#evil boyfriends society

[philhoffman]

Phil’s theater work in the 90s <3

[wellnoe]

the thing about jjk is that gojo is actually a pretty good character. unfortunately like 90% of the things people say about him and make about him outside of the show are about a completely different dude they've made up.

[mqfx]

(kicking rocks) I miss jingshun. badly

[bunny-jpeg]

the jailbird (2)

prisoner!simon 'ghost' riley

part 1 | original text post

cw: (former) prisoner!simon, civilian!reader, romance & fluff, smut, size kink, sane and consensual, roleplay, rough sex, spanking, bondage & gags, tattoo kink, dom!simon, sub!reader

bunny says: love the fic? leave a comment! really love the fic? suggest your own! reblogs are encouraged!

-

living with an ex-convict was interesting. he still woke up at the crack of dawn, and as a result you were up too. he didn't know where anything was in your apartment, he hated that he had to wake you up but he didn't know where the spoons were.

you were happy to help him and spend some extra time together before you went to work. the more you were around him, the more you realized how big he was compared to you.

even his hands were much larger than yours. he loved to wrap you up in his arms and hold you while you were making yourself some breakfast. those strong tattooed arms around your middle as you flipped eggs.

sometimes he'd bury his face in your neck and visibly relaxed. he was still dealing with his fair share of trauma from the previous events of his life. and while it often left him stressed, he found comfort in you.

"you're my anchor, love." he said within the first week of his return to society.

you simply smiled and tried not to blush too hard as you said, "well, si. i'll happily be your anchor, as long as your mine."

"you're anchor, your rock, your foot solider, your lover." he said as he kept his gaze on you. since he had been living with you, you found his expression had softened a little. he could relax here.

"my husband." you reached out for him. he took your hand and kissed the top of it before he held it for a moment then returned it to you.

simon had a long road ahead of him, being on the inside for so long was going to cause some problems. but, he knew even if he had nothing. he had you.

it was almost five months into living together and he managed to get an interview working in small parts manufacturing. while it was tedious, they didn't need to look at his criminal record. which greatly excited him.

when he came home from the interview, he told you that it went well. that they seemed to like his dedication and were impressed when he mentioned his time in the military. he said, "got the whole 'thank you for your service'." as he held you and kissed you deeply.

it felt like your little lives were coming together. but the one thing you hated to admit to yourself. you sort of had a dark side, it wasn't anything too aggressive or 'evil'. you thought that simon was the perfect boyfriend, he'd never hurt a hair on your head.

but the idea of being with a criminal sort of had a sexy ring to it. to be with the bad boy. you almost felt embarrassed to admit it when he'd come home with flowers for you, or when he smiled at you. or when he held your hand when you went out. with you he got to be a person with love.

deep down you wanted to know the depths of your boyfriend. you wanted to know what a man like him, with his skill set, was capable of. you wanted it to burn, ache and hurt.

it took a lot of courage, you communicated with your boyfriend about a little make believe. while hesitant at first, he slowly started to warm up to the idea. you knew he was open to it when he came home from one, actually the first day at his job, with a bundle of bondage rope.

"the blue looks good on you." he remarked as he finished tying you up on the bed. he had your arms behind your back with you on your side and one leg tied to the bed post.

you looked at him, those eyes of yours were so alluring. you tried to move your leg but was stuck to the bed. he smiled down at you and tapped the ball gag in your mouth.

"but it doesn't matter what you want. right?' he asked, "i've searched a long time for you. you're not an easy woman to catch." he got between your legs, and hiked one leg over his shoulder as he started to aggressively lick your cunt. it was already dripping from the act of him tying you up.

there was no escape for you, even if you somehow got out of the bondage. he was almost twice the size of you and could do some damage if he wanted to.

you squirmed and whimpered around the ball gag as he took long, hard licks against your clit. he wanted to make sure his girl was wet enough for his large cock.

"maybe i should breed ya. bring you back to the boys all fat with my brats.' he purred, "i don't think they can throw ya in the can if you're pregnant. but who knows, you got pregnant by a thief." he continued to lick your sweet cunt. he was in heaven.

he really was so much bigger than you. he overpowered you, he could keep you down and fuck you until he had his fill, and there was nothing you could do about it. you were bound and gagged like a good girl.

he kept at it, he even teased your hole with his thick fingers until you were squirming more with your moans getting louder. he slapped your ass and gave you a stern look over your pussy. he gripped your leg over his shoulder. "shut up." he growled, "i don't need ya causin' a scene. i'd hate to go back to prison because you can't keep your trap shut up."

you hole clenched and he chuckled. he patted where he smacked and grabbed at the flesh before he went back to his feast between your legs. it didn't take long before the slick between your thighs got all over his face.

he pulled away and sat up on his knees. he stared down at you with your thigh wrapped around his waist. he was going to fuck you at a weird angle, but it was the only way he could keep his little prize tied up. he wiped is face, "you are the best thing i've caught." he said, "stolen a lotta loose change, but they're nothin' to the sweet taste of your cunt." he got his cock out his sweatpants and started to rub it against your slick pussy. he let out a harsh sigh from the sensation, "they should be keepin' ya behind the vault door." the tip slipped in for a moment and you clenched around it.

you whimpered and tried to pushed yourself down on his cock, but it was hard to do that when you were so tied up, he pushed the hair out of your eyes, your leftover wetness got on your cheek from his movements.

"but, you need to know." he said, "you're mine to do whatever to. your mommy and daddy aren't gonna save ya. you fell in love with a bad man and now you're lettin' him fuck your cunt raw. what's gonna happen at christmas when you're all swollen with my brats. riley boys are lil hell raisers." he went back to rubbing his cock up against your slit, "you'll be mine forever. my little prize. i should've taken ya a long time ago. just snatched ya up off the train. keep ya to myself." his tongue was getting loose from the buzz of pleasure in his brain.

you whimpered around the gag and almost cried out when he slipped his large cock into you easily. you felt it in your guts and his pace was much more brutal than the other times you've made love. that was the difference, you made love before. this was dirty, primal sex between a criminal and his captive.

the sounds of sex filled the air, paired with simon's heavy breathing. his heart was thumping steadily as he pushed his cock as deep as it would go. he loomed over you as he drilled himself into you. you were a comfortably tight fit around his cock.

you dug your nails into your palms from the immense pleasure and yelped when he slapped your ass. you whimpered when he leaned further into you to get closer into your personal space. his pace was brutal and it excited you.

"i'm a bad man." he said lowly, his voice close to your ear, "my worst crime is tainting such a precious angel." he held onto your calf as he bent your hips the closer he got. his voice was hot, "fill ya right up, make sure no other man has a chance to get ya knocked up." his tattooed hand went to your stomach which he gave a small rub, "my girl carryin' my boys."

your eyes almost rolled back from the heat in your body. you were almost drooling around the rubber gag in your mouth. it was dirty, it was filth. if anyone saw the state you were in, they would be shocked!

your head felt full of lust, you felt your lover so close to him. you knew despite the roughness and the harsh words, the entire scenario was safe. you knew you could get out of this if you needed to. but it wasn't getting to be too much, it was just enough.

the wetness between your legs and the flips in your stomach only excited you. to have such a large man be so domineering. it made you feel small in a good way. it was almost like being bound made you feel protected.

that you could lay yourself over to him and he'd cherish you. even if you were his little 'prize' for the evening. the hottest part was the pace at which his cock was battering your womb.

you whimpered against your gag and felt the heat rush through you. you held onto your palms as best as you could with your arms bound. the entire situation left you spinning, there was no wonder that orgasm crept up on you so easily.

with a loud moan around your gag, you climaxed around his cock. the tightness of your cunt mid-orgasm milked his cock till he was seeing stars. he came inside of you, his seed hit against the back of your womb.

the feeling of being able to do so left him a little slack-jawed. but he kept it together, even if his cheeks were flushed. when he finished, he slowly pulled out and started to untie you. his hands were shaky from the after effects of his orgasm.

he took the gag out of your mouth and pulled you in for a kiss when he finished untying you. he fell into bed with you and laid on top of the covers with you. he held you gently and kissed your face. he gave you gentle praise as he kept you in his arms.

when he looked at you, all was right in the world. you held onto him and pressed kisses against his face. after care consisted of tea and a small snack followed by a shower together, where he washed every part of you.

even though you were capable of doing it yourself, you still appreciated how detail orientated he was in the manner of getting you clean. little did you know that biology was working its magic and simon's seed found home in your cervix.

you better hope that the line about the riley boys being hellions was untrue or you'd have your hands full. it didn't help that when simon's hand grazed your stomach as he washed you that you blushed and tucked yourself closer to him.

mama riley did have a ring to it.

[wttcsms]

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖࣪ now he's thinkin' 'bout me every night !!

ᝰ.ᐟ there’s nothing nagi values more than getting his rest, but thoughts of you have been keeping him wide awake at night. someone has to help him get rid of all this annoying restless energy — and it has to be you, the whole entire reason why his sleeping schedule is fucked. ( fem!reader )

pairing seishiro nagi x reader word count 2.4k content contains jealousy (nagi is being a baby abt how chigiri has your attention)/jealous sex, soft yandere!nagi, possessive sex, biting/marking kinktober masterlist

Evil. 

That’s what you are. Nagi is convinced that you are the fucking devil, someone sent from the abyss to ruin his life and destroy his ego. 

Maybe that’s a harsh judgment to make — he doesn’t mean it; not really, anyway. But there is something about you that chips away at his nonchalance. Seishiro Nagi doesn’t care about a lot of things. He can’t be bothered to. He thought that after soccer found its way into whatever void is inside of him, he’d be fulfilled. That that was it — he found his purpose, he found his driving force, and now he can enter society as a functioning human being with actual hopes and dreams. 

He never realized that he had the capacity to care about anything else, and then you arrive on the field one day, camera in one hand, a bright smile plastered on your face as you’re being introduced as the new social media manager for Manshine City. 

And suddenly, Nagi realizes that not only does he have the capacity, he’s actually emptier than he thought. 

You had been receptive to his awkward, fumbling advances. For as attractive and cool he appears on the outside, Nagi’s never bothered to actually approach any girls before. Never really felt the need to. You had taken all his accidental rude comments in stride, and you harbored the same interests as him, and he finally has you now. 

He has you, and no one else can call you theirs, and yet here he is, on a Friday night, sulking in bed instead of getting his precious rest time. 

He’s frowning, looking up at his ceiling as he thinks about what had happened earlier today. 

There’s really no need for a dress code. The coaches are all decked out in athleisure, the athletes themselves are wearing practice jerseys, and since you’re expected to be constantly on the move and chasing after these athletes, trying to get good footage and spend the whole day with ‘em, Nagi can’t necessarily fault you for wanting to be comfortable. You’re wearing a cropped version of the Define Jacket with leggings that hug you in just the right way, and Nagi swears that he isn’t a jealous person.

He thinks being envious is a crude waste of his energy, energy that he can’t bother to exert, and he’s never really experienced jealousy before. 

Maybe that’s why he’s awake at midnight despite the fact that he has an early morning practice scheduled. A practice that you’ll be attending, once again. He frowns as he tosses and turns in his bed, trying to shut his eyes, but every time they’re closed, he keeps seeing you. 

More accurately, you and Chigiri. 

Just the thought of his teammate is enough to make a scowl appear on his face. 

You’re filming content for a TikTok, and Nagi can’t help but childishly pout when he asks himself why does the TikTok need to star Chigiri and Chigiri alone? It’s not like he’s the only member on the team, you know! You spent the whole day laughing at whatever Chigiri had to say, and Nagi knows that it sounds terrible, but he doubts his teammate is that hilarious. And the way you kept following him around, barely paying any attention to the other players, including your own boyfriend, wasn’t even Nagi’s breaking point. No — what his breaking point happened to be was the way your figure-flattering outfit was just too tantalizing. 

You’re so focused on Chigiri, with your back turned to everyone else, that Nagi gets quite a view every time you’re bending down to get a different angle. Even just the memory alone is enough to get him hard. 

Fuck. Now he’s sporting a semi, he’s still seething with jealousy with the memory of you all over Chigiri still constantly playing on a loop in his mind, and worst of all: you’re not here with him. Your laptop is in your apartment, and you had kissed him goodbye after practice because you needed to edit the footage you captured today, and so you can’t spend the night with him like you usually do. 

When thirty minutes go by, and he’s still wide awake, jealous, and hard, Nagi rolls over and groans in his pillow. The minute he gets his hands on, he’s intent on making sure you can’t walk. You won’t be able to chase after Chigiri, that’s for damn sure. 

Things don’t necessarily go according to Nagi’s grand plan. Sure, you’re laying in bed with him, wearing just his shirt and a pair of panties, but you barely paid any attention to him. He’s been pretending to be occupied with his Switch, but he keeps glancing over at you. 

You’re on your phone, eyebrows furrowed as you meticulously go through the footage for a video you plan on uploading. Nagi scowls when he catches a familiar glimpse of red hair moving on the screen. You’re still editing videos of him? Seriously? 

“I thought you weren’t working today,” he mumbles, tossing aside the Switch. You don’t even look up from your phone.

“I know. I’m sorry, baby, but Hyoma asked if there’s anything he can improve on for the next promo vid we’re shooting, and I want to at least find something to comment on so he knows I’m taking him seriously.” Chigiri is surprisingly a perfectionist when it comes to videos of himself. He’s been constantly asking you if you’re sure he doesn’t look too nervous or too stiff on camera, and honestly, his worrying is a bit endearing. 

Hyoma — since when were you on a first name basis with his teammate?

This is what sets him off. This is his breaking point.

Sometimes, with how sloth-like Nagi acts, it’s easy to forget that he’s a bonafide professional athlete. A genius, even. He’s quick to pounce on you, tossing your phone somewhere on his massive bed while pinning your body down with his own. With no pesky phone in the way, the only person to give your undivided attention to is him. That’s exactly how it should be. 

“Sei— Ah!” You can’t help but let out a surprised gasp as you feel Nagi nip the soft skin of your neck, teeth grazing you. Not hard enough to leave a mark (he’ll save that for later, for when you’re too drunk on his cock to protest), but sharp enough for you to feel it, to feel the pressure and the intent and the promise behind a love bite. 

“You’re supposed to be my girlfriend.” Nagi grumbles, his head still buried in the crook of your neck. 

“I am, Seishiro.” You run a hand through the white strands of your boyfriend’s hair. It’s just as soft as it looks, and he leans into your touch, seemingly content. You didn’t realize just how neglected poor Nagi was feeling, and you wonder if it’s possible if he’s jealous. But that can’t be it — Nagi’s never been jealous a day in his life. He doesn’t even react when he catches guys flirting with you in public because he’s so confident in his relationship with you. 

You think he just wants to rest like this, but then you feel his lips dragging down the expanse of your neck. He sucks on your collarbone for a second, and returns back to your neck, sucking and biting, and all you can do is tangle your fingers into his hair, letting out little whimpers and gasps. 

“Sei, baby, you— you’re gonna leave marks.” 

He lifts his head up momentarily, staring up at you with a dark fog in his gray eyes that you normally don’t see. Underneath that haze of desire, though, lies something sharper in the gleam of his eyes. 

“That’s the point.” 

And then he does bite down on the fragile flesh of your neck. And you just lay there, allowing him to. 

Nagi wastes no time in using one hand to rub against your thigh, squeezing at the plushness of it before traveling further to slide your cotton panties to the side. When his thick fingers brush against your folds, he can’t hold back a smile as he finds you already wet. 

You’re embarrassed, heat rising to your cheeks when Nagi holds up his hand so you can see the way your essence is glistening on his middle and ring fingers. “You’re this wet, and I haven’t even kissed you yet.” His tone is half-teasing, half-in awe. He maintains eye contact with you, and you watch him stick his fingers in his mouth, obscenely sucking on his digits, groaning as the taste of you hits his tongue. 

