#every fucking cliffhanger for the last seven chapters has been a left

[im-all-out-of-ideas]

oh my god

fujimoto when i get you FUJIMOTOR WHEN I FUCKING GET YOUUU

[oddinary4bts]

When the End Comes | ch 4 (jjk)

☆summary: Seven years after you've started dating Jungkook, long distance creates a wedge in your relationship. When the only solution seems to be breaking up, you go your separate ways even though love still lives in the two of you. Will you find a way back together, or has the end come for you and Jeon Jungkook?

☆pairing: photographer!Jungkook x lawyer!female reader

☆rating: 18+ (minors DNI, there is mature content in every chapter)

☆genre: breakup!au, slice of life!au, angst with a big A, smut

☆warnings: fear of getting stood up, alcohol, pet names, curses, Jungkook's scars, angst, stubborn Jungkook, pessimism, depressive episode, cliffhanger at the end I'm sorry, explicit content: jerking off, oral sex (male receiving), Jungkook taking pictures of them during (I apologize, I have sinned), balls sucking/fondling, pain kink (Jungkook), deep throating, mouth fucking, unprotected sex, hickey, clit play, degradation, fingering, cum play (ish?)

☆word count: 14.3k

☆series masterpost

☆a/n: Rereading each chapter to edit is a challenge bc I just be sobbing the whole time :') I hope you enjoy this one, though it does really hurt oop

☆a/n pt2: Thank you to @moonleeai for beta-ing this, you are the best <3 and thank you to @jessikahathaway for supporting me with this project, you are amazinnng

☆Read The Forgotten Spaces here, the prequel to When the End Comes! It does not need to be read to understand When the End Comes, but I think it still should be read first to have a better understanding of the characters in general!

☆Add yourself to the taglist here (if you were on the taglist for The Forgotten Spaces, you're already on the taglist for When the End Comes!)

☆☆☆☆☆

But love never leaves a heart, where it found it, found it You found it Someday, I'll fall into you That's where I'll be now when the end comes

When the End Comes, Andrew Belle

☆☆☆☆☆

Friday, September 8th

                You clutch the gift bag in your hand. It feels strange to be meeting Jungkook again, after last weekend. And even after last weekend, you’re not sure where you’re standing.

Did he spend his whole week thinking about you the way that you were thinking about him?

You texted a little, over the week. Each time a notification from him popped up on your phone, you felt like you’d gone back in time. Like maybe, maybe you took a time machine to a past of better days last weekend. It’s bittersweet in a way, because you feel like there is still so much left unsaid between you and him.

But he’s willing to try. Even if you broke him, even if you’ve been wondering if there’s anything salvageable after all, he’s willing to try. Willing to meet you at a Korean barbecue restaurant halfway between his place and yours.

You check the time, anxiety flooding your veins. He’s running late, though he texted you to tell you he was almost there. A part of you wonders if he’s going to stand you up – you think you’d deserve it. Because you’re not sure you deserve this chance, yet you don’t want to lose it, don’t want to let it go.

You look down at the bag. You bought the gift on a whim this week, and you have no idea if he’ll still want it. It’s a lens he was looking to buy months ago, before he left for Paris, and there’s a high chance that he’ll have bought it for himself since then…

You just couldn’t think about anything other than that to gift him. Even though his work was your demise, you know Jungkook loves photography. Always will, no matter where you two will end up. And since it was his birthday last weekend – before you’d reconnected – you thought why not? Why not get a gift and show him that you still care, that you remember?

Because you’d never forget, when it comes to him. You think, if you had dementia, he’d be the last thing you’d lose, if at all.

You worry at your lip, glancing around. Luckily enough for you, there is a bench outside of the restaurant, though you can only sit on a corner of it as the rest is still wet from the rain earlier. It was raining when you left work, but it fortunately stopped as you were getting ready for the date.

You sigh, looking down at your phone again. Twenty minutes late seems like a long time, considering that Jungkook’s not one to be late usually. A sense of dread takes ahold of your heart, and you already feel tears forming in your eyes.

You were foolish, stupid. Idiotic, if you thought there was a way things could be set right.

You get up, looking towards the door of the restaurant. A couple are waiting in the hall, arms around each other as they hug with not a care in the world. It aches deeply, makes you crave the physical intimacy last Saturday held and you gulp as you swallow around the lump in your throat.

Still you stay rooted in your spot. There’s a light tremor that starts taking a hold of you, and you regret not putting a jacket on even though it isn’t remotely freezing today. Your eyes fall to the gift bag, and you think about May. About the moment you’d let him go – has he gotten too far for you to reach him now?

A tear wins. Or perhaps it’s the gravity, growing ten times stronger as your heart breaks again. As the hope gets lost to you, replaced by that same deep sorrow you’ve become accustomed to. You sigh, the breath of air trembling on the way out.

And then you almost let out a scream as someone touches your arm.

Jungkook startles just as much as you, taking a step back, his big, doe eyes widening even more as he meets your gaze. Your mouth remains open, yet no words come out. You just take him in, take his appearance in – his piercings, the beanie he’s wearing, his flushed cheeks. He looks like he was running, and you think maybe he was.

“I’m sorry,” he tells you.

At that your eyes drop to the bright pink bouquet of flowers he’s holding, and something inside of you heals, as if you’ve found a cure to the disease.

“Oh, Jungkook,” you let out. You meet his gaze again. “You didn’t have to.”

He pulls at his piercings, shrugging sheepishly. “I wanted to.”

It’s warm. Whatever is blossoming in your chest is warm, a stark contrast to the winter you’ve been stuck in since the night you lost him.

“Thank you,” you murmur, and you blink away the tears in your eyes.

You freeze when he wipes the one that’s already rolled on your cheek, frowning slightly at the sight.

“The florist I wanted to go to first was closed,” he says as an explanation. “I had to run around to find another one.”

You offer him a small smile, and his features immediately smooth out into a soft expression too.

“I was scared you were…” you trail off, wetting your lips as you refuse to voice your fear.

Refuse to admit you didn’t have faith in him.

“I thought you would,” he answers carefully. “Hence why I ran.”

You nod. “I…” You look down at the gift bag, holding it up. “I got you a birthday gift.”

His smile is teary when you look at it next, and you take a moment to delve into the depths of his gaze. There’s a small twinkle there, though it is faint, barely even noticeable. If you didn’t know him like the sun knows the moon, you wouldn’t recognize it.

He’s hopeful. It’s strange – there was no hope in Jungkook’s gaze last weekend. Or there had been, for a fraction of a moment, until it had been blown away by the wind. You can only hope that this time it will hold on strong.

“You didn’t have to,” he says, though the curve of his pink lips tells you he appreciates the thought.

He grabs the gift bag, not looking through it right away. Instead, he hands you the flowers, and you delicately take them, bringing them close to your nose so that you can inhale the fragrance. Your eyelids flutter shut, and a content smile moves on your lips.

“Thank you,” you murmur as you meet his gaze again. “And…” You motion towards the gift. “You deserved it. I think you’ll like it.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence, as Jungkook looks down at the bag. He offers you a tight-lipped smile, and you cock an eyebrow.

“What?” he lets out.

“Aren’t you going to…” you vaguely answer. “Open it?”

“Oh, now?” He chuckles awkwardly, glancing around before pointing towards the restaurant. “Shouldn’t we go in to give our names?”

He’s got a point. Especially considering that it’s a Friday evening. So you do just that, giving your phone number to the hostess as she tells you there will be a thirty minutes wait. You and Jungkook move back outside after that, and he guides you towards his car, a few streets down.

“How was work this week?” he asks on the way.

“Better,” you admit, remembering how you’d told him that you didn’t like the new department in which you worked.

And it’s true – it has been better. Maybe because the excitement of receiving texts from him through the days made it easier to handle. Or maybe it’s because you haven’t been so damned cold since last weekend. All in all, work has been easier, even if it isn’t as interesting as it used to be.

“I’m glad,” he says, offering you a smile.

Silence surrounds the two of you, only interrupted by a car honking in the street. You startle a little, and Jungkook chuckles.

You’re struck. His chuckles have healing properties, you’re convinced of it. They spark hope into you, so bright you think you’ll be blinded, retina forever burned. Yet your eyes don’t lose focus on him, even as his lips return to a neutral expression.

“What about you?” you ask as your heart picks up in your chest. “What were you up to this week?”

A small crease appears between his brows, but it disappears so quickly you think you might have imagined it. “I’ve been going to the gym,” he answers. “And looking around for some jobs.”

His last sentence turns the hope into a firework show inside of you. “Yeah? Any luck so far?”

You reach his car, and as he always does, he opens the door for you. You blush, something you haven’t really done with Jungkook in forever, and you’re struck thinking that this feels new.

Perhaps this will be a new chapter in your relationship with Jeon Jungkook after all.

“Thank you,” you mutter as your cheeks burn. You sit in, and he closes the door before moving around the car to get in. You watch him do so, and he sits next to you, turning the car on just long enough so that you can roll the windows down.

“Now,” he lets out, eyeing the bag. “What’s this?”

For some reason, it makes you chuckle, and he shoots you a dumb smile that makes you think you’ve delved right into the heat of summer, warmth spreading through you. It erases the winter, replaces it with blooming flowers and bright sun rays, golden sunsets and the feeling of a soft breeze threading through your hair.

Needless to say, you want to cling to it before winter comes again.

“Open and you’ll see,” you answer, your heart racing as you glance at the bag, before going back to his smile.

He nods, and he opens the bag, taking out the paper first. Your heartbeat increases tenfold because, what if he doesn’t like it?

What if he takes it as an affront that you’ve given him something photography related?

But then he sees it. Sees the lens you bought for him, and his features turn somber, but not in a bad way. They settle into a calm expression, with a softer smile that barely even tugs at the corners of his lips. He takes a deep breath, and then looks towards you again.

Teary eyes find yours, and you think maybe this is it. Maybe this is where the end will find you. Lost in the swirling depth of his gaze, in the forgotten space of you and him.

He whispers your name, emotion making it heavier than the whole world. You nod once, as no sentences take shape in your mind to reply to him. You’re not sure you have to say something – he sees in your eyes the emotions you can’t quite voice.

“You really didn’t have to,” he adds, and you watch his Adam’s apple bob as he gulps. “Fuck.”

He looks down at the lens, takes it out of the bag so that he can examine it thoroughly. You observe him as he does so, as if you’re watching a show. And you think, maybe he is a show – a movie meant for you to admire on and on until you go old and blindness seeps into your gaze.

“I wanted to,” you reply.

He shoots you a quick look, just as teary as the initial one. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

And then he laughs, a small vulnerable laugh that has you blinking back the wetness building up on your waterline. You echo it with one of yours, though it comes unexpectedly to you. But then again, you reckon you share the same feelings.

You always have, haven’t you? Your soul is in sync with his, has always been, no matter if distance put an end to the story of you and him. Or tried to, because he’s here today.

So are you, and if he allows it, you’ll never leave again.

“I’ve wanted this lens in forever,” he says, voice small as he turns it in his hands, looking at it in every possible angle. “You…” he trails off, meets your gaze and smiles again. “You remembered.”

You nod. “How could I forget?” You worry at your lips, shy away from his gaze to watch your wriggling fingers in your lap. “There isn’t a day I didn’t think of you.”

The revelation seems out of place, in a parked car on the side of a busy street. Yet it comes naturally to you, and meets him just as naturally. Because he nods, and then reaches for you. Grabs your jaw, gently, so that he can turn your head towards him. There’s a moment when you think the whole world holds his breath, and then he leans forward, brushes a soft kiss on your lips.

“I missed you,” he admits as he pulls away, letting go of your jaw reluctantly.

A tear slips on your cheek, and you quickly dry it. “I missed you too.”

And though the moment is heavy with emotion, you don’t want to run away from it. When you were younger, you would have fled like a deer hearing a branch crack in the woods. But today, today you want the weight of this emotion to rest upon you, like a weighted blanket that reminds you you’re alive.

The emotion lingers, past this moment and into the next. As you get the text that a table is ready for you and him, and you move back to the Korean restaurant. As you sit in front of him, watch him smile and laugh in time with you at the stupid jokes that you make.

You and him make more sense than you realized. Or maybe you forgot. Maybe the distance made you forget, but right now you think you know he’ll always be the one. And if you lose him again, he’ll be the one that got away, and you’ll search for him through every connection with temporary people.

Because there can’t be permanent people after him. He’s permanently inked into your heart, carved into your bones.

“How has your family been?” he asks when there’s a lull in the conversation.

You offer him a tight-lipped smile, though you know he means your father, Isabel and Louis.

You know he’d never talk about your mother as part of your family.

“They’ve been great,” you answer. “Dad’s been looking to retire, or at least to have a lesser charge at work.”

Jungkook furrows his brows, but says nothing as he puts some meat on the grill between you and him. You observe him as he does so, wincing when flames erupt and he pulls his hand away – quickly enough, thankfully.

“How old is he again?” Jungkook asks after that, meeting your gaze again.

“Fifty-nine,” you reply. “But I don’t think it’s about his age. He just wants to spend more time with Louis.”

The softness that takes over his doe eyes makes you want to curl up in him, against him. Makes you want to listen to his beating heart until the day that it ceases, decades away from now. It’s a strong feeling, and you’re forced to blink away tears again.

“Don’t cry,” Jungkook gently says, and he reaches to pat your cheek.

It makes you laugh. Of course it does, and he offers you a dumb smile again. For the first time that night, you notice that yes, it does reach his eyes. The smile lights up his gaze, though there’s wariness, etched in the lines of his face.

It’s not that you missed it before. Maybe you just didn’t want to see it. But right in this instant, it’s all you can see, and it makes his smile fall until his eyes follow, moving to the grill. He turns the meat as you busy yourself with eating japchae.

And you don’t like this silence. You don’t like the ache that it carries, so you force yourself to try. To try and fight for him and prove that, after everything, he really is where the end will be, when it comes for you.

“What about your family?” you ask, throwing him a lifeline in the storm you’re sure he’s been plagued with too.

“They’ve been great,” he answers. “My brother’s wife is pregnant again.”

For a moment you forget about the torment between you and him as your mind zeroes in on the fact. “That’s amazing!” you let out, and your smile comes easily. “They must be so happy.”

Jungkook looks at your smile, taking a deep breath. It seems he takes a decision then, because his lips curve up, and some of the wariness fades away. He looks softer like this, younger, and your heart shines under his light.

“It really is,” he says. “I was thinking on going to Korea to see the baby when Yuri gives birth.”

In another world, you would have said you’ll go with him, but right now you don’t think you can. So, instead, you reply, “That’s a good idea. I’m sure your family will be happy to see you.”

He nods, and then he puts some meat in your bowl, taking the two other stripes for himself. You mindlessly pick one of the pieces up, mixing it in ssamjang before eating it. You wince as you burn your tongue a little, and quickly eat the meat so that you can take a long gulp of water.

Jungkook must have expected you to burn yourself, because he laughs at your expense as he refills your glass. “You good?”

You nod. “Sorry, just burned myself.”

“Don’t apologize.”

So you don’t. For the rest of the evening, you try not to apologize. And you think you succeed – you both speak as if distance wasn’t a thing between you. As if time hasn’t come to pass between you too – as if you’ve never been apart. As if, seven years ago, the stars told the truth as they sparkled in the July night sky.

You finish eating while chatting like this, while sharing thoughts about movies you’ve seen. As he tells you about working out, about Bam and the songs he’s been listening to. He drinks a beer as you speak, and you once again take a moment to admire him.

You’d never admit it, but the beanie makes him look good. Comfortable and soft – as does the jean jacket, you reckon. But then again you know Jungkook would look good in anything, one of the advantages of him being gifted with pretty privilege.

And when he clinks his glass with yours, claiming you have to finish drinking even though you’ve only been drinking water, you still laugh with him, still down your glass as he chugs the beer. And you wonder, how long will it take to erase the distance?

Will it take more than this moment in time, to undo the distance and rebuild the closeness?

And you think, maybe it just needs now. Because as you walk out, bellies full and minds buzzing with a slight tinge of alcohol, you accept Jungkook’s extended hand. You let him guide you to his car, even though yours is parked on the other side of the restaurant. He opens the door for you again, but you hesitate for a moment.

Long enough to step closer to him instead, and pull him down so you can peck his lips. He looks surprised, and his features fall serious as you share a long look.

“Can I come over tonight?” you whisper.

He nods. “I thought it was a given.”

Of course he would. And you’re not even mad that he would. You’re rather relieved, and you can’t help yourself. You can’t help pulling him down in a more heated kiss, even though you hate public displays of affection. There are just words your lips can’t say any other way than this, and he gets it. He’ll always get you. He always will, and he kisses you with the same intensity, one hand cupping your cheek gently while the other presses on the small of your back, resting flat as he pulls you in. You hold his delicate waist, sighing in the kiss as your thumbs draw idle lines on his sides.

Jungkook pulls away to press a kiss on your forehead, lingering there for a small eternity that leads to you wrapping your arms around his waist. He lets you do it, and you wonder if his soul has found yours. You hope it has, for there are things your soul can say even better than your mouth can.

Apologies don’t mean much when they are shaped in words. But you think your soul could show him, and maybe, maybe tonight he’ll allow you to show him.

“Are you parked somewhere you can leave your car overnight?” he asks softly, lips moving against your forehead.

You nod. “I am.”

“Then let’s go home.”

*****

                It comes as a surprise, when you realize Jungkook has moved in the same building as Kiko and Yoongi. Even more so as they run into you on the way in, knowing smiles on their lips as Jungkook holds your hand tight. They don’t really say a lot – both of them aren’t man and woman of words, except when they pour them into the lyrics of a song.

But Kiko does hug you. Does whisper in your ear that she wishes everything will be set right for the two of you, and when you pull away to meet Jungkook’s gaze, you think it already is. Especially as you’re clutching the flowers he got for you, and their sweet fragrance surrounds you.

And then they walk away, as they were leaving to go on a late walk, and you and Jungkook walk in the building, making your way to the elevator. Jungkook presses the call button, and then pulls you close to his chest so that he can press a kiss on the top of your head.

“Well, that was awkward,” he says.

You chuckle. “It wasn’t really.”

His grip tightens around you before he lets you go so that you can enter the elevator. He follows you in, and he intertwines your fingers as he presses on the fourth floor. As the elevator starts moving, you pull him closer, tilting your head back as you pout slightly.

“What?” he asks.

“Kiss me?”

He doesn’t need to be asked twice. He immediately dives in, and you’re surprised with the strength of the kiss. As if he’s pouring his entire soul in it, and you think maybe he is. After all, you kiss him back with all the fire in you, and it’s burning brighter than it ever has.

Unfortunately, the moment is short-lived as you reach his floor and the doors slide open. He pulls away, presses a kiss on your forehead as if he wasn’t sucking on your tongue a moment ago, and then he pulls you behind him as he walks towards his door.

It’s further down the hall, and you wait excitedly as he unlocks. Though you’re a little worried about seeing Bam again – what if he doesn’t recognize you?

Which, you reckon was a stupid thought, because the dog comes barging out, tail wagging wildly, when Jungkook manages to get the door open.

“Bamie!” you exclaim, and Jungkook carefully takes the bouquet of flowers from your hand to allow you to bend down and pet the dog.

He licks at your face, whimpering as if he thought he’d lost you. It brings tears to your eyes, and you giggle like a kid as you pet him, rubbing his short fur as he keeps running all around you.

“I think he’s happy to see you,” Jungkook deadpans, and you burst out laughing.

You look up to try and look at Jungkook, but Bam jumps in your vision, which makes you giggle again. And then, something magical happens. Something you didn’t think you’d hear again – Jungkook laughs that childish laugh of his, the one that usually only comes forth when he’s really happy.

You act by pure instinct. You stand up, wrap your arms around Jungkook’s neck. His giggle dies against your lips, but he’s quick to kiss you back as he snakes his inked arm around your back. You let out a breathy sound, and then burst into a fit of giggles as Bam jumps on you.

“I think he demands attention,” you state and Jungkook nods as you part, though he keeps his arm close to you.

“We should take him on a walk,” he says, and you notice his cheeks are flushed red. You reckon yours probably are too, but there’s something about seeing the effect that you have on him, even after everything, that makes you come undone.

“I’m so happy to be with you right now,” you murmur.

He gulps, eyes shining suddenly. “Me too.” He adds your name softly, before repeating, “Me too.”

You walk in his apartment after that, to put the flowers in a large glass of water since Jungkook doesn’t own any vase. Meanwhile, he disappears in what you assume is the bedroom, only to reappear with his camera. To your surprise, he’s already fitted the new lens on it.

It’s endearing. There’s something so incredibly endearing at the thought that your gift is loved already, that Jungkook already wants to use it. It makes a line of silver appear in your eyes, and you don’t even blink it away as Jungkook angles the camera towards you to take a picture.

“Huh,” he lets out as he looks at the picture. He adjusts some settings, and before he’s had time to take another picture of you, Bam comes up to you, jumping up. His two paws rest on your waist as you laugh, and that’s when Jungkook snaps the picture.

You glance his way to see him smiling softly, and then he nods appreciatively. “I’m going to use this lens way too much,” he comments.

It makes you laugh. “I’m glad.”

And then you’re going outside with the dog. Jungkook brings the camera, and he snaps pictures of the surroundings, of you and Bam. He even takes one of the three of you, though you reckon the angle is clearly unflattering.

It doesn’t feel like it matters. Because you’re struck realizing that this, this moment matters. It matters enough for him to want to commit it to memory, and you wonder if he’s going to add it to all the frames you left behind.

But then again, did he even put them up in his new apartment? From what you could see when you were in, there was no picture visible.

It aches, but then he tells you to smile and you do. You immediately do, because there’s nothing easier than smiling when you’re with him like this. The wariness still clings to him, but it’s barely visible, like a mirage that’s about to fade in the distance.

“Stop taking pictures of me,” you say as he takes another one.

He lets out a noncommittal sound, shrugging his shoulder. “Why?”

You pout as blush creeps on your cheek. “You haven’t taken this many pictures of me since… Chicago?”

He shakes his head. “I took more pictures on our first trip to Korea.”

A beautiful trip, where you’d met his family for the first time. You had gotten along with everyone well, even though your Korean was poor. You got better through the years, but you still have a long way before you can speak in Korean without feeling like everyone is going to judge you.

“That’s beside the point,” you mumble. You motion towards Bam, who’s patiently sitting next to you. “I’m pretty sure he’s done.”

Jungkook pouts, and butterflies take flight in your stomach. “Sorry,” he apologizes.

You’re not quite sure why.

“I just…” he adds, and then shadows cloud over his features. They resemble the sorrow that was surrounding him last weekend, and just like that you think summer has ended. “I haven’t used my camera since…”

You don’t need for him to say it, because you know exactly what he was going to say. Still, it hurts, and your gaze drops to the ground.

“Gosh,” you whisper. You let out a strangled sound. “I’m so sorry.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just grabs your hand, raising it to his mouth to press a gentle kiss on your knuckles.

“We said we’d try,” he reminds you, or maybe he’s trying to remind himself. “Let’s try. For real. So no more apologies.”

“I feel like you deserve thousands of apologies and more,” you admit.

He kisses your forehead, and it’s against your skin that he whispers, “I just want us to move on from what happened.”

You nod, wrapping an arm around his waist to loosely hug him. Unfortunately, Bam pulls on his leash, and you have to let go of Jungkook far too quickly. Still, you meet his gaze, nodding your head again.

“I want to move on too,” you tell him. “If I could, I’d erase everything but…”

He holds out his hand for you to interlace your fingers with his. “But it’s in the past.”

