#escaped convicts au | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yeyinde · 6 days ago

Text

shadow monsters on wooden church walls

SIMON RILEY X READER

an escaped convict finds shelter inside an abandoned chapel in rural New Mexico. and with it, a very obliging woman on the run from her fiancé.

(well. obliging, asleep. is there really much of a difference?)

18+ | HEAVY NONCON. COCK WARMING. SOMNOPHILIA. PUSSY SLAPPING. NONCON CUM EATING. UNSAFE SEX/BREEDING. MARKING. SIZE DIFFERENCE. IMPLIED KIDNAPPING. WILD WEST AU. SEXISM/MISOGYNY. BASTARDIZED RELIGIOUS MYTHOLOGY.

He finds you asleep on a pew.

A gloved hand shoved under your temple. The other curled into a loose fist, knuckles resting against the bench seat. Your elbow tucks itself nicely into the slope of your waist, forearm balanced on your belly as you slumber, fully relaxed and utterly unaware of who—or what—stumbled upon you.

Too relaxed, maybe.

There's a softness to the spill of you that makes his teeth ache—melting candy. Spun sugar. Something that makes him want to burrow his jaws into the marshmallow sweetness sitting pretty for him like a little treat.

His belly grumbles. He can't remember the last time he ate.

And lucky for him, there's no artifice to the steady rise and fall of your lace-covered chest. The swell is a lulling rock that disturbs the dust gathered along the wood in a thick, dense blanket of moulder and disuse.

He tucks the pistol he snatched on the way here into the pocket of his stolen jacket, cocking his head to the side as he considers this unexpected discovery.

The church was meant to be empty. A sequestered haven for him to hide inside until the lawmen chasing him passed by further in the north. This diverging path known only to the man who shared his wisdom of it in the prison. Locatable only by staggered markers left behind by the pilgrims who were plundered of their goods and left to die in the sprawling, untenable wilds of New Mexico.

(It's always been man eat man in the dust.)

He's not sure how you found it. The state of your boots and the bottom of your dresses make him believe you'd been on the run for some time. Coincidence, maybe. Or—

You don't stir at all, even as his boots clunk against the loose, dusty floorboards as he prowls closer to your prone form. His breath drawing ragged from his broad chest. Heart dropping down to his empty belly where it pulses thunderously in his guts. The reverberation thrumming in his groin—

It's been a long time since he's seen a woman.

Even longer since he had one.

It never seemed like much of a necessity when he was younger. His life split between survival and hunger. Ripped from his ramshackle home in Manchester and squeezed into an overcrowded boat headed to America.

Land o' opportunity, his old man promised, but much like all of his predictions (and schemes), America had little forethought to spare on a poor family with nothing to their name. Opportunity—but only inasmuch as the wealth carried with you provided. And being poorer than dirt, it only made sense that New York had little to offer except rubble—more dirt. More soot staining his fingers, blackening his father's teeth.

He doesn't find it too surprising they were chased out west within a week. Trudging along the same dirt-covered road as everyone else in search of something to call home.

The only place willing to take them was an aptly named town called Tombstone. A place where both his dad and brother rest.

Incarcerated at eighteen for enacting revenge on their murderers, and now a full-bodied man of some thirty-odd years, it's a jarring, encompassing thing to see you sleeping like this. So vulnerable. So soft.

Maybe it's the fragility of these curled parts making up the cluttered framework of your body that appeals to some aspect of himself that longs to break small, soft things between his fists. Crush bone like paper. Shatter it into pieces like fine china. Brittle porcelain.

Whatever it is, it itches in his guts. Makes his hands grow slick, dampening with sweat. Blooms a vicious fever in his head. This unquenchable thirst clawing at the back of his throat is only sated by the spill of your soft, cottonlike body tucked into the pew.

It's—

Precious, he thinks, cock stirring, thickening in his borrowed pants. Sweet lil' thing, he coos, tongue scraping over his teeth. All curled up inside a church. Alone.

Waiting for him.

He isn't one for religious zealotry. It held no appeal even as the priests visited the prison, beseeching him to repent. The idea of god, gods, never held much interest to him, but he learned the Bible they carried with them, this sacred object of divine wisdom. A fairytale, not too dissimilar to Chaucer, he found.

But he can't deny there's something a little poetic about this. Something divine.

Almost as if that mighty, tempestuous god they preached about was smiling down on him. An offering not at all dissimilar to the riches he bestowed on the men who caught his eye.

And don't all those men face trials and tribulations before being given grace, too? Lands, and honour, and sanctified, but most of all—

Wives.

And a sweet one, too.

Folded up into yourself like a little bird who fell from the nest. Shivering on the cold, unfamiliar ground as it waits for its parents to come and bring it back. Unaware of the viper in the grass behind it. The hawk circling overhead.

Lucky for you, god thinks you'd fare quite nicely in his stomach instead.

And really—

You should know better, he thinks, hands dropping to the stolen buckle of his belt. Sleeping in a lonely building like this. Practically waiting for him to come along and take what he's owed, aren't you?

And who is he to pass up such a pretty little gift from God?

You come awake on a gasp.

Clawing against iron wrapped around you—tentacles, maybe; you were at sea seconds ago, lost to the whims of the ocean as something tried to pull you down, down—and choking on an inhale that gets stuck in the hollow of your throat, glueing to tissue. A bubble that won't pop. That you can't breathe around—

"Keep squirmin' like tha', birdie, an' I’ll be ready t’go again."

The voice, slinking slowly through the thick fog spooled densely over your mind, comes in a lazy drawl half-growled into your crown, warm breath tickling over your scalp. Unfamiliar, too. And much too close.

Pieces click in the back of your head. You remember running. Hiding in the church. Being moved. Dreaming of a turbulent sea that rocked you back and forth—

Seasick. But no—

This isn't the ocean. It isn't your fiancè.

The thing behind you is bigger, broader. Where you would have expected to meet solid muscle, you instead sink into a thick, warm pelt. One that's all heat. A raging fever. Burning against your back, under your thighs.

This laden heaviness in your limbs. Your belly—

A burn there, too. A pulsing, terrifying ache; this pressure you can't squirm away from, can't breathe around—

Panic pops the bubble stuck in your throat when it surges up your esophagus like a fist. The world slowly loses the haze, the thick cloud of confusion and sticky-eyed sleep clinging like molasses to your awareness, but what is left behind when the veil is ripped off is nothing short of abject horror.

There's a man behind you.

But that's only half-true.

In the sluggish grapple of your cognizance flailing around for solid ground in the heavy drape of hypnagogia, you shove your fingers into the degree of separation between sight and dream, curling against awareness, and—

You're cradled in his lap like a child. Spine liquid against his chest, legs pulled taut over impossibly thick thighs, knees bent at an angle that makes your hips twinge in discomfort. Pulled too far apart, and done so to make room.

Nausea claws up your throat when your bleary eyes drop down to the immodest, intrusive spread of your legs, feet dangling helplessly in the air, bouncing with some unfathomable motion. The position takes a second to unravel, to work out with the sleep-sticky tremble in your fingers. Mind still chasing the end of a dream even as the sudden spill of massive, bare thighs takes shape in the trembling ruins of your cognizance.

And God—

You wish it didn't.

With your skirts rucked up beneath your bared breasts, held in place with a big, heavily scarred forearm looped around your ribs, crushing your arms to your body, you can see the unmistakable rut of pale, mauled muscles flexing, tensing

And then suddenly, lifting.

“Told y’to stop squirmin', birdie—”

But you're not moving—

The pressure from before sharpens into a blistering ache as this—thing—inside of you grows. Stretches. Presses against tender, sore muscles as it snatches the last wisp of air from your heaving lungs.

There's a sting so deep, so wide, inside of you that you almost think you can see the soft curve of something moving against the skin of your belly. A trick of the mind, maybe.

Nightmare on solid ground.

You clamp down against the urge to scream when it shifts within you, pulling on soft, tight walls.

It hurts. Feels like you might be impaled on a dagger, maybe. A knife. A writhing mass devouring you from the inside out. But no—

You know what this—what it—is even if your brain refuses to acknowledge it. To let it take shape.

It keeps you cradled in the protective cup of its palms where the world is superlunary, your body incorporeal. Weightless.

But with every hiccup, each gasp, this nebulous sanctity congeals a little more into the brutal reality of what you've woken up to.

A man.

Unfamiliar. Unknown.

Rasping in your ear. His breath soured by the leftover communion wine you'd found tucked beneath the pulpit. Reeking of sweat and stale tobacco. Dust and dirt. Days on the road. Something wild. Primal. Animal, maybe. The musky scent of a horse, fur heated under the sun. Unwashed man. Masculine and potent. Dirty. Carrying the scent of loam, humus, with each harried breath he heaves against you.

But it's not just the smell of him. His hands, his skin, is covered in a hazy watercolour of grime from days without washing. From the sands of the barren, empty plains soaking into his skin, and smearing across scarred, torn tissue as he sweats in the heat.

Maybe it's his own internal fire causing him to burn so hot. Pyretic. An inferno against your back, under your thighs. So scorching, you wonder, dazedly, if it isn't the devil himself rutting into you below like a bullish beast.

With his feet tucked into big, dusty leather boots, you can't tell, but the sight of hooves emerging from them instead of pale, dirty skin wouldn't surprise you in the slightest.

Maybe it'll be easier to stomach if he was just that because what sort of man would do this to you in an abandoned house of worship.

A beast—

His arm tightens. With a grunt, he shifts, grinding you down into that ineluctable pressure, maneuvering you on his lap like some oversized doll, a child's toy. A plaything for him to amuse himself with. To use—

In the pit of your belly, something blooms. A vicious, untenable feeling of fragility. Weakness. You can't move an inch in his ferric grip. Can't breathe without his assent. You're little more than an object cradled in his hands. Utterly powerless in a way you haven't really felt at all—not even when the man you were supposed to marry curled his hand around your wrist and told you that he'd enjoy chopping your independence down into bite-sized pieces. Gorge himself on your helplessness.

This makes the frailty, that clawing, desperation feel like a boy's play at patriarchal ownership. Clumsy stumbling through the motions. A pantomime of sadistic cruelty. Revelry in power.

That was a loss of control.

This—

This is not.

In order to lose something you need to have had it in your grasp to begin with.

It was yours when you ran from the man, your fiance, when he clamped his hand around your wrist, eyes wild and feverish with delirium, and said he'd keep you forever. Life of imprisonment chained a man who scared you more than the gnarled scar on the side of his head.

And after, too. As you fled from the coach on a whim when it rattled over a small hill, tumbling down the embankment. Hiding in a small alcove, waiting for them to grow tired of searching for you.

Cradled when you found the church. A safe haven. A place to rest—

Only to wake up to a hand on your throat. A purr in your ear.

Hands empty.

Useless.

Curling into the messy spill of your skirts, clinging to the fabric until your joints ache from the strain, and your nails bite through cloth to sink into skin, because that's all you can do.

Clutch. Hold. Plead—

"Takin' me so well, ain't you, birdie?"

Even his voice sounds devilish. A robust, brassy rumble you've never heard from a man before. More akin to the growl of a tiger. Beastal and wrong. Drenched in a thick, unmistakable bliss as he seats himself deep inside of you like he's been bestowed the privilege. Allowed to claim what you denied even to your intended husband—

"P-please stop—"

Each steady pump of his hips fills your belly with more of that impossible, overfull feeling. The too-tight squeeze of you around something that wasn't ever meant to fit pulls at your flesh until it burns.

"Please—" your moan is a wretched, mournful thing, but it makes him grunt into your ear like a starved, taunted beast. The arm slung possessively around your ribs tightening into a painful squeeze that forces the air from your lungs in a huff.

The dizzying spill of hypoxia makes you almost thankful when it dulls the blunt, fat split of him bludgeoning into you in response. A sharp, full jerk that tears through you. Forcefully eking space where there is none left to give. Stretching, rearranging, until you can feel him in the very apex of your being.

But in that, a strange, horrifying trill brims, leaking from the pressure cracks of your bones. Spinal fluid dripping out. Thick, hot oil that steadily floods the mess between your thighs, eroding the bones, the muscles, in your pelvis until all that remains is an oozing, gooey pool he rocks into. Molten.

Sticky, wet sounds spill from the cradle between your thighs, each one burning through your chest until you choke, mortified. Blistering from shame.

It's difficult to catch your breath around the squeeze of his arm over your ribs, and the too-full stretch in your belly. Harder, too, to think. To make sense of the wall of solid, soft heat against your spine. The ache in your thighs as your legs are spread much too wide.

Everything below his arm feels like an open, pulsing wound—

But it changes when his hand, just as scarred, as ugly, as his thighs, the forearm clenched tight around your waist, slides down from its lazy perch on your neck, lowering to the gaping, throbbing wound between your thighs.

He curls it into a loose fist, scabbed, scarred knuckles sharpening into fattened peaks. His fingers bend inward, seeking.

It doesn't make sense until he touches you.

With your swollen folds spread over the thigh (impossibly thick; monstrously so—) girth of him, it opens you up to his wandering hand. He delves into the split seam of you, rubbing calloused, rough fingers over throbbing, stretched flesh.

And for a moment, it's just a tickle. Pressure on your puffy, outer lips, but then he leans back, shifting the angle of your pelvis until he can slide his dirty fingers up, up—

"Fuck, lil' bird. Gonna strangle my cock if you get any tighter—"

You're howling. Thrashing in his hold as the ache pulses, squeezing like a vice around the unfathomable, fattened mass bullying itself desperately inside of you. Rutting bluntly against something just behind your navel that makes you nauseous with each stroke. Every muscle in your body seizes as he grunts, ugly and vicious, into your ear and starts moving you against him, lifting and jerking your body into his lap, meeting his own thrusts.

“Must want it bad, eh, birdie? Listen to you—” his fingers slide through the mess between your thighs, and the sound that spills makes you think of the shores of Asphaltites. The splash of brimstone—slick, wet. Wanting. Am-heh lapping at the waters. “Fuckin’ gagin’ for it.”

You're not. No. You want to scream but the air is snuffed from your lungs. Sickness writhes in the back of your throat, clawing desperately at the walls of the esophageal prison it's locked inside. Inescapable. You can't let it out—

He wouldn't like that, you think, and it splinters in the back of your head. Separating into fragmentary pieces. Their sharp, obsidian edges, still slick with those broken, polluted whims—be good, it drips; be good and take it—press into soft tissue, cutting open gyri. Stuffing the wound—

And he's speaking, too. Groaning in your ear as he rocks into you. Bein’ so good f’me, ain't you? Takin’ my cock like this—

Good.

Against your will, you relax. Swallow down the sickness trapped in your throat. Good. The tension bleeds out of your muscles, and in the slippage, your softened thighs sink into his lap a little more, pushing him deeper than he was seconds ago.

It rips a whine from the back of your throat when that too tight, stinging feeling spins into something else. Still overfull, but—spreading. Evolving. Shifting as spills into the gaps, flooding, and filling, and—

Good. It's good.

The noises he makes change suddenly as your body eases, melting around him almost without thought, wholly against your will. Turns animalistic, feral, as you breathe into the heat swallowing you whole, chasing more of that overwhelming fullness, that hazy, ghosting pleasure that peppers delicate kisses over your nerves—gentling, distant; but growing closer with each shift—

“Tha’s it—” he snarls, shoving his face into your sweat-slicked nape. All teeth. The whitehot brush of a tongue. “Can feel your little cunt openin’ up f’me. Want more o’ my cock, birdie? Such a greedy thing, ain't you?”

The physical sting of jagged teeth scraping over your damp skin marries the burn scorching your chest in a brutally demeaning synchronicity.

It's intentional, of course.

You know what this mockery, this cruelty is, but they reave through the vestiges of propriety, unearthing your shame until it lays between those crooked teeth he keeps pressed into your skin.

The etchings of a smirk tickle along the knob of your spine when his mangled mouth pulls upward at your harried whimper.

“Bein’ such a good girl, ain't you?” He coos, digging those assailing fingers deeper into the soil of your mortification. “Takin’ my cock like this—” a groan trembles over his words, a clawing, helpless thing he can't seem to bite down on. “An’ in a ‘ouse o’ god, no less.”

His voice is airy. Thinner. Drenched in thick amusement as he cleaves into you with a growing desperation.

“Who knew I ‘ad such a sweet little cunt waitin’ for me?”

You want to refute his words, but he just squeezes your ribs before you can shape them on your tongue. Renting your protestations until they fall in a choked gasp, a mewl, at his feet.

“Been locked up a long time. Got a lot saved up f’you—”

This new dip in his abasement doesn't make sense until he shifts, shuffling forward on the pew. It brings your line of sight closer to the broken window on the wall to the right of the crooked pulpit. A candle burns on a worn, wooden stand beneath the shattered glass. In the flickering candlelight, and hazed against the unfathomable blackness of a moonless night in the desert, the image that forms in this swelling abyss is nothing short of horrifying.

As the contours render slowly—spilling like liquid ignominy in midnight satin—the hulking shape behind you begins to fill out.

The first thing you notice—

He's big. His broad chest nearly swallows you whole as he leans over you like a hellish beast readying itself to devour you alive.

But it's not just his size that trips your pulse into a painful sprint, but the sight of him.

He looks mauled. Decorated almost entirely in thickened scar tissue running in strange, jagged lines along his skin, coloured in swaths of soft pink and blotchy purple. Deep pocks. Slashes. The meat beneath the right side of his jaw, right beside his chin, is missing, leaving behind the indented slope of shiny pink tissue cratering deep down to bone.

The baleen lines scraped into his wound look like the flat press of teeth and you wonder if someone took a bite out of him.

He makes a strangled noise when you shudder, tensing at the cannibalistic nature of the wound—of the mosaic of brutality sliced into skin.

“Go’ so fuckin' tight, birdie—” in the window, the blurred image of this beast draws closer to you, mouthing along the slope of your neck with a ruined mouth. A mockery of a lover's kiss as he shifts you in his lap, rasping: gonna make me fuckin' cum if you keep squeezin’ me like tha’

It rips out another shiver that tickles along your spine, making you tense up again with a choked sob as the thickened press of his cock grinds against something inside of you that makes your vision swim and your ears ring—

Cutting through the pulsing roar in your ears is a thunderous groan from deep inside of his chest. It's a savage, terrifying thing that claws over the haze, ripping it to pieces between it can spool over your head.

Blinking through the tears in your eyes, you're met with a swell of cold, deadened fury.

“Fuckin’ hell—” he spits on a biting snarl, tendons in his neck bunching together. A vein pops out from beneath his skin, throbbing in a dark, blue line—

“Ain’t givin’ it to you good enough, huh, birdie?”

You don't know what you did. Can't untangle the sudden anger in his voice as it sunders that thread of his derisive subjugation, ushering in an unfathomable anger slashing over his brow.

With your arms trapped under his, you can't brace yourself when he pushes to the edge of the pew with a growl, and begins to shove himself inside of you with a terrifying speed.

It's too much. You can't breathe around the punishing pace he sets. Forcing himself into you over and over again. Taking you. Making you take him.

There's no escape. His hold is like iron around you. You can barely cling on as he moves you up and down his cock, forcing the fat, blunt head into your sore, tender walls at a bruising pace. Each rock jarring your body as he makes you swallow him down to the root—look'it tha', he coos, ugly and biting and mean, his hand dropping to press tight against your belly; the pressure making you feel sick: go' my whole cock in there now, birdie—

"Tha's it," he rasps, rubbing his mauled, torn muzzle over your shoulder. Jagged teeth catching skin. "Squeeze my cock, birdie. Fuck, go' such a tight lil' cunt, don't you? 'nough t'make a man go half insane, ain't it?" He tilts his head suddenly, blowing warm, humid breath over your cheek when he exhales on a mean, callous scoff.

"S'what you do, birdie? D'you offer this sweet pussy up t'anyone who passes by?"

His words are uglier than the moulting scars on his skin, and they sink deep inside your head when he presses his foul mouth up against your ear, groaning the words out between rasping pants. Tha' what y'do, birdie? Spread these pretty thighs t'anyone? Don't even know who I am and y'pantin' for it. Gaggin' for m'cock—

You flinch away from the sting of them, twisting in his hold to escape. To run—

But he just huffs mockingly in your ear, deriding you about how you're tightening up like a pretty fuckin' bow around his cock.

"Made for it, weren't you?" He taunts, words rolling between jagged, fangled teeth. Sharpened to a brutal, devastating point.

You shake your head as much as you can with his face tucked inside the curve of your throat, mewling feebly in denial because that's all you can do. Whine. Sob. Wailing like an animal as he pistons his hips into you, each jarring thrust accompanying a sting on the back of your thighs as his hard, unyielding flesh slaps into yours.

It's humiliating. Shameful. His finger presses into something that makes your belly knot. Muscles tightening. Spasming. Your leg kicks out against the back of the pew when he smothers his thumb over that place again, drawing tight circles that make your navel throb, pulsing as if your heart dropped down to the pit of your belly. Beating like a drum behind your mound.

It's agony. Terrifying, awful agony—

But it isn't. It's not. Not really.

Not when he drapes himself over your back, lowering his stubbled, unevenly textured chin to your shoulder, and shoves you forward. The angle gives him more room to pull out, and the emptiness that follows each retreat has you sobbing. Fingers clawing at the tangled mess of your skirts to cling to something as the ugly, awful feeling inside of you tips on its axis. Shifts.

It's wrong. So, so wrong—

You don't want this.

But he doesn't give you much of a choice except taking it. Letting it happen.

"But tha's not true anymore, is it, birdie?"

His arm tightens around you. Squaring against the ground as he spreads his thighs further apart, rutting into you with a fit of anger that steals the scant air from your lungs. Drills real, tangible fear into your head that he's going to break you if he doesn't slow down, doesn't stop—

"...'cause you're mine," he snarls, lips tucked against your ear so you can hear him over the awful noise made as he hammers into you, the sickeningly lewd squelch. The stinging slap of soft skin of firm muscle. "Ain't you, birdie? An' this cunt—" his fingers trail down, grazing over the skin of your rim stretched too tight around the thick of him. Pressing until it hurts. "Belongs to me now, don't it?"

He mocks your pained whimper with a patronising coo of his own, but mercifully, the pressure shifts away. The respite, however, is brief.

The arm locked around your ribs shifts as his fingers slide to the cradle of your mound, his thumb brushing over your tender, sensitive clit in slow circles. His other hand peels off of your forearm, reeling back slightly before shoving inside the loose gap of your unlaced dress, cupping your breast in a rough, scorching palm.

He squeezes it tight in his hand until you whine, squirming against the discordant sensations dragging over your nerves. The pleasure of his thumb doing something magic between your thighs and the bruising ache in your breast—

It shifts again when he moves his hand, dragging it back until your pebbled nipple is trapped under the broad trap of his thumb. Just pressing. Holding. The touch is daunting. Possessive.

You tense again. Waiting—

The pain doesn't come.

It's just—strange. Ticklish. He rubs his finger over your nipple in slow, ghosting swipes. Barely a whisper of a touch. A mere graze. And as you slowly acclimate to these soft, small circles, the pleasure grows, pulsing between your thighs.

Every pass of his fingers feels like it's strumming against some taut line that coils behind your navel, tightening. Growing—

And then it's gone. Dissipating into frustration with a mean huff spilling out against your nape, quickly reshaping itself into a low, mocking taunt when you thrash, mewling pitifully at the loss of that heady feeling liquifying in your veins.

“We're you about t’cum, birdie?”

He tuts at that; making a low, mordant coo in the back of his throat when you whimper in response.

“Didn’t know you were so greedy.”

There's a strange undercurrent in his tone you can't make sense of. This loose, looping thread that weaves between the seams. Incomprehensible—

But you find the answer in his touch.

It tightens almost in warning, but you know him better now than to let yourself trip into that fallacy. A notion that solidifies itself when the hand that was once pushing you to that heavy, all-encompassing brink steadies itself on your belly. Pushing. He anchors his hold against your breast, letting it fill the cup of his palm as he squeezes once more, another mocking warning, and then begins to move.

The pace is rougher, faster, than before. With you tipped forward slightly in his lap, the angle makes it easier for him to unleash that thread of ire on you. Using the space to plant his feet solidly on the ground, knees spreading as he bucks his hips, pounding his cock deeper, harder, into you with a savagery that rips breathless whimpers and sobbing moans from the back of your throat with each jarring thrust.