And when he’s done, he finally does kiss you properly. 

You think you can taste a hint of yourself on him, and it only makes you feel even hotter. You’re subconsciously thrusting your hips upwards, trying to get any sort of friction from him. 

“Mm, ah, Sei—”

“Shh.” Nagi hushes you, pressing another kiss against your lips, swallowing up your would-be pleading and begging for something, anything — his fingers, his tongue, his cock, something to ease the heat building inside of you. “Gonna make my baby feel so good.” He rubs at your slit through the slickness of your panties, teasing you as he allows the thin fabric to act as the only barrier between his ring finger and your wet heat. You’re already soaking through the cotton.

He’s been fucking pent up since last night, finding no relief, and now that he has you pinned down on his bed, wet and whining for him, he figures you won’t mind if he rushes into things. He has plenty of stamina, anyway. He can go all night if you want him to.

You mewl out his name pathetically when he slides your panties to the side once more, only instead of his fingers toying with you, it’s the tip of his cock that you feel prodding the entrance of your cunt. 

“You feel that?” He gasps out, having to take a few breaths as he adjusts to the snugness and heat of your cunt. He’s slowly pressing forward, making himself at home inside of your pussy, slowly but surely. “That’s—” Just a few more inches ‘til he’s bottoming out. “—the only dick that’s ever gonna be inside of your pussy.” He’s pressed as deeply as possible, his entire length buried inside of you. 

He’s close, so close to you, and all you can do is whimper as you adjust to his size. Nagi’s cock isn’t just long, but thick. Even with your slick-soaked hole helping ease him in, it’s still a bit of a pain to take him all the way. 

“Say it.” His voice goes a bit deeper than his normal easy-going cadence. When you look into your boyfriend’s eyes, you see it once more: the pussydrunk, lustful haze clouding his vision, and the dark, sharp look that is the driving force behind why your boyfriend impatiently started burying his cock inside of you as soon as he could. “C’mon, tell me.” 

The thrusts he’s giving you right now are only shallow; an inch or two being pulled out, only to lightly be shoved back in. It’s almost as if he’s testing the waters, but you can hear the edge in his tone. He’s growing impatient once more, but he refuses to fuck you boneless unless you tell him what he wants to hear. 

Fortunately, it’s the truth. It’s the truth when you whine out, “This pussy is a-all yours, Seishiro.” 

“Yeah?” He’s pulling out slowly, licking his lips as he watches how submissive he can get you to be. He’ll start with a slower pace, he decides. Treat his girl to a couple of easy orgasms before he starts showcasing his true strength. 

At least, that was his plan. Then, your phone notifies you of a text message.

He stills, eyes glancing, squinting at your screen. 

It’s a text. 

From Chigiri. 

Nagi focuses his attention back on you, but inside his mind, all he sees is the notification with his teammate’s name on it. Your eyes are wide, as if you know what he just saw, but before you can explain yourself, Nagi abruptly slams back into you.

The pace he sets is brutal. He has one hand gripping the headboard to steady himself, his other is angrily tightened around your hip, sure to leave a bruise he’ll kiss all better later. 

“Fuck.” He practically snarls, never relenting. All you can do is let out a string of moans as his cock continues to pound your pussy. There’s another chime from your phone, another notification from Chigiri. He’s asking if the video looks okay. 

You don’t have work on the brain. The only thing your mind is capable of processing are the sensations that Nagi is serving up to you on a silver platter. Even with his brutal pace and hard thrusts, he finds enough kindness inside of him to move his hand from your hip and instead grind his palm against your clit. The callouses all over his hand only add to the pleasure, and you find yourself sobbing out his name as you feel the familiar, overwhelming need to cum. 

“You gonna cum?” Nagi grunts out, as if he doesn't already know. He can tell, y’know. He can tell, because your walls are clamping down on his dick so tightly, it’s a struggle to pull out because you’re clinging to him. He can tell, because you’ve got your adorable little fucked-out expression on your face. Drool on your lips, a string of incoherent pleading and broken mewls of his name. His name. Yeah, you better be moaning his name, and his only.

“Mm, Seishiro!” You squeal out, tightening even more against his cock. Your clit is so sensitive, so receptive to his touch, paired with the nonstop thrusting of his dick, you can’t help but cream all over him. 

“Fu-ck.” The swear comes out in broken syllables as Nagi feels you cumming on his cock. He looks away from your face to look at the messy scene between your legs. Your panties are still pushed to the side, the fabric wet from your juices, and when he pulls out a bit, he sees a nice, white ring around his girth. 

You’re still whimpering, eyes closed shut as you try to regain your breath, but Nagi isn’t done just yet. He still hasn’t cum.

When he hears another text message notification, certainly from Chigiri once again, Nagi knows that you’re in for a long night. He won’t stop even after he cums. 

No — for every text message you get from his teammate, that’s another orgasm he’ll just have to wring out of you.

[jeyneofpoole]

first day as a 20th century polar explorer i’m selected to go on the super special sledging trip with my polycule but succumb to scurvy and my preexisting heart condition i will never tell anybody about and they have to carry me back to the ship. second day as a 20th century polar explorer the dominant member of my polycule convinces my favorite boyfriend to vote me out survivor-style and send me home on the invalid ship so i am now a bitter 27 year-old divorceé. third day as a 20th century polar explorer i’m begging wealthy widows for money but my evil gay kleptomaniac brother aids in the theft of the crown jewels of ireland and shames the family so nobody will give me a ship. fourth day as a 20th century polar explorer one of my benefactors makes me bring a huge fuckoff car to antarctica and i run out of space for food so all of my men almost starve and the car doesn’t even work. fifth day as a 20th century polar explorer my evil ex dies and i finally get to go back to the pole but my ship gets fucked and i have to spend 2 years dragging my men home and when i get back the royal geographical society are still publicly cucking me and nobody cares because of wwi. sixth day as a 20th century polar explorer i round up the boys for one last hurrah but die of that same preexisting condition before we can even get anywhere like a #boss. which is also what they call me.

[greco-roman-jewess]

Hey Jumblr I want to let you in on a secret that has made some of my worst days bearable

Blame the Romans

Have some freakish Ashkenazi malady…

Blame the Romans- you wouldn’t be a lactose intolerant with terrible sinuses if it weren’t for genetic bottlenecking caused by Roman slavery

Can’t eat fava beans…

That’s probably the Babylonians fault but YOU KNOW WHAT if the Romans hadn’t destroyed the temples then maybe your ancestors would have returned home and not developed a genetic mutation that causes deadly intolerance to a bean

Your boyfriend turned out to be an antisemitic weirdo and took all your friends in the break up by telling them you were an evil Zionist…

Those people were never your friends AND blame the Romans for renaming the land Syria Palestinina and confusing defiantly very anti colonial college students the world over

You feel like you have no sense of unique culture or identity and your antisemitic brain worms are tell you that you are a leech that produces nothing for society but CO2…

Blame the Romans for intentionally killing and robbing your ancestors of their indigenous land and disrupting cultural transmission

That hot Israeli girl won’t text you back because you don’t know enough about winter barley cultivation…

If it weren’t for the ROMANS you would be disappointed that a HOT JUDEAN GIRL wasn’t texted you back and you might know more about barley if Jewish society had remained agrarian in nature

[sarahreesbrennan]

Are all the themes in “in other lands” supposed to be a commentary on something? Or do you just like writing sex scenes between minors, age gaps, and reverse misogyny?

Genuine question.

Ohhh, my dear anon, I don't believe this is a genuine question.

But it does bring up something I've been meaning to talk about. So I'll take the bait.

Firstly. Yes, my work contains a commentary on the world around us. I wonder what I could be doing with the child soldiers being sexually active in their teens (people hook up right after battles), and the age gap relationship ending in the younger one being too mature for the elder. What could I possibly have been attempting when I said 'how absurd gender roles are, when projected onto people we haven't been accustomed by our own society to see that way'? I wasn't being subtle, that's for sure.

Secondly. Yes I do enjoy writing! I think I should, it's my life's work. Am I titillated by my own writing, no - though I think it's fine to be. The sex scenes of In Other Lands aren't especially titillating, to be honest. It is interesting to me how often people sneer at women for writing romance and sex scenes, having 'book boyfriends,' insinuating women writers fancy their own characters. Women having too much immoral fun! Whereas men clearly write about sex for high literary purposes.

… I have to say from my experience of women and men's writing, I haven't found that to be true.

I’m not in this to have an internet argument. Mostly people use bad faith takes to poke at others from the other side of a screen for kicks. But I do know some truly internalise the attitude that writing certain things is wrong, that anyone who makes mistakes must be shunned as impure, and that is a deeply Victorian and restrictive attitude that guarantees unhappiness.

I've become increasingly troubled by the very binary and extreme ways of thinking I see arising on the internet. They come naturally from people being in echo chambers, becoming hostile to differing opinions, and the age-old conundrum of wanting to be good, fearing you aren't, and making the futile effort to be free of sin. It makes me think of Tennyson, who when travelling through Ireland at the time of the Great Famine, said nobody should talk about the 'Irish distress' to him and insisted the window shades of his carriage be shut as he went from castle to castle. So he wouldn't see the bodies. But that didn't make the bodies cease to be.

In Les Mis, Victor Hugo explores why someone might steal, what that means about them and their circumstances, and who they might be - and explores why someone else is made terribly unhappy, and endangers others, through their own too rigid adherence to judgement and condemnation without pity. The story understands both Jean Valjean the thief and Javert the policeman. Javert’s way of thinking is the one that inevitably leads to tragedy.

Depiction isn't endorsement. Depiction is discussion.

Many of my loved ones have had widely varying relationships to and experience of sex (including 'none'). They've felt all different types of ways about it. If writing about them is not permissible, I close them out. I'd much rather a dialogue be open than closed.

I do understand the urge to write what seems right to others. I've been brain-poisoned that way myself. I used to worry so much about my female characters doing the wrong things, because then they'd be justly hated! Then I noted which of my writer friends had people love their female characters the most - and it was the one who wrote their female characters as screwing up massively, making rash and sometimes wrong decisions. Who wrote them as people. Because that's what people do. That's what feels true to readers.

I want my characters to feel true to readers. I want my characters to react in messy ways to imperfect situations. I love fantasy, I love wild action and I love deep thought, and I want to engage. That's what In Other Lands is about. That's even more what Long Live Evil is about. That sexy lady who sashays in to have sexy sex with the hero - what is her deal? Someone who tricks and lies to others - why are they doing that, how did they get so skilled at it? What makes one person cruelly judgemental, and another ignore all boundaries? What makes Carmen Maria Machado describe ‘fictional queer villains’ as ‘by far the most interesting characters’? What irritates people about women having a great time? What attracts us to power, to fiction, and to transgression?

I don’t know the answers to all those questions, but I know I want to explore them. And I know one more thing.

If the moral thing to do is shut people out and shut people up? Count me among the villains.

[merqki]

boyfriend’s brother (derogatory)

cw: boyfriendsbrother!rin x f!reader, badboyfriend!sae x f!reader — CHARACTERS ARE AGED UP! cheating but make it hot, emotional neglect (and ofc it's sae), rin itoshi is a menace to society, reader has questionable morals and zero self-respect (we love her tho), sibling rivalry deluxe edition™, rage baiting as a love language, phone sex??? kinda, voyeurism if you squint, subtle exhibitionism, dry humping, getting caught, fingernail marks and bruises, non-violent strangling, swearing, really horny people, suggestive content but not full-on NSFW, intentional lowercase

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ 🪻 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

boyfriendsbrother!rin has always been quiet.

quietly annoying.

you and sae have been together for a few months now. he is a good boyfriend.

well, sort of.

good enough to hold the door open for you, but not enough to actually acknowledge your presence. he always had something in his mind, and god forbid his girlfriend wanted to spend some quality time with him.

what could be worse than that? being invisible to your own boyfriend?

his brother making fun of you.

rin itoshi was a pain in the ass.

at the dinner table, when sae brought you home to meet his family, rin smirked, that evil grin appeared every time sae — purposely or not — straight up ignored your comments like they didn’t matter. like they didn’t even happen. like you weren’t even there.

his mom noticed, she gave you an understanding look, like she was silently saying “i’m sorry, he’s like this. get used to it.”

and you intended to. hell, you had to.

you’ve had your eyes on sae for the longest time, his teal eyes and stoic demeanor, his otherworldly talent, the ambition that you admired so much. you finally managed to get him, and now what? were you supposed to leave him just because he wasn’t showering you with affection like you’d hoped?

that's childish.

your friends told you, ”get over it. you’ve been wanting for that man for how long?”.

and they were right.

getting over it? somewhat doable. but those looks rin kept giving you? hell, straight up hell.

he was the worst part of the day. never said a word — his eyes did all the talking. laughing at you when sae wasn’t looking. shaking his head in disbelief whenever his brother ignored your flirting as he passed by.

on a random friday at the itoshi household, the rage and embarrassment you had been bottling up for months hit you like a tidal wave. you had to do something.

and of course – you did.

it started as pure rage-bait.

you began purposely leaving sae’s bedroom door open just enough for rin to see you two making out. you'd never been that touchy with sae, but now? now you were overdoing it. hands in his hair. love marks.

it shouldn’t have been abnormal for a couple, but with sae it was.

still — he was a man, so of course he didn’t complain.

the thing is, your back was always facing the door. you couldn’t really tell if your plan was working. the only way to know was to keep doing it until rin gave you a sign.

so you kept going, week after week, until it became a routine.

still, rin gave you nothing but those same judgmental looks whenever you were in the same room.

sae did loosen up a little. he let you hold his hand at the table. but still nothing from rin.

he let you kiss him in front of his family.

rin didn’t flinch.

it pissed you off. the way he’d only acknowledge you when sae did you wrong — ugh.

it had become a challenge, but you weren't winning, not at all.

you kept looking for rin’s gaze, you felt disappointed when he wasn’t at dinner or when his door stayed shut and you couldn’t put on your little act.

it was exhausting.

one night, sae actually tried to be affectionate — kissing you, touching you, his mouth on your jaw, neck, collarbone. but you were still, distracted, frowning. wondering why rin wasn’t reacting like you wanted him to.

you turned your head to face sae, whose mouth was still on your skin.

you just had the best idea ever.

you straddled him. his hands gripped your hips, and you moved slowly, grinding against him. you tugged at his hair and kissed him, tongue desperate, angry. you kept moving on his crotch, waiting for him to do exactly what you were hoping.

he did.

whimpers slipped from his lips, and a grin spread across your face. there was no way you were letting rin miss this. you pulled your phone from your back pocket, turned slightly, and typed in three letters:

r-i-n.

you called his number, the ringtone echoed from the other room for a few seconds. then it stopped. he either picked up or hung up, you were so hoping for the first but you couldn't know yet.

so you kept going, louder and louder.

when you and sae stopped, the room was silent. his hair was messy, your neck bruised, breaths ragged, and the sheets a disaster. you reached for your phone — the call was still on.

he didn’t hang up.

sae got up and left, probably for the bathroom. you didn’t care about his sudden burst of touchiness. all you cared was about rin.

rin, listening.

rin, hearing you and his brother like that for twenty minutes straight.

he didn't say a word, he waited 30 seconds and then hung up. it was a win, right?

but once again, not a single word from him.

so. fucking. infuriating.

the plan didn't work out like you wanted it to, and for the next couple of weeks you started avoiding your boyfriend, making lame excuses every time. he barely reacted, just replied with an ’ok’ when you canceled your plans. three weeks passed like that.

when the fourth rolled around, you finally decided to face him. you went to his place again. the thought of seeing rin made your face heat up instantly. you weren’t ready for his fucking little smirks.

the house was empty. the itoshi parents weren’t home. as usual, sae led you to his room.

you weren’t in the mood, so you put on a movie and chatted a bit. eventually, sae dozed off. the movie ended. the silence was deafening. you were scrolling through your socials when you heard it.

a bed creaking like crazy from across the hallway.

oh.

oh.

that son of a bitch.

you were fuming. forced to listen to rin fuck someone senseless while your boyfriend snored.

but what hit you hardest wasn’t the rage — it was the jealousy.

you were jealous.

god. you wished it was you.

so desperate to get something — anything — out of him, you stormed out of sae’s room and banged on rin’s door. didn’t even care if there was a girl inside.

he opened it with a smug grin on his face.