He’s right, yet you see the wariness. It’s still there, though you think soon the mist will dissipate with the rays of the sun. So you follow him in, let him feed Bam before he shows you around his small apartment. It feels like him, in ways you can’t really describe, and you want to stay. You think, if he’d ask you’d never leave again.

“I like it,” you tell him as he finishes the tour in his bedroom, which is only occupied by an unmade bed with white sheet and a small night table with his pair of glasses on top. You notice the LED lights, and a smile moves to your lips. “Please tell me these still shine purple like they did at the house with the boys.”

Jungkook nods, offering you a grin. “Yeah. I thought it’d be great to have a… reminder of a simpler time.”

He turns them on, and you get it. You get it so much you grab the lapels of his jean jacket, pulling him closer to you. His lips are upon yours in an instant, hungry, insistent, ravishing a kiss that makes you light-headed. Especially as he grabs your face, holds on to it like it’s a life buoy in a storm. The piercings push into your bottom lip, their colder temperature making your tongue dart to them, as if to warm them.

Jungkook groans, and then kicks the door of his bedroom shut. He’s had to stop kissing you for that, but he’s kissing you again half a second later, and it’s even more intense, more desperate.

You let go of his jacket, hands blindly moving to his belt as he pushes his tongue in your mouth. You suck on it, moan lightly when he groans again. You fumble with the buckle, but soon enough you get it undone, and you move on to the button of his jeans.

You just want him. Need to feel his body against you, in you. And clearly he needs the same thing, as he pulls away from the hug to take your shirt off. Right as you get the button undone, and then unzip his jeans. You slip your hand in, letting out a breathy sound as you find him already hard. He sits heavy in your hand, and you squeeze him unabashedly.

“Fuck,” he curses, head thrown back as his eyes close. “Baby.”

The pet name has you drop to your knees, and you pull his pants down just enough for his dick to spring free. He doesn’t try to stop you, and you admire him for a time. Admire the brown base of his tip, the veins that run along his length. A bead of precum appears on his slit as you look, and you’re quick to lick it clean. The salty taste fills your mouth, and you look up at him, to see him watching down on you, strands of hair falling in his eyes where they’ve escaped the confines of his beanie.

“Suck it, mmh?” he says.

You grab him, jerking him off loosely. “Yeah?”

His eyes darken behind the strands of hair. He bites at his piercings, cocking his head to the side. And then he’s glancing away and to your surprise, he asks, “Can I take pictures of you while you suck my dick?”

You swirl your tongue around his tip, and he bucks his hips forward. In answer, you sit back on your heels, looking up at him innocently. “Right now?” He nods. “You want to take pictures of me while I suck your dick?”

“If you want to,” he answers. “If you don’t want to it’s fine.”

You close your lips around his tip, sucking once. “You’ll keep the pictures to yourself?”

You don’t know why you’re agreeing. Only know that the lust in Jungkook’s gaze is making you forget everything about common sense. But then again, you highly doubt that Jungkook would ever do anything to harm you.

Jungkook’s mouth falls open as he was about to answer, but when you take his dick as far as you can, he’s silenced. And he’s hard in your mouth, a rod of steel you’ve missed since last week.

“Yeah,” he finally breathes out.

You sit back on your heels. “Then it’s fine.”

He smirks, nodding his head as he finishes taking off his jeans and underwear. “Wait here.”

You purse your lips as he walks away, and you watch him leaving his room to head to where he left his camera. You patiently wait, feeling shy even though you have nothing to be shy about. This is just Jungkook – it’s not like he hasn’t seen you half-naked and on your knees for him before.

It takes him a moment to come back, but when he does, it’s to sit on bed. He’s still hard, and he leans back on a hand as you move closer.

“If you want me to stop, you tell me, okay?” he gently says as you run a hand along his thighs.

You glance at his scar, the familiar knot of skin giving you more confidence than you expected. “You’re going to jerk off to these pictures, mmh?”             

He gulps, angling his camera towards you as you lean closer to his dick. You lick at it, and the shutter goes off.

It has you dripping in your panties, unexpectedly.

“So what if I do?” he asks as you grab his dick, stroking him.

The question is rhetorical, and your answer is to wrap your lips around his cock as your eyes flutter shut. You swirl your tongue around the tip and hollow your cheeks as you go down. You hold the gag reflex in as he hits the back of your throat, and you can’t help but moan as you hear his camera again.

You flick your tongue at his frenulum on the way out, and then you stroke his dick as you sit back. You move one hand to his balls, squeezing gently before thinking better of it and leaning forward, sucking on one. He grunts, and you keep your eyes locked on the camera as you jerk him off faster.

Another picture added to the list. And you’re dripping wet. Already you want to sink on his dick, want him to be so deep inside of you that you’re just one.

“Kook…” you murmur, and then you’re back to sucking on his dick, though this time you make sure to squeeze his balls too, the way that he likes it. Hard, but not too hard, and you’re choking around his dick in no time as he starts fucking up in your mouth, clearly forgetting about the pictures.

It goes like this for a while, with his dick growing impossibly hard. Your jaw aches by the time he pushes down on your head, hand lost in your hair. You gag, and he moans loudly. You think he’s coming, but he somehow manages to keep it in before pulling you off.

“Shit,” he curses. “Sorry.” He breathes for a moment, as you wipe your mouth and chin from the drool.

“It’s okay,” you reassure him. You glance at the camera. “Any good pics?”

That brings him back to the land of lust and passion, and he offers you a smirk. “We can look at them after. I’m not done with you yet.”

You laugh, because you know you’ve barely started. Know you’re likely to be unable to walk tomorrow. Because the lust in his gaze hasn’t shone so bright in years, yes, but also because you almost lost each other.

Or maybe you have, and this too is just a dip in the past.

You stand up, hands snaking to your back so that you can unclasp your bra. Jungkook watches you carefully, before taking a picture as you massage your breasts. It makes you bite at your lower lip, and you look at his hard dick where it rests on his stomach.

“Can I ride you?” you ask breathlessly.

He smirks. “You don’t want me to finger you first?”

Instead of replying, you finish undressing, taking off your pants and panties at the same time. You then push on his jean jacket, and he takes that as a cue to remove it. You motion to the shirt too as he was about to lean back on his hand and he cocks his head to the side, an eyebrow raised. When you nod, he takes it off too, and it makes his beanie fall.

His hair is a mess, and you can’t resist but step forward so that you can push it back, though you think the jet black strands are currently untamable. You give up after a few seconds, pushing on his chest so that he lies back.

His eyes are on you as you climb on his lap, and you grind along his length, coating it with your juices.

“Shit,” he lets out again. “You’re fucking dripping.”

You nod, moving up just enough so that you can grab the base of his dick. His tip prods your entrance, and he pulls at his piercings as you wait there, teasing him with a corner smile on your lips.

“Fucking tease,” he growls.

It undoes something in you. Because yes, you wanted to tease him. You wanted him to beg you to fuck him, but now you sink down on him, until he reaches your cervix. Even the pain of him hitting the back of your pussy doesn’t make you move, and your walls clench around his dick as he grunts out a curse, followed by your name.

“Kook,” you purr. “Fuck me good.”

He chuckles as you circle your hips, and his free hand rests on your hip as he angles his camera to take a picture of you again. “You can’t do the work?”

He says it condescendingly, and you find enough challenge in you to start bouncing up and down. It shuts him up, and the following moment is spent with you fucking yourself on him as he groans under you, your breathy moans filling his room. Soon enough he stops taking pictures, putting his camera down next to him so that he can hold your hips with his two hands.

And then he’s fucking up in you, and you cry out as you lean forward, wrapping an arm around his neck while your other hand holds on to his shoulder.

You’re a mess, yet your heart clenches in your chest as he fucks you like this. As you remember a land of winter, that somehow doesn’t feel as distant as it should. Maybe because of Jungkook’s wariness tonight, or maybe because you know all good things come to an end.

The thought douses your arousal, until Jungkook stills deep inside of you and whispers, “I want to be with you, like this, forever.”

You nuzzle your face in his neck and suck a mark on his skin. “Me too.”

And then he’s fucking you again, hard and quick. He holds you close, grunts in your ear as you lick at his neck. It’s an abundance of sensation, and your brain focuses on the way he hits your clit whenever he pushes up. Whenever his hips snap against you, and soon there’s an orgasm in the distance.

It finds you when he lets you sit up so that you can fuck yourself on him again, and his thumb finds your clit to press expert circles on it. It finds you hard, and your pussy spasms repeatedly on his dick. He helps you through the high, and when you finally come down, a dumb smile tugs at the corners of your lips.

“Fuck,” you let out.

“Felt good?” he asks with a teasing tone to his voice, the one you know he only reserves for you.

To hear it right now makes you love him so much you think you’ll die on the spot. Because yes, tonight has been great. Yes, it’s almost been like before, but what if he doesn’t take you back?

What if, in the end, this was just an extended moment meant to be closure for you and him?

“Yes,” you still reply.

Because no matter how much your heart aches in your chest, you’ll never lie to him.

“Good,” he says. He sits up, wraps an arm around your waist to steady you as he brings his mouth to yours.

You go in for the kiss. Meet him halfway, and you moan against him as he moves under you, albeit clumsily from the position.

His lips will make you drunk. Make you dumb, make you forget that there’s a world outside the door. That, in that world, you might not belong to him anymore. But then again, you think you do. To you, you always will.

“Lie on your side,” he says after a moment, lips moving against yours.

Jungkook pecks your lips one last time before you move, and then he kneels behind you. His dick prods your entrance again, and he grabs his camera to snap another picture.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he praises as he pushes the tip in, taking another picture. “Such a good little fucking slut.”

And then he pushes all the way in, until all of him is embedded in you. You grip the sheets as a broken moan escapes your lips. He holds your hip with one hand, fingers digging in the supple skin as he fucks you hard, chasing his own orgasm.

He looks good doing it. Long hair sticking to the sweat on his face, eyes narrowed in pleasure, mouth open as soft grunts echo through the room. The purple light makes his honey skin glow somehow, and you feel another orgasm reaching for you, though it doesn’t hit right away. It just feels so good – as he always does – and you can’t help but clench your walls against him.

That’s what undoes him. He comes, ropes of white painting your insides, as he swears and says your name in a litany that almost makes you go over the edge too.

“Baby,” he says at the end.

It feels like a confirmation. Like a confirmation that, maybe, maybe you will work this time around. That maybe distance won’t destroy you again – maybe you’ll grow old and gray by his side.

“You came so much,” you say as you feel his hot cum sitting deep inside of you.

He pulls at his piercing, nodding once. And then he pulls out, and he takes a picture of the cum dripping out of you. He decides to push it back in, curling a finger inside of you, and your walls clench as you moan.

“Touch your clit,” he tells you.

You don’t need to be told twice. You quickly move your fingers to the sensitive bundle of nerves, drawing quick circles on it as he pushes another digit inside of you, fingering you until the second orgasm finally finds you.

You cry out his name, a broken plea that doesn’t really make any sense as your vision turns white. And it stays that way for a long time, blinding you until ecstasy is swimming in your blood. And when you come down from the high, all that you can think is how much you missed him.

“Kook,” you breathe out.

“Baby…”

He puts the camera away, and then bends to press a kiss on your lips. It’s soft, and you grab his face to hold him in place, not even wincing as a bead of his sweat rolls on your cheek. You kiss him with a heart heavy with emotions, trying to show him that you’re never going to leave again. When he pulls away, you notice his teary gaze.

“Can we be together again?” he asks, and you watch in horror as a tear rolls on his cheek. You sit up, drying it with your thumb.

And you don’t care if it was too quick. Don’t care that there’s a high chance it won’t last. You still answer, “Yes, Kook. Yes we can.”

He smiles, nodding his head. “Let’s take a shower. I want to hold you tonight.”

You want to cry from the statement, want to tell him that you wish he could hold you forever, but the words get lodged in your throat. Instead, you follow him as he gets up, interlacing your fingers with his as he leads you to the bathroom, uncaring that his seed is rolling down your inner thighs.

He turns the shower on, and soon enough you’re standing under the hot water. He watches you carefully, presses a kiss on your forehead when you stand in front of him. You wrap your arms around his waist, holding him as close as you physically can. Even then it’s not enough – you want him under your skin, or to be under his.

You don’t think you’d survive being parted from him again. Maybe that’s why you let him fuck you again when you return to his room, slower this time, lips entwined in a never-ending embrace. Love flows between you and him, and it’s etched in the way your bodies move together, in the way you’ve been molded perfectly for him, and him for you.

You wonder if outside, the stars are shining. And you’re struck thinking that tonight, tonight they’ve aligned for you and him again, the universe agreeing for this second chance between you and him.

So you hold him close, and pray that this time around, forever is waiting for you.

Saturday, September 9th

                Jungkook wakes up slowly. Softly, the same way waves hit the shore at low tide. He’s unusually warm, and he frowns as he shifts, trying to turn on his side. Then, he realizes his arm is stuck under something. His very dead arm, and he cracks an eye open.

That’s when he remembers that it’s you. You’re the one sleeping next to him, mouth slightly agape as you breathe softly. You’re also the one crushing his arm, and he tentatively clenches and unclenches his fist to try to get the blood circulation back on track. It doesn’t really work, so then he stops, figuring he’s going to have to make you move somehow.

But you look peaceful, in the light of the rising sun. Serene, like there’s never been anything wrong in this world. This morning, Jungkook wants to believe it. Wants to believe that happiness is all he’s ever known – that accidents, heartbreak and pain are all constructs of his imagination.

He’s too realistic for that. Or perhaps the breakup has made him pessimistic. Because the peace of the moment doesn’t really linger, and he’s stuck reliving the moment you left, that night in May. Stuck reliving the wait for you to come back, only you never did.

Or maybe you did, months later. Maybe you really are back, and this time you’ll stay.

You mumble something in your sleep, startling him. It takes him a few seconds to realize you’re still deep asleep, but when you move he quickly does too, pulling his arm from under your head. You frown, lick your lips, and then your features smooth out as you return to your peaceful slumber.

He turns on his side, watching you carefully. He’s aware that watching you sleep is creepy, but he can’t help it. Not when his bed has been empty for months.

He stays like this for a while, unable to fall back asleep. Because, what if you’re gone when he wakes up again? He doesn’t want to risk it.

Unable to help himself, he gently brushes a strand of hair behind your ear. You sigh, and he’s afraid he’s woken you up. When a small smile appears on your lips, his heart skips a beat, yet you don’t show any other sign that you’re awake. He assumes you aren’t, and then decide to take a picture of this moment.

He feels like he’s going to need it. Like all the pictures he took yesterday – he was desperate to commit to memory as much of you as he possibly could. He feels bad – he said he’d give you a chance, he is giving you a chance, but some part of him is just waiting for it to blow up in his face.

Maybe if he expects it it will hurt less.

He carefully grabs his camera where he left it on his night table. He doesn’t dare take a look at the pictures you took yesterday, a little ashamed that he asked you to do that in the first place. Silently, he takes a picture of you, and then puts the camera away.

Only, the reminder of the kind of pictures he’d find in the camera was enough to make his blood stir, and he picks it back up almost immediately.

And then there you are, in all your glory. Beautiful as ever, pussy filled to the brim with his cum, with his cock. Tits squeezed in your hands, in his, and his dick goes rock hard as blood leaves his head.

He wants you again, and he wants you now. He doesn’t care that it’s early morning, that he never liked waking up early. All he can do is put the camera down and slide closer to you. He pulls you back into his embrace, and you sigh softly as he wraps his arms around you.

Jungkook holds you tighter, nuzzling his face in your hair. The inebriating scent of your shampoo fills his nose, and his dick twitches in his underwear.

You hum, and he holds you tighter. “Morning,” he says, voice low and gravelly.

You make another sound that can pass as a hum, but you move against him, until you’ve wrapped an arm around his middle. There’s a moment where silence reigns again, and Jungkook is afraid you’ve fallen back asleep, but then you say, “Morning.”

He smiles. “Slept well?” he asks, kissing the top of your head.

He’s convinced you’re smiling against him as you say, “Want to sleep more.”

He whines, which earns him a chuckle from you that makes the wariness settle back in, even as his heart feels full in his chest.

It never felt full without you. Another reason why he needs to be ready for the blow, whenever it comes.

“I want you,” he admits. “Can’t sleep.”

You hum again, and your hand slides down his back. You squeeze his ass, and then move the hand back up. “You’re going to have to try.”

He whines, lips jutting out in a pout. “Boring.”

At that you laugh, pushing him slightly until you’re able to look him in the eye. He keeps the pout on, knowing that it always worked with you before.

“It’s not even morning,” you point out.

“The sun is up.”

You roll your eyes, though your lips are curved upwards, your gaze beaming as you hold his. “We fucked twice last night.”

He shrugs, rolling on his back so that he can stare up at the ceiling. He pulls at his piercing, the new one, and then turns his head towards you again. “Yeah, and?”

“Surely you don’t need to fuck right now,” you tease.

He frowns, looking away again. “Not my fault if I haven’t fucked since… May. Last weekend doesn’t count.”

“I’m pretty sure it does,” you say, laughing lightly. You prop yourself up on an elbow, blinking away the tiredness as you meet his gaze again. “And besides,” you pause, features turning confused as a crease appears between your brows. “Haven’t you fucked while we were…” you trail off, motioning vaguely around you.

And then something occurs to Jungkook. Something bad – maybe the explosion was closer than he expected it to be. Maybe he’s been standing in the radius of impact, waiting for the bomb to go off. And maybe your sleep deprived brain forgot the measure of protection, maybe it forgot he was standing there.

Because your eyes go round with fear, right as a drop of lead solidifies in Jungkook’s stomach.

“What?” he lets out.

What a stupid question to ask. He wants to beat himself up, because he knows.

He knows now that you’ve been with someone else. Why else would you be surprised that he hasn’t?

“I’m just saying…” you try, but it’s too late.

The bomb has gone off, and all that’s left is rumbles.

“Get out,” Jungkook says, and somehow it’s lacking bite. It’s lacking anger, lacking any signs that he cares for you.

It surprises even himself – doesn’t he care? Or is there nothing left of him in the aftermath of the explosion?

“Kook.”

“You’ve fucked someone else,” he states. When you don’t say anything, just watch him in horror, he sits up in bed. “Get out.”

“Come on,” you let out this time, following him up. You wrap yourself in the blanket, his blanket, and he wants to rip it from your body. Doesn’t want anything that’s his to be in contact with you anymore. “It didn’t mean anything,” you say, and you’re suddenly blinking back tears. “It was just one-time.”

“Frankly, I don’t want to know,” Jungkook says, and he really doesn’t. Doesn’t want to think about another man’s hand on you, or he’ll break.

He’s done breaking for you.

You don’t fight the tears, as you understand that the end really has come. At least that’s what he thinks happens – you just sit there, gaze heavy with tears until they fall, little droplets that carry a world of regret.

After all, the distance really was enough to break you up, wasn’t it?

Jungkook watches you, surprised that his heart is not clenching in his chest. No, he feels nothing as he watches you – he’s already cried enough for you.

“We were broken up,” you murmur, holding his gaze. “It’s not like I cheated.”

At that he laughs, shaking his head. If you can’t understand that he’s done, that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with you anymore, then he’ll do it the harsh way.

“I don’t give a fuck,” he says. “I couldn’t be with someone else. I tried, and you were all I could think of. And…”

“You tried!” you interject. “You tried and you’re giving me shit for it?”

He gets up, trying to put distance between you and him, as if that’ll make the fight easier.

“I still chose not to do it,” he coldly states. “The girl was willing, she even kissed me and…”

“You kissed someone else?”

He laughs again, the absurdity of the situation dawning upon him. “Yeah? Tae set me up on a date, and the girl kissed me at the end and I told her I couldn’t. I didn’t fuck someone else.”

The way he’s throwing the blame at you feels selfish, especially as more tears join those already sliding down your cheeks.

“How is that fair, that you’re mad at me when you literally went on a date with someone else?” You pause, choking on a sob as you try to dry your cheeks. “Come on, Kook, it meant nothing.”

“Who did you fuck anyway?” he asks.

For a reason unknown, your tears stop. Entirely, there a moment and gone the next. “Why do you want to know?”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t fucking want to know, and he scoffs as he runs a hand through his hair, pulling at the strands. “Get out,” he says again, still as stern and void of emotion.

“It was Harrison,” you still say. “I switched departments because I didn’t want to see him again after that.”

Now, there’s an inkling of pain tickling the carcass of his dead heart. As if there was still more, for him to feel, even after everything. As if pain is but a constant of his life now, and he thinks maybe it is.

“Your colleague?” he repeats, dumbfounded.

He’s met Harrison a couple of times, throughout your relationship. He’s always thought the guy was decent, but now something very ugly settles deep in his core. Something that tells him, ‘Hey, maybe he’s only ever wanted to fuck her, maybe he was waiting for his chance’.

The words are on a loop in his head, and he doesn’t even think he can see you anymore. All that he sees is Harrison with his hands on you, in his ever-too creative mind.

He startles as you put a hand on his arm. He shrugs your grip off, steps away from you. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Kook, I swear, please listen to me,” you beg, and now you’re crying again.

He shakes his head. “I don’t want to.” At that he shuts his eyes, runs a hand on his forehead and then through his hair. “I really don’t want to. I don’t want you to be here anymore.”

“It didn’t mean anything,” you say, an echo of something you said earlier. Though this time you say it differently, as if you too sensed the finality in Jungkook’s tone.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever want you to be around anymore. He was stupid to give you a chance after you broke his heart – you chose to break up, months ago. Why would it be different this time around?

“It doesn’t matter,” he tells you, as softly as he can. Because he knows you’ll break even more, and some dark, twisted part of him is satisfied that this time, this time he’s the one with all the power over you. “I’m done, Y/n.”

The words sound like thunder, in all their calmness. In all their softness – or maybe that was the sound of your heart breaking. Whatever it was, Jungkook really is done. He wants you gone, wants to be able to break in the quiet peace of his home.

A home you aren’t a part of anymore.

You nod. He expects you to fight more, but you nod. Choke out a sob, turn around, and start putting your clothes on. He figures he should dress too, so he does, picking up discarded items of clothing on the floor, not caring that they probably aren’t clean. All that he cares about is to get you out of his apartment, out of his sight.

And when you’re ready, he walks you to the front door. Lets you say goodbye to Bam, a crushing parallel to the time you’ve said goodbye in May. Bam still looks confused, and Jungkook feels bad, for a moment. Because you were the dog’s mother – he’s been looking for you ever since May. Jungkook can only hope that, this time around, Bam understands that it’s farewell.

When you straighten, you mutter an apology. Jungkook ignores it, holds your gaze expecting something to hurt, but he’s just empty. Empty and tired, and all he wants is to go back to sleep and to never wake up again.

“I can’t let you go,” you let out, voice stark with pain.

He shrugs. “You should have realized that in May.”

You close your eyes, and you look so fragile. Like glass – it never survives the shockwave of an explosion, doesn’t it?

“Please,” you beg. “Let me make it up to you.”

He laughs bitterly. “How? You’re going to go back in time and not get fucked by him? You’re going to go back in time and not break up?”

You look like you want to curse him, and he almost wants you to. He wants you to fight, wants you to make him feel something other than this emptiness. Instead, you shake even more, sobs racking through you.

“I wish I could.”

“Leave.”

“Jungkook, I swear,” you insist. “Let’s not lose each other over this.”

He wets his lips, tongue pushing in the inside of his cheek next. “We’ve lost each other already. It’s time we realize that we have.”

