#curse my terrible hand drawings

[derek-draws-stuff]

(Drops in with Geo Art and leaves for two weeks again or something)

Kinda lazy drawing of eepy man yippee

Also happy holidays!!! :)

[charanekun]

oooo chat i'm cooking best believe

[scorpiion]

day 10- exorcism

[keeps-ache]

who even wakes up at this hour!!! [<- is awake at these hours]

[thebestandworstdayofjune]

in the refrigerator light

summary: you are somehow unprepared to run into Logan while on the quest for a midnight snack... in the house you both live in. wc: 1.9 k a/n: to be fair I did warn you that this would happen. I have a few more ideas kicking around in my head, but feel free to send requests if you have any! this doesn't take place during any particular movie, fyi, but you and Logan are both teaching at the school warnings: fluffy fluff, mutant!reader, empathic powers!reader, soft!Logan

You should have been asleep. Even after choosing to stay on at the school past your education, you’d had a hard time shaking habits of the past. It still felt strange to walk freely into professor only areas, and you were always in bed by 11:00 pm every night. Sneaking down to the kitchen to steal one of the chocolate bars you knew Scott had stashed deep in the back of a cabinet felt wrong, but the siren song was too strong to resist. 

You’d been quiet, making sure to avoid the creaky stair (third from the bottom on the right) before shuffling into the kitchen. You rubbed at your eyes as you made your way to the proper cabinet. The only problem being that it was much higher up than you remember. It was times like these that made you wish for a more helpful mutation, like telekinesis or at least a few extra inches of height. You struggled for a few moments, on your tippy toes, stretching your arm as far as you could reach before you gave up. You sighed, raking your hands through your hair and making your peace with the fact that chocolate was not in your future tonight. 

“Scoot over, bub.” You jumped and let out a small shriek, before clasping a hand over your mouth. It was rare that anyone got the drop on you these days, your power more finely tuned and emotions tending to be strong around the manor, but your guard was decidedly down in the place you’d called home for so many years. But Logan was an exception to many rules. HIs hand gently gripped your wrist, pulling you against his chest for a brief moment before moving to stand in front of the cabinet. He reached up into the cabinet, the zip up hoodie he wore pulling up to expose a few inches of his stomach before pulling down a few bars of chocolate with ease. He smiled, the crinkles by his eyes more prominent in the low light of the kitchen. You did your best to appear like you hadn’t just been ogling him. 

“How did you know-”

“Scott’s shit at secrets.” He huffed, rolling his eyes. “You think he’d learn by now to not be such a loud mouth in a house full of people with enhanced hearing”. 

Your laugh was quiet, muffled by your hand in the interest of not waking the others. “Well, in that case, I hope one of those is for me.” 

Logan shrugged, eyes full of mirth. “What’ll you give me for it?” 

You blinked, unsure of yourself. You weren’t used to this Logan, yet. He was usually gruff and reserved, always reluctant to give into the kids in his history class that were trying to derail the lesson with a joke or two. He’d been playful a few times in your presence, and it almost always made you worried that the other shoe was about to drop. Seeing him in pajama pants and a soft grey sweatshirt only added to the strangeness situation. 

For the briefest moment, you considered using your powers. A single touch and you would know exactly how he was feeling. It was a blessing and a curse, to be able to be sure of how others were feeling with a single touch. A god-send on intel gathering or stealthy missions, a terrible temptation at midnight alone in the kitchen of the manor with the man you had harbored a crush on for as long as you’d known him. You make to grab one of the bars out of his hand, but he is too fast for you, quickly lifting them over his head. Your eyes narrowed. 

Fine, two can play at this game. You roll your shoulders back, drawing up your courage. “Depends what you want for it.” 

Logan grinned, dropping his arms and holding the bars behind his back. “Well, what I don’t want is to be an accomplice in your quest for cavities. Chuck’d have my head if he found out I had a part to play.”  

“I’m a big girl, Logan. I can take care of myself” You grab for the chocolate, but he’s too quick for you. For a brief moment, the two of you stare at each other, the moment charged. You lunged for the chocolate again, but Logan is already halfway across the kitchen, waving the chocolate around teasingly. 

“Logan, please” you laugh, following around the island. He cocked his head to the side, smirk playing at the corner of his lips. You were seconds away from stomping your foot and demanding he hand the chocolate over, when his smirk grew into a grin. 

“Alright bub,” he made his way around the island, depositing one of the chocolate bars in your hand. “You know I can’t say no to you.” 

You did your best to tamp down the butterflies that suddenly made a home in your stomach, but his smile was so gentle and he looked so soft, it was hard not to feel a little lovestruck. You snapped a piece of the bar off, and held it out to him. You dutifully busied yourself with breaking off a piece for yourself, ignoring the way that his affectionate gaze seemed to never leave you. 

“You’re not usually up this late,” he says, holding his hand out for another piece. You shrug, dropping another section into his hand. 

“Couldn’t sleep.” 

“Welcome to the club.” You knew that Logan had trouble sleeping, he was usually the first one hunched over a cup of coffee in the mornings, steadfastly ignoring inquiries into how he slept. 

“I, um” You hesitated. Usually offers of using your powers didn’t go well. You took a breath, steadying yourself. The worst he could say was no, right? “I could help with that, if you want.” 

Logan reached out, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear. You could tell your eyes were the size of saucers, but you couldn’t find words. After a few moments, Logan took a step back, shaking his head slightly. You blinked owlishly, taking a breath to steady yourself. 

“That’s sweet of you, bub. But I wouldn’t want to tucker you out.” It was no secret around the house that although you had a less physical mutation, it still took some of your energy. Sensing emotions was as natural as breathing, but influencing them was newer, and took much more focus. 

You pointedly glanced at the clock over the stove, noting that it was well past any reasonable bedtime, before facing Logan once more. “That actually sounds really nice.” He mumbled something about not wanting to take advantage of you, but the words died in his throat when your hand found his own. You looked up at him through your lashes, hoping that he would be able to see how earnest you were being. “I don’t want to force you, but I want to be asleep more than anything, and I can tell that you are too wound up about something to even begin to fall asleep.” 

His thumb stroked over the back of your hand a few times, before he stepped around you and led you out of the kitchen. You expected him to turn towards the living room, where you’d caught him ‘resting his eyes’ a few times in the middle of the day. Instead, he turned right making sure to skip the creaky stair (third from the bottom on the right) and right up to the door of your room. 

“A bit presumptuous, no?” You asked, before opening the door and walking through. 

Logan rolled his eyes, leaning against your doorframe. “I was there the first time you tried this. Figured it was best that no one has to pick you up off the floor.” 

You felt your face grow hot, remembering the unmitigated disaster that had occurred the first time Charles suggested that this application of your powers was a possibility. Your chin tilted up, doing your best to project confidence. “Well, it’s been a while since then, I’ve gotten better.” 

If the lighting had been better, you would have seen the faintest pink blush coloring his cheeks. “Rogue’s in my room.” You couldn’t help it, your eyebrows shot up near your hairline. “She and Bobby got into a fight, she wanted somewhere she would be left alone.” His hands were twisting in the pockets of his sweatshirt as he ducked his head down low. 

“Is that why you were prowling around the kitchen?” He rolled his eyes, but nodded all the same. “Well, do you wanna stay here tonight?” He looked like he was about to object, but you held your hand up, effectively silencing him. “You’re doing a favor for Rogue, let me do one for you.” 

“Thought you were already doin’ me a favor, sweetheart.” He protested, all while moving towards your bed. 

You perched on the edge of your bed, consciously doing your best to keep your heart rate in check. The students always joked that between Charles and Jean’s mind reading and Logan being able to hear cheaters hearts speeding up, it wasn’t even worth it to try and cheat in class. It hadn’t occurred to you that if he could hear your heart fluttering, he could definitely hear the measured deep breaths you were taking to mitigate the issue. 

You reached for his hand, and he accepted it readily. His palm was shockingly smooth under yours, it must be from his regenerative powers. Your thumb gently ran across his knuckles, still slightly red from the training session he’d had with some of the students earlier in the day. You tugged on his arm slightly, and he lowered himself down onto the bed beside you. “I thought that it’s important to work as a team, sometimes.” 

“You spyin’ on me, bub?” You sheepishly meet his eyes, but find nothing but tenderness waiting for you. “I’ll try to forgive you.” He drops a kiss on your knuckles, before motioning for you to lay down. “I’ll take the floor.” 

You tightened your grip on his hand. If he really wanted to, he could have broken away easily. Instead, he paused, eyebrows raised and waiting for an explanation. “Not much of a favor if your back hurts in the morning from sleeping on the floor” you shrugged. 

“Only if you’re sure-”

“Just get in the damn bed Logan.” He grinned, pulling back the covers and slipping into the bed. You followed shortly after, and slipped your hand back into his. The both of you laid in silence for a few moments, adjusting to your new arrangement. You were nice and toasty warm, able to feel the heat radiating off him under the covers. You were in the middle of working up the courage to actually use your powers, when soft snores began to emanate from the other side of the bed. You chanced a glance towards him only to find his lashes gently fanned out over his cheeks, and his chest rising and falling with his steady breathing. 

After a few moments, you followed him into dreamland. In the morning, you woke up with his arm firmly around your waist, feeling fully rested for one of the first times in your life. Again, you waited for the awkwardness to come, for your face to flush and your stammer to pick back up, but you were left waiting.

feedback is very much appreciated, as I’ve never written for Logan before! let me know what you think <3

next part

[luvsupa]

“SHALL WE RESUME, MY LADY?”

tags: heianera!sukuna, trueform!sukuna x fem!reader, kissing, servants are bullies :(, BLOOD + KILLING, smut-ish (?), ANGST, readers called little one, my lady, my queen, sukuna lovessss reader but doesn’t wanna show it.

w.c: 1.8k

a/n:ITS BEEN LONG SINCE I WROTE PART 3 FOR SUKUNAAA, so pls read (part 1 + part 2) to understand this :p (or don’t 😔)

-part 1 was my first ever story so pls don’t mind the terrible writing 🤕

+ likes and reblogs are appreciative!!

for weeks now, since your intimate encounter with sukuna in his chambers, his words have echoed relentlessly in your mind:

“you belong to me, mind, body, and soul.”

unable to shake his haunting assertion, you find yourself lost in a fog during your duties, drawing the king’s scorn for your clumsiness—pathetic, he silently judges.

you’ve been desperately trying to avoid sukuna, feeling his ominous presence lurking near the servants’ quarters, dangerously close to your room. each night, you pretend to be asleep, hoping he won’t enter.

uraume and the other servants and concubines have noticed your distraction, their whispers and spiteful glances intensifying your growing distress.

just as you’re lost in your thoughts, walking towards the grand kitchen, you feel yourself being harshly pushed—nearly losing your balance. you turn to face the two brunettes who always accompany sukuna in his chambers.

“look at her,” one sneers, her voice dripping with contempt. “she looks even more pitiful than usual. you’d think she’d try harder, especially with tomorrow’s annual gift-giving ceremony.”

your heart drops, and you feel the blood drain from your face as the realization hits you—you had completely forgotten about it. shit.

the other brunette catches your expression and smirks, leaning closer.

“oh, you did not know?” she mocks, her eyes glinting with malicious pleasure. “did you truly forget? lost in your own little world? pathetic. do not think sukuna-sama has not noticed your incompetence. if i were you, i would be prepared to face his wrath tomorrow.”

before you can respond, the brunettes walk away, laughing cruelly amongst themselves. fear grips you as you stand there, contemplating the consequences of your forgetfulness. this time, he might seek to end my life.

sukuna spared your life once before, but now? you’ve truly done it.

⨯. ⁺ ✦ ⊹ . *

morning arrives, finding you sleepless and anxious, having spent the night wrestling with decisions on what gift would appease the king of curses. regret gnaws at you—you could have been better prepared.

if only you had listened to uraume’s instructions, you wouldn’t be scrambling now to please sukuna.

a loud groan escapes you, not just from lacking a suitable offering but from the impending threat of losing your life in front of everyone.

your thoughts shatter as your door creaks open. uraume enters, carrying a basket laden with ceremonial attire.

“sukuna-sama will return soon from his mission,” uraume states matter-of-factly, approaching your bedside and handing you the basket. your gaze fixes on the black and gold kimono. “in the meantime, prepare your gift for our king,” they remind you, prompting your heart to skip a beat. you nod gratefully as uraume exits the room.

you linger, captivated by the elegance of the wooden basket. slowly, an idea begins to take shape.

i hope this idea will work…

⨯. ⁺ ✦ ⊹ . *

you hurriedly slip into the black and gold kimono uraume handed you, the fabric draping elegantly over your curves as you smooth out its silk folds.

grabbing the basket, you rush out of your room, navigating through the crowded hallways filled with servants, concubines, and guards all preparing to present their gifts to the king.

anxiety grips you as the chatter rises, signaling the ceremony may have already begun. finally reaching the garden, you drop to your knees, swiftly gathering orchids, red camellias, and wisterias.

heart pounding, you carefully arrange the brightly coloured flowers in the basket, leaving space for more. glancing around the vast garden for inspiration, you freeze as you spot a familiar figure in the distance, surrounded by guards and soldiers.

shit.

your pulse quickens as sukuna approaches the estate. you force yourself to calm down, needing clarity to finish your task.

turning to the fruit garden, you ignore the dirt on your kimono as you hurriedly gather peaches, oranges, and pomegranates from the trees, arranging them neatly in the basket.

with your last-minute gift finally perfected, you hope he will at least appreciate the effort. as cheers and applause erupt, signaling sukuna’s arrival, you hasten back to join the line of gift-givers, heart still racing with fear.

⨯. ⁺ ✦ ⊹ . *

the ceremony unfolds in a chamber unfamiliar to you, far larger than sukuna’s usual domain, filled with hundreds and hundreds of servants seated on comfortable cushions, rows of expectant faces awaiting the ceremony’s commencement.

as you wait nervously, you glance around at the lavish offerings others have brought—paintings, gleaming gold jewelry, fine silk robes, ancient artifacts, perfumes, and oils. in contrast, your basket of fruits and flowers seems painfully simple.

whispers and snickers ripple through the crowd, directed at your low-value gift, almost insulting to the king, as the laughter grew louder and more pointed. the embarrassment increases, now overwhelming you.

“silence.”

his voice cuts through the room like thunder, instantly quieting the chatter as all heads bow. only you remain defiantly gazing at sukuna from his elevated throne. he looks magnificent, his towering frame draped in a dark cotton robe that accentuates his scarlet eyes—those unsettling eyes that draw you in despite your fear.

