon smiles. “We’ve had her for a month. She’s part of the emydidae family which has about fifty species. Her scientific name is trachemys scripta elegans and she’s a type of pond turtle like the others. She’s my favorite.”

“I can see why.”

“Do you want to hold her?”

Before you can answer, a shadow falls over you. Both of you look up to see the Tower’s eldest son standing over you, his arms crossed and a frown on his face. Vernon’s reaction is instantaneous as he quickly puts Blush back on her rock and wipes his hands on his pants, making them damp.

“You missed singing happy birthday,” Choi Seungcheol snaps. His voice wavers right between adolescence and that first crack of puberty. “And of course you’re with the fucking turtles.”

“I was showing her… sorry.”

Seungcheol’s eyes go to you. He drinks in your outfit and his frown only increases, making you feel on edge. You don’t like that look on his face, like he’s annoyed with you. He doesn’t even know you.

Turning his attention back to Vernon he says, “Get up. You’re going to have to explain to my mother who kindly bought you those clothes why you let some girl stain them.”

“Alright.”

You look at Vernon, remembering what he had said early about Seungcheol sometimes talking to him like he was the boss. Irritation comes alive in you, thinking of all the times your mother has done exactly that despite her not being the boss of you either.

Turning to Seungcheol you say, “You don’t have to be mean about it.”

“What?”

“Do your ears not work? You don’t have to be mean to him. He was being nice to me and you’re just being rude.”

Seungcheol’s ears go red and he clenches his fists. “I don’t have to be nice to him. I’m the son of the Tower-”

“You’re not the Tower though, and even the Tower is nice. My dad says he’s nice. You’re not.”

“Angel,” Vernon mutters, a warning tone to his voice.

“No,” you tell Vernon. “He’s not being nice to you and you didn’t do anything wrong.” Your mother’s face swims in your vision, the way your knees bleed when she makes you kneel on grains of rice, the sting of a switch against your back when she punishes you. “You’re not supposed to be mean to people who didn’t do anything wrong.”

Something you say makes Seungcheol’s face thunderous. You watch the darkness cloud over him, his eyes darting to Vernon. The older boy sees something there that you do not, because he goes from angry to full of rage in moments as he crouches down to eye level, looking at Vernon who has ducked his head.

“This little bastard knows what he fucking did wrong. He was born.”

Vernon doesn’t move. His breathing is heavy and you see the way his fingers grip his pants, bone white with ferocity. He doesn’t dare look at Seungcheol, who is looking at Vernon like he wants to hit him - like he might hit him. It’s exactly how your mother looks at you for drinking a soda that your dad got you, or how she looks at you when you read a book on the couch.

But Vernon doesn’t deserve it. Vernon who was nice to you in the hallway when other people ignored you. Vernon who gave you a change of clothes because you hated yours. Vernon who knows all of the names of the turtles in the pond because he sees them as friends.

Looking at them, all you see is you kneeled in supplication while your mother’s shadow looms over you, dominating. Final. Hateful.

You barely remember leaping forward to tackle Choi Seungcheol. One minute you’re a shaking, angry mess and the other you’re on top of him screaming at him, hitting him with little closed fists that can’t deliver any real damage.

Seungcheol thrashes under you, several times your size and strength as he manages to knock you off of him. He rolls over on the ground, nose crimson where you landed a single good punch on him. He yells at you but you can barely hear him through the high-pitched ringing in your ears as the rage turns into something all consuming, something you can’t stop, something that makes you want to hit and hit and hit -

Someone knocks you over. There is a high-pitched screaming before you realize that the birthday girl is on top of you, pulling your hair in a rage for attacking her brother. You push back at her, all your rage exploding as the two of you scream like feral cats. You pull anything on her that you can - hair, her dress, earrings - it doesn't matter. You yank and yank until someone is pulling the two of you apart.

The dark-haired boy that was with Seungcheol’s sister earlier is pinning you to the ground. You thrash in his hold but he’s strong, keeping you down until suddenly he topples over as Vernon crashes into him, sending him to the side. Now Vernon is the one yelling, he and the boy rolling over as they fight for dominance like you and the girl moments before.

A booming adult voice startles you as they shout, “Enough!”

Vernon and the other boy scramble to their feet, covered in dirt and grass and blood. Both of them bow deeply at the waist, unmoving as a man approaches. Around him, the adults part like the river at the prow of a boat. He’s dressed in an all white suite with a single, obsidian brooch on his lapel in the shape of a mountain.

The Tower.

Behind him is your father, and another man you don’t recognize but looks identical to the boy Vernon had tackled, all high and round cheekbones with intense eyes glaring down at the miniature version of himself. You assume he’s the boy's dad, and by the way he’s dressed, you know he’s important to the Choi family.

“All of you,” the Tower instructs. “In my office. Now.”

“Yes Tower,” you all echo in unison.

Seungcheol is the first to march after his father, spine stiff. His sister is right on his heels with the other boy right behind her. He looks over his shoulder once to scowl at you, a warning that you don’t understand before he quickens his steps after her.

Vernon sighs heavily, looking after them before he turns to you. “Come on.”

The party goes on without you all and the birthday girl. The strings start again and the adults go back to talking, some of them giggling as they watch your group of stained and bloody kids trekking behind the Tower of the Choi Syndicate into the estate.

Some of the ground floor is familiar to you. You pass through living spaces and darkened hallways with old fashion sconces before you reach a parlor room with two guards standing on the outside. Both of them look at the Choi siblings fondly, one of them leaning over to check Seungcheol’s nose before smiling and patting him on the cheek.

Inside the Tower’s office smells like leather and sweet tobacco. It’s not unpleasant but it’s unfamiliar to the heavy incense and myrrh constantly choking the air of your home. Books line the walls behind a sitting area with big, leather armchairs and an old coffee table made of rich wood.

You kind of like the room, looking around at all the strange gadgets and things unfamiliar to as the Tower clears his throat. He leans on his desk casually, crossing his arms over his chest as the five of you line up, looking at the floor underneath the heavy gaze of the Syndicate leader.

All you know about the Tower is that your dad loves him. He says he’s like family, and that out of all the men in the world who could lead the business to greatness, it’s Choi Moojin. He comes from a long line of powerful men, firm and powerful as the mountain that their name draws its meaning from. Married into the fire and wrath of the Hino family, the Choi’s have been unstoppable since he stepped into his father’s position as Tower.

And now you punched the boy who is supposed to grow into a man and replace him.

It’s a bad look. You know it is, and you don’t know how much trouble you’re in, but you would do it again. Vernon had been so soft-spoken and gentle when showing you the turtles, pointing out every detail he liked about them, listening when you asked questions.

No one listened to you when you asked questions. He did. And Seungcheol had wanted to punish him for no reason, to make Vernon feel small, to make him-

“Explain,” the Tower commands, voice rough. He points to Seungcheol. “You first.”

“That crazy little girl hit me!” he exclaims, pointing at you. “She tackled me like a savage-”

“You were mean to Vernon!” you explode, unable to keep silent. “He was showing me turtles and you were being a jerk and you hurt his feelings!”

Both Seungcheol and his sister start screaming at you, though the third boy and Vernon both stay silent as the grave. The Tower interrupts his children again, raising a hand to silence him. They fall into line immediately, bowing their heads as an apology.

The Tower looks at you and you cower, dropping your eyes. “You’re like your father,” he notes, though he doesn’t sound too angry. “Which is probably a good thing. What did Seungcheol say to Hansol that made you tackle him, hmm?”

“He called him a bastard. And something about not liking that he was born.”

There’s a heavy pause in the air. No one breathes, all of you waiting as the Tower deliberates. Finally, it’s his daughter who murmurs, “What’s a rastard?”

Suddenly, the Tower is laughing. You’re not sure at what but you glance at him from the corner of your eye to see he doesn’t look as imposing as he had earlier. Next to you, you feel Vernon relax. His shoulders drop, less tight and his mouth twitches a little.

“You kids,” the Tower sighs. “All carbon copies of your parents, I’m afraid. Seungcheol, I want you to apologize to Hansol. You know that wasn’t kind, and you’re the son of the Tower. You know better than that.”

Seungcheol nods and turns to Vernon, giving him a full ninety degree bow. “I’m sorry for insulting you and being impolite. I was… angry. It’s no excuse.”

Vernon bows a little. “I accept.”

“Now how,” the Tower says to his daughter and the boy next to her, “did the two of you get involved? Soonyoung?”

The boy next to the Tower’s daughter shifts. “Baby got mad that she,” he spits the word out toward you, “punched Seungcheol. So she started fighting with her and I tried to pull them apart. Then Vernon hit me.”

The Tower looks at Vernon, surprised.

“I was scared he was going to hurt Angel.”

“I see. Angel, is it?”

“That’s what my dad likes to call me.”

The Tower smiles and nods. “Were you just protecting Hansol?”

“Yes. He’s nice and… doesn’t deserve to be punished for being nice.”

“You have good character, Angel. Hansol needs someone to watch over him. I’m glad he has you.”

A flush goes through you, white hot. You don’t really know what he means, but you’re pleased nonetheless. You glance at Vernon to see him fighting a smile, his fingers nervously pulling at the threads of his ripped shirt.

“You all might not know it,” the Tower announces, “but you’re family. Your parents are my closest confidants, my secret-keepers, my best friends. You all will be like us, one day. Sometimes we fight - fighting is good for the spirit. But at the end of the day, we apologize, we make amends, and we move on. It is important to do those things, yes?”

“Yes, Tower.”

“Everyone make amends. You’re bound to one another for life. Start acting like it.”

Vernon cradles a tablet in his lap, the diagrams and charts to his math homework hovering above the screen. He sighs, shaking his head as he uses his fingers to spin the hologram around, watching it intensely. The light turns his face blue, reflecting in his dark brown eyes. It makes his freckles stand out more, the light smattering of them dusting the tops of his cheeks and his nose.

There’s a bruise on his jaw again. It makes you shift uncomfortably. Vernon’s dad doesn’t hit him, but his mad rampages influenced by the number of substances he’s prone to get into every now and again make him difficult to contain. As the only other man of the house, it’s Vernon’s job to do so.

At least, that’s what Vernon says. You’re not so sure, hating each time you find a random bruise on him, another badge of honor at containing his father’s tirades now that he’s too young to hide at the Choi Estate.

You’re supposed to be doing homework alongside Vernon, but you can’t take your eyes off of him. The windows are open to the rain, an occasional blast of wind coming in and misting the room with the smell of lotus blossom and petrichor. It’s nice, the steady drip drip drip of the rain on the roof a pleasant backtrack to your studying session, which feels like it has stretched on forever.

In time with your thoughts, Vernon stretches. You watch the way he reaches his arms upward, sleeves constricting around his biceps which have become corded and strong under Soonyoung and Seungcheol’s careful tutelage at the gym. His shirt pulls up a little with the stretch, revealing a stretch of smooth, pale stomach.

Flustered, you snap your eyes back to your homework. You should be thinking about history, not Vernon’s stupid stomach or his stupid arms. Both of which, at twelve years old, have become insanely distracting for you.

Gone is the little boy who taught you about turtles, replaced by a very cute boy that you cannot stop staring at every time you do homework together.

Thunder rolls in the distance. You look up at the ceiling as though you could see the darkening sky through it. Outside, the wind swells, growing stronger as the full strength of the storm nears. Still, you don’t close the windows. It keeps the room cool in the summer months and you like the scent and feel of the rain.

