#drowning in stardust

[finnthenorthsheep]

Artfight 2024 (Team seafoam)

Attack for @alleesaur Memories of drowning flowers!

First year, first drawing! I think It's really cute

[lithi]

Andersen’s The Little mermaid Seiusa AU…. Woah… My brain….

[theliterarymess]

The full spredges collection as of October 2023

[n0va-daamnn]

Japan woman :0

//not such a new art, I just remembered this game and decided to post it

[moxie-girl]

friendly fire attack on @snowyeclipse!

(filterless ver under the cut)

[shea-like-the-butter]

Thursday, March 23rd 2023

Stuck on a little hot mess

[vendettavalor]

@tacticalvalor said: That slight nod you give before their lips are pressing against yours -> ghost and mari

⚔️ Those Seconds Before The Kiss Prompts // CLOSED ⚔️

There's a sweetness to the moment. A secret understanding that only they share. It's without words or explanation - the story behind the small gap between them is much too long and much too painful to think too deeply on, much less talk about. So they don't. He answered what she needed him to anyway.

She asked his name and he told her, and her whispered voice made his knees weak. She asked about the mask, and he said he wasn't willing to talk about it. So she didn't press. She asked if someone had hurt him and he answered. So she didn't ask for details. She asked him to come closer, and he did. She asked him to lean down, and he did. She asked if she could touch him, and he said yes. So she did. She ghosted her fingers over the cheeks of his mask. Her gentle fingers bled warmth though the fabric and heated his cheeks until they blushed with such fervor. His breath hitched and trembled, a familiar anxiety creeping in his chest as she touched him. Contact always made him nervous. Even with her, that deep-rooted reflex to push her away, to fight back against the contact, no matter how much he wanted to accept it. It took all of his willpower not to go on the defensive and immediately shove her away.

When it finally waned, he felt himself relax just the smallest fraction. Increment by increment, his shoulders slumped. Coiled muscles unwound and slumped, his frame sagging just the smallest bit as he leaned into her. So warm. Her hands were so warm. The scent of the sea and sweet blooms clung to her and melted his senses. Her touch was so gentle and so kind, it made his eyes burn. Then she whispered and he felt his heart melt too.

"Simon... can I kiss you?"

He looked at her for a moment, the prospect of jumping right into a kiss making that creeping anxiety flare up again. He was scared but... God he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her so badly. He'd been in love with her for so long, and now she was here. So close. She was touching him and she was so close and she looked so beautiful. He couldn't help the nod he gave and the way he reached up to roll up the bottom portion of his mask until it was just past his lips. He felt almost giddy, shushing her as she mumbled that they could go slower if he needed it. But he insisted that he could handle a kiss from her.

When his hands fell, hers returned to his cheeks. Still slow. Still ginger. A little hesitant, but so was he. For a moment, they lingered there. Just a few inches apart, separated only by hesitation.

Then, they meet each other halfway. They let their hearts melt together as their lips meet. It's gentle and cautious; a silent question being asked. But soon it is warm and kind. Two lovers getting to know each other for the first time and getting swept up in their quiet excitement.

There's a sweetness to the moment. A secret understanding that only they share. It's without words or explanation. But they don't need to say anything. Not when they've come this close.

[samwisethewitch]

Excellent, excellent addition, and I 100% second everything @powersandplanetaries said here. How To Keep House While Drowning is excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone who struggles with cleaning.

One other thing I would add: if you live in an older home or one that has been poorly maintained by previous owners, you'll have a fourth category of tasks that you might call "Structural Maintenance" or "Managing Wear and Tear." Our house was built in the 1970s and has had some shoddy "repairs" done by previous owners, so we occasionally have to do things like fix a leaky faucet or patch a crack in the ceiling. I want to emphasize that this is normal for older homes.

For me, this category of tasks is lower priority than Health and Safety or Utility tasks, but higher priority than Mentally Restful tasks. Dealing with small wear and tear before it becomes a bigger (and often expensive) problem will take a lot of stress off both you and your home. It's much easier, cheaper, and less stressful to replace caulk on a bathroom faucet than to repair water damage from an unmanaged leak, for example.

It's 110% okay to pay someone to do these fixes if you have the funds, and if you're renting your landlord or building maintenance should really be taking care of these things. But you can do a lot of home repair tasks yourself! I have ADHD and multiple chronic illnesses and zero experience in this area, and I've managed to teach myself how to do a lot of these small, simple fixes. It's been really empowering for me to know that I can repair my own living space.

A resource I've found really helpful is the book Safe and Sound by Mercury Stardust, who you might know as the "Trans Handy Ma'am" on TikTok and Instagram. It's a really thorough and compassionately written guide to the kind of basic maintenance I'm talking about, and has lots of gorgeous illustrations!

*takes your face gently in my hands and looks sincerely into your eyes* listen. your home does not need to look like a showroom. homes are meant to be lived in, and that means a certain amount of mess. it's okay if there is clutter on your desk or if you don't remember the last time you cleaned your oven. mess is morally neutral. but at the same time, you deserve to live in an environment that is safe and comfortable, and that means someone has to clean sometimes. things like mold, spoiled food, and dirty litter boxes are genuine health hazards and need to be dealt with before they make someone sick. think of cleaning less as "my home needs to be completely spotless" and more as "I am an animal and I need a habitat that is free of hazardous material." it's okay. *kisses you on the forehead and tucks you into a blanket*

(and of course it is always acceptable and even good for you to ask someone else to help you with cleaning if it's physically or mentally difficult for you. even if you're paying them to do it.)

[zaebeecee]

Drowning in Stardust

🦌 RadioDustTober: Short Story Edition 🕷️

Day 15: New Threads

Alternate Universe (1930s gangster AU, secret relationship)

CWs: Period-relevant racism

If Alastor is going to pose as Anthony’s new bodyguard, he has to look the part.

Word count: 1290

•••

Purchasing clothing was a foreign concept to Alastor.

He had clothing, obviously, he wasn’t some Philistine traipsing around ‘naked as the day he was born’ (as they said back home). That clothing, however, had all been hand-made by his maman and later by Alastor himself once he cultivated his sewing skill enough to tailor things. In the little village outside of New Orleans, where he grew up, there was a shortage of things like professional tailors and the newfangled idea of ‘ready to wear’ clothes you could buy off a rack; there had been more options in the city, of course, but they didn’t cater to people like those who lived in the village, so their only option was the one small store that sold a limited variety of cloth and sewing notions.

The building in front of him was not a place where you could buy plain cotton fabric or a pack of sewing needles. No, this was a New York City bespoke tailor, the kind of place where they gave you champagne and let you sit on soft velvet chairs while men with measuring tapes around their necks practically begged to cater to your every fashion whim. There was even a sign in the window that said, in no uncertain terms, WE CATER TO WHITE TRADE. WAITING ROOM FOR COLORED ONLY, with an arrow pointing around to the back of the building.

“Somehow, I don’t think I’ll exactly receive a warm welcome here,” Alastor said lightly, tilting his head enough to look at his companion. With his slicked white hair, entirely white suit, and matching white hat and shoes, his boss (boss’s son, strictly speaking) couldn’t have looked any more like a gangster; it only took one glance to see why so many who worked for the Family called him the Ghost.

“Does that bother you?” Anthony asked, casting Alastor a sidelong glance as his lips curved into a smirk.

Alastor returned the look with a smile of his own. “I think you already know the answer to that, sha. I simply wouldn’t want to waste your time if they’re only going to refuse service.”

“No one refuses the Mezzasalma Family’s money,” Anthony said, his smile growing darker as he took hold of the door handle. “Not more than once, anyway.”

Alastor followed Anthony inside and looked around at the interior that was just as posh as he imagined it would be, the interior all polished wood and fine carpet and largely uncluttered by the usual bolts of cloth and shelves and bins. Instead, cloth samples lined one wall in a neat little row, a large section of the interior dedicated to a seating area and a raised dais with full-length mirrors surrounding it in a half-circle. It was mere seconds before a man strode over to them with a speed that made his attempt at dignified posture downright hilarious, and he stopped near Anthony, clasping his hands together.

“Mister Mezzasalma,” he began, casting Alastor more than one glance from the corner of his eye. “I— This is quite the surprise, we were not expecting to see you.”

“Wasn’t exactly expectin’ to be here myself,” Anthony said, straightening the lapels of his jacket as he glanced around. “I’m in need of a couple of new suits and my usual tailor won’t be back in the city for a few weeks. My father speaks highly enough of your work, so I figured I might as well give my patronage to someone who’s already been good to my people.”

“That… that’s very kind of you, sir.” The shop attendant glanced at Alastor again; Alastor smiled at him, and the attendant’s face blanched to an interesting color that reminded Alastor of bad milk. “We would be more than happy to clear our schedule for you, but I am afraid your man will have to go around to the back of the building for the entrance to the waiting area.”

“Oh, no, he won’t,” Anthony said, clasping his hands behind his back and strolling over to where the cloth samples stood. “They’re for him. He’s recently come close into my employ, you see, and he requires clothing that… befits the position, so to speak.”

The attendant looked panicked. “Sir, I-I’m afraid I must insist, it isn’t just our policy, the law dictates—”

He fell silent when Anthony glanced his way. “Ain’t that a shame,” he said, turning back to the cloth and taking what looked like some expensive gray tweed between his thumb and forefinger, feeling its texture. “I suppose I’ll have to obtain a different recommendation from my father, then. He’ll be very disappointed to hear your establishment didn’t meet my needs, but the law is the law.”

If the attendant looked unwell before, now he looked positively ill, like he might vomit where he stood any moment. While Alastor might have rolled his eyes at the indirect passive-aggression of veiled mafioso threats, he had to admit it was very funny to be on this side of it. “Oh, n-no, sir, it isn’t— I didn’t mean—…” He cleared his throat, gathering himself. “Your father has always been a very valuable patron for us. I’m certain the owner wouldn’t mind making an exception.”

Anthony smiled. “Well, that’s very good to hear. Alastor, come on over here.” When Alastor stepped up beside him, Anthony dropped his voice and said, “Let me know if anybody here says or does anythin’ even a little… inappropriate, alright?”

“You got it,” Alastor murmured with a smile. “Are you planning to shoot them if they do?”

Anthony chuckled. “Nah. Might get someone to accidentally burn down the building, though.” Alastor stifled his laugh as Anthony shushed him, trying to keep his own laughter from bursting out in a giggle.

The fabric was nothing like Alastor had ever held before, and he took his time in making his selections while Anthony told the attendant, in no uncertain terms, that they required the suits as quickly as possible. He negotiated a two-week turnaround that made the attendant sound like he was close to an apoplexy, but he agreed and had Alastor stand on the dais for his measurements.

They returned to the store for fittings three times—Alastor had tried to tell Anthony that he didn’t need anything so extravagant, and Anthony had countered that he enjoyed spending as much of the family money as possible this way—and when Alastor finally stood in a completed suit of light gray cashmere, looking himself over in the mirror, he hardly recognized himself.

“Leave,” Anthony said to the shop’s employees, and as they scuttled away, Alastor watched him in the mirror as he stepped up onto the wide dais and walk up behind him. “What do you think?” Anthony asked, dropping his voice to ensure they weren’t overheard.

“It’s different,” Alastor said. “But I can’t say I hate it.”

“Most positive thing I’ve ever heard you say about somethin’ bein’ different,” Anthony chuckled, and Alastor felt hands on his waist as Anthony leaned in close to his back.

Alastor smiled, leaning back in return as he fixed his cuffs. “I think I could absolutely get used to this.”

“Good. And besides…” Anthony leaned in close to Alastor’s ear, whispering, “I think both these suits will look fantastic on my bedroom floor.” Alastor felt his face heating up as Anthony’s tongue darted out, flicking the shell of his ear, a little bit of that ‘playing with fire’ he was so fond of. Then, he backed off and turned away. “Let’s get out of here, then. Next time, I’m takin’ you to Rosie.”

Alastor took one last look at himself, smoothing his hand down the front of his jacket, before he turned to follow Anthony out of the building. He could definitely get used to this.

•••

[myths-of-fantasy]

Again y'all - here me out

First Snip

| | | |

Riot lifted her head coolly, keeping her chin just out of reach of the hands gripping furiously at her upper arms and clawing at her wrists. If there was one benefit to having four arms, it was that those with only two tended to struggle against a superior grip. She watched the fury burning in Ms. Power’s eyes steadily growing fainter by the second as salty ocean water flooded her lungs, bubbles streaming from her nose as she struggled. Frankly, Riot was impressed by the tenacity the woman was showing, determined to the very end to kill another member of her species. How typical of a kaladorian.

Finally,ally her struggles grew weaker, her super strength seeming to fade into the normal powers she would possess on any other planet. Riot’s lips curved into a dangerous smile, happily showing her fangs to the rapidly fading woman. She wants this bitch’s last memory to be of her fucking smiling while her vision grew darker and darker.

The winged woman made sure to keep her underwater for another minute after her struggles back, trying to ensure the drowning was as thorough as possible. Her skin may have been unblemished, the flesh unable to be torn because of the enhancements earth gave the waste of space, but her lungs were as vulnerable as any other gas breathing species in the galaxy.

Serves her right for laying a fucking finger on Namielle.

She gave the corpse one last, fierce and sharp little shake to startle her awake if she was faking. Satisfied that she was dead, she left the body floating for a brief moment in time to pop back onto the shore to retrieve a pair of large, fairly heavy rocks and thick-braided ropes. She made quick work of wrapping it around Ms. Power’s body, releasing it in the center of the ocean. She watched it slowly begin sinking to the bottom of the ocean where it would rot and decay and, crucially, Becky wouldn’t find out until she was grown up enough to understand the situation. Riot cocked her head as it finally vanished from sight.

“Hmph,” she grunted, and promptly buzzed up higher into the air. She kind of wished that she had the same strange, levitation style flight that Wordgirl and Ms. Power did – her wings were so loud when she moved. Especially so when she was moving quickly – she was just lucky that Hairiel sending her off on various missions over the years had primed Becky to hear her buzzing around the edges of the city, which kept her from investigating.

Riot touched down lightly on the sand, her antennae waving around in the air, picking up even the faintest scents in the area. She kind of wants to do a study of the effects that the strange radiation from earth has on various aliens – kaladorians seemed to gain immense super strength, flight and breath abilities but lexiconians got that, laser eyes and super hearing. Then there was Riot – her natural flight had been boosted and though she hadn’t gotten any breath powers or eye lasers (how come Becky got all of the coolest stuff?) but her second stomach usually reserved for honey had begun producing other honey with… interesting qualities. One was essentially a form of acid, another was mostly just glue.

Another feature had been her sense of smell.

Hearing had never been very important to her people – the sensitivity of their wings often alerted them to those approaching them, the force of their steps vibrating them while allowing the scales of their wings to tremble in time to their movement and their antennae typically picked up on any of the scents released by a potential predator. Between the two, hearing just wasn’t the greatest necessity for them – and she figures that’s why the planet chose to enhance her sense of smell.

She was thankful.

Because when Cuddlesworth sprung from his hiding place, shrieking and screeching in – what she was willing to admit was justified anger for her cold eyed murder of its caretaker – she was able to grab it by the throat with her upper arms, watching it with a slightly tilted head.