“do you consider yourself more worthy than others to not bow?”

his voice pierces through you, shocking you out of your thoughts. you hadn’t realized you were staring at him so openly. a nearby servant nudges your head down forcefully, a silent command to acknowledge sukuna’s authority.

uraume then signals the first row to approach sukuna with their gifts. as he settles into his throne, one of his lower eye fixates on you with a chilling intensity, reminding you of the difference of ground upon which you stand.

the two brunettes, who supposedly despised you, were the first to present their gifts. all eyes watched as they offered lavish amounts of gold and diamonds to sukuna. you couldn’t help but notice the satisfaction that spread across his face, a subtle amusement evident as he casually placed the gift with one of lower arms behind him.

they took their places on either side of his throne, making way for the next in line. as the line shortened, your turn approached rapidly.

you watched with nervous anticipation as sukuna accepted one of the servants gifts— the beautifully sculpted artifacts and golden treasures—

slash!

the servant’s head was cleanly severed, a loud thud echoing through the room. gasps filled the air as the shock spread through the assembled crowd. some of the seasoned servants were used to sukuna’s impulsive acts, but this was the first time you had witnessed such brutality. blood splattered across his face, yet he remained unfazed, awaiting the next offerings.

you covered your mouth, stifling a scream of horror. the fear of becoming the next victim intensified as you compared your gift to the high valued gift he had just received.

how could he appreciate your offering if he did not enjoy the artifacts?

you were on edge, continuously hearing numerous slash and thuds that kept racing your heart. his gaze seemed to linger on you, intensifying your dread.

unaware that it was your turn next, you suddenly found yourself on the elevated floor, your gift clearly visible to all below. laughter erupted among the watching servants, their anticipation of your downfall.

you felt all four of his eyes fixated on you, observing your trembling form, your eyes flickering nervously as you struggled to stay composed. stepping cautiously over a puddle of blood, you nervously approached his throne.

with trembling hands, you presented the basket of flowers and fruits. below, the two brunettes knelt, their mocking laughter ringing in your ears.

sukuna silently observed the basket, his large hands delicately holding the tiny fruits. he plucked out peaches, pomegranates, and oranges with two hands while the other two hands carefully examined the flowers, bringing them to his nose to inhale their earthly fragrance. then, to your surprise, sukuna’s lips curled into a mischievous smile.

“little one,” he said in a low velvety voice that sent shivers down your spine. “you surprise me.” 

the crowd exchanged puzzled glances, uncertain of how to interpret sukuna’s unexpected reaction. the two kneeling servants looked up at sukuna in disbelief, their faces turning pale as they realized their own gifts, despite their value, had not elicited such a response.

sukuna carefully placed everything back into the basket, then lifted a ripe peach to his lips. his intense gaze locked onto yours as he took a deliberate bite, savouring the sweetness. loudly humming at the sweet taste.

unexpectedly, two of sukuna’s free hands reached out and gently grabbed your waist. you squealed in surprise at the sudden contact as sukuna swiftly spun you around, placing you on his lap with your back is against his chest. his third hand delicately tilted your chin, looking up towards him.

“‘kuna…” you began, mindlessly calling him by a forbidden nickname. but his lips cut off your words in a hungry kiss. the taste of peach lingered on his lips, blending with the sweet intensity of the moment. his kiss was fierce, brimming with a raw passion.

sukuna’s large hand snakes up to the crevice of your neck, and to your surprise, another mouth formed on his hand, trailing down to suck and kiss a sensitive spot on your neck. a soft moan escaped your lips, muffled by his kiss, and he grinned at your reaction.

the brunettes stared up at the two of you with utter jealousy, never having received such intimacy from their king. the entire room gaped in shock; they had never witnessed the king of curses succumb so readily to a mere servant.

sukuna then pulls away, leaving you dizzy from the closeness. his presence seems to envelop you, making you feel intoxicated by his mere touch. with a gentle touch, sukuna adjusts your slouched posture, his hands holding you firmly against his broad chest. leaning down, he kisses your ear softly.

“you will judge which gift is worthy,” he begins, his closeness making your head spin even more. “if anything displeases you, I will take care of it,” he murmurs, hinting at even more slashes. another hand snaking up to your neck, softly applying pressure to restore your stability.

if anything you feel a rush of arousal.

“i will obey your every command, my queen. i am yours to command,” he declares softly, causing you to whimper in response. gasps fill the room as they witness the king of curses submitting himself to you.

“shall we resume, my lady?”

[just-some-random-blogger]

Tormented Spirit | 1

Part 2

"Is it such a sin to stand up for yourself?" you mutter as tears blur your vision. The way he reacted was visceral, instinctive even. "You never have to stand up for yourself ever again," says Daemon, reaching a hand to you, "come."

Daemon Targaryen x Hightower!Reader | 4k+ | cw: fem!reader, reader has brown hair, wife!reader, twin!Gwayne, arranged/forced marriage, canon divergence, alternate universe, eventual smut, DD:DNE, panic/anxiety attacks, daddy issues/child abuse/family problems, mentions/depictions of mental/physical/psychosomatic illness, mentions/depictions of death/suicidal ideation, ye old misogyny, angst, typos, etc.

A/N: i nearly decided on nuking this because it feels so fucking bad and aimless guess in the end I'M really the tormented spirit huh anyway if I'm glad i didnt and decided to wait it out. if you enjoy this please think of leaving a comment and/or reblog because i need the reassurance. | cross posted on ao3

Tagging: @arabellasleopardcoat

"Father," Alicent pleads, "she needs to see you."

Otto's jaw clenches as he lifts his gaze from his desk. He looks upon his youngest child's features. You were one in the same, his first daughter and last. He thanks the gods that she did not inherit the curse you bear.

Alicent picks at her fingers while awaiting a response. Though she draws blood, no sound leaves her lips. She did not know it, but her father catches this anxious tick. He mentally corrects himself: at least she did not inherit it at equal intensity.

"A man has no place in the dressing room of a bride-to-be," the Lord Hand dismisses.

Alicent knew about as much would be said, yet she still tries, "please. She is having a-"

"And when has my presence ever soothed her?" Otto interrupts, raising his voice to make his point clear.

It was enough. Alicent understood.

He turns back to his papers. He reads them but none of the words register. He says, "I am sure your brother is already there, coddling her as he does."

Alicent does not respond.

Otto lifts his gaze, "go," he speaks as though his daughter missed the obvious, "if she needs someone so badly, coddle her with Gwayne."

Alicent returns to your chambers. Her heart pinched in every which way at the sight of you. Here you stood, clothed in one of the few precious dresses that belonged to your mother— a bride. Dark blue satin and gold jewelry embellished your form. Your brown hair was curled and plaited and pinned. Your face had a glow, only because it was stained with tears. It was terrible and magnificent all at once.

Rhaenyra goes to her best friend, and the two girls clutched hands before walking towards you. Gwayne spots them and gives your hands a tight squeeze. Because of this, you turn from your older brother to your younger sister. Your eyes are pink with melancholy.

"Lord Hand," Alicent mutters, "is deep in his work."

On his daughter's wedding day, thinks Gwayne.

Rhaenyra clenches her jaw, loathing your father more than normal in this moment.

More than your own, you cannot stomach your sister's duress. You stroke her cheek, "I am well now. Worry no more."

Alicent catches Gwayne's expression and knows that is a lie. Still, she smiles and nods, "I am glad," she looks you once over, "you are an exquisite bride, sister."

Rhaenyra offers a smile, "I agree, dear aunt."

Your face twists at the young princess's words, though you knew she meant well. You will away the dreadful sensation in your stomach and manage a smile, "thank you... sweet niece."

You relish their company for as long as you can in this moment. You gather strength from Rhaenyra's smile, from Alicent's touch, and Gwayne's words. Then, all at once, you were alone, walking towards Daemon Targaryen.

In truth, he was not curious of you. He despised you, for after all, you were the spawn of that Cunttower. But, gods, what could possibly be the reason you were taking so long to walk down the aisle? It was not like this room was that big. And so, he turns over his shoulder to inspect you. His hand remains on Dark Sister and his weight still rested mostly on one leg.

He squints at the sight of you, moving like a snail. He is about to roll his eyes, but then he catches a glimpse of your countenance.

Tis strange.

You were not nearly as repulsive as he remembered you, and not nearly as similar in likeness to your rotten twin. How could that be, when it was not only- what, a season since he had pummeled Ser Cuntface to the ground? He will never forget your screaming face in the audience, and how deliciously distressed your father had been from hauling you away.

Even now, as Daemon's lilac eyes appraised your distant silhouette, gliding towards him like a phantom intent on haunting, he second guessed if that weeping woman from the tourney was you. But then he turned to your brother and saw his jaw harden. It was unmistakable then you were the weeping woman, and now, you were his weeping bride.

Gwayne, could not help the way his hands tightened into a fist as he helplessly watched you inch towards his most ardent foe. Beside him, unmoving, stood the very man who allowed such madness to ensue: your father.

You pass the pew that seated your family. Your twin's expression softens. He nods, and you know he means take heart. Your sister does the same. But your father, who stood between his children, does not spare you a glance.

Daemon notices the coldness. He would feel bad, but then again, he has been proclaiming his ill-guided brother's Lord Hand was the biggest cunt in the realm for so long, so he doesn't. Oh, but then you look at him with those beady eyes, and he did not know why his thorax felt uneasy.

Twas strange indeed.

Soon you stood in front of your promised, and, finally, Otto lays his eyes upon you. He does not see you though. He does not see the woman dressed in the garments that once belonged to his wife. He does not see your trembling hand and glassy cheeks. He sees his timid, tremoring, little daughter that he had to leave a moon's length for work. He sees her frail body that shook on her tiny bed and found no comfort in the way he held her tiny hand when he returned.

As the septon begins this damning rite, all he could hear was the voice of the maester that promised the new medicine he procured would heal his girl. As tears rolled down your eyes, he remembers how he nearly killed the maester for feeding you herbs that caused you to retch the little food you had eaten.

Has my child not suffered enough?

Has my child not suffered enough?

ᴴⁱˢ ᶜʰⁱˡᵈ ⁱˢ ᵐᵃʳʳʸⁱⁿᵍ ᵃ ᵐᵒⁿˢᵗᵉʳ

Daemon turns to the pew beside the Hightowers' and finds his brother's face. Viserys seemed pleased to witness this wretched affair, as did Aemma, who clutched her pregnant belly. Rhaenyra beside her seemed more interested in you however, or at least the dress that she and Alicent helped dressed you in.

The septon blabbers and tells you both to speak your vows. You do, one as reluctant as the other. Then, as instructed, Daemon cloaks you and presses a kiss on your salty lips.

Twas bittersweet. On one hand, as he takes your clammy one, the image of Otto's face when Daemon told the King that he wanted to marry you comes to mind.

Oh, how excited he was to see the old fool look as though he was a breath away from lunging at him across the table, and how utterly horrendous that he hadn't. He would have simply, and justifiably, killed him. Then all this bother would not have ensued. The look upon the said man's face this moment, now that he's sullied what he so dearly protected, made his stomach giddy.

As the same time, as he held that same clammy hand of yours and felt it tremble, he remembers that you and he were bound. Though not in the manner of his house, he knew he could escape only so much of his wretched duties. Otto's vexation would only last so long, and deep down the cunt must enjoy that his daughter was now a princess. He knew soon Viserys would also begin nagging him again.

But then out of nowhere, he laughs. It was so abrupt that a few guests looked at him in confusion.

How could he forget? There was the matter of your... affliction. Perhaps he can frighten you to death on your wedding bed.

He chuckles once more.

The idea is so delicious, he is in good spirits the whole wedding feast. He does nothing but embarrass and shame you by entertaining literally every other lady save yourself.

What makes matters worse, at least on your end, is that your father refuses to go to your side and forbids not only your brother but as well as your sister from leaving their spots to come to your aid. There was no need to make the matter bigger than it was. You are left alone at your seat at the table, looking nothing but pathetic and weepy.

You sustain such temperament until you're in your marriage chambers, but then you do a funny thing and down two glasses of wine. Daemon laughs at how it spills from your lips, down your neck.

He, who had already much more than a measly two cups, comes behind you and takes the one you loudly prop on the table. You squeak and bolt away when Daemon's arm sneaks up from underneath your own; it only further amuses him.

"V'you a change of heart?" he pours himself a glass, "ready for debauchery, yes?"

You turn unbelievably pale, and it merits the fondest of laughs from your sadistic groom. Daemon drinks and licks the wine off his lips.

You gulp, reaching out a trembling hand.

He raises a brow at it. Suddenly, he's annoyed— twice was much because he has absolutely no idea what the gesture means.

That is, until you speak, "may I have some more?"

One of his faint silver brows raises. Suddenly, he is greedy with the wine he thought tasted too sour on his tongue. However, a curiosity within him urged to hand over the cheap drink, for why did his shivering wife have the nerve for this to be her first words to him?

He watched you throw your head back as you down the wine just as quick as you did the previous ones. He chuckles and crosses his arms. When you turn to Daemon, he tilts his head, "thirsty?"

You inhale deeply, though it is strangled, "for my anxiousness."

It takes a moment for him to realize what you mean, and when he does, his nostrils flare. Had he breathed fire, surely smoke would have come out his nose at this moment. Daemon releases an airy, unamused chuckle and averts his gaze, "eager to bed me, harlot?"

Your throat tightens, for that was not what you meant at all.

You forcibly swallow a lump that forms when he comes to your side. Your throat only further constricts when he grabs and yanks you into his chest. You whimper as he presses his nose against your ear. Goosebumps form when his hot breath hits your ear, "on the bed then."

Your heart thunders as he shoves you towards the bed. You nearly miss it. Actually, only your head and arms touch the cushion, and the rest of your body collides with the floor and the hard bed frame. Your tailbone throbs at the impact, but it doesn't hurt nearly as much as your chest that tightened, and tightened, and tightened and—

You barely manage to gasp. You are hard of breathing when Daemon crouches and grabs your thighs, pulling your skirts up. He feels your flesh tremble beneath his palm. His fingers touch your skin, and it brings him to hiss; you are ice against his burning hands.

He looks up at you. A line forms between his brows. You gasped for air that seemed unwilling to enter your lungs. Not only was your face stained with tears, but as well as your neck now

He mutters, "nyke pendagon jaelā naejot sagon ipradāri," I thought you wanted to get eaten, "I do so find fear delectable."

You continue to slump into the floor until you're a melted mess. You can do nothing but clutch your chest, not that it helps one bit.