A bang startles you at the front of the house. You whirl around in your seat, Vernon’s head snapping toward the entryway where your door is open, blasts of rain coming in. Paper goes flying around the house as your mother stands in the door, soaked and shaking. She’s staring right at you and Vernon, her eyes wide, mouth open.

A chill comes over you. It has nothing to do with the rain. You murmur for Vernon to stay exactly where he is as you peel yourself off of the couch and approach her slowly. She’s dressed in her temple clothes, the fabric sticking to her wire-thin frame. Her hair is pasted to her face and she’s panting, nearly frothing at the mouth.

She looks like a wraith coming to take your soul.

“Mom?” you ask, tentative. Her eyes dart to Vernon. Back to you. Your stomach sinks. “It’s just Vernon - you know, the Chwe’s son? He’s just here for homework.”

“Whore,” she hisses, her voice demonic. “Filthy rotten whore, sinning in my house?”

“No, we’re doing-”

Her hand reaches for you. You’re fast, but she’s like an adder, striking your wrist and latching on. You yank your hand back as she storms into the house, ripping you after her. You stumble and Vernon shoots to his feet, throwing his homework to the side.

“Call my dad!” You yell at him as your mother hauls you to the hallway, her hand like an iron claw on your wrist, threatening to break it. Her anger feels like the wrath of god, but you know her god isn’t real. Only yours is, and you need him now. “Please, call him!”

“Whore!” your mother screeches, launching you through the bathroom door. She lets you go as you fall forward, slamming into the bathroom tile. It jars you, pain blooming in your shoulder particularly. You cry out, unable to stop it as she climbs over you. “Whoring in my house! In the presence of God! O forgive me Lord, for she is wretched and foul!”

“Stop it!”

“I will cleanse the sin from this house, I will rid thee of this loathsome woman, who dares to perform filth under your reverent eyes!”

Her fingers tangle in your hair and she pulls. You scream, shoving at her. She is soaking wet with rain, dripping on you and turning the tile slippery as you thrash under her like a fish. Your scalp screams as she yanks you toward the bathtub, strands of your hair coming out with the ferocity.

Your head smacks the side of the tub, making your world spin. For a moment, the ceiling spins on its axis, lights blurry. The pain leaves your scalp for a moment, your mother vanishing from your vision as you get the urge to vomit, trying to roll over and push yourself off the side of the bathtub and get away.

Thunder rolls above you, shaking the foundation of the house. Your hands slide on the tile as you push yourself up, only to be knocked back down again as she shoulders you into the bathtub. A pitiful noise leaves your mouth as you go down hard on your shoulder. You feel the crack, the pain worse than anything you’ve ever experienced before.

Crying, you clutch your shoulder, trying to roll off of it, to do anything. Touching the arm hurts, but trying to move is worse. It is a radiating pain, jarring, searing-

Water floods your mouth. You gasp, choking as you lift your head to see that the faucet is running. With renewed panic, you thrash, nearly blacking out with the pain that explodes from the injured arm. Your mother, who doesn’t seem to notice the break, grabs you by the back of your head and shoves you forward.

The pain incapacitates you. Blots out everything else, your inability to fight back vanishing and replaced with only the knowledge that the pain exists. It increases tenfold. Fifty fold. A hundred fold.

Thunder pounds against the walls of the bathroom. It shakes the door in the frame, it splinters. You can barely register the thunder over the rush of the water filling your ears, but it’s there, accompanied by the rush of water in your mouth.

Panic slams back into you. You can’t breathe, can’t see. You flail, sitting upward for a moment to suck in a sharp, painful breath.

“Have mercy on me, O God,” your mother gasps, her hands on your face, nails biting into your skin. “According to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. I will remove evil from thy house, and embrace your grace and love.”

Water fills the tub. She pushes you back under and you scream in terror, forgetting to take a breath before your world is a dull roar. You thrash, kicking at her, slapping at her, tearing your nails into her wrists. It’s like she can’t feel pain, can’t be convinced to let go.

Your lungs ache, your nose filled with water. Her grip loosens for a second and you wretch yourself upward, choking and coughing, mucus and bile burning the back of your throat as you hack. The water is near the edge of the tub, sloshing as you try to crawl away from her.

“Stop!” You scream as she grabs you by the hair again. “Stop! Mommy, stop! Please!”

Water fills your mouth again. You gag on it, feeling your throat constrict as it fights between needing to wretch and swallow down water. Before your body can figure out which, you’re being hauled out of the water, the world spinning.

You fall over the side of the bathtub onto the floor, a pile of soaking, trembling limbs. Water spills over the sides of the tub like a waterfall as you choke up the water you’ve already swallowed, vomiting it out on the tile.

Someone grabs you and you scream in terror, not wanting to go back into the tub.

“It’s me!” Vernon’s voice wavers, higher-pitched than you’re used to. You get your bearings, lifting your head to see him. He’s next to you, soaked and panicked as he holds his hands out, not touching you. “It’s me.”

Turning away from him, you look where your mother is lying on the tiles. She’s still breathing, but she’s got a knot forming on her forehead. Behind her, the door to the bathroom is in splinters, entirely kicked through and torn apart - Vernon, you realize. It wasn’t thunder, it had been Vernon kicking through the door.

A knot forms in your throat as you swivel back to him. He’s on his knees, water pooling around him as the bathroom floods. His hair is soaked, long strands hanging in his eyes, which are wide with terror. He’s panting and there’s a little bit of blood on his hands, splinters visible.

Vernon, who taught you about turtles and all of their names. Vernon, who always quietly sits next to you at parties so you don’t feel alone. Vernon, who had tackled Soonyoung because he thought you were in danger that time at Baby’s birthday party. Vernon, who liked to sit on your couch with the windows open when it rained because he enjoyed the smell.

Vernon, who pulled you from your mother’s wrath. Who saved you. Not your dad, but Vernon, this time. A new god. A fierce one.

When you start to cry, Vernon doesn’t hesitate. He reaches for you, pulling you into him. You yelp when he touches your shoulder and his touch turns careful. He slides himself against the wall, pulling you between his legs to press your good shoulder against him. His chest is warm, the steady beat of his heart underneath your cheek as you press yourself into him, heaving.

Vernon’s arms come around you, careful not to touch your shoulder. You don’t care if he does. No pain can blot this out, no pain can erase what he’s done for you. He cradles you to him like you mean everything to him, hands pressed to you and mouth against your forehead, murmuring it’s okay. I’ve got you.

Your fingers twist in his shirt as you try to catch your breath, shaking violently. He doesn’t mind, just letting you use him however you need. A constant force, a guardian who requires no penance, no devotion, no alms in return for his protection.

“I’ve got you,” Vernon promises, kissing your temple. He squeezes you tighter. “I’m not letting you go. I’ll never let you go.”

It’s how your father finds you when he skids into the doorway, wrapped in Vernon’s arms and trembling as the bathroom floods around you, mother muttering under her breath about the demon in her home.

His eyes look from your mother to you, and you see it. The realization of what’s happened. Your god turns his vengeful eye on your mother, and you know you will never know her terror again.

Blossom petals fall from the ceiling as your father dips Yoon Minji by the waist to kiss her. Everyone in the pews shoots to their feet, clapping happily as he smiles into the kiss. They don’t overdo it, stepping away to bow a bit to their guests, laughing and happy. You clap from where you stand on the side, one of the few bridesmaids she’s picked for the wedding.

You think you like Yoon Minji. You don’t know much about her beyond knowing that she is from one of the wealthiest families in the Choi Syndicate, and she’s the current Wisdom to Choi Moojin, which makes her the second most powerful person in the room directly after the Tower.

Across from you, her son Jeonghan claps politely, placed among the groomsmen. He’s a little bit older than you in his late teens, a spitting image of his mother with her coquettish smirk and knowing eyes. Jeonghan you do like, though you’re not sure you trust.

Trust is a fickle thing that only two people in the room you’re standing in have earned. One of them is now walking with his new wife back down the aisle from the altar where they said their vows, and the other is sitting stiffly between his mother and father, his dark eyes only on you.

Butterflies erupt in your stomach. You feel warmth spread up your neck to your cheeks as you begin the processional back up the aisle, walking to meet Jeonghan who gives you a raised brow.

“You’re blushing,” he teases, looping your arm with his as he escorts you. “Is it because a certain Chwe is looking this way?”

You roll your eyes at the rhyme. “You just wanted to make a rhyme.”

“I’m also right.”

“If that’s what helps you sleep at night.”

He grins, turning to you, pleased at your rhyming. “I like having you for a sister. I’ll see you later, go see your mister.”

“Ugh, goodbye, Jeonghan.”

Your new step-brother lets go. He grins at you, always looking like the cat that ate the canary. You shake him off, knowing that lying to him about Vernon is pointless. The two of you are usually glued to one another’s side, near inseparable to the point that you asked if you could be a guest instead of a member of the wedding party.

That had earned a hard no from your father, despite how much he likes Vernon.

Now, though, you’re free to do what you want for cocktail hour. Naturally, this means stealing a bottle of wine from behind the bar when the bartenders aren’t looking and slipping out one of the side entrances outside.

Balmy air kisses your skin. The sun has long since faded and crickets chirp as you descend the steps toward the massive gardens on the property. The reception will be held in the east garden, so naturally you head to the west garden, slipping your phone out to message Vernon and tell him where to find you.

A waxing moon hangs in the sky. The entire world looks blue under its light, dark enough to slip away unnoticed but bright enough not to get lost on the cobblestone path, following the tinkling sound of a fountain.

The small courtyard has a massive fountain at its center. The statue centerpiece shows a series of mermaids resting upon rocks, water sprouting around them and showering them with mist. You walk up to the fountain's edge, looking at the glittering coins at the bottom that make the water smell coppery.

Mist cools your skin from the fountain. You study the mermaids while you wait for Vernon, eyeing the details of each scale, each strand of hair. The artist had a good hand, the careful lines and curves of the stone life-like.

Footsteps make you turn around. Vernon enters the yard, his hands tucked in the pocket of his suit pants. He looks at ease, walking in that same loping gait he always does. Now that he’s fourteen, he’s a lot taller than he used to be. Still wire thin, but not gangly like he was as a youth.

Tonight, his hair is gelled back. You feel your heart start to race again as he grins when he sees you, a smile only reserved for you. He looks painfully handsome, his suit fitting him just right and a cluster of white flowers that you’ve never seen before pinned to his jacket.

“Where’d you get that?” He gestures to the bottle of wine as he stands next to you, kicking a foot up on the fountain's edge to lean his elbow on his knee.

“Stole it from behind the bar.”

He shakes his head, laughing and holding his hand out. You give it to him and he turns the label upward, reading it in the moonlight. “This is good shit. They should keep better track of their wine.”

“I’m good at not being seen.”

“Oh, I’m aware.” Vernon peels the foil off the wine bottle, pausing to look you up and down. “I always see you, though.”

As soon as he says it, he drops his eyes. You stare at him, your heartbeat racing as he pulls out a knife to get the cork out the bottle. You don’t ask why he has a knife - you have one too. A beautiful little butterfly knife with a mother of pearl handle and an edge sharp enough to cut a single strand of hair. It had been a gift from Jeonghan, a little welcome to the family.

