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sweetiechenle · 3 months ago

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would you film my s*x tape? ⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ haechan

pairing: non-idol!collegestudent!haechan x collegestudent!afab!reader

summary: you and your best friend haechan are strapped for cash and desperate to make some... quick. thank god he has the best idea ever to make a sex tape!

warnings: mdni 18+ only, smut, masturbation, swearing, marking, porn with plot, face fucking, possessiveness, unprotected sex (don't do this), dirty talk, oral (receiving and giving) fingering, manhandling, praise, creampie, pet names, fluff, crack/humor, this is so unserious, you are all freaks in this

you thought the line was crossed after the internet bill cost more than an arm and a leg or when the water was shut off because of an overdue bill, but this was probably the worst thing that could’ve happened. all you wanted to do was take a nice long hot shower, you stripped off your pajamas and climbed into the tub. turning on the water you jumped back and let out a small scream, scrambling to turn off the water, you let out small cries as the ice-cold water continued to pelt your back. finally shutting off the shower, you shivered, stepping out and wrapping a towel around your body, holding it close.

leaving the bathroom, you march down the hallway, finding your best friend and roommate, haechan, on the couch. he looked up from his phone when you stopped in front of him with your arms crossed.

he smirked, ‘not sure what i did to deserve this’

rolling your eyes and huffing, ‘did you pay the gas bill? The water was freezing!!’

haechan quickly stood up, ‘i thought you did!’

‘no it was your turn this month!’ you cried.

he fell back on the couch, letting his body slump in the cushions, ‘fuck’

you sighed, moving to sit down next to him. ‘im so fucking tired of being broke, dude’

‘yeah, you’re preaching to the choir’ you replied with a lifeless laugh.

‘our jobs fucking suck, our pay fucking sucks, these prices fucking suck. we have tried everything and now what else is there to do? ask chenle for money!? yeah fucking right, i’m not owing that little shit anything’ he vented.

you sighed standing up, ‘i don’t really know what else to do either, we are too busy to take on a second job, we tried delivering food and driving others around, but it’s never enough’ you agreed with him.

he grabbed your hand when you stood up, you looked down, ‘don’t worry, i’ll think of something’ you nodded, seeing the sincerity swirl in his chocolate brown eyes you nodded.

later that evening haechan, and you sat down for dinner in front of the tv watching whatever you could pay attention to, pushing your money problems to the back of your mind. you placed your empty bowl on the small table in front of you, ‘i’m not doing the dishes with the water being this cold’ you smiled. haechan laughed and grabbed your bowl, taking it to the sink to do the dishes himself, you followed him into the small kitchen. you stood and stared at his back, his shoulders now much broader than the boy you first met ten years ago, his slender fingers moving around the bowl as he scrubbed the food off, he turned back at you and it was so hard not to notice his plush, pink lips that moved into a small smile every time he saw you, and it always made your heartbeat skip. it was so hard to decide if you wanted to be him or be with him.

‘i thought of an idea’ he said nonchalantly, glancing back at you to see your reaction.

‘oh god’ you laughed, nervously you asked, ‘should i be scared?’

‘probably?’ haechan answered, finishing up the two dishes and facing you in the kitchen now.

he ran his hand through his chestnut-colored hair, his hands flying everywhere as he started to explain his thought process behind this ‘genius idea’.

‘we should…’ he paused, and you quirked your eyebrow up, ‘make a sex tape!’

you snorted and double up laughing, ‘you’re fucking insane’ to continue the theatrics you pretended to whip non-existent tears.

‘no, okay, listen… it’s a crazy idea, but think of all the money we could make’ he sighed, now growing embarrassed due to the idea he was so confident in before. his cheeks grew red, scratching the back of his neck, ‘as we said earlier, we tried everything, but not this’

‘fuck’ you breathed, he was serious, mind going a million miles a second trying to come up with anything better, ‘they make so much money on only fans and stuff i fear you might be right’ it’s not like you didn't want to have sex with your best friend and roommate, you always thought he was attractive and had a body you dreamed to have in your bed. of course you would never tell him that to his face, his ego would get too big you'd have to move out. being best friends since middle school had its perks, each other's first kiss, each other's first small sexual experience at the end of high school, something you both agreed to never speak of after it had happened. so, you figured with something like this it would be something similar, you would make a couple of sex tapes, post them, and then rake in the cash and never speak of it ever again. however you didn't want something this extreme to change any aspect of your relationship with haechan, yes you were attracted to him and he was your favorite person but you liked where your relationship was at right now.

he pumped his fists up in the air, whooping as you finally agreed that one of his plans was feasible. ‘i know! i think it's probably one of the best ideas i’ve ever had’ he said proudly. ‘i can borrow one of jaemins nice cameras to film, we have to research what could make us the most money too’ he noted.

you nodded, ‘we should lay down some ground rules too, i don’t want to just jump into this and both do something we regret’

he turned to you, acting genuinely confused, ‘what would we regret?’ you inhaled his cologne as he moved in closer to you.

you looked up at him as he caged you between him and the kitchen table, you shuddered as your lower back made contact with the cold surface. you looked down now too nervous to look into his eyes that stared down at you, ‘i-i don’t know haechan, i just don’t want anything between us to change’ you said now feeling small even though your heart was jumping for joy.

‘you don’t? that’s a shame’ he clicked his tongue in disappointment, his voice low. not knowing what to say, you gulped waiting for him to continue, ‘when it comes to you, i don’t think there’s anything i could regret sweetheart’

oh, damn him, if you weren't supported by the table your knees would've already given out and you would've sucked his dick right then and there. what he said lit your body on fire but the subtle pet name went right to your core, shamefully feeling your panties growing wetter. he always played these games when he wanted something, using cute pet names and pleading in a cute way where anyone would say yes, but this time seemed different. hearing the sincerity in his voice made the situation feel all too real, you couldn't believe this was real.

‘wha-’ you gazed up at him through your eyelashes, ready to ask for further explanation but he stopped you, placing his finger over your open mouth.

‘do you trust me?’ he whispered.

all you could do was nod at him, while your best friend was playful and mischievous, you knew he could also be serious and forthright. it makes you think back to the time when mark wouldn't let haechan drive his car ever, saying he would never in a million years trust him. on the other hand when there was ever tension between his friend group he would be the one to go out of his way and get everyone all together again and diffuse any tensity. there were some things most people wouldn't trust haechan on but if he said you two could climb mount everest, you'd meet him at the spot.

‘good’ he replied, ‘get some sleep, we have a long day tomorrow’ he smirked and stalked away from you, hearing his bedroom door shut you let out a long breath. the air around you seemed too thin and you took that as your cue to also head to your room. you got ready for bed, climbed into your sheet and turned off your lamp, falling back into the mattress you stared up at the ceiling mind blanking and trying to process everything that happened an hour ago. you turned and grabbed your phone, wincing as the light burned your eyes. opening up the search engine you turned on incognito because there was no way this was ever going into your search history. typing in ‘popular porn categories’ you nervously waited as the page loaded. ‘seriously?’ you said to yourself as you read the words ‘milf’ and ‘lesbian’, so those were off the table. continuing to scroll you made mental notes of everything that could get you clicks, words like ‘creampie’ and ‘anal’, some things you weren't against, but stuff that seemed pretty straightforward.

you put down your phone and sighed, bored and unable to sleep. so, doing what most girls do when they are bored and in bed: masturbate. you slide your hand down your body, stopping just above the waistband of your pink sleep shorts. automatically thinking of haechan and imagining it was his hands sliding into your panties. soon, you reminded yourself. you finally reached the sweet spot, you tried your best to suppress your moans as your fingers worked in circles around your clit, occasionally taking your fingers down to dip in between your folds and pump them in and out, closing your eyes and making up a picture of haechan in your head on him above you, wishing it was his cock being driven inside of you. biting down on your bottom lip as your hips lurched forward due to the friction, you let out a small cry as you came all over your fingers, ending it by rubbing the stickiness over your worn-out pussy.

you cursed silently, getting up and going to the bathroom to clean yourself. after you gave yourself a well-deserved whores bath you got a clean pair of undies and slipped back into bed, now tired enough to go to sleep.

you wake up to a sunny saturday morning, stretching your limbs out you get out of bed and grab your phone, heading to the kitchen for what little breakfast you can have. you and haechan were never big money makers, at least not yet. you had a job doing entry graphic design for a yearbook company, paid like shit, but at least you were working towards something while going to school. haechan was majoring in software engineering but couldn't find any companies willing to hire someone without a degree, he seemed to always miss the chance to apply for internships so he was stuck at his job of being a mystery shopper, which also didn't pay that well. so, you both lived paycheck to paycheck and scraped what little you could to do things with friends and go out, haechan always telling you to go bat your eyes and act cute with every man in clubs so you both could get free drinks.

you opened the pantry and opted for the generic-branded cereal, hoping to every god in existence there was some milk in the fridge, you slowly opened it and silently cheered when there was a bit left. having all the ingredients you made up your bowl of cereal, sat down in the creaky kitchen chair and dug in. looking around you noticed haechan wasn't home, his shoes were gone along with his house keys, he never mentioned going anywhere so you opened your phone and checked on ‘find my friends’. you zoomed in on his little contact picture that was set years ago and obviously the perfectly, most embarrassing picture. he was at jaemins, for some reason unbeknownst to you. you continued to eat and scroll through whatever social media app could hold your attention. after breakfast, you cleaned your bowl (despite the cold water) and sat on the couch to pass the time until haechan came home.

you heard the door swing open, immediately standing up you walked without even thinking up to haechan. he gave you an inquisitive look as to why you came upon him so suddenly. then you noticed the camcorder in his hand… jaemins camcorder, oh.

‘i didn't know you left this morning’ you explained.

‘i was at jaemins’ i know you wanted to say, ‘i was getting this.’ he gestured to the video camera in his hand, taking off his shoes and throwing his keys onto the table.

you were rooted in place as you watched him move around the apartment nonchalantly, ‘did you tell him what it was for?’ you asked restlessly. scared that he confided in jaemin of your little plan to make more money, if he did, you could probably never look into the poor man's eyes ever again.

‘oh god no, i told him it was for a project you were working on but couldn't come to get it yourself’ haechan answered and that consoled your worried mind. ‘he expects it back by thursday’ he winked at you, and closed the door to his room, leaving you a loss for words at the front door.

you went back to your room, confused as to why haechan didn't bring up anything about the sex tape(scapades), like he knew nothing about it while it was his idea in the first place. he was probably nervous and getting ready, didn't want to ruin the mood or overthink any decisions that were already put into place from last night. you decided to lay in bed and watch videos and play on your phone to pass the time. after a while of shifting around in bed and switching between the same ten apps, you didn't realize the time when haechan softly knocked on your door, saying that dinner was ready.

you got up and opened your door, surprised by the setup he put together, there was a white sheet over the coffee table in front of the tv with multiple candles lit (needed them for when your electricity got shut off), there were wine glasses included a plate of food that looked absolutely delicious. ‘wow, haechan you really outdone yourself’ haechan was romantic when he wanted to be, asking gift and flower suggestions for whatever girl he decided to get involved with during that time. it always stung a bit, but you could never turn him away as a best friend.

‘anything for my favorite girl’ he smiled, and led you to the couch, taking your hand as you sat down. you blushed at his comment, almost feeling like this was a real date at a real fancy restaurant. but of course reality is that you are eating spaghetti on a couch in pajamas before getting absolutely railed by your best friend. you almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. he poured some wine into your glass, and turned towards the tv to put on your favorite movie. it was all really sweet and made your heart swell with adoration for the boy next to you. even with the cards he was dealt in the situation he exceeded expectations and went out of his way to make everything special for you. you dug into your food and took a sip of wine, ‘ugh’ you gagged, ‘this is the cheap shit’ you both laughed at the reaction and he gave you a of course it is look.

‘don’t worry, when we are raking in the cash, i’ll get you the good stuff, and take you on a real, proper first date’ he smiled sheepishly, not confident in his words, worried you'd object to his obvious advances.

it was almost impossible to keep your heart from jumping out of your throat at his words, not believing what you just heard. you coughed, thinking of a way to get back at him, ‘i will be looking forward to that’. he beamed, giving you a toothy smile, your insides twisted, he was too cute for his own good, taking everything in you not to devour him whole right there. you swallowed your spit and turned back towards your food, finishing it off within a couple of bites.

haechan got up and took your plate to the sink, not bothering to clean them. he walked up to you and took your hands in his, looking down at the connection. wondering if he could feel how hot you were, haechan was always a touchy person and cuddled with you more times than you could count. but those times didn't make you feel this way, you knew tonight was different. ‘go get ready,’ he walked you to your bedroom door, dropping your hands he went to his door, ‘the video camera is all charged up’ he went inside and with that you scrambled around your room, thinking of what ‘get ready’ could mean. it was his job to prep you right? pacing around the room reality sunk in and you knew what to do. now going through your small closet, trying to find the only piece of lingerie you had. a gift from a past boyfriend, probably worth more than what you wanted to know.

‘ah-ha!’ you pulled it out of the pile of clothes that remained on the floor, it was somewhat misshapen from being at the bottom of the wreckage but salvageable. it was a red teddy with lace and a thong that hugged your curves perfectly. it was comfortable and sexy while also leaving some stuff up to the imagination, you knew haechan would love it. mentally thanking yourself for shaving everything before the gas got turned off, you slipped it on and checked yourself in the mirror, twisting and turning admiring the way it snatched your waist perfectly. you moved to your small vanity and put on light makeup, with plenty of mascara, knowing it would be picture-perfect to let the camera witness as it flows down your cheeks knowing you'd probably end up crying in pleasure soon. you threw on your robe and peeked outside of the door, haechan was nowhere to be seen but you were ready, hyping yourself up there was no backing out now.

you moved towards his door, softly knocking and waiting for him, clit quivering in anticipation. you pictured all the ways he'd have you tonight, silently hoping this would take off and you'd have no choice but to make more videos to appease the viewers that didn't even exist yet. haechan opened the door, he opened his mouth to say something, but closed it quickly. ‘you look beautiful, doll’ he breathed, like he was a tiger, and you were the prey, he took his time taking in your appearance.

you blushed, ‘you look gorgeous too’ he was in a tight-fitted black shirt along with those famous gray sweatpants, and you could barely control yourself. he looked like a god, his brown hair now dark, the light only coming from his room. his features were highlighted under the warm glow, his eyes growing dark in hunger, his nose perfectly sculpted and you were ready to beg him to let you sit on his face, needless to say, he was absolutely divine.

he opened his door wider, ‘shall we start?’ his eyebrow up in question. you nodded walking into his room, entrapped in his space and musk, you could get lost in the space forever. he grabbed your hands like before, ‘do you trust me?’ he was sincere, and you nodded, ‘because everything is about to change’

you nodded, whispering, ‘i can't wait’ you looked up at him, silently pleading for him to do anything at all. he leaned into you, noticing how his eyes kept moving from your eyes to your mouth, bracing yourself and closing your eyes, his breath was on your cheek.

‘the camera is rolling baby’ and with that he graced his lips with yours, moving to a rhythm you both fell into immediately. you could feel the sparks fly as your heart soared, his lips fitting perfectly into yours, soft but also rugged with the way he grabbed your waist and pulled you closer. your body now flush with his, shrugged off your robe you let it fall to the ground, haechan stopped his movements and took a step back. breathing hard and looking over your body in a very new way, staring at him feeling like daniel being thrown into the lion's den, chest heaving up and down you whined due to the surprising lack of contact. ‘fuck, you are so fucking hot baby’ he moaned, going back to the position you were both in. you gave him a coy smile, ‘did you wear this just for me? do you know how crazy i get when you walk around the apartment looking like a total slut? now here you are, in something that barely covers anything’ he grabbed the strap over your shoulder, pulled it back with his finger, and let it slap back on your skin. you sucked in a breath, feeling the slick pool into the thread, on your thighs. ‘not sure what i did to deserve this baby’ he ghosted his hands over your body, grabbing onto your lace-covered tit. you moaned at the contact, his lips now on yours again, moving much rougher and more hungry and teeth clashed together and tongues dancing in dominance. haechan picked you up, lips never leaving yours until he threw you on the bed, landing with a thump, going limp you grabbed the sheets in anticipation, watching as he threw off his shirt and pants. your mouth dropped, ready to take him right now if he wanted. his defined body shone with sweat, abs glistening, eyes finding his happy trail and erection confined in his briefs your mouth watered at the sight. you figured he was blessed with a good length, but now you were wondering if it would even fit.

taking the situation into your own hands, getting on all fours you crawl to him at the end of the bed. ‘haechan, please let me suck your cock’ you begged, yearning for nothing else but to feel his fat and heavy member choke you. he said nothing, acting unimpressed like your pleads didn't meet his expectations. whimpering in desperation, ‘i can show you what you deserve my pretty boy, please use my mouth’ he groaned at the pet name, stroking his length. he took a step in front of you, face now in front of his thick cock.

‘lay on your back’ he ordered, obliging immediately, he grabbed you and brought you towards him, head now hanging slightly off the bed. you watched him upside down stripping himself of his briefs and letting his member free, it slapped against his toned stomach, never taking his eyes off of you as he spit in his palm and pumped his erection. he had such a pretty cock, and your core burned at the beautiful sight in front of you. thighs instinctively rubbing together to create some friction. ‘open up’ mouth falling open he teased the tip on your lips. he pushed his length into your mouth, trying to adjust quickly, haechan started trusting at a small pace, letting you get used to the feeling. haechan shudders at the hot feeling, groaning as you gag on his cock. drool piled up and spilled out of your mouth and all over heachan, he trusted faster losing his mind over the noises you continued to make. you grabbed the sheets under you until your knuckles went white, mind spinning from the position as your best friend fucked your mouth with full force. he grabbed your boob under the lingerie and pinched your nipple making you shiver and cry around his length. he pulled out and you coughed and whipped the spit from your face. moving back into an upright position, collecting yourself, and watching as haechan went to grab the camcorder that sat on his desk. he brought it to your face, ‘did you enjoy sucking my dick?’ he asked.

‘yes’ you breathed, ‘your cock is so pretty and big’ staring into the camera lens, haechan watched you through the screen, his dick jumped in excitement at the lewd scene in front of him. his hand reached behind your head, you accepted it melting into his touch. grabbing your hand he pushed your lips back to his pulsing member, head red with anger and ready to let go. instinctively opening, he pushes it back into your mouth, raggedly pushing the back of your head down his length until your nose touches his pelvis. gagging and slurping up your spit as best as you could, it dribbles down your chin as you moan around him, making him groan at the vibration. as glassy eyes stared into the camera, the camcorder picked up the whimpered sounds as hot, wet tears glided down your cheeks. after a couple of last thrusts haechan lets go of your hair, pushing you off of him, and moves back, ‘give me a show baby, take it off’ you oblige and start with the straps, trying to make it as sexy as possible for the camera. you smile innocently, as you free your tits, moving your hand to play with it, before lifting your lower body to strip yourself naked.

haechan moans, as you toss the garment to the floor, staring up at him he cages you in, climbing on top of you and kissing your neck, violently sucking on the skin and lightly biting, ‘im going to leave so many bruises, so everyone knows you're mine’ he whispered against your sensitive skin. you mewled at his words, the thought of being his. ‘please,’ you gasped through rugged breaths, ‘make me yours’ he placed his knees between your thighs, feeling your wetness as it pooled onto the sheets and him. your hips buckled forward, trying to get some sort of pressure onto your sopping cunt. he continued moving downward, the camcording moving with him, letting it see what he did. he kissed over your boobs, giving them little kitten licks as you moaned at the contact.

finally reaching your entrance, he motioned for you to take the camera and film him, which you did with shaking hands. now pointed at him, he stared into the lens, as you watched him through the screen he delved in, giving your lips small licks which turned into harsh lapping sounds as he abused your clit. he never looked away from the camera, the eye contact making you moan as it felt so intimate, yet so dirty. this really was the best idea he ever had. you hissed as his finger slid into your entrance, so hot and warm, you distinctively moved your hips towards his hand, wanting more. he added another finger, stretching you in preparation, ‘fuck, you are so tight’ he observed, pumping his fingers in and out of you. the coil in your stomach tightened and the air around you felt so heavy, you knew the band was about to snap. shuddering, your eyes and head rolling back ‘i think i’m gonna cum chan’ you whimpered. but, he stopped and his fingers exited your hole with a squelching sound, crying at the loss of contact your head moved back towards his, shooting daggers.