Daemon is satisfied at this point. He stands and dusts his hands off. He looks at the pitiful Hightower, your dark locks spilled on the ground as if blood from a crime scene.

"Is that your affliction then, wife?" he tilts his head, "do you seize up when you're nervous?"

You look at him, but do not respond.

"S'rather inconvenient, no?" he sighs, as though he actually cared.

You shut your eyes and curl into a ball.

"Mmm, well, I suppose I will have to claim the womanhood owed of me some other time," he said, uninterested. With that, he exits the room with a skip in his step, pleased to know he had such a tremendous effect on you.

You remain in this turmoil for what felt like hours.

By the time you peel yourself up from the floor, your body is encased in sweat. You command yourself to calm; you cannot afford to slip into another bout of insanity. Your tears cannot be contained as you struggle to undo the ties of your dress; at least tremendous relief comes after you do. You struggle to your feet and remove the pins in your hair while making for the vanity table.

You sit before yourself; your horrid face reflects on the mirror that was far too clear for your liking. As you free your hair from its bounds, you think, perhaps it was fortunate that your husband did not lay with you. At least not tonight.

But then, comes to mind, the argument you with your father. Your chest threatens to tighten again as the severity of his voice replays in your head.

It was no secret, Otto despised Daemon. How then could he be so shocked at your horror of learning he had approved your marriage to him. His raging voice still rings in your head: "you ungrateful fool!"

You fall apart in your palms and nearly succumb to yourself again. Thankfully, you manage to take deep breaths and pick yourself up before you fall apart.

You always knew you were the spare in your father's eyes, but you thought that merited indifference. You did not think he hated you so deeply. How could anyone hand their child to their enemy? Perhaps this was his way of finally having use of you.

A spare. A pawn. Will it ever end?

You go to bed and wrap yourself tightly under the sheets. You stare at the ceiling, praying the same prayer you've prayed since you were eight: Seven, let this be my final slumber.

You nearly choke when you are awoken by such violent shaking. You jolt up, or at least as much as you can from the blankets you were so tightly bound in.

Daemon grins and brings the hands he had shaken you with behind his back, "I would say good morn, but it is apparently opposite to you, wife."

The name makes your skin crawl. You push yourself out of the sheets and sit up. You wipe your face and tell yourself; you must get used to this, "good morrow, husband."

Your brown curls spill down your shoulder as you sigh to yourself. Daemon thinks you look much more palatable this way, unlike yesterday, when your hair was jailed so tightly. He motions with his head, "ta. We make haste to the dragon pit."

Your eyes are suddenly devoid of any trace of sleepiness as you look at him.

His lips remain curled, "it would only be proper to do so, no?" He does not let you retort, as he is already making his way out, "tis Caraxes' right to know who his master has been shackled to," he opens the door, "at least momentarily."

If he was self-satisfied with how you shook under his grasp last night, one can only imagine his exhilaration over your severe disinterest in meeting his mount this morning. What's more, Caraxes could smell your anxiety, and it made him chuff and snap his jaws.

Of course, Daemon chastised his dragon, telling him to obey, even though he very much did not want him to. He eagerly fantasizes: oh, a shame my bride died the day I introduced him to my ride.

A true shame.

"Calm yourself," Daemon sniggers as he forcefully pushes you towards the blood wyrm, "the harder you make this for yourself, the harder it will be."

You found no encouragement in that, for no part of it meant to encourage. You continue to writhe against him, pushing yourself back, only to be pressed against the prince's chest and urged forward. It didn't help that he shackled his hands on both of your wrists, preventing you from elbowing him away.

Though your hair was braided to the side, you still manage to whip it to Daemon's face in your attempt to free yourself, only causing him to be more impatient. You could not help the harrowing shriek that left you when he ultimately brought you to the beast's maw, and the said creature pressed himself against your chest to sniff you.

Caraxes rips away and shakes his head at your piercing reaction. He shrieks in like, as if disapproving, or showing offence. He must exact appropriate retaliation. He draws a deep breath, readying to set you ablaze. Daemon would have let him, had he not been a direct target of his mount's wrath, "keligon, Caraxes!"

Caraxes hisses.

"Keligon!" Stop!

He does not enjoy the order, exemplified by the way he licked his teeth, but obeys, nonetheless. He roars one last time, spit sputtering onto your face as he does. It's enough to make you finally lose your resolve.

You cease your wrangling and find yourself going limp in his arms. Daemon is pleased. He can finally drag you on dragon-back and torment you even more mid-air. What he did not know, however, was that your stomach was tingling; it was not that of the usual dread so familiar to you, but twas familiar still.

Daemon takes you by the arm and tries to make you climb up to the saddle, but then he stills when he hears the sound you make. He pulls away just before the acid from your stomach rushes out of your mouth. You retch so much it comes out of your nose, and you feel yourself grow lightheaded.

"Fucking gods," Daemon recoils in disgust. He turns to one of the dragon keepers and orders you away.

The dragon keeper, who looked far older than your father, spoke to you in a language you could not make out. You understand the part where he says maester as he leads you out of the pit. You manage to convey you no longer needed his assistance once you were out and walked off by yourself. You flinch and shriek when Daemon takes off on Caraxes.

You do not go to the maester's, instead, you have your servants draw you a warm bath and stay in it until it is cold. Only then do you scrub your skin until it is tender.

Once you were clean, you looked for the only person in the world that did not use your name interchangeably with hysteria: your twin.

"That uliginous blinkard," Gwayne slashes the dummy before him. You watch him pace from the bench you were sat upon. "He is incapable of procuring a morsel of dignity out of his wretched existence."

You clench you jaw when he chucks his sword to the ground.

"I should smother him in his sleep."

The thought chills you.

"But then I would be no better than he, would I not?" he seethes as he walks to your side, grabbing the towel beside you.

He wipes his face. You look up at him, a line forming between your brows, "remember you are my confidant, not my vindicator."

"If not I," he chucks his towel back beside you, "then who?" His forehead wrinkles, "an affront to my twin is worse than one to myself."

"Then you would know better than anyone that I share your sentiment," you grab his arm, hoping to calm him down.

His face is hard. He pushes your hand away.

You sigh, "and you know well that I suffer more in circumstances where you've acted on my behalf."

He clenches his jaw. He draws a deep breath and denies the thought with the shake of his head, "father will not hold it against-"

"Father holds everything against me," your eyes instantly water, "he would not be our father if he did not."

Your twin has never spoken your name any other way but in gentleness, yet it is precisely why it chips you apart. Gwayne continues, "be it as it may, but I do not believe that he gave to the prince— certainly not willingly."

You laugh and lift your countenance to the sky. Tears fall from the corner of your eyes, down your ears and neck, "does it matter?"

"It does," he urges, "he fought for you."

"He does not fight for me," you turn back to him, "allow yourself to come to terms with it as I have. It will hurt you less."

Gwayne does not manage a response as someone else speaks in that moment. The way you both tense at the sound is that of instinct.

"You vomited in the dragon pit?"

You turn over your shoulder and shoot up from where you sat. You watch as your father walks towards you. He places a hand on your neck and looks you up and down, "did the prince jostle you so on his ride?"

His touch is like a searing rod against your skin, his eyes, even worse. The raised hairs on your neck remain even as he pulls away. You quietly retort, "I did not even touch his saddle."

"Oh," Otto raises his brows, "then perhaps your affliction is that of you carrying."

Carrying?

Both you and Gwayne are mortified by the idea. You stutter, "s-surely it is not that quick."

"The blood of the dragon runs hot," he sighs, "as he would so boldly proclaim."

Your face burns upon hearing this.

Your father looks past you, "take your sister to the maester at once."

"No, I-"

"Make sure that she is good condition and take note of what will be instructed of her."

"That is not-"

"I am sure she will be required to take further precautions because of her affli-"

"We did not!" you blurt, finally regaining the attention of your father.

Your heart races as Otto looks at you. Suddenly, you are like a deer shot by an arrow, pained and powerless. He is annoyed that you interrupted him, only to say nothing. He presses, "we did not what?"

You take a strangled breath before reply, "we... did not consummate ou-"

"You what?!" he steps forward.

Gwayne immediately takes your arm, eager to get between you two, "father-"

But Otto does the same and pulls you toward him, "you did not consummate, or you did not want to consummate your marriage?"

Gwayne's hold on you falters. Your saliva lumps in your throat, "I-"

"You do understand the consequences if you do not bear your husband heirs, correct?"

You turn to your feet, unable to hold his heated glare, "I-"

"Look at me when I speak to you," he shakes you.

You lift your eyes, and hot tears begin to rush down your face.

"You've proven your point, father," Gwayne blurts, "release her."

"Release her?" Otto redirects his ire. Though he does just that, release you, it feels as though an iron clamp around your neck replaces your father's hold. "Even if I were to release her, boy, your dearest twin sister will not be free of the truth," he turns back to you, "nor my point. Your failure to do what is necessary will lead you straight into the dragon's belly."

You clench your jaw tighter than anyone should.

"Do you understand, girl?"

You nod before you allow yourself to breathe. You blurt, "yes, my lord."

Otto looks you once over before turning and walking away. The moment he is out of sight, you fold like a deck of cards, and Gwayne must keep you upright.

He hushes you and sits you back down. He kneels in front of you, observing if you were about to collapse into another episode. You do not, for he was with you, but you do weep until tears could no longer fall. He leads you to your room after this and urges you to rest.

You repeat the prayer you prayed on your wedding night before you sleep.

[prythiansprincess]

little dove.

pairing: tom riddle x reader.

song inspiration: if u think i'm pretty by artemas.

author's note: can't believe this is my first tom fic, but please know that this man awakens the feral, unhinged side of me. let me slytherin to your chamber of secrets and ride that basilisk tommy 😏

This was a stupid, idiotic, and terrible idea. 

Unfortunately for you, those were the conditions in which Harry and Ron worked best under. In your defense, you tried to talk them out of the prank, but the boys were determined to leave their mark. You suppose you could’ve told Hermione, but you didn’t want to interrupt her date with Draco. When it came to talking sense into their thick skulls, you were completely and utterly alone. 

After much argument, you finally accepted that you weren’t going to get anywhere with Harry and Ron. The only thing you could do was supervise their reckless pursuits and minimize the damage as much as possible. So here you were, sneaking into the dungeons under the cover of darkness. 

“This will be the best seventh year prank yet,” Ron whispered as he trailed close behind. “Fred and George are going to be so jealous.” 

“If we don’t die from the cold first,” Harry quipped sarcastically, slightly shivering underneath the invisibility cloak draped over the three of you. “The Slytherins really take the whole cold-blooded thing quite literally, don’t they?” 

You huffed in response, trying your best to muffle your steps. “Can we please focus on not getting caught? We need to be in and out of the dungeons before the prefects start their patrols.” 

The boys nodded as you inched further into the serpent’s nest. Luckily, the corridor that housed Professor Snape’s office was empty. You held your breath as you began to unravel the wards protecting the entrance. You had to give it to him, Snape was incredibly thorough when it came to his security measures. Good thing you were an expert on unlocking charms. 

With a final flick of your wand, the door gave way and creaked open. Ron and Harry wore matching grins as the three of you spilled into the office. Closing the door behind you, Harry’s green eyes crinkled with mischief. 

“Let’s get started.” 

Surprisingly, Harry and Ron’s half-arsed plan was actually coming together. The three of you worked in silence, the boys handing you paints and supplies at the snap of your fingers. After a few more strokes, you flicked your paintbrush over the wall and cocked your head to examine your work. Nearly every single surface of Professor Snape’s office was covered in your illustrations—technically vandalism according to wizarding law. 

The drawings, imbued with the same magic that powered the moving portraits, depicted caricatures of Professor Snape, all of which scurried like rats along the walls, hurtling globs of paint at one another. The head of Slytherin house was going to have a fit when he saw what you’d done to his office. You almost wished you could be there in the morning to witness the look on Snape’s face when he uncovered your masterpiece.

“Bloody brilliant!” Ron exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear as he packed up the paints and brushes. “You’ve really outdone yourself, Y/N.” 

Harry chuckled and nudged your shoulder. “See? You do have a taste for trouble, after all.” 

You rolled your eyes fondly. “Yeah, yeah. Now help me clean up so we can go.” 

As you carefully wiped the office of any trace of the three of you, Harry suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. You looked up, ready to scold him for idling, but fell silent when you saw the panicked expression on his face. 

“What is it?” you asked quietly. 

Harry held up his hand and slowly opened the door, peeking out into the darkness. A muffled clicking that sounded an awful lot like footsteps echoed from the corridor. “Do you hear that?” 

Ron cursed lowly. “The prefects must’ve started their rounds early.” 

You peered over Harry’s shoulder and felt the color drain from your face. “It’s not the prefects,” you said, swallowing thickly. “It’s the Head Boy.” 

Both the boys swore under their breaths. You steeled yourself, knowing that panic was not going to get you anywhere. As quietly as possible, you retrieved Harry’s cloak and beckoned the boys underneath it. 

“We’re so fucked,” Ron mumbled. 

“No, we’re not,” you chided sternly. “Get under the cloak and don’t make a sound.” 

Harry scooted in beside you, clutching the invisible fabric over his shoulders. “Do you have a plan?” 

You nodded. “Run like hell and don’t get caught.” 

“That’s a bloody terrible plan!” said Ron. 

With a glare, you tugged the redhead underneath the cloak. “Then please, let us hear your brilliant idea, Ronald.” Ron stayed quiet, his freckled face etched with fear. “That’s what I thought. Now stay close and for Merlin’s sake, try not to stomp around like a damned erumpent.”

Stupid. 

Idiotic. 

Terrible. 

Every ounce of apprehension you felt earlier that night came rushing back as the three of you cowered in the darkness. It was pitch-black in the corridor, but you didn’t dare cast lumos for fear of getting caught. Thankfully, a small light up ahead provided you with a vague sense of direction. You remembered passing the lit emerald sconce on the way down. All you had to do was get back to the entrance without running into the head boy. 

The glimmer of hope became clearer and clearer as you neared the stairs that would lead you out of the dungeons. You were so close. Barely a few metres away from freedom. 

Just as you thought you were safe, Ron knocked into a table, sending one of the snake sculptures guarding the alcove to the common room tumbling. The marble cracked against the concrete, breaking into a million pieces just like your hope of escaping. 

“Run!” you huffed, urging the boys to go on. 

A solid plan if you hadn’t been nearly blind in the dark. You could hear the shuffling of footsteps beside you. Three sets belonging to you, Harry, and Ron, while an unknown fourth inched closer and closer. Whoever it was wasn’t running, but they were definitely in pursuit. 

