#but you know it's so fascinating how even from the people who were claiming that the priority should have been to Support Shelby

[the-daydreaming-show]

(1.) Threads of Time.

SUMMARY: Ever since you arrived in the Night Court, you've avoided awkward confrontation and the thought of going out of your way to talk to Feyre. You've barely looked at her in an attempt to avoid facing the very thing you came here for. But finally, one evening, after a flight over the mountains with Balerion, you come face to face with the past and present you've been avoiding.

Or

After not seeing each other for over a decade, you and Feyre finally meet in the woods again, but nothing is the same, not even the two of you. You make an agreement to try to find a balance, and you fail miserably.

NOTE: (All together, we are going to ignore that this should have been published yesterday.) The plan is for there to be an episode every Thursday, until it is finished. So stay tuned for that.

We are skipping many dinners and political discussion meetings because I did not like them and in the end what you need to know about them is explained by the reader in her monologue.

As always, English is not my first language so sorry for spelling mistakes and mistakes of the type, any comment on it is welcome if it is respectful. I am always trying to get comfortable and improve my writing in this language.

I hope you like it, let me know in the comments your opinions. XOXO Ella

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.” — William Faulkner.

The night in Velaris was as beautiful as it had been said to be during the endless negotiations with the Night Court's emissary, Morrigan, and in the secret meetings of your council regarding this visit.

The balcony you had ended up on after insomnia woke you before the sun came up was the size of a ballroom, and you suspected that was what it was used for due to the beautiful marble that decorated the floor. It had a view of the entire city, spreading below you in all directions.

Since you had arrived three days ago, it was the first time you could stop and admire the view that the House of Wind offered you of the city over which it loomed. Between uncomfortable meals, less-than-secret conversations, and discussions about the court's functioning, you had not had time. And you thought it had been for the best.

Upon your arrival at the house, you had been greeted by the High Lady and High Lord, with their court, as well as Morrigan, who, as the one in charge of the negotiations, was in charge of the introductions. Feyre had been perfect—the perfect image of a ruler that is everything. But you had not seen her outside official meals and meetings. Your people, and you suspected that she stayed at the private residence by the river. It made sense, given the matter of the child. In the house with your court, there was Nesta with her husband, General Cassian, who owned the residence and had opened his home to you.

It did not escape your notice that the highest point in the city was ideal for you, because it did not allow you to move around too much without being noticed. It kept your dragons as far away from the city and its inhabitants as possible.

You'd seen more of Nesta than Feyre or her husband, Rhysand, which didn't bother you as much as Armin said it did; he must have given her the disrespect he claimed she represented in matters of politics. But Night Court politics were more lax than the mortal ones they were used to, so you told him to relax. Well, to do what Armin considered relaxing. You weren't going to ask for a miracle, either.

You found it amusing to see how the proud and seemingly shallow Nesta Archeron was married to and in love with a man like General Cassian. They were so opposite in the eyes of the world that it was fun to watch them interact. It even made you feel tender. Nesta had caught you staring a couple of times, and she had already told you several times to shut up, even when you hadn't said anything.

You had seen Elain the day you landed too; she had been fascinated by Dreamfyre, one of the dragons that had come to the Night Court with you, along with Caraxes and Balerion, your own mount.

You hadn’t looked at Feyre much. Or at least, you hadn’t looked at her normally—not thinking much about how the interactions would be normal. You didn’t want to make her uncomfortable either, and you knew there were things you couldn’t control if you looked at her. Like the way it made you gasp at how she seemed to glow in her place in the world. She looked so comfortable and right where she was, and it led you to believe that you no longer had a place in her life, which led you to believe that was selfish.

And her husband could reportedly read minds, so you'd rather not think about her, out of respect for him. You didn't look at him much at first either, but it seemed like you'd be spending some quality time with him during meetings he wasn’t going to.

The sun began to peek over the mountains as you finished your thoughts, and the lights in the city slowly faded as the city took in the morning light. You decided you needed to get out and quickly returned to your room in the house so you could change into your riding gear.

As you changed in your room, Balerion woke up in his sleeping spot in the mountains, which he had taken as his own for the first few days of your visit. You could feel the way he moved, the way his muscles stretched, and the way the earth shifted beneath his claws. Finally, the feeling of both of your bodies coordinating through the bond, until your breathing and the dragon's were coordinated as if they were one, washed over you. Filling you with a calm that nothing else in this life had ever given you. Your breath felt hot as you pulled the harnesses over your head to adjust them at your waist and hips, then hooked those to the harnesses on your thighs.

Balerion took flight in the mountains as you walked around the house to the highest point you could reach on foot and began to climb without any problem to the house's highest point. Balerion circled the house twice before he was close enough for you to jump into the void and land on his back, something you had done many times. You got hooked on the mix and took Balerion to fly over the city and then the sea for a good while. You enjoyed the feeling of flying together and allowing yourself to leave all worries on the ground for a while.

You wanted to fly back to the house for breakfast, but Balerion was feeling like heading out into the woods and mountains, so you let him wander around the outskirts of Velaris with you on his back as well.

“Haven’t you played enough these days?” you asked the beast beneath you as he circled the sky in slow loops, indicating that he wanted you down there. He had probably smelled some prey in the mountains and couldn’t wait to drop you off at the House of Wind. A growl, the equivalent of an eye-roll to humans, sounded through the bond. “If I asked so nicely,” you scoffed, letting go of the reins of your mount and unhooking your harness from your saddle. You leaped off and landed in the woods surrounding the city, swooping down to the meadows that surrounded it. It was the first time Balerion—or any of your dragons—had seen mountains and forests of that immensity.

The three eldest, Vhagar, Balerion, and Meraxes, had been born in the lava of the volcanic islands. While these had a jungle surrounding the massive, steamy mountains, it was nowhere near a sight like Prythian and the Night Court. The rest of your dragons had already hatched by the time you reached the bay, so they knew only the burning desert and colorful cities. Dreamfyre, the youngest of the dragons you brought, was fascinated by the flowers and meadows surrounding the city. Balerion was obsessed with the mountains and the fighters he could take there. And Caraxes, the middle one, had a fascination with flying over the sea and perching on the rocky outcrops of the hillsides a few miles from the city. He wouldn’t go into the sea, but he fought the waves that rushed toward him when the tide came in.

Balerion's roar as he charged forward and the ground shaking at his energetic landing further up the mountain only made you laugh as you descended the mountain and admired the surrounding forest. You made it down a couple of meters when you heard a pair of footsteps in the forest and stopped dead in your tracks.

You had known these footsteps for years.

You walked through the forest, following the small, noisy footsteps. They were where you had been told they would be, and you approached, making noise so she would notice you, but you soon realized that the girl's awareness was not yet trained enough. You should have made more noise, but now it didn't matter. You would scare her one way or another because, standing a few meters behind her, young Feyre hadn't noticed you were there.

Something twisted deep inside you. If you were a man, and you had bad intentions, she wouldn't have noticed until it was too late. The hunters in the area were mostly good husbands and sons, good hunting partners to go out with from time to time, too.

But you can never know someone well enough, especially a man.

You saw a branch on the snowy ground and stepped on it, making a noise that would cause the girl to notice, with the file raised. At least she had good reflexes, you thought.

“Hey,” you greeted her with a smile, the same one you used to give Rue when you wanted to encourage her to do something new. “You are being too loud. You aren't going to find anything being so noisy.”

You approached the area where the footsteps were sounding, and with the silence that had characterized years of habit, you silently came to stand behind the footsteps that advanced with a predatory rhythm on the ground. They stopped dead a few seconds before she entered your vision.

The image was strangely familiar.

There stood Feyre, bow in hand and arrow on the string. She was watching a fully grown deer eating the grass a few feet away, visible between the trees. But she wasn't ready for the shot. You didn't understand why she wouldn't get a better angle to kill such a large animal. Her feet weren’t positioned for the shot or the possible chase. The string wasn’t stretched, nor was the bow raised to aim. If she moved too much now, she could make noise on the ground, and she’d miss the shot.

She wasn’t really looking to hunt that animal, you realized.

You could have turned around and left the place as quietly as you came. Feyre wouldn’t notice, as she hadn’t noticed you were so close, letting the opportunity slip away and going back to ignoring the moment until there was no other option. But you were here just for this, so you let habit take over.

“Are you planning on waiting for the deer to walk to the arrow on its own, Fey?” you asked, loud enough to send the deer running.

If she wasn’t ready to shoot when you found her, she was now. Feyre had turned fully and nearly fired her arrow at the sound of your voice, but you didn’t even blink and just let your gazes meet. With the hearing of a High Fae, Feyre must have grown unaccustomed to being surprised.

“Fey,” you called, and the rabbits that were just a few feet away from Feyre ran away in terror at the noise, returning to their hidden cave underground and easily avoiding the fired arrow.

“Stop scaring me,” the aforementioned begged irritably, her youthful and elegant voice echoing through the woods, probably scaring any other animals that might have been in the area.

“Stop being so mean and thinking so much, Fey,” you recommended with a mocking smile. “It’s not a good combination for a hunter.”

“So she can be loud or dubious? But not at the same time?” she asked, mocking your logic.

“You have a bow and arrow; if you want to hunt loudly, you simply train your hands and eyes to be able to reach greater distances,” you explained softly as you crouched down beside her and pulled a wild blackberry from your pocket. Feyre leaned in but gently moved her chin out of your reach. “And if you want to hesitate, you can let nature decide for you.”

You left the innocent-looking blackberries a few feet away from you, and both of you went off to continue your hunt. That day, when you walked down the road back to the house, a rabbit lay dead with blackberries in its mouth, with no physical wounds to be seen. Nature had decided.

“Good to know you still know how to draw a bow. For a second there, I thought you didn’t remember how I saw you there.” You turned to look at her, approaching her, not offended by the arrow pointed at your face.

You stood a meter away from her and looked into her eyes as she slowly lowered her bow, coming out of the fight instinct. You heard her subtly sniffing the air for any trace of a non-human scent on you, the same way Morrigan had when you had done the same to her once when she visited the bay as an emissary during negotiations. But like Morrigan, Feyre wouldn’t find anything amiss, and you wished you had an explanation to give her, but you barely knew more than she did about what you were these days.

“You ruined my dinner,” Feyre said matter-of-factly, to which you smiled knowingly and simply crouched down, grabbing a rock from the ground. You heard Feyre shift her feet out of habit.

It was like the world had suddenly lost all sense of time, as the present bled into your past. When you threw the rock at the tree, causing a group of hidden birds to fly away, and Feyre killed two of them with a single arrow, it felt like nothing had changed. Even though neither of you was even the same species you were when you used that trick.

A silence formed between the two of you and the forest, with only the abrupt sound of birds falling to the ground echoing around the area before silence returned. She wasn’t sure if she was expecting you to leave or if she just didn’t know what to say about the sense of time running out around the two of you. It was all the forest’s fault.

“I’m sorry about Rue,” was the first thing she said to you directly after all these years.

The forest moved naturally as you and Feyre each held Rue’s hand while venturing out on the little girl’s first expedition. At ten years old, Rue was two years younger than Feyre, and she seemed excited to teach someone else as you had done with her. The fact that she was teaching your little sister felt like a full circle for her—a way of repaying you for your teachings.

Watching her crouch beside a trail in the dirt, diligently explaining how to follow it and how much time had passed since the animal had gone by, you realized that you could never tell her the truth about your teachings.

“Look, Rue,” Feyre whispered lovingly as she pointed to where the trail ended, at the door of a cave where the rabbits lived. “We need to set the traps here, near the cave. Not too close so that they leave and create a new entrance, but in the area where they’ll take a path in search of food. Look over here.”

Feyre led Rue, who was watching her intently, by the hand through the area. You didn't interrupt her lesson.

When you learned that Nesta and Elain were alive, despite everything they had been through, you found envy in your heart.

Rue had been safe, barely managing to buy her freedom from the brothel where she had been sold, without ever having someone lay a hand on her, thanks to your uncomplaining work. Nesta and Elain had been in the middle of a war, turned into beings they didn’t understand, fighting with their own identity and caught in the crosshairs of many enemies.

The odds had been on Rue’s side, not Nesta’s or Elain’s. You should have felt something about the fact that the sisters had survived against those odds, while she had died in a situation that hadn’t even been targeted.

But you quickly realized, with sadness, that you were only relieved the Archeron sisters had beaten the odds—all three of them together and against all logic. The absence of your sister weighed on your heart like a stone sewn into it, tugging at the stitches, opening unexpectedly at the thought of something she would have liked or moments she would have enjoyed seeing.

Never fully healed, but never truly as raw as the moment she bled out in your arms. You wanted to say something, but a lump formed in your throat, and you realized you didn’t really have anything to say to that. All you could manage was to acknowledge that it was what it was—and you meant it deeply, too.

That always drew looks from people you didn’t like, and you didn’t want to, nor could you, allow Feyre to see you that way now.

“I hope you’ve learned to cook with seasonings over the years, Fey,” you said, moving a little closer to her and pointing at the dead birds a few meters away. “Because wild geese require skill so they don’t turn out dry on the grill.”

Feyre grimaced as she looked at the fallen animals. She quickly concluded that, first, she didn’t need the meat since she didn’t hunt for food anymore—she just went out shopping—and second, she lacked the skills to cook them even if she wanted to, judging by the face she made while staring at the dead birds.

There was a time when such a hunt would have been a relief, providing a week’s worth of food for both families. The weight of the present lingered between you both more than you’d like.

“What are you doing out here so early?” Feyre finally asked, trying to spark a conversation and shake off the awkwardness. You realized the one stuck in the past was you, not her, so of course she wanted to escape the memories that were creeping into the moment. “I thought you’d be sleeping in, given the late meetings your court had.”

As you walked downhill asymptotically, pacing yourself to avoid getting too close, you thought about what she might have said if you did approach: We know what you are doing; We are in the house, and we are watching you.

But you and your council had anticipated that. There were magical barriers you couldn’t defend against. Still, you knew what not to say, simply assuming that the shadowsinger would pass his information along to his superiors one way or another. Communication, in your humble opinion, was much easier that way.

“I’ve found sleep less necessary than usual these days,” you commented as you passed her. “And if I didn’t take Balerion out for a ride, he’d start getting fussy and end up landing on the house just to annoy me. It’s a very nice building, and I fear Nesta would poison me for dinner if even one brick of her house moved because of my dragon.”

You heard Feyre moving through the forest, but you resisted the urge to turn around and look. You allowed yourself to walk slowly, telling yourself to watch for uneven ground. Feyre joined you silently, the birds tied around her neck, with her quiver of arrows resting on her back.

“Personally, I like to keep my quiver on my hip,” you pointed out as you adjusted yours in its place, hanging below the bone on your left side. “It’s easier to draw several arrows at once that way. With my eye, it’s sometimes necessary before I get a prey to fall.”

Feyre nodded, looking at the left pupil that dripped down onto your iris. She had noticed the way you turned your head to the left over the days, so she had gotten used to walking on that side every day.

“Balerion?” Feyre’s question set off a roar that echoed into the distance. She looked in the exact direction of where your beast was in the mountains, and with her hearing so precise, she would surely create a beeline to it if she wanted to.

“He’s a bit of a diva,” you explained as you began to walk down the mountain.

In the pace of the walk, you naturally ended up half a step ahead of Feyre, with her to your left—the same formation you used when walking in the woods to hunt. Your right eye was not only a genetic anomaly, but it was also a cause of vision loss on that side. You had never known how that drop had gotten there. Your mother had once told you that you were born with it. Your father had once coldly told you that it had come to you by accident.

Now both of your eyes could see perfectly—both of them. The fire and the lava had healed them the same way they had healed any scars or pains on your body. But you didn't say anything about it.

At the foot of the mountain, at the edge of town, was a clearing of green grasses and small white mountain flowers growing in random places. You and Feyre walked in silence; you wished you had something to say, but anything felt wrong. When you stopped, you waited for her to keep walking, assuming she didn't want to either; she had nothing to say.

As you began to walk across the grass and passed the first patch of flowers in your path, Balerion flew over the area, casting a shadow that made it seem like night had covered the hillside. Feyre looked up to see him pass. Your feet settled on the ground, ready for the tremor that came as the dragon landed dangerously close to your position, but Feyre stumbled enough that she had to instinctively grab onto your arm.

When the earth stopped shaking and Balerion settled back on the ground, Feyre was still clinging to your arm. You could understand why. You were the odd one out in this situation, smiling at the beast in front of you like it was a puppy barking at your arrival at the house because it brought a new friend.

“Relax, Balerion,” you demanded, using the language of dragons, making sure he understood and heard what you were saying, still not approaching the part of the dragon that was raised in front of you. “You are like a child!!”

The dragon's breath washed over both of you, and you pulled Feyre's arm so she was behind you. The color radiating from Balerion's breath was always bright; sometimes it could burn the grass he breathed on when he took naps, and sometimes it was like a summer breeze.

You never knew what would happen, and you didn't know how Feyre would react to the worst options. You knew it wouldn't affect you, so the instinct to protect led you to act before thinking. You immediately felt uncomfortable with your actions. You were out of place, you shouldn't have done that, you thought to yourself.

You let go of her hand and walked toward the dragon's snout; his jaw was higher than yours, but Balerion lowered his head so you could caress his nose. You took a deep breath, resting your forehead against the tip of his nose, and he imitated you naturally.

The way Balerion moved under your hands and the sound of their coordinated breathing left you baffled by the world for a few seconds. You didn't notice when Feyre relaxed into place and sighed heavily.

“I don’t know what to say,” Feyre confessed from behind you. You lifted your head from where your forehead was resting against Balerion, but you didn’t look at her. “It feels like I don’t know you, but I know I do, and I want to know everything about why—I don’t know how to ask without feeling like I’m invading someone’s life and that I have no right to want to know when you were alone.”

Silence.

“We both live what we have to live, Fey,” you said, caressing the scales on the dragon’s nose, looking at the shape your sunlit hand made against Balerion’s blackness, which seemed to absorb the surrounding light. “You have to believe that we are both where we should be now, and that will not change.”

Silence.

“The past doesn’t change either,” Feyre said, whispering your name at the end, the same way she used to call you when you were both young.

She was right; they both are who they are now, but they had also once been what they had been, neither canceling out the other despite the feeling that filled you these days. Sometimes you wished one would undo the other, that the past would be enough to win over the present. Or that the present would wipe out the past. But it didn’t work that way. Maybe, just maybe, you might be able to accept the mix, to lose nothing and have everything.

Could you do it?

Yes, you could try.

“He wants to know who you are.” It wasn’t a lie; Balerion really was like a puppy wanting to meet a new friend; he probably sensed through you what Feyre meant. But you were desperately changing the subject with them.

“Looks like he wants to eat me or you.” Feyre stared blankly at Balerion from her spot, bowing over the man, dead birds still in her hand.

“He always looks like that; he just has a problem with not knowing when to stop eating.” The joke caused an irritated growl from the dragon, who blew to ruffle your hair and playfully tease you. “It’s the truth.”

Balerion sat his butt down on the grass with a slam, agreeing to change position so that his new friend could get closer, thus making his form smaller in front of both of them. This was an attempt to make himself less intimidating, you assumed.

“Would you like to introduce yourself?” you asked Feyre, and she saw that for what it was: an attempt to not want to ignore the past or the present, an attempt to find a balance between the two without what they were and what they are or will be preventing them from knowing who the other is now. And she nodded slightly.

You motioned for him to put down the birds, bows, and arrows on the ground. He walked calmly and steadily up to where you were standing in front of Balerion's enormous head. Balerion moved closer in excitement, and you pushed him back into position immediately by pulling on one of the tusks protruding from between his fangs, while Fey waited for you to signal him to come closer.

“Give me your hand,” you asked when she was at your side. Feyre gave you her right hand. You placed her hand on the scales and let it sit there for a moment, letting the tension of the moment pass. When you felt her body realize there was no danger and her fingers moved only over the scales, you let go of her hand and allowed her to pet the dragon herself. “See, he’s a very big pup.”

“A fire-breathing one,” Feyre joked back, Balerion snuggling under her hand like a kitten, causing you to roll your eyes at his attitude. He’s not all that gentle and obedient when it comes to dealing with younger dragons. “He’s quite beautiful for such a dangerous animal,” Feyre commented as she stroked the scales with both hands and felt the heat of the fire running beneath Balerion’s scales. You smiled at the sight.

“You should see it at night, in the moonlight. When he flies through the sky, it looks like he has stars and can camouflage himself perfectly. He disappears from view if you are underneath him,” you explained, proud of Balerion and how he had grown from a rock in the volcanoes to the enormous beast he was now.

A glint on Feyre's hands caught your attention. Her wedding ring, a jewel that sparkled in the sun, reflected in your eyes as if it wanted to purposely annoy you more than its meaning could.

“It must be quite a sight,” Feyre commented, and your frown changed before she saw your face as she turned to ask you more questions about Balerion.

To your chagrin, you quickly realized that the plan for acceptance and balance you had outlined with Feyre that day was far too ambitious for your circumstances.

It all started the next morning. It was time to visit the Illyrian Mountains. Armin, as your general, and Luka, your secretary and master spy, refused to let you go alone, despite your insistence. It wouldn't make any difference if they tried to kill you, whether they were there or not, but you still gave in, in the end, for their peace of mind. Rhysand, Morrigan, and Azriel were your guides on that occasion.

You figured Cassian was staying in town because the dragons were supposed to be staying there, too. Though that must have meant Feyre’s court believed the Illyrians would be able to handle several dragons at once if need be, which you found amusing, both because it sounded like something Cassian would do and because it also meant they hadn’t decided yet how much control you had over the beasts.

It was even funnier when the three of them appeared flying over the camp hours after you arrived, where you had to explain that it was difficult to tell them to stay far away from you. Dragons are protective beasts, and you were their mother, after all.

Cassian joined you not long after. He was the punchline in your statuses, and Armin had to hit you to stop you from laughing.

Spending time with Rhysand was torture. You wanted to hate the bastard.

Would that be the most logical thing to do, right?

You wanted Feyre, and he had her; hate should have been the healthiest way out of everything. But you didn't. You severely suspected he was perfect. Not because he didn't have flaws. No, you'd heard plenty of those flaws from Luka. But you also knew what he'd done, which was more than you should know.

When Luka, with his tattooed face, ink-blackened hands, and raspy voice, had offered the most drastic way out for information, you had refused his sacrifice. But ultimately, you knew there was information about the High Fae that no information network you could muster would get from them without them noticing. You needed the tactical information if you were going to move forward with negotiations and visits for a potential deal, and you desperately wanted to follow through.

So you ended up giving in, knowing that it was the only way to overcome the Shadow Singer, or at least level the playing field as much as possible in your favor.

You had offered to make the sacrifice, but he had refused, as there was no telling what your blood might do to the process, and so now Luka had no ring finger on his left hand. “I don’t plan on listening to wedding tales for myself. So I can’t do anything but grip my daggers, and I can use my other hand for that until I get used to it,” Luka had told you.

The ritual gave you the information you knew you needed, even if you didn't know you needed it or that you needed it at some point. For more precise information, more sacrifice was needed, and you wouldn't let your friend sacrifice a full hand for you, even though he had been more than willing until you sternly ordered him not to.

The information you had been given was indeed what you required. Your council needed to know how trustworthy the Night Court was and what they might find there if they went. That they had received, and perhaps all too effectively.

Rhysand played the annoying idiot role well enough, but you had the information to see through him in a way you hadn't expected to be able to. You weren't sure if it was his love for his people or his loyalty to Feyre, but you couldn't find it in yourself to hate him. You respected him in a way that wasn't just out of fear, but because he seemed to be where many (including you) would want him to be and not waste the chance (like others).

And it only made everything more difficult because the trip to the mountains confirmed the information about the Illyrian armies you had thanks to Luka's missing finger. You returned to the House of Wind on Balerion to ensure that you got the dragons out of the mountains as quickly as possible, as the few days you were there caused nervousness among the locals. You definitely wouldn't be going on vacation to the mountains at the invitation of anyone from the area anytime soon.

“And?” Mayhem, your lady-in-waiting and bodyguard, asked. You glanced at her through the mirror, and it answered the question sufficiently. You silently wondered if Azriel and his shadows had already realized that they weren’t communicating, as if they already knew what they should know and what they shouldn’t.

You still didn't understand how you would manage the balance if the path remained as marked as it had been since before you left the Bay. The next stop would be the Court of Nightmares, so you could see the other part of the court's military forces.

You found yourself standing on the same balcony, looking up at the darkening sky the night after your arrival from the mountains.

“Hello,” Feyre greeted, appearing in the doorway. The two courts were supposed to be dining together that night—some sort of political dinner, you supposed. You waved back, leaning over the balcony railing, looking down. She leaned against you, and you shifted in place to put some distance between you, even if it was just a few inches. “How were the mountains?”

“Very windy,” you commented, sighing heavily, “and it seems the locals didn’t like me very much. I’m still not sure if it was my lack of a penis or my extra dragons. A mystery indeed.” You scoffed, and Feyre laughed in response.

“Devlon is a delight to be around, no doubt about it,” Feyre explained as she turned to sit on the edge and looked at you for a moment in silence, as she often did when she wanted to tell you to stop thinking. “I hope you still enjoyed the beauty of the mountains.”

“I did,” you admitted, glancing at her briefly and pointing at Balerion in the distance with a smile. “And Balerion seems to want to take up residence in those sacred mountains of yours. He says it has good hunting, which is a guarantee of moving by their standards, but I don’t think he’d be very welcome.”

“I don’t think they could do much about that, could they?” Feyre seemed amused at the idea of the massive dragon you called a pup taking up residence in Ramiel and no one being able to stop it, the same way she imagined you taking the bay. Her imagination wasn’t close to the truth, but they didn’t know, nor would they be told anytime soon.

“The wedding,” you pointed at her ring, shining in the sunset, looking at it instead of her face, afraid something would betray you. “And the birth.”

“Thank you,” Feyre whispered sincerely and looked at the ring on her finger fondly, as if remembering her happiness and being happy about it. You moved your gaze to the horizon again.

“I hope he was and is chubby.” You wished for him, remembering the words that adults in your town exchanged when a baby was born alive in one of the families. The memory made Feyre smile honestly.

“Yeah, I guess that’s consistent,” Feyre whispered, and you nearly rolled your eyes as the scent of expensive cologne hit your nose before you looked at the man in question.

“Your husband has nosy tendencies,” you blurted out before you could control yourself, crossing your arms. Feyre let out a laugh at the lack of malice in your voice.

“A little,” she admitted, looking over at where Rhysand stood, his expression feigned offense.

“And I wanted to tell him that the food is ready, but I ended up being insulted,” he complained, approaching Feyre. And before he could reach her, you were already on your way to the door. “I thought we were all friends.”

Rhysand stood in his way as if expecting you to confront him and share a mocking fight, but you simply muttered and continued on your way, not even looking at him, running away from the situation as if you weren’t even aware of the fire.

“Something like that.”

The balance slipped from your grasp as if you were trying to hold onto seawater in a storm, and it cruelly hit your face during your visit to the Court of Nightmares. You sat in an elegant chair in front of an elegant table, with your boots on the polished marble floor, so polished it was like a mirror. A high-faced fae stared at you in disgust from her spot directly in front of you. You didn’t know if it was your presence or your casual attire (your usual riding clothes) that bothered her. You suspected it was a mix of both.

Rhysand asked for updates on the court and didn’t explain who you were or what you were doing there. He just allowed you to sit and listen. The fae whose name was Keir was the ruler of this side of the court on behalf of Rhysand and Feyre. Keir answered Rhysand’s demands, not taking his eyes off the way your boot was thrown over the edge of the table and into his line of vision because of the way you had crossed your legs. You had only made sure he had that angle of vision, much to his irritation.

Azriel was leaning against a wall not far from where Rhysand was sitting, and he seemed as entertained by Keir's irritation as you were, though it was less subtle.

For some reason, you felt the comment coming. Ever since you’d taken over the bay, it always got through to some people, and you’d learned to feel almost like you were an oracle when the need to point fingers got the better of people. You picked up the wine glass on the table, and the single sip you took while Keir was talking about what you knew about court caused him to grimace in disgust.

“Is our finest wine of the season not enough for our mortal guests?” Keir asked, his tone making it clear where he had changed the word he wanted to use to one that wouldn’t get him into trouble. But he spat out the word "mortal" with such abruptness that it felt just as insulting in some way. Now that was a skill, you thought with amusement.

“Is this the best there is here?” you asked, genuinely concerned about the quality of the spirits here. “I guess you can’t expect much from a vintage made in stone and darkness.”

“The whiskey is more passable,” Rhysand commented in amusement. You let out a murmur and looked at him skeptically.

“We have better wines in the Bay, and it’s a desert!” you pointed out indignantly.

The floor is a mirror; the wine should be just as luxurious; it was a huge contradiction in your opinion. You wondered when else that place was just part of a facade for the rotten and bitter beneath.

“That is true,” Keir said again, looking and speaking with undisguised disgust now. You looked at him in response. “The Aspiring Whore of the Slaves sits with the Night Court this moon.”