“Loyalty is an admirable trait,” she told the creature, watching it steadily become alarmed. A pang of sadness resonated throughout her chest, a soft sigh leaving her chest at the creature’s angry beady eyes. This creature was the same species as Hairiel. This was another hakuchan. One totally and completely brainwashed, fully dependent on the same species that drove theirs to functional extinction. She lifted a palm from her lower set of arms, stroking his face gently. “I hope you’re rewarded endlessly for it wherever it is you go when your kind moves on.”

Then she walked it to the shore and repeated the process.

Maybe Power has an execution-blaster in her ship, Riot mused to herself thoughtfully. She almost hoped so – it wouldn’t bode well if she did, given what it would mean for a kaladorian with executioner’s equipment to be on earth, but it would help them out in situations like this. If there was a proper-advanced blaster, she could give it to Hairiel to reverse-engineer and perhaps modify to work regardless of any superhuman resistance the field around the earth granted them. It would make her feel better about executing hakuchanians, whose only true crime was that they’d fallen for the lies and revisionist history fed to them in the carcass of their ruined planet.

At the very least, their lung capacity was nothing compared to a kaladorian’s. Riot had held Power beneath the salty shores for what felt like an eon before she finally weakened and was counting passing clouds waiting for her to finally succumb to drowning. And Gigglecheeks’ arms weren’t long enough to get in her way, no matter how much he clawed.

When the life finally left the creature, she dug up a shallow grave and dumped the corpse inside. As much as Power deserved to die alone, Riot would at least begrudgingly respect the concept that Gigglecheeks would probably like to be dumped into the same part of the sea as she was. So the rhalochyrril would – reluctantly – toss him out to be with her later, once he’d rifled through the ship.

Stepping away from the buried creature, she made her way back towards the ship – the true reason Hairiel had sent her out to search through it for signs. Signs that Power wasn’t the only kaladorian in the area, signs that she and her colleagues had been watching the earth for a while – signs that there was trouble brewing. She did her best to ignore most of the junk scattered throughout the ship, various bits and bobs from her conquests pinned to the walls and displayed proudly upon the shelves in a vile mockery of the various species whose worlds they destroyed.

“Bastards,” she snarled, scowling as she ran her palm across a silken-cocoon. The suffering that poor nymph must’ve gone through, boiled alive in their own chrysalises because some self-centered jackasses wanted their cocoon and refused to just use the cocoons of already pupated nymphs. Still, might as well not waste it – as an imago herself, Riot could no longer spin silk, and she’d been wanting to give Nami- Becky, something nice for her up-coming fifteenth birthday.

She tucked the bundle of unused fabric beneath her lower left arm, as she crouched below the mainframe. Kaladorians prided themselves on advanced technology, but experimental ships like the one Power was apparently piloting were often sloppily put together, meant to be private models used to design even better ones. So it was nymph’s play to remove the bottom panel and simply rip out the cords associated with the ship’s broadcasting system, preventing it from sharing its location. She fiddled around in the wire mess for a bit longer, checking for anything suspicious - black boxes weren't common on test ships like this one, but they weren't rare either.

“Nothing,” she murmured to herself, sitting up. No blaster, no black box, not even a miscellaneous inventory tracking chip from what she could tell. It was like Power had fished the machine out of a dumpster somewhere far on the ends of the galaxy. She used her secondary arms to push herself back into standing, “Power must not have been as high ranking as we thought…”

If anything, the picture the rhalochyrril was beginning to get was that Power was an exile. The small test ship, no back up swooping in when Wordgirl fought back, no frantic message from Hairiel that he'd found other marks - it seemed Power was alone. And her irritating desperation for awe and worship were the hallmarks of an exiled kaladorian. The idea should've soothed her, but instead it made her worry - the presence of exiles tended to draw the attention of full status kaladorians looking to swoop in and steal what little glory could be obtained by those removed from the hierarchy. Sometimes they even placed inconspicuous looking bugs within the ships so they could track them across the galaxy.

“Fuck,” Riot said, running her fingers between her antennae. Ship mechanics were far above her know-how. She only knew the basics of repairs, like any regular spacer would, but tiny, unnoticeable tracking chips? She barely knew what was standard on a kaladorian ship given she spent most of her life around lexiconians.

Which meant she had to turn to the expert.

It was time to bring Hairiel into it.

[yandere-wishes]

⭒ㅤׂ Do You Think We'll Be In Love Forever? ㅤׂ ⭒

⭒⌒★ Yandere!DC Men x Reader ★⌒⭒

゜。♡ 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝒾𝓇 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝓉𝓊𝓇𝓃𝓈 𝒾𝓃𝓉𝑜 𝑜𝒷𝓈𝑒𝓈𝓈𝒾𝑜𝓃 ♡ ｡ ゜

​𓆩☾𓆪 Nightwing - Dick Grayson | بالشب - دیک گریسون

He's mesmerized by the sight of you between his arms. Definite little doll smiling up at him through tear-soaked eyes. He floods your essence with saccharine kisses, sweet vows, and anguished 'I love yous' all paying testimony to his sugar-laced obsession. He's desperate to taste your sweetness on his tongue, lick through your flesh like a lollipop, and unravel your bones with his teeth.

He had been so young once, chasing virtue and strength into every dark alleyway, following bats and hope into vicious nights. Back then, he hadn't understood his mentor's desperation for paper-thin kisses and phony love. But now feeling the push of your body beneath his fingertips makes him understand how satisfying real love can be. To observe you in the sun's gentle rays. To feel your body curled next to his on cold nights. He plays hero under the moon's watchful gaze only to return home to you upon daybreak.

❀࿔ Red Hood - Jason Todd | نقاب قرمز - جیسون تاد

He glides your fingers across his scars, shuddering under the weight of your touch. Stardust cauterizes ancient wounds, licking away the rotten grime. Jason clenches his teeth, there's something so intimidating about the softness of your touch. It stings worse than any crowbar or bullet wound, intruding, harrowing. It's almost like you're plucking the constellations of his past from under his skin, trying to rearrange the stars into something cathartic.

He can't help the hapless way his nails scratch across your bones, the gurgling laugh that escapes his throat. You're Elizabeth Lavenza and Ophelia trying to mend a broken boy, with your wry smile and terrified eyes. Jason traces his lips across yours, his kiss is ravenous, frantic. Faux-hero desperate for an inkling of love, of bliss, of softness.

´ཀ` Arkham Knight - Jason Todd | سلحشور آرکام - جیسون تاد

He likes to think he's shed his human skin long ago. Left it to die in that burning warehouse with his old mask and youth. But when he hears your laughter, that haunting echo reverberates off the edifice walls. He can't help but think maybe, just maybe a trace of humanity still lingers beneath his armor. Your smile glares at him in every carmine puddle he treks through. He dreams it's your blood marring his gauntlets, syrupy sweet as he licks them clean. Daydreams about your ethereal face painted in reds and purples by his iron-clad hands.

His kisses are razor blades cutting through your lips, forcing his love down your throat, and watching as you choke on the rust and ache. He's trying to merge two bodies into one void, to engulf you. Mirror his scars upon your flesh with dull knives and jagged fingernails. He kisses you again, you swear you're going to drown in his sea of red. Maybe that's all the love he has left. He

｡♦｡ Red Robin - Tim Drake | رابین قرمز- تیم دریک

He plays hero in the night, little bird chasing villains and evil by moonlight. When he blinks it's you he sees lying on the couch watching TV. He's starting to think you're his favorite show, afterall your window is about the size of a flat-screen TV and he's always too eager to peak through for the next screening. Episode 84, you're hugging your favorite teddy bear, lost in euphoria as your knuckles turn white around the controller. Tim watches heart in his throat as you claw out the boss's eyes. Sanctimonious champion vying to save the holy princess.

Tim bites his fingers, addresses each tooth mark to you. He pens his love letters upon his own skin, sealing them in red when he finally punctures through. Maybe life is just a video game, an endless kaleidoscope of cutscenes. And he's just a besotted hero dying to kiss the precious princess who doesn't even know he exists.

ꨄ︎ Robin - Damian Wayne| سینه‌سرخ - دامیان وین

His heritage pounds between his bones. The deja vu of an ancestral lifetime runs rapid through his veins as he chases you across the rooftops. His father, his mother, his brothers, always chasing, running after things they know they'll never reach. Your blades clash against his and Damian can't help but wonder if this is the closest he'll ever get to kissing you.

You leave him with paper cuts that feel like venom, like saying 'I love you' while chewing on his bones. He ponders, does his father have the same scars, if Damian pulled away Bruce's skin what would he find? Kittycat claws and dragon bites engraved in the nth-wielded ivory. He feels legacy clawing at his throat as he pictures your fingers between his teeth. Tears blooming in your eyes as he uses diamonds and ceremonial knives to engrave his name upon your flesh. Dotting the I with a heart and entwining each letter. God, he's so tired of being lonely...

🦇 Batman - Bruce Wayne | بتمن - بروس وین

He can't help but pick you apart, chip away at the bones and flesh until he reaches your essence. Dissecting your heart with his tongue and savoring the ichor between his teeth. He's the world's greatest detective and yet he can't unravel his own ardor. This mania, this addiction festering within his crux gnawing at his sanity until every thought is consumed by the cadence of your voice and the stars scintillating in your big doe eyes. This desperate need burning inside of him are you really divinity? Will you bleed glod, if he tears you apart with his teeth?

You're so ethereal squirming beneath, kicking and screaming vying desperately for freedom. He's fought this love for far too long, tried to preserve you in the light. Cover your eyes and ears and make you forget about the monsters that roam in the dark. But he can't not anymore, maybe he never could. Maybe the only way he knows how to love is by trickling his darkness like nectar between your lips and watching as it paints you in his shades.

ᯓ★ Superman - Clark Kent | سوپرمن - کلارک کنت

His kisses melt into your skin sweet like molten sugar drizzled on jasmine rice. Like lava smothering roses, leaving a trail of fragranced ashes. Clark smiles and he notices how you cover your eyes. Like you're staring directly into the sun. Like you're scared of being burnt. Clark can't help but bury his head in the crock of your neck, inhaling your ather. Molten roses and floral ashes he likes the amalgamate of your scents. Like how his presence lingers upon you.

He holds you like a doll, like the little straw dolls his mother used to make. It's easy to be gentle, coddling when everything is so fragile compared to you. He kisses down your neck, your jaw, nuzzling his nose into your soft skin, trying to earn a giggle a gold star. Trying to wipe the fear from your eyes. He kisses you again, mumbling cloying words between your lips, wishing he could just push his love between your fragile bones.

˚✶˚ Superboy - Conner Kent | سوپربوی - کانر کنت

He's fighting back the urge to peel your heart from between your ribs. To trail kisses across it and marr his lips with your ether. He wonders if your heart beats as frantically as his. He wonders if your ribs rattle when he enters a room.

He wants to push little superboy earings into your ears, to lay upon you the piercings he could never have. It'll be his way of telling the world you belong to him, that you belong to Superboy. And yet he settles for draping his leather jacket across your shoulders when senses a shiver run up your spine. He settles for the friendly hugs and airy hello-kisses. He wants to say he's he loves you. he can't. It's all so annoying, tasting the dead words on his tongue.

𓂃✮ Superman - Jon Kent | سوپرمن - جان کنت

He's scaping his nails along the Hershey's kisses re-aligning the red blue and gold wrapping. It'll be obvious, right? If he leaves them in your locker you'll understand the colored metaphor you'll answer the question he can never ask. You'll know it's him, everyone always does, for the byproduct of the world's greatest hero, he's terrible at keeping his identity a secret.

He blames it on the legacy flooding his lungs. On the promises that beat in his blood. He's born to be a hero, to play the role of savior, but aren't heroes promised love too? Aren't they meant to save the girl from burning skyscrapers and crumbling sidewalks, to fly above the skyline and kiss her in tune with the setting sun? He's so desperate for the sweet fairytale ending, so desperate to kiss the girl who always knows just what to say. He leaves the chocolate in your locker before making a dent in the metal door.

˚｡⋆🪙⋆ ˚｡ Two Face - Harvey Dent | دو چهره - هاروی دنت

He can taste your pain on his tongue, swallow the barbed wire, and relish in the familiar sting of hope, expectation, responsibility. Maybe that's why he can't stop himself from chasing after you. Burning the world demanding you stop him, desperate for a silver of your deficit attention. God, you're so ethereal with his gun aimed at your head, his pretty little girl with big starry eyes laced with dread as they follow the cascade of his coin. 'I know' he wants to scream 'I know what it feels like' but the words never quite spill out that way. And Harv only laughs at his foolish attempts to play hero once more. Sanctimonious bastard, the words reverberate in his skull.

You may claim to be a hero but Two-face knows you'll fall, plunder to the ground like all the rest, that's what happens when you reach for the sky, deem yourself Icarus, and let the flames of glory engulf you until there's nothing left. 'You can't save them' Harv screams only for Harvey to hear. They want to get closer, to slip the coin between your lips and make you taste defeat, maybe then you'll understand why he's so keen on fighting you out of your crusade. Maybe then you'll take their hand willingly, letting them sprinkle kisses across your knuckles like dying stars.

˙⋆☠︎︎⋆˙ Black Mask - Roman Sionis | نقاب سیاه - رومن سیونیس

He wants to cut out your big heart and sink his teeth into it, engrave himself in every vein, and chew on the heartstrings. HIM he needs to be the only one in that plushie heart of yours. The only one with the right to be graced by your ethereal smile. He wants to awaken to your soft nimble fingers tracing hearts and stars across his chest. Pretty pink lips weaving feathery kisses across the scar of his pacemaker. Giggles tickling his neck as you bid him 'good morning' in that all too cheery voice of yours.

Roman almost moans as he hears his name spill from your mouth, each letter cradled carefully between your lips he can't help but want to push his thumb inside your mouth, to feel your purity and shock. There's so much he wants to call you so much he wants to whisper in your ear as he watches your cheeks glow red. To hold you in his lap and trail his fingers across your legs, to dress you in pretty dresses and short skirts and skin-tight tops. To taste the fear and dread on your tongue palpable like the blood he draws with every kiss.

༄✩༄ Scarecrow - Jonathan Crane | مترسک - جاناتان کرین

He likes the stars in your eyes, the mini constellations spelling out your greatest fears. The tears blooming in the corners of your dopey eyes have his lips twitching. You're so gorgeous like this, curled up on the floor trying to make sense of such an eerie world. Jonathan doesn't anoint himself a fool, he knows it's chimeric to think that you'd love him without the toxin, without the heavy drugs he's spilled into your veins. That's why he keeps you like this, scared and depressed. Always in need of him.

What's your greatest fear? He wonders when you tuck your head between your knees and sob all so quietly as to not disturb him. Is it him you see in your grandest nightmares? Is it the mask jumping at you from within the darkness, or is it Professor Crane abandoning you in such a macabre world? Mask on mask off it makes no difference. He just hopes he's the star of every nightmare, as long as you fear him as much as he fears losing you.

｡??｡ Riddler- Edward Nygma| ریدل - ادوارد نیگما

It's frivolous to think he will not solve this riddle. That he will no unearth this plague you have bestowed upon him. This fixation, this obsession, he needs to understand you, to peel away your skin and glimpse at your inner clock workings. To undo your screws one by one and find out what exists between that haunting laugh and those knowing vicious eyes. To rip apart your wires, and feed upon your mind. To understand, he needs to understand you.