Vernon is always like this. He says things that make you stare at him, trying to unravel their meaning. You’re both fourteen and you know what flirting is, but you can’t figure out if that’s what he’s doing or not. Sometimes Vernon just says things and doesn’t mean anything secondary. He’s simple like that, very to the point and forward. Other times, you swear there is an inflection there, but you can’t tell if it’s because there is or you want there to be.

This is one of those times. Of course Vernon always sees you - he knows you better than anyone else in the world. From the moment he pulled you out of that tub and cradled you to his chest, you knew that you were his. It doesn’t matter if he knows or not. You’re entirely devoted to him - all because he doesn’t ask for it. Doesn’t expect it.

He doesn’t expect anything from anyone. It’s part of why you like him so much. He believes in keeping to himself and keeping quiet, carefully observing the world around him. Jeonghan thinks it makes Vernon dangerous - the good kind, he had emphasized. The useful kind.

You think it makes him perfect.

Vernon manages to get the cork out the wine bottle, his smile electric as he turns to you, presenting the bottle. You clap happily, taking it from him and bringing it up to your lips to take a hearty swig.

Immediately you cough, making a face as the wine hits your mouth. It’s fruity but it’s dry and tangy, something about it making you shake your head. After a difficult swallow, you take a big breath of air and give it back to him, still coughing.

“Wine is terrible.”

He takes it and tilts it towards you, his own cheers. When he takes a sip, he makes a face but his reaction is far less vile than yours. Smacking his lips together he says, “Yeah, not great.”

Together, you sit on the fountain, sticking your feet in the water. Vernon has rolled up his pants, to the knee, swishing his feet back and forth as you take another sip from the bottle. Your dress is pooled around your thighs, lifting lightly in the breeze.

Even though the wine is disgusting, you drink it anyway. Let it make you dizzy, turning the world softer. It feels good, this little buzz you have. You’ve never been drunk before but it makes you giggle, leaning your head back and closing your eyes as Vernon takes another swig.

When you open your eyes and look at him, you giggle.

“What?” he asks, shy. He puts the bottle down.

“Your mouth and teeth are sooo red.”

“Yours too.” He laughs, leaning toward you a little. You can’t tell if it’s the drink or his proximity that makes you dizzy. His breath fans your face - you hadn’t realized how close he was. “Your lips are red like berries.”

“Really?”

“Mhmm.” His eyes are dark, something flickering in them as they drop to your mouth. “Wonder if they taste like berries too.”

Your breath catches, heart hammering. “Why don’t you find out?”

Vernon doesn’t even hesitate. He presses his lips to yours, a little forceful and awkward. You don’t care, shocked that he’s kissing you. You don’t know what to do, but you close your eyes, letting Vernon slot his mouth against yours.

For a moment, it’s just the two of you and the press of your mouths, the fountain spraying you with water as the wind changes direction. Then, Vernon tentatively parts your lips, his tongue darting out to swipe across your bottom lip and you soar.

He starts to pull back but you make a sound, shifting forward to really kiss him. You know nothing about kissing, but you remember Lin telling you and the other girls about it. Baby had told you a little bit about what it was like to kiss Soonyoung, so you try to replicate her feedback, gently licking Vernon’s mouth open.

Vernon makes a pitiful sound, leaning into you. Your noses bump and you grow eager, bringing a hand up to his neck, holding him there. His hands cradle your face, his mouth eager and hungry. It’s messy and clumsy and you’re not sure either one of you really knows what you’re doing, but it’s Vernon and it’s everything.

When you break away, panting, Vernon presses his forehead against yours, nose nudging you. “Tastes better than berries.”

“What’s it taste like?”

His grin is goofy and he can barely get the joke out when he says, “My girlfriend?”

It’s more like a question but you already have an answer, nodding and whispering, “Your girlfriend.”

“Ah fuck,” Vernon mutters as you walk toward him, his head thudding against the back of the couch. You don’t hear his voice but you can see the look on his face and the shape of the words on his mouth as you storm over, fingers flexing. “I warned you,” you hear Vernon mutter to the girl he’s been pushing off of him the last ten minutes.

Vernon watches, eyes flashing when you grab the girl by the back of the neck and yank backward. The girl’s head snaps up, her eyes wide when she realizes who is grabbing her. Immediately she drops her hands from Vernon’s arms and tries to lean away from you, but you’ve got her in a death grip, nails digging into her skin.

She lets out a sound as you stare down on her, feeling your anger throb in the side of your neck alongside your pulse. The buzz of the alcohol burning through you doesn’t help either, turning your wrath sharp like a knife. Somewhere, you hear Jeonghan collecting bets behind you.

“He told you no,” you growl. You’d watched Vernon several times physically try to get up from the couch and push the girl off but she’d clung to him, ignoring his protests. “And no is a full sentence.”

“I didn’t know he was yours.”

Your nails dig in further and her hands fly up to your wrists, trying to break free as she cries. “The point is he told you no. Now apologize.”

Vernon watches with dull amusement, brows raised as they flicker between you and your victim. He always seems interested in what your nexk move is going to be, happy to go along with whatever your mood brings out, even if it’s violence.

“I’m sorry,” the girl says to you and you shove her forward. Her head snaps down, teeth clacking painfully. “Not to me, idiot. To him. Apologize to him for violating his personal space and not knowing what consent is.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

Hauling her off the couch is a task. She’s much taller than you, but you’re strong. Seungcheol has started letting you work out with them, and though he still holds a grudge from that time you punched him in the face as kids, he’d rather you be good at fighting than bad at it.

Instead of fighting, you let the girl go. She hits the floor like a ragdoll, scrambling away from you. Your fingers are sticky with her blood, the underneath of your nails black with it. She stumbles to her feet, hand going to the back of her neck where she must feel the broken skin.

“Crazy bitch,” she gasps, looking at you.

You take a single step and she shrieks in fear, running. You want to chase her, but Vernon’s hand is around your wrist and he’s laughing, tugging you toward him on the couch. Collapsing into his lap, you pout at him, stomach fluttering at the way he looks at you - like you’re everything, the only thing.

It doesn’t matter that you’re only fifteen. You know that you’re in love with Vernon and that he’s in love with you. No amount of threats by your father has swayed Vernon and no amount of never trust a man from your stepmother has convinced you that you cannot trust Vernon implicitly.

“Very hot of you,” Vernon assures, his hands sliding from your waist to your ass. He grips you through your jeans, uncaring that you’re in the middle of some gritty ass party in the Lower District. If Baby knew you were here, she’d be so mad you didn’t bring her along. “Kiss me.”

You do. He tastes like gin and lemons, but he smells like fresh rain, all petrichor and vetiver. His mouth is warm and wet against yours, a little clumsy because he’s been drinking, but far more skilled than that awkward kiss you shared the night your father married Minji.

Vernon groans under you and you laugh, cradling his face with your hands as you separate from him, nipping his lower lip a little. “Take me home,” you whisper, thighs squeezing around his. “Please?”

He taps your ass. “Let’s fucking go.”

Outside the world is awash in rain. It’s always raining in the city, turning the streets slick. It smells awful in the Lower District, the water flooding the streets and clogging the drain until it smells like wet decay and piss. A group of men shuffle too close for comfort, making Vernon tug you toward him. His eyes are dark beacons as he watches them pass by, either uninterested in the two of you or deciding you’re not easy targets.

Standing on your tiptoes, you press a messy kiss to Vernon’s jaw. He smirks but his eyes never leave the men until they’re around the corner. Vernon might be quiet and unassuming most of the time, but he’s the son of a Sword, one of the heavies for the Choi Syndicate. Vernon is far more lethal than he looks, and he’s learned how to use it.

Turning to catch your mouth, Vernon presses a messy kiss to your lips. “Come on,” he mumbles, tugging you toward the motorcycle parked near the front of the apartment complex. “Let’s go.”

Vernon slides onto the bike, unhooking a helmet and passes it to you. You swing a leg over, getting on the back and pulling the helmet on. Immediately, the face shield swims with color as it turns on, a mini heads up display projected across the glass.

Underneath you, the bike roars to life. Red lights glow around the rim of the wheels, casting murky light on the sidewalk as Vernon walks the bike backward. You scoot closer to his back, wrapping your arms around the middle to give him a squeeze. One of his hands drops from the handlebars and pats your leg.

“Good?” His voice comes through the comms in the helmet perfectly clear.

“Good. You good?”

“Mhmm.” You hear something click against his teeth. “I’ve got a stim pop.”

The boys love stim pops. Most of them use them when they’re trying to fight a high or being drunk, the mix of sweet candy and methylphenidate serving as a kickstart to the nervous system. All of the workers under the Choi banner use them, especially when pulling late night shifts or just trying to stay awake. Your father even chews them sometimes, popping one in his mouth when he comes home.

You hate the taste, personally. The candies aren’t sweet enough and you can taste the bitter edge of the stimulant as it melts in your mouth. Vernon, however, loves them. He’s always careful not to overuse them, afraid of becoming too reliant on them. With his father’s history, you don’t blame him.

Resting the side of your helmet on Vernon’s back, you watch as the world turns into a blur of color. You love the feeling of being on a motorcycle, the world around you becoming nothing but wind and blurring shapes. This late at night, Vernon has to maneuver around people as he drives through the entertainment districts, but once he hits the highway you’re gone.

Wind rips at your clothes. You can see the speed in the corner of your heads up display as Vernon tops out the bike, shooting across the bridge like a bullet. He’s going way above the speed limit but you don’t care, hugging him closer as he navigates through the night.

Even if city police did want to go after him for speeding, they’d never catch him. Seungkwan had refitted the bike with tons of illegal parts and machinery, making it travel at speeds far above regulations. And even if Vernon did get pulled over, he just needed to tell them who he was - the Choi’s were deep in the infrastructure of law enforcement, near impossible to weed out.

Nights like this with Vernon feel invincible. As children to members of status in the Choi Syndicate, you’re untouchable. Gods.

Well, perhaps Vernon is. You don’t feel so much as a god as you do a shadowy angel at his side, ready to deliver vengeance tenfold to whoever stands in his way. It’s been like that since the day he pulled you out of the bathtub - before, even, when you’d punched Seungcheol for him.

Despite being high-ranking in the Choi Syndicate, Vernon’s family doesn’t live in the luxurious accommodations as some of the other upper echelon. He had lived in an actual home like you when you were kids, but last year had moved to a smaller apartment in the Upper District - still better than most of the population of the city, but strange for someone so close to Choi Moojin.

Sleep is a stranger to the city. Lights burn in the windows of the skyscraper as Vernon pulls into the garage lift. He plants his feet on the ground, a hand dropping to your thigh to squeeze and hold you close as the lift shoots upward. It jolts you a bit and you hug him closer.

“Gonna break my ribs,” he teases.

“Good. I’m the only one allowed.”

“Anything you want.”

It makes you smile. You’d never actually hurt him - you’d rather die than inflict any sort of damage on him. Jeonghan has tried to tell you over and over again that you should have a contingency with Vernon, that if he ever breaks your heart-

You shake your head at the thought. Jeonghan trusts no one and neither do you - but Vernon isn’t no one.

The lights are off in Vernon’s apartment. His mother is nowhere to be found, which isn’t uncommon, and his father blessedly isn’t home. You don’t think Vernon would bring you back if Chwe Jiyeong was home. You don’t have to ask why and Vernon doesn’t have to explain. Like most things between the two of you, you just know.