Your teeth clack painfully together when he pulls you down to meet each one, cock shoving so deep inside of you, you could swear it was lodging against your heart. Knocking everything inside of you askew to make room, to fit—

There's a sudden, stinging pain that blooms from between your thighs, and you thrash as it happens again, again—

His hand comes down over your clit, and you yowl at the burning sensation of him slapping you there—

"Please, please—!"

You can't recognise your voice anymore. It sounds wrecked. Raw. Each blow draws out a deafening wail as the heat reaches a blistering zenith. A devouring, ravenous heat—

His voice cuts through the shrill ring of it all. "Say it, birdie. Who does this cunt belong to?"

It tips off your lips in a desperate litany. A plea. You, you, you—

"S'not good enough, birdie. You gotta say it. Who does this cunt belong to?"

You say it because that's what he wants—you. it belongs to you. my cunt belongs to you. please, please, pleasepleaseplease stop—but he groans like you've gutted him. Slamming his palm down against your tender, swollen clit as he sloppily ruts into you, grunting in your ear about God and wives and fuck, buried, this sweet cunt was gonna drive him fuckin' mad—

Everything narrows down to raw sensation. Just the constant, feverish push of his cock dragging against your walls, bluntly pushing into that spot behind your navel that makes your ears ring, and your vision swim. The scorching press of rough skin against your stinging, throbbing clit; the abrasive stroke of each clumsy, pawing circle catching on swollen flesh. Blooming a vicious heat in your belly.

It draws tight. Coiling into a tense knot as a ruts into you, grunting about being close, so fuckin' close, birdie, so you better come on my cock; want this pussy coming all over me—

There's a sharp pain burrowing into your nape, his teeth sinking in deep, breaking skin with jagged teeth, and that knot snaps. Shattering into a series of intense, dizzying pulses that squeeze behind your navel, liquid bliss saturating through the cracks, and bubbling, molten, in your veins.

You're a twitching, shuddering mess. A sicky spill melting into his chest as he clamps down harder against you, grunting around the bite of flesh he lodged between his jowls as he swells inside of you, finding his release.

As he throbs inside of you, his teeth dig in deeper, biting down harder on your nape to smother the snarl ripped from his throat. His hips pump into you with staggered jerks bereft of all finesse; just a clumsy rut as he chases the aftermath of that same mind-numbing euphoria rippling through the honeyed mess of your body.

But it's this bliss that mutes the pain, hiding it under the deluge of endorphins that mushrooms inside of your head, blotting out the pain that you can feel lingering on the periphery. Looming on the edges of the syrupy spill of bliss still pounding in your veins.

Even with clots numbing the worst of it, you can feel the ache in your muscles each time you move. A prelude to the rest of the night, perhaps.

A thought that scraps against the film covering your fear. Panic an acrid burn in the back of your throat, a sting in the corners of your eyes—

Just as you open your mouth to rasp out the words let me go, he unhinges his jaw from your nape, and huffs.

There's a paralysing stab of fear cudgelling into you whenever he moves. It wells up from the wound, and you wait, teetering on a knife's edge as he slumps back against the pew, body unspooling from its tight coil as he lazes with you still sat on his lap, on his cock, purring like a satiated cat, ignorant of (or purposefully ignoring) the way you flinch at his touch when he drops his hand down between your thighs to cradle your sore, abused cunt. Even spent, softening, he still feels so big inside of you. A thickness you can't think around.

"Never came inside anyone before," he muses, catching the trickle of slick, of cum, that leaks out when he shifts back. "Ain't you lucky, birdie? Was savin’ it all up for you. An’ you go' the honour o' bein' my wife."

It cracks through the air like a whip. The echo resounds in the back of your head, smothering the whimper of panic that claws up your throat. Wife. Wife—

"I—I have a fiance," you stutter out, heaving through tattered lungs. "I can't—"

"How's I supposed to know? I don't see 'im, do I?"

"He's—he's looking for me. And he's a real, um, powerful man. I won't—I won't tell anyone if you let me go. You can just—just leave, and I'll never speak of this to anyone—"

His arm tightens around you, snuffing the words out on a pitiful gasp.

"Fucked you nice an' full o'my cum, birdie. You jus' gonna go back to 'nother man when I'm drippin’ down your thighs?”

Your lungs ache. "Please, you didn't—you can't—"

He swipes his fingers through the mess puddling under your thighs with a derisive snort, and brings his hand up to your face. Making you look at the thick, milky smear sticking to his skin. Slowly, he pries his index and middle finger apart, twisting his wrist to show you the web that glues between them.

It's a lot, you think, stomach churning. Too much.

"An' there's more o'tha' all nice an' plugged up inside you, birdie. Gonna sit here til it takes."

He draws his hand closer, thumb and ring finger closing around your cheeks, squeezing painfully until your mouth pops open on a whimper. His fingers bully between the gap of your lips.

It's bitter. Salty. You try not to gag as he roughly shoves them in deeper, knuckles knocking into your teeth as he forces them in, petting his fingers over your tongue. Your gums. Your teeth. The soft skin of your cheeks. Smearing his spend all over your mouth. Making you taste it.

And it's as vile as it is demeaning, and you shudder at the chuff of amusement that rumbles out when you gag, choking when he shoves his fingers in too deep. Trying not to weep as he lowers his head to your nape, nipping the throbbing, torn skin around the bite mark, grunting out a callous demand of swallow it. All o' it. Every drop. If you don't, then I'll jus' make sure you get it from the source next time—

"Bet you'd look so fuckin' pretty on your knees f'me, wouldn't you? Gaggin' on my cock. Could barely take it all in your sweet cunt, an' tha' was made for me, wasn't it? Be a struggle to get it all down—"

"Please," you slur around his fingers, shaking your head pitifully as his cock stirs inside of you, twitching at the revolting image he draws. "I'll—"

He taps his fingers against the roof of your mouth and you clamp your lips shut to stem the nausea that surges. Swallowing reluctantly around the bitter taste of him on your tongue. A painful gulp that makes him groan.

"See, birdie? You're full o'me now."

His fingers tickle when they drag over the wet, sticky skin of your lips. A tease.

He grunts when you shiver, cunt inadvertently clenching around him—

"Ain't ready for another round jus' yet," his voice drops, pitching low. You freeze instantly. Falling still on a shallow gasp. "But if you don't stop squirmin' on my cock like this, birdie, I reckon I'll 'ave you bent over the pulpit soon enough. What kinda husband would I be if I didn't give my wife what she was achin' for?"

Wife. There it is again. And nestled within the cruel word is the clink of a metal collar locking around the inflamed curve of your chewed up neck. Bound to a man you don't know. Don't want to know—

With you held in his grasp, tucked securely to his chest, he settles back into the pew with huff. A quiet admonishment when you try to stir, shushing you with a brief flex of his hand tightening around your neck. A warning. Be good.

It's hard to think with him buried inside of you, still taking up so much space.

And maybe that's the crux of it all. You can't breathe around the softening swell of him to let the thoughts form. Take shape. They flicker past in the moonless midnight of your mind; comets dying in the atmosphere.

Or maybe you're too haunted by the pulse of his heartbeat somehow lodged inside of you, echoing in tandem with your own. A deafening rataplan you can feel in your belly. Your guts.

You squirm—

“Birdie.”

The cup of his palm flexes around your throat—a warning, maybe—and he's pulling you further back against the broad, thick swell of his chest. As easy as breathing. As easy as taking you apart in a church. Unmaking you in a pew.

Turning a house of worship into a mausoleum.

It's a little unfair, all things considered. You pay your dues on Sunday, head bowed over the back of a pew, hands demurely clasped in your lap as you mumble through the familiar beats of mild flagellation. Prettied up in penance. Handing out a fistful of coins and spare nickles when the offertory passes by.

To be trussed up and tossed to the wolves twice over in a single night makes you tip your chin towards the angled, crumbling rafters in silent mutiny. But the bold, blasphemous display of fury doesn't cause the heavens to split, and some grand being to smite the demon sniffing the skin behind your ear.

It only makes his hand settle more firmly around your throat, thumb sliding along the smooth curve from collarbone to jaw. The wide, unfathomable expanse of his hand is more than enough to bite at the vitriol brimming in the back of your throat. Don't be stupid.

(At least—not yet, anyway.)

Without anywhere else to direct the smouldering embers of your anger—and not nearly stupid enough to break it on the jagged cut of his teeth—you slump against the steady rise and fall of his chest, letting it whisper out on an exhale. But even with self-preservation keeping the ugly words under a firm heel, you can deny that this tastes like defeat.

A sour, bitter sting in the back of your throat—full o’me, birdie—that you struggle to swallow around.

It feels like a tremendous weight you can't escape. Like everything is collapsing around like the raining ruins of a condemned house, leaving you half-buried in the rubble. Holding the roof overhead in your hands. This Atlassian task sinks your soles deeper into the dirt, dragging you down.

His threat, his presence, is an anchor buried in the seabed—utterly immovable despite how hard you yank at the chain.

Something has to give.

You're not terribly surprised when that something is you.

Riddled with holes, in tatters, the fight is quickly snuffed under the flood of water surging through. Filling space.

It's fatigue. Exhaustion. You're drained, you think. Mentally, physically. Emotionally. Everything catches up all at once, and your heavy eyes start to blur around the edges, listing shut.

For a second. Just a second.

Through the sluggish putrefaction of mouldering grey matter, you try to promise yourself that you'll run, that you'll escape, after. You just need rest. Sleep. And once you have it—

He squeezes, choking the wayward thought out under the broad cradle of his palm almost as if he knew it was there.

“Get some sleep, birdie,” he rumbles, low and brassy; the murmur of his voice purring through your ribs. “Go’ a long trip ahead o’ us yet. Gonna need it.”

It isn't the soft uttering of a man worried over your condition, but rather the rough, patronising drawl of a brute relishing the prize he caught. A plunderer preening over his loot.

You don't spare much thought to where you're going, and let him pull your weak, battered body deeper into the broad spill of his warm chest, holding you against him as the residuum of your wounded survival instincts drown in the spill of exhaustion dripping out of each decisive cut trephined into your head.

His muzzle is back on the side of your neck as your eyes slip shut, licking between the bracket of his fingers spreading possessively over your mauled skin with a rumble that trembles through your bones, shaking loose the last vestiges of your fight.

It's much too late to bemoan your lack of luck. Your lot in life. Even so—

Going from skirting around the grasping hands of a doglike man drooling on your toes, wagging his tail for just a taste—somethin’ tae take th’ edge off, doe, jus’ somethin’ tae quench this thirst; ah can't take it anymore—to waking up in the jaws of another beast, half-devoured, is such a devastating, almost Grecian sort of irony that had you any room to spare inside your belly (and if his hand not been so firmly clenched around your throat), you might have laughed until your knees gave out, and the world collapsed down on top of you.

Instead, all you can do is try to get comfortable around the bellyaching fill of him, and pretend there's still a chance you can wiggle out of his grasp as easily as you did your fiance—

But as his molten tongue lashes over the wounds on your throat, digging the tip into the puncture mark he left behind, you can't help feeling the sharp sting of defeat hew through the lingering tendrils of hope, severing it at the root. Letting it bleed out in his hands. The same ones that shackle you to his chest, keeping you in his clutch like a stunned bird in the gaping maw of a wolf's jaws.

Rather fitting, you suppose, as those artful fingers smear through the blood and sweat, pinching the stubborn remiges that remain until they're stuck firm between the tips.

A tug, a pull—

They come loose, clutched his triumphant, bloody fist.

And as the candle flickers, crawling down the wick, the flutter of them falling to the dirty floor casts shadows on the old church walls:

(crushed birds, burning dogs, and grasping hands surging from the depths—)

He stirs later, rousing you from a fitful sleep running from a burning dog by taking refuge in the gullet of a lake on fire.

You blink, scrubbing your numb fingers over your sore, tired eyes. “What—?”

“Been thinkin’,” he says, and something about his tone prickles sharply at your paltry instincts, making them stir like lead in your guts. "What's the name of tha’ little fiance o'yours anyway?"

"Why?"

He shrugs. "Jus' think I should meet the man, is all. Considerin' I stole his little wife—"

A noise is wrenched out of you—some strange, strangled amalgamation of denial and dread. “Don't,” you whisper, a fever pitch; a plea. “Don't—”

He's unpredictable. His moods are as mercurial as the sea he crossed over to find you. Tempestuous: you think of his eyes, those burning pits. Much too wide. Wild. A frenzy.

Like a fox—the one you saw when you were a child. Rabid, they said, tugging you away from those big, round eyes. Gone fuckin’ mad.

With its lips peeling back, spitting up foam and sickness, it looked like it was smiling.

Oh, doe; the same eyes, the same grin. Sickness dripping down his chin as he stared, slack-jawed and hungry. Been waitin’ so long fer ye—

“C’mon, can't be s’bad as all o’tha’.”

You think of him, then—perhaps the lesser of two evils—and shudder at the ripple of desperation spilling like oil into your chest.

“Johnny,” you mutter, wondering if he'd still take you like this—ruined as you are; a pittance of what your father promised—if you ran back to him, broken tail tucked between your legs. Back to that foaming mouth and those big, wild eyes. “Johnny MacTavish.”

If he hadn't been stroking your jugular as he asked, trailing the tips of his fingers around the aching curve of your thigh with the other, you might have missed the frisson that crackled across his implacable veneer at the name.

So suffused to him are you that any idea of distance is only divisible between atoms, and your skin hums with this little hiccup. The tensing of his muscles under your thighs; hands stuttering along flesh—

Something about that name makes him pause.

“Johnny,” he says it like he's testing the word, feeling the way it fits between his teeth. Shifting the weight of it around his tongue. Warm-up. Stretching a muscle. Familiarity thrums along the seam of his mouth; pregnant with a mordant, mocking delight. “Might ‘ave to pay ‘im a visit after all.”

In its the afterbirth breathed into the world on his name where you see the cosm split, unveiling a world between them marbled in blood and viscera.

Home in the manner of a botfly.

Something that takes. Makes fecund land from flesh and bone; a parasitic kinship that eats itself, and everything else hapless enough to stumble inside its gaping, wounded maw.

You think of a foaming grin. A sickness that burns from the inside out.

A burning dog—

And when his smouldering hands reach between your thighs to cup your cunt in the broad spill of his palm, you feel the flaming waters of a blazing lake lapping at your spine.

“‘ow ‘bout tha’?” he muses, a needling thread of ice splitting through his tone. “Guess it's a small world after all.”

(—and a rather bleak one for you when he decides that God's will is stronger than a still-wet signature on a piece of paper.

Finder's keepers an' all o' tha'.

Besides, if Johnny really wanted you, he wouldn't have let you go, would he?)

#this really didn't need to be so long but one of my biggest flaws is being unable to get to the point #simon riley x you #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader #simon ghost x reader #simon ghost riley

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astraystayyh · 1 year ago

Text

pieces of you

single dad!chan. x fem!reader

genre : neighbors!au. fluff. angst. slow burn. mutual pining. 8.7k wc

summary : In which you and chan are each other's missing pieces. Alternatively, Chris and his daughter come knocking at your apartment asking for flour, and he's no longer embarrassed when you open the door.

a.n. : my chris best girl dad agenda is going strong!!!!!! my second fic for the winter falls collab with my writer xi hehe i hope you will all enjoy reading!! feedback is highly appreciated 🤍 the song chris will write for sowon is light by sleeping at last, highly recommend listening to it!!

winter falls masterlist.

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this.”

“Shh, daddy smile.”

Soft whispers linger just outside of your apartment, elusive words that you are quick to dismiss as figments of your imagination. However, any doubt in your mind dissipates with three resounding knocks on your door.

A reluctant groan escapes you as you glance down at your attire—a loosely hanging oversized hoodie, a testament to the numerous times it has been tugged down, and a pair of pajama pants whose matching top has mysteriously vanished. Clearly, you don't feel presentable enough to welcome anyone at this late hour. So, you remain motionless, futilely lowering the TV volume in hopes that whoever’s behind the door will just continue with their night. But the knocks persist against your wish, so, with a resigned sigh, you rise from your seat, your blanket cascading to the ground.

“What–” the words dissolve in your mouth like a sweet nectar as you open the door, your eyes beholding no one in your periphery. A slight tug at your pants draws your attention downward, only to find the most adorable child your eyes have ever laid on. She’s clad in Rapunzel-themed pajamas, wolf slippers bumping into your plain ones, and, to your surprise, a whisk cradled in her small hand.

“Hey there,” your voice softens as you crouch to meet her warm gaze. You find an innocent happiness gleaming in her eyes, a radiant spark shining even beneath the corridor’s muted light. Two dimples adorn her cheeks as she smiles at you.

“Hi, my dad wants to tell you something,” she says, pointing with her whisk to the very end of the hallway. You crane your neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive figure.

“Your dad?”

“Mm. He’s a bit shy, that’s why he’s hiding,” she confides in a whisper. But, despite her earnest attempt, her words still resound loudly in the vacant space, causing giggles to spill out of your mouth.

“And you aren’t shy?” you inquire, tilting your head.

“Nu-uh,” she shakes her head with conviction as someone emerges behind her. She instinctively wraps an arm around their leg, nestling her cheek against their thigh.

She isn’t shy because she feels protected.

You rise from your place, eyes locking with a familiar shade of brown. Only these hold a mesmerizing quality to them making your very breath catch in your throat. Kindness pours from his gaze as it travels down your face, a sentiment that further materializes as delicate smile lines stitch around the corner of his eyes.

He’s beautiful.

Your eyes trail down to two pairs of dimples, mirroring the ones of his daughter perfectly. She is his living portrait, sharing his eyes, lips, and smile. Yet, his cheeks blush in a hue she does not possess, while his left hand fiddles with his earlobe, in an unspoken, timid gesture. For some odd reason, it pierces straight through your heart.

“Sorry for bothering you,” a smooth Australian accent rolls off his tongue, similar to rich butter spread on warm bread- it infuses your being with tingles pulsating from the base of your toes. You suddenly no longer miss your blanket.

“I’m your next-door neighbor. We were just making cookies and we realized we actually don’t have flour,” he explains, a bashful smile imprinted onto his lips.

“You didn’t check beforehand?” you ask, laughter tinting your voice.

“I forgot,” he admits, but his tone sounds almost sad as if beating himself over it. A fleeting shadow veils his face briefly, dissipating like a passing cloud grazing the sun.

“Can we borrow some from you? I told Sowon that we could go to the store but she said it’s too cold out,” he asks, his hand resting on his daughter’s shoulder soothingly.

“It is too cold out,” you agree with a frown, looking down at Sowon to which she smiles brightly, happy to have your support.

“And of course, I'll bring you flour. Don’t worry about it. Do you want to come in meanwhile?”

“It's okay, we'll wait here. Don’t want to intrude.”

“Thank you!” Sowon beams, her missing tooth in full display.

“Yeah, thank you so much…” he trails out, tilting his head as if to silently inquire about your name.

“Yn. And you?”

“Chris.”

“Nice to meet you, Chris,” you smile, shaking his extended hand. His fingers wrap around your palm, and it feels as if you’re grasping thunder, crackling with an electricity that your eyes can’t behold, yet your soul does, suddenly illuminated from within.

Your smile grows as you detach yourself from his hold, before bending forward to bop Sowon’s nose. “And nice to meet you too Rapunzel.”

Your words make her hide behind her father’s leg, peeking out slightly to look at you.

“See I’m not the only one who gets shy,” Chan chuckles, and Sowon whines in complaint, further burying her face in her dad’s grey sweatpants.

Adorable, so much it stirs a long-forgotten melancholy within your being.

“She gets a pass, she’s still young, right Sowon?”

“Are you calling me old then?” Chan fakes outrage, bringing one hand to his chest while the other cradles Sowon’s back.

“Old enough to forget about flour,” you wink and he laughs, looking down at your slippers.

“Touché.”

A few minutes go by before you come back, a recipient full of flour in your hands. The sight before you makes you pause in your tracks– Chris, leaning against the wall, Sowon propped on his hip, her arms loosely hanging around his neck, her eyes closed.

“Did she…” you whisper and he turns to you.

“Yeah, fell asleep,” he smiles fondly, tucking a few strands of her hair behind the curve of her ear. “She’ll be disappointed when she wakes up to no cookies. She wanted us to have a baking holiday tradition.”

“You don’t know how to make them?”

“No, I was counting on a six-year-old to assist me,” he chuckles quietly, prompting a snort from you.

“Well, keep the flour, in case you need it again.”

“Thank you, Yn,” he grins, the smile taking over his entire face, grabbing the recipient from you.

“You’re welcome Chris,” you say, as you both linger around the door still, not making any attempt to move.

Your eyes refuse to peel away from his, as if there were a magnetic force drawing you to him, telling you that your gaze belonged to rest on him.

“Uhm,” he clears his throat, leaning away from the wall. “I'll get going.”

“Yeah, sleep well, Chris.”

“Thank you,” he smiles before turning around.

An idea brews in your head, a germ sprouted by the clear adoration in which Sowon gazed at her dad, and the disappointment in his face as he said he would no longer be making cookies. Had you wished to dig a little deeper, you would’ve also found a long-buried feeling of a little girl who would have loved holiday traditions as well. You close the door before heading straight to your kitchen.

One hour later

You knock softly on Chris’ door, fidgeting from one foot to another. You almost retract back to your apartment after your fourth knock, when the door finally opens, Chris coming into your line of sight.

“Hi,” you greet, hands behind your back.

“Hey,” he smiles, leaning his arm on the doorway, right above your head. He tilts his head to the side, silently wondering what you want. The words dissolve in your mouth at the way his eyes fixate on you as if trying to peer behind your irises onto your mind.

“Cookies,” you bring the plate before him, as his eyes grow wide, an incredulous smile drawn on his lips.

“You made them?”

“Yeah, didn't want Sowon to be disappointed,” you shrug and his eyes grow wild, racking all over your face in disbelief.

“You didn't have to do this,” he finally says, tone softening, syllables ringing like a sweet sonnet in your ears.

“I know. I wanted to. and I’m a baker so making cookies comes easily to me, don’t worry about it,” you shrug sheepishly, biting your lower lip slightly. You felt scrutinized by him in ways you haven't felt before.

“Thank you, Yn, I don’t even know what to say,” he says, his smile resembling a beam of light. A surge of pride courses through you at managing to bring it forth.

“No need to say anything. I hope I didn't wake you up,” you smile sheepishly and he shakes his head.

“No, I- I was working in my studio and Sowon is asleep. It's just us two. Always has been,” he adds, tone slightly changing, air growing heavier between you both. It’s just them two.

“Studio?” you inquire, hoping to dispel the tension latching around you both.

“I’m a music producer,” he clarifies. “I made a studio here so I could stay the night with Sowon.”

“I’m sure she appreciates that,” you say as you hand the plate to him. His fingertips brush against your own, and a slight electricity courses through you at the touch, the hallway suddenly brighter from the fireworks ricocheting off of you both.

“I…. I'll get going.”

“Yeah, yeah, don't want to take more of your time.”

“I'll see you around.”

“Yeah, I'll see you,” he says, words not ringing carelessly into the air, sounding more like a promise. He'll see you, he'll make sure of it.

ii.

“Can you wait!” a voice echoes near the building entrance, and you prevent the elevator doors from closing as hurried steps near you.

You recognize the voice easily by the light tingles running down your spine, the Australian accent shooting straight through your heart. Its owner materializes, Chris— leather jacket hugging his muscles snuggly, black t-shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans, cap nestled on his head, rebellious strands of ebony hair peeking behind it.

You find the breath knocked out of you once again at his sight. He's beautiful, even more so in broad daylight, where every feature of his comes to life, beckoning, demanding your sole attention.

“Hey, Yn,” he smiles in delight, uttering your name in a familiarity that infuses your being with warmth. Even though you've only talked once, two days ago.

“Hey, Chris,” you greet back, pressing the fourth elevator button again. you face the mirror to find Chris already looking at you, his eyes instantly locking with yours.

“The cookies were good,” he smiles softly and you grin. “I'm glad you think so.”

“Where is your bakery? I need to taste more of your baking.”

The butterflies in your stomach tone down at his words, your attraction momentarily forgotten as gratitude coats your heart instead.

“I can text you the address?” you propose.

“Yeah, here,” he takes out his phone, a picture of him and Sowon set as his lock screen— their cheeks are pressed tightly to one another, messily done eyeliner on both their eyes. you giggle to yourself as you grab the device.

“Cute picture,” you muse and he brings an arm to his neck, scratching the side of it timidly.

“She insists on trying her makeup on me.”

“She makes you look better,” you giggle and he rolls his eyes, tongue poking against his cheek.