He got close once when he had your neck under his shoe, but the evil lith of your laughter rings across the room and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't unnerved. He doesn't know what question to ask first. 'what have you done to me'? 'why do you think you're better than me?', 'Why don't you love me?' Instead, the silence shatters with your voice, proud melody rivaling his own, your eyes lock on him and he can't suppress his shutter. "Well Eddie, riddle me this. What can kill any man, but isn't even alive itself?"

⁺♡⁺ Deathstroke - Slade Wilson | مرگ سکته - اسلید ویلسون

You're like a shooting star, dancing across the night as you stalk his latest kill. Little asssasin, you know your stuff but he finds your thirst for ineage and morality both exhausting and honorable. Most people grow up and spit out their morals with blood and broken teeth. Let the world's cruel realities claw and gnaw at their skin until it's hardened enough to survive. He's yet to see you extend such a courtesy to the world, makes him think that pulling the trigger on you would be some sort of mercy. Bullet through the heart leaving your body coated in his essence and one final kiss pressed onto your paling lips.

He dosen't notice the inkling of you rattling around in his brain until he realizes that this is the eighth him he's seen you smile at the end of his barrel. Pretty little girl chasing after morals and sand, hoping to escape the endless night by spilling just a little more guilty blood. You look like some sort of ethereal doll, immortal in your innocence and vicious in your virtues. He can respect that, truly but Slade isn't naive enough to think you have what it takes to survive. Maybe that's why he wants all so badly to feed you his victim's hearts and eyes and livers, to push them past your pretty lips, staining them the deepest red. Watching your delicate throat constrict as you swallow everything he gives you. Reveling in the sensation of your greedy little tongue swirling around his fingers licking up the access gore. Can almost picture your smile and stupid little head tilt as you thank him for the 'candygrams'.

⭑.ᐟ Respawn | احیا

Respawn drowns in his love. Pulling apart his heart to lay at your feet. It's all he's ever known, broken boy built to harvest spare parts. But you don't look at him like that, you don't even look at him like an assassin. No, you smile fondly as you nuzzle his neck with your nose. You look at him the way his father used to, like he's actually worth something more. He's never quite kissed you, he's not even sure he knows how. Instead, he holds you close to his chest making sure you hear the dull patter of his jagged heart.

He's born from greatness, left to rot in the dark. He refuses to play pawn, anymore. So maybe that's why, when he finally kisses you -with all the grace of a schoolboy's first kiss- it's so desperate and erratic, clumsily licking your lips and nicking his tongue along your teeth trying to think what his father would do. His fingers dig into your arms, preassing prayers into your flesh, screaming 'Don't leave me, you're all I have left'.

⭑☽ Ghost-Maker - Minhkhoa "Khoa" Khan | روح ساز - مینه خوا "خوا" خان

There's nostalgia in your essence, in your presence, something he can never wash away. He's grown addicted to the erratic reverbate of your pulse between his teeth. Kissing the bites he leaves marring your perfect body.

Why can't you just love him, let him haunt your every thought, and erode those pesky creeds, until he is the only thing you'll ever need? Khoa hates to admit it but he sees something in you, something so reflective of the little boy laying in the sand of the gobi desert, shooting phantom bullets and mocking stars. You scream every time he kisses you, recoil your tongue, and cry at the bitterness sweeping in. But Khao loves the challenge, the fight, loves forcing you into submission, even as your knife digs between his ribs. He's only ever content when your pith floods his mouth and your melodic voice rings through his ears. His precious little princess tucked away between his arms forever.

☾⋆ Phantom-one | روح یک

he never shows you his face. He blames it on his upbringing too used to old rules that he can never escape their clutches not even for you. His kisses are always clouds dancing across your skin, so light and airy they may as well be the wind. But tries to leave traces of himself with every kiss. Desperate pleas for you to look at him, to touch him, to love him back. All so he knows he's alive, still real enough to love.

He's always trapped between the land of the living and the realm of the deceased. Always so gentle with the love he's stolen, so careful to not break his lover, as his mentor did to him. He laces his fingers through your hair, sucks gently on the length of your neck, all while pushing 'I love yous' into your soul, marking you as his forever.

🎀𖹭🎀 : @your-yandere-kiss @fancyfeathers @yandere-writer-momo @nxdxsworld @lilyalone @neverano @natsukicookies @googeecat44 @starrydollita @mune-writes @a4g3lstarfire @yourhornysister @froggy-voidd @rissareader @6helpneeded9

@blacklunardice @princesstrunkz @mona1704 @testification

[locktheundeadworker]

Fight fight fight

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED

[stardusted-hearts]

Anonymous asked: Never have I ever nearly drowned, Stardust and Shadow ---

Never Have I Ever - No longer accepting for Stardust [he's WASTED]

"..." They're lucky that Sonic is already drunk. But he's suddenly oddly quiet. He takes his sixth shot silently.

"Let's lay off the death related ones, shall we?" Shadow does not take a shot.

[yanderenightmare]

ooooh what kinda mythic creatures are the jjk boys?

Gojo, Sukuna, Toji

TW: implied noncon, yandere, the supernatural?

gn reader

Gojo Satoru Hybrid between angel and human

His hair is pearlescent and so are his wings—soft feathers, sharper than blades when he wants them to be. His halo can only be spotted when the sun shines extra bright—like a ring of stardust slowly orbiting his crown.

He doesn’t know his parents, nor which one of them was the angel. But it’s not something he cares much about. People call him Icarus, and he tries to live up to it the way he drowns himself in another’s embrace every new night—never the same one.

Never the same one until you. Another hybrid. No part of Angel, though…

He falls in love with it—all of it—the points of your teeth, the tiny horns that protrude from your hairline, the slim tail adorned with that pretty arrowhead, and the equally sharp look in your eyes as you glare at him with disgust.

He wants to know more. Do have markings in unseen places? How far does your tongue stretch, and is it split down the middle like with a snake? Is it venomous? Is it sweet? Does your skin burn to the touch like the sun does when he flies too close? Or will it be warm and soft and pliable?

He and his angel eyes freak you out. You advise him to leave you alone, the point of your tail threatening to slice his throat open. You’ve been shunned enough by humans—you don’t need to add a snooty angel boy to the fray. 

But then he calls you beautiful. And no one’s called you beautiful before.

Ryomen Sukuna Hellhound

The few times humans have dared try to tame him have all been devasting days of fire and death. Silly humans, thinking they can make him do his bidding like another mutt on a leash—he’ll make them all burn.

But then there’s you. You’re not like the other humans. You don’t come to him with any intention of collaring him. Instead, you have your hands folded together in prayer—sweet scripture leaves your lips, soothing his singed skin until it stops burning.

You wear holy robes and a kind smile on your face, you don’t avert your eyes even as he glares at you with the embers in his own, even as he growls and bares teeth. You don’t ignore him when he speaks, either, even when his tongue comes out split through the middle and all his words reek of smoke. You bathe him in holy water and rinse the soot out of his fur—telling him he’s a good boy.

He feels no desire to bite your hand as you pet his head and stroke his ears—he just ends up wagging his tail. But then again… he is still a hellhound. And you should know better than to feed monsters in the dark…

He leaves his room in the chapel and sniffs yours out—nothing, not even so much as a seal on your door to keep him out. You have too much faith. Your door creaks open, but you remain peacefully asleep—all soft snores as he mounts you with drool dripping down his canines…

Fushiguro Toji Hunter

Rumor has it that something far worse than ogres and trolls travel the forest. Beware of the hunter—all you little nymphs, fauns, and fairies. Some say he’ll stuff you in a bag and sell you, while others argue it’s his appetite that makes him hunt—some even mean it’s just for sport, that he’ll kill and stuff you and mount your head on the wall.

You, a poor forest nymph, are unfortunate enough to get yourself caught in one of his nets. You’re a crying little mess by the time he comes around—begging him not to sell or eat or skin or harvest your wings, barely breathing between the words.

He chuckles and promises you he won’t do any of that stuff, but the smile on his face is enough to convince you he’s possessed by some sort of demon. And as he hauls you up on his shoulder and starts carrying you further into those places you’ve never dared venture, into the thicker parts of the forest where the trees all seem riddled with some type of disease—you can’t help but believe all those rumors you’d heard.

He tells you that his snares and nets are meant for rodents and that he didn’t think fae-folk were dumb enough to get themselves caught by them as he starts cutting into the net to free you—only, he doesn’t stop at the net—but goes for your slik garb next. Whistling as he bares your pretty skin while pinning your small wrists above you in one meaty hand.

His grin is sharper than his knife when he advises you not to struggle, saying he would feel awful if he were to accidentally cut you.

♡ Nanami, Fushiguro, Naoya ♡ JUJUTSU KAISEN masterlist

[kyrios-i]

Dreams

They say our dreams will take us far [Eyes fixed on the ground] So I tread carefully To not suffocate or drown

Our dreams will carry us far, they say [Eyes fixed on the

g r o u n d] So I am not another dove shot To crash and burn

Up! Up! I say my dreams are made of stardust and silk [EYES FIXED ON THE BEYOND] A never-ending light Guiding those on the never-ending road Surrounded by bright flashes and dull sparks Of things that never will or be

I walk.

created on 03/18/2023

last edit on 11/27/2023 @ 12:47AM

Inspired by "Eyes Fixed on the Ground" by EDEN

[hyukascampfire]

𝑯EART 𝑊ORM ⸺ hueningkai ℘˒´ˎ˗

  ⨾𓍢ִ໋ ˒˒ 𝚑𝔢art𝚠𝔬rm

[𝑛]. a relationship or friendship that you can't get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

⸺ listen to the playlist .ᐟ ‧˚

〝﹙ 📼 ﹚“I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?”  ˛ ､､

wc ➛ 17.9k

𝔭airings childhood bsf!kai x reader (lowkey soulmates?) ⤷ ft. asshole!yeonjun x reader

𝒢 ‎; smut ˒ angst ˒ some fantasy

𝔴arnings angst, family issues, fingering, jealousy (i’m sorry i just love ts), yeonjun really is an asshole, orgasm denial, thigh fucking, unprotected sex (they're stupid!), strength kink a lil bit, breeding kink, possessiveness, creampie, choking... i think that's all, lmk if i missed any

✎୭ ashlynn's note omg. this was such a fun palate cleanser to write. this wasn't supposed to be as big as it is, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and i got super into the story. this kai is SOOOO!! yeah. i’m so nervous posting this because i’ve only ever posted TSFAWC, but…. here you areee (^^;; this is not proofread, so if you see a mistake... give me a sec. i'll get to it. hehe

Though you fan your hand furiously over your face, the little breezes washing over your clammy skin are not enough. The air is thick and heavy with summer’s heat. So thick that you almost feel it each time you swallow. It’s better than just letting yourself melt away, though. The cushion at your back doesn’t help much. It holds your warmth and returns it to you the longer you sit slumped back into it. You suffer it though—you’ve gone too sluggish to move.  

You let a leg dangle over the arm of a chair, watching a hopeful moth dance in the light of the buzzing porch light overhead. It flutters frantically in it, making a grand fight to reach that false moonlight, only to drop away when it realizes that it’s being burnt. You watch it rinse and repeat, relentless and sure, for who knows how long. It’s no special moth—no luna moth or the ones with the pretty pink wings—but the light falls down on it and colors it a pleasant stardust silver.  

You delight in letting your conscious brain turn off to watch it. It lets you forget the sweltering under your skin, and also that Kai had drug you out here. His dad gives him shit when he plays inside, but it’s way too hot to be out here. Isn’t it supposed to cool off after the sun goes down? It doesn’t feel like it. The deep acoustics are drowned out each time a car whirrs by. Playing outside should be the best option, but you and Kai live right on a busy road.  

When the roar of some car going ten miles over the speed limit doesn’t obscure his playing, though, you admire the intricacy of it. His fingers work up and down the neck, jumping frets that you imagine would be impossible to anybody without those long fingers of his. You had always been a loud supporter of his playing, even way back when the most he could play were simple chords, but you became especially so when a few years back he put a guitar in your hands and tried teaching you. Even with his fingers guiding yours, it was quick to learn that the effortlessness with which Kai handles the instrument is hard earned.  

He practices on the acoustic guitar, but that’s not his domain. With houses just a dash across the street from each other, Kai had grown up at your home more than he had at his own. So vividly, you remember the stars in his eyes when he’d listen to your dad’s music. Metallica, The Smashing Pumpkins, Linkin Park, any of it. He had fallen in love with it a long time ago. Your whole life you knew that it was only a matter of time before he was in his own band, chasing his dreams with a boundless mind and an indelible vision of himself on stage. How had that time come so soon, though? You don’t know if the notebooks full of inky lyrics that live wherever he deems inspiration might hit him make you proud or nervous. He’s making good on his dazzling aspirations, and you? 

You speak finally into the air, cutting through heat waves and his music and the night. “Isn’t it weird that we’re not going back to school after this summer?” 

He doesn’t have to even stop playing to answer you. Playing comes to him as a second nature. “Kinda,” he answers, brown eyes flitting up to you. “But it’s not like you won’t be back to it in September. College is the same shit.” 

The leg you’d been dangling and bouncing pauses. That’s right; you’re supposed to be going to that college you’d chosen because it was only a three-hour drive away from here. You pluck at the seat’s threadbare fabric, and the moth, still there, becomes oh-so-interesting once again. When his playing stops, you drop your head back with a cushioned thud and a groan that you wrangle in your throat. 

“Why are you acting like that?” he says, voice gone sharp like accusation. He doesn’t even know the truth, but he’s known you too long.

Can’t you just keep secrets for yourself, sometimes?

Kai, arms clad in a well-loved hoodie even in this dreadful weather, lays the guitar down. You maintain your silence. “Seriously, what?” 

Some secrets have timers, though. This one could only last you until about September, or even August when he realizes that you’re not preparing to return to school. A controlled sigh from your chest isn’t enough to soothe the nerves that sparks. “Nothing.” 

“Secrets, huh?” Kai says. When you do finally look to him, black spikes of hair frame his eyes and the accusation in them. 

It’s a simple poke, but it gets under your skin as sharp as any thorn might. It’s not like you don’t keep secrets from him, and you’re sure he keeps some from you too. But those are the little kinds, the inconsequential ones—like I ate already when asked why you’re not eating or like Yeah, I’m fine when it’s been a bad day. You don’t hide this kind of stuff from each other. Usually, you’d run over to his place to tell him whatever’s bothering you. Why not, when he’s known even the worst details of your life for almost the entirety of it? You’ve been holding this one close to your chest since somewhere around the end of senior year, though. The longer you let it fester, the worse your nervousness snowballs. “C’mon, Kai. Let’s not do this. Can you keep playing?” 

He doesn’t like that, of course. But you watch recognition dawn over his chocolate brown eyes, helpless to stop it. “You’re not going,” he says. It’s not a question nor a suspicion, it’s a bone-dry fact.  

Well. There that goes. You want to tear every hair on your head right out. Why had you even thought you’d keep him in the dark about it? When he’s not out in some garage making music, you two are together. The conversation was going to stroll by at some point; this was only inevitable. His disappointment radiates off him in waves and blisters you. He hasn’t even said anything yet, but you know exactly what he thinks of it. It’s why you kept it from him in the first place.  

Your silence is enough confirmation for him. “Why?” he says. “I thought you were excited to move out.” 

