#drawing from memory always (lie) (half lie) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

magicalmatcha · 4 days ago

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now playing ♪ i bet on losing dogs by mitski

"i bet on losing dogs, i always want you when im finally fine."

cw: angst, mention of addiction, long

As little sense as it made, Megumi didn’t think a DNA test would ever be necessary to prove Yume was Yn’s child. Sitting next to her now, birthday cake ice cream smeared across her cheeks, rambling at the speed of light, he was convinced she was just a carbon copy in miniature.

“Mama doesn’t let me have ice cream before dinner,” Yume chirped, her legs swinging beneath the booth, nowhere close to touching the floor. Megumi sat beside her, slowly working through his espresso scoop, one eyebrow raised.

“Is that so?” he said, feigning surprise. “And you didn’t think to mention that before we walked in here?”

Yume froze for half a second, cone tipping dangerously in her small hand as she considered this. Then, with all the drama of a spy in a movie, she raised one sticky finger to her lips and whispered, “Secret.”

Megumi huffed a soft laugh, watching as she refocused on her ice cream with renewed determination. God, she really was Yn’s kid.

“Did you know Mama when she was a kid?” Yume asked, her voice muffled slightly by the melting ice cream.

Megumi tilted his head, caught off guard. “When she was younger, yeah. I did.”

Yume nodded thoughtfully, then tilted her chin up to meet his eyes. “Are you guys in love?”

The question hit him harder than it should have. He blinked, hand pausing midair with his spoon.

“Like Jiro and Nahoko,” she added, like that made everything clearer.

Megumi let out a breath, half a laugh. “You watched The Wind Rises? Is that even for your age?”

Yume shrugged, licking her fingers where the ice cream had started to drip down. “Maki, Mama and I watch Studio Jibi films all the time!”

“Studio Ghibli,” Megumi corrected gently.

Yume frowned, then carefully repeated it, drawing the syllables out like they were a spell. “Studio… Ghee-bli.”

“Close enough,” he said with a smile, still recovering from the question she didn’t even realize was loaded.

"Are you in love like Jiro and Nahako." She repeated again. Sharp kid unfortunately, his attempt to avoid the question had clearly failed.

"At a point we were." He answered softly. Yume gasped. "Why are you not anymore?"

Megumi stared down into the last melted bit of his espresso ice cream, watching it pool around his spoon like it held the answers.

Why weren’t they in love anymore?

That was the question, wasn’t it?

He could lie. Say they grew apart. Say life got in the way. Say something vague and poetic that didn’t hold any weight. But Yume didn’t deserve that. And neither did the memory of what they were.

So he answered it in his head first.

Why weren’t they in love anymore?

They were young. That was part of it. They were kids trying to play adults, lighting matches in a house made of gasoline. Every kiss felt like a spark and every fight felt like a fire. But there was no shelter. No safety net. Just raw emotion and aching, beautiful recklessness.

Yn had this way of seeing the world, like everything was too much and never enough all at once. She loved with a sharp kind of devotion, the kind that frightened him sometimes. She needed him to believe in the impossible. To choose her even when it was hard. And he was too scared. Of failing. Of staying. Of the future.

He remembered the way she’d look at him like he was her whole universe. And the guilt of knowing he couldn’t carry that kind of weight. The nights they’d lie together in bed and she’d whisper dreams of names and futures and soft-lit kitchens filled with warmth, while he stared at the ceiling and wondered what it would cost him.

Gojo had told him to leave. Not in so many words, but enough. “You’ve got something rare,” he’d said. “Don’t let it get derailed by something so unstable you'll never be able to account for it.” He hadn’t said her. He didn’t have to.

And Megumi had listened. He’d blocked her. Left her. Told himself it was for the best. That his love for her was a distraction, a detour, something fleeting. That he was supposed to want more; fame, success, the big stage. He convinced himself she was an anchor.

A girl with blown out pupils and a spirit that was not all there.

She’d come to him smelling like old perfume and borrowed hope. Sometimes trembling, sometimes laughing too hard at nothing at all. And he thought: She needs saving. And I can’t save her.

He mistook her softness for weakness. Mistook her chaos for a weight he couldn’t carry. Told himself the world he wanted couldn’t fit someone like her, too fragile, too volatile. Too much.

But now, staring into the face of the little girl she brought into the world without him, all he could think was: She did it. Without saving. Without him.

And somehow, in doing so, she’d saved herself.

Now?

Now he was sitting across from the living, breathing proof of their love. A little girl with Yn’s smile and his quiet eyes. A child who ate her ice cream too fast and talked like she’d already lived a dozen lives. And suddenly he couldn’t remember what any of those songs had been about.

She asked again, “Why are you not anymore?”

And he stared at her, this impossibly bright, impossibly smart girl, and said softly,

“I don’t think I ever stopped. But let's keep that part a secret okay?"

He had to bend a little to hold her hand as they walked. Her small, sticky fingers wrapped tightly around his like a lifeline. Her shirt was stained with the remnants of birthday cake ice cream, and her cheeks were flushed pink from the heat. He silently prayed Yn wouldn’t yell at him for the mess.

“I don’t wanna see Mama,” Yume said suddenly, breaking the quiet between them.

Megumi looked down, surprised. “Why not?”

“She lied to me.” Yume’s voice was pouty, but serious in that dramatic four-year-old way. “She said we’re not supposed to lie.”

She stomped her glittery purple rain wellies with every other step, shoes Maki had told him she insisted on wearing, despite there being not a cloud in the sky.

Megumi winced. “Go easy on your mom. She probably had a good reason.”

“But she didn’t tell me,” Yume huffed, looking down at their joined hands. “She never said fathers were even real.”

Megumi blinked. “Yeah… that’s a tough one.”

He nodded slowly, suddenly finding the back of the man walking in front of them very interesting.

Yume’s voice softened. “So if fathers are real… where’s mine?”

Megumi swallowed hard.

He could lie. It would be easy, comforting, even. A vague, soft deflection. He could say “He’s far away” or “Maybe you’ll meet him someday” or something equally hollow that would float out of her head before bedtime.

But she was staring up at him now, waiting. Eyes round and open and honest in a way that made his chest hurt.

He crouched down slowly until they were eye-level on the sidewalk, her little boots scuffing the concrete as she came to a stop.

“I don’t know how to answer that in a way that makes sense,” he said honestly.

She tilted her head. “You don’t know him?”

“I do,” he said softly. “I know him really well, actually. I just… I didn’t think I was allowed to tell you.”

Yume blinked, processing.

“Is he mean?”

Megumi smiled a little at that. “No. Not at all.”

She studied him carefully, something thoughtful knitting her small brows together. “Then why did he go away?”

He let out a quiet breath. “Because he made a really big mistake.”

“Did he say sorry?”

“I think he’s trying to,” Megumi said. “But sometimes it takes more than just ‘sorry,’ you know?”

Yume nodded solemnly. “Like when I broke Mama’s necklace and she didn’t talk to me for a whole hour.”

“Exactly like that,” Megumi chuckled. “Only with more… crying.”

Yume stepped forward and looped her arms around his neck suddenly, and it knocked the air from his lungs.

She smelled like sugar and grass and sunscreen. A sticky, chaotic little whirlwind.

“You can tell me who he is,” she said, voice muffled against his shirt. “I can keep secrets.”

Megumi hugged her back gently. “Okay,” he whispered. “I promise I will.”

They stood there for a few seconds longer before Yume pulled back, her eyes shining with something unreadable.

Then she grabbed his hand again like nothing had happened and tugged him forward. “Come on! Mama's making chicken for dinner!.”

Megumi followed with a small smile, heart heavier than ever.

“She’s gonna kill me,” he muttered.

Yume looked back, grinning. “Maybe.”

“Eat your pancakes, Yu,” Yn grumbled.

Sleep had been more of a concept than a reality last night, Yume’s post-ice-cream sugar rush had turned their apartment into a low-budget rave. It took four rounds of Just Dance, several laps up and down the hallway, and a poorly negotiated bedtime story about a narwhal prince to even get her to yawn, let alone sleep.

Now, with her scrubs wrinkled from the couch nap she took at 3 a.m., her school bag slung over one aching shoulder, and no instant coffee in sight—because Maki had finished the last of it while editing their vlog at some ungodly hour—Yn was one inconvenience away from placing a generational curse on the entire Fushiguro/Zenin bloodline.

She looked over at Yume, who was currently trying to stack pancakes like they were Jenga blocks. “Yume,” she warned, voice barely above a hiss. “You drop one of those and I swear on everything sacred, you'll never eat again."

Yume grinned, unbothered. “But Mama, they’re building blocks."

Yn glared. “Eat the building blocks.” She turned back to the stove, scraping together half assed scrambled eggs for Maki and Yume to share before she headed off to work.

A knock rang through the apartment. Yn groaned, dropping the spatula with a sigh as she trudged toward the door.

She opened it to find Megumi, dressed in a black hoodie layered over a white t-shirt, charcoal cargo pants, and sneakers far too aggravatingly expensive for someone dropping by unannounced. His hair was damp, like he’d run product through it in a rush, and he was cradling a large box under one arm.

“Is it too early?” he asked, wearing that sheepish smile she already wanted to slap off his face. “I wanted to catch you before work.”

Yn blinked at him, unimpressed. “You guys didn’t have a hangout scheduled today.”

Her eyes shifted to the box, chin tilting toward it. “What’s that?”

Megumi held it up like a peace offering. “Let me in and I’ll show you.”

She stared at him. Her options were clear: one, let him into her apartment while she was wearing crusted pancake batter and one more inconvenience away from burning the apartment building down. Or two, slam the door in his face.

The second option had so much appeal.

“Me-gummy!” Yume appeared at her side, face lighting up like a sunrise. She practically bounced on her toes.

Yn exhaled. Loudly.

Then she stepped aside. “Fine. Wipe your feet.”

He followed the smell of maple syrup and chaos into the apartment, box still tucked under his arm like a baby. Yume trailed behind him like a duckling, one pancake already in her hand.

He placed the box down on the counter, reaching into his pocket to pull out a switchblade.

Yn raised a brow. “Jesus. Planning on gutting me?”

He didn’t answer, just flicked it open with a practiced ease and sliced through the packing tape in one smooth motion.

The box flaps popped open with a soft crunch, and he stepped aside so she could see.

Inside was a sleek, matte-black coffee machine, top-of-the-line, with chrome accents and a digital screen. Nestled beside it were three neatly stacked boxes of pods, each one labeled with unnecessarily elegant names like Fleur d'Espresso and Caramel Eclipse.

Yn blinked.

Then blinked again.

“You bought me a coffee machine?” she asked, like she wasn’t quite sure if she should be flattered or insulted.

“Technically, I bought you guys a coffee machine,” Megumi corrected. “But yeah.”

“Why?”

“You ran out of instant coffee. Yesterday. Maki used the last of it.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Figured this might buy me forgiveness before your caffeine withdrawal hit homicidal levels.”

Yn stared at it. Then at him.

“That’s manipulative.”

“Did it work?”

Yume gasped from behind her. “It’s so shiny!”

Yn shook her head, voice low but firm. “Megumi, I can’t take this.”

“You can,” he said gently, nodding toward the machine. “Go ahead.”

“No, I really can’t.” Her arms crossed over her chest, digging in. “It’s too much.”

“It’s a gift, Yn.” He kept his tone steady, like he was trying not to startle her. “That’s all. You needed it. I got it.”

“Mama, you have to take it,” Yume chimed in from the side, tugging lightly on Yn’s sleeve.

Yn glanced down, ready to dismiss her with a soft “not now,” but Yume barreled on, eyes wide with conviction.

“He’s in love with you.”

The room fell silent.

Megumi froze mid-step. Yn’s mouth opened slightly, then shut.

Yume, oblivious to the tension that hit the air, licked a finger and poked one of the coffee pods. “This smells weird."

Megumi cleared his throat. “I—I’m not.”

“I mean,” Yume interrupted casually, hopping onto a kitchen stool, “that’s what happens in books. You give girls presents and then you fall in love and then you kiss. Then you get a dog. Then a baby.”

“I already have the baby,” Yn muttered.

Megumi looked like he wanted to melt into the floor.

Yn didn’t look at him.

“Go wash your hands,” she said to Yume instead, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. “They're all sticky and gross.”

Yume didn’t argue. Just nodded, eyes wide with mischief, and scampered off to her bathroom.

The silence returned. Thicker this time.

“Why does my four-year-old think you’re in love with me?” Yn asked slowly, her voice measured, but not soft.

Megumi laughed, too quickly. “Kids come up with the darndest things, huh?” He moved to grab his keys off the counter. “I should probably head back—”

“Sure they do,” Yn cut in, stepping forward, voice cool and sharp. “But Yume didn’t say we were in love.”

Megumi froze.

“That’s what she says when I’m talking to someone at the grocery store for too long, or if I wave at our neighbor who happens to be a man. She says we’re in love. Like it’s this story she made up.”

Yn took another step, just enough to box him in with her presence. Her eyes didn’t waver.

“She said you're in love with me. Present tense. Singular. And I’m just curious, Megumi, where would she get that idea?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“Maybe she overheard something—”

“Like what?” Yn’s voice didn’t rise, but the shift was immediate. Cold. Focused. “You telling someone you’re in love with me?”

Megumi hesitated. “It… it might’ve come out when we were getting ice cream. I didn’t mean to say it, not like that, not to her, I didn’t even think she heard me. She said she wouldn’t tell you.”

Yn laughed, once. Quiet and sharp. It didn’t reach her eyes.

“You said that,” she repeated. “To my daughter.”

He tried to take a step forward. She didn’t move.

“I didn’t plan it. It just, slipped. I was looking at her and thinking about you and it just… fell out.”

She blinked at him, slowly, like trying to process a language she hadn’t spoken in years.

“Do you hear how insane that sounds?” she whispered, incredulous. “You left me. You left us.You disappeared like I was nothing. And now, four years later, you accidentally tell my child you’re in love with me?”

“Yn, I—”

“No. You don’t get to say my name like that.”

Silence opened up between them. It wasn’t cold. It was full of all the things she’d had to survive in his absence.

Megumi inhaled shakily. “I still love you,” he said, quietly. “I don’t think I ever stopped.”

Her mouth parted, but no sound came out. And then her eyes burned, but she didn’t cry. She never let herself cry where he could see.

“You loved me,” she said finally, voice brittle, “and still left.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

“No. Listen to me, do you have any idea what that does to a person? To know that you were loved and still not enough to be chosen? You made me think I was unlovable. Like something must’ve been so wrong with me, I drove you away without even realizing it.”

Megumi’s eyes were wide, glassy. She kept going.

“You told me I was your future. Your air. That you couldn’t breathe without me. Then you left like it cost you nothing. Do you know how cruel that is? Do you know what it’s like to wake up alone with a body full of grief and a baby growing inside you and no idea if the person you loved even made it out of the city alive?”

“I didn’t know how to stay,” he whispered.

“That’s not an excuse. That’s not love.” She shook her head, voice breaking. “You don’t get to come back just because time softened the edges. You don’t get to drop a truth like that in my living room and expect it to mean something now. You already decided I wasn’t worth staying for.”

He looked like he might crumble.

“I never stopped thinking about you,” he said.

She stared at him, and for the first time, he saw something in her eyes that made him feel small.

“That’s not love, Megumi,” she whispered. “That’s guilt.”

Yn turned her back on him, arms crossed tightly like she was holding herself together.

“Next time,” she said, quiet but cold, “don’t say shit you’re not brave enough to stay for.”

She moved toward the kitchen, shoulders tense, but Megumi’s voice stopped her mid-step.

“You think it was about bravery?” he snapped. “You think I wanted to leave?”

He wasn’t yelling, but there was something worse in his voice: frustration, regret, the slow crack of something he’d been holding back for years.

“You were unraveling right in front of me, Yn. And I—I thought I could handle it. Thought I could love you through it. But every day it felt like I was holding onto someone already halfway gone.”

She turned slowly, her expression unreadable.

“You think you were the only one falling apart?” he said, voice raw. “I was broken too, Yn. We were broken together trying to fix each other and it wasn't working."

He looked down, jaw tight. “We couldn't stay in the same place forever.”

She didn’t say anything.

“For a while,” he continued, voice gentler, “it almost felt beautiful. Like we were both cracked in the same places. Like being broken together was some kind of intimacy. Some kind of proof.”

He let out a breath. “But then it stopped feeling beautiful. You stopped trying to swim. And I was so sure that if I stayed, I’d drown. We couldn't both drown Yn."

Yn stared at him for a long, long moment. When she spoke, it was barely above a whisper.

“So I was right.”

He looked back up, startled. “What?”

“You did leave because I was too much. Because I was broken. Because loving me got hard.”

“Yn, that’s not—”

“You know what’s funny?” she laughed, bitter and sharp. “Everyone loved the idea of me when it was romantic. Tragic girl. Soft pretty mess. Until it got real. Until it got ugly. And then suddenly no one wanted it anymore."

Her voice cracked, just once, but she didn’t look away.

“I used to tell myself you were scared. That Gojo pushed you. That it wasn’t really your choice.” She shook her head. “But deep down I always knew. You saw me. All of me. And you decided it wasn’t worth it.”

“That’s not fair—”

“No,” she cut in, trembling now. “What’s not fair is telling someone they’re the air in your lungs and then deciding they’re too much effort to breathe.”

He took a step forward. She didn’t move.

“You thought I’d stay broken forever,” she said, voice softer now, almost childlike. “Didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer.

“You thought loving me would always feel like saving me. That it would never get better. That I would never get better."

Still, he said nothing. And that silence, more than anything, broke her.

“That’s why you left,” she said, mostly to herself now. “Because the fantasy ended. Because I didn’t get better fast enough. Or maybe you finally realized I never would.”

“I didn’t know how to help you,” he said, helplessly. “And no one else did.”

She met his eyes. “You didn’t have to help me, Megumi. You just had to stay. But you felt I was going to hold you back. I always knew you did. Even if you didn't want to stay with me, I wish you just told me. Instead of leaving me to wonder where I went wrong."

And maybe that was the worst part. Not the leaving. Not even the silence. But the fact that she had always known, deep in the marrow of her bones, that the second it stopped being poetic, he’d be gone. That being broken together had an expiration date. That eventually, she would be the weight around his neck.

That she wasn’t worth staying for.

That silence came back, heavier than before.

She didn’t cry.

“Mama, my hands are all clean!” Yume burst back into the kitchen, her small hands held out proudly, fingers spread wide. “I even put lotion.”

She turned eagerly toward Megumi, her face lighting up. “Do you want to smell them? It’s bubblegum!”

Megumi crouched slightly, smiling softly as he leaned closer. He inhaled gently, the sweet scent tickling his nose. “Smells delicious,” he said quietly.

But when his eyes lifted to meet Yn’s, the warmth faltered. Her arms hung stiffly at her sides, her face taut, eyes glistening with a storm she refused to release. The exhaustion and weight behind those eyes cut deeper than any words.

“I have to go,” he said softly, straightening, voice low and careful, as though trying not to disturb the fragile quiet between them. “But I’ll see you later, okay, Yume?”

Yume nodded enthusiastically, her innocence unknowing of the tension that filled the room. “Okay! Next time, I’ll show you my sticker book!”

Megumi smiled once more for the child, then turned toward the door. His footsteps were light, but heavy in the silence. The soft click of the lock closing behind him echoed in the empty space.

Yn stood motionless, staring after him. The room felt colder now. The absence of his presence pressed in on her chest.

Then, almost imperceptibly, a sharp scent cut through the air. Smoke.

Burnt eggs.

Her gaze snapped toward the stove where a thin haze drifted upward, curling like a silent warning.

From the corner of her eye, she caught Yume’s small form, frozen with a tilted head, clutching a nearly empty bottle of syrup.

“Mama, I spilled—” Yume’s voice trembled as a dark puddle of syrup spread across the floor, glistening and sticky.

Yn’s shoulders sagged. She didn’t say a word.

Instead, she moved with deliberate slowness. She reached for the burner knob, turning it off with a soft click. The smoke began to thin, drifting away like the last remnants of her patience.

She turned away from the mess, eggs blackened, syrup staining the carpet, and walked through the kitchen, past Yume’s wide, worried eyes, and into the hallway.

The weight of everything bore down on her with every step. Her breath hitched slightly, a quiet surrender she didn’t allow herself before.

When she reached her bedroom door, she didn’t hesitate. She closed it behind her, the sound sharp and final.

Her back slid down the door until she was seated on the floor, knees drawn close.

The silence inside was suffocating.

The exhaustion of years, the pressure of expectations, the loneliness of carrying so much, she finally let it all go.

Tears welled up, hot and bitter, tracing down cheeks that had long grown numb.

And for the first time since she saw his album hit number one in the charts, she cried.

extra! extra! read all about it! (no seriously read it)

I did not proofread and this will come back to bite me in the ass later I can feel it

why must they suffer so much

CEO's of not properly communicating their feelings and unintentionally causing more problems

"Sukiya" is the name of a restaurant my ex like whenever them and their family would visit Japan (lmao)

Megumi rehearsed telling Yume he was her father in the mirror three times. None of those versions sounded brave. So he didn't tell her

When Megumi left, Yn deleted his contact, but she never blocked the number. Some part of her always wanted to know if he’d call.

megumi should have known yume couldn't keep a secret when she immediately told yn that megumi gave her ice cream

It took Yn two days to wean herself off alcohol after finding out she was pregnant. A week for the drugs. She finally had someone to get better for.

Megumi doesn’t know this yet, but Yn still keeps a picture of him in a drawer, tucked behind a sonogram and lyrics he wrote on the napkin of a pad thai restaurant that she never threw out

They're so pathetic I love them

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sincerelyneo · 9 months ago

Text

sunflower vol 6 | l.hc

“i couldn’t want you anymore, kiss in the kitchen like it’s a dance floor”

💿now playing: sunflower vol 6 by harry styles

❯ summary: Let’s make dinner together, he said. I’ll behave, he said. Honestly, you should have known that was a lie because when it comes to you, Haechan is never on his best behaviour. That’s why he’s sneaking sly touches every time you complete a step in your recipe.

❯ pairings: haechan x fem!reader

❯ genre: established relationship, fluff, suggestive content

❯ words: 1.4k

❯ tags: tooth rotting fluff, domesticated fluff, swearing, kissing, pet names, literally just hyuck being so boyfriend and them dancing in the kitchen together.

an: i’m a firm believer that harry styles wrote this song about haechan

Hyuck bursts through the front door with a sense of urgency, unable to contain his excitement. It's been months since he last saw you, his girlfriend whom he's more than just a little obsessed with, and the door feels like just another barrier in his way. He thought his job, which requires him to tour for half the year, was obstacle enough.

"Baby, I'm home!" he calls out eagerly, scanning the apartment for any sign of you. Disappointment flickers across his face when he doesn't immediately spot you waiting for him with open arms.

The honeyed tone of his voice instead echoes from the living room to your bedroom, drawing you to him like a magnet. Without wasting a moment, you rush down the stairs and wrap your arms around his neck.

You melt into each other effortlessly, as you always do. Your bodies seem custom-made for one another, fitting together perfectly. You've missed his touch, his warmth, in a way that FaceTime calls could never fulfil. Nothing compares to the physical presence of your Hyuck.

You plant a gentle kiss on the soft skin of his cheek before pulling back to meet his gaze. "You weren't supposed to be home for another four hours. What's going on?"

"I got an earlier flight because I missed you so much," he replies with a grin.

You shake your head, but a smile still tugs at your lips. You've never encountered a man more smitten and in love than him. It's endearing, really. It's the kind of love his friends would tease him about if he didn't take so much pride in it.

You run a hand through your hair, trying to process the fact that he's here in your living room. You're happy, of course, but you had hoped to be all dolled up for his arrival, not standing in old pyjamas after months apart

"Well... are you hungry? We could order takeout if you want. You can tell me all about that tour that's kept you away from me for what feels like forever," you suggest with a smile, and his eyes soften at the invitation

"Babyyy," he whines, catching you off guard a little. His hands slide to your back, pulling you in by your waist as he plants a kiss on top of your head. "Can't we make dinner together?"

You raise an eyebrow, pulling away to look up at him, his hands still wrapped around you. "By 'we,' you mean me?"

"Of course not. You know I make an excellent sous chef. Restaurants should be grateful I chose music instead of culinary arts.”

You shake your head, with a grin. "We never get anything done when we cook together. Remember last time?"

He smirks, recalling the memory. "It's not my fault you asked me to get something out of the fridge, and when I turned around, you were bent over the counter showing your ass to me. I couldn't help myself."