«took you long enough,» he said.

huh?

your face must’ve said it all, because he kept going.

«to stop acting like a child.»

«like a child? are you out of your mind? you're the one who–»

«called you while making out with my brother? yeah, no. that was you.»

«no point in denying it, huh?»

you shrugged. he stared straight through you, his teal eyes were darker than usual and you felt so small under his gaze.

«sae’s not good for you.»

now, that took you off guard.

«excuse me?»

you pushed him inside and slammed the door behind you.

«you,» you said, poking his chest, «have. no. say. in. my. relationship.»

each word was a push. he didn’t break eye contact. you pushed until his back hit the closet. he grabbed your finger.

you were dangerously close. your body, your mind — spiraling. you heart thundered in your chest. his gaze made your knees weak. he grabbed your wrist, pulling you in.

«you're so incredibly unhappy,» he whispered, «you made him moan just so i could hear.»

his breath fanned your lips. you tried to pull back, but his grip was too tight. too intoxicating. you leaned in without meaning to, eyes flicking from his to his lips.

he smirked. he noticed.

«you piss me off. so fucking much. i want to strangle you.» you whispered.

«i’d enjoy that.»

that – that was your last straw.

you freed yourself from his hold and grabbed the back of his neck, crashing your lips onto his. he grabbed your thighs and you jumped, legs wrapping around his waist. he kissed you like he was starving, tongue deep, humming into your mouth.

he carried you to his bed, laid you down and caged you underneath him. he paused and took a good look at you.

swollen lips. eyes glassy with desire. perfect. and to think his lukewarm of a brother had denied you affection so long that you started craving his.

him, — so fucking pathetic that he faked having a girl over just to get your attention. so pathetic that he kept baiting you, just to see you chase his gaze instead of sae’s. so pathetic that he stayed on that call, imagining it was him pulling those moans from your pretty mouth.

the sole thought of his brother being responsible of those lewd sounds drove him insane. he let that anger loose on your skin. his hands explored your body like they needed to memorize it. his nails sank into your thighs, and when you whimpered he lost it.

you were so goddamn gorgeous beneath him. loud. desperate. all for him.

his mouth moved to your neck — the same place sae had left his marks. he felt disgusted, he had to fix that.

rin kissed, sucked, bit — determined to erase it all. to show you what it meant to be wanted. to leave proof that it was him making you feel this way.

and you didn’t stop him.

god, did you even care if sae caught you?

«rin…» his name sounded like a sin on your tongue. your moans were music. fucking music.

you grabbed him by the neck and pulled him into another kiss.

«feisty.»

he breathed against your lips.

«you were made for me, not him.»

«shut up.» you tightened your grip on his neck, he moaned into your mouth. fuck, was he driving you insane.

more, more, more. you needed more.

and rin wanted to give it to you.

he stood up and unbuckled his belt, eyes locked with yours until the lights flicked on.

you didn’t even flinch, too far gone. he threw his belt at the door, but when it fell it didn't make a sound.

instead, it... coughed?

«i’ll leave you to it.»

sae, holding rin’s belt and leaning on the doorframe. he closed the door behind him. calm. cold.

you and rin froze, staring at each other in disbelief.

whoops?

© chiara — 2025

[whoopsyeahokay]

October Moon

summary: as you had gotten ready for the Homecoming dance, you'd finally confronted your sister about her creepy, Ken Doll husband. meanwhile, Xavier had continued to notice differences in his dad's personality while Claire had probed for answers.

pairing: Wally Clark x fem!reader

warnings: smutty smut smut. mad spoilers. and obvious Canon divergence. very involved, very dense plot.

bon reading, frens

___________________________💀

OCTOBER MOON pt.4

At home, you were curled up on your desk chair, Aurora behind you wielding her hair curler, bobby pins poking out from the corner of her mouth as she styled your hair for the Homecoming dance. Your dress hung on the back of your door. Emerald green satin and spaghetti straps, structured bodice and A-line skirt. It had pockets.

Aside from being your personal hair stylist and makeup artist, Aurora had also opened her closet to you and lent you a pair of tall, chunky heels that matched the color of your dress. You weren't much of a heels girlie, but Wally had height and you wanted to kiss him without folding him in half.

Unbeknownst to him (and everyone except Xavier who'd given you the keys to his truck), you had a plan. A plan that involved a blow up mattress and a pile of blankets to cover your body in the bed of the truck while your ghost made merry with Wally unhindered.

Was it risky? Yeah. Was it worth it? Hell yes. You'd make appearances here and there as your living self—you had to, the band was scheduled to kick off the party—but, ultimately, you wanted spend a stress-free night in the arms of your very sexy date.

"You feel pink, little sister," Aurora commented around the bobby pins. "You excited to see Simon?"

Right. That.

Simon had agreed to meet you at the house and pose as your date. It had been a semi-awkward conversation throughout which he and Maddie had teased you. There'd been an item of negotiation. Namely, you'd had to take a folded up note from Maddie and pass it to Simon for a reason neither disclosed. But, in the end, Simon had been happy to be of service.

Nicole would drop him off in—you glanced at the boysenberry Kit-Kat Klock above your desk—twenty-five minutes; he'd say hi to Andrew, Aurora, and Ginny, act a little lovestruck, and then you'd drive to the school in Xavier's truck.

Everything was working out perfectly.

Except the matter of Aurora's mug of tea sat on your desk, the nasty stench doing its level best to overtake your perfume. It wasn't as bad as being trapped in the confines of the car with it, your window open and your room much bigger. Still nauseating, though. You stared at her mug and deliberated whether or not to ask Aurora about Dave who was now, in your mind, suspicious as hell and who also happened to enjoy a cup of tea—that may or may not be related to an evil cult—with his breakfast.

Seeing Dave at the school last night, sneaking around the basement like he was on a mission, had made you uneasy and you realized you didn't know a damn thing about the guy who slept two stories below you.

Glancing at Aurora in the mirror, you ventured, "Rory...how'd you meet Dave?"

She seemed ecstatic that you'd finally asked, plucked the pins out of her mouth and giddily said, "Feeling romantic, huh? And you kept denying it when I called Simon your boyfriend!" After she'd seen you on the swings with him that night he'd found the money in Mr. Anderson's classroom.

You tried not to cringe, "Sure, let's go with that."

"Well," Aurora began, twirling a curl into a roll atop your head and pinning it in place, "We met when I was in New York. Obvi. I actually met him through Carol—" Xavier's mom "—when she was there for a realtor's mixer. They worked together."

"Dave's from Split River?" You were surprised. He didn't sound like he was from Wisconsin. He had a very proper way of speaking. Controlled. Crisp. More Big City Society than Small Town Midwestern. Perhaps it was something he'd learned to do in order to charm prospective investors.

"Born and raised," Aurora confirmed. "Anyway, I went to meet Carol for lunch and Dave tagged along. The rest is history."

"That's it? You ate lunch together?"

Aurora dismissed your cynicism with an eye roll, "No. We stayed in touch after he left. You know, texting and Skype. And then he transferred to the NYC branch of his company. We moved in together after two months," She sighed as if reliving that era of their relationship.

"If you know, you know." You muttered, not sure that Aurora had known, however that wasn't for you to say.

"Exactly."

Staring at the tea again, "And then you brainwashed him into drinking this stuff?" You indicated to her mug.

Again, Aurora rolled her eyes, "You know, this superiority act is getting old. You drank it, too."

"And then I found my brain and stopped."

Answering your question, "No," Aurora said, "Dave was as bad as you're suddenly being about it." Aurora pondered, "But then work stress caught up to him—the pace in New York is no joke—and I suggested he try it." Her reflection smiled at you. "I mean, it helped mom, it helps me, it helped you until you got all holier-than-thou."

"Helped me how?" You frowned at her through the mirror, "I wasn't stressed." Which further made you wonder why you'd been drinking the stuff for so long.

"Oh, come on, you remember. After—." Aurora abruptly stopped.

After Aiden, she didn't say, her face telling you that she was uncomfortable bringing up the memory since you'd always blamed yourself for his death. Because she knew what you'd thought had been the truth; that he'd fallen and busted his head open. Not what'd actually happened.

"Well," You cleared your throat, "I guess I'm over it now, huh?"

"Guess so," Aurora murmured, attention entirely on the curl she was shaping in your hair.

There was a brief lull before either you spoke again. Prodding, "And Nanna still drinks it because...?"

"It helps her focus her divination. The way she puts it, she has too much time to herself these days to think."

The more you learned about your family's motives to drink the tea, the more you realized everyone was using it as a mild sedative. Which, okay, it probably was, but usually the natural stuff didn't work that well.

Though certainly not as strong as what you'd smelt on the sacrifices in the cavern, Wally had claimed that he'd smelled exactly what the tea smelt like on younger-you's breath on the other side of the farmhouse door. It could be as he'd suggested, that your family's tea was missing a key ingredient, but was otherwise identical.

Maddie had given you the list of ingredients, tucked between the pages of your Math notes, and you were more determined than ever to compare what was in your family's tea to what Wally remembered seeing on the shelf in the farmhouse cellar.

"Do you know what's in it?" You asked Aurora who'd relaxed since bringing up Aiden.

She hummed and then, "Sort of. We started to carry most of the floral ingredients at the shop. But some of them I have to get from the holistic place on Randolph." A main drag in one of three upper-middle-class boroughs in Split River.

"So, we make it ourselves now?"

"Oh, yeah, we've been making it for years. The place that used to sell it went out of business a few years ago."

Should've taken that as a sign, you mused.

"I can feel your sassy thoughts, you know." Aurora reminded you, giving you a flat look through the mirror.

You grinned, "I'm not sorry."

"I know you aren't."

There was one more thing you wanted to know, something that had been nagging at you since last night. There was a chance Aurora would rat you out to your great-aunt or mother, but, at that point, it didn't matter. You were seriously unnerved by Dave's behavior. By the fact that he'd driven around town supposedly looking for you by his lonesome, without Aurora...?

And then last night, Dave who never attended a single sports event ever suddenly appears in the school after the Homecoming game wearing Andrew's clothes? Nah, the guy was up to something. Maybe not cult-related something, but something.

"Rory?"

"Yeah?"

"Did Dave mention anything about last week?"

You watched her carefully through the mirror, the genuine confusion on her face as she thought about it.

"No? Why? What happened last week?"

Here goes nothing, you swallowed, took a deep breath and then, "I snuck out last Thursday and Dave found me. He brought me back home... He didn't mention it?"

Shock-horror flit across her face in stages as she processed what you'd said. She was so stunned that she almost burned your hair, the curler on for too long.

"You did what?"

"I'll take that as a no." You said, turning to face her properly. "Oh, like you didn't do the same thing when you were a teenager."

Aurora gaped, "I absolutely didn't, are you crazy!? This is Split River! Your friend is literally missing and you thought it was a good idea to just," She gestured widely, face puffed up in frustration, "wander around the town after dark!? Are you dumb!?"

Right. Normal people worried about things like kidnappers and murderers. Normal people didn't help their friend's ghost investigate the circumstances surrounding them being stuck in an In Between. Because normal people, even if they could see ghosts, didn't put themselves in danger when there were people trained to do that sort of thing.

Oops.

Placating, "Nothing happened. I'm not drinking or having sex or doing drugs. I was hanging out with friends." Kind of. "Can we please talk about how Dave snuck out to come find me and never told you about it?"

Aurora went through the motions of unplugging and setting aside the hair curler, tidying up the unused bobby pins, and uncapping the hairspray before she said anything. Either she couldn't process what you'd said or she needed the time to come up with an excuse.

"He probably heard you," She started, "And he might've woken me up to tell me, I just don't remember. You know how I am, I'm like a zombie when my eight hours are interrupted."

"Strange how you used to wake up when I breathed too loud in my room across the hall with the door closed..." You quipped and gave her a hard look.

Aurora scoffed, "You get to your thirties and tell me if you're the same as you were when you were younger."

"Where's Dave now?" Because he hadn't come home at half-past six as was his routine.

Visibly uncomfortable with receiving the third degree, Aurora shot back, "At the office; he has a meeting with clients on the West Coast. What the fuck? You think he's cheating on me or something?"

You hadn't realized that that could explain all of Dave's weird behavior. Jesus, you were so far down the rabbit hole, the average slimy husband angle hadn't even blipped on your radar and yet it made the most sense.

Ashamed, you tried to salvage what you could of the conversation, "I mean, I don't think so. But, I think he's lying to you about something. He was at the school after the game last night. Did you know that?"

Aurora didn't answer, her eyes darting about, "Maybe he went to pick you up?"

"I didn't ask him to. You obviously didn't ask him to. And when has he ever done anything for me from the kindness of his heart?"

"Why are you being such a bitch!? Dave is a good man. I wouldn't have married him if he wasn't."

You got to your feet, gesturing to emphasize your point, "Good or not, Rory, he was sneaking around the basement at school last night."

"You followed him?" Aurora frowned at you, "Did you see anything?"

You chewed your lip before admitting, "I lost him. Which is why I'm asking you." God, was Dave cheating on Aurora? With someone who liked high school football and basement trysts?

Aurora stepped back until her legs hit your bed. She sat down, pushed her hair out of her face and mulled over what you'd exposed about her husband. You joined her, sat close, studying her expression as she struggled to piece together a plausible explanation that didn't make Dave the bad guy.

"I'll ask him," She finally said.

"You think he'll tell you the truth?"

She shrugged, "If he doesn't, I'll know." According to Aurora, lies were painted in shades of grey and smelt like burnt rubber.

Aurora assisted you through everything else; fixed your hair, perfected your makeup, zipped up your dress. Throughout it all, she remained quiet, obviously thrown into internal hysteria, mentally seeking out what red flags she'd missed from Dave in the past.

You felt horrible. Sort of. Dave wasn't Mr. Anderson who'd been desperate to get out from under a mountain of debt that wasn't his. He hadn't hurt anyone; had actually helped raise that money and had provided new uniforms as promised.

On the other hand, Dave was being dishonest with Aurora. Sneaking around and acting like finding you behind the school near the woods was totally legit.

"Rory." You murmured, "I'm really sorry for bringing it up."

Aurora smiled at you, small and sad, and pulled you into a hug, "I'm glad you told me," She said. "I'd rather know now than be taken by surprise later."

A knock at the door and Andrew peeked in, "How's she lookin'?" He asked Aurora and then entered the room fully. His eyes widened and a grin spread across his face, "Wow. You fix up nice, beans."

You chuckled at the old nickname, "Thanks, Drew," and tried to ignore how his eyes misted and his smile wobbled.

It was sweet, and Andrew basically filled in all the gaps your father left behind whenever he was deployed or stationed away from home. But you'd never been good at handling that kind of emotional attention; preferred jokes and laughter to happy tears.

Andrew cleared his throat, glanced away, and said, "You're date's here, by the way. Ginny's got her paws all over him, so you might wanna hurry up."

"We'll be down in a sec," You grinned back, "Just make sure Ginny doesn't eat him, please."

"Can do," Andrew saluted and stepped back out of your room to rescue Simon from your great-aunt's clutches.

‗‗‗‗•‗‗‗‗

Xavier listened at the banister as Claire fished for clues. He wasn't convinced she'd hurt Maddie, but she was definitely hiding something. Something worth whatever amount that cheque she'd handed Xavier's dad had on it.