‘i want you to cum on my cock beautiful. watch you fall apart as i fuck you stupid’ he confessed, grabbing the camera from you. now turned back towards you, you gulped, body buzzing and hot at his nasty words. he grabbed your ankles, forcing you closer to him. haechan pushed your legs against your chest, giving him perfect access to your swollen lips. he casts the camcorder downward, ready for the money shot. lining up his tip with your entrance, he pushes in, causing you both to gasp and sigh at the contact. finally bottoming out, his hips reach your thighs, giving you a minute to adjust he started to thrust lightly, making you keen at the feeling of being so full, that, and the wet sounds of your bodies, almost made haechan cum right there on the spot. ‘fuck, you feel so tight baby, you don't know how long i’ve waited for this’ he whimpered, trying to keep himself composed. moaning at his confession you grabbed his arm and brought him down suddenly to kiss you. now in a missionary-esque position, haechan sat the camcorder down on the bed to face you both, sloppy kisses were exchanged, and you both gasped into each other mouths when haechan went deep and hit your sweet spot. moving up to his knees, and grabbing the camcorder, he pulls his hips down harder, drilling into your weeping cunt. you grunted growing incoherent as you babbled about how his dick was so big and for him to keep going, ‘you take me so well pretty girl’ he groaned, zooming in on your fucked out expression, ‘it’s like you were made for me, you're mine baby, all mine’ he breathed, his rhyme becoming sloppy and harder, faster.

you could feel fire start to poll in your lower abdomen, sinking your nails into haechans forearm as he moved circles in your burning clit with his free hand. ‘cum with me baby please’ he begged, ready to release inside of your warm pussy. you tensed feeling the lightning strike as you felt the earth stutter on its axis. groaning loudly, you finally let go, waves of pleasure coarse over your body, walls convulsing griping haechan like a vice. he whimpered above you, stilling his hips as he coated your insides white, curses flew out of his mouth as he made small trusts, loving the feeling of overstimulation. your thighs vibrated and jerked, letting your orgasm die down, haechan pulled out slowly, making you both hiss. he sighed contently, getting up and heading to the bathroom and coming back with a washcloth. he videotaped as his sticky substance dripped from your hole, cleaning you up thoroughly as he continued to zoom in.

‘well… that's a wrap’ he said cheekily and turned off the camera, placing it on his bedside table. you laughed at the comment, moving closer to him as he climbed into bed beside you. heart floating as he pulled you closer, bringing your head to rest on his chest. ‘i think that would win at fucking sundance’ he whispered, making you snort and playfully hit his chest. you both sat in comfortable silence, his fingers ghosting your back, moving up and down.

‘did you mean it? what you said?’ you asked, feeling small in his embrace.

‘what part?’ he ventured, grabbing hold of your shoulder.

‘when you said you had been waiting for this moment, was that real or just for the tape?’ you felt stupid needing clarification. you both had decided to make it overzealous so it would do numbers, he wouldn't think twice to say any of that stuff when money was on the line, or maybe he had meant it and in the heat of the moment confused about what you were also thinking.

‘of course i meant it love, if you can't tell, i’ve been in love with you for a while’ he confessed.

you gasped, head lifting off of his chest to gaze up at him, eyes shown in full sincerity, he went on ‘there's no one else who understands me as you do, you continue to put up with my shit, you're honest when i need it most, but you also support me in everything i do. you spent a week trying to find any companies that would take me on, going as far as to call continually when i never asked you to in the first place’

you groan remembering the hiring manager that had said ‘his resume wasn't good enough’ to which you gave them an earful telling them they would be stupid not to accept him. ‘you laugh at my stupid jokes and you always let me win in league, you are effortlessly beautiful without even trying, even after you have woken up after 15 hours of sleeping, seeing your face walk out of your bedroom door is the best feeling, i get so excited when you come home from work, like i’m a dog waiting for its owner’ you cry as you both sit up, holding each other.

‘haechan… i don't-… you’re my best friend, the person who knows me better than i know myself,’ he wipes small tears pricking from the corners of your eyes, just as they are about to fall ‘you always know when i’m down, you help me with tasks whenever i get frustrated and you never complain, you are my rock and i know i can always rely on you for anything, you’re my home.’ you finished your turn of the confession with a simple, ‘i love you too’

haechan gives you a small kiss, ‘no more crying, we should rest’ moving to turn off the lamp next to him, he puts you in an embrace and lays you down back in your previous position, kissing your hair you let your eyes flutter shut. ‘what if i told you i was a secret billionaire?’ he mumbled.

you squirmed, pretending to be annoyed at his antics, he gripped tighter, trapping you in his warmth, whining ‘please, go to fucking sleep’ you grumbled, finally settling down after a long day of shooting.

you stirred awake as the sunlight from the window hit your eyes, blinking you stretched and sat up, groaning as every muscle seemed to ache after last night. ‘good morning girlfriend’ haechan sang, walking into his room holding a plate of food for you.

‘girlfriend?’ you questioned, grabbing the fake porcelain from him.

he shook his head from side to side ‘mmm well we’re married in my head already, so that’s we can go with for now’

you sighed and nodded, smiling, ‘okay boyfriend, whatever you say’ picking up the bagel you got ready to take a bite when haechan gave you a nervous smile without saying anything, still standing in front of you ‘... what's wrong?’

‘don’t get mad, but hypothetically, what if i told you i forgot to hit record last night’ he cast his eyes downward, obviously trying to hold in a laugh.

you groaned, knowing he was still messing with you, ‘i saw the red light on the camera stupid, you can’t fool me.’ he looked up hearing the crunch from the toasted donut, happily eating away. ‘now come here and massage my back’ he immediately obliged, coming behind you to rub your pain away. ‘and make sure to delete everything before giving the camera to jaemin. please.’

haechan stopped, ‘but he said he wanted to see!!’

you turned around ready to grab him by the neck and not in a good way, ‘HAECHAN’. all he could do was laugh and hug you as tight as he could, never wanting to let go.

‘holy shit babe, come here and look at this’ haechan called from the kitchen, you came buzzing in, eager to see what he had to show you.

‘what is it?’ you mused, glancing down at his phone as he handed it to you.

you gasped, seeing the number of money your videos have made over the past couple of months, ‘that's enough to pay for four months of rent!!’ after a couple of months and making more videos, you started posting them to a private channel online and promoting them in various placing, thus helping you both reach pretty decent number for amateur porn. you even moved into his bedroom and turned your old one into a perfect little studio.

‘i know!!’ he got up from the table and hugged you in celebration, ‘and we owe it all to our first subscriber and top donator… maybe we can ask him to film for us some time’

you dropped your arms and grimaced, ‘jaemin’

it really was the best idea he ever had, and you love him for it.

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yameoto · 4 months ago

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SUPERNOVA CAITLYN KIRAMMAN

kpop idol caitlyn X her insatiably horny junior

"Noona is so cool!" You mimic, voice pitching either higher or lower, depending on which of the plethora of comments you pick, at your leisure. "Caitlyn’s a CF goddess. Her talents are seriously wasted. Wah, her visuals are really otherworldly. Unnie looks so good I’m creaming my pants—" Caitlyn fixes you with a flat, unimpressed look, at that last one. “It doesn't say that.” You grin, like the effervescent angel you are. “Yeah. That was just me.”

tw; dom/sub!caitlyn, brat!reader, idolverse, girlcock, semi-public sex, sex in dance practice rooms, mirror sex, handjobs, handjobs during vlives, voyeurism, mild age-gap, age hierarchy dynamics, use of korean honorifics. idol!caitlyn x idol!reader wc; 5.1k. ao3

notes: set in modern day runeterra. ionia encompasses the entire region of asia in league which i personally find stupid but i dont make the rules. fluff/smut/humour. derivative of korean culture (kpop idol au) + pokes a lil fun at stan culture. no prior kpop knowledge is needed (though it would likely help) the sex is filthy regardless. wrote this after finding caitlyn is only a 1/4 white like hallelujah jesus

CAITLYN looks stupidly good. Like stupid, stupidly good. Her grey sweatpants are slung low on her hips, waistband of her briefs peeking out. Sweat-slickened abs glare back at you, from the floor-to-ceiling mirror. The outline of her bulge is visible. These are all observations that you latch into like an IV-drip hooked-up to your wrist, in order to stay alive—lest you die from the fatigue. And boredom.

“Please,” You grumble, head slumped on your knee as your arm drops to the floor, phone abandoned Candy Crush side, up. “Please, please, please, can we go home?”

“No,” Caitlyn huffs, hands on her hips, looking entirely too good as she takes a momentary (and you mean, momentary) break to swig a sip of water, before she hurls herself right back into it, sweaty and stunning.

The two of you have been trapped in the practice rooms for what feels like eternity. Or, more accurately, Caitlyn has trapped you in the practice rooms for what feels like eternity. You would rather be snuggled up and content in the comfort of your dorms; rather than slogging away in the basement, like you’re still trainees clawing your way up the company ladder inch by inch—rather than the four-time daesang winners, face of Ionia’s girl-groups’, and other innumerable accolades under your belts that seemingly mean nothing to your fearless group leader. At least, at the moment.

You’ve long slunk to the floor, sleepy eyes tracing the way sweat rolls down Caitlyn’s nape as she re-runs the movements for about the zillionth time. Her shoulder-blades flex through the thin fabric of her shirt, sweat dampening into a darkened pool in a way that should be gross, but on her, it just looks sexy. The ache in your muscles has simmered to a low burn, by now. Jeez, your eyelids are slipping. Thank God you have your sweet leader to ogle. The sight of Caitlyn’s bulge peeking through those sweatpants is practically your sole motivator in keeping your eyes open.

“You know,” After what feels like a decade, you pipe up again, because time has begun to melds together. “You’ve got it. Seriously.” The swig of water that sluices down your throat is lukewarm and unsatisfactory. Fuck, you’re thirsty. “The stage is a week away. You’ll be fine.”

Caitlyn’s eyes narrow at you through the mirror, incredulous.

“When in the world has fine ever been good enough?”

Okay, sure. Caitlyn’s right. But she’s more than fine. Almost-perfect, actually—and come seven days—her dance moves will indubitably be heaven-sent and her ending fairy will probably trend #1 on three different social media platforms, and you will most definitely tug her ear endlessly about it, like the benevolent, supportive junior you are.

Seven days prior, however—and all you are is tired, grouchy, and maybe just a little bit horny.

“I crave the sanctity of my blankets.” You lament, hand falling over your forehead as you languish on the floor, because the sun has probably set by now and you are seriously contemplating the possibility of dying of old age in this godforsaken practice room. (Not that that would be so bad, if Caitlyn were with you).

“You can go home, you know,” Caitlyn sighs, twisting around to face you, sneakers squeaking on the glossy wooden floors.

“How am I supposed to sleep without my favourite member as a bolster?” You pout, snatching on the chance to act a brat, immediately. Caitlyn just rolls her eyes, but her lips twitch upwards, so negligible that if you weren't so tuned in to all-things-Caitlyn, you might’ve missed it.

“Clingy.” She mutters, like she doesn't love it. Loves being your favourite. Not that it matters, because the glimmer of hope that flickers in your chest when Caitlyn crouches down in the direction of her bag—is immediately quashed when she only taps her screen, and the speaker rewinds all the way to the start.

You’re really starting to hate this song.

“Are you serious? That’s not enough to rouse your cold, dead, heart?” You whine, because usually Caitlyn would've caved to your grabby-hands and doe-eyes by now (especially with the way you look; lips parted and shining with spit, water trickling down your chin down the column of your throat, from the leftover rivulets of your water-bottle.) Not that Caitlyn doesn't notice. She’s just really, really determined to get this right.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

“You work yourself too hard.”

You stretch to a stand, elongated and cat-like before you slink over and sling yourself dramatically along Caitlyn’s back. Her expression contorts into exasperation. She attempts to turn her head, to face you—to no avail. Not when you’re pushing her up against the mirror and the pinning her down against glass with the power of aggressive spooning on your side. Her hand shoots out to brace against the mirror, as your fingers hook the hem of her sweats, and Caitlyn stiffens under your thumb, lips falling open against her will.

“Darling,” She inhales, in that addictive, throaty accent of hers. Caitlyn sounds almost pained, as she catches your wrists—though she neither takes them in or wrests them away. The both of you have full view of the rising tent in her groin.

“What?” You smirk, teeth grazing the shell of her ear, like the sneaky little bastard you are. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to practice with a boner, unnie. That must hurt.”

Caitlyn’s breath hitches, and her knees almost buckle, if it weren’t for the way your arms tighten around your waist and squeeze the growing problem at her crotch. Your fingers twine with the string of her trackpants, loosening them under slim, deft fingers.

“Honorifics? Really?” Her voice is tight. She’s screwed. You only ever whip those out when you want something, seeing as how you've been speaking informally to your technical senior since your very first meeting, in trainee days, (an accident she so loves to recount on variety shows. “It’s not my fault you just looked so young and pretty, unnie.” You’d fumble in defense, eyes wide and doling out the extra sparkle for the cameras as they zoomed-in on your frantic apologies, laugh track sure to be edited in. “What was I supposed to think?”

“You’re lucky I was too kind to scold you,” Caitlyn sighs, and—in a dramatic show of theatricality—flips the inky-blue curtains of her hair behind her shoulder, much to the hosts delight. “I can be really mean, baby.”

That had been a hit. Probably because of the way her drawl had lilted playfully and she’d cupped your jaw in the most egregious display of fan service you’d ever seen. Caitlyn’s always known how to wrap the media around her pretty fingers; and your stammer and ensuing blush had mercilessly crowded your feed for at least two weeks, afterwards.)

That’s in public, though. In private?

Caitlyn is a puddle to the graze of your fingers along her hipbone, and the glide of your breath up her neck. Dark eyes meet hers, hooded and intent, reflected in the pane of metal in front of you. It’s certainly a sight to behold. The two of you are both dripping in sweat, Caitlyn’s cheeks flushed, bare-faced and glowing—hair tangled up in that loose ponytail that you've always found so much hotter on her, than any amount of hours in the styling chair could ever produce.

“I really need to..” Caitlyn’s protests sound weak even to her own ears. Especially when heat pools in hot, throbbing waves that rush straight to her dick, and she's cut off by her own gasp when you nuzzle in the nook between her shoulder-blades and your hands—beautiful, cunning hands—ghost over her crotch and squeeze. Her entire world lurches into a haze, body spasming upwards.

“Unnie,” You breathe, sweet and soft, like the devil in her ear, “please fuck me.”

Just like that, Caitlyn can’t take it any longer. A low, strangled noise rips from her throat, eyes fogging over and black eclipsing blue. Lithe hands coil around your wrists, and flips your positions entirely—thrusting you right up against the glass.

Her muscles are throbbing, hours of dance practice flaming up her bones; but she pins you down with the strength of a woman possessed, all the same. As far as Caitlyn’s concerned, she’s like a sleeper agent to your bedroom voice, and the fact could never shine with more clarity, than now (other than the time you’d done a Lola Shark impression in an interview and she’d gotten, to her horror, embarrassingly hard underneath the blanket thrown over her lap. She’d had to call in a bathroom break, to take care of it—much to your smug, haunting amusement).

In the mirror, you watch as Caitlyn’s breathing shallows into pants, tongue licking hot up the stretch of your neck to under your jaw. Neither of you miss the brief, smugly satisfied spark to your eyes and glowing hot between your thighs, even as both squeeze shut when you arch up against Caitlyn’s bulge. She grinds down against your ass, and you moan, so brazen she almost can’t believe it.

“Shit. You're so shameless,” Caitlyn mutters, breaths rushing harsh against your shoulder as she fumbles with the knot at your sweats, rutting hopelessly into the coil of your figure. The moment thread slips free, pants pooling to your ankles as you bend over, head thrown back—Caitlyn’s brand-name briefs soak with a splurge of pre so intense she almost thinks she’s come early.

“You want my fingers?” Caitlyn asks, just to be a bitch. Your eyes squint open to glare at her through blurry vision and through an even blurrier visage.

“Don’t joke,” You spit, voice hoarse with want. It's meant to sound demanding, but all it comes out is whiney, and Caitlyn’s laugh sends shivers down your nape.

There’s a millisecond in which your mind empties completely, and it's almost cruel how you can only see the reflection of Caitlyn’s cock curving upwards from her underwear rather than the real deal.

Caitlyn’s grasp is like steel around your neck. She thrusts you forwards, your flushed cheeks smushing against the cool surface of the mirror as your stuttered breaths puff in grey clouds of condensation. A groan wrangles itself out of your throat from being manhandled like that, knees wobbling the moment you feel something hot, thick and so, so wet press insistently against the backs of your thighs. Arousal has already begun to drip down your legs, running down in rivulets and moistening the floor under your feet. Yours or Caitlyn’s—you don’t have the eyes to know.

“Unnie,” You breathe, shakily, voice raw. Your fingers are slippery against glass, and you whimper when the familiar stretch of two fingers sinks into your cunt. You slide open, just like that, and Caitlyn temporarily wrenches you back so that you can see your fogged-up reflection in all its full, filthy glory.

“S’not enough,” You pant, back arching and ramming urgently against her digits she’s spreading you wide, with—so eye-wateringly slow. Maybe it’s the fact that you've been working yourself up, blatantly eyeing her down, for hours since your head checked out of training and your brain devolved into its most primitive urges in coping with your mind-numbing boredom.

“Not enough?” She grins, sharp-toothed and devastating, adoring the upper-hand. “What? You need a third finger, baby?” The noise that tears out of you is almost like a wounded animal, and you'd be embarrassed if you weren't so overcome with need and prolonging this teasing sounds like torture.

So, you answer with the obvious, “Your cock.” You hiss through gritted teeth, because Caitlyn loves it when you beg for her dick and you’re too hare-brained and empty to do anything more than push back, impossibly deeper into her fingers. They sink to her knuckles of entirely your own volition, without her having to do so much as twitch.

Caitlyn’s laugh is practically a goad in itself. The lush curtain of her lashes are lowered, irises swallowed up by the deep dilation of her pupils. Still, though, she takes her time in playing with you, just a little longer. Revels in the way you thrash around her fingers, fucking yourself back, desperate.

Herself is one thing. Her dick can only take so much, however. The ache becomes too much, too soon, and the second she runs her glossy head against the drenched, hot pulse of your hole—she can’t not shudder, knot in her throat, before her fingers slip out of your pussy and your consequent whimper is interrupted by the plunge of her cock.

“Hah, baby..” Caitlyn whimpers, eyes fluttering back as she fucks you against the mirror, nails dragging up your hips and digging into supple flesh. Never has Caitlyn felt so at home, submerged in the deep, velvet ocean of your cunt.

“Unnie—” You gasp. It’s the one word, echoing over and over, like an all-consuming siren song throughout your head—with each gasp that comes with every thrust of Caitlyn’s hips, motions growing sloppier as the exhaustion of hours of tireless exertion catches up to the both of you. She nips at your ear, then down the curve of your nape, to the unblemished skin of your upper back. Teeth grazing, pads of her fingers leaving scorching trails as she gropes up your body—your mind a jumbled, fuzzy mess. Her cock plunges in and out, still guided, though she never slips out more than mid-way; bodies sticking together like gum. Like she can’t bear to be apart from you for even a moment—even if it is to pummel your cunt until you can hardly take it anymore.