You give him a deadpan look but he only smirks more.

"And if we're being honest, I remember you loving it." His arms cross over his chest, the satisfaction in him beaming from knowing that you know he's right. You did enjoy those steamy cooking sessions, but not right now; you're hungry.

"Please, baby, I missed your cooking. Nothing any restaurant can make compares to your food," he pleads. "I'll be on my best behaviour."

And although you know better, and you know that there’s no such thing as "best behaviour" with Lee Donghyuck, you still can't resist. And so, you give in.

Surprisingly, everything goes well. Hyuck isn’t too much of a distraction; instead, he follows your instructions without protest. He grabs ingredients, chops vegetables, and even compliments the head chef— and nothing catches fire.

Progress is being made.

That is until your boyfriend finishes the little tasks you assign him and wraps his arms around your waist while you chop ingredients.

“Hyuck… you promised—”

His plush lips melt against your neck so delicately that you nearly chop off your finger—though Hyuck won’t let that happen, gripping your hands to steady them. He chuckles softly, his lips quirking against your skin.

“I know what I said, Y/N,” he teases. “I’m just trying to help.”

“You’re not trying to help; you’re trying to distract.”

He laughs, “You know… I bought a new record while I was on tour. It has that one song you love.”

You pause, setting the knife down and pressing your hands against the counter as you turn to face him.

“Oh yeah?”

He nods, “I think we should play it while you cook.”

“I thought we were supposed to be cooking together?”

Hyuck simply chuckles as he heads over to the record player in your kitchen and sets the record spinning. Soft guitar notes fill the space, and despite your need to focus, you can’t help but smile.

You watch as he dances across the cool kitchen tiles, a smirk on his lips, until he stands behind you. His hand finds your elbow, gently pulling you backwards.

The laugh that spills from you is warm and Hyuck matches it as his hands drift down your arms to your hands, fingers threading together before he pulls you back into his broad, solid chest.

Strong arms cross your own chest, and the two of you start to sway against each other. The music is quiet and grainy and mixed with the sound of your feet creaking on the floor.

The two of you float back and forth—a stream of sunlight streams in through the high window. You close your eyes and let the light shift across your eyelids. Hyuck’s lips find your ear, singing softly. The sound was gentle and sweet and you could hear the smile in his voice.

“I’ll never forget the moment I realised I love you.”

You sink further against him, your voice humming as you ask, “Yeah? When was that?”

“The minute I saw you,” he breathes. “You were dancing so carelessly, and I knew then—you were my person. You’ll always be my person.”

You’re grinning like an idiot despite rolling your eyes as you let go of Hyuck’s hands and turn around in his arms. You slide your palms up his chest to wind around the back of his neck, pressing your foreheads together.

“You’re so cheesy.”

“And you love it,” he responds easily, smiling with his eyes closed as he continues to sway with you in the tiny kitchen of your tiny apartment. You nod, leaning forward to knock your noses together gently with an exaggerated sigh.

“I do. And I love you. I wouldn’t want to spend a minute loving anybody else.”

Hyuck hums, pulling you in closer and starts walking you backwards slowly until your hips rest against the counter. He dips down, curling his hands around the backs of your thighs and effortlessly hoists you up to sit on the edge. You open your eyes and run your fingers through his hair, twisting a perfect little strand around your finger just the way he likes it.

He looks back at you, eyes filled with patience and love. Then he leans in, drawing you into a soft, lazy kiss—because he’s finally home, because he can, because he loves doing it, because it’s all he ever wants to do from now until forever. You melt against his chest, pressing up into the contact. When you break apart, Hyuck rests his lips against your temple, swaying gently with you in his arms.

“I’m so in love with you,” He says softly.

You rest your cheek against his shoulder and brush your nose back and forth against his neck as you close your eyes and smile.

“I love you too, Hyuck.”

You linger in the warmth of his touch until the sharp beeping of the oven interrupts the moment. You pull away slightly, frowning at the oven’s display.

“Ugh, I forgot I put that in there!” you exclaim, glancing over your shoulder to see smoke beginning to curl from the edges.

Hyuck chuckles, but there is no concern creeping into his voice. “Can’t believe my first meal home is going to be charcoal.”

You rush to the oven, Hyuck close behind. As you open the door, a plume of smoke escapes, and you cough.

“This is totally your fault! What happened to you not being distracting?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugs, leaning down to plant another soft kiss on your lips. “What can I say? I’m obsessed with you.”

#haechan fluff #haechan x reader #nct fluff #nct dream fluff #nct 127 fluff #nct x reader #nct dream x reader #nct 127 x reader #nct one shot #kpop fluff #haechan imagines #nct imagines #kpop imagines

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boneblushed · 3 months ago

Text

Cruel Summer

a/n: blink and you’ll miss it — it’s a folkloreslovechild original 💐 18+, minors PLEASE dni as contains mature content

Fever dream high, in the quiet of the night

You shouldn’t be walking the streets alone.

It’s the first thought Rafe has when he spots your figure from a distance, smooth legs exposed and pretty face hidden. Above him, the argent moon wanes, a half-crescent of silver light that does little to illuminate your features. A lone star twinkles further north of the horizon.

He begins to slow down and squints hard, pupils sharp and thick eyebrows furrowed. You have your head down as you walk along the path ahead of him, worn sneakers kicking up loose bits of gravel from the asphalt.

Of the paltry details he is able to discern, perhaps most valuable to him is your thready, white singlet and raw-cut, denim shorts. Glowing inches of bare skin. Rafe’s gaze skates along the poorly-defined edges of your silhouette, taking careful note of your slender limbs, the shadows created by the column of your throat. His pulse does something strange. You really, really shouldn’t be walking the streets alone, especially not looking like that.

He’s frozen in place, a conspicuous few feet away, when you do finally lift your head and meet his gaze.

You startle as his figure registers, stumbling backward in surprise.

“Fuck,” you curse, clutching your chest with adrenaline-weak fingers. Underneath them, your poor heart staggers forth in quick surges. “You scared the shit out of me.”

The street lamp overhead stripes your face with lemon-yellow light. A thick band of kiss-able cheek, a soft corner of your parted lips. You must be a touron. There’s no other explanation for why someone as pretty as you has evaded him until now.

“Me?” He asks, mostly joking as he raises his eyebrows. “What about you?”

You lift yours in tandem, the rate of your pulse acquiescing a little. Through the inches of velvet night that fill the space between your figures, there’s enough solid torso for your eyes to find purchase. Shadowing light defines his chiseled jaw, the strong biceps that become stronger, forearm muscles.

He’s hot. You almost forget that he’s also the stranger that’s blocking your path.

“What about me?” You return, faux-indignant.

“I’ve been walking this path since I was a kid,” he answers easily, taking a step closer. There’s something woody–vetiver, maybe, warmer notes of crackling musk–in his cologne that draws you in. “And never before have I seen you walking it, too.”

You shrug. “Maybe you’ve just never bothered to notice.”

“Trust me.” Rafe pauses, his voice low, gravelly around the edges. “When it comes to girls like you, I always bother to notice.”

You feel your pulse leap. The summer air presses into your skin, an all-encompassing heat, but it’s the sincerity in his tone that really has your warm cheeks burning.

“Girls like me?” You ask quietly, more bashful now.

He steps even closer still, the tips of his sneakers making contact with yours. And maybe it’s the stillness that twilight tends to bring, the way that dead of night suburbia warps time into something meaningless. But Rafe swears, in that moment, that you’re definitely not real. There’s a thin film of sweat that shines over your bare skin, and Rafe swears, bathed in dim moonlight, it looks honest-to-God iridescent.

The way his train of thought is veering toward Jane Austen prose is perplexing. His hand twitches toward yours without meaning to, an absent-minded action.

“Yeah,” he says, his heavy gaze falling over your features slow, agonizingly slow, like he’s trying to commit all of you to memory. “You’re the whole reason I’m out here so late at night in the first place.”

Lie. His father’s stern instruction about taking care of family business was the only thing capable of bringing him back to the Banks in the first place.

He’d only docked at the anchorage near Tannyhill a short while ago, the sky bleeding burnt ochre, dusk his only accomplice. And though he’d managed to sit down at Ward’s desk and get started, the restless whir in his brain had prevented any meaningful progress.

All he’d needed was some air. Clearly, your presence had given more than he’d bargained for.

“What?” You narrow your eyes jokingly. “Because I’m easier to kidnap in the dark?”

Rafe cocks his head to one side, his roguish grin cracking through. “Like… in a sexual way? Or…?”

“Oh my god,” you admonish, breathing out an exasperated laugh. “No way you’re trying to pick me up right now.”

“That’s the whole reason you’re out here, right?” Rafe asks seriously, furrowing his brow in feigned bemusement. “God’s put you in my path because he knows how much I need it.”

You raise your eyebrows appraisingly. “It?”

“You know,” Rafe answers vaguely, waving his hand in the air. His signet ring glints as the street light folds over it. “Beautiful girl with an end-of-summer deadline. Something to live for until the shit I’m running from catches up with me.”

This gets your attention. Your expression falters as the weight of his words wash over you, parenthetical tone with an allusion to something deeper.

And it makes Rafe’s chest ache, the concerned crease between your brows, pretty lips he wants to kiss pulling down into a frown. He’s even about to call it quits on grounds of your worry alone, when he realizes, questionable motive or not, you’re a touron that’ll be leaving in two months.

There isn’t time enough for you to wind up in his fucked-up orbit. He can still have you, he attests, he’ll just have to keep at arm's length; resign himself to touching, not marking, letting the bruises he leaves fade away.

Amongst other things. He adds, definitely overcompensating, “Don’t look at me like that, it’s nothing serious, yeah? I just mean the boring family business I’m supposed to inherit from my dad.”

“Oh,” you say, features relaxing it a little. You cock your head to one side and regard him for a moment, the moon’s glow bringing light to the mirth within your gaze.

When you’d first moved into your grandparent’s quaint beach house a few days ago, never once had you imagined stumbling into a no-strings-attached arrangement.

Not that there was any harm in one, especially not with a boy with as much small-town charm as this one. He’s just enough brash to make this fling a forgetful one, maintain a safe enough distance to ensure your heart remains unharmed.

You blink. Would-be fling. “So I’m something to live for, huh?”

“Worship, even,” Rafe murmurs quietly, his gaze dropping to your lips.

Your eyes widen in surprise, his rough voice rousing something deep in your stomach. “Little excessive, don’t you think?” You ask weakly, clearing your throat in an effort to regain your composure.

“Probably.” Rafe shrugs. So close now, you can almost feel the rustle of his polo as he does so. “Working though, isn’t it?”

A pause. You hate how right he is about that. Trying for more fire, you answer, “Maybe it’d work better if I knew who you were.”

“Fair enough,” Rafe says through a roguish smirk, pressing his tongue against his cheek. “Rafe Cameron.”

“Cameron?” You echo slowly, brow furrowing in thought.

Of the slew of unfamiliar names your grandfather had mentioned on his Outer Banks tour, Cameron was one of the few with enough significance to consolidate for good. The details were a little hazy — something about a powerful patriarch, a Pogue on Kook war gone awry. You’re sure the island slang would rouse more concern if you knew what any of it meant in the first place.

“Like…” you pause, looking up at him in astonishment, “…Ward Cameron who owns all of Tannyhill estate?”

Rafe makes a face. “Of course you’ve heard of my dad and not me.”

“Rafe Cameron.” You say his name slowly, soft eyes widening as they skate over his features. “The family business you’re inheriting is Cameron Development?”

Rafe could get used to this. Not often does he come across strangers—let alone pretty strangers—who correctly identify him as the big deal he is. He raises his eyebrows playfully, returning, “You sure you’re a touron, Polaris?”

“Pogue, kook, touron,” you list, shaking your head exasperatedly. “Why do the people that live here speak another language?”

Rafe chuckles appreciatively, strong arm swinging forward as he runs his hand over his buzz cut. Goosebumps bloom as the air shifts. “It’s a superiority complex thing.”

“To hold over tourons?” You half-admonish, mostly tease, the sticky heat of night pressing over you in waves.

Rafe doesn’t miss a beat. “To impress them. You.”

You balk, frowning bemusedly. “Why would you want to impress me, Rafe Cameron?”

“Are you kidding?” A gust of wind lifts your hair from your shoulders, exposing a smooth canvas of bruise-able neck. He could definitely get used to this. “You’ve gotta know that you’re the most beautiful thing on this Island right now.”

“This thing has a name, you know,” you say indignantly, your traitorous cheeks warming. “And it’s not Polaris.”

“You’re sure?” He grins easily, placing his hands on your shoulders, a soft-on-rough pressure that has your skin burning. In one, swift motion, he pivots you on your heel, stretching an arm above you to point out a lone star that's twinkling. “It was right above you when I spotted it, you know that?”

His broad torso folds over you easily, a blanket of vetiver and musk body heat. “The North Star?”

“Yeah,” Rafe says, his head above yours, chin this close to your hair. “Pretty, huh? Sure your name’s prettier.”

A pause. You can feel his chest wall lifting with every breath he takes, a barely-there force that presses into your chest.

“Guess you’ll never know,” you say with a shrug, pulling away slowly. Charming as he is, you’ll be damned if you make the chase that easy. You step out of his sphere of influence and turn back around, regarding him warily.

“Anyway,” you add, beginning to walk past him. “I better get back before my grand-parents realize I’ve left.”

“Hey – wait,” Rafe says in a hurry, reaching out to clasp your wrist. Hold you in place. He squeezes gently, jolting fire along veins that are already half-singed. “I can’t let you go alone.”

Your gaze drops to his rough fingers encircling your wrist, the way his thumb swipes over the skin of your forearm. You blink. “Of course you can.”

“No I can’t.” Rafe pulls ever so slightly, just enough force to return you to his side. “Not in good conscience, at least.”

“Seriously, Rafe,” you argue, drawing your hand back when his hold acquiesces. An imprint of sloven heat lingers. “I’ll be fine.”

Rafe frowns, looking over your features carefully. “Why’re you out here this late, anyway?”

Your lips pull down in tandem, a little meaner, a little more defensive. “Why’re you?”

“I know this neighborhood inside out,” he answers, raising his eyebrows.

“So you’ll know that the Clarence Lane cul-de-sac is only two streets away,” you return, folding your arms across your chest.

“Uh-huh.” He beckons you forward expectantly. “Won’t talk very long to walk you there.”

You frown down at his calloused palm, all the rough grooves and ridges that he’d pressed into your shoulders. “Alone.”

“Not on my watch.”

“If you’re trying to be chivalrous –”

“Would it help if I wasn’t?” Rafe interrupts faux-solemnly, splaying his large hard across the center of chest. “If I was only offering to walk you home as an excuse to get your number?”

“No.” You pause, the corners of your mouth twitching despite your feigned disinterest. “Maybe. Yes.”

“Alright then,” he says, nodding soberly. “I’ll be a total fucking douchebag from here on in.”

“From here on in?” You echo, raising your eyebrows playfully. “What? Because you weren’t being one of those when you scared the living daylight out of me ten minutes ago?”

“Shit, I know right?” He agrees apologetically, resting his hand on the small of your back to guide you forward. “I’m such a fucking tool. You’ve gotta make me pay by forcing me to walk you home.”

The warmth of his palm filters through your singlet, a spiderweb of heat that unfurls over your skin. You hadn’t realized, until now, how much comfort you’d find in his presence. It makes your pathetic pulse lurch, heart racing in juxtaposition.

“A five minute walk hardly counts as a punishment,” you say.

“You know what else you could do?” Rafe’s thick brows furrow as he pretends to think. “You could… wait, I know — you could let me take you out. I hate doing that shit. Fucking hate taking out pretty girls. Especially hate paying for them, bringing them home with me for another drink —”

“Fucking hell,” you interrupt exasperatedly, laughing despite yourself. “You know how creepy this’d be, Rafe Cameron, if you weren’t as hot as you are?”

“And rich,” Rafe supplies unhelpfully. “You forgot to mention my lord of the manor shit.”

His large hand sinks lower, a little less chaste and a lot more firm. You turn a corner in tandem and kick up more loose gravel, your grandparent’s large beach house growing in your line of vision.

“Cocky, too,” you return with a shake of your head, shying away from his touch. “Not used to people saying no.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” A few houses away from yours, now. The quaint cul-de-sac ends at a shortcut to the beach, and suburbia begins to thin as you near this man made trail. “Saying no to me?”

“If I am,” you say, raising your eyebrows at him. “It’s mostly just because I want to knock you down a peg.”

Rafe pretends to look affronted, his bright eyes full of mirth. “After I’ve taken the time to walk you all the way home?”

“Five minutes,” you remind him.

Rafe shrugs. “Feels longer.” His palm makes contact with your skin before drawing back, the rectangle of bare waist that’s exposed between hem and buckle. The heat of his touch lingers. “Actually, no, feels shorter. Five insanely short minutes where I still haven’t got your number.”

“Or your name,” he adds significantly, looking over you with a frown.

“Shame,” you say evenly, slowing to a stop as you near their gate. It’s paneled with driftwood and rustic bamboo, still quietly unlatched from when you’d snuck away before.

This time, when you step away from him, Rafe Cameron doesn’t catch your wrist and stop you. You walk backwards and nudge it open with your hip, trying to ignore the way your bones ache in protest. A phantom of his rough, clasping touch folds over your forearm.

“So…” Rafe trails off helplessly, running his fingers over his buzz cut, “...shit, I mean, that’s it?”

“I don’t know, Rafe Cameron,” you say softly, slipping through the gate and closing it on him. “Is it?”

“Fuck.” His pathetic heart lurches. “I hope not.”

“Hm,” he only just catches your silhouette shrug, any definable features shrouded by velvet night. “I guess all you can do is just keep hoping.”

—

Bad, bad boy shiny toy with a price

It’s a week before you see Rafe Cameron again.

The sky is a seamless, periwinkle blue, the sun shining over the horizon, a yellow bulb of light. Tepid seawater glimmers below it.

As you roll along the Island Club green in a golf-cart, the coastline dances in and out of sight. You veer to the right as hole eight comes into view, your grandfather and his old friend, Judge Thornton, close behind you.

You don’t recognise him at first. His buzz cut is hidden under a regal, white cap, a salmon-coloured polo stretching over taut biceps. He’s in the process of loosening the Velcro straps of his glove, and as he slips his fingers free, a signet ring glints in the sun.

An identifiable signet ring, with a flat surface of buttery gold. You swallow down the beating heart that’s bounding into your throat, trying not to think about the implications of him being here.

You being here. There’s something about the looming proximity that’s making your chest whir.

When the cart is close enough to cast his figure in shadow, he straightens and looks over, deep, blue eyes squinting hard. Acquiescing. He’s able to recognise you without any extra thought.

The whir in your chest grows deafening. It replaces the golf cart’s ignition as you slow, stopping just short of his figure by the hole.

“Looks like all that hoping’s paid off,” he says by way of greeting, grinning down at you as you climb out of your seat.

“All that hoping, huh?” you return playfully, folding your arms across your chest in faux-skepticism.

Rafe’s gaze drops with the action, an absent-minded gesture, and he catches an eyeful of cleavage that has him balking. You’re wearing a tighter singlet than you were a week ago, a black skirt instead of denim, shin-high socks with embroidered sunflowers. More gloss on your pretty lips, a sunscreen shine to your tired complexion.

And a visor. Rafe gives it a careless, little flick before responding.

“Think we can make a deal, Polaris?” He asks blithely, cocking his head to one side.

You raise your eyebrows. “Depends on the deal.”

“Alright,” Rafe says, gesturing to the tee below him. “I get this hole below par, and you let me buy you a drink.”

“And if you don’t?” You return with a frown, looking over the assessingly. The low rumble of Judge Thornton’s golf-cart grows louder.

“I will,” Rafe answers confidently, not missing a beat.

“That wasn’t my question, Rafe Cameron.”

“I know.” Rafe grins handsomely, strapping his golf glove back on. “That is my answer, though.”

You let out a defeated sigh, shaking your head exasperatedly. “What’s par for this hole, anyway?” You ask, obliging as he motions you backward.

Rafe doesn’t answer right away. He steps up to the tee with strong shoulders hunched, a punishing grip on the club that brings his knuckles to a blanch. When he swings, the metal heel clips the golf ball neatly, its trajectory through the air a majestic, half-crescent. It lands just short of the putting green, a few feet from a hole-in-one.

Behind you, your grandfather wolf whistles appreciatively. You blink. How did you fail to register his arrival?

“That was a beautiful shot, son,” Judge Thornton says then, stepping past you to give his broad back a firm pat.

“Beautiful shot for a beautiful girl,” Rafe returns smoothly, flashing you a quick, roguish wink as he straightens.

The compliment roars through your traitorous cheeks, a burning heat. You say, fighting hard to maintain nonchalance, “Par, Rafe Cameron.”

“Four,” he answers through a smirk, pressing his tongue against his cheek. “Does two under mean two drinks instead of one?”

“Woah there, country club,” you return playfully, trying not to smile. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Your ball’s on the putting green, you haven’t even got it in yet.”

“C’mon,” he faux-chastises, raising his eyebrows. “What did I say before?”

“Something fucking cocky, I’m sure,” you snort out, shaking your head exasperatedly.

“Cocky or not,” he returns, plunging the club back into his bag slovenly, “I was right.”

“Not quite.” You watch him jog it backward with raised eyebrows. “Not yet.”

He grins devilishly before turning around and quickening his pace, the heavy bag gathering grass stains as it trudges along behind him.

There’s no denying the mild amusement on your features as you watch him, though it’s only once Rafe’s well out of earshot that someone addresses it.

“Ward’s kid, huh?” your grandfather says, raising his eyebrows appraisingly. Rafe’s poised and ready on the putting green, now, his strong forearms flexed, the sun’s shadow making them ripple. You swallow instinctively. “How do you two know each other?”

This gets your attention. You tear your gaze away just as he taps the ball, just enough force behind his mallet to make the ninth hole in two. “Hm?”

“Your acquaintance with the Cameron boy, my dear” your grandfather repeats, regarding you with steely-eyed disapproval. “How long has this been going on for?”

You grimace abashedly, looking equal parts helpless and defensive. “We aren’t… well, I wouldn’t say we’re acquainted, per se –”

“Now listen,” your grandfather interrupts sharply, his gruff voice austere. “That boy may come from a very reputable family, but there’s no denying that trouble seems to follow him everywhere he goes.”

“Grandpa,” you groan, burying your head in your heads. You do not want to be having this conversation with him right now.

Or ever, for that matter. It isn’t as though this fling with Rafe Cameron is capable of turning into something serious.

Right? You add, your quiet voice muffled weaker by sweaty palms, “I’m not – I mean… we aren’t –”

“And that’s not to say,” he continues grimly, more to eschew an argument than anything particularly paternal, “that I forbid you from seeing him. God knows he’s still far better than the pogues your mother would bring home.”

Your diffidence eases a smidgen, head lifting again and pretty smile shining through. Through the corner of your eye, you catch a smug-looking Rafe Cameron with his putter raised above his head, thick biceps stretching.

“You think so?” You ask absently, a little distracted now. Rafe relaxes his shoulders and jerks his thumb toward the Island Club, mouthing, through a satisfied smirk, “Come find me when you’re done, yeah?”

A terrifying emotion sears through you. You send him a playful glare before turning away, meeting your grandfather’s weary gaze with something akin to embarrassment.

“Sorry,” you say sheepishly, grimacing again. “You were saying? About Rafe?”

A pause. Something within his stern features softens. “You’ll promise me one thing?”

“Anything.”

“You’ll take everything he says with a grain of salt?”

“C’mon, grandpa,” you chide, elbowing him playfully. “You really think I’d fall for his little douchebag act?”

“My dear,” he returns sagely, raising his eyebrows. “You can’t blame me for worrying. It’s a tale as old as time. How else do you think I got your grandmother?”

—

Rafe’s already ordered you a Mai Tai when you find him.

He’s drinking whiskey neat, the deep colour of thick molasses, lounging back against a chair that overlooks the yawning green. When he spots you, he’s quick to lean forward and straighten. The front legs of his chair slant down and strike the ground again.

“What?” You fold your arms across your chest, pretending to look affronted. “I don’t come across as someone who also likes straight whiskey?”

“D’you want to swap?” Rafe offers with a grin, sliding his low ball across the table.

You raise your eyebrows dubiously, sidling into the seat opposite his. The drink in front of you is sunset tangerine, a heady mix of tropical citrus and sweet, orgeat syrup. “That easy, huh?”

Rafe presses his tongue against his cheek, regarding your features with mild amusement. “Anything for a name, Polaris.”