Wincing, you nod slowly. You were. Even went through the whole application process, along with most other kids your age. Ultimately, you never went through with declaring a college. You don’t exactly know why, but somewhere weaseled down in the shadowy recesses of your soul, you know. Taking those steps, the massive and terrifying ones from adolescence into adulthood, meant agreeing that this form of your life was over. It meant that at some point, you’d be moving away from here to where living your days away in Kai’s room would not be a choice. Everybody has to do it eventually, you know that. Kai’s music gig could take off any day, too. He’s going to make it happen. And then what? All this stalling and wishing on just a bit more time would mean nothing, he’d be off and chasing that dream. As excited as you are for it to finally become reality for him, there’s a nasty bitterness that’s budded in your chest, infecting your person.  

Can’t things just stay like this? 

“I was,” you say. It comes out of your mouth heavy.  

“Then why aren’t you going?” he says. Crickets, never seen but always heard, sing their song into the night’s darkness. “You didn’t get rejected. You’re too smart for that.” 

An ache sits heavily somewhere near the center of your chest, maybe over your heart. All those good grades, nights spent bent over a desk and AP paperwork—you’re wasting it. You shake your head. “No... just...” It’s an effort to dress your thoughts in a way that might appease him. A quiet moment stretches with your thinking before you continue, “I don’t know what I want to do.” 

He doesn’t like that, the yellow wash of the overhead light dancing over his taut lips and hard eyes. “Don’t know what you want to do?” he says, bringing his legs up onto the seat to crisscross them. He wears his favorite jeans. They’re heel-bitten and baggy enough over his legs that he can wear them around the house without any bother. “You’ve wanted to be an artist your whole life. You know exactly what you want to do.” 

Your chest only seems to ache harder. When the both of you were only young and hopeful, you both had big dreams. Kai was going to be the face of a metal band, and you were going to be an artist. A painter, potter, sculptor, even doing animation for those big companies like Dreamworks and Disney. You wanted any of it, just as long as you were doing art. You’d even promised him that you’d do the cover art for his albums with interlocked pinkies and flushed, hopeful cheeks. That passion and love wasn’t gone from you, it blazed strong in your veins. This blaze wasn’t the kind that kept you warm and excited to push forward into life, though. It had morphed into something that scalded you when you got too close or started imagining yourself pursuing its call. It’s a taunting silvery glow, no longer a guiding north star. Taunting words of family members stamped down on that hope hard. When you were little, it was said lighthearted and in passing. The older you got, though, the more serious their faces became. They wouldn’t say it outright perhaps, but you hear what they think well enough. Art is a dead-end career.  

Shifting in your seat, you tell him, “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean?” Kai says. “There are good colleges for that.” 

“I just... don’t know.” 

Shaking his head, he tells you, “But you love it.” 

You do. In its every form, you love creating. But loving it doesn’t mean that it’s right for you, or that you should trust your future in its hands. “I think I can do it in my own time,” you say, finally pushing yourself upright from the cushion. “Don’t wanna kill the passion by doing it for a living, you know?” 

He thinks on that for a moment. “If you love it, you should do it,” he says. 

An awful frustration bubbles in your chest. Kai has always had a clear life path, the steps ahead of him set in stone and waiting for him to follow in them. It’s hard for him to see why you might not want to do the same. There’s nothing that makes you as happy as the fact that he has it all figured out, that he knows just where he’s going and that he’s so incredible at it that he doesn’t have to worry about meeting the requirements, but your path seems obscured and untrodden. Punctuating a deep, resonant sigh, you say, “It’s not that easy, Kai.” 

“If you’re not doing that, then what are you going to do? Are you just going to settle for a nine-to-five?” he says full of accusation, the tapping on his knees gone still.  

A dry laugh, you say, “Maybe I’ll marry a super rich guy and just do my art for a living. No nine-to-five.” 

His face flashes. He’d always been a bit reserved, especially around others, but he bared his emotions freely around you. You hold them dearly to your chest and made sure to do your best to make good on that trust. He says, “You’re more than some guy’s housewife.” 

Cheeks radiating in the heat, you snort. “I know, dork. I’m a rockstar’s best friend. It’s my personal favorite achievement.”  

His face sours when you reach out and pinch hard at his cheek, but he doesn’t pull away or brush you off. The skin there is warmed and clammy. Really, the two of you should go meet the cool AC inside before you suffer heat stroke. But this moment feels so nice—your shoulders feel tons lighter without something to hide. If you had it your way, things would stay like this forever. Just the two of you, sat here like you have so many times before, just taking for granted the time you’ve got together.  

His mouth opens to banter, probably something about how he’s not a rockstar yet or to get you back for calling him a dork. Wingbeat and sterling dashes about your face send the image into a blur, though. You’re a quick mess of limbs and a whipping head, as if it’ll chase the thing away from you. 

“Seriously?” Kai says. You’d climbed halfway over him, elbows digging into him and knee doing a number on his thigh. “It’s a moth. You’re not scared of moths.” 

Lingering for a few moments later to ensure the flying thing was nowhere on you or around you, you hold back a laugh before you climb off him and fix your hair with undignified tucks behind your ears. “He was in my face,” you say around a laugh, because you know it was a bit too much. Nobody likes wings in their ears and spindly legs in their face, though, and you’re in no control of what you do when anything with six legs tries and get too friendly. Even moths.  

“You just wanted me to protect you,” he says. A sarcastic, shit-eating smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.  

“Oh,” you scoff, batting your eyelashes and clasping your hands together all saccharine-sweet. “Yes, Romeo, won’t you kill that bug for me? This girl’s heart just can’t take it!” 

Kai’s nose crinkles, and the playful light twists into a glare. “Nasty.” 

“That’s how you sounded,” you say. “I only reacted accordingly.” Laughing, you kick your legs out over his lap and sprawl back out. He takes the guitar back into his hands. 

As much as you want to escape the mugginess, you’ll survive it for just a little while longer—if only with the force of an indulgent heart. The eternal moments are those you allow to linger.  

⚝⭒ 

Some things, you forget when you’re older. Maybe it’s time’s hand, eroding memories down and stuffing more in the longer you live to experience them. But also maybe because they’re the sort of things you can’t say in the adult world without a laugh in the face and a look from down their noses.  

This memory is one of those forgotten things. It’s moth-bitten and dusty, something you one day folded up in a moving box and decided to never revisit. 

You’d been down at the creek. Kai and you had spent so many summer days there. It wasn’t too far from home, just past the filbert trees and into the shallow neck of the backwoods, but there you were out of sight and free to get up to nothing good. It was a wonder your mom ever let you do it. Kai’s dad didn’t care too much where he went or what he did, but your mom dug her claws in deep. You like to think that she imagined you two would have each other, if anything ever happened. 

Usually, you’d be there holding your jeans up from the stream and Kai would be letting his jeans go dark with it. The bite of water was nice as it washed over warm skin. Fun was a simple thing to find, then. You dug your fingers into the mudbanks and tossed stones way too big to be throwing at each other, just because you two remembered how much the adults hated it when you did. Then, you’d drag tired limbs home avoiding sweetgum tree spikes that had fallen to the ground and dug splinters out from your feet.  

This day, you had been in the blackberry bushes. It was maybe late July or early August, and they’d gotten heavy on their branches. You’d waited until the smell of them, summer-warmed, was sweet and cloying in the air to pick them. With buckets in your hands, you plucked only the fattest berries from their bunches. Your fingers were stained a delightful purple and perhaps a bit thorn raw, but you didn’t mind much then. You plucked for hours, and it was dusk before you could catch it. Dinner was no doubt waiting for you back home. 

“There’s a bunch over here,” Kai had said. He reached a long boyish arm, still awkward and lanky with puberty, up high for ripe bush. You finished off picking before climbing around thick branches sticking out to take a peek. A bunch, there was. 

When you went to drop a handful of them into your bucket, Kai hissed. He’d been snagged by a vicious looking branch, those ones as thick as a finger with thorns to match and you’d warn each other tongue-in-cheek to watch out for that one. He’d worn those ridiculous shorts that day, the ones that looked half pants half shorts with how long and baggy they were, and the claws of the bush had jumped at the opportunity. At first the scrapes were white, but then red blood crawled out and down his leg.  

“Kai,” you said, some parts chiding and some parts just wondering how he’d managed that. You surveyed his leg for a bit, and then determined that he should wash his leg off in the stream. He walked there strong, but of course you noticed the hobble beneath his acting. When you squatted down into the dry grass and cupped water to wash off his leg, you laughed. 

“What?” he had said, holding the shorts up. You covered your laugh with a hand, but it erupted past your palm. You remember the glare on his face very well.  

You still laughed. “You’re stupid,” you had told him. 

“I didn’t see it,” he said. “I tripped over it because it was sticking out.” 

That time when you brought your hands to catch some water, there was a twinkle in its surface. You didn’t notice it for a second. The creek moved fast and you could see a lot of things in its reflection. When it lingered, that’s when your brows furrowed. It seemed to twirl, dancing around like alive over the stones. 

The sound of Kai’s voice remains with you. “Hey,” he had said, strong to call your attention but also wavered with uncertainty. 

When you looked up, there was silver dust dancing around you. 

It was fluffy and whorling, fine silver stardust. It’d moved weightless in the air, as though it barely existed. In the center of it were a few moths. They seemed to be made of sterling powder just as the dust was, and they glowed against dusk’s backdrop. If your memory serves you right, there had been a sweet hymn of coos from them. They beckoned you. Summer’s heat felt lighter, and so did your chest. You wondered where they had wanted you to go. 

Almost afraid that if you spoke they might have fluttered away, you whispered soft and low to Kai. “What is that?” He was stood frozen there, pant leg still scrunched up in his fist. Stardust glowed soft in his brown eyes while he took it all in, you remember. It wasn’t a scared frozen. You weren’t scared, either—rather, it was as if that lightness had found its way into the core of your being and brushed over it with mending hands. 

He whispered back, “I don’t know.” How could he have known? It was absurd. 

Those whisps had beckoned you, flowing toward the deeper woods. The soft moths, their murmuring brushing up against your ears, seemed to wait for you to follow. You remember a pull, soft tendrils wrapping themselves around your heart and the yearning it planted there.  

But there was also this reluctance, a bone-deep answering that had told you: No. You’re not ready. 

“Kai, I wanna go,” you told him. 

You didn’t even need to tell him twice. Berry buckets forgotten; the journey home was a stranger one. When your dad asked why you returned from berry picking emptier handed than you had left the house, Kai and you only shared a look. You pair kept that evening at the creek hidden so well that it became more forgotten than shared secret.  

⚝⭒ 

Once, you had been the type of girl that loved being around family. Some of your favorite days of your life were spent in this living room, T.V. roaring over bouncing conversation. Some of those nights ended in rosy cheeks and laughs, and some ended with words thrown angry like fireworks. You never knew which you’d be getting, but you endured the fear of not knowing because it was a simple love—the basic kind built with biology into you the moment your infant skin touched your mother’s. You endured it because eventually, sleep washed away the bad taste left in your mouth and you forgave them quick, sometimes quicker than you ought to, and things would go on as if it hadn’t even happened. You endured it because you could handle its burden, if only to feel the warmth you feel when it’s a good day.  

Kai was always there—his dad was hardly home, so he found family in yours. When you were younger, you’d been embarrassed he was there for caustic, spitted words and intimate fights. Now, you’re just grateful for his shoulder.  

So, yes. Once, you had loved being around your family. But things feel tenser now, nights spent all together less frequent and when they do happen, they’re tainted by a strange air. You think that this strangeness is new, but an awful worry also makes you think that it’d always been there, that you only feel it now because you’ve grown into your adult mind. A hollow ache stakes its claim in your chest, declaring that it won’t leave until you find that youthful ignorance and joy once more. You think that it might stay there forever. 

Bare feet bounding down the stairs, you make a rare appearance downstairs. The cupboard is only half open to make way for a snack raid before your mom’s voice cuts through the air. You know quickly just by the look on her face that you should’ve stayed upstairs. 

“Hey,” she says, gathering laundry into a basket. “You’ve been applying to jobs?” 

With an anxious belly, you tell her, “Yeah. A few. They’re not really, like, ideal, but I sent applications.” You don’t remember when it got hard to look into your mother’s eyes, but you can’t bring yourself to do so now.  

“Not ideal?” she says. “It’s not like you can be picky. Mcdonalds or wherever, I don’t care, you’re going to need to get a job if you’re staying here.” 

“I know. I applied,” you reiterate around a mumble. You close the cabinets, not so interested in a snack anymore. “I just... I don’t know, ma. I don’t want to do that for a living, going between those sorts of jobs.” 

Face hard and abrasive against the truth you bare, she does that awful taunting smile that makes you feel small. Stupid. “You’re not going to college, so that’s what it’s gonna be. You can’t sit up there and draw for a living. You’ve gotta get into the real world, get some real experience.”  

There’s a burst of hurt in your chest, dazzling and gnawing. She’s getting closer to saying how she really feels about your dreams out loud every day. Your face burns and so do your eyes, knot thick in your throat. “Yeah, okay. Got it,” you say, nodding. You’re at the front door before you even know it, slipping on shoes and fighting the greatest internal battle to will back tears. She’d use those against you, no doubt about it. “I’m going to Kai’s,” you throw over your shoulder.  

Whatever she barks back at you, you’re glad you don’t hear. Bells on some old Christmas decoration hung on the door that had yet to be taken down, even into summer, jingle and wash it away for you. 

Kai’s brows shoot up when he opens the door to your face crumpling. You’d done so well at damming it up, but the wall cracks and the water crashes through once you see him. If it were anybody else, you’d feel icky and attention seeking, but you’d held Kai to your chest through gut-wrenching sobs as much as he’s done it for you. Without question, he takes you into his arms, warm hand running up and down your back. The warm soothing is so familiar. You melt right into it.  

He keeps you there for a long moment. Then, his chest rumbles as he tells you, “Come on.” The walk through the AC to his bedroom is nice. Having a house like Kai’s to come to where it can just be you is nice, too. You step around the mess of clothes and scattered belongings on his floor like you have a muscle-memory roadmap of his room. Boxsprings creak and hard mattress welcome you back home. His room is dark as always, a night-dweller you call him. The array of peeling band posters plastered over walls you two had painted blue some years ago, when it’d been his favorite color, don’t help to lighten it up. He keeps a low lamplight on.  

“She never listens to me,” you say, crying gone to occasional sniffles from your chest. You rest your cheek on your bent knee. 

“I know,” he says. “But at least she cares about you. Pays attention to you.” His voice is soft and deep and right next to you. Always right next to you, there for you even when you might not appreciate it as you should.  

His dad cares too little what he does, and yours care too much. The grass is always greener on the other side, you know it. Still, you hold a fantasy where you’re able to do teenager stuff. Where you’d allow yourself to do bad things, because you weren’t so intent on painting yourself with their will. You two hold eyes for a long moment, your twinkling ones caught in that steady brown. “I just want to get away. Be my own person.” Your words are muffled in the softness of your skin. 

“You had the chance to do it,” Kai says, hand playing with your fingers. “But you didn’t.” 

Holding your legs closer, you lick your lips. What do you say to that? Would it ever be the time to tell him that you did it because you think that your soul is pathetically intertwined with his, and that it might snuff your lifeforce out to even try pursuing life without him? Without this? How do you tell him that you’re so frozen and unwilling to pursue any sort of future because it means accepting that this chapter is over? You clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. You refuse to acknowledge its end.  

“Kai,” is all you say, trembled and thick. It’s not just your mother’s words that dig at you and tear to shreds the last bits of what dreaming you had left in you, but so many other reality checks too. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard those sorts of words, urging you forward. You can only dig your heel into the ground for so long before you’re swept away in time’s ruthless, endless moving.  