And that does it. You fall silent, defeat washing over you like a tsunami wave – there’s nothing left after its passage, and you look tired, sick, standing there right next to the door.

“I’m so sorry,” you apologize again.

He shrugs. “It’s whatever. The past is the past.”

You look like you want to say something else, but somehow you remain silent. Somehow you look at him for a time, bloodshot eyes taking in his features as if it’s the last time you’ll ever see him again. He surprises himself by doing it too, mostly by instinct. Because right now, looking at you makes him want to be sick, but he knows that it won’t last.

He knows that the echo of pain in the distance is a good indicator that he still has it in him to break for you. That he’ll break for you forever, perhaps. Because he doesn’t think that there’s an end to you and him. It’s always going to be a cycle, and it’ll never end well.

“Goodbye, Jungkook,” you murmur.

He offers you a tight-lipped smile. “Goodbye.”

All he can do is hope you know it means farewell.

Thursday, October 5th

                You used to love fall. The cooler weather, the long walks that smell like soil and fallen leaves and pumpkins. Nowadays, you hate fall.

You hate it because he loved it, and every reminder of him is poison to you. And though the season is still early, the days are getting shorter, and the longer the night, the more you drown in thoughts.

You haven’t slept in weeks. Have barely eaten too, and you’ve been off from work for a week. It’s allowed you to stay in, to just sit and try to breathe, hoping that it’ll help.

That it’ll fix something that’s never going to be fixed.

You’re lost. Lost in a town that used to be your home, lost in memories that used to be beauty brought to life – now, you’re seeing the ugliness in beauty. Because beauty is temporary, and like all temporary things in life it doesn’t last long enough. Beauty, and the ending temporality of it, leaves nothing when it goes but a bitter taste in mouth.

Perhaps that’s why you haven’t been able to eat properly.

You haven’t spoken to anyone, since the early morning he asked you to leave. Yet for some reason, you’ve felt the need to go outside today. To walk around, aimlessly perhaps, but you couldn’t stay inside a second longer. Too many tears were shed in your apartment, and you hoped the cool weather would help you feel better.

It does, a little. Because you feel like you’re breathing him in every time you inhale, and then carry him out on an exhale. You feel close to him, in a distant way that’s bound to only make you break harder tonight, but right now you can’t bring yourself to care. You do hate the reminders of him, but you need them. Viscerally, as he was the oxygen in your lungs for so long.

You’re going to have to learn how to live without him, one step at a time.

So you take another step, let your instinct carry you where you have to go. Maybe it knows how to heal.

The sun is descending in the sky, and the absence of clouds lead to a sea of azure you’d swim in if you could. You’d soar up high, so high that there isn’t oxygen anymore, and maybe then the pain would cease. You’d ride a sunray into the night, where you’d finally be able to fall into a well-deserved slumber.

As you look up, a tiny bird flies across the sky, a small speck of brown that goes so fast you think you imagine it. Like the years with him – they went by so quickly, the crushing wheel of time spinning down the slope towards the end.

Seven years ago, almost to the day, you kissed him on a hotel roof lost in Chicago, under clouds painted with fire. Who knew seven years later you’d be trying to live without him, clearly failing at it.

You sigh, pushing the thought away as you reach a crossing. You wait for the light to turn green, then follow the parallel white lines across the road. You avoid a pile of leaves, though a strong gust of wind makes some of them swirl around you, spinning like Mother Nature’s tiny dancers.

The foliage in the trees along the street is golden and red, bright colours that look out of place in the bleakness of your heart. You follow them, wonder if they know that they are about to die. The answer is one you’ll never have, and so you walk under the trees, the autumn breeze playing with your hair.

You don’t know where your steps have been carrying you. You’ve long gone past the places you usually go to, heading towards the middle of the city. The no man’s land between you and Jungkook, spread wide in a maze of streets you want to get lost in.

So you do. You press on, walk until the sun becomes a ball of melted gold nearing the horizon, and it’s on the corner of a street that a glint in a vitrine catches your eyes.

You eye the rings, crafted by an expert hand. Bands of gold, with diamonds and emeralds and gems you don’t know the name of. They look expensive, elegant, and you wonder if you would have had a ring on your finger one day, bought by him.

Recklessly, you walk into the shop, wishing to peruse its vitrines, hoping they’ll offer you dreams to survive the night. And you can almost see it – a ring on your finger, a proposal under a star-sprinkled sky, an intimate wedding for you and him. A dance, always and forever, of love shared like a secret in the night. Your secret, as the end would have one day come for you and him, an eternity of life later. You would have been old and grey, yet your love would have been young and eternal.

In this dream, he would have never taken the job overseas. You’d have stayed here, together, growing old by his side. You would have gotten more dogs, maybe even a cat, and you’d have lived happily ever after.

You wonder if, in a parallel universe to yours, the dream is unfolding. If parallel-universe you has the chance to experience it, and you think she does. You think she does, and the love is so strong it’s shaking through universes, picking you up like you’re just a leaf in an autumn wind.

Because why else, then, do you find yourself buying a gold band? Too big for you, masculine in its simplicity. Something you think he would have worn, had you been in that other universe.

You sit on a bench outside, after, as the last of the sunlight finally fades away, replaced by a blue dusk that matches your mood far better than the sun ever could. You have no idea where you are in the city, no will to brave the trek back home – you’ve been out for hours at this point.

You grab your phone, long forgotten in your purse. You haven’t touched it all day, and to your surprise you’ve received a couple of texts while you were walking, all by the same person.

[04:37 pm] Jimin: hey, this is going to sound crazy [04:37 pm] Jimin: and I’m really sorry to be telling u this [04:37 pm] Jimin: can u go check on JK? [04:38 pm] Jimin: he’s been unreachable for days and at this point I think he’ll only talk to u

You want to text him back to fuck off, to leave you alone, yet you hold on tighter to the velvety box in which the gold band hides. After all, even if you’ve received the texts hours ago, you’re realizing perhaps that that’s where your steps have been leading you anyway.

It’s stupid – he asked you to leave. Hasn’t contacted you once since then, and it’s like the wedding and the week after never happened. Like you’ve been broken up for months, like you barely know him anymore. He’s a stranger now, in your life, something you’d never thought he’d become someday.

And why would he talk to you? Why would he want you in his vicinity, when he made it clear as spring water that he was done, that the end had come to pass between you and him?

But if the end has come, why is that you’ve been feeling like you’re surrounded by him, today? Like you’ll always be – just a drop of water in the sea of him. Perhaps you are weak, to feel for him the way that you do, but seven years ago, the cataclysm that started you and him shook you, and its repercussions are still felt today. Will be felt until your dying breath, until all that’s left of you is stardust.

So you let your feet carry you, weightless in the way that you’re moving forward. Like you are once again but a leaf carried by the wind, and you can only hope that it’ll let you land in the right place.

You don’t really know how you make it to his building. Perhaps you were closer than you initially thought you were – all that you know is that you recognize the building, and that you sense his proximity through the walls.

Your heart reaches for him, longs for him in a way you can’t ignore anymore. Because you’ve been dead, without him. Just a shell of what you should be, of what you want to be. Because yes, you could learn to live without him. After everything that you’ve been through, you know well enough that you are strong enough to do it.

But you don’t want it. You want that dream you’ve found in the jewelry shop, want to make it possible. Want to prove that, no matter who would ever get close to you, he’ll always be the owner of your heart.

So you walk in. Reach the elevator, press on the call button. Then on the fourth floor, reminiscing the night you rode the elevator in his company, right before the fall. The new fall, a harshest one that made you reach those low levels of hell that living without him are consisted of.

You awaken when you are standing in front of his door. You think you can almost hear him inside, moving around through his home. You wonder if he can hear your heartbeat, where you’re standing. If he too can tell that you’re nearby once again, even though you shouldn’t have been.

Even though farewells have come to pass between you and him.

You don’t knock. You don’t have to. To your surprise, the door opens in front of you, slowly, before you’ve even managed to raise your arm to knock. Then his voice fills your ear, as he tells Bam to wait. You just stand there, dumbfounded, and then his eyes move from the floor to your face, and his mouth falls open.

Bam jumps on you, tail wagging wildly as you take a step back from the force of impact. You pet him on the head, pushing him back to the floor as you try to focus on Jungkook.

And then it dawns upon you that you have no clue what to tell him. You reckon you maybe should have prepared something in advance, because you’re wordless standing in front of him.

“Hey,” you eventually say, and you think the world has time to revolve around the sun three times before you manage to say something else. “How are you?”

His mouth slowly shuts, and you watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. He pulls on Bam’s leash, tells the dog to sit, before he finally addresses you. Just your name, and the way he says it make it sound formal, like you’re just a stranger.

“What are you doing here?” he asks after another moment.

You look down at your hands. At the box you’re holding, and his eyes follow after you. “I was thinking of you, today,” you admit.

He sighs, and his eyes shut. “You were?”

You nod as he meets your gaze again. “When am I not?” Your comment doesn’t ask for a response, and he doesn’t offer you one either. “Jimin told me you’ve been unreachable.”

“Yeah,” he lets out. “I’ve been busy.”

“Oh.” You try to look behind him, as if you’ll find his reason to be busy there. “Can I talk to you?”

He says your name, this time like an apology. “I told you we were done.”

You shrug. “I know.” You gulp, fingers playing with the velvet box as if it’ll help ground you. “Can I walk Bam with you, then?”

He looks conflicted but he gives in. Says yes in a defeated way that rips your heart from your chest, in a way that makes you cling to the ring box even more, hoping that it’ll offer you salvation.

Being outside in the early fall evening with him feels like the Earth has finally returned to its normal axis. You don’t say anything, unable to find the words, and he remains silent too. You just enjoy his company, watching over Bam as he sniffs at plants before peeing on a pole.

Stars are twinkling in the sky up above. The breeze is still soft tonight, caressing your features in a gentle embrace that resembles the one he’d used to offer you, though it’s far colder than his. You spare a glance at him – he’s already looking, and he doesn’t look away as your gazes connect.

“What are you doing here?” he asks again.

You wet your lips. “I don’t know,” you admit. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

“How is that an explanation?” A shrug of your shoulders is all the answer he gets. He scoffs, shakes his head slightly, and then his head turns toward the door of his building. “I have hot chocolate inside,” he tells you, once again sounding defeated. “Do you want a cup?”

Turns out salvation wasn’t to be found in the velvet box you’re holding, but in the gentle angles of Jungkook’s features, behind his big doe eyes that will forever feel like home to you.

“I don’t want to intrude,” you tell him, voice soft. “I just wanted to… talk.”

“Then let’s talk over a cup of hot chocolate,” he says.

Which is what you do. You follow him in, feeling like you’re out of place in his life. Like he’s only giving this to you because of what you used to be to one another. Yet you don’t care. You’re slowly finding words, your brain shaping them into sentences to change an ending you can’t come to terms with.

Jungkook prepares the hot chocolate in silence, as you sit at his small dinner table. You play with Bam as he does so, a game of tug-of-war that you’re bound to lose as the dog is far stronger than you. Yet you still indulge, as you’ve missed Bam far more than you even thought possible.

The game is only interrupted when Jungkook rests a cup of steaming hot chocolate on the table next to you. You let Bam go, and the dog trots away to go play somewhere else, you can only assume.

“What did you want to talk about?”

You’ve left the ring box on the table. You’ve noticed Jungkook glancing at it repeatedly since you’ve put it there, and you worry at your bottom lip.

“I wanted to apologize again, for what it’s worth,” you answer. “I felt horrible when it happened, and just wanted to forget all about it.”

His features turn harsh, and his eyes drop into the cup of hot chocolate he’s nursing for himself. It reminds you of a café, of a conversation you had years ago, that led to you opening up to him, and to him opening up to you.

“I love you,” you continue. “I haven’t stopped loving you, and if I’d known that breaking up would hurt so much, I would’ve fought harder. I wish I had, and I wish I’d never let you go.”

“But you did…” he says when you remain silent for a few seconds.

“But I did. And I understand if you hate me for it. If you don’t want to ever see me again. But shit, you’re the only thing that I’ve been able to think about. Just you, and everything that could have been, had I been stronger.”

You grab the cup of hot chocolate, the warmth of it slowly seeping through your cold fingers. For the next few minutes, you don’t say anything, and neither does he. You just drink the hot chocolate, hoping you’ll find more words to say at the bottom of the cup.

“The distance was hard,” Jungkook eventually says. “I don’t blame you for wanting to end things over it.”

It surprises you. Makes your brain go entirely empty, and you just watch him with wide eyes for a few seconds.

He shrugs as you don’t say anything. “What?” He looks down, tongue darting out to play with his piercings. “I’ve been thinking about everything too.”

“Yeah?”

He nods. “I over-reacted, when you told me you had sex with Harrison,” he admits.

Totally not expecting the conversation to take this turn, you’re stunned silent.

“I was shocked, and needed time to process,” he continues. “You were right, the fact that I went on a full-on date is just as bad, differently. We were broken up, we didn’t owe each other anything.”

As much as it pains you to agree, you still do, nodding your head. “We didn’t.”

He purses his lips, holds your gaze for a few seconds before glancing down at his cup. The silence is more comfortable now, as you think maybe, maybe then the dream you’ve dreamed about isn’t just a distant mirage of what could have once been. It’s foolish, but you can’t help it.

You think your heart is beating for the first time since you left that morning weeks ago.

“Did you want to speak about anything else?” he asks after he’s taken a long sip of his hot chocolate.

You take a deep breath, and somehow courage finds you on the long exhale. “I don’t want us to be over.”

You think you hear him gulp. “You don’t?”

Blinking away a few tears, you shake your head no. “I really don’t. I walked around all day today, and all I could think about was you. All I could think of was all the years between us, from when we met to a few weeks ago. And I don’t know, I refuse to accept that the end has come.”

“When does it come, then?” he asks.

“When the end comes?”

He nods.

“After years and years,” you say, allowing yourself to voice your dream. “Hopefully after we’ve had years to live together. After we’ve gotten married, and maybe even after we’ve had kids. Not that I want some.��� You pause, and you look down at the table, unable to carry the weight of his gaze anymore. “Or maybe after we’ve had plenty of dogs, a cat or two. After we’ve had a house with a white picket fence, after we’ve danced under a thousand different night skies.” A tear rolls on your cheek, and you do nothing to stop it. “After we’ve travelled the world together, after we’ve had a chance to live, together.”

“And what happens after we’ve lived together?” he presses.

You shrug. “Then we die together. Then we turn into stardust and memories. I don’t care. As long as it’s with you, I don’t care what happens to me.”

Blurry behind the wall of tears in your eyes, you see Jungkook run a hand through his hair. “You don’t?”

“I don’t,” you echo. “I just want to get to love you.”

At that you do cry. And not just a little bit. Your heart longs and yearns for him, reaching in the space between you, trying to find a beat to sync with. You wipe your cheeks dry with trembling hands, before pressing the heel of your palms on your eyes, hoping to stop the cascade at the source.

“It’s a nice dream,” Jungkook says after the few minutes it takes you to collect yourself, your hands falling to the table.

“Is it?”

He nods. “Yeah. I don’t think we’d do a white picket fence though. I’ve always found cedar trees make a better fence.”

Something stirs inside of you, and you want to take a hold of him, and to never let go. “Yeah?”

He sits back in the chair, looks up to the ceiling as he blinks away the silver in his own gaze. You wonder if he’s crying because he saw you cry, as the sympathetic crier that he is, or because he shares the emotions in your heart.

“Where would you want to get married?” he asks then.

You push the velvet box towards him. “This is for you.”

He doesn’t acknowledge this, instead repeating the question.

“Somewhere in the countryside,” you answer. “Maybe the cottage where it all started.” You think about Julys of a world ago. “Under the night sky.”

“People don’t usually get married when it’s already dark.”

“Right,” you let out. “Then we’d have a ceremony for just us two when it’s dark outside.”

At that he grabs the box, opening it. You reckon he must have known what the content was, because he doesn’t say anything as he takes it out. As he tries to put it on his finger, though it doesn’t fit. It’s too tight, and it makes him chuckle, a sad sound that almost kills you on the spot.

“Do you think we’d dance under the stars?” he asks as he turns the gold band in his fingers, and light glimmers on it.

“Yes,” you say, nodding your head. “We always would.”

“So you came all the way here to tell me this?”

He meets your gaze again, for the first time in a while. He looks struck with emotion, much like you feel – the depths of his eyes are swirling with love and ache and yearning. You fall forward, fall in his eyes, trying to find home again.

“I came here to ask you to marry me,” you finally say, as it dawns upon you that, yes, your steps were leading you to this all along. “Jungkook, will you marry me?”

He smiles, a world of sadness etched in the sweet curve of his lips. “Can it be this easy?”

You shut your eyes. “It can. Please. Let’s not lose what we have again.”

“When would you like to get married?” he asks.

“Are you saying yes?”

He plays with his piercing, takes a deep breath as he chases tears away from his gaze but to no avail. You watch the two drops as they slowly roll down his face. “When would you like to get married?”

“In July,” you answer easily.

“Next year?”

You nod.

He holds your gaze for a few seconds more, then looks at the gold band again. His fist closes around it, slowly, as if he’ll be able to crush it in his hold. For what you don’t know. All that you know is that his features grow tortured, pained. It doesn’t last long – another deep breath later the expression is gone.

“I need to tell you something,” he says then, his voice so small you can barely hear it.

You prepare yourself. As well as you can, expecting the blow before it comes. You sense it – in the eternity it takes for him to speak again, you see every moment of you and him before this day, your life flashing before your eyes as if you’re about to die.

And then he says it a first time. At first you don’t even understand the words, as if he’s speaking a foreign language. So you let out, “What?”, hoping that it will change the cruelty that this world holds.

But nothing can, after the end has come. Nothing, especially not as he repeats the words, softly, their meaning tainting the dream you’ve just painted with him, until all that’s left of it is a bitter aftertaste in your mouth.

“I’m permanently moving to South Korea.”

Prev | Next

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I'm sorry for the angst, for the cliffhanger, for them to be so stubborn and for how life is working against them now. I hope you don't hate me too much after this :') let me know what you think of this chapter!

All rights reserved to @/oddinary4bts, 2023. Do not copy, repost or translate.

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[her-power]

Last Chance to Dance (Part Five: Rockstar! e.m x fem reader)

🚨🛑🔞18+++ MINORS DNI - YOU WILL BLOCKED🚨🛑🔞 TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNING (For entire series): Rockstar! Addict! Sweet! Mean! Eddie, smut, unprotected p+v, fluff, fingering (f receiving), masturbation, oral (m+f receiving), heavy drug use, descriptions of IV drug use, swearing, talks of anxiety, panic disorder, mental illness, talks of suicide

Eddie Munson Masterlist

Last Chance to Dance Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four

A/N: I'm baaaaaaack. I'm feeling so much better. My son is getting better, and he's still his same goofy one year old self. This ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but the final part will be Part Six! I think you're going to like how I end it. My next series is still brewing in my nogging right now, and I have a few one shot ideas. ALSO, the next series will be a surprise release. What's the theme? You may wonder. Well...I don't know yet! Lmao. I'm just gonna go with the flow, and let my fingers do the talking. (That sounds a little dirty, right? Meh. The dirtier the better!) The series might be based off of a sequence of dreams I have been having of our precious Eddie Munson/Joseph Quinn. I just have to figure out what the fuck they mean. Anyways, I love you all. I hope you enjoy this chapter. I also didn't proof read this, again, I let my fingers do the talking. ;)

Summary: Full Summary on Part One

Word Count: 7.4k

Seven months ago… It was a busy day at the hospital; it was so short staffed they had to call you down from oncology to fill in in the ICU. You were straddling a young man on a gurney who had come in with an overdose, doing chest compressions as they wheeled him into the room. He wasn’t responsive, he still had a pulse, but there was no reaction to his pupils or muscle movement. You knew he was likely brain dead; he had been unconscious for twenty minutes before he was found. It didn’t take much time for your brain to die out when there wasn’t any oxygen. You hopped off his gurney, another nurse took over with compressions because you were getting tired; the doctor on call had given him more Narcan, but then he started to code. They attempted to shock his heart two times before they called it. He was only twenty, another young life lost. 

You had gone outside for a break; you barely smoked cigarettes anymore but today was one of those days where you were really craving the nicotine. It was a warm day, summer was around the corner, but you could never shake the chills you had when a patient dies. You only had an hour left of your shift, and then you could go home, shower off the day, and then enjoy your next two days off.  You were playing a puzzle game on your phone when an unknown number shows up on your screen. You answer, the man on the other end asks if it was you, you say it was, and you’re not sure if you should hang up, or keep listening. 

“My name is Ted Callahan, I’m a longtime friend of the band Corroded Coffin, and their manager.” 

Your breath hitches for a moment, you scratch your head, confused on what was happening. “Uh…I don’t—”

Corroded Coffin. You have known that name longer than the world has, more than half your life. 

“Listen, I know this is out of the blue, but I’m kind of at a loss right now. I’m calling because, Eddie is…he’s going through some stuff right now. He’s been mentioning you a lot lately, and I never even knew you existed until a few weeks ago, but…just hearing him talk about you, and your history, even though I don’t know much. I was wondering if you could help.” He sounds kind, you say to yourself, also exhausted. You never thought you would hear his name again, or even think he'd ever want to associate himself with you again. 

“Me?” You say, almost laughing. “I don’t…I haven’t spoken to Eddie in…God, going on fifteen years now. We didn’t…we didn’t end on good terms, I’m surprised he even remembers me, I…” I think about him every day still. 

“He said you were his first and only love…listen, honey. I’m gonna give it to you straight here. He almost died a few weeks ago, well, not almost, he did...for probably about five minutes. He overdosed on heroin and now he is in rehab after a legal issue in New York City with a few officers and the paramedics that revived him. I know it’s not your responsibility to save him, but I thought maybe you could reach out to him somehow…a phone call, letter. I don’t know what you kids do these days.” 

“He almost died?” You almost whisper it; your breath is caught in your throat and your stomach turns sour. 

“I’m not gonna make you do something you don’t want to do, honey. I don’t know exactly what happened with you two, but…there’s a spark that lights up in his eyes when he talks about you that I haven’t seen in a long time. You must have been really special to him.” He tells you softly. 

“I don’t know about that.” You whisper. If I was so special, why did he leave? 

“Will you at least save my number? Just let me know what you decide. Again, I’m sorry to dump this all on you. I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t think it was gonna make an impact on him…because I think if this rehab and sobriety thing doesn’t work, I’m afraid he’ll be dead in a year.” 

You rub your forehead, squeezing your eyes shut. “I’ll…I’ll think about it. I’ll save your number.”

“Thank you…you have a very kind voice.” He says and you mutter a thanks, you too, and awkwardly hang up the phone. You’re not entirely sure what to think, you just knew you had to get back to work and you would deal with this later. 

You tried not to think about him on the drive home; it was hard not to. Most days you went without thinking about him even though he was so very present on your heart. You’ve dated other people off and on for years, but nothing ever stuck. They were good men, but they were lacking something you quite couldn’t put your finger on. They weren’t him. You rolls your eyes at yourself, you hated how pathetic you felt when you thought about him. He was this famous rockstar, making millions, selling out stadiums and releasing records and most likely fucking every single woman that met him, but you still loved him. You still loved him after everything he put you through, you still loved him even though it had been fifteen years. It broke your heart hearing that he was using heroin, that it had gotten so bad he is now in a rehab. You weren’t sure how helpful you would be to reach out to him, or if he would even respond. You were still shocked when Ted told you he kept talking about you. It took everything in your power not to call him back and tell him to never contact you again because that part of your life was over. 