He watched the tendrils stretch between him and his dad (blue), him and Claire (a swirl of green and red). His dad's blue was steady tonight, unlike earlier when Xavier had come home with the suit bag and his dad's credit card. No words had been exchanged, just that annoyed stare his dad sometimes fixed him with, like he couldn't wait until Xavier left for college. And that black thread suspended between them, linking them.

"This year has been...unreal. First Maddie, and then Mr. Anderson."

"Yeah...it's nothing you kids need to worry about. The police are on it." His dad told Claire, sounding human for the first time in weeks. Sure, it could all be a show for Claire who had the money to fund his dad's campaign, but Xavier remembered when his dad used to speak to him like that.

Austin Baxter was being real. Himself. Not whatever made that thread between he and Xavier black as pitch.

Claire responded, "It's hard not to wonder, though, if we'll ever have any answers." A pause. "Are there any updates?"

Xavier continued to eavesdrop as Claire prodded about Mr. Anderson, clearly desperate to find out if Mr. Anderson had said anything about her to the police.

Xavier knew Mr. Anderson hadn't, had seen it in the file his dad had brought home one night to finalize (along with a few others, including Maddie's). That was even stranger, now that Xavier was thinking about it. His dad had been meticulous about following every letter of the law; had taken his responsibilities very seriously.

The state specified that no officer, not even the Sheriff, was allowed take home case files unless authorized by a court under tightly controlled conditions. Yet, Xavier's poking around had yielded results twice. First, unmarked evidence in Christopher Nears' case, and then earlier that week, case files that should've stayed at the station.

Either his dad was that narcissistic to believe he could do whatever he wanted, or he was beginning to slip.

"—be sure to tell your folks we're very thankful they're cooperating while we continue to search the abandoned property."

Xavier pushed away from the banister and descended the stairs, eager to get moving. He wanted to get answers as much as Maddie and Simon, but he couldn't do that if they stuck around trying to coax information from his dad.

Claire complimented how well he cleaned up, and he even managed to get what constituted as praise from his dad. Xavier ushered Claire to the door, shooting one last look over his shoulder at his dad, and watched in mild hope as the blue thread between them shimmered a resolute and brightening blue.

‗‗‗‗•‗‗‗‗

Simon rang the doorbell, shifting from foot to foot. He was nervous. He'd never been to your house, had never met your family—waving to your sister from a swing set while she yelled at you through an open window didn't count—and he wasn't sure what to expect.

To be clear, he wasn't sure what to expect from a family of, "we're not witches, Simon, stop."

In that case, a family of magical people whose abilities ranged from seeing ghosts to acute empathy to psychometry to, what the hell was it? Oh yeah, full-fledged divination.

You'd rattled off who would and wouldn't be there; your mom had been called last minute by a friend to help look after an elderly relative; your Nanna was minding the family flower shop on behalf of your sister who was home to assist you with your nails or lashes or whatever.

If Simon recalled correctly, that meant he had to be wary of your sister the empath, your uncle the psychometrist, and your great-aunt the astral Traveler.

He could do this.

In the last two weeks, he'd been arrested, questioned by police, turned the tables and had his teacher arrested, manifested clairvoyance, embarked on a quest to dismantle a death cult that may or may not have resurfaced, and passed a history test on no hours of sleep. If he could overcome all that, this would be a cake walk.

When the door opened, he was greeted by an elderly woman who he identified easily to be your great-aunt. And, wow, she knew how to make an impression. Beautiful, looked younger than her age with rose gold hair and bright blue eyes, tiny frame swimming in satin. She smiled warmly at him, levering him into a hug before she ushered him inside.

Appearing from the kitchen, wiping his hands with a dishtowel, was your uncle, Andrew. He shared a lot of your great-aunt's features. Same eyes, same impish smile, but he was much taller and broader. He stepped up to Simon and held out his hand for Simon to shake.

"I'll go get the girls," He said after introducing himself, laughing when he added, "And whatever Ginny says, ignore it."

Simon chuckled in response and nodded. "Sounds good," He said, nervous, and followed your great-aunt into the living room after she flapped a beckoning hand at him.

"It's wonderful to meet you, Simon," She said, her voice rich and deep for a woman, at odds with her pixie-like appearance.

Politely, "It's nice to meet you, too, ma'am," he replied.

She gestured for him to take a seat at the corner of the couch as she fell into an armchair beside him; legs crossed, eyes openly grazing up from his shoes to his hair. He felt his ears burn when she at last settled her gaze on his.

"Call me Ginny," She offered, "A friend of hers is family here."

Simon smiled, "Thanks."

He liked her. There was something magnetic about her. Fun. Interesting. He wanted to sit with her over coffee and listen to her tell him her life story. Without knowing anything about Ginny, he could tell she'd lived an exciting life, probably filled with African safaris and cruises around the Mediterranean. She just had that aura about her.

As they chatted—Ginny posing the usual small-talk questions and Simon dutifully answering—he noticed the pendant on one of her necklaces. He wouldn't have been drawn to it had it not stood out against the long strings of bejeweled costume jewelry. In comparison, it was plain, understated, a very simple piece that didn't match the rest of Ginny's aesthetic.

A round piece of silver with a design that reminded Simon of the sun.

She must've noticed him staring because, "It's lovely isn't it?" she said, leaning forward and holding the pendant away from her collar for Simon to see. "An heirloom. Once part of a pair." At Simon's questioning gaze, she elaborated, "Earrings. But one of them wandered off somewhere along the line, so I strung this one on a chain. I simply couldn't part with it."

"It's beautiful." Simon said as he admired the pendant. "Does the symbol mean anything?"

Ginny nodded, "Actually, it does. The compass is to keep your soul on the right path, the sun beneath it represents clarity in this case, to ensure your vessel remains clean. And the flower," She used her Victory Red pinky nail to indicate, "is another layer of purity." She chuckled, "Essentially, it's to ward off any bad juju that tries to enter your body or mind."

Simon listened closely, curious if she wore it because she was a Traveler, like you'd told him. Her soul could walk out of her body on a whim, which, to Simon, suggested something else could walk in. Including but not limited to bad juju as she'd put it. Was that possible? He really wanted to ask, but knew he couldn't.

The click-clack of heels on hardwood turned Simon's attention to the hall. He stood, smoothed his suit jacket and stepped around the couch, eyes widening and jaw going slack when he saw you descending the stairs.

"Wow."

You looked...gorgeous. Stunning. He'd never seen you done up like that before, makeup that enhanced your features rather than made a statement, hair in loose curls that fell down your back, a cocktail dress in a color that complimented your skin. He was, to put it lightly, gobsmacked.

Wally was a lucky guy, Simon thought.

Your sister giggled and whispered something to you that sounded like, "He's pink, too," which...did that make sense? Because he didn't understand. He'd have to ask you when you and he were safely alone in the truck.

He saw Andrew roll his eyes, "Not now," and knock your sister's shoulder as he passed her to stand with Ginny.

Behind him, Ginny snickered to Simon, "We want her back in the same condition she's leaving in," to which Simon blushed to his roots.

Knowing something you didn't, he could only stammer, "I—yeah. I promise. No funny business."

Your sister seemed to disagree, squinting at him before she whispered to you again, this time telling you, "He's red now," then louder, for everyone to hear but directed at Simon, "Remember to keep room between you for the holy spirit."

Oh god. Simon's collar suddenly felt too tight. Andrew barked a laugh. Ginny cackled and patted his shoulder, assuring him not to listen to your sister as she winked salaciously.

When he turned back to you, you had your hands over your face, grumbling, "I hate you so much," to your sister and Ginny.

Grinning, Simon held out his arm to you, a charming, "Milady," as you banded your arm through his.

"Milord," You grinned back, "Let's go before they make us take pictures."

He agreed, wishing Andrew, your sister, and Ginny goodnight, and escorting you to the door. You grabbed a peacoat and a guitar case on your way out, waved to your family and bid them goodbye, groaning like the teenage girl you were at whatever, "You'd better still smell like jasmine tomorrow!" meant.

💀___________________________

PART THREE - PART FIVE

also available on AO3!

MASTERLIST

[damiamor]

end game

genre: strickland!au | exes! outlaw!seonghwa x nurse!fem!reader

length: 10,584 words

summary: your injured ex-boyfriend breaks into your apartment in search of your healing touch, unintentionally dragging you back into the life you thought you’d left behind.

content warnings: angst with a happy ending, smut mdni, descriptions of violence/gore/blood, guns, probably botched medical terms but i tried my best, no use of y/n.

notes: this was way longer than i originally thought it was going to be, but here we are! this also took wayyy too long to write and has actually been sitting in my google docs for months. but anyways! i’m working on my reputation era of the taylor’s version masterlist (because if she doesn’t want to give us reputation, guess i gotta do it myself). likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated!

ateez masterlist | taylor’s version masterlist

nsfw warnings: oral (female receiving), fingering, penetrative sex, gentle/makeup sex

“breaking news: city hall is facing another round of vandalism after the black pirates set fire to the front steps. this is the gang’s third successful attempt at defacing government, following a fire at the municipal hall and staging a riot outside the courthouse. despite three months of investigation, the police still have not been able to locate and capture the group’s leaders known as-”

you turned off the television before the newscaster could continue. you weren’t sure how many more images of your city driven to chaos and flames you could take, or how many more mentions of their name you could stomach. 

for as long as you’d lived in strickland, you remembered hearing about rebellion. in a society of suppression and fear, resistance brewed. there was always talk of a coup, but no one ever dared to try until the black pirates came. the leaders of the movement plundered the rich and stood atop the highest buildings to protest, advocating for control from the evil central government. they’d avoided arrest for years and served as the the figureheads for the rebellion, clad in black leather and masked so the world would never know their true identities lest their loved ones face a desolate end. some people preferred them to remain nameless; they grouped them in with the rest of the black pirates, afraid that putting a name to their devious acts would only give them more power. but the rest of the world spoke the name that set dread into the government’s bones: ateez. 

it had gotten worse lately. infrequent riots became a weekly occurrence, and crime was at an all-time high. sector one was littered with flyers, and you heard more occurrences of music blaring through every alley to incite crowds and draw them in. the streets had more patrols now than ever before, controlled by iron-clad police with batons and bulletproof armour. you watched innocent civilians who tried to become freedom fighters be wheeled into the trauma centre you worked in with broken bones, bleeding from various wounds while they whispered about the new world they were fighting for. every day you felt another life leave your skilled hands, you feared it would never get better.

“come on, karuma. let’s go to bed.” 

you sighed and stood up from the couch, your empty glass of wine in hand. the black cat curled up by your feet suddenly stretched and came to life, hopping off of the couch and padding into the kitchen on soft, silent paws. you weren’t far behind. 

your apartment drifted into silence as you washed out your glass. the sirens roared outside felt like a soothing lullaby, willing you to leave your dishes behind and fall upon the soft, silk sheets of your bed, but you resisted the call. 

a year ago, it wouldn’t have been like this. your home had always been filled with so much light and laughter. it was always spun into chaos, somehow becoming the social hub for your friends—friends you hadn’t seen since the day everything fell apart, since the government debut their special guardians in an attempt to deal with the black pirates. since you broke up with him. 

karuma swiped her paw at your arm. your hands had gone still, running beneath lukewarm water as your mind spun with the memories your home used to share. you blinked a few times, then shut off the water and dried your hands on the towel.

“sorry,” you apologised, scratching behind the feline’s ears. karuma immediately careened into your touch, nuzzling her head into your hand.

you took the kitten in your arms, and she curled her head into the crook of your neck as you gently stroked her furred back. when you turned off the kitchen light, your apartment was plunged into darkness, save for the little plug-in light in the hallway, giving you just enough light to begin your trek to your bedroom. 

as you turned on the lamp next to your bed, karuma jumped out of your arms in favour of curling up on your sheets, comfortably resting against the second pillow on the opposite nearest of the bed—the side closest to the door, the side you never slept on. he never wanted you to be too close to danger if anyone dared to break in.

with a sad smile, you shook your head as the cat stretched out to occupy as much space on the bed as possible.

“spoiled brat,” you teased karuma, who mewled pathetically at the comment as though she understood, her yellow eyes wide and innocent.

you would’ve crawled into the bed beside her had your phone not buzzed on your bedside table, blaring loudly though the discordant symphony of sirens with the government notification. karuma jumped up from the bed, her tail raised high, and you gently scratched behind her ears to calm her as you silenced your phone.

public safety alert: fugitives have been spotted in your area. stay in your homes.

crash!

there was a shatter from the living room, too noisy to be a simple vase falling. every nerve in your body burned in fear as you froze, karuma’s meows becoming piercingly loud. you stared at your open bedroom door like you were expecting someone to breach the doorway. 

if it was the government sending their guardians, there would have been more chaos. you would’ve heard dozens of footsteps and low chatter. the more likely scenario was that someone was trying to break into your home, making you the next victim of the crime riddling strickland.

but you lived on the third fucking floor.

a few thundering footsteps and a thud made you snap out of your trance. you knew how to protect yourself—you’d been taught what to do if something like this ever happened. it repeated in your head like a mantra. his voice, though distant, was still in your head.

“if anyone ever tries to come in, don’t fight them. go to the closet. behind the shelf. push it, it’ll slide open. stay there. do not come out until i find you.”

you opened the second drawer of your bedside table. a gun stared back at you, one you’d been sworn to only use in emergencies. you remembered learning how to shoot it, the feeling of him behind you as he guided your hands towards the proper placement. gathering the weapon in your hand, you silently scooped karuma under your opposite arm and carried her to the closet, noiselessly shutting the door and trapping you both inside. 

your heart thundered in your chest, the noise so deafeningly loud you could hear it in your ears. the closet was void of any light, but you knew your way around. blind hands searched for the shelf and when you found it, you pressed against the panel. a soft click! let you know that it opened to your will, and you silently slipped inside, dragging karuma with you.

the gun felt silly in your hand as you pulled the panel closed. the cramped space hardly fit you both, but you let the kitten curl up in your lap, silently shushing her with careful strokes down her back. you shakily held the weapon in your other hand, making sure the safety was off. you’d never shot anyone before, but there was a first time for everything. 

one breath. two breaths. if this was how you died, you’d be a little disappointed; you thought it would’ve been a grander display. 

he’ll come and get me, you thought to yourself. but the harsh reality was that he wasn’t here anymore.

the panel slid open, and in a panic, you fired the gun. karuma yeowled and jumped off your lap, sprinting out the closet despite the figure looming over the shelves.

“jesus, sweetheart. we gotta work on your aim.”

the string to the overhead light was pulled, and it took your eyes a few seconds to adjust. when you finally saw the man standing in front of you without black spots dotting your vision, your eyes went wide.

“seonghwa?”

only his face was lit in a golden glow from the light. his black hair was slicked back, though a few sweaty strands managed to fall across his forehead. sculpted jawline and sharp cheekbones were framed by deep-set eyes—eyes that have seen too much of the city’s worst, of experiencing the world’s cruelty. his skin was shade-kissed by the sun from long rides on his bike. usually, you saw him with a sleek, red-and-black leather jacket that hugged his lean frame, but it must have been tossed somewhere in the apartment. he was clutching his side, his black tank-top sticking to his skin.

he reached a hand out, grimacing at the movement. “give me the gun.”

you clutched the weapon tighter, flinching back from his upwards palm. you should’ve been thrilled that it was him in your apartment and not some stranger, but your mind raced. he shouldn’t be here.

seonghwa’s stare seemed to soften, eyes examining your expression as though reading your fear. “baby, it’s just me,” he cooed. “now, give me the gun. you’re gonna hurt yourself.” 

he didn’t wait for you to comply. a gentle hand slowly gripped yours, pulling the gun out of your grasp. you didn’t resist him, too busy watching him hide his pain through a carefully-masked visual. he never wanted you to worry about him, to fear for his life despite everything he did; and yet, even now, your were tempted to care.