It’s only when the pumps and rolls begin to slow into simple, gentle rocks, to absolutely nothing but a twitch—that your mind clumsily clasps onto a semblance of clarity, hasty and brief, like you know it’ll slip away and out of reach, soon. “Wha..?” You rasp, half-slurred, even if what you really want to whinge is; What’s goin’ on? Why’d you stop? And, please, please, please. Don’t stop. Keep goin’. Fill me up. Please, don’t ever stop— and other half-baked nonsense that you’ll be glad your tongue was too thick and heavy in your mouth to spill.

“I can’t mark you,” Caitlyn grunts, and your eyes sharpen, just a little. Her tongue peeks out from her lips as her expression looks disproportionately distraught, like it’ll be the end of the world if she doesn’t stake some sort of physical claim on you, eyes darting downwards to your unblemished shoulders with a low growl of frustration.

Distantly, that part of you is still clinging onto reality, knows she’s right. That your comeback is in a week’s time and risking a hickey or a bite-mark or worse (because Caitlyn is stronger and sharper and rougher than her delicate figure should ever have been allowed to be), is a bad, bad idea.

But the larger part of you—the part of you that is currently being railed by her unnie’s cock and trying desperately not to squirt cum all over the practice room mirror—rasps out a reckless, ragged, “Who cares?”, and that’s all the permission Caitlyn needs.

Caitlyn pulls out, and slams herself in again, grip on your waist, bruising. Your hands go sliding, uselessly against the steamy surface of the mirror, long fogged-up under the slick tangle of your bodies. She’s mouthing slurred nonsense into your ear, the music speaker knocked over by one of your ankles and emitting distant sounds from where it's rolled, to the other side of the room. Neither of you could give a single fuck.

Not the least, when Caitlyn’s hand is sliding up your throat and thumbing over your gaping lips. It feels as if a pink-hued fuzziness has descended the room and become a thick veil over everything, and when her fingers slip into the hot, wet gasp of your mouth—it's only right for you to take the digits in your tongue and suck.

“Ahnngh—Cait—”

“When did I say you could speak informally to me?” Caitlyn husks, fingers pressing deeper into the roof of your mouth. In your reflection, you can see the razor angle of Caitlyn’s jaw as she nuzzles into your ear. The obscene glisten of your spit, coating her fingers and coasting down your chin as her digits languish between your parted lips. You look every bit like her precious fuckdoll, right now.

“Unnie—”

“Ah-ah.”

“Sunbae.”

“Mm. That’s better.”

Her free hand skims up your shirt, slipping up the taut lines of your body and flicking idly at one nipple. You whine, garbled around the gag of her hand, and Caitlyn lets out a moan of content when your pussy tightens around her shaft.

“Fuck,” She pants, teeth sinking down into your shoulder and you buck, even though the pain barely registers with how Caitlyn barrels her cock in you, deeper, and your eyes roll back into your skull. Your thighs are shaking. “M’gonna—hfgh—”

Her hips draw upwards, and Caitlyn cums like a faucet. All of it, inside you. Outside of you. Dripping from your still-leaking cunt and droplets getting fucked out with each, desperate thrust as she moans, guttural. “Take it—fuck—” Caitlyn groans, harsh and insistent as she pounds, your pussy squelching—so wonderfully wet—as your fingers scramble against the glass, her fingers cramming deep inside your mouth.

“Ah-ah—fuck!”

The two of you go crashing down, sliding down against the mirror and onto the floor with a twinning, indecipherable slew of obscenities, a boneless, panting heap, still moving in tandem.

You both slump, slippery and sticky. The song on the speakers re-starts, yet again, from the other side of the room, though it's the first time it's even pierced your ears in the past forty minutes. Caitlyn groans, pushing her nose into the crook of your neck, arms tightening around your waist. The mirror is splattered in both your cum.

“We’re gonna have to clean this up, aren’t we?”

“..Probably.” You sigh, still leaking around her cock as you angle your head, the two of you slotting together like missing puzzle pieces.

Twenty-four hours and countless Kleenex wipes later (and really, cleaning your own cum from floor-to-ceiling mirrors—with two half-guilty reflections staring right back at you—is an uniquely humbling experience); it was totally worth it to see Caitlyn appropriately red, after the crash of post-nut clarity.

It’s your one, blissfully empty day before comeback promotions launch you all into full-throttle. You intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

“Your latest Lotte CF went viral,” You pop behind her, totally innocously if weren’t for that familiar, impish glint in your eyes. Caitlyn sighs, not even glancing up from the stove, completely nonplussed. Probably because Caitlyn could record herself taking a piss and it would chart #1 on Melon.

“The seonjiguk is simmering.” She ignores you. You ignore her right back.

“Look at those dimples,” You beam like a little shit as you wave the video in her face. “Maybe you should go into acting. The GP would go crazy.”

“No thanks,” Caitlyn snorts, hand lifting upwards to stifle a brief yawn, sleeves coming up all the way to her knuckles. “been there, done that.”

“Oh, right. All your Piltovian film connections.” You hum, idly tracing the underneath of Caitlyn’s elbow as you lean over her shoulder to watch her cook. She’s markably improved from her humble beginnings of blackened, bubbling slag (what was once instant Buldak), or the scotchmarks that still hail the kitchen tiles, to this day.

“Mhm. I was almost poached. My mother wanted me to—what was that? Follow in her footsteps.”

“Well, I’m grateful that you didn't,” You hum, into her shoulder. You poke her side, grinning. “Then you wouldn't have met me, and wouldn't that be tragic?”

Caitlyn scoffs, but you feel her sink a little deeper into your embrace, eyes flitting to settle onto the top of your head, as you nudge into her. You both, really are grateful.

You’re pretty sure Ionia is grateful, too.

Whatever the day, it always feels like Caitlyn’s name has taken up a permanent residence in the nation’s newsites. ICE PRINCESS. AI VISUALS. ATTITUDE PROBLEM. Her quarter Piltovian and subsequent accent injects an ‘attractive exoticism’ (or whatever management had stapled to your files, at the dawn of debut), that had made Caitlyn internationally explosive, too.

The Kiramman surname certainly helped. Caitlyn’s debut was like, the biggest plot-twist in nepotism, ever. It was like if Nicole Kidman’s kid suddenly became Hatsune Miku. Not to mention the fact the Kirammans are the largest benefactor of Hextech, whose global rollout of leading-edge tech has gone unmatched. Of all careers for the Kiramman’s mysterious, devastatingly attractive daughter to take—this is the one that took the entire globe off-guard. Including the great and glamorous, Cassandra Kiramman.

Of course, the initial shock long lapsed underwater, with the constant roil of the media waves. Caitlyn’s fame, however, has not.

“Noona is so cool!” You mimic, voice pitching either higher or lower, depending on which of the plethora of comments you pick, at your leisure. “Caitlyn’s a CF goddess. Ah, her talents are seriously wasted. Is she an angel? Her visuals are really otherworldly—”

“Get that away from me.” Caitlyn swats your phone away with a scowl, pretty pink flush glowing on her features.

“Don’t act all coy,” You prod her so-highly-lauded cheekbones as Caitlyn huffs in annoyance, though begrudgingly leans against the touch anyways. You squish. “We all know you’re preening inside.”

“I am not!”

“Ooh, sexy. I love it when your accent comes out like that.”

Caitlyn groans, because you’re impossible, and just twists so that she’s facing you, back against the kitchen counter. You reach behind her to switch off the stove.

She hooks her fingers into the hem of your pyjama shorts, thumbing over familiar cotton. She sighs outwardly, propping her head up on your shoulder and slumping forwards to rest the cold press of her nose into the crook of your shoulder. Her fingers skim up your shirt, absently rubbing circles into the plane of your stomach.

“You know I hate it when you read those.”

“About how you look like an eepy bunny when you’re sleepy? Or that you have moles in the shape of a giraffe on your nape.” You arch a brow, looking past her as you flick through the blurs of text in various degrees of capitalisation, on your phone. A subtle smirk lifts your lips. “Hey. Is that true? Let me check.”

She scowls, and then almost looks offended that you don’t know that already (You do. Caitlyn also has a darkened, heart-shaped birthmark indented in the crook of her inner thigh—but that’s just for you to know, thank you very much).

Your voice raises a pitch. “Unnie looks so good I’m creaming my pants!”

Caitlyn fixes you with a flat, unimpressed look. “It doesn't say that.”

You grin, like the effervescent angel you are. “Yeah. That was just me.”

Oh, now Caitlyn’s cheeks go red. You push valiantly past the triumphant flutter in your heart, in favour of continuing your teasing. Hey—there’s no schedule today, the dorms are all to yourselves—and you’re on a roll.

“Look. They wanna steal your eyes and put them in a boba drink.”

Thoroughly fed-up with your antics, Caitlyn snatches the phone out of your hand, and you immediately squirm, to lunging for it. Caitlyn’s ridiculous height advantage has the one-up on you, though, and you puff out an aggrieved yelp of protest when she dangles it above your head, like a dickhead.

“Hey, what the fuck?” You complain, like your comeuppance wasn't exactly what you were hoping for. Except you were more aiming for a pin-you-against-the-fridge, fuck-the-insides-out-of-you type of comeuppance. Not a sordid reminder that you need a stool to reach the top of Caitlyn’s head. “Don’t lord your freakish Frankenstein genetics over me!”

Caitlyn laughs, eyes flickering down. “Are you on your tip-toes right now?”

Your eyes narrow, because you do not appreciate having the tables turned on you. Your hand shoots up to cup her jaw, tilting it upwards. Caitlyn softens, putty in your hands, adorable furrow in her brow melting away along with her pride as she sinks into your palm with a soft sigh, arm falling to her side.

There we go.

“It’s not my fault you avoid socials like the plague. I’m just doing my duty to take care of my leader’s PR. Your fans are starving.”

Caitlyn grumbles, “Well, let them starve.” though it comes out pinched between smushed lips, cheeks squishing like a dumpling. So heartless, like she’s not the industry’s princess and probably makes up a total of 50% of the company’s annual income. You know exactly why, as you cradle her face in her palms and watch as she leans upwards because no matter how disgruntled Caitlyn acts, or how shockingly humble she is under that front of aloof, arrogance–she definitely preens under attention.

Just. Only yours.

“Hey, you know what? We should go live right now.”

“What—?” Caitlyn stammers, flabbergasted by the sudden change in direction, “Don’t—“

Too late. Within seconds, you’ve swiped your phone back from her limp hands and flipped the vlive on. Recording. Like, now. Damn, you're speedy.

“Ah..” Caitlyn’s expression smooths over to that charming, impeccably gorgeous grin of hers that shows off the sharp curves of her cheekbones and has won her the hearts of a nation.

You pull her to the couch, and under the scrutiny of the camera—Caitlyn acquises with little more than a subtle elbow to your ribs, when the both of you go thudding into the cushions with a low oomph.

Then, you flop against her chest, and the stream of hearts that ensue are absolutely incredible, comments rolling in faster than you can read them. There’s a reason why the two of you are the most popular pairing in the group.

“Hm. Is it on?” You muse, faux confusion tugging on your pretty features. Knitted brows and a plush little pout always do the job, especially when you add a sneak of tongue. No doubt to be screenshotted and re-uploaded countless times, within the next hour. “Hello? Can you guys hear us?”

Which is, you know, the perfect time to grab Caitlyn’s dick through her pants.

A choked noise resounds beside you, and you don’t glance over, for you’re too busy fiddling with the phone and the settings and all other kinds of bullshit that is really just an excuse for you to focus your attention on snaking a hand down Caitlyn’s waistband, just out of view of the camera. “Oh! It’s working. Did you miss us?” You beam, as Caitlyn struggles not to either sock you in the stomach or throw her head back and moan.

If anybody notices Caitlyn’s pupils are suspiciously blown, it doesn’t come up. What does come up, is her ever traitorous cock that lilts immediately into your touch. Fuck. Fuck, fuck.

“Aw, little Caity’s missed me, too,” You croon, as your sneaky fucking fingers stroke idly along her girth, underneath the veil of her sweatpants and just over the thin fabric of her underwear. Caitlyn visibly bristles, because, 1. You’re jacking her off. 2. She hates that your coo instigates a flood of love-bombing so intense, that the hearts on the screen almost completely obscure the both of you. 3, and the most important one; you just gave her dick a nickname!

“Cait.” You tease out, eyes glittering, not even bothering to conceal your amusement as Caitlyn’s hips buck upwards, her fingers pinching against your sides, lips completely shut mum, for fear she’ll let slip a moan on camera. “C’mon. Say something. You missed them too, right?”

Gods. Caitlyn hates you. She really, really hates you. Just—not enough to not shove your hand away when it starts to peel away the waistband of her underwear. If only because the feeling of precum soaking its seat, sticking to her skin, and not because she’s itching for the sweet relief of your hand around her cock.

“..Hi,” Caitlyn forces her winning, boxy grin, and the years of practice make it an admirably unstrained effort. Maybe she really should go into acting. “Mm. Long time no see, hm?”

“Unnie’s being awkward, today.” You snark, all sly, and Caitlyn shoots you a glare. She’s rewarded by the sudden, fervent warmth of your hand wrapping around her dick, and then the harsh tug of your fist that has her knees jerking upwards and her dastard slit spurting out a shiny, hot glob of precum. She swallows back a low, strangled whine, like a dry pill. Oh, Gods. She’s supposed to say something.

“Ah, just..—we’ve—ah—”

In a rare show of mercy (because apparently, you’re not out to throw both your careers to the dogs), you swipe the phone back with the most cherubic, triumphant grin to adorn your face, literally ever. Catilyn lets slip a barely-audible hiss as your fingers coil, just a little tighter, stroking up and down—thumb running back over the swollen, gloatingly shiny cockhead.

“We just had a long time in the practice rooms for our comeback, yeah? So we’re pretty tired. Right, unnie?”

Oh, you're really pushing it, now.

“Mm. We’ve been—working. Really hard.” She has to lean out of the screen to release a silent, desperate gasp, nails digging into the back of the couch as she tries to rut up into your hand in a way that doesn't obviously send the sofa, trembling. You idly thumb over her slit, smearing the thick, embarrassingly copious amounts of pre down her length. It twitches in your palm, as you ramble on about schedules and the comeback and spoilers and other things that have long become white noise in Caitlyn’s ears. Her hips chase your touch, brazenly, now. She barely even realises when you’re calling it quits; early, too. Because obviously, this was all just to fuck with her.

“Caitlyn,” You sing-song—smirking (supremely unsubtly), at the camera. “Say bye-bye.”

She only just registers the comment. Barely. “Bye.” Caitlyn’s voice is a low croak, hips arching upwards off the couch just as you end the live. Just in time, too, because—

“Oh, fuck.” Caitlyn releases the longest moan of her life, cum spilling over your fist, and she collapses back into the couch. Your phone falls from your hand, and you’re practically shaking with laughter.

(“Little Caitey,” Caitlyn grumbles, after the fact, with your head nestled between her thighs in apology, “That’s preposterous. What’s so little about her?” Nothing. But there’s no fun in that, is there? At the slow, sly smile spreading on your face, Caitlyn groans. “What?”

“You referred to her in third-person.”

“..Please just suck me off already.��)

#(っ ‘o’)ﾉ⌒💥my works !#arcane #caitlyn kiramman x reader #caitlyn kiramman #caitlyn kiramman fanfiction #caitlyn kiramman smut #caitlyn kiramman x you #trans!caitlyn #arcane x reader #arcane smut #written solely for me but if u enjoyed it. i adore you #surprisingly not the most self-indulgent thing i’ve penned but close #kpop!caitlyn

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aureatelys · 6 months ago

Text

she lives in daydreams with me

pairing: aaron hotchner/fem!bau!reader rating: explicit w.c.: 7k.......

content warnings: 18+ please MDNI, fluff and smut, service kink sorta, mild d/s undertones, oral (f) receiving, vaginal fingering, semi public sex, age gap duh, employee/boss relationship duh, an excuse to write hotch eating pussy ngl

It all started with a cup of coffee. Or: You've had a crush on your boss for a long time, but you've recently started noticing him going out of his way to do things for you without you asking. Or or: Aaron Hotchner likes to do things for people. And by people, he means you.

read on ao3 or below <3

It all started with a cup of coffee.

You had just walked through the glass doors and into the bullpen, still waking up and desperately needing a cup of coffee, when JJ walks by you with a stack of folders in her arms. She gives you that look and motions towards the conference room.

You sigh and follow her, not even bothering to put your bag down at your desk. “That bad, huh?”

JJ grimaces. “Isn’t it always?”

You choose not to say anything, because she’s right. Lately, the cases have been getting more gruesome, more violent, and you’re wondering if it’s starting to affect you at all.

You pass by Hotch as he’s leaving his office and down the stairs, most likely going to make a coffee. You nod at him, giving him a small smile. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Hotch says, curt as always. He makes eye contact with you briefly, silently telling you that he is still waking up as well and that he’s not being curt on purpose, before looking away.

Thankfully, it’s been a couple of months since you’ve joined the team, so now you know that Hotch doesn’t actually hate you like you suspected. In fact, he seems to have taken a liking to you based on the number of dry jokes and banter he’s participated in just this week. It definitely doesn’t help the tiny, miniscule crush you have on him.

You don’t know where it came from. Hotch has always been an objectively attractive man, but it’s not often you have a crush on a man who is your boss who is more than 20 years older than you.

Maybe it happened last month, when you were on the jet and he was placing files onto the table to run through theories, and you noticed just how large his hands were. Or maybe, it started when you had knocked before entering his office and he hadn’t noticed you because he was on the phone with who you assumed was Jack based on the excited whispers and soft smile on his face. Or, to your horror, maybe it started when you walked in for your interview, and you felt something stir in the pit of your stomach when he looked you up and down, his eyes lingering on the form-fitting pencil skirt you had worn.

A very tiny crush, you think to yourself as you situate yourself in the conference room, throwing your bag underneath the table.

It’s still dark outside, barely 6 in the morning, and the entire floor was quiet while JJ set up the files and photos. You yawn and you’re just about to get up and make your cup of coffee since there was still some time left before everyone showed up, when a mug is placed in front of you.

You stare at it, halfway out of your chair, before the wonderful smell of that bad yet addicting office coffee hits you and you sit down.

You look up to find Hotch sitting down at the head of the table with his own steaming mug. He looks at you, not smiling, but his eyes are soft. “I hope I got it right.”

You look back at your coffee. It’s the perfect color. He even used your designated mug you brought from home, plain and pink, and the image of him carrying it through the office makes you want to giggle.

You don’t giggle, and instead carefully pick it up and bring it to your lips to take a sip. It’s warm and absolutely delicious, sweetened the way you like, which is a lot. How does he know, you blink, a bit shocked that Hotch was able to make your coffee perfectly, more perfectly than you’re able to make sometimes.

So you tell him. “This is better than when I make it. Thank you,” you say sincerely, and chalk up the warmth sparking in your stomach to be from the coffee.

“Don’t mention it,” Hotch says, the corner of his mouth quirking up before turning back to his own mug and taking a sip.

You feel pleased that he thought of you, and then a little anxious because why is he thinking of you? He’s never made you coffee before and you wonder how he knew you like your coffee tasting more like sugar than the actual coffee. You blame it on the fact that he probably saw how tired you looked and knew you needed a little caffeine to start the day.

“Morning ladies,” Derek announces, striding in with too much energy this early in the morning, and making you jump a bit. He laughs at your reaction and then notices the man sitting at the table, looking up at him wordlessly. “And Hotch.”

“Morning,” he says flatly, raising his eyebrows at him.

Derek laughs and chooses to situate himself between you and Hotch. You silently try not to be annoyed by that as you take another gulp from your coffee, and then internally beat yourself up because why would you be annoyed, he’s doing you a favor.

You start reading up on the file that JJ placed in front of you when Morgan asks “Hey, where’s my cup of coffee?”

You glance at him, still holding onto your mug like a lifeline, to find him looking at you almost offended. You shrug. “I didn’t make it.”

Morgan whips his head around to look at Hotch, who acts as if he didn’t hear him. “Where’s my specially made Hotch coffee?”

He doesn’t even look up. “I only have two hands.”

You snort, almost choking, while JJ laughs and Morgan scoffs before he gets up to go downstairs to the break room.