Or was it?

You thought it was over. Fifteen years ago, it was. When he had ripped out your heart and stomped on it. When he had left you standing in the middle of the street, on a cold night in Hawkins, as you silently cried, repeating the words he said: “I can’t do this anymore.” He never gave you a reason why, even as he sobbed while he was telling you those words. The next day he was actually gone; Gareth, him and Jeff loaded up his van, and had left before the sun had risen that morning. You had grieved him and were on the way to finish grad school for nursing when you saw their faces on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. After that, their songs were on the radio, they were on everyone’s social media. He was everywhere, and you couldn’t get rid of him. You hated how good their music was, and you couldn’t believe the first song on their first album was the one the two of you wrote together. You remember that day like the back of your hand; it was summertime, senior year of high school was around the corner. You were two nerds in love, and no matter where you went, he was always by your side. You had always loved writing poetry, and that was what started the idea of you writing a few verses for him. 

The wind whips your hair as you attempt to turn the page in your book with one hand, trying to shift the weight of the warm body near you as your lean against the trunk of a tree. Eddie was laying in your lap, writing in his composition notebook. Your other hand was gently curling through his hair, massaging his scalp. He sets his notebook down on his stomach and gazes up at you. You look at him and smile, your eyes going back to your book. His hand reaches up to play with your hair, and he grins. “What are you reading?” 

“The collected poems of Sylvia Plath.” You tell him, not meeting his eyes.

He moans softly. “’I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. I think I made you up inside my head.’”

“Didn’t know you could read.” You say with a smirk and he laughs. 

“She’s the only woman that has allowed me inside her head, unlike someone I know.” He sits up, seating himself between your legs as you feel his eyes burn into the side of your face. You look at him, placing the bookmark to save your place. He’s smirking that smirk, and you lean back against the tree. 

“You’ve known me your whole life, you still haven’t figured me out?” He smiles and shakes his head. You reach your hand out to grip his chin. “Am I really that hard to read?” 

“Yes.” He says with a laugh. “You’re a mystery to me. I want to know what goes on inside that pretty little noggin of yours.” He leans forward, kissing your lips softly. You smile against his lips. 

“Give me your notebook. I’ll give you a little taste.” 

“Ooooh.” He says, groaning softly, brushing his lips against yours. “Don’t tempt me to taste other things.” 

A shudder goes through you, and you try to hide your blush. He giggles, rubbing your cheek softly, pushing his notebook into your chest. “Write me a song.” 

“I’m not sure if my thoughts are heavy metal material.” You tell him, turning to a blank page and uncapping the pen. He kisses your neck gently; his fingers lightly graze against the soft skin on your arm. Your eyes flutter close at his touch and you press the tip of the pen on the paper. He still gently caresses your skin, his soft lips leaving kissing trails along your neck and jaw. He was lucky you were in a public park, because you were about to say fuck the writing and lift up your dress just to feel him inside you. Well, that has never stopped you two before. 

He rests his head against your shoulder, letting out a peaceful sigh as you write. You’re not sure where it had come from, it felt dark as you stare at the words. You feel Eddie’s palm gently rub over the fabric where your stomach was, gently kneading. Your stomach twitches as he tickles you and he laughs quietly. “Is that a new spot?” He bites his lip, kissing your neck again. 

“Shhh, I’m almost done.” You tell him with a grin. His hand travels below your belly, gently cupping your mound and a small gasp escapes your lips. “Eddie…hands.” 

“Sorry.” He mutters and kisses your cheek. He watches you as you write more on the page. You hand him back the pen and the notebook. “Read it to me.” 

Your eyes widen slightly. “No, I’m embarrassed.” 

“Sweetheart, it’s me.” He tells you with a sweet smile. 

You sigh. “Fine. But don’t laugh at me.” He rests his head against your shoulder as you begin. “They say these ‘violent delights, have violent ends’ but is it so violent, that when the world ends in fire and ice, I’d rather freeze my soul, to be reborn, in a world not so cruel. Soulless eyes stare back into me, terrified of what they’ve seen. A little girl lost, but you found her in the pits of despair and agony. Kissed her tears, tasted her until she felt you in her very core and called you hers. A daughter of the night, the sun burns too bright, the sun burns too bright.” 

Eddie lifts his head from your shoulder and stares at you in awe. “Wow…that was…” 

“Horrible.”

“No! No, sweetheart.” He cups your face. “I didn’t know you could write like that. Why have you been holding out on me?” 

You shrug. “I don’t know, I didn’t think I was that great.” 

“This definitely heavy metal song material.” He takes the notebook from your hands, pressing his lips deeply against yours, holding the side of your face, his tongue licking your lips begging for entrance. You curl your fingers through his hair, feeling the butterflies in your stomach flutter all around as he kisses you. He pulls away, leaving small pecks on your lips. You were breathless, being kissed by him was always so breathtaking to you but he caught you off guard with this one. 

“What was that?” You giggle, staring into his big brown eyes. 

“I just…love you.” He rubs your cheek. “I feel like I don’t tell you that enough.”

He didn’t. And he didn’t love you, he was just lying about it, because why would it be that simple with him? That’s why this decision would make it hard for you. What would you gain from it? A mended friendship? That’s better than nothing, you thought. You didn’t want him to die; your stomach turns at the thought. What an idiot. You shake your head, what the hell was he thinking using heroin? What brought him to that point in his life to make that choice? You sigh, feeling defeated. What would you even say to him in the letter? Would you tell him that you’ve been thinking about him this whole time? No, that sounds pathetic. 

You groan. You pick up the pen, and you just write. 

Present Day - Eddie

I don’t think I’ve left my bedroom at all today. Maybe once to get something to eat. I was in my cabin in New York, Gareth has been staying with me. I know most of it is to keep an eye on me, but I know he doesn’t want to be alone either. It had snowed last night, there was over a foot on my property; Gareth had offered to take my truck to plow, I didn’t say no, I would’ve done it, but it probably would’ve stayed like that until Ted’s services. He wanted a combined wake and funeral; he was going to be buried where his parents were. We had to be in Vermont the day after tomorrow.  I was laying on my side, staring at the wall, and I hear my bedroom door open. I feel the bed shift as Gareth lays next to me. It wasn’t unusual, us to be laying in the same bed. For months we only had my van to drive and sleep in to play music gigs across different states, and the three of us would have to get comfortable being close. “You need to get up, man.” He tells me softly. 

“I will.” I mutter. 

“When?” I can feel his eyes digging into the back of my skull, I squeeze my eyes shut and then snap them open. Everytime I close my eyes I see Ted’s lifeless face, I hear my cries, feel the unbearable weight of the grief. 

“When I go to the bathroom again.” I feel myself smirking and I hear him chuckle a little. 

“You’re scaring me.” He says after a moment of silence. 

“I shouldn’t be.” I say quietly. “I don’t have a needle in my arm.” 

“Not yet.” 

“I love your words of support; it’s always so appreciated.” I say with an eye roll and turn on my back to face him. “I’m not gonna use again.” 

He looks at me, and I see the shy, awkward little kid that I met all those years ago, the kid I took punches for, who I would still take punches for. “How do you know that?” He does look scared, exhausted, sad…really fucking sad. 

I feel my throat close up as tears spring to my eyes. “Because if I do…all the work that I did…all the love and support he gave me even when I was at my worst…that all dies with him. And I can’t do that to him. Not again.” 

His eyes are watery, and he looks away from me, staring up at the ceiling. “I can’t lose you too, Eddie. I really, really don’t think I’d make it.” 

I grab his hand, squeezing it gently. “I’m not going anywhere, man.” 

“What are we gonna do?” He whispers, and I see a tear fall down his cheek and onto my pillow. “He was the heart of our band…what are we supposed to do? Get a new manager?” 

“No.” I say, surprised at how stern I sound. “We don’t need a manager. He taught us everything we needed to know.” 

“It’s not gonna be easy.” He says with a soft laugh. 

“Did he ever have it easy with us?” 

“With us, yes. With you?” He meets my eyes and smiles. 

I laugh. “He did his best, that’s all we wanted.” 

“And he was good at it.” 

“That’s why we can’t get a new manager. It won’t be worth it.” I let out a loud sigh, your face flashes through my mind for a moment and I shudder, trying to not think of you. Gareth can sense my internal demise. 

“You should call her.” 

“No.” I say immediately. 

He sits up to lean against the headboard, looking down at me. “I don’t know why you’re so upset with her. She loves you.”

“She only contacted me because Ted asked her to. That’s not love, that’s pity.” I scoff, running my hands through my hair. I smell ripe, I definitely need to shower. 

“I mean…you walked out on her, Eddie. The fact that she was even willing to give you a chance again after all these years, it shows that she’s loved you this entire time. She started doing chest compressions on Ted the second I said to call 911, she didn’t even hesitate. She just did it. She is the same kind, caring, stupidly beautiful girl that she’s always been. She may have gotten older, but it didn’t hurt her insides. And she loves you, dude. I see her look at you the same way she did fifteen years ago, she’d still go to bat for you. Why does that scare you so much? To let love in like that?” 

“Because why would she love me? All I’ve done is cause her pain.” My voice sounds far away; I hate feeling vulnerable.  

“And have been causing yourself pain in the process. Eddie, you’ve been in love with her forever. Like since before you even started dating. You’ve been through everything together. There’s a reason why Ted reached out to her; there’s a reason why after all these years you get that chance to be with her again. Don’t let this be the thing that takes her away forever.” 

I glance up at him, scowling. “I hate that you have a way with words. I just wanted to kiss you just now.” 

He laughs, patting my head. “Don’t let her go. You’d be stupid to do that again.” He hops off the bed and turns to look at me from the doorway. “You fucking stink, go take a shower.” 

I put up my middle finger and we both laugh; I watch as he walks away and closes my door. I sigh, groaning at the stupid regret I feel in the pits of my stomach. He was right, I’ve been in love with you for so long sometimes it was hard to breathe. I force myself out of bed; it’s like thinking of you was the push I needed. I remember the day I told you I loved you for the first time, I was having the worst anxiety; I remember Uncle Wayne telling me that the worst thing that could happen is that you wouldn’t feel the same way, and that just made me feel worse. It was just a normal night for us, we were smoking pot in the back of my van. It was cold this night, you had a fleece blanket wrapped around your knees, you were singing bohemian rhapsody in all the voices, and I couldn’t handle how funny you were being, I was almost going into a straight panic attack. 

“Please, stop. I can’t…I can’t breathe!” I laugh loudly. 

“For meeeeee, for meeeeeeeee!” You start head banging and ended up whacking your head off of Gareth’s high hat, which causes me to laugh even harder. “Ow! Fuck.” You laugh holding your head and I gently lift your hair to check to make sure there wasn’t a severe injury. 

“That’s what you get.” I laugh, gently smoothing out your hair. You giggle, moving Gareth’s high hat out of the way to make more room. You were wearing a black zip up hoodie, and only a bra underneath. I only knew that because when you leaned over I could only see the hills of your breasts. And I know that’s why you were so cold. Oh, how I wanted to unzip that hoodie even lower, just to see you, see all of you. I hated my hormonal thoughts, it always gave me an erection whenever I thought of you that way. And I have always thought of you as something more, not just my best friend, but someone I could see spending the rest of my life with. I felt stupid thinking like that, we were only seventeen, we were babies. 

“What?” You snap me out of my thought. 

“Huh?” I say. 

You laugh. “You’re just staring at me, are you having a moment? Are you too high?” 

��Let’s not talk about whether I’m too high or not because you know it will send me into a spiral thinking my eyeballs aren’t closing.” I laugh nervously. 

“They’re not closing.” You smirk at me. 

I growl at you. “Don’t be an asshole.” 

You laugh loudly, nudging me with your shoulder, moving yourself onto my lap. I could feel how cold you were, so I wrap my arms around the top of you, gently rubbing your shoulders. It wasn’t unusual for you to do this, we have always been each other's human security blankets, but I could feel my heart beating out of my chest. I needed to tell you, just to get it out. Just to let you know that I’ve loved you since I understood what that word meant. That if you didn’t feel the same way, at least you’d know. I’m playing with your hair; my fingers gently go behind your neck and massage the skin. You softly moan a little, and I swallow hard. 

“I have to tell you something.” I whisper to you. You turn your head in my lap to look at me, you have a small smile on your face. My hand gently goes to your chin, and I let out a shaky breath. 

“Hey, are you okay?” You sit up to look at me. 

“I…I um…” I laugh nervously, running my hands through my hair. I stare at your face, your lips. “I’m in love with you.” I give you a little shrug and a small smile. 

You stare at me for a moment, and I can see the gears in your brain turning. “I know this is out of nowhere and I’m sorry…even if you don’t feel the same I just wanted you to-“ 

Your lips are on mine suddenly, your hands cup my face. My hands nervously go to your waist as the kiss deepens, I feel your tongue graze mine gently, and I shudder. You pull away, staring into my eyes, my lips. You hold my face and I stare at you in awe. “I love you too.” You whisper and I can feel my grin getting wider.

“Really?” I ask you and you nod. 

“Since forever.” You say, leaning forward to kiss me again, I hold your face when we pull away. “You’re my person.” 

I smile again, pressing my lips to yours. You push your body onto mine, straddling my waist with your legs.  I wrap both my arms around your waist, moving slightly to lay you on your back. The rug to my van was an old shag carpet, but it was comfortable. You didn’t feel cold anymore. Your hands move under my shirt, I shudder at your touch, your soft hands. I move my lips to your neck, pulling the zipper down, kissing both hills of your breasts. You let out a soft sigh, your fingers curling through my hair as I cup one of your breasts, kissing in between them. I grip your jean clad thigh, hooking it tighter around my waist and grind against you. The friction plus the pressure causes a throaty moan to escape me and you sit up. You stare at me, your lips swollen from our kiss, and you unzip the hoodie, sliding it off of you and I watch as your hands to behind your back, unhooking your bra. The straps fall slightly down your shoulders and I watch as you shyly let the bra slip away from you. I lean back on my heels, my palms on your knee as my eyes scan your body. I’ve always imagined this; but this was better than what I had imagined. I lean forward between your legs, kissing you deeply. My lips go down to your neck, and I glance up at you, making sure everything was still okay before I did what I did. You lean back to get more comfortable, and I pull your nipple into my mouth. You let out a moan, which caused me to almost explode in my own jeans. The closest I’ve ever gone with a girl was feeling her up, this was brand new to me, and I could tell it was for you too. I wanted to taste all of you, I wanted to know what your sex tasted like, I wanted to know what would make you scream. I move my lips down to kiss your ribs, your naval and I snap the button of your jeans. You arch your hips, helping me pull them down and this is the first time I’m seeing you in your underwear. My fingers knead your thighs and I look into your eyes. 

“Can I taste you?”

Your face turns crimson, it made you look so much more beautiful, and you nod, biting your lip. “I’ve never done this before.” 

“You know I haven’t.” I laugh, and I stare at you as I move my palm to the top of your underwear. The fabric was damp, and I feel a smile toy at my lips, gently moving your underwear to the side. My hands shake a little as the tips of my fingers graze your clit, I watch as your head falls back, and a soft moan escapes you. I rub you gently, feeling your opening. I gently slide a finger into you and your back arches, I couldn’t believe how tight you felt. I scoot back to my stomach, wrapping my arms around your thighs, staring at your beautiful, beautiful pussy. You lean up on your elbows to look at me; and I flick my tongue out, gently kissing your clit. You gasp and something awakens inside me. You taste so good, so sweet, and I bury my face into your folds, devouring you. I didn’t even know if I was doing it right, but from the sounds you were making; I think I was doing okay. Your fingers pull my hair and I feel my dick twitch as you moan loudly. “Right there, baby.” You moan out, and I moan in response; you sounded so sexy, so breathless. 

I pull away to look up at you. “Like this?” I lick a long wet stripe from your hole to your clit, sucking gently. You tremble beneath me, your chest heaving with gasps and moans. 

“Oh…my…Eddie.” You moan. I groan in response, tasting all of you, sucking you until your moans get louder and I’m pretty positive you’re about to come. Your head falls back in pleasure, and a loud, hot, moan escapes your lungs and you’re coming in my mouth. I stick my tongue around your hole, feeling you clench, tasting your juices and gripping your thighs until you can’t take it anymore. It’s so intoxicating I don’t want to stop. Your eyes are closed as you settle your breathing, I sit back on my heels, wiping my face and smile at you. You sit up, grabbing the back of my head and kiss me. You moan against my mouth, and a groan escapes me when I feel your hand cup my erection over my jeans. You pull away from me, quickly undoing the button on my jeans and pulling them down past my legs. I see your eyes widen when I spring to life, and you smile.

You look up at me, your hands gently rub my thighs, my ass and I shudder under your touch. I move to my back, highly aware of how exposed I felt with your eyes scanning my body. I immediately feel shy, and I honestly couldn’t tell you why. You sense how nervous I am, and you crawl up my body. Your hand tickles my chest and you kiss me gently. I hold your waist, gripping your skin and you pull back to look at me. I swallow hard as you lean down to kiss my neck, making soft pecks along my chest, moving down to my abdomen. A moan escapes me when I feel your hands gently grab my cock, rubbing your soft hands over the velvety ness of it. I gasp when I feel your lips kiss the tip; I could tell you were nervous too, but I swear as soon as you took my whole length into your mouth, you knew exactly what to do. A broken moan escapes me, and you quickly pull your head back.

“I’m sorry…did I…”

“No, no.” I say breathlessly, grabbing your wrist. “That was really good, keep going.” 

Your mouth is on me again, and I groan, feeling your tongue swirl around my shaft, move down towards my balls. I moan loudly, my head falls back against the bottom of the high hat, which causes a humorous sound and I end up laughing while moaning. You throat me deeper and I hold your hair. I want to know what you feel like inside, I want to feel that beautiful pussy clench around my cock. I pull your head up to look at you.

“I wanna feel you.” I whisper. 

You sit back, smiling that beautiful smile. You nod, biting your lower lip. I scoot up, taking your face in my hands and kiss you deeply. I turn you around so you’re on your back, gently grazing my fingertips over your skin. I bite my bottom lip, staring at your naked body. You were so beautiful. I feel a blush rise to my cheeks as I stare at you, and you smile sweetly.

“You nervous?” You ask me and I nod.

“A little.”

“Me too.” You say, reaching up to cup my face as I hover above you. I smile into your palm and a thought crosses my mind. 

“Oh.” I lean back, go into my wallet, pulling out a condom. I tear it open with my teeth, staring at the rubber like it was a bomb. 

“I think it goes…” you sit up a little, taking the condom and sliding it down my shaft. I shudder but I’m equally embarrassed. 

“Pretty pathetic that I don’t know how to put a condom on.” I laugh awkwardly, leaning down to hover over you again. 

“You’re not pathetic. If you’re pathetic; I’m pathetic. I’ve never had an orgasm until you.” 

My eyes widen at your confession. “No way. Even when you play with yourself?” 

You shake your head. “I guess I didn’t do it right.” You laugh and smile at me. “Looks like we have to teach each other things.” 

I smirk, gently leaning down to kiss your lips. I rub your cheek, caresses your hair. “If it hurts, you tell me, okay? And I’ll stop.” 

You nod, I could feel you shaking. I was shaking too, but I wasn’t sure if it was nerves, excitement or both. You open your legs a little wider for me, and I kiss you gently, my hand palming your entrance and I pull my hand away to line myself up with you. I slowly push myself in, and a grunt escapes me, you let out a soft gasp and I feel you clench. 

“Am I hurting you?” I ask, panic in my voice as I stop pushing in.  

“No, it just stings a little. Keep going.” You whisper, gripping my forearms. I push myself in further and I hear you coo; I look at your face and you’re biting your lip. You were so fucking tight, so tight that it was starting to hurt me, and I didn’t know what to do next. I feel you roll your hips into mine and I gently pull myself out a little and move back in. You moan, and a throaty growl escapes me as I quicken the movements in my hips. You felt so good, and I wanted to go faster but I didn’t want to hurt you. 

“Faster, baby.” You moan, like you read my mind. I stare into your eyes, and you kiss me deeply, letting me know that it was okay. I move my hips faster, the sensation of the friction, plus the sounds that were coming from you were turning me into a wild fucking animal. “Ohhh…” 

I could feel my orgasm building in my belly, and once I feel your hands grab my ass to push me deeper into you, it was all over. We were both moaning so loud, and I honestly didn’t remember which way up. You gasp loudly, and I feel you clench around me. “Oh baby…I think I’m gonna come again…”

“Fuck…I’m close…” my head falls back in pleasure, and I slow my rhythm down, my hips bucking as I come into the condom, and you’re fucking screaming my name, clenching all around me. Your nails claw at my back and I’m groaning into your neck as I ride out the rest of my orgasm, and you gasp out beautiful, beautiful sounds that was music to my ears. 

I swallow back the lump in my throat as I lay my head in the crook of your neck. Your hands are in my hair, holding me to you. I look at you and you smile at me, kissing me so softly, sweetly. And at that moment, all was right in the world. 

Gareth had driven my car to Vermont, I couldn’t stomach the drive. I think I puked three times before getting in the car because I’m still having a hard time processing what we were doing and why we were going to Vermont. I think I chain smoked a whole pack of cigarettes the way there. I was texting with my sponsor the whole way there too, he was a good guy, making me feel better about myself on how it was normal to be feeling the way I did. I didn’t want to use, but I didn’t want to feel anything. He also suggested I reach out to you after the services, and I shut that down. I didn’t want to think about you, I just wanted to focus on the fucked-up fact I was about to bury the one man I considered a father. We pull up to the funeral home, it looked like a beautiful cottage. A large window overlooked a frozen lake. I get out of the car on shaky legs; I could feel Gareth’s eyes on me. 

I turn to look at him. “I’m fine.” 

“Don’t look it.” He mumbles. 

“Neither do you.” I slam the car door and we both walk up the stone steps into the funeral home. We enter the place, and I’m immediately overwhelmed by the aroma of floral arrangements I want to gag. We sign the guest book, and I have to pause in the double doorway when I see the shiney black opened casket. I don’t even see the people in the seats, or the people who have been in the music industry longer than I have. I just zero in on the box and Julie standing right next to it. She meets my eyes, and she’s already pushing her way through people to get to me. I’m falling into her, my forehead is resting against her small shoulder, I’m breathing in the smell of her shampoo and her Chanel perfume. She’s hugging me close, and I begin to weep. 

“Oh, my sweet boy…” She says gently in my ear.

“It doesn’t seem real, it’s not right…” I pull away to look at her, to glance at the casket. “It’s not okay.” The tears are hot on my cheeks, and I feel Gareth stiffen next to me as he tries to control his own tears. She kisses my cheek, taking my hand, leading me up to the casket. I stop when I see Nellie, she meets my eyes, and she’s immediately sobbing. I hug her to me, cupping the back of her head as she buries her face into my chest. She was a few years younger than me, and she always felt like a sister, and I immediately feel riddled with guilt that I spent so many years chasing a high when she would send me birthday cards from her kids, or birthday party invitations. Even when I wasn’t on tour, I would make up some excuse. I couldn’t do that anymore. No more excuses. 

“I’m so sorry.” I whisper to her, and there’s so many reasons behind that. Her fingers grip into my back and she nods against my chest. 

“Don’t disappear on me again, okay?” She pulls away to look at me. “The kids need their Uncle Eddie.” 