“And what if I say no?” You return, taking a long sip of your drink. Remnants of sticky Curacao making your full lips shine.

“I mean,” Rafe says, his voice lower now, more gravelly. His eyes drop to the column of your throat as you swallow, and his mind strays to something less innocent leaving it awry. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

He leans forward and swipes his thumb over your bottom lip gently, just enough pressure to gather the glossy, Mai Tai film. When he brings it to his own mouth, his heavy gaze holding firm, it’s sweeter than he remembers it, more you than the orange liquer of his youth. “But I’ve realised,” he adds after pause, pulling away. “That a need-to-know basis doesn’t have to be so bad.”

Your eyes widen in surprise, hand lifting to your chin on instinct. The pads of your fingers press over your bottom lip, feeling the phantom of his touch, the soft nerve-endings he singed.

“Exactly,” you agree after a beat, swallowing thickly. “If anything, it’s better if you don’t know my name.”

Rafe cocks his head to one side, an imperceptible something flickering over his blue irises. “How so?”

You don’t miss a beat. “Makes things more interesting.”

Rafe picks up his wide-rimmed glass, taking a generous pull of whiskey. “And the other way around?” He asks, the auburn liquid burning as he swallows. “Am I less interesting as Rafe Cameron to you?”

“Not at all,” you answer honestly, shaking your head. “My name doesn’t carry the same weight that yours does.”

“Bad weight,” Rafe infers, a funny ache in his chest.

“Mm-hm.” A pause. There’s no way you’re thinking straight right now. “So bad that it’s good.”

—

Killing me slow, out the window

You’d decided against giving Rafe any means of contacting you.

Save knowing where you live and your affinity for moonlight trysts, you’ve given him little over nothing to work with since he’d bought you a Mai Tai.

Not that it matters. Somewhere between your first meeting and now, he’s made a habit of sneaking through your grandparent’s driftwood gate and waiting below your window for you.

Admittedly, there’d been a hankering in his chest since your Club rendezvous. Though you’d politely declined his offer to walk you home after a few rounds of liquor, the promise of more had permeated the sticky air as you’d looked over his features.

Harder when you’d pulled him closer. The kiss had been quick and fleeting, soft lips tinged with longing, and his rough hands had only just found purchased when you’d broken it.

“Later,” you’d said in cryptic yearning, breaking away from his figure and disappearing through the exit.

And of course, he’d taken you up this on this offer, finding his way to your grandparent’s front porch that night, rough heat in the stillness of suburbia.

Another kiss to seal your fate. His was doomed the second you’d slipped away.

Tonight, the air is thick with honeysuckle and the trill of cicadas.

You unlatch your window and push it open fully, the thick heat of June curling over you unrelentingly. You duck your head through the opening and peer into the back garden, a canopy of indigo dusk overlaying the perennials. No Rafe within the flowers. Your traitorous heart aches.

It’s as you’re preparing to acquiesce that a rustle of movement in your periphery catches your eye. It crawls along the dimly lit path until it’s right below you, a vague form with broad shoulders that you recognise, stronger forearms.

“Waiting for me, tonight?” He asks quietly, raising his eyebrows at you, roguish smirk on his face. “I’m touched.”

“God, shut up,” you bite back, smiling despite yourself. “What are we doing tonight?”

He shrugs cryptically. “You’ll see.”

It’s how you find yourself in a secret alcove on the edge of the beach, two towels splayed out with a bottle of French label connecting them.

You’re sitting opposite each other, cross-legged, the tips of your knees touching, jolts of electricity that hold you in place.

You reach for the bottle and take a careless swig, the bottom of your singlet riding up from the action. Rafe’s eyes drop to the taunting rectangle of exposed skin, silvery moonlight making it glow iridescent. He swallows thickly.

“Okay,” you say, handing it over to him. “Truth or dare?”

Rafe presses his tongue against his cheek mirthfully, still looking over at you as he tips back the bottle. “Truth.”

“How’d you find this place?”

A pause. Rafe looks over the weathered walls of the alcove, his eyes lingering over familiar ridges, the grooves his mother traced over when she’d first brought him here.

“I didn’t,” he says after a beat, the revelation searing through his chest like a knife. “My mom did.”

“Oh.” You regard him for a moment, your mischievous smile faltering a little. “Do you think about her often?”

Rafe hesitates. He takes another steely pull of the wine before thrusting it toward you, quick to avert his gaze. “That’s two questions, Polaris. It’s my turn.”

“Right,” you say, frowning slightly. You accept the bottle and take another long sip, your soft lips stick with saliva and warm liquor.

“Truth or dare?”

“Hm.” You pause, turning toward the poorly defined coastline in the distance, inky night descending over a slurry of dark waves. “Dare.”

“I dare you,” Rafe says deviously, swiping the bottle from your grasp, “to go for a swim.”

You tear your gaze away from the horizon, raising your eyebrows. “That’s it?”

“Naked.”

There’s only a moment where you falter, a split- second of uncertainty. Had you not already consumed half a bottle of expensive wine, you probably wouldn’t have had it in you to go through with something so brazen.

There’s a blur to your vision that has Rafe liquefying around the edges. You nod curtly and stand up, a coy smile dancing over your features.

“On one condition,” you say, voice smooth and saccharine sweet.

“Anything,” Rafe answers, and means it, too. He discards the near-empty bottle and pulls himself onto his feet, your gaze lifting up as his shadow folds over you.

“You count to five before following me.”

“Fuck,” Rafe groans, reaching forward and pinching your hip indulgently. “Fine. Alright. One —”

You break free from his grasp and tug off your thready singlet, throwing it into his chest before turning around and running forward. Rafe watches as articles of clothing fly onto the warm sand, watches the soft curves of your silhouette, the way you shrink as you grow bare.

By the time he’s counted to five, you’re already submerged in the water. Your exposed limbs glisten in the moonlight as you wave him over, and as he follows your fabric trail, Rafe feels a strange pull that makes him falter.

He’s a few feet away from you, and the pulse in his wrist isn’t capable of bounding faster.

“It’s warm, I promise,” you say, running your fingers through your wet hair.

“Fucking hell.” It’s an unrelenting rhythm, and his fingers shake as he fumbles with his own clothing. “You’re going to be the death of me, you know that?”

“In a good way?” You ask, watching his arm muscles ripple in tandem with the waves, almost balking at the ease with which he wades through the water.

He’s in your space before you can so much as blink, his rough hands skating along your bare back. “The best way,” he murmurs, pressing you against him indulgently.

“Guess that makes two of us, huh?” You mumble back distractedly, wrapping your arms around his neck. He nudges the slant of your jaw with his nose until your head falls back, sponging wet, hungry kisses along the soft column of your throat.

“Hm?” He hums, the sound reverberating through your skin.

“You’re the best kind of bad weight,” you breathe out, his tongue this close to rolling over your hard, sensitive nipple. “And I’m the best kind of death.”

There’s no coming back from making love in the middle of the ocean. In that moment, though, alcohol in your veins and Rafe everywhere, you realise, as the needy ache sears through you, that you couldn’t care less.

Control is overrated. For Rafe Cameron, you’d pick cruel over safe anyday.

—

And it’s new, the shape of your body

“Shit, Rafe,” you breathe out, awestruck, staring down at the vintage bottle of champagne that he’s holding. “No way you just happen to have 1990 Cristal lying around.”

A dim row of wall sconces bathe the scene in yellow light.

The air feels stale as it bears down on you, thick and untouched, every bottle you disentomb exhaling a fresh cloud of must.

“What?” Rafe furrows his brow in mock thought, swiping over the chalky film of dust on the label. “This old thing?”

“Shut up,” you chide, swatting his chest playfully. “You have to know it’s worth like, $10,000, easy.”

Rafe’s blue eyes lift to yours, a glimmer of mirth painting them softer pastel. “Good enough to open, you reckon?”

You balk. “You’re kidding.”

There are a torturous, few inches between your figure and his, a little less when you consider the champagne bottle’s width. A faint, yeasty scent, some vetiver, a little bergamot, enough emanating body heat to rid the air of your alcohol-heavy lungs.

Rafe’s long retired the baseball-style shirt he was wearing when you’d first arrived, the mood lighting etching every line on his torso. His shorts hang low on his hips, belt free, revealing the devastating V that defines his lower abdomen. He passes the bottle between his hands absentmindedly, strong shoulders square and thick biceps tensing.

“C’mon, Polaris.” He raises his eyebrows faux-appraisingly, holding the neck away from your face. “Do I ever kid when it comes to expensive shit?”

He holds your gaze as he peels away the aureate foil, uncorking the screw and releasing wisps of white smoke. No brilliant spurts of foam, no deafening fireworks, and yet — you still feel that quick flurry of hope.

You reach for the bottle just as he pulls away, nimble fingers swiping still air instead of Cristal. He tsk-tsks softly before bringing it to your mouth, the cool rim bruising the pillow of your lips as he slants it forward to permit a pull.

It’s all effervescence and a hint of citrus, candied fruit and truffle within the melange. Rafe’s gaze skates along your neck as you swallow, his pupils dilating as he takes a gulp himself.

“More?” He murmurs absently, more an ulterior motive than anything particularly gallant.

“Mm-hm,” you answer, lips parting obligingly. He pinches your chin between his forefinger and thumb gently, tilting it up so he can tip more in. The wetness on the bottle rim leaves your soft lips shining.

Rafe stares down at them, all pupil now, with something akin to reverence. “Can I have a taste?” He asks quietly, setting the bottle on a table beside him.

Your breath hitches. The criss-crossing shelves of the wine cellar press into your back, a firm pressure, though the heat of his gaze feels far heavier. He cages you in by placing his arm on the wall adjacent your figure, bicep to ear. And he’s so close, his head ducking to yours, lips a hairsbreadth away and yet still so far.

You lean in first.

There’s a tentative press of your lips on his before he gathers his bearings, pushing into you fully. The weight of his torso holds you against the shelves, a sloven, almost discomposed air to his movements. Like he’s desperate, memorising your mouth through rough, teeth scraping kisses.

His lips drag along your jaw, the smooth expanse of your neck. And when he finds the sensitive spot beneath your earlobe, bruising it amaranthine, you have to bite down on your soft cheek to suppress the moan it elicits.

“Don’t do that,” he murmurs into your skin, like he’s worshipping you. “Wanna hear you, sweetheart.”

There’s a mess of warm limbs and discarded clothing as he paws at your layers, eager to feel you fully.

And though you’d never once imagined you’d make love in a wine cellar, the way Rafe Cameron rocks into you, slow, agonisingly deep, makes you feel as though you’ve been missing out on a whole avenue of sexual misdemeanours.

He’s in tune with your body in a way you didn’t think possible. Every thrust of his cock has your tender clit swelling, the stale air filled with the lewd sound of your wetness. And he’s a man starved as he fucks you, his needy tongue swirling over your nipple, rough hands groping every inch of soft skin.

“Fuck, you feel unreal,” he grunts out, a thin sheen of sweat making his chiseled torso shine.

“Mm,” is all you can manage in response, fingers gripping his broad shoulders, a needy ache at your core. “K—Keep going —”

“Yeah?” He encourages, his own orgasm close to apex. “You going to cum for me, angel?”

And when you do, hot pleasure shaking through you in waves, it isn’t the first time, nor the last, that Rafe’s made you finish since you’d arrived.

There’s something about being around him that tends to charge the air with hungry static.

A little later, when you’re lying in his bed, details hazy, you turn your head and look over his vaguely obscured features. A lone band of silver moonlight spills through his slightly ajar, bedroom window.

“Rafe Cameron,” you whisper, angling your body toward his.

He shifts in tandem, his vivid, blue eyes like glow-in-the-dark stars. “What’s on your mind, Polaris?”

There’s an ache in your chest that’s difficult to explain. It enfolds the heart within your ribcage and squeezes, a heavy, cloying pressure that’s fairly unrelenting.

If only you knew that you aren’t it’s only victim.

“I don’t know.” A pause. Rafe reaches out before he can help himself, tracing over the planes of your face with his forefinger. Along your cheekbones, the pert tip of your nose. The Cupid’s bow above your lips. There’s a soft on rough juxtaposition that he’s trying to commit to memory. “Summer’s ending in a month.”

“I know,” he murmurs softly, barely audible. He thumbs over pillow of your bruised bottom lip, faltering.

“I’m leaving in a month,” you say quietly.

“I know.”

Another pause. You reach up and clasp his outstretched wrist gently, squeezing the pulse within it that’s staggering. “How come I only feel like this when I’m meant to be sleeping?”

“The same reason you were out that night that we met,” he answers, coaxing your fingers free to intertwine with his. “Easier to think when the world isn’t listening.”

“I feel like,” you hesitate, exhaling carefully, “like this is going to end badly.”

Rafe moves a little closer, his hip brushing against your thigh. “Probably.”

“But hey,” he adds, bringing both of your hands down. He leans in and presses a kiss on your lips, harder, more pressure, his figure bearing down. “Let’s leave worrying about that for when it comes, okay?”

—

It’s cool, that’s what I tell ‘em

Polaris: my grandparents aren’t home tonight btw

“…and — eh! Hey now, country Club,” Barry rebukes, his metal crown glinting as he bares his teeth. “I ain’t got the time to say this shit again.”

Rafe peels his gaze away from his phone screen forcibly, feigning a cool sense of disinterest. “What?”

Barry pauses, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “Who you texting?”

“Shit, relax, no one, alright?” Rafe answers in a hurry, locking his phone and sliding it into his back pocket. He raises his arms in placating surrender, trying to ignore the restless whir of his insides.

“Now I know that ain’t true,” Barry throws back, waving his weathered pocket knife at his face knowingly. “You ain’t been in this room for a while.”

Rafe swallows evenly, leaning back into Barry’s dirty couch and spreading his thighs against either armrest. “I’m listening.”

“No you ain’t,” Barry snorts back, shaking his head. “You been texting since you came. What…Mrs Country Club asking you where you went?”

The taunt makes Rafe’s face crumple, if only for a split-second, and the realisation that dawns on Barry’s features tells him he’s lost this battle.

“Well, shit,” he goads, wolf whistling lewdly. “A Mrs Country Club, huh. Didn’t even know that you had one of those.”

“I don’t,” Rafe answers, gritting his teeth.

“Why you getting your little panties in a twist then, eh?” Barry smirks smugly, regarding Rafe with mild amusement. “Where you two meet? Brunch, or some shit?”

“There’s — it’s not like that, okay?” Rafe responds wearily, running his fingers over his buzz cut. “We’re just fucking. No strings attached.”

“Shit, doesn’t look like no strings,” Barry raises his eyebrows, gesticulating with his knife. “You been off your game for a while now.”

Rafe balks, frowning bemusedly. Sure he’s had to cut a few business meetings short, cancel a trip or two to Barry’s because he didn’t want a date to stop.

But it isn’t as though he’s with you every second of every day, is it? Thinking about you within these parameters of time is different to your physical presence.

Right? He says, voice hoarse and unconvincing, “Whatever, bro. You’re full of shit.”

“And you, Rafe,” Barry returns, scoffing exasperatedly, “ain’t listening to me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rafe dismisses frustratedly, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “What were you saying? I’m fucking listening.”

Barry ignores him. He walks forward and squats just short of the couch, face to face now with his brown eyes narrowed. “She the reason you been avoiding these parts the last few weeks?” He accuses, cocking his head to one side.

“I’ve just been busy, alright?” Rafe answers gruffly, keenly avoiding the question.

“Huh.” Barry runs his tongue over his metal crown, his own jaw tight. “With Mrs Country Club.”

Rafe feels his phone vibrate with another text through his linen shorts. It’s as though, when the urge to check it surges through him, when the forefront of his mind works furiously to place his absence elsewhere, that he realises he needs to give in and stop fighting it.

You. Brazen as his taunts are, there’s some truth to what Barry’s saying.

Every spare moment Rafe’s had in the past few weeks, he’s wanted to spend in your presence. Sunset walks that end in moonlight trysts, endless hours of pillow talk, skinny-dipping at the beach. He’s tasted more champagne through your lips than he has a bottle, marked more of your soft skin with purple bruises than he thought possible. A criminal amount of touching. Don’t even get him started on the looking. Rafe thinks, the course of the cruel summer coming to fruition, that he’s done more memorising of you than school’s taught him. God, he’s in love with you, and the revelation is dreadful.

This wasn’t part of the plan. You’re leaving the Banks in a week or two.

“There,” Barry says after a beat, tapping the sharp edge of his pocket knife against Rafe’s forehead. “Shit’s clicking, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” Rafe answers in a rush, straightening. “I need to get my priorities straight.”

“And what might they be?”

“Not this.” Nothing else has ever felt more obvious. “Not any of this. Listen, Barry, I’m done.”

–

I’m drunk in the back of the car

You aren’t quite sure what set you off.

The pair of you were a few drinks deep when you’d felt it, that deep, cloying ache that’d been plaguing you since you met him. It was a sudden blow to the system, this ticking time-bomb of an arrangement, and the Island Club clamour in your ears was only heightening your emotions.

It was the same timbre of obnoxious as on your first rendezvous, a reminder of the day he’d used a Mai Tai to covet you. Frightening to think that that was a mere two months ago, the whirlwind of a summer romance with him feeling far longer.

Moments from ending. You were forty-eight hours away from being fully packed up and leaving.

So when that stupid, Taylor Swift song blares through the car radio, the same one you were listening to when he’d startled your midnight walk, you forgive yourself for the thick, hot tears that well to the surface.

Rafe’s struggling with his own hankering heart as they surge forward. He’s been stealing long, wistful glances at you throughout the car ride home, selfishly driving the scenic route in an attempt to avoid what’s coming. The fact that your skin glows in silver moonlight—a neck that he’s marked with a bouquet of bruises, smooth legs that he’s felt encircling his torso—is but an added bonus to an otherwise excruciating end to summer.

He isn’t sure when exactly it happened, but somewhere within the haze, you begun taking precedence over his father. He stopped thinking about retribution, his dauntless greed ebbed, and the situation with the cross and the pogues meant far less. Almost nothing, as he registers the falling tear on your cheek. It sears him with a fresh swell of longing, car beginning to slow as he pulls up beside your grandparent’s beach house.

He unbuckles and leans forward, placing his hand on your thigh and squeezing gently.

“What are you doing?” You ask in a strained voice, shying away from his touch. You turn away lest he see you cry, scrubbing your cheek in a hurry.

“Polaris.” Rafe reaches up to cradle your jaw, feeling his chest tighten when you flinch. “You’re crying.”

“I’m drunk,” you mutter, looking away from him. A fresh steam of tears flow down your face, creating a trail of hot fire that makes you ache.

“Talk to me,” he tries again, sounding more desperate than he wants to. He moves his arm around your headrest, the other finding purchase on the centre console. An all-encompassing figure in your periphery, the way he’s always been, the way you’re doomed to remember him.

“About what?” You ask, voice breaking as it rises.

“What — what’s on your mind?” Is it the same as what’s on mine?

“What do you think, Rafe Cameron?” You let out an exasperated sigh, muffled weaker by the sound of a strangled sob. “I’m leaving in two days.”

A pause. You turn toward him bravely, the whites of your eyes tinged red with a spiderweb of tears. “You’re staying.”

Rafe swallows. The pads of his fingers brush over the bare skin of your shoulder. “I thought that’s what we agreed on.”

It comes out all wrong — Rafe didn’t mean it like that. He grimaces when he catches the way your face crumples, cruel buzzcut a little longer, almost swaying as he shakes his head. “That’s not — I mean — I’m not saying I’m happy with —”

“No… I, whatever, I get it,” you interrupt languidly, swallowing down another sob. “We… it was no-strings-attached for a reason.”

“I’m bad news,” he reminds you quietly, honest-to-God yearning.”

“And don’t even know my name,” you agree, equally as quiet, a touch more subdued.

Rafe feels his own eyes burn, the unshed tears in your making them vague and glossy. “Not for lack of trying,” he murmurs.

“Glad I held my ground, anyway,” you whisper back, biting down on your cheek roughly. “It’s better this way.”

Is it?

Rafe doesn’t think so. His gaze falls to the same lips he’s memorised with his kisses, sometimes soft, something hard, and he really doesn’t think so.

“If you say so,” he allows after a beat.

“I do.” A pause. “I’m fine.”

Rafe forces himself to draw his arm back to his side. “You’re sure?”

“Of course I am,” you answer with a nod, averting your gaze as you click open the passenger’s side door. “Listen. Thank you. For… for showing me around, for taking me out, for making this summer so fucking incredible.”

Too fucking incredible. There’s a sad voice in your head that’s screaming in protest, growing louder, more desperate, with every inch of added distance.

“Hey,” Rafe calls, clasping your wrist as you pull away. “I — wait. That’s it?”

You look down at the rough fingers as they encircle it, wide-eyed and fairly close to acquiescing again. “That’s it,” you echo, forcing yourself to meet his gaze.

“Well,” he retrieves his hand, running his palm over his buzzcut distractedly, “Now it’s my turn to talk

You exhale slowly, watching him. “About what?”

“Shit, Polaris, maybe the fact that I’m in love with you?” He says incredulously, torso over the center console now. He’s looking up at you with enough intensity to revive burning embers, dry the tears on your cheeks until your skin feels vulnerable.

You balk, frozen in place as your eyes widen. “What?”

“I love you,” he repeats, sighing defeatedly. “And I know that I’m meant to keep that shit to myself, it wasn’t part of the plan and —”

“Rafe Cameron,” you interrupt, your warm cheeks burning. “I love you too.”

A pause. The confession makes the hankering dissipate, so quick Rafe almost doesn’t notice. His lips pull up until he’s sending you that sweet, devilish grin.

“Huh.” He reaches for your wrist again, tugging hard. “Well ain’t that just the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

—

135 notes · View notes

jungkoode · 2 months ago

Text

THE 25TH HOUR | O7

“𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐒”

"The most annoying thing about Agent Min isn’t how easily he dodges your questions—it’s how effortlessly he outmatches your wit."

next | index

— chapter details

word count: 7,4k

content: field trips, noma being curious as usual, yoongi being half amused half exasperated, yoongi being a smart lil shit and evading her questions, her growing frustrated, forced proximity, eery memorials and visceral reactions.

— author’s note

Hiii peeps!!!

It’s been a long time coming huh??? FINALLY chapter 7 reached the goals yesterday!!! *cue the confetti that i absolutely do not have the energy to throw*

I’ve been writing this chapter for what feels like an eternity (literally aged 10 years minimum) but I just finished the last scene today and edited and proofread it just now soooo I hope everything’s okay??? If you see a typo… no you didn’t (ಥ﹏ಥ).

Not gonna lie to you, I had to reread chapter 6 because I straight up forgot whether I had tasked Yoongi and Noma to the Monitoring Hub or if that was someone else ahahaha—spoiler alert: it was Tae and Jungkook who got stuck with that chore, not Yoongi and Y/N. Slay for us!

Then I reread some of my notes and remembered some plotlines I had emotionally suppressed and well… the last scene about the park basically wrote itself. Yeah. It’s eery. Prepare yourselves.

There’s SO much to unpack from this fic and SO little we have even scratched the surface of. I know The 25th Hour is my most head-wrecking fanfic so PLEASE, feel free to vomit ALL of your theories at me hahaha. I’m here for the chaos.

As always—remember my fics are sloooooow paced and sloooooow burn because my brain doesn’t know how to operate differently. Don’t expect fast plot movement, I’m intentionally taking my time to build the world and lay tiny breadcrumbs for you to gather. Pick them up. Put them in your emotional basket. Analyze them to your heart’s content.

Enjoy, goblins! <3

— read on

ao3

wattpad

The streets feel fundamentally wrong.

It's not something you can quantify, not yet. The temperature is stable, the air quality within acceptable parameters, and the ambient noise levels hover at a predictable 67 decibels.

But still, something feels… off.

Sector 4 has always been bustling, it is a fact you do not question.

Coffee shops line the sidewalks—windows are fogged with steam and promises of overpriced caffeine. Restaurants have flickering neon signs in rhythmic patterns that seem to draw people in inevitably. Storefronts display fashion statements that you’ve never found appealing but still manage to catch your eye every time you pass them.

You do like fashion—at least, theoretically.

You’ve never bought anything from these stores, though.

Agent Min walks ahead of you now, stride measured as always. You recalibrate your position almost immediately, adjusting your pace to walk beside him instead of behind.

Not behind him. Never behind him.

You don’t know why it matters so much, but it does. To you, at least. Or maybe to whatever part of you keeps acting out without conscious thought lately.