He understands. Lifting your face with warm fingers against your cheeks, he says, “Hey. How about we go get ice cream, or something?” 

Ice cream does sound nice. “Dairy Queen?” 

Smirk tugged over his mouth, he says, “Yes, Dairy Queen. A blizzard. C’mon, let’s go.” Sliding off the bed, he offers you an urging hand up. 

But you falter. “I don’t know if we can. She’s mad at me. I don’t think she’ll let me go.” 

“Let you go?” he says, eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t have to let you go. You’re an adult now, you go if you want to.” He offers his hand to you again. 

It’s so him, freely going wherever he ordain it. The bullheadedness is very him, as well. Always the devil on your shoulder, he was the root of any rebellious thing you’ve ever done. He could never understand your apprehension, or why getting in trouble was such an awful thing to you. “I have to ask to get money.” 

Brows pinching, he says, “You think I’m not gonna pay for you? You don’t need them to give you money, I’ll pay. I’ll take care of it.” He drags you up from the bed this time. “Live a little. Do you want to go?” 

It was never the punishments or the getting in trouble that you were scared of, though. Disappointment was a scarier word than grounded. Sneaking out and those sorts of things, it’s not like you had angel wings at your back and never considered them. It’s that you are deeply, utterly terrified of changing how they look at you. You begin to tell him, “I do, but—” 

He cuts you off, adamant. “Then do it. Let’s go. If you want to go, then go,” he says. “At some point, your life needs to become your own. It’s not sneaking out when you’re graduated and eighteen years old, it’s going wherever the hell you want. You’ve... You’re gonna end up stuck here, in this town, forever. You don’t deserve that.” 

That sounds like both the best and the worst thing you’ve ever heard. You take his hand.  

⚝⭒ 

Your frozen fingers nurse your ice cream. The cup itself is cold, but the Dairy Queen on your side of town is always thirty degrees below what it should be. It’d always been that way. Even way back when you two couldn’t drive, you’d get dropped off here to escape the melting weather and get a frozen treat with a handful of dollars. Each time, you’d start off sagging with the relief of summer’s weight off your shoulders and left the place shivering and sugar-mouthed.  

It’s really only you two in here. You crinkle your nose when he takes a spoonful. “Out of all the flavors...” 

Unbothered and no doubt expecting you to say it, he offers you a flat, “You get your flavor, I get mine.” He makes a point of taking an extra-long bite. His lips linger around the red plastic of the spoon and his brows rest high in silent challenge.  

The corners of your lips twitch up. “Hmm. Well. I just have a hard time believing that Oreo... or, like, brownie fudge, is right there, and you actually want M&M. I don’t get how M&M your favorite.” A familiar banter falls over your tongues. Your heart buzzes and your cheeks radiate. This is the first you’ve done this all summer, and it’ll be weaning off into fall soon. Any other summer, you would’ve been here on all the hottest days. You hate that Kai’s been so busy with his music; you hate that you can hear the resounding ticks of the clock counting down your time. You also hate that the stubborn depths of you still believe that if you freeze yourself here in stasis that the world will relent and stop along with you. 

You look over the sharp lines of Kai’s jawline as it feathers with his chewing, and the broadness of his shoulders where his jacket stretches around it, and the starkness of his collarbones against his chest and the bobbing of his adam’s apple when he swallows. No, time doesn’t stop. Some of him remains the same, though. In it, you see the boy that had love creeping up on you so long ago, with all its aching and all its hope. That freckle on the column of his neck, the bump in his nose leading down to the button tip that beckons your lips to steal a quick kiss.  

And, those lips. They’re as soft as ever around the discontented grimace he pulls. “M&M isn’t my favorite.” 

With a pursed mouth and patronizing brows arched over your eyes, you say, “Oh, huh. That’s funny, because if my memory serves me right, it’s the only flavor you’ve ordered for the past... six years.”  

Kai husks a laugh at that. “That’s because they haven’t had my favorite for years,” he tells you, scooping up the final bit and then pushing it off to the side. “It was a blizzard of the month that they discontinued. The blackberry cheesecake one. I made peace with it, though. It lives on in my heart.” He grins, arms crossed over his chest and his back settled into the booth seat to let you finish your cup.  

“Blackberry cheesecake,” you say, voice made taunting. Your nod is slow and taunting, too. “Well, forget M&Ms. Why would blackberry cheesecake be your favorite? Ever?” 

His face falters, a moment where something flows over his eyes as if reliving a memory in a few short seconds. Then, he shrugs. “It just is.” 

You roll your eyes. “Whatever,” you laugh. “Maybe my palate is unrefined.” Imagining the tarte fruit in purple swirls of ice cream, you’re taken back to a humid July day and the scent of churned mud.  

The strange memory unfolds itself quick. As if it were waiting for you to find wherever it’d hidden itself away. With a sharp gasp, you say, “Oh my god, Kai. Do you remember that one day? That weird stuff we saw down at the creek?” 

He nods. “Yeah. I was just thinking of that the other day, actually...” 

Less interested in finishing your cup now, you let the spoon rest. “What?” you say, the word peaking in the middle. That day hadn’t crossed your mind once since it’d happened. “How weird is that?” 

Scoffing a laugh, he says, “Weird, yeah. Just as strange as two kids high on fermented berries.” 

That draws a breathy laugh from you. “Is that what you think it was?” you ask him with knitted brows. The berries had been fresh, and you two had popped plenty into your mouth. But no doubt, you’d have spat them right back out if they were that ripe. “I mean, we saw the same thing.” 

“It happens to animals all the time. Squirrells, and stuff.” He lends you a gallic shrug. “We just freaked ourselves out. Like that one time you said you saw the shape of something in the dark and we freaked out. And it was clothes.”  

Well, hallucinating, in tandem, a glowing mist because you two by chance ate fermented berries is a very long shot. However nonchalant he acts about it, he seems to have thought long and hard about it. Enough to reason it away with some far cry explanation. Would you have even been able to get drunk off a handful of fermented berries? And, god, you’re really sure that you’d have noticed. That taste isn’t really one you just don’t notice.  

Whatever. Maybe you were just drunk idiots. That’s a lot easier to swallow, anyway. 

“Okay, but you saw that. Did it not look sinister?” you say. With your spoon back in your hand, you punctuate the sentence pointing it at him. “You freaked out with me, too.”  

An unsatisfied scowl on his lips, he steals a spoonful of your dessert. You don’t even swat him away—your phone buzzes in your pocket. 

Catching sight of who’s calling, you share a long look with Kai. It’s funny, how fast those three white letters scramble you up. When you hesitate to answer, Kai tells you, “Answer.” 

You hope she can’t tell you’re not at Kai’s by the refrigerators’ dull buzzing. It’s an effort to tussle that invasive worry back. You’re at Dairy Queen. Getting ice cream with the boy she’s known since childhood. She should clutch her hands and thank the sky that you’re here, not out in some nasty frat house like you could be. You thumb the green button. 

Her voice comes through the speaker crackled and asking you to run over to do a quick dish load. For a heartbeat you consider telling her that you will and then start rushing home. Instead, you fork out the truth through resistant lips. 

The hangup tone sits heavy on the air between you and Kai. Having listened to the whole thing on speaker, he says, “What was so hard about that? The world didn’t end, did it?” 

The plush of your lip takes a hard gnawing. No, it hadn’t. “I know she’s not going to get mad at me for just going here,” you say as you rest your elbows onto the table. “It’s that they’re supporting me right now. I still live under their roof. The more I go around and insist I can do whatever I want, they’ll start reminding me of it.” 

His face drawn, he lets his mouth twitch to one side. “Yeah,” he muses. “I never thought yours would be the type to kick you out.” 

Kai’s dad had started threating him with getting kicked out years ago, when he first started telling him that he wanted to do music. How many times had he let reluctant tears flow into your shoulder over it? Because music wasn’t a real job? Back then, you’d whispered in his ears that he’d become everything he’d dreamed of and more as your fingers carded through shaggy locks of hair.  

“I don’t know,” you say, humming it out noncommittally. “Is your dad still... y’know?” 

Nodding slowly, his eyes tell. “Yeah. Always.” 

“Because you’re taking the band seriously, now?” you ask.  

“Probably. I don’t give a shit what he thinks about it. If I’m just his goddamn problem, I’ll give him what he wants soon enough.” His eyes blaze with promise of it.  

It takes a bit out of you to not wince. Kai living anywhere but in the house across from yours is wrong. “I don’t think he necessarily wants that, Kai...” You take his hand in your icy ones, the urge to reach out to him thinly veiled under the guise of searching out warmth. He’d always run warmer than you—your personal heater. “It’s probably because he can see that you’re doing it for real. Not just saying it anymore.” 

“Yeah, well,” he spits, “I can’t fucking wait to see what he’ll say to me when I make it. That piece of shit, though, he wouldn’t even care. It’s not like he ever gave a shit about me enough for it to matter.” 

But, it matters to you, you want to tell him. You understand his need to throw it all in his face, though. “Is that one label going to sign you? The one you were talking about?” 

His tongue darts out to wet dry lips. “They haven’t yet. I don’t know. But I don’t need that money to get out of here, I’ve been working on it.” 

“They will,” you say. “But, where would you go? Not too far?” You try and keep it light and playful, even as your heart aches. 

“Come with me,” he says. It’s painfully blunt, as if it were that simple. “Let’s go get and apartment; you and me.” 

“Kai...” you say. “You don’t have to drag me along because you feel bad.” 

The idea doesn’t sound half bad, though.  

“What?” His face tightens, as if somewhere under the surface your words had scraped somewhere tender. “You don’t have to stay here forever. Please. I want... I want you to come with me. You wouldn’t have to even tell them; just bring all your stuff and go together. We could do it together. Like we said we would.”  

“We were like, five. Everybody tries to pretend running away at five,” you deadpan. It’s a washy attempt at lightening things back up. 

Living with him, moving out together, should feel like everything you’ve ever wanted. And, maybe it is. But, he’s not asking you to live with him the way you want him to. Not in the way that your aching heart wishes he would.  

Kai doesn’t share the laugh you give him. “Yeah, okay,” he says, leaning into the table.  

Perhaps you should consider the potent disappointment he’s terribly masking with a face of indifference, though. 

⚝⭒ 

Slowly, the knots in your belly have worked themselves out. When Kai had dropped you off, they’d been so awful that you felt borderline sick. You sat the whole ride there in his old beat-up truck picking at your nails and rambling to him. He listened to you the whole time. And then when it was time to walk in, it had least felt a little easier to do so with his eyes on you, watching to make sure you made it in safely. 

You’d gotten a job. It’s not too bad, folding clothes out on display. It would be nice if they kept the lights a bit brighter, but you’ll get used it eventually, you hope. 

Most of your coworkers are around your age, but the one showing you the ropes... your heart had fluttered. 

“You’ll get it,” Yeonjun says. The smile you find on his lips once he straightens up from placing product on a display is smooth and smug. Sleek strands of black hair fall over his eyes. You fluster under his gaze.  

With arms crossed over your chest you say, “Yeah, probably.” You reach into the cardboard box for stock to practice on. 

“Where’d you work before this?” he asks, leaning back into a wall to watch you. Suddenly, you make sloppier work of your folding. “Your first retail job?” 

Some obnoxious pop song falls down from the speakers over the store. Nobody’s in here yet, thankfully; you’ve got some time to try and get a handle on everything. “No, this is my first job. I was so nervous walking in.” 

Interest catches in his eyes. It encourages that smooth smile on his lips further. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll show you the reins.” 

Your mind stalls. The suggestive, sly flicker to it—are you looking too much into it? Maybe that’s just how guys like Yeonjun act. It’s hard to pretend that you don’t see how he’s looking at you, though. It has your belly twisted up in fluttery knots. It’s not like you hadn’t had your share of his type. But, for some reason you’d rather not address, he’s got your heart thumping in your chest. 

He laughs at your fifth attempt to fold up the shirt. When he takes it from you to help, he smells of musk and vetiver. “You going to college near here?” he continues.  

“Nah, just doing this, I guess,” you answer, watching him fold it up to try and soak it up.  

“Really? Why not?” he hums, crossing his arms about his chest. “You seem like a smart girl.” 

Buffering, your blood buzzes in your veins and your cheeks burn. “Dunno. Not really sure what to do. Are you in college?” 

“Nah. I’m trying to figure things out, too.” 

The both of you pop your heads up when the bell rings to announce the arrival of a customer.  

“Yeah,” you say, eyeing him. He’s a few years older than you, no doubt, and yet his life hasn’t fallen apart because he’s not done anything grand yet.  

Time’s hand around your neck loosens. Just a little bit.  

⚝⭒ 

You sit crisscrossed on top of Kai’s bedsheets. He’d thrown the windows open because the AC died, but it’s no help. The hot air wafting about the room sits heavy on your skin. You’d dressed in as little material as possible to let it breathe, bare thighs clad in a pair of loose shorts and a thin tank top, but it’s still miserable. 

Perhaps you two should be going over to yours, but you haven’t had time alone with him for a few weeks now. You hate this busier life, where you struggle to make room for this. 

Your new job isn’t so awful, though. Especially with Yeonjun there. A bout of nerves flows up through your stomach. That reminds you. 

Sitting up a bit straighter, you consider not doing it. In fact, you really shouldn’t. But your mouth moves before you can put a stopper on it. 

“Hey, Kai,” you say. The thickness in your throat makes you believe that your heart’s jumped up into it, caught. God, what are you doing? The unsure waver in your words has you regretting. 

His eyes flicker up to yours. He hums out a, “Huh?” 

No, this is wrong. You mess with the thin cotton strap of your tank top where it’d slipped down. “Never mind,” you tell him, trying to shrug it off.  

That piques his interest. “No, what?” His brow pinches.  

You lick your lips and shake your head. “Nothing, never mind. Really.” 

His eyes search you from where he sits up against the wall. “Tell me,” he demands. 

Really, you shouldn’t have said it in the first place. It was a ridiculous idea. But now you know he’s not going to let it go. And, ridiculously, you say it. “I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?” 

Insects buzz outside as he looks at you, frozen in spot. You reject the urge to dart away or throw up. You’re honestly just as shaken as him. But really, who else could you trust with something like that? You don’t want Yeonjun to be disappointed if he kisses you, or to seem inexperienced to him. 

And, perhaps, the hopelessly in love part of you hopes to at least feel his lips on yours at least once. If you’re going to be alone forever in your longing, you just wish that you can have this. 

“What?” Kai says. He looks rattled.  

Of course, he’s shocked. You shift. “Forget I said that,” you tell him, unable to meet his gaze.  

String-roughened fingers wrap around your upper arm. “I didn’t say anything,” he says, voice strained and face less shock-fallen and more darkened. “But... I mean, you want me to teach you to kiss for some other guy.” He spits out the last bit as if bitter in his mouth.  

“You don’t have to do it,” you say. “I just... thought that I might ask you to do it. I don’t know, I’m sorry I said it. I’ll just wing it or something.” His room’s grown ten degrees hotter, if that was possible. Especially where you feel his eyes on your face.  

Almost imperceptibly, his hand tightens around you. He swallows hard. “You want to learn how to kiss?” he says. “Fine. I’ll teach you.” 