You smiled. There it was, the comment.

“Well, I’m retired as a courtesan. And I use the term 'courtesan' because if I had been just a prostitute, I would have been cheaper,” you commented. You settled back against the back of the chair to move your boot in front of him again, annoyed as much as you could.

“You’d think a courtesan would be better educated,” Keir spat.

“You wouldn’t know, with the quality of wine you drink. You couldn’t pay me dead,” you explained simply. It was true that, at your peak in the market, you had been one of the highest-paid in the Pirate Islands. It wasn’t something you were bragging about; it was a fact. You knew what you had been and what you were. That idiot couldn’t use it against you. You had learned that long ago. “And in my view, I have tasted fine wines in the Night Court, mostly in the restaurants of Velaris. I assume you haven’t had that opportunity, given their low standards.”

A bitter but malicious smile formed on Keir’s face, and there you knew. The idiot.

“I haven’t had the honor yet, but soon, I hope.” The arrogant idiot. If only he’d kept quiet. Or maybe you could have, but you needed the information.

You dined with your court privately that night. Nesta and Cassian were gone, but you wouldn’t let a word slip out of place because you knew that didn’t mean you weren’t being heard.

“Was the visit as we expected?” Luka asked casually as he figured out how to hold the fork with his missing finger, trying out positions and attempting to poke his potatoes, slowly figuring out how to best use it.

“Yes,” you said in a tone that ended the conversation before it even began. You downed your entire glass of wine (the same one you bragged about that afternoon in the Court of Nightmares) in one go. You quickly wiped the little that escaped your lips with the napkin on the table.

Everyone at the table knew what it meant. There would be no alliance because the Night Court had not yet recovered from the Hybern War.

Luka's sacrifice had not only shown the truth of Rhysand and his Inner Circle's character; it had also laid bare the results of the wars and circumstances that had wronged the Night Court.

With Amarantha ruling for sixty years, leaving Rhysand trapped without the ability to control his queen, the Illyrians had grown too accustomed to freedom, not only resisting the High Lord's ancient rules but the laws as well. They had gone to war through gritted teeth, but more for the chance at glory, and had been slaughtered in the thousands at a time. Many believed Rhysand had driven many to their deaths, knowing they had no chance, and though death in war was noble in the culture, the grudge of those who hadn't died still smoldered. To top it off, Nesta and her Valkyries had been spit in their faces, for they surely hadn't expected her to survive as she did.

To add Keir's forces to his troops, a deal had been made, one that the appointee himself had confirmed had not yet been paid.

The rest of the war with Hybern wasn't enough to get you back into battle, something you needed them to do if you signed that treaty. It was sooner rather than later because you had fired the first arrow when you declare yourself queen of all mortal lands. The queens of the continent were quick to respond with their own declaration or action, which wouldn't be long in coming, and it was only uphill from there.

She would be flying with Balerion into battle before the year was out, something he had seen coming. And the Night Court could not offer you the troops you required even if they now intended to help you, and you could not walk into battle with one of the Inner Circle as your weapon. They would tear apart any mortal army that crossed them, and you were not going to rule over ashes other than those of your own making.

What security would it give to the people who would be your subjects, who feared invasion because of the lack of a wall, if you won their lands with the direct help of those they saw as enemies?

There would be no balance, no matter how much you held on or wanted to put on or take off the scale. The reason you were there was nonexistent, and that left anything else you built on top of it in the dust.

You knew that. But you had still come. You had come anyway, knowing the possibilities, and you knew it would break your heart one way or another. It was a reality now, and it didn't feel any better even though you saw it coming.

TAG LIST: @pinksmellslikelove @saltedcoffeescotch @raisam @asweetblueberry2 @kabekusa @throneofsapphics @makayla2036789 @jojodojo02

[thedroloisms]

like ultimately speaking i don't even think that public discussions into the identity of shubble's ex are that necessary. at a certain point i think it's up to personal discretion, especially in terms of different platforms - for example, having a certain amount of discretion when it comes to spaces where it's more likely for shubble to see. that being said, at a certain point, it was obvious that the calls to Not Speculate, to Not Bring Up Him why are you saying his name he doesn't have to do with this i'm going to wait until shubble makes a statement if she wanted us to know then she'd say his name :) were doing a shit ton more harm than good?

like, shubble wasn't making an accusation. why people were flat out expecting her to say more in itself is beyond me. at the end of the day, people's willingness to continue supporting a content creator is a personal decision - shelby certainly wasn't trying to frame her stream as an allegation with proof. it was an ancedote about a personal experience with relevant details. along that same note, taking up pitchforks and banging on the door of the person in question is ??? again, the stream was hardly framed as an accusation & proof, and that was on purpose. whether or not one believes that he deserves a platform, with the great pains that shelby has taken in order to keep themselves from directly pointing at any specific person and making a direct accusation, brigading in their name in ways meant to directly attack the person in question feels...distasteful, literally for her sake.

like, any fan is capable and has the right to withdraw their support at any time, and giving other people reasons to withdraw their support isn't wrong either, as stating one's opinion is obviously perfectly fine. but uhhhh direct attacks without an explicit accusation being made are a bit of a different story.

but back to the first point, watching people in real time go Oh Don't Bring Up [Name] Sweaty :) was ???? like, it's impossible to go without acknowledging that if it wasn't him, that the amount of coincidences between her ex and the cc would be EXTREMELY high. "there's millions of ccs in england" and shubble was spending hours a day and in the apartment of every single one of them??? like be fucking fr??? this isn't even a case of it's a 50/50 between him and some other guy just based on the number of coincidences as described by shelby's one (1) stream alone, not to mention the corroborating evidence of things like the year's worth of content they produced with each other in recent years. and like, the literal album. which meant that even with the extremely likely possibility of him being the person, people were fucking tripping over themselves to scream NOT TO SPECULATE !!! DONT SAY IT'S [NAME] !!! to the point where when i clicked on the trending tab, tweets along those lines made up at least half if not more of the results. tweets she clearly saw, based on statements by her and her mods. like, look, even if the calls not to speculate came from a place of good intentions, they were all getting swallowed up by the noise of people explicitly telling other people Out Loud not to bring up the possibility of the man who was very likely the person she was talking about as being her ex - all while claiming to speak in her name #believevictims [words they continue to put in her mouth].

like, yeah, when you're going DONT TALK ABOUT HIM!!!!! this totally looks like you care about her and her story and not like a silencing tactic.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Retiring the US debt would retire the US dollar

THIS WEDNESDAY (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

One of the most consequential series of investigative journalism of this decade was the Propublica series that Jesse Eisinger helmed, in which Eisinger and colleagues analyzed a trove of leaked IRS tax returns for the richest people in America:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files

The Secret IRS Files revealed the fact that many of America's oligarchs pay no tax at all. Some of them even get subsidies intended for poor families, like Jeff Bezos, whose tax affairs are so scammy that he was able to claim to be among the working poor and receive a federal Child Tax Credit, a $4,000 gift from the American public to one of the richest men who ever lived:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

As important as the numbers revealed by the Secret IRS Files were, I found the explanations even more interesting. The 99.9999% of us who never make contact with the secretive elite wealth management and tax cheating industry know, in the abstract, that there's something scammy going on in those esoteric cults of wealth accumulation, but we're pretty vague on the details. When I pondered the "tax loopholes" that the rich were exploiting, I pictured, you know, long lists of equations salted with Greek symbols, completely beyond my ken.

But when Propublica's series laid these secret tactics out, I learned that they were incredibly stupid ruses, tricks so thin that the only way they could possibly fool the IRS is if the IRS just didn't give a shit (and they truly didn't – after decades of cuts and attacks, the IRS was far more likely to audit a family earning less than $30k/year than a billionaire).

This has become a somewhat familiar experience. If you read the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, Luxleaks, Swissleaks, or any of the other spectacular leaks from the oligarch-industrial complex, you'll have seen the same thing: the rich employ the most tissue-thin ruses, and the tax authorities gobble them up. It's like the tax collectors don't want to fight with these ultrawealthy monsters whose net worth is larger than most nations, and merely require some excuse to allow them to cheat, anything they can scribble in the box explaining why they are worth billions and paying little, or nothing, or even entitled to free public money from programs intended to lift hungry children out of poverty.

It was this experience that fueled my interest in forensic accounting, which led to my bestselling techno-crime-thriller series starring the two-fisted, scambusting forensic accountant Martin Hench, who made his debut in 2022's Red Team Blues:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

The double outrage of finding out how badly the powerful are ripping off the rest of us, and how stupid and transparent their accounting tricks are, is at the center of Chokepoint Capitalism, the book about how tech and entertainment companies steal from creative workers (and how to stop them) that Rebecca Giblin and I co-authored, which also came out in 2022:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Now that I've written four novels and a nonfiction book about finance scams, I think I can safely call myself a oligarch ripoff hobbyist. I find this stuff endlessly fascinating, enraging, and, most importantly, energizing. So naturally, when PJ Vogt devoted two episodes of his excellent Search Engine podcast to the subject last week, I gobbled them up:

https://www.searchengine.show/listen/search-engine-1/why-is-it-so-hard-to-tax-billionaires-part-1

I love the way Vogt unpacks complex subjects. Maybe you've had the experience of following a commentator and admiring their knowledge of subjects you're unfamiliar with, only have them cover something you're an expert in and find them making a bunch of errors (this is basically the experience of using an LLM, which can give you authoritative seeming answers when the subject is one you're unfamiliar with, but which reveals itself to be a Bullshit Machine as soon as you ask it about something whose lore you know backwards and forwards).

Well, Vogt has covered many subjects that I am an expert in, and I had the opposite experience, finding that even when he covers my own specialist topics, I still learn something. I don't always agree with him, but always find those disagreements productive in that they make me clarify my own interests. (Full disclosure: I was one of Vogt's experts on his previous podcast, Reply All, talking about the inkjet printerization of everything:)

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brho54

Vogt's series on taxing billionaires was no exception. His interview subjects (including Eisinger) were very good, and he got into a lot of great detail on the leaker himself, Charles Littlejohn, who plead guilty and was sentenced to five years:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/charles-littlejohn-irs-whistleblower-pro-publica-tax-evasion-prosecution

Vogt also delved into the history of the federal income tax, how it was sold to the American public, and a rather hilarious story of Republican Congressional gamesmanship that backfired spectacularly. I'd never encountered this stuff before and boy was it interesting.

But then Vogt got into the nature of taxation, and its relationship to the federal debt, another subject I've written about extensively, and that's where one of those productive disagreements emerged. Yesterday, I set out to write him a brief note unpacking this objection and ended up writing a giant essay (sorry, PJ!), and this morning I found myself still thinking about it. So I thought, why not clean up the email a little and publish it here?

As much as I enjoyed these episodes, I took serious exception to one – fairly important! – aspect of your analysis: the relationship of taxes to the national debt.

There's two ways of approaching this question, which I think of as akin to classical vs quantum physics. In the orthodox, classical telling, the government taxes us to pay for programs. This is crudely true at 10,000 feet and as a rule of thumb, it's fine in many cases. But on the ground – at the quantum level, in this analogy – the opposite is actually going on.

There is only one source of US dollars: the US Treasury (you can try and make your own dollars, but they'll put you in prison for a long-ass time if they catch you.).

If dollars can only originate with the US government, then it follows that:

a) The US government doesn't need our taxes to get US dollars (for the same reason Apple doesn't need us to redeem our iTunes cards to get more iTunes gift codes);

b) All the dollars in circulation start with spending by the US government (taxes can't be paid until dollars are first spent by their issuer, the US government); and

c) That spending must happen before anyone has been taxed, because the way dollars enter circulation is through spending.

You've probably heard people say, "Government spending isn't like household spending." That is obviously true: households are currency users while governments are currency issuers.

But the implications of this are very interesting.

First, the total dollars in circulation are:

a) All the dollars the government has ever spent into existence funding programs, transferring to the states, and paying its own employees, minus

b) All the dollars that the government has taxed away from us, and subsequently annihilated.

(Because governments spend money into existence and tax money out of existence.)

The net of dollars the government spends in a given year minus the dollars the government taxes out of existence that year is called "the national deficit." The total of all those national deficits is called "the national debt." All the dollars in circulation today are the result of this national debt. If the US government didn't have a debt, there would be no dollars in circulation.

The only way to eliminate the national debt is to tax every dollar in circulation out of existence. Because the national debt is "all the dollars the government has ever spent," minus "all the dollars the government has ever taxed." In accounting terms, "The US deficit is the public's credit."

When billionaires like Warren Buffet tell Jesse Eisinger that he doesn't pay tax because "he thinks his money is better spent on charitable works rather than contributing to an insignificant reduction of the deficit," he is, at best, technically wrong about why we tax, and at worst, he's telling a self-serving lie. The US government doesn't need to eliminate its debt. Doing so would be catastrophic. "Retiring the US debt" is the same thing as "retiring the US dollar."

So if the USG isn't taxing to retire its debts, why does it tax? Because when the USG – or any other currency issuer – creates a token, that token is, on its face, useless. If I offered to sell you some "Corycoins," you would quite rightly say that Corycoins have no value and thus you don't need any of them.

For a token to be liquid – for it to be redeemable for valuable things, like labor, goods and services – there needs to be something that someone desires that can be purchased with that token. Remember when Disney issued "Disney dollars" that you could only spend at Disney theme parks? They traded more or less at face value, even outside of Disney parks, because everyone knew someone who was planning a Disney vacation and could make use of those Disney tokens.

But if you go down to a local carny and play skeeball and win a fistful of tickets, you'll find it hard to trade those with anyone outside of the skeeball counter, especially once you leave the carny. There's two reasons for this:

1) The things you can get at the skeeball counter are pretty crappy so most people don't desire them; and ' 2) Most people aren't planning on visiting the carny, so there's no way for them to redeem the skeeball tickets even if they want the stuff behind the counter (this is also why it's hard to sell your Iranian rials if you bring them back to the US – there's not much you can buy in Iran, and even someone you wanted to buy something there, it's really hard for US citizens to get to Iran).

But when a sovereign currency issuer – one with the power of the law behind it – demands a tax denominated in its own currency, they create demand for that token. Everyone desires USD because almost everyone in the USA has to pay taxes in USD to the government every year, or they will go to prison. That fact is why there is such a liquid market for USD. Far more people want USD to pay their taxes than will ever want Disney dollars to spend on Dole Whips, and even if you are hoping to buy a Dole Whip in Fantasyland, that desire is far less important to you than your desire not to go to prison for dodging your taxes.

Even if you're not paying taxes, you know someone who is. The underlying liquidity of the USD is inextricably tied to taxation, and that's the first reason we tax. By issuing a token – the USD – and then laying on a tax that can only be paid in that token (you cannot pay federal income tax in anything except USD – not crypto, not euros, not rials – only USD), the US government creates demand for that token.

And because the US government is the only source of dollars, the US government can purchase anything that is within its sovereign territory. Anything denominated in US dollars is available to the US government: the labor of every US-residing person, the land and resources in US territory, and the goods produced within the US borders. The US doesn't need to tax us to buy these things (remember, it makes new money by typing numbers into a spreadsheet at the Federal Reserve). But it does tax us, and if the taxes it levies don't equal the spending it's making, it also sells us T-bills to make up the shortfall.

So the US government kinda acts like classical physics is true, that is, like it is a household and thus a currency user, and not a currency issuer. If it spends more than it taxes, it "borrows" (issues T-bills) to make up the difference. Why does it do this? To fight inflation.

The US government has no monetary constraints, it can make as many dollars as it cares to (by typing numbers into a spreadsheet). But the US government is fiscally constrained, because it can only buy things that are denominated in US dollars (this is why it's such a big deal that global oil is priced in USD – it means the US government can buy oil from anywhere, not only the USA, just by typing numbers into a spreadsheet).

The supply of dollars is infinite, but the supply of labor and goods denominated in US dollars is finite, and, what's more, the people inside the USA expect to use that labor and goods for their own needs. If the US government issues so many dollars that it can outbid every private construction company for the labor of electricians, bricklayers, crane drivers, etc, and puts them all to work building federal buildings, there will be no private construction.

Indeed, every time the US government bids against the private sector for anything – labor, resources, land, finished goods – the price of that thing goes up. That's one way to get inflation (and it's why inflation hawks are so horny for slashing government spending – to get government bidders out of the auction for goods, services and labor).

But while the supply of goods for sale in US dollars is finite, it's not fixed. If the US government takes away some of the private sector's productive capacity in order to build interstates, train skilled professionals, treat sick people so they can go to work (or at least not burden their working-age relations), etc, then the supply of goods and services denominated in USD goes up, and that makes more fiscal space, meaning the government and the private sector can both consume more of those goods and services and still not bid against one another, thus creating no inflationary pressure.

Thus, taxes create liquidity for US dollars, but they do something else that's really important: they reduce the spending power of the private sector. If the US only ever spent money into existence and never taxed it out of existence, that would create incredible inflation, because the supply of dollars would go up and up and up, while the supply of goods and services you could buy with dollars would grow much more slowly, because the US government wouldn't have the looming threat of taxes with which to coerce us into doing the work to build highways, care for the sick, or teach people how to be doctors, engineers, etc.

Taxes coercively reduce the purchasing power of the private sector (they're a stick). T-bills do the same thing, but voluntarily (they the carrot).

A T-bill is a bargain offered by the US government: "Voluntarily park your money instead of spending it. That will create fiscal space for us to buy things without bidding against you, because it removes your money from circulation temporarily. That means we, the US government, can buy more stuff and use it to increase the amount of goods and services you can buy with your money when the bond matures, while keeping the supply of dollars and the supply of dollar-denominated stuff in rough equilibrium."

So a bond isn't a debt – it's more like a savings account. When you move money from your checking to your savings, you reduce its liquidity, meaning the bank can treat it as a reserve without worrying quite so much about you spending it. In exchange, the bank gives you some interest, as a carrot.

I know, I know, this is a big-ass wall of text. Congrats if you made it this far! But here's the upshot. We should tax billionaires, because it will reduce their economic power and thus their political power.

But we absolutely don't need to tax billionaires to have nice things. For example: the US government could hire every single unemployed person without creating inflationary pressure on wages, because inflation only happens when the US government tries to buy something that the private sector is also trying to buy, bidding up the price. To be "unemployed" is to have labor that the private sector isn't trying to buy. They're synonyms. By definition, the feds could put every unemployed person to work (say, training one another to be teachers, construction workers, etc – and then going out and taking care of the sick, addressing the housing crisis, etc etc) without buying any labor that the private sector is also trying to buy.

What's even more true than this is that our taxes are not going to reduce the national debt. That guest you had who said, "Even if we tax billionaires, we will never pay off the national debt,"" was 100% right, because the national debt equals all the money in circulation.

Which is why that guest was also very, very wrong when she said, "We will have to tax normal people too in order to pay off the debt." We don't have to pay off the debt. We shouldn't pay off the debt. We can't pay off the debt. Paying off the debt is another way of saying "eliminating the dollar."

Taxation isn't a way for the government to pay for things. Taxation is a way to create demand for US dollars, to convince people to sell goods and services to the US government, and to constrain private sector spending, which creates fiscal space for the US government to buy goods and services without bidding up their prices.

And in a "classical physics" sense, all of the preceding is kinda a way of saying, "Taxes pay for government spending." As a rough approximation, you can think of taxes like this and generally not get into trouble.

But when you start to make policy – when you contemplate when, whether, and how much to tax billionaires – you leave behind the crude, high-level approximation and descend into the nitty-gritty world of things as they are, and you need to jettison the convenience of the easy-to-grasp approximation.

If you're interested in learning more about this, you can tune into this TED Talk by Stephanie Kelton, formerly formerly advisor to the Senate Budget Committee chair, now back teaching and researching econ at University of Missouri at Kansas City:

https://www.ted.com/talks/stephanie_kelton_the_big_myth_of_government_deficits?subtitle=en

Stephanie has written a great book about this, The Deficit Myth:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/14/everybody-poops/#deficit-myth

There's a really good feature length doc about it too, called "Finding the Money":

https://findingmoneyfilm.com/

If you'd like to read more of my own work on this, here's a column I wrote about the nature of currency in light of Web3, crypto, etc:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/21/we-can-have-nice-things/#public-funds-not-taxpayer-dollars

[frenchkisstheabyss]

♰ ₥ØĐɆⱤ₦ ĐɆ₥Ø₦₴ ♰

♰ Pairing: slasher!yunho x chubby!fem!slasher fucker!reader

♰ Genre: smut/dark romance/horror

♰ Summary: With a ruthless, brutal killer on the loose the safe thing to do would be to stay as far away from dangerous men as possible. But you've never been the kind of girl to play it safe and when danger comes in the form of a man like Yunho, how's a girl to stay away?

♰ Word Count: 3.4k-ish

♰ Warnings: Yunho's a literal serial killer, neither of you die but someone does, sorta vivid description of a limb being chopped off, voyeruism in a way, slasher fetish, sadism, masochism, dom daddy Yunho, choking, restriction of movement, a lil nipple play, penetrative sex, sex covered in blood, dirty talk, scratching, hickeys, other forms of marking, creampie, manhandling, pet names (baby, princess, good girl), you're both kinda psychos...obviously.

♰ A/N: I'd like to say, "Oh, I wrote this because Halloween is coming up!" but, no, I didn't. I'm just a slasher fucker, okay? A part of this was inspired by one of my favorite horror movies and if you can guess it then let's get married. Love you forever.

On a side note, thank you @dawn-iscozy for suggesting Yunho for this. I didn't regret that decision for a solitary minute.

There’s a killer on the loose. A brutal, wicked man who stalks the night preying upon unsuspecting victims. Some say he only goes after those he perceives as having done something wrong. His own perverse way of balancing the scales, righting the wrongs that the cops don’t have the balls to fix.

Others say it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do. Your chances of being butchered are all the same, sinner or saint. One thing’s for sure, once he has his sights set on you not even god himself can save you from the fate that awaits. You’re gone in the blink of an eye, never to be seen again. At least not in one piece. 

You’ve heard the warnings a thousand times over but none of them struck fear into your heart. On the contrary, you have quite the erotic fascination with his art as he calls it in the letters he leaves behind. There’s something about what he does that taps into a fetish for danger that you dare not tell another living soul about. You want to play with fire, scorch the tips of your fingers in his flames. That’s how you ended up here, straddling the lap of a man who claims to be the killer your sick little heart yearns for. 

You met at a club. The kind where people go to indulge their wildest fantasies, no matter how depraved. You were wandering around alone in a tight latex mini dress that fit the richness of your curves like a glove. You had your hair pinned up the way you do now, waterfalls of curls spilling down to frame your face. Expertly applied black lipstick adorned your kissable lips, drawing men in enough that they’d lose their minds thinking of all the things that pretty mouth could do. The man beneath you was among them. 

He spotted you from across the room, your figure bathed in red neon light as you sat at the bar plotting your next move. You let him buy you a few drinks, loosening you both up enough that secrets began to spill as freely as the vodka in your glass. “I wanna know if I tell you a secret, will you keep it?” the dark haired man whispered in your ear, a hand hovering dangerously close to your inner thigh. You swore that you would, hand over your heart. And that’s when he confessed. Your clear fascination with the man known as the Seoul Slasher had prompted him to reveal himself to you. 

You couldn’t believe it. A real live serial killer, an absolute monster, so hypnotized by you he was nearly drooling down your cleavage. Going against every self preservation tactic they taught you in school, you invited him back to your place for a bit of fun. An offer he excitedly accepted. For a man whose entire modus operandi is control, he was more than happy to relinquish it to you. In no time you had him spread out on your bed, arms and legs handcuffed to the bed frame. 

The entire room’s dark save for the flickering wicks of a few candles sprinkled about the room. You run a hand down his bare chest, sharp nails nicking at his tattooed flesh. He hisses at the sting, grinding his hips up against your core to add some pleasure to the pain.

You let out a giggle, fingers teasing the waist of his pants, “Tell me how you did it.” You flash your doe eyes, tightening your plush thighs around his hips. 

“How’d I do what?” he asks, far too preoccupied with your body to hone in on your words. 

“Those last two guys you killed. I wanna know every gory detail. You can tell me while I ride your cock.”

Your words certainly aren’t falling on deaf ears. He heard you loud and clear. He takes a calculated pause before providing you with a less than satisfying answer. “I used a butcher knife. Chopped them up real easy. Some of my best work I’d say.”

“Oh” you pout, shoulders dropping. You fold your arms across your chest, your disappointment hanging heavy in the air. “You really shouldn’t lie, you know? It’s a nasty habit.”

“Lie?” he scoffs, a nervous smile creeping across his face. His deception has failed and he doesn’t have enough brain cells to save this sinking ship. “I’m not lying, babe. I’m telling you. I used a butcher knife.”

You point an accusatory finger at him, applying pressure right between his eyes. “Dirty, dirty, liar” you sing, “You aren’t the Seoul Slasher.”

“And how would you know?” he asks, unjustly offended at the fact that you aren’t stupid enough to buy his bullshit. 

You lean in close, the warm flames of the candles reflecting in your eyes like hellfire. “Because I’m already fucking him and he’s not too happy about you going around pretending to be him. It’s just bad manners.” 

His smile grows more strained, his nervous laughter tickling the tip of your nose. He can’t tell if you’re serious or not but this is getting a little weird. Even for him. You watch him for a moment before erupting in soft, sweet laughter that mocks him. Reaching underneath your pillow you pull out a gag and shove it right into his mouth, shutting him up for the first time tonight. 

“Baby, I’m done playing now!” you call out like a housewife announcing that dinner’s ready. 

You sit back up, climbing off of him, and skip your way over to the dresser on the other side of the room. You hop up, feet giddily swinging back and forth to the tune of heavy footsteps descending the hallway. The man’s eyes dart over to the closed bedroom door, his heart thumping out of his chest. You can make out a few muffled protests but you dare not take it out. There’s nothing he can say that interests you now. Not that it ever did. 

When your best friend first told you that a guy at the club was going around claiming to be the Slasher, you couldn’t believe your ears. Especially not when the real one was sleeping peacefully beside you. Further investigation proved that your best friend had been telling the truth so he had to be dealt with. Then another popped up and another. This one will make for the 4th and you must admit, as annoying as identity theft is for your boyfriend, you get a kick out of luring them here. 

They always start out so cocky but once the gag’s in and those footsteps come, getting closer and closer at an agonizing pace, they’re not so confident anymore. At first they freeze up just like the corpse they’re soon to be. The shock does need a few seconds to set in. And then they panic, screaming through the gag and tugging at their bindings, their bodies writhing like a fish out of water. This one’s no different than the others. You can guess his next move like a film you’ve watched a dozen times and all of it’s in vain. 

Sweat slicks his brow as the door creaks open and your face lights up like the Fourth of July. You breathe a sigh of relief. There he is. You’ve only been apart for hours but it feels like an eternity. A tall figure steps out of the shadows into the candlelight, revealing a handsome man in tailored black pants and a black button up you pressed yourself. His sleeves are rolled up, tucked just below the elbow where a pair of long black latex gloves begin. He spares the unfortunate soul strapped to the bed a passing glance before approaching you. He leans forward, palms flat on the dresser, caging you in. 

“Did I do okay?” you question innocently, always hungry for the praise he never fails to feed you. 

Yunho nods, gloved fingers stroking your soft cheek, “Oh, my good girl. You did more than okay. What would I do without you?”

Taking your chin between his thumb and pointer finger, he tilts your head up, capturing your lips in a kiss that would soak your panties if you were wearing any. He takes a deep breath as he pulls away, not wanting to but knowing that time is of the essence.

“Did he touch you?” Yunho’s jaw tenses, gloved hands flexing to warm up for the night’s events. 

You peek around him to check in on the dark haired man. His face is wet with tears and he’s sobbing all over your new gag. You pray he hasn’t pissed himself. You’re not in the mood to have to buy a new mattress again.

You look back to your boyfriend and nod. “In the car he put his hand on my thigh.” 

“Thank you for telling me, baby,” Yunho says, kissing you on the forehead. He turns around, eyes darkening as he approaches the foot of the bed. “I’ll start with his hands.” 

Kneeling down, he slides a large case from underneath the bed and pops it open to reveal his tools. The spread is a pristine assortment of autopsy tools, not a lowly butcher knife in sight. He delicately runs his fingers over them, settling on the fine toothed bone saw. Your gaze never leaves him as he rounds the bed, aligning the sharp teeth of the saw with what you’ve come to know as the ulna. The bone right on his inner forearm. 

Yunho grinds the saw against it and the man’s arm tears open, tattered pieces of flesh splintering off to the side as he carves his way through tough tendons. Blood gushes from the man’s arm, drenching the brand new sheets in a river of crimson. Yunho’s movements are precise and purposeful. The saw taps bone as the body below him convulses violently, the pain beyond anything you can imagine or ever care to. 

Your boyfriend pauses, glancing over at you, and you know it’s about that time. You open one of the drawers beside you, fishing out your phone and a pair of over ear headphones. You sync them up, hitting play on your favorite song, and smile lovingly back at him.