“She wants to become a stylist,” he explains, as the elevator doors open. He lets you out first, arm stretched forward.

“I find her passion really cute so I buy her anything she asks for,” he shrugs and you chuckle, pointing to the bag of pink ribbons he is carrying.

“Let me guess, she wants to use these on you?”

“Yeah. She also said that I quote ‘need to learn new hairstyles because her friends always come to class with intricate braids, and she can't go to class with a simple one.’” He repeats, tone growing slightly high-pitched as he mimics his daughter's words. Yet, the fond smile on his face is louder, screaming of his love for her.

“She has you wrapped around your finger,” you muse, leaning against your door. The keys in your bag are long forgotten.

“She can be very scary for such a little girl.”

“What does she threaten you with?” you ask, feigning horror.

“No goodnight kisses,” he whispers, as if scared she'd hear him beyond the wooden door.

“Torture,” you gasp, placing your hand on his shoulder reassuringly. Yet, the smiles slip out of your face instantly. Was it normal for clothes to dissolve under your touch, layers of cotton and leather doing nothing to stop the warmth of his skin from seeping through you? Was it normal to be so affected by such an innocent touch?

“Uhm,” you clear your throat, “I can help you. with her hair, I mean.”

“You don't have to. I already took too much from your time with the cookies,” he seems truly apologetic, his tone sobering as if despising others doing things for him. You see yourself in him, in the way he wants to carry the world’s burden on his shoulders. It is a reflection you wish to mend.

“I don't mind, I remember feeling jealous of the other girls in my school so I made myself learn all the braids.”

And then you see his gratefulness, the twinkle in his eyes that you can only grasp for a millisecond before they disappear into moon crescents. Happiness looks grand on him, overtaking his entire face, brightening his features with a glow too ethereal to be of mankind, as if they were carved to translate joy. You find yourself willing to give up more of your time to see it.

“Thank you,” he breathes out and you nod, a grin taking over your face as well.

“You’re welcome. Let me just change my clothes.”

☃︎⋆꙳•❅

“And then, you pull the right strand all over to the middle one. Then you repeat, this way the ribbon is braided into the hair,” you explain to a very concentrated Chris, his eyebrows furrowed as he follows your movements.

“It looks easy when you do it,” he frowns and you giggle, handing the mirror to Sowon so she'd be able to look at her hair.

“Do you like it,” you ask, a tad apprehensive and she beams, dimples that almost swallow her chubby cheeks surging forth.

“Pretty!” she exclaims and you giggle, bopping her nose. “You are pretty.”

“And you are pretty too. right, daddy?”

You turn back to find Chris watching you, a smile so fond on his face that it renders your insides putty, coats your cheek in the palest shade of pink.

“Very much so,” he says, tone quieter, his eyes never leaving yours.

Sowon suddenly climbs on her dad’s lap, star and moon stickers in hand. She places them all over his face, and he sits there diligently, arms wrapped around her midriff so she won't slip away. Every carefully placed sticker is punctuated by a soft gasp from him and a small giggle from her. You could feel the love radiating from both of them, a feeling so strong it made your heart twist in your chest.

Were there red neon exits you weren’t aware of in your being? Ones through which love trickled away all these years ago? Were the spaces between your fingers carved to hold someone’s hand, or to make everything you’ve ever wanted slip from your grasp like fallen sand?

“What do you think?” Sowon startles you and you force a smile on your face, willing the heaviness in your heart to dissipate. There were questions you'd never find the answers to, you had to make peace with that.

“I love it!” you grin and Sowon nods, satisfied. You look down at your lap as Chris fixates his eyes on you, a worried crease growing between his eyebrows.

“Fun is over, you need to do your homework, Miss Bang,” he scolds and you snort, as Sowon rolls her eyes slightly.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?” he fakes offense and you giggle as Sowon huffs slightly. “Dad, I told you I have no homework. I already did it with uncle Felix.”

“Oh, right,” he deflates slightly before brightening up once again, “then, you should put away all these hairbrushes and ribbons, okay?”

“Will you watch a movie later with me?”

“Of course, baby.”

“Okay then,” she grins, quickly standing up to start putting away her things. you smile, getting up your turn to leave. Chris understands and stands with you on cue.

“You can stay and watch the movie with us.”

“It's okay, I have some things to work on,” you turn around, but then you feel his fingers wrapping around your wrist, stopping you in your tracks.

“Are you okay?” he asks, hand still burning straight through your skin, igniting a million nerve ends with a simple touch. You avoid his eyes, looking down at the ground. It seems to be response enough for him.

“We’re conditioned to say yes even when we aren’t, right?” he speaks softly, his words travel through your veins in a rapid course against the current of your blood— which one will reach your heart first and flood it?

Your facade cracks. His voice wins.

“So, you don't have to reply now,” his thumb swipes once across your pulse. “But I'll be here if you ever wish to tell the truth.”

iii.

You’ve grown exceptionally fond of Chris in the span of mere months, more than you would like to admit to yourself. It was an easy task, as natural as the current of a waterfall. Yet, you did not plan for it, for a new emotion to settle on top of your lungs, to make you more aware of your heart and how it beats, slightly faster, around Chris. But it happened serendipitously, against all odds, when he knocked on your door at 10 p.m. asking for salt.

“Should I start buying groceries for you?” you joked, and it took Chris a millisecond longer to respond, his gaze wandering across your face, as if discovering the world’s eighth wonder, hidden in plain sight all these years.

“For my defense, I have a daughter that likes experimenting with cooking,” he smiled, and you raised an eyebrow at him.

“Just with salt?”

“She added four teaspoons of it in an omelet. Then forced me to eat it because I always tell her food shouldn't go to waste,” he shudders at the memory and you chuckle loudly.

Chris knocks on the doors of your heart, once.

It happened when you spotted a cockroach the size of your palm on your bedroom wall. You would’ve killed it, you were going to, except it started flying towards you and you let out a loud shriek you didn’t know your vocal chords were capable of conjuring. So, you called Chris.

“Can you please come over,” you murmured, crouching near the entrance door, a pair of slippers in your hand.

“Why are you whispering? are you okay?” he sounded worried, and you heard the turning of a lock as he opened the door to his apartment. He didn’t ask questions, instantly coming to your aid. A sudden urge to weep filled your being at his gesture.

“There is a cockroach. a flying one,” you precised, horror dripping from your tongue and his laugh flooded your ear, tiny squeaks that made your hold on the slipper grow limp.

“I'm from Australia,” he knocked on your door, and you stood up promptly. “I've seen worse,” he said once you finally opened it, his eyes softening incredibly when they met yours.

He did kill the cockroach, by spraying your insect repellent enough times to asphyxiate you too. “I don't think I can sleep in there tonight,” you sighed, gulping down ice cold water, “why does it feel like we went through war?”

“We? You were behind my back all the time.”

“I was cheering you on, from afar. Spiritually.”

“I can’t believe a cockroach scares you this much.”

“You literally screamed when it flied towards you too.”

“I didn't scream! I made a very manly, non-terrified sound.”

“Mm, sure,” you giggled, voice softening at the blushing of the tip of his ears. Chris didn't have to force the door down to your heart, you willingly opened it for him.

And after that, it was a race to find the silliest excuses to see one another. Chris suddenly taking up an inkling for baking, you manifesting a newfound interest in music, Sowon needing her makeup done for a dance, Chris visiting you in your bakery, Sowon craving your cookies and you teaching her the recipe, Chris knocking on your door and you knocking on his. The same giddy smiles on your faces as you usher each other in. And it always, always ending with a movie night.

“Let's watch Tangled,” Sowon exclaims, clapping her hands excitedly.

“Baby, we watched this movie for the past…” he looks at you for support. “Three,” you whisper, a bashful smile on your face. “Yeah, for the past three movie nights,” he whines slightly.

“But I love it,” she says, her pout morphing into a huge grin. “Again! Again! Again!”

“Fine,” he concedes, mouthing “save me,” from afar to you. You giggle softly while Sowon cozies up to your side, your arm draping across her body while her legs stretch atop Chris’ lap, naturally, as if having you both by her side was the way things have always been. The only reality she’s ever known.

It is a fleeting fifty minutes as the three of you watch the movie, Sowon reciting excitedly the lines that she seems to remember. But then the quiet is replaced by her soft snores, her body growing light against you.

“She fell asleep,” you whisper, tapping Chris’ shoulder to catch his attention. He tilts his head to the side, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips as his eyes land on his daughter.

“I'm sorry you have to watch the same movie every time,” he says apologetically and you shake your head.

“I don't mind. Tangled is a good movie.”

“Are you here just because of the movie?” he smiles, dimples peeking through. The juxtaposition between the weight of his words and the soft expression on his face makes a buzzing warmth spread through you. He’s cold and hot, in and out, yours but not.

“What do you want me to be here for?” you throw back, squeezing his shoulder slightly.

“The company.”

“I do find Sowon entertaining.”

“Just her?” he pouts and you giggle, tipping your head back.

“And you too, I suppose, by extension.”

“By extension, mm,” he hums, as he gathers Sowon in his arms, freeing her from your hold. “Then I guess I shouldn't come visit you in your bakery anymore. Since you only enjoy my presence by extension.”

“So sassy,” you shout-whisper as you both walk to Sowon's bedroom, “I like your company too, idiot.”

“Yeah?” he turns back to look at you, tone a tad bit too hopeful. He doesn’t care that he sounds eager for your approval, not when he feels as if he can only truly breathe when you're near.

“Yeah, Chris, I really do,” you speak earnestly, and Chris bites his lower lip slightly, suddenly overwhelmed by the gentleness of your tone. Your eyes follow his action instantly.

He lowers Sowon gently onto the bed and she stirs awake, blinking repeatedly at the both of you. “Yn,” she calls out quietly once her eyes land on yours and you kneel before her bed. Chris watches from the door entrance as Sowon cups her hand near your ear, before whispering something to you. He notices your body stiffening, your gaze fleeting to him before you relax, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

He wishes he could freeze time, stitch this moment into his eyelids until it is the only thing he sees when he goes to sleep. Loneliness is too big of an enemy for one person to fight off, but it seems more harmless when you are near.

Chris sees you right here, every night, not forcing your place into his family, but falling seamlessly into place. Perhaps you were the missing piece that’ll soothe the burn in his heart. Perhaps he’d let you in, even as fear paralyzes his being at the mere thought of asking you to stay.

One week later.

You've grown used to the knocks on your door at ungodly hours of the night, Chris seeking your company each time you both fail to fall asleep. Except this time, there is a chilling premonition in your heart as you walk to your home’s entrance, anxiety coiling like a steel ball in your throat.

“What’s wrong?” you ask upon opening the door, locking eyes with Chris's bloodshot gaze.

“Sowon,” he heaves, tone laden with fear, so different from how he usually pronounces her name. The syllables pierce through your heart like an arrowhead.

“Sowon?” you question, peering behind him to his slightly ajar apartment door.

“Yes, she has a high fever, and it won’t come down. I tried everything, and I-I don’t know what to do anymore. She’s shaking, but I can’t—”He trembles, his quivers akin to delicate chinaware on the precipice of an earthquake, poised to shatter at your feet. You'd plunge to the ground first, anything to soften his impending collapse.

“It’s okay,” you soothe, your voice soft as you grasp his wrist. “Let’s go see her, okay?”

“It's her first time being this sick,” he whispers, clearly distraught, one hand running through his freshly dyed blonde hair.

“It's okay. Don’t panic, it happens. Did you give her medicine?”

“Yes, a few minutes ago,” he replies as you guide him towards her room.

“Good, it'll start working soon,” you reassure, opening the door and crouching before Sowon.

“Hey, Rapunzel,” you coo softly, and Sowon attempts to muster a smile. Her cheeks flush, eyes dim like withered petals.

“How are you feeling?” you ask, pressing your hand to her feverish forehead. You cast a wary glance at Chan, who's anxiously biting his thumb.

“Cold,” she whispers, and you nod, peeling off her blanket. “I know you are, but you have a high fever. We need to let it cool down, okay?”

“I-I’m shaking,” Sowon sighs, lower lip protruding and trembling, both from the iciness clawing at her frail being, and the tears welling in her waterline, like a cup on the brink of overflowing.

“Shh, don't cry. It will pass, it's okay,” you murmur soothingly, cradling her face on your lap, gently moving damp strands of her hair behind her ear.

“Chris, can you bring me a towel and a bowl with cold water?” you ask softly, and the man startles, painfully peeling his eyes away from his daughter, as if doing so would consign her to a dark fate.

“Sure. Sure,” he repeats, scurrying out of the room.

Sowon buries her cheek in your thigh, small hands clinging tightly to yours. You tie her hair up into a loose bun as Chan hurriedly comes back, a bassinet in his hand.

“Thank you,” you smile, as he kneels beside the bed, his hand resting on Sowon’s knee gently.

“Hey sweetheart,” he coos softly, and Sowon blinks at him, light spilling over her face.

“Hey daddy,” she replies as you dip the towel into the water, before squeezing the fabric to remove any liquid excess.

“You're being so strong. I love you so much my pretty girl,” he says, bringing her small hand to rest upon his cheek, bestowing a gentle kiss on her palm.

The moment feels so intimate, so tender, that you almost feel like an intruder. You imagine this is what thorns on roses must feel like, so out of place amid delicate petals and stems.

“I love you too,” she grins, and you remain silent, diligently wiping her face and neck with the dampened towel. You soon lose track of the number of times you've repeated this motion, but Sowon’s eyes are now closed and her body is no longer trembling.

You rest your palm upon her forehead, a sigh of relief escaping your body as you realize that her fever has gone down noticeably- the medicine finally taking effect.

“It's better now,” you smile reassuringly and Chris’s eyes widen, irises shaking as he looks back to his daughter.

“Will she be okay?”

“She will be. She just needs to sleep a bit.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“Can we prepare her something to eat meanwhile?”

“Mm,” he absentmindedly nods, his fingers trailing down Sowon’s features delicately, resting upon her round cheeks.

“She looks just like you,” you softly smile.

“I know,” he admits, not with pride but in surrender, as if his reflection was nothing but a cursed fate. His voice tastes like ocean water, salty, acid, suffocating.

“Chris…” you trail off and he shakes his head, abruptly standing up.

“Let's make her chicken noodle soup. She loves it,” he says and you nod. A ticking bomb resides in his veins, devoid of a countdown, leaving you unsure of when he'll finally explode.

You get your answer soon after—it takes two minutes and thirty-three seconds for the first tear to roll down Chris’s cheek. You spot it as you retrieve carrots from the fridge, averting your gaze as Chan angrily wipes it away.

A few seconds later, five tears follow the same agonizing trail, and now the knife is shaking in Chris’ hands. He squeezes his eyes shut as if frustrated by his pain, by the emotions escaping through the cracks in his heart.

You stay silent, bringing the water to a simmer.

The clank of metal against the counter snaps your attention, and you see Chris with his head lowered down, his hands tightly clutching the counter.

Your tongue moves before you can order it to speak.

“Chris,” you call out, your hand finding its place on his back. An ugly sob escapes his lips, a raw cry unearthed from the depths of the soil where he buried his feelings, never allowing himself the grace of grieving, then moving on.

“I'm a horrible father,” he utters so brokenly as if this idea were cemented into his head, woven into every thought of himself—an adjective that lingers like a phantom each time Sowon calls him dad.

“You're not, what are you saying?” you gently turn him around so he'd face you. But his eyes remain downcast, as if ashamed to meet your gaze.

“I didn't know what to do. I panicked. I-I wasn't enough to help her.”

“It's okay, you can't know everything, you are trying your best-”

“No, no, no, it's not just about this!” he snaps, despair clinging to his eyes as he finally looks at you. “It’s hard. It’s so hard to be here alone, and I- I try but it's not enough, I can't do everything and I'm not a good enough parent for her, there will a-always be something missing.”

“You're wrong,” you say but he shakes his head in disagreement. “Chris, you're wrong,” you cradle his face, taking you both by surprise. Your thumb swipes gently underneath the skin of his eyes, wiping his cascading tears.

“You love Sowon. And she can feel it, she can see it, she can hear it. Everyone can. A parent can't be perfect, but they should love. And you love her.”

“What if I can't even love her enough for a father? How will I ever fill the role of two parents?” he's leaning onto your palm, hanging onto your every word. You'd sit for hours and untangle every thread of his mind if you have to, until you single out the infested one and burn it away.

“She loves you Chris. She looks at you as if you hang every star in the sky. As if you're responsible for every good thing that happens in our world. She loves you and you love her.”

You gaze up at the ceiling, tears welling in your eyes. Chan notices the subtle tremble in your hand against his cheek.

“If I had someone who loved me as much as you love Sowon when I was a child, I would've turned out so differently,” you smile bitterly, swallowing down the lump in your throat.

“You won't be a perfect dad. You can't be. But she won't grow up with a throbbing heart, pulsating because of a void that cannot be filled. Her veins won't be poisoned by hate and abandonment. Because she knows what it's like to be loved,” you pause, as your voice breaks, traitorous tears rolling down your cheeks. “To be cared for.”

Your eyes hold his in a silent conversation, secretly telling him what your tongue cannot speak of— Sowon, an untarnished blossom, won't unfurl into a solitary flower the way you did.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers after a while, eyes softening in understanding. His knuckles brush gently against your cheek.

“Why are you apologizing?”

“So you'd find a reason within you to forgive,” he says, as he leans forward to press a tender kiss on your forehead. And somehow it feels more intimate than any way you've been touched before.

Five days later.

chris [11:32 p.m.]: you up?

yn [11:32 p.m.]: i just got bad flashbacks to my college years

chris [11:33 p.m.]: ajaksjsbsbbs

chris [11:33 p.m.]: i didn’t mean it like that ㅠㅠ

chris [11:33 p.m.]: wanna come over? i'm in the studio but im not feeling inspired

yn [11:34 p.m.]: and how will i help?

chris [11:34 p.m.]: i find your presence inspiring

You don’t reply, instead putting on your slippers and walking over to his apartment. He opens the door before you even have the chance to knock.

“What are you working on?” you ask once you’re settled atop his chair, spinning around slightly. He looks down at the pillow on his lap, lightly plucking its pink fur. “A song for Sowon,” he admits softly and your eyes grow a little wide.

“That is so sweet,” you pout, inching closer to him. “How is it going?”

“I've finished the melody and now I'm working on the lyrics. There is just.. so much i want to tell her, i'm unsure if ill be able to express it well.”

“Can I read what you wrote?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure,” he searches through his papers. “Here.”

May these words be the first to find your ears

The world is brighter than the sun now that you're here

I'll give you everything I have

I'll teach you everything I know

I promise I'll do better

I will soften every edge

I'll hold the world to its best

And I'll do better

Tears spring to your eyes unexpectedly, you try to stop their flow but they fall upon the paper, splattering like a broken mosaic, mimicking the brokenness of your own heart.

“I'm sorry,” you spin around, your back to him as you attempt to dry your tears, and yet they show no desire to stop. Chris is in your heart and he’s kicking every other emotion out, forcing you to make amends with your sadness, the one you buried years, years ago.

Chris gently grabs the back of the chair, pulling you back to him before spinning your chair once again until you are facing him. You bury your face in your hands and his rests reassuringly on your knee, squeezing it slightly. “Is it so bad it made you sob?”

“Shut up, you know this isn’t the case.”

His hand delicately traces up your arm, gently lifting your fingers from your face. He kneels before you, his thumb tenderly wiping away the traces of tears on your cheeks.

“Talk to me?”

“It's so beautiful, so warm, so loving. Everything a parent should think of their child,” a traitorous hiccup escapes your lips. “Everything my parents never felt for me.”

Chris’ mouth morphs into a pout, eyebrows scrunching tightly. You shake your head, smoothing down the worried crease between his eyes.

“I don't feel sad over things I can't control and I love myself enough now to compensate for what I didn't have, but sometimes-'' your voice breaks, Chan’s hold on your hands tightens. “It stings to remember what could’ve been.”

Stings was an understatement, it is rather a pulsating void, throbbing in ache every day, calling out for its missing piece. How can I fill you with what was lost when it chose to walk away?

“Come here,” he whispers, coaxing you to your feet, his arms enveloping your body as he guides your head to the crook of his neck. His body runs warm, the material of his sweatshirt soft, and he smells nice too, the contours of his muscles tailor-made to complement the ridges of your own.

“You grew up well, Yn. You did well.”

You clutch his shirt, tightening your grip as you fist the fabric in your palm. He's patting your back, and time slows down to match the rhythm of his touch.

“Love can be hard, I know. Especially when the people who left are the ones supposed to be staying.”

He understands, more than anyone you know. He missed out on a different kind of love too, two facets of the same coin.

“You’re doing well too, Chris. You shouldn’t doubt yourself as much,” your arms trail up to encircle his neck, as his nose tickles your hair. You're the one hugging him now. “Sowon is really smart, she told me that she loves you a lot. She can feel it. She sees everything you do for her.”

“Is that what she told you that movie night?”

“Partly,” you whisper, and Chris leans away slightly, his warm palms still pressed to your waist, holding you close.

“What else did she tell you?” he asks, curiosity barely hidden in his tone.

You pause for a while, eyes going over the entire room before finally locking on him.

“She thanked me, said that I make you smile more.” You suck in a deep breath, gathering your courage. “Do I?”

“There are smile lines that don’t show on my face until you're near.”

“Oh.” That is the only coherent response you can formulate, and Chris giggles, a tiny squeak escaping his lips in a huff. “Cute,” he murmurs, planting a tender kiss on your temple. His lips linger, holding onto the moment a beat longer than necessary, causing your eyes to close in delight. Both of you find yourselves blushing as he leans away, a shared warmth coloring the space between you.

“Sorry, didn't mean to make the mood somber,” you say sheepishly as you sit back down, eyeing Chris’s laptop. “I wanna hear this,” you quickly point to a random track on his screen before he can reply, hoping to make the sadness flee away.

“This one? It’s not really good, let's listen to something else,” his rambling and eagerness to change the track pique your curiosity and you quickly click on the song before he can stop you.

connected.mp3 starts playing.

Sultry beats inundate your ears, weaving through your veins and whisking you away to the pulsating rhythm of a dance club. You knew Chris produced good music, yet you never fathomed that his voice could be so luxuriously rich, cascading over you like molten wax. You feel a blush rise to your cheeks at the suggestive lyrics, the innuendos peeking behind every word. And then, a sudden jealousy claws at your heart, at the thought of Chris hunched in his studio, fantasizing about connecting with someone who isn’t you.

You wished to be the only one Chris liked.

“It’s a- a demo for one of my clients,” he explains through a stutter once the song is done, and you nod meekly, willing your body’s temperature to go down, for the possessivity crinkling in you to fizzle out.

So, you put on your best taunting smirk.

“I know you want me don’t crumble.. No need to be desperate we’re just getting started,” you sing-song back. “You were feeling so cocky when you wrote this, right?” you grin, inching your chair closer to his. “Feeling yourself, Mr. Bang?”

He chuckles with a hint of annoyance, running his tongue along the expanse of his lower lip. Leaning back into his chair, he casually spreads his legs a bit wider, a gesture that suddenly leaves you feeling dizzy, on him.

“It’s cute how affected you seem by it,” he throws nonchalantly, crossing his arms before his chest.

“I'm not,” you smile, although your erratic heartbeat spoke of a different tale, you just didn't need to voice it to him. “I think you were the one getting all hot and bothered in your studio,” you stand between his legs, hovering over him as he leans back fully in his chair.

“I was thinking of a pretty girl.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm,” he suddenly grabs your waist, you feel like your entire body is ablaze. “The prettiest.”

“Who is she?” you exhale, teetering on the edge of crashing your lips onto his, like an incoherent love poem, hastily scrambled on a notebook in a fit of passion.

“y–” The door suddenly opens, Sowon’s small frame standing by the door, she’s rubbing her eyes tiredly, her chick plushie dangling from her hand (a gift from her uncle Felix as she explained to you). You quickly scramble away from Chris as he clears his throat loudly.

“Daddy, I can't sleep,” she says faintly, a tiny pout drawn on her lips, and you can see Chris physically melt at her words, at the way she paddles to his chair, and tries her best to climb up his legs. She fails to do so, so he quickly scopes her up his arms until she’s buried in his hold. Her small hands wound up around his neck, and he tenderly pats down her hair, his gaze never wavering from her frame.

“Want me to sing to you, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” she whispers, before making grabby hands at you, your heart softens like clay dough as you scoot closer, enclosing her fingers in your hold.

“Sleep well, Sowonnie,” you whisper.