“you’re hurt,” you said bluntly. you crawled out of your hiding spot, swatting away seonghwa’s hand when he offered to help you.

once you were settled on your feet, rather than spare his face a second glance, you stepped forward, your fingers reached towards his hand clutching his side, and he instinctively flinched back; but the longer your hand lingered in the air, the more relaxed he became, until finally, he let your fingertips brush his top.

the gnarly wound had clearly been from a bullet. it had burn across his side, grazing his skin deep enough to tear flesh. he was lucky the impact seemed to have cauterised the wound enough to keep it from bleeding uncontrollably, but coagulated blood still covered the wound. you were impressed he hadn’t passed out on the way here. your mind raced with memories of him limping home, of you coming back to the apartment still dressed in your bloodied scrubs and nursing him back to health. you thought your days of attending to his bedside were over. 

“i didn’t know where else to go,” he admitted quietly. you looked up to find him staring at you, his eyes filled with unspoken worries. 

you removed your hand and pushed past him to exit the closet. “go sit on the bed.”

he called your name, trying to reach out for your wrist, but it only proved too painful. “wait—”

“seonghwa, sit your ass down on the bed. i’m getting the kit.”

you didn’t hear an argument after that. instead, seonghwa sulked out of the closet and sat down on the end of the bed while you grabbed the medical kit from beneath your bathroom sink. when you and seonghwa were together, it saw much more use. you’d pull it out to stitch up his latest bullet wound, or you’d have one of his friends sprawled out half-dead on your dining room table (you vividly remembered patching up wooyoung one night after he’d been shot through the thigh). now, the kit was barely holding itself together, and it was far emptier than you remembered. 

snagging a towel from your bathroom, you silently walked back to your bedroom. seonghwa had certainly made himself comfortable there, sitting with karuma curled on his lap. the cat purred with delight as he scratched behind her ear, a soft grin on his lips. 

“she misses you,” you said as you walked back into the room. karuma, who usually perked her ears up whenever you arrived, didn’t budge from seonghwa’s lap. you’d never seen her so content with someone who should have been a stranger. 

who would have been if he hadn’t come back tonight. 

“i remember when i brought her home,” seonghwa said quietly, like he was afraid of waking up the resting cat. “fresh out of a gutter. you were so scared i was hurt that you didn’t blink twice about bringing a kitten into the house.” 

you would never forget that day either. the black pirates had raided the courthouse, freeing those arrested for expressing themselves through song and dance. when the central government sent soldiers to subdue them, chaos ensued. there were more innocents that died than actual criminals. you’d spent the entire day so worried seonghwa had been amongst the dead or injured that you cried when he crawled through your window, and you didn’t notice the trembling creature beneath his jacket. too overwhelmed by emotion, you didn’t bat an eye when he asked if you could keep the kitten ‘just for a few days’ until he could safely take her to the animal shelter.

over a year later, karuma was still there, and she’d stayed with you even after seonghwa left. but he was always her favourite. 

you blinked away your blurry vision, tears pricking your eyes. you didn’t want him to see you cry—he didn’t deserve your tears. 

“lay down.” you laid out the towel, the only precaution that he wouldn’t get blood on your sheets. “and take your shirt off.” 

seonghwa looked up at you, but you were too busy opening the kit and counting your supplies to notice the sad look in his eyes. he complied with your order, gently moving karuma off his lap and sliding onto the towel. he discarded his bloodied tank top on the floor before laying back, wincing at the sudden stretch.

you kept your gaze clinical as you glanced back at seonghwa under the ruse that you were inspecting his wound. in reality, your eyes dipped down his chest. he’d bulked up a little since you last saw him, his muscles becoming toned and shaped where they were once slender and lean. you remembered the nights you would spend tracing the scars littering his torso, some stitched by you and others from before your time. your eyes traced the beads of sweat there now, likely from his escape to your apartment and the no-doubt painful climb up your fire escape. 

to distract yourself, you cleared your throat and snapped your gloves against your wrist. you doused the gauze in your hand with saline before holding the pad against his side. “this is gonna hurt.” 

“yeah, i remember.” seonghwa gritted his teeth as you flushed out any dirt remaining in the wound. all he could do was look at you, but you kept your gaze detached. 

this felt too familiar, too normal. even the sirens ringing outside reminded you of the past, of being cooped up in the apartment and soothing seonghwa with sterile hands and gentle kisses. he always lulled your worried brow with whispered promises of fighting for a better tomorrow, a dream of liberation hongjoong had planted in their heads. at one point, you believed it, too; now, it was too good to be true.

you grabbed an antiseptic wipe to clean the skin around the wound. “what the fuck happened out there?”

“it’s those fucking guardians,” he breathed out as you tossed the wipe aside and covered his side with gauze. you tore the medical tape with your teeth, sticking the edges to his skin. 

“hongjoong thought if we disappeared into the chaos of the crowds trying to escape, they wouldn’t be able to find us. but they just... they started shooting, like they didn’t care about all the innocent people around us.” you could hear the anger in every word. his hand balled into a fist at his side. “i couldn’t just stand there and let that happen.”

“you’re not faster than a bullet,” you scolded him. after checking the wound’s dressing one last time, you snapped off your gloves. “one of these days, you’re gonna get shot, and i’m not gonna be able to stitch you back up.”

seonghwa tried to laugh, but the sudden pain to his side made him wince instead. “i thought i was your favourite patient,” he teased as he slowly sat up. 

you rolled your eyes. “don’t push it.” 

packing up your medical kit, you set aside the dirty supplies and tossed them in your bedroom trash before taking the box back to the bathroom. the towel, shockingly spared of most of seonghwa’s blood, was discarded in your washing machine, along with his tank top. you walked back to your bedroom, rummaging around one of your drawers. you were sure seonghwa had left some of his things here—clothes you should have thrown out or given back months ago, but you couldn’t part with them.

“here.” you walked back to your bed with a simple black t-shirt, handing it to seonghwa. he didn’t question why you still had any of his things. he knew you didn’t have the heart to throw them out. that would mean forgetting him. 

“thanks.” he pulled the shirt over his head. even the smallest movement made his nerves twitch with pain.

you frowned and instinctively moved to help him, tugging on the hem of the t-shirt. maybe if you realised how you were leaning over him now, how your face was only inches away from his when he turned his face upwards, you would have left him to suffer with the clothing. 

his lips were so, so close, wind-bitten yet pink and soft and… and you were staring now, remembering how it felt when he kissed you. you always felt like you were floating on air, like the lightest touch could knock you off kilter and send you tumbling into an abyss, if only he wasn’t there to catch you. if you closed your eyes, you could still feel his lips across your skin, when he pressed delicate kisses against the hollow of your neck or nipped his teeth at the cusp of your ear.

no.

you pulled away before you could think better of it. for a moment, you caught a twinge of a pout on seonghwa’s face when he noticed how quickly you’d flinched away from him, but he was quick to steel his expression. 

“seonghwa, you can’t keep doing this,” you said, standing up from your bed. “you can’t... you can’t just barge in here after a year.” 

“i know-”

“what if someone saw you? do you know what they would do to me?”

“i’d never let them hurt you.”

you scoffed. “yeah, that’s what you said last time, too.” 

that’s what he said the night before the guardians raided the hospital in search of the black pirates. the central government agreed that the only way they could have survived this long was if they knew someone who could tend to their injuries. when no evidence was found, they punished the hospital. they limited their supplies, arrested doctors and nurses for treason, and sent the guardians to wreak havoc until the medical facility was only a shell of its former glory.

all you could do without exposing yourself was watch helplessly while those around you suffered. the night the guardians raided through the emergency room, seonghwa nearly convinced hongjoong to set the city ablaze in protest. you told him this was all his fault, that your life was ruined because of him. looking back, you were too harsh; it was just as much your fault, too, for staying with him despite his crimes, but you were too full of anger and grief to see that. 

you kicked him out, you told him that you couldn’t do it anymore. you couldn’t be the one he ran to when they needed a doctor, couldn’t risk your life or the lives of the innocent people around you for his sake. he never argued, never pleaded with you to take him back; he just accepted his fate, took his things from your place, and didn’t speak to you for an entire year. 

you acted like you didn’t notice the rotation outside your apartment every night of the week as the boys took turns watching over you, protecting you. you didn’t notice how the sirens around your apartment got a little quieter, how for an entire year, the black pirates didn’t seem nearly as reckless as they had in the past. strickland's harshest critics thought they were going soft; you knew they were finally understanding how high their body count was. 

“i can’t start doing this again, seonghwa,” you said quietly, sitting next to him on the bed. your gaze was on your hands firmly trapped between your thighs.

you didn’t have to look at him to see that he was hurting. his first time seeing you in a year, and you refused to look at him. all he wanted was to catch your eyes, to see you, to hear your voice. but instead of letting his anguish show, he cracked a smile.

“i wasn’t asking you to, sweetheart.” 

you looked up from your hands. his smile did nothing to hide the pain in his eyes. if you looked too long, you knew you would’ve done anything he asked. 

“i’ll go get you some painkillers to take with you,” you said as you stood. anything to get out of the suffocating silence of the room, to stop feeling like you were the one to blame.

memories piled one on top of the other in your mind as you rummaged through your medicine cabinet. early mornings spent tangled in sheets, watching the sun crest over the city. breakfast in bed on your birthday. good morning and goodnight kisses. goodbye kisses in the living room, the ones that took your breath away. and nothing would ever make you forget the instant relief you always felt when you saw him come home from the black pirates’ latest escapade in one piece. 

you shook your head as though it would make you forget. it wouldn’t, you hadn’t forgotten for the last twelve months. 

“here, these should last you until-”

when you got back to your bedroom to give seonghwa the medicine you’d grabbed, he was gone. the sound of sirens echoed further away now, the lights no longer casting shadows into your apartment. it was like he’d been a ghost, with no trace left behind for you to even claim he was there except the faint scent of his cologne. 

you dropped the pills on your bed, sitting back down on the edge. karuma hopped up beside you, allowing you to scratch behind her ear and run your hand down her arched spine. you didn’t know you were crying until a salty tear hit your thigh, and you quickly wiped it away.

whether you liked it or not, you did miss him. and somewhere, deep down, you knew you’d see him again soon.

“seonghwa, what the fuck?” you hissed as you opened your apartment door. you hadn’t even been home from your latest shift for more than fifteen minutes before there was frantic knocking at your door. your sweaty, grimy scrubs from work were still sticking to your skin when you opened it to find him.

“please, he’s-”

“get the fuck inside before someone sees you.” 

you ushered the four into your apartment. karuma hissed at wooyoung’s feet and fled into your bedroom as the young sharpshooter ran to your window. he peeked outside, cheeks illuminated by red and blue lights. seonghwa gave yeosang’s weight to san as he helped you clear off your dining room table, only returning to his side to help lower their injured friend onto the dark oak.

“what the hell happened?” you asked, grabbing your medical kit.

“those fucking androids,” wooyoung seethed. he had his gun in his hand, the long sniper rifle still hanging from his shoulder and his travel bag heavy at his feet. “they ambushed us at the warehouse.”

“wooyoung, put down the gun and get away from the goddamn window,” you ordered as you reached yeosang on the table. “i’m not gonna have you fucking shooting at people from my living room.”

you didn’t see him grimace, nor did you see him glare at you as he slowly backed away from the window. his gun was forgotten on the couch, but it wasn’t as though he was defenceless; he still had a pistol strapped to his hip.

once he seemed to have calmed, or at least distracted himself from his anger by finally sitting down and bouncing his leg (you would have to just get a new lounge chair with how soaked in dirt and blood wooyoung was), you looked back at yeosang. he was slipping in and out of consciousness, and the only positive was that he didn’t seem to be actively bleeding. you wordlessly handed seonghwa a pair of scissors to cut off yeosang’s top, and he silently complied. 

you couldn’t seem to move fast enough. you ran to wash your hands in the kitchen sink.

“i need-”

“i’ve got ‘em.” seonghwa opened the medical kit, as he had hundreds of times before. your box of gloves were sitting on top, and you quickly snapped them onto your hands.

you set aside your supplies. saline. antiseptic. gauze. medical tape.

“where are the-”

“bottom of the box.” he reached into the medical kit, grabbed the box of sutures, and set them down on the table.

maybe if his friend—your friend, too—wasn’t dying on your dining room table, you would’ve taken more time to notice how well he knew you. of course, he knew where all of your supplies were, and of course, he knew your routine. before you broke up, you’d been doing this for years, more than long enough for him to know how these kinds of situations went.

but you didn’t have time, not with yeosang bleeding out on the table.

your fingers pinched the wound to find the blood coagulating enough to stop the bleeding. without the knife still inside him, you had no way of knowing how deep it could have gone, what organs it hit. you know better, you wanted to spit at the boys, who had once listened to your incessant rants on how they needed to take better care of themselves in the field. but with everyone looking so grim, you didn’t think such a lecture had a place here. 

“i told them not to take it out, but they didn’t listen,” seonghwa told you quietly. his voice was shaky, like he was scared yeosang might not make it. “i-is he going to be-”

“he’s fine. hand me the bottle of saline and the gauze,” you instructed, already holding out your hand expectantly. 

seonghwa nodded and grabbed the supplies, placing them in your gloved hands. you moved with the fluidity of a professional, the clinical grace and experience of a nurse of your stature. every time you asked for something, seonghwa would hand to you. most of the time, you didn’t have to let the word leave your mouth before the next supply was in your hand. 

it was nearly twenty minutes later when you were suturing the wound closed, covering the edges in an antibiotic ointment. you applied the dressing, securing the gauze with medical tape seonghwa cut for you. but yeosang was still blinking his eyes warily, his head elevated by san’s hand. the bruiser kept speaking to the getaway driver, whispering something about how he couldn’t die. you just didn’t want to be the one with his blood on your hands.

“he can stay here. he’s in no condition to travel,” you said, and while you were speaking out loud, you knew seonghwa was the only one listening. 

you snapped off your gloves, discarding them in the trash and taking your supplies to the sink to be cleaned. in the silence of your kitchen, you took a moment to breathe. the moment you thought you’d finally gotten rid of this part of your past, it came crawling back, exposing you to the dangers you’d been happy to avoid for a year.

your forceps and needle holder clattered into the sink, and you watched the blood on them rinse off into the drain below. self-pity brewed in your chest, but more than that, anger boiled. of course, you’d never get to leave this life. it was selfish of you to ever think that.

“need any help?” 

he was the last person you wanted to see right now, but you knew none of them were going anywhere. the four men were stuck in your apartment, at least for the night, and the others would never leave yeosang here to recover by himself.

“i told you i didn’t want this anymore,” you said, picking up the metal supplies from the sink. you hastily washed them off until they were clean in your hands once more. you’d soak them in solution later, but for now, you set them aside on a clean towel.

“i know.” his presence was behind you, and you didn’t need to turn around to know he was hovering uselessly. he always did that whenever he was trying to apologise, always seconds away from wrapping his arms around your waist. you’d be lying if you said you didn’t once find his touch comforting, and some small part of you craved it now, too.

“i’m sorry.” 

you scoffed and turned around. if you weren’t so angry, so worried over yeosang, you would’ve noticed the barely-concealed furrow of his brow, the frown on his lips. sweat clinging to his hair. 

“yeah, you’re always sorry,” you muttered. “you guys can’t just keep showing up on death’s door asking me to save you. they’re going to find out where you keep running off to.”

“no, they won’t.” 

seonghwa shook his head and stook a step forward. his hand slowly raised, instinctively falling upon your jaw. tender, calloused fingers traced your jaw until his thumb rested on your chin. every instinct screamed to pull away, that finding yourself in such a compromising position would only start the repeated cycle of misery and heartbreak you’d just recovered from.

his voice was a whisper. “i’d never let them hurt you.”

i know, you thought, but you’d never say it out loud. 

for a moment, the world stood still. you couldn’t hear the sirens outside or the water running in the sink. it was just you and seonghwa, in your kitchen like old times. in your memories, he’d always gently swayed you, soothing your fears with gentle kisses. he was close enough now that he could do the same, and for a moment, you almost let him.

you would have if san hadn’t walked in.