Vernon pulls you toward him as he walks backward toward his room. You giggle, your feet tangling and tripping as you go. You chase his lips with yours, pleased when he lets you drown him in an all consuming kiss, your hands pulling him closer by the jacket.

Tumbling into his room, you knock something over and he laughs. Pressing your hands against his chest, you send him backward onto his bed. His room is dark, save for the light peeking through the tinted windows. This high up in the sky, the clouds blot out the moon.

Crawling into his lap, you grin down at Vernon. His hands go to your hips, greedy fingers exploring. His eyes shine in the darkness of the room, hungry for you - only you. You are the only thing in the world Vernon ever looks at with a sliver of desire.

Leaning down, you plant your hands on either side of his head, dropping your mouth to kiss him again when something crashing in the living room startles you both. Vernon is fast - faster than you even knew he could move. He has you up and off of him in a second, planting you on the bed as he heads for his bedroom door.

You begin to stand but Vernon holds out a hand, stopping you. “Don’t move,” he whispers. “Stay in here, and do not come out of this room. It’s probably my dad.”

Nodding, you sit back on the bed. You swallow thickly, watching as Vernon places his hand on the knob and stills, turning his head to listen. At first, there’s just eerie silence. Your heart pounds hard enough that you swear he can hear it thundering in your ribcage.

Someone cusses out in the living room. Vernon dips his head, sighing heavily as he white-knuckles the door handle. You watch the change come over him, a stone dropped in a still pond rippling a calm surface. He’s tense now, the desire for you moments ago stomped out by the sound of his father knocking over something else in the house, followed by the yell of his mother’s name.

Vernon turns back to you, eyes hard. “Stay here. I’ll get him back to his room and I’ll take you home.”

You nod. You know better than to be disappointed. His dad has ruined your night, but getting to ravage Vernon isn’t as important as this.

Carefully, Vernon opens the door. A shaft of light falls across his face, showing a moment of fear. Then he’s through the door and it’s closed, leaving you alone as your fingers twist nervously in his sheets.

Straining your hearing, you listen as Vernon’s steps fade down the hall. His soft voice is barely audible through the closed bedroom door. Silence follows for a moment, then you hear his dad, voice raised. The urge to stand up and go to the door is overwhelming but you stay put, knowing it’ll only make things worse.

Jiyeong hates your stepmother, and by extension, you.

Again, Jihyeong’s voice raises in the living room. You cannot make out what he’s saying, but it's obvious he’s angry. He’s always angry, though. Angry he can’t kick his addiction to frostbyte and resin, angry the Tower didn’t save his home from being taken by the bank, angry he’s in this apartment, angry that Vernon is here and his mother isn’t, angry at the world.

Growing up, you’d only seen the angry episodes from Vernon’s father once or twice. Seungcheol’s sister had told you about them, though. How when she was little, she’d be woken up to Vernon being brought upstairs to stay the night while Jiyeong was raving mad downstairs, how the Tower and his Sentinel - Soonyoung’s father - would placate him until morning.

No one placates him anymore. Soonyoung’s father is dead and Vernon is fifteen, old enough to deal with his old man by Syndicate standards.

A crash of sound makes you shoot to your feet. You wring your hands together, staring at the door intensely, wishing you could manifest Vernon to walk back through. Another loud crash followed by a loud shout makes you flinch, your hand flying to the angel charm on your necklace.

For a few beats, there’s only silence.

The silence scares you more than the shouting. Before you know what you’re doing, you’re opening the door and rushing down the hall.

Light spills into the living room from the kitchen. You smell something burning and catch snatches of foils near the stove top where there’s still an open flame. For a second, you think the apartment is empty, but you hear a grunt and something smack against the cabinets.

Rounding the counter top, you scream, reaching for Jiyeong where he sits on top of Vernon, whose feet are sliding against the title as he kicks, hands wrapped around his father’s wrists. Jiyeong’s hands are wrapped around Vernon’s throat, thumbs pressing dangerously into his windpipe.

You don’t even think. You lunge forward, grabbing at Jiyeong to pull him off of his son. He thrashes to the side, throwing you into the counter. Pain explodes in your hip but you don’t care, diving back at Jiyeong to pull him off of Vernon. You succeed in loosening his grip and Vernon gasps for air, his face red and strained as he coughs, spittle flying.

The moment of respite is costly - his dad shoves you back hard, sending you stumbling and falling on your ass. It hurts when you land, a pile of limbs and panic and disorientation. It doesn’t matter. You scramble to your feet again, the world tilting as your panic consumes you.

Jumping on Vernon’s father, you try to pull him off. He’s insanely strong, arms corded and honed to killing perfection, the perfect Sword of a powerful Syndicate. Vernon doesn’t try to fight back - he just pries at his father’s hands, the death grip so strong that he knows it’s his best chance at survival.

Your nails rend down Jiyeong’s face, you pull at his hair, at his head. It doesn’t matter. He is feral and intent on a single thing, and that’s choking the life out of the person you love most in the world - even more than you love your father, your god, your savior.

A set of knives catches your attention on the counter. Without second guessing, you grab one, knocking the block over with your haste. Your hand shakes on the handle and you scream when you bring it down on the juncture between Jiyeong’s neck and shoulder.

He doesn’t stop choking Vernon. Filled with rage and terror, you shriek, gripping the handle as blood spills onto your hand. You rip the blade out and drive it down again and again, ignoring the way blood spurts, covering your face and arm.

Jiyeong finally lets go of Vernon, who starts coughing as he sucks down air. He twists under his father, kicking away to roll over on his stomach and crawl away. He gets a few feet away, where he stops to vomit.

You stop screaming. Vernon chokes, spit flying from his mouth as he hacks, trying to get his windpipe to work again. Jiyeong remains on his knees for a second and you realize he’s also choking. His hands are covering the stab wound in his neck, red spelling between his fingers and running down his arms.

Then, he falls forward.

Shaking, you remain standing where you are, hand trembling violently, knife in your hand. It is covered in red now, nearly indistinguishable. Heaving, Vernon manages to sit on the floor, sliding further away from his father to press himself against the fridge. His throat is already red and bruising.

Vernon’s eyes go from his father, motionless on the floor and in a pool of blood to you. Then back to his father. Then you again, where his gaze stays. You don’t know what to do. All you know is that you’d thought he was going to die and that you had to do something about it. You didn’t-

“I didn’t mean-”

Vernon shakes his head and holds out his hand to you. He says nothing - can’t say anything with his throat - but his hand is outstretched toward you and violently shaking. He’s asking - begging - you to come to him.

You drop the knife and it clatters, loud in the eerily silent apartment. You rush to him, stepping over the body, foot sliding in blood. You careen forward, collapsing to your knees. Pain shoots up your legs but you don’t care, crawling to Vernon, hands slippery against the tile until you’re there and you’re holding his hand and he’s pulling you to his chest.

Vernon is quivering, his entire body vibrating as you press against him. His arms squeeze you tight and he turns both of you away from the mess at the mouth of the kitchen, shielding you from it.

Your hands are on his face, smearing blood and red finger prints across his perfect skin as you inspect him. He shakes his head, as though to say he’s fine. But he’s not fine. His throat is bruised and you don’t know how much damage his dad did and he just watched you plunge a knife into his father over and over again.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean-”

Vernon kisses you. It’s brief and quick, but it stops you from spiralling. He shakes his head again, squeezing you harder. Instead of fighting him, you melt into him. Bury your face in his neck. Cry. Cry like you haven’t since your mother tried to purge this world of your existence. Cry because for a moment, you thought he was gone.

Minutes pass. Maybe hours. When Vernon stops shaking, you finally pull yourself from his neck turning to look at the body. The blood has stopped pooling around it. It’s dark - darker than you remember. Perhaps because it’s drying. Going cold.

Wiping your nose, you look at Vernon. He’s expressionless, eyes wide. “I have to call Minji,” you rasp. “She’ll know what to do.” You nod to yourself, pressing the back of your bloodied hand to your mouth. “Yeah, she’ll know what to do.”

Turns out that Yoon Minji does always know what to do. You sit at her boudoir, back facing the mirror. You don’t feel like facing the mirror right now. You know that your dark under eyes and hollowed out expression will just stare back at you.

Minji comes in with a steaming cup of tea, closing the door gently behind her. She is more poised and regal than you’ll ever be, but you like that about her. She reminds you of the knife that Jeonghan gave you when you became step-siblings: a beautiful, mother of pearl handle with a blade so sharp you could cut paper.

You see that in your stepmother as she hands you the mug of tea. You cup it carefully in your hands, palms leeching the warmth from the cup. It smells like honey and chamomile, perhaps with a hint of yarrow. She’d recently started teaching you the names of herbs and how to smell them out, as well as their properties.

Vernon would like her lessons, you think.

Vernon.

As always, he consumes your thoughts. He is, afterall, the reason why you’re barely able to sleep. Though you’re able to spend all day with him while he recovers from a crushed windpipe and a broken collarbone, you have to let him rest at night, which means him being alone.

You hate it. You know he’s in the careful care of the Choi family’s personal doctor, and Dr. Ymir is wonderful. But you hate being separated from him, and despite screaming and yowling like a feral cat, the Tower had been adamant that you were separated for his recovery.

Vernon hated it too. Nearly set himself back by damaging his throat to scream that he wanted you with him. The Tower had finally compromised and agreed that you could spend all day there if you left for a minimum of eight hours at night to sleep.

Minji sits on the edge of her bed. She smoothes her silk shirt down and crosses one knee over the other. She’s dressed professionally in a beautiful, pearl colored shirt tucked into black cigarette pants, with pearls in her ears and on her fingers, hair tucked neatly in a bun behind her head.

She is worlds more beautiful than your own mother, but perhaps your opinion of your birth mother is a little skewed.

“Drink,” Minji urges, gesturing to the cup. “I’ll help you sleep. If you still can’t sleep, send for me. I’ll get you something stronger.”

Nodding, you sip the tea. Warmth unfolds in your mouth and you do feel yourself relax a little. Your hackles have been raised since leaving Vernon an hour ago, and already you’re looking at the clock to see how long until you can go back.

She notices and laughs. Not meanly, but tiredly, followed by a sigh. “What are we going to do with the two of you?”

“Nothing,” you mutter into a cup. “We were defending ourselves.”

She waves a hand. “Not about that. Chwe Jiyeong is a motherfucker. The fact that he would dare hurt that child is-” She cuts herself off with an angry sound. “No one will miss him.”

“The Tower will.”

Her mouth thins. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

Silence stretches between the two of you. You sip your tea, watching her while she watches you. Her eyes don’t miss a thing. As the Wisdom of the Choi Syndicate, it’s her job to be the second-in-command. The know-it-all. The intelligence.

Minji must be grand indeed. Most women in the Syndicate didn’t have roles like that. The Kim and Yong Syndicates only had men in executive roles. It was mostly the same under the Choi banner, but Minji was different. The Fox, some called her.

“Do you know why Chwe Jiyeong tried to murder his son, Angel?” Her question catches you off guard. You hesitate, sipping your tea as you think about how to answer her. She notices, her mouth twitching. “Ah. You do.”

Of course she can see the deliberation in your eyes. Instead of arguing, you ask, “Does it matter that I know?”

“Not really. I’m more interested in how you know. Did the boy tell you?”