In a heart-stopping moment, your eyes snap to his. Brown and familiar, they hold you with an intensity that turns your limbs into jelly. The air is stifling. “What... do I do?” you ask when the silence becomes too heavy.  

A muscle feathers in his jaw, reflected in the low light of his room. It’s quick and so easy to miss, but it tells you everything you need to know about how this is making him feel. How much disbelief he’s in. “Come here,” he says, stilted around the absolute absurdity of it. He pats on his lap. 

You make a hesitant crawl across the bed toward him. It seems as though your elbows might buckle beneath your weight, but you make it despite the odds. A fog settles over your brain when you rest your hands on his shoulders and bring your legs to straddle his lap. 

But you shove it back; you want to live and breathe every last second of this. No matter how unbelievable or blistering it is.  

Breaths fan out over your face. It’s seizing your mind like undiluted liquor. “Where do I put my hands?” you ask him. It’s breathless, the air stolen right from your lungs though your mouths haven’t even touched.  

“There is fine,” he says. His words sound breathless, too. The weight of his touch on you as he runs his own up to support your back is unsure. “And then...” he says. It falls out on your mouth slowly, and then he’s taking your lips onto his. 

The walls melt away, sound does too. All that is real is the taste of his lips and how they move against you. Your lips start tentative, but you try his mouth movements yourself. It feels like a timid dance—it feels like deep, deep down, finally everything is right. That mist, thick and blinding, falls back over you. 

Something changes. Something in it, where you two meet, changes. He becomes hungry. Softly locked lips turn biting and nipping, shaky breaths exhaled slow through your nose. His hands on your back become surer, and one even ventures off to grab your chin. The other holds you to his chest, melded together despite the intense smoke and flame rolling off your bodies. You wonder if he can feel your heart beating a mess there. 

Reluctance paints you both when you pull back. You’re panting deep drinks of air. It’s hard to think; your mind’s run off and sits just out of reach. Licking your messy lips, stained with illicitness, you can only manage to brush your fingers against it to form words. “How... was that?” you say, searching his eyes. You find his pupils blown so wide that they consume the warm brown. You’re ready to jump out of your skin with that look pointed at you.  

Kai doesn’t answer, though. He slams your mouths back together as if starved by just the brief moment you’d parted for air. Nips on your bottom lip and emboldened hands—he moves like roaring water through a dam. A dam that he’d worked hard to fortify, and yet, at a crack it’s all falling down. Fingertips digging through the fabric of your shorts down to your soft hips, his chest rumbles. You feel it reflected in your core, electricity charging there and shooting up your spine and down your thighs. 

You kiss him for all the times you wish you would’ve, but didn’t. The slight rolls of your hips down onto him come easy. You love how it has him making a sound into your mouth and taking the fat beneath his fingers harder into his hands. He helps you. 

He drops his head into your neck. Your head swims for air and he has you shuddering with just the brushing of his nose against the column of your neck. The walls of his room spin around you. “Kai,” you whine, every bit of friction his jeans provide, even clothed as you are, just enough to rile you but not to give you what you need. 

“God,” he growls, thumbs hooking under your waistband. “You always fucking run around dressed in nothing,” he says, letting his fingers linger like a suggestion of undressing you. “Did you do it on purpose? Expect to make me crazy, knowing I couldn’t touch you?” 

And, in those words, it seems that he steals every last bit of breath from you. How often had you gone braless or worn something like this around him? Laid here, in his bed, like that? 

Grown tired of your fruitless grinding, he brings a hand down to support your lower back and says, “Turn around.” 

Though you explode with the prospect of what he might be intending to do or what’s next, if you’re really going to do this, you do so in a flash of eager limbs. His chest is solid against your back, you melt against the feeling of it. He’d become such a man lately, filled out, and you watched it happen. It was hard for your eyes not to catch on muscle-corded forearms while he picked at strings or to not appreciate the timbred rumble of his voice when you’d feel it come from his chest. How could it not do things to you? Now, he’s dragging your shorts down your legs and you’re in disbelief.  

“Fuck,” he breaths out. His fingers find your panties soaked through. “So, you’re the type to get dripping wet.” 

An embarrassed blush decorates your cheeks. Kai drags his index finger in circles around your clit through the fabric as if enamored with how much of a mess you’d made of it. Your hips twitch every time he rolls right over it. It’s strange how he’s got your body acting on its own volition with his touches. Even stranger that it’s your best friend doing it. “Sorry,” you tell him, wavering.  

He continues those terribly slow circles. “Sorry?” he says, chin on your shoulder. He’s got you wrapped up in him, with nowhere to go but to melt back into him and let his fingers work. Free hand on one of your inner thighs digging divots into the plushness there to hold it still, he tells you, “It’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s hot as fuck. You’re so excited for me to touch you, huh?” 

The words wreak havoc on you, feeding the flame that has your belly twisted up tight and the ignition point between your thighs pounding. To hear them coming from him, reserved Kai, has you digging your fingers into his forearm to prove that it’s real. You’d never have imagined him being so... filthy. You imagine him behind falsely nonchalant eyes, devouring you with a perverted mind all the times you’d spent innocently sitting together in this room.  

Your cheeks squish beneath his fingers as he takes your face and turns it to him. He wants to make sure you’re look at him as he asks you, “Do you want me to finger you?” 

Like a record, your brain skips. Between the blunt, lewd question and his hand on you, it’s in overload. How could he ask something like that so simply? Stunned as you are, of course you want him to. You want him to do anything to you. You nod.  

Every last nerve and neuron in your system, just below the skin, cry out when his fingers slow down to nothing. “Hmm?” he says, ignoring the chasing of your hips and the opening of your thighs to invite him into paying your poor pussy the attention he’d ripped from it. He wants to hear you say it.  

About ten minutes ago, you lost your mind. It does not return to you now. “I want you to,” you say, chest beating in tandem with your cunt. 

“You want me to, right? Not some dumbass you met a week ago, huh?” he says. “Because you know that this is what it’s meant to be. Me, doing these things to you. Not some twenty-five-year-old piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve you, baby. Understand?” 

His fingers slider under your panties. Dumb brained and cognition gone muddled, you nod. All you can really think about is the moment his fingers slide over you. Fire licks up your lower belly and your insides as he brushes calloused finger tips finally right against your clit. 

Puffed breaths of a scoff raise goosebumps over your skin. “Teach you to kiss so that you can go over there and get his hands on you,” he says, middle two fingertips prodding at your entrance. “As if you were ever anybody’s but mine. You’d come crawling back to me, baby, because it was always meant to be us. He could never satisfy you.” 

His words might alarm you or have you asking questions if he hadn’t pushed his fingers into you and begun curling them with strong, pointed presses, pulling soft mewls and hums from you until he finds a spot that twists up your insides. Even through the palm you press over your mouth, your moans come out more like wavering grunts and croaks. Your thighs quiver and twitch, threatening to snap closed against your own will with each. Only your feet stay planted to the mattress. Like a cone of soft serve under the sun’s blistering attention, you melt down him. Just his frame keeps you upright. 

“Right there, huh?” he says. The smirk on his mouth filters his words into something taunting. “That’s where you like it.” It’s like he’s learning your body step by step, fulfilling all the questions he’d been forced to only guess at before this.  

“Uh-huh.” It comes out whiny and cracks in the middle, but you can’t find even an ounce of you to care right now. If this moment had been a long spiral, a fall from grace, down into a dark pit of forgotten inhibitions, you’ve just hit the bottom. Cheeks blazing cherry blossom pink and with your fingers curling into his pant leg, you don’t doubt that you are a picturesque mess. The kind of mess that’s beautiful because it’s dirty. Your teeth are not gentle on your plush bottom lip. It stings, tugged back and bitten and still a bit swollen with kisses. Perhaps you taste the tang of metal on it, but you pay it no mind. 

Kai redoubles his efforts. Now that he knows exactly how to play you, he’s fucking you on his fingers without mercy. The sounds coming from your cunt were wet, but now they’re different— nasty squelching. The only noises coupling with your pathetic keening. Forget anchoring yourself on his thigh, forget muffling your sounds. Instead, your hands fly to encircle his flexing forearm. Under your nails, angry red crescents dig into the muscle there. What had been a languid, building pleasure suddenly becomes everything. Your breaths run away from you, and you chase them frantically. Deep down in your core, the muscles spasm and rage against his fingers. “H—oh god,” you groan. Even the muscles in your thighs and tummy tighten up. 

“So whiny...” Kai mumbles, voice taut with the effort of eroding you down into pure, blinding-white pleasure. 

And then, in a swoop of mercy, your belly tightens. You hover here, on the precipice of something so consuming and voracious that your muscles and bones reject it, and yet your heart sings. Your eyes and cheeks and lungs and belly burn, the flame charring the edges of you in a beckon. You answer its call. Kai doesn’t mind the snapping of your legs shut around his arm, nor does your bucking or shaking deter him. He just holds you through it, arm like a metal bar around your waist. He’s everywhere, in this moment—the smell of him, leather and utterly familiar, his mouth dusting hot kisses over your skin, his fingers guiding you through orgasm. Where you’d gone silent in the initial crash of it, you devolve into mewls and grunts as you come down.  

He holds you even as you slump against him boneless. Afterglow simmers in your veins and has your brain all lethargic and lazy. Neither of you speak for a while, your pulse thumping a rhythm. His breaths rise and fall against you; it grounds you in this moment where you feel all spacey and gone. You become aware again of how disgustingly sweltering it is in his room, your skin sheened. 

That brainless bliss only lasts you for so long, though. When rational mind returns to you, no matter how you wish it wouldn’t, you’re hit in the chest with regret so hard it knocks the wind out of you. 

How will anything ever be the same after what you’d just done? Stricken still by the thought, you barely register him pulling his fingers out of you. After all your worrying about making sure no wedge comes between you two, look what you’ve gone and done. No; nothing ever will be the same again.  

⚝⭒ 

A couple of weeks ago, you ruined the one friendship you were supposed to have forever. It presses down heavy one you while you sit sprawled out on Yeonjun’s couch, his arm around your shoulder. His phone casts a glow over his features with all the lights out. 

It doesn’t smell like home. He, pressed against your side, doesn’t smell like home.  

Some stupid movie that he’d picked out, yet somehow you’ve ended up the only one still watching it, weaves a hum into the quiet of his apartment. Tangy hurt wells up in your throat. Even the moments when you and Kai would sit in mutual silence on your phones never felt like this. This is different.  

You haven’t seen Kai since that night. He’s been busy getting ready to move out, and you’ve been here most days. How fast all of it had changed. You wish you’d feel whiplashed, left empty, by the drifting that you’d been so terrified of. But you don’t. It’s just been you, locked on land, watching him being taken away by the ocean’s tide with no way to change its course. You tried and screamed to call him back, but now your voice has gone hoarse.  

And instead of watching him go, you choose to look elsewhere. It’s all you can do to protect yourself from the hurt. 

“Hey,” Yeonjun says, finally addressing you rather than whoever’s he’s got in his phone. “Did you bring anything to change into?”  

“I brought stuff to sleep in,” you say, eyeing him. You know that’s not why he’s asking. If it came down to it, you could just steal something from him and pull it on. He means going out clothes. Your jaw tightens. “But nothing nice. Why?” 

He stretches his arms behind his head in a flaunt of long arms and tanned muscle. Hours spent at the gym lent him those; you appreciate the look of it with a watering mouth. Kai had earned his build by hours spent outside with your dad, because his own could care less, helping him fix up cars and vehicles of all ridiculous sorts. You remember when Kai had first gotten his truck—junk on wheels, honestly—he’d spent so much of summer out there getting it running. And, well... the sun-kissed bronze of his skin and frame that came with it, you had no qualms with. 

But those memories only sit heavy in your chest as you’re sat here beside Yeonjun. You banish them elsewhere; you need to let him drift off. If you can’t have each other, and your feelings won’t permit just being friends, then you have to. You want him to do amazing things, and you fear that it’s your presence in his life that will interrupt that. As much as your feelings are real, they are selfish. You, your unsure direction and all your dead weight, should let him go. Because you love him. 

“The guys want to come over,” he tells you, pushing off from the couch. “You should probably into change into something less showy.” 

Less showy. Your mouth drops into a scoff of disbelief, looking down. A pair of shorts and a shirt, showy? You have to laugh, or else you’ll succumb to the strange embarrassment crawling at the back of your skull. What’s he trying to say? Is that what he thinks of you? “What’s that supposed to mean?” you say, face tilted up to him in a twist of distaste. “I’m wearing something comfy.” 

He shrugs, hands shoved into the pockets of his black sweats. “Don’t want to give them the wrong idea about you, that’s all, baby. They’re guys; I just want to protect you.” 

“No,” you say, the word falling out in a barked laugh. “Why would you even be bringing over dudes that you think will look at me like that? Why are you even friends with people that you think are gonna make moves on your girlfriend?” He holds a hand out to you, but your hands stay right where they are: crossed solidly over your chest. 

Throwing that hand up in audacious exasperation, he gives you a look that makes you feel small and petulant—like you’re throwing an overblown fit. And, maybe you are. You should probably just do it; him seeing you as some overbearing or high maintenance girl has that embarrassment flaring like wildfire that’s found dry brush. “C’mon, baby,” he says, a lazy smile on his mouth that gets under your skin. “Let’s just have an easy night. Don’t make it a big deal.” 

Let’s just have an easy night. As if you’re the one ruining the night. Something snarky tries to seize your tongue, but you hold it down. “I thought it would be just us. We wanted to watch the movie together, Yeonjun. Can’t you wait to hang out with your friends? Let’s enjoy our time together; you’ve got your shift tomorrow.” 

“My fucking god,” he groans, running a hand through his hair furiously. “You’re needy, you know that? The neediest I’ve ever had to put up with. I don’t put up with needy, baby. Can’t you just chill out a little? My last didn’t mind when I’d have friends over.” 

Your eyes burn. Your cheeks burn. He’d been with plenty of other girls before you; that, you’re well aware of. It’s been a corrosive source of self-doubt for you. You don’t want that title: the neediest he’s ever had. Don’t want him to think of you as some prude that won’t let him have fun. Just... hearing him bring up the other girls he’d been with before you stings and leaves welts no different from a slap in the face. Feelings of inadequacy shackle you and have you saying, “Fine. I’m gonna borrow some of your clothes.” 

Heavy resentment blooms on your skin where he bends down and presses kisses to your cheek, and then mouth, and then down your neck. “Thank you, baby.” 

And, where those ugly, wilted flowers of it bloom, you hear echoes of something. Something that tells you that Kai wouldn’t treat you like this. But you’ve made your bed, decided to do it yourself, and now you’ve got to lay on it. 

⚝⭒ 

The frat parties are the worst kind of social outing that Yeonjun insists upon. The smaller kinds, more intimate gathering with just his closer friends, you tolerate much easier. You’re not fond of the circles he chooses. Breathing in thick, smoked-out air surrounded by alcohol-coated breaths is not your type of fun night. Somehow, you end up doing that more than date nights. But that’s better than being here. The base rumbles up through your feet and makes your stomach sick, and it reeks of grinding bodies and body odor, and condensation coats your fingers from the red solo cup as full as when you’d first gotten it. 

But, still, you come along. Not every time, but when you don’t, you lay in his bed sickening yourself with images of what he might be doing here. How pathetic is it to attend parties with your boyfriend because you fear that otherwise, he might stick his tongue down the throats of other girls? 