“Can’t you stay with us?” she asks and you feel your blood freeze in your veins, your heart skipping three beats at once.

To stay. What a frightening concept. Even more scary when you realize that you aren’t opposed to it.

You yearn to stay, for the first time in years, you wish you could.

You swallow the growing lump in your throat, before smiling reassuringly. “I'll stay till you fall asleep.”

Conditions, it is the way it has always been for you. staying till you’re no longer useful, staying till you're no longer wanted. Staying, but always with a time limit, always with an expiration date.

iv.

You’re avoiding him.

Chris knows you are, since you no longer come over to his house, claiming that you’re tired, or that you have an important order to bake for the next day. He would have believed you had he not seen you only once in the past three weeks.

Those were excuses, and each one of them weighed heavily on Chris’ heart, on his home too, his studio particularly, the one that got used to the sound of your laugh.

He misses you. He never thought he’d miss someone again, craving you presence as if every breath leaving his body depended on you. He wasn’t a stranger to intimacy, fleeting hookups every now and then. Strangers invited him to their bed, knowing what they were signing up for– one night of pleasure, never to be seen again, their faces blurring into an indistinct mass in his mind, like an impressionist painting where no features stand out. Yet, with you, every detail is etched in his memory.

He could pick you out of a crowded room, recognize the delicate curve of your neck, the fullness of your lips, and the way your nose scrunches when you smile.

He could draw the moles scattered on your body from memory alone, recognize your scent from miles away– your cotton shampoo and the specific laundry detergent you love to use and a hint of vanilla that never truly leaves you.

He’d remember the curve of your lashes and the cascading of your hair, the airy giggles you leave across like a trail for him to follow everywhere, and your eyes– the way they gazed at him, softening slightly around the edges, shining brightly as if crafted from stardust, the way they softened even more when you looked at Sowon, voice growing slightly high pitched as you listened to his daughter’s rambles.

How did you manage to make his home yours without ever living in it?

“Dad?” Sowon calls out and he snaps his head up, locking eyes with his little girl. She’s sitting on a high stool, munching on her pizza, a pensive look on her face.

“Yes, sweetheart?” he asks, walking over to her side.

“Where is Ynnie?” she asks in a small voice and he freezes, mulling over his response. He settles for the truth.

“I don't know, baby.”

“Does she not want to play with me anymore?” Sowon whispers, and he doesn’t remember his daughter ever being this tentative about voicing a question.

“No!” he's quick to reassure, cradling Sowon’s face between his much larger hands. “Of course not baby she loves you a lot.”

“Okay…” she nods, a small pout drawn on her lips still. Chris senses his heart physically crack in his chest.

“Do you wanna work in the studio with me?” he says in a joyful tone, and she instantly cheers up, the twinkle in her eyes found again. “Yes!”

“Finish your food first, okay Wonnie?”

“Okay!”

In Chris's life, regrets have been scarce, and certainly not in the form of Sowon, his beacon of hope, as he named her. Having her was beholding a sun wherever he went. However, a fear lingers, a whisper in his heart, suggesting that letting you go might be his one true regret.

So when his daughter falls asleep, he knocks on your door once again. He's suddenly transported into that cold night, months ago, where he asked you for flour. Had he known you were behind it he would’ve knocked much sooner.

“Hi,” you greet softly once you open the door. He takes a step forward, his wolf slippers matching with Sowon’s bump into your plain ones. You avert your gaze, finding anything but him to fixate on.

“You're avoiding me,” he says matter-of-factly, voice soft, resigning to you.

“I'm not,” you contradict, even as your eyes remain on the ground. He finds himself missing the color of your irises.

“Look at me, hm?” he implores, and you stay rooted in place. A soft sigh escapes him as he cradles your right cheek with his warm hand, his thumb gently sweeping across your cheekbone. “Yn, please, I want to look at you.”

Maybe it is the pleading tone of his voice or the way his thumb tenderly grazes your skin, but something about Chris makes your resolve unravel, threads of fear unknotting before your eyes. So, you finally look at him. An exhale of relief escapes him.

And then you speak.

“You asked me if I was okay, and I didn't reply, back then,” you say, leaning your head further against his palm as tears well up in your waterline. “Do you still want to know my answer?”

“Of course, always.”

“I'm happy. With you, with sowon. I feel this warmth that I have never known before when I'm with you. It was almost easy to forget I've known you during winter,” you chuckle dryly, “but it is all an illusion, I lie to myself thinking I could stay, I… I can't, I-“

“What if I ask you to stay?” he brings your hand to his heart, where it beats erratically, pulse seeping through your skin.

He’s as scared as you are.

“Chris…”

“What if I told you, Yn, please stay with me,” he breathes out, guiding your hand to gently cup his cheek. “Would you? Would you stay?”

“I'm terrified,” you whisper, as he tilts his head, bestowing a tender kiss on your palm.

“I know, so am I. But, you make me believe that even my bruised parts are worthy of love.”

He wins, before years of skeletons and piled up doubts, he wins.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I'm staying.”

“You are?”

“I am,” you giggle lightly and he staggers back, the sun pouring into his smile.

“Um, wow, okay. Thank you for staying,” his voice sounds airy, happiness floating in his tone, and you find it contagious, imprinting into your own.

“Thank you for asking me to stay.”

“You made it less daunting,” he pats your head, smoothing your hair down. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

He giggles in response and you can't help but mirror the sound. “Why are you so nervous?”

“Whaaat? I'm not,” his tone grows high-pitched and you roll your eyes amusedly.

“What happened to connected Chris?”

“He is flustered by the girl he wrote about.”

Your cheeks tint red as he places a hand above your head, caging you in place.

“I think the girl should get paid for being the muse.”

“Oh yeah?” he smirks, “I'll think about it.” His grin softens, as a content expression washes over his face. You know you must look the same. “Let's talk more tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” you grin, before placing a chaste kiss on his cheek. “Good night, Chris.”

“Good night, yn.”

You quietly watch as he walks to his apartment door, his hand settling on the door knob. He pauses, for a few seconds where the air around you stills, before swiveling around and walking over to you again.

you win.

“I forgot something,” he breathes out, before crashing his lips onto yours, furiously, as if needing to imprint his essence onto you, tainting your soul the way you have tainted him, permanently altering the composition of his being. His lips move on yours as if they've done this before, a dance they have rehearsed countless times, perhaps in all the dreams Chris visited you in. Yet, nothing compares to how it feels to have him touch you, lick your lower lip and drag his hand up your hips, press you against your apartment door, and nibble at your neck.

Nothing could have prepared you for the passion he shows you, for how delicious it feels to be pressed against him, for the storm that your lips conjure, swirling in your heart in vibrant shades of red. Then, for the softness of his lips as they slow down their course, plump and rosy as they meet your own, tenderly, more gently, one kiss after the other. “My hope,” he whispers, as his lips find yours again, “my missing piece.”

He’s hot and cold, in yet seeking no out, finally yours.

bonus (one year later).

“So I brought the eggs, milk, sugar,” Chris enumerates as he takes out the groceries, and you turn to look at Sowon to find her already gazing at you, a mischievous look on her face.

“How much do you wanna bet he forgot flour?” you whisper and she giggles, burying her face in her hands to stifle her laugh.

“And… Wait, where is the flour?” he trails off and you burst out laughing, as you and Sowon high-five each other excitedly.

“Daddy, you are really bad at groceries.”

“Am I?” he smiles sheepishly, fiddling with his earlobe in a manner that still makes your heart melt, renders your insides butterflies speaking of Chris’ name.

“Yes, it’s good Mom bought it,” she says naturally, looking down at her iPad. You and Chris freeze in your tracks, eyes instantly locking with one another, yours and his, glossy with emotion, a loving tide enveloping you both.

It's her first time calling you mom.

You swallow down the lump in your throat, crafted not by thorns but by petals, not by ache but with love, before placing your chin on the small of her shoulder, murmuring softly. "Mm, will you help me bake, baby?"

“Yes! I wanna be a baker when I grow up, just like you.”

“What happened to being a stylist?”

“I can't be both?” she frowns innocently.

“You can be anything you want, princess.” you bop her nose and she giggles, pressing a sweet kiss to your cheek.

In the grip of winter, Chris discovers a warmth that defies the season, casting off years of cold from the recesses of his bones. A soft smile graces his lips as he gazes at you, his hopes, his girls, the three of you clad in wolf slippers.

He’ll propose to you tomorrow.

#skz x reader #skz x you #stray kids x reader #stray kids x you #stray kids angst #skz fluff #stray kids fluff #skz imagines #stray kids imagine #stray kids reactions #skz angst #skz fanfic #chan fluff #chan x reader #bang chan x reader #bang chan fluff #skz scenarios #stray kids scenarios #skz au

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boltonbritreads · 6 months ago

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🗣️Eddie Munson Fic Recs

This is gonna have a sappy start before I get into the fic rec portion: but I just wanted to say that at the end of May 2022, I was finishing up my first year of law school. It was rough, challenging, lonely, and basically everything you’d expect and I was in a bad place and the fandom I’d been in was slowing down just naturally. I truly wish I could remember how I even became aware of Eddie Munson because stranger things wasn’t really on my radar anymore and whoever I followed at the time that started to veer off into Eddie-mania, thank you. In the two years since then, I’ve graduated and become the worlds babiest lawyer and I genuinely owe a lot to this fandom and community on here for giving me a fun, usually safe, creative place to escape to when it got rough.

I’m just hoping to maybe remind people that there are already an incredible, incredible amount of existing stories to read and talk about that deserve your attention and love if you’re looking to read some Eddie stories. Some of these will be fics I’ve recommended before but I’m going to try my best to pull together writers and fics that I love and think everyone should read in the hopes that someone like me who still scrolls through eddie tags looking for my nightly bedtime story can find something new to them to read! ✨

Previous Fic Rec list here!! some overlap but there’s no such thing as too much hype for these writers

@munson-blurbs I hope it’s ok but I’m linking Bug’s full masterlist here because I have genuinely loved everything she has written. There are blurbs, series, and special events which are all incredible and worth a read! Bug is currently still writing the “Living after Midnight” series which is my current obsession and features rockstar!eddie x motelheiress!reader and it’s angst and lust galore

@corroded-hellfire also sharing the Eddie Masterlist here because there’s so many fics to read!! As You Wish, Big Brown Eyes, Where the Heart Is are all incredible but truly there’s so much here to enjoy

@upsidedownwithsteve SIMMER!! jk I’m actually linking the Eddie Masterlist here too because I love them all but “I Want You To Want Me” and “Simmer” are out of this world

@pinkrelish The Yes Policy I love it, you love it, we all love it and if you haven’t caught up yet oh my god I wish I was you and could read these chapters for the first time again

@ghost-proofbaby I’ve previously told people to go read 24 Hours, and you should, that’s an order; but Maroon is ongoing! and it’s actually infiltrating my every thought so go on over and get caught up bc I think it’s safe to say things are getting amped up

@trashmouth-richie I have also previously recommended Honey, I’m Home because it’s a work of art but Ziggy has a new mini series “Crash + Fall” that I’m completely obsessed with the concept for and I’ve loved every piece so far!

@tiannasfanfic I just reblogged Conviction again but I genuinely am not exaggerating when I say I think about this story and these two monthly and try and find this story all the time to re-read it endlessly. It’s a really lovely story of unplanned pregnancy and two characters not realizing they’ve been smitten for each other the whole time and I love it

@carolmunson I’m sharing another Eddie Masterlist here because I’d be making this post far too long but Carol’s stories are all incredible, complex, and honest. “Let’s go, don’t wait” just got updated and I had to read it like 3 times last night because it was too good to just read one and done

@rebelfell I just discovered Sarah’s blog after reading the most recent “Frenemy” fic and idk what I was doing wrong to not already follow her and not have already read her whole Masterlist but I’m linking the whole thing bc she’s so good!!

@the-au-thor I also only just discovered Elle’s blog and that’s criminal but thank god I found Babysitting Mun because I am a sucker for rockstar!eddie and this series has me on the edge of my seat rn

@storiesbyrhi I’m sharing the Masterlist folks because I have genuinely loved every single story and series and I have read them all now (some several times). So many of Rhi’s stories have a wonderful warm witchy vibe that I crave and I’ve read Siouxsie and the Soulmates, The Cabin in the Woods, Our Patron Saint of the Arts, Vintage Reeboks, and Burning Yarrow (insert screaming fan gif) multiple times now

@heart-eyed-love this fic is the epitome of a soft, cozy, domestic night with Eddie and if you need a hug read this 🥹

@eddieandbird I JUST got caught up on Eddie/Tour Manager series and I’m fully obsessed and desperate to know how they’re gonna navigate this - for folks new to the story, Eddie and his tour manager accidentally drunkenly get married- what could go wrong??

@eiightysixbaby the scream I scrumped when I finished reading Princess Leia, and Other Wishes - look bffs to lovers is already my absolute weakness on this earth but then you had to make it witty and funny and FLUFFY I just can do nothing but re-read and pine

@superblysubpar I’m still obsessed with this addition to The Boy is Mine writing challenge and oh god it’s so good 😩

…and while we’re talking about it - here’s the entire The Boy is Mine masterlist with an INSANE amount of incredible stories to read

@the-unforgivenn !!! tumblr hates me and deleted this bullet (so if you already saw this post, no you didn’t) but And I Need You to Know is a proper novel! I can’t imagine how much time, love, effort, planning, and work went into creating this insane and absolutely incredible world but everyone needs to read this!! and then follow up with She’s So Cold bc I love it and I am so reader

~~ this is not the end nor an exhaustive list! I just wanted to put something out there now that I plan to build on because I know I’m always scrolling and searching for new things to read or old things to revisit ♥️ ~~

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson smut #eddie munson x you #eddie munson angst #eddie munson au #eddie x reader

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n0b0dyukn0w · 7 months ago

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i *audibly* gasped

Peridot: *was yelling at steven and ec spinel* you stupid brain dead clods! don't you have any ideal how much danger you could of have put yourself in!? Common sense would say not to do something so fucking stupid and reckless but apparently that is something you two clods are lacking! *she kept yelling at them from the top of her lungs*

Steven and EC spinel: *steven was filled with shame and regret while spinel was looking down at her annoyed*

EC spinel: …you sure do talk a lot for someone who is at dick sucking height, don't you agree steven *she smirked and nudge steven, making him and peridot gasp causing them to turn red and speechless from shock*

Heh human peridot

#spinel #this is a family friendly channel #steven universe #ec spinel #escape convict au #escape convict spinel #human spinel #human peridot #steven universe movie #su #su au #su peridot #su steven #su spinel #incorrect quotes

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fancyfeathers · 9 days ago

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Ringmaster

Yandere!Villain/Serial Killer Dick Grayson x Robin!Darling

Okay so I had a really creepy idea while watching Escape the Night, and while I normally don’t do AUs I really like this one.

This is a little gift for @yandere-wishes for wanting me to post my dark content

Yandere!Ringmaster Dick Grayson watching his parents die in front of him but Bruce never takes him in, so he stays with the circus and one day takes it over but oh is he angry because no one did anything when his parents were killed so he takes it upon himself to get rid of any potential threats at the show, researching into every single person who buys a ticket because after all it is the job of the ringmaster to look after their performers.

Yandere!Ringmaster Dick Grayson is a serial killer and everyone at the circus knows, but he is always so edge since that day his parents died that no one ever says anything about it. Even the authorities have an idea but they have no solid evidence to convict him.

Yandere!Ringmaster Dick Grayson meets his darling at one of the shows, they are an orphan like him only they got adopted by a certain billionaire playboy, Bruce Wayne. His darling was the first Robin, not him. He sees her, a young girl woman at that point, a night out for her nineteenth birthday with her friends and a night off from being Robin, or so she thought.

Yandere!Ringmaster Dick Grayson who kills her friends one by one throughout the night like in a horror movie, because all of them have done something, jewelry theft, drugged someone, or helped cover up an accident. All of them were her friends because she helped fix them as Robin, but then she finds one body after another she realizes someone knows about their pasts.

Yandere!Ringmaster Dick Grayson who can’t bring himself to kill her, even if she is a potential witness, she is broken like him but she has never done anything wrong. They are opposites, and that becomes clear when he comes face to face with her in her Robin costume, he is angry but she has made peace with her past.

Yandere!Ringmaster Dick Grayson who can’t let a witness get away, especially one who is a vigilante and he manages to knock her out in their fight and stuffs her unconscious body in one of the costume trunks. He’ll let her out once the circus gets out of town, can’t risk her escaping and telling the police or even Batman.

Yandere!Ringmaster Dick Grayson who comes to see his little bird after every show, tied up and dressed up in his own tent. She can scream in her gag but no one is coming to save her because no one wants to get on the Ringmaster’s bad side.

#yandere dc headcanon #yandere dc x reader #yandere dc #yandere batfam #yandere batfam x reader #yandere batfamily x reader #yandere batfamily #yandere dick grayson #yandere dick grayson x reader

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andypantsx3 · 1 year ago

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DEAD RECKONING : TODOROKI TOUYA x READER

SUMMARY: A makeup artist at a haunted maze, all you want to do is make it to the end of the season with a little extra cash in your pocket and no murder convictions on your record. Scare actor Todoroki Touya makes that last part a challenge. (7.8k) CONTENT & WARNINGS: no quirks au, halloween, enemies to lovers, fem + afab reader, slight scumbag touya, haunted maze workers, smut, semi-public sex, smoking, heavy swearing, touya likes having his hair pulled + girls who are a little mean to him, sort of good girl vs bad boy vibes, 18+ minors please dni NOTES: Happy Halloween from me!! This fic is part of the Willow's Haunted House collab. Dedicated to cat-slippered and ofmermaidstories, for workshopping what eventually became this fic with me about a thousand years ago. I’m sorry I turned Bakugou into Dabi. And I’m sorry for dedicating the now Dabi fic to you. But not sorry enough to not have done it. Love you. :)

If there was one thing you hated about Halloween, it was Todoroki Touya.

Shockingly, this was not a commonly-held sentiment, which was the only reason there even was a recurrence of Todoroki Touya darkening your Halloween seasons in the first place.

For the last three years, you’d spent your fall semester working as a makeup artist at the Musutafu haunted maze alongside a slew of other college and local kids looking to make a little extra cash. The hours were fairly flexible, and the wage covered your textbooks, with a little left over to keep you in the occasional coffee between lectures.

But your wages did not nearly cover the amount of psychic damage you had been dealt, managing Todoroki Touya’s obnoxious, sarcastic, chain-smoking ass day after day for seasons on end.

On lucky days, someone else was on Touya duty. But on unlucky ones, you found him sprawling in the plastic makeup chair opposite you, those intense blue eyes tracking you with no small amount of pleasure, like he was this afternoon.

You stopped in the doorway, a curse slipping out of you. You’d been hoping that you’d get lucky today, as the day was otherwise an excellent one. You’d invited a group of friends to do the maze with you after you got off shift, and you had been looking forward to it all week.

But it figured Touya could never let you have too good of a time.

“Missed you too, sweetheart,” he drawled over the noise of displeasure that escaped you. He was at least already dressed in costume, so he wouldn’t go smearing his makeup as he pulled it on, a tumble of stitches and frayed edges that had once been a dark-blue duster, but now just mostly gaped open to show the hard planes of his chest.

“I’m so sure,” you told him, averting your eyes from his pecs. You sighed, resigning yourself to his presence, and made your way in, dumping your bag on the staff room couch.

“This is a very hostile work environment you’re creating,” Touya rasped, his grin sharp. Years of chain-smoking outside the maze had left his voice even lower and raspier than when you’d first met him three years ago.

“Don’t worry, it can always get more hostile,” you told him, affecting your own sweet grin as you moved over to the vanity, digging through all the makeup and prosthetics for the ones he’d need.

Touya himself was severely scarred, which was likely why he’d applied to work at the haunted maze in the first place. You’d never asked him about his scars, but you’d heard enough gossip from the other maze workers to know that they were the product of a childhood accident, involving the burning down of his father’s—the then-and-current mayor’s—house.

He’d accentuated them with a shit load of facial piercings, and was sort of off-putting to look at the first time you caught a glimpse of him. The issue was that, once your eyes made sense of what they were seeing, he was infuriatingly handsome.

You’d heard he’d initially been unleashed on the maze with no makeup or prosthetics, and within the first evening was causing line backups, with all the parties of teen girls who were taking a little too much time lingering around his section of the maze.

So now he was subjected to prosthetics to make him uglier, a fact that he seemed to absolutely relish.

You dug out the monster prosthetic pack that gave him jutting forehead ridges. “Let’s make the outside reflect the inside, shall we,” you told him as you flapped the rubbery pieces at him, smirking your own little smirk.

Touya’s answering grin was wicked, and he relaxed back in his seat, sprawling his legs out wide in that infuriating way men had. “Think my outside is too pretty then, huh?” he asked, sapphire eyes flickering over you.

Your face went hot in a weird combination of anger and embarrassment. “I try not to think of your outside,” you told him pertly, making sure to slap the forehead piece onto him hard enough to make a splat noise.

His mouth twitched again but he let you go to work, gluing the pieces down against his face, careful not to press them to the seams of any of his scars. He was tall enough even lounging in his seat that you only had to lean over a little to focus clearly on his face, all long legs and rangy muscle.

This close, he always smelled like cigarette smoke, with an undercurrent of something rich and dark, like cinnamon or chocolate. You could never put your finger on it, but you were not about to go sniffing him at any length to figure it out, even if it was annoyingly appealing.

He’d probably love that, and would absolutely never let you live it down.

Touya’s eyes tracked you closely as you worked, but otherwise his expression was still, and you thought not for the first time that it really was too bad he was so obnoxious. He was actually quite handsome, with a soft, sensuous mouth, a blade-straight nose, and vivid blue eyes that all but glowed like the embers of a crackling fire when he was provoking you.

It was a shame he wasted all his beauty being the most annoying man on earth.

You’d heard from the other maze workers that he was relatively well-known around the area, having spent his teen years doing petty criminal shit to destabilize his father’s reelection campaigns, netting himself several jail stays and a record a mile long. He’d settled somewhat since he’d gotten a job at a piercing parlor downtown and several side gigs like the maze, but people weren’t fully convinced he’d abandoned his old ways, and he still clearly relished any opportunity to discomfort and destabilize anyone who got on his bad side.

Apparently including you.

“Don’t hurt yourself thinking too hard, sweetheart,” Touya said, those cerulean eyes blinking up at you.

You realized you’d paused over him, midway through blending his prosthetic forehead in, and another annoying little smirk rode his mouth.

You took care to roll your eyes at him, gesturing at him with your brush. “I know several places I can stick this if you’re not careful.”

Touya’s smirk melted into an unholy grin. “Don’t threaten me with a good time,” he rasped, eyes glittering up at you.

You went back to work on him with a little more force than necessary, blending hard enough that you saw his broad shoulders shift in an effort to keep his neck braced. “I doubt any time with you could be classed as good,” you said pertly, giving a final few brushes before stepping back, satisfied with your work.

The forehead made him look unhinged as he offered another smirk, leaning forward. “True—the feedback I usually get is ‘incredible’, ‘mind-blowing’, ‘earth-shattering’, ‘toe-curling’, ‘scream-inducing’—”

“Oh I’ll scream if you keep talking,” you said hotly, even as your cheeks warmed. Even with the stupid fucking forehead he was annoyingly handsome. You needed him a thousand million miles away from you before you herniated something, jumping back and forth between annoyance and attraction.

Maybe it was time to stop signing up to work here.

“Now get out of my room, I have other people waiting,” you commanded, thankful when you heard the scuff of a boot at the door confirming another maze worker waiting.

Touya didn’t look at all chastened, but he unfolded himself from the chair in an unfurling of broad shoulders and long legs. He leaned in close as he passed, voice dipping low. “See you later, sweetheart,” he said, a smile curling his mouth.

Annoyingly, his proximity crossed a bunch of the wires in your brain, and you fumbled before managing, “Not if we’re both lucky.”

“Stop, I’ll blush,” he drawled, another unholy grin splitting his cheeks before he saluted two fingers at you and ducked out of the room. The scent of smoke and cinnamon followed him, and you let out a sigh of relief, the air and your brain clearer now that he was gone.

No sooner were you free of him, however, than another problem was immediately introduced.

“So…he actually talks to you?” The other maze worker’s head poked through the door, her eyes resting on you intently. You recognized her as a local highschooler who’d just joined this season, who usually ended up getting in early enough to get her makeup done by the other artist.

You blinked. “I…unfortunately?” you answered, confused.