“No.”

“Pray tell, then.”

“When we were kids, we all got into a fight.”

She smiles. “I recall. You were very disruptive.”

“It started because Seungcheol was being mean to Vernon. I told him that he shouldn’t be mean because Vernon did nothing wrong, but he called Vernon a bastard and said Vernon had done wrong by being born.”

“I see.”

“Wouldn’t have meant much to me as a kid, but Vernon had mentioned that Seungcheol and Seungcheol’s mom specifically didn’t like him much. As we got older, I wondered why out of all the kids that have family members who work for the Tower, why Vernon was given a space at the Choi Estate.”

Her eyes are glittering now, smile spreading. “And?”

“Soonyoung was given a room because his parents are dead.” You sip your tea. “His dad was the Tower’s closest friend. Vernon’s dad wasn’t though. He had a drug problem and was constantly disappointing the Tower.”

“So why give Vernon a place to stay, then?”

“Because he’s not Jiyeong’s son. He’s the Tower’s.”

When Minji smiles, you see Jeonghan in her. Jeonghan looks so much like his mother that sometimes it makes you do a double take. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in the Yoon family, and it doesn’t just stop at looks. Jeonghan is the perfect clone of his mother in face, but particularly in mind.

Which is why you wonder what her motive is when she says, “You’re very bright, you know.”

It wasn’t a question but you answer anyway. “Yes.”

“Most fifteen year olds would have been very afraid to kill someone.”

“I was afraid. Just not more afraid of him than I was Vernon was going to die.”

“Good.” She stands, unfolding like a lotus flower blooming. “I’d like to put that mind of yours to use, Angel. Clever girls like you are important. Valuable. Mean something.” She pauses and smiles. “I think Vernon might be good for the job, too.”

Nerves twist your stomach into knots. You wind your fingers in your shirt, following Vernon out of the main house and onto the grounds of the Choi Estate. The bruising on his throat is long gone, but Vernon’s voice has only just started returning.

Not that you’ve heard it, at all. His vocal recovery is reserved strictly for the hours spent with his medical team, going through exercises as he slowly makes progress toward speaking fully again. Thankfully he’s expected to make a full recovery. You remind yourself to ask Minji to give Dr. Ymir a hefty bonus for helping Vernon, especially with how fast his return to health has been.

You are dying to hear his voice. Weeks spent writing notes and curating ways to communicate has lost its novelty, and now you just want to hear him again. You miss his voice more than you’ve missed anything else, and you’re starting to worry that you might forget the sound of it. The pitch. The raspiness.

No.

His voice haunts you in your dreams, brushing along your skin like velvet, coaxing you into a restful sleep. Other times, it twists your nightmares, his scream cut off by the sound of his choking as his father chokes him, face turning blue.

The nightmares only happen when you sleep without him. Now that he’s back to functioning health, you’re allowed to spend however long you want with him - in theory, anyway. Though the adults keep muttering about how improper it is for two teenagers to be having sleepovers, it’s easier to let you have your way than to try and pull you apart.

Everyone remembers Vernon screaming the last time they’d done that.

Plus, there’s no way that the Tower hasn’t noticed Soonyoung occasionally slipping into Baby’s room after waking up from nightmares. Vernon shares a wall with him now, and sometimes Soonyoung’s sharp shouting stirs you from sleep before you hear the soft click of his door and his footsteps fade toward the youngest Choi’s room.

No one says anything, though. It’s like the Tower had told the group of you years ago: you’re bound together for life.

That is certainly true enough for Soonyoung and Seungcheol’s sister, who covet one another like greedy little magpies hoarding treasure. Seungcheol covets no one and nothing, but he’s grown out of the sulky, mean teenager phase and remains a bulwark for the rest of you - especially between you and the adults.

The first hint of autumn air kisses the back of your neck. Vernon’s fingers are linked with yours, leading you toward the gazebo near the retention pond at the south end of the estate. You both pause as you near the small turtle pond, both of you crouching down to say hello.

They swarm to the edge of the pool, stretching their necks up to greet Vernon who smiles brightly, gently petting each and every one of their heads. You recognize Blush when you see her, much larger in size but just as beautiful with her rouge ears and beady eyes.

Giggling, you hold your hand out to her, letting her come up to gently nip at your finger. When she decides you have no snacks for her, she ducks under the water, little legs kicking as she vanishes into the murky bottom.

Satisfied, Vernon stands up and offers you his hand again. You take it, smiling. It occurs to you how genuinely happy you are. It’s one of the few days you have off between school, meetings with Minji, and combat classes led by Old Man Vero and Seungcheol.

The memory of Seungcheol putting you on your ass the first day sours your mood a little. He’d told you it was for that punch all those years ago, and you didn’t blame him. Now, there’s no bad blood between the two of you. As the future Tower, he takes your self defense seriously.

You’re also the only one of your group of five who has murdered a fully grown man.

It’s not something to brag about. There are other teenagers your age in the organization who have killed. Most of them are less fortunate - their parents aren’t high up the rung in the Syndicate or they’ve fallen from grace. Some of the others don’t have parents and are in the Syndicate to survive.

Death isn’t something you want to think about while with Vernon though, so you shove it away as he walks up the steps of the gazebo. Wisteria trees surround the building, the purple leaves draping the railings and stretching through some of the windows. A few yards away, the pond ripples as a family of ducks swims across.

Vernon sits on the bench, tilting his face upward into a ray of sun. You sit close next to him, pivoting so you can face him directly, eyes scanning his face as he closes his eyes to enjoy the warmth.

A smile tugs at your lips. Your entwined hands rest in his lap, his tumb absently rubbing back and forth across the top of your hand. He is so beautiful. He’s regained some of this tan back now that he’s somewhere he can go outside and enjoy the sun. His freckles are a little darker for it, skin a little more flushed and glowing.

Glinting gold catches your eyes. You smile when you see the gold chain peeking from the collar of his shirt. You know the angel that you used to wear is tucked under his shirt, a new talisman for protection. You’d given it to him the night you’d saved him from his father, clasping the chain around his neck with bloody, shaky hands and promising that it would bring him protection.

You reach out toward Vernon with the hand not holding his, fingers brushing the top of his cheek bones. He doesn’t open his eyes but he grins and turns toward you, letting your fingers trace his nose, the shape of his brows, his lips. Your fingers stop at his mouth, pinching his lips together in a pout lightly.

He chuckles but doesn’t laugh - not really. You wish he was able to, aching to hear his voice again.

Vernon’s eyes flutter open. The sun hits him just right, turning his brown irises into molten gold. Your heart beats a little faster as you lean on your palm, watching him. He has the most incredibly eyes, turning from brown to burnished gold in the right light, and-

He interrupts your thoughts and says your name. You blink once. Twice. Not Angel. Not any other nickname. Your name. In his raspy, but deep voice, that is soft as velvet and oh oh oh.

“You-” Your voice catches. “You shouldn’t talk unless you’re able.”

He says your voice again and your hands squeeze his, turning into a vice grip. “I’ve been practicing,” he whispers, and you lean forward, not wanting to miss a word. “I can start talking again. Just wanted you to hear me before anyone else.”

“Are you sure?”

He nods. “I promise.” He pauses. “Are you going to cry?”

“No.”

He laughs - actually laughs - when you turn your face away from him to look at the pond, eyes flowing with tears. He pulls you close to him, leaning into your space. He smells like rain and earth, petrichor and vetiver. Vernon says your name again and you look at him, heart hammering.

“Vernon,” you whisper back, like an answer to the way he says your name.

He shakes his head and you frown, questioning. “Hansol.”

Only my mom gets to call me Hansol and it’s ‘cause I love her.

Now you are definitely crying. It makes him laugh because he knows you hate crying, but he is the only person in the world who can move you to tears. He��s the only person allowed.

“Hansol,” you murmur.

His smile lights up the entire world.

“Hansol!” You screech, tripping over the shoes he left by the door. You kick the boots, sending them flying into the entryway. “You motherfucker, stop leaving your shoes in front of the fucking door!”

No one answers your complaints. Huffing, you toe off your boots, slick with rain. They’re heavy and caked in mud, messing up the rug at the front of the door. Instead of leaving your shoes where anyone walking in can trip over them, you pick them up and put them on the shoe rack like a decent human being.

Simmering, you walk into the house proper. The lights are off but there’s a vetiver candle on the counter in the kitchen, filling the house with a scent that smells exactly like Hansol. It lessens your stormy mood a bit as you get to the stairs, climbing them two at a time to get to the second floor faster.

One of the smaller guest houses on the Choi Estate has been taken over by you and Hansol entirely. There are only two bedrooms on the second floor, but that’s all you need. A single room for the two of you to share, and one room for the egregious amount of weapons and paraphernalia to do your jobs.

The paraphernalia room - or the Pew Pew Place, as Mingyu calls it - is heavily locked with a bioscanner and a digital padlock. You pass it as you walk toward the tiny, spiral staircase in the corner of the hall. You climb it, careful not to tip over the hand railing that is far too low, ducking into an attic turned greenhouse of sorts.

It’s really Hansol’s rain room. There are some plants hanging from the ceiling, their waxy green leaves spilling over the sides and thriving in the sunlight when it pours through the glass ceiling. Now, the ceiling is misty and awash with rain as it taps on the glass.

A record player stands against one of the walls, a massive shelf of nothing but records expanding to the side of it. There’s also a small coffee cart and sitting area for when Seungkwan or Mingyu want to come over.

The object of your ire - and now affection - is lounging on the green chaise by the window, hands behind his head as he stares up at the water sluicing down the roof, his headphones on and making him unaware of you standing in the entryway.

Sighing, your anger immediately melts. Instead of yelling at him for the shoes, you walk toward him, feeling the exhaustion wear you down. Anger and exhaustion are the only two things you seem to feel lately. Even your love for Hansol sometimes seems blotted out by the size of your anger, which has turned into an ancient creature that you’re unsure how to control.

For now, you will it away - beg it to leave. It’s easier to do when you’re sinking into Hansol’s lap, startling him from his reverie. You smile as you lean down, laying on his chest. He wraps one arm around you while the other pulls off his headphones, the music pausing as he does.

Hansol is warm and smells like the rain he’s watching - soothing, making you forget about everything for just a second. Underneath your cheek, you feel the steady rhythm of his heart, one of your favorite sounds.

Instead of saying anything, you both just lie there, you on top of him while he holds you, content to run his hands absently up and down your back. It’s nice. Moments like this lately are few and far between, the world spinning so fast that it’s hard to stop and take a second to just hold him.

As if it can sense your moment of peace, Hansol’s phone starts to ring. You hiss and he groans. You want him to ignore it. He wants to ignore it. But you know that ringtone anywhere, and despite wanting to keep this moment for longer than five minutes, Hansol reaches into his pocket to answer Seungcheol’s phone call.

“Yes, Tower?”

You bury your face in Hansol’s chest, which vibrates when he speaks. “Got it. Yeah.” He sighs, running a hand down his face. “Alright.”

He hangs up the phone. “Tell him no.”

“You tell him no. He’s actually afraid of you.”

“Seungcheol isn’t afraid of anyone.”

Well. That isn’t explicitly true. You wouldn’t say that Seungcheol is afraid of you, but he’s certainly wary. Wary in the way someone might be a bomb that is under their roof. Wary in the way someone’s exotic pet has started to corrode under animal instinct. Wary in the way one might be when one of their prime killers recently lost the only person she ever really considered a mother, setting her on a warpath.