You’re looking for him right now, awkward and left alone. He’d promised to stick around; you had begged him to. That was pathetic, too. You know that you put up with too much. If he loved you, or honestly even liked you, you two would be in the thick of the throngs dancing or off somewhere talking with others. Together. The frantic skimming and weeding of your eyes through the blur of faces is not right. That’s not how he should make you feel. It’s not how Kai would make you feel. 

Well, Kai would never have you here in the first place. 

Venturing out from your little corner, you sift between the bodies of people have a hell of a lot better time than you. Drunken, some you bounce off of like bumper carts. You press your palm over the round face of your cup to spare the floor from spillage threatening to pour over the lip. It’s not like a splash from yours would matter much, though. The linoleum has already been made a fetor mess of dirt off shoes and the sticky sugar of liquor. Your shoes peel from it as you walk. God, what would your parents think of you being here? 

You peek around corners and eye big groups. He’s not in the kitchen when you look there, either. Your stomach feels sick in a knowing way—a gut feeling that doesn’t justify anger or tears just yet, but you know. Right in the center of your chest, you know. 

It’s in some room that you find him. Sat on the floor along with a few faces you don’t know, he pulls from his bottle. And on his shoulder, he lets a girl with shining curls and pink cheeks rest her head. At your busting in on the intimate gathering, Yeonjun’s eyes slide to you. Recognition flashes over them and wars with bleary drunkenness. 

“Hey, baby,” he says. Their gazes all fall on you, but you can hardly see them through blurry eyes. 

The girl lifts her head from his shoulder. She’d caught the memo. 

“I think I’m gonna go.” You make it sound resigned, try to not let them see your shame, but your voice betrays you and crackles. Maybe it’s better to pretend it doesn’t feel like you’ve just been kicked in the stomach and left to reel against the force, but you can’t. You’re nowhere near shocked, nowhere near blindsided, but still you hurt. 

He follows you down the hall. “What’s your problem?” he says, the few, plain words mending and waving into a slurring. 

You’ve got one goal: get to the front door, away from the shitty music and him. His words, sharpened, fall off your skin despite his efforts. What good would fighting do you, anyway? It was always going to end up this way. This is just who he is, and he doesn’t give two shits enough about you to want to change that. 

“Baby, seriously? That made you this mad? I didn’t even fucking do anything. Stop being insecure,” he says. At the gritting of your teeth, he sees an opportunity and pounces on it. “You don’t need to be jealous. I don’t do jealous shit. We can dance, or something. Shit, I don’t know what you want! Just stop throwing a fit.” 

Didn’t do anything? You have to laugh. Maybe you didn’t walk in on him fucking someone else, but that’s not what this is about. Not even a little bit. You’ve checked out, and the fact that he thinks he can make you believe that it’s your fault this time only drives the killing stake in harder. 

Maybe you’re bitter. It claws at your insides—turns your face hot and screams in your face that you’ve been used. But beside it sits a sadness. Not the slow kind, but the quick sadness of hurt. Why hadn’t you been good enough for him to love you? To like you? You’d left behind Kai and rested your new life on Yeonjun’s shoulders. You’d wanted so badly for his approval, or for him to want you. You did your best to try and make this work out because you needed it to. You needed so desperately proof that you could fall in love with somebody else. But your best was not what Yeonjun was interested in.  

Pins and needles prick your skin as you step outside, like jumping into an ice bath. It shocks you out of dizziness. Words surge up and out in a flash flood like hard reality. You spin on him. “Jealous?” you say, choking out a scathing laugh. “The last thing I’d ever let myself suffer over you is jealousy. Get over yourself. I’m going, stay here if you want. I don’t care.” 

“How are you gonna do that, huh?” he says. The flickering yellow of the porchlight paints his features. The shadow of something fluttering around it cuts dark spots in the light, and then a small little moth comes down and jumps around in his face. He waves it off. “Gonna have bitch boy come pick you up? You can’t leech off him forever; he’s gonna get sick of picking up another man’s girlfriend.” It seems like you walking in on that had sobered him up, but his breath still curls out onto your face with the reek of alcohol. “It’s not a big deal. You’re making this a bigger deal than it has to be. Do you not trust me?”  

“You are such a piece of shit,” you grit out. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Ever. I don’t know how I let this go on for so long.” You don’t like him having Kai in his mouth, don’t like him trying to act like you’re conflating things, and especially don’t like that face he’s making. As if you’re acting crazy and overblown. “No, I don’t trust you. You didn’t fuck her, but come on, Yeonjun. Seriously? You think I’m stupid, and I’m sick of it. You thought this would be easy because I didn’t have the experience you have, but I’m sorry. I don’t like being walked over.” 

“If you’re gonna be so goddamn jealous, then maybe we aren’t gonna work,” he says. 

That moth, floating light in the air, is right back in his face. Yeonjun takes two hands and smashes it between a clap of his hands. He shakes its flattened, broken body off his hand. Looking down at it laying there on top of dirt-caked concrete, you get this... feeling. A tickling around your person.  

“See if I care,” you snap, throat aching against the onslaught of emotion and held back tears.  

⚝⭒ 

Rivulets of raindrops dilute the tears on your cheeks. Your hair plasters to your face and your clothes to your body.  

For a week, you’d went about it all as if it hadn’t happened. And then you came here.  

It’d not been this rainy when you first got down to the creek—just a gentle trickle, really. You hadn’t been crying then, either. But, watching the water work at babbling over stone, you let yourself feel it. Here, where you’d had so many good memories. You’ve gone and tainted it, now. But for whatever reason, you’d just wanted to be here. Arms curled around yourself and fingers digging into drenched sleeves, you don’t wipe away the tears or cover the sounds of your crying. You let the stream hear it; it’ll sweep it right up and down the way. Somewhere far off, where you don’t have to feel it anymore. 

You realize that, usually, you’d be over at Kai’s right now. The fact that his room was not the first place you thought you could go to anymore is a punch to the gut. You drop your face into your hands and cry harder. Really, you’ve got to stop doing that to yourself. Thinking of sad things—putting your hurt under the microscope to see it closer. It’d be easier to just fold it up and tell yourself that it’ll pass, and that relationships end all the time. 

It’s not him that you cry over. Well, maybe some of it is. Rather, it’s that you have absolutely no idea where you’re going. Where you are. Finally, you’d built yourself a raft to get off the shore and go out to sea, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and it’s breaking apart right beneath you. And, stranded and alone in the water, you’ve got no way to get back to shore to build yourself another raft. You’re stranded, and the scariest bit is that you’re doing it all alone. You weren’t supposed to do this alone. You two made promises back then. 

You suppose that a promise is one of those things you were supposed to leave faith in back on shore. 

The raindrops are heavy over you. The fall of it roars against the ground, a torrent downpour. It’s not coupled with whipping wind or flashes of lightning—just straight, still falling. It’s a somber feeling no different from the gnawing in your chest. 

Like chimes, there’s a distant, gentle sound. Maybe water falling over creek rock, but it’s more like suggestion. A sweet sound that you shouldn’t even be able to hear over the rest of it, it’s as if it’s right in your ear. A whisper.  

You fix your blurry eyes with a wet sleeve. Rain falls right back into its place, but you see it: a silvery, whimsy haze. And the moths. They jump and call you, this time. Their glow bounces off the rainy mist against the grey of night’s arrival. Then, all you can hear is the whispering. Where you stand frozen, your feet beg to move. To follow them. 

So you do. 

Their entourage of moondust trails them where they go, wrapping you up and weaving between raindrop and space. You don’t worry where they’ll take you, or even try to wrap your head around this happening again. You just follow, mind glossed over and entranced with how beautiful it is. When you’d seen them before, it’d made you uneasy. Mostly because it looked so unearthly and unbelievable. But this time you just follow. 

A far-off voice, one oh-so-familiar, peaks through the haze. It’s not enough to stop you, but then you hear it again, louder and closer. 

You blink a few times. Once to break away the fog, and then twice to focus your eyes on Kai stood in front of you. His hair lays in wet spikes over his eyes and beads of rain trace the planes of his face. He’s as soaked as you. 

“Kai?” you say. Looking around you, you’ve ended up somewhere in the field between your houses and the creek. But you’ve got no recollection of walking here. Whatever that mist is, sentient or not, had swept you here.  

His voice is strained, but you appreciate hearing it. “Break up with him,” he tells you. 

In his eyes, as you search them, there’s stardust glowing like reflection. Your face twists up. “What?” you say, breath a puff of smoke ahead of you. Summer had come and gotten away from you so fast, and now it’s gone all cold again. 

“Break up with him,” he echos, face solemn. He looks ruffled. 

“Why?” you ask, “And why are you out here?” 

“Because I’m moving out today, and I think I deserve to at least see you before I go.” His eyes look over you. “And... your dad said you went down to the creek.” 

He’s moving out today, and you had no idea. And really, it’s your fault. You’d driven that wedge between the two of you. “I did break up with him.” 

Downpour fills his quiet for a few moments, his face swirling with emotion like the clouds above you. He nods. “Good.” 

There are a few more long minutes between you; just you two searching each other's faces, antsy to say so much that it bunches up in your chests and stalls. It’s what a summer of longing does to you. Even with Yeonjun, even trying to slowly chip away the stitching that had connected the two of you at the hip, you were helpless to stop the gnawing of the love you bear for him. Even just seeing him now, you feel those threads mending back up. God, why does it have to be so hard? 

He just looks at you. For a few beats, he just looks at you. There are so many questions in his eyes. They flit across and turn over, but all he settles on is, “Why?” 

There’s so much you want to tell him. Words pile up to the top, some threatening to spill over. But you know that if you tell him some of it, just to make up for all the time you’d missed out on together, it’ll all come crashing out. And you don’t think you want him to know just how much you accepted, the way you let yourself get treated. So, you shake your head and say, “It doesn’t matter.” 

Kai looks like he wants to push that issue, but whatever look he finds on your face deters him. “Come with me,” he pleads. “I want you to come with me.” 

Your throat tightens. Curling your arms around yourself harder, the rain only coming down on you harder, you say, “Kai, I want to. I want to. I just... I don’t want to freeload off you, because you’re doing great things, and I’m just...” Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, but they’re already as soaked as the rest of you. “I’m just going nowhere. And I don’t want to be a burden, or ever be the reason that you can’t do what you dream of. If staying here means that you become everything that you’re destined to do, then I’m happy with that, Kai. I am.” 

He shakes his head, stumbling toward you. “No, no you don’t get it,” he says, frantically taking your shoulders into big hands. Under his touch, every taut muscle goes slack. You melt. “You don’t get it. You are the music. Every single song is about you. Every single fucking song is about you. I want you to come with me, please. I love you, I have always loved you, and I will always love you, and I thought you’d loved me too, and I don’t want to do this alone. I can’t do it alone.” 

He loves you. Kai loves you. The enormity of it rumbles the ground where you stand on legs you fear might just give in. You flex your fingers to combat the tears pricking your eyes. It doesn’t work; they brim and well up, spilling down over your cheeks. “What?” you say, voice softly breaking. “Kai, I didn’t...” 

“And just when I thought I finally had you, you left me,” he says, throwing a hand up beside him in a big gesture. “You left me! I woke up thinking you’d be there, and that maybe you loved me too, and you had left me. And then you threw me away for some piece of shit, and you stopped coming around.” His chest heaves for breaths. 

Your face contorts. That night, the one where you two had slipped up, you’d fallen asleep curled up against his chest on undiluted contentment. When you woke up, you had panicked. You thought he’d wake up and pretend it hadn’t happened, or he’d be uncomfortable, or even be disgusted and regretting. You couldn’t handle that, so you slipped out before he woke up. It’d been an attempt to protect your tender heart, but looking at the twitching of his lip now, you begin to think it’s the most selfish thing you’ve ever done. He thinks you used him and left him. Your stomach twists. Voice thick, you say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you, Kai. I thought you didn’t... I thought you didn’t see me that way. I was scared. I’m sorry I hurt you.” 

Brows knitted together, he says, “Thought I didn’t love you?” His hand cups your cheek, warm against the soft frozen skin he finds there. “I’ve... I’ve dreamed of you almost every night of my life. In my sleep, I see you, and you’re happy and glowing, and that damn... mist is all around you. I couldn’t get away from you even in my sleep.” 

Darting between his eyes, soft and reflecting your face back to you, it’s hard to breathe. Kai’s dreamt of you; he’s as sickly in love with you as you are him. Thunder claps, and the ground shakes, and the heavens open up above you, the trumpets belt, and you two are in love. Somewhere deep in your center, you feel it—your soul nodding yes. 

The mist. You know exactly what he’s talking about. “I saw it. That stuff, those moths. The stuff we saw back then.” 

“I did too,” he says, wet spikes of hair bouncing with a nod. “Not that long ago. It was the first time I saw it out of a dream since that day.” 

Back then, you two had only budding, innocent love for each other. Things hadn’t become mangled and lost to confused hearts or expectations. When they’d appeared to you, you hadn’t needed it. This time, you’d followed it. And it had led you here—somehow had led you right to the very spot you needed to so that every last piece might fall into place. For this moment to happen. You know why it did. 

“I’ll go with you, Kai. I’ll go wherever you go; I love you. I’ve loved you since forever,” you say, each and every word massive and lovely on your tongue. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier.” 

So unlike the last times your mouth had met, he brings his mouth to yours with a dazzling clarity. No longer is it confused kisses; he locks his lips against yours with the urgency of so many years being unable to. Kai’s hands cradle your wet cheeks, hold you so tenderly into his kiss. His touch grounds you, makes the moment real. You melt into him—your fingers curled into his shirt as if holding him there so that he won’t disappear like something of an incorporeal dream. He sighs through his nose, kissing you harder. Even if it all were fake and this was nothing more than a feverish figment of your imagination, you think you could die happy just knowing this once. 

But it is utterly real, and utterly yours. You kiss him harder, too. 

When your lungs start to burn and plead for breath, you two pull away from each other. Your eyes flutter open to capture his. Warm and brown and the same ones you’ve stared into so many times before, but not like this, you sink into them. He runs his thumb over your cheek as he sinks into yours. His tongue darts out to lick lips painted with you. In the inches between you, space no longer feels heavy or charged with grievances. Every last unsaid thing had been answered. 

“I have my stuff up in the truck,” he says, breaths soft. Brown eyes dart around your face. “I’ll help you add your stuff to it.” 

You shudder out a breath. Add your stuff to it. A nervous energy settles down over you, but it doesn’t seem so bad if you’re doing it with him. Together.  

“Okay,” you whisper, a balmy secret just like the ones you used to share in small, giggly voices so many years ago. “Okay.” 

⚝⭒ 

Shivers seize you like jittering bones, all wrapped up in a blanket. The velour cushion seats beneath you have soaked up water and become damp, but Kai’s got the heater blasting. You wind around back roads, headlights illuminating the way ahead of you. Stray droplets whip in them, but nothing much. Isn’t it funny how the rain had just stopped like that? That’s just how the weather is, out here. You wonder how the weather might act wherever you’re headed. 

Your teeth chatter as if your jaw had its own will. The two of you had the windows down thinking that the wind might dry you off, but all it’s done is lap at your bitten cheeks. You reach down for the handle to crank it up. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you—either you’ll eventually dry off, or you can pull off at a rest area to change in a bathroom. The wet clothes are really not helping. 