She stepped into the room, and you reflexively gestured her over to the chair that Touya had just abandoned.

She hummed as she took her seat, eyeing you curiously. “Wow. How’d you get him to do that? He doesn’t really talk to any of us,” she informed you.

You could feel your eyebrows lift towards your hairline. “He…doesn’t…?”

She shook her head, her pretty golden ringlets swaying with the motion. “He’ll chainsmoke with Tomura and he sometimes talks to Himiko. But the other girls—they say he just laughs and walks away if they try to chat with him.”

Well. That sounded rude enough to be true to form, you thought. But when Touya was in your makeup chair you couldn’t get him to shut the hell up. You shifted, uncomfortable with the idea that Touya had any special soft spot for you. Maybe, like a cat, he could sense who didn’t much like him and decided to latch on out of spite.

“You might be a little young for him,” you decided, going over to the vanity and digging out the prosthetics she’d need—a witch chin and a raised gorey slash that would open along one cheekbone.

“No—it’s all the other girls too. And most of the guys,” she told you. “He must like you.”

A laugh escaped you, and you turned back to her with the prosthetics in hand, a few new brushes and a white, cakey paint palette shoved beneath your elbow.

“I don’t think he likes anyone,” you told her, setting everything down and applying the tacky glue to the underside of her chin prosthetic. “I think he just likes to inflict himself on people he knows it will annoy. You could act disinterested in talking to him and he’d probably come flitting right over.” The image of Touya suffering at the hands of a league of flirty high school girls pleased you—better they suck up his time and energy than you.

“I don’t know,” the girl said uncertainly. “Maybe he likes you.” But she was forced to leave it at that once you started applying her chin, making it difficult for her to speak.

You certainly didn’t think that was the case.

But the seeds of doubt had already been sown, a question that you thought would probably haunt your evening now that it had been formed. Just why did Touya talk to you if he was so standoffish with other people? And what did it mean that he made such a point of it?

You knew for sure it wasn’t because he liked you, his obnoxious manner said that well enough. But why did you get treatment that was significant enough that even the other maze workers would comment on it?

And, perhaps even more concerningly, why did the thought agitate you so much?

You decided to try your best not to think about it, and have a good time with your friends once they got there, putting Touya out of your mind. You returned to doing the girl’s makeup with vigor, suddenly as eager to get her out of your chair as you had been Touya.

She was finished in record time and she thanked you, carefully not to smile too widely lest she dislodge the prosthetics. You took in the next person waiting as she left, slowly working your way through the line of people as the hour drew ever closer to the maze’s evening opening time.

Eventually you finished up and collected your things, making your way out front to find your friends already waiting for you. They’d clearly dressed with the intent to go out after—something you hadn’t considered—their dresses short and slinky and their makeup smoky. You’d have liked to have joined, but you were still in the sweater and leggings you’d come straight from lectures in.

Maybe you would have time to go home and change after the maze.

You were scooped up into several hugs, breathing in the sweet scents of various perfumes, and informed that you absolutely did have to go home and get changed after so you could come out and get “Hallowasted!” too.

“Okay if I’m not busy peeing my pants, which monsters are the ones you did?” your roommate asked, dancing around to warm herself in the cool fall air. “I wanna see ‘em.”

You named several of your creations, conveniently leaving off Touya. You knew that if your friends took too close a look at him and figured out what he looked like under the cakey makeup and forehead prosthetic, they’d never leave the maze. You knew he sat somewhere around the end of the set up, in an alcove that had been decorated to look like an abandoned village with burned out cabins, a mess of bones dotting the ground at the side of the walkway.

You were also hoping you could pass unnoticed in the group of your friends, as there was no doubt in your mind that Touya would take special care to annoy you in particular. So you did not want your group to linger long enough for your friends to scope him out.

You would know it was him under the makeup you’d done yourself, but being cornered somewhere in the dark with the soundtrack of screams echoing in your ears would not exactly have you feeling your boldest.

Your group had dinner at the food trucks parked out front, chatting and laughing and waiting for the crowds to die down, each indulging in one drink for bravery before joining the line. Eventually you ended up at the front of the queue, late in the evening, your friends crowding in behind you, whispering nervously.

“You first,” your roommate hissed when you looked back at them questioningly. “You work here, you have to do the honors.”

You sighed, accepting your fate, making a mental note to subtly shift to the back of the pack as you made it further into the maze.

Then you were being greeted by Shigaraki Tomura, whose makeup you’d done last. He’d been given layers of prosthetic peeling skin and a scar at his mouth, and he was decorated with a layer of disembodied hands gripping him all over. He shredded your tickets, looking unenthused.

“Remember that inside the maze, none of the monsters can touch you,” he recited dully. “You are not permitted to touch them in return; do not hit, kick, push, bite, slap, lick, scratch, or otherwise assault the actors. Don’t tamper with the props, do not leave items behind. Be respectful of other guests and do not linger too long in the rooms. If you need to leave for any reason, every room or alcove has clearly-lit exits marked in red.”

His eyes briefly met yours as he waved you through, and you thought you saw a pale brow go up.

But then you were being shoved forward by your friends, several hands clinging to your arms and the back of your shirt, and you stepped forward into the dark of the hall.

The maze truly was a labyrinth—it started indoors in a pitch black room, with fake body bags hanging from the ceiling. Toga Himiko, a highschooler whose makeup you usually did, stalked you around the edges of the room, dressed in a torn school uniform with fangs peeking out of her widely grinning mouth, and a dripping knife clutched eagerly in her fingers.

Once you made it past her, the maze spilled outdoors, into a tangle of hedges and artificially-constructed set, steering you in twisting loops around the property.

You were pleased with how terrifying all the actors looked, even having done most of their prosthetics yourself, and found your heart racing as you took every new corner, found yourself freezing up and stumbling back whenever someone jumped out at you, suppressing a shriek.

Your friends participated with gusto, shrieking and ducking away from the monsters, holding you like a human shield between them and the maze workers. You would have been insulted if it hadn’t been so funny.

You made it through most of the maze with little trouble, passing through a haunted swamp, a graveyard with mummies twisting and screaming in their bindings, grasping for you. You stumbled past a man wielding a chainsaw and a set of clowns waving axes, making it through in record time thanks to the push of your frantic friends behind you.

It was only on the last leg of the maze that you finally ran into Touya.

You peered around the corner, recognizing the set up instantly. The burned out houses flickered with blue flame, lighting up the set in an eerie, unsettling sapphire light. The fake bones on the ground sat in piles of ash, glowing stark white in the light. You couldn’t spot Touya anywhere, and you slowly crept forward, trying to shepherd your friends in front of you.

You even almost thought you had been successful, until a rasping voice drawled behind you, “Hello sweetheart.”

And then your roommate screamed, bolting forward, knocking into you and sending you stumbling over a pile of the fake bones. You landed hard on your ass in the patchy grass, the wind punching out of you.

“Oh fuck—” you heard one of your friends say as she too was steamrolled, and you watched the group of them trip over one another in their desperation to get through the alcove, dissolving into chaos in a matter of seconds.

You quickly tried to get to your feet to follow, but a hiss forced its way through your teeth when you tried your ankle, a wave of sharp pain washing over you.

Oh fuck. Not good.

The tread of a boot in the grass next to you made you jump, and your head whipped up to catch sight of Touya crouching over you.

“You good down there?” he asked. His eyes glinted in the dark of the maze, and the blue light cast shadows over his features, twisting them in the dim. Your heartbeat picked up, even as your brain recognized him for who he was.

You cringed, embarrassed that you’d had to hurt yourself in his part of the maze specifically. It figured.

“I’m fine,” you said quickly, trying to climb to your feet again. Your ankle twinged in protest, and Touya must have caught the flash of pain on your face because then his hand was under your elbow, supporting you as you rose in an unexpected show of courtesy.

Although he broke the illusion immediately when he opened his mouth again.

“Yeah you look real fine,” he said, quirking an eyebrow. With the prosthetic forehead it made him look sort of demented.

“Well I’ll be fine,” you insisted, even as those blue eyes flickered over you assessingly. His fingers tightened a little on your arm before he bent down, tapping his other hand on your leg.

“Which leg, sweetheart?” he asked. “And where?”

It took you a minute to catch up to what he was asking, confused at seeing him on his haunches before you. A scream went up in the background, some terrified maze goer, and a little shiver went down your spine.

“Uh, the left ankle,” you supplied, startling when Touya’s fingers slid underneath the cuff of your legging over the aforementioned ankle, rolling it up gently. You blinked, surprised at the careful touch.

“Can’t see too well in the dark,” he announced. “But it looks like you ripped it open on something.” He peered back up at you. “Think it’s sprained?”

You shook your head. “Probably just rolled. It hurts but not like go-to-the-hospital level,” you said. “Just give me a minute, I’ll be good.”

Touya considered you for a moment, then got to his feet, moving closer. That scent of smoke and cinnamon drifted over to you, and he bent his head to look into your face.

“Much as you’re the most terrifying thing in this maze, I don’t think people are gonna wanna see you here,” he told you, a smirk cutting into his mouth. “Would ruin the experience. So we’re gonna have to get you out of here.”

You scowled up at him, crossing your arms over your chest. Well no thanks for the concern, then. “I’m going, I’m going, keep your shirt on,” you told him, preemptively gritting your teeth before readying yourself to take another step.

But before you could, one of Touya’s hands was suddenly sliding under your knees, his other slipping behind your shoulder. In the next second the burning buildings were swinging wildly in front of your eyes, and then you were being hefted up into Touya’s arms. You let out a startled yelp, your own hands shooting out to grab his jacket, giving him a wild-eyed look.

“Touya—!” you garbled out, as a smile pulled at his expression.

“Relax, sweetheart,” he told you, looking a little too smug about the situation he’d just put you in. He strode towards the exit, kicking the door open with a heavy boot, carrying you down the hall and back into the building. He was hard with wiry muscle underneath you, and so deliciously warm against you. Your ears went hot with every sure, easy step he took, like carrying you was little effort for him.

Thankfully it was barely a minute before you reached the staff room, where Touya laid you out gently on the couch, much more carefully than you might have expected from him.

Your cheeks and your nose burned, flaming even hotter when he squatted down in front of you and took your ankle in his hand again.

His dark eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he took note of your injury. In the light you could definitely see that you’d caught your ankle bone on one of the fake bones you’d tripped over, as there was a long gash up the side of it, but nothing else looked bruised or otherwise concerning. You thought you’d probably be fine in a couple hours, just a roll.

It was definitely nothing Touya had needed to princess carry you through the staff halls for!

“Don’t move,” Touya told you, and you watched, bewildered, as he stepped away, stalking over to the other side of the room where the staff lockers were. He dug out a shabby backpack, pulling something out of it, and then returned to your side, spreading out his haul on the couch next to you.

You noted a little tube of rubbing alcohol, an antiseptic cream and a bandage, as well as an ice pack. One of your eyebrows went up.

“You rob a hospital or something?” you asked reflexively, heart fluttering a little bit weirdly when Touya’s eyes flickered back up to yours. His eyelashes were long and thick, startlingly pretty.

“Nah,” he said, his gaze cutting suddenly away from yours. “Usually keep shit on hand for my burns.”

Your stomach flipped, and you realized how rude your question had been. Embarrassment welled up in a hard lump in your throat. Well shit. “Oh—fuck. Of course. I’m sorry, Touya.”

A pinch to your leg had you yelping, and his handsome face was serious when he stared back up at you, his eyes practically glowing with intensity. “I don’t need your sympathy.”

You rolled your eyes, rubbing the skin he’d pinched absentmindedly. “It wasn’t sympathy, asshole,” you said. “It was an apology for being thoughtless. Although if that’s how you’re gonna be then I take it back, geez. As if you need sympathy when every girl in this maze—” you froze, clamping your mouth shut when you realized what you’d been about to say. “Uhhhh.”

Touya’s eyes slowly slid down your face, flickering over you as another fucking obnoxious smirk started to twitch at the side of his mouth. “When every girl in this maze what?” he asked, pleasure turning his tone a little silky.

You rolled your eyes, leaning forward to grab the rubbing alcohol off of the couch so you didn’t have to look at him. “When every girl in this maze would like for you to shut up and stop asking questions,” you said, unscrewing the top with a deliberate focus.

Calloused fingers came up to yank the tube out of your grip, however, and Touya leaned in, his grin sharp and white.

“Lemme do it, sweetheart. Return the favor for my prosthetic,” he said. You winced, remembering how forcefully you’d applied his forehead earlier. As you braced yourself, however, his fingers brushed gently over your skin.

You suppressed a shiver at the feeling of him wiping off the blood with the rubbing alcohol, then going over it with the antibiotic cream, smearing it delicately, your nose going hot again. He took his time, careful to cover every inch, kneeling on the ground in front of you with your ankle clutched in one large hand. His duster fanned out behind him, dragging on the ground as he bent over you, but he didn’t seem to care, too absorbed in his task.

When he was done he carefully applied the bandage too, and you looked on, mystified, as he cracked the ice pack with long, strangely elegant fingers, and pressed it over your ankle bone as well.

His eyes flicked back to yours when you let out a short hiss, feeling the zing of the ice all the way in your teeth. Some of his expression looked squashed, given the obstruction of his prosthetic, but you thought he looked maybe just a little bit concerned, before he realized you were just being a baby. You were suddenly overcome with the urge to rip off his prosthetic so you could see his expression in full, and had to pin your arm to your side to stop yourself.

“This was—unexpected,” you admitted, watching him closely. “You’re…a surprisingly good nurse, Touya. Thank you.”

His answering smile was nothing short of wicked. “Anytime, sweetheart.”

You fumbled with the antiseptic and sniffed pointedly, just to have something to complain about. “Well. Your bedside manner could use some work.”

Touya leaned in, his smile suddenly going dark. “Oh, angel, now that’s not what I’ve been told—”

Your palm shot out to cover his mouth, horror overriding your normal brain function. Touya just laughed into the skin of your hand, however, shockingly boyish and sweet-sounding.

You pressed harder, hissing at him to shut the hell up, until you registered the feeling of dry, raised skin under your fingers. You jumped, realizing you were pressing down on his scars.

“Shit, did I hurt you—?” you asked, yanking your hand back, only for Touya to catch your wrist. He blinked, looking surprised that he had.

“No it’s—you didn’t—” he said. His fingers shifted over yours and his eyes darted over your hand in something like shock. “They get dry and pull but they don’t—it wasn’t that.” He sounded annoyed, but not that you’d touched him. That you’d pulled away from touching him.

Somehow, that settled you. Before you understood what exactly was possessing you, you reached back in, satisfied when Touya let you. The pads of your fingers met the edge of a scar again, feeling along the seam. You carefully traced over it the way Touya’s had just traced the cut on your ankle.

Touya’s eyelashes fluttered, and he let out a slow breath. “You don’t need to touch ‘em, sweetheart,” he said finally.

He said it as lightly as he’d said all his earlier nonsense, but he’d been giving you shit for long enough that you recognized there was something deliberate about the ease of his tone this time. This wasn’t his usual, natural timbre.

“Does it bother you?” you asked.

It seemed to take him a minute to decide.

“...No,” he answered, those cerulean eyes catching on yours again. You felt like you could feel your heartbeat in your own fingers, and your skin prickled with something—annoyingly not annoyance.

“Well then shut up,” you told him. “Or I’ll pinch you right on the seam.”

Touya laughed, a slow rolling sound. “Promises promises,” he said, but he seemed more relaxed.

You felt along the contours of his face, mystified by what the hell you thought you were even doing, until you reached the edge of the prosthetic you’d applied. It only took a second for you to give in to the impulse you’d had earlier and start peeling it from his skin, slow and deliberate.

You reached down and helped yourself to the rubbing alcohol, applying it around the prosthetic, letting it dissolve the adhesive before pulling gently. Shockingly, Touya let you do it. He just sat there, watching you with an intensity you’d never experienced before, hardly blinking.

You kept careful track of the prosthetic, unable to look him in the eye, focusing on rubbing off the makeup you’d used to blend it in for good measure. You tried not to examine the weirdly satisfied feeling that settled in your stomach when his natural face was visible to you again.

It was probably just his looks. He really was so handsome for such a grating personality.

You set the prosthetic aside, lost on where to go from here. Touya probably thought you were so fucking weird for just like, rubbing his face like he was some kind of cat. He certainly looked like he had no idea what to do now, which was such a departure from his usually snotty self-assurance that it threw you for an even bigger loop.

“Always thought you’d be a little rougher with me, sweetheart,” Touya finally managed, flashing you a smirk. It looked a little smaller than usual though, like he was drawing it up like a shield, but your hackles raised instantly, like always.

You always, always responded to him.

“Trust me, that can be arranged,” you promised darkly, trying to crack your knuckles. Only one of them crackled obligingly, however, and Touya blinked, before laughing again.

“Yeah?” he asked, leaning in closer. Cigarette smoke and cinnamon clouded your senses, fogging up your brain. “Gonna fuck me up nice and good, sweetheart?”

You dredged around for something snarky to say, but words were suddenly failing you as those infuriatingly pretty features drew closer. Seriously could a makeup artist not catch a break around here?

“Uhhh,” was all you managed, your brain bluescreening, as Touya huffed a laugh, exhaling over your mouth.

“Shut up,” you finally spat out, catching a fistful of that black hair. Touya groaned, however, looking like he liked that of all things, and a red hot flash of something jolted through you.

There was a pause, then, a tiny sliver of a moment where it seemed like one of you might pull back—move away and snipe at one another from a safer distance.

Things somehow seemed to be spiraling out of control, in a way you hadn’t expected, after just one kind gesture from him. You didn’t really understand how you’d suddenly found yourself with him leaning over you, your hand pulling at his hair, but if you had any good sense you’d have pulled away immediately and told him something extra mean, just for good measure.

Except then Touya opened his mouth and escalated things, as usual.

“Make me,” he said, the most absolutely heinous line of all time. You yanked his hair harder, deeply disgusted that he’d try that on you.

And then, like a thread had snapped, you leaned forward and crushed your mouth to his.

Touya reacted like a lightning strike. He surged up over you, weighing you down into the staff room couch. He tasted like spearmint muddled under bitter smoke, and he was broader than he looked under that duster, heavy with lean muscle. You could feel every kilo of it press you down into the cushions as Touya licked hot and filthy into your mouth.

His tongue curled around yours, wet and teasing, and he exhaled on a groan like he’d never tasted anything better. It sent little sparks of electricity jittering up your spine, especially as he shifted between your thighs, that trim waist slotting between them perfectly.

“Fuck, angel,” he said, his tone somewhere between sweet and nasty. “Wanted me this whole time, huh?”

You yanked harder on his hair, telling him to shut up, but the swelling of something hard against your thigh told you he only liked that more. “You are so nasty,” you told him, and you could feel his mouth curl into a wicked grin against the side of your face, before he leaned in and bit the shell of your ear, grinding the evidence of his interest even harder into your thigh.

“I can show you nasty, sweetheart,” he promised, his tone going silky-soft again. A calloused hand slid up into your shirt brazenly, long fingers teasing the underside of your bra. When you didn’t immediately try to yank him out of there he wiggled in further, until his fingers met your nipples, and he got even harder against your leg.

He pinched carefully, moving back to kiss you again so that the sound that escaped you was muffled into his mouth. He kissed you harder as your nipples tightened, pebbling in his fingers, something far too satisfied filling the air around you. His hips canted up, grinding himself into you again, this time a little closer to your core.

Your own hips shifted, moving to increase the friction, trying to shift him closer to your center. His fingers and tongue teased you, each flick of his tongue mirroring the caress of a finger, the soft pinch of his index and thumb.

You couldn’t have controlled yourself if you wanted, too focused on the sensations he was drawing from you, the desperate need to get closer to him though you were already pressed together from mouth to shin. You realized you’d been pulling at his coat when he finally withdrew from your shirt and let you yank it down his arms, exposing a patchwork of scars over dense, mouth-wateringly well-defined muscle.

You inhaled sharply, and Touya paused for a minute—until he seemed to realize that you were fixated on the shape of his arm, rather than the purple bruise of scar tissue. The quickening of his grin in the corner of your vision told you that you’d pleased him.

“You like that, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice obnoxiously sweet. “Want to see the rest of me, angel?”

You ripped your eyes off of his arm to glare at him, which only made his grin wider. The fluorescent lights behind him limned his hair in a pale light, blinding you when he moved his head—and all of a sudden you recalled where you were and what you were doing.

“Here? No! Touya, anyone could walk in!” you said, trying to scramble out from beneath him.

Touya caught you around the thigh, hauling you back underneath him. You noticed he was careful to angle your leg up so you didn’t catch your ankle against the arm of the couch.

“This is far from the worst thing I’ve done in a public place,” he said, laying himself back out over you.

You pushed at his shoulder though, casting a worried glance back at the door. “I am not trying to get fired,” you hissed, even as you shivered with the delicious heat of him over you.

Touya sighed through his nose, and then heaved himself off the couch. You watched him seize the plastic makeup chair and haul it over to the door, stuffing it under the knob at an angle so that it held the lock in place. Then he turned around and prowled right back to you with predatory intent. Your stomach fluttered.

“Better, angel?” he asked, tone soft.

You didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of nodding, but he seemed to know what you wanted anyway, leaning back in to kiss you fiercely.

You melted into the feeling of his mouth over yours, kissing him back just as passionately. You hated how good he was at that, hated how pretty he was under all those scars and piercings, hated how his obnoxious personality wasn’t even a factor in what you wanted to do with him right now.

Touya groaned again when you pulled at a fistful of his dark hair, and then you were dragging him down to the couch and climbing into his lap. Touya seized your left leg as you did, pointedly guiding your ankle away from the edge of the seat, and it only inflamed your desire for him.

“Like you a whole lot better like this,” he said into your mouth, as calloused fingers slid into your leggings.

Your reply was cut off by a moan as he traced his index finger lightly over the center of your panties, before pressing down firmly over your clit. A thousand little points of electricity lit up under your skin, and you shifted into his hand unthinkingly.

A smile formed against your lips, and it was only Touya’s hand making its way into your panties that suppressed the annoyed buzz that started in the back of your brain.

“You kick up such a fuss, sweetheart, but look at what you really think of me,” Touya purred as his fingers slid up into your incriminatingly wet folds. “All this for me, angel?”

You wanted to bite him for his cheek but you feared breaking the skin of his scars, so you settled for giving him a pointed look. He just laughed, his smile smug.

“I’ll show you what I’ve really thought of you too, sweetheart,” he promised, taking hold of your leg again to slide your leggings and panties down. He settled you back over the hard line in his pants, grabbing your hips and pulling you firmly down over it, grinning.

“Love when you’re a spitfire little fucking brat. I’ve imagined taking you right over the vanity every single day for the last three years, sweetheart. Taking you against the lockers and then right here over the couch. Fucking you so hard that you scream and everyone comes running in to see you squirming and crying and begging on my cock, and you want it so much that you don’t even care—”

He laughed when he felt you clench up in his lap, working to unbuckle his belt and free himself, immediately angling you over him. “You want that too, sweetheart? Want to see if I can make you scream so loud that people come to see what’s wrong?”

“My god you never shut up,” you told him, pointedly avoiding the question. In lieu of an answer, you shifted, guiding him to your center and sinking down onto him instead. You watched with satisfaction as he threw his head back and hissed at the feeling of you slipping down around him.

“Fffffffffffuck,” he said to the ceiling, a hand tightening in your sweater. You had to agree, gritting your teeth with the delicious slide of him inside of you, hot and thick and full and perfect. You leaned in, putting your mouth over the scar tissue on his neck, smirking when he exhaled shakily again.

“I think,” Touya huffed. “I should have put you over my lap three fucking years ago.”

You thought back to your first glimpse of him, flicking ash at you as he chainsmoked outside the maze entrance, and thought you would have probably gouged his eyes out if he had tried. Honestly he’d barely scraped together enough good will with his little ankle treatment as it was.

But maybe this is what that girl had been talking about, when she said Touya didn’t talk to anyone besides you. Had he really been more into you than he’d let on, these three years? Is that why he’d been at your throat this entire time?

The thought was lost when Touya’s hips lifted into yours, grinding himself into you just right, and your head fell back with a shivery moan. Touya’s mouth found the skin of your throat and sucked as he bucked up into you, picking up into a faster pace. You rocked back and forth over his lap, guided by Touya’s grip on your hips, relishing in the feel of him inside of you.

His fingers slid back down, brushing over your clit, and you bit down a yelp as he dragged his thumb over it firmly.

“That’s it,” he said, biting down softly on your neck. “Let me hear you, sweetheart.”