You stumbled through the dark, nearly tripping over your own feet. From up ahead, you could hear Harry and Ron urging you on. As you broke into a sprint, paints and brushes came spilling out of your satchel. Under any other circumstance, you would’ve abandoned your art supplies, but leaving them behind would fully incriminate the three of you. In the time it took to pick up the damning evidence, you stopped hearing your friend’s voices. 

It would’ve worried you, but in all honesty, you were relieved. If you could no longer hear the boys, then that meant they made it safely out of the serpent’s nest. A feat in itself given their track record. Those two couldn’t be inconspicuous if they tried. Without the need to worry for them, you were confident that you’d be able to slip out undetected. 

In hindsight, you were perhaps a tad bit overconfident. You were great at sneaking around, but apparently not good enough to slip the head boy’s notice. As soon as you started to creep past the dormitories, you ran into a wall that hadn’t been there before. 

Except it wasn’t a wall. 

It was a strong, firm chest. A chest that belonged to none other than Tom Riddle. 

Leave it to your terrible luck to run straight into the arms of the scariest boy in the castle. 

Determined not to cower, you lifted your chin defiantly and faced Tom head on. “Head Boy,” you greeted in acknowledgment. 

Emerald eyes unflinchingly surveyed you, that intense green stare sweeping from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. Beneath the faint glow of the Black Lake pouring in through the stained glass windows, you could’ve easily mistaken Tom Riddle for an angel. He looked like an illustration straight out of the Sistine Chapel. Beautiful, intricate, perfect. 

Yet utterly terrifying. 

Danger prickled at your skin as Tom’s lips curved into a sinister smirk. “My, my, what do we have here? A little dove out of her cage.” 

You bristled as he brushed a loose strand of hair behind your ear, his voice a seductive caress. It was low, husky, and a little rough around the edges. Just like its speaker. Tom plucked a paintbrush out of your satchel and examined it between his fingers. “I saw what you did to Snape’s office. Quite artistic, aren’t you?” 

A part of you considered denying it, but it would’ve been a futile attempt. There was paint splattered all over your skirt and flecks of it were already drying on your skin. Tom had quite literally caught you red handed. The only thing you could do was to own up to it and face whatever consequences came as a result of your foolish actions. 

“Are you going to turn me in to the headmaster?” 

Tom shook his head, his brown wavy hair falling over one eye. “Not until I catch your two helpers.” 

Panic seized your body. It may be too late for you, but Tom hadn’t seen either Harry or Ron. There was a chance they could come out of this unscathed. 

“I was alone,” you declared with your chin held high. “There was no one else with me.” 

Anger contorted Tom’s handsome features. Those emerald eyes lit up in flames as he backed you into a wall, bracketing each side of your head with his arms as he leaned down. You tried not to cower under the intensity of his stare, but gods was it hard. Tom towered a good foot over you and as if that weren’t intimidating enough, he also blocked every possibility of escape with his body. 

“Don’t lie to me, little dove,” Tom growled, tilting your chin up with one hand. “I heard three sets of footsteps running through the corridor.” 

You swallowed thickly, praying to Merlin to grant you the ability to flawlessly lie your arse off. “I swear, it was just me. No one else. I did it all by myself.” 

Tom hummed as if unconvinced. “Well, you’re certainly on your own now. Your idiotic friends left you down in the dungeons all alone. Don’t you know that dangerous things lurk in the dark around here, Y/N?” 

“Like I said, I was alone.” 

“So it appears,” Tom said, flashing you a smile that told you he was the most dangerous thing lurking in the dungeons. “Poor little dove wandering the serpent’s nest all on her own. Hasn’t anyone told you that us Slytherins have teeth?” 

“Why?” In an idiotic surge of courage, the words slipped out of your mouth before you could pull them back in. “Do you plan on biting me, Tom?” 

Tom grabbed your jaw roughly, making you whimper in surprise. “Insolent girl. You’ll learn your lesson soon enough.” 

Without warning, he grabbed you by the elbow and started dragging you down the corridor. At first, you were certain that Tom was taking you to Dumbledore’s office, but as the minutes ticked by, you realized that you were going in the opposite direction. If anything, he was leading you right into the heart of the dungeons. 

Tom’s grip tightened to the point of pain as he guided you up a set of twin staircases, practically flying up the steps on the right side, which you assumed led to the dormitories. It had a similar layout to the Gryffindor common room, except instead of leading into the towers, the narrow hallway opened into an intricate maze in the lower levels of the castle. 

Nestled into the underbelly of Hogwarts was a large, dark room that was surrounded by more stained glass walls that looked out into the Black Lake. A school of fish swam by as Tom ushered you through the door, which he promptly locked behind him with a series of complicated spells you had no hope of deciphering. 

You were trapped. Alone in a room. With Tom Riddle.

Upon closer inspection, you surmised that this had to be his private suite. It was twice as large as your dorm back in the towers and extremely private. A luxury that only the Head Boy and Head Girl enjoyed. 

“You’ve been very bad, little dove,” Tom reprimanded. "You deserve to be punished, but I’ll tell you what. Give up the names of your accomplices and I might find it in my heart to go easy on you.” 

His drawling voice echoed in the bedroom as he leaned back against his desk, twirling his wand between his fingers. The look he leveled at you is enough to awaken your fear. Plus another emotion that you couldn’t quite place your finger on. 

Merlin, Tom was sizing you up like he was the lion and you were the helpless deer frolicking through the meadow. You steeled yourself and doubled down on your lies. 

“There was no one else, Tom.” 

He smirked as though you’d given him the answer he’d hoped to hear. Tom stopped twirling his wand, tucking it away in his back pocket as he stalked over to you. “Very well, then. I suppose you’ll just have to endure their punishments too.” 

You swallowed past the lump in your throat. It occurred to you that while you had your wand, you were completely and utterly defenseless against Tom. It should’ve scared you shitless, but instead you felt a strange sort of thrill as he came closer. “What…what sort of punishment?” 

A smirk curved at his lips as he fisted your hair between his fingers and tilted your head back to meet his gaze. “I think you know, babydoll.” 

Heat ignited in your veins as your tongue darted out to sweep across your bottom lip. “This is crazy,” you whispered. “Shouldn’t you be telling Dumbledore? Snape? Someone in charge?” 

“I’m the one in charge,” Tom growled as he shoved you against his bookshelf. Your back hit solid wood, disturbing the neatly organized tomes behind you. “You snuck into my dungeons, under my watch, and defaced my home. I will dole out your punishment as I see fit.” 

“And if I refuse?” You asked, hoping that you emulated the bravery that your house was infamous for.

Tom pressed his body against yours, leaving barely a hairsbreadth between you as he flashed you a feral smile. “It’s laughable that you still think you have a choice.” 

“I could scream bloody murder. Wake the entire castle up and alert everyone that you're holding a fellow student against her will."

“You could,” Tom mused as amusement flickered in his eyes. “But we both know you won’t.” 

“What makes you so sure?” 

“You’d never risk such a scandalous act to go on your record. First vandalizing Professor Snape’s office, then sneaking into the Head Boy’s dorm after curfew? You’re on a downward spiral, aren’t you, little dove?” 

“I didn’t sneak into your dorm. You dragged me in here.” 

“Please,” Tom said with a scoff. “Let’s not pretend that you don’t want to be here. I’ve been watching you, you know. The perfect little Gryffindor good girl. You think you have everyone fooled, but not me.” You groaned as he pinned your hips in place, sliding his thigh between your legs. 

“You think I haven’t noticed the way you look at me in class? Bending over in that tiny little skirt of yours hoping I’ll glance your way? Leaving the buttons to your blouse undone so you can give me a view of that lacy red bra? Biting your lip when you’re thinking dirty thoughts about me in class?” 

You flushed at his spot on assessment. Tom might be right on the mark, but you weren’t about to admit that to him. Not when your pride was on the line. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Dirty little liar.” Tom whispered against the shell of your ear. “You know, your mental shields are impressive, but it’s like you can’t help yourself when I’m around. You’re practically broadcasting your filthy fantasies every time we’re in the same room.” 

Fuck. 

This was bad. 

This was really fucking bad.

How many times had you sat in class staring at Tom while thinking the filthiest, dirtiest thoughts about him? Tom bending you over a desk. Tom slipping his fingers under your skirt. Tom making you scream with his head between your thighs.

All this time, he had complete access to those dirty daydreams.

“That’s right, doll. You may be a powerful occlumens, but you’re no match for my legilimency.” He chuckled darkly, caressing your jaw. 

A heavy pressure weighed down the constraints of your defenses as Tom poked around in your mind, teasing and taunting as a lover would. The act of him prodding around in your subconscious was oddly sensual, mixing pain and pleasure together as he waited for you to yield. 

There’s no use hiding now, Tom whispered into your subconscious. I’ve already seen inside your mind, doll. And your thoughts are just as fucking filthy as mine. 

Glimpses of your deepest, darkest fantasies flashed through your mind. The images were a never ending rolodex of filth and smut. Tom fucking you like his perfect little slut. Tom panting above you as he spread your legs. Tom working you with his fingers until you were a sobbing, whimpering mess. 

He was right. You were shameless. 

But so was he. A new image of you on your knees while Tom unbuckled his belt, his thumb brushing over your bottom lip as you stared up expectantly took center stage. Since it was from his point of view, you could only assume that he was showing you one of his fantasies. It was oddly satisfying. Tom was basking in the depravity with you, sharing his equally fucked up thoughts. 

“Tom…” you breathed, leaning into his touch as he continued to pin you against the wooden bookshelf. 

“Not Tom,” he grunted gruffly. “You’ll address me properly from now on, little dove.” 

This was so fucked up and yet so hot at the same time. You were so turned on you could hardly speak. “Yes, sir.” 

“That’s better, doll.” Tom declared with a smirk. “Now that I’ve been inside of your head, I plan on being inside you in every other way as well. Starting with that pretty little mouth of yours. On your knees, little dove.” 

A strange sense of deja vu washed over you as you knelt onto the floor. The concrete nipped at your knees, but you welcomed the pain. It kept you centered as your body buzzed with anticipation. You watched as Tom unbuckled his belt, deft fingers slowly sliding his boxers down as he gripped himself with one hand. 

With a smirk, Tom brushed his thumb over your bottom lip, looking down at you with lust blown eyes. “Open wide, babydoll.” 

Tom pumped himself slowly. The sight of his cock made your mouth water, your head spinning and dizzy with desire as you tried to calculate how you were going to take all of him. The tip of his cock glistened with precum as he rubbed over it. Tom was thick, long, and absolutely delicious. You groaned as he rubbed his head over your lips, the salty taste of his arousal resting on your tongue. 

“I won’t ask again,” Tom warned. “Be a good girl and open your mouth. I’ll make you regret it if you don’t.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

A satisfied smile graced his handsome face before he shoved his way in. Your lips parted for him, opening your mouth wider as you accommodated his size. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” 

You nodded obediently, eyes filling with tears as you took Tom all the way back. He fisted your hair in one hand and rocked against your mouth, hitting the back of your throat. A garbled sound crawled out of your chest, but it was soon silenced with Tom’s impatient thrusts. 

“Fuck,” Tom cursed. “So wet and warm. Such a perfect little throat. What a pity that I’m about to ruin it.” 

Ruin was an understatement. Tom fucked your throat with precise thrusts, angling deeper and deeper and groaning as you gagged on his cock. He was so deep that you could feel him bruising your tonsils. The more he abused your throat, the wetter your pussy got. You were practically soaked as you moaned on his cock, sucking your cheeks in and bobbing your head up and down to take more of him. 

“Such pretty noises,” Tom said, his fingers curling through your hair to the point of pain. He tugged at your scalp, forcing you to meet his eyes as you sucked him off. “If your mouth feels this good around my cock, then I can’t even imagine what your cunt will feel like.” 

You groaned in pleasure, making Tom’s eye roll back from the vibrations. Controlled, compulsive, and perfectly composed Tom Riddle was fading before you, replaced by a man driven only by his base desires. He was an animal lost to lust and so were you. 

Tom squeezed your throat, groaning when he felt himself moving beneath his grip. “Your throat was made to be fucked, doll. You like that, don’t you? You love it when I’m rough.” 

You struggled to nod in acknowledgement, saliva sloppily collecting in the corner of your mouth as you continued to let him use you for his own pleasure. Tom chuckled at your pathetic attempt to respond. “Don’t bother answering, little dove. You won’t be able to speak when I’m done with you anyways.” 

The filth flowing effortlessly from his mouth made you clench your thighs together. Tom threw his head back, those pretty curls tousled and plastered against his sweat soaked skin. A moan tore through his chest as he got closer and closer, fucking into your mouth with reckless abandon. He chased after his orgasm, shuddering as he spurted hot ribbons down your throat. 

“Fuck. You see what you do to me? Swallow, doll. Every single fucking drop.” 

The fantasies that you’ve been harboring for the past few years finally came to fruition, but none of it came close to reality. Tom was a fucking god. A masterpiece coming undone above you. You’ve never seen such a beautiful sight. All the artwork in the world would’ve paled in comparison to witnessing Tom Riddle at his most vulnerable. 

In awe and wonder, you looked up at him with mascara streaked eyes, tears and saliva staining your face. Tom hauled you to your feet and claimed you with his mouth. The taste of him was still on your lips, but Tom didn’t seem to mind as he parted your lips with his tongue. The kiss was neither sweet nor innocent. It was dark and dangerous and there was an edge of possessiveness in the way he demanded your submission. Almost like he was marking his territory. 

Tongues, teeth, and lips met with a clash as Tom carried you over to his desk. His books and journals clattered to the ground as his teeth grazed the column of your throat. The taste of him was intoxicating and you licked, sucked, and nipped at every inch of skin he allowed access to. You gasped into his mouth as Tom parted your legs, not bothering to warn you as he palmed your soaked panties. 

Your core clenched as he slipped a finger inside of your pussy. A squelching sound filled the room as Tom added another digit, pumping you full and fucking you with his middle and pointer fingers as you begged for more. He knew exactly what he was doing. Tom studied you like one of his books, with meticulous precision and alarming intensity, pouring all of his efforts and attention into making your body sing. 

It wasn’t long before that familiar warmth singed your veins, your moans growing louder and more desperate as you clawed at Tom’s back. You were so, so close. You were practically riding his hand as he brought you closer to the precipice. Just when you were about to come, Tom pulled away and denied you the orgasm. 