“do you have an air mattress we could borrow?” 

you nearly jolted away from seonghwa, your spine stiffening as you turned your face from his hand. kind eyes met san’s weary gaze. he managed a smile, only for you, to hide how exhausted he really was.

“yeah, let me go grab it,” you said. “i only have the one, so someone’s gonna have to take the couch.”

“we’ll make it work.” 

you nodded and left the kitchen. the apartment plunged into silence again, with only the echos of sirens heard getting further and further away. 

seonghwa stared at the spot where you’d once stood, hand lingering in the air. his fingers curled into a fist as though angry at himself, and he gritted his teeth only briefly before leaning back against the counter. his eyes met san’s, and the man’s expression had changed from the tender, youthful glow that had addressed you. the bruiser’s eyebrows were firm, eyes set in a disapproving glare.

they’d all seen how messily this ended once before. and while seonghwa knew san was right in his silent plea to stay away, he couldn’t bring himself to listen.

“do you have the charts for the patient in room 801 ?” you asked one of the other nurses at the desk. a clipboard was blindly handed to you, and when you leaned back against the wall, you nearly collapsed from the day’s exhaustion.

it’d been nearly a week since yeosang had been brought to your apartment with his stab wound. when you woke up the next morning, everyone was gone, with only a hastily-written note stuck to your fridge in san’s handwriting thanking you for your help. wooyoung was the only one to text you and apologise for barging in, and he updated you on yeosang’s condition a few days later. you never heard from seonghwa. 

maybe that was for the best. after your near-moment of weakness in the kitchen, you didn’t want to see or hear from him. you’d broken up for a reason, and you’d be a fool to go crawling back into his arms at first glance. 

“you have a patient waiting for you in room 43.” one of the other nurses, a fresh-from-university young woman named tae, sat down a clipboard on the desk and hurried to your side. she’d always been attached to you by the hip, and you became her mentor of sorts while she got her footing in the hospital. 

you furrowed your brows. “i don’t have any other patients.” 

tae shrugged her shoulders. “just relaying the message. said he was your boyfriend or something.” 

you weren’t sure whether your body tensed from panic or anger, but your skin paled at her words. the clipboard in your hands clattered on the ground, and your sneakers squealed against the floor as you raced down the hall. 

the worst thoughts ran through your mind. he’d finally gone too far, had tried to do a mission with the boys and gotten himself seriously injured. was he dying? he was, wasn’t he? the boys had left him behind—god, you’d give hongjoong a piece of your mind whenever you saw him next, even if you had to drive to find him yourself. 

you threw the door open, expecting to find the worst inside. but there was no chatter of doctors, no gaggle of nurses hovering around a patient. you pulled back the curtain, only to see seonghwa sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, blood trickling down the side of his face from a cut just under his eyebrow.

alive. he was alive.

when seonghwa noticed you, he stood up from the bed, eyes wide as he looked at your panicked expression. but the worry morphed into anger, your jaw tensing and your hands balling into fists at your side as you quickly approached the opposite side of the bed.

“wait, i can explain-”

his head snapped to the side when your hand made contact with his cheek. he didn’t make a sound, his jaw clenching as he slowly turned his face back to you. you wished he would have said something, would have done anything except look at you with eyes that let you know he knew he deserved it. 

“what the fuck are you doing here?” you made sure the door closed on the other side of the room before returning to the bed. there was a fury burning in your eyes, replacing your previous panic. at least he was alive enough for you to yell at him. “are you trying to get caught?!”

“i wasn’t followed, i swear!” he insisted, but he, too, was raising his voice. anyone in the hall would know they were inside. 

“but you can’t know that for sure!” you yelled. but in contrast to your words, you reached for the gloves on the wall and pulled them over your hands. you dragged the small cart by the door over to the bed and pushed back on seonghwa’s shoulder with one hand, effectively making him sit back down on the edge of the bed. 

“this is just fucking like you,” you spat as you tilted his head back, inspecting the cut above his eye. not deep enough to cause lasting damage, but it would still need stitches. “putting everyone else in danger without a second thought.”

“stop.”

“no, seonghwa! i’m tired of it!” you wet a gauze with saline and pressed it against the wound, cleaning the side of his face. “you can’t just waltz in here where anyone can see you. you’re lucky tae came straight to me. what if she told someone else?” 

“but she didn’t,” he countered. 

“but she could have,” you hissed. “she’s never met you before. she’s young and naive, but you’re lucky she trusts me.”

seonghwa winced as you cleaned off the wound, but there was no warmth in your gaze. there didn’t seem to be any tenderness in your touch either as you pierced his skin with a needle, suturing the wound beneath his brow and knotting the end.

you retreated back to your supply cart, tossing off your gloves and pressing your palms into your eyes. don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, you repeated to yourself like a mantra, because you swore you wouldn’t ever shed any more tears over seonghwa. but emotions clawed up your throat, begging to be felt and expressed. you nearly choked on a sob. 

“i thought you were dead.”

the sound of shuffling filled your ears, of seonghwa getting off the bed. you didn’t see the way his face twitched into sorrow, but there was no time wasted as he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into his chest. soothing hands rubbed your back as you let our another cry, your hands moving to clutch the zipper of his leather jacket. 

 “i’m okay,” he whispered, lips nearly brushing against your ear. “i’m okay, i promise.” 

“but you’re not okay, seonghwa.” 

you pulled your head up from his chest, but you didn’t dare back away from his arms. whether you wanted to admit it or not, this was what you’d been craving, what you’d missed most this past year—because as much as you hated it, there was no safer place than his arms.

“this was why we broke up,” you said sadly, voice hoarse and tear-filled. “because you keep pulling shit like this. you keep throwing yourself into danger, keep getting yourself hurt, because you think it’ll mean something. it doesn’t, seonghwa, and you’re not bulletproof.”

he raised his hand, thumb brushing over your jaw. he didn’t dare interrupt you, only tenderly caressing your cheek as you spoke.

“every day, i sit here and wonder when it’s gonna be you coming out of the ambulance. or wooyoung, or yunho, or any of the boys,” you sniffled, and he wiped away your tear with the pad of his thumb. “and i can never get over that feeling of dread whenever i see that you’ve all pissed someone off again, that there’s another riot or break-out. because what if you don’t come back from that?”

seonghwa let his fingers fall beneath your chin, tilting your head up so you were forced to meet his eye. 

“i will always come back to you.”

he’d promised it before, but it was a promise he’d always kept. no matter what, seonghwa always came back to you, even when it seemed like the world was burning outside your window. 

you saw him dip his head, the subtle shift as he brought his face closer to yours. you felt your lungs constrict as your breath got held in your throat. his lips brushed against yours, wind-bitten from the miles he drove through strickland's streets on his bike. you used to tell him he needed to keep chapstick in his jacket, and he always made sure he wore strawberry—your favourite, you liked the taste. 

he was gentle with you, like he was scared you’d break beneath him. and after a year apart, you just might have. you nearly melted beneath his touch. he brought the kind of comfort only a partner could, savouring the moment as best as he could as his thumb stroked your cheek. no words needed to be shared; you could feel every ounce of emotion bleeding from his lips and into yours, reminding you of all the promises he’d made—how even now, even after so long, he wouldn’t break them.

you only jumped away from him when you heard your name being called. the door opened, and tae’s pink hair popped in. the loud noise in the hall let you know there were patients that urgently needed your attention.

“hate to ruin the moment, but the ambulance just dropped off patients from a car accident.”

“no, no, it’s okay,” you muttered. you took a reluctant step away from seonghwa, fingertips wiping over your mouth as though trying to hide what had just transpired—as if she didn’t already know. “i’ll be there in a second.”

tae nodded and left the room. 

seonghwa stared down at you with love and affection, and you hated it. you hated it because you felt it through. despite your hardships, despite being apart for a year, you weren’t over him, and he knew it.

“you should go,” you whispered. “before someone finds you here.”

seonghwa nodded. “yeah,” he agreed, adjusting his jacket. “yeah, i should.”

you pushed the supply cart back to the wall, discarding the supplies you’d used in the container on the wall. your heart was racing, your skin feverish to the touch where his hands had been. you couldn’t let him leave, not again.

“seonghwa-”

but when you turned around, the window was open, and he was gone.

it rained two days later. storms had been plaguing the city since you saw seonghwa at the hospital—since you’d kissed him. you still dreamt about the butterflies in your stomach, like you were falling in love with him all over again. it was a bad path to go back down, you knew; it would only lead to more heartache. 

you were curled up on your couch now, your small television playing whatever recent news the government was trying to shove down your throat, but your mind was elsewhere. you stared out your window, watching the rain hit your window. a steaming mug of tea sat between your hands. for a moment, you wondered if seonghwa would try to crawl through again, needing his next injury tended to or dragging another friend for you to patch up. 

was it bad you wanted to see him again?

a knock at your door startled you. karuma jumped off the far end of the couch, loudly meowing at the new presence. 

“shut up,” you seethed, setting your mug down. you scooped up the cat in your hands so she wouldn’t bolt out the door into the downpour (it wouldn’t be the first time she tried, though seonghwa was usually the one who chased after her and held the shivering cat afterwards). 

you didn’t look through the peephole before opening the door, but you didn’t have to. somehow, you knew who was on the other side.

seonghwa was soaked from head-to-toe from the rain. droplets fell off his leather jacket and onto the concrete beneath his feet. your eyes scanned every inch of his body that you could see, but you didn’t find any injuries. still, anything could have been hiding beneath his rain-soaked clothes.

you stepped back, allowing him to walk inside your apartment. karuma wrestled in your grasp, and you only let the cat go once you closed and locked the front door.

“i don’t see any injuries, so-”

you didn’t have the chance to completely turn around before you felt seonghwa’s lips on yours. he was more insistent than at the hospital, gently taking your head in his hands and tilting your face up towards his. 

he was impatient now, desperate to take your breath away. you fell into a familiar rhythm as your hands instinctively fell onto his shoulders. he’d bought strawberry chapstick since he kissed you last, the taste heavy on your tongue. his hands were greedy, moving from your face, tickling down your sides and gripping your hips as he backed you against the wall. calloused fingers explored your bare thighs, barely covered by your shorts, until he pulled both up around his waist.

“hwa-”

“don’t,” he gasped against your lips, breathless from the kiss. he kept your back against the wall, holding you up with your legs resting on his hips. his mouth hovered over yours now, tempted to steal another kiss. “please, don’t tell me to stop.”

your lips twitched up into a miniscule smile. “i was gonna tell you to take off your shoes before you get mud on my carpet.” 

seonghwa grinned, but kicked off his shoes beneath you. he balanced you against the wall, pinning you there with his hips so he could take off his jacket and throw it across the room. his lips devoured yours again in seconds, and you ran your fingers through his hair. you didn’t feel the wall leave your back, but you could vaguely hear seonghwa carrying you down the hall to your bedroom. 

he unceremoniously dropped you on your bed, your lips parting only for a moment before he crawled over you. he littered your neck with wet kisses, teeth grazing your skin. any sound he could pull from you—any delighted sigh or encouraging gasp—was music to his ears. his hands stayed on your shorts, thumbs running beneath the waistband to play with the lacy hem of your panties. 

you felt another light pressure against the bed and turned your head when you felt a wet nose nuzzle against your cheek. 

“karuma,” you hissed.

seonghwa, lifting his head from your neck. “relax,” he soothed, placing another quick kiss against your lips. he scooped up the cat with one hand and lifted himself up off the bed, quickly depositing the pet outside your bedroom door.

“sorry, sweetie,” he cooed at the cat, scratching behind her ears before shutting the door.

when he turned back to see you splayed out on your bed, lips kiss-bruised and cheeks flushed, he nearly let out a moan. god, he was so fucking stupid for letting you stay away for so long, for not trying harder to make you stay. he should have been there to smooth every worried brow, to wipe every frown off your perfect lips. 

“you like her more than me,” you pouted teasingly.  

seonghwa laughed, the sound quiet and low. as he stalked back to the bed, he gripped his shirt and pulled it over his head. it fell to the floor, where you knew it would be long forgotten for the rest of the night. 

“impossible,” he whispered as he kissed your shoulder, collarbone, then your lips. 

his hands pulled at the hem of your tank top, pushing it up your stomach and over the swell of your breasts. his mouth wandered across your newly-revealed skin, his hand cupping just below your breast and rolling your nipple between his nimble fingers. your hand found his hair, gently pushing through the strands until you could tug at the ends. his other hand slid down your side, gathering the thin material of your shorts and tugging it down your legs. his lips soon followed his hands, planting soft kisses across your stomach. both hands tugged down your shorts, taking your panties with them. you heard them drop to the floor, but you didn’t pay attention to where they landed.

“should’ve tried harder,” he murmured, voice muffled by your skin. he shifted so he was between your thighs. you instinctively spread your legs, and he began kissing the soft skin of your inner thighs. he ran his lips up the right, then the left, whispering against your trembling flesh between every touch. “should’ve done better, baby. i’m sorry.” 

“h-hwa,” your voice was shaky now, your body desperate for pleasure. 

“shh, shh, shh.” seonghwa’s voice was soft, the exact opposite of his actions as he inched closer and closer to your wet folds. “let me apologise.”

if this was his way of apologising, you hoped he fucked up more often. 

you cried out as his teeth grazed your clit before he wrapped his lips around it, gently suckling on the tender bundle of nerves. pleasure consumed you as his tongue darted out, lapping over your slickened folds. your eyes flutter shut, body relaxing back against the bed as you let seonghwa devour as though he was a man starved, deprived of you. his arms were wrapped around your thighs as though he feared you would try to squirm away from him.

he was gentle, reverent, and if the muffled groan you heard was any indication, he enjoyed this just as much as you did. every sound that spilled from your lips only spurred him on more, echoed by a groan against your cunt that made you shudder. it been so long, too long, that you knew you wouldn’t last under his touch. not with how greedily he devoured you. 

seonghwa pulled back for only a moment, and you barely opened your eyes enough to see him run his tongue over his lips. his hands pushed your thighs back until they were pressed against your chest, and you took the sign to grasp them in your trembling hands. he looked at you with lidded eyes heavy with lust, his pants tightening merely at the sight of you teetering on the edge of bliss. 

“fuck, i missed you,” he murmered, voice rasped with desire. he didn’t give you the chance to answer before his fingers dug into your thighs and he dipped his head back down. he slid his tongue between your folds again, then traced it up and caressed your clit as gently as he could. 

his fingers danced across your inner thighs before he slid a slender finger between your folds, then inserted two inside you. he curled them, and when you gasped and tugged on his hair, you could’ve sworn you heard him let out a quiet whimper. you couldn’t rock your hips, not with your thighs up against your chest, but you didn’t have to. seonghwa wasn’t leaving the heaven between your thighs anytime soon, not for all the money, riots, and rebellions in the world. now that he was here, he was home. 

he savoured every mewl and gasp that left your lips as he thrust his fingers inside you, watching your face twist in pleasure as he dragged them until the pads of his fingers barely grazed your folds, then plunged them back inside you. he wasn’t trying to rush things between you, not how he usually did—how could he after so long? every touch was reverent, an act of worship. he wanted to remember every detail he could, knowing he’d never go this long without you again.

you moaned and arched your back, toes curling as your nails dug into your skin where you held your legs. as if he knew you were close, seonghwa started moving a little faster. his teeth nipped at your clit again, and you felt every muscle in your body tense. the familiar feeling of pleasure consumed you as your thighs quivered and you orgasmed over his fingers and tongue, and you lost your grip on your legs in favour of tangling your fingers in seonghwa’s hair to push his head away from your clit before the stimulation became too much. 

his fingers worked you through the aftershocks of your orgasm, but he didn’t try to overwhelm you. his thumb rubbed quick, tight circles over your clit, drawing out your pleasure as he cooed down at you with words you barely heard. 