Your eyes betray you again, flickering to his gloved hand for the fifth time in the last fifteen minutes. Covered, as always. Black leather stretched taut over fingers that move very precisely—cataloging, calculating, anticipating.

You’re still stuck on his earlier words: “Protection from me.”

What did he mean by that? Is his touch scalding? Dangerous?

You haven’t seen him touch anyone else without those gloves—not once since arriving at the facility. It’s plausible enough to form a hypothesis around it, but not enough to test it without risking another nosebleed—or worse.

Still… you want to test it anyway.

And then there’s the matter of your own gloves—thin fabric ones that feel more like a restriction than protection.

Nobody else wears them except Yoongi. Just him and you. You and him.

Why? Why? Why? Why?

The question loops through your mind like a broken record, each repetition louder than the last until it feels like static buzzing beneath your skin.

You want to ask him outright, even though you know it will get you nowhere.

But still… you want to ask.

“Why gloves?”

The words slip out before your analytical mind can filter them properly—an impulsive breach of protocol that surprises even you.

Yoongi sighs—a sound weighted with irritation but tempered by something softer beneath—and doesn’t respond immediately. His gaze flickers around the street instead, cataloging details invisible to your untrained eye.

“Stop staring at my hand,” he says finally, voice low enough that only you can hear over the ambient noise of Sector 4’s busiest avenue.

“I wasn’t staring at your hand,” you counter, the denial emerging with suspicious automaticity.

And technically, it’s not a lie.

Your focus was on the glove itself—the material composition, the precision fit, the way it moves with his fingers as if designed specifically for his unique biomechanics.

“My gloves cover my hands,” he points out, logic impeccable as always. “You looking at my glove is functionally equivalent to looking at my hand.”

Your analytical mind acknowledges the validity of his reasoning—the correlation between glove and hand approaches 99.7% in this context.

“Stop trying to be clever,” he adds, the corner of his mouth twitching upward by approximately 0.3 millimeters—a microexpression your body recognizes as amusement despite your mind having no reference point for it.

“I’m not trying to be clever,” you respond, your tone matching his. “Fabric is not skin. I was technically not observing your hand but rather the material covering it.”

His eyes narrow by exactly 1.2 millimeters. “You’re doing it right now.”

“Doing what?”

“Attempting to establish semantic superiority through technical correctness.”

“I am not.”

“You are. Stop it.”

Your lips press together, suppressing what feels suspiciously like a smile. Your gaze shifts to his profile, noting the controlled tension in his jaw, the rhythm of his breathing.

“Why?” The question emerges softer than intended.

He turns, eyes meeting yours with unsettling directness.

The contact lasts 2.7 seconds—42% longer than standard conversational eye contact.

“Because,” his eyes flicker gold for precisely 0.3 seconds, “being intellectual antagonists with each other is essentially our foreplay.”

Your Chrono-Sync Watch beeps softly: Temporal variance: 1.37%.

“That would imply sexual attraction.”

“Yes, it would.”

“Are you sexually attracted to me?”

He doesn’t respond.

You weren’t expecting him to.

Doesn’t make it less annoying.

But curiosity nags at you as your eyes flicker down to his gloves. And before you can process your next question, you’re already voicing it out.

"Can I hold your hand?"

Agent Min halts mid-step, his shoulders stiffening by precisely 0.6 centimeters. The sigh that follows is audible, weighted with the kind of exasperation that suggests this isn't the first time he's had to deal with you derailing his focus.

"Not this again," he mutters, his voice carrying the same energy as someone who just realized they forgot to defrost the chicken for dinner.

You blink up at him, unbothered by the irritation radiating off of him in waves.

“What? I’m serious."

He turns his head slowly, mint-green hair catching the sunlight in a way that seems almost too vibrant for someone with such a perpetually dark aura. His eyes narrow slightly—not in anger, but in that uniquely way of his that suggests he's already regretting engaging with you.

"You want to hold my hand," he repeats flatly, as if saying it out loud might somehow make it sound less ridiculous.

"Yes." You nod once, decisively. "Without the gloves."

His jaw tightens by 3 degrees, and for a moment, you think he might ignore you entirely. But then he exhales sharply through his nose—an audible punctuation mark to his mounting frustration—and tilts his head just enough to meet your gaze.

"Why?" he asks, voice low and measured, like he's trying to reason with a particularly stubborn child.

You pause, considering the question.

Why do you want to hold his hand?

It’s not like you’ve ever been particularly interested in physical contact before. In fact, you generally find it inefficient and unnecessary—an outdated social construct with no practical application in most scenarios.

But this feels... different. Important. Like there’s some unquantifiable variable at play that your analytical mind can’t quite grasp.

"I don’t know," you admit finally, your tone carrying the same blunt honesty that has gotten you into trouble more times than you can count. "I just do."

Yoongi closes his eyes briefly—1.2 seconds exactly—before pinching the bridge of his nose through the fabric of his glove.

“You can’t just go around asking people if you can hold their hands."

"Why not?" Your brow furrows as you process his response. "Is it against protocol?"

"It’s not about protocol," he says, dropping his hand back to his side with a resigned sigh. "It’s about basic social norms."

"Social norms are arbitrary constructs," you argue, crossing your arms over your chest. "If I want to hold your hand and you don’t explicitly object, then what’s the issue?"

"The issue," he says slowly, as if explaining quantum mechanics to a toddler, "is that most people don’t ask questions like that because they understand how it might make someone else feel."

You tilt your head slightly, analyzing his expression for any sign of genuine discomfort. His face remains impassive—calm but guarded, like he’s carefully controlling every microexpression to avoid giving anything away.

"I don’t see how it would make you feel anything," you say finally, your tone more curious than defensive. "It’s just skin-to-skin contact. Statistically insignificant unless there’s some kind of chemical reaction involved."

Yoongi stares at you for a long moment—4.7 seconds exactly—before shaking his head slightly and muttering something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like why me?

"You’re impossible," he says finally, turning away from you and resuming his perfectly measured stride down the street.

You fall into step beside him without hesitation, adjusting your pace to match his once again.

“You didn’t answer my question," you point out after exactly 3 seconds of silence.

"I thought I did," he replies dryly.

"No," you counter, your tone taking on that annoyingly persistent edge that you realize seems to get under his skin. "You explained why most people wouldn’t ask to hold someone’s hand. You didn’t explain why I shouldn’t ask."

He exhales sharply again—louder this time—and glances at you out of the corner of his eye. His gaze flickers briefly to your gloved hands before returning to the path ahead.

"Because it’s not normal," he says finally.

"Neither is wearing gloves all the time," you shoot back without missing a beat.

His lips twitch upward for 0.2 seconds before flattening again—a microexpression so fleeting that most people wouldn’t have noticed it.

But you do.

"Fair," he mutters under his breath.

You take this as a victory and press on. "So? Can I?"

"No."

"But why?" Your voice edges into what could almost be described as a whine—not because you’re upset, but because you genuinely don’t understand why he’s being so difficult about something so seemingly insignificant.

Yoongi stops abruptly again—his second unplanned halt in less than five minutes—and turns to face you fully this time. His eyes lock onto yours with an intensity that makes your pulse spike by 8 beats per minute.

"Because," he says slowly, enunciating each syllable like it physically pains him to explain this to you, "if I let you hold my hand without gloves, it won’t stop there."

You blink, processing his words.

"What do you mean it won't stop there?"

Your head tilts exactly 4.3 degrees to the right—a physical manifestation of your curiosity. Yoongi's jaw tightens, the muscle visibly tensing beneath his skin.

"Just drop it."

"Is it just the hands?" you press, undeterred by his obvious discomfort. "Or would any skin contact cause this... whatever it is you're concerned about?"

"Any skin contact," he answers flatly.

You process this new variable. "So if I touch any part of your skin, the reaction would be the same?"

"Yes."

His response is clipped, precise—clearly hoping brevity will discourage further inquiry.

It doesn't.

"Is that why we're both covered head to toe? To prevent skin contact?"

The question emerges as you glance down at your own tactical gear, noting how thoroughly it encases your body.

"Yes."

"But not our faces," you point out, studying the exposed skin of his cheeks, his jaw, his forehead. "Our faces remain uncovered."

He exhales, the sound carrying precisely 23% more frustration than his previous sigh.

"Covering our faces would make us suspicious to CHRONOS agents. We need to blend in."

Your analysis immediately detects the logical inconsistency.

“Your resistance movement seems quite popular among CHRONOS employees. I've counted at least 27 defectors in your facility."

"Mhm."

"How come agents don't recognize you then?" The question presents itself naturally as you catalog variables. "Wouldn't they have put a face to your name by now? Especially given your apparent leadership position?"

"Part of my ability."

Your temporal readings spike by 0.12% at the mention of his ability. You've been collecting fragments of information since arriving, piecing together a picture of what each team member can do. But Yoongi's ability remains the most significant unknown variable.

"What's your ability?" You ask directly, knowing the probability of receiving a straightforward answer approaches zero.

Indeed, his lips quirk upward—0.3 millimeters, right side only.

"Guess."

You narrow your eyes, cataloging the available data:

- His ability relates to temporal manipulation

- It affects perception

- It involves skin contact

- It has restoration properties, as demonstrated with your glove

"Time manipulation," you venture, knowing it's insufficient but hoping to prompt elaboration.

"Not specific enough."

"Temporal reconstruction?" You recalibrate, adding the restoration variable.

He makes that sound again—the one that's almost amusement but contains too much restraint.

“Closer."

Your analytical mind sorts through theoretical temporal abilities, discarding those incompatible with observed phenomena.

“Chronological restoration with perceptual manipulation components."

His eyebrow raises by exactly 0.4 centimeters. "Sometimes I forget how unnecessarily technical you can be."

"Is that accurate?" you press.

"Parts of it."

His attention shifts to the street ahead, where the monitoring hub should be visible. But it isn't. Not where your memory insists it should be.

You follow his gaze, temporal cognition struggling to reconcile the discrepancy.

"The hub is missing."

"No," he corrects, "it's been moved. Remember?"

The correction creates a curious double-vision effect in your cognitive processing—you simultaneously remember the hub at its original location AND at its new position three blocks east.

Your nose starts bleeding.

Agent Min doesn't even look—simply extends the black handkerchief towards your nose.

"Stop trying to hold both memories at once," he instructs, voice dropping to 42 decibels. "Accept the new one as current reality while maintaining awareness that it's been altered."

"That's contradictory," you argue, pressing the handkerchief to your nose.

"Not to your brain, it isn't." His eyes never leave the street ahead, yet you sense his focus remains partially on you. "Your temporal signature allows you to perceive both timelines simultaneously. The cognitive dissonance is what causes the bleeding."

"How do you know so much about my temporal signature?" The question emerges with sudden intensity.

His jaw tightens. "Focus on the mission."

"Answer the question."

"No."

Your frustration spikes by approximately 37%.

“You know significantly more about my physiological responses than should be possible given our limited interaction history."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Classified."

You resist the urge to roll your eyes—a social gesture you've never found particularly productive.

“That's not an answer."

"It's all you're getting right now." His tone shifts, carrying a finality that suggests further inquiry would be pointless.

Your gaze returns to the street, where two distinct sets of memories continue to overlap in your perception. The monitoring hub that should be directly ahead isn't there. Instead, an upscale coffee shop occupies the space, patrons moving in and out with the synchronized efficiency of people who have no idea reality has been restructured around them.

"They don't notice," you murmur, observing the civilians. "They genuinely believe that coffee shop has always been there."

"Yes." Agent Min's confirmation is unnecessary but appreciated. "For them, reality is singular and consistent. No contradictions."

"And for us?"

His eyes meet yours briefly. "For Outliers, reality is... negotiable."

“Outliers. That’s me now, too.”

"Yes. People whose temporal signatures resist CHRONOS manipulation," he elaborates, voice dropping lower. "People who remember when reality changes. People who can see through the illusion."

"Like right now," you note, focusing on the coffee shop while maintaining awareness of the monitoring hub that should occupy its space. "I can hold both versions simultaneously."

"Exactly." For once, he doesn't sound annoyed by your analysis. "That's what makes you valuable. And dangerous."

Your Chrono-Sync Watch beeps softly: Temporal variance: 1.42%.

Agent Min's eyes flick to your wrist. "We need to stabilize you before continuing. Your variance is climbing."

"I'm fine," you counter, though the persistent throbbing behind your eyes suggests otherwise.

"You're not." His contradiction carries no room for debate. "Find somewhere quiet. Now."

You scan the area, identifying a narrow alley between buildings approximately 34 meters ahead.

“There."

He follows your gaze and nods once, already adjusting his trajectory. His stride lengthens by precisely 0.07 meters—not enough for casual observation to detect, but you note the change immediately.

The alley provides 68% reduction in ambient noise and 74% decrease in visual stimuli—optimal conditions for temporal stabilization according to the limited data you've gathered.

Agent Min positions himself at precisely 47 centimeters from you—close enough for what you now understand is temporal alignment, but far enough to maintain whatever invisible boundary he's established.

"Your variance is too high," he states, glancing at your watch. "We need to reduce it before continuing."

"How?" The question is direct, clinical—exactly how you intend it.

His expression shifts, eyes darkening by approximately 12%. "Proximity and synchronized breathing. It's slow but effective."

Your analytical mind immediately identifies the logical gap.

"If proximity helps stabilize my temporal signature, then closer proximity should logically be more efficient. Physical contact would provide maximum efficiency."

His jaw tightens so suddenly you can almost hear the teeth grinding.

"No."

"Why not? It's the most logical solution."

"Because I said so."

The childish response seems deliberately designed to irritate you.

It works.

"That's not a scientifically valid reason," you counter, crossing your arms. "Is there another method besides proximity and breathing?"

"No."

His response comes too quickly—0.37 seconds faster than his average response time. You narrow your eyes, analytical mind immediately flagging the statistical anomaly.

"You're lying."

"I'm not lying," he counters, voice dropping to that dangerous octave that somehow makes your skin prickle despite the climate-controlled tactical gear. "I'm just not telling you the whole truth."

"That's the same thing."

"It's really not." His lips quirk upward in that infuriating half-smile. "One involves active deception. The other involves strategic omission."

"Strategic omission," you repeat, the term rolling off your tongue with obvious distaste. "Is that what we're calling it now?"

"We've always called it that. You just don't remember."

Your Chrono-Sync Watch beeps again: Temporal variance: 1.57%.

"Your variance is still climbing," he notes, voice shifting to something that might almost be concern if you didn't know better. "Focus on your breathing. Match mine."

You want to argue further, to push until he breaks and gives you the answers your analytical mind craves. But the pressure behind your eyes is intensifying, and your temporal readings are becoming increasingly unstable.

"Fine," you concede, though the word carries more edge than intended. "Breathing."

He inhales slowly—4 seconds in, 6 seconds out—establishing a rhythm that your body automatically begins to follow.

The synchronization feels practiced, like muscle memory you shouldn't possess.

"Why do I know this pattern?"

"Because your body remembers even when your mind doesn't."

"You keep saying that. It is not scientifically possible."

"Then why is it working?”

Your temporal variance begins to decrease—1.52%, 1.47%, 1.39%—the numbers falling in precise correlation with your synchronized breathing.

"Fascinating," you murmur, analytical mind already calculating the energy transfer mechanisms that might explain this phenomenon. "The temporal resonance between our signatures creates a stabilizing effect that—"

"Stop analyzing it," he interrupts, the command carrying a sharp edge. "The more you try to understand it, the worse your variance gets."

"That's counterintuitive."

"Welcome to temporal physics." His tone carries a dry humor that catches you off guard. "Where everything you think you know is wrong, and trying to figure out why makes your nose bleed."

Despite yourself, your lips twitch upward.

Illogical.

“That's an inefficient system."

"It's by design." His eyes never leave yours as he continues the breathing pattern. "CHRONOS doesn't want people understanding how reality actually works."

"And you do?"

A softening around the eyes that lasts precisely 0.7 seconds swallows his pupils before disappearing.

"I want you to understand. Just not all at once."

The admission carries more weight than it should, creating a curious pressure in your chest that defies analytical categorization.

Your variance continues to decrease—1.31%, 1.24%, 1.18%—each number bringing you closer to stability.

"There's something you're not telling me," you state, the certainty absolute despite having no empirical evidence to support it.

His lips quirk upward—0.4 millimeters, right side only.

"There are approximately 7,429 things I'm not telling you, A-735. You'll have to be more specific."

"About stabilization methods." Your eyes narrow, focusing on the micro-expressions that betray him. "There's another way, isn't there? Something more efficient than this."

His breathing pattern falters for exactly 0.3 seconds—a statistical anomaly that confirms your hypothesis.

"Yes," he admits finally, the word emerging with obvious reluctance.

"What is it?"

His jaw tightens, eyes darkening to that dangerous shade that makes your pulse accelerate by 7.2 beats per minute.

"Nothing you need to know right now."

"I disagree."

"Shocking."

The sarcasm in his tone is so thick you could practically measure its density. Strangely, it registers a progress in your head.

"Is it dangerous?"

“Not in the way you're thinking."

"Then why won't you tell me?"

He holds your gaze for exactly 3.7 seconds—42% longer than standard conversational eye contact.

“Because once you know, you'll want to try it. And once you try it..." He pauses, something raw and unguarded flashing in his eyes. "Let's just say it complicates things."

"How?"

"Classified."

You exhale sharply through your nose, frustration spiking by approximately 43%.

"You can't just classify everything you don't want to explain."

"Actually," he counters, that infuriating half-smile returning, "I can. It's one of the perks of being in charge."

"You're impossible."

"So I've been told." His eyes flicker to your watch. "1.03%. Almost stable."

Your variance continues to decrease—0.97%, 0.92%, 0.88%—each number bringing you closer to the standard range.

"We should continue the mission," you state once your readings stabilize at 0.84%.

He nods once, already turning toward the street. But before he can take a step, you catch his wrist—your gloved fingers wrapping around the tactical material covering his arm.

He freezes, entire body tensing like you've applied an electric shock.

"This isn't over," you state, voice low and precise. "I will figure it out."

His eyes meet yours, something dark and dangerous flickering in their depths.

"I know you will. You always do."

The statement carries too much weight, too much history that you can't access. But before you can question it, he gently extracts his wrist from your grip and steps back onto the street.

You follow, sorting through the fragments of information, piecing together the puzzle that is Agent Min.

He's hiding something. Something important. Something about you, about him, about whatever connection exists between you that defies logical explanation.

And you're definitely going to figure out what it is.

You’ve been walking for exactly twenty-three minutes.

And Agent Min has looked at you ten times in the past five.

Each glance is quick—measured flickers of attention, like he’s trying to calculate something without setting off an alarm.

You count them anyway. You always count things when you don’t know what they mean.

The silence stretches between you, and it’s thick; clinging really. You expected him to appreciate it—your restraint, your control, your refusal to ask questions he won’t answer.

But instead, he’s growing restless.

Another glance. Quick. Sharp.

You stop walking.

He takes two more steps before realizing you aren’t following, turning around with a tilt of his head that would seem casual if it weren’t so obviously deliberate.

You cross your arms. Narrow your eyes. Catalog the slight shift in his posture.

“What.”

It comes out flat. Demanding.

He exhales—short, controlled, dismissive.

“Nothing.”

You frown, recalculating. “Then stop looking at me.”

He raises an eyebrow by approximately 0.5 centimeters. Very deliberate. Very measured.

“Not looking at you.”

You tilt your head, mirroring his earlier gesture.

“Incorrect. You’ve looked at me ten times in the last five minutes. Nine, if you want to exclude peripheral glances.”

He doesn’t respond immediately, which statistically increases the likelihood that he’s internally debating whether arguing is worth it.

You decide to press anyway. “Why?”

His mouth tightens, a minuscule shift of muscle you might have missed before. Not now. Now you notice everything.

“You’re distracting,” he says finally. Short. Clipped. Like ripping off a bandage.

You blink, recalibrating.

“How?”

He sighs, heavier this time—more oxygen expended, betraying more irritation than he probably intends.

“You’re…” He searches for the word like it’s a personal affront to have to find it. “…loud.”

“I’m not speaking.”

“Exactly.”

You process that.

“So my silence is distracting.”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re used to me questioning you.”

“Partly.”

Your eyes narrow. His left hand flexes at his side, the faint creak of leather betraying tension he’s probably holding in check.

“Then elaborate,” you say. Curious. Intrigued despite yourself.

“No.”

You resist the urge to sigh back at him—your own version of his exasperation.

“Is it proximity?” you try again. “I can increase distance if needed.”

The corner of his mouth twitches—barely—but enough to register.

“It’s not proximity,” he mutters, almost to himself.

“Then what is it?”

His eyes flicker back to you, sharp and cutting.

“You’re unpredictable,” he says. “That’s the problem.”

You tilt your head again, absorbing that.

“Unpredictability usually denotes a flaw in pattern recognition,” you say thoughtfully. “And you pride yourself on anticipating variables.”

His expression tightens, the faintest edge of irritation sparking.

Good. You’re getting somewhere.

“You’re not a variable,” he says finally, voice low. “You’re an anomaly.”

Your heart stutters—not from sentiment, but from the weight of the word.

Anomaly. Noma.

The nickname he’s never explained.

You hold his gaze, cataloging the dilation of his pupils, the slight tremor in his exhale.

0.4 seconds too long before he looks away.

Enough to register. Enough to matter.

You tilt your head a fraction to the left. Testing. Probing.

“Your behavior denotes a penchant for sadism,” you observe. Neutral enough to pretend the words don’t sting a little when they land between you.

Yoongi exhales—slow, the faintest curl of amusement threading through the air.

“Because I’m sadistic, clearly,” he mutters, voice rougher than necessary.

Calculated imperfection.

You narrow your eyes. Catalog the rhythm of his steps, how they slow imperceptibly as you fall into pace again, how the ambient noise seems to dull when he speaks.

“You are being purposefully obtuse,” you accuse, sharper this time. “Being wistfully cryptic does not align with leadership traits. I would assume the leader of the 7th Hour would not engage in childish tactics.”

A beat.

He hums low in his throat—a noise of neither agreement nor denial. More like he’s tasting your words, deciding whether to bother answering at all.

“Me?” he says finally, deadpan. “Childish? Never.”

The dryness of it slashes across your skin like a blade dipped in velvet.

You scowl, which only earns you another flicker of that infuriating almost-smirk.

“I expected more,” you say, voice clipped. Measured. “That is on me for applying inappropriate expectations.”

“You’ll learn.” His tone drops, lazy and lethal. “Eventually.”

The way he says it—you’ll learn—prickles under your skin.

Because it doesn’t sound like a threat.

It sounds like a promise.

Your body catalogues the microadjustments again: the flex of leather at his hands, the sharp lines of his jaw as he grinds out the words with so little effort it’s almost mocking.

You resist the irrational urge to step closer.

Proximity is inefficient. Emotional responses disrupt cognitive processing.

You recite it mentally like a catechism.

Still.

The question rises, unbidden.

The same way it seems to always do with him.

“What is the mission objective?”

Blunt. Necessary. Something to tether yourself back to reason.

He doesn’t break stride. Doesn’t even flinch.

“You’re a smart girl,” he says instead, so casually it almost doesn’t register as condescension. Almost. “You’ll figure it out.”

You exhale sharply through your nose. Inefficient communication strategies. You’re tempted to cite the statistical decrease in operational success rates when leadership fails to fully brief its agents, but he’s baiting you. Purposefully.

And you, predictably, are already chasing.

“Statistically,” you begin, voice taut with precision, “the likelihood of successful insertion without a clear objective—”

“Statistically,” he cuts in, unbothered, “there shouldn’t even be a 25th hour.”

The implication lands harder than it should.

You tighten your jaw, recalibrating, watching how he watches you.

Like he’s daring you to keep up.

“You are evading,” you say. “Obfuscating under the guise of intellectual superiority.”

“Am I?” he says, feigning disinterest. His shoulders shrug—barely, beautifully. “Or maybe you just don’t like not being the smartest person in the room.”

You blink once. Slow. Methodical.

Your pulse betrays you anyway, kicking up by approximately 6 bpm.

“You overestimate your own cleverness,” you say evenly, even though some traitorous part of you wants him to keep doing it.

Keep outsmarting you. Keep sparring until the tension snaps under its own weight.

“You underestimate my patience,” he counters.

Another tiny smirk. Quicker this time. Sharper.

Your chest feels too tight around your ribs.

Inefficient physiological response.

You step away—not because you want distance, but because your processing centers are beginning to overload. You need new data. A new angle.

You pivot sharply toward the park ahead.