You glance at Hotch to find him smiling to himself, mirth in his eyes, and feel the warmth in your chest again despite how tired you feel.

It’s probably the caffeine.

The next time it happens, it’s after you had gotten shot.

To be fair, you’ve been shot a handful of times already since being on the team, but still. You hate being shot at.

Luckily, this time it was your leg and not your stomach like last time, which absolutely fucking sucked. You had been on bedrest for weeks and was going crazy in your apartment despite Penelope visiting you every day, bringing takeout or a steamy romance novel.

You’re currently in a hospital in Texas, leg in a cast, and starting to get antsy. They told you you’re going to be able to discharge later today, but you’re ready now.

“Relax,” Hotch says where he’s sitting at your bedside, not even looking up. He’s finishing up some reports from the case they just finished, laptop on the bed providing a warm presence against your thigh. You try not to ogle at his hands. How is he even able to work with hands that big?

“I’m just ready to go home,” you say through gritted teeth. “I don’t know why we can’t just leave now, I’m fine.”

“You’re lucky the bullet didn’t hit a nerve,” Hotch says, now looking up at you. There’s a frown on his face and his eyes are tired. The bags underneath his are deeper, darker, and you ignore the pang in your chest when you remember the frantic shouts of him calling for an ambulance after you got shot, the warmth of his hands on your calf to press against the wound.

“I’m fine,” you say, rolling your eyes. “What I’m worried about is what I’m going to do the next case we get.”

If possible, his frown deepens. “You’re not coming with us on the next one.”

Something like irritability rises up your throat. “Yes, I am. I can still work in this stupid cast.”

“Yes, but the doctor said you need rest,” Hotch states, sitting up a little straighter after seeing the look on your face. He knows how stubborn you can get, and this time is no different.

“I can rest on the jet, at the precincts.” You cross your arms, raising an eyebrow defiantly at him. “I can still be helpful. I’m not useless.” Like hell you were going to go crazy in your apartment again, living off of frozen pizza and reality TV.

Hotch sighs, and whatever he’s about to say is interrupted by a nurse coming in to check your vitals one more time, your pain level, and then giving you the rundown to be careful, get some rest, blah blah blah.

Somehow Hotch is the one who is tasked with driving you to the airport after you get discharged, the rest of the team already on the jet. You hobble awkwardly through the parking lot with your crutches, and Hotch is right next to you with his hand on the small of your back in case you fall. His hand is warm, nearly setting your whole back on fire, and you shake that thought away as you stumble a bit into the passenger side of his car.

“Are you okay?” Hotch asks as he puts your crutches in the backseat. His eyebrows are furrowed as he looks at you with concern, his hands already out to catch you just in case.

You fight a blush and sit down with a grunt. “Yep, I got it.”

The drive to the jet is quiet besides the low hum of the radio. You stare out the window the whole time, just happy to finally feel the warmth of the sun on your face.

“Do you need me to stop for anything?” You turn your head to look at Hotch. He has some stubble forming on his cheeks, hair mussed, and he’s wearing that brown quarter zip-up you like. He has his eyes on the road and turns to look at you, eyebrow cocked. His lips are chapped.

You are struck with the thought of how insanely handsome he is.

You clear your throat. “Nothing I can think of.”

Hotch hums. “Let me know if there’s anything you’re needing.”

You nod silently, and five minutes later, you’re on the tarmac and stumbling up into the jet. Hotch’s hand is at your back again, barely grazing you, and making sure you don’t fall down the stairs. He’s holding onto your crutches despite your protests, and you try not to feel a little indignant.

“There she is,” Morgan singsongs as you plop down into a seat with a sigh. “How’re you feeling?”

“Ready to go home to my bed,” you say, immediately slouching down to get comfortable.

“I feel that,” Emily laughs, nodding, and then she’s patting you on the shoulder before she sits behind you.

Hotch sits across from you, and you try not to think about how this seating chart has become a normal occurrence. He doesn’t seem to mind, however, based on the small smile he gives you.

He’s setting up his laptop and takes out a couple of files from the bag. He then reaches in and places something on the table in front of you. A water bottle and a small bag of trail mix.

“Oh,” you say, caught off guard and not knowing what else to say.

Hotch clears his throat, averting his gaze. “I know you don’t really like hospital food. So.”

You’re suddenly reminded of the coffee incident, where he somehow knew how to make your coffee exactly the way you liked it and continued to do so almost every day since. You can feel Reid staring a hole into the side of your face from where he’s lying on the couch across the aisle.

Your stomach grumbles then, loudly, and you hear Emily laugh behind you. Hotch glances up at you from where he already has a file open. The corners of his mouth just barely quirk up, almost smug. As if he knew that was going to happen.

You wonder when he had the time to get you a snack. It didn’t come from the kitchenette in the jet, having been out of stock of snacks for weeks, and he hadn’t really left your side while you were in the hospital.

“Thanks,” you finally say. You reach forward to open the bag of trail mix. “You didn’t have to.”

Hotch’s eyes soften, his eyebrows relaxed, and there’s concern and something else in his eyes when he says “I wanted to.”

You smile before you can help yourself, ducking your head, and hoping no one else can hear how fast your heart was racing.

You’re hit with the fact that Hotch was thinking of you, planning ahead to get you a snack and make sure you were fed before you guys made it home. You notice the lack of snacks for the rest of the team and try to ignore the thrill that goes through you. It’s like he knows what you want before you know yourself.

Like he’s taking care of you.

You nearly choke on a cashew when the thought occurs to you. Hotch’s head shoots up at the sound, looking alarmed, and it looks like he’s about to get up and hit you on the back when you wave him off. He doesn’t look satisfied until you take a swig from your water bottle and give him a thumbs up. He goes back to tapping away at his laptop, but you can tell he’s still watching you out of the corner of his eye.

It makes sense now that you think about it. He’s made a habit of checking in with you at the end of the day, offering to drive you home if you stay at the office too late. Whenever you check out a location while on a case, he always goes first. He makes sure you’re getting enough sleep, reminding you that you can take time off whenever you want.

You’re not sure if you’re imagining it, but ever since The Coffee Incident, you feel another pair of eyes on you more often than usual. Sometimes you would look up and see Hotch staring fixatedly on a particular file or his phone, but you can’t deny the prickling feeling you get on the back of your neck. You’ve noticed your fingertips touching more, sharing looks when the rest of the team argue, knees and feet knocking together underneath tables.

You’ve noticed that not only is Aaron Hotchner, your boss, very handsome but extremely and undeniably hot.

His broad shoulders, his tall stature. His cologne, the way he fills out his suits. His deep voice that’s able to dominate and control an entire room and make you weak in the knees.

“Interesting,” you mumble to yourself. Hotch glances at you with that same concern etched in his face, a question forming on his lips. You smile at him innocently and knock your knees against his underneath the table. It’s easy to find him with the annoying cast on your leg.

He knocks his knees back, gentler than he needs to, and a corner of his mouth just barely lifts.

You are absolutely sure now that Aaron Hotchner has a… thing.

You don’t know what to call the… thing, but there is undoubtedly a thing.

It’s late and you’re the last one in the office. Well, besides Hotch of course, because he practically lives at the office.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to stay?” Emily asks, JJ on her arm. “I’m sure we can find something for us to do.”

You wave them away. “I’m almost done. Just got at least 2 more reports I need to finish my notes. Promise.”

Emily frowns, but you can see she’s slowly walking backwards to the exit. JJ looks like she’s trying not to tug at Emily’s arm to walk faster. “If you’re sure…”

You roll your eyes. “Go on and have fun with… whatever you guys are going to do. I don’t want to know.”

JJ gives you a wink over her shoulder and you watch as they head into the elevator, a skip in her step. And then they’re gone.

Even though you had just gotten back from the case, it takes you awhile to finish your notes hunching over your desk. It’s quiet in the building, silent besides the faint hum of the air conditioner and your pen scratching at the paper. Your hand cramps a bit and you seriously wonder why this has to be handwritten rather than being in the current century and use a laptop. You’re motivated by the thought of sleeping in tomorrow morning though, which means getting up at 9 instead of your normal 6.

You lean back into your chair, staring at your completed notes. You hear paper rustling from the office upstairs and look up to see Hotch’s door slightly ajar. You suddenly feel nervous being alone with him, as if you haven’ t been alone with him countless of times before. Recently, however, it’s been happening more, and you’re not quite sure how to feel.

You get up from your desk and stretch your back, groaning when you hear a pop. You take a deep breath, imagine your soft bed, gather your reports for the final signature, and head upstairs.

You knock, hear a faint “Come in,” and step inside Hotch’s office, closing the door behind you.

He has his desk lamp on, washing his office and his face with a warm golden glow. He hasn’t even looked up from where he’s writing his own reports, so you take the brief chance to stare.

He’s surrounded by piles of papers; messier than how he usually keeps his desk. His tie is loosened from around his neck and the top two buttons are undone. His sleeves are rolled up and you try not to stare at his thick forearms, the veins in his hands. He grabs a nearby mug to take a sip of coffee, no doubt already cold. Your eyes follow his mouth when he takes a drink, watch the way his tongue flicks out to lick his lips, and then to his face. Where he is watching you with a faint smirk tugging at his aforementioned mouth.

You clear your throat, fighting the blush that’s starting to crawl up your neck. You go to stand in front of his desk, files in hand. “I have the rest of my notes from the Florida case.”

Hotch’s face easily morphs back into his stern and professional look, but you can still see something dance around in his eyes. He takes the files wordlessly, opens one, and reads your notes for not even 5 seconds before he says “You have the names of the sisters mixed up.”

You blink, still trying to fight the nervousness you feel and the warmth pooling slowly at the pit of your stomach as you watch his hands. “Huh?”

Hotch points at the crooked paragraph you scribbled out. “The older sister is named Amanda, the younger sister is Cynthia. You have them mixed up.”

And suddenly the nervousness you felt from being in the same room as your boss, alone and in the middle of the night, is overtaken by sheer embarrassment. You must have been more tired than you thought. “I’m sorry.” You put your hand out for the file. “I can go fix it real quick.”

“It’s fine,” Hotch says, and somehow, you’re not surprised. “I got it.”

You think about the past couple of months and the small gestures he’s been doing for you. Even though you’ve known Hotch for a couple of months now, you can’t quite get a read on him. It’s confusing, he’s confusing. You hate to say that it feels like he’s giving you mixed signals. One second, he’s opening the car door for you when you’re on a case, the next he won’t even look at you when the team is at a bar for an evening. Now this? Offering to fix a mistake you made at work? Something indescribable crawls up your throat and you suddenly feel irritated, upset, and something else.

“No,” you say as professionally as you can despite the rush of blood you can hear in your ears. “I can fix it, Hotch.”

He looks at you then, something like surprise on his face. “It’s just a quick fix, I can do it.”

It’s just a little typo, why won’t he let you fix it, you think to yourself. Maybe it’s the stress from the case you just got back from, how late it was, or something else entirely, but you find yourself unable to stop yourself from saying “Why do you keep doing things for me?”

This time, it’s Hotch who blinks back at you. He puts his pen down and clasps his hands together, looking like he’s ready for a talk. “What do you mean?”

“This!” You wave your hand at him, now not sure exactly what to say. “You keep… doing things for me. Things that I am perfectly capable to do myself, you know.”

Now you realize what that nagging feeling in your throat was— anger. Has Hotch been doing this because of how old you were? Because you were a young and new agent, naïve and innocent and can’t do anything herself?

Hotch just looks at you blankly. You quickly try to read his face; he’s clenching his jaw, his hands where they were clasped are now clenched into almost fists, and his eyes are dark.

“You are perfectly capable,” Hotch says, slowly. “I do know that.”

You huff a bit. “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

Hotch is silent again before letting out a deep sigh. He closes his eyes, runs his hand over his face, and you’re starting to wonder if you’ve just ruined your friendship/professional relationship with your boss. You can almost see the wheels spinning in his head as he figures out what to say.

He smoothly gets up from his desk and is now standing in front of you, leaning against his desk. He’s close, nearly towering over you, and you can almost feel the heat of his body like this.

The close proximity makes you nervous, because this is different than sitting next to each other on the jet or in the car. It’s different because the entire floor of the building is empty and you’re alone in your boss’s office.

He finally opens his eyes, making sure to make eye contact with you. His hands open and then close, like he doesn’t know what to do with them. “I do these things because I like doing them. For you.”

You stare at him, not sure what to say and feeling overwhelmed at the onslaught of emotions you’re feeling. You feel pleased, shy, giddy, anxious, and overwhelmed.

It makes sense that Hotch likes to take care of people. He’s a leader, a father, and his whole life is about helping those who are in need. You’ve seen it in the way he checks in with everyone, the way he humors Reid with his ramblings or lending an ear to Rossi. You’ve seen it in the way he talks to children and the way he tries to make himself appear softer, almost smaller.

You see it in him now. If it was anyone, Hotch would look stoic or cold, however you can tell he’s just as nervous as you are with the way he’s clearly biting at the inside of his cheek, the tense jaw, and the concerned furrow of his brow.

You’re still not sure what to say, but you know what you want to do.

So, you close the several inches between you and him with one step, grabbing the collar of his pristine button-up, and kiss him.

You’ve clearly taken him by surprise, but he pretends to act otherwise as he gingerly places his hands on your hips and kisses you back.

His lips are soft, addictingly so, and he tastes like coffee when he swipes his tongue along your bottom lip. The feeling makes your knees weak and you think you let out a soft moan, but you’re unable to hear anything over the sound of blood in your ears. His hands, large and hot, roam from your hips and up your back, giving you shivers.

Hotch is the first one to pull away and you instinctively chase after him with your lips before he stops you with a hand on your shoulder. “Are you sure?”

You look up at him, not realizing you had to crane your neck so much to do so and feel that all-too-familiar feeling between your legs that makes you clench your thighs. His lips are already swollen, pretty and pink, the collar of his shirt wrinkled from where you were pawing at him, and his eyes boring into you like he’s going to eat you alive.

“Yes,” you breathe, looping your arms around his shoulders to pull him back in. Hotch goes willingly, almost eagerly.

Hotch kisses like he works—meticulous and focused, however his hands are needy with the way he runs them over your ass, your back again, and your breasts through your sweater. He still seems like he’s being careful, like he’s worried about breaking you. You weave your fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and pull out of pure curiosity, marveling at the way Hotch lets out a groan deep in the back of his throat.

That seems to set him off because now he’s groping you a bit harder, mouth trailing down your neck and peppering kisses in a way that makes you breathless. You can tell he’s refraining from biting and leaving marks, instead making sure to pay extra attention to the spot underneath your ear that makes you gasp and grab at the back of his shirt. “Hotch…”

“Aaron,” he mumbles against your neck before bringing his face back up to yours, noses nearly touching. “Please call me Aaron.”

He’s looking at you like you hung the moon, like he can’t believe you’re in front of him. His face is relaxed, void of any stress, a faint redness on his face, and his hair is so effortlessly messy in a way it makes him look so young and devastatingly handsome.

You nod and move your hands up the nape of his neck again to touch his face, feeling the rough stubble on your palms. “What are you going to do to me, Aaron?”

He groans again and the sound goes straight between your thighs. He suddenly spins you both around until you have your back pressed up against the desk, nearly digging into you. Your breath is knocked out of you, from surprise or desire you don’t know, but then Aaron has his hands at the hem of your sweater. He looks at you, silently asking, and then quickly taking it off when you nod.

His hands immediately gravitate to your breasts, kneading them through the plain black bra you’re wearing. You’re almost embarrassed that it’s so plain, but clearly Aaron doesn’t mind from the way he’s staring at them, thumbs pressing with the lightest pressure against your nipples through the fabric. You feel them tighten, sighing at the soft beginnings of pleasure, and think surely he’s able to feel them even through your bra.

“Fuck,” Aaron curses, and you have never heard him curse and definitely not like this. For some reason, it makes you hotter, and you scramble to bring your hands behind you to unclasp your bra.

And then his mouth is immediately pressing hot open-mouthed kisses down your chest, between your breasts, and then onto your right nipple. You gasp and involuntarily arch your back to press closer to him, chasing his warm and wet mouth.

Aaron takes his time with you. He alternates between sucking hard to little kitten licks while his hand is rolling the other nipple between his fingers. You bite your lip in an effort to suppress your moans, trying to keep in mind that both of you are still technically at work. The thought of being caught during sex has never appealed to you, but for some reason, tonight it sends lightning down your spine. You could tell that you were already incredibly wet, probably soaking through your panties, and you spread your legs a bit to relieve some of the pressure. Aaron immediately steps in closer.

You suddenly feel the hot line of his hard cock against your leg through the several layers of clothing and it makes you moan even louder. “Please,” you gasp, nearly clawing at his back.

His mouth lets go of your nipple with an obscene noise and he’s back to pressing kisses against your neck now, soft and slow, as if giving you a second to catch your breath. “What do you want?” He murmurs, voice deep, and going straight to your wet pussy.

And there it is again— Aaron’s need to take of people. To take care of you.

You spread your legs more at the thought, feeling like you can’t breathe.

Aaron hums, stroking his hand along your thigh, and it feels like you’re burning through your slacks. “Is that you want?” The deep timbre of his voice makes you dizzy, especially when he talks to you like that; teasing, like he’s playing with you.

You nod, your words stuck in your throat. You feel the sweat start to gather at your forehead, your chest, and you can feel him staring while you’re trying to catch your breath.

“I want you to say it,” Aaron says before he’s lifting your hips up so you’re sitting at the edge of his desk. He then tucks his fingers in the waistband of your pants but makes no move to tug them down.

You glance helplessly at the door, thanking past you and the thought to close the door. You know there is a low chance of being heard since it’s almost midnight on a Friday, but again, the thought of being caught with your pants around your ankles and your bra off sends a shiver through you.

“Look at me.” And there’s a hand on your chin, pulling your attention back to the older man in front of you.

He looks absolutely wrecked despite all of his clothes being on. You didn’t notice his tie was gone, thrown somewhere in the office. Aaron is looking at you intently, eyes dark from how dilated his pupils were, and you can tell he’s just as affected by the way his chest is heaving up and down underneath his button-up.

“Tell me what you want,” Aaron whispers, his free hand running up and down your thighs. “And I’ll give it to you.”

Your throat clicks when you swallow, licking your lips, and you watch as Aaron’s eyes follow the movement. “Please eat me out,” you say breathlessly, and it almost feels stupid to say until Aaron is surging into you to press his hungry mouth against yours.

“That’s a good girl,” Aaron mumbles against your mouth and you want to melt into a puddle.

He finally pulls down your pants, helping you lift your hips up to take them off. He’s helping you take off your shoes and then suddenly, he’s kneeling on the floor in between your thighs.

You almost want to close them, suddenly feeling shy, until he has his hands on your knees to keep them apart. You can’t see his expressions from this angle, but you squirm when you feel his eyes and warm breath on your core, probably having soaked your panties right through. You wouldn’t be surprised if you soaked through your pants.

He lets go of your knee to trace your slit through your panties and you jump a bit in surprise, moaning nonetheless and grinding your hips up into his touch. You’re sensitive and have been teased for who knows how long, and secretly you’ve always liked getting dirty with some clothes being on. Blame Aaron and his penchant for suits.

And then he’s leaning in and pressing his hot hot mouth against your cunt through your panties.

You gasp, loudly, and your hands fly to the top of his head. That’s all the permission Aaron needs, it seems, as he begins by swiping his flat tongue up you before dissolving into slow languid licks. He’s not exactly touching you where you need him most, but it’s enough for now. He’s messy and you’re starting to wonder if a mix of his spit and your wetness is dripping onto his desk, onto the floor, and the thought makes your thighs shake. You know he’s doing this on purpose to make your panties wetter, and it’s so hot in a way you didn’t know was possible.

You feel him hum against you and you squirm against his hands, mewling when you feel them tighten on your thighs. You secretly hope he leaves bruises.