“Don’t be mistaken, doll. This is still a punishment.” Tom said as you whined from the loss. He silenced your complaints by bending you over his desk. 

“Tom, please—“ You clawed at the wood as he lined up and filled you with one sharp thrust. “Oh my fucking gods.” 

Tom gripped your hips, the slap of his skin against yours echoing in the room as he fucked you from behind. He was relentless, thrusting in and out and arching your back while he railed the absolute life out of you. It wasn’t long before you were getting close again. The sharp angles of his thrusts had him hitting all the right spots, making your knees weak and your pussy sensitive from the roughness of his actions. Sensing that you were close, he rutted into you, letting that tension uncoil before ripping the orgasm away from you once more. You whined, fresh tears soaking your cheeks as you chased after that high. 

“Like I said, this is still a punishment,” Tom taunted, slowing his thrusts to a snail’s pace. “That’s two orgasms I’ve taken from you, which leaves you with two more. Four for every wall you defaced. It should be twelve, given that you had help, but I’m in a forgiving mood. I think I’ll just spank the other eight out of you instead.” 

With your head bowed, you wiped the tears off of your cheeks and braced yourself. You knew that he was telling the truth. To Tom, this was mercy. You should’ve found it sadistic, but you fucking loved it. Maybe you were a masochist. Whatever the case may be, it seemed like the two of you were a match made in heaven. 

“I’ll be good,” you whispered hoarsely. Your throat was still raw and sore from earlier. “I’ll happily take the punishment. I promise I’ll be good, sir.” 

Tom chuckled darkly, relishing in your submission. His hand came down with a hard smack against your right ass cheek, making you jolt from the contact. Before you could recover, he repeated the action on the left. 

“That’s two,” Tom said proudly. “Can you count out the rest, babydoll?” 

You nodded, biting down on your bottom lip every time his large hand came down on your ass. His rings bit into the soft flesh of your skin, but it was a delicious sort of pain. One that you could easily become addicted to. 

Three. Tom tugged at your hair. 

Four. Teeth nipped at your shoulder. 

Five. Fingers curled around your throat. 

Six. Hips slammed against you. 

Seven. Lips trailed down your spine.

Eight. Moans echoed in your ears. 

When Tom slipped his fingers down to your clit, your eyes rolled back so hard that you saw fucking heaven. “It’s not a punishment if you’re enjoying yourself so much, little dove. I can feel you creaming my cock. You look so innocent, but you’re just a filthy fucking slut for me, aren’t you?” 

“Yes sir.” 

“So. Fucking. Perfect.” 

Tom emphasized each word with a thrust and worked your clit faster and faster, bringing you to the edge. This time, he didn’t pull back. Tom let the orgasm build until it threatened to wipe you out entirely. White hot heat coursed through your veins as stars exploded behind your eyes. You whimpered through the intensity of the orgasm. After being denied four times, the pleasure ripped through your body so fiercely that you nearly blacked out. 

“Fuck, let me fill you up,” Tom growled. “Take it, doll. I want you dripping with my cum.” 

“Yes, yes, oh gods. Please cum inside of me, sir.” 

Tom released a guttural grunt, gripping your hips in place as he filled you to the brim. Nothing in the world compared to the sensation of Tom filling you with his warm, wet cum. You glanced behind you and found him staring intently as he slipped out of you, stuffing his cum back into your pussy as it dripped down your folds. You bit your lip, utterly aroused by how fucking sexy this man was. 

His gaze met yours, a proud smile curving against his lips as he swept you off your feet and into his arms. “I think I’ll keep you, little dove.” 

[hyukascampfire]

THE TERRIBLE HALF-TRUTHS OF THE UNDEAD ҜING

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

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

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

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There you are, love.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

And you absolutely should not wonder about him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s not my issue.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you come here often?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He shakes his head. “He’ll die.”

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I take pride in that.”

“Take pride in what? Being insufferable?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aren’t you now?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’ll be gone if you do, anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my fucking god,” you say.

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You shake your head, wiping your soaked cheek.

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

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

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

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

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

Pulling back, Yeonjun says, “No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He blinks.

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

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[sturnlsstuff]

GENTLEMAN | matt sturniolo

loser!matt x partygirl!reader

matt gets dragged to a party, when he meets the "party queen" who definitely doesn't find him terribly boring like he thought she would, which she makes sure he understands.

requested by @mattsobvimyfav . divider credits. @anitalenia

— warnings; smutty smut, sub!matt, soft!dom!reader, making out, blowjob, riding, unprotected p in v, dirty talk, whiny matt (hot alert), pet names (pretty/good boy, baby, sweetheart...) cursing, praise kink lowkey, mentions of weed, cigs and alcohol, — english isn't my first language.

women like you were out of the league for guys like matt. you were a typical popular girl, partying every week and not like normal people did. you were the queen of the dance floor. party queen, that's how people called you. everyone with eyes and a brain admired the graceful way you carried yourself around. never missing parties, always staying until the very end, usually your friends had to carry you out of the building due to the excess alcohol in your blood and inability to stand on your own feet. when you were telling a joke, everyone laughed. when you were taking shots, so did others, that's how convincing you were.

you could have any guy you wanted, but no one was perfect for your standards. you were admired by girls who wanted to be like you and guys who wanted you.

matt was one of those people. he admired you.

he didn't know you well as a person who kept away from people. he was an observer type, only talked to his closest friends, of whom he had few. maybe even a little shy, that's what people called him, but really when he felt comfortable? he could be so interesting.

he had never talked to you before, only ever heard about you or knew what he had noticed. matt wasn't the party type, usually was practically dragged out of the comfort of his room. he didn't like looking for adventures. and today? some girl that his brothers were friends with, and that matt knew by sight, had a birthday and of course chris and nick once again dragged him out of the house for the party, ignoring his complaints. so that's how he found himself in this house full of rich, drunk kids, loud music blasting in his ears, every now and then someone would trip over his legs, causing him to roll his eyes. he sat half the party on the couch in the corner of the main room, arms crossed and beer in hand. he really wanted to go home, but his brothers would kill him if he didn't last until midnight. half an hour left.

unable to bear it any longer, he finally goes outside where the music was a little muffled, giving him the feeling of getting to breathe again. maybe that was the case. being surrounded by so many people was overwhelming. he lights a cigarette, which was his little addiction but helped him relax, and leans against the wall, praying that the minutes go by faster.

he started getting more and more relaxed, finally at peace, tilting his head back and blowing out clouds of smoke until he heard giggles. his eyes immediately opening, noticing you and your two friends coming out from behind the building and walking crookedly towards him, you searching for something in your purse. he would recognize the party queen everywhere.

"... i can't find it!! i swear i had it!!" you laugh, giving up with whatever you wanted to find, your purse slips off your shoulder just by the front door of the house, right next to where matt was standing. he automatically bends down and hands it to you, drawing the attention of you and your friends to him, which makes his heart beat faster. "oh helloooo, thank you," a smile appears on your face, that brings a slight warmth to his cheeks.

"yeah, no problem," he tries to keep it cool, scratching the back of his neck nervously. you look at your friends, gasping playfully, "ohhh, maybe this gentleman will have a lighter—" your gaze goes back to his blue eyes that were now wide. "do you have a lighter??? i think i lost mine!"

"a what— oh—" he snaps out of his trance, staring too hard at you which makes him blush even more. you were so beautiful. he clears his throat, "yeah, uh, i have one..." he hands it to you, your friends giggling at his nervousness, while you thought he's being really cute. "here you go."

"you're a life saveeeerrrrr," you're about to start searching for the cigarettes but he's quick to pass his own pack to you. "oh god, you're like an angel," your grin widens as you take a cigarette from him, putting it between your lips and lighting it up.

"girlll, my song is playing! can you hurry up?" your friend complains, causing you to roll your eyes.

"just go, i'll come in a minute."

"you sure?"

"yeah, go," you repeat yourself and stand next to matt who was leaning against the wall against, his heart pounding in his chest. he could feel your perfume mixed with... weed, perhaps? you give him the lighter and cigarettes back with a simple 'thank you'.

you both stand next to each other in silence that was starting to weigh on him, but he wasn't able to speak first. you both smoke your cigarettes when you finally look at him again. dressed all in black, a beer in one hand, on which you notice tattoos. oh, he's handsome as fuck.

"so" you speak up, getting his attention. "does this gentleman have a name?"

he smiles shyly, overwhelmed by your beauty. "i'm matt."

"matt," you repeat, tasting his name on your tongue. "i like it. suits you."

the way you repeat his name makes him feel both uncomfortable and strangely excited at the same time. he rubs the back of his neck nervously again, blowing out the smoke, just as you say your name too. he gives you a glance, "i know."

"oh, do you?" a smirk appears on your lips as you take another drag. he replies hesitantly, "well, i mean... who doesn't?"

you nod confidently, "right." your eyes travel to his tattooed arm again, feeling your stomach twisting in knots at the sight. he catches it and looks down at his arm as well. "i like them. make you look hotter," you confess.

he blinks, caught of guard by your words. he wasn't really used to people, especially not girls like you, saying things like that to him. mostly because he barely was leaving his house. he feels his heart race, a warmth spreading through his chest. "thanks."

"of course," you respond casually, checking him out once again before looking away with a small smile and taking another drag of the cigarette. you were slightly high, not really that drunk yet and you knew what you were doing. his awkwardness was so cute, there was no way you'd let this man go so quickly tonight. you actually felt like you need to have him.

matt finishes his beer in one swing, putting the empty bottle aside, causing your attention to get back to him.

the more you looked at him, the more he reminded you of someone, but there was no way you talked or even seen matt before. though, you decide to ask, "wait, don't i know you already?"

he raises his eyebrow, locking eyes with you. "me? i don't think so." i would definitely want you to, he thinks.

"oh, 'cause i feel like i do. or maybe you just remind me of someone—"

"i'm a triplet. you probably know my brothers."

"ohhh, wait—" you snap your fingers, trying to remember. "yeah, chris and— and nick? oh, now i know. never seen you before though. lowkey thought they're bullshitting about being triplets."

matt smiles amused, taking one last drag and throwing the butt of the cigarette on the ground, trampling it with his shoe. "yeah, m'not really out going."

"i see," you nod, smiling back. "i'd definitely remember you."

he chuckles softly, feeling his face warm at your words again. damn, get your shit together matthew. "really, huh?"

"yeah. with this looks and that—?" you point at his tattoos. "i promise, i would remember."

you didn't feel like beating around the bush, you liked him. he was extremely handsome, his hair looked so soft you wanted to run your hand through it, his eyes made you weak in your knees and his lips begged to be kissed. not to mention the aura he had around him, he intrigued you. matt was different than the rest of those assholes you met at parties.

he looks away shyly, the smile on his face makes your heart flutter. literal butterflies — something you've never had before.

you finish the cigarette in a comfortable silence, getting slightly overwhelmed after the weed you smoked before. leaning against the wall, your shoulder brushes against his, drawing his attention back to you.

"you good?"

"mhm, it's that cigarette, give me a second."

he nods, watching as you throw the rest of it aside. "okay. jus' don't go passing out on me."

"hey, i'm not that drunk i can even stand on my hands if you want. look—" you're literally bending over in front of him, hands on the ground, and you're ready to do it, but he quickly grabs your waist, forcing you to straighten up. matt tried his hardest not to look at your ass and the way your short dress rode up. his pants suddenly start to grow tighter but he ignores it.

"you better not—"

with a giggle, you turn around to face him, the feelings of his hands sends a shiver down your spine. "i could easily do that."

"sure," he raises his eyebrow, the blush on his cheeks only growing because of the closeness. "i don't think i'd know what to do with a drunk and unconscious party queen on my hands, if you did that."

"right, okay." you bite down on your bottom plump lip, which doesn't go unnoticed by him. "but what would you do with a slighty tipsy and definitely conscious party queen on your hands, hm?"

his eyes sparkle with amusement, heart rate subtly increasing at your promixity. "well, that's a pretty open-ended question," he replies, his voice low and gentle. "depends on the party queen personality and how she's feeling."

oh, he's funny.

"and if the party queen is feeling perfectly fine and have the best personality ever?"

the air between you two suddenly feeling charged with an unexpected, but pleasant tension. matt could feel himself getting more and more worked up. he tried to be the gentleman that handed you the purse a few minutes ago, or gave you a cigarette and a lighter, but it was getting hard. especially now, when he realizes his hands are still on your waist and you don't seem to mind at all.

"oh, in that case i'd probably just try to keep up 'n hope her great personality doesn't find me too terribly boring."

"nah, i think she finds you pretty intriguing actually." you tilt your head to the side, eyes dropping to his lips before moving back up. oh, those lips.... "and if she wanted to show you just how bad?"

he swallows hard, "you mean, hypothetically... if she wanted to show me she's interested?"

"mhm, yeah. exactly what i mean," you lean in, giving him time to push you away, but he doesn't. oh, he would never. he wanted you so bad, knowing he's just one of hundreds of your simps, but it was the last thing on his mind right now. all he wanted is to feel your lips on his.

and he finally did.

closing the gap between you two, you kiss him softly, what he does too after a moment. his initial hesitation melting into reciprocation as your lips move against his. his hands, unsure at first, eventually move down to your hips, pulling you gently closer. your fingers tangling into his messy, soft hair, pushing him slightly against the wall, getting a hum in approval. matt starts relaxing against you, letting you set the pace and tone for your interaction. as you take your time, he finds himself growing more comfortable and excited. he would never think it would happen. with you out of all people.

the kiss starts getting more and more heated, you grow slightly impatient, feeling the ache between your legs starting to grow. you press your body closer to him, hand traveling up and down his chest, your tongues dancing together. once he feels how gently you bite his lip, a small whine leaves him, your mind spins and definitely not because of the amount of alcohol or weed you've consumed.

you break the kiss, both of you panting as you mutter against his lips, "come with me, yeah?" getting a weak nod in response, you're fast to make your way back into the crowded house, dragging matt behind you by his wrist.

his palms start to sweat as you take him upstairs and reach some empty room, pushing him inside. the noise of the party fading behind you two once you kick the door shut and attack his lips again.

matt is overwhelmed but in the best way possible. his senses are filled with your sweet scent, the tension growing in his pants with each second. his eagerness showing in his tentative exploration, but offset by an earnest enthusiasm. he lets out a soft sigh into the kiss, surrendering to your lead. he hits the bed and falls onto the mattress, you climbing on top of him, straddling his thighs. he gasps softly as your weight presses down on him in the most distracting and exhilarating way. his hands instinctively find their way to your hips again, gripping slightly as he tries to adjust to this new position.

breaking the kiss, you start trailing kisses down his jaw and neck, his head tilts back unconsciously, giving you better access to his skin. his whole body shivers at the delicate touches of your lips, a soft moan escaping him as you hit a particularly sensitive spot, sucking on it to intentionally mark him.

his reaction brings a smile to your face and you look up to see him in such a cute state. messy hair, cheeks reddish, his pink lips swollen from the make out as he lets out heavy breaths.