He can’t be as brutal when he knows you’re listening. It’s one of few things about his profession he’s never quite been able to bring himself to expose you to. Even with the man’s cries muffled, being dismantled brings sounds out of someone that could give the most vile person nightmares. You can watch all you want but you won’t hear them.

It’d be easy to say that you weren’t like this before you met him. You were a sweet, delicate flower and this charming psychopath came along, corrupting your young soul. But a girl doesn’t get wet watching her boyfriend dismember people because she had her purity corrupted.

You were never innocent, you’d simply presented yourself as such. Yunho just freed you from the prison of feeling guilty about what got you off. Power. Not being at the mercy of anyone. Yunho treats you like a princess. You’re never left wanting for anything. Your every desire is satisfied. So what if your Prince Charming comes with a body count? Nobody’s perfect. 

Yunho makes quick work of the body. After the slice to his second arm the man’s already at death’s door and the severing of his knees puts the final nail in the coffin. Yunho tosses the body parts to the ground like the limbs of an old doll. Breathless and blood soaked as he licks splatters of scarlet from his lip, he goes in for another cut.

You’re the only other thing he looks at like he does his work. The excitement of the kill is borderline orgasmic, dopamine coursing through his veins with every gruesome cut. Once he starts he has to keep going, chasing his high until it’s finished and the body’s nothing more than scattered pieces of an impossible puzzle. 

Shoving the torso to the floor, he steps back to catch his breath, waving to get your attention. You slip your headphones off, setting them down to navigate the landmine of limbs and entrails to reach your love. 

“You need some water, Yunie?” you ask, throwing your arms around him. The blood weighing down his clothes sticks to your arms, cool against your skin. It used to feel a bit strange but after a few times you’ve come to find it refreshing like a cool shower on a hot day. 

Yunho shakes his head, a dazed look in his eyes. Usually the adrenaline begins to die down after that final cut but it’s only getting more intense. His chest rises and falls rapidly as he salivates over you like a man on the brink of starvation. “No, I need you. Right now.” 

His lips crash into yours at a thousand miles per hour and you don’t even attempt to stop him. Why would you? Bloody gloves cling to your dress, stripping you of the material. You rip his shirt open, sending buttons raining down onto the slippery hardwood floor. Yunho’s hands ravenously explore your body as you rid him of his pants, painting your plush figure in blood like a canvas. 

Attempting to feast upon your body through gloves is as close to torture as he’s ever come so he tears them off, groaning in delight as his bare hands sink into your pillowy ass. He picks you up, tossing you back on the bed, your breasts bouncing marvelously as you land.

You grin watching your boyfriend stare down at you like an absolute animal. His body’s everything dreams are made of, his flawless, rigid cock already leaking in anticipation. You spread your thighs, teasing him with the arousal dripping from your entrance. Bringing two fingers between your legs, you stroke them between your lips, spreading yourself open for him.

“You want it?” you moan, back arching as you pinch your sensitive clit. 

Yunho positions himself between your legs, palming his cock above a pussy that’s clenching wildly at the ghost of what could be. He places a hand on your thigh, admiring the view. You in a sea of blood toying with yourself for his pleasure. What a sight to behold.

“You aren’t teasing me are you?” he asks, gripping your thigh tighter. His voice is low and rough, feral in every way. 

You bring your slick fingers up to the head of his cock, coating it on your juices. “And what if I am?”

You motion to get up, your brain set on tasting his cock on your tongue, but Yunho’s quicker than you, grabbing your wrists and pinning your arms over your head. His free hand wraps around your neck, the veins of his arms pulsing as he applies the right amount of pressure to leave you breathless but not in pain. 

“Do you want it?” He bumps his cock against your slit, missing on purpose to drag it between your folds. Your body shudders as much as it can with his full weight on you. 

“Mmhmm” you hum, knowing he won’t hurt you but loving that you’re completely at his mercy. 

“You know that’s not enough, baby” he smiles, squeezing your throat tighter, “I need to hear it, princess. Tell me you want it. Beg for daddy’s cock.”

He presses his throbbing tip to your entrance but this time he arches into you, giving you the head and nothing more. The stretch of that alone is disorienting, a wave of heat rushing through you. Releasing his hold on  your throat, he brings his lips to yours, parting them to taste the desperate pleas that spill out. 

“I want you to fuck me, Yunie. I’m so needy for your cock. I have been all night” you whine and his tongue traces your lips. You taste delicious. He inches into you, feeding you a little more then stopping. A little more then stopping. And your body jumps with every motion, pitiful sounds pouring from your lips onto his. 

“Fuck me” you beg, an undeniable brokeness in your tone, “Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck…” Your voice trails off, eyes rolling back as he bottoms out. He lifts off of you, still holding your arms in place above your head, and thrusts into you ever so gently. You clamp down around him tightly enough that it’s hard to move, your pussy's too needy to let go. 

Yunho grins, cupping one of your breasts, “I didn’t know watching me kill got you so hot. You’re sick, you know that?” He pinches your nipple harshly and you squeal, twisting in his hold. 

“I know” you moan, blowing him a kiss, “But so are you.”

“Fuck, I love you” he growls, pulling you under with another dizzying kiss.

His thrusts grow harsher, your warm, spongy walls drawing him in impossibly deeper. His fingers knead the tender flesh of your breast as he brings his tongue down to soak your bud in equal parts blood and spit. Taking the bud between his teeth, he wraps his lip around it, suckling at it without losing his rhythm between your legs. 

“Yunie. So good. So, mmph, aah…” you’re moaning but he gives one particularly hard thrust to your cunt, knocking the words right out of your mouth. 

You want to touch him so badly. To dig your nails into his back while he fucks into you. To run your fingers through his hair, tugging at the deep brown strands as his tongue swirls around your bud.

“Touch” you pout, wiggling your hands. 

Yunho pops your bud free of his lips, licking his way up your breasts, across your heated skin, along your neck, until you’re eye to eye. “Use your words, baby. Tell me what you want.”

“Wanna touch you. Please, daddy” you plead. You’re so helpless. So beautiful.

Yunho watches you squirm, feigning indecision. After an agonizingly long contemplation, he turns your arms loose, the redness on your wrists marking where he held you. Your hands are drawn to him like magnets, scouring every inch of him they can reach just to feel him.

Your nails find his back, digging into the flesh. Yunho buries his face in your neck, moaning at the sensation. “Harder” he whispers, fingers knotting in the sheets beneath you. You dig your nails in deeper, breaking skin, and he’s on the edge of a whimper, the sensation nearly too much for him. 

Slipping an arm around your back, he keeps you flush against him, sinking into you over and over. Your mouth falls open, eyes squeezed closed. You’re saying something but nothing’s coming out. Only whines and moans, the occasional fractured piece of his name.

There’s no bracing yourself for a cock this long and thick. You just have to take it, let it destroy every bit of you until there’s nothing left. A sense of euphoria surges through you and your legs instinctively lock around his waist. 

“That’s it” he coos, fawning over the string of hickeys he’s left on your neck, “Be a good girl and cum for me.” Yunho grabs for your wrists one last time, locking them above your head. He pounds into you so hard the bed creaks, maybe even moves a few inches. “I wanna feel you gushing around this cock.”

Suddenly your breath hitches and your body feels weightless. It’s as if you’re floating above yourself. Watching this gorgeous man fuck you into the mattress like his own personal whore. And you are. You’re more than happy to be. Your senses come back to you in a rush of ecstasy and you’re trembling, crying out as you do exactly as he said. Creaming, gushing, dripping down his length. 

Yunho pulls back, kneeling between your legs to drag his cock out and glide it back in. He goes all starry eyed at the sight of his cock glistening in your cum and soon he’s spilling inside of you. Your needy walls milking his cock of the warm, white liquid that overflows from your delicious pussy.

His hand comes down on your plush belly, enjoying its softness as he feeds you those last few strokes. You’re still moaning weakly when he finishes, laying back on the bed and pulling you on top of him. 

Curled up safe and warm in his arms, you bask in the afterglow, thoughts of the man your boyfriend dismantled little more than a distant thought now. But ultimately it’s difficult to ignore. Especially when your eyes drift up and you notice something dangling in the corner of your eye. 

“Yunie” you say, lightly petting his shoulder. 

Yunho strokes your hair, looking down at you lovingly, “Yes, baby?”

“I think his hand’s still attached to the handcuff.”

[being-worthy]

Venom & Eddie Brock headcanons

I started this a while back and wanted to have it finished before the third movie, Venom: The Last Dance, would come out. Yet, it got sooo long that I decided to split the first headcanon into several parts (not quite sure how many there'll be).

I might consider doing another one after watching the third movie which would be about their life together during and after Venom 3.

I’m doing a little goal over on my Ko-fi to get some help with unexpected health bills! ✨Any help is super appreciated! 💖

Moodboard credits: Picture found on Pinterest. If someone knows who the creator is, please let me know as there was no name.

Here's the 1st headcanon part set during and after Venom 1 & 2:

To say that Eddie was surprised by your reaction when you saw them in their Venom form for the first time, would be the understatement of the century.

That said, they saved you from a mugger, although V had other reasons, too. He was intrigued by your sweet smell (it had something chocolaty to him, his words).

You were a bit afraid to be honest, after all, Venom is huge and broad, very broad and muscly, and don’t forget the shark-similar teeth. 😬

However, your fascination with V was bigger; wondering what his skin would feel like if you touched it, would it feel more like touching a snake or slimy like a frog? Also, how would it feel to be hugged by him? Does he radiate warmth when hugging?

You mustered all your courage together and asked them if you could touch their face. V squinted his eyes upon hearing your question and wouldn’t quite know what to think of you at first, it was a mix of ‘brave little morsel’ and ‘naïve little morsel’. Eddie was at a loss at hearing your request.

V indulged you and let you touch their face. Eddie just got along with it, not that he’s got much of a choice when V’s in charge, especially when someone else shows interest in him instead of running away screaming. You took the chance to explore his face with your hands thoroughly.

You were fascinated by him. His skin wasn’t slimy or like a snake’s; it was smooth and had a cool feeling on your hands at first, but it radiated warmth to your hands. afterwards.

You thanked them for saving you pulling on V’s arm quietly asking them to bend down a bit further. They did as you asked bending as much as possible to your height, once they were within reach, you lightly placed a small peck on V’s cheek and gave them a faint “thank you”, like this 👇

V’s milky eyes turned into two big saucers at the surprising gesture. They were so happy that you didn’t scream and run off like many before have done and even gave them a soft and warm kiss.

Eddie was also amazed by your reaction. He wasn’t sure if you were a bit crazy or the real deal.

V tried to convince Eddie to take you home with them, but Eddie reminded him that they can’t just “take” you or people in general with them. V annoys Eddie for the whole night for that.

They ensured you made it home safely as they insisted on being your bodyguard for the night and escorting you home.

After that night, they’d regularly bump into you claiming they were just in the neighbourhood, and so not making sure nothing bad happened to you, nor were they keeping an eye on you. This was the start of a beautiful and peculiar friendship.

To be continued...

Comments and reblogs are always appreciated! Do not copy or translate my work plz!

💫 My Ko-fi page

[plethorawrites]

Guys! Clark has started to invade too!!! Anyway, today I was thinking about Smallville Clark Kent (personal go to when thinking about the character) with a new neighbor from the city...

---___---___---___---___---___---___---___---___---_

Clark Kent: Who sees you by the fence, petting his family's horses, and doesn't recognize you, which is odd because he recognizes everyone in such a small town.

Clark Kent: Who quickly realizes from the way you dress to the lack of an accent that you're not just new in town, but from some larger city that probably has apartment buildings with more tenants than the entire town has people.

Clark Kent: Who brushes off your apology for petting the horses, which you'd only done because you've never seen any in real life and couldn't resist how sweet they looked.

Clark Kent: Who watches you insist on going home to unpack instead of keep talking, but runs into you at school the next day and offers to show you around.

Clark Kent: Who you offer a ride home in your car as a thank you for being an extremely patient tour guide.

Clark Kent: Who accepts, under the condition that you let him show you the town too and when you tell him you pretty much have with how small it is, shakes his head and tells you there's a lot of places people don't know about aside from him or a few other kids.

Clark Kent: Who not only shows you his favorite places the next time you're both free, but also says he would be glad to teach you to ride, if you ever wanted.

Clark Kent: Who is thrilled when you take him up on it and spends several hours on a trail with you at a calm pace, keeping close in case anything suddenly spooked your horse. Although they were incredibly good horses so there weren't any problems.

Clark Kent: Who was fascinated by watching you slowly get more accustomed to the town—wearing clothes that were from a local boutique instead of a designer brand, engaging in the rather silly but beloved town traditions, even cutting off some of the friends from the city who you realized weren't really your friends at all after they once visited and immediately started making fun of Clark and his friends.

Clark Kent: Who was surprised at first, when you showed up at his family's door one day asking to help with the animals, but quickly got used to you coming over to help him feed or bathe them, which you claimed was your way of thanking him for the riding lessons but he suspected you just wanted an excuse to be with the animals.

Clark Kent: Who knew you'd fit in with his friends after they got over their own prejudice of you being rude or pretentious because you're from the city and likes hanging out with you with them but likes it just as much, maybe more, when everyone leaves and you're able to stay a bit longer in the barn.

Clark Kent: Who leans out the window next to you, enjoying the breeze as the sun sets and tells you he's glad you moved to Smallville.

Clark Kent: Who sees you shudder from the cold and instantly wraps his jacket around you, conveniently ignoring your blushing cheeks in case he was misreading the situation.

Clark Kent: Who still carefully tucks a piece of hair out of your face—while the voice in head screams not to ruin things—just to see it better and wets his lip while staring at yours.

Clark Kent: Who leans in slowly, waiting for the moment you'd slap him and walk out for daring to try something with you, but only sees you leaning in too.

Clark Kent: Who kisses you for the first time while you're in the barn, wearing his jacket, but promises himself then and there that it wouldn't be the last.

[satsugacafe]

𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐒/𝐎

➳❥ 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫: Grimmjow, Starrk, Ulquiorra

➳❥ 𝐑𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭: Hello! Can I have a request? How would Starkk, Grimmjow, and Ulquiorra adjust to a human world with human s/o?

➳❥ 𝐀/𝐍: I had too much fun with this piece lol. Enjoy!

➳❥ 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭: How they adjust to living in the human world with you.

𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐍𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

Coyote Starrk

↬ Starrk found the human world baffling, mainly because of how noisy everything seemed compared to Hueco Mundo. Car alarms, the hum of electricity, and people chatting endlessly in cafes had him constantly muttering, “Do humans ever shut up? Where is the off switch?”

↬ He had a lazy charm that worked in his favour. He would somehow manage to get free samples from the bakery down the road just by looking mildly interested. “You know, this human world isn’t so bad when they hand out food for no reason.”

↬ Teaching him to use modern appliances was a trial. He once accidentally turned the vacuum cleaner on full blast and almost blasted himself through the wall. “This thing’s alive, isn’t it?”

↬ He was a natural with animals, though. Dogs adored him, and he could walk into a park and have a pack of strays following him within minutes. You joked he was assembling a canine fracciones.

↬ He had an odd fascination with pigeons. He’d sit on park benches for hours, watching them mill about, occasionally throwing them crumbs. “They’re like tiny, less annoying Lilynettes. I like them.”

↬ Cooking became a mild obsession for him once he realised how much variety the human world offered. You caught him watching cooking tutorials on your phone. “Why do they all say, ‘easy recipe’ when this involves twenty steps and an oven I barely understand?”

↬ He was incredibly protective in the human world, though it didn’t show in dramatic ways. He’d keep you on the safe side of the pavement, steer you away from crowded areas, and shoot deadly glares at anyone who even glanced at you wrong. “Humans don’t know their place sometimes. Annoying, really.”

↬ He once tried going grocery shopping alone and came back with entirely the wrong things. You asked for bread and milk; he brought back jam and six bags of crisps.

↬ You introduced him to Netflix, and he became addicted to crime dramas. He liked to critique the criminals’ plans. You also caught him talking to your cat one afternoon, a very serious conversation about naps. “Listen, furball, if you don’t appreciate a good nap, what’s the point of life?”

↬ He was baffled by your human obsession with coffee. One morning, after trying it for the first time, he leaned back, his eyes narrowing at you. “So you willingly drink this dirt water every day?”

↬ Every time you mentioned going to work, he’d dramatically throw himself across the doorframe. “No. Stay. Your world’s already loud enough—don’t leave me to suffer alone.”

↬ Sleeping in the human world was oddly peaceful for him. He would stretch out on your sofa, claim half the bed without meaning to, and casually drape an arm over you. Just don’t let him sleep on a water bed. Worst sleep of his life.

Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez

↬ The feral kitty cat was convinced humans were weaklings until you took him to a gym. He ended up challenging some poor bloke to a weightlifting contest, won, and then complained it wasn’t a fair fight. Eventually, exercising was his idea of fun. He got addicted to the gym, showing off during pull-ups or weightlifting. “You watching? Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

↬ Adjusting to technology was a nightmare. He refused to admit he didn’t know how to use a phone and kept swiping at the screen like he was challenging it to a fight. “Why doesn’t it do what I tell it to? Stupid thing.”

↬ He got into trouble almost daily. One time, he scared a street performer by growling when they asked for a tip. You had to stop him from picking fights with random joggers. “What? They were staring too long. Looked like they wanted a challenge.”

↬ You tried teaching him how to cook, but he turned it into a battle. “Fire’s too weak. How do you even boil water in this thing?” He ended up burning toast and proudly declaring it a success.

↬ He was surprisingly good with kids, though he’d never admit it. Once, a group of kids challenged him to a game of football in the park, and he got way too into it. You had to stop him from trash-talking a ten-year-old. “What? They need to toughen up!”

↬ Animals adored him, which annoyed him to no end. Dogs would trot up to him on walks, wagging their tails. “What’s your deal? Go away!” But you caught him sneaking them pats when he thought you weren’t looking.

↬ Grimmjow got jealous easily in the human world. If anyone flirted with you, he’d casually stand behind you with his arms crossed, glaring like an angry kitty ready to pounce. “They can look somewhere else unless they want trouble.”

↬ You introduced him to video games, and he was instantly hooked. He preferred fighting games and made it his mission to beat you every time. “Don’t hold back, or I’ll make you regret it.” When he finally lost, he pouted for hours.

↬ He mocked human horror films relentlessly. “This is supposed to scare you? I’ve seen Hollows scarier than that guy with the knife.”

↬ He hated wearing human clothes at first and complained endlessly about jeans (like those skinny jeans Urahara gave him lol). “These things are like a prison for my legs!” Eventually, he settled for hoodies and track pants, which he grudgingly admitted were “not bad.”

↬ Going out to eat was chaos with him. He’d order the spiciest thing on the menu just to prove he could handle it, then spend the rest of the meal pretending his face wasn’t red. “I’m fine. This? This isn’t hot at all.”

↬ He did love human food but refused to admit it. “What’s this crap? Tastes alright, I guess.” Yet you caught him hoarding spicy crisps and chugging fizzy drinks like they were going out of style.

Ulquiorra Cifer

↬ The fourth Espada treated the human world like a scientific experiment, observing everything with quiet fascination. You once caught him staring at a vending machine for ten minutes before he asked, “How does it decide what to give you?”

↬ He doesn’t understand the need for human social practices, like small talk. When someone greeted him with, “How are you?” he replied, “That is irrelevant,” and walked away, leaving you to apologise.

↬ He had an unexpected knack for blending in. His quiet demeanour and neutral expression made him oddly suited to working in your local library. The librarian adored him for his efficiency, though he refused to smile at patrons. “They do not need my emotions to find a book.”

↬ He doesn’t understand sarcasm at all. When you joked about him being a terrible flatmate, he replied, entirely serious, “Then perhaps I should leave.” And then proceeded to depart.

↬ Was very baffled by human food. You once handed him a chocolate bar, and he stared at it like it was a piece of alien technology before taking a cautious bite. “This…is acceptable.” But no spicy food, please.

↬ He was deeply confused by human emotions. Once, you cried watching a sad film, and he frowned. “Why are you leaking from your eyes over something fictional?”

↬ He adapted to human clothes surprisingly well, favouring monochrome outfits that matched his Espada uniform. You teased him about looking like a model, and he replied, “If that is how humans perceive me, it is irrelevant.”

↬ Ulquiorra had a habit of silently appearing behind you, scaring you half to death. When you yelled at him, he tilted his head and said, “If your reaction is fear, then perhaps your spiritual awareness is lacking.”

↬ He found rain fascinating. One evening, you found him standing on the balcony, staring at the sky as water drenched him.

↬ Despite his stoic nature, he had a protective streak. Once, a stranger got too close to you, and Ulquiorra stepped in, his gaze cold. “You are intruding. Leave.” The stranger bolted without another word.

↬ He often left you cryptic compliments. When you asked if he liked spending time with you, he’d say, “Your presence is…not unpleasant. That is sufficient, is it not?”

↬ He found the human world illogical but not without value. One night, as you both watched the stars from your balcony, he quietly admitted, “You humans…are fragile, yet endure. It is strange.”

©satsugacafé 2024: no permission to repost, plagiarise, copy or translate my work onto any other platform or this one.

[hauntedhouseghost]

Misogyny in Shifting Criticism

If you’ve heard about “Reality Shifting” but (like me) aren’t yourself involved in the community, it’s probably been presented to you as a TikTok trend amongst teenage girls obsessed with Harry Potter that emerged in response to the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. The most generous critics have framed it as an online game of pretend amongst bored quarantined teenagers; the harshest have sounded the alarm that reality shifting is a psychosis. This alarmist reaction to a trend amongst teenage girls exploring their sexuality through such a benign thing as fantasizing about Draco Malfoy was suspicious. I thought they were wrong, but I didn’t know enough about Shifting to know for sure. 

Social media in general seems to have become increasingly conservative since 2020. I see Dark Academia and Cottagecore as connected to today’s BookTok and Trad Wife (through shared aesthetics and hobbies), both of which have been criticized as anti-feminist and anti-intellectual. I wanted to see if Shifting would fit into that pattern and have a more conservative 2024 offshoot. After learning more about Shifting, I have found that:

As expected, shifting criticism is almost always laced with misogyny

It doesn’t have a conservative offshoot, but it is ideologically connected to New Ageism and the “conspirituality” wave that has swelled since COVID first hit. 

Misogyny in Discussions of Shifting

People always shit on whatever teenage girls are into, and this is just another example of that. The mindset that teenage girls are vapid/gross/stupid/etc has misinterpreted Shifting as a solo endeavor, a TikTok trend, and a mental illness. Here’s why they’re wrong:

Even though people might practice Shifting alone, it’s still a very communal practice. As researcher Sarah Perez writes:

“...to call reality shifting ‘solitary’ misses the continuous exchange of stories, tips, motivational messages and more…—making the practice highly social” (“Through the Looking Glass” 298).

Connecting to the above: “shifter” refers to anyone who believes in and practices shifting, not just people who have themselves shifted. Researcher Sara A. Kumar found that only 78.7% of self-identified shifters have experienced a successful shift (“Through the Looking Glass,” 299). 

While shifting does involve seeing/hearing/smelling/feeling/etc things that others cannot, those experiences only happen when a person intends them to. In psychotic disorders, people cannot control their engagement with/break from reality. 

Lots of religions have developed within fandoms online. Others have focused on Jedis, the Matrix, or The Lord of the Rings. What sets shifting apart is its association with young women. Interestingly, another fandom religion that got mocked a lot is SnapeWives. Also, Snape is probably appealing for very similar reasons as Draco—both are quite tortured and feminine-coded—but that's a separate tangent.

I was looking at YouTube shifting criticism and found this gem:

What's fascinating is that this guy's whole account is dedicated to videos about lucid dreaming!!! In this video, he calls [air quotes] “reality shifters” "weird," "insane," and "fucking annoying" and says “Reality shifting is just bullshit, it’s just a dream" (1:30-34). He characterizes shifters as all wanting to go to Hogwarts and “fuck Draco Malfoy” (at 1:15-17). The top comment reads: “Reality shifting is the astrology of lucid dreaming.” Astrology is another New Age spiritualist belief that is generally disparaged by outsiders and is also associated with young women. However, as a wise person once Twote:

With shifting, could we say that lucid dreaming is the version of “reality shifting” that is acceptable to men?

6. Another video I found is called “'Reality Shifting': How the Tiktok Teens are Giving Themselves Psychosis” (by Nicholas Black). In this, the YouTuber says (at 2:04-16) “It was a TikTok on Reels with a teenage girl claiming that she shifted realities so she could become Draco’s girlfriend.” He then shows a video along those lines, and afterwards says “You can imagine I was concerned.” Other videos on his page are titled in similarly misogynistic and panicky ways:

“Are Booktok girlies “corn” addicts?”

“Instagram won’t stop recommending me Tradwife Reels”

“When TikTok users get ahold of words they don’t understand”. The example of such a word given in the thumbnail is “Male Gaze,” which is connected by an arrow to the winking eye of a stock image white man. Beside this is the text: “Please actually read Laura Mulvey’s theory. I’m begging you.”

All of these position him as superior to whoever his video focuses on, and he seems to focus on women/women's sub-cultures a lot.

New Age & Philosophical Roots

Western philosophy focuses on skepticism, as in Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am.” This idea that our perception of reality is uncertain underlies conspiracy thinking (ex: QAnon), vaccine denialism, and reality shifting.

Authors Beres, Remski, and Walker coined the term "conspirituality" to refer to the combo of conspiracy thinking and New Age spirituality (think: QAnon believers who rely on healing crystals to protect themselves from COVID and psychic vampires or whatever). They define the central tenets of conspirituality as:

Nothing happens by accident

Nothing is as it seems

Everything is connected

In “Granola Fascism” (ContraPoints, at 37:51-38:06) she says, “New Age and conspiracy thinking share a hunger for meaning. They feel that all of reality should be comprehensible to the intuition of any individual human mind. This is a way of seeing that is epistemically empowering.” These emotional needs that drive people to conspiracy theorizing also drive young people to ShiftTok (and shifting content elsewhere). Of course, there are other appeals of ShiftTok - creative expression, escapism, community. Those and its main demographic are what distinguish ShiftTok, but at its core is still this search for narrative meaning and agency.

How psychologically different really are shifting and ideas about the “deep state”? What differentiates them is their emotional ~flavor~. QAnon believers of a secret deep state cabal of pedophiles craft a reality around soothing fear. Shifting can craft realities around soothing depression and hopelessness. They are both removals from, not engagements in, reality. Some shifters’ Desired Reality is just like this one, but without climate change, or just like this one, but with their family unaffected by depression. In response to the question “Why do people come back to their cr?” one Redditor said this:

Conclusion!!!

Shifting is actually super interesting!

Fandoms generate actual religions/spiritual practices that aren't any less plausible than older, established religions

Teenage girls can't do anything without people pathologizing it or acting like it's freakish and bad

[lady-pug]

Written Between the Lines

Interlude - Meddling With Our Hearts

Summary: Five times someone interferes with yours and Aemond’s relationship and one time you decide to take the reins and shape your own fate.

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x Reader

Word count: 6,9k

Warnings: canon-typical incest (uncle-niece)

Notes: Hello!! How have you all been? This one came out faster than I expected! Yay!

Okay, just to explain a few things, so this chapter is a bonus, non-chronological chapter in the story. It is separated into items, as it follows the ‘5+1 Things’ model, spanning across several years. In item 1, Reader and Aemond are very young, around 4 and 6 respectively (and Aegon is around 10), whereas items 2, 3, 4 and 5 are set after chapter 1 of this story (think episodes 6 and 7 of season 1). Lastly, the last item is set in the middle of chapter 2. 

I am having lots of fun writing for Aemond, so much so I have a few ideas for unrelated one-shots I plan on writing for him. Anyway, I really really hope you enjoy this!

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1. Aegon Targaryen

As young children, wherever Aemond Targaryen was you were never too far behind. As the eldest of Rhaenyra Targaryen’s children, you were often regarded as a possible successor of your mother’s to the title of the Realm’s Delight, being soft and sweet and so very beautiful even from such a young age. There was no shortage of people wanting to gaze upon you, spoil you with attention and possibly win over the favor of the heir to the Iron Throne after King Viserys I. But there was only ever one person whose attention you truly craved.

With the birth of your younger brother Jace and your mother’s pregnancy with yet another child, your parents’ attention was naturally split. It wasn’t to say they neglected you or favored your brother above you, oh no, but it was only natural that you were no longer their sole focus, even more fickle given their duties at court. Your father in particular, Ser Laenor, tried to give you as much attention as he possibly could, but even then that was restricted to specific times of the day, mostly at supper and after. It was an adjustment, for sure, and for a little while you resented your little brother, but you were quick to find another source of the attention you craved somewhere else: your uncle Aemond. You couldn’t possibly know why, nor had you ever thought about it, but you were drawn to him in ways you could not explain. And the feeling seemed to be mutual.