“Please,” you whisper. As much as you love the thought of him so desperate to get a taste of you, him willing to take what he can get through the fabric, you need more. “Aaron, please…”

He groans, something masculine and guttural, and then he’s moving your panties aside from your wet pussy and delving back in again.

His mouth feels infinitely better like this, and you can feel his tongue swiping into your opening, gathering the wetness and completely avoiding your clit. You whine, grasping at his hair a little harder, and wonder if that’s his smile you can feel against your pussy. You grind against his face, almost involuntarily, and he lets you, even enjoying it based on how he moans and moves his tongue faster, exploring.

He finally moves his tongue to your clit and your eyes nearly roll back at the pleasure wracking your body. You gasp and tighten your hold on his hair. It feels so so good, and again the thought of Aaron being so hungry for you he’s willing to do this in the office, his office. Stern and cold, highly esteemed SSA Aaron Hotchner. Your boss.

“Fuck, Aaron,” you whimper and look down at him on his knees between your thighs. His eyes are closed, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, as if he’s just at his desk filling out paperwork or working on a case. Instead, he’s focused on eating you out so intensely, on making you feel so good, he’s so hot.

He opens his eyes at that, as if he could feel you watching him, and they’re a warm golden brown, pupils blown. His hands on your thighs tighten and he shifts from where’s kneeling on the floor. You could see he’s genuinely enjoying making you come apart with his pretty mouth as he flicks your clit ever so gently. You distantly wonder if he’s hard and leaving a stain through his own dress pants.

He gives a soft suck on your clit and your hips stutter, your breath catching in your chest as you feel that familiar pressure start building at the pit of your stomach. And it’s like he can immediately tell, because of course he can, and you suddenly feel one of his thick and long fingers enter you.

“Oh,” you gasp in surprise, eyes rolling back at the primal feeling of being filled. You wish it was his cock, God do you wish, but this is enough for now.

Aaron is still looking up at you and you can tell he’s about to move away to ask if this was okay, if you’re okay, but before he can, you put your leg on top of his shoulder and pull him in. You hope that that answers his question.

And because Aaron is Aaron and can somehow read your mind, he almost imperceptibly nods and puts his mouth on your clit again. His finger starts slow, despite how wet and open you are, as if he’s still teasing you. It’s almost enough for you; the steady sucking of your clit and something thick in your pussy, if he would only move a little faster.

“Harder, please, please,” you beg, unable to stop yourself, nearly babbling. It would be embarrassing if Aaron clearly didn’t like it based on the way he pushes his finger in deeper and harder, his sucking moving into hard licks to your clit.

It was good, so so good, and so intense that you wish you could swipe all of his files and folders off the desk and lay on your back to savor it. Instead, Aaron moves his tongue faster and that tidal wave is getting stronger. You instinctively push at Aaron’s head so you could catch your breath for at least a second because you don’t want this to be over just yet.

Aaron grunts and moves his free hand to your hip, grabbing you hard to keep you in your place. He inserts another finger, and it’s almost too much but it’s also just the right amount of fullness you want at the same time. He’s pumping them in and out of your wet pussy so fast, the lewd noises filling the office, maybe even carrying downstairs.

And then he’s curling his fingers just so, flicking your clit just so, and looking at you with eyes so dark and intense that you finally, finally come.

The shout of his name dies in your throat as you throw your head back, squeezing your eyes shut, and feeling that blissful white-hot pleasure all over. Your pussy clenches around Aaron’s fingers as he keeps his fingers curled inside you. You can feel your hips stuttering, unable to make your mind up on whether to chase the feeling with his mouth or away, but Aaron makes that decision for you as his hand grips impossibly tighter and laps at your clit gently to help you ride out your orgasm.

You’re trying to catch your breath when you feel Aaron give a whisper of a kiss on your cunt, making you jump. He chuckles quietly and you blearily open your eyes to see him slowly standing up, hearing him groan when his knees pop. You don’t even have the mental capacity to make fun of him for it, especially when you see the look on his face as he steps closer between your shaking legs.

His hair is absolutely ruined thanks to your fingers and his eyes are soft with a touch of concern. There’s a near triumphant smug grin on his face, sweet dimples poking out, and the bottom half of his face is unquestionably glistening. He flicks a tongue out to lick his lips and you want him so bad.

You glance down and feel a shiver of pride and hunger when you see the line of his hard cock through his slacks, a wet spot barely visible.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and you nearly swoon at how low and deep his voice sounds. He uses his clean hand to swipe a strand of hair that’s fallen in front of your face and tuck it behind your ear. You can’t even imagine what a mess you look right now, face probably flushed and naked on his desk.

You nod, swallowing the dryness in your throat. His smile gets wider at that, if possible.

He leans in and gives you a gentle kiss and hums when you part your lips to taste yourself. The hand that’s migrated to cradle the back of your head trails down to the nape of your neck, gripping you in a way that was almost possessive. It’s hypnotizing and you feel breathless again at the thought of his hand around your throat.

You feel his cock pressing against your inner thigh, so close to where you need him the most, and you reach to fiddle with his loosened tie before trailing it down his chest. You can feel his muscles flexing, his stomach tensing, before passing his belt and pressing your palm against him. “Can I…?”

He groans against your mouth before pulling away, leaning his forehead against yours. You can imagine the veins in his throat popping as he tries not to cant his hips against you.

You’re marveling at the size of him as you run your hand up and down his length. You had a feeling he was going to be big but not this big. Your mouth waters at the thought of him between your lips, hot and heavy, or pulsating in your pussy as he comes inside of you, filling you up. You can imagine his biceps tensing, the veins in his forearms showing, and the way his eyes would close as he chased his own orgasm.

So, you’re shocked and maybe a little offended when you feel Aaron’s fingers circling your wrist to pull your hand away.

“It’s okay,” he whispers against your lips before you could say anything.

“But I want to—”

“Not here,” he says, now rubbing your wrist like an afterthought. “I wanted to take care of you first.”

You huff a laugh, starting to understand now. Something warm unfurls in your chest at that. Aaron Hotchner had always seemed like the type to want to make the woman come first, maybe even multiple times before his own release.

He steps away, adjusting himself in his pants and fixing the collar of his shirt. Your eyes follow the motions, fixated on his hands, and for some reason you’re feeling hot again.

You must have made a noise because Aaron’s head whips up at you, that smug grin that he’s not even trying to hide anymore getting wider. He leans down to pick up your pants and helps you wriggle your panties back up your legs and to your hips. His hands linger on your inner thighs as if he can’t help himself and you notice his breath getting deeper, his mouth parted.

You’re just about to slide them off again, maybe even using your arm to finally slide all the papers on his desk off when he steps away again.

“My place?” He asks lowly. His gaze lingers on your thighs, your chest, and then back up to your face. The desire and want is plain as day on his face.

As if on cue, you hear the familiar sound of a custodial cart next door in Rossi’s office. Your heart leaps in your throat and you push off the desk to scramble and put your pants and sweater back on.

Aaron laughs at that, quietly again, as if they don’t work here and they’re about to get caught doing something they’re not supposed to be doing. Which, you guess, is somewhat true.

But then Aaron is on his knees again, your shoe in one hand and his fingers circling your ankle to lift up with the other as he looks up at you. His eyes are so sincere, sweet, as if he just didn’t give you the most mind-blowing orgasm of your life here in his office.

You smile at him, feeling the fondness grow impossibly larger in your chest, and let him help you put your shoes back.

You can return the favor in his bed.

#god forgive me please im so sorry #i havent written anything in forever and then i write this in a week lol like aight...#aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotchner fanfiction #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #aaron hotchner smut #mine #aaron hotch imagine #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner x reader smut #aaron hotchner x y/n #aaron hotchner x female reader

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neveralarch · 8 months ago

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this morning I was like 'Dez I have gotten SO many kudos on sword and pylon. Clearly someone has recced me on discord and I will never find it' and then 6 hours later Dez was like 'BRO I FOUND IT' lmao

Anyway!! This art is soooo amazing, I love the line work and how much the artist clearly loves jazz haha. Those section headers are sooooo perfect, truly capture the spirit of the fic :)

shoutout to this fic for being the funniest thing ive read in ages

i have way too many sketches,, will be adding them in rbs to this post

(note. the fic doesnt have an age for soundwave, nor does any canon so i just made it up bc i wanted to include him

also note: this fic doesnt seem to be set in any specific universe, but based on the art in the fic + some descriptions im loosely taking idw/g1 designs and mashing them up to make my own life easier)

#other people's art #fanfiction written by me #transformers

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erebus0dora · 8 months ago

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this might get an accidental double publication bc the web connection fails me, but still-

-this belongs to @nile-the-empathy-cleric, the author of the gorgeous Ego Death. this might also be the first commission of mine in three years that's not a slow thing brewing for a long-term friend.

anyway. them touches and tenderness. we all need this 💜

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sohotthateveryonedied · 8 months ago

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#please i have to know if i'm just a bitch or not #you can probably guess what my opinion is on the matter lmao #just orphan the fic if you don't like it anymore/don't want to be associated with it!!!!#that's what the orphaning option is for!!!! why are you taking away MY beloved reading material!!!!!! it makes me so mad #i've started downloading and keeping a collection of my favorite fics because i can't trust them not to disappear on me #if you've written a fic i love and deleted it you'd better count your days #ao3 #archive of our own #orphaned works #deleted fics #fanfic #fanfiction #fics #batfamily #batfam #batman #fandom #i'm just gonna tag all the fandoms i've read fic for lmao #voltron #voltron legendary defender #the raven cycle #trc #aftg #all for the game #the foxhole court #yuri on ice #marvel #mcu #the avengers #young justice

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mariyekos · 1 year ago

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Okay to reblog to help sample size!

#erurandomness #erubabbles #fanfiction #fanfic #I have a few longfics I've come to realize I'll probably never finish #but they have like 50k words and maybe people would enjoy the beginning?#and i *want* to finish them. I just don't know if I'll ever get that spark back that'll let me finish. it's frustrating #my perfectionism has kind of paralyzed me and a mix of that and drifting fandoms has me wondering #would people like it if i shared them so they could experience what's been written? or is it not worth it if they won't be updated?#fic tag

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saltcxrcle · 5 months ago

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drunken words ↼ d. winchester

summary: drunk you isn't the best at keeping their mouth shut

pairings: dean winchester x reader, dean winchester x gn! reader, platonic sam winchester x reader

requested: yes/no: by @traiitorjoe; thank you for sending your request!

word count: 3.0K

warnings: no use of 'y/n', none really, some cursing, a little bit of fluff, sam being a meddling little shit, some angst, kinda edited

a/n: i got this request in july and i felt so bad for having put it off for so long but here we have it! there is a potential for a pt.2 so if anyone wants that lmk lol

but enjoy the fic! please like, comment, and reblog!! your feedback fuels me!

[here's my taglist; read rules before sending in an ask]

𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵

Dealing with the Winchesters always felt like a Herculean task when you would run into them while you were on a hunt. The first time you ran into them was when they barged into the farmhouse that you were staking out for a nest of vampires. They went in, guns blazing, and you cursed them out under your breath as you hurriedly left the hiding spot you were in and rushed into the nest to help them clean out.

It was safe to say that they were surprised and confused by your anger when you guys had killed all of the vamps. You didn’t recognize them at first when they first ran into the farmhouse, but now that you were standing there and really looking at them, you instantly knew that these were the infamous Winchester brothers you’d heard from Bobby and other hunters.

Regardless of who they were, you were furious that they had messed up the hunt that you were on, and they were on the receiving end of your fury while they looked at you dumbfounded. After you were done yelling at them, you left the farmhouse fuming and decided to leave them with the cleanup job.

The brothers were so confused by you that they didn’t even think to ask for your name. They also were slightly scared by your fury, and they failed to realize that you clearly knew who they were, but they had no idea who you were, only that they had taken over your hunt and were really mad about it. Dean only hoped that he wouldn’t run into you ever again.

But as fate was a fickle thing, you would run into the brothers on your next hunt in a small town in Oregon, where a witch was terrorizing the men of the town, and it just so happened that you had arrived at the station the same time they did. You had to play along with them until you got the information you needed, and then when you tried to leave the station before them, a hand slammed your door before you could get into your car.

You turned around to be met with emerald green eyes filled with irritation and thinly veiled curiosity.

“Did you need something Winchester?” You said with a scowl etched into your face.

Dean scoffed as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah, answers. Who the hell are you?”

“What’s it matter to you?”

“Because you’re a hunter and we could use some help on this case.” Sam interjected, and your eyes were ripped away from the man in front of you. You almost forgot about the taller Winchester that was lingering behind Dean.

You raised an eyebrow at Sam while Dean’s head jerked over his shoulder and glared at his brother. Sam stared back at his brother with raised brows, sending him a look that said, ‘What? It doesn’t hurt to ask.’

“I don’t think your brother here is keen on working with me.”

“You’re damn right I’m not. You went off on us for no reason and left us to clean up.”

You couldn’t help but smirk at the thought of them cleaning up the plethora of severed heads and bodies from that farmhouse. But you ignored Dean's words as you contemplated the offer Sam was proposing.

“Fine I’ll help, but you’ll have to follow my lead on this one.”

Sam nodded, agreeing with you, and sent you a dimpled smile.

Dean opened his mouth to protest but was cut off by you slicing the air with your hand in front of his face.

“Zip it Winchester, either you listen to me or I leave you high and dry on this hunt.” You waved around the copy of the case file that you convinced the Sheriff to give you before leaving the station.

Dean all but glared at you and stomped towards the black Chevy Impala that was parked down the street. You couldn’t help but smirk at Dean’s grumpy attitude, and Sam told you which motel they were staying in and followed them to it.

With three heads instead of one (more like two since Dean barely did any research and stuck you and Sam with it), you guys found the witch in no time and disposed of her swiftly. You had to admit that working with the brothers was more manageable than working on your own. But you knew that this had to be a one-off occurrence because you had heard about all of the craziness that surrounded the Winchesters. You were not keen on being pulled into any of it.

Once the hunt was over, Sam gave you his number and told you to call if you needed help or vice versa. You took it to be polite, but you knew that you weren’t going to call them unless your life depended on it. The three of you went your separate ways before Destiny decided to play her games, and somehow, you ended up working on most of the hunts the brothers were working on.

It’s like some higher power wanted you to work the Winchesters against your better wishes. Alas, you ended up working with them every time because you couldn’t resist Sam Winchester’s pleading puppy dog eyes. But you got on quite well with Sam, and he slowly became a good friend of yours.

But your relationship with Dean, on the other hand… Well, let’s just say you had a mutual hatred for each other. You guys practically fought like cats and dogs anytime you interacted, and the two of you couldn’t help but let snide comments leave your lips each time the other was wrong or messed up. Both of you bickered like an old married couple that should have divorced a long time ago, so much so that Sam had to be the mediator constantly if you were to work with the brothers. If he hadn’t, he wasn’t sure if you were either going to throw a punch or fuck each other.

Dean Winchester is an incredibly infuriating man, and you hated that you found him attractive. It wasn’t lost on you that both of the brothers were hot, like they should be on the cover of a magazine hot, but there was something about Dean that drew you to him more. You didn’t want him to know that, so you hid your attraction for him through your sarcastic demeanor. Eventually, Sam had enough of your bickering that held so much sexual tension that he locked the two of you in the motel room he and Dean were sharing until the two of you could have a civil conversation.

Sam had left the two of you for a couple of hours. He was half expecting to find the two of you naked in Dean’s bed, but when he unlocked the door, he saw the two of you on separate beds and watching a random movie that was playing on the TV in the room.

In the time that Sam was gone, you guys had bickered and gotten in each other’s faces, but you eventually admitted that it was tiring to keep up the fact that you didn’t exactly hate Dean since the moment you met him and to your surprise, he admitted the same thing. After that, you guys sat on separate beds, finding some common ground between the two of you, and watched whatever was on the TV.

After that incident, the two of you still argued like a married couple, but there wasn’t any heat behind your words, and it turned into friendly banter between you and the older Winchester. Months went by, and you found yourself as the unofficial third partner to the brothers, accompanying them on the majority of the hunts that they picked up.

You didn’t know how it happened, but to your utter shock and horror, along the way of becoming friends with Dean Winchester, you developed feelings for him. Of course, you had no idea when you started to feel like this around Dean. Sam was perceptive, caught onto your change in behavior, and had basically interrogated you when he saw you glare at the woman Dean decided to take home that night, trying to ignore the stinging sensation in your chest as he left the bar the three of you were at.

You had vehemently denied that you felt anything for Dean, but all Sam said in response was a shit-eating grin and gave you a look that said, ‘Yeah, you’re lying, and I know it.’

Once Sam had figured out that you liked his brother, he stopped at nothing to leave the two of you alone in hopes that you’d put on your big kid pants and admit your feelings towards him (spoiler alert, you never did). As much as you loved Sam, you honestly wanted to punch him in the face every time he urged you to tell Dean about your feelings.

You knew that Dean wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of guy, and you definitely knew that he wasn’t one for love or relationships, as evident with the women he picked up at bars after successful hunts. Did your heart clench any time you saw the satisfied smirk on his face the morning after the night out at the bar? You wouldn’t admit it to anyone but yourself, but yeah, it did.

Now, after a successful hunt, you and the Winchesters found yourselves at the bar across the street from the motel you were staying in. The three of you were at a booth at the corner of the bar, and you had gotten the first round of drinks for each of you. But when Dean volunteered to grab the third round (Sam had gotten the second one), Sam said he was turning in for the night and shot you a sly smile, and you knew exactly what he meant by it. You glared at him briefly before telling him goodnight through gritted teeth (Dean had seen this interaction between you and his brother and was confused by it but brushed it off).

Sam left, and Dean turned to you. “Still want a drink?” He asked.

You nodded in response, and Dean shot you a small smile before his knuckles knocked on the table, and he made his way toward the bar. A couple of minutes had passed, and Dean wasn’t back from the bar. You looked up from your empty glass to see him being chatted up by a woman dressed to the nines, and clearly, Dean was into her.

You let out a harsh breath before shaking your head, getting up from the booth, heading to the opposite side of the bar Dean was at, and ordering a vodka soda. You downed in quickly and told the bartender to keep the drinks coming. You didn’t know how many you had until you heard a gruff voice telling the bartender to give you water instead of another drink. You could vaguely recognize Dean’s voice through your drunken haze.

You turned around in your seat to see Dean right next to you with furrowed brows. “You alright there, kid?”

Dean hadn’t seen you this drunk before, so he was half concerned but also half amused by the cute pout you had on your face.

“M’not a kid.” You slurred out, irritated. You hated the nickname that Dean had given you; you weren’t much younger than Dean, you were the same age as Sam.

“Then why are you pouting like you didn’t get the candy you asked for?” Dean asked, his tone amused.

You couldn’t help but scowl at him and look around for the woman he was talking to earlier. “Where’s the girl-*hiccup* you were talking to?” You questioned, dazed.

Dean’s face had scrunched up. “Turns out she plays for the same team.” He muttered lowly, but you managed to hear it through the bar chatter.

You couldn’t help but burst out in drunken giggles at Dean’s failed attempt to take someone home. Dean looked at you, slightly embarrassed, but couldn’t help but smile at the sound of your laughter.

“Okay, we should probably get you back to your room.” Dean coaxed you off of the bar stool you were sitting on before paying for the tabs and leading you out of the bar. Dean had tucked you into his side as you walked on wobbly legs across the street to the motel.

Once you reached your room (which was coincidentally right next to the boys’ room). Dean asked where you had your key. You were leaning into Dean, so his question was spoken into your ear quietly, and it sent a shiver down your spine.

“M’back pocket.” You mumbled out.

You didn’t see this as your eyes were closed as you rested your head against his shoulder, but his eyes widened at the realization that he’d have to grab it from your jeans pocket.

“If you remember this in the morning, please don’t punch me, I swear I wasn’t trying to cop a feel.” He had muttered something else under his breath, but you were too out of it to notice what he said.

Dean managed to get your room key out of your pocket and unlocked your door. He led the two of you inside, and when you saw your bed, you quickly ripped yourself from Dean’s embrace and fell face-first into bed, uncaring if you were still in jeans.