Three steps away before you hear his chuckle—so quiet you almost mistake it for a glitch in ambient noise.

You don’t turn back.

Instead, you focus on the new structure—the park that wasn’t there before.

It waits ahead, pristine and out of place. Grass too green. Air too clean. Symmetry too perfect.

Manufactured. Synthetic.

You slow your pace, narrowing your eyes, cataloging inconsistencies: tree spacing (1.3 meters apart, unnaturally even), the curvature of the path (identical to simulation model 8C), the temperature drop (2 degrees lower than the surrounding sector).

You feel Yoongi’s presence a few steps behind you. Not following. Not chasing.

Waiting.

Just like he always does.

Just like he always has.

And somehow, despite everything you know—despite every logic protocol firing in your mind—you want him to follow anyway.

You inhale sharply. Taste static on your tongue.

Focus.

Not on him.

On the mission.

On the park.

Focus on anything except the way Min Yoongi—a ghost, an anomaly—manages to outsmart you without even trying.

So that’s what you do—you focus forward, eyes locking onto the new structure rising ahead of you—all marble paths and manicured trees and gentle, glistening statues under the waning light.

A park that didn’t exist last week.

A plaza that hums wrong against your skin.

Your steps slow as you approach, instinct warning you even before your mind can fully process it.

You analyze the angles of the paths. The symmetry of the displays. The too-perfect gloss of the stone.

The air feels wrong here—too still, like it's been filtered of something vital.

But curiosity nags at you. It always does, when things defy explanations.

You step forward into the park, assessing its dimensions with a precision that seems excessive even to you. The perimeter measures exactly 247.8 meters around. The pathways curve at identical 30-degree angles. The statues are placed at equidistant intervals of precisely 12.4 meters.

Perfect. Too perfect.

Your temporal readings spike by 0.17% as you observe families strolling casually through what your analytical mind categorizes as a statistical impossibility. A man pushes a stroller past a bronze figure frozen mid-gesture. A couple takes selfies beneath the outstretched arm of another.

"The Garden of Stability," reads a polished plaque at the entrance. "Honoring those who sacrificed to maintain our timeline."

You've never seen this place before. You're certain of it.

Yet your Chrono-Sync Watch registers no anomalies beyond the acceptable variance threshold.

Curious.

You move deeper into the garden, cataloging details: like the fact that the statues are eerily lifelike—capturing expressions with a fidelity that exceeds current manufacturing capabilities by approximately 27%.

Furthermore, each statue has a small plaque fixed to its base.

You approach the nearest one, a figure of a woman with her hand extended, fingers splayed as if reaching for something just beyond grasp.

"In memory of Eska Thior—sacrificed herself to stabilize Sector 7 during the temporal disturbance of 2156."

Your eyes narrow as you analyze the woman's expression.

The sculptor has captured what should be determination, but there's something else—something in the eyes that registers as wrong.

Your visual processing identifies it as fear, not resolve.

You move to the next statue. A man looking skyward, one foot slightly raised as if caught mid-step.

"In memory of Vayon Zesian—sacrificed himself to protect civilian timelines during the Sector 4 anomaly."

The black man's face is frozen in what the plaque suggests is awe or reverence. But your pattern recognition flags inconsistencies: the tension in his jaw is 38% higher than would be expected in a reverent expression. His fingers are curved at angles suggesting resistance, not surrender.

Your head throbs—a dull, persistent ache that intensifies as you catalog each discrepancy. Yet you continue, your analytical mind demanding more data despite the physical discomfort.

A sharp tug at your wrist interrupts your analysis. You turn, ready to object to the invasion of your personal space, when you register Agent Min's face exactly 31.7 centimeters from yours. His eyes contain a warning that makes no logical sense given the context.

"Shh," he says, the sound barely audible at 22 decibels. "Act normal."

You blink, processing both the command and the unusual tension in his posture. His hand remains on your wrist, gloved fingers gripping with precisely 42% more pressure than necessary for attention-getting purposes.

"This wasn't here yesterday," you whisper, your voice automatically matching his volume. "It's new."

"Yes, it is," he confirms, his eyes never meeting yours. Instead, they scan the perimeter. "And I'd advise against looking at the statues."

The request is illogical. You're already looking at them. You've already cataloged five discrepancies and three statistical anomalies in their design.

"Why?" you ask, the question forming before you can process the tension radiating from his body.

You turn away from him precisely as he tightens his grip—too late to stop your movement. Your eyes land on a statue directly ahead, positioned 15.3 meters from your current location.

A man in a CHRONOS uniform, arms outstretched as if embracing the air around him.

Robin.

Your cognitive processes stutter, creating a 0.7-second delay between visual input and meaning assignment.

Robin. Cubicle 47-B. Coffee preference: black with one sugar. Temporal compliance rating: 98.7%. Lunch companion: yesterday, 12:37 PM to 1:14 PM.

"That's Robin," you state, your voice dropping to 19 decibels. "I had lunch with him yesterday."

Your stomach contracts unexpectedly, digestive acids rising by approximately 37%. Your neural pathways struggle to reconcile the contradiction: Robin alive yesterday. Robin memorialized today.

Robin moving, breathing, complaining about the cafeteria's tempeh option yesterday.

Robin frozen in bronze today.

No fabrication facility could produce a statue this detailed in less than 24 hours.

The metallurgical processes alone would require at minimum 72 hours for casting and cooling, with an additional 48 for detailing and patina development.

Unless...

Your analytical mind reaches the conclusion precisely as your stomach lurches again—a visceral response you didn't anticipate and cannot control.

They're not statues.

"We need to leave," Agent Min says, voice pitched extremely low.

His fingers adjust on your wrist, shifting downward by 2.3 centimeters until they rest against the pulse point where your glove meets your sleeve.

Your heart rate increases by 13.7 beats per minute.

Not from his touch. From the realization.

"They're not statues," you confirm aloud, your voice clinical despite the acid burning the back of your throat. "They're people. Frozen in some form of temporal stasis."

Agent Min's jaw tightens, the muscle visibly tensing beneath his skin.

“Not here," he warns, his voice barely audible. "Camera at your two o'clock, range 17 meters. Audio capture capabilities."

You process this new variable, immediately adjusting your behavior patterns. Your posture shifts by 4.3 degrees—more casual, less alert. Your expression recalibrates to something 76% more neutral.

"The craftsmanship is remarkable," you say at standard conversational volume, the words feeling like ash on your tongue. "Such attention to detail."

Agent Min's eyes flash with something that might be approval if it weren't overshadowed by urgency.

“We should continue our walk," he says evenly. "There's more to see in Sector 4."

His fingers remain at your pulse point for exactly 2.7 seconds longer than necessary before releasing. The warmth lingers—a ghost sensation you struggle to categorize.

You follow his lead, moving away from Robin's frozen form with measured steps despite the increasing pressure in your chest. Your breathing adjusts automatically—in for 4 seconds, out for 6—matching the pattern Agent Min established earlier.

Families continue to mill around you, oblivious to the horror disguised as art. A child points at Robin's statue, tugging at her mother's sleeve.

"He looks so happy, mommy! Like he's giving everyone a big hug!"

Your vision blurs by approximately 12%—an inexplicable visual phenomenon you'll need to analyze later.

Agent Min positions himself precisely 47 centimeters to your left—close enough for temporal alignment, far enough to maintain whatever invisible boundary he's established.

But something has changed.

His posture carries 27% more tension than before, and his eyes scan the area with a renowned frequency.

"Don't look back," he instructs as you approach the park's exit. "And whatever you do, don't react when I tell you this."

You maintain your neutral expression, eyes fixed forward as instructed.

"There are seventeen of them in this garden," he says, voice low and controlled. "All from your monitoring facility. All disappeared within the last 72 hours."

Your Chrono-Sync Watch beeps softly: Temporal variance: 1.12%.

A warning. Your emotional response is affecting your temporal stability.

You inhale slowly, forcing your analytical mind to take precedence over the uncomfortable pressure building behind your sternum.

"Probability of coincidence: less than 0.003%," you calculate aloud, keeping your voice steady despite the data.

"It's not a coincidence," he confirms, voice dropping even lower. "It's a message."

"For who?"

His eyes meet yours briefly—0.8 seconds of direct contact that somehow feels heavier than it should.

"For us," he says simply. "For you."

Your temporal variance increases to 1.17%.

"They're hunting for Outliers," he continues, eyes scanning the path ahead. "This garden is both a warning and a trap. They're watching for reactions—for people who recognize what they're really seeing."

“That's why you grabbed my wrist. You anticipated my reaction."

A ghost of that infuriating half-smile crosses his face. "You're predictable in some ways, Noma."

The nickname dulls the ache sitting low in your stomach for reasons you cannot comprehend.

"Robin greeted me yesterday," you realize aloud, the pieces clicking into place. "At lunch. He looked at me strangely when I mentioned the temporal fluctuation in Sector 3."

Agent Min's expression doesn't change, but something in his eyes darkens.

“How long was the conversation?"

"17 minutes, 42 seconds."

"And did you discuss anything related to temporal anomalies after that?"

You review the memory, analyzing each exchange with renewed scrutiny.

"Negative. The conversation shifted to cafeteria food quality."

He exhales—a controlled release of breath that betrays nothing of his thoughts.

“That might have been enough."

Your stomach lurches.

Robin is frozen in bronze because of you. Because he noticed something. Because he might have reported it.

The data is insufficient for a definitive conclusion, but the probability exceeds 72.4%.

Your temporal variance increases to 1.23%.

"Steady," Agent Min murmurs, his voice carrying a cadence that seems designed to stabilize your readings. "Focus on your breathing. In for 4, out for 6."

You comply automatically, your body responding to the instruction before your mind can process why.

"Is this what happens to all Outliers?" you ask once your variance stabilizes at 1.09%. "They become... monuments?"

"No," he says finally. "Most are simply erased and reprogrammed. This is... new."

"A tactical adjustment," you surmise. "Enhanced psychological warfare."

"Yes."

"Why now?"

His jaw tightens, eyes darkening to that dangerous shade that makes your pulse accelerate by 7.2 beats per minute.

"Because they're getting desperate."

"Why would CHRONOS be desperate? They control reality itself."

His eyes meet yours, something unreadable flashing in their depths.

“That's what I'd like to know," he mutters, voice dropping to that dangerous octave that makes your skin prickle.

The discrepancy registers immediately. Agent Min doesn't ask questions—he provides answers, often cryptic and insufficient, but answers nonetheless. This response pattern deviates by approximately 87% from established behavioral norms.

Before you can analyze further, your body betrays you.

It starts as a contraction in your esophagus—sudden, violent, measuring approximately 74% stronger than standard swallowing reflex. Your salivary glands activate at 243% above baseline, flooding your mouth with excess moisture. Your stomach muscles clench in rhythmic waves, each contraction more intense than the last.

The analytical part of your mind calculates: gastric acid rising at 7.2 centimeters per second, diaphragm contracting at 3.7 times normal pressure, throat constricting at 82% capacity.

The rest of you simply feels.

Robin's face. Frozen in bronze that isn't bronze.

Your Chrono-Sync Watch beeps a warning: Temporal variance: 2.43%.

A dangerous spike.

Your body heaves, doubling you over with a force that defies voluntary control. The acid burns at exactly 4.7 on the pH scale, searing the back of your throat as you fight to contain it. Your vision narrows to a field of approximately 47 degrees, peripheral awareness fading as your sensory systems redirect all processing power to the immediate crisis.

You register Agent Min's hand on your back—exactly T4 vertebra, pressure precisely calibrated at 2.3 kilograms, generating heat at 38.2°C despite the glove barrier.

"CHRONOS agents," he says, voice suddenly sharp with urgency. "Two o'clock, range 43 meters. Moving this way."

Your body doesn't care about CHRONOS agents. Your body only knows that Robin is frozen in timeless agony while families take selfies beneath his outstretched arms.

Another contraction—87% stronger than the previous one. Your analytical mind attempts to categorize the physiological response but finds no suitable parameters.

This isn't logical. This isn't efficient. This isn't you.

Agent Min's hand moves from your spine to your wrist in one fluid motion. His fingers lock around the pulse point where your glove meets your sleeve, grip tensing to exactly 3.6 kilograms of pressure.

"Move. Now."

Your body moves before your mind processes the instruction, legs automatically adjusting to match his sudden directional shift. You register environmental changes with fragmented precision: ambient temperature decreasing by 1.7°C, crowd density increasing by 23%, noise levels rising to 72 decibels.

Agent Min guides you, his body angled at exactly 37 degrees relative to yours—shielding you from direct line of sight with the approaching agents while maintaining casual appearance.

"Temporal signature spiking," he mutters, grip tightening by another 0.4 kilograms. "They'll detect it if we don't stabilize you."

Your watch confirms his assessment: Temporal variance: 3.17%.

Critical threshold approaching.

The nausea intensifies, each wave synchronized perfectly with the beeping of your watch. Their correlation approaches 97.3%—statistically significant by any measure.

"Coffee shop," Agent Min decides, adjusting your trajectory by 28 degrees. "Northeast corner. Dampening field in the walls."

Your cognitive processes struggle to keep pace with the sensory overload. The street blurs around you—not from speed but from some perceptual distortion your analytical mind cannot quantify.

You glimpse your reflection in a storefront window as you pass—your face pale by approximately 37% compared to baseline, pupils dilated to 7.2 millimeters, micro-expressions cycling at 3.4 times normal rate.

You barely recognize yourself.

Another contraction seizes your stomach, more violent than before. Agent Min's arm shifts, sliding around your waist with a familiarity that feels habitual despite being entirely new.

"Almost there," he says, voice dropping to that calibrated cadence that seems designed to stabilize your readings. "In for 4, out for 6. Match me."

Your body complies automatically, respiratory system syncing to his pattern without conscious direction.

CHRONOS agents appear in your peripheral vision—three of them, moving with the unnatural precision that marks them as Timekeepers. Their trajectory will intersect with yours in approximately 12.3 seconds at current velocity.

"They're tracking your signature," Agent Min confirms, pace increasing by 0.3 meters per second. "Coffee shop.”

The coffee shop materializes ahead—a nondescript building with that averageness that makes it practically invisible to casual observation. Its design incorporates exactly zero distinguishing architectural features, rendering it 87% forgettable to the human brain.

Perfect camouflage.

Agent Min guides you through the door body positioned at precisely the optimal angle to shield yours from external observation. The bell chimes at exactly 56 hertz—a frequency your analytical mind flags as mathematically significant though you cannot immediately determine why.

The door closes behind you with a soft click that somehow sounds final.

Agent Min's arm remains around your waist—a point of contact your body accepts with suspicious automaticity.

Your Chrono-Sync Watch beeps one last time before falling silent: Temporal variance: 1.78%.

Decreasing. Stabilizing.

The nausea recedes by approximately 42%, leaving behind a hollow sensation you cannot properly categorize.

Agent Min's eyes meet yours, and he looks… concerned?

"Breathe," he instructs.

You comply, your body responding to his command without conscious direction.

In for 4.

Out for 6.

In for 4.

Out for 6.

goal: 100 notes.

next | index

— taglist

@cannotalwaysbenight @livingformintyoongi @itstoastsworld @somehowukook @stutixmaru @chloepiccoliniii @kimnamjoonmiddletoe @ktownshizzle @yoongiiuu93 @billy-jeans23 @annyeongbitch7 @mar-lo-pap @hobis-sprite0218 @mikrokookiex @minniejim @curse-of-art @cristy-101 @mellyyyyyyx

no reposts, translations, or adaptations

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leighsartworks216 · 2 years ago

Text

You Have A Type, Don't You?

Astarion x gn!Tav/Reader

Based on this post

I wrote this instead of doing any of the work I need to do! I'm gonna go do that now lol

Warnings: innuendos, minor references to sex, the barest hints of jealousy

Word Count: 1,601

Masterlist

AO3

Tag List Form

Your pencil scratched across the paper, drawing Astarion over and over again on a single page. This wasn’t anything surprising; you drew all of your companions. Gale, Wyll, Karlach, Shadowheart, Lae’zel - they all had pages of their own, but it was usually only one drawing. Some had even posed for it. It was just a way to relax, and their faces always lit up when you showed them, even if they tried not to show it.

Everyone needed a break from fighting and exploring day in day out, so you decided one more day here wouldn’t hurt. As such, you’ve spent the better half of the day just drawing. At first it was little doodles of Scratch, but then you realized you hadn’t drawn the vampire spawn yet.

Most of the expressions you captured came from memory. You’d occasionally sneak a glance for quick reference, pretending to stretch or get distracted by some birds. But at some point, he’d disappeared from camp. You just assumed he’d gone off hunting.

That assumption was proved quite wrong when a voice tsked over your shoulder, almost directly in your ear.

Startling away from the sound, you whipped around to see Astarion crouched down. He wore a self-satisfied smirk and settled down into a full sit on the ground.

“It seems someone is infatuated,” he teased. “So who is it? Someone we saved from peril, perhaps?”

Oh. Right. It had completely slipped your mind.

You cleared your throat as your cheeks warmed and smiled. “Y-Yeah, something like that.”

He chuckled. “Come on, darling, there’s nothing to be shy about. Spare none of the juicy details. What’s he like?”

“He’s, well,” you stammer, “he’s interesting.”

He scoffed. “That’s hardly juicy or a detail. Or is he just another pretty face?” He leaned forward, trying to get a better look at your drawings. You wanted to pull them away and hide them, but why? All the others had drawings done of them, and you loved showing it off when they were done. Why was this any different?

“No, he’s a lot more than that,” you admit quietly. You weren’t good at lying - usually Astarion took the lead any time you had to - but maybe if you didn’t tell a complete lie… “He’s funny, charming. His laugh lights up my world. He’s had a rough go of it, but he doesn’t like it to show.”

“He must like you if you know,” he hummed. Your heart leapt into your throat as he pointed to the pin pricks drawn on the neck. “Is he a vampire, too?” He chuckled, but it sounded strained. “You have a type, don’t you?”

You scoffed even as warmth flooded to your cheeks. “No! I do not have a type.”

“No, of course not,” he played along. “Certainly not for creatures of the night who bite into that pretty little neck of yours.” Despite his smile, there was a tension in his eyes. “I don’t mind, dear. I’d be more than happy to scrounge around some nights so you may indulge your new lover.”

You shook your head. “You don’t have to do that, Astarion,” you assured. “He’s not… We’re not together.”

“No?” You shook your head again. He opened his mouth to give you advice or console you, but you cut him off. It was better to end this fantasy now, before it began to hurt too much.

“It doesn’t matter. Besides, you shouldn’t be sneaking around so you can look over my shoulder. I could have been drawing something terrible.”

He laughed. “All the more reason to risk a peek. You’re so good, it would be nice to know you can be tempted.” Then he scowled. “Unless it’s something terribly dull. You deserve much more than missionary.”

If your cheeks weren’t already blazing hot…

“In any case, I was only wondering when you’d draw my portrait. You seemed more than happy to provide the others with a likeness. And…” He looked past you, seemingly far away. “I haven’t seen myself in two centuries. One gets curious, especially when you’re as vain as me.”

If he heard your heart start racing, he didn’t comment on it. Drawing him would make him realize it wasn’t some other vampire crush you were drawing. But, it had been a while since your adventure began, and you’d drawn everyone else. You swallowed down your anxiety. “Yeah! Of course! Did you wanna pose, or anything?”

He blinked and suddenly he was back in the present. A sly smirk covered up whatever emotions could be lingering on his face. “If your little vampire friend doesn’t get too jealous. I would actually like if you could draw me just,” he paused, “smiling. It would be nice to know what everyone else sees. Make sure I’m not off-putting, you know how it is.”

Once he was sitting comfortably, you turned to a fresh page and began drawing. The paper was hidden from his view, but he watched as your hand, wrist, and arm all moved in tandem like a clock’s gears to create an image. Your eyes moved between the sketch and him multiple times. Sometimes you’d glance up and draw for almost a minute. Then other times you kept going back and forth, constantly checking for reference.

Watching you work was fascinating. All your surroundings faded away. Karlach being her usual loud self, Wyll dancing, Gale cooking, Lae’zel sharpening weapons - nothing could turn your attention from him. He almost felt subconscious with the intensity of it. Your eyes studied him, taking in every single feature, and translated it to your journal. What did you see when you looked at him, he wondered. What did the world see? It had been so long, he couldn’t even remember his face. All he knew was he was attractive.

With a final few marks, brushed away to blend them into the rest, you looked down at your masterpiece. You were so caught up in the drawing you forgot why you were hesitant before, but now that Astarion stared at you from two different angles, your anxiety came back full force. There was no way out of this.

“All done, dear?”

You smiled shakily up at him and turned the journal around. His face scrunched up in confusion. When he met your eyes, he was decidedly unamused. “Darling, if you’re going to draw your fleeting fancy, don’t trick me first. I know it’s hard to see past the depraved bloodlust, but we don’t all look alike, you know.”

“No, Astarion, it’s not- I-”

While you fought to find words, Karlach picked up the slack. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted across the camp, “IT’S YOU, FANGS!”

Dread washed over you. You closed your eyes. If a merciful god was going to kill you and rid you of this embarrassment, now would be the time. A bolt of lightning, perhaps. You’d even welcome decapitation.

You risked a glance when you felt your book being tugged carefully from your hands. His eyes were wide, mouth slightly open as he tried to comprehend what the fuck had just happened. Gods, now he was going to leave camp. You buried your face in your hands. He was going to pack everything up and leave before the sun even touched the horizon. And you’d never see him again. Maybe you’d go find Cazador yourself, just to kill the bastard.

“All these drawings… are me? Darling?”

You inhaled deeply and lowered your hands, but you couldn’t bear looking at him. He could stab you with his dagger and you’d apologize to him for it all. Hell, you’d let him drink you dry if it meant leaving this all behind you. “You’re very pretty,” you admitted quietly. “I didn’t know how to ask, and just- You can rip the pages out, burn them, whatever makes you feel better. And if you leave, I won’t blame you or chase after you or-”

“I’m not upset.” Your head never shot up so fast. “Well, a little. You’re not subtle when you stare, you know. I thought you were just uncomfortable being around a vampire, but this…” He turned back to the portrait you’d just finished. “This is really what I look like?”

You swallowed away a small portion of the shame. At least he wasn’t running away. “As best as I can capture you, anyway. Y-You’ve got these sharp eyes, and your hair curls around your ears, and you get little wrinkles around your eyes and mouth when you laugh - and I just like drawing you.”

The page flipped over again. The page of expressions, capturing everything you described. When he smiled full and bright his fangs were on full display, accented by the laugh lines on either side of his mouth. And the puncture wounds on his neck…

“Ah, so when I said you had a type…” He chuckled, but it didn’t hold as much warmth as usual.

“Your laugh does light up my world,” you admit. His red eyes were on you in an instant, flickering over your whole face. “Just, for the record.”

He glanced at the drawings once more, contemplative. Then, he held the book back out to you. “I wouldn’t be… opposed to trying this. Whatever this is.”

You reached out to take it, but he pulled it away. “But, no more sneaking glances across camp when you want to draw me. I would be delighted to model for you again, in any pose your sweet heart can concoct.” He held the book out again. “Deal?”

You grabbed onto the book, finally relaxing as you smiled. “Deal.”

---

Tag List:

@satelliteapotheosis @hypopxia @mjmygd @flsalazar @thedevilssinner @marina-and-the-memes @softempest @rebeccasship @pinkishredlemonade @faeoran

#fanfic #fanfiction #astarion #astarion x reader #astarion x tav #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #baldur's gate astarion #baldur's gate tav #baldurs gate astarion #baldurs gate tav #bg3 astarion #bg3 tav #gn reader #x gn reader #gender neutral reader #x gender neutral reader #fluff

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ama--ryllis · 3 months ago

Text

Underneath soft candlelight

The artist series: panting/drawing

Warning: angst, no izumi ( even though i love her😭) not proofread, violence/gore ? Massacre au, stalking ? Fem reader.

You were not shinobi, just a normal girl, born from a chunin dad and civillian mother. You'd like to say there was nothing much that was special about you, but that would be a lie, a huge one at that. Because you were special, not just because of your skills in art, no...you were special to him.

Shisui and itachi were best friends, that much was pretty well known around the village. Two prodigies, or so they were called by their clan, they were friends since childhood, doing almost everything together but at some point, someone else came along. You came along

It wasn't that special of an encounter really, most would subject it as rather expected, considering shisui curiosity and extroverted personality. Let me take you back on your memories...