I swallow a sob, and nod, gently kissing the top of her head. I look over at the casket, and I slowly make my way over. He was dressed in his best blazer that he had custom made, a vintage Van Halen t shirt covers his chest underneath. His shaggy dirty blonde hair was styled neatly. I couldn’t look at his face. I just stared at his chest; my vision was blurring. I felt the similar ache in my belly when I thought of you, except you were still alive. Ted was dead.  I finally look at his face, and a sound escapes my lungs. I sound like a whimpering dog; I couldn’t control it, I just started to weep. I rest my head against the kneeling bench, feeling Julie’s arms wrap around me. I felt pathetic, crying like this, in front of all these people. Ted was the reason we got to where we were…Ted was also the reason that got me back to you. 

And I didn’t know how to keep going without him. 

I disassociated during the burial, I don’t remember who I spoke to, who I hugged. All I remember is coming back to my cabin with Gareth, neither one of us saying a word to each other. I had peeled off my suit jacket, kicked off my shoes and plopped on the chair in my kitchen. I lit up a cigarette, letting the smoke billow in my lungs. I stare up at my liquor cabinet, knowing that I had a half empty bottle of bourbon hidden in there. The chair skids against the floor as I get up, go into the cabinet, and pull the bottle down. I pull the cap off the bottle, staring at the brown liquid. My heart was racing, I could feel my ears pulsating as my thoughts were swimming in my brain.

You know where this can lead to. Ted’s voice echoes in my head. 

“Fuck off.” I whisper through my teeth. 

You’ve come so far. 

“FUCK OFF!” I scream, pitching the bottle against the wall next to my refrigerator and it shatters, the liquid spilling to the floor. I yell again, punching the wood of my cabinets until my knuckles bled. I slide to the floor; Gareth comes running in from the back bedroom.

“Jesus, Eddie…” He says quietly, his eyes scanning the broken glass, my bloody hand, and the tears streaming down my cheeks. 

“Did you know…the last time Ted was here, I was detoxing? Right on that couch.” I let out a chuckle, pointing out into the living room. “Unwillingly of course, or maybe willingly, I don’t fucking know. I was heading into the depths of madness at that point, but he had shown up. I was convinced you had sent these little demon creatures to come kill me or hurt him and somehow, he convinced me to get rid of my dope.” I laugh again, almost manically. “The last time that man was in my house, I was a complete fucking monster. I hated him, I hated him for making me go through the pain. I hated him because he cared about me so fucking much, he’d rather sit there and watch me cry and scream in pain. Why, man?” I look up at Gareth, my lips trembling. “Why did he care about me so much? After everything I had done. After who I became?”

“Eddie…” I could tell he’s lost for words. He slides down to the floor next to me, and I just stare at him. He pulls me by my shirt, pulling me into him. He cradles me like a baby, and I just sob into his chest. “You know why, dude. He loved you.”

I scoff, wiping the snot from my nose. “I was unlovable. And I fucking manipulated him so many times. I’m surprised he didn’t have a heart attack back then.”

“Eddie.” Gareth says sternly. “If you are blaming yourself for his death, you’re a bigger fucking idiot than I thought. Things like this just happen sometimes, man. Whether it’s natural, or unnatural. When I was so fucking at you when it got really bad, when I thought I was staring into the eyes of a person who murdered my brother…Ted would always tell me that he knew you were still in there. That you would come out of this, and look…you came out of it.”

“It’s not that simple, man.” I say through my teeth, my throat bobbing as I’m trying to stop from sobbing again. “Everyday I have to fight…I have to hold back the urge to go and use…and now…now I have all this love…all this love that has no place to go…he was a fucking dad to us, Gareth. And now he’s gone…he’s just…gone.” 

Gareth doesn’t say anything more, he just holds me tighter as I cry. 

Rabbit hole

Rabbit hole

Where did you go? 

Rabbit hole

Rabbit hole

Where did…

I haven’t showered in three days; Gareth left yesterday. 

I pace in my kitchen, already on my fourth cup of coffee, and it’s not even noon. 

My phone rings, I send it to voicemail, sending a reassuring text that I’m okay. 

I’m really not, but I don’t have a needle in my arm.

So, there’s that. 

It’s been a week; I finally showered. I dreamt of you last night. 

I grip the pen in my hand, flapping the composition notebook as I continue to pace in the living room. 

My therapist is here. 

I don’t say much. 

She looks afraid for me. 

Maybe, she should be.

She suggested anti-depressants. 

I said no, I numbed my feelings for too long, I had to pay the price and feel things without the help of a medicine. 

Dying seems better than this existence. 

Maybe I already died, and I’m just living in this vessel of a body that is rotten. 

Fuck, Eddie. That’s dark. 

I laugh to myself, continuing to pace. Looks like I don’t need the drugs to be an actual fucking madman. 

Mad hatter, too much tea

Mad hatter, look at me, look at me,

I’m a fucking disease. 

Every time I close my eyes, I see you. I see your smile, I hear your laugh, I feel your touch. 

What the fuck am I doing? 

Why am I standing here alone? 

I miss you. 

I miss him. 

No. No. No. 

Gareth is right. 

I can’t lose you. 

Not again. 

Not again. 

NOT AGAIN.

I take the keys to my truck, awkwardly pulling my boots on as I stumble out the door.

Looks like I’m going to Maine.

[tavyliasin]

ATG 9 - Mouse? Rat.

(In which a mirror is met, and a trap is set)

Pairing: Haarlep/Tav  SPICE Rating: 4/5 Content Warnings:  Sex, BDSM, Power Play,  Aphrodisiacs,

Spoilers Act 3, House of Hope Canon Compliance Canon Is Wobbly - Technically there is some canon detail of what House of Hope is like, and if we really stretch  we can fit this in to the canon. But it's probably going off course, we're heading towards uncharted waters now so we can sail free. Canon gave us the start, the foundation, set our course out of the dock. Now we head on into our own waves, going where the wind takes us. Other Notes This chapter ends on a cliffhanger because it was getting too long to do everything I wanted in one go. So we have a split, then we will come back in write where it stops... Song/Mood The Cabaret of Dreams - Seven Spires "I will be your host this eve, So sit back, relax, and I guarantee If you take it, embrace it, succumb to the dark, Escape into a night where no one knows who you are, You crave it, awake it, the coeur bizarre, Lose yourself to the twisted art. Hey! Don't be afraid Hey! You'll be amazed Let your demons out Let your spirit free It's only gonna cost you your soul." ----- FULL CHAPTER BELOW THE CUT -----

It had been a day . That was about as positively as Tavylia could spin it as she prepared another hop across the broken rock face above fields of lava, once again questioning every single life choice that had lead her to this moment. Not much further, just keep going. That was the mantra now, one foot in front of the other, and hope you still had both feet still attached at the end of the day.

It had been a whole week, really. Their arrival in the city had been filled with more and more dangers. Even with Ketheric gone, there was still Orin and Gortash, the pair of them both more than willing to draw Tav to their side in order to destroy each other and claim power solely for themselves.

Then there was Raphael. Because of course he would be waiting wherever she went. ---

They’d first met again in a brothel of all places, which had done nothing to help Tav’s conflicted mood. He’d spoken to her the same way as always, not a single mention of the “dream” that plagued her mind in every quiet moment, and the constant slipping in and out of seductive flirting and vicious mockery was eroding the last shred of patience in her soul.

“And what if I don’t need to turn against the Emperor? He has kept all of us safe for a long time now.” She wasn’t sure she believed it, but contradicting Raphael was fast becoming her favourite hobby.

“I didn’t take you for that much of a fool , Little Mouse. Perhaps I should’ve offered you a bag of beans when we first met? That could’ve saved a lot of time.” Even as he sneered, it looked like he was half undressing her, body and mind. The scented perfumes in the room, the luxurious pool behind him, and the edge of a bed visible behind the dividing wall were all adding to a simple equation. The solution was not one that could be settled with paper, pencil, and abacus.

Fuck you, Tav thought, but her mouth gave different words to the sentiment. “You don’t even have beans, do you? Besides, everything about you screams that you should not be trusted, whilst the Emperor is capable of actually displaying compassion.” Oops.

“Oh good gods, you didn’t sleep with it, did you?” A look of horror crossed his face, and Tav could hear Lae’zel physically gag behind her. “Of all the depravity in all the nine hells… It’s using you, Little Mouse, selling you a sweet little story to get what it wants before it discards you, or worse it’ll turn you into a creature just like itself. I had thought you wished to avoid that particular fate, at least.”

Tav remembered, as he’d mentioned before, that Raphael had a habit of shielding them from the Emperor’s view. “Did it ever occur to you that I might be the one using him?” She was suddenly glad she had left Astarion at camp to relax today, as she didn’t want him to misunderstand what she said next. “Emotion can be a weakness, a weapon. If he were to turn on me, I already have another card in my hand.”

“Oh, very impressive, Little Mouse,” he replied, in the most patronising tone he could muster - an impressive feat given how patronising his usual tone was anyway, “you really think that will be enough? I can offer you something else, a trump card for your deck.”

“Don’t tell me, it involves another deal?” she glared, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“So you do have a little intellect left in that pretty little head of yours! Obviously nothing in life is free, but we made a deal before, did we not? I kept my end of the bargain, you kept yours - quite the lucrative relationship, wouldn’t you say?” His smile widened a little, more small gestures almost like a bow. Always the same dance, Tav thought to herself, considering his words. Hold on did he call me pretty?! She pulled her thoughts together again. “I can’t deny that. The answer was hardly satisfying, though, and we’re still far from resolving that particular issue.” “Ah ah ah, Little Mouse, you know that I never promised resolution to the problem. I told you the meaning of what was written on your lover’s back, no more, no less. And you killed my old enemy for me, no more, no less.” “Fine. Deal done. What do you suggest this time? Just more words?” she couldn’t resist pushing him right to the edge of his patience, delighting in watching him lose his composure for just a moment as his jaw clenched a little too hard. The Cambion smoothed his hair down casually, though not a single strand had been out of place. “Actually, this time we will be needing more than a simple verbal contract. I’m afraid you’ll need to sign on the dotted line.” “I’m not saying yes without details.” Tav put her hands on her hips, glaring a challenge towards him.

“Always so ferocious, aren’t you? You can keep your daggers to yourself, for now. I’m not even asking for your soul, my aim is not to own you.” He smiled, with unnerving charm. “I’ll even sweeten the deal and pay may half in full first. A gesture of goodwill, if you like.” “Remarkably generous, for a fiend. What exactly are you offering?” Tav couldn’t help the insults, but her curiosity was piqued. “Orpheus.” He said plainly, for one horrifying moment making Tav wonder if he actually knew what had happened with the Emperor. If her reaction showed on her face, Raphael was ignoring it. “I can give you the means to free Orpheus from his prison, and in turn he can free you from the hold of the illithid creature and solve that little tadpole problem for you. He won’t take any convincing to help you with your final foe, either.”

“You sound very sure of yourself. What’s the guarantee he won’t just murder us all on sight for having the tadpoles in our minds in the first place?” “He won’t.” Lae’zel spoke up from behind her. Tav had almost forgotten anyone else was in the room. “Kithrak Voss. I’ll speak with him, I am certain he will aid us when the moment comes, and Orpheus will be on our side.” “See?” Raphael’s voice took on a musical tone for a moment. “You’ll be just fine . Besides, you’ve made it this far, have you not? I don’t make pointless bets, either. I have the hammer, a particular weapon that is the only way you can free the Gith Prince from his prison, and I’m willing to give it to you right now.” Tav considered him, eyes scanning every inch of his body language and expression for the barest hint of a lie. She found nothing. “And if it’s not my soul you want in return, what is it?” “The Crown.” He replied, simply and without any of the usual dancing around the point. It was almost unnerving. “Bring me the crown once you have defeated your foes, and consider our deal complete.”

Easy enough, on the face of it. But he was not the only one looking for it, and Tav wasn’t about to just sign anything without giving it a lot more thought first. “I’m not saying yes, but I’m also not saying no. I’m not foolish enough to erase a possible advantage, but I’m not about to just sign without reading all of the small-print.” “For once, Little Mouse, you’ll find the page to be really quite clear, no lines to read between, no secret catch. But if you insist on struggling pointlessly against the tide, well, just remember who to call when you’re running out of breath beneath the waves.” He held out one hand facing up, then briefly covered it with his other hand. When he revealed his palm again, a pair of small smooth stones glinted in the light. They looked fairly plain, and yet entirely identical. “Sending Stones. Simple little trick, consider it free of charge. When you are out of luck, preferably before you start growing tentacles, use this. Call out to me, and I will come to you. Then we can finalise our deal.” “That sounds remarkably fair of you.” Tav looked at the stones with suspicion, before picking one up and turning it over in her hand as if inspecting it for traps. “There’s no point overcomplicating things. I have what you need, and you can get what I want. Still, you ask for time, and I can be patient. For now. But consider, how long do you truly have left? Tick tock, Little Mouse, don’t wait 'til the final hour to beg at my feet. You’re smarter than that, at least.” He bowed with a flourish, though he didn’t break eye contact. “Until then, unless I see you sooner.”

---

Tav had almost slammed the door when she left, still feeling the smug look following her as she left the brothel. She had half a mind to spend some coin and a couple of hours with some of the staff just to blow off some steam, but there was little chance for peace with her companions insisting on talking over the pros and cons of the contract. Afterwards, another week had passed, but in that time the bitch Orin grew impatient and took Halsin from their camp, which is why Tav was now about to hop across a broken balcony in the middle of Avernus of all places. She didn’t want to imagine what he might be suffering through while they searched, so she had decided to try a new angle. The House of Hope. Raphael’s mansion. An expensive ritual to open the portal, but it had to be worth it. She would make sure of that.  “Stay out here,” she turned to her companions as she eyed up the balcony above, “if I need help I’ll send you a signal.”

“I’m sorry? You’re waltzing in through the window of the devil’s bedchambers and you want us to, what, go and read a book while we wait? Darling I know you’ve been reckless recently but this is too much.” Astarion looked genuinely worried, like one step wrong and he would shatter. “You have your disguises, I have the scrolls Gale gave me. If you can find anything in his archives that could help us find Orin and get Halsin back…it’s worth the risk. I can handle Raphael, don’t worry. Besides, apparently he isn’t home. It should be easy to take a little peek at his secrets.” She did her best to reassure him, even though she knew they were getting desperate. “I’m with Astarion on this one, but I’m well aware that trying to change your mind is futile.” Gale turned back to his companions, preparing to leave. 

Shadowheart also laying a hand on the pale elf’s shoulder behind him. “She’ll be fine, somehow. Gods know she’s manage to stay alive this far.” The cleric shot Tav the kind of look that said don’t you dare prove me wrong, I will not speak kindly at your funeral if you mess this up. “Stick to the plan,” Tav said, “it’s the best chance we have. Oh and stay away from Hope for now, she risks drawing too much attention. Rule 1, remember? I’ll meet you in the entrance hall later.” As the others turned back the way they’d come, Tav steeled her nerves, swigging from a potion of leaping to give herself the extra strength to make it on to the balcony edge. ---

Tav almost immediately regretted not trying to quickly switch outfits before stepping into the lavishly decorated room. She was fairly certain that Raphael wasn’t home, especially from how Hope had spoken when they arrived through the portal. The plan was just to gather a little information, maybe see what they could learn about Raphael’s own plans before deciding whether handing him an item of immense power was just a step too reckless. But reckless, it seemed, was becoming the theme of the day. She stepped through the open balcony door cautiously, peering inside the room. 

Well, shit, this is awkward. Laying on the bed in his full devilish form was Raphael, dressed in what could only be described as the sluttiest leather harness that Tav had ever seen in her life. He turned lazily to look towards her, eyes travelling the full course of her body with a hunger that she could feel , even from this distance. He beckoned her closer, but remained on the silk sheets, chalice of wine in hand. “A lost little mouse is running through the house, a thief in the night, greedy and here to take. Why are you here, little thief?” His poetry was familiar at least, but there was something else…different. “Raphael? You look… I wasn’t expecting you to be home, and certainly not dressed like that. ” She tried in vain to prevent her gaze travelling across his form, rippling muscles just beneath crimson skin, lined with veins and a few little ridges that marked his body as just beyond human. Of course, the large wings, tail, and the viciously curved horns growing from his forehead were decidedly less human than the form she was most accustomed to seeing him in. However, it seemed like her reaction had amused him, as he began to laugh. “Raphael? Ha! No.” The voice turned colder, a sharp edge to the speaker's words now. “You will have a far crueller master than Raphael, soon. But what inspired you to pay him a visit?” Shit, Tav thought, but if it’s not him…who the fuck-“Come on, little thief, out with it. Why in all the hells did you sneak in through the bedroom balcony of the Archduke Raphael? If you had an invitation, the door would be open to you, and you certainly are not dressed like someone who belongs in here . The disguise will not fool me, you’re no debtor either.” Despite the harsh words, they seemed more amused than furious. As if this entirely unexpected turn of events was entertaining, rather than an invasion.

“Well, I’m in a little trouble.” She began, hesitating at the fiery eyes seeming to burn through her. Somehow, this one was more intimidating than Raphael, shaking her usually cocky foundation. “ That , Little Thief, is obvious . Nobody is foolish to turn up in this House when they have any other option.” They took a sip of wine now, gesturing for Tav to go on. “I’m not here for his deals, not yet. I was looking for some answers first.” She paused again. It was extremely distracting to be stood there looking down at the almost naked object of several quietly kept fantasies just laying on the bed. It was unnerving. “Actually, the first question - if you’re not Raphael, who are you? And why do you look just like him?” “I am Raphael’s personal incubus, glamoured to look just. Like. Him. He’s so terribly vain, only wanting to sleep with himself, but you know what they say. Better the devil you know. Usually information does not come for free, but I suppose we shall consider this a trade. Names next, then? Mine is Haarlep. You would do well to keep that in mind, you may find yourself in need of it.” They licked their lips idly as they continued to observe her. “Your turn, Thief.” “Tavylia.” she replied, eyes drawn to their lips involuntarily. “Tav, usually.”

“Ah so it is you. The Little Mouse that has the cat’s fur standing on end.” Haarlep seemed more intrigued now, sitting up a little to take a better look at the increasingly uncomfortable elf stood before them. “I’ve heard all about you. ” The emphasis increased with every word, as each syllable travelled across the room with an enticing intensity. “Then you have me at a disadvantage. I know nothing of you.” She stood stiffly, trying to keep at least a little of her pride intact as their gaze burned right through her. “Of course not, I’m his dirty little secret. ” They laughed, draining the last of their wine and placing the chalice on the bedside. “And you have been quite the thorn in his side. He might call you Little Mouse, but now I look at you… Little Mouse doesn't suit you, no, you're more like a rat. You actually stand a chance against a cat, if you're clever enough. Unfortunately for you, I'm no house cat. You'll find me considerably closer to a tiger than to the pet you've been playing with until now.” Tav felt the familiar prickling of danger running up her spine, every alarm blaring in her mind that she had walked into the wrong room at the wrong time, but still another part of her had control and was quite unwilling to leave just yet.

“Well, my little Rat Thief, now the introductions are over…” They stood from the bed now, raising to their full height, wings stretching out behind them in an impressive display. Even their eyes seemed to blaze with a brighter fire than before, the heat making the air stifling. “Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable without those old rags?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Tav would’ve taken a step backwards, had she found any strength in her legs to move at all. “I told you, Rat, that I already know all about you. So you have nothing left to trade if you want more answers from me.” They stepped closer, the heat from their body almost unbearable, the scent of cinnamon drifting enticingly from their skin. “It is entirely your choice. I’ll allow you to leave, if you wish, empty handed. Or, if you really want to know some of Raphael’s dirty little secrets , we can play a game. If you win, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” their voice lowered to a seductive growl, “but you’ll enjoy it far more if you lose.” Stopping just short of where she stood, they kept their eyes locked on Tav’s. She took her time to consider their words, and what they seemed to be implying. If Raphael truly is only interested in sex with his own form, well I’m shit out of luck. He’s just been playing the angle for the contract… But an incubus? Far simpler, right? They desire lust, sex, and will naturally gain something from the act…but what? “Alright, Haarlep, but I want to know the rules first. ”

“That’s cute, that you think you can make a demand of me. I can see where your eyes drift, Rat, and I promise you I can be everything you dream of, and more. ” They let their gaze wander over her body now, a direct challenge. “I can even, if you prefer, take a softer form. Raphael occasionally enjoys the pleasures,” they paused as their body shimmered and transformed into what could only be described as a feminine twin of Raphael, voice to match as they continued, “the very many pleasures of the Archduchess. The choice is yours, but you must agree to the game before we can play, Rat.” The new nickname was beginning to grate on Tav’s nerves, and yet every time Haarlep spoke, she felt more and more drawn towards them. It was becoming impossible to lie, as if the truth of her desire were being drawn from within simply by being in their presence. “Usually, I do not mind the body I lay with, as long as the experience is worth it.” She swallowed now, her mouth suddenly dry. “But…I have found myself wanting Raphael, all of him.” “Well then, Little Rat, far be it from me to disappoint,” another gesture and the cambion form shifted again to the masculine shape that plagued Tav’s dreams of late, “you shall have what you desire. And you shall find it far more pleasant than the company of the Archduke himself . ” Tav found herself sighing involuntarily, taking a step towards them, reaching out to touch-

“Ah ah ah, Rat, patience. I will only give you two rules. The way out of our game is simple; the same as any other, if you wish to cede defeat, all you need do is say Meow. Or, if for some reason your tongue is unable to form the word, simply hum it. I will know, and you will be free to leave. From what I’ve heard, however, I doubt you will have use for it.”  They reached out a hand towards Tav, stopping with their finger less than a millimeter from her lips, denying the touch that she craved. “My second rule, is that you only ever refer to me by my proper name. And I assure you, you will want to before we are through.” “Wait…” Tav spoke, desperate to do anything but wait. “What do you get from this?” “Simple. I get you. I’ve been watching for some time, listening, and you are so very entertaining. Am I not entitled to a little fun, too? I hear you even had fun with an illithid ! I must say I am impressed by that experiment of yours. Even I have not indulged in the particular flesh of a Mindflayer. But enough of that, what do you say? Will you step back out the way you came? Or are you going to take off those awful rags, so we can enjoy ourselves more freely.” Their finger still lingered tantalisingly close to Tav’s lips, without giving her the satisfaction of contact even if she moved closer.

“I…agree to your terms, Haarlep.” The incubus’s wing’s seemed to flutter slightly as she spoke their name, barely above a whisper. She was rewarded by the briefest touch, the tip of their nail tracing down their cheek to beneath her chin, lifting it towards them as they bend to speak close to her ear. “Excellent decision~” they purred, the reverberations of their voice alone travelling directly through Tav’s entire body, almost falling to the floor as their tongue teased the pointed tip of her ear, “now take your clothes off and lay on the bed.”

No sooner had they given the order, they stepped away leaving a vast emptiness in the space they had just occupied. They never took their eyes off her, but walked slowly around to the opposite side of the massive bed. The clothes were hardly enticing, but Tav knew when she was being tested. She removed each item swiftly, but with purpose and grace in her movements. At least she had been able to keep her own underwear beneath the debtor's disguise. She paused now, watching them for any reaction.

"I don't believe I told you to stop, Rat. Keep going…" Their eyes were burning with a cool fire, flickering irises reminiscent of the hells themselves burning within them. 

Tav was torn between a curiosity to see what might happen if she stopped, and the greater desire at what may follow if she continued. An easy decision, and soon she was completely exposed, though grateful for the heat in the room. 

"You needn't be afraid, little thief, I have no desire to harm you. At least, not in a way you won't enjoy…" The last syllable was drawn out like a brief growl, the fire in their eyes sparking once more as they noted her response. "Pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin, after all, and it is such fun to balance on the edge."