Dean chuckled at you, and you looked up at him with a pout. “Are you laughing at me?”

He shook his head, trying to stifle his amusement. “No, of course not.”

You squinted suspiciously at him before sitting up and pawing at your combat boots. You were fumbling with the laces until you felt a warm hand cover yours. You looked up and found Dean kneeling on the floor in front of you. You couldn’t help but stare at him as he untied your boots for you and pulled them off of your feet.

“You’re pretty.” You couldn’t help but blurt out drunkenly.

Dean laughed, his green eyes sparkling with mirth. “Maybe I should get you drunk often, maybe you’ll compliment me more.” He sent you one of his smug smirks before standing up and heading toward the small kitchenette in your room.

He filled a glass with water before heading to the bathroom. He grabbed some aspirin that was stored in the medicine cabinet (you had no idea that he knew where you stored your painkillers). He came over to the bed with the water and painkillers and set them on the nightstand.

As he was bustling around your room, you had managed to wiggle off your jeans and get underneath the covers of the bed. You looked at Dean underneath the warm lighting of the lamp that illuminated the room. His freckles were prominent in this lighting, and you couldn’t help but stare at his side profile.

Dean noticed your intense gaze on him and smirked down at you after setting the water and aspirin on your nightstand. “See something you like?” He gently teased. Dean felt his hand twitch, trying to resist the temptation to brush back the stray hairs on your forehead.

“Mhm, I like your face.” You smiled in a drunken bliss before your eyes fluttered. “I like you a lot actually.” You said before you felt the pull of sleep tug at your eyes.

Your eyes shut, and your breathing evened out as you succumbed to sleep, leaving Dean standing in shock next to you. He looked down at your sleeping form before shaking his head. He’d deny the fact he felt his heartbeat quicken at your drunken admission. Dean quickly left your room and entered his shared room with Sam.

Lucky for him, Sam was sound asleep in his bed, and Dean quickly got ready for bed, trying to ignore the fact you may or may not have shared the same feelings as he did.

You woke up with a groan. Your head was pounding. You saw through your bleary eyes that there were some painkillers left out with a glass of water right next to them on your nightstand. You sat up as quickly as you could and grabbed the things off the nightstand. You downed some of the water before taking the aspirin and then drinking the rest of the water.

You put the glass back on the nightstand before crawling back under the covers, wanting to let the ache in your head subside slightly before getting ready for the day. But fate was not on your side because pounding came from your door, making pain shoot through your head, and Dean waltzed into your room with a bag of food and a wide smirk on his face.

“Rise and shine, kid!” He said enthusiastically.

You shot up from your spot on the bed and glared at him. “I hate you. And stop calling me kid.”

“Well, that’s not what you said last night.” Dean smirked knowingly.

Your heart dropped to your stomach; what the hell did you say last night? “What do you mean?”

Dean placed the food on the table before leaning on its edge. “Do you not remember what you said last night?”

You shook your head. “Nope. Last thing I remember was you leading me out of the bar.”

Dean's smirk faltered. He wasn’t expecting that. “You don’t remember anything at all after that?”

“No. Why did I say anything important?”

Dean cleared his throat, trying to seem nonchalant and hide what he was actually feeling. He shook his head.

“Uh, no. But I got you some grub, we’re gonna head out in 30 so be ready then.” He said stiffly before leaving the room. Not looking at you once before the door closed with a click.

You stared at the door, confused. That was probably the most awkward Dean had ever been around you. But you shook it off and decided to pack up and eat the breakfast Dean got you.

You’d figure out what you said to Dean later.

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neveralarch · 7 months ago

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Dez and I spent the last month writing a goddamn novella, and we're starting to post it now. You should check it out!

Red Sun, Autumn Chill Chapter 1 of 5 Fandom: Naruto Rating: adult Characters: Kakashi/Gai Chapter wordcount: 7,300ish Summary: The delegation from Iwagakure arrives in Konoha on a cold, misty morning. It carries with it wedding gifts, guests, and a man promised to marry Hatake Kakashi. Political marriage in the shinobi world has its own set of duties and expectations, its difficult conflicted loyalties. But Maito Gai has been obsessed with Kakashi since they were twelve years old. If anyone could make this work, surely it's them.

#kakagai #fanfiction written by me #naruto

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goatunderthebridge · 5 months ago

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Tendou knew that Ushijima took things in the literal sense. He would misunderstand phrases, take idioms for gospel, and flounder at abstract metaphors. Tendou knew all of that, but he hadn't exactly thought about what extent that literalness would take.

When Tendou had returned back from visiting his family in France, he hugged Ushijima tightly, winding them both. When Ushijima asked why he did it, Tendou declared that was what people did when they missed someone. It was a passing phrase, just one moment out of many that Tendou had spent explaining to Ushijima something small and obscure and not meant to be taken seriously at all. He should've known better than that. Ushijima took everything seriously.

Tendou had only been off sick for a few days with a cold. He'd been resigned to his bed until he fully recovered, not chancing passing it on to the team. But he had only stepped a couple feet into the Shiratorizawa gym before someone had grabbed him and wrapped him tightly in a hug, squeezing the frail bit of life barely left in him.

Tendou saw a flash of dark green hair and tanned skin, putting two and two together. He patted Ushijima's back as best he could with his restrained arms, "Uh, bud? What are you doing?"

"This is what people do when they have missed someone," Ushijima returns flatly, his arms still wrapped tightly around Tendou. "I have missed you."

Heat creeps onto Tendou's face and he's glad at that moment, as the other boys start to crowd around them and question what they're doing, that they can't see his face as he lets it fall into the crook of Ushijima's neck.

"I've missed you too, bud." Tendou mumbles back with a smile.

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#hq #ushiten #haikyuu ships #tendou satori #ushijima wakatoshi #ushijima x tendou #haikyuu fanfiction #i love small stories #been thinking about this one for a couple days and couldn't decide who would hug who without warning #i just really really like ushijima being cute okay im only human let me have this #also this was written on my break from coding for uni so pls know i was v sleepy writing this

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fullsunalicia · 7 months ago

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gif made by @dojaejung ! all credits to @dojaejung !

roses (m.) | jeong jaehyun

“it’s killing me to know there’s someone else out there buying you / roses, roses” OR where jung jaehyun is pathetic enough to be yearning after his beautiful ex-girlfriend, whom he reconnects with after awkwardly crashing her date with a new potential lover.

jeong jaehyun x ex-girlfriend! reader

warnings: some allusions to stalking and online harassment, some make-outage, oral (fem. receiving), some exhibitionism ig?????, some cussing, jaehyun is EXTREMELY down bad (he who yearns is he who earns amirite yall), svt as side characters for my caratzen agenda, also i’m still an awkward writer (in my opinion) so that warrants its own warning

This is why Jaehyun despises leaving his apartment.

For the first time in weeks, Doyoung and Taeyong, in their combined nerdy best friends power, have managed to make him go outside again. Although it’s the middle of the winter, each day inching closer to Christmas day, the bustling city is filled with people enjoying themselves despite the sub-zero temperatures. It makes him sick, really. Not people in general, for sure, but the sight of couples swarming about, their happy faces making sure every single person’s envious gaze is following them until they disappear around the corner.

Winter is sickening. Winter makes people too cozy, too cuddly, too loving. When spring comes, that love melts away, fleeting as it was. It dims out like the warm fire you stoke in the evening as you gather with your loved ones, in the morning long gone and forgotten with the loss of the guests. Jaehyun hates it. His friends knows he hates it.

So did you.

As Doyoung and Taeyong keep him in their middle, holding on to his arm on each sides as if they were old aunts bickering away, he reminisces about your shared hatred of the cold. You had hated snow, most of all, he remembers as he watches the thick, cold flakes swirl around in the air. It leaves a mist on the people passing by him, painting them in the lovely shades of the cold. Rosy cheeks, white smiling teeth, blue fingertips. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine it’s you clinging to him again, complaining loudly about the weather, scared of falling to the ground. You had always been incredibly clumsy, and unashamedly loud. Every passerby could not help but smile at your antics, but none smiled wider than the man you had wrapped around your littlest finger; Jaehyun, who had always stared at you instead of ahead. Jaehyun, who in the end always made you guys fall because he wasn’t concentrating on walking, he was concentrating on you.

You, the single star in his solar system he was orbitting around. He had felt himself collapsing, folding around you, as if he could ingrain himself in your existence in the very same manner you had immortalized yourself in his soul. How pathetic you had left him.

“Hey, earth to Jae! You’re not seriously upset we made you leave the house, right?” Taeyong’s hand forces itself into Jaehyun’s periphery as he waves it infront of Jaehyun’s face, trying to gain the man’s attention. Every finger was perfectly manicured, the tell-tale rings that signified Taeyong snapping Jaehyun out of his daydreams. Mentioned friend looks worried, but not regretful. “We were beginning to think you had fallen asleep in there, like some bear. You shouldn’t hibernate.”

“But bears got it so right. It’s so much better to sleep the winter away.” Jaehyun sounds exhausted, almost childish. He knew he was a grown man, not a teenager mooning over his first love. But it certainly felt like he had become the former. That was your effect.

“Dude.” Doyoung grasps his shoulder then, boring his gaze into Jaehyun’s face. He had been dreading that, actually; it’s hard to act like a complaining child when Doyoung makes you face yourself just like that. Almost unconsciously, Jaehyun straightens up. It’s almost like facing your mother, and he’s trying to avoid Doyoung’s fussing. “It’s been almost a year. I hate to be the one to be saying this, but you have to let it go at some point, man.”

You have to let it go at some point. Doyoung’s right, of course, but Jaehyun hasn’t yet reached that point of being reasonable. It’s not like the five stages of grief. Jaehyun is in the awkward process of trying to understand what has actually happened to him; why your relationship came to an end, why you were so kind to him despite it all, how you had finally cut him off. No one really knows why you did it, least of all Jaehyun. As you had broke it off with him after dropping him off at the airport before he flew to the first stop of his current world tour, there wasn’t exactly time to ask questions.

You had given him a letter and apologized (seriously, so not cool to explain in a letter just so you didn’t need to face him), and just as soon as the flight touched down at his destination and his phone had regained connection to his cellular data, you had changed your number, deleted your socials and disappeared from his life.

(Not like he immediately found you again when you re-debuted on social media. Johnny, as a true best friend, has forced him to limit looking at your instagram account to once a week, but how will Johnny know if he does it more? No one needs to know. Jaehyun would lose face if even anyone knew how much he misses you.)

Jaehyun lowers his eyes then, unable to keep looking at Doyoung. “Let go. Yeah.”

Doyoung and Taeyong exchange a worried gaze at that, before nudging him to a new direction. Their footsteps leave soft white traces, disappearing as quickly as they are made as fresh snow falls. “I got just the thing to cheer you up,” Taeyong quips then, and when he smiles at Jaehyun in an attempt to comfort him, Jaehyun finds the strength to smile back. Those are his friends, after all. If he weren’t so detached from his emotions, he’d find himself moved by their sincerity; his silly friends that loved and cared for him despite his habits and his weird coping methods. They didn’t judge when he sent them new song lyrics he had written in the middle of the night because the memory of you is still haunting him, scaring him off sleep because the comfort he gains from dreaming of you is as addicting as chasing liquor. They had let him ruminate in his apartment for as long as possible. It was time to face the world properly now. “Hot cocoa and waffles?”

Jaehyun snorted. “Like children?”

“Like children,” Taeyoung announces, his voice too earnest for the statement. Doyoung laughs, and then it’s difficult to not join in. Taeyong grins, happy to have drawn that reaction out of them. For the moment, Jaehyun feels normal again, and he offers to buy the waffles as Doyoung and Taeyong line up to buy the hot cocoa.

That’s the same moment where Jaehyun immediately regrets having left the house.

The sight of you physically knocks the breath of his lungs. For just a second, just seeing your face erases the feeling of all the pain that had been wrenching at his heartstrings, your beauty so all-encompassing it stuns him into silence. The cold season has kissed your face in the most pretty way - as you throw your head back in laughter, your (incredibly tempting) lips curve into his favorite smile of yours, the smile that has to be stolen out of you, so surprised by something that you laugh involuntarily. Honest. And earnest.

And beautiful.

It’s almost beautiful enough to make him not acknowledge the other man that you are gifting it to.

Jaehyun forces himself not to look, the effort incredible. He does not want to see who you have replaced him with, he really doesn’t, truly not, but then the dizzy envy makes him look so that he can bombard the man with death threats in his mind. Not that it matters. He could have been anyone, anyone at all. What did it matter if that was someone he knew or someone unknown, when the most damning thing about the situation was that it wasn’t him?

When he looks back at you to keep analyzing whether you like this man a lot, Jaehyun has come to the startled realization that you have noticed him, aswell. Your face has dropped, the shock painted over your face like an ill-fitting mask. “Jaehyun?” you say, the sweet voice carried over to him in the wind, and his knees almost buckle. (Jesus Christ, he’s a grown man.) Your partner notices, looking up to see whom you’re addressing, and Jaehyun’s nonchalant reaction to the irrelevance of the man’s identity disappears instantaneously.

Fuck you, he thinks hard at the dude, as if the sheer mental strength of his thoughts could reach him, for actually looking gorgeous. Fucking hell.

“Jeong Jaehyun?” You call again, robbing him off the opportunity to maybe pretend he hadn’t heard you. He forces himself to move forward.

“You know each other?” the guy asks then, and Jaehyun thinks to himself, No, idiot, I am the stalker that’s been breaking into her apartment and leaving her letters. But then he remembers how Johnny has admonished him for doing the social media equivalent and how often he visits your socials just for a glance at you, and the thought almost immediately sobers him up. “Jeong Jaehyun,” he introduces himself then, reaching out his hand to shake the other man’s, even though he’d rather bite it off. “We were…”

“Acquaintances,” you interrupt him almost immediately. The smile you sport now is nervous, to the untrained eye flawless. But Jaehyun knows every inch of your soul, and the look in your eyes pleads him not to acknowledge it. “Jaehyun used to be really close to my brother. You’ve met my brother, right?”

“Oh, Seokmin, right?” The stranger’s eye glint in recognition. “That means you must be cool, man. Anyone who’s in Seokmin’s good cards is good in mine. My name’s Junseo.”

“Nice to meet you, Junseo,” he makes himself speak, although the words taste like coal in his mouth, turning ashy as he pronounces them. He’s never been a good liar, always careful about choosing his words, but then, he’s never been in the situation where had to meet the lover that was going to replace him in your heart. He turns to you, your lovely face ripping into him. You stare back as if you are aware of the effort it takes him to remain friendly. You don’t look like you enjoy inflicting this havoc upon him, but ever since that day, he doesn’t truly know what you are capable of. “It was nice to see you,” he tells you, turning away as soon as the words leave his lips.

He never hears your “Jae”, the sound ripped out of you like an old instinct.

jaehyun

could you maybe at least warn me that your sister is back in town

dk 😁

i didnt even know she was

can you let her know to bring milk to mom’s house we ran out this morning

jaehyun

. . .

no dk i cannot i almost collapsed when i saw her

can you say hello to your mom tho

Jaehyun drops the phone on the couch, the interaction having soured his mood just as much as the meeting with you. Seokmin was cool, and a really good friend, although a bit clueless. He had been firm in his support for Jaehyun, not picking sides, but not abandoning their friendship either, and had been one of the friends who had dragged him out for dinner once a week ever since the break-up to make sure Jaehyun was actually eating. Jaehyun doesn’t even think this happened to your dismay. You were way too nice, and even your fucking break-up letter had been kind, even though it hadn’t been enough to wipe the blank look in his eyes as he had read it.

“Okay, so that may have went worse than we thought,” Taeyong proclaims, the hot cocoa still steaming in his hand. Even though they had technically paid for the cup as a loan, taking it back home felt like stealing. Jaehyun couldn’t find it in himself to care. He was staring at the ceiling, looking at no one. “But hey, at least we found out who the mystery guy on her instagram was!”

Johnny, who had let himself into the apartment while they were gone, perked up at that. Very aware of your instagram due to Jaehyun’s influence, he knew that there had been an odd silhouette in your instagram story the past few weeks, almost a soft-launch and almost not. There had been theories whether the mystery guy had been a new lover. Jaehyun had almost thrown up when Mark had suggested the idea. “You did? She was with a man?”

“Yeah, Junseo what’s-his-name. Didn’t give a last name, though.” Doyoung sounds concentrated, probably too focussed on not breaking Jaehyun’s new coffee machine. “Jaehyun, coffee?”

“No,” Jaehyun deadpans. “I want death.”

The entire room groans at that. “Fresh out of death, dude,” Johnny tells him, bowing over the couch to throw a blanket over where Jaehyun was laying and Mark had fallen asleep. Johnny was his best friend in the entire world, and very used to Jaehyun’s antics. Throughout it all(the acclimatization to the celebrity life, the growing into a fully formed and actualized person in the public eye, the stabbing ache of heartbreak), Johnny had become a brother to him. It was Johnny’s hand pulling him along through life, his ears that were entrusted with every joy and worry in Jaehyun’s mind, his kindness that kept Jaehyun standing sometimes. “It’s coffee or nothing,” he continues after ensuring both men on the couch were covered with the blanket. And then, as he turns back to Doyoung: “Make him some coffee. He hasn’t touched his cocoa.”

The quiet bickering of his friends fade away then, forcing him to come to terms with what has happened. Seeing your face again felt like being struck down by God, to put it in blasphemous terms. You had always been the most beautiful person to him, including both his preference that came from loving you and his attraction to people in general. Jaehyun hadn’t been the kind of man to have an exact type before meeting you, but now he looks for you in every smile, every fluttering lash, in every face he meets. Looking for the traces of where your ancestors had painted their magic, the overarching connection between several generations, the hand reaching across time. Whoever crafted you had taken his time to ensure every single detail, and the love that had flowed into the shaping of you glinted across every feature. Having been starved of seeing you, this interaction had thrown him into cold water face first. Even the memory stung.

You hadn’t looked bothered to see him. If anything, you had been as sweet as always, even though you hadn’t expected to see him. He had thought being gone from your side had hurt, but seeing that Junseo was making him sick to the stomach. It was his job to make you laugh like that. It was his duty to ensure your happiness. To think of that fool doing it in his stead made him spark up with a fury that he had long forgotten, the feeling so unfamiliar it made him reach inside those spaces inside himself that he had abandoned for so long. During the separation every emotion had come to him so dull and muted - happiness, sadness, surprise, anger. But as if they had never left him, Jaehyun recognized that he was jealous.

Awfully jealous.

So that was the next step of Jaehyun’s alternative five stages of grief process. Instead of coming to terms with the ephemeral nature of his relationship with you, he’s pining over the one woman he cannot have. He raises his hands to cover his face, his fingers shaking - it’s crazy, how you unravel him. It’s been eight months and Jaehyun is still willing to go on his knees to beg just to make sure you stop seeing anyone else.

(At that point, he was very unaware of how near in the future that was going to happen.)

“Hey, dude.” Jaehyun is snapped out of his thoughts by the raspy voice of one Mark Lee. He lowers his hands to see Mark peaking his head out of the blanket, hair completely ruined from tossing and turning in his sleep, looking just like the lion that his friends affectionately nickname him as. Their friends are still bickering in the kitchen, arguing about how to handle the coffee machine properly, with Doyoung’s voice cutting through the others. “You alright over there?”

Jaehyun clears his voice. He suddenly feels glad that Mark doesn’t know yet that he’s seen you, as he doesn’t want to burden Mark with his worries. He’s only a little younger, but he’s the closest thing to a younger sibling Jaehyun has, and he treasures him to the point where he often wants to shield him from the shit that Jaehyun has going on. “Yeah, all good. Why did you wake up? Not sleepy anymore?”