With an arm up on the steering wheel, Kai turns his attention on you. You know that smile. “Cold?” he asks, eyes darting between your face and the road. With the hand he’s not got working the steering wheel, he runs fingers over your thigh. Soft, gentle massages, yes. The number it does on your core is absurd. Each mindless digging into your thighs and brush of his thumb, sparks sputter there. You’ve sat here, right in his passenger seat, so many times before. Day trips up to the lake, the one he’d joined your family camping at for so many summers, all the times he’d driven you to school in this truck, and even just a quick run down to a convenience store for a late-night snack. You’d deemed it your seat. But never once had you sat in it like this. Your heart does a flip. All those times you’d wish he’d reach over and do just this—a small gesture that would’ve been so big then. And it’s your reality, now.  

“Freezing,” you say. A brush of his fingers nearer the apex of your thighs sends you pressing them together and shifting in your seat. “But not everybody runs as hot as you, though, so.” 

His eyes catch the movement in just the split second he looked over to you. “Huh,” he says. He turns to look at you, his gaze flickering with something anew. Something that you’d only ever seen once before. “Is that it?” 

It’s hard to swallow. His fingers brush higher, and higher, feather-dustings of calloused fingertips that sends tingles shooting up your spine at the slightest suggestion of where he’s headed. “Yes,” you say, feigning indignance to cover the shiver that threatens to overtake you. When his fingertips dance at the waistband of your bottoms, it does so anyway. “Kai,” you say, blood hot in your veins. “You’re...driving.” 

His eyebrows pinch into a taunting furrow. “I am,” he says, nodding. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I’ve got us.” 

And he does; fingers slipping under the band of both your bottoms and your panties, he doesn’t even tear his eyes off the road. He’d driven these roads so much, you think he might be able to do it asleep. Even drawing a mewl from you with a brush over your clit, he doesn’t look away more than a quick glimpse at your pinkened cheeks. 

Two fingers dragging up your folds, right over the source of the mess. “You get excited so easily, huh?” he hums. “You like it when I play with you.” 

When he presses those fingers at your entrance, you can’t help but be taken back to that night. It echoes and reverberates through you. Long fingers, strong and punctual brushes against the sweet spot—he was criminally good with his fingers. Playing guitar did more for him than just music. He seemed to know exactly how to utilize those roughened fingers and trained flicks. Your muscles flicker as he abandons your hole for more brushes at your bud.  

Those teasing, sly touches turn to something more serious. His fingers roll over your clit, slow but enough to have you sighing and rolling your hips against the seat belt. But last time had gone just like this, him touching you and receiving nothing. He should feel good, too. “Shouldn’t you pull over?” you sigh, muscles taut. Your breaths come out shuddering and half-controlled, interrupted by the tightness that each delicious swirl provokes. The door takes the brunt of your grip, white-knuckling the interior. 

He laughs, a husky sound that is tinder to fire. He knows what you mean. “Maybe,” he says. “But I think I’m enjoying this plenty. I think I want to see you cum on my fingers again.” 

Fingers pinching and flicking faster, you grow breathy and whiny, hips rolling against the seatbelt and back into the seat. Your muscles, all the way down your thighs and deep in your belly, jump and twitch each time his fingers run over your clit in just the right spot—that tender spot that’s so good that it teeters on overwhelming. The kind that makes you hiss and then want more. “Shit, Kai,” you whine. “Right—there, keep going."  

He doesn’t answer with any teasing words. No, he just doubles down right at that angle and pressure, leaned back into his seat and driving as if he wasn’t fingers-deep in your panties right now. His sculpted profile at total ease—it does something for you. A delicious tightness curls its fingers over your center, promising a sugary ecstasy that you can’t help but chase. Bucking into his hands as best you can, you go quiet. Right there—right there, you feel it. The cusp. Your fingers brush over it, clenching around nothing and squeezing your thighs tight around him. Every last drop of blood in your body reaches for it, singing and dancing through your veins and making you dizzy. 

And then he stops. Your mouth drops open, whiplashed and helpless to its slipping away from you. You whittle your gaze into something sharp and turn to him. “What—why?” you complain. The tide slips further and further and further back, but you still taste sea salt on your tongue. Frustration sets in its place as you feel it go. Seriously, you’d been right there. “You’re so mean.” 

He slows and then with the clicking of the turn signal, he’s off the road and pulling the truck into park on a little secluded side road. Where the headlights pierce the pitch black, nothing but gravel and field surrounds you. He doesn’t kill the engine, instead pulling his hand free from you. 

Your heart, still stuttering with your lost orgasm, kicks back to life as he smears your slick over your mouth, dragging it over your lips and then taking his thumb to run it right over the plush of your mouth. “Am I?” he says, fingers taking your chin to meet your eyes with his. Endless hunger, pupils so blown that his eyes look black, pins you. “I don’t think you’ve seen mean yet, baby.” 

Darting your tongue out to clean your lips, you look at him through your eyelashes. “Show it to me, then.” 

Something dark passes over his face. It has your skeleton jumping out of your body. Then, he says, “Is that what you want? You want mean?” 

Brain gone to mush that can only really think about him touching you, a slow nod is all you can manage. 

The engine’s hum prevails for some long, thick seconds. And then, he tilts his head in a gesture. “Get in the back.” 

Holy shit. You want to sit there frozen in an overwhelming sort of excitement, but his seatbelt clicks undone and you’re set into motion. In a flurry of giggles and clumsy limbs, you climb up over the center console and into the backseat. He slips out of the front seat, not bothering to even kill the engine. 

The door beside you opens in a swirl of cold wind. In nothing more than a blink, a strong hand has both your wrists pinned to the cushions and your back flush against it. Nose-to-nose, his breath hot over your face. “I’ve got plenty of ideas as to how I can warm you up.” 

You appreciate each other’s faces for a beat more, you looking up at him big-eyed and waiting. Kai breaks the moment to attack your neck in a procession of bites and kisses. Your mouth falls into a silent sound. 

“You know,” he says, free hand working your pants off. His eyes are trained on you, though. “I thought about doing this to you all summer. Touching you again.” He moves on to your top, pushing the fabric up until your chest is freed, clad in soft cotton. He eats the sight up. You want to reach down and cup the back of his head or feel his hair between your fingers as he presses his mouth against the soft beginning of your cleavage, but he’s got your wrists firmly planted. So much so, that you wonder exactly how he’s got you so secure with just one hand. Kai is strong, but maybe you hadn’t seen just how strong. Your skin aches under the purple bites he decorates you in. The sight of him—face in your chest and marking you up so lazily—has your teeth abusing your bottom lip. Whatever sounds you might make otherwise would be embarrassing. Kai lifts his eyes to you. “And I think you thought of me, too. Didn’t you?” 

“Oh, god, yes,” you say, writhing beneath him. He’s going so slow. You want him all over you. “So much.” 

He likes that. He takes your pebbled nipple into his mouth through the fabric. Soft grazes of teeth and sucks, you’re burning all over. When he pulls back, he’s left you dark wet patches when the bra had only just dried against your body heat. “Good,” he rasps, taking his big hands demanding and hungry over your torso. They swallow your frame up, soothing skin but lighting it aflame all the same. “Good girl.” 

You never thought just words could unravel you, but those did the job. Not a gasp, nor a sucking in of breath—no, you go silent and brainless, fumbling for rational thought. 

The dropping of your jaw has Kai delighted. “You’re so pretty,” he says. In a swift and powerful hoist, he’s tugging you down the cushions toward him with greedy fingers. He’s got your thighs pressed up to your chest. You’re bent right in half. 

Out of breath, you huff out, “You too.” 

A quick laugh falls from his mouth, lips pulled into a smug tilt. He nips at your calf up by his face. “So sweet, it almost makes me feel bad for what I’m about to do to you.” Reaching down for your panties, he pulls back on the suffocating press for only enough time to drag them up your legs. Those get discarded somewhere on the floor. Who cares about that right now, though? All you can register is the metallic clinking of his belt being undone. It’s got your nervous system twisting up. 

And, those words. Electricity shoots bolts of pure, sizzling revery into your core. What I’m about to do to you. You imagine a great deal of things that he might mean, but still, you think that none could hold a candle against the promise his voice held in saying it. 

Kai presses his body to your thighs and hooks your calves over his shoulders, and it all becomes real. The press of his heavy cock to your folds, the digging of his fingers into your outer thighs, his pretty eyes sparkling with something feral. As real as it gets—more real than anything you’ve ever felt in the entirety of your life. Your hands find perch flattened to his broad chest. 

The position leaving you two no option but to look right into each other, he holds your gaze and begins slow drags of his hot length up and down your slit. Tantalizing, awful, awful drags. When his tip nudges your eager clit, you jolt. And then he does it again. And again. 

“Kai,” you mewl. A press against your hole has you hopeful, and he lingers there for a moment, but doesn’t give it to you. Can’t he just fuck you? You’ve never been more pitifully in need of something in your life. 

“Shh.” His ruts get more daring, smearing your slick up onto your belly. “Take it.” 

You wiggle your toes in the air and make passes at arching yourself into him in search of better friction. He’s got you pressed so suffocatingly into the seat that it does absolutely nothing for you. In fact, he holds your harder and changes tack so that your thighs press together. At the very apex of them, his weeping cock slips through the seam. 

Pressing his cheek into your calf, he watches you. Every gasp and shaky inhale, he watches. It spurs his rutting on, sticky sounds and pants eating up the air. Your nails claw at his hands as, finally, a knot tightens in your core. 

“Yes, please,” you breathe. He fucks your thighs harder. Faster. Every nudge at your clit and hole becomes euphoric. “Kai, baby—I’m gonna—” 

Just as furiously easy as last time, he rips it all away from you. The rushing away of the buzzing and promise of shaking thighs—he takes it from you again. It brings prickling tears to your eyes. “Kai?” you hiss. “Again?” 

His eyes aren’t playful. He pulls your calves back over his shoulders, handling your hips into a better position to press his cock right at your entrance as if you weigh nothing. Face utterly straight, he says, “I don’t think you deserve it, do you? Not after what you did with Yeonjun.” 

A swallow goes down your throat hard. He presses himself just a bit harder into you. Not in yet, but right there. 

When he does begin sliding in, the stretch of it... You cling to him and squirm between him and the warm cushions behind you. Each inch is a heady feeling, all the way up to the hilt of him. He shudders a controlled breath. “You’re so fucking tight, though,” he grits out. “Did he not fuck you right?” 

Slaps of skin bounce off the car interior and between your bodies. He starts off at a brutal pace; you know it’s meant to make your brain go foggy. Squeezing your eyes closed, you manage, “I... didn’t fuck him.” It comes out strangled, voice bouncing as he fucks you into the car seat. 

Thumb tugging your bottom lip down and then dipping into your mouth, he watches the show of your ecstasy down to every last detail. “Yeah?” he says, voice shaking and almost desperate. “Always thinking of me, huh? Such a good little princess. You know exactly where your heart belongs.”  

You want to answer him, even just with a whine or moan. You try to. But with his thumb pressing down on your tongue, enough to pin it to the floor of your mouth, it’s not gonna happen. He tastes salty in your mouth. 

His truck consists of his grunts and whines, and your taut groans for some moments that seem to stretch forever. The planes of his groin grind against your clit when he delivers occasional pointed rolls, but mostly it’s just an animalistic, feverish dancing of your two sweaty bodies, holds growing more frantic the closer you get.  

Thumb wet with saliva; he frees your mouth. The hand trails slowly down your face and your chin, brushing feather touches, until he finds your neck. 

Your eyes fly open, wide. He pressed his fingers into your neck—no real pressure yet, he looks at you through damp strands of dangling hair and says, “Want my fingers around your neck?” His thumb brushes over the buzzing pulse point there. 

“Yes,” you grit out, body bouncing and back raw with friction against the coarse cushion’s surface. Your breath stutters, your mind stutters. Even your blinks stutter, eyelids too lazy to keep up. “Please.” 

The pressure of his fingers there—it frightens you and has you tightening around him at the same time. But you would trust nobody more with your life than Kai. 

He presses his cheek to your calf to indulge in the sight of you like this: underneath him, folded in two, nowhere to go but to take his pistoning hips, cheeks blazing, and his fingers pressed into your windpipe. If the way he becomes sloppier and more desperate in his tempo has anything to say for it, it does something for him. 

“Gonna be my pretty little girlfriend, huh?” he says. His voice is tight—so is your belly. You’re both so close. Hopefully, this time he’ll let you cum. “Take you to every show; show you off to everybody. Fuck.” 

Brain like static and swimming with a pinched flow of oxygen, you slur your words. “You’re—hah—gonna have other girls all over you.” 

The taunting, split-second raise of his brows flips your belly. You tighten around him again. If he keeps hitting that spot, tip ramming into the soft spot deep inside you that he’d taken such delicate care of finding last time, you’re going to burst into sparkling flame and firework. He growls, “Well, I’ll just have to knock you up so that they know I’m yours, huh?” 

Holy shit. You like the sound of that. Your nails dig into his wrist around your neck, but you cry out a pitchy, “Yes!” 

“Oh, you like that?” Kai releases your throat to take both your hips. You gulp for air, finding nothing but the thick air of sex and humid breaths, at the opportunity. He’s ramming into you like he’s found a purpose. “Isn’t this the perfect position to do it? Get you pregnant?” 

With every last bit of brain power you’ve got, teetering on the edge excruciatingly close to salvation, you groan a long, hoarse sound. “Fuck, yes! Please, Kai, inside—” A hot trail of tears roll down your temples. 

It’s all he’s got to hear to still inside you. His growl rumbles deep in his chest, holding you in place and filling you with his hot cum deep in your cunt. That feeling, coupled with his short grinds against your clit as he fucks his seed deeper, takes your soul by sinful claws and crumbles it down into nothing. You burst into a shaking, whimpering peak, sucking your lips into your mouth to bare through the sheer twisting of your insides and the flame that consumes up your thighs and cunt. 

He falls on you heavy, face in your neck. Warm kisses against your clammy skin meld with your slow floating down, the two of you a beautiful, nasty picture of fucked out. He stays right inside you—the absolute stillness of him, you think he has no plans of pulling out any time soon. His long fingers card through your sweaty locks of hair. 

Finally, he presses himself off you. You get a glimpse of the window behind him—fogged up and filthy with your affairs. Anybody to see the truck from the outside would know exactly what went on inside, but right now, you don’t care. Not one bit. Your panted breaths drag in nothing but musk and thick, hot air. The drumbeat in your chest tells you that, despite how you feel ripped straight from your body, you are very much still alive. More alive than ever. 

“Warm?” he says, pushing sticky hair off his forehead. He’s a mess, too. His hair is ruffled with your touch, his clothes rumpled the same, beads of sweat rolling down the planes of his cheeks and neck, and his eyes a lazy smolder. As much as he looks like sex personified, a soft smile twitches at his lips. 

You snort. You can’t help but feel giddy, here with him. You’re with him. Nothing has ever felt more right. Unplugged when he pulls out of you, your mess trickles down onto the seat below you. “Yeah,” you say. “Very.” 

Warm is not enough to begin to describe how you feel. In your ears, you hear whisperings. Soft and gentle. Perhaps it was divine intervention, or the fates lending you their word, or maybe just rational thought. It says: 

Home. You are home. 

✎୭ ashlynn's note how do we feel about this pair? i really didn't mean for this to get so long, but i ended up RLLY liking their chemistry. i had to do their story justice. also, i finished this with kai as a guitarist and then his drummer performance came out... hmm.

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