Your jaw works. Yoon Minji had been the last connection you’d had to your father. Somehow, losing her has felt worse.

It wasn’t like your father, who had finally withered away from cancer. Minji had been picture-perfect health, if not a little old and weary from running the Syndicate while Choi Moojin withered away to sickness after his wife’s passing. Minji was built of different stuff. Strong in the face of death. A force to be reckoned with as her friends aged out of life without her, leaving her to be the steadfast Wisdom manning the helm.

Then the Kim and Yong Syndicates had struck like snakes in the night, a move only cowards were capable of. The only reason the Choi Syndicate hadn’t fallen to the treachery of the Kim’s entirely was because of the Tower’s daughter. Her forced marriage to Kim Yujin had ultimately been the Choice Syndicate's saving grace, her call coming only two hours prior to the coordinated attack, a warning that an overthrow was in process.

It had been enough time for most people.

It hadn’t been enough time for you or Jeonghan to get to Minji. Not enough time to figure out why they knew where she was or how to get her. Now, you were both trying to stay adrift in the aftermath of losing your shared anchor - Jeonghan worse than you but you… worse than you expected.

“You okay?” Hansol’s voice brings you back to the present. Only Hansol is able to drag you out of those churning waters where your eldritch anger lurks, waiting. Watching. Hungry. “I gotta go soon but if you’re not good-”

“I’m good.” Lie. “I’m just sleepy.”

“Cheol is working us to death.”

Except it isn’t the Tower working you to death. The Tower isn’t putting you to work at all. He is actually staunchly avoiding you, letting the Wisdom of the Choi Syndicate wield you like a weapon of vengeance instead.

Yoon Jeonghan takes aim at his enemies often these days.

Vengeance. That is what your stepbrother had called it when he started gathering his list of soon-to-be-dead in his office. Vengeance for his mother’s murder, vengeance for trying to take out the Choi Syndicate, vengeance for anyone who had anything to do with any of it.

It isn’t traditionally the Wisdom’s job to dole out punishment and retribution, but Jeonghan is still actively looking for how the Kim family discovered the Yoon family safehouse, something that could have only come from inside.

Which means the Kim family have a Watcher inside the Choi Syndicate, someone with access to the inner circle. Someone you trust someone you know, someone who-

Anger begins to twist your insides again. Hansol sees the change in you, his eyebrows creasing as he looks down at where you lay on his chest. Instead of looking at him directly, you press your cheek to his chest and close your eyes, listening to his heartbeat, trying to let it ground you.

“You know you can talk to me, right?”

No. “Yes.”

You don’t dare look at him because you think Hansol sees right through you. You’ve never hidden anything from him, and you don’t quite know why you do now. Why you pretend that you’re not eroding inside, why you hide the ancient anger that becomes so raw that you can’t stand it.

Shame.

Shame that you cannot get rid of this feeling inside of you. Shame that you’ve never felt like this. Shame that you don’t know how to tell him what you’re feeling how to articulate that you feel wrath so intense that it makes you suffocate, makes you see red, makes you-

“I gotta go,” Hansol says softly. You cling to him a little tighter reflexively. His laugh vibrates through you, followed by a heavy sigh. “We’ll be okay, right?” That makes you look up at him sharply. His face is serious, eyes dark. “We’ve been through shit before. This stuff with the Syndicate war - we’ll be fine?”

“Of course we will.”

It feels like a lie.

Carefully, he extracts you from him. You don’t want to let him go - you never do. But you peel yourself from him anyway, trailing after him as he goes down to the second flood of the house into your padlocked room. You can’t bring yourself to part from him yet, silently handing him a gun over the counter and running your hands along the inseams of his jacket to make sure he has what he needs.

It’s a bit of a ritual. Usually, you’d be doing it together. As Rooks of the Choi Syndicate, you and Hansol have unique jobs. Collecting debts, reminding people of their debts, and applying pressure are the main responsibilities of your positions.

Applying pressure is a gentle way to put it. You find what makes people weak, and then you hurt it until they’re begging you to stop. You salt their wounds, you kick them when they’re down, you make good on their promises. It’s work that requires an inability to feel guilt and a willingness to go however far the Tower needs you to go.

You and Hansol are good at that. Minji had trained you to be good at that, becoming two of the best assets for the Syndicate - especially now that it was a time of Syndicate war where the Chois were facing down the Kim and Yong families simultaneously. Now was the time to apply pressure and to ensure that everyone who had promised to be loyal to the Choi Syndicate was keeping their promises - especially now that Seungcheol had stepped into his father’s role.

Syndicate war makes people unsettled. It’s a time of uncertainty, especially among the city officials and law enforcement trying to assert control over the Syndicate families. While the Syndicates hold no political power in the city, they have wealth, assets and connections, making them very competent and powerful puppeteers.

Ensuring that those who threw in their bets with the Choi family still intended to do so is paramount. As is eliminating anyone who so much as thinks about switching sides, undermining the Tower, or trying to leverage the conflict for their gain.

Hansol stops at the doorway to kiss you goodbye before he leaves. It’s soft and lingering, like he would rather be raked over hot coals than go do whatever errand Seungcheol is sending him on. You don’t blame him. There aren’t that many people in the family that do what the two of you do, and Hansol is the Rook that Seungcheol trusts the most, his brother by bond - and by blood, though most didn’t know that.

“Will you be home tonight?” Hansol mutters the question against your lips, unwilling to part from you just yet. He tastes like vanilla chapstick, lips soft and supple. You shake your head and he sighs. “Alright. Let me know when you leave here.”

“Yeah.”

He kisses you again and steps away. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

When the door shuts behind Hansol and you’re left to your own devices, the wrath begins to stir again.

Sickly sweet incense hangs in the air as you near the lounge. A beaded curtain separates the main hall from the lounge beyond, parting with a soft, clicking hiss as you slide through the strands. The cloying scent of incense is far more intense in the room, accompanied by the smell of something sweet burning.

Pink, velvet couches crowd around a small table. On the table is a smattering of bottles, a pipe with half burn resin in it, a spilled bag of frosbyte, and a handful of cash. Your boots stain the carpet with mud as you tread to one of the couches, throwing yourself across one as you wait.

“Be with you in a minute,” a soft, feminine voice comes from beyond another beaded curtain.

While you wait, you look around the room. There’s a small personal bar shoved in the corner with miscellaneous brands of liquor. In a room as cheap as this one, there are no holograms or high-tech lights to entrance patrons - just a shitty disco ball that barely refracts the light with some music skipping as the internet goes in and out over the speakers.

At the soft clack of the beaded curtains opening, you drop your gaze to the back of the room where the room’s renter comes through. At first, she enters the room with a coy smile, the silk robe falling off of her shoulder to show milky white skin.

The second she sees you, she tries to turn on her heel and go back to the room.

“Leaving so soon, Rosalind?”

Rosalind stops her retreat immediately. Like the perfectly practiced entertainer she is, she spins and fixes you with a plastic smile. You’re no whore, but you know a whore’s smile when you see one. She approaches you with a lazy gait, appearing at ease, but when she sits, it's a hairsbreadth too far away and there is a slight pinch in her shoulders.

“Nonsense,” she assures you, dropping the soft affectation in her voice to her heavily accented, naturally voice. “I just didn’t wanna wear this fuckin’ wig if its just you.”

Lie.

“You know I love the black hair,” you agree. She has on a silvery wig now, giving her the illusion she’s some sort of moon deity. There’s a shimmer to her skin that makes her ethereal in the right light, but with the shitty disco ball, it looks tawdry. “How’ve you been?”

“Business is slow. You Syndicate-types have everyone up in arms.” Leaning forward, she gestures to the abandoned pipe on the table. “You mind?”

“By all means.”

You watch her as she picks up the pipe. Her hands shake a little, either from the shitty resin she keeps smoking or from the anxiety of seeing you sitting in her lounge. It could be either, it could be both. She lights the end of the pipe and inhales, coughing brutally for a second, the wet sound of her lungs a result of smoking low grade shit.

After a few more tugs and another coughing fit where her eyes water, she puts the resin down, leaning back to spread her arms along the back of the couch. “What can I do for you, Angel girl?”

“Nothing. Just checking in on you.”

“Oh?”

“You’re not officially under the banner of the Choi Syndicate and I’m fine with that. But you’ve helped me in the past - I like to ensure that those who help me stay protected.”

Her mouth twitches upward. “Are you getting sweet on me?”

“I’m always sweet on you.” Your gaze sweeps the room. “If you did want to be under the Choi banner, I could give you better accommodations, you know.”

“I don’t like to be controlled by the Syndicates.”

“So you’ve always said.”

Leaning your head against the back of the couch, you sigh. Looking up at the ceiling, your eyes trace the water and smoke stains. This room really is a piece of shit, but it’s belonged to Rosalind since before you were an official Rook under Choi Moojin, and then Choi Seungcheol.

There used to be a sort of charm to the room. You always thought it looked like one of those cheap collages that Baby put together in her mood boards with white lace, red velvet, plasticky hearts and quotes from all of the romance movies that she liked. It had always felt nostalgic.

Now you see it for what it really is - desperate to be something it's not.

Your fingers drum on the couch. “You’ve always admired your independence,” you eventually say. Rosalind watches you, finally at ease. “I admire that about you. I didn’t have much independence growing up.”

“I don’t think most Choi’s do.”

“I’m not a Choi.”

“You’re practically married to one.” You cut your eyes over to Rosalind and she grins. “Yeah, I know about the boy.”

“Of course you do. You know a lot of shit.”

“That's why you’re so sweet on me.”

“Yeah.” You laugh airly. “It is.”

Silence stretches between the two of you. From down the hall, you can hear the heavy grunt of a man fucking into something. In a proper brothel, you’d never have to hear the sounds of anyone else fucking - unless that thing was specifically requested.

“When did you tell the Kims where Minji’s safehouse was?” You ask, turning to fix your gaze on Rosalind. Her smile drops. “Since I’m so sweet on you I thought you’d be willing to tell me”

“I don’t know where Yoon Minji’s safe house is. I didn’t like the bitch but I’ve never sold her out.”

“Hm.”

You look back up at the ceiling, feeling eerily like you’re at a therapist appointment. You’d started going as a bit of a joke with Jeonghan, wondering what would happen if you told her snatches of your life. You leave out the murder, of course, but you’re pretty sure she knows.

The thing your therapist is most interested in is your relationship with Hansol, asserting that you’re codependent. You’re not entirely interested in what it means or that it’s bad. Of course you’re codependent on Hansol - there is no one else in the world you want or would rather trust.

And yet you’re here, on a rampage that he is unaware of.

“You know, Rosalind,” You say airly. “I would believe you except… I have a really good instinct for this shit. It’s what makes me good at my job, and it’s why you always respected me.”

For a second, she doesn’t answer. Then, she changes her tone of voice, earnest. “I would never sell out Yoon Minji, Angel. I don’t want the Chois as an enemy.”

“There it is again.” You sit up and point at her. “Do you know that when you lie, you take a tiny little breath right before? Like someone might do right before they jump from a cliff.”

“I’m not lyin-”

“Lie again and I will cut off a fucking finger like that bitch Yoon Minji taught me.”