Aemond Targaryen, as the second son of King Viserys and his fourth child, was most often overlooked by many in court. He wasn’t Rhaenyra, who held their father’s unconditional love, or Aegon, who carried the title of his first male child, and matters were made worse by the fact that his dragon egg had yet to hatch, whereas Aegon’s had done so when he was still pretty young, and Helaena had quickly claimed Dreamfyre. Even his mother, who once doted on him like never before, had lessened her attention over him, as her fourth pregnancy progressed and her affection usually leaned more towards her only daughter. 

So when his little niece, barely old enough to attend lessons, had developed a fascination towards him and would often trail behind him wherever he went, he absolutely basked in the attention that was so freely given. You, who had no obligation to him other than to be cordial at best, gazing up at him with adoration in those innocent eyes made him cherish the moments you spend together.

It was only natural, then, that the two of you could often be found in each other’s presence. Whenever neither of you were having lessons and were left to your own devices, you seemed to always find each other, your tiny hand enveloped in Aemond’s not much bigger one as he pulled you behind him towards whatever destination he had in mind.

“Where we going, Aem?” your sweet voice, not yet able to properly speak his name, would often ask. The library, the dragonpit, the gardens, it didn’t truly matter as long as you were together.

Aem.

The nickname you had bestowed upon him was one of his deepest treasures. To everyone else he was either Aemond, son or brother, and two of these he had to share with other people, but to you, and to you alone, he was Aem. It was something so inherently his, something to share with you and only you. It reminded him of you, of the devotion and admiration you held for him, something no one else seemed to have for him, and he never wanted to let go of it.

But as he would be reminded time and time again he should never hope, nor should he wish for good things for himself, for they could be ripped from him at a moment’s notice.  

The day had started out like any other: after your lessons you had quickly scrambled out of your quarters to find Aemond and spend the day together. He had decided, then, to take you to the training grounds to watch some of the knights train.

“See that one over there?” he pointed to a man, just barely out of adolescence, training with Criston Cole “That is Ser Arryk. Or could he be Erryk? It matters not, either way, both of them are really good. Ser Criston is training them to be the newest members of the Kingsguard.”

“Wow.” you sounded from next to him, mesmerized by the clash of the swords.

“Impressive, hm?” he then pointed to another man who was supervising the training “Ser Criston, over there, he is the best knight in all the realms. I hope to train under him and be as good as he is one day.” 

He was eager to start training with the sword, like his older brother already did. His mother had promised him that he could start his own training after his next nameday, though it was still a few moons away, he was already eagerly waiting for that moment.

“You be amazing knight in future, Aem.” you turned towards him then, that look of pure reverence made warmth spread in his chest, for he felt your words were true.

“Aem?!” a familiar voice cackled behind the two of you, and Aemond could feel the cold dread seeping into his heart like it usually did when his brother decided to torment him.

Aegon marched over in your direction, almost an entire head taller than Aemond, and ruffled his younger brother’s hair with a tad more force than necessary.

“Oh, Aemy, you will be such an amazing knight one day.” he spoke in a poor imitation of your own voice, high pitched and overly sweet and dreamy. Your face was scrunched in anger and poorly contained humiliation, and had the two of you not been under scrutiny Aemond would have found it adorable.

“Aegon, stop it!” he tried defending the two of you but he couldn’t stop his own cheeks from lighting up in embarrassment.

“Aemy, oh, Aem. Perhaps our mothers will marry us off to one another and I can carry your children.” Aegon chuckled before flicking his brother on the forehead “You would surely want that, wouldn’t you, you twat?”

You couldn’t take it anymore. With a warcry unbefitting of a princess of the realm you delivered a sharp kick to Aegon’s shin, the only part of him you could really reach, before running off with tiny droplets streaming down your cheeks. Aemond tried going after you, holding your wrist, but you swatted his hand away and disappeared around the corner.

“She attacked me!” Aegon complained, voice strained from the intensity of the blow, utterly baffled at how something so small could carry so much strength.

“Oh, please!” Aemond pushed past his brother, annoyed, before stomping away towards his own quarters “It barely scratched. And you deserved it.”

For the next three days you ignored both of them, preferring to spend your days with Heleana. Whenever he asked about you, his mother would claim you didn’t wish for visitors and would rather stay in the company of your aunt. Aemond couldn’t deny that it stung, the only person he felt cared for him deeply, no longer wanting to spend time with him.

So he was overjoyed when, on the fourth day, you approached him as if nothing had ever happened, your expression light and smile bright as you held his hand.

“Where we going, uncle?” and his face fell, joy completely dissipating and giving way to sadness. 

You refused to call him by his previous nickname after that day, opting to refer to him only as ‘uncle’ going forward, and Aemond felt an overwhelming longing for things to go back to the way they were. He couldn’t help the resentment he felt towards Aegon for ruining what you had, for he felt it in his bones that things between the two of you would never truly be the same again.

2. Jason Lannister

You were bored out of your very mind at the moment. You had zoned out completely and could barely hear the incessant droning of Jason Lannister’s voice in the background as you reflected upon your life at the moment.

After that night in the bathtub where you shared your very first kiss with your uncle, you feared things between the two of you would change, and change for the worse. You didn’t want that, cherishing what you had with Aemond, even if it never went anywhere beyond friendship. But you needn’t have worried so much, for both of you seemed adamant in not ever speaking of that night ever again. It did sting a little if you were being honest with yourself, but you preferred that over ruining what you had.

So you were very much looking forward to spending a few hours with him before lunch when you were intercepted by Ser Jason Lannister.

“You look wonderful today, my princess.” the man had smiled down at you.

“Uh, thank you, my lord.” you answered, confused as to what he could possibly want.

“Why don’t you give me the pleasure of going on a stroll with me around the gardens?”

You didn’t know why he wanted to take a stroll with you of all people. And to be fair you didn’t want to spend more time than necessary in his presence. What you did want was to find Aemond and spend your day with him. But something, a strange sense of propriety and duty, held you back and you found yourself agreeing with his proposal.

That’s how you ended in the current situation, arm looped with his as he droned on and on and on about himself and his wealth and his castle and many other topics you couldn’t care less about. 

In your reverie you hadn’t even realized you had reached the training grounds until Aemond, who had just finished his training session with Ser Criston, smiled and waved at you as he was putting a wooden shield away. You were about to wave back when Ser Jason’s voice pulled your attention back to him once more.

“Well, princess, this is where we must part ways, unfortunately.” he gave a small bow of his head before letting go of your arm “The maesters say it is good to keep active, so I will go see if I can find a sparring partner.” 

You barely spared him a courtesy as Aemond was already by your side, ready to whisk you away.

“What was that all about?” he asked when you were already halfway to the library, a sense of unease pulling at his heartstrings once he remembered the way your arm was linked with the older lord.

“I do not know for sure.” you shrugged “I barely paid attention to what he was saying. Something about his riches I believe, we just went on a walk around the Keep.”

He laughed then, though it lacked any mirth, and his smile no longer reached his eyes.

“What is it?”

“You are so naïve, niece.” he explained.

“And why is that?” you questioned, feeling slightly offended.

“He wishes to court you.”

Your disgust at the thought must have been reflected very clearly upon your face, for he let out a full, genuine laugh this time.

“B-But- why?!” you tried collecting your thoughts, flabbergasted by such revelation “He is so…”

“Arrogant? Boring? Plain? All of the above?” Aemond completed for you, jesting at the situation.

“Old!” you whined and he laughed even harder at your expanse “I mean it! He is older than my own father!” you got closer to him to whisper conspiratorially at him “I heard he courted mother when she was looking for a husband, and he was already considered too old for her at the time.”

His laughter echoed around the halls, a few servants stopping to stare at the two of you, dumbfounded at the way you seemed to be able to bring the usually stoic prince out of his shell.

“But why does he wish to court me? Why not some other, older, lady?” you asked, still confused.

“Well, you are not just any lady, mandianna. You are a princess.” he explained, though his words seemed practiced, like they were reflections of not his own thoughts but those of other people “Any lord would jump at the opportunity to wed you. Chances are, in fact, that more suitors will start to flock around you for attention as you grow.”

“Ugh!” your shoulders slumped under the weight of your frustration “I do not wish to marry these lords!” you threw your hands up in exasperation “I just wish to spend my days with you and Helaena! Why can I not just marry you, then?!”

He felt a twinge too tight of happiness at the notion, but chose to ignore it and listen as you continued with your rant.

“If I were to marry one of these lords I would be miserable!”

His face softened in sympathy, remembering the conversation he overheard between his mother and grandsire regarding Aegon and Heleana’s betrothal. He felt pained for his sister, for he knew Aegon would not treat her how she deserved, and now he was seeing the same pattern with you.

“It is our duty, I fear, to find matches that best interest our House.” he spoke softly, but you turned towards him infuriated, and he feared he said the wrong thing.

“But I do not want to marry for duty!” his heart clenched in his chest as he noticed your eyes brimming with tears “I want a husband who loves and cares for me, like father and mother!”

He held back his tongue, knowing that speaking his mind about the kind of love between your parents, or lack thereof, would only upset you further. There was no denying that Ser Laenor cared deeply for Rhaenyra, just not in the way a husband should a wife.

The both of you stayed quiet for a moment, you simmering in your unsettled thoughts and him disappointed he couldn’t comfort you further, for this was something that was out of his hands.

“I would not mind, you know?” he heard you speak softly, turning his head to find you already looking at him.

“What?” 

“Marrying you.” you smiled softly at him “At least with you I would be content. I could see us being happy, even.”

Your words were a soothing balm over his heart, making it clench in his chest. He, too, did find the notion appealing, he could be happy with you, hells, you already made him happy.

“If it matters,” he spoke, trying to hide his true feelings behind a layer of nonchalance “I would not mind marrying you either.”

Your smile brightened then, and you bumped your shoulder with his.

“One can dream, right?” you giggled, before sighing once a servant came to fetch you to clean up before lunch, annoyed that your time with him had been cut short.

But as you walked away an idea formed in his mind, and with a determination he hadn’t felt in a really long time, he set off to find his half-sister.

3. Alicent Hightower

“No.” the Queen’s voice was harsh, and Aemond’s heart filled with dread as he peaked from his hiding place behind a pillar in her solar. He knew he shouldn’t eavesdrop but his traitorous heart was too anxious to wait.

“Come on, your grace.” Rhaenyra answered, clearly annoyed, a hand placed on her very pregnant stomach and another on her lower back, as if standing here arguing was bringing her physical discomfort “The boy came to me, begging for her hand in marriage, all that was left was for him to fall to his knees. She herself has asked about the possibility of marrying him once. They are the perfect match!”

After your conversation earlier that day, Aemond had set off to find Rhaenyra and ask, no, beg her to allow him to court and eventually marry you. She had laughed in his face, and he tried not to show how her dismissal wounded his pride, until her face softened once she realized he was serious. 

“Please, sister.” he had even stooped so low as to address their familial bond, no matter how sour the word tasted in his mouth “Allow me to marry her. As her husband, she would want for nothing, I would protect her with my very life. And I could even… make her happy.”

Rhaenyra’s face softened then, for the first time realizing how much her little brother truly cared for her daughter. She had known the two of you were close, but the depth of your feelings for one another was only now being revealed to her. So she promised him she would speak with his own mother, and if Alicent agreed, then so would she. Aemond’s heart had plummeted then, knowing it would be a lot harder getting through his mother. But he wouldn’t give up hope.

But hope, it seemed, was not enough.

“No, and my answer is final.” Alicent moved about, trying to get Rhaenyra to leave and go bother someone else.  

“Alicent,” even though she had her back towards him, Aemond could imagine the tick in his mother’s eye at the informal way Rhaenyra was addressing her “All I am asking is that you consider it.”

“Why do you even think they would be a good match for one another?”

“Oh, by the Gods, Alicent! Can you not see how much they care for each other? The amount of time they spend together? They are practically glued at the hip at this point!” Rhaenyra threw her hands up in exasperation, and Aemond could see yourself so perfectly in your mother’s image “I will just ask my father then.” 

“Do not entertain that idea even for a moment!” Alicent’s voice became shrill as she glared at her former friend “What is this even about, hm? Are you so afraid that child” and she pointed at Rhaneyra’s prominent bump “will be born sooner or later bearing a striking resemblance to a certain commander of the City Watch once more that you resort to this… this scheming? To secure your line of succession, is that it?”

Ouch. That was low, even for Alicent’s standards. 

Rhaenyra’s face hardened as she stepped closer to the Queen, and for a moment fear gripped Aemond’s heart that he was about to witness his mom get battered.

“My brother, your own son” she spat out, genuinely angry now “begged me to let him marry my daughter when they are older. He promised me he would be a good husband, and for once in my life I am inclined to believe him.” her face softened then, raising her hands as if to grab Alicent’s but let them drop, thinking better than to try and touch her “Please, your grace. If there is still any care left in your heart for the love we once held for one another, please let me do this for him.” 

Aemond waited with bated breath for his mother to say something, anything. For once in his life he allowed himself to hope; he’d give up everything, even his dream of having a dragon of his own, just so she’d say yes. But the longer she went without saying anything, the deeper the cracks in his heart became.

“I will not be able to change your mind, will I?” Rhaenyra asked, her face contorting in sympathy, and when Alicent shook her head, breaking his heart in a thousand tiny little pieces in the process, she sighed “Then I feel sorry for Aemond. For both of them.”

As Rhaenyra left the Queen’s solar, Aemond took his leave as well, his heart shattered and a weight heavy on his stomach, regretting even going to his half-sister in the first place. It seemed you and he could never be after all.

4. Rhaenyra Targaryen

Tears streamed down your face as you ran through the cold tunnels of Maegor’s Holdfast, not caring even for a moment that you were only dressed in a nightgown. The news you had just heard from your father regarding your mother’s decision weighed heavily in your heart, and you had to share them with your uncle immediately. It couldn’t wait until the morrow, because come first light you might be gone.

“Hells, niece, will you ever learn to knock?” Aemond had turned towards you once you barged inside his chambers through the secret door, freezing once he noticed the state you were in. He was in front of you in a second, holding your cheeks in his palms and forcing you to look at him “What happened?”

Even though his image was blurred by the tears that kept on rolling down your cheeks, barely noticing when he started collecting them with his thumbs, you could perfectly see the concern etched upon his features, and that was all it took for you to release the sobs you had been holding back, falling into his arms and hiccuping against his shoulder.

“Mandianna, what happened?!” he asked, holding your trembling figure in his arms and awkwardly trying to console you, running a gentle hand up and down your back. He had never seen you in such a state before, and he did not truly know how to help, much less without knowing the cause of your distress.

Once you had calmed down enough, your wails reduced to soft sniffles, you pulled back from him, running the back of your hand through your face to try and look more presentable.

“Mother has decided to move us to Dragonstone.”

Aemond’s breath hitched then.

“What?” he whispered, taking a step back from you.

“Father just told me. We are to leave King’s Landing come first light in the morrow.”

He felt his whole world crumbling before his very eyes then. He believed his heart could no longer face more damage, for it had already been broken when he overheard his mother and Rhaenyra’s conversation a sennight before, but he felt it shatter all over again at your words.

“C-Can you not stay behind?” With me?, he wanted to ask as his own eyes started filling with tears.

“I asked, but father says we are all to go. Me, Jace, Luke and baby Joffrey.”

His heart was beating widely in his chest, twisting painfully at the prospect of having to face everyday at court without you to keep him company, to keep him sane.

“We can write, of course, but-” you started, voice still trembling.

“It will not be the same.” he completed for you. 

It was true, wasn’t it? Things were about to change. On one hand he wouldn’t have to face the teasing from Jace and Luke, just Aegon, the main instigator. But on the other hand he would lose you, which was so much worse.

But then he noticed how your lower lip had started quivering again and realized he had put quite a lot of distance between the two of you. Not wanting you to jump to the wrong conclusions he crossed the space he had created and cupped your cheeks, looking sternly into your eyes.

“It does not change anything.” 

“Aemond-” you looked at him with sympathy and disbelief but he wasn’t having it.

“No. It does not change anything between us.” he spoke, determined “I will write to you every single day, and I expect a response every time. It will be like you never left. You can fly on dragonback and come visit. And when I get my dragon, I will visit you in return.”

Your smile, although tentative and still wobbly, returned to your face and he felt relief wash through him.

“You said so yourself, the lines promised me I will have a dragon.” he rejoiced at hearing you giggle “I have to make good use of them when time comes.”

A comfortable silence settled over the two of you. Something in your eye, glimmering with a blazing hope, compelled Aemond to lean forward, resting his forehead against yours, his eyes closing as he took everything in.

“We will still be the same.” he felt you move, nodding against his head, never once moving away “We will still be us.” 

And even though, or perhaps exactly because neither of you could prevent the events that would unfold in the following weeks, both of you believed it with every ounce of your souls.

5. Aemond Targaryen 

“Aemond.” you knocked once more, your knuckles red and starting to ache from their incessant contact with the hard wood “Qȳbor, please open the door.”

He hadn’t left his temporary chambers in days, and no one would let you see him. After the whole ordeal with Vhagar and the fight between your two mothers in the grand hall at Driftmark after the loss of his eye, Aemond was whisked away to the quarters he was stationed at during his stay so the maesters could work properly on his wound and for him to sleep off the copious amounts of milk of the poppy he had been given.

Having talked to your brothers and cousins and understood what had gone down, you started feeling a tad guilty for the way you reacted to it. Yes, you were still hurt over what he had said about your brothers and, by extension, you. But at the same time you had let him go when he was the most vulnerable, he had just lost an eye for the Gods’ sake. And yet, even though you were hurting, so was he, he needed you and yet you let go and ran from him.

So you had decided you needed to talk. Perhaps, if you apologized for Luke’s actions and your own behavior, he’d offer an apology of his own, for calling your brothers bastards and for not extending Rhaena the courtesy of trying to claim her late mother’s dragon before him. Then, having cleared the air, you could move past this and go back to the way things were, with exchanged letters and promises of visiting one another. 

But your attempts seemed futile. There was always a guard stationed in front of his door, denying you entrance every single time you asked. Even though they were stern, hardened by their training, you tried using your authority as princess to order them to let you through, but to no such luck.

“Apologies, princess.” they would say, a smidge of sympathy and annoyance in their tone “The prince is to receive no visitors. Orders from her grace, the Queen.”

Panic was starting to grip at your heart, for your time was running out. Eventually, as soon as Aemond was recovered enough to travel, King Viserys and his family would leave Driftmark and return to King’s Landing. By then it would be too late. If you didn’t speak to him now, you would lose Aemond forever. That is, if you hadn’t already lost him for good. You had to speak to him, and it had to be soon, otherwise he’d leave and you would lose the one person you cared most in the world, who understood you like no one else, and would be left to drown in your own loneliness.

So you started scheming. You waited around the corridor of his chambers, waiting for rotation of the guard so you could catch his door unattended. You almost managed once, but Queen Alicent opened the door to exit the room, stopping dead in her tracks once she came face to face with you, about to knock.

“Your grace!” you were quick to recompose yourself “I came to visit the prince. I wish to see if he is faring well.”

You winced, instantly regretting your choice of words once her face hardened. Of course he wasn’t faring well, he just lost his bloody eye! 

“Aemond is not receiving any visitors.” her voice was harsh, and dread overcame you as she started to walk away.

“Wait!” she stopped but didn’t turn around to face you as you pleaded “I just- I just want to see him.”

When she did turn her features were laced with a combination of disdain and pity. It stirred something so deep inside you you almost recoiled and ran, but you decided to endure.

“He doesn’t wish to see anyone, princess.” she spoke, her tone stern yet motherly. But the implications of her words were not lost on you.

He doesn’t wish to see you.

It hurt, tears brimming in your eyes as you turned around and headed for your chambers.  

Did he truly not wish to see you? Or did he just wish for solitude, away from everyone? Could your friendship still be mended after both of you had been hurt like this? 

It didn’t matter, afterall, for you were determined to try until the very end.

That’s how you found yourself in front of his door, finally alone with him, having waited patiently for the guard’s rotation and making sure his mother wasn’t around. It was his final night in Driftmark before he was set to return to the capitol, and so this was your last, final chance to talk to him before that. 

There was a light flickering inside his chambers, visible from under the door, so you knew he likely wasn’t asleep, and when you had knocked for the first time, you heard a thud coming from inside, like he had bumped into some furniture, so you believed he had listened to you. But no matter how many times you knocked, he wouldn’t open it, nor give any indication that he was listening. 

“Aemond, please.” you tried again “Please, let us talk.”

The longer you went without an answer, the tighter the knot that was forming in your throat became. Growing desperate, you laid your forehead on the cold, damp wood.

“Please.” you breathed out, not even sure he could hear you now “Talk to me, Aemond. Please.”

For a moment, a short, passing moment, you heard a flutter of movement from inside the room. Your breath hitched, a tiny flicker of unadulterated hope burning in your chest that he had heard you and was coming to talk. But it was quickly snuffed out when you heard nothing else follow.

A deep ache took over your chest, like something had dug its claws in your heart and squeezed. The inevitability of it all, the looming sense of grief over something so close yet impossibly far, out of your grasp completely, clouded your mind and had your ears ringing.

“I am sorry.” you said, taking a step back and turning around to leave “For everything.”

As you walked away you couldn’t help but feel like a part of you was missing. For you had just lost him for good. Perhaps forever.

+1

As you brushed off your skirts, having been sat on the grass by the weirwood tree, you set off to find your mother, determination written across your features.

You nearly ran into Luke as you walked briskly, sending a thankful look to Rhaena as she helped you steady him.

“Where are you off to in such a rush?” Jace asked as he came up behind your brother at the same time you bypassed him and Baela and continued on your way. 

“To secure myself a husband!” you shouted over your shoulder, not even turning back around to address them. Now all that was left was to find your mother.

And search for her you did. It was imperative that you found her quickly, for you wanted to make sure you did this tonight. It had to be tonight. No one knew how much longer the King would live, and the moment he drew his final breath, a war would break out within your family. A war that would ravage all of the Seven Kingdoms. So you had to make sure that didn’t happen while your grandire was still alive and lucid enough to give you his full support.

But Rhaenyra was nowhere to be found. The Keep was huge and there was a probability that you were both on the move and simply never crossing paths. You even stumbled upon Helaena during your search as she tended to her youngest son, Maelor.

“Have you seen my mother, aunt?” you asked after a brief and sweet exchange, though you did not hug her like you would Baela and Rhaena, for you knew she did not like to be touched.

“I have not, niece.” she bounced baby Maelor in her arms as he cooed up at her “Why are you in such a haste to find her, if I might ask?”

“I have something of utmost importance to discuss with her.” you smirked as you added next, and by the glimmer in her eyes she understood the hidden meaning of your words “I believe I have found myself a suitable husband and must ask her to arrange our betrothal as soon as possible.”

“Oh!” she smiled brightly then “So we might be celebrating tonight.”

To your surprise and confusion, her smile faltered just a bit, her eyes becoming unfocused, before she smiled brightly again.

“With a union forged in fire and blood, the dragon’s nest is put to rest.”

You dared not question her, for Helaena often spoke in riddles, even in your youth. Biding her farewell you went back to your task. You didn’t have to search long though, for you quite literally bumped into your mother and Daemon right as you were turning down the corridor from Helaena’s chambers.

“Mother!” you exclaimed as you helped Daemon steady a once again very pregnant Rhaenyra “There you are!”

“You were looking for me, darling?” she asked.

“Yes.” you cleared your throat, squaring your shoulders “I wish for a husband.”

That seemed to take both of them by surprise, their eyes widening.

“O-Oh!” she smiled then, still confused where this was coming from “And did you have someone in mind?”

“I wish to take Aemond as my husband.” 

“Darling.” her face softened in pity as Daemon scoffed “You know the Queen would never allow this union.”

“That’s not all, mother. I think I may have found a way neither she nor the Hand could refuse.”

Rhaenyra and Daemon exchanged a curious glance with one another.

“Let us hear it then.” your step-father encouraged.

“I want Aemond as my husband.” you took a steadying breath, knowing you’d have to argue the next part “And I want him to be King.”

“Absolutely not!” was Daemon’s reaction, while your mother just looked… betrayed. And it broke your heart. You knew what she was thinking, she had just reaffirmed you as her heir, had to fight for it, and you now want to pass that off to someone else entirely?

“Please allow me to explain.”

“Why would you suggest such a thing?! To that cunt, of all people!” Daemon kept on raging, but his words were abruptly cut short as Rhaenyra raised her hand.

“Let her speak.” her tone was firm, and you knew you had to choose your next words carefully to plead your case.

“Word has come to me of a… plot against you as King Viserys’ heir.” her face twitched in anger for just a moment “The Queen and the Hand will try to instate Aegon as King once grandsire passes.”

“What is new?” Daemon laughed, incredulous.

“And the noble houses would back his claim.” you explained “Many will not recognize you as the legitimate heir-”

“But-” your mother tried cutting you off but you continued over her.

“-regardless of the oath they swore years ago. Simply because Aegon has a cock and you do not.” you hated how crass you sounded, but you had to get the point across “And then a bloody civil war would break out, for you would not let this go unpunished, am I wrong?” 

Rhaenyra pondered for a moment before nodding, and you took that as a sign to continue.

“A war between us, dragonlords, would absolutely decimate not only our House but also the realm. But a marriage alliance between me, your heir and future Queen, and my uncle might just make them give up on this quest.”

“Otto would never settle for his blood being just consort.” Daemon argued.

“That is why he would not be consort.” you smirked, the catch you were waiting to reveal slipping from your lips.

“You shouldn’t give up your claim and be consort either!” your mother exclaimed.

“I would not do such a thing. I would be the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”

Both of them looked baffled.

“Now you have lost me.” she said.

“When the time comes, both me and Aemond would be crowned Queen and King, and we would rule together as equals. No consorts.”

Rhaenyra took a step back from surprise, and Daemon looked like he was told the realm’s funniest joke.

“You cannot be serious, tala!” he chuckled, but there was an undertone of disbelief to it.

“It could work.” your mother spoke to herself.

“Rhaenyra, you cannot be entertaining this ridiculous idea!” Daemon turned towards her then, wringing his hands as if to stop himself from grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking some sense into her “It is not tradition!”

“Fuck tradition!” you exclaimed a lot more harshly than you intended, and probably a lot harsher than it was appropriate. 

You took a deep breath, trying to calm down enough. 

“You being heir over Aegon already breaks tradition as it is. Like I said, many will not see you as legitimate. But even if they do, and you are able to rule, the same thing would happen to me and Jace. But will you make all the great houses swear another oath to you?” Rhaneyra understood where you were going with this “Having a husband to back me up as heir, to rule alongside me, would give me strength in my own claim. If you are already breaking traditions, what is one more, eh?”

“You might want to keep your voice down.” Daemon spoke lowly, and you noticed he was staring at someone “The walls have ears in this Keep.”

From the corner of your eye you saw a familiar figure, and in a moment of panic, grabbed your mother’s hand and pulled her towards the temporary chambers you were housed in. You did not want Aemond to overhear what you had to say, fearful that should anyone hear about this ahead of time it would all crumble to shambles. As Daemon joined you two, shortly after, you continued. 

“Please, please mother! Think about it. It might be the only way.”

Rhaenyra was silent. While Daemon looked vexed, but made no further complaints, she looked deep in thought. You knew she knew you were right. She just had to see it for herself.

“It would be easier to convince them if we had the King’s approval. That is why we need to do this tonight, at supper.”

Daemon bristled but didn’t say anything. Your mother on the other hand agreed, even if she believed this was all very rushed.

“Would you be happy though?” she then asked, and it was your turn to be surprised “Marrying Aemond? After everything that has happened?”

You looked between her and Daemon, and for once in your life you were certain of what you wanted.

“Aemond has always been kind to me. Or most of the time, at least.” you shrugged “I believe, with due time, we could put our differences aside and rebuild what we once had. Perhaps even learn to love each other.”

Again, you meant. Learn to love each other again. At least in your case.

“Then it is settled.” she looked determined “We will pitch this proposition tonight.”

A wave of relief washed over you. This could work, genuinely actually work. Perhaps it didn’t have to end in bloodshed like you believed it would. Maybe your family could be whole again. And all of that at the cost of marrying the one you had longed for deeply in your heart once.

“He asked for your hand once, you know.” Rhaenyra broke you out of your trance, a soft smile on her face and a far away look in her eyes, as if she was reminiscing on a fond memory. Daemon had left at some point, leaving you both alone to share this conversation, too deep and personal for anyone else to hear, in private “Right before we left for Dragonstone.”

Your heart clenched in your chest at the revelation. He had wished to marry you as well?

“He said he could make you happy. And I believed him.” she then looked at you, cupping your cheek as pride took over her smile “I believe it still.”

You grasped at her wrist, feeling warm at the love you could feel it emanating from her.

“If you believe you could be happy as well,” she continued “then you have my blessing. That is all I want.”

You nodded, blinking back tears.

“I do. I will be very happy.” 

She nodded then, pulling you into her arms. In the safety of your mother’s embrace, you finally let yourself relax. Your fate was yours to shape how you saw fit, and you intended to make the most of it.