“there you go, baby. that’s it,” he soothed. slowly, seonghwa slipped his fingers out from between your thighs and brought them to his lips. you nearly moaned again when you saw him lick the glistening wetness off each finger. he kept eye contact with you until, watching your flushed face as you came down from the peak of ecstasy. 

the fire in his bloodstream was lit, his heart beating furiously against his ribs as he looked down at you. you looked like an angel, naked and chest heaving as you caught your breath. it was a sight he’d almost forgotten, and one he dared himself to never forsake again.

seonghwa crawled up the bed, and his lips were back on yours. you could taste yourself on his tongue through each shuddered breath, your body still buzzing in delight. even though his hands weren’t on you—they were too busy trying to frantically undo his pants—you could feel him everywhere. the memories of him rushed back in furious, flashing frames across your mind, of how he felt, how gentle he was with you, how he loved you. 

he pushed his pants down just enough to free his aching cock, erect and leaking with arousal, flushed and angry with desperate desire. one hand guided your legs around his hips while the other took himself in his hand, giving his cock a few strokes before lining up with your weeping cunt. you whimpered as you felt the tip dip between your folds, the head catching on your slit. 

his hand moved to grip your hip as he slowly pushed inside you. his lips left yours, his head falling into the crook of your neck. seonghwa gritted his teeth to keep silent, to only hear your sweet moans and curses of pleasure as he sunk inch after inch of his cock into your warm, welcoming heat. it had been too long, and if he tried to move any faster, he was sure he’d lose himself too quickly. 

his grip on your waist was firm, even as he hilted inside you. he noticed you’d fallen silent, and your body was still.

“you okay, sweetheart?” he asked, barely lifting his head from your shoulder to try and catch your gaze.

you frantically nodded. his hand moved to your cheek, his thumb running over your smooth skin to try and bring you back to earth. your body was still trying to adjust. 

“i’m fine,” you reassured him. “it’s just... it’s been a while.”

seonghwa gave you a tender smile. “yeah, me too.”

neither of you needed to say it. there’d been no one else since the day you broke up. you’d tried dating, you really did, but no one made you feel like seonghwa did, and seonghwa’s heart was too hung up on you and his life was too busy to even entertain the idea of finding another girl. 

his head dipped back down to your neck. he placed soft kisses there, from the underside of your jaw down to your collarbone. “can i move, baby?” 

you nodded your head, and seonghwa finally moved inside you. the city lights spilled in from the window, painting the room in shades of silver and blue as he thrust into you slow but steady, his cock dragging along your walls before slowly sinking back in. your sweet sounds of pleasure spurred him on. every thrust was careful, as though you were glass that might suddenly shatter beneath him, but he wanted to savour the moment. he wanted to cherish you, his hands mapping your body in a lover’s caress, fingers trailing the valleys of your skin that he’d been without for so long.

he placed a reverent kiss to the soft swell of your breast, lips ghosting over your skin like a prayer with each deep thrust. one of your hands still rested on his head, fingers tangled in his hair, while your other gripped his side, nails lightly digging into his skin. when you finally managed to open your eyes and see him, you nearly came. 

he was quiet, listening to every little sound you made, to the sound of your bodies as his hips met yours. but under the glow of the city lights, he was breathtakingly beautiful. the sweat over his forehead plastered his hair to his skin as he brought your left breast into his mouth, gently suckling on your nipple. you pushed back the sweaty strands of hair, moving it out of his eyes until you could meet his gaze filled with adoration. with love.

you loved him. after everything, you still loved him. 

you tugged on his hair until his lips were back on yours, silencing your whimpers and soft moans of pleasure. his hand left your hip to rub your clit instead, drawing you closer to your orgasm. he didn’t think he’d last much longer, not with how your pussy gripped him with every thrust.

“i love you.” 

the words were whispered against your lips like a prayer, his voice quiet like he almost didn’t want you to hear it. you shuddered at the sound, and tears pricked your eyes because you knew it was true. he loved you, he always loved you; fucking you now didn’t make any difference. 

your breath was sparse as he rubbed his fingers over your clit a little harsher, determined to bring you to the peak of pleasure again. you were going to speak, your mouth open to reply, but a sharp moan left instead as his head fell to kiss at your neck, and he snapped his hips against yours. the sudden move made you tense beneath him, hands scrambling for a better hold of his body as though he would ever let you go. 

“seonghwa—”

“i know, baby,” he whispered huskily into your ear. your hips bucked up to meet his, and he looked up from neck for a moment to see your eyes pinched closed in pleasure. it won’t be much longer, that much he knew.

your back arched, and you bit your bottom lip to try and contain your moans. you didn’t hear the soft praises that he whispered such sweet nothings against your ear. he gripped your hips tighter, surely leaving bruises as he fucked you towards your orgasm with deep, languid strokes. you heard the choked sound he made as he tried not to spill inside you before you came. all his quiet moans were reduced to whimpers as you tightened around him.

your body fell back into the mattress as you came, head hitting the pillow. the electric zing of pleasure tickled down your spine, made your toes curl and your eyes roll into the back of your head. your moans were louder now, mouth open as you cursed his name over and over again. seonghwa had a tight grip on your hip, placing a kiss against your neck before you felt him spill inside you.

his breath was heavy against your throat, and the two of you simply laid there, basking in the stillness. the sirens outside, the brief flashes of light—it meant nothing, not when you were back in his arms. not when you felt him laying on top of you, his warmth consuming you. you didn’t want him to move, you didn’t want him to leave again. 

“don’t leave me.” you didn’t realise you’d said it, that you’d whispered it loud enough for him to hear. he raised his head from the crook of your neck, his lips now hovering over yours.

“i won’t,” he replied, his words ghosting over your lips. “not again. never again.”

you didn’t care if it was the truth or not. it was what you needed to hear now.

seonghwa hissed through gritted teeth as he pulled his softened cock from your dripping, and you winced a little at the loss of his warmth. he crawled up the bed beside you until he laid back against the headboard, and his arms reached out to take you will him. he pulled you up against his chest, running his fingers through your hair as you relaxed back against him. 

your eyes closed, and you felt his breath by your ear. he kissed your temple, your cheek, then buried his head back into the crook of your neck. he said nothing—which seemed rare, since he used to whisper praises in your ear until you fell asleep in his arms, but the silence now was nice. you caught your breath, letting him hold you, letting him feel you back in his arms after so long apart.

“seonghwa?” you finally whispered, though you were beginning to feel tired.

“yeah, baby?” he whispered into your neck.

“i love you, too.” 

the sun was what woke you up the next morning. it bled through your curtains and tempted your eyes with warm sunlight, basking your room in a golden glow. it was maybe the first true stream of daylight you’d seen in the city in years, especially with the smog that usually sat just below the tallest skyscrapers. 

the ache between your thighs helped you remember everything. losing yourself in seonghwa’s arms, him being back, being here. you thought you’d regret your actions in the morning, but the longer you reminisced, the more you knew you needed him with you. the year spent without him was hell, and you couldn’t survive without him.

you stretched your arms and turned in your bed, expecting to find him laying behind you, but he wasn’t there. you realised how empty the bed was, that his side had been perfectly made, and there was no warmth there. wherever he was, he’d left early, had to have if the sheets were so cold. karuma slept there instead, curled up on his pillow where the memory of his scent remained. 

he wasn’t anywhere else in the apartment, you would’ve heard him moving around through your open bedroom door. the regret you refused to feel turned into frustration, then sadness. of course, he hadn’t stayed. why would he? there was always the next mission, the next chance to stand on the tallest building and build the rebellion against the central government. 

you sat up, pressing your palms into your eyes to stem any tears. you refused to cry over him. your tears were better spent on other things. but you could still feel him, feel his presence everywhere around you.

when you opened your eyes again, you grabbed yourself a shirt from the closet and a fresh pair of panties, then walked down the hallway to the rest of your apartment. you flicked on the lights for your kitchen, hoping to find something small for breakfast. maybe if you continued with your daily activities, you would forget he had been there (a lie, you knew, but it was nice to feel a little delusional every now and then). 

your feet stopped when you saw what waited for you on your counter. a little box of your favourite tea bags and a small pastry box from the bakery down the street. there was a sticky note against the box of tea bags, with a hastily-written letter in seonghwa’s neat handwriting.

sorry i couldn’t be here this morning. hongjoong called an emergency meeting. i’ll be back after lunch. i hope these are still your favourite <3

you stuck the note on the counter and picked up the box of pastries: coffee cake, blueberry scones, and a cinnamon muffin. all things you loved, little snacks seonghwa used to pick up for you when he knew he’d be gone for the day, but he wanted you to know he was still thinking about you. it made butterflies kick up in your heart to know he still remembered all the little things you swore he would’ve forgotten.

because he still loved you, and you loved him.

[elysianholly]

So I got sucked into r/buffy again over the weekend (I know I know) and the amount of misogyny disguised as performative feminism is killing me. As is the attempt to distill S6 into a "Spike bad/Buffy victim" when the actual story is so much more complicated, nuanced, and heartbreaking than that.

I will say I absolutely sympathize with Buffy 100% throughout S6, more than I do Spike. This is a big reversal of how I felt 20 years ago, but reflective of my own experience with self-hatred and depression. That said, I also 100% sympathize with Spike and recognize a few fundamentals that antis can't seem to grasp:

He's trying to be what Buffy needs

He can't be what Buffy needs, but he doesn't understand why

He doesn't have a soul, ergo he's incapable of meeting her at the level she needs. This is not a choice on Spike's part; it's simply fucking nature.

Death/darkness/disassociating from society is a GOOD THING in Spike's mind. He found the ultimate freedom once he rejected societal pressures and stopped trying to win the approval of his peers. He fully believes Buffy will be happier if she does the same.

Is it selfish? OF COURSE IT'S SELFISH. He can't not be selfish because of the no-soul thing. But that doesn't mean his motives are inherently bad; it means his understanding of the situation is fundamentally flawed.

In Spike's mind, Buffy seeing things Spike's way is what will set her free. This mentality is of course wrong and toxic, but his intention is not to break her down, rather cut the chains he sees holding her back. Being human did him no favors. He's trying to share his experience and becomes increasingly desperate as these attempts fail.

Throughout all of S6, with very few exceptions, Buffy pursues Spike. She does in OMWF, Tabula Rasa, initiates sex in Smashed, Gone, Doublemeat Palace, and in Dead Things, save the balcony scene. We also see that she WANTS Spike in her dream sequence, specifically in her bed the way a normal boyfriend would be. Buffy's only source of comfort and support at a time when she needs it most is coming from someone she believes she should be ashamed of, and that is what hurts her more. She's expected to take care of Dawn, of Willow in the midst of her recovery, participate in a wedding, balance being the SOLE BREADWINNER in her home (for reasons that are never addressed, much less acknowledged), along with the intense trauma of having been ripped out of heaven and KNOWING that peace exists out there somewhere and she can't have it. That the only person who seems to see her struggle, understand her, and provide any reprieve is also someone she has been conditioned to believe she shouldn't like, much less love, compounds her intense self-loathing and her belief that she is wrong. She wants the answer to be that she came back wrong because being wrong means being released from the expectations and responsibilities of being Buffy Summers.

This is what Spike can't understand, and not because he's stupid or evil or selfish, but because by the show's own lore, he is incapable of understanding it. His best and only connection to the human world is broken; it's not Buffy's responsibility to be his compass, but she IS his compass. She's the reason he's changed as much as he has, how he models his behavior, the reason he has evolved, and she's emotionally incapable of being that for herself at the moment, much less him. Again, not a burden she should have to shoulder to begin with, but a result of the natural order as dictated by the show's lore. Spike's humanity is nurtured through his connection to Buffy, and his connection to Buffy changes from day to day as her internal processes change.

I don't think "mutually abusive" is the right term as we understand it outside of Buffyverse because that has a lot of real-world implications that are absent from this fictional paradigm. But setting aside those implications, the dynamic is MUTUAL and ABUSIVE. It is intellectually dishonest to apply human motivations and power dynamics on inhuman characters stripped of the very specific conditions that allowed those dynamics to become what they are. It's also appalling to claim that Buffy was Spike's victim when she was calling the shots throughout the bulk of their relationship; it completely strips Buffy of her agency. Women can be depressed. Women can make bad decisions. Women can flounder, struggle, and fail because of themselves and crack under the pressure others put them under without being someone's victim.

Also? Denying Buffy's abusive behavior to Spike is similarly appalling. Slayers are understood to be physically stronger than vampires, the same way as most men are understood to be physically stronger than women. If a man beat a woman bloody in an alley and abandoned her there, would you say she deserved it? Would it be acceptable if you knew she was asking for it? That the man had had a really bad day? That he was going through something and trying to work some stuff out?

Season 6 is complicated, especially the Spuffy dynamic, because these are two broken people trying to not be broken and unable to help each other the way they need. But they were broken people, and that fracture was mutual, regardless of how uncomfortable that is. It's also why Season 6 is one of the show's strongest seasons. It takes us to pretty awful places but also shows us the way out. Trying to minimize that or make it black-and-white is a lot of things, and none of them are good.

[hoshigray]

Had the most random thought, but what if you caught Miguel by surprise and sneaked a kiss on the back of his neck when he's stressed out?

An: Don't mind me, just feeling soft for Miguel because he's corrupting my brain at the moment, lol. Also, wanted to write this to distract me from the fact Pleasurable Practice got smacked with a community label ffs. But, tysm for the love on that fic <33, and [MAYBE] I'll work on pt ii for next week! Thanks again, you lovelies, and enjoy!!

Edited Note: Also, here's an ATSV masterlist I made earlier for your convenience!!

Cw: Miguel x reader - fluff - stressed Miguel bc when is he not - you give him a kiss on the neck - pet names (amorcito/little love, mi alma/my soul; amor/my love) - just you and Miguel being adorbs and him being whipped hehe~

Wc: 902

"Aaaaaarrgh!!!"

You snap away from what you were doing to find where the noise came from. Not to your surprise, it's from your boyfriend — Miguel O'Hara, who's expressing his dismay by throwing another tray full of empty containers you got from the cafeteria.

The man is descending from his [godforsaken slow-ass] station, tapping his feet and huffing by the second. His brows are furrowed in anger, and he moves a hand to soothe his forehead with his fingers. When his post finally stops, he jumps down to sit on a chair and groans into his hands.

That was the third time this week. A villain was supposed to be captured and brought into the Spider Society to be sent back to their own universe; however, that was two days ago. And for some reason, this evil-doer has been hopping in and out of multiple universes. It's been a hassle for the other Spiders to grab hold of them; Lyla has to have eyes on them within every minute of every hour, and Miguel...Obviously, he would like to have this matter taken care of already.

You get up from where you're sitting and walk up behind Miguel, whose face is still covered by his hands with inaudible curses that you can tell are in Spanish. "You okay?"

The rise and fall of his broad shoulders entail a huge sigh seething out of his system. "No, mi amor." He frees his face only to rest his forehead with a hand propped by his leg. "This game of cat-and-mouse has been going on longer than necessary, got Spiders who're tired of the chase — I'm tired, yet there's more stuff piling up and—" He stops himself with another deep sigh, and you place your hands on his shoulders. "I just can't right now...."

All you can do is hum aimlessly while massaging his shoulders, his trapezius and deltoids tense with stress. You understand that a lot is going on for Miguel, giving him his space and letting him do what he does best: being a hero. But of course, being a superhero isn't all sunshine and rainbows, and you're bound to get hit with obstacles that'll hinder your progress. Annoyingly so, if you're a leader of an organization like your boyfriend.