Whilst they talked, Tav laid on the bed as instructed, feeling their gaze look beneath her flesh and to the potential it held. They looked like a hungry beast before a banquet. Haarlep moved to the end of the bed, taking another prolonged moment to examine every inch of exposed flesh, before they began to crawl across the bed above her. Their words earlier rang clearly in Tav’s ears, they stalked like a tiger, eyeing her like prey. Just the look they were giving her was raising the heat within her now. “You are so intriguing, Rat, so you’ll have no tricks here. It would be far too easy to charm you, seduce you with a trick to want me, but you’re already right here with barely a hint of coercion.” The sharp talon of a nail softly caressed Tav’s lower lip, the unspoken encouragement for her to part her lips. “And I’ve heard all about this tongue of yours - sharp words can rile him up, you know.” Now they pressed a thumb into her mouth, the tip of their claw just shy of piercing through but the pressure enough to sting with the sharp edge. “You’re welcome to try that with me, of course, but you may find yourself less able to speak before we’re done.” Tav moaned softly, the devil above her was a deeply erotic sight. They straddled her hips easily but kept the contact minimal, and she felt a strong desire to wrap her lips around the thumb that tasted of smoke and heat and cinnamon, but the moment she tried they pulled back again, leaving only a wanton moan in their wake. “Build up your appetite, Rat, you’ll dine well soon enough. But first I simply must know what is so fascinating about one little elf…” They almost seemed absorbed in their own thoughts as they bent to meet her lips, tasting the most chaste kiss and yet leaving a feeling of intense debauchery from just that simple contact. “Hmmm…” They ignored any reaction from Tav, shifting back a little now instead. Clawed hands gripped Tav’s breasts, pressure enough to hurt but simultaneously finding nerves that made her heart race faster. She was becoming impatient. “I thought an incubus would be quick to get to the point.” “Hah! Aren’t you adorable, I didn’t think you’d have the words now. You are aware that we carry a powerful aphrodisiac in our saliva? Perhaps such a small kiss is not enough to poison a ferocious little rat?” They eyed her closely, daring her to reply.

Tav was briefly reminded of a very uncomfortable moment in the temple of Shar involving a half eaten giant spider. She could feel the heat lingering on her lips, and almost heard Gale’s voice shouting at her in her memories- “Stop licking the damn thing!”

She almost laughed, but Haarlep was bending towards her again. “Well, Rat? Do you want more of a taste?” Their claws gripped and pulled on sensitive skin, her chest flaring with a bright heat and pain. Tav remembered now the night she had danced with the Raphael’s true form, a dream more real than she realised. She reached up and grabbed Haarlep’s horns, pulling them in to a deep and passionate kiss. Their tongue danced between her lips, drawing out her breath, tasting every moan that started low and sang up through her throat. It was as if they were drinking in every single spark of her arousal through her lips, a taste of fire, cloves, cinnamon and smoke. Even their hands on her skin felt like the heated more, and she held on to the viciously curved horns until her wrists were snatched away and pressed down above her head. “Well well, you are entertaining…” Haarlep purred, licking their lips, “So, so delicious .” This time, Tav was lost for words, a fact that seemed to make the incubus smile with satisfaction. 

“Good…good, little thief, though you might have bitten off more than you can chew this time. I was only going to give you a little, but you went ahead and took all you wanted.” They let out a low chuckle. “I hope you’re ready, you should be feeling it…right about now.” Tav’s head rolled back onto the silk pillows, pressing down as she bit her lip. She was feeling it alright. The it in question was a powerful surge of libido, which started in her mouth where their tongue had drawn their devilish designs on her own like a curse. It spread like butterfly wings opening through the centre of her chest, chasing on down to her middle with the fluttering of a hundred desires. By the time the heat pooled between her legs it was damn near unbearable, pulling her hips up desperately towards the incubus who still knelt over her, their hand still effortlessly pinning her arms above her head. It continued further still into her legs, which Haarlep easily pinned by hooking their feet over her shins. By the time the sensation of pure lust had reached every inch of her being, Tav barely remembered how to breathe, where she was, or anything beyond the deep aching need to be touched.

The entire time, Haarlep simply watched, holding her still, refusing any contact besides the easy restraint. Their tongue licked the taste of her from their lips, revealing the hint of sharp teeth for one tantalising moment. “I don’t think I need to ask what you want, now, do I?” Their voice was just beside her ear as they bent close again, still just keeping their bodies from touching. Their wings spread out behind them. “But I would just love to hear those pretty lips beg.” Tav groaned. This was torture, but she was beginning to feel that reckless confidence rising up in her again. The game was on. “Fuck. You.” She managed to hiss out between desperately quickened breaths. This is a bad idea, this is a bad idea, why am I antagonising the-“Not. Yet.” They replied, tail coming down viciously on her upper thigh like a whip. The pain stung, her eyes almost watered as she felt the hint of a bruise beginning to swell where the blow had landed, but the contact had also given her a taste of what she desired. Haarlep laughed, they knew this game well, and they were ever so intrigued by a mere mortal who would be so willing to play it. “Perhaps I should be surprised how you’re still alive,” they punctuated the pause in their sentence with another lash of their tail, “and you don’t even know yourself, do you?”

Despite their question, Tav wasn’t given space to answer as the game intensified. Tail lashing with brutal precision, dancing on the knife edge of agony and ecstacy ever time it struck home, the incubus ever watching her reactions. If she had the presence of mind to look more closely, she would’ve noticed their red skin now bore a few flecks of her own blood, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered beyond the maddening embrace of pure hedonism. “I am beginning to like you, Rat. You’re bearing this all so very well, you might just be my new favourite pet~” They bent to her neck now, pressing their heated lips against skin that begged for their kisses. There was no affection beyond the lie of a false love, and despite the look in their blazing eyes they did not devour her in one bite, nor did they treat her with patience or reverence. No, the incubus wanted to pull every nerve in her body like a puppet’s strings, and gods it was good . 

Astarion was a practiced lover, focused on her, and leading her towards more experimental experiences by building the trust between them. The Emperor had looked directly into her mind and harnessed her hidden desires to bring them closer, an act she could only describe as respectful violation. The brief moment she had shared with Raphael showed her a kind of greed and selfish wanting that made her head spin every time she thought about it. But Haarlep? They were unique.

Haarlep’s touch was like fire dancing through her body, they lived and breathed pleasure, their entire being was designed to feed upon the shudders running through her body as they dug their clawed nails into her hip and traced a lustful path along her collarbone with lips, tongue, teeth . Tav struggled a little against the hand pinning her wrists, but it wasn’t freedom she wanted. Freedom was a word away, a word that almost sought her tongue to form the sound but was chased back every time by a fresh wave of utter delight leaving her drunk on lust.

“Ah you are refreshing, ” they breathed against her ribs, chuckling softly as another whip of their tail drew a fresh moan from Tav’s lungs, “and such pretty songs you sing, little thief, and you will sing mine soon~”

Their teeth grazed along over-sensitive skin, tongue flickering to press against tender flesh as they moved down to her breasts, releasing her hands now from above her head. She ached for the restraint, but found no breath to complain. Instead her hands balled into fists, gripping desperately at the decadent fabrics as the incubus reached the peak of her breasts with their wicked mouth now, their free hand beginning to tease her tense thighs.

For a few minutes, there was quiet. Haarlep finally stopped talking, their mouth busy drawing yet more infernal symbols with a quick tongue upon every inch of Tav’s exposed chest. She missed the voice, though, yearning for the deep tones to seduce her soul from her body- Shit, and I in danger? The thought tried to find purchase in her mind, but it swiftly left the way it came as she felt a finger finally find the source of the searing heat below.

“My, my, little Rat, aren’t you just full of desire~”, their voice began to fill the still air once more, musical and intrigued, “do you wish for more? I’ll need you to speak up now~”

The teasing touch, circling but never entering, sparked a new fire in Tav. The insulting nickname enticing the stubbornness to rear its head. “Make me.”

The incubus growled, wings fluttering for just a moment with something like a warped mirror of irritation. This wasn’t enough to get under their skin, was it? But oh, the challenge had been set, and they were not going to let this one get away with it. Their tail cracked through the air in a vicious arc, landing a stinging blow across her breast, and at that same moment they thrust their finger inside.

Tav howled. An unhinged noise, the satisfaction of finally having something in that aching emptiness that needed to feel this, and the delicious searing pain of the cambion tail drawing blood from pale skin. But that was all - she was left breathless, wanting, as Haarlep pulled back from her, leaving only that one motionless finger waiting. If they so much as twitched their taloned fingertip within her, she might have burst there and then, but they didn’t.

“So, are you going to ask nicely, Little Rat? You might be able to sneak into this house but do not think you can so easily steal from me. ” Their eyes burned brighter, and if Tav had any sense of what was going on around her she would’ve noticed the flames raising from the bed. Not a true fire, this was an illusion, one that was beyond Haarlep’s control. The light highlighted every inch of their chiseled body, their wickedly curved horns almost glowing as they continued to glare at her.

All it took was a slight twitch of their finger, and a fresh wave of arousal stirred within her entire being coalescing into a single, desperate word: “Please…”“Good~” they purred, wings spreading a little wider, free hand raising into the air to summon-

Oh shit, Tav whispered in her mind, somewhere between a pleased expletive and a note of concern, those are vines-The living vines rose up from beneath the bed, entangling her wrists securely, others below her coiling around her ankles and knees, positioning her legs bent, held open, displayed for the fiend’s amusement. “Very good~” they continued, before lowering towards her abdomen. A teasing bite drew blood from the curve of her hip at the same moment a second finger found its home in warm flesh, both moving now and finally drawing the first climax out of her soul with a long low sound that was almost unrecognisable. Haarlep ate it like an appetiser, far from sated. And given their kiss earlier, Tav was also completely given over to her need now.

The room fell quiet once more, aside from the sound of a thrumming heartbeat and the lewd echoes of Haarlep’s talents, as they moved lower to give another kiss. Far from the chaste kiss of a first love, the incubus put their tongue to work in tasting everything even as their fingers built up an intensity of motion.

Every nerve was alight, the sting of wounds from their lashing tail still burned brightly, pleasure and pain dancing a tango in every inch of Tav’s body. Her mind was almost empty, entirely focused on the swarm of sensation that was devouring her consciousness almost as voraciously as Haarlep was devouring her-

---

Haarlep almost regretted enthralling Tav, the spell was hardly necessary, and they had only used it moments ago. Her mind was not allowed to drift now, they demanded that of her, demanded that she think and feel only them , but their peace was about to be disturbed.

They felt the air shift, the currents changing, charged with the familiar electric crackle of magic as the shimmering doorway appeared behind them.

“Well, well, well,” the master of the house spoke with an air of calm irritation, “I don’t believe we had any scheduled guests today. And what, or rather who , the FUCK do you think you are doing, Harlot ?” The insulting nickname made them bristle, even as they continued to pull a shuddering orgasm from Tav’s burning body with a feral scream. Still, this could work in their favour… They folded their wings and sat up slowly, leaving their hand still inside her to keep working her nerves as her mind focused only on them, entirely unaware of the new arrival.

Raphael’s expression was complex, unreadable, as he took in the scene before him. His personal incubus grinning back at him with his own smug face, lips still wet with her desire. Her. What the fuck was she doing here? In his bed? Exposed, wanting, and having the audacity to not even look his way for a second.

“Little Mouse?-” ----------- ----------- ENDING NOTES ----------- -----------

It felt bad to split the chapter, but it was also very necessary~ finally we bring Tav to play with Haarlep, and naturally Raphael knows something is going on... I fear writing this and its sequel fundamentally rewired my brain, and gods am I glad that it did~ Until tomorrow, loves, when you will have more... Oh, did I almost forget? This one gets a LiArt~

[ikenbar]

Mr. Love: Ike’s Choice CH4 PT8

aaaand we back in the angst. Don’t worry about sitting pretty in it tho. expect those fluffy moments to hit soon B)

Warnings: Angst, heated arguments, talk of death; explosions; and harsh flashbacks, big swear for the swear jar, mad twists, Adri being an OG, the thickening of some epic plot, and a cliffhanger leaving you begging for more >:D

(Chapter Four (Victor and Gavin) Prologue, and part one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven can be found here!)

Please read the author’s note (and the beginning of the story) on chapter one part one if you’re new here :D

And an additional note in a previous part of chapter four part three here! (I promise these notes are important)

Chapter four:

Part eight:

Victor leaned back, clearly thrown off guard by my words. I sat up straight and pulled my hands from Victor’s. “I need to get back to work.” I said, moving to stand. Victor, coming to his senses, quickly stood and pushed me back down.

“No, you’re not.” He boomed, standing over me, giving me no space to try and stand again, “And we are going to the police after work.”

“No, I’m not!” I said with the same determination before. I pushed Victor roughly away from me. He stumbled back enough to give me space to get back onto my feet. I threw my plate of food onto the coffee table half-hazardly as I glared at Victor with determination, “That guy is mine! I will be the one who takes him down. So no, I’m not going to the police. And neither are you.”

“Is that a threat?” Victor growled and he walked back up to me. He towered over me, obviously trying to intimidate me. I merely looked up at him, a cocky grin slinking onto my face. 

“Nope!” I chimed, folding my arms proudly, “It’s your word against mine, Victor, and all you know is what I’ve told you. Sure you can go to the police with speculation, but you have no evidence to support your claim. I’d know. I also have no evidence.”

“You have got to be kidding me!” Victor rolled his eyes, “Ike, this is way over your head!! Do you have one good reason to keep this to yourself?!”

“Yes.”

“Oh really?! What is it then?!”

“… it is my business. Not your own."

"Ike-"

"Now if you'll excuse me," I moved to walk away but Victor stopped me. He grabbed my arms and held me steady in front of him, forcing me to face him. I looked up and glared at him.

"One reason, Ikamara." Victor's tone had changed dramatically. I relaxed my glare, "Tell me one reason we shouldn't go to the police and I'll drop it." I froze. Every part of me screamed to keep pushing Victor away, to protect him from getting too close and knowing too much. But, after one last look in his pleading eyes, I knew that he wouldn’t let me get away with pushing him off any longer.

I closed my eyes and sighed, "... he killed my friend.”

Victor's fingers twitched around my arms. 

I twisted myself from his grip as I recalled the events of that horrible day. “... We were following a lead into a warehouse. There was a secret room… a bomb… an explosion… I had to bring him back to life… with my own bare hands." My voice cracked. That image of Gavin’s lifeless body held form in front of my eyes, "It’s only a matter of time until it happens again… and…” I paused. Then, without hesitation, I looked unfalteringly up at Victor, locking eyes with him, “It’s not going to be you. Not if I can help it.” Victor looked down at me, eyes flooded with those familiar undecipherable emotions. 

Before he could say anything, my eyes flickered next to him, where they landed on a fourteen year old boy staring at his phone. My face suddenly felt like it had been set on fire. It was then that I became very aware how very not alone Victor and I were.

I jumped back from Victor and looked around the room, preparing rounds of lies and explanations in my head… 

but I stopped.

No one was moving. They were all posed in one motion, all looking over at Bart, who hadn’t moved an inch from his position on the floor. Not even Lola had wavered from where I had seen her last, with her small hand posed over Bart's knee. 

No one was moving. No one was breathing. Everyone was frozen. 

Almost like they were stuck in time.

I looked back at Victor in disbelief. He was watching me, eyebrow arched and hands in his pants pockets. He looked as calm and stoic as ever… 

… As if he knew exactly what was happening. 

My disbelief sunk into curiosity was I studied him, questions posed on my tongue. Victor merely sighed as a small smirk pushed up his cheeks. “Dummy.” He muttered, moving to sit back down on the floor. I opened my mouth. 

Just then the room snapped back to life. Bart groaned as he reached over and rubbed the baby Lola’s head. She giggled and fell onto his knee, slobbering on his suit pants. “Ah that’s probably how that anonymous tip got out.” Bart lamented, as if he was continuing where he had left off, “The reporters coming here is my fault.”

“Oh, Bartholomew.” Chris sighed, making me snap my head to face him, “You’ve got to learn how to keep your mouth shut! It’s gonna be the death of you! Or more, in this case, Ikie!... Ike?” Chris finally looked up at me. His perfect smile wavered slightly, “Something wrong?” I hesitated. Had they not heard a word of what Victor and I talked about? I literally said I was being targeted! Did… no one care?

I stole a quick glance at Victor. He was sitting casually at the end of the coffee table, eating his food once again as if nothing happened. I narrowed my eyes.

“... No.” I said, straightening my expression and posture, “I… Bart, what did you mean by anonymous tip?” Bart looked up at me through the gaps in his fingers.

“Hm? Oh I called our inside in the media.” Bart replied, sitting up, “She said that she got a call telling her about what happened. All the way down to the place your office was. It was because of my big mouth, Ike. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I waved Bart off limply, slightly lost in thought, “Did she say whether or not this person was male or female?”

“No. She said that they used a voice modulator.” Bart said, intrigue and blind curiosity dripping from his tongue, “One that made their voice seem lower and more mechanic. Whoever it was, they really didn’t want to be found out.” I hummed and furrowed my brows. 

Who would modulate their voice for an anonymous tip?

“Evie, dear.” Maria said from behind me, making me turn to face her, "Are you sure everything is alright? You look worried.”

“Yeah.” I said slowly, “I need to get back to work. Thank you for the meal.”

“But, you’ve still got some food left!” Sam chuckled gesturing to my half empty plate.

“I’ll heat it up during my next break.” I moved past the couch and away from the group, “Besides, I have a lot I need to do before I go home today.”

“Wait, Ike!” Bart quickly scooped up Lola and stood up from the floor, “I wanted to talk to you about that. I don’t think you should take your bike home today.”

“What?” I snapped my head around.

“At least not until this whole thing blows over.” He said, throwing his free hand up defensively as he walked over to me, “I don’t want anything happening to you while on the road. That thing is a death wish as it is. Then you throw in some reckless reporters-”

“And someone will aggressively write a story about my driving? ” I arched my eyebrow, “I’ve been driving that bike for years, Bart. I’ll be alright.”

“You could still get hurt!” Maria spoke up from the couch, “You never know what these people would do to get a story.”

“Maria, I’ll be fine.” I rolled my eyes and turned back to my desk, “I can take care of myse-”

“Oh. my. GOSH!!” Adri shouted from her place on the couch, causing everyone to jump. She glared at me sinisterly. “You drive a two wheel drive that has had more accidents than the average vehicle! Not only that but you just got out of the hospital! Do you really want to go back in?!?” Everyone in the room was frozen in place, speechless because of Adri’s sudden outburst. Adri, reading the room, breathed a loaded sigh, “All they are asking you to do is get another ride.” She continued, arching her eyebrow and glaring at me, “That’s all! Is that really too much to fucking ask?”

“Swear jar.” Ashton spoke up for the first time that day. Adri whipped her head around and glared at him. I hesitated, looking around the room. Nearly everyone’s eyes were on me, waiting for my answer. I could read the same emotion on each of their faces. 

It was an emotion I was tired of seeing.

I sighed. “I need to ride the bike home-but,” I said quickly before anyone could interrupt me, “I'll get someone to pick me up and drop me off at work starting tomorrow. Minor, would you-”

“I’ll take you.” A cool voice came from the coffee table, making all of us turn to face it. Victor stood up, empty plate in hand and determination on his face. I looked at him in disbelief. 

“N-no. You’ve done enough alre-”

“It wouldn’t be out of my way.” Victor said simply, walking to the trash can beside his desk to dispose of his plate, “I drive by your complex on the way home anyway.” I opened my mouth to argue more but Victor held up a hand, “If you are really concerned about the trouble, I’ll add the gas money to your investment fund.” I shut my mouth and glared at him. There it is again. The investment.

“Yes!” Bart pointed at Victor happily, “Let’s do that!”

“Bart-” I started, trying to regain control of the situation.

“It’s settled then!” Maria said, standing from the couch and clapping her hands, “Ike will ride with Victor from now on!”

“Hold on!” I tried again, but was interrupted once again.

“Wait does this mean Victor has to pick me up from school too?!” Sam asked with both excitement and worry.

“I’ll send a driver to pick you up.” Victor said, walking back to his desk.

“Sweet! My own personal driver!” Sam beamed, looking at me for approval. I arched my eyebrow. Sam’s smile plummeted. “...I-I mean,” He quickly said, throwing his hands up, “Not that you aren’t a better personal driver! I mean one outside of the family! I-I bet this driver has nothing on you, Ike!... Evie?” Sam smiled at me innocently. I rolled my eyes and looked over to Victor. He was also looking at Sam with a complacent expression. Sensing my stare, he turned to face me.

“There’s no getting out of this, is there?” I asked dully.

“No.” Victor, Bart, Maria, Adri, and Sam said at once. I sighed and turned back to my desk, where I sat in the chair and ran my face through my hands. 

“I still don’t like the idea of you going out alone tonight.” Bart said uneasily. I pulled my hands down my face and looked over to him.

“I can go with her!” Adri said, raising her hand from the couch. Maria glared at her.

“You have school.” She said in her menacing motherly tone.

“Didn’t you hear?” Adri said, flashing a devious grin, “Today is a half day! I was going to hang out with friends after school but I’ll just spend the night with my favorite sister instead!” Bart and Maria glared at their newest foster daughter in silence.

“...I’m too worried for Ike’s safety to double check that.” Bart finally said, keeping his squinty eyes on Adri. Maria turned to me.

“Would you be ok with Adri spending the night?” She asked sweetly. I looked back at Adri. She grinned at me and winked. I hesitated. She obviously had something planned. But what? What could I have for her? Maybe she planned on ditching me to hang out with her friends? But then why would she be so persistent in getting me a ride home? And why was she so angry before? What caused her attitude to change so quickly like that… There really was only one way to find out.

“Sure.” I said, turning to face my computer, “but I warn you, Adri, my life at home isn’t very exciting.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Adri chimed.

“I’ll follow Ike home and be sure she is safe.” Victor said, standing from his place at his desk. He put his hands in his pockets and looked over to me. I looked away disgruntledly. 

“Can I come?!” Sam asked hopefully, looking between Bart and Maria.

“You have soccer practice today, mister.” Maria scrubbed his head roughly. Sam whined but didn’t say anymore. Maria smiled and looked over to Victor. “I’ll give you a copy of the kids’ schedules. Be sure to send me the bill.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Victor waved his hand dismissively, “I’ve got it handled.” I rolled my eyes. He sure was wasting a lot of money just to prove a point.

“Then it’s settled!” Bart clapped, “Adri will go home with Evie today and Victor will follow. Then he will take her to and from work until everything is cleared up! Great! Now! Let’s finish eating in my office and let Ike and Victor get back to work. Say goodbye to Ike kids!” Bart jogged happily to the coffee table and started packing the food back into the bags. Everyone complied to his demands and scattered thank yous and goodbyes came from various voices in the room. I stood up as Sam came running up to me. He jumped up and gave me a big hug.

“Don’t worry.” He whispered in my ear, “I told Adri I called dibs on the next sleepover.”

“Noted.” I said as I ruffled his hair. Sam laughed and pulled away from me, just in time for Chris to replace him. He lifted me up in the air and rocked me back and forth, all while squeezing the life out of me.

“Be safe, Ikie!” He said in between the swings. 

“You too.” I coughed, giving him a few pats on the back, for it was all I could do in that situation. Chris dropped me and walked away. I just barely had time to breathe as Adri approached me.