And you would.

High Valyrian translations: - mandianna - niece (older sister’s son or daughter) - qȳbor - uncle (mother’s younger brother) - tala - daughter (meant here affectionately, not by blood, as there are no terms for step-relative in High Valyrian)

Tag List:

@callsignwidow

@sleephereicome

@bitchassgoose

@voguiing

@dibutw

@fruityvampslayer

@garden-in-the-rain

@queen-of-elves

[vivinens]

a lover's game !

characters: neuvillette, wriothesley & navia.

summary: little things they notice about you.

warning, minor fontaine story spoilers. gender neutral reader. here's a few short drabbles, hello tumblr!

Neuvillette, while famously intrigued by human behavior, often finds himself completely fascinated with you in particular.

For all his objective understanding of worldly matters, he is still confused as to why he specifically craves your attention. It's utterly strange, really, how his eyes seem to trail after your movements and expressions with more care than he would show to others.

You smile differently, when speaking to him. He's picked up on this after numerous conversations involving you two and a third party. When speaking to Monsieur Neuvillette (he often wonders about the soft way you say his name), your tone is easy and your smile is—for lack of a more appropriate word—entrancing. But, the moment your attention turns to the third party, that smile is dimmed.

At first, he simply chalks it up to you wanting to get in his good graces. After all, he's had no shortage of humans attempting to get close to him in order to satisfy their own desires. However, even with his lackluster social skills, he can see how your behavior is different from the people trying to appeal to them for their own merit. Your flustered sentences and bright eyes were not the same as others using flattery to gain status among the court staff.

...Perhaps he should ask Navia about it. Not for the first time, he curses his own lack of social understanding.

Wriothesley is not usually the kind of man who finds himself hung up on trivial details. He spends too much time working and worrying as it is; so why should he make life more complicated for himself?

There were some things he can't help but notice when it comes to you, though. It's midday when he overhears you mumbling to yourself about a new treat from Café Lucerne you'd like to try—as well as something about you having already spent all your "fun mora" for the week. You had sighed to yourself at your own respective desk all afternoon, and the sheer longing he could sense made his eye twitch.

You arrived to your work desk the next morning to see a wrapped gift box atop it. You had gasped when you opened it to reveal the outrageously expensive cake you had been craving all week. Wriothesley couldn't stay to further see your reaction, as to not raise suspicion, but he was content nonetheless.

It was when he arrived at work the next day that he realized—after seeing a steaming hot cup of coffee set on his desk beside a signed thank you note—that you're more observant than you let on. After all, he had taken great care in not letting it be known he was the one who gifted you the cake.

He takes a sip of the coffee. It was the way he likes it. Yes, you were very observant, indeed.

Navia has always had a soft spot for her underlings. She remembers their birthdays, their favorite songs, and those who they would prefer to work alongside. She claims it's her duty as their boss to know such things—although, in the opinion of many, she often goes above and beyond.

However, if you were to ask any of Navia's other subordinates, they would probably say she tries to understand you best of all. You have known one another for a long time, and this friendship was something she held very dearly—especially after the passing of her father. You were a beacon of light in those times, when the world seemed against her and her father's memory.

In some ways, she wondered if she was... taking advantage. You worked hard to support her and Spina di Rosula, and earned hardly nothing in return. Pay was rocky and sometimes even scarce. What if your talents could be better used elsewhere? What if you truly did want to leave? What if—

"You're overthinking again, Navia," you sigh, and before she can even think to respond, your hand is reaching to feel her forehead. You're sat beside one another on a bench, taking a small reprieve after a day spent out and about Vasari Passage. "Hm, I'm surprised you don't have a fever. You've been acting strange all day," you say, tilting your head. "You would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn't you?"

The genuine worry in your voice makes Navia's heart flutter. "No, no, nothing at all!" She exclaims with more confidence than she feels. She seems to be doing that a lot lately. "But... thank you, for worrying about me. You shouldn't have to."

You frown. "I care for you—perhaps more than you understand, Navia. You don't have to speak about it now, but if something is troubling you, I will always lend you an ear."

Sometimes, Navia finds you truly are too understanding of her emotions. Instead of responding, she nods wordlessly, lest the things she wants to say so desperately clog her throat, and reaches to rest her hand against yours. You don't pull away, and the loud hammering of Navia's heart continues in her chest. It does not stop for a long while.

[koqabear]

Lamb To The Slaughter

♫: Gods & Monsters, Lana Del Rey

"An act of kindness goes a long way, your parents told you once; their words stuck with you all your life, your pure heart never failing to follow their philosophy— though, it seems your naive self was left unaware of just how far an act of kindness can go."

wolf hybrid!beomgyu x lamb hybrid!fem!reader x herding dog hybrid!soobin

Genre: smut, hybrid au, angst, porn with the world's smallest amount of plot

Word count: 15.8k

Warnings: barely edited oops, heavy predator/prey themes, injuries/blood, use of scents, scent glands and scenting, mentions of kidnapping and murder, psychological abuse i guess… this fic doesn’t let you forget that they’re hybrids btw, (showcases animal-like behaviors and habits), soogyu are stronger than the mc, obsessiveness, manipulation

Smut Warnings: DUBCON. threesome, mean dom!gyu, soft dom!soobin, sub!mc,inexperienced!mc, pet names (pretty, doll, good girl, etc.) manhandling, marking, subspace, possessiveness, choking kinda, dry humping, praise, praise kink, humiliation, dacryphilia, fingering, exhibitionism/voyeurism, degrading, orgasm control, dumbification, finger sucking, cum eating(?), spanking, begging, mind breaking, unprotected sex, jerking off ig, jealousy, hair pulling, rough sex, corruption kink maybe, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, double vaginal penetration… brief mentions of breeding, creampies, knotting, claiming, mc blacks out. (lmk if i should add anything.)

Notes: look at these stupidly long paragraphs of warnings oh im gonna kms. this story almost had me plucking my hairs out one by one, i’ve never been so stressed out by a pwp before. it was originally an ot5 au and was supposed to come out during october but… yk. shit happens. (i saw a post that changed the entire trajectory of this fic)

[This story contains dark content. Please read the warnings carefully; I am not responsible for the content you choose to consume.]

The forest at the edge of the village is something that should’ve been closed off long ago— but there’s no resources, no men to work on the border, no money— so the townspeople have resorted to old myths and tales to ward off wandering children and defenseless women instead.

There’s a killer in the forest— fairies will lead you down the wrong path and trap you in the woods forever; there’s a hidden pond so deep that if you fall in, you’ll sink forever. Typical tales that are told around the bonfire, where people cower and whisper from the thrill of the stories. Yet with each varied warning, one thing stays the same.  

There are wolves in the forest.

Large and strong and invincible, with a terrifying bloodlust and noses so keen they could spot you the moment you cross the barrier; tearing you to shreds, eating you alive and forcing you to feel the pain all throughout it. The wolves are always hungry, insatiable, and lurking about for its next prey— anyone who would enter the woods willingly would be deemed suicidal. 

You’ve never been one to believe such tales; how could you, when you’ve grown alongside the forest?

There are wolves in the forest, that much you’re sure of— but the fantastical tales and myths are nothing but a farce, crafted from the fear of the unknown and the dark, entangled landscape that lies past the backyard of your small cottage; belonging to your deceased parents, now left to fend on your own and care for the gardens and lush plants your mother had carefully cultivated since you were a child. 

She taught you everything you needed to know about the forest; which paths to take, which areas led to steep cliffs or poison ivy, and where to find herbs and plants that would aid to the medicinal business your family ran— you were fascinated by the craft, even as a young child, learning with eager eyes and an even more eager mind as you stored all the information in your small, worn down journal; the pink material of the cover faded and torn at the corners, filled to the brim yet still useful to you as you took it with you on every trip.  

Tonight, you pull on a warm coat dress; it’s thick and durable, a cute piece gifted on your birthday by the baker’s son, the border collie family always making sure to look after you since the day you were left on your own. The shawl sewed into the coat hangs over your shoulders like a small cape, adding in extra warmth as you look out the window and onto the cold scenery; the leaves have begun to abandon the trees, and if you hadn’t memorized the forest layout like the back of your hand, the covered paths might’ve concerned you— but you’re confident as always, grabbing your wicker basket and perching it on the crook of your elbow, glancing down to make sure your journal is already inside— and with one last mental check to make sure you have everything you need, you slip on your boots and make your way outside. 

“Soobin,” you say in surprise, swinging the door open, getting scared at the sight of someone already waiting for you outside— the said man only smiles at the sound of his name, laughing fondly at the way you press a gentle hand against your startled heart; his ears perk up at the sight of you and his black hair is slightly disheveled, though you guess it’s probably from his habit of running a hand through it whenever he’s restless— he holds a basket of his own, and your eyes fall onto it with a curiosity you don’t bother to hide.

“Hello pretty,” he smiles softly, the nickname never failing to make a heat flush up the back of your neck— you really hope he doesn’t notice your flushed expression, his eyes narrowing with fondness as he brings his basket up, opening it to show you the contents, “I made an extra batch of bread, and I thought you’d like some. Business will get busy for us both soon, and I’d hate for you to get hungry because you don’t have time to eat.”

He’s sweet and caring, and it never fails to leave your knees weak— he looks at you with nothing short of affection, raising a brow in curiosity and glancing down at your already occupied arm— his brows furrow, biting his lip in thought as he finally pieces everything together. 

“Are you going to the woods?” he asks softly, reaching past you and into the doorway, placing the basket of bread on the table next to the door— his hands are immediately coming up to your shoulders, smoothing out the soft material of the coat with narrowed eyes— and they’re filled with worry again, ears angling down and tail swaying slowly from side to side, searching your face that can’t seem to lie to him, “It’s dangerous to go at this hour, you shouldn’t.”

“It’ll only be dangerous if you continue to stall me,” you tease, shrugging his hands off and wrapping your own around his elbow, tugging him until you’re both stepping out of your home; he allows you to, and you’re locking it up with ease, even as he continues to tell you not to, to go another day, another time— you huff, shaking your head and frowning at the way he begins to offer to come with you; his instincts must be kicking in again, eyes filled with a calculated look he only sports when looking out for your safety— and with you being nothing but a fragile little lamb in his eyes, this look was something you’ve become very familiar with. 

“No, you mustn’t come with— it’s dangerous, and I’m the only one who knows my way around the woods,” you scold him, and even though he stares at you with that intimidating, stern look, murmuring about something about his keen senses, you stand your ground, “I’m too one-track-minded to guide someone else through these woods— I’d hate for you to get hurt because of me.”

He sighs— and you know you’ve gotten him good by the way he remains silent, stalling his leave as he tries continuing to reason with you— but you keep refusing in return, cooing softly that you’ll be okay, that you’ll be quick. 

“I’ll wait for you,” he finally says, refusing to back down even as you express your worry; after a moment of bickering, you finally give in. Your eyes widen in surprise as he gently pulls you in for a hug, engulfed entirely in his embrace as he rests his chin on your shoulder, inhaling your scent with a content sigh— warm, comforting and pure, like jasmine with the hint of a pure, soft vanilla, his nose subconsciously poking at your gland in search for more— and you shiver at the feeling, engulfed in his calming scent, a sage and rich pine, allowing yourself to melt in his arms and hold you tighter, ignoring the way your heart begins to race the longer your remain there. 

“Come back to me safe.”

Soobin is just as solemn and loyal as he was the day he declared that he would always protect you— and it makes your heart race a bit faster, a dopey smile stuck on your face as you wave him goodbye— you sigh pathetically the moment you’re finally in the woods.

The leaves crunch under your feet and birds chirp in the distance; it’s comforting to you, humming softly to yourself as you walk the paths you need to take without much of a thought, gathering herbs and plants as you slowly check them off your list; everything goes as smoothly as it always does, your mind in awe as you witness the sun beginning to set. 

You should get going soon; it was never ideal to be in the woods after dark, no matter how familiar you were with the landscape. The thought makes your steps quicken and your eyes sweep over the land in acute concentration, looking for the last plant on your list— you’re freezing entirely when you hear a shift against the leaves. 

You’re still; was it a false alarm, or a harmless rabbit passing by? You’re not entirely sure, wicker basket heavy in your hand as the other presses firmly against your heart; trying to settle your heart rate, breathing deeply as you look for any signs of movement, any signs of life around you. 

Just when you think the coast is clear, you hear it again; rustling against the leaves, harsh and erratic as something else greets your ears— sharp pants and sounds of struggle, a pained yelp resounding into the vast space and sending you into action before you can think twice. 

You round the thick oak tree ahead of you, searching for the source of the sound— and stumble back in surprise, an involuntary gasp escaping you as sharp eyes and equally sharp teeth point your way— a man lays before you, injured and weak.

Except, he’s not just a man; that much is made clear to you the moment your eyes sweep over his frame once more, taking in the ears that press flat on his head and his fangs that remain bared at you, the injured man—wolf hybrid— growling lowly at you and shuffling back to curl against the thick tree that once covered him; your hands shake as you hold onto your basket a little tighter, wide eyes sweeping over his figure and inevitably landing on the source of all this commotion; a twisted ankle, rendering the man before you immobile. 

You must run— you must, and it’s all your instincts seem to yell at you, your muscles becoming rigid with tension, white ears pressing flat against the top of your head and fluffy tail quivering with fear— but you have yet to, something about the look in the wolf’s eyes making you ignore your instincts, just for a second; behind the dangerous fangs that glint beneath the remaining light and his eyes that are narrowed threateningly, you can still see the pain he’s found himself in.

Something inside you clicks— your weak heart twists and your hands grip your basket a bit tighter, a voice in your mind telling you that you can’t just leave him like this; you can do something to help. Next thing you know, you’re taking cautious, slow steps toward him, hands held out to show that you’re nothing close to a threat— though you’re sure that the smell of fear that rolls off you in waves is enough of an indicator— and your soft voice is whispering out your intentions, continuing your approach even as he bares his teeth at you in warning. 

“I want to help you,” you say softly, finally at his feet as you place your basket gently next to him; and he growls at you once more, though you don’t find yourself to be afraid— if he were dangerous, he would’ve attacked long ago. It’s the only thought that repeats itself in your mind like a prayer, pretending as though your hands don’t tremble as you reach into your basket, as you grab the herbs you were just stocking up on and the bandages you carry for emergencies. 

He lets out a particularly harsh growl that makes you jump; it makes you hesitate to touch his skin, bruised and broken and bloody, eyes jumping to meet his— and though the action was meant to be confident, nothing can hide the fear that taints your eyes, the way your frame shrinks slightly when you’ve found that he has no issues holding eye contact— and after a standstill moment, you finally continue, ripping a piece of the bandage and attempting to clean the wound as best as you can. 

You’re a bit clumsy at first; unable to look away from the man, his strikingly dark red hair that's matted to his head from a thin layer of sweat, dirtied clothes and face that’s twisted in a mean glare— but eventually, it softens, the deep heaving of his chest calming as he watches the way you tend to him with deft hands, not seeming to care if he’s soiling your pretty coat as you tug him closer to you. 

The bandages are tight on his ankle and you’ve placed herbs within to help soothe the swelling— all tricks you’ve learned from your mother, from the times when you would run about carelessly and twist your ankle in some hidden hole, only calming your cries to see her work her magic on you.

Reassuring words don’t do much in the grand scheme of things, but you still whisper them sweetly to the injured man before you, dry bandage cleaning along the rest of his calf as you tell him to rest, to try and not overexert himself. And though you don’t know if he can understand you, though you’re unsure of where he came from— because as far as you know, wolves have been banished from your village for decades— you still find yourself caring for him. It’s something he can pick up on in your eyes, gentle and reflecting the last of the sun’s golden rays that leak through the woods. 

It’s quiet; it’s peaceful. Warm fingers lingering on his skin much longer than you intended, a curiosity leaking through your wide eyes as you take in his figure, the tall dark ears that stand on his head, the tail that lays on his side, thumping rhythmically— and you think you’ve finally found the courage to ask who are you? Lips parting to speak, you’re cut off by the sound of rustling, a new overwhelming scent overtaking your senses; something is approaching. 

The man before you doesn’t seem to be worried; it’s you that’s whipping around to the source of the sound, shrinking pathetically once you spot something emerging from the dark, thick mass of trees behind you; eyes, multiple pairs, glowing and angry as they stare at you like you’re their next meal— you’re not sure how many pairs there might be, but you’re stumbling to your feet quickly, eyes widening as you realize that the sun has set long, long ago.

You almost slip on the leaves beneath you; one last glance at the man behind you shows that his hands were out as though to catch you, expression twisted with what you’re surprised to see is… concern. But as a rough growling begins to surround the two of you, a sharp pang of fear courses through your body, the gravity of your situation finally sinking in as your eyes sweep around the area in one last, terrified glance.

They’re targeting you.

Before you can think twice, you’re turning on your heel and running— though nothing follows behind, you still let adrenaline take its course, shallow breaths and teary eyes guiding you back to your home; you don’t realize how crazed you must’ve looked until you’re finally reaching your front door, a worried Soobin immediately interrupting your flee and scooping you into his arms, whirling around to shield you away from the forest.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt? Dear, what happened?” he’s breathing out the concerned questions against the crown of your head, arms wrapped tightly around your middle and the only thing keeping you up as your knees buckle with fear; his gaze sweeps down to the state of your cute coat, the once pristine and pink material now dirty and bloodied; his hands hold onto it with a newfound panic, lifting the coat and attempting to find the source— it isn’t until you’ve let out a few pathetic sniffles that you can finally reassure him the blood is not yours.

“Is everything okay? Did something happen to you? Oh, I should’ve—” Soobin has pulled away to cup your face in his hands, wiping away the tears that escape your sweet eyes like a fountain; thumbs caressing your tear-streaked skin lovingly, brows knitted together as his concern pours off him in waves— and you shake your head softly, attempting to dissuade the guilt he must’ve felt for leaving you on your own. 

“It’s fine, I’m not hurt,” you croak out, grabbing onto his waist for support as you finally regain the strength in your legs, “I just— had some encounters with a wolf— but I’m safe, they didn’t hurt me, I’m just a bit shaken, is all.”

“A wolf?” Soobin asks, much more concerned by your words as he pulls away to inspect you once more; his hands run gingerly over your shoulders, running along them until they’ve stopped at your neck, eyes honing in on the spot for a moment before he sighs in relief. His gaze is hardening once more, cupping your face and looking at your sternly as he speaks. “Where were they? Did they follow you? Did you interact with them?”

“No, no— it’s alright, I’m alright, I promise,” you breathe out, hoping that Soobin doesn’t notice the way you shrink under his gaze, the way your body warms up at his touch— but he’s much too concerned about your safety to pick up on it, dismissing every cue of your body as nothing but fear, instincts heightened as he looks behind you and back at the forest you just came from. He watches the woods carefully, eyes narrowed and ears perked in concentration— but nothing happens, and he’s left to reluctantly believe your words, even if he wants nothing more than to run into the woods himself and make sure there’s no threat to you. 

After a moment of observing the forest, Soobin is turning back to you, and his gaze immediately softens at the sight. The brave front you put up isn’t fooling him, and it’s quite obvious that you’re still shaken from your encounter, delicate ears still pressed close to your head, eyes wide and scent muddled with distress— like rotten flowers, earthy and pungent— and with all the adrenaline ebbing away from your system, you’ve found that your legs have become pure jelly once more; Soobin is quick to catch on to the way you tremble and hold on to him tightly. 

“Oh, my doll,” Soobin sighs softly, fishing for your keys in your coat pockets and unlocking the door for you, leading you inside with a careful hand— as though you were made of porcelain, still shaken and anxious as he leads you to sit down, “it’s alright, you’re safe now— I’ll keep you safe.”

Soobin insists on taking care of you long after you tell him you feel better; he’s keen to protect you through and through, keeping his distance yet still doting on you as he makes you tea, helps you out of your coat, and even offers to wash it for you— the sight replaces the heavy fear in your stomach with butterflies. 

When he bids you goodbye, his eyes are soft, his movements slightly reluctant— but he must, it’s unlawful for him to stay the night with you; an unclaimed little prey like you, spending the night with Soobin, even if he was nothing short of perfect and kind, was enough to have the town gossiping like a storm. The very thought has your cheeks hot and your tongue stumbling on words, telling Soobin to get home safe with a shy, sweet voice— and he brushes his thumb against your cheekbones, smiling fondly before he leans in to press a kiss to your forehead; he lingers there, and you think you might just melt against him before he finally bids you goodbye. 

Your heart still races long after he’s gone; you suppose all this makes up for the fact that you forgot your basket in the woods, mourning the fact that you’ll have to go back to get it tomorrow— but for now, you’re content with giggling softly at the memory of Soobin’s lips against your skin, completely unaware of the eyes that watch you twirl around your kitchen happily.

 ≪ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆≫  

When you wake up, you find something peculiar at your doorstep; your wicker basket is placed before your feet, pristine as it was when you first took it out. 

Your brows furrow, looking around the area and wondering how it got here— your mind is going back to the wolf you tended to, eyes slowly sweeping over the dense forest, ears twitching in attention, listening for even the slightest rustle of leaves, wondering if he’s still lingering— but the world around you is still, and it seems to be only you here. You bend down to pick the basket up carefully. 

Everything is intact— your herbs, your bandages, your worn down pink journal— and the closer you bring it to your face in order to inspect it, the better you’re able to catch something peculiar; a scent, your nose twitching in curiosity and your eyes narrowing. The unknown scent only grows stronger the closer you get to the handkerchief you used to line the inside, and only then are you able to get a good sense of it— light and heady, like an amber and smoky smell filling your nose, finding yourself oddly enticed by the scent. 

You’re far too wrapped up in attempting to decipher the complicated notes of this new scent to notice someone approaching; your senses have gotten so used to Soobin’s presence you no longer find yourself alert around him, only perking up at the approaching sound of leaves crunching and the familiar, sage filling your senses— tucking the basket behind your back, you send him a meek smile, cheeks heating up as you silently hope he didn’t see you curiously nosing at your basket. 

“Hey, pretty thing,” Soobin rumbles out lowly, smiling fondly at the way you practically preen at the name; you’re terrible at hiding your expression, the way your ears twitch at his words not helping your attempts to seem nonchalant before him. 

“Hi Soobin,” you smile, fingers restlessly playing with the wicker basket behind your back as you tilt your head curiously, “what’re you doing here today?”

“I needed to check on you,” he says immediately, a soft oh leaving your lips at that, “I couldn’t sleep well knowing I just… left you here on your own. I needed to make sure you were safe.”

“Soobin, it’s fine, really,” you reassure him softly, fluffy tail wiggling behind you at the fact that he confessed how worried he was about you, his dedication to keep you safe, “Nothing happened— as long as I’m in my home, I’m safe.”

Soobin wants to argue against that, you can tell. But you don’t give him a chance to, inviting him in with a tug at his arm, smiling at the way he immediately relents; you tell him about your plans for today over a cup of tea, that you have to make a few deliveries to some homes across the village— Soobin practically jumps to offer to come with. 

“You– won’t you be busy?” you ask shyly, staring down at your teacup and stirring your spoon in  a feeble way to distract yourself. 

“No, I’m not needed at the bakery today,” Soobin immediately reassures you, reaching over the table to place a delicate hand over your own— and you stiffen, a heat rushing through your body at the sudden contact; the smell of sage wafts over to you as his thumb rubs soothingly over your skin, your mind mulling over his offer as you bite at your lip in thought. 

He’s eager to hear you say yes; his tail wags slowly behind him, ears perked up and eyes honed in on your every expression— and after a moment, you finally nod meekly. 

“It’s only a house or two, but the walk is… it’s far,” you say, standing at the doorway and reaching over for your basket, placing the bottles and jars filled with homemade remedies inside carefully— but before you can continue your explanations and tuck your basket snuggly into the crook of your arm, Soobin is taking it from you, his brows knitted together as he stares down at the item in confusion. 

“I thought you lost this,” he says quietly, rotating the item in his hands, taking in its pristine condition with a frown— his ears are perking up and his tail is straightening, head whipping over to you with wide, concerned eyes. “Did you go into the woods to retrieve it?”

“No!” you say, oddly defensive as you shake your head adamantly, “It just— it was at my doorstep this morning, I think someone might have found it—”

“The wolf,” Soobin sneers, his tone much darker than it was mere moments ago— it makes your ears flatten against your head and your figure shrink, his scent turning earthy and thick and rendering you docious and pliant— his eyes are darting from the basket and back to you, only to go back to the basket in order to examine it closely; the moment Soobin brings it closer to his face, you’re able to see the very moment where that same, smoky scent enters his senses— his pupils dilate, and his nose twitches. 

The same scent as before. Soobin recognized it as the same scent that you were drenched in the moment you found him, shaken and face aghast— your coat and skin reeked of nothing but that scent, wanting nothing more than to take you inside and replace it with his own— but the most he could do in the moment was hold you close and hope that it would wash off. 

The owner of this scent must have brought you the basket back; Soobin’s head races to find meaning, to find reason, adrenaline coursing through his body that yells at him to take action; this must be a threat—you’ve been followed, they know where you live.

“It isn’t safe for you to stay there anymore,” Soobin proceeded to tell you, only confessing how he felt once you were far, far away from your home— from the woods. And you could only shake your head at that, the reassurances an automatic response in your head at this point. 

But Soobin wasn’t going to go down without a fight this time; knowing that the wolf was out there somewhere, that he knew where you lived and even went as far as to visit your home— it made Soobin tense with anger. 

“That wolf was at your doorstep without you knowing,” Soobin continued to reason, all throughout your walk back, “you don’t know who they are— what their intentions are.” 

It was only then that you decided to mull through his offer to stay, or for you to stay with his family— images of a bloodthirsty wolf at your doorstep filled your mind, and you couldn’t help but feel like your nine year old self again, sitting at a fireplace and telling each other scary stories about the forest only a few feet away from you— your young self would always be left shaken and paranoid, asking your parents if you could sleep in their bed. 

Maybe you’ve become too used to being independent; you’ve survived this long on your own— most lamb hybrids you knew couldn’t walk around at night without having a trusted predator around to protect them, just in case— yet you were so used to depending only on yourself that you seem to have forgotten how truly vulnerable your species is; Soobin made sure to remind you with a stern look and crossed arms. 

“I don’t see why you’re insisting so much, binnie— I promise nothing happens here, this place is dead,” you tell him as you make dinner for the two of you, the sun now long gone and the man still stuck to your side, leaning against the counter beside you and watching you cook dutifully— his eyes drift over to the window behind him, looking over his shoulder and at the dark, gloomy forest that obscures his view; his eyes can’t help but narrow and pick apart each shape he sees, nose keen and eager to sense any changes, any hint of that smoky smell— but he sees nothing, and he’s turning back around to catch the way you send him a slightly incredulous look. 

“I understand why you might feel this way— you’ve been on your own for longer than you can remember, after all,” Soobin says softly, taking in the way your eyes remain downcast and you shy away from his gaze. Hesitantly, he shifts to stand behind you, a gentle hand placing itself on your bicep before his head lowers to rest on your shoulder; his forehead rests against you, able to smell the restless, flowery notes of your scent— despite the strong front you put up, Soobin’s keen senses are still able to pick up on the tenseness of your body, the way you keep glancing out the window and into the forest unsurely. 

“You have to allow yourself to be helped— there’s nothing wrong with that, doll,” he coaxes softly, ears atop his head twitching at the sound of the shaky sigh you let out— the stove is turned off, and the food is done— but you don’t seem to care about that much. 

Carefully, Soobin nudges at your jaw with his head; allowing your neck to tilt slowly, to expose it to him as his nose runs along your skin delicately, until it’s pressed against your scent gland, inhaling slowly and taking in the intense mix of smells and emotions within you— and he presses his lips softly against it, a gentle kiss that turns your scent sweet and fresh like a blooming flower; your heart pounds against your chest for a second, then proceeds to relax against Soobin’s hold the moment his scent invades your senses. 

“I’m here to protect you.” 

His words stick to you for the rest of the night— as does he, his presence reassuring enough to make you forget of why he was here in the first place— enough to allow you to miss the glowing eyes that peek from the edge of the forest as you get a glass of water in the middle of the night, taking in your drowsy figure and eyes that are heavy with sleep; unaware of the pair of eyes that take you in hungrily, the tongue that runs along a sharp set of teeth, nose twitching to get another gust of your sweet, clean scent, the muddled vanilla that makes his mouth water. 

With Soobin lying in the guest bedroom, you’re almost able to forget that there are wolves in the forest. That there is one that has now set his sights on the cute little lamb that tended to him with wide eyes and an innocent heart. 

 ≪ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆≫  

It’s early in the morning when you bid Soobin goodbye; your cheeks are flushed and you’re barely able to look him in the eye, despite not having done anything more than talk the whole night. He finds your shyness nothing short of endearing, placing one last affectionate kiss on top of your head before he tells you to call him if you ever need anything— to never be afraid to ask for help. You nodded to his words with a soft smile. 