"look at you, pretty boy."

his eyelids flutter open, revealing pupils dilated with desire. matt touches the mark on his neck lightly, fingers tracing where you'd sucked. "that's..." he clears his throat, feeling his face flush even more. the way you look at him is both intimidating and incredibly hot.

"hm? you like it?"

"y-yeah, that's really... good," he admits.

you just couldn't help yourself, he was so majestic, really. the way he was clearly trying not to rush or throw himself at you, makes you want to give him all the pleasure in the world so he wouldn't be able to forget about this evening, no matter how hard he'd try.

"want more?"

his eyes darken slightly, voice hoarse with lust, "that wouldn't be really... gentleman of me, hm?"

you smile, finding him amusing. "oh, but i'm proposing this to you, not the other way around. so...?" you whisper against his lips, "how it's gonna be, baby?"

this time he captures your lips in a kiss, wanting to show you how much he wants— no, craves you, hoping this is enough of a response.

a wave of heat washes over you, hands traveling under his shirt which steals another whine from matt. you had never been so turned on before in such a short amount of time, automatically starting to move your hips and grind down against him, feeling how hard he was beneath you. pride overwhelms you at the feeling of how much he's affected by you, the want for him even bigger than before.

his arms wrap around your waist, pulling you closer as he deepens the kiss. he can feel you moving on his lap, the friction driving him crazy. your tongue explores his mouth, lips clicking against his. his hands shaky on your body from the desire he felt. "you can touch me, matt..." you pant against his plump lips, pressing your clothed, soaked core against his dick harder.

"y'feel so good..." his eyes are glassy with lust as he looks up at you. his chest is heaving, and he bites his lip, trying to compose himself when he finally allows his hands to explore your body.

"mhm, i can feel how bad you want me," you keep grinding against him, the friction causing you both to whimper. "is really cute.... and hot— you know?"

"please—" his eyes flutter shut from pleasure, your hands teasing him just above the waistband of his jeans. "what is it, baby?" you bite back a smile at his desperate expression.

"just... i need you please— can you..." his breath is coming in ragged gasps now, and he feels both embarrassed and completely exhilarated. his hips rise slightly to meet yours, a natural response to the overwhelming sensation. his body aches for more contact, more friction, more of you.

"can i what? c'mon, you gotta ask nicely if you want something." you're teasing, torturing him purposely, enjoying how adorable he gets when his shyness takes over. "look at me, matt."

blushing intensely, he opens his eyes and stammers out, "can you... i mean, would you... with your mouth?" he immediately looks mortified at his own boldness, his cheeks flaming red as he quickly adds, "sorry, i didn't mean to presume—"

"i think you did mean it though," you smile softly, licking your lips. his words and the image that just popped up in your head makes your pussy pulse. "how can i say no when you're being such a good boy for me?" you press kisses to his neck just as he whines again, your hands already working on his belt. his eyes watching as his jeans and boxers get pushed down his legs. he gasps as the cool air hits his exposed lower half, his body trembling slightly. his dick twitches as you kneel on the mattress between his legs, looking at him in awe. "just relax."

he nods quickly, trying to calm himself. his chest is rising and falling rapidly, hands fumble anxiously with the hem of his shirt unsure what to do with them. is not like he was inexperienced, he was in a relationship before, but having you, the popular party girl that everyone wanted, between his legs was definitely making him more nervous than he would usually be.

you put your hair up into a messy ponytail, his body immediately tensing up. he can feel the blood rushing to his cock, making it throb with anticipation. he tries to relax his legs, spreading them wider to give you better access. you stop just above his tip, looking up at him with a smile at the messy state he was already in, even if you didn't start yet. "gonna say a magic word?"

he swallows hard, his blush deepens, "please."

his eyes dart between your face and his hard, leaking with precum dick, hardly believing this is really happening. but it feels real, when you give him a kitty lick before starting to suck on his tip. a strangled moan escapes matt's lips, his hips involuntarily twitching upwards. the sensation is electric, his hands fist in the sheets beneath him, grasping desperately for some form of anchor. "o-oh, fuck—"

your tongue is swirling around his tip teasingly, before you take him deeper, his eyes roll back in his head, breath catching in his throat. he can feel every ridge and curve of your mouth, the wet heat almost more than he can bear. a shaky whimper escapes him, hands slide up to tangle in your hair, gripping tightly as he fights the urge to buck his hips forward.

he was so big, the choking sounds echoing in the room, saliva dripping down your chin. hollowing your cheeks, you start bobbing your head up and down, nose brushing against his pelvis. "s-shit.... feels so good— mmmm, fu—ckkk--" his entire body shudders, he watches you through heavy-lidded eyes, completely captivated by the sight. the sounds alone are enough to make him dizzy with desire. his breathing becomes more ragged, mingling with the wet sounds of your mouth. "oh god..." he whimpers. you're breathing through your nose, focusing on his tip again, your hand working on the rest of him. the sensation combined with your mouth is incredible, almost too much to process. matt bites his lip hard, suppressing a loud moan, but it still escapes as more of a choked groan. "fuck, please—"

he was completely out of it, a big whining mess, his hips uncontrollably lifting upwards, his tip hitting the back of your throat. his toes curl as he feels the mounting pressure, his entire body tingling with exquisite tension while you suck on his dick like on a lollipop, being all messy with it, gagging every now and then. panting heavily, he tugs gently at your hair, "w-wait, m'gonna.... m'so close, wait—" you hum in approval, wanting to taste him on your tongue. it sends vibrations through him, another whimper escaping him. you speed up your movements, matt automatically starts thrusting up into your mouth as his orgasm approaches, "f-fuck, sorry, i.... i can't— shittt, gonna cum— can i... oh—"

he's lost at this point, his head threw back, a loud, unrestrained moan ripping from his throat as you resume your actions. his hips lift off the bed, pressing himself deeper into your mouth, getting another moan from you. the sight was hypnotizing, his flushed features, the way he tried to muffle his moans by chewing on his bottom lip. you were dripping, clenching around nothing just from watching him.

with a choked cry, his entire body convulses as he finds his release, pulse after pulse of ecstasy flooding through him. his fingers fist so tightly in your hair that he's vaguely aware it might hurt, but he can't seem to loosen his grip. you whimper around him, tasting him on your tongue and swallowing everything. your tongue swirl around his sensitive tip one more time before pulling out with a wet pop. his vision blurs, heart pounding in his chest. he lets go off your hair, your eyes meeting his, a string of saliva connecting your lips to his tip. damn.

his face flushed with heat as he smiles, "holy fuck."

"holy fuck indeed," you lick your lips, the sight so intimate and erotic for him that he feels his spent dick twitch in response. "that was, like, amazing—" he mutters, still struggling to find his voice.

you chuckle, moving so now you were on top of him again, hands on each side of his head. "what a shame that we met so late," you say, running your hand through his hair, a shiver going down his spine.

"i was supposed to leave at midnight," he admits. your eyebrow raises, "oh really?" he nods, "yeah, not a fan of parties."

"well... i'm glad you didn't have the chance to leave then."

"me too." he pulls you into another desperate kiss, tasting himself on your tongue, getting a hum in surprise. he was clearly eager for more. your fast to roll your dress up around your waist, grabbing his hand and directing it between your legs. when he feels how soaked your panties were, he can't help but whimper again. "feel it, baby?" you break the kiss, looking at him, his eyes darken with lust. "that's allll because of you."

his gaze travels over your body, taking in the curves he's only ever imagined. he swallows hard, his voice hoarse with need. "please, i need you..."

"you're so cute when you beg," you smile biting down on your plump lip. removing your underwear, you position yourself just above his tip, letting him feel the wet warmth, teasing him mercilessly. matt whines softly, his body tensing with the need to thrust into you and finally feel you. "what was that, hm? tell me what you want, matt."

"need you... to ride me— please—"

"need me, hm? and how bad?"

he whines again, louder this time, his hips bucking slightly in an attempt to get him inside you. "so bad," he pants, his voice barely recognizable in his desperation. "please, please, please..." he chants, his voice cracking with need.

"gooood boy," you praise, his words getting you even wetter. wrapping your hand around his cock, you give him a few strokes before slowly sinking down on him. "begging so pretty— f-fuck...." the sudden feeling of your warm, tight pussy enveloping his aching dick is almost too much for matt to handle. he throws his head back, a loud, wordless whimper tearing from his throat as he's sheathed inside you, a moan leaving your lips as well at his reaction. "shit, you're so big—" you stay still to adjust, lifting your dress higher to be more comfortable. you feel his dick twitching inside you after your words. amused written all over your face when you look at him, "you like it, hm? who would've know you're so naughty...."

matt's hands tremble as they grip your hips, trying desperately to hold back the urge to grind into you. his breath comes in short, sharp bursts as he savors the exquisite tightness gripping him.

"feels good?" you slowly start moving, he nods his head weakly, words caught in his throat as he tries to speak around the lump formed by his swallowed moan. "mmm, holy shit, matt—" his cock is buried so deeply inside you that it makes you see stars for a moment. you crave more of him, so you start speeding up the pace.

"so... good..." he manages to rasp out, his eyes rolling back briefly before snapping forward to lock onto yours again. "you're...too much..."

"yeah? want me to stop?" you mock him a little bit, knowing that's the last thing he wants.

he shakes his head frantically, a sheepish grin spreading across his flushed face. "no, no...don't stop. i meant...fuck, you're just so tight— fuckkk, feels incredible." he bucks his hips slightly, emphasizing his enthusiasm, his nails dig into your hips, his body tensing as he tries to pull you down further onto him.

"you're doing perfect for me, baby—" you moan out, putting one hand on his chest as you start moving your hips harder, your attention drawn to his tattoos. the sight of his arm causes you to painfully clench around him, your pussy gripping him like a vice. he hisses at the feeling, it drives him wild. "shit, just like that—"

you both aren't able to hold back your moans, letting them spill out one after another. each thrust pushes you both into ecstasy, your hand on his chest the only thing anchoring him to reality. matt's hands slide up your sides, then down to your thighs, marveling the soft skin beneath his fingers.

matt notices the way your eyes are locked onto his tattoos and it makes his dick throb even harder inside you. "god, matt— mmhpp, oh my...." you lean forward, needing some balance as your legs start growing tired, your hands on each side of his head. he reaches up to your waist, guiding your movements as he lifts his hips to meet each thrust. "f-fuck— you're so beautiful..."

your eyebrows knitted together in pleasure, eyes rolling back as you feel your orgasm approaching. he can feel it as well, which pushes him over the edge too. "gonna cum for me, pretty boy?" you choke out, looking down at him through half-open eyes.

"mhmm, fuck—" he pants, his own face contorted with pleasure. he sees the concentration on your face, the beads of sweat forming on your collarbone. he wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you down onto him even harder. "s-so close... shiiit—"

"me too," you whine into his ear. "fuck..." his grip tightens on your waist as his release builds. his movements become more urgent, more desperate. "tell me... mm— tell me how you want it, sweetheart—" he knows he won't last much longer, not with how perfectly you're stretching around him.

"inside me—"

"y-yeah?" his voice breaking as he feels you clench around him again. "you want me to fill you up?"

"mhmmm—" you moan just as he whimpers again, what pushes you into a state of bliss, euphoria consumes you as your orgasm crashes down over you, your hips stuttering.

once he feels you creaming around him, and the pretty — mesmerizing moans, oh he's too far gone. matt's control snaps, he buries himself as deep as possible inside you, his hips jerking as he unleashes a torrent of cum deep within your spasming pussy. one last moan leaves him, his vision blurring as his release seems to go on forever. "fuckkkk—"

after you both ride out your orgasms, your hips come to a stop, his hands splaying out against your lower back as he pulls you flush against him. matt can feel his release slowly leaking out of you and dripping down his thighs. your breath against his neck tickles his skin.

"oh my god," he breathes out, making you chuckle and you lift up your head, seeing his flushed face. so cute. "made me see fuckin' stars, holy shit."

you laugh again, getting off to lay down beside him, head on matt's shoulder, his heart skips a beat at that. "you're funny," you say.

he wraps his hand around your waist again, not really ready to let go yet. "m'serious."

"okay, mr serious," you roll your eyes. "doesn't mean you aren't funny. and still a gentleman."

"getting into your pants before first date isn't really gentleman of me," he smiles shyly as you look up at him.

"i got into your pants," you correct him. "you gonna get into mine after that first date."

"there's gonna be one?"

"oh, definitely."

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[yeagersss]

Sukuna after his defeat at Shinjuku — He ends up as your... pet... blob?

Like the last thing he remembers is proudly declaring to Yuuji's foolish requests of starting over that he's a curse and then he remembers just drifting away to what he believed would be an eternal slumber for him.

But then he's confused because suddenly it's dark, he's confined into a tight space and he could hear... muffled voices of someone singing...?

You had just moved into your new place, your grandfather's old home in the outskirts of a small town. A quiet and peaceful place especially far away from loud and terribly dangerous city that Tokyo had become.

You were an aspiring artist and you believed that you will draw so much inspiration from your new home.

You opened one of your boxes while humming a soft tune and jumped when you saw... something??? in it. A weird... blob looking—maybe it's some weird deformed one eyed frog? How did it end up in your box??

Sukuna squinted his eye at the sudden brightness and glared up at you. This is not... the afterlife, right? What the hell is this??

You curiously lifted your hand to touch the weird blob frog and then suddenly... it spoke.

"Touch me and I will slice your finger off, stupid woman."

Needless to say you screamed and flipped the entire box over. Before scrambling to the far side of the room.

Poor Sukuna is now buried helplessly under some books and other shit and that's when he realized he was still in that... weak and disgusting form Yuuji had reduced him to.

As he was wiggling out of the pile while thinking about the fact that this is probably hell, you are in the far corner, holding a pair of kitchen tongs and tense up when you see him before shouting "What the HELL are you???"

And before he could open his mouth to even threaten you further or maybe even cut you up, he gets pounced by a fluffy white... Cat.

"What the—get off of me! Unhand me this instant!! WOMAN, control your creature or I will end it's life!!" Sukuna demands as he wiggles away from the cat.