You pressed a hand over your mouth instead as he slid in and out of you, those clever fingers working you deftly. He pinched softly, then swirled the pad of his thumb firmly over your clit again, groaning and pounding up into you. “I wanna hear you, sweetheart. Always want to hear your mean little mouth.”

“Touya—shut up—” you panted as he moved you how he wanted, played you like an instrument. Between his fingers and the hard press of him inside you, you felt like you couldn’t escape the pleasure, the feeling mounting within you. No matter how you moved your hips, his fingers were there to meet you, rubbing maddening circles, teasing you mercilessly, and he filled you so good that it felt like he was pressing against that spot from the inside too.

You writhed with the feel of him, as he steadily covered your neck and shoulders with marks of his attention. You couldn’t help but moan, much much louder than you would have liked, and Touya leaned back to look at you again, looking pleased.

“That’s it, yeah,” he said, another grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Louder for me, sweetheart. Want you to come for me.”

You huffed, unable to do anything but squirm in his lap, chasing the feeling closer, ever closer to the edge. You weren’t going to let his infuriating attitude ruin this for you, not when you were so close—

Without input from your brain, your hand reached out to grab a fistful of Touya’s hair again and his hips stuttered, slamming up into you with more force than he had previously. He looked a little shocked, and then a little dazed, and the grip he had on the side of your hip tightened almost to the point of bruising as he forced you down onto him harder, gasping.

“Fuck, yeah, sweetheart—fuck yes,” he rasped.

His fingers rubbed you harder, and his hips slapped up into you frantically. The uptick in intensity had your eyes almost rolling to the back of your head, and you bit your palm to keep the sounds in.

Touya ground into you with a renewed fervor, and it was only another matter of seconds before something inside of you was being wrenched loose. You lost the grip on your control, every nerve ending in your body lighting up and coming alive, singing with pleasure. You seized up, crying, “Oh my god, Touya!” and then you were cumming hard, harder than you ever had, Touya’s talented fingers still working you, his cock still fucking you mercilessly.

Touya swore, spitting out your name like a curse, and then again in almost reverent tones, before he too was following you right off the edge. He slammed you down on him once, twice, and then he was cumming too—shivering against you as he held you tight against him.

The silence of the room around you was ringing, once you managed to return to yourself. Touya was a long, hot, hard wall of muscle between your thighs, his hair mussed and a patch of makeup you’d missed smearing into the hair at his temple. His cheeks were flush with effort over the seam of his scars, and he looked, irritatingly, even more beautiful than he usually did.

Like he could sense what you were thinking, the corner of his mouth rose as those cerulean eyes searched over you, blinking like a pleased cat.

“Fuck, sweetheart. I knew I liked you mean,” he said, his raspy tone rougher than normal.

“And I don’t like you at all,” you sniffed, though you knew the protest was pointless when he was quite literally softening inside of you. You let go of his hair, remembering yourself.

“Aww angel don’t be like that,” he drawled, his grin widening. He leaned in, pressing a slow kiss over your mouth. “I can make it up to you—all three years, if you’ll let me.”

You knew he felt your involuntary shiver, pressed up against you like he was. And that was definitely answer enough for him, as his smile went more handsome and boyish than you’d ever seen it. You hated that you liked it.

“I’ll clean up and clock out,” Touya told you, gingerly helping you off of him and back into your leggings, his eyes fixating a little too closely on your legs as you did so. “You tell your friends you’re gonna go home and rest that ankle. And I’ll pick you up out front, angel.”

You flushed, embarrassed that you’d completely forgotten that you were at work, and you’d intended to go out bar hopping after. But you figured you could be forgiven just this one time.

“Fine,” you said, though your insides were feeling a little fluttery at the thought of leaving with Touya. “But I expect penitence or there’s going to be a reckoning.” You supposed you were owed, for all these years of suffering.

Touya looked down at you from under his lashes, dark and beautiful and still as infuriating as ever. “I’ll give you my best, sweetheart. Over and over until you can’t even walk,” he promised, “Gotta keep you off that ankle, after all.”

You flushed again, yanking your sweater down over your leggings, and fled out the door. Touya’s laughter floated after you, sounding pleased.

You sped up your pace, your ears burning.

And if you were actually rushing not to get away from him, but to return to him sooner? Well, then, nobody needed to know that but you.

#dabi x reader #todoroki touya x reader #touya x reader #dabi x you #touya todoroki x reader #character: todoroki touya #andie's writing

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partywithoutsmiling · 10 months ago

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Genre-Fluid Branch XD The idea for the lore behind this one... well, or idea for another AU XD everyone keeps doing the 'Branch gets adopted by other tribe', but what if he wasn't a young trolling when that happened?

The scenes from the first movie- played for comedic gag- where he kept interrupting events to scream about Bergens- ended with him overthrowing coffin at a funeral, and I image even for Pop Trolls, that would be kind of like the last straw- especially for the grieving widow

After calming down from his panic attack, I imagine even his most stalwart defender at the time (Poppy and to some extent Peppy) would be at loss what to do and what to say to smooth this mess over, and Branch himself would probably feel pretty horrified and horrible

Now feeling most ostracized than ever, I can just imagine him having quite the bout of absolute self-loathing, and coming to conviction that he is very much not welcome among his tribe- especially if he overhears trolls discussing him as if he was the worst thing to ever the walk the earth

Miserable, unhappy and very very lonely, he could be prime for breaking point- where instead of staying in his bunker and embracing the half-forgotten promise of his brothers returning, he chucks all that aside, packs his bags and decides to leave the Troll Village for good. (And perhaps in hopes to find his missing brothers himself, if only to get that part of closure)

After all, it's not like anyone would miss him. (He is wrong of course)

Time wise, set probably roughly 3 or 4 years before the events of the 1st movie, and thus Branch is a very young troll who probably just got into his 20s

Of course, his travels will bring him far and wide, eventually meeting all of the tribes (each offering a different perspective on life), allowing him to heal with help his own tribe cant provide

He would eventually head back to troll village- if only to get few sentimental things from his bunker that he left behind in his hurry to run away- just in time to see the mess of the 20th anniversay escape party

Lets's call this.... Wanderer!Branch AU?

#trolls #dreamworks trolls #trolls fandom #trolls branch #Wanderer!Branch AU

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lemon-lime-behavior · 2 months ago

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Yes please!! Explain more! I’m so invested in the story and kids!!!!! Also thank you for being kind 🩷

No problem!!

welp, okay, put extremely simply and probably just a little bit wrong too because its been a hot minute and I have the memory of a goldfish, here’s the gist of it:

Sanji was born the prince of a kingdome called Germa (though it’s really more of a glorified mercenary group with delusions of being a kingdom) in the North Blue, the third of four quadruplet sons. His father king judge fancied himself a scientist and wanted to make his children into supersoldiers (via genetic modification) that could lead his armies and destroy his enemies. He wanted them to be super strong, fast, have impervious metal skin, be totally obedient and have basically no emotions. Perfect soldiers!

His wife Queen Sora was not stoked about this, especially after seeing what it looked like in their firstborn daughter Reiju, so when Judge tried to pull the same thing with the quadruplets she drank a special syrum to counteract the conditioning. Unfortunately it only worked on one of the princes, Sanji, and the other three (Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji) came out modified and were trained by their father into being perfect little monsters that made Sanji’s childhood a living hell. Sora was super sick fter all that and eventually died when the princes were very young. Long story short Sanji eventually escaped with Reiju’s help, got picked up by Zeff after Tragic Backstory 2: Starvation Rock Boogaloo, and eventually joined the straw hat pirates. Fast forward some more and there’s this whole *thing* that happens with his birth family trying to blackmail him into a political marriage blah blah blah blah he’s eventually rescued but now he’s very worried that due to certain circumstanced, his genetic modifications might have just been dormant and are now awakening within him, and eventually he’ll turn out just like his siblings, which is like, one of his worst nightmares. It hasn’t fully happened yet, but who knows!

So that’s all what happens in canon. What I’m doing in my own little fankids au is imagining that the genetic mutations are in fact dormant in Sanji and while they never fully materialize in him, they do pop up in one of his children, because genetic. So Kuina has black hair (because the mods include hair color changes and if Sanji was fully modified there’s evidence his hair would’ve been black) and she has unbreakable skin and enhanced physical abilities and she has… I guess what can be described as an empathy disorder? Like she experiences emotions differently and isn’t great at understanding/mirroring emotions in others. However, I don’t believe that makes someone a monster. Sanji’s brothers are absolutely terrible people because they were raised to be that way by Judge, who is absolutely a monster himself, entirely of his own volition. Reiju is not as bad as her brothers, because she had some positive influnce from their mother Sora. Kuina is gonna grow up absolutely surrounded by love and a lot of very honorable moral conviction, so while there will be ups and downs, I think she’s gonna be all right.

#fankids au #fankid kuina #one piece spoilers #black leg sanji

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zeraaachan · 2 years ago

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hypothetically

if i died hypothetically… what will you do?

summary: in which the reader asked them a hypothetical question and they curse the day it becomes reality. alternatively, how the genshin! characters react to reader's death

content warning(s): major character death, angst/ no comfort

character(s): scaramouche, xiao, venti

modern au! scaramouche

"babe, hypothetically speaking…"

scaramouche's head adorned by his crown of violet hair lays on their lap, his dark locks being gently combed by their nimble fingers. he hummed and closed his eyes to urge them to continue.

"if I die hypothetically--"

"no."

"babe, i haven't finished yet."

"no."

"no, like seriously," they said with a chuckle. scaramouche's eyes are now already wide open, glaring at them with obvious hate for the topic. yet the sharpness of his gaze is a sharp contrast to the way he currently holds their hand: soft yet firm, as if even the reaper is not allowed to take them from him. "if I die hypothetically what will you do?"

"no."

"what do you mean no?"

"no."

"babe…"

"no."

"scara, love…"

"no."

"no!" scaramouche's breath hitched as the only word that escaped his constricted throat is a mere one syllable word. he repeated the short word with another despaired cry. an anguished wail as the two cones of ice cream on his hands fell to the ground, completely forgotten and melted at the mercy of the hot pavement. "no…" another horrified murmur escaped his lips as he take in the sight before him. he can not even hear anything except for the sound of panic and cries to call the ambulance. "no, no, no…"

scara, felt himself shut the world, as the very person that stabilize him to the ground is in front of him… immobile. they sleep on the pavement of the road as a thick, warm red blankets their body. their eyes didn't even met his. it's inanimate, gone… just like as how the rest of the words that the cunning boy once knew became replaced by one word that fully express his grief. all that was left for him was to say, "no…" in pure guilt, in agony.

no, no, no, no… he screams and tear himself in his head as he blame his stupid self for everything. his hands found its way on his dark hair as he cries in pure pain. no, please, no… no… he bemoans, tears continuously falling from his eyes, the same thing he despised yet he now hated even more. no, no, no… what if he just stayed with them instead? what if he didn't stepped away for a moment and bought ice creams for the two of them? then maybe he'll still be holding a warm hand and not a cold and bloody one. no. oh no… no, no…please no. if only he was with them… if only he was there when someone accidentally pushed them… if only the car didn't hit them… "no…no…"

as scaramouche, the ever prideful, kneels on the harsh pavement with both of his knees… as the red started to seep into his entirety, he remembered the words they hypothetically asked that day. in which he answered 'no', repeatedly, it's a 'no'.

how ironic that when the hypothetical question became a reality and his only response truly became… 'no'.

modern au! xiao

"babe, hypothetically, if i die,"

a sharp hiss escaped xiao's throat as soon as he heard those words slip past their lips. the mere thought is blasphemy for him, an unimaginable imagine that he'd rather not have. and that's why he can not blame his eyes for narrowing in alertness and unsettlement as he waited for them to continue.

"what will you do?"

the edge to his gaze didn't lessen nor dull. solid amber remains cold, rigid, as the thought freeze each blood cell in his body and cold fear gripped his being. his gaze remained hard on them, unreadable of the muddled thoughts that run in a frenzy in xiao's head.

"i…" he started, trying to makes his voice softer. he racked his mind to find the right words to give them but in the end, what his tongue presented to them was his honest, straightforward answer. "i will never let that happen." he stated, full of conviction, more to himself than them. it is a vow that he etched to the very fiber of his heart's muscle and there it'll stay 'til his heart beats. "just call my name if you're in danger, call my name whenever you need me… i'll always answer your call."

a static noise suddenly filled his ears. it blurred his memory and drowned his reminiscing.

twenty missed calls and one that he actually received. the first twenty are from them, the last call was from a hospital. all that registered to xiao alatus' muddled brain are a few words from the call: heavy injuries, we did our best, and… their name.

he promised them immediate answers. he swore to them an instant response. he vowed to them his presence with their every beckon and call. he made an oath, to be there whenever they need, to be by their side whenever they were in danger… to answer whenever they called.

and the one time xiao alatus didn't answered… the one time he failed to check his phone… the one and first time he dismissively said that everything was fine… was the last time they'll call.

ah, xiao is too stupid. a fool. a whole fucking circus! and the weight of the joke fell heavy on his shoulder, made him drop on the morgue's floor, and laughed as he sing the hymn of bereavement. stupid! how can he easily make a vow and eat his own words? how can he swear to protect them and be nowhere near when they indeed need him? how can he not take their call…? when now he realized how every call of theirs matters…that each time they call him, his name, is the number of times that he actually lives.

how can he let it happen?

the one call xiao failed to answer… is the one he should have.

venti

"hypothetically,"

they started as venti serenade them with his lyre. his ears strain to hear the melody of their voice above his strumming of musical instrument and the lyrics that he sings with pure affection. he listens intently to their next words, just as how he listen to the rhythm of the wind.

"what will you do if I die?"

it made the harmony pause. the orchestra experienced a hiccup in their synchrony as the silence became its new conductor. venti's fingers hovered over the strings of his instrument, his gaze now fully trained on them as a mixture of horror, shock, and fear, play like the wind in his green eyes.

"windblume, what made you say that? are you in any sort of danger?" the bard asked in evident distress and their dismissive shrug did nothing to soothe his worries. it terrified him. yet when they urged him to answer, venti sighed in surrender. his mouth that sings the most beautiful and sweetest verses voiced his mind. it made his tongue, expert with the taste of wine yet is never a liar, let a devoted oath fall from the archon’s lips. "if you die… i'll sleep… and choose to never wake up."

"venti!"

"but that won't ever happen, windblume. as long as i am one with the wind, you are cherished, loved, and protected." he vowed, a tone of sincerity in the bard's beautiful voice that made its sweetest song when he swore to them. "there's no place that the wind doesn't reach."

oh, but there is a place where the wind can't reach.

and they fell to it, drowned in it. without the wind, the turbulence took them and took their whole being away from the anemo archon. they spiraled downwards, down to the deepest depths, pulled to the deepest place… at the end of death's tornado. and he wasn't there to save them. the wind can not reach them… he can not reach them. until all of the air in their lungs was gone… and not a single arm of wind reached them.

they escaped the wind's grasp and turned to death's clutch.

ah, venti, barbatos, forgot how to cry. he should have been used to this. he should have prepared for this. he lost one too many already… and it seems that everyone he cherish can not be protected by the wind, by him. anemo must be a hateful element and death is a more enticing option. since how can everyone leave him? always alone with the wind.

ah… venti, the bard, feels tired. the words he swore to them that day rang in his ears. he can still hear their voice, their sweet music that sings with the wind… and he can still hear his promise to them that day.

just as promised, venti, barbatos the archon, went to a deep slumber… to another place that the wind doesn't reach.

#genshin impact #genshin impact headcanons #genshin scenarios #Genshin #genshin venti #genshin scaramouche #genshin xiao #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #scaramouche x reader #genshin modern au #venti x reader #xiao x reader #scaramouche angst #xiao angst #venti angst #genshin impact angst #genshin impact x gender neutral reader

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justice4gyeongsu · 2 months ago

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━━━ 'CHAPTER THIRTEEN' [WHEN DAWN BREAKS]

SYNOPSIS ➢ the power of being stuck in a storage closet makes some come together while others seem to stray away.

PAIRING ➢ lee suhyeok x male!reader

AU ➢ enemies-to-lovers au!

CONTENT WARNING ➢ this chapter contains; flashbacks, violence, alot of angst, signs of depression, jealousy, mentions of bullying, death, depression, some fluff, reoccuring ptsd, mentions of gore, blood, cannibalism [let me know if i missed any!]

NEXT I PREVIOUS

as morning breaks, the storage closet transforms. sunlight pours in through the few high windows, casting a warm glow on the space. the air is filled with the sweet sounds of birds chirping and crickets falling silent, a serene contrast to the chaos that has unfolded.

one by one, the group stirs, each person slowly rising to sit across the room in contemplative silence. the weight of the past few hours hangs heavy, as they process the loss of loved ones and the turmoil that has brought them to this place. but amidst the somber stillness, one figure remains motionless. you lie sleeping underneath a chair, wrapped in the gentle protection of onjo's sweater. your face is turned away from the windows, away from the world outside, as if seeking refuge from the pain and exhaustion that has consumed you.

in this moment, sleep is a welcome respite, a fleeting escape from the overwhelming emotions that threaten to engulf you. and as you rest, you can't help but feel a sense of resignation, a tempting desire to simply stay hidden away in this storage closet forever, shielded from the uncertainty and heartache that lies beyond.

onjo sits vigilantly beside you, her presence a gentle comfort as she watches over your slumber. she feels an overwhelming urge to care for you, to shield you from the world and its cruelties. her eyes soften as she gazes at your peaceful form, her heart filled with a deep affection for you and cheongsan, who sits quietly to her right.

as she looks at you, she's reminded of a young deer, vulnerable and alone, struggling to find its footing in a vast and unpredictable world. your tired, fragile appearance evokes a strong maternal instinct in her, and she feels a deep desire to protect and nurture you, to help you find your strength and resilience in the face of adversity.

wujin turns to his sister, his voice laced with concern, "noona, you didn't fail in the preliminaries, did you?" he asks, his eyes searching for reassurance. his sister hesitates, her gaze drifting away as she responds slowly, "no, i did really well." her voice is measured, but the lack of conviction is notiecable. wujin's curiosity is piqued, and he presses for more information, his tone gentle but insistent. "well, then what happened? why did you come back to the school if you won?" he senses that something is amiss, and his doubts begin to simmer just below the surface.

mijin, sensing the unease, intervenes with a light, conversational tone. "you're her brother?" she asks, sitting up a bit straighter, her interest piqued. wujin nods, his expression a mix of curiosity and concern, "yeah, i am."

mijin's face glows with pride as she gazes at hari, a smug smile spreading across her features. "you should know then that she got a perfect score, so she made it to the nationals," she reveals, her voice dripping with satisfaction. she adds a casual remark, "i saw her," to lend an air of authenticity to her statement.

wujin's eyes widen in awe as he turns back to his sister, a bright smile illuminating his face. "really?" he asks, his excitement palpable. "no way. you're really in nationals? does mom and dad know?" he presses, sitting up even straighter, his enthusiasm bubbling over.

however mijin's sarcastic tone quickly deflates his excitement. "gosh, you rascal, how could they know now? look around," she scoffs, her words a harsh reminder of their current circumstances. wujin's eyes dart away, his face flushing with embarrassment at his oversight. cheongsan's gentle reprimand interrupts the exchange, "hey guys, quiet down. y/n's still sleeping." wujin nods, chastened, and turns back to his sister, ready to ask another question, but mijin catches his eye, a warning glint in her own.

mijin's expression turns stern, her voice tinged with a mix of disappointment and amusement. "yah, she jumped out of the archery bus and ran to the school to find you. you little..." she trails off, smacking her lips in a gesture reminiscent of a disapproving aunt.

wujin's face contorts in disgust as mijin continues, her gaze drifting to hari, who remains lost in thought. "you be good to her," mijin instructs, her tone softening slightly. she pauses, a hint of pride creeping into her voice. "...and to me too." her eyes sparkle with amusement as she looks away, a subtle smile playing on her lips. wujin attempts to whisper to his sister, his voice barely audible as he tries to convey his confusion. "who is she and why does she keep talking for you?" his words are laced with a mix of curiosity and annoyance, but mijin's sharp ears pick up on the hushed conversation, her gaze flicking back to wujin with a knowing glint.

hari's gaze shifts to mijin, a faint smile playing on her lips. "she's my friend," she says, her voice soft and gentle. mijin's heart skips a beat as she processes hari's words, a thrill of excitement coursing through her veins. "yeah, we're... fucking besties," mijin agrees, her tone shy and hesitant, but her eyes sparkling with delight. wujin's reaction is immediate, his face contorting in distaste as he looks away, clearly uncomfortable with the exchange.

his gaze falls on daesu, who stands before them, a solemn expression etched on his face. wujin's eyes widen in surprise, and he mutters, "shit, you scared me." daesu's presence is unexpected, and wujin's words hang in the air as daesu prepares to speak, his expression somber and serious.

daesu clears his throat and looks down at his feet awkwardly. “i..” he trails off. “..you?” mijin tries to help him finish his sentence.

daesu's words tumble out in a rush, his voice barely above a whisper. "i think you're the perfect girl," he confesses, his chest rising with a deep breath, as if he's been holding the sentiment inside for far too long.

wujin's eyes dart between his friend, his sister, and back again, his expression a mix of shock and incredulity. "you freak..." he whispers, his voice laced with disbelief. the room falls silent, with all eyes fixed on the unfolding scene, except for two people - suhyeok and you.

suhyeok's gaze is captivated by your shoes, which lie neatly on top of each other, a testament to your orderly nature, even in rest. he sits transfixed, his eyes drinking in the sight of your belongings, his presence drawn to yours, even as you sleep. without drawing attention to himself, he subtly shifts his position, inching closer to your shoes, and by extension, to you. though he doesn't touch them, he feels a sense of comfort in being near, as if your presence is a soothing balm to his soul.

suhyeok's emotions are a tangled mess, a jumble of shame, regret, and self-reproach. his anger, a familiar companion for most of his life, has turned inward, and he's consumed by the memory of how he spoke to you the night before. the weight of his words hangs heavy, and he's tormented by the thought of how he treated someone as fragile yet resilient as you.

as he sits, his arms fold over his knees, and his head bows, resting on his arms. his gaze drifts upward, drinking in the sight of you, sleeping peacefully. his mind is a cacophony of recriminations, a constant, piercing criticism that echoes through his thoughts. the turmoil within him is a palpable, almost overwhelming force, as he struggles to come to terms with his actions and the emotions that drive him.

daesu's voice echoes through the room, his words tumbling out in a desperate, anguished cry. "why don't you understand? i really like you!" he shouts, his emotions raw and unbridled.

suhyeok's gaze had been fixed on you, lost in thought, but daesu's outburst snaps him back to reality. he's missed the chaos that erupted moments before, when hari's temper flared in response to daesu's confession. he's unaware of the punches and slaps that flew, or the way hari trapped daesu within a makeshift prison of metal racks, their wire mesh confines overflowing with sports balls of every shape and size.

but suhyeok's attention is riveted on you now, as your body jerks in response to daesu's sudden, ear-piercing shout. suhyeok's head snaps up, his eyes locking onto yours, his expression a mask of concern and alarm.

you stir, pulling your legs up and sliding out from underneath the chair, as the sudden shouting jolts you awake. your head darts wildly around the room, struggling to comprehend the chaos that's erupted. your eyes scan the space, drinking in the scene before you, as you try to shake off the remnants of sleep.

in your haste to stand, onjo's sweater slips off your shoulders, and you instinctively reach out to catch it, clutching it tightly to your chest. onjo and namra rush to your side, their hands extended in a calming gesture, as they try to reassure you that there's no danger.

but you're still disoriented, half-asleep, and struggling to process the mayhem that's unfolded. your gaze darts around the room, confusion etched on your face, as you try to make sense of the shouting, the commotion, and the worried expressions of those around you.

hari's voice drips with sarcasm as she turns to daesu, her eyes blazing with annoyance. "now look what you did. you woke up y/n, my dear husband," she says, her tone heavy with irony.

she lunges forward, trying to grab daesu, but he dodges and weaves, avoiding her grasp. "you attacked me first!" daesu protests, trying to reason with hari, but she's having none of it.

instead, she begins to hurl volleyballs at him, her aim true as she tries to pelt him with the balls. daesu ducks and dodges, desperate to avoid the flying projectiles as hari's anger continues to simmer, threatening to boil over at any moment.