“Angel,” she begs, sliding off the couch to her knees. Her hands are rubbing on her thighs, shaking her head when she looks at you. “I’m telling you, I swear on my life.”

You stare at one another. Sweat gathers on Rosalind’s brow. The synthetic strands of her wig stick to her forehead. Her eyeshadow is smudged, her lipstick not done right, a little bit overlined. You see the glue holding the fake lashes to her waterline, the separation of the body glitter on her skin as she starts to sweat.

Clapping your hands on your thighs and standing, you announce, “I believe you.”

She nearly collapses with relief. “Really?”

“No, but it was funny to see how relieved you are. Soonyoung!”

A series of crashes echoes from the hall. The wall vibrates as someone gets knocked into it, followed by heavy footsteps. Soonyoung comes crashing through the beaded curtain, dragging a young woman by the hair after him. The tape over her mouth keeps most of the screams to muffled grunts as she twists in his hands, her nails wrapped around his wrist where she tries to get him to let go.

Rosalind lets out a sound like a wounded animal but she doesn’t dare move. Soonyoung throws the girl to your feet, sending her tumbling into the coffee table. Things fly off the surface, crashing into the already stained carpet.

Whimpering, the girl crawls away from you toward where Rosalind is kneeling, staring at her with an open mouth and tear-lined eyes. Before the woman can make it far, Soonyoung steps on her fingers, making her wail and thrash.

“Stop!” Rosalind screams, spittal flying. “Stop!”

“This is who the Kims offered to protect, right?” You ask Rosalind as Soonyoung applies more pressure to the woman’s fingers. She goes rigid with tension as the pain wracks her. “This is your daughter? Got into a nice ass school two weeks ago - a boarding school, even. All the way across the world.”

“Please,” Rosalind begs. “Please.”

“I thought to myself, Rosalind has had all this time to ask me to protect her kid. Never once asked the Chois to do it. And then suddenly she’s accepted into something you can’t afford so very far away… and I wondered. Who is this woman’s dad?”

“Angel, please.”

“No daddy on the birth certificate but… she looks so much like Kim Minchan’s niece. They have such pretty eyes in that family.”

Rosalind is openly weeping now, the sobs wracking her body. You stare at her and feel the ancient anger inside of you curl in pleasure, teeth clicking as you get ready to strike. The violent ocean that has manifested as your wrath is ready now, waters churning, waiting, hungry.

Slowly, you crouch down to Rosalind’s level, staring at her across the coffee table. “Who fucking told you where Yoon Minji’s safehouse was, Rosalind?”

She shakes her head. You look up at Soonyoung, who looks like the devil with his white-blonde hair and beady, black eyes. He leans on his foot, crushing the girl’s fingers under the toe of his boot. She screams, thrashing again. Surely they’re broken by now.

“Stop!”

“Tell me,” you coo, nodding sympathetically. “Tell me, Rosalind. Or I’m going to kill her in front of you. Alright? Tell me.”

Rosalind nods. Her makeup streams in black, inky tendrils down her face. She struggles to suck in a breath, coughing through her resin-ruined lungs. You watch with predatory stillness as she manages to suck in a breath, nodding to herself again.

“Jung Lan.”

You frown. “Jung Lan is dead. He was murdered protecting Choi Moojin.”

She shakes her head. “The son. Junior.”

Sucking in a breath, you look up at Soonyoung. His eyes are storming, the churning waters of his violence the same as the thrashing anger inside of you. It is, perhaps, the only time you’ve ever related to Kwon Soonyoung. He glances back to Rosalind, eyes narrowed.

“Tell me what he told you.”

“He didn’t tell me with the purpose of giving it to the Kims. Just ran his mouth while he was here. Said his old man deserved the house she was given, not Minji. Said it was in Cascade. That’s it. I swear that’s it. Please.”

You nod at Soonyoung and he lifts his foot from the young woman’s hand. Her fingers are crushed and bent at odd angles, bruised under the heavy weight of his foot. He looks at you and you give him a curt nod. Expressionless, he pivots and marches from the room, vanishing with a snap of beaded curtains.

Rosalind sags in relief, collapsing inward on herself as she sobs. Her daughter starts to crawl to her and you let her, watching the way she folds herself into her mother’s lap. The way you might fold into Minji’s lap, in another life.

In that life, where you were born to her, maybe, instead of the woman who gave birth to you. In another life where you and Jeonghan still had a fierce figure to lead you through the trenches of this fucked up mess. In another life where she wasn’t dead and you could lay your head in her lap to let her comb your hair.

It doesn’t exist - never existed. Even alive, you don’t think that was in your future for you and your stepmother. But she had made you tea and comforted you, had taught you how to weaponize what little skills you had, turned you into something that could protect Hansol no matter the cost.

“Thank you,” Rosalind whispers, crushing her daughter to her.

“For what?”

“For sparing her.”

When the first electric pulse of a gun being fired and screams come from down the hall, Rosalind looks at you, wide eyed. You grin, the rage taking shape on your face. “I didn’t.”

It’s dark when you get home. The clock floating above the holoscreen stand says it’s just past four in the morning, which is earlier than you thought you would get home. Every part of you is tired and dragging, each step weighed down more than the last.

Dissatisfaction follows you, haunting your every step. You feel the weight of its presence as you try to run away from it to the second floor, shoving it away. You feel no better after ridding the world from the woman who’d traded secrets, along with the entire establishment.

You don’t feel guilty. You’d done it eagerly and with Soonyoung’s help. They had deserved it, not only for betraying the Choi Syndicate, but for having the nerve to pretend to be neutral for all of these years, benefiting from servicing all three of the city’s main syndicates.

The problem with neutrality, though, is there’s no one to save you when death is on your doorstep.

None of it makes you feel better, though. You don’t feel justified. You don’t feel like you did a good job. It doesn’t feel like a box that has been checkmarked. Your anger asks for more, wants more, needs more.

Hansol is asleep in bed when you come in. He doesn’t stir, too heavily knocked out to sense you. Here in your home in the heart of the Choi Estate, there’s no reason to sleep light for fear of intruders. Here, in his home with you, he can be completely at ease.

You stare at him as you change into a sleep shirt, leaving nothing else on. He looks at peace, face completely relieved of the stress of his evening or the constant frown he’s started to wear around you. Hansol looks like his younger self when he sleeps, face swollen where it’s smushed against the pillow, mouth parted as he snores a bit.

When you crawl into bed, he stirs. He blinks those round, gentle eyes at you, immediately recognizing your home. His hands seek you, stretching across silky sheets to grab you by the hips and pull you close, needing your warmth. He smells like vetiver and petrichor, immediately soothing the unsettled feeling nipping at your heels.

It isn’t enough.

As Hansol’s eyes drift shut, planning to go back to sleep now that you’re here, you lean forward and press your mouth to his. You feel the question in the curve of his mouth for only a second before he relents and kisses you back, lips tired and slow, a little lazy.

You tangle your legs with his, hooking your knee behind his to pull him flush to you. He grunts, but goes with the flow, his hand sliding up your thigh to rest on your hip, fingers tentative. You want more of him, need more of him. You want to drown in him until this - this whatever it is eats you alive and leaves nothing less.

Hansol senses your need because of course he does. He knows you better than anyone else in the world, and when your mouth turns desperate, he understands. Instead of asking questions, Hansol comes alive, rising up from sleep to lean over you and push you down into the mattress.

A soft sound leaves your mouth and he drinks it down, gentle mouth turning into bruising hunger.

Yes. It vibrates though you as his teeth scrape your bottom lip as he sucks on it gently. Yes. When he drags his nails up your thighs, scratching. Yes when he leans his weight into your hips, pinning you to the bed underneath.

This is part of why you love Hansol. He’s able to flip the switch he needs to meet you halfway, to offer whatever salve you need to the burn, whatever fire you need to rouse you. It’s an instinct of his, a calling that he answers every time.

You wrap your arms around his neck, keeping him close. His kisses are needy and messy, turning to more tongue and teeth than anything. You thread your fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling slightly. It earns a groan from him, his warm breath ghosting across your slick-bitten lips as he mouths across your jaw.

Hansol grabs your thigh and wraps it around his waist. You squeeze, pinning him to you while he lets go of your leg, hand drifting to your bare ass to squeeze generously. You tug his hair in response and his laughter comes out in a huff of air.

Attaching his mouth to your neck, Hansol slides his hands under your shirt. His palms are warm but you shiver at the feeling of his rough calluses scraping against your soft skin. He drags the tips of his fingers along the curve of your breast, teasing and light.

“Don’t,” you growl, fingers going tight in his hair. “Not tonight.”

He bites you sharply, making you moan and arch into him. His tongue soothes the sting of his teeth and you feel his grin against your skin as his mouth drifts toward your shoulders.

Hansol listens, though. Instead of teasing you with his feather-light touch, he flicks his thumb back and forth over a nipple, making you shiver. Being in his hold feels so good, the violence of the night fading to the background as Hansol’s hands and mouth numb the anger.

After over a decade together, there is nothing he doesn’t know about you. He knows the way you like to be kissed, the way you have a sensitive spot under your ear, attaching his mouth to it and sucking greedily. He knows you like to be scratched and bitten, that you need to feel nothing but him for a moment of peace.

Hansol peels the shirt off of you. You don’t even feel the chill of the room, just the heat of his hands turning you over to press your face down into the mattress, his teeth and lips on the back of your shoulder, his other hand hooking behind your knee to pull it upward and spread you open.

Your fingers dig into the mattress as Hansol sinks down, pressing kisses to your spine. It feels like you can’t stop shaking, only focused on the way his tongue darts out occasionally to taste your burning skin. His hands don’t stop either, squeezing the back of your thighs, skimming upward to gently squeeze your ass.

The ache for him is nearly unbearable by the time you feel the first, soft lick of his tongue on your cunt. You sigh, melting into the mattress as he prods lazily at your entrance before dragging back down to your clit. He knows exactly how to work you, mouth attaching to you and sucking leisurely, like he has all the time in the world to do this.

And he does, doesn't he? You and Hansol have whatever time is fated on this earth to spend together, so why should he rush? Why should he not enjoy the way you shake under the buzz of his mouth as he licks and sucks at you fervently, his hands running up and down the back of your thighs as he drags his nails along your skin.

Reaching back with one of your hands, you sink your fingers into his hair. Hansol hums appreciatively, the buzz of his mouth against your pussy making you moan his name. He’s messy with it, devouring you in a way that makes nothing else in the world matter. You writhe under him, face hidden in pillows, short of breath.

The muscles in your lower stomach start to squeeze and you feel the force of your orgasm coming. Hansol can tell by the sounds you make, his hands turning firm as he keeps you pried open at the thighs, pressing his face further into you.

Your fingers tighten in his hair and you come with gritted teeth, screaming into pillows that smell like him. He continues to mouth at you, eager to work you through the full length of your orgasm. It sends you into overdrive, muscles twitching, legs shaking, lungs barely able to take in a breath.

With a final, messy kiss to your pussy, he peels away, taking under a minute to shed himself of his clothes. Heaving, you lift your face from the pillows, feeling sticky drool on your chin to turn over your shoulder and look at him.

You can barely see him in the darkness of the room, but you can just make out his shape as he shuffles to you on his knees, hands pumping his cock slowly. You make a desperate sound and he huffs - laughter, you know. He slides a hand underneath your thigh again, hitching one knee up high on the bed while the other is pressed flat.