And Sukuna did try to end the cat's life. He really did but to his horror his cursed energy, that used to be as vast as the fucking ocean, was so, so low that he only managed a tiny shallow cut of the cat's paw that it dismissed with a swift lick.

Still you got your cat, Luna, away before that thing could hurt her.

And that is how the King of Curses comes into your life. You don't know that though because to you he's some weird mutated and helpless frog. You had considered tossing him outside but you kinda felt bad for the little guy. (he's so small. Like he can fit in your palm! Even if he does threaten you to die, he would be helpless outside.)

And Sukuna, on the other hand, had went from trying and failing to kill you (and your damn cat) to throwing every creative death threat he can think of to downright ignoring you as he stayed slumped on the floor with his eye closed, trying to tap into his depleted cursed energy. Anything to maybe help him gain his form back or atleast legs so he could walk but luck wasn't in his side at all.

He had stayed like that for a good two days. By that time you were done moving in and organising your stuff. For a second, you thought he was dead but a quick poke with a spatula confirmed he was very much alive when he suddenly threatened to eat your liver.

So anyway Sukuna is stubborn af. He refuses to acknowledged your presence and just stays on the floor meditating or spaced out, trying to figure out a way to get out of this predicament or wait until he has enough CE to actually do something.

But then you bring him food. You realized he hasn't eaten a thing ever since you found him.

"Here. I'm not sure what you eat but with the way you talk about eating my heart or whatever so I'm guessing it's meat." You say as you place a plate of cooked steak in front of him.

For a moment, his pride does not let him touch the food. But then you come back and see the plate completely empty, you smile.

"Can I atleast pick you up and place you by the window? I know you get bored sitting on the floor all day." You ask one day.

Sukuna doesn't say anything and simply glares at you before giving a simple "hmph".

You take that as a yes and carefully scoop him up before placing him on the window sill. The view of the beautiful countryside is incredible and you're sure the little guy will appreciate it.

And Sukuna does, somewhat. After being exposed to the bustling and overwhelming atmosphere of the modern world, he's glad this world still has... some places that remind him of his own era.

You gently place a plate of food next to him and this time, instead of eating when you go away, he eats it while you're still here. He slithers closer to the plate and using his tiny paws, he holds the meat down before taking a large bite.

He glares when you stifle a laugh.

"... What should I call you?" You ask.

Sukuna frowns at that question. It's the first time someone has asked for his own name. He doesn't have one, obviously since all his life, others were the ones who labelled him: demon, monster, god, the Fallen One, the Honored One, the King of Curses, Ryomen Sukuna.

"How does Poupou sound?" You suggested with a grin to which his blood red eye looked at you with nothing but pure hatred.

"Sukuna. Call me that one more time and I will feast on your eyes, you useless woman."

... Sukuna it is then.

[soapcloth]

Fantasy au -> Warrior!Soap x Healer!Reader

CW: 18+ MDNI, light bloodplay, noncon undertones, dacryphilia if you squint

not edited - 800 words - dividers -> @/cafekitsune

You’ve had just about enough of that axe-swinging asshole, built like an ox and thrice as stubborn.

You’re absolutely beside yourself asking why you’re sticking it out in his half-baked party. John, as he had practically breathed the name down your neck, couldn’t keep a decent healer and now you know all too well why. He was mean, smelly, loud, and worst of all- overly familiar despite your best efforts to stamp out any flame of acquaintanceship. You could write ballads dedicated to reasons you should leave this party, but truth be told? You were down on your luck. You wondered sometimes if you were cursed with misfortune, a hilariously horrid timeline of events leading you to this very position right now. So you’ve made a few mistakes, hasn’t everyone in the pursuit of dungeon crawling?

Even so, was the state of your freelance healing career really so bad that you had to saddle up with someone like John MacTavish? The man had been naught more than a trail thief brute-forcing his way into other parties’ treasure a few years ago, but because of a few lucky encounters in monster slaying, suddenly he was picking up jobs in adventurer hubs like it was something he was born to do. It pissed you off to no end and he knew it. Loved seeing your indignant scowl while you healed him up knowing better work was near impossible for you to come by.

“Och- that’s it, ‘m sore there.” He’d groaned, humid breath fanning your skin, god, why was he always so close? “Gonna show me that pretty glow, lamb?”

“No.” You bit, rubbing the salve a touch deeper than needed. Your lips twitched seeing his eyebrows draw tight. “It’s not so bad that you need healing, stop being a baby.”

The man snorted in response. “That’s why no other parties’ll take ye on, lamb.” His deep blue eyes searched your own, a wild smirk twisting across his mouth. “Terrible bedside manner.” You flushed slightly, shooting him a sharp glare that caused him to lean back on his makeshift fallen and rotted log seat with a pleased grin as he inspected his wound. Like the ever-expressive man he was, his face suddenly took on a shade of concern. “Ach-!”

“Huh?” Was all you could muster, confused as to what he could be so worried about.

“Think I got nicked by something venomous, lamb, need yer healing.” He seethed out. “Oh for- let me see.” You sighed, grabbing his uselessly huge hand. As expected, his palm was fine, albeit still a bit bloody as the salve worked to stop it.

Wrong move.

Upon inspecting his wound, the adventurer managed to shove his palm into your face with a vicious grin, huffing through his nose a bit as he smeared blood across your mouth. Sputtering only invited the acrid taste of bitter salve, sweat, and copper onto your tastebuds as he laughed and continued to wipe his hand across your face. “See?” He chuckled “M’still hurt.” His eyes seemed to glisten like the northern stormy coast seeing his own blood on your skin. “Suits you.”

You pushed his hand away, misinterpreting his words in a way that scratched at a sore spot of your own. “I didn’t kill them, John! Stop holding that over my head!” You snarled, causing his eyes to widen a fraction. You wiped his blood off your face with your arm, only to smear it around more and get it on the limb. Great. It was then you realized you had a runny nose as well, were you starting to cry? “I fucked up- but my god, they lived, okay?” And now you couldn’t get a gig better than this one because of that fact, a voice in the back of your head snarked. It’s true too, they made sure no party worth its salt would ever take you on. You still have no idea why John did either in all honesty, for all his faults and the high turnover rate, he had a seemingly bottomless fount of healers willing to take a shot at being the one to stick.

John cupped your cheeks. “None of tha’.” He spoke lowly. One of his calloused thumbs swiped at an emerging tear before it could fall and you had to watch, mouth slightly agape as he brought the pad of his thumb to his lips without much thought, tongue darting out to taste. You blinked as he clapped that hand down on your shoulder, leaning closer. “None of tha’…” he repeated, quieter this time. He looked so focused. “Dinnae give a shit about those no-names, lamb, neither should you.”

You swallowed audibly when met with his intensity, his voice a rolling growl. “Fuck- seeing ye all covered in my blood’s got me stiffer than a rock. Palm’s busted and you won’t heal me. Cannae do a thing about it, feel like ah’m gonna-“

“I can heal your hand.” You urged, the oppressive haze he left you with suddenly lifting.

He snorted in response. “Though so, lamb.” His palm connected with your hair, ruffling his blood into your locks before moving down to pat your cheek. “What a dutiful healer ye’ are… So good te’ me. Let me see tha’ gorgeous glow.”

[dollishmehrayan]

# CHRISTMAS TREE DECORATING AND CHAOS ── .✦ ( decorating trees with batboys ‘separated’! ⋆౨ৎ )

a/n: I literally feel so happy genuinely now, I guess my mental health is getting better && anyways i have 64 requests to get to… i truly need to speed run through these but some I can’t do sadly 😭 so sorryy ᥫ᭡, tags: (batboys x fem!reader)

© dollishmehrayan — ( all rights reserved to me. These works cannot be reposted, translated, or modified. Thank you for understanding dollies! )

DICK GRAYSON ── .✦

The king of enthusiasm: As soon as you suggest decorating the tree together, he’s all in.

“We’re going for the most extra tree Gotham has ever seen!” He wants it tall enough to touch the ceiling and glittery enough to blind someone.

He’s the guy who insists on climbing to the very top to put on the star, even though he wobbles dangerously on the ladder.

Sings Christmas songs (terribly off-key he’s also like tone deaf and beat deaf it’s a curse to hear him sing something at karaoke) while you decorate, complete with dramatic twirls and spins around the tree.

Accidentally tangles himself in the lights at least twice. “I’m fine, I’m fine! I was just… testing the durability!”

Insists on taking a million photos of you with the finished tree, calling you his “Christmas angel.”

When it’s all done, he dims the lights, wraps an arm around you, and whispers, “This might be my favorite Christmas ever.”

JASON TODD ── .✦

He pretends to be indifferent. “Decorating a tree? Sounds boring.” But the second you start, he’s invested.

He’s surprisingly good at untangling lights and getting them perfectly spaced on the tree. “What? I’ve got steady hands.”

Jason leans into more minimalistic decor deep reds, dark greens, and gold accents but he lets you take the lead. “You want glittery ornaments? Fine. But I draw the line at tinsel.” (he’s like those sad beige moms but with like dark traditional Christmas colors…)

Complains about how prickly the tree is the entire time but still helps you string popcorn garlands because he knows it makes you happy.

TIM DRAKE ── .✦

He’s excited about decorating but is terrible at it. Tim tries, but he’s way better at figuring out the tech side of things (like synchronized tree lights) than actually hanging ornaments.

Spends 20 minutes untangling lights and another 20 trying to figure out why one strand isn’t working. “It’s science! There’s a method to this madness.”

He’s the type to sneak a caffeine break halfway through while you keep decorating. “What? I need fuel to focus!”

Insists on hanging some nerdy ornaments—little Batman logos, Star Wars-themed ones, or even a tiny Robin figurine.

When you get frustrated with his lack of artistic flair, he pulls you close and says, “Hey, at least I’m good company, right?”

After it’s all done, he insists on dimming the lights and turning on the synchronized tree music. “Look at that. A masterpiece.”

DAMIAN WAYNE ── .✦

Initially acts like it’s beneath him. “Why would I waste time decorating a tree?” But he ends up being surprisingly good at it.

Damian has an eye for symmetry, so every ornament has to be perfectly spaced. “No, that one is too close to the red one. Move it.”

If you mention that decorating the tree is a nostalgic tradition for you, he softens immediately. “Fine. But this had better be worth it.”

He refuses to wear a Christmas sweater, but you catch him smiling when you put on a ridiculous reindeer headband.

Titus gets involved, carrying around ornaments and wagging his tail, which Damian pretends to be annoyed by but secretly loves.

When the tree is finished, he stands back with his arms crossed, pretending not to care. But when you beam at him, he quietly says, “It looks… nice. I suppose this wasn’t a complete waste of time.”

BRUCE WAYNE ── .✦

(He buys like 40 ft Christmas trees for the main ball in the manor and like that’s almost impossible to decorate without professionals)

The ultimate perfectionist. He has a very clear vision for the tree, but he tries to let you take the lead. “It’s your tradition. I’ll follow your lead… mostly.”

Insists on using the tallest tree that will fit in Wayne Manor and hires a team to bring it in.

He’s all about elegant, classic decorations white lights, glass ornaments, and a tasteful tree topper. But if you want colorful lights or quirky ornaments, he’ll indulge you.

Offers to lift you up to reach the highest branches instead of letting you use a ladder. “I don’t need you breaking your neck before the gala.”

Alfred brings hot cocoa and cookies halfway through, smiling at how relaxed Bruce looks around you.

When the tree is done, he turns to you and says, “It’s perfect. Just like this moment.” Then he pulls you into a rare, heartfelt kiss under the twinkling lights.

[gay-dorito-dust]

hey author! how do you think the batboys would act if they had a best friends to lovers kinda of thing going on? like reader is their bro, their other half and then out of nowhere the batboys are like omg i love my best friend <3

Dick often made jokes in the past that it was only time before you two become the plot of a really bad romcom, two friends who pretty much did everything together, it was almost as if fate itself was trying to tell you something. A cliche friends to lovers trope just waiting to happen.

Now he couldn’t help but recognise the irony now as he holds his head in his hands, curse him and his loud fucking mouth for it always found its way to bite him in the ass sooner or later.

Dick didn’t mind falling in love, but to fall in love with your best friend after teasing about it happening for such a long time felt like karma for his teasing behaviour. He’s stuck trying to think of anything that didn’t remind him of you but unfortunately for Dick everything reminded him of you no matter where he looked, even his apartment was covered in things that you’ve left behind with no intention of taking back.

This has proven to be the perfect example of how much you’ve been overtaking his mind, slowly but surely before becoming all he could think of in his waking hours and his sleeping hours. It was driving him mad with how obvious his feelings must’ve been to the people closest to him.

You were all he knew in these moments and he was forced to be remained of his ever growing emotions with how he always seemed to be touching you in any capacity he could, his arm was often thrown over your shoulders in public or he’s holding you from behind as you stayed over at his place. He thrived off of your warmth and presence that it made going home to his place even more dull without you by his side to parent Hayley together, you’d make a great dog parent for all he was aware.

The signs were there and Dick was made to realise that he was the one who had fallen first out of the two of you, even though he wished it was you, and now all he could think was how he’d much rather have you live with him since you loved to leave your stuff at his place for convenience when you did spend the night. Hell you even cuddled together like a couple with you burying your head under his chin while he caged you against his chest with his arms as he pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

Dick knew he’d have to make a move sooner or later before someone else swoops you up right in front of him.

Damian was having his own integral crisis once he realised that he wasn’t in fact ill and was infect feeling romantic feelings towards you.

He’s against it and heavily so that he would find himself putting distance between the two of you because of it as it wasn’t something he was ready to face.

It’s very much an ‘oh shit, oh god why?!’ Type of reaction and suddenly his walls are back up. Damian knows how dangerous it would be if you were either him, as if being friends with him already didn’t put a target on your back. Not only that but he was secretly scared of what these emotions could spell out for his future.

Would he be distracted in patrols and missions to come because his mind was fixated on you and your wellbeing?

Would he become sloppy in his fighting or would he become even more ruthless at the idea of something terrible happening to you under his watch?

Damian didn’t know and he wasn’t one to ask for help either so he would often retreat to his room and put his head in his hands and sigh. Emotions were more trouble than what they were worth and it often caused him frequent headaches in the process. Damian didn’t know what to do and so he could only hope that if he spend less time with you then the feelings would go away.

However owever this plan ultimately backfires on him as he finds himself missing your presence more then he’d ever admit at gunpoint, he’d even find himself drawing you how he saw you and he’s back to holding his head in his hands and groaning at how much of a bother these emotions were going to be.