Your face was comfortable resting in your palm, your eyes half-open as you sat alone in a dango shop. The pencil between you fingers spun slowly as you silently racked your brain for some ideas, you had to draw something to get yourself out of damned block. It was annoying really! Art blocks were such a pain in the ass! Your groaned while pressing your hands against your face, dragging them down slightly.

You went through your sketchbook lazily in hope for some ideas, but something was strange. Why did it feel like someone was staring at you-

You covered your mouth as to not scream when you realized someone was looking over your shoulder, you scooted away, looking at....a shinobi? With an awfully curious look on his face, he didn't even look your way when you squirmed away

"yo! Itachi! Come see this"

Said itachi came over to his friend, his face rather devoid of emotion, carrying a plate of dango in one hand. Looking towards...nothing, why? Because the sketchbook was now in your hand, hitting shisui, the man that was peeking over your shoulder, straight in the face.

"creep!"

You yelled, pointing at him with an annoyed look on your face, shisui, was surprised to say the least and itachi sighed.

"shisui, apologi-"

A girly yelp escaped shisui when you straddled him about to punch his face

"i'm sorry! Your drawings are gorgeous!"

Your fist went straight into the ground, cracking the wood next to his head, to which his gaze slowly looked, from the corner of his eyes. He whimpered but also chuckled nervously

"oh really?"

He nodded firmly, sweat dropping slightly, but before you could do anything else an arm pulled you off shisui and stabilized you, before also helping shisui up.

"thanks itachi...."

You stared at both of them, wiping the dust of your clothes.

"i apologize on behalf of my friend here, shisui, apologize"

His voice was deep, bot not to an overbearing extent, you eyed shisui, waiting for that apology.

"haha...sorry?"

You sighed, waving it off before grabbing your sketchbook again.

"don't go bothering strangers again, weirdo"

His jaw dropped at your insult, it wasn't much but definitely uncalled for, you walked past them and out of the dango shop, mumbling to yourself.

"she called me a weirdo-"

"you deserved that"

Shisui sulked, a pout on his face while itachi sighed to himself, feeling disappointed in his friend.

So, that pretty much sums up how you, itachi and shisui met, somehow, from then on, you three became good friends. It was kind of weird but it just happened.

You three always hanged out together, sometimes sasuke, itachi's little brother, joined in, he was always so sweet and begged you to see your art, to which, after a good amount of puppy eyes, you couldn't deny. Even itachi's mother, mikoto, loved you very much and often times insisted to itachi to invite you for dinner, an invite you could never refuse. She had always teased you two about becoming a couple, because in truth, you and itachi grew very close. Even shisui noticed that you were closer to itachi than him, much to his dismay, everyone could see it, but you and itachi. Well, itachi knew of his feelings for you, but he was completely convinced you didn't reciprocate, so he never acted on it.

Everything was going well between the three of you, a good trio of friends. It was more often bright smiles and you always welcomed the two from their missions, something the were always grateful for.

But nothing good could last forever....right? Yea, right, because everything came crashing down one day. The day shisui commited suicide, you weren't there to witness it, but when itachi came to see you one day, with a solemn expression instead of the soft one he had around you, shisui missing, he didn't have to utter a word before you broke down in tears, falling to your knees. He crouched beside you, rubbing your back and bringing your face to his shoulder, silently crying himself but he couldn't show you raht, could he ? So that night, he stayed over, you comforted eachother, well, mostly itachi comforted you, he didn't want you to comfort him, he wanted to be strong for you. You cried and cried in his shoulder, even more after he gave you the message Shisui wanted to tell you in person, even if he couldn't. He spoke, in a quiet voice:

"shisui said...he wanted you to know that he loved you, had feeling for you. He wished you could know in a different way"

That, that made you cry even harder, you clung to itachi, gripping his clothes while he held you tightly. He wanted to cry too, but he couldn't, so he just held you, using your scent as comfort for his unshed tears.

~ a year and half later~

You had moved on...or at least somewhat from shsiui's death, you and itachi didn't hng out as much, he got busier and busier with the anbu and you had started focusing on your art and started to sell. While you were still friends, you rarely saw eachother, when you spent time together, it was usually in small clearing or in your room, talking. He tried...he tried to make time for you before it came, but these last few days he ahd been even more distant, as if he was trying to get rid of you. You were hurt to sya the least, what came next....you couldn't say you expected it.

That night, you were up late, at your desk along with your sketchbook opened on a blank page. Drawing on it while lost in thought, or more like lost in the thought of itachi.

As for him, he was holding back his tears, he had just murdered everyone, his parents, his clansmen. Everyone but sasuke, who layed, unconscious before him, he turned and started jumping along roofs until he saw your home, your curtains and window opened to let him fresh air. He stopped on a rooftop, looking at you through your window, you were sat at your desk, the candlelight illuminating your face in just the right way. That, that made itachi fall in love over again with you but he couldn't...he killed every shred of feeling in his heart and darred away, leaving the village for good.

The next dew days were quiet...too quiet. That was until sasuke came at your home one of those mornings and what he said, hit you like a brick wall.

"itachi killed the clan and left the village"

You fell to your knees on your doorstep, hugging sasuke against you. It was clear the kid needed it, he hugged you back so tightly, clinging to you and held him aswell. Doing the same thing itachi did for you the night shisui had died, sasuke had grown attached to you, and you were the only pillar he had left in his life. He clung to you desperately, wanting some sort of comfort, it was still unbelievable and you were shocked.

Years passed, but they were far too slow, sasuke grew cold and you did a bit as well. You mother had passed away during that time, which didn't really help. Your father was often away on mission, leaving you to be alone in your home most of the time.

Sasuke stopped coming to see you as much, he loved you, yes, but he was too narrow minded in some way. He only wanted to kill itachi and nothing else, not only to avenge his clan, but avenge what he did to you. You let the kid do and say as he pleased, as much as you didn't want him to kill his brother.

You fell asleep at some point in your bed, thinking about all this. You didn't sleep because you wanted to but because your body couldn't take it and just collapsed.

That night, someone opened your sketchbook, picking up your pencil to write something in it. Something along the line of an apology and confession. Their touch lingered on your skin...cressing your cheek oh so gently.

Itachi thought your skin was as soft as ever, he couldn't help himself but to gently cup your cheek and leave a kiss on your forehead. He couldn't stay very long, he didn't have much time, the second he finished writing that note, he jumped out the window, heading out the village once again. Not without his heart breaking a million more times when he saw your sleeping form from far away. He longed to feel your arms wrapped around his neck once more, feeling your body against his, your soft lips press on his, your tongue tangled with his, to hear you giggle like a kid again or to hear your voice, to hear you sigh, or gaso as he- he shook those thoughts away, feeling ashamed of thinking about you this way. He looked back once more at the village, a single tear running down his cheek at the thought of leaving you behind.

Sasuke had encountered his brother recently, having been effortlessly stopped angered him. He only focused on finding ways to get stronger more quickly, it broke your heart to see the last piece of itachi you had left break by itself. The note, the open window, you knew....but you wished you hadn't fell asleep that night, that you had stayed up just one more night. Your heart broke over andover again but you kept telling yourself you had to move on, there was nothing better than a bit of painting to get your mind off of thongs, right ? So that's what you did, you got dressed and headed out into the wild nearby, sitting by the edge of a small river with a small waterfall. Just the perfect view to paint and get your mind away from those thoughts. As you drew and painted, you felt a soft smile slowly stretch onto your lips. You felt it, but someone else saw it, hidden into a few trees, hiding his presence, he looked at you. Gosh how much he wanted to just leap and wrap hid arms around you, to feel you against his chest just one more time. But he had to be content with observing you quietly, letting you paint your feelings away. You looked so peaceful, so happy to finally forget about him, as much as it pained him, he was glad.

You finished your painting, letting it dry while you soaked your feets in the cold water of the river. You felt a gaze settled on your back for a long time now, you were sure.... completely sure it was him but could you face him again? Face him without crying or throwing yourself in his arms, you probably couldn't. But you looked over your shoulder anyway, you expected just to see trees, but no....your gaze met his black one. It wasn't his sharingan, just his normal onyx eyes you loved so much. It felt like every possible emotion stabbed your body at the same time. You just stared at eachother, basking in eachothers eyes, he didn't have a smile, but you could tell he was feeling a lot of things right now. His eyes weren't stern, they were soft, as if awaiting something. You stood up, not caring about being a bit wet, taking one step towards him, you didn't say a word, your eyes speaking for you. But before your could take another step, your head rested against a his chest, his arms around you and his face buried in your hair. Your hands were shaking but they eventually rested on his nape while you pressed your cheek against his chest.

"itachi..."

The sound of his name on your lips was like heaven to him, one hand tangled in your hair and the other around your waist.

"say my name again.."

You pulled your head from his chest, looking up at him, his eyes were pleading, begging you to just say his name again. And you did, for his sake

"itachi..."

You reached reached to his face, cupping his cheek and he couldn't help but lean into your palm, closing his eyes and turning his face to kiss your hand. Pressing his lips to the middle of your palm, you watched him, a single tear slipped down your cheek and that, that broke his heart into a million pieces, that single tear. He wiped the tear from your cheek, leaning his face close to yours, your lips just centimeters away from hid and he was tempted to just go for it. But he waited, he had to know he was doing the right thing, there was also something he wanted to say before kissing you and showing you his feelings....

"i love you"

That's all he said, three words but it felt like so much more, every moment you spent by his side. It felt raw, no lies, nothing stopping you from loving eachother.

"i love you too, itachi"

Those words, the ones he wanted to hear ever since his mother had suggested confessing his so obvious feeling to you. Now, about seven years later, he could finally show you how much his heart held for you, and so that's what he did. Pressing his lips on yours, in a soft but emotional kiss, whe you reciprocated, that's when he deepened it, wanting to feel your tongue dance with his, to hear you laugh and talk to him about endless topic, that's all he wanted, to be by your side...

#x reader #fanfic #fanfiction #yourlocalbaguette #naruto shippuden x reader #naruto #naruto x reader #naruto fanfiction #itachi uchiha #itachi #itachi x reader #itachi uchiha x reader #angst #shisui #shisui uchiha #love #naruto shippuden

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tacoguacamole · 1 month ago

Text

SEROTONIN SKY | MYG - ONE SHOT

Summary: In Serotonin Sky, Min Yoongi reunites with you—his former creative partner and lost love—amidst the backdrop of a music festival in LA. A spontaneous trip to Joshua Tree reawakens old feelings and long-buried truths, forcing Yoongi to confront the cost of chasing dreams without you. A tender, bittersweet story of love, timing, and second chances under starlit skies.

[Pairing: Idol/Producer!Min Yoongi x Producer!Female Reader]

[Theme: L2E/Angst]

[Status: Completed One Shot inspired off a track.]

The hotel room is too quiet.

Min Yoongi lies awake on his back, eyes tracing the dark ceiling, while Los Angeles hums distantly beneath the high-rise windows. The digital clock on the nightstand blinks a sterile blue: 3:47 a.m.

He hasn’t slept in 36 hours—not since rehearsals started, not since the lights and smoke machines drowned out the crowd, not since he saw you again for the first time in nearly a year.

He squeezes his eyes shut. Presses his palms to his face like he can undo the memory of you with pressure and breath alone.

You weren’t supposed to be there.

But of course you were. You’d always said you’d climb your way to the top, whether or not the world was ready. And he believed you. You weren’t chasing the spotlight—but when it came to you, it came naturally. Headphones slung around your neck, coffee in hand, that sharp glint in your eye that could slice through the thickest creative haze.

And just like that—just a glimpse of you on that rooftop studio—Yoongi lost every reasoned thought he’d spent the last year stacking like bricks.

He should have nodded. Said congratulations. Maybe even smiled.

But then you smiled first.

And that was the end of that.

~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~

The next day, he runs into you again. He’ll call it an accident, but that’s a lie he tells himself to make the spiral feel less deliberate.

You're beside a mixing booth, sleeves pushed up, listening with your full body like you always do—head tilted, jaw tense, one hand tapping your thigh to the rhythm of a half-finished beat. You haven’t changed, not really. He watches from the doorway too long.

Then you turn.

And you see him.

And you don’t look away.

You approach like you’re not holding a year of silence between your fingers. “Hey, Min.”

His name, in your voice, still sounds like the hook of a song he never finished.

“Didn’t know you’d be here,” he lies.

You arch a brow, unimpressed. “Liar.”

He almost smiles.

He wants—desperately—to say something important. Something brave. I need you in my life, I’m not lying. But the thrum of the bass from the monitors swallows the words, and so does his pride.

So he says nothing.

And watches you walk away again.

That night, he writes like he’s bleeding.

Later, after most of the crew has cleared out and the last cables are coiled, you’re leaning against your car in the lot, arms crossed like you're waiting for him.

“You still drive aimlessly when your head’s too loud?” you ask.

He doesn't answer. Just unlocks his rental and tosses you the keys.

The playlist is yours.

Old songs. Unfinished demos. Your voice humming along to a melody he forgot he sent you. The city falls away in the rearview mirror, swallowed by a desert that stretches endlessly ahead.

You roll the window down and stretch your hand out into the wind. “You ever been to Joshua Tree?”

He glances at you. “Once. Years ago.”

You turn your head, voice softer now. “Then take me again.”

At 1:04 a.m., you're barefoot on the hood of the car beneath a sky scattered with stars. You draw your knees to your chest and rest your chin on them. You don’t speak. You don’t have to.

Yoongi watches you instead of the constellations.

The curve of your cheek, illuminated faintly in moonlight. The way the night seems to hush itself around you.

“She’s a supernova, I’m a casualty,” he murmurs, more to himself than anyone.

You turn to him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he mutters. “Just… working lyrics.”

You nod. You understand. You always did.

A few minutes pass.

Then you ask, quietly, “Why’d you leave?”

His breath fogs in the night air.

“Timing. Fame. Fear. Thought I had to follow the dream or lose it forever. And I didn’t think I could be what you needed.”

You don’t move. Just stare out at the sky like you’re trying to find the version of him you once believed in.

“I never asked you to be anything,” you say. “Just honest.”

Yoongi’s throat tightens. Because honesty is the one thing he buried. The one thing he wrote around, but never into.

“I still love you,” he says, voice raw.

You blink. But you don’t look away.

And maybe that’s how he knows you still love him too.

On the drive back, you fall asleep somewhere past Palm Springs. Your seat is reclined, your hand resting between the seats, close enough to touch.

He glances at you in the quiet. The world blurs by in streaks of red taillights and desert shadows. Music hums low.

Fine like a wine, she’s my type, call her wifey.

He closes his eyes at a red light. Breathes you in.

I’ll rest my eyes, live my life in the backseat, he thinks, before the light turns green.

~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~~ ♬ ~

Back in Seoul, weeks later, when the silence returns, when he’s alone again, Yoongi plays the track he wrote that night. The one he never released.

It starts with desert wind. A faint laugh caught on tape. His voice, unpolished and human.

Serotonin sky… Got her bringing out the best in me. Every constellation over Joshua Tree…

And when he closes his eyes, he sees you again.

Back on that hood.

Still by his side.

#yoongi fanfiction #yoongi ff #yoongi fanfic #yoongi x reader #yoongi x yn #bts fanfiction #fanfic #bts min yoongi

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pancaketax · 5 months ago

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What Remains | Chapter 1 A Ghost Among the Living (Tony Stark x M! Reader)

Summary : The morning unfolds in quiet solitude, the apartment filled with stale air and remnants of your roommate’s late-night mess. At university, the day drags on, lectures feeling distant, classmates engaged in conversations that barely include you. A new animation project is assigned, but motivation is scarce. Eliott’s usual teasing barely registers, while Peter, as always, tries to pull you back into reality. He brings up a Stark-hosted event, sensing you need something to break the cycle. Meanwhile, home is no refuge—tension with Matthew lingers after an unspoken mistake changed everything. As night falls, the walk back feels heavier, each step pulling you toward a place that no longer feels like yours. Post aswell on AO3

word count: 6.9k

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The low hum of the alarm breaks the silence of the room—barely audible, yet enough to disturb the frozen stillness of dawn. It doesn’t truly ring, it vibrates — a discreet, rhythmic, almost organic pulse that makes the nightstand tremble faintly. A bluish glow escapes from its digital screen, casting the shadow of the furniture across the cracked wall. The numbers press themselves into the darkness: 5:42. Too early to live, too late to keep dreaming. But you stopped sleeping at normal hours a long time ago. Habit, or maybe necessity, drives you to rise before the first rays of morning kiss the gray sidewalks of the city.

You lie there for a moment, still, on your back, eyes open, staring at the fissured ceiling as if it might offer you an answer you’ve never known how to ask. Your body is numb, but your mind is already elsewhere, floating in that semi-conscious haze that precedes the gestures of the day. With a slow, almost deliberate motion, you slide the coarse blanket to the side. The cool air bites at your bare skin for a second, drawing a shiver. Your feet search for the floor, settle on the worn-out wood that creaks under your weight. Your hand disappears into your tousled hair, tracing an uncertain path through the knots formed by the night. Your fingers linger for a moment at your temple, as if trying to massage a thought struggling to be born. Then, without a word, without a sound, you get up. Your steps are soft, nearly silent—like an intruder in your own home. The apartment is steeped in warm darkness, disturbed only by the cold reflections of the streetlamp filtering through half-closed blinds.

As you walk down the narrow hallway, a muffled snore reaches you from the living room. You pause on the threshold. Your roommate is slumped on the couch, a blanket lazily thrown over one shoulder. His mouth is slightly open, his breathing uneven. A pale light blinks softly on his face from the TV screen, left on standby. He looks peaceful, almost detached from the very idea of discomfort. You watch him for a second, without animosity, without affection either—just that neutral, distant gaze you now reserve for everything that no longer truly concerns you.

You turn away, slowly making your way to the cramped kitchen. It greets you with its familiar coldness—worn-out surfaces, cracked tiles, cupboard handles hanging loose. You reach for the coffee machine, already prepared the night before, and press the button. A soft click followed by the low rumble of heating water fills the space. The sound, almost comforting, breaks the heavy silence of the apartment. For a few seconds, you stand still, arms crossed, watching the black liquid drip slowly into the carafe. The strong, bitter scent of coffee begins to fill the air, seeping into your nostrils, triggering a sensory memory you don’t try to name.

You open the fridge, its door groaning with a tired sigh. A harsh light spills out, brutally illuminating the remnants of a night you weren’t part of: empty beer cans stacked on the bottom shelf, a torn-open bag of chips, crumbs scattered everywhere, an overflowing ashtray resting directly on the glass, filled with a bizarre mix of cigarette butts and pen caps. A cold, acrid smell hits your nose. You close the door with your foot, irritated but not angry. It’s nothing new. And it won’t be cleaned either. You grab a mug—the same one as always, chipped, with the image of a black cat—and pour the hot coffee into it. The feel of the ceramic against your palm is oddly comforting, almost familiar. You sit on one of the two rickety chairs pulled up to the small table, set against the wall to save space. The room is quiet again, pierced only by the distant hush of a city waking up.

Through the slightly open window, the sounds of the outside world timidly seep in. A lone car horn in the distance, followed by indistinct shouting. You hear hurried footsteps, maybe a jogger, maybe someone rushing to work. The street is still pale, the air probably damp, thick with the fatigue of sleepless nights and the lukewarm promise of an ordinary day. You sit there, listening, watching, letting your thoughts unravel slowly into the diffuse silence.

Here, in this narrow apartment, you are just a blurred outline in a frozen frame. A silhouette among shadows. Background noise in someone else’s routine. You inhabit the walls without leaving a mark; you drift through days like a forgotten dream. You are invisible—even to yourself.

And at university, it’s not much better — just another shadow in the hallways, a figure that doesn’t make waves, a name nobody remembers. You’re alive, but without presence. You exist, but without grounding.

You raise the mug to your lips. The coffee is bitter. It burns your tongue, but you don’t flinch. You cling to the sensation, as proof that you’re still here. You sit there for a long moment, staring into your mug, as if the dark liquid might show you a direction to follow. The acrid smell slowly fades into the still air of the kitchen, replaced by a dull fatigue that nothing seems able to lift. Then, with a methodical gesture, you get up. Your movements are precise, almost devoid of intent—they follow a mechanical routine, as if your body, out of habit, knows what to do without your permission.

You walk to the small table against the wall, where your bag waits—slumped, the fabric tired from too many aimless commutes. You open it in silence, sliding in your sketchbook, its cover bent from too much handling, and your laptop—heavy and warm—handled with care. You check automatically for your charger, a pen, your tangled earbuds. Each object finds its place, like in an emotionless ritual. You head to the coat rack near the door and grab your jacket—the one you wear nearly every day, its elbows worn thin, marked by time and neglect. Before leaving, your eyes drift toward the living room, stopping on the inert silhouette of your roommate. He’s still there, slumped in an awkward position, mouth half-open, uneven breath escaping his dry lips. The blanket has slipped off his shoulder, pooling halfway on the floor like it gave up.

You feel nothing. No tenderness, no irritation. Just that quiet, worn-out indifference that settled between you from the very first day. Two people coexisting out of necessity, like silent passengers on a never-ending ride. You look away, gently close the door behind you. The dry click echoes briefly in the hallway, then silence takes back its reign.

Outside, the air is sharp, biting against your skin. A morning chill that seeps through your jacket and draws an involuntary shiver. You inhale deeply. The damp smell of asphalt, of trash still piled in the street corners, and the more distant scent of warm bread mingle in a strange urban harmony. A new day begins, identical to the last, identical to the one before. One more day where you’ll move among others unnoticed, leaving no trace. You walk down the stairs, your worn-out shoes hitting the concrete with regularity. Each step a note in the monotone symphony of your daily life. The walk to university is short. You know it by heart, but you don’t even look anymore. The same shop windows with the same displays, the same tired faces, the same impatient horns at the same intersections.

As you get closer, the street grows livelier. Students pour in from every direction, carrying the same bags, earbuds in, eyes ringed from short nights. They cross paths, sometimes greet each other in passing, laugh, yawn, call out. Their voices blend with the engines and the early birds. You walk among them, at their pace, but from a distance. You’re there, physically, but no one looks at you. Your existence slips between the cracks of theirs, like a quiet current that never disturbs the flow. You pass through the university gates, enter the main building, then the hallway leading to your classroom. The freshly cleaned floor still smells of harsh disinfectant. The walls display the same old project posters, warped slightly from humidity. You enter the amphitheater—a space with harsh lighting and a ceiling far too high, where the emptiness feels larger than the presence of the students already seated.

The room is half-empty. A few scattered groups talk in low voices, their faces glued to screens or bent over notebooks. You recognize a few figures, classmates whose names you’ve never bothered to learn. They’re part of your class, but there’s no real sense of group. Just a bunch of individuals vaguely gathered by the obligation of a shared curriculum. You pick a seat on the side, mid-height, where you can observe without being seen. You set down your bag, take out your notebook, a pencil. You wait. Around you, the conversations pick up again, mundane. Deadlines, due dates, hoping a teacher won’t show up, overpriced vending machine coffee. Colorless conversations that fill the space without feeding it. The professor eventually arrives, late as usual, walking briskly, a poorly tied scarf around his neck. He drops his bag with a sharp motion, opens his laptop, connects the projector. The screen flickers to life with a familiar hum. The image stabilizes, a title appears: Semester Project – Animated Opening on the Theme of Ecology. He clears his throat, adjusts his voice, then begins to speak.

You hear the words—visual storytelling, meaningful message, symbolic mise-en-scène. He talks about impact, emotion, creative responsibility. Some students jot notes frantically, others nod as if trying to absorb every word. A flicker of excitement rises in the room, barely perceptible, but there. Ideas are already flying. One mentions Japanese inspiration, another a vintage UPA style. Reference names pop up, techniques, color palettes. You stare at your notebook. The first page is still blank. Your pencil grazes the paper, writes a word, then another. Ideas that don’t quite stick, blurry fragments. You sketch a few abstract shapes, faceless silhouettes, lines without depth. Your mind is already drifting. The voices around you become distant, filtered through an invisible bubble. You hear without listening. You’re here, but elsewhere. Always on the edge, always apart.

Your gaze drifts beyond the lecture hall, drawn by the subtle movement of students below in the courtyard. From up here, they look like rushing shadows, their steps paced by habit, their gestures erased by the dull morning light. You watch them without really seeing, your thoughts floating elsewhere, far beyond the university walls. A harsh scrape—the sound of a chair dragged carelessly—pulls you briefly back to the surface. You blink, as if shaking off a dream, then your gaze drops back to your sketchbook. Your fingers, moved by some independent will, resume their slow, distracted dance. A few abstract lines appear on the page—without direction, without intent. They testify to your deep disinterest, that distance between you and the world.