mijin's voice is low and casual as she issues a gentle command, "yah, kid. go back to sleep." she slips her hands into her pockets, her demeanor nonchalant, as if trying to downplay the chaos that's erupted. your mind is still foggy, struggling to shake off the remnants of sleep. you nod slowly, your gaze drifting around the room in confusion. onjo seizes the opportunity, grasping the hem of your pants and gently tugging you down to sit beside her. you follow her lead, still disoriented, and settle in next to her.

meanwhile, suhyeok's eyes hold a glimmer of hope, a fleeting wish that you might glance in his direction. but even in your tired, bewildered state, your instincts don't lead you to seek him out. suhyeok's gaze lingers, a mixture of longing and resignation, as he watches you settle in beside onjo, his hopes dashed, if only for the moment.

onjo gently cradles your head in her lap, softly laying her sweater back over you. your eyelids grow heavy, and you succumb to sleep once more, the warmth and comfort of onjo's lap a soothing balm to your exhausted mind and body. the transition is seamless, and you're asleep again within mere minutes, a testament to your deep fatigue.

mijin's voice cuts through the din, her tone detached as she ignores the ongoing commotion between hari and daesu. "gosh, i never thought i'd see that brat again," she remarks, a hint of amusement dancing in her eyes.

hroryeong's curiosity is piqued, and she asks, "you know y/n?" her confusion evident, as she tries to piece together the connection between mijin and you. mijin's response is smooth, a subtle smile playing on her lips. "yeah, we go way back," she says, the statement a blatant fabrication, but one that goes unchallenged in the moment, even by you, who slumber peacefully, oblivious to the conversation.

mijin's gaze sweeps the group, a small smirk still playing on her lips. "glad to see the guy actually has some other friends," she says, her tone laced with a hint of dry humor. the group exchanges small smiles, a sense of warmth and camaraderie evident in their expressions, as they reflect on the bonds that have formed between you and them over the past few days.

wujin's voice cuts in, a hint of smugness creeping into his tone. "y/n and i were childhood friends, actually," he says, crossing his arms over his chest, a self-satisfied smile playing on his lips. mijin's gaze lingers on wujin, her expression unreadable. after a beat, she responds, her voice measured, "oh yeah?" her tone invites wujin to elaborate, and he nods, still not meeting her gaze. "yup, spent almost every day together," wujin says, a faraway look creeping into his eyes, as if he's genuinely reminiscing about fond memories. however, the hint of smugness still lingers, suggesting that wujin might be embellishing the truth, or at least, enjoying the attention.

mijin lets out a dismissive scoff, a proud smile spreading across her face. "yeah, well, y/n and i are pretty close," she says, her voice dripping with confidence. "i mean, we're practically family. you know, he calls me noona instead of sunbae?" she adds, the claim a blatant fabrication, but one she delivers with conviction.

joonyeong and suhyeok exchange a look of annoyance, their expressions a testament to their skepticism. they return their attention to the exchange between mijin and wujin, their gazes neutral.wujin responds, a hint of smugness creeping into his tone. "i mean, that's cool, but i think since i've known him longer, i'd say we were closer." he adds a casual "just saying" to his statement, but the underlying competitiveness is palpable.

mijin's gaze snaps to wujin, her eyes narrowing into an annoyed glare. the air is thick with tension as the two engage in a silent stare-down, each attempting to outdo the other in their claims of closeness to you.

mijin's eyes narrow, her gaze piercing as she scrutinizes wujin. "that's funny," she says, her voice laced with skepticism. "last time we spoke, he told me he didn't have any friends." her tone implies that wujin's claims of a close relationship with you are dubious, at best.

wujin hesitates, his eyes darting around the room as he searches for a response. but before he can speak, mijin presses on, her words dripping with challenge. "honestly, he never even mentioned your name." the statement hangs in the air, a gauntlet thrown, as mijin awaits wujin's response.

wujin's chuckle is nervous, a forced attempt to diffuse the tension. he's clearly caught off guard by mijin's revelation, and his mind is racing to come up with a plausible explanation. the room falls silent, all eyes fixed on the exchange between mijin and wujin, as even daesu and hari pause in their argument, intrigued by the sudden drama unfolding before them.

mijin's voice rises, her anger and frustration simmering just below the surface. "actually, he said everyone was pretty much against him because he's..." she begins, her words trailing off as she meets wujin's gaze. suddenly, she realizes what she's about to reveal, and her expression freezes. she gulps, her throat constricting, before clearing her throat and looking away, her anger and frustration boiling over. "ugh, nevermind, you little brat," she mutters, her voice laced with irritation, as she scratches her cheek in frustration. the tension in the room is palpable, until cheongsan speaks up, his voice calm and soothing. "we know," he says, his eyes drifting to your peaceful form, still slumbering away. "it's not a big deal, so let's not make it one." his words are a gentle rebuke, a reminder to mijin to let the matter drop.mijin's eyebrows furrow, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she turns to cheongsan. "you know... what?" she asks, her voice low and even, as if daring him to reveal how much he really knows.

daesu's voice is barely audible, his words whispered as if sharing a secret that's too sensitive for outsiders to hear. "he's gay," he says, his tone conspiratorial, as if the storage closet is a confessional.the room falls silent, with no one responding or reacting. joonyeong breaks the silence, giving a thumbs up, a subtle acknowledgment of daesu's revelation.

mijin's expression transforms, her suspicion giving way to a warm smile. she nods, seeming to accept the information, before sitting up, a mischievous glint in her eye. "okay, thank god," she says, chuckling to herself, "cause i wanted to ask him more questions about his love life, and it would've been hard with all you brats here."

hroryeong and onjo exchange a look, their expressions bored, before shrugging and focusing on their skirts, playing with the fabric as if seeking distraction from the conversation. their nonchalant attitude is a stark contrast to mijin's enthusiasm, and the tension in the room begins to dissipate, replaced by a sense of mundane normalcy.

suhyeok abruptly rises to his feet, his eyes fixed on the metal ball containers stacked below him. with a sudden burst of energy, he begins to kick and clang against the containers, testing their sturdiness. the loud rattling noise fills the room, causing everyone to turn their heads in unison, seeking the source of the commotion.

joonyeong is the first to react, getting up from his seat to approach suhyeok. "what's going on?" he asks, a hint of curiosity in his voice. suhyeok pauses, his chest heaving slightly, as he explains, "i was just wondering if we can move these things."

joonyeong's expression changes, a spark of understanding igniting in his eyes. he begins to think critically, his mind racing with the possibilities. he starts to envision ways to utilize the metal containers to their advantage, his gaze drifting back to suhyeok, a nod of appreciation on his face.

suhyeok's words spark a flurry of activity, as everyone rises to their feet, united in their efforts to create a makeshift shield. "we can tie all the carts in a circle, then we can use them as a shield," suhyeok explains, his idea igniting a sense of purpose in the group.

as the others begin to work together, gathering zip ties and securing the carts in a circular formation, suhyeok's gaze meets onjo's. onjo's eyes had been fixed on your sleeping form, a look of quiet contemplation on her face. suhyeok's eyes lock onto onjo's, and onjo responds with a subtle nod, as if acknowledging suhyeok's unspoken understanding.

onjo's hands gently cradle your head, her fingers stroking your hair with a soothing gentleness. the calm, peaceful atmosphere surrounding you is a stark contrast to the bustling activity around the makeshift shield. as the group works together, their movements become a blur of efficiency, united in their determination to protect and defend.

the storage room transforms into a flurry of activity, as everyone works together, pooling their resources and skills to create a formidable barrier. tool boxes and crates are raided, yielding a treasure trove of random supplies that are quickly repurposed for their defense.

joonyeong, wujin, and hroryeong scour the room, gathering an assortment of ropes, including jump-ropes, to secure the carts in place. meanwhile, cheongsan and daesu work in tandem, holding the carts together in a circular formation, as they await the ropes to tie everything together.

suhyeok, ever the climber, attempts to scale a nearby shelf, his eyes scanning the top for any equipment that might aid in their defense. his movements are agile and precise, as he searches for anything that might give them an edge.

nearby, namra, mijin, and hari engage in a heated discussion, debating the merits of adding a top section to their makeshift shield. "we should add a top part," namra suggests, "so they can't climb over." hari nods in agreement, while mijin chimes in, her voice filled with determination. "yeah, we can't let those zombies get the drop on us." the trio continues to brainstorm, their conversation flowing easily, as they work together to fortify their defenses.

the sense of harmony and cooperation is shattered in an instant, as onjo's leg jolts, startling you awake. you sit up with a jolt, your eyes scanning the room, and your ears assaulted by the sound of screaming. but it's not hari's voice that fills the air - it's mijin's.

"you piece of shit! who do you think you are?" mijin's words are venomous, her face twisted in rage, as she shoves joonyeong with all her might. suhyeok attempts to intervene, but he's no match for mijin's fury.

you leap to your feet, your voice ringing out across the room. "yah! what's going on?" you demand, your eyes scanning the scene before you. mijin's anger is still simmering, her finger jabbing accusingly at joonyeong. "ask your idiot friend," she spits, her tone dripping with malice. joonyeong's face is a mask of anger, his eyes blazing with a fierce intensity. wujin steps in, his voice laced with annoyance. "we shouldn't fight like this, especially not now," he says, his words a plea for calm in the midst of chaos.

suhyeok tells them both to stop but joonyeong pushes his hand away from him, “who the hell is she to tell us we have to redo it?”

mijin's expression twists in scorn, her voice dripping with venom. "your fucking nightmare, that's who!" she retorts, her anger and frustration boiling over. she attempts to take a step forward, but suhyeok once again intervenes, his body positioning itself between mijin and joonyeong.

suhyeok's voice rises, his tone firm but calm. "look, we're in this together, so let's not make it harder than it needs to be," he says, his eyes darting between mijin and joonyeong, as he strives to mediate the conflict.

your gaze falls on suhyeok, and for a moment, the tension between mijin and joonyeong fades into the background. memories of the previous night's encounter with suhyeok come flooding back, and your face flushes with a mix of desire and embarrassment. the feelings are still raw, and you're not ready to confront them. your anger and frustration serve as a convenient shield, allowing you to push those memories aside, at least for the time being.

“youre gonna die out there if you don't listen to me,” mijin sneered at joonyeong who rolled his eyes. “you think im putting it up cause i wanna die? no!” joonyeong responded back, “stop acting like you're better than us just because you're not in the same grade as us.” he huffed in annoyance at mijins fiery spirit. however mijin took that as disrespect.

the atmosphere is electric with animosity as mijin and joonyeong engage in a heated exchange. but your calm and authoritative voice cuts through the chaos, bringing the argument to an abrupt halt. "both of you stop, we can discuss this in a better way than screaming at each other," you say firmly, your words commanding attention.

the room falls silent, with all eyes on you. you notice namra's gaze fixed intently on you, her eyes having been on you the entire time. you flash her a soft smile, accompanied by a subtle smirk that only she can see. "what do we do, class president?" you ask, your voice low and gentle.

namra's expression remains serene, but she raises her head slightly, her eyes locked on yours. "we'll vote on it," she declares, her voice clear and decisive. the room remains silent for a moment, before namra instructs everyone to gather around, her words sparking a sense of anticipation and expectation.

you position yourself beside cheongsan and mijin, leaning casually against the cart as namra begins to outline the options. "one, we split up," she says, her voice clear and concise. but instead of sparking a debate, her words are met with an uncomfortable silence. no one raises their hand, the reluctance to split up palpable in the air.

namra's expression remains neutral, her eyes scanning the group as she continues. "two, we stick together," she says, and this time, the response is overwhelmingly in favor. one by one, hands begin to rise, some more hesitant than others. the consensus is clear: sticking together is the preferred option, and the group's collective relief is almost tangible.

namra's voice is calm and authoritative as she announces, "alright, that means we are staying together." but before she can continue, daesu and mijin's disagreement threatens to boil over into a full-blown argument. you intervene, firmly telling them to "shut up and listen." they both reluctantly comply, their faces still stormy with discontent. namra seizes the opportunity to press on, her voice steady. "anyways, one, we make the outside higher." joonyeong's hand shoots up first, followed by suhyeok, onjo, and cheongsan. you hesitate, weighing your options, and just as you're about to raise your hand, mijin's death stare freezes you in place. you flash her a small, conciliatory smile before lowering your hand.

but you're not willing to abandon your opinion entirely. when mijin's attention is diverted, you slyly mouth to namra, "count me too." it's a subtle gesture, one that allows you to register your support without openly defying mijin's glare. namra's eyes flicker to yours, a hint of understanding in their depths, before she continues with the discussion.

namra's voice continues, steady and clear, as she presents the second option. "two, we fold the lids to make a box." mijin's hand springs up instantly, followed by hroryeong, wujin, and hari. mijin's eyes dart to you, expecting to see your hand raised in agreement. but your hand remains still, and you deliberately avoid her gaze, pretending to focus on something else.

mijin's reaction is immediate and intense. she mutters a curse under her breath before elbowing you sharply on your injured arm. the pain is sudden and intense, and you can't help but groan in response. but despite the discomfort, you lift your other arm in a show of solidarity with mijin, though you carefully shake your head at namra, indicating that you don't actually support the second option. the gesture is a delicate balancing act, one that aims to placate mijin's temper without compromising your own opinions.

namra's announcement is met with a mixture of reactions. "majority votes for option one. we'll be building the barricade higher," she declares, her voice firm and decisive. some members of the group rejoice, seemingly pleased with the outcome, while others remain stoic.

mijin, however, speaks up, her voice tinged with a hint of challenge. "what about your vote?" she asks, her eyes fixed intently on namra. the question hangs in the air, implying that namra's own vote might have swung the decision in a particular direction. the group's attention is now focused on namra, awaiting her response to mijin's inquiry.

namra's blank stare speaks volumes before she finally announces, "i go with one." the decision is met with a mixture of reactions, but mijin's disappointment is palpable. she lets out a curse under her breath, clearly unhappy about losing the vote.

you try to offer some comfort, patting her back as everyone starts to build the shield. "hey, if you ever get mad again, just know i was on your side," you whisper with a small smile. but mijin isn't buying it - she knows you're lying, and she gives you a small glare to prove it. "you moron, this is what i get from treating you so well?" she says, hopping off the cart and motioning for you to help her drill the boards to the carts. despite the tension, you can't help but notice the way mijin's eyes sparkle with annoyance, and you can't help but feel a twinge of amusement at the situation.

"hurry up," you say, following mijin with a small smile. you're trying not to laugh at how adorable she is when she's sulking. it's been a whirlwind few days, and to say you've built a lot of things is a massive understatement. you've been pushed to your limits, and your skills have been put to the test.

as you work alongside mijin, you can't help but think about the future. once this ordeal is over, you're going to have a slew of new skills to add to your resume. you're not sure what kind of job you'll be applying for, but you're confident that your experiences will make you a strong candidate. the thought is a comforting one, and it gives you the motivation to keep going, even in the face of adversity.

as you kneel down to drill the wood panels, mijin holds them in place, her hands steady and firm. your focus is solely on the task at hand, the sound of the drill filling the air. around you, the others are working on different aspects of the barricade. namra is carefully holding down a nail that will secure a makeshift mattress to the metal cart's pole, while suhyeok is supposed to be attaching a zip tie to hold it in place.

but suhyeok's attention is elsewhere, his gaze drifting across the room to settle on you. he's noticed little things about you as he's spent more time with you, like the way you react to mijin's teasing. she calls you a moron, and you don't bat an eye, but when myungwhan used to say the same thing, you'd get defensive. suhyeok's observations are subtle, but they reveal a deeper understanding of your personality and dynamics within the group.

suhyeok's observations of you have given him a glimpse into your emotional intelligence. he's realized that you're able to distinguish between people who are genuinely trying to hurt you and those who are simply joking around. it's a subtle but important distinction, and one that speaks to your ability to navigate complex social dynamics.

just as suhyeok is lost in thought, namra's soft voice breaks the spell. "staring isn't going to help us get done faster," she says, her tone gentle but pointed. suhyeok's head snaps towards her, his expression a picture of innocence. he blinks slowly, his eyes wide with feigned nonchalance. for a moment, suhyeok tries to come up with an explanation for his behavior, but he quickly thinks better of it. instead, he focuses on tying down the zip tie, his movements sudden and deliberate. it's clear that he's trying to avoid an unwanted conversation, and he's willing to do whatever it takes to steer the focus back to the task at hand.

namra's gaze lingers on suhyeok for a moment, her eyes sparkling with a hint of amusement. she seems to sense that there's more to suhyeok's behavior than meets the eye. slowly, she looks around the room, taking in the sights and sounds of the group's industrious efforts.

her eyes scan the space, lingering on mijin and you as you work together, before moving on to joonyeong and the others. finally, her gaze comes back to rest on suhyeok, who's still intently focused on securing the zip tie. namra's voice is low and casual as she asks, "suhyeok, do you... like y/n?" her words are dropped like a stone into a still pond, causing ripples of tension to spread through the air. suhyeok's hands freeze, the zip tie momentarily forgotten, as he struggles to come up with a response. suhyeok's ears turn a brilliant shade of red as namra's question hangs in the air. he's frozen in place, his body as still as a statue, as he struggles to process his emotions. it's clear that he's unsure of how to respond, and the silence that follows namra's question is oppressive.

just as it seems like suhyeok is about to implode from embarrassment, daesu ambles over, a look of annoyance on his face. "hey, suhyeok, can we switch?" he asks, patting suhyeok on the back. "wujin keeps yelling at me, and i'm getting tired of it." daesu's interruption is a welcome distraction, and suhyeok's frozen state begins to thaw. he blinks slowly, his eyes darting towards daesu as he tries to process the sudden change in conversation. namra's question is left hanging, unanswered, as the group's attention shifts to daesu's complaint.

wujin stands up from his kneeling position, a look of exasperation on his face. "he's always complaining that he's hungry," wujin says, his voice tinged with frustration. "i'm trying to focus on getting this done, and all he can think about is his stomach."

daesu shoots back, "hey, i'm starving! we've been working for hours, and i haven't eaten anything since..." he looks around the group, hoping to garner some sympathy, but wujin just rolls his eyes. "you're always hungry, daesu," wujin says, shaking his head. "it's like you have a bottomless pit for a stomach." the group chuckles at wujin's comment, and the tension is momentarily broken. suhyeok, still looking a bit flustered from namra's earlier question, takes a deep breath and tries to compose himself. as the sound of your drill momentarily stops, cheongsan suddenly speaks up, his voice low and barely audible. he mutters something underneath his breath, and you strain to catch the words. at first, you're not sure what he said, but then you pick up on a single word that makes your ears perk up: "chocolate". you're not sure what cheongsan is talking about, or why he's mentioning chocolate out of the blue. but the word itself is enough to spark a sudden craving within you. you can't help but wonder if there's any chocolate to be found in their current surroundings, or if cheongsan is just taunting you with the mention of it.

as everyone turns towards cheongsan, they're met with a surprising sight: he's holding an unopened chocolate bar in his hand. the room falls silent for a moment, before suddenly erupting into a flurry of activity. people start gathering around cheongsan, their eyes fixed greedily on the chocolate bar.

you can't help but be drawn in, your curiosity getting the better of you. daesu is the first to make a move, quickly snatching the chocolate bar out of cheongsan's hand. "let me see," he says, examining the package with a critical eye.

after a moment, daesu looks up, a hint of disappointment on his face. "it's expired," he announces, as if that's the final nail in the coffin. but suhyeok is undeterred. "who cares?" he says, a mischievous glint in his eye. "we can still eat it."the room falls silent again, as everyone considers suhyeok's words. then, slowly, a murmur of agreement starts to build. "we can take small bites," someone suggests. "just to calm our hunger a bit."

the discussion quickly gains momentum, with everyone chiming in with their opinions. it's clear that the prospect of sharing the chocolate bar is a tantalizing one, and no one wants to miss out.

the group forms a circle, the chocolate bar placed in the center. one by one, each person takes a small bite, savoring the sweet, rich flavor before passing it on to the next person. as the chocolate bar continues to make its way around the circle, you find yourself standing between suhyeok and cheongsan. you can't help but stare at the chocolate, your eyes fixed on the decreasing size of the bar. with each passing bite, your mouth waters more and more, and you can feel your hunger pangs growing stronger.

the chocolate bar is getting smaller and smaller, and you can feel a sense of urgency building up inside you. you hope that there will be enough left for everyone to have another bite, but as you glance around the circle, you realize that might not be the case.

as suhyeok brings the chocolate bar up to his mouth, you're completely entranced, your eyes fixed on the sweet treat. but as he pauses, his gaze meeting yours, you realize that you're staring directly at him, your eyes locked on his lips. the air seems to freeze around you, and for a moment, it's as if time has stopped. suhyeok's eyes narrow slightly, his expression unreadable, as he takes in the sight of you staring up at him with an unguarded intensity. your eyes, wide and unblinking, seem to be begging for something, and suhyeok's gaze lingers on yours, his face inches from yours. for a moment, it's as if the entire room has melted away, leaving only the two of you, suspended in a moment of charged anticipation.

the room falls silent, with everyone staring at suhyeok and you with a mixture of confusion and awkwardness. it's as if they're all waiting for something to happen, but nothing does. except for namra, who seems to sense that something is off. she elbows suhyeok gently, as if to snap him out of a trance. suhyeok blinks, his expression unchanged, and looks down at the chocolate bar still clutched in his hand.

and that's when he realizes, with a flush of embarrassment, that you were never actually looking at suhyeok's face. you were still fixated on the chocolate bar, your eyes glued to the sweet treat. suhyeok's face hadn't moved, and you were just... staring at the chocolate.

suhyeok clears his throat, a faint blush rising to his cheeks. he hesitates for a moment before offering you the chocolate bar, his eyes locking onto yours with a hint of uncertainty. "here," he says, his voice a little softer than usual. "you can take a bigger bite. it'll count for both of us."

daesu's eyes widen in protest, and he lets out a dramatic whine. "hey, no way! that's not fair!" he complains, his hands on his hips. "we're supposed to be sharing equally!" the group chuckles at daesu's outburst, and suhyeok shoots him a wry glance. "it's just a little more chocolate, daesu," he says, his voice tinged with amusement. "don't be so greedy."

you take the chocolate bar from suhyeok, your fingers brushing against his as you do so. but as you're about to thank him, you suddenly remember the words he spoke to you the night before. "i'm just gonna leave you alone." the memory of those words sparks a flicker of anger within you, and you feel your expression harden.