Watching him leave had left a bit of an empty feeling in your heart; you couldn’t seem to help but watch him leave pathetically, standing at your doorway even after he had long gone; his scent still drifted around in your senses, the warm and sturdy scent helping you remain calm as you finally went back inside— closing the door behind you, you were pleasantly surprised to see that your home still smelled strongly of him. 

You had over ten different orders you needed to work on; you were able to busy yourself with making medicine throughout the rest of the day, boiling herbs and making remedies for colds and illnesses and burns. It was a tedious and slow process, and as you finally began to reach the end of your list, you couldn’t help but frown. 

You ran out of two different herbs needed for these next three orders; without them, you wouldn’t be able to make the medications at all. 

Glancing out the window, you gulped; it wouldn’t be another thirty minutes before the sun set, but after your encounter a few days ago— paired with Soobin’s warning and harsh reality check— you were much more hesitant to go into the woods on your own. 

You could call Soobin— ask him if he’d like to accompany you, stay put until you finally had proper protection. You mulled over the idea for a moment, your traitorous mind whisperering encouraging words in order to see him again; it’s just for protection, you told yourself, walking over to your landline phone before you began to dial his number, tangling the long cord around your fingers absentmindedly as you did; you tried to dismiss the nervous pounding of your heart, the way you bit at your lips in anticipation of hearing his voice again.

“Hello?” you’re gulping slightly at the sound— part of you wasn’t expecting him to actually answer. Clearing your throat softly, you muster up the courage to do what you’ve been hesitant to for so long. 

“Hi Soobin,” you start softly, listening to the small hum of acknowledgement from the other side, “I— I’m sorry to bother, but I just wanted to ask; I have to make another trip to the forest— it’s urgent— and I… well, I was wondering if you’d be able to accompany me. For protection.” 

The shyness and hesitance in your voice is horribly apparent; it makes you face burn and your hands grow clammy, feeling as though there’s a lump in your throat as you wait for him to respond— it feels like eternity, but in reality, it’s merely seconds—- and you’re practically slumping against the wall in relief when he gives you a soft of course I can in response.

“Wait for me inside until I get there,” he says, and you nod, letting out a sound of affirmation as well, “I’ll be quick.” 

Soobin hangs up promptly after; you’re left to scurry around your home in preparation of your trip, changing out of your sullied work clothes and into something more comfortable— inevitably, the same coat from before finds itself wrapped around your form, and as you wait by the doorway with your wicker basket in hand, you realize with a smile that the item is practically drowned in Soobin’s scent— the item is wrapped around you tighter and your nose is burrowed deeply into the soft plush-like material, your senses spinning with the warm, earthy smells that belong to the man. 

The sun is setting— but he’ll be here soon, a fact only proved by the sound of footsteps your keen ears manage to pick up on; you’re practically racing to make it to your front door, only to pause at the sound of something else— more footsteps. 

Instinct brings your body to the floor and away from all windows; your back is pressed up against your door, ear pressed tightly against the wood as you remain alert, subconsciously holding your breath in fear of getting spotted in any way— but whoever is currently surrounding your home knows you’re here, judging by the way they take careful, calculated steps closer to your door— you will your heart to remain calm, to not alert them that you currently lean on the very item separating the two of you, but the fear that courses through your veins is simply too strong. 

Your mind is racing a mile a minute; you try to calculate who it could be, why they’re here— and you’re thinking back to Soobin’s warnings the night before, eyes widening as you scold yourself for being such a naive idiot— because as you pick up of the soft sounds of sniffing and low growls, you realize that you’ve managed to lead a pack of wolves right to your home. 

It all happens too quickly; you’re running from the door at the sudden spike of scents, like a dirty smoke that approaches your door in the blink of an eye— the wood practically flies off its hinges with the way it’s broken into, a scream involuntarily leaving you as you grab the nearest thing to you as a weapon— the fire pit poker is thin and old in your hands, but that’s the last thing on your mind as you back away slowly, taking in the wolves that make their way into your home with sheer terror. 

One, two, three— it’s only three of them, but it’s enough to have your limbs trembling and your ears pressed flat against your head; tall, broad figures, disheveled in appearance and looking at you with eyes dilated, filled with nothing but a carnal hunger that makes your stomach twist into knots. 

It’s a standstill. They watch you with coy smiles and blown out eyes, watching as you press yourself against the wall, wondering if you can make it to the back exit of your home if you try enough— but they’re perceptive to even the most miniscule movement, every twitch of your muscle garnering a step closer from any one of them; you remain still, and so do they. It’s silent, save for the ragged heavings of your chest and the low grumbles that resonate from theirs— they have yet to make a move, locking eyes with the tallest and watching as his lips quirk into a smile.

You feel nauseous. They’re toying with you.

They could easily take you— kill you— in a split second; the second you try to run, they’ll be hot on your heels, outmatched three to one and left at their mercy entirely. And judging by the way they practically salivate at the smell of fear that radiates from you, you don’t think your fate with them will end well.

You gulp. They watch you, keen eyes taking in the way your throat bobs, the tears that fill your eyes— the way your legs look as though they’ll give out on you any moment now, the flimsy poker in your hands nothing but a joke as you point it at them in warning— as though it would do anything, they muse. 

One of them, with a head of ginger hair and eyes sharp as a knife, begins to approach; you tense, bringing the poker forward more, inhaling sharply and taking a step back— but that only garners a sharp growl from another, with pitch black hair and a gaze so threatening it renders you pliant; hesitantly, you meet the eyes of the man who stands before you, narrowed eyes taking you in with amusement. 

He reaches towards you— again you tense, flinching at the movement and weakly yelling at the wolf to stay back—! But it can only come out as a breathless whisper, your entire being rendered useless, instincts doing nothing but telling you that this is it; accept your fate, it tells you, weakening your muscles and sending off waves of fear so thick the room reeks of death and rot; your figure shrinks the moment he grabs your poker, ignoring your clearly empty warning as he lowers it forcefully, fighting easily against any strength you had left. 

“Don’t be afraid,” he smiles, baring his teeth that only makes your blood run cold— sharp canines, strong and in great condition to bite and chew even the toughest of meats— “We’ll take good care of you.”

A sharp growling impedes the man before you from closing in on you, from taking away what little space was left between you— the sound is loud and furious, making the three wolves before you turn immediately in search of the source; including you, the foreign sound making your knees buckle and the poker fall from your hands as you paralyze with fear. 

Standing in the doorway is a figure you remember quite well— the sight of him makes your eyes widen and you heart flicker a dim light of hope, watching the way he sends the three wolves before you a pointed glare, enough to make the two nearest to him avert their eyes the moment his gaze lands on them. 

“Beomgyu,” the wolf near you sneers, “what the hell are you doing?”

He doesn’t bother answering the question; his eyes land on you, on your figure that visibly trembles with fear, nostrils flaring at the scent that radiates from you and fogs the room— and he growls. 

“Get out.” 

It’s a simple command given by the man— Beomgyu—  to the others, eyes filled with an unbridled rage that makes the others flinch; they’re confused, glancing to where you remain frozen before they’re turning back at the man, as though waiting for him to back down on his words— instead, he bares his teeth, jaw clenched and eyes narrowed with rage, and repeats himself. 

“I said, get. Out.”

Silence; you can hear your heartbeat thundering in your ears as you watch the two wolves glance at the man with the bright head of ginger hair— as though looking to him for their next move. The two remain in a standstill, refusing to look away from the other, as though silently communicating. And after what feels like eternity, the wolf near you scoffs, lips upturned in annoyance as he finally looks away— he turns back to you, eyes scanning your shaken figure, and he smiles the moment your eyes meet.

“Don’t expect any mercy from him.”

You’re sure you might be on the verge of fainting as you watch them all exit, one by one; tails practically tucked between their legs, only wolf to make a fuss being the orange-haired one from before; you watch the two of them bare their teeth and make comments you can’t quite pick up on, pressing yourself firmly against the wall and jumping the moment they snap warningly at each other— a threat to bite, the sight of their sharp fangs enough to have you retreating slowly to the exit of your backyard. 

The second his back is turned from you, watching the wolves retreat to the forest, is the second you make an attempt to escape— hurried steps leading you to the kitchen, walking backwards in order to keep an eye on him— your shaking hands remain pressed against the wall in an attempt to keep yourself upright, keen eyesight taking in any small movement from him, body alight with adrenaline as you wait for the moment you can book it. 

His ears, a dark auburn just like his hair, twitch; his head snaps over to where you stand, dilated eyes meeting yours in milliseconds. 

You’re turning around to make a run for it— the floorboards creak behind you from the very sound of Beomgyu running after you, a yelp leaving you involuntarily; your feet are falling harshly on the cool tile of your kitchen, but before you can so much as outstretch your hand and reach for the doorknob of the back exit, strong hands are wrapping around your middle and spinning you around, away from your last taste of freedom. 

“Please!” you cry out aimlessly, a pained groan falling from your lips as your back collides with the wood of your counter; you’re pinned into the very corner, tears pricking at your eyes and weak hands pressing against the strong chest of the wolf before you— your eyes remain glued to the floor, soft tail trembling with abandon and ears willing hopelessly to hide your face. 

“You’re running? After I just saved you?” is all you get in response, his voice gruff and genuine as he remains unfazed at the weak pushes against his chest; his arms cage you in, body impossibly close to yours as he looms over you, watching the way you cower and make yourself shrink with wide, interested eyes. “Why do you run from me, my flower?” 

The pet name makes your stomach lurch; a soft sob escapes you, eyes closing in defeat as your mind makes peace with your demise— your shoulders shake with every attempt of yours to breathe properly, every inhale only flooding your senses and clogging your mind with the scent of the wolf above you, like a thick smoke that burns your lungs and leaves your thoughts impaired.

Beomgyu is all but salivating at the sight of you; your soft, fragile body, the tremble of your limbs, your pure and fluffy ears that are pressed flat atop your head, hands subconsciously gripping onto his shirt in a feeble attempt to keep yourself upright— your heartbeat overwhelms him, quick and panicked just like your scent; it makes his brows pinch together and a confused pout form on his lips, the familiar, delicate flower no longer radiating from your figure.

“Are you scared of me?” he murmurs, ears twitching in curiosity as you remain silent; he leans down, willing to get close even after you continue to shrink away in response, curling into yourself and keeping your chin tucked in dutifully; his hand flies to your waist in attempts to prevent you from shifting away any further, rough claws digging in through your dress and making you jolt in surprise— a shaky breath leaves your lips, the wolf that continues to inch closer to you, cocking his head in fascination. His eyes all but burn through your skin. 

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispers, lips brushing against your temple as he speaks; you remain frozen, stiff, feeling the way he continues to wander down, nosing at you softly in search for a sign of that sweet, intoxicating smell you once gave off. 

“You’re safe with me— remember?”

Your voice remains stuck inside you— all you can muster is another shaky breath as you feel his lips brush against your jaw, wandering along until he’s at your ear— then he trails down, forcing your head to tilt as his nose runs a soft line along the column; a weak whimper falls from your parted lips the moment he presses down against your pulse point, feeling him inhale slowly before he presses a soft kiss against your sensitive neck— like an automatic reaction, warmth blooms from the spot, spreading through your body, your heart telling you to calm down— but you refuse, and though Beomgyu is able to smell the sweet vanilla and the flowers that blooms from his action, it all dies into one muddled mess that leaves him to huff frustratedly. 

His hands have begun to wander— large and warm, sharp claws scratching at your garments and running up your sides before he hugs you tight, pressing your figure flush against his— and as have his lips, pressing soft kisses against your scent gland repeatedly, in search of the scent that he was only granted a mere glimpse of— soft, careful kisses at first, listening to the way you whimper and cry against him, trembling hands balling up his shirt in your fists— only to feel himself grow more desperate, out of control, his lips parted and harsh as he presses his kisses against one of the weakest points in your body. 

Beomgyu’s nose is sharp, is able to pick up on even the slightest changes within your scent— so when he picks up on the warm, subtle twinge of vanilla that peeks through everything else, he’s unable to find himself exhibiting restraint. Warm and wet, you feel his tongue press against your skin, the sharp, accidental scratch of his fangs following after— and you gasp, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling above you as your mind finally processes what his intentions truly are, feeling your instincts take over soon after— the moment of clarity passes, and your vision fogs; your body melts against Beomgyu’s.

You’ve been sandwiched between the counter and Beomgyu’s body; even more so now that Beomgyu’s felt you submit to him, head lolling to the side and displaying your most fragile part to him, a smell of vanilla, warm and sweet like a pastry, filling his lugs soon after— you’re presenting yourself to him, eyes glassy and lips parted as you simply let out a shaky exhale. 

Your legs are parted with every attempt Beomgyu makes to get closer to you, feeling him stand in between them as he continues to cage you in, continues to kiss and lick along your exposed skin, huffing and sighing in satisfaction with every soft keen you let out in response, your mind and soul still convinced that your time has come to an end. 

From a distance, Soobin senses it; he sees the dim lights of your cottage, the door that is left ajar, crooked on its hinges— most of all, he’s able to pick up on the intoxicating sweetness that escapes from the cottage, the innocent jasmine that’s intertwined with the scent that travels with the wind— and his ears stand straight, keen senses straining to hear the soft sob that leaves your delicate lips— his body reacts before he can, and he runs straight to you. 

The sharp call of your name is all Soobin can get out before he stumbles to a stop at the kitchen doorway— his eyes remain wide and focused on the sight before him, body on edge and tail stiff as he grits his teeth in rage. 

Your doe eyes meet his instantly— they’re shining and incoherent, and Soobin wonders if you’re even conscious of where you are, of the way you whine out his name in the most fragile tone he’s ever heard. The rest of you is covered— you’ve been pressed tightly against the kitchen counter, back arching backwards due to the sheer pressure of the body that weighs you down; ragged clothing covers your own, the pink coat obscured by a white flowing, dirtied white button up, falling off the owner’s shoulder and pooling at his elbow— Soobin’s eyes follow the line of movement, taking in his arms disappear behind your waist, forcing your lower halves to be glued together, your dress bunched up at your thighs from the crude way they’ve been forced open. 

“Soobin,” you whine again, taking his attention as he watches a hand of yours appear from where they were caged in, outstretching shakily toward him before it falls limp, hanging over the arm that pulls you closer against him. 

Dark, long hair covers the face that is buried in your neck— ears of the same color adorn the top, twitching with interest at the sound before they stand forward— roughly, the head emerges from its hiding place, eyes blown open with nothing short of hunger; the wolf before Soobin bares his teeth and growls, hugging you tighter against him, stepping back and shielding you away from the dog’s view. 

Soobin doesn’t hesitate to mimic the other’s threats— he means every bit of it and more, face alight with rage and body poised in an aggressive stance— and though your face has been tucked into the wolf’s chest, though the arms that wrap around your body attempt to prevent you from being seen at all, Soobin is still able to catch glimpse of your tail that quivers with fear, of your figure that shakes pathetically from instinct. 

Loud, angry growls and spiked scents fill your senses and leaves you docile; Soobin’s sharp, strong pine mixes with Beomgyu’s thick, intoxicating smoke, painting the scene of a burning forest as they continue to warn the other, narrowed gazes and sharp canines creating yet another standstill. 

Beomgyu’s eyes catch onto Soobin’s restlessness with ease— and before he’s able to make a move, Beomgyu is manipulating your body once more, spinning you around and pressing your back firmly against him, feeling the way you follow his every command without a second thought— and when you present yourself to him for a second time from pure instinct, Beomgyu grins; his eyes lock with Soobin’s and his head cranes down, dangerously close to your scent gland that continues to release its tempting smell.

“Stay.” is all Beomgyu growls out, eyeing the way Soobin freezes immediately, wide eyes watching the way Beomgyu’s mouth opens, tongue lolling out lazily before it’s running slowly against your shoulder, gliding along until it stops dutifully against the joint of your neck, pressing down to feel your pulse— Soobin flinches, undoubtedly wanting to lunge forward, but is stopped again by the wicked smile Beomgyu sends him, sharp canines meticulously on display. 

You’re all left frozen— Beomgyu’s arm that has been thrown around your waist toys with the hem of your cute coat, the other that presses against your heart feeling the quick pounding against his palm— and he laughs, inching his hand up slowly until it’s around your neck, his index and thumb exuding little effort to keep your head upright, watching your eyes slowly meet Soobin’s.

“Any sudden moves,” Beomgyu begins again, eyes flickering down to your neck, watching the quick rise and fall of your chest with fascination, feeling the way your throat constricts with every swallow against his palm— and he smiles, looking back at Soobin and allowing his tongue to run over the top row of his teeth leisurely, “and she’s mine to claim.”

Silence; Soobin takes a moment to weigh his options, to inspect the scenery before him— the wolf means it, Soobin is quick to realize, seeing the way he all but drools over your exposed neck and faint figure— and he meets your eyes again, attempting to decipher what you may be thinking, only to realize that you’re not composed at all; you’ve been stripped down to nothing but your basic survival instincts, and yet it seems as though your brain has told you that it’s best to give up any fight you have left inside you.

Soobin feels his jaw ache from the way his teeth grit together angrily— and with a soft huff, he becomes the first to look away from Beomgyu entirely, turning his head in defeat and forcing his body to back down. 

“Good dog,” Beomgyu coos mockingly, grinning unabashedly at the sight of Soobin’s face twisting up in anger; he turns to you, placing a slow, lingering kiss on your cheek before he murmurs softly into your ear. “My flower, don’t you want to show him how perfect you are for me?” 

Beomgyu doesn’t expect a response from you; the way you whine and shift restlessly against him is enough, having already felt him rutting against you the moment he had you caged against the counter— and he continues to do so, even now, the hand on your throat forcing you to tilt your head, allowing him access to suck and bite on the clean canvas of your skin; your eyes flutter shut, and you’re left to rely on his strength to hold you upright, body rocking gently with every thrust that is delivered from the wolf behind you. 

“So sweet for me,” Beomgyu groans, his hands letting go of their respective places before they begin getting busy; your legs feel shaky and you’re left to watch as he undoes the ties of your coat, slipping it off before he reaches to bunch your thin skirt at your waist— you gasp softly, face heating up at the feeling of being so exposed, hands flying to pull down your skirt on instinct— but you’re granted no such reprieve, stilling immediately as a growl leaves Beomgyu’s lips at your action.

Soobin’s head is snapping back at the two of you at the sound of the threat— his eyes widen and he inhales sharply, a clear mistake that only makes Beomgyu grin— your scent, thick and progressively needier, clouds Soobin’s mind, clouds his judgment, unable to do anything more than stare at the way Beomgyu has you in his arms, canines still glittering under the soft lights of your home as a constant warning. 

“You smell it too,” Beomgyu speaks, his words less of a question and more of a fact— Soobin’s eyes dilate and his nostrils flare that moment Beomgyu’s lithe fingers begin to wander around the hem of your panties, feeling your thighs press together and your hands grip at his forearm shyly; from Soobin’s distance, he’s able to pick up on the tears that hang on your waterline, the way your lip quivers from the humiliation of being exposed so crudely. 

“Innocent thing…” Beomgyu murmurs, dipping down to swipe the pad of his middle finger across your slit, listening to the yelp that escapes your lips, feeling your body buckle against him— and sure enough, a spike of your scent follows after, like an addicting toxin that only fuels the desire of the two canines before you, “So tempting. So good.” 

You’re crying softly at the way he continues to tease you, overwhelmed by the foreign sensation, mouth parting in shock as his hand sneaks past the waistband of your panties; you feel as though shocks of electricity flow through you the moment he brushes against your clit, teasingly at first, only to begin circling it steadily soon after— and you can only moan and whine for more, unknowingly bucking your hips forward in search for something else that can satisfy you. 

When your eyes meet Soobin’s, you can only feel a hot wave of shame flow through you— his expression is unreadable; is he embarrassed of you? Disgusted, ashamed that you have already given in to the simplest threats? You’re not remotely near as strong as he is, you defend yourself mentally, you’re sure that it was either this or— or…

“You filthy mutt,” Beomgyu spits out beside you, laughing softly at the way Soobin has yet to take his eyes off you, eyes narrowed meanly and brows tugged together, an expression that could be easily read as rage— but Beomgyu knows better, watching as the said man jumps at the sudden sound of the other’s voice, gaze hardening the moment they lock eyes; Beomgyu huffs out another mocking laugh. 

“You like this, don’t you?” Beomgyu asks, as though he were sharing a secret— behind you, you feel his hips buck against you, able to feel the hardness of his cock as he uses his free hand to press just below your navel, forcing you back on him— and you gasp, his ministrations against your clit never ceasing as he continues to fuck against you slowly, groaning breathlessly at the feeling of your warm body against him; Beomgyu’s eyes never leave Soobin’s, however, pupils filled with nothing but a mocking joy as he continues breathlessly.

“You want her.”

Another wave of arousal floods though you at his words, filling the room and reaching the two men before you with ease; you’re able to see and feel the way their chests rise slowly, the way they take in your essence before letting out pleased sighs, their own strong, heady scents filling your senses as you simply flutter your eyes shut and whine with need.

“No need to deny it,” Beomgyu grins, leaning his head against yours fondly, middle finger abandoning your clit to tease your entrance, your mouth falling open and hips twitching in surprise at the feeling— the man behind you simply watches with amusement, watches the way you meet Soobin’s gaze shyly, body heated up with embarrassment as you can only let out pathetic cries and breathless gasps with every new stimulation— and Beomgyu’s finger enters you slowly, meticulously, angling himself just right; your vision is fogging at the stretch, hands gripping onto the strong forearm that helps keep your upright as you merely beg for more. 

“I’m sure she’d love to give you a show,” he continues, palm pressing against your clit, other hand guiding your hips to roll steadily against his hand— he chuckles softly at the way you’re pliant for him, following his every command without a second thought, “filthy, greedy thing.” 

Though Beomgyu directs those comments at you with a voice of acid-like hatred, the way he stares at you is anything but; his eyes are just as keen as the rest of him, willing to not miss a single reaction you make for him, from the way your voice breaks with need to the way your fingers twitch helplessly against his skin— his body buzzes with a desperate energy, his cock pulsing and begging to be inside you the longer he feels you rock helplessly against him— lucky for him, you seem to be getting just as desperate. 

“Get your filthy hands off her,” Soobin seethes, though he’s unable to make a move to get you away— a single twitch of his tail enough to garner a harsh sneer from Beomgyu, teeth snapping together in warning— the idea of having you claimed, taken, and possibly killed by the monstrosity that holds you hostage is enough to keep Soobin complacent for now, undoubtedly waiting for the moment the wolf no longer has easy access to such a vital part of you to make his move.

Beomgyu doesn’t heed the other’s comment— if anything, he laughs, prodding a second finger at your entrance, forcing the other to listen to the way you perk up and cry in panic, poor inexperienced body not used to the stretch, to the curve of his fingers as he presses against your soaking, tightening walls, calloused skin making you shiver as he forces you to grind against him, to fuck yourself on his fingers. 

“Hmm? Don’t touch her?” Beomgyu asks, curious fingers stretching you open slowly, grinning at the way you throw your head back against his shoulder and whine, a hand slapping over the arm that currently fucks your slowly, pressing against it in feeble attempts of getting more, “What, does it upset you that you won’t be getting to her first?” 

With a particularly calculated thrust of Beomgyu’s fingers, you’re jolting up and letting out a broken moan; he proceeds to continue to abuse the weak spot within you cruelly, watching with an amused gaze as you continue to fall apart against him like clockwork. You’re getting wound up quite quickly, not used to the intense feeling of pleasure being provided to you— and Beomgyu takes in the sight eagerly, smiling in amusement before he’s stopping abruptly, watching your head hang and your chest heave from the sudden loss of stimulation. 

“Does it anger you?” his fingers slide out from your cunt slowly; you twitch at the feeling of emptiness, barely processing the way his hand slowly snakes its way back up, grabbing at your neck and forcing you to look forward again— his fingers, covered in your arousal, prod at your mouth, and in your dumbed state, you can only follow his commands and part your lips dutifully; your tongue circles around his digits and your lips close around them, flushed face painting a lewd scene that only makes Soobin tense; beside you, Beomgyu smiles wickedly. 

“Knowing that you’re about to watch her get fucked open— get knotted good— by a wolf?” 

Soobin thinks he might be seeing red at this point; his hands remain by his side, closed into a tight fist that has his nails threatening to break through his skin— but that’s the least of his worries, especially with the way your ears twitch and your body perks up at the wolf’s words— both of the men are able to pick up on your reaction with ease, one clearly much happier than the other at the sight. 

“You know, if you behave, I might give you a turn.” Beomgyu looks over at you, chuckling softly before he removes his fingers from your mouth, only to grab at your face and turn it roughly to look at him; his fingers dig into your cheeks and his forehead presses against yours, taking one glance at your hazy expression before he’s cooing softly. “I’m sure you’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

All you can do is muster a broken whine in response. 

Beomgyu is letting go of your face with a soft chuckle; slowly, you muster the courage to look forward once more, inevitably meeting Soobin’s gaze as a result— his expression is unreadable, and it makes your knees feel weak— your mind races to try and decipher what he may be thinking about, left unaware of the way Beomgyu has let go of your dress, letting the skirt fall slowly over your front as he busies himself in lifting it from the back instead, allowing himself access and grazing your skin curiously; it is only then that you’re coming back to your senses, heart rate picking up with a panic and body bristling the moment you feel the wolf’s hands wandering across the swell of your ass, muttering soft praise that doesn’t quite reach you— a firm hand grabs at your waist, keeping you in place the moment you tried to shift away from him shyly, tried to cover yourself with a weak protests that only garnered yet another growl; with wide eyes, you looked to Soobin, unaware of the helplessness that coated your glassy pupils. 

“Soobin,” you cry yet again, blood growing cold at the way he simply seems to stand and watch; his gaze seems to have wandered, seems to have been following Beomgyu’s every action, adam’s apple bobbing at the sudden sound of impact that filled the room, the sound of your yelp followed by the sight of your pathetic hands attempting to swat Beomgyu away, easily overpowered the moment the wolf gathers your wrists in his tight hold and scolds you to stay still, his claws digging threateningly into the soft skin— and again, your head whips back around to look at Soobin, ignoring the keen stance of his ears and the slow, interested sway of his tail as you simply call out to him again, “Soobin, please…”

You’re not sure what you’re begging for any more. All you know now is the feeling of Beomgyu’s broad chest pressed against yours, the muddy feeling of your brain as smoke fills your lungs, allowing your head to loll back against his shoulder, allowing your hips to begin to grind back against the hard bulge that has begun to tease you, shivering softly at the way Beomgyu’s head remains buried in your shoulder, pulling you back against him firmly— you barely register the way your voice whines in protest the moment you feel his lips pull away from your delicate skin, abandoning the gentle kisses and sucks to sneer triumphantly, his low voice a half-hearted replica of yours as he proceeds to parrot your words softly. 

“Soobin…” Beomgyu sing-songs, reaching his free hand down to tug at the waistband of your panties, soaked through with arousal that leaves your inner thighs shining pathetically; the said man is snapped out of his trance immediately, enticed gaze hardening the second his eyes find Beomgyu, chin perched on your shoulder leisurely as he continues to tug your panties down, feeling the way they slip down your hips ever-so slowly, “Soobin, come here.”

When Soobin refuses, Beomgyu scoffs— though, he doesn’t seem to be surprised in the slightest. 

“Come on Soobin,” Beomgyu repeats again, softly this time, eyes half-lidded as his mouth dips down to kiss your skin; right at your scent gland, tongue darting out before his eyes dart up to lock eyes with Soobin— you can feel goosebumps form on your skin as Beomgyu laughs breathily, mouth still open as he proceeds to nip at the spot gently; not enough to break skin, not enough to leave a mark, but enough to make you squeal and jolt in surprise. Soobin flinches. 

“Come.”

It takes a pleading look from your tear-brimmed eyes for him to move. A slow, hesitant step first, pausing momentarily to gauge Beomgyu’s reaction— the said man quirks a brow in amusement, a silent encouragement to continue— and Soobin finally finds himself looming over the two of you, eyes dark and narrowed as he watches you reach out for him with a trembling hand— curling his shirt into your fists, leaning forward and resting your forehead against his chest, body unintentionally arched forward and left in the perfect position for the man behind you— Beomgyu simply coos softly at the action, a false sense of endearment that makes Soobin’s teeth grit with rage; when their eyes meet, the wolf simply smiles. 

“Kiss her,” Beomgyu says, the words almost inaudible from how softly they were uttered— but then he’s grabbing at your head and forcing you to look back up, ignoring the sound of protest you make and holding you up by your jaw as he tilts your head to look at Soobin, fingers squeezing your cheeks and forcing them into a soft pout, “Go on. She’s dying for you to touch her.”

Beomgyu speaks as though he were the one in control of your body and mind— and perhaps he is, you find yourself thinking, teary eyes unable to communicate anything more than want as you feel your panties slowly dragging down your thighs, the wolf behind you hissing softly at the sight of the string of arousal that sticks to the fabric, your slick cunt tightening around nothing in response— Beomgyu’s fingers find themselves teasing your entrance again, three this time, dipping in and out of your cunt, stretching you yet leaving you craving for more.