The professor goes on with his presentation, his voice rising above the ambient murmur. The discussions multiply—some students speak without raising their hands, others comment on the projected visuals. The commotion brushes past you without touching, like a distant buzzing. Your pencil drifts again, carving out indistinct forms, like a sleepwalker tracing footsteps in snow. You’re not really there. Another day of class slips by, just like the others, your presence blending into the background. A throat clears, snapping you once more from your daze. You barely lift your eyes, just enough to spot a familiar silhouette settling beside you. Eliott. He makes himself comfortable as if he’s known you forever, elbow resting lazily on the table in perfect nonchalance. He turns his head slightly toward you, a smirk tugging at his lips, and blatantly peeks at your sketchbook.

He’s the kind of guy who stands out in a crowd like this. His sweatshirt outlines a discreet but solid build, maintained without showing off. His dark brown hair is always neatly trimmed, giving his face a near-military sharpness. But what really strikes you are his eyes—two piercing blue sparks, vivid, sharp, almost too bright to be real. When he looks at you, it’s like he sees right through you with unnerving ease.

— “So,” he says, voice laced with mockery, “did you crank out something revolutionary or still stuck in procrastination mode?”

You shrug, barely shifting your gaze. No desire to explain. You quietly turn the page of your notebook, hiding the aimless scribbles that would betray your lack of inspiration. You already know he won’t settle for silence, but you’d rather not invite commentary. He lets out a theatrical sigh, rolls his eyes like the weight of the world just landed on his shoulders, then slowly straightens to look at the professor’s screen.

— “Seriously, who thought giving us a project about ecology was a good idea? They want us to become tree-huggers or what?” His tone is loud enough to draw a few stares, but he clearly doesn’t care.

You stifle a small smile. Eliott often annoys others with his borderline provocative remarks, but you’ve learned to see through them. It’s a mask, a persona he wears religiously: the cocky guy, a bit macho, always ready with a jab to test reactions. A role he plays with almost artistic precision. He glances at you again, his blue eyes catching the pale light filtering through the blinds.

— “You got even a single idea for what you’re gonna do?” he asks, voice lower this time.

You sigh. You shake your head slowly, like even answering costs too much energy.

— “Not really. I don’t even know why I’m still here.”

He arches an eyebrow, mock-surprised.

— “Third year and still lost? Impressive.” He pats your shoulder briefly, almost affectionately, then bends over his own notebook, starting to sketch out half-formed shapes of his own, like he’s following you into the fog.

You let out a soft breath, barely audible, swallowed by the ambient murmurs. Another day pretending, faking progress while everything in you remains frozen. Around you, the project begins to take shape. Conversations become more concrete, ideas intersect, sketches multiply. The group moves forward, inexorably—even without you. You feel like you’re still standing on the platform while the train has already left, carrying with it the momentum you never managed to catch. The bell rings—sharp, metallic—signaling the break. A slight jolt ripples through the room, then everything speeds up. Students pack their stuff with the jittery eagerness of people desperate to escape for a few moments. Some laugh, chat in low voices about their projects, others are already on their feet checking their phones, planning a coffee break or a cigarette outside. You watch them without really seeing, their blurry excitement sliding off your vacant stare.

You stay where you are, arms crossed over your chest, as if that posture might hold your inner world together a bit longer. The amphitheater empties slowly, footsteps echoing off the metal steps, laughter fading. The door closes softly behind the last student. Silence falls again like a cold blanket. Only the low hum of the projector remains, still on, and the pale light bathing your abandoned notebook. You could go outside too. Feel the sun on your skin, watch the others live a simple, light moment. But what’s the point? That world feels distant, like you’re looking at it through thick glass. So you stay. You lower your gaze to your notebook, its pages half-filled with meaningless lines, unfinished sketches, fragments of ideas that died before they formed. You try to take a step back, to understand what you could possibly do with this project, with the coming months, with this degree you’re pursuing almost mechanically.

And there, facing the blankness, a quiet truth sinks in. You’re not really here. Not in this classroom, not in these studies. You’re following a motion without believing in its destination. Motion Design. Three years of learning tools, theories, techniques. Of faking motivation, pretending it all means something. But the truth is, you’re drifting—because you have to go somewhere. Because they told you it was better than nothing. Because you told yourself that maybe, with a diploma in hand, you could try something on your own. Freelance work, independence. But none of it sets your heart racing. None of it really drives you. You realize that sometimes, you envy the ones who have the spark. The ones who argue with passion, who stay after class to work on their projects, who take initiative, who talk in terms of style, narrative, rhythm—with stars in their eyes. You, you look at your screen with indifference. You open the software without conviction. You start things you never finish. And meanwhile, everyone else keeps moving forward.

And there’s that persistent feeling, always humming in the background—the sense that you were pushed aside. You weren’t always alone. You used to be different. You showed up. You went to parties. You brought drinks, food. You talked, you laughed. And then one day, it stopped. You never understood why. There wasn’t a fight, no dramatic gesture. Just the slow, quiet realization that you weren’t invited anymore. That you weren’t included. You went from being “there” to being “too much.” And since then, you’ve drifted. You go missing. You stop giving notice. You isolate yourself—not really on purpose, but not trying to stop it either.

Your mother doesn’t know any of this. She thinks you’re doing fine. That you’re serious. That you’re working hard to succeed. You never really lied to her—not exactly—you just left things out. You didn’t have the strength to disappoint her. So you keep playing your role. You get up every morning, you go to class, you come home late, you say you’re tired. And it’s true. You are tired. Just not in the way she thinks. You don’t even really have an appetite anymore. You don’t feel like cooking, even though it was one of the few things you used to enjoy doing for yourself. You can’t afford the cafeteria, or delivery. Your living situation wears you down, eats away at your energy a little more each day. You’re supposed to cook, eat properly, take care of yourself. But that takes a kind of willpower you just don’t have anymore. The idea of pulling out ingredients, chopping them, watching over a pan… it all feels distant, too complicated, too demanding for a mind already saturated. So you settle for whatever’s there. Leftovers. Cold meals. Packaged food. Anything that gets you through without requiring effort.

You could go out now. Get some air, feel something other than this lethargy clinging to you like a heavy blanket. But you’re still here, sitting. Staring at your notebook, searching for answers that won’t come. Hoping a line, a word, an idea will shatter the invisible wall between you and the person you’re supposed to be. But all you hear is silence. The door opens softly, and a warm draft slides into the empty amphitheater. You don’t move right away, still frozen in your quiet daze. A familiar figure appears in your field of vision. Peter Parker. His shoulder bag thumping against his thigh, his hoodie a bit too loose, sneakers squeaking on the smooth floor. He walks in like the place belongs to him, with that casual ease he brings everywhere. He spots you instantly, a playful smile on his lips, then approaches without a word. He sits next to you, drops his bag on the desk with an automatic gesture, then crosses his arms, watching you like he can read every thought without you saying a thing.

— “Bet you haven’t done a damn thing yet,” he says finally, his usual half-smile glued to his face.

You shrug with that slow detachment you’ve perfected when you don’t want to explain yourself.

— “I’m thinking about it.”

— “Yeah, yeah.” He rolls his eyes, but there’s no malice in it. “You always think about it right up until the night before, and yet you still manage to hand in something decent.” He tilts his head slightly, raising a brow. “But you do know that’s a crap work strategy, right?”

You smile faintly, amused by his familiar honesty.

— “So I’ve heard.”

Peter shakes his head, mock-despair in his eyes, and leans over to glance at your open notebook. He squints, analyzes the forms without commenting, then asks, voice barely louder than a whisper,

— “What’s the project about again?”

You fold your arms on the table, head lowered slightly.

— “An animated title sequence. Ecology theme.” You pause, your tone laced with the soft irony you reserve for uninspiring assignments. “Inspiring, right?”

He lifts an eyebrow, pretending to be impressed.

— “Yeah, sounds like it’ll be packed with moral messages about saving the planet and recycling. Good luck with that.”

You nod silently, lips tight.

— “Thanks for the support.”

The silence that settles next is easy, obvious. You don’t need to fill the space between you with pointless sentences. Peter doesn’t either. He just sits there, perched on the edge of his desk, hands clasped, his gaze drifting between the dark screen and your notebook still lying open. He watches you calmly, attentive but never intrusive. He knows you. He knows you shut down when pressure builds, that you prefer irony to drama, withdrawal to confrontation.

— “You got even a rough idea of what you’ll do?” he asks again, his voice softer now.

You shrug once more. The gesture has become an answer in itself.

— “Not really. I don’t even know why I’m still here.”

Peter turns his head toward you, his expression shaded with a gravity he rarely shows. He looks at you for a moment, as if weighing his words. Then he sighs—a long breath, betraying a quiet worry.

— “You’re fed up, huh?”

You don’t answer right away. You stare at an invisible spot on your notebook, a fleck in the paper, a flaw in the ink. You could say yes. You could spill everything. But you don’t feel the need to. He doesn’t push. He waits. And sometimes, that’s enough. His presence alone serves as a reminder: you’re not completely alone.

You smile—brief, tired.

— “Anyway, you know how it is. I’m just here to survive the day. We’re here for the degree, not to make friends.”

Peter says nothing. He nods slowly, a compassionate smile brushing his lips. He doesn’t pretend. He accepts your cynicism, your exhaustion, without trying to fix them. You pull out your phone—a reflex, just to fill the void. You scroll through the news with a lazy thumb, not really reading. Until one headline catches your eye. You pause, frown, then tilt the screen toward Peter.

— “You seen this?” you ask. “They want us to go to some conference on new technologies.”

He skims the article quickly, his eyes darting from line to line with curiosity.

— “It’s hosted by Tony Stark. Could be cool.”

You raise an eyebrow, half-skeptical, half-annoyed.

— “Mmh. Not really sold on it.”

Peter turns to you, a little surprised.

— “Why not? Not your thing?”

You straighten a bit, sighing.

—“First of all, it’s in the evening. And I’m working that day. Not sure it’s worth the hassle.”

He shrugs, understanding.

— “Makes sense. But still... it’s Stark, y’know.”

You don’t answer. You let the silence stretch a little, then set your phone down face-down on the table, as if that would end the conversation. You stretch slowly, arms above your head, your shoulders cracking under the tension. The break’s almost over. Already, you hear voices in the hallway, footsteps approaching. The bell rings—its metallic echo cutting through the walls of the amphitheater like a sharp reminder. Peter stands up, grabs his bag in one smooth motion, then throws you a sideways glance—half teasing, half concerned.

— “All right, back to your class of ghost-shadows,” Peter jokes with a wink. “At least try to pretend you’re motivated.”

You stay there for a second, once again alone, in the fading echo of his voice. Silence returns, slowly reclaiming the space between the empty rows of seats. Your eyes linger on the now-closed door without really seeing it. It feels like Peter just took a fragment of light with him, leaving the usual shade of your day-to-day behind. Then, little by little, the calm is replaced by a growing murmur. Students return, one by one, in scattered clusters. Footsteps echo on the floor, voices rise again, chairs creak under rediscovered weight. The room fills up slowly—alive, noisy—but to you, it’s like it’s all happening behind a window. You’re here, yes, physically present, but none of it really reaches you.

You haven’t moved. Your arms still crossed, head slightly lowered, gaze lost in the spirals of your sketchbook, while others’ words float around you. But one conversation eventually pierces your bubble. You don’t really mean to listen, but their excitement makes it impossible to ignore. They’re talking about the event tonight. The conference hosted by Tony Stark. His name alone seems to electrify the air. Some are speaking with barely restrained enthusiasm, eyes already sparkling with anticipation, as if they’re hoping for some grand revelation. Others are more reserved, weighing the pros and cons with fake objectivity. There are those who see it as a networking opportunity, a possible step toward a real job. And those who don’t know if they’ll go, but talk about it anyway—just to stay part of the conversation.

You stay frozen in your seat, expression blank. You hear, but don’t listen. The buzz slides over you like rain on glass. Nothing catches. Even if Tony Stark himself walked down from the stage and handed you a personal invitation, you’re not sure it would make a difference. The thought of going feels pointless. Too far. Too loud. Too full of people. And anyway, you’re working that night. That’s what you keep telling yourself. Like a shield. A convenient excuse. A quiet sigh slips from your lips. You dive back into your sketchbook, as if it could serve as refuge, a barrier against the noise outside. You scribble without purpose—shapes without logic, fragments of thoughts barely formed. Just another day of being here, of pretending to function, while your inner self stays motionless. A blurred figure in a world too sharp.

A familiar clearing of the throat interrupts you again. You look up just in time to see Eliott plop down noisily beside you. He folds his arms on the desk, back slightly hunched, and flashes that trademark smirk of his. His piercing blue eyes glint with mischief, but not malice.

— “Come on, man, you can’t be that dead inside. We’re talking about Stark here! It’s not every day we get a shot like this. And we’re doing an afterparty too. Gonna be fun.”

You don’t reply right away. You glance to the side, your gaze brushing your phone. The screen lights up under your thumb, revealing another wave of unread content you scroll through without focus. Your thumb moves up and down, mechanical. Your eyes are here, but your mind remains somewhere else.

You let a few seconds pass before muttering, without even looking at him.

— “I’ll see… I don’t know. I’m working that night anyway.”

Eliott rolls his eyes, an amused grimace tugging at his mouth.

— “You always find an excuse, huh? Seriously, you should come. It might clear your head.”

You shrug vaguely. It’s not that you’re refusing the invitation—but you can’t bring yourself to imagine going either. His insistence doesn’t bother you. It barely touches you. Like everything else. You’re stuck in that bittersweet fog where every suggestion feels demanding, every movement a mountain.

And yet, a small voice buried inside whispers that he’s not wrong. That you’re just surviving. That you’ve been floating on the surface of everything for a while now—never diving in. You survive. You conserve energy. You say “no” by default. Or “maybe,” just to avoid saying “I’m too tired.” Eliott eventually gives up. He slouches against the back of his chair, arms crossed behind his head, looking resigned but still amused.

— “You’re really a lost cause, man. But hey, if you change your mind, we’ll be there.”

You turn your head just a little, a small smile flickering at the corner of your lips without staying. You nod—barely—but enough for him to know you heard. Maybe you’ll change your mind. Maybe not. The idea hangs there, suspended, somewhere between possibility and indifference. For now, you’re not there yet. For now, you’re still watching the world go by from the sidelines, unsure whether you even want to step into it.

The day stretches out slowly, weighed down by the stillness of the room and the constant hum of voices. The hours slip by without you really feeling them—punctuated by the tapping of keyboards, the scraping of pencils, tired sighs and the occasional burst of laughter. You’re still there, in your seat, notebook open in front of you, but your thoughts are somewhere else entirely. Every now and then, you doodle, scribble a word, a shape, a diagram you immediately erase. Nothing takes form. Nothing grips you.

Around you, the commotion continues, like a little self-contained world you only float through. The conversations loop endlessly. The Tony Stark event keeps coming up, again and again, like a magnet pulling all the room’s energy toward it. Your classmates talk about it with a mix of excitement and nerves, as if it were some pivotal moment in their careers. Some see it as a professional opportunity, others just want a glimpse of a celebrity. But what keeps coming up—what everyone seems most hyped about—is the after.

You learn it almost by accident, half-listening while pretending not to. The afterparty will be held in a luxury apartment, apparently lent by a student who’s clearly way more loaded than the rest. The comments pour in about the décor, the rooftop jacuzzi, the balcony views. They’re already talking about drinks, playlists, who’s bringing what. The mood is rising, energy building—and you remain still in your bubble. A few people vaguely call out to you, invite you again. Always the same polite smiles, the same hazy looks. Not because they really care about you being there. No—you know why. They remember the convenient version of you: the guy who, without saying much, brings a good bottle, the guy who always adds a little something extra to the vibe. They don’t know you. They don’t know anything about you. But they keep that blurry image: the quiet one, but useful.

That’s when you find out the event isn’t tonight. It’s tomorrow. The news slides over you like a lukewarm drop of water. Nothing changes. One more day pretending, taking up space without really inhabiting it. Another chance to stay on the outside while others make plans, carve out paths you won’t follow. The hours crawl. The afternoon drags like a never-ending rainy day. The professor comes back, still talking about the project. Some students show progress, share ideas. You pretend to listen, nodding now and then, taking a note here and there. But your mind is fogged. Nothing gets through. You’re there—but not really. And finally, the end creeps closer. The sun starts dipping behind the grimy windows, casting the room in a golden light that doesn’t warm you. One by one, voices quiet, things get packed away, bags zip shut in soft rustles. You finally move. Slowly. You close your notebook with almost ceremonial slowness. You tuck your pencil back in its case, your laptop into your bag—every motion precise, measured, meaningless.

Your movements are automatic, like a puppet repeating the same dance every day. You don’t look at anyone. You say nothing. No goodbye, no smile. You slip between the others like a shadow leaving before the room’s even empty. Only the dull sound of your zipper, the gentle scrape of your chair, and the weight of your bag on your shoulder remain behind you. Another day behind you. Another one ahead. Identical. Silent. Outside, the air barely surprises you, but it’s enough to remind you you’re no longer indoors. It’s cooler than the stuffy classroom, and it brushes your face, drawing a subtle shiver. The daylight fades, leaving behind that orange hue that marks the end of a season’s day. You take a deep breath, as if that one inhale might wash away the inertia of the day.

And then, the second your eyes sweep the plaza in front of the university—you see him. Peter. Leaning against a lamppost, hands stuffed in the pockets of his oversized hoodie, one leg bent against the painted metal pole. That eternal half-smile lights up his face—calm, grounded, reliable. He was waiting for you. When your eyes meet his, he straightens with a fluid motion, steps away from the post, and walks toward you with that quiet energy he always carries.

— “So,” he says, one eyebrow raised in a mix of amusement and gentle challenge, “still not convinced about seeing Stark live?”

You sigh, already tired just thinking about the subject again. You shrug lightly, not even slowing your pace.

— “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t really have the energy for it. I’ve got work that night anyway, and showing up to a conference after… I’ll just end up more exhausted.”

Peter lets out a soft laugh, rolling his eyes, but his smile doesn’t fade.

— “I’ll pick you up after your shift if you want. We don’t have to stay long. Just check it out, feel the vibe, then you can crash.”

You glance sideways at him, a bit intrigued by his persistence. He knows you’re not the type to chase after big social events. He knows crowded rooms, inspiring speeches, charged-up atmospheres—they’re not your thing. But he keeps insisting. Not to be annoying. More like he genuinely wants to pull you out of this fog you’ve been sinking into day after day. Like he’s scared you’ll vanish into your routine without even noticing. You lower your gaze, eyes trailing the sidewalk. You feel the weight of your bag, the sound of your footsteps on the concrete, the breeze brushing your neck. Without thinking, you pull your phone from your pocket and scroll aimlessly. Pointless notifications. Unread messages. News that tells you nothing.

— “Yeah… maybe,” you murmur. “But I’ve got the project too. Not like I’ve got time to waste.”

Peter stops walking for a second—just enough to cross his arms and tilt his head toward you.

— “Dude, when’s the last time you did something just for you? Not for class, not for work—just… for you?”

You stay silent. His question catches you off guard. Worse—it hits home. That emptiness you feel every day has already been whispering the answer. But saying it out loud, admitting it to him—that’s different. That’s a step you’re not ready to take yet. You shrug faintly, a movement so small it’s barely there. You pocket your phone without a word, like that gesture could close the topic.

— “I’ll think about it,” you say eventually, your voice tired, uncertain—but not shut off.

Peter’s smile softens—almost brotherly. He pats your shoulder with his palm, light but full of meaning. Then, without pressing further, he starts walking again beside you.

— “It’s cool. I know your ‘I’ll think about it.’ I’m still coming to get you though, just in case.”

You shake your head slightly, a faint smile tugging at your lips despite yourself. One of those smiles that doesn’t fully land—but Peter always catches it. He knows you. Too well, sometimes. No other words are needed. You walk on together in the fading light, in silence. The streets begin to come alive again. Shop windows light up one by one, people stream out of offices, bikes weave between cars. In the distance, you spot the glowing signs of the grocery store where you work. They’re already blinking faintly in the deepening dusk, dragging a sigh out of you. The world keeps spinning—noisy, fast. But in this quiet walk next to Peter, something feels suspended. Just for a moment. Like in all the background noise, you’ve found a breath of calm.

The walk continues in a lighter mood, almost peaceful. You and Peter exchange trivial things—stories that don’t matter, little observations—just to keep the weight off. Talking without effort, without pressure, without expectation. It’s simple. It’s soft. It’s rare. A moment where you don’t have to perform, or calculate your words. You can just exist—present, unguarded. Then, between two street lamps, between two muffled chuckles, silence settles in again. You let it. You don’t try to break it. And finally, without really meaning to, you sigh—almost under your breath—eyes drifting to the pavement sliding by under your shoes.

— “I don’t really wanna go home tonight…”

Peter doesn’t answer right away. But he doesn’t need to. You feel his gaze on you—steady, listening. You know he understood, the way he always does, with that silent kind of insight that never forces you to say more than you’re ready to. He doesn’t push. He waits. And you keep walking. He knows. Since you arrived in the city, you thought you had found balance. A simple living arrangement. No drama. Matthew was just that quiet but friendly guy, the one things just clicked with. Those late-night kitchen chats, shared beers, the unspoken ease of quiet routines. A soft kind of normal. Built from small gestures and unspoken understanding.

And then came that night. You don’t even know why you did it. A mix of exhaustion, loneliness, tension that had been building in every glance for weeks. That unspoken something that hovered over every meal, every laugh that lingered a bit too long. You kissed him. And everything stopped. Like a light switch flipped mid-motion. In seconds, everything you’d built collapsed. Since then, Matthew has become a bitter shadow in your everyday life. He doesn’t talk to you anymore—or only to throw passive-aggressive remarks. At first, he avoided you. Then came the little comments, the pointed looks, the sighs. He learned to aim right—straight at what hurts. You don’t know if it’s rejection, fear, or just cruelty in disguise. You don’t know. And you don’t want to figure it out anymore.

You rub your hand over your face, already tired at the thought of crossing that threshold, hearing another sigh, seeing his closed-off stare.

— “Matthew’s home tonight, and I just know it’s gonna be a mess again.”

Peter turns his head gently toward you, his gaze calm but touched with concern. He doesn’t judge. He doesn’t dramatize. He just extends the offer like he’s holding out a hand.

— “You wanna crash somewhere else tonight? I can take you in if you want.”

You hesitate. You even slow your pace a little. The idea is tempting. But you shake your head softly, almost automatically.

— “Nah, I’ll be fine. I just… needed to say it.”

He stays quiet for a second, then matches your pace again. His presence remains steady—comforting, but never overbearing. Exactly what you need. Still, he doesn’t drop it entirely. His tone stays gentle, but firmer this time.

— “You say that, but seriously… you don’t have to put up with a roommate like that. If he’s being an ass, maybe it’s time to just step away from it, y’know?”

You smile a little—a crooked, sad smile. The kind born more from irony than joy.

— “Don’t worry. I’ve been through worse, honestly.”

Peter shoots you a more focused look, and his expression shifts slightly. Something in your voice—or your eyes—must have caught his attention.

— “Yeah? Like what?”

You shrug slightly, your gaze drifting to the lit windows of distant apartment blocks.

— “I mean… outside of class, you don’t really know me that well.”

He doesn’t respond immediately. You can feel him processing that. Maybe for the first time, he’s realizing that everything he knows about you is surface-level. He knows the classmate—the quiet guy, sometimes sarcastic, often tired, always a bit distant. But not the rest. Not the weight behind the silences. Not the things you’ve run from to end up here. Eventually, he lets out a sigh, a sideways smile tugging at his lips.

— “You’re good at dodging serious questions, huh?”

You glance at him, raising an eyebrow.

— “You just noticed?”

He lets out a quiet laugh—almost fond.

— “You’re a walking mystery, man. One day, you’re gonna have to open up a little.”

You don’t reply. You leave the sentence hanging in the air between you. It’s easier that way. He seems to understand—again. So he doesn’t push. The rest of the walk unfolds in peaceful silence, broken only by the sound of your steps on the pavement. The streetlamps cast their trembling halos, shop signs flicker as businesses close one by one. Evening settles in for real. The world slows down. At a corner, the two of you stop without needing to say a word. It’s habit. The natural end of the road. Peter slips his hands into his pockets, his gaze settling on you one last time, more serious than usual.

— “If anything happens—send me a message, okay?”

You nod slowly.

— “Yeah. Don’t worry. Good night.”

— “Good night, man.”