Nevertheless, he's only one man, and you know he forgets this fact when he's too wrapped up in work. He's dedicated to protecting his peers, his home, and you. And although you appreciate the sentiment sincerely, you wish he'd remember to not go too hard on himself before he's burnt out.

You sigh through your nostrils, your hands kneading out any remnants of tension while Miguel indulges before storming back to work. That's when an idea hits you when your eyes land on the back ends of his hair, a smile creeping in slowly. Your hand brushes the lower tufts of his brown strands, and you lean down to press your soft lips on him after pulling his suit to expose his neck.

Immediately, Miguel goes rigid at the feeling of your lips on him. And his breath hitches when your hands wrap around him, pulling him closer to you as you lay your chin on top of his head (which you realize is a rare opportunity as he's taller than you).

"Mi lindo araña," You chuckle to yourself when you notice hints of red sneaking on the lobes of his ears. "The more you stress yourself, the more you look like a grouchy face."

"A grouchy face?" His tone holds slight confusion. "You've been hanging with Peter B. too much, amorcito." He shakes his head while you giggle, and you two sink into each other's presence for a little while, taking in the silence outside of the calming breaths Miguel takes. If he were to confess, it's as if almost all his fatigue has vanished into thin air when he's in your embrace. But he doesn't say anything — he doesn't have to. Because you already know.

You set your lips on his temple. "Feeling okay now?" His body vibrates from a tiny purr, and you remove yourself to stand up straight. "Alright then, I'm gonna go to the cafeteria to get something to share. Because you clearly need a snack. And while I'm gone, pick up that tray and those empty containers off the floor before Lyla has another reason to call you a 'grumpy man-child.'"

His face molds to a deep scowl from the mention of his pixelated peer's name-calling. "I am not a man-child."

You give him a look. "You kinda are."

"And what gives you that—"

"Muñeco," Miguel quickly refrains from arguing when you call him by his nickname, the name only you can use. "If you're not a man-child, why haven't you stood up and done what I asked yet?"

The man opens his mouth, yet no words dare leave. Reddish-brown eyes are honed in on your figure as you survey his reaction, and he exhales in defeat when he stands up from his chair. Your smile flourishes. "I'll be back," is what you say as you turn to exit his domain and head to the cafeteria.

Miguel watches you leave until you're out of his line of sight, unable to fight the twinge of his lips while he moves to pick up his mess like you instructed him to.

"Sólo tú puedes darme órdenes, mi alma."

[blu3n]

[ Could you please write something like Jason and her are already in a relationship, but she doesn't know he's Red Hood and she falls and Red Hood catches her and he starts flirting she is all "I have a boyfriend, back up" and she goes back home and tells Jason everything complaining about the Red Hood and Jason sits there with a smirk enjoying her ranting? Maybe she punches him in the stomach and comes home and sees Jason has a matching bruise? Honestly, I leave the writing to the writers..😅 ]

@angel-eyes-777

Author: thanks for asking! 🐞

Description: You had no idea Jason was from Red Hood

For several reasons, Jason wouldn't tell you that he was Red Hood, both to spare you from the atrocities he committed and for fear that you would leave him when you found out what he did.

He would feel bad about it, his mind would be so tight that he would almost speak as soon as you asked him something about it, but he did it to protect you from the evil that he was.

He would cry a lot if you left him, Jason loves you and doesn't want to be left alone again.

When you found out he would freeze, try to stop you from leaving or want your attention on him so you wouldn't stop to think about how violent he seemed.

It was cold in Gotham City, the wind blowing in your face making your skin colder than usual. Your work shift was quite tough, your grumpy boss pulling your foot to deliver piles and piles of work.

Letting out a sigh of discouragement, you try to cross the street, taking a shortcut that was sometimes convenient. So focused on your stress and headache, you couldn't see the huge hole that was in front of you..

.Before you could fall, you felt a pair of firm and strong hands holding you, saving you from falling into that place.

Red hood you look up, observing that familiar face that you saw on TV, usually not frowned upon by society as an anti-hero or something like that.

"We usually look where we're going, gatinha?" Sua voz era sedutora e profunda, faria qualquer garota se apaixonar por ele em um minuto se ele quisesse.

"Thanks for saving me, now I'm going," saying firmly, you walk past him, after all, your boyfriend was waiting for you at home so you could sleep together in a warm bed for another day.

"Hey, what's the rush, baby?" He holds your wrist with his rough and thick fingers, his touch soft.

"I said no, and that's it." When she realized that this guy wouldn't leave you alone, in an act of self-defense she punches him in the stomach, making him grunt in pain and bend over a little.

Without wasting time, you run back home, trying to hurry, you just wanted to go back and see your boyfriend again.

When you walked through the door, you noticed that he had something in his stomach and the TV was on.

Jason looks at you with an amused expression. He never told you about his Red Hood persona, and he managed to hide it surprisingly well throughout your relationship. The TV was on, covering a news story about how Red Hood saved some kids from a burning building.

You stopped and sighed as you walked into the house "I don't have much to say about him, he saved me from falling down the drain but he's still a flirt" she says in disgust

"Well, he saves people, doesn't he?" he says nervously, running his fingers through his hair so as not to look as nervous as he looked.

Following your eyes to his abdomen she frowns and realizes something was wrong, moving slowly towards him you see the same mark on his abdomen. "What?" without even needing to ask properly he already collapses in front of you knowing that you found out.

"i'm sorry- baby please- baby" jason stands up the pain stinging in his stomach he tries to reach out to touch you desperate for you not to leave "please don't leave me..."

"No, no, I won't leave you" your voice soothes him and he holds onto you holding you there...needing your warmth and your love, the rest of the night you two slept together while he clung to you

he loves you.

--------

🪼 Thank you for requesting the writing, and I hope it is what you asked for.

[saeun]

“okay, i see how it is...”

megumi's voice trails off. his shoulders drop, arms loosely attached to his sides. to him, it feels as though his heart's been squished into pieces by a hydraulic press.

you delivered the most painful experience megumi's ever been through. he couldn't believe you. is your heart made of fucking steel? how could you just throw him to the side like... like he's a mere hand-me-down you settled with temporarily?! preposterous!

“it's the way life goes, fushiguro,” you coldly taunted him, reaching out for his shoulder.

megumi flinched back. his head's turned to the side; he doesn't want to see you anymore. without any noise from him, he continued to fiddle with his hands, moving the small pieces of silver-painted plastic around his palm.

“are you really gonna keep me here, baby? is that the kind of person you are?” he asked, slowly moving his tear-glazed eyes to connect with yours.

“don't blame me. it's what nature wants,” you shrugged your shoulders, moving your attention away from his eyes to the money you hid under your leg.

his eyes bulged. would this seriously be the end of your relationship? your nonchalance to his suffering is outrageous! he's your boyfriend — for fuck's sake!

“baby, please,” megumi begs, placing a hand on the middle of the board to lean over.

he's a little under twenty centimetres away from your face. his eyes wander until they land on your lips.

“bail me out? please?” he begs again, biting his bottom lip.

you locked your eyes on his lips, smirking at the petty attempts to convince you.

“megumi, it's not my fault you rolled a six-dice three times, okay? you had to go to jail for that — it's the rules!”

“oh fucking hell, since when do you play by the rules?!”

“i take this monopoly shit very seriously. if you going to jail means i'd win, then so be it.”

your lines defeated him. he once again let his shoulders drop. you truly are cruel. is it just an empty void inside your chest? where's your heart?! he's been jailed for the past six rounds!

“i cannot believe you, you materialistic evil person of today's society,” he spat, voice reeking of venom as he moved back to his original spot.

you rolled your eyes, ignoring him as you moved four blocks on the board to buy another house. that house just so happened to be the one he's been eyeing.

“well, sweetheart. which one of us is moving freely across the board right now?” again, you taunt him. smiling as you placed a red-coloured mini-house on the block. oh, he's so fucked when he's out.

“you will be the reason i do a ritual to summon a curse to end us both.”

[tenjikufag]

Growing Pains

Laios Touden x Tiefling!MaleReader

-ANGST, established relationship, anatomy mentions, body image

-for funsies, make your own tiefling self here !! (will redirect to picrew)

-read part 2 here!

This wasn’t supposed to happen, let alone outside of the dungeon. It was in town and happening in your home.

Tears ran down your face, hands in your mouth while you watched as your canines grew and became more sharp.. almost like a vampire.

You wished you had been turned into a vampire.

There was a curse, a dark magic spell, casted upon you and you had no idea from who or how it came to you.

You were turning into a tiefling, a demon as most described them. To many there was no discernment, evil races were just that. Evil. Vile. Shameful.

Paired with the drows, orcs, those society deemed subhuman.

You were a human, a tallman, to have your world turned upside down and forcibly swapped.. your stomach bubbled it’s way into your throat as bile made you hurl over and wretch into the toilet.

Laios was gone, he was exploring the dungeon with his party once again.. he wouldn’t be back for, hopefully, atleast a week..

You wanted to leave, you needed to find something to help you or at the very least.. leave Laios, you didn’t want him to become afraid of you.

Watching him look at you in disgust, fear, anxiety, maybe even apathy? You weren’t sure, you didn’t want to wait to see how he would react.. he adored monsters and while his interest was well known to you and everybody around him.. this was different. It was you. His partner. Not just a random monster in passing, not only just an obstacle in his path and not an organism he could study.

A pang throbbed through your head, a new panic settled in as you reach to the side of your head and your ears grew pointy and horns started to form just above your hairline.

You gagged, unfamiliar sensations around your body felt like poison in your veins and caused more bile to burn at your throat. Nothing came up but bile and spots of blood from the shifting inside..

The tingles in your spine sent waves of discomfort to your whole body.. shaking, you peered behind you.

A tail.

An obnoxious, obvious, tail.

“Please… no..”

Sobs poured out, you gripped the new appendage with disdain, it was freakish, ugly, foreign and terribly scary.

Struggling to stand, a final look in the mirror forced a veil of horror in yourself.

This wasn’t you, but it was. The body you’d lived in was no longer one you recognized and the discomfort made you want to shred your flesh from the bone in hopes to restart, to go back to normal.

There wasn’t a second to lose. You needed to leave, and fast.

Every person around became a painfully obvious nuisance to escaping from here.. not an escape but an abandonment of the life you’ve made yourself.

You were an adventurer, you had all the gear, but you hadn’t gone out for quite some time due to party issues and wanting to be there for when your dear boyfriend came home.. you couldn’t do that for him anymore.. ink glided across a piece of paper, it’s unfair to everyone but this would be for the best. Your heart poured into the inked words, tears staining and spreading spots of the ink.

He needed a goodbye.

It’s what he needed if he were to move on.

It ached deeply to think of him loving and holding someone instead of you, but he deserved someone that wasn’t so… abnormal.

Leaving the note on the table, you hastily packed essential belongings and threw a hooded cape across yourself in attempts to conceal the new body of yours. That left the tail.. the goddamn tail! Arguably the most unsightly aspect of it all, how the hell would you cover that?!

Finding old belts and garters would be your best bet, you’d anchor the appendage to your leg or your waist… pulling down your pants the tail wrapped around your leg and you quickly restrained it against the limb, putting your pants over it, pulling your tall boots to hide the end of it that peaked out.

Making final checks, you looked as normal as any other person here.. snatching the bag of coins, you tied it to your waist and took off.

Away from your home.

Away from your life.

Away from Laios…

—

“Exits just up ahead!”

Laois called to his group, a soft smile on his face when he looked back and saw how tired they all were. Chilchuck grumbled a ‘finally’, Marcille and Falin talked amongst themselves but acknowledged their ‘leader’.

He was excited to go home, even if the dungeon felt like a second home he knew this recent trial had exhausted him more than usual. The man thought about you, how you always greet him with a big hug and a kiss, a warm home meal, and all the pampering the low maintenance male could ever dream of.

“I assume you’re headin straight home huh?”

Chilchuck asked, catching up to pace with Laois. The half-foot typically went to the nearest tavern to indulge in proper, tasty liquor after the dry spell in the dungeon,

“Yep! He’s going to be waiting for me and I want to see him as soon as possible!”

“Hm, mind if I stop by to say hi? I haven’t seen him in quite some time and he said he had somethin’ for me.”

That was true, you’d acquired some fairly new and fancy lock picking tools that you assumed would be in better hands with him. The blonde smiled and nodded, finally feeling the fresh air and breeze on his cheeks.

Off he was to your home, to you.

There wasn’t much speaking, the group stayed in a comfortable silence as they surveyed the homey town.

It was typical to stop by the shared home, dropping off gear and such then heading out for a more fancy group meal (after his home meal) and drinks together.

Laois felt giddy, turning the door handle and stepping inside..

It was quiet. Pouting, his slumped his shoulders and moved so the others could pile into the home..

“It.. it looks a bit dusty in here..”

Chilchuck ran a finger across the table, picking up a thin layer of dust.

“Hm.. Y/n? I’m home!”

He wandered around the space, only to be met by empty rooms, empty bathrooms, empty closets..

“Maybe he went out, we can probably find him in town!”

The blonde wasn’t one to stress, but he did feel quite antsy about the unusual homecoming.. as he walked back into the living room, he saw his group huddled around the table.. reading a letter.

“Oh? What’s that?”

Falin had tears pricking at her eyes, Marcille looked like she was going to throw up and Chilchuck looked… bewildered and worried.

“Brother…”

Falin choked, running to his side and gripping him in a hug.

“I can’t.. give this to him, Chilchuck.”

Marcille covered her mouth, passing the note. Chilchuck looked solemn and slowly walked towards Laois.

He was confused, and the reactions from his friends didn’t ease any worry he had about you not being here.

“To Laois, the love of my life,”

He gulped, feverishly he continued to read the note..

‘Something has changed here, and I need you to know that first and foremost it is nothing to do with you.. I love you endlessly and never thought in a million years that I would ever leave your side. Not even in death did I imagine having to lose you like this..”

Laois felt his throat close up, he read quicker than he ever had before and before he knew it there were silent tears flowing down his cheeks.

You left.

You were gone and didn’t even say goodbye.. all you left was a letter.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t speak the words to tell you how sorry I am. You don’t need to forgive me, you can resent me, curse me, whatever you need to do to move on.. I love you, I always will and that’s why I have to leave. You are the only love I will have until the end of my days, my soul is bound to you forevermore but I ask of you to forget me.. move on with your life and make sure to take care of your group.. take care of yourself. Continue to be the loving, caring, optimistic and charming person you are.

Thank you, for the love you gave me.

Goodbye, Laois.’

The male frantically flipped the letter over, rereading to find some kind of sign that this was a prank, a bad joke.. you were going to come in as soon as he was done reading to laugh at him!

“Laois.. “

He tensed, feeling a hand on his shoulder. Marcille looked up at him, trying to read the emotions he had or lack thereof..

“It’s not true. He would never leave!”

Chilchuck and Marcille looked at eachother, distressed but not nearly as panicked as their friend.. who still held the letter in a vice grip.

“I don’t know what to say to you.. we will help you-“

“Great. We will search for him together!”

“I don’t think that’s what he would want-“

“What if he was taken! I don’t know if this was him! The Y/n I know would never do this!”

Laois’ voice cracked, it couldn’t be from you.. surely you were forced to do this because yes it was your handwriting and your own stationary but there were too many possibilities-

“Laois.. if he doesn’t come back in a day or two we will set out with you..”

“Yeah.. you know him better than any of us would ever know him.. I’m trusting your intuition but you gotta promise me one thing..”

Chilchuck gripped Laois’ wrist tightly

“If what we find isn’t good, if it was him and he doesn’t want to come back..”

He inhaled sharply, scrunching his nose at his own words.. not believing them himself

“You have to promise to let him go.”

Laois’ stomach churned, it felt like curdled milk in his stomach.. surely you wouldn’t leave him on your own volition.. right?