"no thanks," you say curtly, your voice devoid of gratitude. "i'm not that hungry anymore." you quickly pass the chocolate bar on to cheongsan, who takes a bite with a look of enthusiasm. suhyeok's eyes narrow slightly, a hint of confusion and hurt flickering across his face. but you don't meet his gaze, instead turning away and focusing on the task at hand. the tension between you and suhyeok is palpable, and the group's mood seems to shift in response.

suhyeok's eyes linger on you, his expression a mixture of surprise and curiosity. he seems to be studying you, trying to read the emotions behind your actions. and then, it clicks. he realizes that you're not the same person you were before. you're not the pushover people thought you were. he can sense that you've built a wall around your heart, a high, impenetrable barrier that's guarded with military-grade weapons. and he knows that those weapons are aimed directly at him.

you walk past suhyeok, your eyes fixed on namra, who's leaning against one of the metal racks, a look of quiet observation on her face. you make your way towards her, your footsteps echoing through the room.

as you approach, namra pushes off from the rack and watches you with a concerned expression. you sit down on the floor, your back against the rack, and close your eyes, taking a deep breath. the cool air fills your lungs, and you feel a sense of calm wash over you. you can hear the muffled sounds of the others, but they seem distant, unimportant. all that matters is this moment, this breath, and the sense of peace that comes with it. namra sits down beside you, her presence a comforting silence. she doesn't say anything, doesn't try to offer words of comfort or advice. she simply sits with you, a steady, reassuring presence in a chaotic world.

as you sit there, eyes closed, focusing on your breath, you're not even aware of namra's presence beside you. you're too caught up in your own attempt to escape, to temporarily forget about the dire circumstances that surround you.

mijin sits down in front of you and namra, her eyes scanning your faces as she takes in your calm expressions. for a moment, she just looks at you, a hint of curiosity on her face. then, as if drawn in by the peaceful atmosphere, mijin closes her own eyes and takes a deep breath. she sits down, her back straight, and begins to focus on her own breathing.

the three of you sit in silence, your eyes closed, your faces serene. you look like a meditation class, with you as the instructor guiding your students through a peaceful exercise. mijin and namra seem completely absorbed in the moment, their breathing slow and steady. meanwhile, wujin whispers to joonyeong, nodding discreetly in your direction. "what's going on with them?" he asks, his voice barely audible. joonyeong looks up from his project, his eyes squinting slightly as he takes in the scene. he shrugs, his expression uninterested. "no idea," he says, his voice equally quiet. "maybe they're just really into... breathing."

wujin raises an eyebrow, but joonyeong's already gone back to his project, his focus solely on the task at hand. he's still nursing a grudge about not getting any chocolate, thanks to daesu's sneaky snacking. the memory of that injustice still rankles him, and he's not about to let some mysterious meditation session distract him from his work.

as the three of you continue to sit in silence, the rest of the group begins to take notice. daesu, still licking his fingers from the last bite of chocolate, looks over at you with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. cheongsan and suhyeok exchange a glance, their expressions unreadable.

but joonyeong remains focused on his project, his eyes fixed intently on the task at hand. wujin, on the other hand, can't seem to tear his gaze away from the three of you, his eyes fixed on your peaceful faces with a mixture of fascination and confusion.

as you sit in silence, your mind begins to wander to a different time and place. you visualize yourself sitting on the couch in your living room, surrounded by the warm and comforting familiarity of home. your father is sitting beside you, a big smile on his face as the two of you laugh together.

the memory is so vivid, so real, that you can almost feel the softness of the couch beneath you, and the warmth of your father's presence beside you. you can almost hear the sound of his laughter, deep and rich, and feel the way it makes you feel happy and safe.

but as the memory washes over you, it's followed by a wave of sadness and longing. you realize that it's been a while since you last thought about your father, and that's a painful admission. you miss him dearly, and the not knowing - not knowing if he's even alive - is a constant ache in your heart. your eyes begin to sting, and you feel a lump form in your throat. you try to push the emotions away, to focus on the calm and peacefulness of the moment. but it's hard to shake the feeling of loss and longing that's settled over you.

namra's eyes remain closed, but a subtle smile plays on her lips as she visualizes herself sitting on top of a high building. the wind blows gently, carrying warm rays of sunshine that dance across her skin. she feels carefree, unencumbered by worries or responsibilities.

in her mind's eye, she's alone at first, savoring the peace and quiet. but then, she notices a presence beside her. she doesn't need to look to know it's you. she can sense your calm energy, your quiet contemplation. as she "sees" you standing beside her, looking out at the other buildings, a soft smile spreads across her face. it's an unconscious gesture, a reflexive response to the sense of comfort and companionship she feels with you by her side. the smile lingers on her lips, a gentle, serene expression that reflects the peace and tranquility of the moment.

mijin's eyes remain closed, a subtle nod of her head the only outward sign of the vibrant scene unfolding in her mind. she visualizes herself in her own room, surrounded by the familiar comforts of home. her headphones are clamped firmly over her ears, the rich sounds of her favorite rap tracks pulsating through the speakers.

as the music washes over her, mijin starts to rap along, her lips moving silently as she mouths the words. her hands begin to gesture, weaving intricate patterns in the air as she channels the swagger and confidence of her favorite artists. the bass thumps and bumps, the vibrations resonating deep within her bones. mijin feels alive, energized by the music and the freedom of expression it brings. her entire being seems to vibrate with the rhythm, her very essence infused with the raw energy of the rap.

in this private world of sound and motion, mijin is unstoppable, a force of nature unencumbered by the worries and cares of the outside world. she's lost in the music, and the music is lost in her.

wujin walks over to the three of you, his eyes scanning your peaceful faces with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. he squats down in front of you, his voice loud and jarring as he speaks. "what's going on here?" he asks, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "are you guys having some kind of meditation party or something?" he gazes at each of you in turn, his eyes lingering on your calm expressions. "you know, i didn't realize we were in a zen monastery. i thought we were stuck in a storage closet in our school gym." wujin's words are like a splash of cold water, disrupting the peaceful atmosphere you'd managed to create. you feel a jolt of annoyance at his interruption, but you try to maintain your calm demeanor.

namra lets out a soft sigh, her eyes still closed, as if reluctant to leave the peaceful state she'd achieved. mijin, on the other hand, smacks her lips in annoyance, her eyes snapping open to glare at wujin. "men ruin everything," she mutters, her voice dripping with exasperation, as she gets to her feet. namra follows suit, her movements graceful and fluid. as she stands up, she turns to you and smiles, her eyes crinkling at the corners. it's a warm, comforting smile, and you feel a sense of solidarity with her. you take a deep breath, feeling the calmness begin to seep away, and get to your feet as well. the three of you stand there for a moment, a sense of shared understanding passing between you, before

mijin turns and walks away, namra following close behind.

wujin's face reddens as he stutters, "w-wait,!" he takes a step forward, his eyes darting between mijin and namra as he defends himself. "y/n is a man too!" he exclaims, as if that somehow justifies his behavior. just then, hroryeong walks into the conversation, a sly grin spreading across her face. "a good one!" she says, as she rolls her eyes at wujin. “the special treatment is getting out of hand..” wujin sighs defeated while going to cheongsan who patted him on the back.

you shake your head, a smile still playing on your lips, as you watch the exchange between wujin and hroryeong. your hair falls across your forehead, partially covering your eyes, and you absently brush it aside, your fingers grazing your skin.

as you move your hair, you catch a glimpse of yourself in your mind's eye, and you can't help but think that your hair must look completely flat and lifeless. you've been cooped up in this place for who knows how long, and you haven't exactly had access to a salon or even a decent hairbrush. you sigh to yourself, wondering what you must look like to the others.

as mijin swiftly changes the subject, the atmosphere shifts and everyone begins to prepare for what's to come. the room fills with the sound of rustling fabrics, clicking buckles, and the occasional grunt as people struggle to get into their gear. knee pads, chest padding, and elbow guards are all being strapped on, each person determined to be ready.

you, meanwhile, are rummaging through a box tucked away on a high shelf, your fingers searching for the perfect pair of protective gloves. as you pull out a pair of worn leather gloves, you wonder if they're from a hockey set – the padding on the palms and the reinforced fingers seem to suggest it. you quickly lace them up, tightening the straps around your wrists until they feel secure. a quick flex of your fingers confirms that you can still grasp objects without issue.

just as you're finishing up, your gaze falls upon a mysterious object tucked away between two crates. it's a thick, metal... something, and it seems to be beckoning you. without thinking, you reach in and wrap your gloved hand around it, feeling a satisfying weight to it. it's heavy, but not unmanageable. as you pull it out, you can't help but wonder what it is, and what it's used for.

as you grasp the mysterious object, you notice a white cover enveloping it, shaped like a long, slender stick. your curiosity piqued, you search for a zipper and, upon finding it, slowly unzip the cover. the sound of the zipper giving way is followed by a collective gasp as the object within is revealed: a sword.

at first glance, it's reminiscent of a fencing sword, but the blade's thickness tells a different story. as you carefully pull the sword from its cover, it emits a clear, ringing sound – a "shling" that sends shivers down your spine. you can't help but stare in awe, the sword's beauty and craftsmanship leaving you breathless.

this is undoubtedly an upgrade from the hammer, and you can't wait to try it out. your friends, equally captivated, gather around, their eyes wide with wonder. "wow!" mijin exclaims, her voice barely above a whisper.

joonyeong, meanwhile, rushes over to you, his glasses slipping down his nose as he takes in the sight of the sword. "where did you find that?" he asks, his voice filled with excitement.

daesu, not one to be left out, chimes in, "yah! see if there's one more!" but before you can respond, joonyeong speaks up, his eyes still fixed on the sword.

"there isn't another one," he says, his voice laced with a mix of disappointment and reverence. he looks up at you, his eyes shining with excitement. "do you know what this is?" he asks, but you can only shake your head, feeling a bit like a deer caught in the headlights.

joonyeong turns to the others, a sly grin spreading across his face. "this, my friends, is a damn hanwei katana." wujin and cheongsan spring to their feet, their eyes wide with astonishment. "you're telling me someone just casually stashed a limited edition katana in our school's dusty auditorium?" wujin asks incredulously, his voice dripping with skepticism. "what an idiot," he mutters under his breath, shaking his head. "that belongs in a glass case, not collecting dust in some forgotten corner of the school."

hari rolls her eyes good-naturedly at her brother's outburst, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. "it's gotta be destiny that you found it here," she says, her voice filled with a sense of wonder.

joonyeong's expression turns serious as he looks at you, his eyes burning with intensity. "this is no ordinary sword," he says, his voice low and measured. "it's a powerful symbol, one that demands respect and caution."

taken aback by joonyeong's solemnity, you clear your throat before offering a awkward smile. "i guess it's about time i had some good karma," you say, trying to lighten the mood.

joonyeong's expression remains serious as he hands the sword back to you. "listen, you need to be careful if you're going to use this," he warns, his voice firm but concerned. "one wrong move, and you could slice someone's hand off." you nod soberly, feeling a sense of responsibility wash over you as you take the sword back.

you carefully slide the sword back into its cover, the sound of the zipper echoing through the air as everyone around you scrambles to arm themselves. metal baseball bats and sharp objects are distributed among the group, each person preparing to defend themselves. you tie the sword's belt around your waist, tightening it until the weight of the sword feels secure against your hip. suhyeok hands a baseball bat to cheongsan, his voice low and serious. "i'll take point, you cover our backs." cheongsan nods, his grip on the bat tightening as the group begins to form a tight circle.

metal crates are pushed into place around them, forming a makeshift barricade. mijin's voice trembles slightly as she speaks, her fear protruding. "you better be right about this,” joonyeong nods, “we've seen so many zombies already... they're not smart enough for this." joonyeong's expression remains calm, reassuring.

“lets do this!”

everything unfolded in a chaotic blur, your brain struggled to keep pace. fragmented images sear themselves into your mind: joonyeong's face contorted in agony, hroryeong's tears streaming down her face as she cowers beside you. your legs tremble beneath you, muscles screaming in protest as you push with every ounce of strength you possess. cheongsan's frantic yells echo in your ears, urging you to keep pushing, to keep fighting.

as the chaos subsided, you're left sitting in stunned silence, exhaustion washing over you like a wave. the same feeling of numbness, of detachment, that you experienced when you were trapped in that car comes flooding back. it's as if life itself has lost all meaning, leaving you feeling empty and hollow. why has this feeling returned? what triggered it? the questions swirl in your mind, but the answers remain elusive. what even happened? what is happening now.

you're lost in a world of silence, oblivious to mijin's repeated attempts to rouse you. but then, as if a switch has been flipped, your hearing suddenly returns to normal. "y/n!" mijin's voice cuts through the fog, and you turn to her in confusion. she's standing beside you, her expression a mix of concern and urgency. "cmon, we need to go," she says, trying to sound harsh but failing miserably. she knows all too well what you're going through, and her words come out laced with empathy.

you blink once, twice, and suddenly the world around you snaps into focus. you're sitting outside the gym, the bright sunlight a stark contrast to the darkness you'd faced just moments before. and then you see him - onjo's father, embracing cheongsan in a tight hug. memories come flooding back, and you recall the desperation, the feeling of being trapped. the doors had been locked, impassable... until they weren't. a man in a green bomber jacket had appeared, his face etched with the same exhaustion and terror that you felt. he'd been through the same hell, and somehow, he'd managed to unlock the doors and save you all.

you gaze down at your hands, surprised to find them steady and still. normally, they'd be shaking uncontrollably, but not today. today, they're calm, serene even. you can't help but wonder why. everyone around you seems to be trembling with fear, their eyes wide with anxiety. but you... you're numb. your gaze drifts up, past mijin, to suhyeok, who's staring down at his feet with a look of shame etched on his face. you've seen that expression before, just last night, when the two of you were arguing. the memory replays in your mind like a broken record, refusing to be silenced.

mijin's gentle tug on your arm breaks the spell, and you allow her to help you up. as you stand, you try to shake off the haze, to regain some semblance of clarity. but your mind remains foggy, refusing to cooperate.

mr. nam's concerned voice cuts through the din, "are you kids alright?" he scans the group, his eyes lingering on each of you before moving on. when his gaze falls on you, it pauses, and you sense a flicker of surprise. you follow his gaze to your shirt, and your eyebrow twitches in confusion. a portion of the fabric is torn, leaving a gaping hole. not again. you try to recall when it happened, but your brain refuses to cooperate. you grasp the torn fabric, willing yourself to remember, but the memories remain elusive.

mr. nam's voice cuts through the silence, "okay, are you all able to run?" the group exchanges hesitant glances before nodding in unison, still refusing to speak. mr. nam sighs, a mix of relief and concern etched on his face. "good."

he takes a deep breath before issuing instructions, "if you go straight through the tennis courts and pass the construction site, you'll hit the mountain." he points behind you, and you turn to follow his gesture, taking in the makeshift plan he's devised.

but before you can even process the information, your hand is grasped, and you're suddenly pulled into a sprint. you stumble forward, regaining your balance as you take in the chaos around you. everyone is scrambling, running up the hill near the gym, desperate to escape the horrors behind them.

you glance back, and your heart sinks. more of the infected are closing in, their twisted faces contorted in a snarl. you whip your head back around, focusing on the path ahead. your legs pump furiously as you push yourself to keep up. it's then that you notice suhyeok's hand still grasping yours, his grip tight as he pulls you along.

mr. nam's voice echoes from behind, "the tennis courts! run!" the sound of heavy footsteps and ragged breathing fills the air as your group sprints towards the gate. daesu's shout of "c'mon!" urges you on as wujin finally reaches the door and flings it open. everyone pours inside, a chaotic tide of panicked bodies.

you release suhyeok's hand as you enter, taking a moment to ensure everyone makes it in safely. hari's struggling to fend off an infected with her bow, but she's suddenly tackled by another. mr. nam leaps into action, saving her from the brink of disaster. "hurry!" you shout, relief washing over you as hari stumbles through the gate, unscathed.

mr. nam slams the gate shut behind her, and the group takes off, racing towards the far end of the tennis court. but as you run, you realize with a sinking feeling that the zombies can still see you, their moans and screams growing louder as they give chase. everyone skids to a stop, frantically scanning their surroundings for an escape. "oh fuck.." you gulp, a cold dread creeping up your spine.

wujin's voice trembles as he asks daesu, "what do we do?" the group's panic is palpable, and you can't help but wonder if you've simply traded one trap for another. in an instant, the gates that had been locked just moments before burst open, succumbing to the crushing pressure of the zombie horde. the bloody, snarling mass surges forward, their eyes fixed on you with an unrelenting hunger. you react instinctively, grabbing hroryeong's arm and pulling her close as you take off in a sprint.

cheongsan leaps into action, wielding his bat with deadly precision as he smashes aside the zombies that aren't tangled in the tennis net. the sound of crunching bone and snapping metal fills the air, a grim testament to his determination.

meanwhile, mr. nam rummages through his bag, producing a red stick that he flicks open with a practiced motion. a blazing red flare erupts from the stick, its intense light and ear-piercing whistle drawing the zombies' attention like moths to a flame. the creatures inside and outside the court converge on the flare, their mindsless bodies driven solely by their insatiable hunger.

seizing the distraction, you spin hroryeong around, shouting to the others, "c'mon, guys!" the group gives chase, hot on your heels as you make a beeline for the opposite door.

just as you're about to grab the handle, a tan, larger hand clamps down on yours, holding you back. suhyeok's eyes scan the surrounding area, his gaze darting back and forth before nodding in satisfaction. with a gentle tug, he opens the gate, allowing you and hroryeong to slip through, the others close behind.

you spin around, ensuring everyone's safe exit, but your gaze falls upon a scene that makes your heart sink. mr. nam has closed the gate behind onjo and cheongsan, trapping them outside. onjo's face contorts in desperation as she rips away from cheongsan's grasp and slams into the gate, frantically trying to reopen it.

her words trail off as she notices the bite mark on her father's hand. tears well up in her eyes, and her face crumples in anguish. you watch, frozen in horror, as the reality of the situation sets in.

you tear your gaze away, looking toward the trees that lie ahead. you take a few hesitant steps forward, trying to get a better view of the path ahead. the trees seem to loom before you, their branches creaking ominously in the wind. you pause, unsure of what to do next, as the sounds of onjo's despairing cries echo through the air.

you take a few more cautious steps forward, scanning the trees for any signs of zombies. your eyes dart back and forth, searching for any movement or telltale signs of danger. but for now, the coast seems clear. the trees are so dense that you can't even see any buildings in the distance, which means it'll take some time to reach the construction site mr. nam mentioned.

just as you're starting to feel a sense of relief, you catch a glimpse of someone peeking around a tree. your heart skips a beat as the person quickly ducks back out of sight. a wave of unease washes over you. who - or what - was that? could it be a zombie that hasn't noticed you yet? or is it someone else, someone who might be a threat? you instinctively crouch down, trying to make yourself as small and quiet as possible.

you take slow, deliberate steps towards the nearest tree, trying to be just as sneaky as the mysterious person. your senses are on high alert, ready for whatever might be lurking just out of sight.

you focus intently on the person, your eyes squinting as you try to make out any distinguishing features. the person darts to another tree, using it as cover. you hold your breath, waiting for them to make another move.

and then, in a flash, the person takes off again, giving you a better look. it's a man, dressed in a plaid shirt that's even more tattered than yours. his baggy jeans are torn and frayed, and he's clutching something in his hand, though you can't quite make out what it is.

just as you're taking in this information, you hear the sound of footsteps rushing towards you, accompanied by heavy breathing. you swiftly move behind your tree, out of sight, and signal for your friends to stop. you press a finger to your lips, warning them to be quiet.

daesu, who's in the lead, looks at you with confusion etched on his face. you slowly point in the direction of the mysterious man, and your friends quickly hide behind nearby trees, thinking that zombies are approaching. namra slips behind the same tree as you, her voice barely above a whisper. "it's a human." she breathes, confirming your suspicions. you glance at her, nodding in agreement.

with a slow, deliberate movement, you draw out your sword, holding it with both hands as you press your back against the tree. you're poised, ready to swing into action at a moment's notice.

wujin mouths to you from his hiding spot behind a large tree, where hroryeong is also concealed, "you don't even know how to use that!" his eyes sparkling with frustration. you roll your eyes good-naturedly and mouth back, "it's gotta be the same as a baseball bat." wujin's expression turns incredulous, and he rolls his eyes in response. just then, the sound of snapping branches and crunching leaves fills the air as the mysterious person approaches. you tense, ready to react. with a swift motion, you step out from behind the tree, sword at the ready. the blade comes to rest against the person's adam's apple, and they freeze, eyes wide with fear.

the person hastily drops their weapon and raises their hands in surrender. "wait!" they exclaim, taking in the sight of multiple young adults emerging from the trees. "i mean no harm to any of you!" they declare, attempting to sound brave despite the quiver in their voice.

his eyes meet yours, and you take in his features. he's gotta be older than you, with that strong, toned build and a few scratch marks on his face. despite his rugged appearance, there's something about him that seems... put together. hroryeong asks quietly, "w-whats your name?" breaking the silence. she suddenly feels like speaking for some reason.

wujin gently pushes down on your hands, signaling for you to lower the sword. you realize you're still holding it up and begin to sheathe it. the boy takes advantage of the distraction to slowly retrieve his axe, his movements cautious. “kyungho, im a senior at bomoon high.” as he stands up, you can't help but notice his stature. he's tall, with broad shoulders and a rugged build that makes him look like an actual lumberjack. cheongsan steps forward and asks, "is bomoon high infected too?" but you're too busy taking in kyungho's appearance to focus on the conversation.

daesu whispers to suhyeok, "how is he still so handsome even though he's all dirty like us?" but his voice carries, and the whole group hears him. kyungho's face flushes, and he looks down, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. he smiles awkwardly, his eyes meeting yours, and you feel a flutter in your chest.

kyungho's eyes lock onto yours, and he says, "hey, i know you." you're taken aback, unsure of what to say. "me?" you ask, incredulous. the group's attention shifts to you, their faces filled with curiosity. mijin steps forward, her arm crossed, her expression skeptical. "you know him, y/n-ah?" she asks, her tone implying she doesn't quite trust kyungho. you shake your head, "n-no, i don't think..." but kyungho interrupts, taking a step forward. "you're that kid in the bike store!" he exclaims, a smile spreading across his face.

daesu whispers to suhyeok, "he called him a kid when they're only a year apart.." his voice is laced with amusement, as if he's watching a show. suhyeok's eyebrows furrow, his expression unreadable as he takes in the interaction between you and kyungho.

the memories of kyungho come flooding back, and you're surprised you didn't recognize him at first. he looked so beat up, but now that you remember, you recall the cute boy you had followed into the bike store. your face grows hot as you realize everyone is still staring at you, awaiting your response.

"right... i remember now," you stammer, trying to play it cool. "it's good to see you." you manage a small smile, but you can't help the way your heart skips a beat as kyungho's eyes lock onto yours. you feel yourself melting under his gaze, and you look away, trying to compose yourself. but you can't shake off the feeling that kyungho's eyes are still on you, and you sneak a glance back at him. his expression is soft, and he's smiling at you, making your heart flutter even more.

“why is y/n so shy..?” daesu's whisper is cut off as suhyeok steps forward, his tall, athletic build positioning him slightly in front of you, as if shielding you from kyungho. the two of them are almost evenly matched in height and build, although kyungho appears slightly more muscular.

suhyeok's gaze is skeptical as he asks, "so you're saying you made it all the way from bomoon high, by yourself?" kyungho's eyes flicker to suhyeok, and he nods calmly. "yeah, today was the day some of the seniors went into the city for a project, and suddenly a bunch of those zombies got into the cafe we were at. luckily, i escaped through the back door," kyungho explains, pointing back in the direction he came from. "so i traveled all this way to find someone, and i've been on the run since."

wujin and daesu nod in unison, seeming to accept kyungho's story. you, however, are intrigued by his survival skills. "how could you survive by yourself for this long?" you ask, your curiosity getting the better of you. kyungho holds up a finger, as if to say "wait," before slipping off the long tote bag he'd been carrying on his back. he rummages through it, revealing a stash of food and snacks that makes everyone's eyes widen in surprise.

"i managed to break into a convenience store," he explains, a hint of pride in his voice. "so that's where i've been staying. i've been looking for people who survived, but you guys are the first people i've seen in days." the group's reaction is immediate. everyone's eyes light up at the sight of food, and they exchange excited glances. kyungho's face breaks out into a warm smile as he continues, his words tumbling out in a rush of excitement. "we can all head back! i'll show you guys. you can eat and sleep for the night." his enthusiasm is infectious, and the group's mood begins to lift at the prospect of food and shelter.

kyungho tosses a loaf of bread to daesu, who catches it and immediately tears into it, savoring the taste. hroryeong speaks up, "that'd be great," but cheongsan cuts her off, his expression apologetic.

"we can't," he says, his words hitting you like a ton of bricks. "i'm sorry, but we're trying to get out of the city." your heart sinks, realizing that you won't be able to rest and eat in a safe place after all. kyungho's face falls, but he quickly recovers, his expression curious. "oh, well, me too!" he exclaims, zipping up his bag. "where are you guys headed?" suhyeok takes over, explaining, "there's a construction site down that way. we need to pass it to get to the mountain." kyungho's eyes light up with interest, and he nods, as if considering something.

kyungho glances back in the direction he came from, a thoughtful expression on his face. "i mean, i can go with you guys if you'd allow me," he says, turning back to the group. "but the store isn't that far from here. we could make it and go first thing tomorrow. come on, you guys look like death." he tries to persuade the group, his eyes locked on cheongsan.

you turn to cheongsan, your eyes pleading. "we won't survive long out there if we don't eat and rest properly. one night," you beg, your voice barely above a whisper. the rest of the group's bodies seem to be echoing your plea, their tired and starving eyes begging for relief.the group falls silent for almost a minute, the only sound the heavy breathing of exhausted bodies. cheongsan looks at suhyeok, who's shaking his head in disagreement, but then his gaze sweeps the rest of the group, taking in their desperate expressions. finally, he nods. "lead the way," he says to kyungho, who grins triumphantly.

"awesome, come on," kyungho says, gesturing for the group to follow him. "if we move quickly and quietly, we'll get there in no time." you thank cheongsan before falling in behind kyungho, who takes the lead. suhyeok crosses his arms, looking disbelieving, but the rest of the group follows kyungho, their footsteps quiet and hopeful.

#all of us are dead #allofusaredeadfanfic #angst #enemies to allies #lee su hyeok #kdrama #suhyeok x male reader #all of us are dead x male reader #male reader #suhyeok x reader #lee suhyeok #top!lee suhyeok #zombies

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