He walks off, his steps swallowed by the night. You watch him disappear without moving, then turn in the opposite direction, starting your way back. Each step toward your building brings back that weight you know too well. It’s not fatigue. It’s anticipation. The dread of walking back into that now-hostile space, filled with heavy silences and dodged glances. The air feels colder all of a sudden. Or maybe it’s just the pressure sitting on your chest—the one that always finds you again, right there, every single night.

#tony stark #reader insert #x reader #x male reader #tony stark x male reader #slow burn #unrequited crush #marvel #marvel cinematic universe #tony stark x you #mcu #long fic #tony stark x reader #enemies to friends #ao3 fanfic #iron man x male reader #marvel iron man #marvel tony stark

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yandere-daydreams · 2 years ago

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Title: To Mark.

A Grab-Bag Commission For The Very Lovely @ohsotearful.

Pairing: Yandere!Wanderer x Reader (Genshin).

Word Count: 1.0k.

TW: Biting/Marking, Set Before Wanderer Regains His Memories, Unhealthy Relationships, and Slight Manipulation.

You’d almost gotten used to the feeling of your husband’s teeth sinking into your shoulder.

A sharp sting, a tight stretch, then finally, the burning relief of his dull canines drawing back and warm blood washing over your skin. His chest was pressed against yours, your legs tangled loosely around his waist, but the closeness brought little comfort when his skin seemed to sap the heat from your own and his hands were wrapped so tightly around your hips. There’d be bruises tomorrow – pinpricks of discolored skin that he’d want to strip bare and examine as soon as they were visible, but you tried not to think about that. His little fixation was one of the more unfortunate parts of your relationship, and you did your best to keep it out of your mind whenever you could.

This, unfortunately, was not one of those times. He found a new spot – the tender junction between your throat and your shoulder – and latched on. Rather than pierce, he chose to suckle, catching your skin between the flat edges of his teeth and sucking gently until his chosen patch was irritated and reddened, until he could be sure there’d be a mark to match the collection he’d already painted across your collarbones, up the curve of your throat, at each corner of your jaw. Most of them were fresh, others older, allowed to fade before your husband remembered to revisit them. None would be allowed to disappear completely, and if they managed the impossible, he’d be sure to lay you down and spend the better half of a day making up for his negligence. Your husband had always been attentive, like that.

His teeth sunk into your jugular and you shrunk into him, an airy whimper escaping your sealed lips. Immediately, he detached from you, raising his head and bringing his stare up to meet your own. You’d never been able to say ‘no’ to him, not when he looked at you with those big, pleading eyes. “Did I…” A slight pause, his tongue darting out to swipe a dot of your blood off his bottom lip. “Did I hurt you?”

Obviously. You had to remind yourself that he wasn’t like you, that pain wasn’t something he had experience with. His porcelain skin would never bruise, and in as much time as you’d spent together, you’d never seen him bleeding or burnt. You had to be empathetic. You had to be patient.

Unfortunately, patience wasn’t a skill both of you saw the value of. When you failed to answer immediately, he took your silence as affirmation and frowned, leaning towards you. “I’m sorry.” It was a familiar apology, but no less sincere than it’d been the first half-dozen times he’d used it. Hesitantly, he brought a hand up to your forehead before remembering that the gesture was meant for a different type of pain and letting it fall back to your waist. “Is it bad? I can get the bandages, if you need them. Or, there’s a pharmacy on the other side of the city—”

“I’m fine, I swear.” You forced out an airy laugh, letting your lips brush against his cheek, then the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t a lie. You’d be nearly too sore to move in the morning, but for now, you were fine. “But, I think it might be time to stop. I don’t want the innkeeper to think that you, I don’t know, mauled me in my sleep or something.”

Immediately, his expression turned from worried to panicky. “But we just started,” he whined, his tone childish, desperate. You hadn’t – you’d been in his lap of just over an hour, now – but he’d always been prone to losing track of time. “I’ll be gentle, and.. and I can move to your chest, if you don’t want anyone to see! I don’t have to—”

“My love,” you cut in, sighing as you cupped his face in your hands. Reflexively, he nuzzled into your palm, melting into your affection far easier than you’d ever be able to melt into his. “I hate having to stop as much as you do, but I’m tired. I might not be hurt now, but I will be if we keep going for any longer.” You smiled, bringing him close enough to kiss properly. It was shallow, fleeting, but you could taste metal on his lips. You tried not to feel sick. “I want to get some sleep. I promise, you can dig your teeth into whatever you—”

It was his turn to interrupt you, this time, his request more simple than yours. "Just a little more?" And then, when your smile wavered, “Please?”

You started to sigh, to shake your head, but against your better judgement, you met those awful, saccharine eyes and…

And, it was over in an instant.

“Fine,” you muttered, dread and self-loathing already welling up in the back of your throat. “Just a few more minutes, the—"

He didn’t wait for you to finish. Your body was wretched away from his in a moment, thrown onto the downy futon below you in another. He was buried between your legs and attacking the vulnerable flesh between your thighs before you could so much as think about asking him to try to hold himself back. His teeth sunk into your flesh, but you didn’t scream, didn’t whimper.

You just let your head roll back, shut your eyes, and tried to pretend you didn’t feel a thing.

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theplotmage · 5 months ago

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100 List of Quirks for your Fantasy Characters:

Get character worksheet here!

1. Speaks in ancient or forgotten languages when nervous or emotional.

2. Uses magic unintentionally when upset (e.g., fire bursts when they’re angry, plants grow when they’re sad).

3. Collects rare magical creatures that no one else believes exist.

4. Has a cursed item they’re terrified to part with, even though it brings them bad luck.

5. Refuses to drink water because they prefer enchanted liquids.

6. Draws arcane symbols in the air with their fingers when deep in thought.

7. Can read minds, but only when they sing.

8. Casts spells backwards unintentionally, resulting in unintended consequences.

9. Has an unbreakable bond with a specific animal that no one else can see or communicate with.

10. Can’t touch silver or iron, as it causes them pain or weakness.

11. Stitches or mends their own wounds with enchanted thread to heal faster.

12. Absorbs magical energy from nature, but it causes them to uncontrollably speak to plants or trees.

13. Loses their sense of direction in places where magic is particularly strong.

14. Holds an enchanted mirror that shows them glimpses of alternate realities.

15. Has an ethereal, glowing aura that only appears in moments of extreme emotional stress.

16. Can summon an animal companion, but only one species, and only when they are truly in need.

17. Can’t touch their reflection without losing control over their own magic.

18. Speaks to inanimate objects like they’re alive, especially if they’re enchanted.

19. Can heal others, but it comes at the cost of feeling their pain.

20. Can’t resist collecting powerful artifacts, even if they don’t know what they do.

21. Can temporarily “borrow” someone’s ability, but only for a short time and with chaotic results.

22. Has a hidden, second personality that they can only access in times of intense danger or during sleep.

23. Is allergic to magical substances, causing unpredictable side effects when exposed to enchanted objects.

24. Fears their own powers, often using them sparingly or trying to suppress them.

25. Can only see magic in its purest form, making everything around them seem blurry or dull.

26. Can’t be around strong sources of magic for too long without feeling sick or weak.

27. Is cursed to speak in riddles or rhyme without control.

28. Can summon storms or fire, but only if they’re singing or dancing.

29. Has a magical tattoo that shifts and changes in response to their emotions or actions.

30. Can communicate with the dead, but only through dreams.

31. Has a secretive, invisible “guardian spirit” that follows them, but they can’t see it.

32. Has an odd way of navigating magical realms, like through riddles, puzzles, or specific gestures.

33. Can only use magic through physical objects, like rings, staffs, or enchanted gloves.

34. Believes they are cursed and always wears a charm or talisman to ward off bad luck.

35. Can grow extra appendages or traits (e.g., wings, claws) but only during moments of intense emotion.

36. Tends to get lost in enchanted forests, no matter how well they know the area.

37. Can read ancient texts, but only in their dreams, and the words change every time.

38. Can never speak the truth when they are under the full moon.

39. Has a deep connection with a particular star or constellation, often talking to it for guidance.

40. Always collects feathers, believing they hold magical properties.

41. Is drawn to certain magical places, like specific altars or ancient ruins, for reasons they don’t understand.

42. Can’t lie, but can weave elaborate half-truths or manipulate the truth without realizing.

43. Absorbs the memories of those they touch, which often causes them to act in ways that confuse others.

44. Can control shadows, but the shadows sometimes take on a life of their own.

45. Has a collection of cursed relics, but they keep them hidden away for fear of them causing harm.

46. Has an ancient creature bound to their service, but it’s unpredictable and often mischievous.

47. Talks in their sleep about ancient prophecies or forgotten spells.

48. Can change shape, but only into something they’ve seen before in their dreams.

49. Can sense the emotions of others through touch, but it overwhelms them in crowded spaces.

50. Has an unpredictable magical aura that shifts colors depending on their mood or energy.

51. Can see into the past, but only in fleeting visions that don’t make sense.

52. Accidentally switches between realities when they feel too much stress or anxiety.

53. Can grow plants, but the plants always have strange magical properties.

54. Summons random creatures during moments of anger or fear, which they must immediately try to control.

55. Can manipulate time, but only in small, disorienting ways, like freezing seconds or speeding up moments.

56. Has a cursed heirloom that appears to be an innocuous object but reveals darker powers when used.

57. Refuses to speak their real name, using a nickname that has no apparent origin.

58. Gains new powers with each battle they survive, but the cost is often personal suffering.

59. Has the ability to transform into a mythical creature, but they can’t control when or how it happens.

60. Can’t touch certain sacred objects without them burning or reacting violently.

61. Communicates through dreams and often doesn’t remember what they said after waking up.

62. Has a dark shadow that acts independently, sometimes as a second conscience or mischievous entity.

63. Can only perform magic when they are barefoot, believing the earth must touch them.

64. Constantly collects and studies herbs, believing each one holds a secret magical property.

65. Tends to absorb spells cast at them, either amplifying or reflecting them unintentionally.

66. Is haunted by a prophetic vision that they don’t fully understand.

67. Has a peculiar obsession with fire, either fearing or worshiping it.

68. Can communicate with celestial beings, but they only appear in dreams or moments of intense need.

69. Is connected to a particular elemental force (e.g., wind, earth), and feels its emotions or disturbances in the world.

70. Has a permanent aura of cold or warmth surrounding them depending on their magic.

71. Is terrified of magic despite being one of its strongest users, afraid of losing control.

72. Owns an enchanted mirror that shows a different version of themselves from an alternate timeline.

73. Can turn invisible, but only when they’re standing still and perfectly calm.

74. Has a companion spirit that offers cryptic advice but can never be fully seen by others.

75. Cannot perform magic without speaking in rhyme or using specific words.

76. Can only cast spells during specific moon phases or celestial alignments.

77. Possesses a unique magical artifact that gives them incredible power but also makes them prone to dark impulses.

78. Can resurrect a person, but only once in their lifetime and with severe consequences.

79. Can read someone’s future, but only through a random, seemingly unrelated event.

80. Has an uncontrollable craving for magical food that gives them temporary powers but with a cost.

81. Can summon weapons from thin air, but they always appear in odd or impractical forms.

82. Lives in a pocket dimension, where time and space are bent and distorted around them.

83. Can change the color of their eyes depending on their mood or energy level.

84. Speaks in a forgotten dialect that no one understands except other magical beings.

85. Has the ability to summon storms, but only when they are emotionally unstable.

86. Is always surrounded by a faint, otherworldly hum or energy that others find unsettling.

87. Can travel between realms, but always ends up in the wrong one by accident.

88. Has a mysterious scar that glows with magical energy, the origin of which is unknown.

89. Can raise the dead, but only animals, and they can never be fully revived.

90. Is bound by an ancient oath, limiting their actions and magic, though they often forget the specifics.

91. Has a dark side that they cannot control when under extreme stress, sometimes causing them to act like a villain.

92. Can create illusions, but they always have a twisted, unsettling edge to them.

93. Can communicate through dreams and often uses it to warn others of impending danger.

94. Has an affinity for the dead, able to summon spirits but at the cost of their own health.

95. Can see the threads of fate, but they’re always tangled and difficult to interpret.

96. Has a connection to an ancient god or deity, often seeking their approval or guidance.

97. Can slow or speed up time, but the longer they use it, the more they age prematurely.

98. Can summon and control shadows, but they constantly shift, making it difficult to control them.

99. Has a pet familiar that’s actually a shape-shifting entity from another plane of existence.

100.Is always accompanied by a chorus of distant, haunting voices, making them appear as if they are never alone.

#writer #writerscorner #writing #writing inspiration #writer things #writerblr #writing tips #author #writers and poets #ao3 writer #character development #original character #fantasy writer #writing resources #writers block #writing prompt #writing inspo #writing community

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zenithnightbane · 2 months ago

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May DWC 2025 Day 1 - Beauty/Cruel

The greenhouse was wrapped in the gentle thrum of rain, the heavy scent of loam and oleander clinging to the warm air. Zenith stood motionless near the threshold, but he wasn’t really here, not entirely. He was lost in a memory.

The light was softer then, warmer. The lanterns had a brighter glow, and so had his heart. Beside him moved Ladoran, sleeves rolled to the elbow, damp strands of dark blond hair falling into his eyes, a mischievous smirk always half-formed. He was holding a small pot of foxglove, examining the cluster of delicate purple bells. "Tell me something, At what point did you look at a row of deadly plants and think, ‘Yes, this will be my sanctuary’?"

Zenith didn’t look up from where he was pruning the crossing branches of some wolfsbane. His long hair was tied back, eyes focused, “They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are. There’s honesty in that.”

Ladoran raised a brow. “And people?”

Zenith glanced up then towards his husband, meeting his gaze with that quiet intensity only the dead and those who have walked beside them carry. “People lie,” he said simply. “Even to themselves.”

Ladoran laughed, a warm sound that cut through the heavy stillness. “You’re too dramatic to be so good with plants.”

Zenith’s lips twitched into a faint smile. “That’s because you haven’t seen what they do when they’re angry.”

Ladoran stepped closer, setting the foxglove down as he knelt beside the other man. He touched Zenith’s smooth cheek lightly, grounding the moment. "You know what I see when you talk like this?" he asked, voice lower as he pressed his forehead to Zenith’s temple. "There’s a darkness around you that would make others turn away, but I find it draws me closer, like a moth to a flame. You’re beautiful. In that tragic, gothic way.”

Zenith turned to face him fully, something tender and unguarded crossing his expression. “You’re the only one who’s ever said that like it was a good thing.”

Ladoran smiled. “It was never not a good thing.”

The greenhouse hummed around them with quiet life while rain continued to trace its paths down the glass above. Between the rows of poisonous bloom, a serenity settled, strange and private. Cruel perhaps, to any other eye, but to them, this was peace.

That was then.

Now, Zenith stood alone. The memory slipped back into the shadows as he ran a gloved hand gently along the matured foxglove, its color more vivid than ever. “Still thriving,” he murmured, the faintest smile at the scarred edges of his lips. “You’d like that.”

And though the plants did not answer, the air around him seemed to pulse softly with presence, alive and listening.

@daily-writing-challenge

#story #zenithal #dwc2025 #maydwc2025 #wyrmest accord #his past #ladoran

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adrift-in-thyme · 1 year ago

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@uncleskyrule happy belated birthday!!! Thank you so much for your patience while I wrote this! I hope it's worth the wait!

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

Four knows what sleep deprivation looks like.

He’s seen it spelled out on his grandfather’s face when long days turn his usual joviality to melancholy exhaustion and draws the shadows of half moons beneath his eyes.

He’s seen it painted across Dot’s beautiful features after an arduous night when the memories resurface, memories of a leering crimson eye, of claims to possession hanging heavy over her, of cages and darkness and smothering magic.

He’s seen it shadowed across his own face too, when the battles within and without grow to be too much, darkening his features, drawing them thin, sucking the youthful fat from his cheeks, the light from his eyes.

And he’s seen it…on the faces of his brothers.

On Time’s when the moon is full. On Twilight’s when a quiet twilight falls and skeletal trees whisper in tongues known only to some. On Wild’s when the amnesia recedes, Warriors’ when phantom lips press across his cheek, Wind’s after he awakens screaming his sister’s name. On Hyrule’s when he gives too much, Legend’s when the adventures he never speaks of tell their tale in his petrified cries at night…

And now on, Sky’s.

Some may find it strange for a man who can drift off practically anywhere to suffer from fatigue. Add to that uncanny ability, Sky’s penchant for seeming one of the most mature of their little group, the most…put together.

But Four is well acquainted with the deceptions someone can tell through demeanor alone. He himself has been dubbed mature, put together, responsible. And while, yes, those labels are true (Four would certainly be cross if people decided to start dubbing him childish or, Hylia forbid, a disaster as they call some more unruly children in his Hyrule), the lie rests in the assumptions they bring about.

Beliefs of invincibility and impervious spirit. Beliefs that there is no need to be gentle or kind, no need to offer respite or lighten the load.

It is the same fate their leader suffers so often, the same Warriors and Twilight sometimes crumble beneath. Suffering silently, yet always strong. So strong.

And Sky…

Sky hides it better than anyone.

Four is uncertain whether or not he is the only one who notices his distress. Perhaps, he is.

It doesn’t matter though. In fact, if he is the only one who has taken note of it then it is all the more important that he do something before Sky’s inevitable collapse.

But life never makes things simple. And in the end, he’s too late.

It has happened too many times now — a portal that separates the heroes into mismatched groups. Four thinks that perhaps, after his near defeat at the combined hands of the champion and the rancher the Shadow is attempting to be more careful.

More conniving. More vicious.

Attack first and you won’t be defeated. Such is the attitude of wild animals and beasts. More than likely, the Shadow shares it too.

This would explain why in addition to splitting the heroes up, this portal also dumps them right onto a battlefield.

Or at least, it does for Sky, Legend, and himself. Four can’t be sure what the others are facing. But he can only pray it isn’t a sand-drenched dungeon packed with redeads and stalfos.

The unearthly screeches of the emaciated corpses fill his ears as he fights, teeth gritted, heart pounding. It’s all the three heroes can do to stay out of reach of their paralyzing cries.

Back up to escape one beast and you nearly collide with the mad swing of a stalfos’ claymore.

Four winces as the very tip of a blade slices across his left arm and leaves an angry gash in its wake.

That’s going to need a bit of potion to remedy.

Beside him, Legend growls what sounds like a curse as he plunges his hand into his pouch and retrieves a fire rod. He brings it in a sweeping horizontal arc. In a blaze of blistering heat, a group of the monsters fall.

“Well done,” Four says with a breathless smirk. He plunges his sword into the gaping chest cavity of one of the stalfos still struggling for survival on the darkened floorboards. With a raspy exhale, it dissolves into ash. “I think you just turned the battle in our favor.”

“I’d better have,” Legend huffs. “The sooner we get rid of these things, the sooner we can get out of here.” He screws up his face in a grimace. More monsters crumple beneath his skilled hands. “It smells like death.”

It does, indeed, Four thinks as, finally, the last of the monsters fall. The stench of it hangs heavy, permeating the thick darkness that surrounds them, wafting from the thin threads of light carrying from faltering torches.

But now that the battle is over they can focus on escape. Hopefully, to a place where it proves easier to breathe.

He sheathes his sword, glances around. The gash on his arm throbs and the various bruises and smaller cuts he earned join in its stomach-churning beat. Still, it could have gone far worse.

“We all okay?” Legend asks, bangs falling into his face as he replaces his fire rod.

“Yes,” Four says. “How about you…Sky?”

His voice pitches an octave higher as he catches sight of the Skyloftian, turning the question almost into an exclamation.

The knight lies crumpled where he had stood mere moments before. The Master Sword lies fallen beside him, his cape flows over him like a blanket of snow. His breath comes in shuddering gasps that grate upon Four’s ears as he races to his side.

“Sky!”

He shakes him, slightly, and hazy blue orbs flutter open. Sky groans.

“What happened?” Legend drops down beside him, panic in his voice and a half-empty potion bottle in his hand. “Did a monster get him?”

Four shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” A quick inspection provides no sign of blood or other injury. But Sky’s face is ashen and he shudders as though in the throes of fever. “Sky, are you hurt?”

“N-not hurt.” Sky curls his fingers into a fist, as though attempting to gather strength. “J-just…just…” He swallows, tries to drag himself up, and nearly collapses again. It’s only Four and Legend’s quick movement that keeps him upright. “‘M fine.”

“Like hell you are!” Legend’s eyes are blazing with emotion now. “Sky, what happened?”

Sky shudders again. He glances down at the trembling hands he has folded into one, white-knuckled fist. There is a certain helplessness in the look.

“I dunno,” he croaks. “Was fighting and the room start-started swirling.” He curls in on himself further, and Four wonders if the next shaky exhale brings tears with it. His voice is very small. “I just-just fell.”

“And you didn’t have the strength to get back up,” Four says, solemnly. An idea is already forming in his head, a confirmation of what he has witnessed these past few hellish weeks.

I should’ve acted sooner.

But there had been fights both in and out of the group, and injuries and secrets unveiled. There had been discussions long overdue, restorations to be made in the face of pain and sorrow. And he, he had been in the midst of it all.

Between explaining the Four Sword and its powers and making up with Wild, he just hadn’t found the time…

“You haven’t been sleeping, Sky…have you?”

Now, Sky raises his head, glazed eyes focusing unsteadily on Four. Slowly, he shakes his head.

Legend blows out a sigh. He sits down beside Four and brings a dusty hand over his sweaty brow.

“Sleep deprivation? Yeah, that’ll do it. How long haven’t you been sleeping?”

Sky swallows. A beat passes, then another. The oppressive feel of death begins to crowd in on Four again. He struggles to breathe beneath it.

Then, “Since Twilight,” Sky whispers, and Four’s heart plummets to the depths of his stomach.

Legend’s hand falls to his lap with more viciousness than defeat. His face screws up in an expression that toes the line between sorrowful and intensely irritated. “I knew something was up! I knew it! I should’ve — ”

“Couldn’t have done anything,” Sky croaks, leaning further into Four’s touch. A small smile quirks his lips. “Was me that should-should’ve d-done something in the…in the first place.”

Legend’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

Sky looks back down at his hands.

Another theory is beginning to form in Four’s mind now, joining with the previous one, enlarging it, and embellishing it until things start to make sense. A theory born out of something Sky has said before, a snippet he had overheard and tossed aside in favor of giving his full attention to fighting the Yiga that had taken Wild captive.

“I’m sorry, champion,” the Skyloftian had said as he had helped Warriors tend to the boy’s wounds. “I was late…again. I’m sorry.”

“You blame yourself.” Four measures the words carefully, speaking each one with intricate precision. Lest he step in the wrong place and cause them all to plummet. “You blame yourself for what happened to Twilight.”

Sky lifts his bloodshot eyes. A tear wells in one of them then spills over to slither gracefully down his cheek.

“Why would you blame yourself?” Legend asks, even as comprehension burns in his violet irises. “It’s not your fault the rancher got hit. You weren’t even near him when it happened!”

“I was near enough.” Sky’s voice is quieter than ever now, more like a whisper than anything else. “I know the skyward strike. I could’ve hit that…that thing if I’d been…b-been faster.” His breath hitches. But to Four it sounds defeated more than panicked. “I was late and he paid for it. I’m a-always…”

He curls in on himself, weighed down by exhaustion, shuddering with pain and sorrow. Legend looks at Four and Four looks at Legend. Then, slowly, together they reach out and draw Sky into their arms.

It’s strange. Four hadn’t taken Legend for someone willing to show physical affection freely. But he embraces the Skyloftian as though it is no price to pay. As though he has done so before.

Long nights. A shuddering sob. Soft feet dressed in boots with wings adorning their sides. Whispers in the dark that exhaustion muddles before Four can make them out. Amethyst eyes staring from over a hazy cloud of silken white. Sliding shut as a larger form huddles deeper into an embrace.

Sky shivers again and Legend holds him tighter.

“It’s not your fault,” Four murmurs, pouring every ounce of confidence he possesses into those words and praying that it is enough. “It’s not your fault, Sky. You did everything you could do for him. There’s nothing else you could have done.”

Sky doesn’t reply.

They hold him, whispering assurances, as his tears wet their tunics and his fatigued body quakes beneath the burden he forces it to carry. They hold him until, at last, in the murky darkness, surrounded by carcasses of monsters and piles of resting sand, he drifts off.

In the arms of his brothers.

#trin writes #linked universe #linkeduniverse #lu sky #lu legend #lu four #hurt/comfort #emotional hurt/comfort #angst

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