He loves you but wasn’t willing to risk your safety by taking your friendship to the next level, but even if he ever did he’ll most likely have to teach you basic hand to hand combat to satiate his concern while he’s away from you. But until then he’d rather let the emotions die in his chest, no matter how much they burn him from the inside for he’s dealt with worse.

Jason would come to this realisation that he was in love with you when he found himself becoming more protective over you than normal. And I mean more than normal.

He’d be on patrol and the first person he looks out for is you, especially if your on an late shift at work, as he doesn’t trust Gotham in the slightest at night for that was when the city was at its upmost worst. He’s watching over you like a guardian angel, a rather violent guardian angel but only towards those who deserve such lethal and or permanent punishment from his gun.

He wants you to be safe on your journey home that sometimes after beating up some goons, he’s walking you home as red hood for extra protection before bidding you a goodnight. He doesn’t care how often he has to do it because he’ll gladly walk you home no matter what, your safety was Jason’s top priority and he knew he’d hate himself more then he already did should anything happen to you when he wasn’t nearby.

He knew he had fallen for you when he became softer and more affectionate towards you, whether that be holding you by the waist as he moved to grab a cup in the morning, kissing your temple as good morning greeting, holding your hand when he feels the need to distract himself by fiddling and intertwining your fingers together.

He even remember falling more for you when you reciprocated the touches with some of your own that lead to him falling into your arms, finding his much needed solace there as he realises just how much he wanted this to be a reality you both share together, a reality where you’d lie in bed tougher and wake the other up with kisses and sweet whispers of love and adoration you had for one another.

His apartment that felt cold and dead was more alight and filled with life when you came in through the door, decorating it with trinkets and other gifts that you bestowed upon him, but what made his apparent more alive and warm to Jason and that was you with your presence and Jason didn’t know how he’d manage to live his entire life without you being his rock and his reason for everything.

So needless to say that Jason felt as though that if he’d loose you he would be a man without a cause, a man without an anchor who could aways bring him back form the brink, he knew damn well that how he treated himself now would be nothing in comparison to how he would treat himself if you left his life.

Jason needed you like he needed air to breathe, how he was going to confess he wasn’t certain but he had a thing or two in mind.

[ardienothesieno]

taking notes on the hermitcraft charity livestream for my friend @pookapufferfish and also just anyone else who had to miss it 👍

these are going to be all over the place lol

i started my note-keeping like an hour or so into the stream so i dont have a lot of stuff from the beginning...

but: grian and scar opened the stream, showed off some of the items up for auction (like real wild life snails. i want one so bad but they're MASSIVELY out of my price range...)

POST-POSTING EDIT: I FORGOT THERE WAS AN IMP AND SKIZZ PODCAST. it wasnt really a traditional podcast though, martyn was asking them questions, a group of hermits would vote on who they thought had the best answer, and whoever lost got shocked by grian.

my most notable takeaway from the shock-cast is that if impulse could have any superpowers he'd want control over time, and skizz would want the ability to heal people. mmm yes food for the superhero aus

and then ren busted out this custom hermitcraft guitar that's also up for auction and played a song by green day

and then we got treebark content.martyn and ren ran the main stream for like 20 minutes

also we hit ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS really freaking fast. and they spun the wheel of chaos and it landed on ✨hermit boxing✨

ROBO-CLEO

okay now all that follows is liveblogging

i keep recognizing people in chat. like not even from mcyt spaces ive seen like three people who i know from skurry streams

martyn using they/them for cleo pog!!

THERE'S A JELLIE MURAL IN THE MINECRAFT OFFICE AWWW

irl guess the build / drawing... drawing things on whiteboards or building things and then guessing

cub is wearing a bob ross wig.

jimmy has built skizz's giraffe...

SKIZZ GIRAFFE REDEMPTION ARC GOES HORRIBLY WRONG

pearl has gorgeous handwriting

grian has obtained a cat keyboard and jimmy is beatboxing along

GEM GIRAFFE REDEMPTION ARC GOES INCREDIBLY RIGHT

they're gonna auction off the terrible drawings. i want one.

round two of guess the drawing / build has the most unhinged prompts ever. including the cursed creature mumbo built in the last permitmaster

it has gone off the rails incredibly fast

grian is just torturing everyone with nerf guns and whoopie cushions

jimmy is left handed

martyn's doing a dollar drive and it's not letting me donate because it doesnt take debit cards. now i need to somehow convince my dad to let me use his credit card... i'll pay him back but. gah. the hassle.

pearl and some person fighting in the background (who was apparently karn, her partner!)

TWO HUNDRED THOUSANDDDDDDDDDDDDD

joe and cub are boxing!! cub is still dressed like bob ross

it's been like 20 minutes and martyn is still going strong with the name reading. and about 30,000 dollars have been raised in that time alone

dimension 20 reference!

martyn's free from yelling names for now... in half an hour we raised SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS

zed and tango hosting the QUIET GAMESSSSSSS. 3 teams of two, imp and gem, ren and skizz, GRIAN AND JIMMYYYY. basically just a bunch of weird minigames where you have to be as quiet as possible. scored on how quiet you are and how well you do

first minigame is moving marbles with spoons but the spoons are attached to a cowbell

gem and impulse did good. skizz and ren did better then i expected. jimmy and grain instantly dissolved into anarchy. jimmy and grian had the most marbles, skizz and ren were surprisingly the quietest

okay the next game is so weird. knocking around ping pong balls with party popper blow kazoo things. but you hold the kazoo for your partner so it's weirdly intimate

someone in the chat described it as nightmare blunt rotation and that the most accurate description yet

someone else in chat has named skizz and ren team rizz and i hate everything

also i realize now that if theyd have done this with commonly shipped pairs the fandom would never shut up

despite the absolute chaos that was happening grian and jimmy won that round on both number of balls and quietness. grian may have slapped jimmy at one point. (he totally did)

the last one is EVEN MORE COMPLICATED. one person blindfolded navigating a minefield of bubblewrap and rubber chickens. another with jingle bells on their ankles and a big stick to smack their partner around.

gem immediately has grabbed the big stick with an evil look on her face

impulse is INCREDIBLY clumsy and gem is just whaling on him

"IT'S ALL BUBBLES!!!?!?" -- impulsesv

ren and skizz have a STRATEGY

ren is doing adorable little shuffley step-steps. "Robo-penguin Ren... Renguin" -- Zedaph

JIMMY IS MOUTHING "HELP ME" OMG.... GRIANS GOING TO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF HIM...

but theyve got the best strategy yet actually grian's only kinda beating the shit out of jimmy... they might win this...

GRIAN AND JIMMY TAKE THE WHOLE THING HOME!!!!!!!! SKYBLINGS VICTORY!!!!!!! THE ONE NO ONE EXPECTED!!!!!!

wheel spin for 200,000 landed on "tortilla slap challenge" whichll be weird

the artworks from guess the build have gone up on the auction site and scar is very horrified over something skizz drew... a "sentient sock" that looks very... sus.

speed TCG time!!!!!!! i dont know much about TCG so im gonna try and maybe try and study a bit during this part (also also every 1000 dollars donated each player gets an extra item card)

joe is doing live TCG sound effects

neither joe or ren cant flip a coin to save their lives

pearl v cub. ren v joe. ren v cub.

TCG IS TOO CHAOTIC I CANT FOCUS ON TRIGONOMETRY LIKE THIS

also i need to learn how to play this it looks so fun

this is HEATED. and ren keeps getting armor stands and is so pissed about it

REN TAKES THE VICTORY!!! and they raised like 20,000 dollars in the process holy cow "THIS IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE GAME OF TCG EVER TO BE PLAYED" -- Joe Hills

ONE MILLION DOLLARS RAISED FOR GAMERS OUTREACH IN TOTAL

THREE HUNDRED THOUSANDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

300k wheel spin has unlocked NERF GUNSSSSS

also it's "donate x amount of dollars get your name on a sign on hermitcraft" time

cleobot is back!

scar is having a fantastic time running the main stream

GRIAN HAS COME IN AND BARRAGED SCAR WITH BULLETS.

it's tortilla tiiiiiiiiiiime

twich has a personal vendetta against me. it gives me ads right when the exciting things are starting.

scar is apparently on the board of directors at gamer's outreach now!!

IMPULSE V JIMMY. a draw. they are both invulnerable to tortillas.

TANGO V ZED. tango loses through laughter

IMPULSE V ZED. zed didnt get a single slap on impulse. a draw.

also all the hermits really really like to play scissors. in rock paper scissors.

"she removed both of my heads from my body..." -- RentheDog

THE GIRLIES ARE FIGHTING (ren and false)

SKIZZ V GRIAN TORTILLA FIGHT. skizz wins lolol

...im buying a sign

gem signed pearl's ankle.

OKAY I GOT REALLY DISTRACTED FROM MY LIVEBLOGGING. THERE WAS WAR. THERE WAS A MASSIVE NERF GUN WAR. IT INTERRUPTED THE SIGN PLACING.

and yeah... i bought a sign <3

but i dont even know how to cover the half of the nerf war. but there was a lot of hotguy and cuteguy action

grian was even using two pistols instead of a bigger nerf gun... just like cuteguy in ddvau... omg...

at one point scar became a tank. and jimmy wheeled him behind enemy lines and he sniped four people and won the round

and theyre starting to wrap up now, martyn's doing another dollar drive. we're at $375,000...

everyone is signing the pc in the background of martyn's mad line-spitting

TEN HOUR MARK

we need 10,000 dollars... then we'll hit 400k and martyn can rest his vocal cords...

SPARKBIRD GOT MENTIONED

since it's been brought up like 13 times on the stream today. hey. you. you, the person reading this. you just lost the game :3

FOUR HUNDRED THOUSANDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

holy cow. that wraps up day one!!!!

im gonna reblog this post in a bit with all the screenshots i took. because i took a lot of them lol.

link to my day two liveblog

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

After Starcourt, Steve finally managed to get a date. He actually liked her, too. She was nice, smart, and completely smitten over the fact that he was fond of the kids he babysat. Apparently, she didn't take it too well that Dustin followed him onto his date. She left before Dustin came back from the bathroom.

"Hey, where's Lydia?" Dustin asked.

"Oh, her parents called the theater. Apparently, there was a family emergency," Steve shrugged.

"Oh, that sucks. You were really looking forward to it," Dustin frowned. "More popcorn for us."

He made his way over to the concession stand. Steve didn't have the heart to tell him the real reason why she left. Dustin's had a hard time lately since the mall, and from what Claudia told him, he's been having nightmares lately. He didn't have to say anything, but Steve figured the reason why Dustin's been clinging to both him and Robin lately was because he felt guilty about them getting hurt. Robin had agreed with him on that theory. He didn't mind it much. He loved spending time with Dustin, someone he thought of like a little brother, and he knew Robin had come to think of him like that, along with Erica. It was where Robin was currently at "babysitting" for the Sinclairs while they had their own date night. As much as she complained, Erica had wormed her way into Robin's heart. Once they got their drinks and popcorn, they found a couple of seats up front.

"Excuse me, is this seat taken?" A voice asked.

"No," Steve replied with looking, and he almost did when he felt leather brush up against his arm.

"Steve?" Dustin asked.

"Yeah?"

"Your date stood you up because of me, didn't she?" Dustin asked.

"What? No!" Steve said quickly.

"You're a terrible liar, Steve," Dustin whispered. "But that's okay, Steve, I still think you're my brother."

"Well, you know, if she doesn't understand that my little brother is important to me, then she's not worth my time," Steve whispered.

"You guys are terrible whisperers," a voice from Steve’s other side said. "Also, totally adorable."

Steve turned and found that Eddie Munson was sitting on his other side.

"Do you know this guy, Steve?" Dustin asked.

"Eddie Munson," the man himself introduced. "Didn't know Steve Harrington had a nerdy little brother."

"I adopted him," Dustin replied. "Besides, Steve’s not just a jock. He's a nerd, too."

"No, I'm not," Steve scoffed.

"Please, I found the comic books under your bed," Dustin hissed.

"What the hell did I tell you about going through my stuff, you little shit?" Steve hissed back.

"You really are brothers," Eddie grinned.

"Hey, Eddie, you're a guy," Dustin said suddenly.

"That's what it says on my birth certificate," Eddie replied.

"Do you know why a guy would keep his muscle magazines with his playboys? Do you think it's a jock thing?" Dustin asked.

"Oh my god!" Steve exclaimed, mortified.

Steve could feel Eddie watching him with curious eyes, and he waited for his reaction.

"You know, it must be a jock thing," Eddie said. "I think if I were your brother, I'd give you hell for digging through his private things."

Dustin sighed and rolled his eyes, but Steve took this as a sign that he's thinking about how wrong he was. The movie was about to start. Suddenly, Eddie leaned so close to him that Steve could feel his hair tickling his cheek, his breath in his ear.

"It's not just jocks who put their muscle magazines with their playboys," Eddie whispered and paused briefly, moving in closer until his lips were brushing up light against his ear. "Big boy."

Eddie sat back in his seat, leaving Steve flushed. His heart was pounding in his ears, and suddenly, his crush on Eddie came roaring back. Steve cursed mentally as he tried to focus on the movie and not on the fact that Eddie was leaning more heavily against his arm. His pinky was brushing up against his. At some point, Eddie started running over his hand, drawing circles into his skin. His touch was setting him on edge, and it was making his brain go all fuzzy.

"Bathroom," Steve said gruffly and stood up quickly.

He was grateful that there wasn't anyone in the bathroom when he went it. It allowed him to catch his breath. It was crazy how one single moment could bring out all of the feelings that he shoved inside of him when he was just a freshman, a freshman who has seen the most beautiful boy ever. He honestly hadn't felt this way since Nancy, and honestly, it was baffling. Just one little moment, and he was crazy about him again. Suddenly, the door opened, and Steve looked through the mirror as Eddie walked into the restroom. They made eye contact, and he raised a questioning eyebrow at him as he locked the door. Suddenly, Steve was moving and pressing Eddie up against the door as he kissed him. Eddie pulled him closer by his hips as he kissed him back. Of course, it didn't last long before someone wanted in. They broke the kiss, and Eddie quickly disappeared into a stall before Steve could unlock. The man walked in and frowned at him.

"Uh, the door got stuck," Steve said.

"I heard the lock, young man," he said.

Steve slipped by him and hurried back to his seat. Eddie soon came back, a grin on his face. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and started writing his number on Steve’s hand.

"Call me when you're ready to have a date without your brother," Eddie whispered. "I really do appreciate people who collect lost sheep."

Steve grinned. Things were looking up. Suddenly, he was very grateful that Lydia stood him up.