“Your phone has been going off like crazy.” Mark points at the aforementioned phone before yawning. As Jaehyun reaches for the device, he sits up and looks into the kitchen from the vantage point he has of the kitchen. The screen lights up after a few quick taps, and Mark asks: “Something important? Sounds like someone’s spamming you.”

dk 😁

not to be the bearer of bad news but mom wants to have you over for dinner on saturday

😭 maybe i shouldnt have delivered your greetings bro

i think my sister has a date on that evening tho so maybe nothing will happen?????

i mean you can say no but you know damn well my mom loves you (because you kiss up to her) so

yeah

i get if you dont want to

Jaehyun blinks. Several times. Then, he drops his face into his hands again, sighing so loudly that even Mark seems astonished.

It seems like you’re not gonna leave his mind anytime soon.

The first time Jaehyun had met you, you had still been a junior in college.

He’s always known you existed, of course - the pretty-faced little sister that was off-limits to anyone, who had the most embarrassing haircut when she was still in middle school, who liked to receive flowers for her birthday instead of gifts. Seokmin doesn’t talk about you often, but when he does, there’s a gentle smile etched on his face that seems like the most jarring contrast to the way he bickers and fights with you in person. Jaehyun couldn’t conjure an image of you, but when he thought of your name, it filled Jaehyun’s mind with a sweet dream. He had been missing you in his heart before he had even met you, the soft tug of a red string around his littlest finger.

The request had been hastily asked and innocent in nature. Pick up my sister, please? An unusual request, as Seokmin never introduced his sister to anyone for your own privacy, but it didn’t bother Jaehyun to do it, especially since DK was a very good friend. You had been incredibly drunk, and uncomfortable at a party, and called for the person you trust most in the world. DK on the other hand, drunk out of his own mind at an entirely different party in his own dorm shared with his bandmates, had called a friend he knew he could entrust with the safety of his littlest sister.

Completely hammered and wobbling on your entirely too high heels, you had gladly clung to Jaehyun’s arm after realizing he had been the savior your brother had sent you. Your introduction came out loud and clear, and you had enunciated every syllable to make sure he heard it. When he correctly repeated the name back to you to ensure he remembered it, a dazzling smile had split across your lips in the cutest way possible. It had made his heart jump in a deliciously agonizing way.

“Can you walk?” he had asked you then, pointing down at your monstrous heels. He had truth be told been incredibly impressed with the way you had managed to leave the front porch of the party house, even though every step enunciated that you were incredibly intoxicated. You had waved off his worry and beamed at him with the innocent happiness only a drunk person could exude, completely free from all wordly burdens. “Don’t worry!” you told him, your voice as melodious as it was pleasing. “I’ve walked in worse heels! And I’m not even that drunk!”

Jaehyun had no intention of questioning you, but the exclamation did make him laugh. He had been awkward about the interaction the entire time he had driven here. Would you be able to even feel comfortable with him? What if you guys didn’t speak about anything? But your behavior had loosened up the tension inside his chest, and he found himself relaxing under your hold, gently guiding you back to his car. Your grip was tight, but not painful, and you had hooked your arm around his to keep close to him in a way that wasn’t entirely unwelcome to him. He had not expected to warm up to you so quickly. “So you’re able to hold your liquor? You must not actually be related to DK then. The guy can’t hold his liquor for shit.”

The joke tugged a surprised laugh out of you. It was a nice sound, the genuineness of it making a smile form around Jaehyun’s lips. So open, so friendly, so extroverted - so incredibly different from him, and yet a simple laugh from you made Jaehyun entranced with the existence of you. He wanted to relish the sound, making him wrap his fingers around the keys in his pockets to ensure they wouldn’t rattle when he pulled them out. “I’m sure he’s got that from mom,” you had explained to him while snickering, momentarily letting go from him as he opened the door for you. After clambering in and pulling the door shut, he had walked around the car to climb in himself. The door clicked shut. “I’m my father’s daughter through and through. We used to place bets at New Year’s parties with the family how much time it would take for mom to crash out after a single bottle of champagne.”

“And?” he asks. The engine of the car sprung to life with a simple press of a button, idling quietly while Jaehyun had put on his seatbelt. “Did you win the bet?”

Your expression in the rearview mirror was smug when Jaehyun checked his surroundings in it, pulling out of the parking space he had found near the house the party was in. “I was fifty bucks richer about half an hour later.”

Jaehyun couldn’t help but laugh - at your behavior, your teasing little remarks, the way you hiccuped before laughing because you were a little liar that couldn’t hold their liquor. By the time he had reached DK’s apartment building, where you had requested to be dropped off because you wanted to sleep over at your brother’s, your drunkenness had made you drowsy. Without even thinking about it, you had climbed over the console to envelop Jaehyun in a hug, shocking him to the core. Your floral perfume had been dizzying, but the near proximity of you had almost made him drunk himself. Jaehyun was an idol under the strict gaze of both his employer and his supporters. His resulting touch-starvation had made him grasp your soft waist with both hands, and he closed his eyes to soak in the warmth of your touch. It was startingly intimate. “Thank you for bringing me home,” you had murmured against his shoulder, momentarily resting your head on it, as if it belonged there - as if you had been made to be held by him. You lined up perfectly, like puzzle pieces, and for a moment, Jaehyun had felt complete in a way that made him question himself was my heart always hollow of you?

When you pulled back with your bright smile and your hazy eyes, a pink blush had dusted across Jaehyun’s cheeks that he prayed you hadn’t noticed. “You’re super duper nice,” you proclaimed then, not fully retracting from where you were leaning on his body. Not pushing his hands away, either. “And it’s way more fun to ride in your car than in Jeonghan’s. You drive like a responsible adult.”

“Are you saying Jeonghan doesn’t drive like a responsible adult?”

“I’m not sure he knows what that is.” Giggling, you untangled yourself from him, startling Jaehyun with the immediate ache for you. Get a grip, he thought to himself. Acting like a teenage virgin. “And I should know!” you enunciated. “The idiot tried teaching me how to drive. If DK hadn’t put an end to that, I would have never gotten my driver’s license.”

Jaehyun, still reeling from the affection you had graced him with, smiled shyly at that. “Well, I’m glad to have brought you home safe, like the responsible adult I am. Can you make it up on your own?”

You “mhm”ed loudly, noisily maneuvring yourself out of the car. Jaehyun winced quietly when the heels of your shoes clacked against the pavement harshly, almost sure one had broken. But you had straightened up with a grin, waving stupidly, shouting loud “thank-you”s and “get home safe!”s as he watched you walk into the apartment complex, running into your drunk brother and almost-brothers (as his bandmates liked to title themselves as, loving you like you were one of their own).

He had sat and waited for a long time for his erratic heart to slow down again. You were a miracle he hadn’t been waiting for, like a sudden blessing after a fervent prayer. He went to sleep thinking of your name, finally being able to connect it with a face, the yearning following him into his dreams.

It was that same yearning that woke him up in the middle of the night now, reaching for the empty bedside, remembering where you were.

Remembering that you weren’t reaching for him anymore, no matter how much you had loved him.

Jaehyun cleans up nicely, when he wants to. When he checks his reflection in the camera app one last time before ringing the door, he almost doesn’t recognize himself. Johnny’s girlfriend had helped him put on a little bit of make-up to cover the black shadows under his eyes and wished him luck, although he wasn’t sure what he needed the luck for. To see you? Not to see you? The question had been eating away at him on the way here, making his hands sweat to the point that the driver’s wheel had looked kind of disgusting afterwards. He can’t shake the cold fear that accompanies the thought of you these days. The desire to be in your presence was a knife turning in his guts, so sharp that even the pain seemed more welcome than another day without you. As he closes his eyes, he imagines you opening the door, welcoming him home, kissing all the exhaustion away. But when the door opens up after knocking at it, the sweet face of your mother receives him.

Not that the sight isn’t welcome. Jaehyun sees his mother often enough to not have to miss her, but the need for a motherly presence never truly leaves you, no matter how old you are. There is a part of him that will always be a child, reaching for his parents’ hands, knowing he will be safe there. Your mother fills that space often when his own cannot. “Jaehyunnie! I’m glad you made it, sweetling,” your mother gushes, hurrying to clasp his hands. The sight of her red, marred hands makes his heart hurt - has she been overworking herself? - but the pain is soon replaced with a gentle warmth spreading inside his chest at her motherly clucking. “Hurry inside, we made your favorite! You still like spicy pork, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He removes his shoes before stepping inside, feeling nostalgic. The first time he had met your parents, the house had been newly bought and hardly acquired, with your parents having haggled for an appropriate price for months. Over the years, the building had been renovated, filled with furniture, and changed as more and more memories had been made in this place. To see it now standing proudly and lived in made him happy, but also sad, as he wasn’t fully part of that experience anymore.

“Don’t be silly, boy! You know you call me mom here!”

“Yes, mom.”

“Mom,” rings out the complaining voice of Seokmin then. He’s standing at the foot of the stairs. His voice had been petulant, but there’s a very big grin on his face as Jaehyun approaches him in greeting, and they hug each other without hesitation. DK had seen him go through enough shit to not have to shy back from physical affection. “Don’t nag with Jaehyun before he’s properly inside. How’s it going, J? I heard your new album, it was awesome!”

Your mother nods enthusiastically. “You are hard-working as always, Jaehyunnie! The songs sound beautiful!”

Jaehyun laughs, bashful. He feels awkward and happy at once, to be complimented upon for his talents while simultaneously knowing that most of those songs had been written with you in mind. “Thank you for saying that,” he answers.

“It’s only right,” your mother tuts then. As she turns to walk back in the kitchen, she opens her mouth to say something again, but there’s another knock at the door, startling them all. The three exchange glances, both Seokmin and your mother seeming surprised by the noise. “Are you expecting someone, Seokminnie?” When DK shakes his head no in answer, she walks back to the door, humming to herself in confusion. “Maybe your father? But he’s not supposed to get off work until 8.”

Before your mother even opens the door, the dread of who could possibly be standing in front of that door tells Jaehyun what to expect. And as he turns over that assumption in that mind, the door opens to reveal you, clad in a red dress that hugs your curves and exposes your mid-thigh. “Oh, sweetie!” your mother exclaims. “But what are you doing here? Aren’t you going to dinner with that Junseo-ssi?”

You don’t answer, your eyes locked onto him. He recognizes the sight of slight panic and confusion in your eyes - apparently, DK hadn’t told you that you were visiting in the hopes that you wouldn’t see each other anyways. Although barely a second passes, it feels like eternity as you take each other in.

Fuck, you’re as beautiful as the day he lost you. He doesn’t even register that your mother is still chattering away as he drinks in the sight of you, the sinful silhouette and the angel eyes that have been accentuated by a skilled hand and your favorite eyeliner pen. The blood rushes in his veins, filling his ears with the sound of waves crashing, his desire lapping higher and higher until it makes his chest hurt. “Mom,” you manage to say. “He was called into work at the last minute. It’s pretty awkward to be the only one all dolled up here, so may I go up and change please? And not have to make awkward small talk in the salon?”

“Of course, sweetling, just go up! Seokmin will help me with the last preparations for dinner.” Your mother leaves at that, and the three adults remaining are crushed by the awkward tension in the room. Even more awkward for the third wheel in the room is that neither of both you and Jaehyun have looked away from each other ever since you walked in, and DK takes the chance to quietly slip out of the room to join his mother in the kitchen, leaving Jaehyun to his doom.

(Traitor.)

Jaehyun breathes out, struggling to fill his lungs with the air he needs. “You look stunning,” he says, his voice straining to pronounce the words. It’s pathetic how much he wants to press you against that wall and devour you. Even though his inner adult yells at him that he isn’t yours anymore, the thoughts do not stop coming. Truthfully, there can’t be any scientific explanation for how fast his heart races because of you, but it keeps on beating, jumping out of his chest. Falling to your feet.

You finally step out of the doorframe, into the house itself. The door quietly falls into the lock. You reach down to unclasp your high heels, the movement mechanic. You seem as dazed as he is. He entertains the possibility whether he has the same effect on you as you do on him, but he casts the thought aside immediately. You had left him, after all. “Thank you,” you answer, your voice meek. As if you were to strangers. “Are you … doing well?”

I hope that despite the way I’m ending things, you will be well. I pray that you are healthy, that you are eating enough, that you flourish in your career as you deserve to be. You are outstanding, Jeong Jaehyun, a flaming star lighting up the sky. I pray that you find it in yourself to forgive me.

“Well?” he echoes, as if that word was a joke. And then, almost in disbelief, he asks back, “Are you?”

You lower your gaze then. “I finish my master’s degree this year, so I’m a little stressed. But aside from that, I am fine, thank you for asking.” You straighten up, intending to walk past him. But Jaehyun, as if possessed, grabs your wrist; the touch makes both of you shudder, and you look up to see the absolute yearning in his eyes staring back at you. He doesn’t really know what made him do it, and he seems as shocked as you are; he had been thinking more quickly than he had been moving, and his muscles spasmed from the lack of communication between his nerves and his brain.

It’s written across his face, it must be. The intense wish to bow his head and lean against you, cage you against the railing of the stairs. To make you reach inside his soul and connect the broken pieces there that were the remaining shards of his heart. Jaehyun doesn’t want anyone else in the world to see inside him like that. He wants you, he wants to be your boyfriend. Despite it all. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. Are you well? Jaehyun’s hand slips lower, interlocking your fingers, the physical connection there setting fire to the skin. I pray that you are. “Take care of yourself,” he tells you instead of all the words that have been left unsaid ever since you abandoned him, all the tears that he has shed. He wants to tell you how his pride for your success makes him fly higher than any of his own achievements ever would, how soft his heart feels at the fact that you are so close to reaching your goals. How much he wishes to be a part of supporting you towards that. But he doesn’t.

You don’t break free of his hold, but it seems clear that you do not reciprocate the hurricane of emotions he is feeling right now. “You shouldn’t say that,” you tell him, tone polite, but your voice sounds hesitant. He wants to kiss the hesitation out of you, eat your laughter as he tugs at your lower lip. The proximity is driving him crazy. “I mean, I don’t wanna be rude. But I am seeing Junseo. You don’t have to worry about me, Jae. Jaehyun.” You cough awkwardly, as if that can erase the affectionate nickname, as if there isn’t something inside you still calling for him. You step backwards. If hitting the railing is embarrassing to you, you don’t let it show.

He lets go of you and steps back, then silently watches you go up the stairs. Your soft shuffling as you walk back to your room. The decisive shutting of a door.

Silently dreaming of what would happen if you graced him with your attention again.

The dinner itself is uneventful. You make polite conversation, thankfully sitting diagonally away from him, wedged in between your mother and your brother, whom Jaehyun sits across. But he sees the blush never truly leaving your face, and the way you throw glances at him when you think he isn’t paying attention. It makes him delusional enough to imagine that maybe, he wasn’t the only one still thinking about their ex.

Jaehyun glances down at his cleared plate, a half smile curling at his lips. Not truly a real smile. But not truly a lie, either.

@leey/n has started following you on Instagram!

@leey/n has liked a post!

The third time your paths cross, you truly think you are about to go crazy.

This is an art gallery, for crying out loud. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Jaehyun in a museum. Not that he’s uneducated or disinterested, mind you, but Jaehyun was the kind of guy to take you to places where you could etch your own memories across the place. The arcade in Busan where you won your first ever plushie and promptly gifted it to him, for one; the trip to Jeju where you had almost fainted and scared the shit out of Jaehyun; the high-end restaurant in Gangnam where you both can never let your face be seen again after having been thrown out for laughing too loud. You had spoken about the particular art gallery here once, debating about attending an event that was held in that month, but ultimately had the decision taken out of your hands after you unexpectedly had to go the hospital due to your appendix bursting. But here he was, looking like the most ravishing man alive in that stupid suit.

It should be forbidden to look that good. Genuinely. You think your heart stops momentarily when you see him, and then again when your gaze involuntarily drops to the exposed skin of his chest, displaying the vulnerable area due to the v-cut of his suit jacket. Hell. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was doing this on purpose.

You gather up the train of your dress and hurry over before anyone can recognize either him or you. He looks startled, and then that weird flash of desperation flits across his eyes before he hastily makes himself appear composed. You don’t for the life of you know why exactly his reaction to you is like that, but you suppose the time for complaining was over, since, you know, you broke up with him. You knew it had been a bitch move to write a letter, but you couldn’t exactly tell him the true reason to his face. Hey, I know this sounds stupid, but I’m afraid of ruining your career because netizens keep shit talking our relationship and tainting your reputation, have a nice day though!

No, he’d never understand. This was for the best. He’d been so close to completing his album, so proud of what he had achieved, and the grief of almost taking that away from him made you want to throw up. So you had decided to sacrifice yourself, in an as cowardly manner as possible.

No one would ever know that Jeong Jaehyun made your soul sing in the most exquisite way possible, and that your heart had been filled with so much joy that it almost burst. No one needed to know.

“What are you doing here?” You hiss at him. You turn your head to ensure that no one is actually looking, before tugging him to the side. Almost unconsciously, you take his hand and guide him to a different spot, a quiet corner where only strangers were staring at the art being displayed. Even the music was muted.

“Is this not a public event?” he hisses back, confused by your behavior. But he lets you do as you please, even lowering his head to yours to make sure no one hears. His fingers gently tangle with yours, swiping across your knuckles as he always does - did. It’s like your love runs deeper than human behavior, deeply embedded in your body’s instincts. You see it in the way the caution you display reflects back in his eyes, as if your secrets are still holier to him than his own. Even though he has no idea why you’re being so ominous. It’s one of the qualities you love most about Jaehyun; he never once tries to tell you what to do, always acquiescing your needs, letting you take the lead when necessary. It makes a traitorous happiness bloom inside your chest that he is still the kind of person who would always have your back. “Why exactly wouldn’t I be here? If it’s because you didn’t want to see my face, don’t tell me that. I don’t think I could handle it.”

“Jeong Jaehyun,” you groan, exasperated as you are. You hastily scan the area, always dreading that Junseo is about to turn the corner to catch you both. It had already been a surprise that evening had been made possible, since Junseo was a workaholic. Your friends joked around that he loves his residency at Seoul General Hospital first, and you second. You did not want to squander this opportunity of growing closer to him, a whim based on the fact that he was a pretty face and you desperately needed to move on. You weren’t serious, and you could count the amount of dates you had been on on one hand, but it worked its magic enough. Jaehyun only needed to believe that you were moving on. And Junseo only needed to believe Jaehyun was unimportant. Not like it’s forbidden to speak with an “acquaintance”, even if he did see you both here - but Jeong Jaehyun wasn’t an acquaintance, he was your ex-boyfriend for crying out loud, and if it weren’t for the necessary masquerade to appear as if you were moving on, you wouldn’t even be entertaining Junseo’s presence, no matter how charming he was. It was a stupid plan, concocted by an even more stupid Jeonghan. “Who would’t want to see your face? That’s not what I mean.”

The compliment slips out before you can hold it back. It’s so easy, so habitual to make it, to admire Jeong Jaehyun’s existence. You had never even met a man like him. He was sin made flesh, with his well-formed, strong body, the gorgeous face, the sun-kissed hair that switched colors from comeback to comeback. Jaehyun looks surprised to hear it. The dimples in his cheeks signal the smile that stretches across his lips, sweet and genuine and startled. It makes you sad, that he doesn’t expect those compliments; he is the kindest, sincerest, most attentive man you know.

(And if you were still in a relationship, you would have torn the clothes off of him and jumped him for looking that good in a suit. Not want to see his face my ass - you could stare at Jeong Jaehyun all day.)

“I thought we weren’t supposed to say stuff like that,” he says back, his voice low. It sounds deliciously rough, the way it sometimes sounded when you woke him from his sleep to kiss him, the sleepy yawns turning into soft moans when you rode him, his hands mapping out the space of your skin. You shake your head, as if you can shake off the memory. Your adoration for him went bone-deep. “Whatever,” you say hastily, as if that can erase the obvious pining you are displaying. “I mean, I don’t want Junseo to see us. I know you don’t like to lie, and I’m sorry for introducing you as an acquaintance, but I’d like it to remain that way. For him to believe there was nothing between us, I mean.”