“Sister!” She said, holding her arms out wide. I winced slightly but that didn’t stop Adri from wrapping her arms around my neck. She pulled me close to her, letting her head rest next to my ear. I hugged her back, patting her lightly on the shoulder.

"I can't wait for tonight!” Adri whispered into my ear as she rubbed my back slightly, “Especially since you're gonna tell me all about that pretty little target on your back.”

All my blood pooled to my feet.

“H-how…” I stammered.

“What, you think your little conversation with Victor was left unheard?” Adri chimed, “‘Do you really think it will stop the man who will do anything to see me dead?!’ ‘He sent a bomb through my ceiling!’ ‘It’s my word against yours!’ Really, Ike, it’s like you’re trying not to hide it. Though it does surprise me that I was seemingly the last person to know.” I tightened my arms around Adri’s body.

“This stays between us.” I spoke seriously and coldly, “Understand? Not a word to Bart and Maria.”

“Geez, alright!” Adri gasped as she tapped my back, “I promise I won’t say anything!” I eased my grip and pulled away from Adri. She keeled over, rubbing her stomach and breathing deeply. I ignored her show as I looked over to Bart and Maria.

They were talking merrily to Victor as if there was absolutely nothing to worry about. I furrowed my eyebrows. I had said I was being targeted when I was with Victor so, why aren’t they talking about it? Why aren’t they worried? If Adri heard the conversation then shouldn’t they have as well? Just what happened when Victor and I were talking?

“Hey,” Adri patted my head, forcing my attention to her, “You can’t keep your thoughts to yourself anymore. You’ve gotta tell me what you are thinking or I will just be someone with valuable information! You wouldn’t want that just walking around willy nilly, right?” Adri grinned mischievously.

“Well” My voice fell an octave as I folded my arms and arched my brows, “there is another way I could make sure that information doesn’t leak…” Adri’s grin quickly fell from her face. I rolled my eyes. “Don’t worry, kid.” I said, patting Adri on her shoulder, “After all, I’m your favorite sister.”

“How can you make that sound so menacing and kind at the same time?” Adri chuckled nervously. I winked at her before ushering her forward, leaving room for the rest of our family to say their goodbyes.

>>>

Once everyone had left, Victor and I sat quietly at our desks. I tapped my pen on my desk, lost in thought.

“So,” Victor said without looking up from his computer, “You’re an evolver.”

My pen fell from my hand.

I tried to speak but my words had gotten lodged in my throat. How could he have known?! Was it the way I pushed him to the ground?! I didn’t use that much power. Maybe I miss judge my evol more than I’d like to admit.

“I had my assumptions but,” Victor continued in between my silence, “I wasn’t completely certain. But now, it’s quite clear why you insist on taking care of yourself.”

“H-how?” I managed to stutter, turning to look at Victor. Victor scoffed as he turned to me

“Are you that slow? You really didn’t notice anything strange during our conversation earlier?”

My eyes widened, “So I wasn’t imagining that!... That was you?” Victor gave me a look that I received far too often. 

“What do you think?”

“So you’re an evolver too? Wait, so your evol is to freeze people in place?”

“Dummy.” Victor sighed as he turned back to his work, “I can control time.”

“Can people still hear us when you do that?”

“No.”

“...what?”

“Do you really think I would start that kind of a conversation in front of your parents?” Victor retorted, turning back to me, “Let alone your siblings?”

“Wait.” I shook my head and held up my hands, “You’re saying no one else could have heard our conversation?”

“No.” Victor turned back to his computer, “Not unless they were also evolvers.”

“... what?”

“They had to have been an evolver to have heard our conversation.”

My heart stopped.

Victor, noticing my change in attitude, turned back to me. “What is it?” He asked, seriousness easing back into his tone. I opened my mouth.

 A knock came from the door. “Sorry, ignore me.” Adri came into the room, looking down at her phone, “Maria forgot her diaper bag so I… came… to” Adri looked up from her phone to see Victor and me staring at her, “... Unless you guys have some sort of emotional connection to it. Then I can tell her it wasn’t there-”

“N-no.” I cleared my throat and gestured to the sitting area, “Go ahead.” After a moment of confused silence, Adri did as I said and continued walking into the room. I started mindlessly tapping my pen on the desk as I watched Adri, thinking over everything Victor had just said.

“...Oh, and Adri?”

“Hm?” Adri hummed.

“I’m excited to have you over tonight.”

“Oh really?” Adri sang, picking up the bag and turning to look at me.

“Yeah.” I nodded and stopped tapping my pen, “I get the feeling we have a lot of bonding to do.”

(Next)

[fxkthatdairy]

Panic Room Chapter Seven: How To Save A Life~ Grayson Dolan

Overview: In the year 2020, to solve the problem of overpopulation. Selected few are thrown into the PANIC ROOM simulation. If the person finds their soulmate in the simulator and manages to survive, they are able to rejoin the rest of the population. If they fail they will become a victim of the PANIC ROOM. What happens when (Y/N) gets thrown in the PANIC ROOM? Will she survive? Or will she fall victim to the simulation?

Warnings: Mentions of death, depression, angst, violence

                                               (Y/N)’s POV

It’s been a week since Grayson woke up from his nightmare after we made love for the first time and he hasn’t been the same. He’s been very territorial and he won’t even really talk to me verbally, the only responses I can really get out of him are yes, no, I don’t know, and Goodnight. At night is the only time he’ll actually touch me and it’s only to hold my body so close to him that I feel like I’m suffocating. Don’t get me wrong, I would normally enjoy him holding me and I do but not when he’s been so distant and won’t let me know what’s wrong. He still hasn’t told me anything about his nightmare and when I try to bring it up, he pushes me away. I began to feel as he was only pretending to put up with me because he has too.

                                              Grayson’s POV

I know I’ve been distant and I know it’s killing (Y/N) but I just can’t. I feel emotionally numb and I don’t want to drag her into it. For the past week, I’ve been collecting the puzzles throughout the area and bringing them back. I don’t want (Y/N) to know so I hide them every night and once she falls asleep, I pull them out and try to figure them out. I’ve figured a few out but the rest is so damn difficult, I end up getting so frustrated that I just put them away and try to fall back asleep. I haven’t been sleeping much lately because I’m so terrified of losing her, I’m scared that if I go to sleep for a long period of time, that something or someone would take her away from me. So I will sacrifice all my hours of sleep trying to solve these damn puzzles to try and get us out of here. But then again a small part of me is begging me to tell (Y/N) how I truly feel and tell her about everything that’s been going on from the dream to the puzzles but I push that away and decide to stay secluded. I was sitting outside with one of the puzzles trying to figure it out, when (Y/N) walked out. I tried to quickly shove it under my thigh, hopefully, she didn’t see anything or wouldn’t bring it up.

                                                   (Y/N)’s POV

I walked outside to check on Grayson and to try and talk to him for what seemed to be the millionth time. I wasn’t going to give up until it killed me because it honestly was killing me slowly watching him seclude himself.

“Hey Gray, what were you doing?” I asked curiously as I approached him. I saw him stick something quickly under his thighs, in an attempt to hide whatever he had from me.

“Nothing, I’m just sitting here,” he said in a monotone voice that broke my heart. This was the voice of the man I love but not his tone, not the tone that could make me smile just from hearing it.

“Don’t lie to me Grayson, please, you’re killing me. Something hasn’t been the same since the night you had your nightmare. You’ve been shutting me out, Grayson. You’ve been silent and you’ve been secretive. The only time you touch me is to hold me at night till you think I fall asleep and then you leave. So tell me the truth Grayson, what is going on? Do you not love me anymore? Am I too much of a damn burden? Just please tell me something and stop leaving me in the dark because it’s killing me, Gray, I love you.” I said as tears began to well up in my eyes.

“No, no, god no don’t ever think that I don’t love you or that you’re a burden because you’re not (y/n) if anyone’s the burden it’s me. I love you so much, so much that I can’t take the thought of losing you. In my nightmare, I was restricted and I couldn’t escape. This dark man had you, my mom, Ethan, and Cameron all tied up and he killed everyone slowly and made me watch but when he got to you he made it agonizingly slow. You called out to me and I couldn’t save you. I couldn’t keep my promise. I watched your life leave your eyes and it crushed me. When I woke up, I knew I had to get us out of here because the longer we stayed in here, the higher my risk was to lose you. God, we only get one soulmate in our lives and your mines and if I lose you, god if I lose you, I wouldn’t know how to live because you’re my oxygen, my blood, my reason to live, and my everything. So I shut down, I didn’t want you to know these because I didn’t want you to worry about me. (Y/N) I think I found how we get out of this place. These puzzles have been hidden and I think I’ve gathered all of ours and I’ve been able to solve a few of them but they others I’ve struggled. I’ve been trying to solve these every night because my body wouldn’t let me sleep because I felt if I slept for long periods of time something bad would happen to you and I can’t let that happen. I love you so much and I’m so sorry I’ve shut you out.” He said through the tears that were falling from his tired eyes. I was so worried about him not loving me, I failed to notice the bags that were forming heavily under his eyes. My heart broke. He had been struggling for a whole week and I was so stubborn I didn’t even offer help sooner. I wiped away a stray tear and sat on the ground next to him. I pulled his head to my chest and ran one hand through his hair and the other rubbed his back soothingly as his body shook from his cries.

“I’m so sorry, my love. I’m sorry you’ve felt this way but I swear to you Gray, that I’m not leaving you. I will fight like hell to make sure I will survive for you. Grayson I need you to be open with me, I love you so much and seeing you in such a depressive state, killed me. Grayson, I know everything is scary right now and I know we are fighting to survive but we’ve got this. We are stronger together than we are apart. I’m so glad you found these puzzles, now let me help you solve them. I was the expert puzzle solver growing up. We have to stay together if we are going to make it but before we even attempt to try and solve a puzzle, you and I are going to pick up everything out here, go back to the tent and you are going to sleep and if I have to stay awake to make sure you sleep I will.” I said as I kissed his forehead. He leaned up and kissed me gently on the lips.

“Whatever you say, Angel, I love you more than you’ll ever know. Thank you for helping me my love,” he said and stood up, grabbing the puzzle. I grabbed his hand and we walked back to the tent and he put the puzzle with the rest of the puzzles. I laid down and told him to lay down beside me. I pulled his head to my chest and massaged his scalp softly and rubbed my hand gently around his back. I felt his breathing start to slow down and his eyes started to flutter shut. Once I thought he was completely asleep, I tapped his shoulder to see if he would respond and he didn’t which made me happy. He deserved sleep, he was so worried about me that he didn’t take care of himself which in a bad way was really sweet. I just wished he had taken care of himself. For the next few hours, I watched his back rise up and down with every breath that he took, I admired every single facial feature he had from his sharp jaw to his bushy eyebrows and plump lips. I admired the facial hair that had grown on his face over the past two weeks that we had been trapped in this simulator. My thoughts then drifted to my mother. I missed her dearly and I hope she’s doing fine. I can’t wait to get out of this hell hole and see her again. I can’t wait to get out of here and spend the rest of my life with Grayson and see his family again. I knew we would get out, we just had to figure out those puzzles. So I reached over and grabbed one and silently solved it and then another and another until Grayson slowly began to wake up.

“Gray, I’ve almost solved them all, they seem to be giving directions on where to go. Maybe this is our way out. We just have a few more to solve and we could possibly be free at last.” I said as I kissed him gently on the lips. He smiled and pulled me into him.

“God, you’re so smart angel, You amaze me every day, now let’s solve these puzzles.” He said and we got started hard at work until we had all the puzzles laid out in order completely solved.

“Look they tell us exactly how to get there. We have to follow the river and take a right at the willow tree and follow the trail, make two lefts and a right and we should be at a door and this is the code. We could get out baby we could go and start our lives.” I said excitedly as I kissed him. We began to pack up all of our stuff and head on the trail beside the river, hand in hand we walked. The sunset and we continued to walk letting the moonlight guide us through the night.

Third Person POV

The two walked alongside the river, watching around so that they didn’t get attacked. They had made sure to pack up everything in case this turned out to be a hoax and they carried it on their backs. When they approached the willow tree, they made a right turn just as the clues had said. They then began to realize how oddly quiet it was as if nobody was around, empty tents were scattered everywhere. It couldn’t be possible that they were the last two alive. They just continued on following the directions they were given by the clues. After making two left turns and a right, they stood in front of a tall black wall. You could see the outline of the door and the keypad. Grayson approached the door and grabbed the clue with the numbers.

“Are you ready baby?” He asked (Y/N) as he went to type in the password.

“Hell yeah, let’s get the fuck out of this place,” she said with a smile as he typed in the password.

The doors opened........

———————————————————————

CLIFFHANGER! I’m sorry I had to do it. This chapter also is slightly shorter I'm sorry. Chapter seven is done! I hope you guys enjoy this series as much as I enjoy writing it. Feel free to let me know your thoughts on how the series is going so far. As always let me know if you have any requests, concepts, or blurbs. Part eight will probably be up in the next few days. Part eight and nine of The Principals Office should be up within the next couple of days as well. I’m going to focus a little more on my Principal’s Office series because I have greats ideas. I’m also going to be writing imagines soon so send in requests 😊 Love you guys 🥺😊💛

Tags: @dolanshellyes @graysavant @graydolan12 @flowery-dolan @dolan-bliss @justordinaryjen @fandomsfeministsandothershit @dolans4lyfe @lanelessdolan @pineappledols @reblogserpent @frickin-bats @cautiouscalum @grays-laugh @youtuberimagines12 @minecraftgamerr @wrcn9fvlcver @buildermangray

[augustheart]

1, 9, 15, 20 for the writing ask meme!

This time around all of these are for fics by the way.

1. Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

Like I said in the last ask at any given time I have a stupidly high number of projects I’m working on but I will take this time to talk about the ridiculously long one I’m putting most of my energy toward now! (The tab is open right now and it is taunting me with that “last updated yesterday at [...]” notification and its 32,427 word wordcount.)

I won’t say exactly what it’s about even though it’s not that hard to figure out and several people already know exact details but progress is generally pretty good! Not the fastest I’ve ever written because I write in fits and starts but it’s going pretty good! (Just jinxed it though for sure.) I’m working on chapter five of a planned ten, and I really hope I don’t overshoot that by accident. It’s fun! It’s definitely more like the things I used to write when it comes to like... the actual angst/“whump” part because there’s a lot of that here, and I’m very really mean to readers with a couple of these cliffhangers. Chapter two and chapter four are especially rude, sorry.

I love all of it. I love that I get to write about people overcoming hardship and coming together and also beating the shit out of people who hurt their loved ones. I genuinely love what I’m writing now and I think it’s probably one of my best works and I’m glad that I decided to write it all out in advance before posting it because I feel like that gives me time to really perfect it. It also makes it easier to go back and seed plot elements through the prewritten chapters, which is helpful because I keep forgetting about a character and going back to make sure that they get to be there because they’re, y’know, the main protagonist of the show. (Don’t worry there is still a character arc and a story she has, it just gets lost in the shuffle a little because there are like... six storylines going on at once that need to intersect. I think six, anyway. There are a lot. Jeez, I think it may be closer to seven, counting the villains...)

Anyway please [Eric Andre “let me in” voice] show me support when I finally post it because I imagine the fandom will be relatively in brumation when I finally do all things considered. 

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

I refuse to write really short things, it has to be at least 1,000 words for some reason, but I do both! I prefer my longfics, I think they give me more time to write plot and flesh out characters, but I’ve found that a good median wordcount for me is...like...6,000 words? That’s usually what I fall on when I limit myself to something under 10,000 that has the potential for more than just 1-2,000 words. But I do like to read and write both! As evidenced by some of my current projects shaping up to be over 50,000 words at least if they haven’t already left that count in the dust by now (hi, Half Light, you stupidly long son of a bitch). 

And I am the hellish combination of both! I usually know at least how I want it to end, but the entire journey from A to B is a complete mystery to me. Sometimes I’ll have elements I want to incorporate or characters I want to include and I’ll plan for them but I will never, ever write down my outline. The only time I write down outlines it’s when I need to know the concrete timeline for something that’s set in the past or is taking major divergent choices or both (i.e., I made a timeline outline for Heartless leading up to when Eric approaches Dorothy, a timeline outline for Two of Spades when I eventually actually work on that, a timeline outline for what I nicknamed the “I’m no longer baby I want power AU,” etc). Literally every other time I am absolutely flying by the seat of my pants. I don’t know what I’d do without Hedgi who helps me plot at least half the things I write (at least for the fandoms she’s also in), usually after I try to write them and immediately get stuck like a puppy who tried to jump into a lake and found out the shoreline was actually just a bog.

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Oh, it really depends. I’m alright at nailing tags down, unless there are categories I want to use that don’t already have a set tag, but sometimes when I think of the concept for a fic it comes ready-made with a summary and I don’t have to think about that at all, or I’m directly inspired by a phrase/lyric/etc and I can just use that for the title and spend hours deliberating on a summary. Luckily for the project I’m working on now the conceit can just be the summary, and the title took a tiny bit of research but I knew what I wanted the bare bones to be and I just needed the actual names/terms. I do think in general, though, summaries are a smidge harder than titles for me. 

12. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

I really, really want to answer this one to talk about the different hidden references, relationship development, and foreshadowing that I baked into damn near every level of the big project I’ve been talking about because it’s in literally everything right down to the chapter titles (and there’s a hint to pay attention to them when you read, especially once we get to chapters 6-10, which I am extremely pumped to write), but I also really don’t want to spoil anything, so... time to be as numbingly vague as possible, I guess.

I’m foreshadowing that a character will develop powers by the final act, of course, but I’m also foreshadowing that a different character will not only develop them but use them to basically save the life of another character--and related to that, there is intense foreshadowing of a character using certain things to save someone else’s life at around the same time, which is not subtle at all if you know what you’re looking for (mainly because I slipped it into plain sight) but is part of some nice red herrings if I do say so myself. It also really makes me laugh that I decided to do some, um, “homophobia-shadowing,” where I just... imply that a character is homophobic. I dunno why I just think that’s a funny thing to do even if it has real repercussions for certain characters later. 

There’s some character development mixed that I’m really excited for because it allows a character to go in a completely different direction than they do in canon but in a way that I think still feels really right for them. This happens a couple times, actually, but this one in particular is something I knew had to happen the second I realized how to tie this plot thread back into everything else. I think it’s exactly what the character could’ve needed if this had gone down and I’m really excited to write it. The other character should’ve just been allowed to do this in canon because I think it would’ve fucking ruled.

Also, in everything I write that’s comics-based, whether it’s fic for the comic directly or for a show/movie using comics as source material, everything is a reference. That number code? That could be anything from the first time someone appeared in a comic mixed with the publishing date of the comic itself (i.e. if someone appeared for the first time in 1964 but the comic began publishing in 1959 I’ll use 6459 or 5964) to the creator’s date of birth. I think that I use famous writers of the character/potential creators of the character as street names or last names or aliases whenever I need to bring them up is a lot more obvious. Same with how I use writer/artist initials as “random letters” if I think a code would realistically have one mixed in--I just checked a document for an example of this and found “ADBP5519MWGK6419.”

I also reuse direct lines of dialogue if I think they fit the situation--for example, in Butterfly Effect I lifted the “World War I chic” line directly from Giffen’s Doom Patrol run, which I mentioned in the author’s note, and there’s dialogue in my current big project that’s a direct reference to/play on the “I wish you’d died instead of Mom” line in the JSA Infinite Crisis tie-in (Johns is a fuckin’ hack for that one though and it made no sense for what he used it for, a better line would’ve been “I bet you wish I’d died instead of Mom,” but we don’t have time for that), and I’ll probably directly reference dialogue from JSA/JSA at some point in chapter nine or chapter ten. (Think really hard about how that arc opens if it’s one you’re familiar with, lmao, and remember--there’s no time travel to undo things here!) 

[oliverarditi]

Impossible speech

I have a pet theory. I would like to articulate it eventually through a scholarly monograph, but for the moment it guides my peregrinations through fantasy (and other forms of) fiction, and emerges in partial form in the things I say about it. It is roughly as follows: certain writers in the twentieth-century, predominantly of fantasy fiction, and most notably J.R.R. Tolkien, developed world-building (a discipline which every writer of prose fiction must attend to) into a literary form in its own right. Tolkien, and others including the linguist, role-playing game designer and sometimes novelist M.A.R. Barker, made the secondary world the primary focus of his creative efforts, his life’s work in fact. The two novels he set there were relatively incidental in his mind, although writing the second certainly spurred him to firm up much of the detail and history. The Lord of the Rings is not, to my mind, a good novel – yet it is one of my favourite, and one which I have re-read repeatedly. The affection I have for it, and I think its widespread popularity, are due not to its virtues as a novel, which are rudimentary, but to the breathtakingly coherent and poetic world-building which underpins it, and which continually ruptures the surface of its prose with intimations of a vast, deep history, and with vatic language of epic power. Few other writers have made world-building their primary focus, but some have understood some of Tolkien’s insights. The past is a well, and its deepest waters must be mythic, or their sun-warmed historical surface will be tepid. An individual, even a carefully particularised one (as Tolkien’s characters are not), is a product of their place, and a place is an archive of its past. And most importantly, cultural coherence is a function of linguistic coherence.

Frank Herbert knew all this, as the documentary evidence which he fabricates for his deep future history in Dune demonstrates. Ursula K. Le Guin understands it well, as can be seen in her remarkable Earthsea books for children, in which she both locates magic in the act of naming, and attends carefully to the specific phonological music of her proper nouns. G.R.R. Martin is also very clear on the relationship between a secondary world and the tenor of a narrative, and his A Song of Ice and Fire series presents a deep, well-thought history, and a coherent linguistic milieu from the outset. None of them appear to prioritise world-building over prose-writing, as Tolkien did for many decades, but having seen Martin’s doorstop Fire & Blood arrive in the library last year it was apparent that he has been enjoying that ‘secret vice’ (a term Tolkien used of his language construction, but equally apposite here). One also might speculate as to whether this explains why the fuck The Winds of Winter is taking so long to arrive, but given my interest in world-building I’m not about to begrudge Martin a decision to set aside his present-tense narrative in favour of a work of constructed history.

I’ve not read his much shorter The World of Ice and Fire, which I assumed would be a cash-in of the sort that attends any intellectual property of this general flavour, but having held Fire & Blood in my hands when it arrived as new library stock, and seen that it consists of nothing but chapter after chapter of densely written historical narrative, I thought it would be remiss of me not to find out what happens when this master of long-form adventure fiction turns his attention directly to world-building. Of course this is still story-telling, and much of world-building will always be story-telling, but it’s fairly clear that Martin is a lot more interested in stories than say maps, or languages. In fact, what this seven-hundred and thirty-six page monolith of dynastic struggle amounts to is a plot outline for another dozen series as large as the still incomplete A Song of Ice and Fire.

When Tolkien wrote history, none of which was published before his death, he adopted a mythic voice which was grounded in a deep appreciation of the music of English, and crucially, of its linguistic past. Fire & Blood is written consistently in a voice which is reminiscent of another of the several which Tolkien employs; it can be found throughout The Hobbit and LotR, but is most prominent in the opening chapters of the later book, which are set in the Shire, among the pastoral, allegorically English hobbits. It’s clear that the work is written in the voice of a fictional scholar within Martin’s world of Westeros, and the tone that it adopts, particularly in reported speech, is very similar to the affectionately patronising tone with which Tolkien reports the speech of ordinary hobbits, in their commentary on the events of his narrative. The effect here (it’s pretty irritating in Tolkien) is twee, and jars with the sometimes explicit content, which of course any medieval chronicler would have left out.