“I…” Soobin breathes out, reaching out slowly for your face; Beomgyu’s rough hand retreats, and it’s replaced by Soobin’s large, gentle ones that cup your face and stroke your cheekbones, watching the way your eyes flutter up to look at him, tears clinging to your lashes like crystals; his eyes follow the path one makes as it falls, thumb wiping it away softly as he finds himself leaning closer, watches the way your lids fall and leave your eyes hazy and obedient.

This is it, Soobin realizes, eyes flickering back to where Beomgyu continues to tease you, much too lost in the sight of your cunt trying desperately to suck in his nimble fingers to pay much attention to the two of you, this is his chance— he can save you. 

You seem to catch onto Soobin’s calculative gaze quite quickly this time— and your heart flutters with a slight hope, your chest falling in quick, shallow breaths as your hands tighten against the fabric of his shirt— his eyes flicker back to yours from the action, taking in the way they hold that innocent light of yours he’s always adored— and his heart breaks. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. 

There’s nothing you can say to that; his lips are on yours before you can so much as let out another breath. They’re soft, hesitant, as though you could shatter if he touched you wrong. His hands shake slightly as he holds your face close to his, feels the way your mouth remains frozen for a second, only reciprocating once you’ve felt the soft pass of his tongue against you— and your overwhelmed mind blanks entirely. For the final time tonight, you submit. 

The kiss is slow, it’s deepening out of your control, and it’s everything you imagined many moons ago, when you first began to feel a spark of desire for the man before you— when you swooned and flustered at the comfort you found in him, the warm feeling that always settled in your chest when he was next to you, knowing you could always go to him for protection. 

So as you feel his hold on you become firmer, feel the way he sighs against your mouth with no intentions to let you go soon, you wonder what it is you feel now— trapped between the two canines, lungs burning and and mouth left open as you allow Soobin to venture inside, not allowed any reprieve from the man who keeps you close, a soft groan leaving your lips as your sensitive ears pick up on foreign, slick sounds behind you, hisses and sighs of pleasure from another— because the feeling that pools in your stomach isn’t remotely reminiscent of the gentle, delicate warmth you always felt around Soobin; it’s hotter, angrier, greedier— it begs to be satiated and throws away the last good sense of judgment you had within you. 

“Soobin— oh god, Soobin—” you hiccup suddenly, finally able to escape from the said man’s mouth that seems to chase endlessly after yours; even now, you still can’t help but cry for him, your body unprepared for the sudden feeling of a cockhead swiping at your slit, the wet noises that arise from the sheer arousal that continues to leak out of you. You cry and you beg with hot shame burning at your skin, unsure of whether you plead for mercy or for more— your body arches and your hips seek for more, cunt throbbing at the feeling of Beomgyu’s tip pressing at your entrance, his rough hands rubbing circles along your ass absentmindedly, but your heart twists and makes a thick lump build in your throat, wishing nothing more than to be experiencing this all differently, in the comfort of your room and in the secure, warm embrace of the man in front of you— you wish for something more intimate, something as gentle as the love you felt. 

But all Soobin does is watch. He strokes your hair with a slow hand and cups your cheek fondly, presses a lingering kiss to your forehead before wandering down to press another at the tip of your nose— and he soaks up the pitiful sounds that make your voice break, feeling your hands attempt to steady themselves against him as Beomgyu begins to enter you; slowly, salivating at the way he feels your walls stretch around him, struggling to adjust to merely the tip— he stares down at your dripping pussy with a parted mouth, letting out a slow breath at the sight of your legs that threaten to buckle and your fluffy tail that goes wild with every inch he eases in— and he finds himself having to take deep breaths to not take you as he wants then and there.

“It’s okay. I know, I know— I’m right here, I’m right here with you,” Soobin murmurs against your skin, placing slow kisses along your jaw, allowing you to duck into the crook of his neck for solace— and he smooths your hair as he feels you nuzzle into him, eyes hooking onto the sight over your shoulder of Beomgyu entering you, the feeling of his hips flush against your ass bringing about another shuddered sigh from your lips, nails digging into Soobin’s chest as you attempt to overcome the new sensations. 

“I got you, don’t worry my doll,” Soobin utters, a hand going to place itself on top of your own, intertwining his fingers with yours before he begins to weigh it down, to guide it down his chest— he lets out a shaky sigh, feeling you cry and squirm against him, “It’s okay… just relax and you’ll feel good, okay?” 

“Don’t you wanna feel good?” Soobin coos against your temple, eyes fluttering shut as he feels you nod against his shoulder, feels the way your hand has successfully breached past his underwear, pants already undone and still guided by his much larger hand as he brings you to palm him slowly, wrapping your shaky fingers around his length; you’re hesitant, unsure of your actions as you allow Soobin to show you what to do— though, you don’t think your brain has truly processed what he’s doing with you yet, preoccupied instead by the thick smoke along with another smell that leaves you feeling lightheaded, along with the feeling of hands groping and smoothing over your skin as a heavy cock continues to twitch inside you. 

Beomgyu isn’t quite fond by your sudden shift of attention; his lips remain upturned in distaste, watching intently as Soobin continues to use you however he likes, your face that remains hidden in his neck directly able to smell the calming, dizzying scent Soobin exudes, placating you and dumbing you down to nothing but a fuckdoll for him— his eyes trail down to where he has you jerking him off slowly, Soobin’s lips pressing kisses to the top of your head as he continues to murmur soft praises that have you melting against him— an unfamiliar, hot streak of rage courses through Beomgyu’s system at the sight. 

“So ungrateful,” Beomgyu scolds suddenly, reaching forward to grab a fistful of your hair and bring you back— he’s forceful, uncaring of the way you protest, an arm that’s wrapped around your stomach pressing you flush against him as he forces the two of you to move— and you’re left bent over the counter, face pressed against the wood and wrists secured behind your back as Beomgyu bunches the skirt of your dress at your hips and bottoms out inside you once again; you hiss at the feeling, looking to the side to see that Soobin is unfazed by the action— if anything, his eyes cloud with lust at the scene before him, taking in the way you’re stuffed full and arched prettily with a gulp. 

“Why won’t you pay attention to me?” Beomgyu asks breathlessly, looking down at your pliant figure with blown out eyes, tail whipping side to side in anger as he catches the way your gaze still seeks out Soobin’s, eyes unknowingly pleading for reassurance— and he growls, low and heavy in his throat, catching the attention of both of you successfully— but he only cares to have your eyes on him, fully engrossed in the way your mouth falls open and your eyes roll back the moment he ruts into you with rough, slow thrusts. 

“Look at me,” Beomgyu groans, pulling out slowly as he speaks, all the way out until the tip of his cock is the only thing catching at your entrance. You’re squirming, trying to move your hips back against him, but the brutal hold Beomgyu has on you keeps you in place; ears pressed flat against your head, you look over your shoulder, back at the wolf who continues to fuck his tip into you with subtle thrusts, sneering at your glassy eyes that continue to look at him with a jarring innocence. 

“That’s right,” he breathes, sinking into you oh so slowly, filling you up and laughing cruelly at the way your hands scramble to hold onto something for stability, for a simple comfort Beomgyu denies, “Eyes on me.” 

Beomgyu fucks you to prove a point; he fucks you so your eyes roll back and your mouth spills moans and whines dumbly, cock filling you to the brim and stretching you out in a way you never knew was possible— the sounds are lewd and has your skin burning, slick, wet sounds of skin against skin filling up the room and mixing along with your cries of pleasure. Beomgyu doesn’t seem to be doing any better than you, transfixed entirely on the sight of your cunt sucking him in eagerly, dripping with slick that makes his cock shine and falls to the floor in a mess, of your ass that ripples with every smack of his hips against you— this is all so new to you, he can tell, your body buzzing with an insatiable need that turns you into nothing more than a cock-hungry whore, your tail wiggling desperately with every harsh thrust of his, as though hypnotizing him to keep going.

The sight of you— a drooling, crying, moaning mess— is the polar opposite of your sweet, naive self, your trusting self that got you into this situation in the first place— and it makes Soobin’s cock twitch with raw lust, the spectacle of you becoming ruined so easily something he never thought he’d witness; such a pure thing, Soobin always felt as though you needed to be treated like glass— but Beomgyu is more than willing to prove that’s not the case with you, growling pure filth at you as he continues to fuck you into the counter, watching the way he hovers over you, practically caging you in with his body, as though wishing for the two of you to become one. And just like before, Soobin watches. He stands to the side and listens to every sweet mewl of yours attentively— after all, he’ll get his hands on you soon enough.

“Tight little cunt— fuckin’ takes me so well,” Beomgyu murmurs into your ear, panting and groaning at the way you tighten around him, “such a good girl for me— shit, you like that? Like it when I talk nice to you?”

Beomgyu is quick to catch onto every little reaction of yours, including the way you tighten hopelessly around him every time he sings soft praises into your ears; it makes you want to hide your face in shame and deny his questions, but you barely get a chance to speak with the way he fucks you— fat cock stretching you out, leaving you speechless as he continues to pound into you firmly, sloppy mouth nipping and marking all over your neck; feeling him on your shoulders and back, canines brutishly ripping at your clothes to get more access to your innocent skin, feeling the way your walls squeeze with every scratch of his sharp teeth against you, eager to get his lips onto any part of you he can. 

“Fuck, fuckfuckfuck, you’re— shit– you’re squeezing me so tight, can barely fuck you,” he rambles off, hand letting go of your wrists so he can grab your hips and pull you back onto him— you’re wailing at the feeling, hands failing to stabilize you as you hold onto the counter, eyes screwed shut as you babble at Beomgyu to slow down— but of course, he doesn’t listen, too caught up in the feeling of you to pay any attention, “Oh, are you close, sweet thing? I can feel you— can feel you getting closer.”

“Do you wanna cum?” He asks you in that same, sweet voice laced with faux pity, smiling unabashedly at the way you immediately nod in response, giving in to his brutal pace, “tell me how bad you want it then.” 

“Please… please let me…” you trail off, unable to communicate properly with the way Beomgyu continues to fuck you, not granting you any mercy as he watches you struggle, “need– need t’cum, want it, feels so good.” 

Beomgyu laughs, the sound labored and breathy from the way you clench around him throughout it; he finds himself glancing over to where Soobin continues to watch, the sight of him focused entirely on your figure making him sneer— his eyes are hypnotized by you and his ears twitch at every weak word that spills from your mouth, lips parted as he all but drools for you— the drastic contrast in character has Beomgyu’s lips twitching in amusement, wondering just where that overprotective bodyguard of yours has gone.

“Yeah? Am I making you feel good?” he mocks, watching as your bowed head nods instantly; he huffs, glancing back at Soobin before he coos softly at you, “Who’s making you feel so nice? Tell me, pretty thing.”

The sudden mention of the pet name is enough to set you off unexpectedly; your mind goes blank entirely, save for a single thought that continues to roll of your tongue like a mantra: 

“Beomgyu,” you cry, sobs wracking at your body from the intense feeling, your voice interrupted with loud, uncontrollable moans, “You— it’s you– Beomgyu— please, please— too much…!”

Beomgyu continues to fuck you until your legs tremble and your body weight is placed entirely on the counter, hips held up entirely by the strength of the man behind you as he finally heeds your pleas; he slows until he’s bottomed out inside you, feeling the way your walls continue to pulse as you whimper quietly at the sensitivity— such a touchy thing, Beomgyu muses to himself, looking down at your messy cunt and feeling the way his cock twitches, still in need to fill you up properly.

“Can’t take anymore?” Beomgyu asks apathetically— and though you weakly let out a sound of affirmation, you can tell he doesn’t really care to hear your answer; not with the way he strokes at your skin in fascination, wandering hand pulling at the base of your tail and watching you squeal in surprise, body arching in an attempt to get away— you all but slump into a pool of overstimulation once he finally lets you go, foggy mind barely able to pick up the way he tsks. 

“Don’t lie— you can, I’m sure you can,” Beomgyu tuts, watching with amusement as you pout and petulantly shake your head, “you’re a good girl, you can take whatever we give you.” 

You don’t seem to process the meaning of his words to a full extent— you’re too far gone to do so, body turned weak as you continue to try and stabilize yourself, chest heaving with every breath you take. But it doesn’t matter if you’ve caught on to what’s happening around you, your every movement taken care of by the two men that cage you in— your shudder at the feeling of Beomgyu pulling out of you, the slick sound drowned out by the crude praises Beomgyu growls; two, strong hands are pulling you up next, proceeding to maneuver you so you sit on the counter— Soobin stands between your legs, looking at you with eyes filled with want and an undeniable pity; he takes in your worn, marked and messy figure intently, watching as his eyes linger on the rips of your dress and the marks all around your shoulders. His hands go up to the area, and your eyes flutter shut, body craving to be covered, to be coddled and tidied. 

“Such a perfect doll for me,” Soobin sighs out, beginning to tug down at what’s left of the material, watching the way you shudder and open your eyes with a slight shock— a whine bubble up at the back of your throat, but you can’t really find the strength to protest the way you’re slowly left undressed before the two pairs of hungry eyes before you, no longer able to find the energy to feel embarrassment from being left bare— Soobin’s voice is as gentle as his movements, feeling him lift your hips so he can slide the dress off you properly; it wasn’t very hard to do anyway, the fabric practically hanging together by a single thread, “It’s alright… I’ve got you.” 

When Soobin wraps your legs around his waist and hoists you off the counter, you can only wrap your arms around his shoulders and lean your forehead on his shoulder, seeking for more of the scent that calms you down and leaves you mindless; your grip tightens the moment you feel the head of his cock poking at your entrance, painfully hard as he sighs out shakily at the feeling of your sensitive walls fluttering at the feeling— he’s stretching you out slowly, filling you up, and all you can do is bury your head into his neck and try to calm your breathing, taking in the thick sage that fills your senses.

Soobin stays buried deep inside you for a moment, cursing at the tight embrace of your heat around him; you allow yourself to relax— it doesn’t last long though, body jolting with shocks as you feel another head poking at your already stuffed cunt. 

“Wait— wait– I can’t— too full, it won’t fit…!” you cry out, looking at Soobin in a panic; a broad chest pressed firmly against your back, familiar lips pressing a chaste kiss to your shoulder— Soobin’s eyes are dark as he takes you in, ears forward and twitching at your pleas; softly, he shakes his head in reassurance.

“You can,” is all Soobin murmurs, watching your face twist as Beomgyu begins to push into you— little by little, stretching you past your limits, resting his chin on your shoulder and shutting his eyes at the sensitive feeling— tears stream down your cheeks freely, soft hiccups escaping you as Beomgyu’s hips press flush against you from behind; Soobin reaches up to caress your head, to pet gently at your ears, and smiles. “See? You’re doing so well. You can take it.”

You shake your head to refute his claims— but it’s not as though that would change the way they’ve begun to slowly pull out, setting their individual paces that inevitably work together, leaving you full no matter what— and it has your head falling back, mouth falling open dumbly as they begin to fuck you; slowly at first, gently, only because your poor cunt has yet to adjust to the size of them. But once they feel the way you leak onto them, the way your cunt begins to clench as their tips ram into places that have your eyes rolling to the back of your head, they begin to find the confidence to use you how they want. 

Eventually, you’re nothing but putty in their arms; weakly grabbing onto anything you can for support, one finding a firm grip onto Soobin’s shoulder as the other ventured to tangle itself in Beomgyu’s hair— the said man continues to keep his head buried in your neck, lips having a mind of their own as he continues to nose at your scent gland; the action of him nuzzling against it, of him scenting you, is enough to have you a whining mess, fingers tugging at his hair desperately; it only serves to have him fuck into you harder, hips snapping ruthlessly against yours and rough groans escaping him from the pleasure. 

“Fuck, such a good cunt, so tight— ah,” Soobin groans, watching as your eyes flutter open to look at him, teary and catching the moonlight that shines down through the window; he cups your cheek, stroking at your cheekbone fondly as he speaks, “so pretty… you’re so pretty, all I’ve ever wanted— god, you’re perfect.”

The look of adoration Soobin gives you isn’t lost on you entirely— but there’s something else that rears its head within his gaze, hungry and desperate, threatening to swallow you whole— and you realize that, for the first time ever, Soobin seems to be staring at you as though you were nothing but prey; something for him to claim and own. 

But it seems as though he’s not the only one who possesses those particular feelings— Beomgyu’s pace seems to be growing erratic behind you, knocking you forward against Soobin’s chest and leaving you to wail at the feeling of his cock ruthlessly pounding into you, uncaring of the rhythm the other has set in place; he mumbles gruff words against your neck, but it’s all muffled and interrupted by huffed out moans he lets out in between— but your poor cunt seems to catch onto what he might be saying quite clearly. 

“C-close, oh shit, ‘m so close,” Beomgyu says, finally perking up from his place in the crook of your neck to speak directly into your ear, placing sloppy kisses at your jaw as he does, “Ah, d’you feel that? Yeah? Want me to cum inside you?”

You know what his question really entails— you know what your answer should be. But your body simply trembles and your brain short circuits at the thought, traitorous to the last bits of reasoning within you as you dumbly nod at his request; he lets out a moan at the sight. 

“Yeah, you do, don’t you? Want my knot, wanna be bred— ffffuck, I’ll give it to you, I’ll knot you, make you mine,” his every movement has become erratic; Soobin finds it hard to continue fucking you, undeniably sensitive to the harsh pace the other has set— but Beomgyu doesn’t care, leaning in close to your ear to whisper his next words. 

“I’ll claim you,” he breathes out, enjoying the way your little tail thrashes against him at the sound, panic filling your tone for a second before you melt into the idea, too fucked out to be able to refuse anymore— if anything, you tighten like a vice around the two, bringing out sensitive sounds from the two; Beomgyu continues to ramble into your ear, much bolder now that he’s taken control of the situation. 

“You want it— oh fuck, yeah, you’ll make such a pretty mate, all for me,” he growls, his words slipping to the other’s ears and alerting him, his eyes widening yet his pace not stopping, “all mine— mine, mine mine— o-oh, shit—!”

It all happens so fast. The swelling of a knot inside you, stretching you out to the point where you find yourself sobbing, pawing at whatever you can and begging for them to slow down, to be gentle— hot cum fills you, your cunt only able to handle so much as Soobin’s cock is pushed out, just enough so his own knot doesn’t catch, his orgasm triggering immediately after— it’s so much, yet it’s not enough, your whole being pulsing with desire for the final thing to push you to the edge— and it comes in the form of sharp canines digging deep into your neck. 

The right side of your neck stings— then, your left. Two sets of teeth have found their home within your skin, the last of your freedom stripped away as your orgasm swallows you whole— you tremble and you twitch within their hold, cunt filled and leaking with their cum, unable to do anything more than lie within their embrace and take what they give you. 

Your eyes feel heavy; you will yourself to stay awake, but your vision becomes spotted within moments— for the first time in a while, your mind is able to find peace.

 ≪ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆≫  

When you finally wake, you find yourself surrounded by warmth; with heavy blankets over your figure, you’re able to recognize the place as your room. You attempt to look around, but are immediately met with a searing pain— the night’s events flood through your mind all at once, and suddenly, you’re able to sense the presence of two others next to you; their arms wrap around you and they remain glued to your side, one embrace much more familiar than the other. 

Through your line of sight, you’re able to spot the moon that peaks through your window, hovering just above the dark, looming canopy of the forest. You stare and you stare, unsure of what to make of everything— of what you’re feeling, of the bodies that shift beside you, pulling you closer to them, as though it could never be enough. 

Your eyes sting, and after a second, you find yourself mourning. Mourning for your loss of freedom, for the overwhelming amount of sensations you were put through, and for this complex, dangerous situation you’ve been thrust into. 

You were warned of the forest; you were warned that nothing good came from venturing within. 

But even then, nothing could have saved you from the creatures that roamed beyond.

[myslutwritings]

I RLLY LOVE UR BLOG OMG 😭💗💗 IF U CAN, CAN I PLEASE REQUEST A THING WITH THE FIRST 3 UPPER MOONS WHERE WHERE READER ACCIDENTALLY CUTS THEIR LONG HAIR TOO SHORT AND REGRETS IT? I HAD THE SAME SITUATION BEFORE 😭😭

Aww, thanks honey! and of course! 🖤

➤ The 3 Uppermoons reaction to your haircut

featuring: Kokushibo [uppermoon 1], Douma [uppermoon 2], Akaza [uppermoon 3]

— A/N: sorry for being gone for so long (again) i tend to disappear and reappear whenever i please. 😂💀

(not proof read btw!!)

KOKUSHIBO

let’s start off by saying that before you even pick up those damn scissors to cut off those voluptuous locks he is IMMEDIATELY stopping you.

Is he doing this because this is his special way of throwing a silent tantrum over the fact you’re cutting your hair and he’s one of those guys who likes people with short hair? NO!

Is he doing this because he’s very observant and knows you’ll fuck it up and then regret it afterwards? YES!

Do you listen to him?

…

No :)

SOOOO you end up cutting your hair.. and.. let’s say it’s a total DISASTER AFTERWARDS.

Horrible would be an understatement!

(at least to you.)

You’re flipping your shit at this point and Koku is just looking at you with a “i told you so” look.

But hey! it’s okay! he still thinks your beautiful no matter what even with shorter hair. He doesn’t care about that and only loves you for you.

You could be bald and this man would still love you to bits!

Kokushibo actually finds it silly that you think he’d care so much about your physically appearance.

He finds you freaking out over it very endearing and now you have to admit you should’ve listened to him since he was right about you ‘fucking up’ your hair.

DOUMA

“Oh my! what happened?!”

Quite literally Douma’s exact words!

He just returned back to his temple from a mission to find a pair of old scissors in your hand and hair stands all over the floor.

Oh, so messy! He isn’t too fond of messes..

But, you know, since it’s YOU, so he’ll let it slide!

Questions what in muzans name you were doing.

Let’s pretend muzan is an expression because it’s funny.

Much like Kokushibo he’ll find it amusing how distraught you are over something so little!

It’s just hair.. why do you care so much?

He still finds you beautiful! not the best at validating your feelings though because he thinks you being legitimately upset over this is stupid.

Always found you being upset by the tiniest of things so dumb but also fascinating.

Douma doesn’t feel anything (so he claims..)

So therefore you feeling so strongly compared to him keeps it entertaining.

But he finds himself feeling somewhat sorry and comforting you in the end..

Strange.

Reassures you that your hair will look great long, medium length or short. he adores every part of you!

AKAZA

Akaza actually likes your hair short!

Not even like.. HE LOVES IT!

Digs it. i’ll tell you!

I feel like he’d like women/men with shorter/medium-length hair.

(Of course he is still attracted to you regardless of your hair style)

Since you’re dating a demon obsessed with fighting..

He actually teaches you how to defend yourself (so that when he isn’t around you’ll be able to fend for yourself)

And fighting with short hair is wayyyy easier! it doesn’t get in the way when you’re training.

Whenever Akaza would train you, you’d always have to put up your hair.

It sorta irritated him because why not just cut it? Or trim it?

Until you finally go through with it..

Shit turned into a whole fiasco. ☠️

You’re upset over it but he convinces you to look on the bright side. attempting to make you focus on the positive aspects rather the negative.

“You’re still so beautiful! Don’t be upset over your hair. it’ll grow back.”

You miss your long hair and regret cutting it and you know it’ll grow back but you can’t help but feel salty.

At least it doesn’t get in the way when Akaza trains you anymore so that’s a bonus.

[peekofhistory]

You said about buying their own hanfu in one of the last asks. Is it really ok for non chinese people to buy it?

Where I live we are usually so preoccupied with cultural appropriation that I'm afraid to somehow cross the line.

Omg, thank you for asking this question, it's a really, really good one (I live in Canada and this is also an issue that pops up here).

In the daily life world, what I would recommend is do what feels safest for you. I know some people can take this sort of stuff to extremes, so protect yourself first. If you feel that wearing Hanfu as a non-Chinese person is going to get you attacked (in person, online, anywhere) then it might not be the best idea.

If you're just buying and not wearing out, buy away~!! No one knows what you have in your closet. Or you can always wear it around the house or in your backyard. You can also kind of..."take it apart". Like, wear a Hanfu top with some dress pants, or a Hanfu skirt with a regular blouse. You're less likely to attract attention that way.

In my own, personal opinion, though, I honestly have no issues at all with anyone wearing Hanfu on 2 conditions: It's not worn to mock or bash the culture. It's not worn with the intention to claim ownership of the garment.

I don't care if you wear it solely because it's pretty clothes, I don't care if you love Chinese history and culture and have a PhD in it and Hanfu is part of the package, I don't even care if you just happen to want to wear it for Halloween, as long as there's no malicious intent behind it I personally have no problems at all.

If you actually come to China and wear Hanfu, I can guarantee (yes, guarantee) that NO Chinese person will attack you for cultural appropriation. In fact, the opposite is MUCH more likely to happen in that Chinese people (in China) will LOVE that you are wearing Hanfu. That you show interest in our culture and history, that's very exciting!

I lived in Japan for several years for work and I wore kimonos once in a while there. My Japanese friends and colleagues had no issues with it, in fact they LOVED it (one of them even gave me a kimono from her family's collection). While traveling around I saw lots of non-Japanese people going to professional kimono studios to get done up and then visit tourist sites for photos, no one gave them any issues, no whispers, no side eyes, nothing but excitement to see visitors enjoying and participating in their culture.

I also used to like Lolita fashion, which is inspired by European historical clothing. No one in Canada had an issue with me wearing that sort of thing, even though my physical appearance is clearly not from Europe. If I ever go to Versailles, I plan on a full Marie Antoinette dress and hair and I'll stomp anyone who tries to tell me I can't.

It's fascinating to me that most people actually living IN the country of question don't see others enjoying their culture as a negative thing. In fact they generally are more than happy to share because it feels GOOD that others want to learn about your country. (And by "most people" I'm talking 99.999999%, I'm only leaving 0.0000001% possibility because China has a lot of people so maaaaaaaaybe you miiiiiiiiiight find one person who has an issue if you interview EVERYone)

I feel like the word "appropriation" needs to be better defined to those who are either: a) Trying to claim something not belonging to their culture is theirs b) Mocking or ridiculing another culture

I had a really sad experience once where one of my good friends and I were shopping in an Asian mall together. She's a brunette, Caucasian. She saw a qipao store (those Chinese form-fitting dresses) and admired how pretty the dresses in the display were so I said why don't we go in and try some on. She said she can't because she's afraid she'll get accused of cultural appropriation (much like yourself). I was SO incredibly sad when she said that, I honestly wanted to cry.

I WANT to share my culture with my friends and others around the world, I WANT people to come and participate in it. But I also understood that with the political atmosphere being what it is, she wasn't comfortable wearing it.

Sometimes it feels like there's a bunch of people who aren't actually interested in our culture, never been to China, never cracked open a book about China, never learned anything about China except maybe what's on the news, very gun-ho to gatekeep who gets to enjoy our culture FOR us (I won't speak for cultures I haven't explored, but I got a similar sense while living in Japan). They mean well, but...I do wish it could be more nuanced so that not everyone simply trying to learn and enjoy a culture outside of their DNA gets attacked.

Then there's my group who have "Chinese" DNA but were either born abroad or grew up abroad most of their life (technically there's no "Chinese" DNA, Chinese is not an ethnic group, but you get the idea). We've been exposed mainly to the political atmosphere outside, but our reaction to this issue splits.

Some are like me, we're happy to share, we're happy to see others enjoying Hanfu, buying it, wearing it, learning about it, etc.

Some will react to this issue similarly as those who attack anyone and everyone who tries to wear something not in their own culture. I find this group scarier because, to a completely non-Chinese person, this group seems to hold a lot of authority on the topic. They have a DNA connection to China, surely they get the final say in whether or not non-Chinese people should be "allowed" to wear Chinese traditional wear. But again, there's no nuance at all. I once saw someone from this group attack a Caucasian woman on Twitter for wearing chopsticks in their hair. Like...??????????????? Who...CARES???? Either they simply liked the look or just wanted the hair out of their face, who CARES. They weren't mocking China or Chinese culture, they weren't claiming sticks in hair was an idea they invented, like...seriously. Then anyone in the comments who said it wasn't a big deal this person would pull the "I'm Chinese" card, but when I checked her profile she left China before she was 4. Yes, she's technically "Chinese" but just how much authority should she hold telling others who gets to participate in Chinese culture?