Hansol keeps your leg pinned there, stretching you open, muscles expanding as he presses the head of his cock into your entrance. His name escapes your mouth in a whine, feeling the way your walls spasm around him as he sinks in. The position has him hitting deep. You feel him everywhere, feel the way he invades your senses.

“S’good,” you whisper when you feel his hips press against your ass. Your cunt flutters around him, trying to accommodate for the stretch. “Fuck.”

He hums in response, keeping one hand on your thigh to pry you open and the other on your hip to hold you in place as he retracts, the slide of his cock sending your eyelids fluttering.

Hansol sets a hard pace from the jump, each one of his thrusts targeted and on point. He punches the air from your lungs and you become a panting mess under him, barely able to breathe. He puts his weight into it, leaning over you to stretch your leg higher up on the bed and crush you to the mattress the way you like, the way you need.

It feels safe here, jolting under the weight of him as he fucks into you hard, his grip tightening on you as you whine and clench around him. You dig your fingers into the sheet, twisting and tearing as if it can release the tension coiling inside you, begging to be let out.

For a brief moment, he slows his pace, pulling away from you. Your eyes snap open, ready to fire off a question when you feel him pry you open to spit onto the tight rim of your ass. You suck in a tight breath of air and hear him laugh before he presses the pad of his thumb to the ring of muscles there.

“Oh,” you breathe, melting. He doesn’t press his finger in, just keeps it firm on the seam of your ass, adding pressure and stimulation that sends you into a thoughtless daze.

“Yeah,” he grunts, picking up his pace again, cock hitting deep. “Oh.”

You don’t have a response - know that he’s teasing you, having sensed your brief moment of annoyance in the split second it took him to add another element of pleasure. You know Hansol will never disappoint you here wrapped in sheets that stick to your sweaty skin, sheets that smell like him, but you’ve always been quick to protest, quick to strike first.

It doesn’t bother him. Nothing about you bothers him after this long together. Not you coming home and waking him up, needing to be fucked into the mattress to forget the hate coiling inside you. Not you being utterly useless tonight, letting him do all the work as he brings you to the brink of coming again. Not you reaching back to grab the wrist of the hand he has on your thigh, your nails digging in so hard you make him bleed.

Hansol takes it all. Takes your shaking orgasm, takes the way you moan his name, takes his time as he fucks you through your high before he drops the hold he has on your leg to hold your hips to the bed instead. Takes the breath from your lungs when his thrusts turn from hard to brutal, hips crashing into you, forcing each breath from your lungs.

The world goes blank. There’s just you laying in a bed that smells like petrichor and vetiver, breath coming to a screeching halt as your face presses into the mattress. He keeps you pressed there, a hand sliding to the middle of your back to keep you pinned, the other working the clenching rim of your ass.

If you could make a sound, you might scream. Instead, you shudder under him, coming violently and without air, ears ringing and blood rushing. It’s exactly what you were looking for, a specific high that only Hansol can give you.

Eventually, he rolls you over and you gulp in air. You’re barely aware of anything, floating in the dizzy space between. A hand laces with yours, squeezing your fingers. You squeeze back, letting Hansol’s grip keep you tether as you gain your bearings.

Slowly, you come back to the present. You blink your eyes open, despite how heavy they feel. You could fall asleep any moment, spent and toeing the edge of the nothing sleep always brings. Hansol is looking at you though, a look in his eye that sparks a little life in you.

“What?” you ask, voice barely above a raspy whisper. “What’s wrong?”

Hansol’s hair is damp with sweat, pressed flat to his forehead. His eyes are dark and simmering with something unreadable but intense.

“I should ask you that,” he answers after a pregnant pause. “What’s going on?”

The question sours your efforts to forget immediately. His concern shatters the illusion that you’d let him fuck into you, removes the numbing you’d practically crawled into his lap for. With his worry comes the sharp stab of reality, all the anger and wrath and ugliness that you keep trying to shove down rearing its monstrous head.

“Nothing, Hansol.” Your words crack like a whip and you let go of his hand to roll over, turning your back to him. “I was just stressed.”

“So tell me what you’re stressed about.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we have stressful jobs.”

“You are not stressed over your job. Don’t sell me that. You have to be honest with me. You said we’d get through this shit together. You gotta talk to me, Angel.”

Your heart starts to pound in your chest. You are suddenly painfully awake, body riddled with the tension Hansol had just gotten rid of minutes ago. Sweat slicks your skin anew, but this time from the anxiety of how close you feel to tipping over.

“Can we just go to sleep?”

He scoffs. “I was asleep until you crawled in here looking at me like you were going to die. Why are you shutting me out?”

“I’m not shutting you out. You were quite literally just inside me.”

“Stop twisting what I’m fucking saying. I’m asking you to be open with me and no amount of you being a bitch is going to make me shut up. I know that’s what you want.”

As always, Hansol is absolutely correct. He doesn’t miss. It’s what makes him such a good Rook, but makes him a good life partner. And he is your life partner. You’ve never said any vows at an alter and there’s no ring on your finger, but Hansol has been your soulmate and your partner since long before he pulled you out of that bathtub.

And here you are hiding from him, crawling to him to beg him to numb you without any reason why, taking but not giving, demanding but not paying him back. Here you are trying to piss him off into silence, being as frustrating as possible to get him to give up and decide he doesn’t feel like fighting this battle.

He knows it. You know it.

A fissure appears on your resolve. Hansol says nothing, his words doing all the work for him as you mull them over. He doesn’t have to press you further - he knows the blow he’s dealt has worked, waiting in heavy silence as the facade you’ve built over the last few weeks starts to crumble to show him the ugly thing you’ve been keeping to yourself.

“I’m angry,” you whisper. It comes out shaky. Scared. He doesn’t dare breath or move, letting you pour through the cracks he’s made. “I’m angry and I don’t know why and it’s like I can’t stop being angry. I feel it like it’s a thing that is alive, like I can’t get rid of it.”

You suck in a shuddering breath, feeling the way you’ve started shaking. You zone out as you speak, vision narrowing to a specific point of darkness in the bedroom. “I feel hate like I’ve never felt before and I swear it’s going to eat me alive. It’s like - it feels corrosive and like I can’t satiate it but the only thing that offers any relief is killing anyone who had to do with Minji’s death.”

Hansol shifts behind you. He doesn’t move closer but you feel his hand move across the bed. He presses his palm flat to the base of your spine. It grounds you, makes it easier for you to continue, “I don’t get it. It’s not like she was my mom. She didn’t - she didn’t give birth to me but she didn’t try to drown me. She didn’t see me as something to be disposed of. She… saw me and embraced me, and thought I was useful. Liked me.”

Clever girls like you are important. Valuable. Mean something.

Minji’s words left an impression on you. You think about them often, letting them replace the bible vowels your mother used to hiss as you. So many of your memories of a motherly figure are Minji teaching you how to read body language, Minij showing you how to look for the subtleties of deception in financial documents, communications, miscellaneous tidbits.

“My dad was my god,” you whisper, voice quaking. “But Minji - she was an entity. She taught me how to fight back and keep what I wanted most protected. And they just… killed her in her bed, Hansol.” You realize you’er crying but now you can’t stop. “They broke into her house and killed her in her bed like she was a fucking dog and not Yoon Minji, the Wisdom of the fucking Choi Syndicate.”

Hansol’s hand drags up and down your spine, slow and hypnotizing. You close your eyes, violently shivering as everything that’s been growing inside of you rushes out in a tide you can’t dam. “All because some stupid fucking kid ran his mouth to the wrong whore. Do you know how angry that makes me? She should have been safe, and a fucking nobody is why she died!”

Instead of comforting you with words, Hansol deems it’s safe enough to grab you. He pulls your back to his chest, hooking his chin on your shoulder to bury his face in your neck. He’s warm and he feels safe, arms wrapping around you as you seethe.

“I hate that I’m angry,” you hiss. “It feels so fucking stupid. People die all the time and I don’t care but this one bothers me and it makes me feel ridiculous. Makes me feel stupid - she was Jeonghan’s mom not mine. But I want anyone who had anything to do with it to die, Hansol. I need them to.”

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Then we’ll kill them.”

Hansol says it so simply. Because of course to him it is simple: you need to feed this desire for revenge or it will kill you, thus it needs to be done. Of course he doesn’t think it’s stupid, doesn’t think you’re being irrational. To Hansol, it doesn’t matter what you want - he wants it too.

To be loved by Hansol is to be loved entirely, without ifs, without buts, without any stipulations. He takes you exactly as you are, and it makes you break in his hold. He’s the only other person in this world who wants you exactly as you’ve been created.

And maybe that’s why you were so afraid of letting him in to see this. You’ll never get rid of that tiny, irrational fear that he’ll decide he’s seen enough. Nothing you’ve both been through has been easy, and loving you comes with so many obstacles that you don’t know how he doesn’t get tired of overcoming them.

“You’ll have whatever vengeance you need,” Hansol promises. He nuzzles to you closer. “I’d do anything for you.”

Once upon a time, your mother thought her god superseded everything. She swore her god was omnipotent, that he would save her and punish the evil around her. He’d never done anything for her, though. Never answered her prayers, never struck down anyone who raised a hand against her, never opened up the skies to cleanse the earth from evil.

Your god answered your prayers. He struck down those who wished you harm, he erased those who stood in your way. He loved you and rewarded you for your love in turn. He cleansed you. Protected you. Allowed no weapon formed against you to prosper.

Hansol was your god, and you were his vengeful angel.

SYNDICATE ROLES

Tower - title for a Syndicate boss Wisdom - title for the second-in-command to a Sydicate boss Sentinel - title for the main military leader of a Syndicate Riots - title for a member of the Syndicate responsible for sowing discord Swords - title for a member of the Syndicate who is a fighter/military role Chariots - members of the Syndicate who make deals/act as business brokers Rooks - members of the Syndicate who collect debts/lead the extortion practices Justices - members of the Syndicate on the legal counsel Hanged Men - members of the Syndicate who betrayed their Syndicate Watchers - members of a Syndicate who are spies/informants Patrons - citizens who pay homage/have an alliance/are under the protection of a Syndicate Vanguard - official members of the Syndicate who don't have specific roles but do work for the Syndicate

TAG LIST

@ddaddunugu @ourkivee @tie-nn @cookiearmy @thesunsfullmoon @stray-bi-kids @ldysmfrst @thepoopdokyeomtouched @eoieopda @onlywon4u @hopeless-foolery @iamawkwardandshy @gyuguys @codeinebelle @Burnt-horizons @ateez-atiny380 @abibliolife @idubiluranghae @bultaereume @yoongznme @kaitieskidmore97 @coffee-addict-kitten @coralpenguinbeard @gyubakeries @archivistworld @hipsdofangirl @asyre @aksweet7 @bunnybeaer @valenhui @fxckinbreathe @agustamygdala7 @kaepjjangiya @fancypeacepersona @beckyloveshannie @SecretFoxBear @babycaratdeul @aiforyuu @imujings

#vernon smut #chwe vernon smut #hansol smut #chwe hansol smut #svt smut #vernon angst #hansol angst #svt fic #vernon fic #vernon x reader #vernon x you #hansol x reader #mafia svt #mafia vernon #svt angst #svt fanfic #svt imagines #svt x reader

387 notes · View notes