In fact there is a fundamental contradiction between Martin’s desire to situate the voice of his text within his world, and his equally obvious intention that we take this text as a definitive and objective account of his world’s history. What interests does his narrator serve? What does he leave out? What does he embellish? Why does he appear to be regarded as reliable, when we are asked to understand him as subject to the same social and political forces as a medieval chronicler, none of whom were ever remotely reliable? He even discusses the relative reliability of his own fictional sources! The convolutions of succession, dynastic struggle, and internecine warfare which Martin describes are an absolutely convincing reproduction of the complexities of medieval European history (give or take a few dragons), but those complexities have been reconstructed by historians from multiple unreliable and politically interested sources. Martin’s decision to put his historical speech in the mouth of a single narrator pitches it straight into the chasm which exists between the singular, indisputable, oral truth of Tolkien’s backstories, and the multiple, debatable, constructed documentary truth of written history.

The impossible subject position of the speech that results could be forgiven as an aspect of the fantastical whimsy which characterises this genre of writing, but Martin’s usual narratives, and indeed his world, are characterised by nothing so much as their grim plausibility (give or take a few dragons). This weakly situated narrative voice, compounded by the lack of a protagonist, decentres the storytelling – without the complex interplay of subjectivities that characterise Martin’s novels the text becomes flat, its functional value (whether that is to edify, to entertain, to inform or whatever) perpetually deferred, until the narrative concludes with the reader none the wiser as to whose story they have just read, or from what position they have received it.

It is undeniably interesting to read a text by a commercial fantasy author that is pure world building. Martin paces his storytelling as carefully as he does elsewhere, and puts in plenty of cliffhangers and ‘Chekhov’s guns’ to keep the reader engaged despite the rather broad scale of the narrative. However, for me, this kind of writing foregrounds literary style in a way that Martin is uninterested in engaging with – it invites the reader to encounter it as the writing, not of its author, but of their constructed world. When Tolkien writes the deep past of his Middle Earth he adopts a backward-looking style which no contemporary writer would regard as being of much literary interest, but it is a burnished and musical mode of textual production which reveals the hand of a master-craftsperson, and which is absolutely plausible as the speech of a denizen of his world. Martin is also a master, but of plotting, not of prose, and his version of Bygonese is a clumsy one. His book will be of great interest to fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, and I certainly enjoyed it, but it reads as though it was written to communicate his plot outline to a publisher or show-runner. It is not at all compelling as a metafictional text.

[seriouslyhooked]

Scoring Your Love (Part 14/?)

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six,Part Seven,Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen. Story also on FF here and AO3 here. Banner by the wonderful @timetravelandfairytales

Modern AU where Killian is a world famous soccer star who has hit rock bottom and been sentenced to the place where ‘football’ legends go to die – America. While here he crosses paths with Emma, an up and coming musician and film scorer who challenges everything he thought he knew and makes him want more than the game he’s always loved. Will be filled with fluff for days. Rated M.

A/N: Okay friends I’m back, as I said I would be, and I can PROMISE that I am not leaving at such an unfortunate place with this chapter as I did last time. No, no, no. The time for cliffhangers and what-ifs is behind us. That being said I hope you will enjoy this installment and thank you for reading!

When he was a child, Killian had been told time and time again that staring at a clock wouldn’t make time move faster. He assumed the same logic worked for cell phones, and so it was arguably fruitless for him to keep staring at this blasted contraption. Surely Emma wouldn’t respond sooner because he wished it to be so. All the same, he was feeling restless and worried not having heard back from her all day.

It was very unlike Emma to leave him hanging. In all the time they’d been together Emma was nothing if not effective at communicating. Even in the depths of her most music-heavy moments, she was a creature of habit. Emma took breaks and checked in with the world in that time, and so the fact that he hadn’t heard from her since she left his place this morning was alarming. Couple that with the fact that they were supposed to see each other at eight and it was now well past ten and Killian was really starting to fear the worst. He knew in his heart something wasn’t right, but short of calling her friends or showing up at her place, what could he do? For the moment the answer did not present itself, so he found himself pacing around the kitchen, stopping every few minutes to check his phone again.

Last night Killian had faced a moment that brought real and tangible fear to the forefront of his life for the first time in a long time. The confrontation with Gold had angered him and terrified him too, but despite all Killian’s misgivings about coming clean, Emma had been accepting of the mess that stained his past. It had been the hardest thing he’d ever done to fess up to her, and though there were moments of heartache where he watched her taking in some of the worse mistakes he’d made, he’d never met a person who was so rational in the face of emotion like Emma.

It turned out that Emma had this ability Killian never anticipated where she could reason through all of his bad choices and all of the happenings that had brought him to LA. She’d listened carefully, asking questions where they were needed and putting together the pieces of a puzzle Killian wished wasn’t so convoluted. Then, at the end of it all she’d not only accepted him, she’d shared her own demons too. If Killian were to wager on it, he’d say he now knew every part of Emma’s past that Regina’s little file had contained months ago, and having that exchange of past missteps between them had made it possible to overcome his fear. After everything, Emma still trusted him, and for Killian that was the single most important thing.

With the truth out there in full, Gold’s power was now seriously lacking in Killian’s estimations. Perhaps Gold had sway with the press and with teams in his old league, but since Killian only cared about his relationship with Emma, and since Emma had assured him that she was in this for the long haul, bad press or not, he felt like he had everything. No matter what may come professionally, Killian had more than enough to keep him blissfully happy as long as he had Emma by his side.

The only problem was that right now she wasn’t here, and the more time that passed, the more Killian began to worry that Emma had changed her mind. Maybe in the light of day this had all gotten to be too much for her. Perhaps some time between when she’d left for work this morning and now she’d seen the light and realized she was worth more than such a sorry state of affairs. He hoped that wasn’t the case, knowing he’d never move on from Emma Swan, but just as the wave of uneasiness around him began to crescendo to an all time high, his phone rang.

“Emma,” Killian murmured aloud as he went to grab it, but instead of seeing her name it was his brother’s. Again. Fuck!

Killian had been barely keeping in touch with Liam since the last spat they’d had, but today his brother had been calling and texting him more than usual. If it was an emergency, Killian would have known – but from what Liam had written he just ‘wanted to talk.’ Whatever Liam believed to be so important, now was not the time to be speaking about it. He had more pressing matters and no patience for whatever business happenings or sport politics Liam was no doubt intrigued by. Killian ignored the call and threw the phone back on the counter. Seconds later there was a knock at the door. Again hope swelled in Killian’s chest, but when he looked to see who was there, he was completely shocked.

“Liam? What the hell are you doing here?”

“You’ve been ignoring me,” Liam said by way of answer as he let himself into the apartment.

Killian looked his brother over, finding Liam just the same as when Killian had left him back in London. If anything Liam was harder now, his suit starched to an almost painful crispness and his blue eyes looked cold and distant. He appeared ever the professional, but Killian could also sense that he would not like what his brother had come here to say. There was an edge to Liam’s presence, and where that edge came, a row was almost sure to follow.

“So you got on a plane and flew here?” Killian asked, incredulous that his lack of response would prompt such a bold move.

“I did what I had to do. Two minutes a day hardly cuts it, Killian.”

“I’ve been busy,” Killian replied, knowing that was true even if Liam had a point. If Killian hadn’t been angry still he would have given his brother more attention. Unfortunately for Liam, Killian hadn’t fully forgiven him for his reaction to learning about Emma.

“Oh trust me brother, I know,” Liam replied, dropping a stack of papers on the table. Killian looked down and saw that the pile contained dozens of photos and that the subjects of the shots were he and Emma.

“Are you spying on me?” Killian asked, the anger in his voice apparent as his arms folded over his chest. If Liam were spying it would be such a flagrant crossing of any line of decency that Killian didn’t know how they’d come back from it, but Liam scoffed at the query like it was utterly preposterous.

“Hardly. These were sent to me this morning, and while I’ll admit that most of these are rather dull, there are a few worth seeing.”

Liam pulled the photos in question out of the lineup and the sight of them made Killian’s heart drop. While the others were mundane shots of Emma and Killian on dates and about town together, the ones Liam fixated on were taken today. Killian could tell because Emma was wearing the same yellow dress and braided hair that she’d left with this morning, but she didn’t look anywhere near as happy as she’d been when they said goodbye. That no doubt had to do with the fact that she wasn’t alone in any of these photos. Gold was with her, and his presence immediately set off warning bells in Killian’s head.

“Where did you get these?” Killian asked, his fingers tracing them over as the ire in his heart grew stronger. He didn’t have any details but already he knew Gold had done something monstrous and it filled Killian with rage to think that man would have the audacity to approach Emma where she worked. At the same time a creeping sense of dread worked its way up through his system. The only reason Emma had to deal with such a lunatic was because of Killian. He was in some ways responsible for this, and it made him ill to think he had put Emma in the path of such a tyrant.  

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Liam replied too cavalierly for Killian’s liking. “What I do care about is finding out just how deep you’re in with this woman.”

“Excuse me?” Killian asked, not following.

From what he could see in these shots, Emma was repulsed by Gold and she wasn’t trying to hide it. She looked angry, and in one photo she actually look hurt. It was clear as day that this was an ambush and a set up, but Killian supposed that to others who didn’t know her Emma’s poker face might come across as convincingly unaffected. Knowing her as well as he did, Killian could read every emotion without doubt, but Liam went on to pitch a completely different story of events Killian would never consider.

“Oh come off it brother. I just chartered a bloody plane to make you see what’s so clearly there. She’s playing you, Killian. It’s the only explanation.” Killian wanted to interrupt but Liam raised his hand to silence him and pressed on.  “I looked into it. Gold’s a secret partner on the show she works on and he’s planning on funneling millions more into the project, enough to guarantee a multi-season arc. He’s essentially paying her salary for the next three years, and what’s more these pictures go back to the very day the two of you met.”

Killian’s gaze moved to an image of him and Emma on the street together that first morning. It was insane that this had been documented, and in a different situation he might be grateful. How many people got the chance to see photographic proof of the moment they fell in love at first sight? But the person behind these photos was a sick and twisted man. A man with no moral fiber who would clearly stop at nothing to try and ruin Killian, including dragging a perfectly innocent woman into the darkness with him.

“Gold has known of Emma since the start, brother,” Liam continued, clearly not seeing that Killian found all his analysis to be complete and utter rubbish. “What are the chances that one of his paps just happened to be there when you two first met? No, I wouldn’t put it past him to have set all of this up. It’s a con, Killian, and I believe Emma is in on it.”

Words failed Killian in this moment. He was so unspeakably angry at the accusation he was sure steam must be physically spewing out his ears. How dare his brother insinuate that Emma was some kind of prop or con woman! Liam didn’t know her. He didn’t know a damn thing about her, but here he was passing judgment, again! Killian had no interest in even responding to such drivel and instead he left the kitchen, moving to the door to grab his jacket and his keys. Now he had a better idea of what was happening even if he was still mostly in the dark. Gold had ambushed Emma today, and if he were to guess he’d threatened her with something. Whatever he’d said had actually scared Emma, and Killian couldn’t have that. She had to know that he would protect her and he wouldn’t waste another moment waiting to assure her of that.

“Where are you going?” Liam asked, alarmed at Killian’s ignoring him, but Killian didn’t give a damn. Instead he slammed the door behind him and headed out.

The usually quick drive over to Emma’s place felt like it took a small eternity, and by the time he’d arrived Killian was shaking from the excess adrenaline in his system. He didn’t know what lay in store for him behind Emma’s front door, but he knew he had to fix it. He marched up to her apartment and knocked loudly. He prayed that Emma was here and that she would open up and let him in, and a few moments later the door opened and a noticeably irate Ruby appeared.

“Where is she?” Killian asked, not bothering with any kind of polite greeting as he tried to move inside. Ruby kept her body in front of the entry, denying him access.

“Oh no you don’t,” she said defensively before dipping her voice low with even more fury sewn in. “I don’t know what you did, Killian Jones, but I have a mind to kick your ass. You said you wouldn’t hurt her. You promised me.”

“I know,” Killian said, feeling defeated. “But you have to understand -,”

“I don’t have to do anything, asshole! You fucked with the wrong girl. You think you can just break my best friend’s heart and get away with it? Not gonna -,”

“Ruby, don’t,” a small voice said from behind them. Killian knew that it was Emma though he couldn’t see her given Ruby’s command of the doorway. “It’s not what you think.”

“Hold on a minute,” Ruby said to Killian, and before he could argue the door shut in his face again and the locks were put back in place. Behind the door Killian could hear muffled whispering, and though he couldn’t make out words he knew Emma must have said something to appease Ruby’s protective instincts. A few more seconds passed and she opened the door again. “You have five minutes.”

“Ruby,” Emma said, chastising her friend and Ruby sighed.

“Fine. You have until Emma decides to kick you out. Satisfied?” Ruby asked Emma and Emma gave a tiny smile. Ruby took that as enough sign that Emma was doing okay and then she slipped through the front door and down the hall, leaving Killian and Emma alone.

Taking in her appearance, Killian felt a tremendous sense of guilt and heartache. His Swan’s beautiful green eyes were rimmed with red like she’d been crying for a while, and her expression was both exhausted and forlorn. It tore Killian apart to see Emma that way, for even if he hadn’t been the direct cause of those tears he was the one who burdened her with Gold in the first place. Whatever that demon of a man had done… well Killian would never forgive himself for the pain it was causing Emma.

“Killian… I’m so sorry,” Emma whispered, surprising him with her words.

He moved towards her, counting himself a blessed and fortunate man when she didn’t shy away. Instead she melted into him and he wrapped her up in his embrace, breathing in the scent of her as he kissed the crown of her head. Killian’s eyes closed for a moment as he let himself take comfort in holding her again. Having her in his arms was the only thing that could heal the pain he’d been harboring since Liam arrived, and he thanked God that whatever had happened, Emma wasn’t decidedly against the two of them being together. She was still open to him, even if she hadn’t come to him like he wished she would.

“Emma, I promise you, whatever you’re thinking you have no reason to be sorry. You just have to tell me what happened. What did Gold say to you?”

“You know about Gold?” Emma asked, clearly surprised and Killian filled her in as quickly as he could about Liam. He tried to breeze over the fact that his brother didn’t trust her, and luckily she allowed him to divert back to the central question – what had happened to make her act this way?

“Please, love, just tell me,” he begged and soon enough she relented.

“He came to me today and he…” her voice broke but she held it together, willing herself not to cry. “He said that if I continued to see you, if I even so much as replied to a text, that he’d know and he’d end your career. He said the deal you had with Regina meant nothing, and that the only way you’d ever play in the leagues where you belong again was if I…”

Her ability to speak collapsed in that moment. She released a broken sob and Killian’s whole body felt the impact of it. He was distraught at her grief, but as the intention of Gold’s plan became apparent to him, his emotions began to blur into something he couldn’t fully understand.

“If you left me,” Killian filled in numbly as Emma nodded, her tears still streaming down her beautiful face.

It was all so clear to him now. Gold’s goal was to take everything Killian loved and leave his life an ashen wasteland in the process. Killian just never imagined that Gold could come this close to totally destroying all Killian held dear. Losing the game would have been a blow, but losing Emma would have crushed him entirely. There would be no recovery. He didn’t think he was strong enough to take that kind of pain.

“So you were just going to end it then?” Killian asked, his voice a hollow sound so unfamiliar to his ears.

“I didn’t want to, but it seemed like the only way.”

The only way? It wasn’t a way at all! Life without Emma wasn’t something he was interested in, and when he considered the leverage Gold had it was nothing. So what if he never played another bloody game in his life? It wouldn’t matter, and Emma should have known that. He’d been trying to show her that for months, but she didn’t see. Hell, maybe she didn’t want to see because she herself didn’t feel the same.

“Was it that easy for you to say goodbye?” Killian asked, his own hurt and insecurity getting the better of him.

“Easy?” Emma parroted like she couldn’t believe he’d described it that way. “You think this is easy? Today has been one of the worst days of my life, Killian. Staying away from you has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I almost gave in a thousand times.”

“But you didn’t. You made a choice.”

“A choice for you!” Emma yelled as her arms waved in the air. “Don’t you get that? I couldn’t let him take your dream, Killian. I had to protect you. That’s what you do when you love someone – you fight for them and you do anything you can to see them happy!”

Though her irritation was undeniable, there was only one thing in that moment that stuck out to Killian.

“You love me?” Killian asked. More tears spilled from her eyes as Emma looked down to the floor.

“Of course I love you, but it’s not enough because -,”

Whatever Emma was going to say, Killian couldn’t bear to let her say it. For though the circumstances were anything but ideal, his greatest wish had just been achieved. Emma Swan, the best woman who he had ever met, had just confessed that she loved him. Through some miracle this woman had given him her heart, and she didn’t see that that was everything. With this kiss he hoped to show her how precious her love was and to make her see that nothing else even registered when compared to that. Their relationship was all that he needed, plain and simple, and when they broke apart from the kiss he made sure to say that as clearly as he possibly could.

“The only dream I have that matters, love, is the one where you and I are together from here on out. I don’t give a damn about any of the rest of it. I just want you, Swan. Because I love you, more than anything in the world.”

“You do?” Emma asked, her tears having shifted to happy and relieved ones as her lips curled upward in a hopeful smile.

“Aye, love. There is no choice. Football’s a game, but you… Emma, you’re everything. I can’t live without you, Swan. I won’t do it.”

“I don’t want that either,” Emma promised, her hands holding tight to his shirt as if she was afraid he’d slip away somehow. “I was just scared. I didn’t want to take your choice away. I didn’t know how I’d live without you, but I didn’t want you to resent me.”

“I understand, Emma, really I do,” he assured her. “But you have to promise me that from now on you run to me. Whatever it is, whatever the threat, we will face them together. It’s the only way.”

“I promise.”

The two of them seemed to be of the same mind in that moment, opting to forego anymore talking and to find their reassurance through each other. They kissed again, this time with just as much heat but a deeper rooted need to take things further. For Killian’s part, he was determined to love Emma as she deserved, and that would start with taking her back to her bed and ravishing her fully. They managed to get to her room without breaking apart, and once the door was closed, Killian had her pushed against it. Instinctively he rubbed the hard and heaving lines of his body against hers, reveling in the shiver that coursed through her and the breathy pants of need she set free.

“Killian.”

His name was a sigh on her lips as her fingers came to rip his shirt off and then his came to tear hers away as well. It riled him to see more of his love exposed to him, but while Emma seemed intent on moving quickly, Killian couldn’t bear to. Tonight he wanted slow and steady, a declaration of the way his love for her would last forever. He wanted to map out every luscious piece of her and pull every type of pleasure from her body, but first he needed something from her.

“I need you to say it, Emma.”

“I love you,” she said without hesitation, understanding him fully and he released a growl at that, tearing off the rest of the layers between them. He maneuvered her to her bed and from there he was a man on a mission.

“Again, Emma,” he commanded as his mouth hovered just above her breasts, his hand teasing upward on her thigh, headed to the place she wanted him most.

“I love you, Killian. God I love you so much,” she said as her eyes closed and her body arched upwards. He rewarded her as his fingers entered her and his thumb brushed her clit. She moaned and then his mouth moved to her hard peak and her hands ran through his hair. In no time at all she was riled to a state where release was imminent, and without his even needing to ask she murmured that she loved him again.

Her orgasm washed over her as Killian gave her everything she needed, but while she came down from the high, Killian was hardly finished. He worked to rile her up again quickly, and by the time his mouth was at her sex she was whimpering for more. His eyes flicked back up to hers. She watched him with a wild expression, and the need and love he saw there on her face had his hard length jerking almost painfully.

Killian believed that Emma must think she was saying the words again, but truth be told she was so consumed with sensation, her exclamations weren’t exactly coherent. Instead they were the most beautiful music to his ears, a serenade of Emma’s want for him that he’d memorize if it killed him. He warred with his want to finish her quickly and give his Swan what she wanted, but instead he tormented her with his mouth and skilled tongue. Only when her whole body was flush with need and she was practically begging did he send her over, and then he kissed his way back up above her, waiting for her eyes to blink open again before he told her all he felt.

“There has never been another love like the one I have for you, Swan. There is no me without you anymore. I’m changed now. You changed me, and I am yours, forever. Just as your mine. We belong together, love, and that’s exactly how we’ll stay.”

“Mine,” Emma whispered happily, the mistiness of her tears returning as she ran her fingers along his jaw. 

Killian knew what this meant for Emma. She’d told him how much it hurt in her past to not belong to anyone – to never have anyone claim her and to not have someone to claim in turn. Her friends had been the only exception, a family she was blessed to have, but the truth was that she dreamed of more, and Killian would be that dream for her. It was only fair, after all, since she was every good thing in his life and so much more.

With a hard thrust, Killian filled Emma completely and he had to stall for a moment at the tight wet hold of her heat. Fuck, she was perfect, made for him in all ways, and it felt like a miracle every damn time he was in her. When he moved again and set a rhythm designed for satisfaction, all thoughts fled his mind. There was only getting them both to that state of perfect bliss, and when they found it the two of them had both been of the same mind, saying those three little words to each other at the moment that they fell apart.

“So how long do you think this will last?” Emma murmured sometime later as her fingertips trailed across his chest lightly, drawing a design neither he nor she was conscious of.

“This?” Killian asked, assuming she meant the relationship between them. “Well Swan, I thought I was rather clear in my promise to you. I said forever and I meant it.”

“No not us,” Emma said laughing as she shook her head. “I meant -,”

Before Emma could get her thought out a loud knocking came from the front door and it as accompanied by an equally audible proclamation.

“All right, you two. I’m coming inside this apartment now, so if there was some super hot make up sex that didn’t make it to the bedroom, now is the time to relocate!”

“There we go. I knew she’d be back,” Emma said giggling as she ducked her head into Killian’s chest.

“I guess we should count ourselves lucky. A whole two hours. She showed a lot of restraint,” Killian joked and Emma shook her head as she sat up, slipping from the bed and getting some clothes on. Killian followed suit, hating that this moment had ended, but knowing he would end up in bed with Emma tonight regardless. There would be no more leaving. Not now. Not anymore.

“Oh believe me, someone kept her busy,” Emma replied. “Only question is was it the girls, or was it Graham?”

“I told you they wouldn’t be out here in the living room, Red. You owe me five bucks,” Graham said from where he and Ruby were now in the apartment and Emma covered her mouth to stifle more laughter as Ruby responded.

“Trust me, Humbert, once Emma gives me the all clear, I’ll make it up to you, and what I have in mind is a whole lot better than ‘five bucks.’”

“Oh God,” Emma said with feigned severity as she took Killian’s hand. “Come on, let’s go tell them the good news. The sooner we do, the sooner they leave.”

“Ah, can’t deny I like the sound of that, love.”

And with one last kiss, the two of them set forth to assure their friends that the storm had passed, knowing all the while that the next time trouble came they’d be ready and that they’d always have each other, no matter what.

Post-Note: So there we have it – I told you guys I would fix things up and the biggest hurdle is now conquered. Trust me when I say that any CS based angst is behind us now, and while there might be some more hiccups, the love isn’t going anywhere. We haven’t quite seen the last of Gold yet (or Liam either), but Emma and Killian are ready for the battles, whenever they might come. Anyway, I hope that you guys liked the chapter, and I want to let you all know that I am not exactly sure when the next chapter will be up. I will be launching a new story next weekend as a part of CSSNS and I am not sure if that will effect when this story gets added to. That being said this story still has five whole chapters and an epilogue left, so don’t worry. It might take a little longer for an update to come, but it will come, I promise. Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!