And honestly, if we're being really, reeeeeeeeeally strict about who "gets" to enjoy Hanfu... "Han" is an ethnic group in China (95% of the population), "Hanfu" means the clothing of the Han ethnic group. I'm 1/8 Mongolian (on my mom's side someone married a Mongolian wife), does that mean I also can't wear Hanfu? Or I get to enjoy 7/8 of Hanfu?? Like...do we have to start doing DNA tests before enjoying cultures? xDD

Anyway, that's my giant, long take on the topic. Congrats if you read all of it ^^;;

You can always come to China (I'm here on a visit :D) and we can wear Hanfu together~ A non-Chinese person wearing Hanfu out would be a star at all the sites, you'll get random people asking you for photos (I get non-Chinese visitors asking me for photos when I wear Hanfu out in China, you'll get all the Chinese people asking you for photos xDD)

Look at these lovely visitors enjoying their trips to China wearing Hanfu :D

[milksnake-tea]

Can I request a yandre Nanook and yaoshi and god /aeon reader the reader is like that unknown god in genshin impact that can control time and destiny

What if Nanook had a fascination about this aeon and slowly developing an obsession with them and yaoshi being the same and would bless their devoting followers

to chase destiny.

characters: nanook, yaoshi

contains: YANDERE CHARAS, obsessive behavior, stalking, manipulation, brainwashing(?), unhealthy relationships, power dynamics(?), vaguely religious language (nothing heavy, it comes with the aeons stuff lol)

a/n: mmmmm yandere aeons <333 love that for them. ngl i kinda forgot about the time part so this is primarily focused on the destiny part so yahoo!

...follows you like an incessant plague. Wherever you go, wherever you may run, they and their Antimatter Legion follow, bringing destruction and devastation with them.

Nanook first met you in the early days of their existence as an Aeon. Back then, they were but a young one, still weak in the eyes of the others. Back then, they saw you as another obstacle in their Path, another nuisance.

But then, in a clash between you two, Nanook witnessed your abilities for the first time. In the midst of a Legion invasion, a battle that was sure to end in the destruction of another planet, you managed to turn the tide. Your hands weaved a different path, a path that destroyed Nanook's forces and forced them to retreat.

Just one word from you, and fate was reversed. Just one sweep of your pen, and a losing battle was won.

The image of you that day is forever etched into Nanook's mind, burned into their memory. You, powerful, beautiful, and the cold glare of your eyes as you met their gaze. You, the weaver of fate itself.

You were the key to purifying the world of the cancer of civilization. You were the missing piece they never knew they needed. With your power, Nanook could create a perfect, clean world.

They would like nothing more other than to take you away for themself, to lock you away in a separate realm from the rest. But alas, you are older, stronger than they were.

But Nanook wasn't one to give up. As the Aeon of Destruction, they have many other Aeons as enemies, such as Xipe or Yaoshi. They knew how to get their way, even if they would have to fight tooth and claw for it.

And so they follow you. They stalk you throughout the galaxies, chasing you much like the Hunt would. Any planet that has the misfortune to garner even the slightest glance from you is reduced to rubble, for Nanook despises the mere idea of your attention being on anything other than them.

The person they hate the most is Elio, the seer that you've seemingly blessed with your favor. If it weren't for your protection, Nanook would've killed him - blessing him with a long, torturous, drawn-out death with you as their audience.

But it's fine in the end. In the end, Nanook will have their way. They will take you, no matter what it takes. And when they finally do, only then can an untainted world be made.

You may claim to change destiny, but Nanook knows that the future can be changed by those with enough ambition, enough drive.

They isolate you, crushing both the people and the worlds you love. They whisper in your mind of how the greed and hubris of civilization weren't worth saving, and show you only the ugliest parts of humanity. Their words cloud and befuddle your mind with distrust, fear, and abhorrence towards the sentient species.

Soon, your loom of fate becomes tangled in their hands, and Nanook is the one who pulls the strings. They are the only one you can trust, clean from ugliness and impurity. They are all you need. And in return for your power, they offer a faux love.

You watch from within their embrace as the universe crumbles into nothing, watch as countries and planets collapse.

This is how things should be, they whisper, feeling nothing in their heart as they hold you. This is the right way of the world.

And you believe them.

...is an insufferable thorn in your side. Yaoshi yearns for a paradise free from suffering and despair, a paradise that wouldn't be complete without you.

Ever since the day they saw you, they've known. Their heart that loved each and every being in the universe, bloomed for you, longed for you.

They weren't sure just what had attracted them to you so badly, but Yaoshi didn't think they needed to. There was never a need for a reason to love, was there?

Every day, every hour, without fail, Yaoshi clings to your side. You could try to foresee their movements, forcing them away from you, but even you were not free from the cruelty of fate. Yaoshi would always find you, arms open for an embrace as they fill your space with promises and sweet words.

Let us make a paradise together, they'd propose, taking you into their arms as they coo into your ear, caressing your arms with their fingers. Think of what we could do, what we could bring to the galaxies.

Yaoshi is convinced that you were meant to be theirs, the gateway to a world ridden of death and disease. With your power alongside theirs, no one would have to suffer any longer.

The only problem was that you were a little stubborn. No matter, for Yaoshi was patient. They knew you wanted to bring salvation to the universe alongside them, you were just a bit scared of venturing outside your script.

Yaoshi wears you down bit by bit. First, they guilt trip you. They lament over the pitiful mortals, succumbing to disease and war. Perhaps if you had taken them up on their offer, those mortals would be alive and happy right now. They remind you about the lives you could've saved. Yaoshi never outright says it, but you know that subtly, they call you selfish for ignoring the plight of the weak.

Then, they gain the favor of your followers. They bless your devotees with immortality, curing them of any disease or injury they may come across. They coddle and care for them, so that even when Yaoshi isn't physically by your side, your followers who sing them praises constantly remind you of them.

It's even worse when Yaoshi is present. As your followers gush about your so-called love, a love you don't ever recall partaking in, Yaoshi preens at your side, holding onto your arm as a noble lady would her lover.

And as they do, they whisper into your ears, crooning like a venomous snake.

Play along, they murmur, playing with your hair as they kiss your temple. You don't want to disappoint them, do you?

And so you do. You play the role of lover to Yaoshi, forced to give up your pen and your being to the Abundance.

Even though you know of the despair that would eventually come of immortality, you are powerless to stop it, lest you face the scorn of your people.

[giuliettagaltieri]

Chase for Prestige

Pairing: Presidential Candidate!Coriolanus Snow x Strategist!Reader

Chapter Synopsis: The Performer

Warning: elitism, morally gray reader, greed, mentions of drugging, self induced injury, violence, death

Word Count: 3738

3 of 6

After graduating from the University, you and Coriolanus set your plan in motion.  With your minds working together, and Dr. Gaul and the Plinths behind him, it was not that difficult to do.

Coriolanus was a perfect man to become a President.

He has the intellect for it, the support, the charisma, and the right name.

It was not a wonder how in just a couple of years, young Coriolanus Snow was able to climb high in politics.  A fresh graduate, already contending with veterans.

With the media on his side, he showed them that what Panem needs is something fresh.  Someone new to govern them.

President Ravenstil is an old man, he has suffered too much.  And it seems he was only waiting for the young Snow to fully come to age and take the seat that was rightfully his.

When Coriolanus announced that he is filing candidacy for President, you were with him.

Thanatos Swansworth’s daughter.

The Districts felt an old fear creeping up their bones, similar to what they felt over two decades ago.

But Coriolanus Snow was not the only candidate.

There was also Hilarius Heavensbee.

Not the greatest politician but he did have the money and influence.

“Heavensbee visited the grave of Felix Ravenstill.”  You say from the couch in Coriolanus’ office.  “Claimed to avenge his good friend when he becomes President.”

Coriolanus puts his pen down as he listens to you read from the newspaper.

This is not good.  This will garner the attention of the Capitol.  And with President Ravenstill stepping down, it seems only fitting to have someone who will avenge Felix as a replacement.

“I regret telling you that.”  You sigh as you make your way to the refreshments table to pour yourself a cup of tea.  “Focus on your speech for tonight.”  

He bristles.  “How could I when my enemy has the upperhand.  He offers kindness and empathy.  What do I have to offer?  The name of my father and games?”  Coriolanus snaps at you.

But you don’t respond to him as you check the teapot for remaining hot tea.

“What are you doing?”  He grumbles, eyeing you with frowned brows.  To his surprise, you plunge your hand inside.  “Y/N!”

Your hiss as Coriolanus yanks your arm away, making the teapot drop and shatter on the hardwood floor.  “What has gotten into you!”  You have never heard him so angry.  Not even when they stripped him off his name and status and sent him to District 12.

He rushes you to the powder room and places your hand under the faucet.  His teeth were grinding against each other as he observed your skin for any permanent damage.

“What were you thinking?”  His voice is low and barely contained.  He was behind you, trapping you between him and the lavatory.  Every rumble of his chest sends a shiver to your spine.

You smile as you gently move your fingers.  No serious damage.  Your skin still stings though.

“Giving you a chance to be kind and empathic.”  You laugh, one cut short by how he squeezes at your hip warningly.  “You’ll have to cut my steak for me later, Mr. President.”  The frown in his brows deepen as he hears the smile in your voice.  “I will make you do everything for me, Coriolanus Snow.” 

He did not like what you did.

Not when you grimace at the slightest touch to your hand.

The Plinths held the dinner party for Coriolanus, a celebration before his District Tour.

Many influential people are present in the party and for those who could not come, the party is being televised, all throughout Panem.

You are by his side the entire time, your good hand holding on to his arm, whispering information to his ears for every person that comes to shake his hand.

It was fascinating to watch how easy it was to inflate their ego.  They genuinely thought that Coriolanus Snow had the time to know their name and worry how their orchids were thriving this year.  No, it was all you.

You with your sweet smile and alluring voice.

Many expressed their worry for your injured hand but you always manage to turn it back to Coriolanus.  Telling them you had a little accident with your tea this morning, that it could have been worse had it not been for Coriolanus Snow.

They were so touched by his concern for you.  They start to see him in a new light.  He was not only good to Sejanus Plinth, but he was also doting on you.

Coriolanus Snow is a firm politician but he is also capable of warmth.

Many of them sneakily tried to ask about your relationship, but you were smart enough to deflect their questions.  Not confirming them but also not denying, just enough to keep their attention on you.

And it was finally time for the speech.

Coriolanus made people shed tears that night, fueled the narcissism of the Capitol citizens, but also gave a smidge of hope to the people of the Districts, it is not much but they do learn to start trusting this young Snow.

You are at your table, sharp eyes glinting at Coriolanus, sipping your champagne as you watch your handiwork.  You were careful enough to wear a gentle smile, for the cameras, lest the public mistake you for plotting something malevolent.

For the grand finale, he walks over to your table, his eyes on you the entire time as roars of applause ring heavily in the air.  He gently holds your elbow, careful not to hurt your hand and places a featherlight kiss on your wrist and closes his eyes, making the public believe that you are his anchor, grounding him.

Your lips part at his display of affection.  It almost seemed real.  You place your good hand on your chest as you smile up at him, your eyes turning glassy from all the emotions you are supposed to be feeling.

The ruse does not end there.

Just as you asked, he cut your steak for you, excusing himself from the conversation with the president to focus on the task.

You kick him under the table, it was sweet but this is the president he is talking to, and to put it to a pause just for your meal-

“What a sweet boy you are.”  The President’s wife coos and the President nods in agreement.

“It is hard to come by a good woman, especially for men like us.”  The President tells Coriolanus who chuckles.

“Indeed, sir.  That is why I have no intention of letting this one go.”  Coriolanus nods at you, making everyone around the table laugh.

“Don’t worry, I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”  You place a hand on his forearm.  “You are stuck with me.”

The President laughs harder at that.

It seems like Coriolanus knows what he is doing.  It made him look committed.

The Capitol is sad to see you off in your District Tour.

Hilarius Heavensbee, calls it foolishness in an interview once.  So many can go wrong on the tour.  You can be ambushed in the middle of speeches, poisoned in the homes you stay in, and even road accidents are a possibility.

You indulge a reporter as you are about to depart with Coriolanus, you smile at the camera as you hold on to his arm.  “Hilarius Heavensbee is right to be afraid, but a coward to hide in the walls of the Capitol.”

The ratings for Coriolanus rose dramatically after your comment, and the man cannot be more proud of you.

Or so he thought.

District 4 was fairly a peaceful place.  The land was beautiful due to it being situated on a large body of water, one that you do not see much from the Capitol.  The stench was something else but with the position of being President on the line, Coriolanus managed to tolerate it.

The mayor was wary for some reason.

He was sweating intensely.  His eyes darted all around, jumping at the slightest of sounds.  It did not sit well with either of you but you smiled for the cameras still.

He was nearly rushing you and Coriolanus to a fairly sized yacht.  

The ship you saw your father buy on an impulse once could collide with this one and your father’s ship will not even feel the slightest tremor.  It was exceptionally gigantic, especially to a four-year-old girl.  Your father bought it for your family should the Capitol fall in the war.  You never got to see that ship again when he got his head blown up with a sniper.

When you manage to get to a considerable distance from the port, the mayor was able to breathe more calmly.

“Is something the matter?”  Coriolanus smiled kindly, but you hear the sharpness in his voice.

The man stills his movement, his breath coming to a stop too as he looks at you like a deer caught in headlights.  He opens his mouth and closes them quickly.  He looks like he is about to burst into tears.

“You-you see, Mister Snow, sir…”  He stammers.

“Yes?”  Coriolanus raises a brow.

The mayor heaves a rather large sigh. 

“We m-might have received word that a…a group of people might have been uhm, they might cause…a smidge of trouble.”  He scratches at his head, trying to make it sound light and funny but he is obviously failing, soaked with sweat now.  “But there is nothing you should worry about.  We are taking care of it.”

You wanted to punch the man.

“And you thought it might be wise to bring us here in the middle of the ocean when someone declared a threat against us?”  You ask coldly.

“We thought, this way…w-we can select who could be around you, Miss Swansworth.”  He grimaces at your tone.

Coriolanus looks around the deck.  The reporters are stationed on one side, waiting to cover the party that will be thrown at dusk.  Peacekeepers are also deployed in the area.

You pull Coriolanus close by his tie, the mayor looking away with his cheeks flushing.  It seemed too intimate for him to see.

“We cannot have rebel attacks in the news.  It would prove everything Heavensbee said to be true.  Everybody would laugh at us!”  You say through gritted teeth.

Coriolanus clicks his tongue, hating how true your words are.  He places a warm hand on your back and leans down until his lips brushes against your ear, tickling you.  

The reporters are going haywire at the romantic gesture being offered to them.

“We will proceed as planned.”  He whispers lowly.  “For now, let’s retreat to someplace more private.”  Coriolanus straightens up and looks at the mayor testingly.  “Mister mayor, could you provide us a quieter deck?  Miss Swansworth would love to rest before the party begins.”

The smile you gave the mayor did not reach your eyes.

“Of course!  Right this way, please.”  He guides you inside the yacht and Coriolanus had his hand on the small of your back, keeping you close.  Peacekeepers stationed themselves inside and outside the doors.  A silencer now attached at the tips of their guns.  The mayor opens the door leading to a smaller deck, an empty one, one you’d love to explore.

“You can rest here, Miss Swansworth.”  He smiles nervously at you, his feet sweating at how you look at the place with indifference.  “Mister Snow, I would send refreshments for you and the Miss.”  He walks over to the door.  “Excuse me.”  He almost runs away from you.

“How rude.”  You say plainly.  “Acting as if I will bite his head off if he breathed wrong.”

Coriolanus leaves your side to rest on a plush sofa.  “You wouldn’t?”  He busies himself with a pile of magazines that featured successful men of the Capitol.  He is somewhere in there too.

You scoff, walking over to the empty deck.

“Stay where I can see you.”  He reminds in a manner that is intended for children.

Rolling your eyes, you venture further into the deck, the sun is setting beautifully, it would be a shame to stay indoors.

You close your eyes at the soft breeze, listening to the gentle lap of the waves and the seagulls flying above.

“My my, what a stubborn girl.”  Coriolanus sighs as he comes to stand next to you.

“You are not my father.”  You quip, brow raising at him. 

He only smiles darkly at you.  “No, but I expect the same obedience from you.”

Coriolanus chuckles when you huff, your lips forming a delicate pout.

In the calmness of the descending twilight, you both share a comfortable silence. 

Behind the beauties that publicity offered you during the tour, one thing that you appreciated is the places you got to visit.

Coriolanus was not the best company but he is slowly becoming more and more tolerable.  At times you even begin to have trouble trying to guess if his actions are part of your ruse or not.

A mistake.

You inhale sharply, turning away from the tangerine glare, your back to him.

Coriolanus Snow watches you as you walk away from him.

“Problem?”

He leans on the rails, his arms crossing.

You sigh as you grip your wrist behind your back and rocked on your feet, still not looking at him.  You appear rather insecure and it bothered him greatly.  Y/N Swansworth can be a shy girl but never insecure.  Not even once.

“Yes.”

Coriolanus strides over but you take another step back.  He narrows his eyes at you warningly.  “Tell me.”

You purse your lips, doe eyes glancing at him before looking away.  “I should not.”

Patiently, he waited for you to continue talking.

You started walking further and further until you were farthest from him.

“Are you asking for a chase, sweetheart?”  He says playfully.  Coriolanus found it comical to watch your eyes widen.

“No.”  You are quick to rid your face of vulnerability.   “I would like a moment alone.”  You spoke distantly.

Coriolanus knew better than to force you to do something that you quite obviously do not want to do.

He straightens up and gives you a charming smile, similar to the ones he gave to the cameras, you hated it.

“I will leave you to yourself then.”

You bite your tongue as you watch him head to the direction of the door.  You wanted to stop him.  To get him to stay…with you.  But your longing eyes, hidden by the dimming nightfall, can only look at him.

A soft thud from behind you steals both of your attention.  Coriolanus pauses his steps by the door.

“Y/N?”  He calls.  “Come here.”

With the lack of light, you struggle to see clearly what is happening, but with the mercy of whatever gods are looking down at you, you manage to see a silhouette of a person on top of the rails.

He was startled to see you, his movements freezing.  But that moment of shock did not last long as he seethed at you, his hand fished something from his pocket and you did not wait around to see what it was as you ran to Coriolanus as fast as you could.

But the man was not having any of that.

You yelp as a heavy mass slams against your back, knocking you to the ground.  It takes everything in you not to scream when your foot lands badly, now twisted in a weird angle.  Tears spring in your eyes as a burning pain rips from your head as your hair is being held in harsh fingers.  A cold sting against your neck had you squeezing your eyes but a muted bang stills every movement.

You look up to see Coriolanus still pointing a gun not very far above you, his eyes wide and afraid.  The fillet knife clatters on the deck and you groan as the man collapses on top of you.

Loud footsteps echo around the deck and you are yanked by your arms but as your feet make contact with the floor, you cry out in pain.  

You sniffle as you collapse on your bum, pretty dress splayed around you as you try to be brave, swallowing your sobs as you shiver from the fright.  Rough hands grab at your tear stained cheeks, turning you from side to side.

“It’s alright, I got you.”  He murmurs as the peacekeepers fill the area, the body being dragged away and taken care of.  You clutch at Coriolanus’ arms as you sobbed openly at his chest.  “You’re safe.”  It was the only promise he made that you found yourself believing.

The mayor was hysterical.  The doors and blinds shut, separating you from the people in the main deck.  He is kneeling in front of you and Coriolanus, sobbing like a newborn child deprived of his mother.

“We cannot let the people know about this.”  You spoke sternly, the ice on your foot had a biting cold, not making you feel any better.  “This never happened.”

Coriolanus’ leg is bouncing without a pause, his eyes livid as he refuses to let you get as far away as a meter from him.

The peacekeepers offered a drink to the Mayor before he leaves, which you think might have been tampered with as he was unnervingly happy afterwards, perhaps a bit loopy.  He joins the party with a glass of wine that a peacekeeper thrusted to his hand.

“You’d have to follow him.”  You spoke gently, trying not to wake his anger again.

“How many times would you have me tell you?”  He asks, agitated.  “I will not be leaving your side-”

“You have come this far, Corio.”  You spoke quietly, eyes looking anywhere but him.  “Surely you don’t intend to make a mistake now.”

This gets him to reconsider.  You turn to him with your most convincing smile. 

“Nobody is foolish enough to attempt another attack after that.”  You do not know that of course but you will say anything just to get him out there.  “We are doing so well, Coriolanus.  Do not ruin this for us.”  You plead.

Coriolanus looks away from you, contemplating.

“We were supposed to do this together.”  He sighs, eyes downcast.  It is a look you have seen often in his youth.  “And I let you get hurt.  On my watch.”

You smile, a real one this time.

In that moment, the peacekeepers and the people outside seemed to have disappeared as you were certain that it was just you and Coriolanus existing at that moment.

“I will never forget what you did for me.”  You caress his face.  He killed a man for you. 

“You still got hurt.”  He frowns, jerking away from your touch. 

Coriolanus Snow is sulking.

Laughing softly, you place a kiss on his jaw as you give him a knowing look.  He keeps his face straight but he looks at you from the edge of his skeptical eyes.

“Don’t play games with me.”  He warns you but you only giggle.

“I will be seeing you in a while.”  You say as you fix the ice better on your swollen foot.

Coriolanus wanted nothing else but to pull you back to him but he decides against it and he gets on his feet.  He gives you one last look before heading to the party.

Peacekeepers were quietly deployed around the yacht to prevent the public from noticing anything unusual.  The party was already packed with them by the time Coriolanus joined in.

You watch a live feed of the party from a channel that broadcasts all over Panem.

They are all expressing their disappointment in your failure to attend the party.

Coriolanus charmed them by saying that you had fallen asleep while the two of you watched the sunset, he told them you were too precious to be awakened from your slumber.

The people of the Capitol will believe you of course, but your enemies will plant seeds of doubt from this error.

You cannot let that happen.

The mayor was laughing at something Coriolanus said, others present at the table laughing along with him.  They did not know that the Capitol politician knew how to jest.

Coriolanus laughed along with them, though his eyes often wander to the closed doors that separated you from him.

“Missing Miss Swansworth?”  The mayor wriggles his eyebrows at him.  Perhaps the peacekeepers added a little too much on the drink.  He is starting to get too friendly than Coriolanus would have tolerated.

He chuckles lightly.  “I am.”

Everybody in the table looks at him dreamily, their hands in their chests.

“I have the perfect distraction.”  The mayor exclaims.  “You must try this, Mister Snow.”  The mayor pushes a plate of Lobster Thermidor to him.  Coriolanus knew better than to try anything that is not approved by the food taster you hired. 

He smiles and pats his toned abdomen.  “Oh, no.  Thank you, but I have satiated my appetite.”

The mayor frowns at him.  “But these are the best lobsters in District 4!”

Coriolanus nods at him.  “And they are exquisite, Mister Mayor!”

With such flattery, the mayor blushes, smiling bashfully at the others who praised him.

As the night progressed, Coriolanus kept glancing at his watch, dreading the speed of time.  Time was moving so slowly, he wondered if this was a form of punishment.

“I cannot believe you started the party without me.”

Coriolanus never looked up as swiftly.

There you stood, in a long evening dress he had not seen before, smiling brighter than any stars overhead.  You are standing on your feet, posture perfect, with no trace of injury.

He was in disbelief and he wanted nothing more than to tell you to get back inside.  His brows pinch when you glide with perfect steps, face as angelic as ever.

Coriolanus was quick to get to his feet and pull the chair next to him for you to sit on.

“Thank you.”  You smile at him.

The media was quick to cover your arrival.

“You’re not supposed to be on your feet.”  He seethes.  His smile barely kept together and you can see his teeth gritting.

In a closer look, he can see how your eyes are a bit glassy, lips quivering, and your temple moist with sweat.  You lean closer to him and beam.

“The show must go on.”

Hunt for Glory

[mintharabaenrelore]

Minthara's Parents

"I'm sure my mother has missed me- she likes competition."-Minthara

I've been working on this post awhile and I'm so excited to share it with you. I referenced @lunastrophe's excellent post on the topic for several details, and R.A. Salvatore's "Homeland" played a crucial role.

*I will make an individual post on Minthara's relationship to her mother later on, particularly the psychology of it, as it is fascinating and utterly tragic.

Minthara is- or was- unusually close to her mother, who taught her how to 'survive the perils of society', but she says there was 'no love to be found.' Minthara's mother saved her daughter's life by shielding her with her own body when Minthara was an infant, and yet she later tried to kill her. Minthara intends to kill her- "[...] I only regret that I left before enjoying a matricide. That would be a memory to cherish."- but says it is 'returning the favor.'

What do we know?

House Devir fell from Lolth's favor in 1297 DR, when they were destroyed by House Do'Urden, due to Viconia's actions. Minthara describes herself as having been young and impressionable at this time, so she must have been in the early decades of her life. Therefore, she was likely born around 1270-1290 DR, leaving her approximately 222 years old in 1492 DR, the year Baldur's Gate III is set in.

Minthara is a Baenre. Her mother is confirmed to be Baenre, as in the epilogue, if you romance Minthara (I highly recommend it) she says her name is her mother's.

When Minthara is asked if her mother is still alive, she replies, "I expect so. If the world were to end, I think my mother would survive to rule over the ruins." At the epilogue party, she tells Origin Karlach, "I have a war of my own to fight, against my mother and her people [...]" which both confirms that her mother is alive and suggests that she is in a position of great power.

Minthara's mother is competitive (Minthara says this herself), resilient, and ambitious (Minthara says her mother likes Neverwinter because it is "ripe for conquering"), much like her daughter.

Minthara and her mother were unusually close- she held her as a child, taught her to "talk, walk, and then kill" and how to "survive the perils of society", gave her a torture rack for her 13th birthday, and they appear to have conversed frequently.

The fact that Minthara has committed avunculicide (the killing of one's uncle) confirms one of her parents had a brother. She also 'picked off' her 'siblings one by one', and Orin claims Minthara murdered her sister in the cradle to secure her inheritance.The first part of her name, "Min", means lesser/second, suggesting she is a 2nd child.

I believe Minthara's father is alive for the following reasons:

1. During the dryad love test, she lists her "-icides", (androcide, senicide and avunculicide). She does not mention patricide. She tells Wyll that patricide is the first step to greatness but she does not say she has done so herself.

2. When Minthara is describing how she and Orin are similar in some ways, she says that they both have "parents" who protect them with one hand and torment them with the other, rather than "mothers".

3. Minthara says (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vYBaYJgz_c, at 43:50) "I'll spot my father too, with any luck" at some point; @mogruith's research suggests that this line was mistakenly given to Minthara when it should have gone to Wyll, so it is not solid evidence.

But Minthara never mentions him- not even once.

So, who is Minthara's mother? *I don't think it's possible to figure out who her father is with the information I have

It cannot be Yvonnel or Triel Baenre, who are dead. Liriel Baenre is out of the question. Noori Baenre, I believe, is too young.

Yovnnel Baenre had 15 daughters, each a high priestess, acording to R.A. Salvatore's "Homeland".  The majority were alive, it seemed, around 1297 DR. The only two remaining in 1480 DR and thus during Baldur's Gate III were Quenthel and Sos'Umtpu. So could it be one of them?

Quenthel: No.

The firstborn of Quenthel Baenre is Myrineyl Baenre. In 1480 DR, 12 years prior to the events of Baldur's Gate III, she is in her last year at Arach-Tinilith. Baldur's Gate takes place in 1492 DR. It is obvious that Minthara is older than her, so she can't be Quenthel's daughter.

Sos'Umptu: Probably not, unfortunately. (I adore Sos'Umptu.)

Sos'Umptu, the keeper of the Baenre chapel, has been described as 'one of the least ambitious drow females her mother had ever known.' Minthara has also mentioned her mother having visited surface cities before, while Sos'Umptu hardly leaves the chapel if she can help it. These facts contrast with Minthara's portrayal of her mother as power-hungry and world-wise. Plus, I have never seen a mention of Sos'Umptu having had children.

@lunastrophe says in her post, "It seems that daughters of House Baenre – at least the eldest and the most important ones – were not allowed to have their own children while the matron mother of their house was still alive (from Siege of Darkness). Triel was free to have children only after she ascended to the position of matron mother, and the same went for Quenthel."

This all heavily suggests it is not Sos'Umptu- but it's not out of the question.

Could it perhaps be Merith Baenre, the second-most-powerful priestess of her House as of 1361 DR, considered for the role of the next Mistress of Arach-Tinilith? Perhaps- but Minthara has never implied that her mother is adopted rather than a genetic Baenre, and Merith used to be the daughter of a street sweeper before her clerical powers caught Yvonnel Baenre's eye and caused her to adopt her as a daughter.

So, who could it be?

I am inclined to think...

Zal'Therra Baenre: Zal'Therra Baenre- a cousin of Triel, and commander of the rearguard of the Army of the Black Spider in 1372 DR. The most promising of Triel's cousins, she seems to fit Minthara's implications that her mother is ambitious, brutal, and powerful, as the highest ranking House Baenre member of the army.

Not only is the description right, she is similar to Minthara as a warrior, the leader of an army. Even the second half of her name, 'Therra', is similar to Minthara's 'Thara'. Plus, everything about her is so vague that it's plausible she had children aside from Minthara- the 'siblings' she mentioned.

I have yet to read "Condemnation", though, so correct me if I'm wrong about anything.

Final notes: if Zal'Therra Baenre is a cousin of Triel, that would make Sos'Umptu, Quenthel, Jarlaxle and others Minthara's aunts and uncles.