“And is there?” Jaehyun’s voice sounds steady. It kills you to see the hope in his eyes, even now, even after you’ve hurt him after flaunting a new relationship. You remember his beautiful face on that day at the Christmas market, where the agony in his eyes had almost made you weep. You never ever wanted to be responsible for Jaehyun’s grief, not even now. “Nothing between us?”

You falter then, forgetting what you want to say. You can’t tell him the truth, you cannot - the truth being that when you look into Jaehyun’s eyes, your knees go weak and your hands yearn to claw at him and your kisses want to devour him whole, bones and all. You want to crawl inside him and live there forever, like the insane lover you are. You want to kiss him until you forget your own name, until the mornings become routine where you wake up next to him, where the sight of his beautiful face becomes the first thing you see after waking up for the rest of your life. The wish is so fervent it catches you off-guard, and it weakens your resolve. “There’s nothing, Jaehyun,” you say. Even you can hear the uncertainty. The atmosphere is so tense that you didn’t even notice the room has cleared out; the area is curtained off, a special exhibition inside the actual exhibition, for a yet-to-be-discovered artist who gained the space to present their art through chance. The few people who had mingled here had quietly left, identifying the situation as a lover’s spat. Anyone could walk in. Anyone. The realization makes your heart skip a beat. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Your words make sense, yet your actions don’t. You unconsciously inch closer to him. You shouldn’t, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t. “You’re confusing me,” Jaehyun responds, sounding frustrated, but when his hands find your waist, his touch is careful. Gentle. Like a collector in awe of the precious rare item he has found. “I thought you hated my guts. You know, that’s the kind of interpretation a break-up letter entails.”

“Jaehyun,” you whisper. You want to rip his hands off, leave him here to come to terms with the realization that this relationship is over. It had been such a difficult situation, and so painful; to rip the band-aid off in the manner that you did. You hadn’t even told Jeonghan about the reason you broke it off, so afraid of the consequences, yet more afraid of the repercussions of your relationship to Jaehyun’s career. You needed to tell him off now, before you do something you would regret. You do none of these things, however. You let Jeong Jaehyun cradle your face in the middle of the gallery as if nothing has changed and the two of you are eternal and you have never been apart. Something inside of you reaches for his soul, across the gaping abyss that forced mythological Orpheus and Eurydice apart. You let him bring your face close enough that he can press his cheek against yours, mimicking Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss hanging in the hall outside. A sweet irony. It had always been your favorite painting, and you know there was a copy of it hanging in Jaehyun’s living room, bought by you for an anniversary long past. His lips trace the lines of your cheekbones, feeding the selfish ache inside you that is always desperate for Jaehyun. “It doesn’t matter. I’m with a different man.”

The answer makes Jaehyun draw in a sharp breath, but his ministrations continue on; as if his love for you was an instinct he was chasing after unconsciously. His lips trail a burning path across your face, his fingers curling at your nape. Lulling you in. Entrancing you. “At the risk of sounding like an asshole - I don’t care,” he murmurs against your skin, the words reverberating in your blood. “I would give anything for being able to touch you like this. Even if this is the last time.”

You screw your eyes shut. Even if this is the last time. Almost mechanically, you raise your arms to draw him against you, your bodies lining up perfectly; you had always secretly enjoyed how well you guys fit together. A perfect match. When you had dropped him off at that airport, you had been robbed of truly saying goodbye to him. Coming home late, almost oversleeping and missing his flight, riding in separate cars because the staff had piled into the seats of which at least one should have been reserved for you. You couldn’t even kiss him goodbye - you had let go of Jaehyun with a heavy heart, a mind full of anxieties turning over all the threats you had received not only digitally, but now even physically, and with a mouth full of lies. This is the last time. You look up at the same time as Jaehyun decides to throw all caution against the wind, bowing his head to inch closer. “Let me kiss you, please,” he whispers, the desperation in his voice so heady it makes you feel drunk. “May I kiss you?”

You draw in a sharp, shuddering breath, and murmur your assent. As if this had been a decision and not a stabbing, sharp need below your chest. “Yes. Yes, Jaehyun.”

Your lips meet his halfway, although meet is the wrong words. It’s a crash and burn, two stars folding around one another and exploding in a supernova; there is nothing human about the way Jaehyun hungrily devours the surprised gasp you let out. His kiss is all fire and blood and teeth, the messy clacking of two people who had been made to love each other once and then cut apart by fate. Your hastily sucked in breaths keep getting interrupted every time Jaehyun kisses you again, and again, and again. It’s a sweet torture, and a productive one. By the time he has dragged you against a wall you are lightheaded and out of it, your skin prickling with the feeling of Jaehyun mapping out his way. “Oh sweetheart,” he sighs out against your collarbone, his teeth painting markings across your chest. You barely even register him falling to his knees. “I could die tomorrow and be a happy man.”

“What are you doing?” You ask him, dazed. Your hands find his shoulders (has he become even broader? You seriously need to have a talk with Johnny and the gym routine he forces Jaehyun through). Despite your confusion, your body remembers Jaehyun. You barely even think about following his guidance, complying almost immediately when he taps against your waist so that you raise your leg and angle it over his shoulder. The belated realization makes you blush heavily; your addled mind cannot keep up with your body’s compliance. “Jeong Jaehyun! Are you insane?”

You intended to sound fierce and reprimanding, but when you finally look down to meet his gaze, your knees almost buckle. Jaehyun looks like a man starved, his eyes heavy-lidded with desire, the irises blown wide to ensure every detail of you is burned into his recollection. He looks like a worshipper, and his hands move across the supple flesh of your thighs as if in prayer. Blasphemous and heavenly. And incredibly dangerous. You can still hear the loud chatter of the other guests behind the curtain, just across the room. The nervousness makes your veins thrum. “Baby,” he says, sounding genuinely disbelieving. “Do you honestly think I won’t use this chance to taste you one last time? I don’t know what made you tolerate me suddenly, but I am not going to be the idiot that ruins the opportunity. You’ll let me go down on you, won’t you, sweetheart?”

The term of endearment makes you all fuzzy-minded and giddy. “I … yes … But anyone could walk in…” you nervously start, and yet you angle your hips forward so that Jaehyun can tug down your black lace panties, barely noticing that he tucks them inside his suit pockets. “And we’re not supposed to … I mean, I shouldn’t …. Jesus, Jae!”

In the middle of your feeble attempt of climbing back to the moral highground, Jaehyun had positioned himself right at your core; your hands fumble to hold on to his shoulders before he kisses your vulva way too innocently for a man who’s currently going down on you in the middle of a public art gallery. You barely remember to lean back against the wall for support before Jaehyun dives in like you are the last meal he is ever permitted to have on this earth, and he is determined to make it last.

You bite back a cry when Jaehyun finally laps at you, the torturous kitten lick lighting your entire body aflame with want. Although Jaehyun immediately follows it up by generously sucking at the sensitive bundle of nerves, you cast aside all pretense of decorum due to your greed and dig your fingers in his hair to direct him closer, much closer, and Jaehyun moans. The sound is so delicious it makes your veins burn with desire, the physical pain of craving him running almost hotter than your need to be pleasured. Keyword almost. You wanted to come all over his mouth just for that delicious fucking noise, but your stomach was tensing up, the quick arousal accomplished by the serious lack of sex and masturbation that the past few months had been for you. Jaehyun’s hands claw at your knees, climbing to your thighs, forcing your legs wide open to welcome his fingers where he drags them across your all-too-welcoming entrance. “So wet,” he groans against your core, and you whimper at the vibration, bucking against his lips. Even though he loves to run his mouth during sex, he gets it to work anyways. Jaehyun laps up your sweetness as it drips down, his thumb flicking at your sensitive spots until he has you keening and tearing at his hair. “God, sweetheart, look at what a mess you’re making. You’re fucking gorgeous.”

“Jaehyun,” you gasp when he finally dives his tongue into you, the muscle pumping in mock-fashion of what he would love to do to you. The compliments are doing insane things to you and your heart, your poor heart that is going to cling to this moment forever. While Jaehyun’s fingers work their magic, your own begin to spasm, pulling and tearing at him. Submitting to you and your feral hunger he finally adds a finger, his right hand busy with fingering you while his left hands continues to trace circles over your clitoris. The sudden penetration has you remembering that his own digits are way longer than yours, the memory accompanying the sensation of him reaching further and further until he finds the right spot that has you bowing over him with a loud moan. This is what you missed, what you were imagining when you were daydreaming about sex, daydreaming about the godly way Jaehyun pounded you into the mattress. He knows he’s got you now, speeding up his ministrations at every noise you make. You screw your eyes shut with a bone-deep shudder, the sweet tension inside your abdomen pulling tighter and tighter in a familiar tell-tale sign. “Jaehyun, slow down, fuck!”

He’s curling his fingers, eager for your approval, hungry for more noises - through your blurry eyes, you realize he’s watching you through it all, the gaze of a predator. Not once does he look away, continuing his sweet song of praise. “So beautiful,” he coos against your pussy, pressing close so he can speak the words into your skin, your soul. In your state, it almost sounds like Jaehyun is the only thing in your world, and hasn’t it always been? The miracle in your life that you surrendered all your worship to? You lurch forward when he sucks your clit into his mouth, seeing white for a second, the stimulation becoming too much. “Keep looking at me, please. Wanna watch you when you come.”

“I…. can’t!” you manage to babble, realizing you are edging closer to your climax. You’ve never once been this quick, not with anyone but with Jaehyun; the only man in your life that knew every inch of you, the very shape of your soul. Your body is as familiar to him as the back of your hand; more familiar to him than his own self. Jaehyun is too impatient to deal with your arguments, though. “You can,” he hisses against you, dragging his fingers more fervently. Your warm walls tighten around them, hungrily trying to keep them in, to keep going. The sudden clenching around his fingers makes it difficult. “Look at me and cum or you won’t get to cum at all, I swear it.”

That’s all it takes for you to finally let go, almost weeping with the overwhelming pleasure. Your orgasm washes over you almost too violently, forced on by Jaehyun’s overstimulation as he keeps going and going and going, and by the time you push him off your sensitive pussy there are tears falling from your eyes. But you drag him close and kiss him, kiss him so hard you think he’s going to bruise, and Jaehyun lets you; it is much sweeter and patient than the beginning of the altercation, so sweet on your tongue it has you melting against Jaehyun. This is it, that adrenaline you kept chasing; true, painful, but worth it love. You feel too sensitive and too aware and too alight, but you wrap your arms around him all the same, as if you can keep him forever. Your kisses reach inside of him, desperate for connection, heavy with the longing that had accompanied you everywhere ever since you left him. You think you were born to love Jeong Jaehyun, and you kiss him as if you are Eve reaching for the forbidden apple - knowing it’s wrong, wanting it anyway. You want and you want and you want. Your hands are on his soft cheeks, dragging against his shoulders, careless, loving. You love Jeong Jaehyun, love him so much that your very existence is exploding from the inherent triumph that accompanied witnessing him.

You think you would gladly go to hell for tasting divinity on Jaehyun’s lips. You’d rather be a sinner than apart from him for being a saint.

When you finally tear away from him, Jaehyun’s lips are swollen(your heart almost fails at the sheer pleasure that sight gives you). He lets you drag your thumb across the kiss-stained lip, wiping away the lipstick, tracing his jawline. “Such a beautiful face,” you tell him, watching as he preens from the affection. Your heart to yearns to give him more, but you finally force yourself to step away before you die from the overdosis that is Jaehyun. He watches you, completely out of it. “This is the last time,” you remind him. The lie comes so easily now, even though you are trying to memorize his gorgeous face, tattooing it across your mind palace. You will never forget this, no matter what illness or loss comes for you. Not Jeong Jaehyun. “The last time, okay, Jae?”

You place your hand over his heart, and he places his own above it. For a moment, the situation feels eternal. You were in love and you were both idiots, but it was okay because you were handling it together. Because you would face all the challenges together. Because you would work towards a future together. But the spell is broken soon, and you make the first step back, biting your lip at the sadness resurfacing in his eyes. Jaehyun, you think. The only man you’ve ever entrusted your heart with like this.

“Okay,” he finally answers, helpless. He holds on to your hand, though, making the last few steps to follow you before he is forced to let you go. You turn back at the last second before you enter the main hall, just to see if he is looking away, but there he stands, watching you.

His face is forlorn, softened by his quiet sadness, and your heart breaks again. You leave him there before you can do something else you regret.

When Jaehyun had fallen in love you, he knew he was in for some deep shit.

Picking you up had become a natural habit now. You had long since stopped calling your brother and instead resorted to texting Jaehyun first. It felt like an honor, to be entrusted with your care. That you’ve started to know him in a way that makes you rely on him. Picking you up had led to late-night-drives to sober you up, late-night-drives had turned into a shared breakfast the next morning when Jaehyun was worried about you having hangovers, and fussing over you had turn into regular meet-ups because Jaehyun could no longer deny that what he craved was not reassurance of your well-being, but you in person.

He remembered one morning where he had slept over after a particularly nasty crash-out. You had been laughing and weeping incoherently, your friend Karina aiding him with the information that you had failed your exam and drowned yourself in booze. He had texted DK a “FYI, your sister’s puking her guts out in my apartment” after deciding his home was closer than yours and you wouldn’t last long enough to throw up in your own toilet, before he had sat there with you and braided your hair back while you emptied out your entire stomach. The next morning, when he had woken up to you cuddled up to him still on the bathroom floor, he had carried you to his bed, tucked you in and walked into the kitchen to cook hangover soup, something he had mastered by this point due to the amount of times Mark had familiarized himself with that toilet just like you did last night. Having checked his phone, he read your brother’s only response: “LOL. didn’t even realize she left party”

You had wandered in shortly after, sleepy and pale like a ghost. The sound of your footsteps had startled Jaehyun, but his surprise had turned into a sudden happiness at the sight of your eyes lighting up when you saw him. The realization that his presence made you as happy as yours made him was invaluable. He loved the kind of person he was when you guys were together; existing felt like floating, a light cloud of pure contentment.

Even though there hadn’t been a lot of talking, you had both been deeply comfortable. That was the very first time he had kissed you; when you couldn’t stop singing his praises after claiming his soup was too tasty, he had simply leant over and shut you up himself. It was almost funny at how quickly you had dropped that spoon, tugging at his pyjama shirt to pull him closer, damn right pulling him over the counter. Not that he was complaining. He loved the way you made him feel, the way your touch made it feel like there were stars blooming below his skin. It made him feel like the brightest sun in the sky. “Why did you do that?” you had immediately asked when he finally pulled back. Jaehyun had cradled your face, realizing he was holding his entire world in the palm of his hand. “I just suddenly understood that I want to hold your hair back for you for the rest of my life,” he had admitted then, earning himself a slap to the shoulder. But you had laughed, that pure boisterous laugh that sparked with joy, and his heart had pounded in his chest: unable to handle the luck he was experiencing.

The mornings had blurred into days, the days into weeks, finally bleeding into the most happiest months of Jaehyun’s life. He’d never been cautious, but you had certainly made him braver. Sudden shenanigans in public, joking around entirely too loud during important events, having fun everywhere you guys were together. You had made him believe there were no honeymoon phases. Jaehyun woke and rose in the morning, and went to sleep in the dawn obsessed with you. There were rough patches, stressful and grieving periods when your private lives had been rocked particularly hard with a certain event, but he never once stopped adoring you. You were in every waking breath, every racing heartbeat.

Even now, as he wakes the day after your goodbye in the art gallery, he wakes up with the taste of hope in his mouth, of the shape of your heart on the tip of his tongue. He wakes still dreaming, always dreaming of you.

“So what you’re saying,” states Johnny, twirling a biscuit around in his coffee, “is that you had sex with your ex-girlfriend in a public museum, fully knowing she’s dating someone else.”

“Johnny,” comes the muffled response from where Jaehyun hides his face in his hands. It’s too beautiful of a day. It should be raining, to reflect Jaehyun’s mood, to encompass this entirely too awkward feeling of knowing Jaehyun was still in love with his ex. He had spent the entire morning racking his brain for ideas to get rid of the other man, feeling like Lana del Rey in her worst situationships. Jaehyun has reached a very new low, the kind of pathetic that makes him not care that he’s embarrassing himself by still being at your beck-and-call. “It wasn’t sex.”

Johnny waves the retort away. “Oral sex, then. Still sex.” The comment is too loud and earns Johnny some weirded-out looks, but the man looks completely unbothered. He had once watched Johnny talk about different sex positions completely seriously while standing in line for gelato in Little Italy, back when they had visited New York together. Johnny Suh did not know what shame was. “I never even knew you were freaky like that. Little exhibitionist freak. Maybe I underestimated you.”

“Johnny,” Jaehyun deadpanned. “Is this the time to be making jokes? Can we get to the point?”

“What point, dude? You basically went on your knees and asked her to take you back, and she didn’t. I didn’t realize you wanted me to throw salt into the wound.”

Jaehyun lowers his head to the tabletop, resting his too warm face against the metal surface. He doesn’t dare close his eyes, because the image of you is burned into his eyelids. He feels like an addict itching for a quick fix. It had been like this the entire week now. It was one thing to be ghosted by you and forced to move on by the lack of interaction, and another to be making out with you and getting his hopes up despite the fact you told him this was the last time. All it did was make him delusional enough to think he could convince you for it not to be. “She didn’t say no,” he tells Johnny, sounding pitiable even to him. “She just told me this had to be the last time.”

A few seconds pass before Jaehyun finally raises his head due to the lack of answer from his best friend. The look Johnny gives him tells him is answer enough, and Jaehyun pulls a grimace. He hadn’t expected of Johnny to be feeding into his delusions, but there had been some hope. Hope for you to call. Hope for you to come back. Hope for you to still want him.

You hadn’t unfollowed him yet; you hadn’t posted in days; and your brother has kindly snitched to him that you’ve even been blowing off Junseo. He knows you have finals coming up soon, but thinking rationally was something Jaehyun severely lacked at the moment. He had been entertaining the idea that the … meeting, for a lack of better words, in the museum had shaken you up as much as it did him. He kept replaying the memory in his head, the way your plush thighs had trapped him there on his knees, your pretty lips jutted in a pout, the tears falling from your eyes from the way he was making you feel so good … he almost felt himself get hard again, but quickly killed the boner by thinking of something else. “I just wish she’d be more clear,” he sighs out. At the sight of Johnny raising his eyebrows, he clarifies: “I mean that she’s playing hot and cold with me. I’m not stupid enough to not realize she does want to put an end to this. And yet she’s the one that followed me on Instagram, and kissed me, and made me fall all over again for her. I wasn’t doing well before I saw her again, but I was going somewhere.”

“Somewhere,” Johnny repeats, his tone mocking, but then he sets down the biscuit that had come with his coffee. This is what Jaehyun liked about him the most. He considered everything and thought about everything carefully before giving his honest opinion, and even though he sure as hell wasn’t unbiased, he still tried his best to be. “I guess,” Johnny concurs then. “I guess that’s true. I just think there must be a reason to this. I haven’t known her half as long as you do, but we were friends once, and she never once acted as irrationally as she did this past year.”

Jaehyun perked up at that. It was true, at least. In the weeks leading up to your break-up, as well as the months afterwards, you had been acting incredibly off, to the point that even your close ones had been questioning your case. He hadn’t realized how keen Johnny’s observations could be. “So you think she’s going through something that she couldn’t tell me?” he asks, his voice tentative.

Johnny shrugs. “That sounds like the most logical explanation to me. So you either hook up with her again and question her while you’re at it, or you start looking up ways to get rid of Junseo, I guess.” The suggestion makes Johnny’s face light up with excitement. “Dude, I actually always wanted to hire an assassin on the dark web. Do you think we can do that?”

“No, you idiot,” Jaehyun hisses back. But the gears in his head are already turning, chipping away at the past year, at your secret glances and your guilty letter and the sadness in your eyes when you had let him go. He had always thought that even though you had been decisive, you had at least been sad for not being able to love him in the way he deserved to be loved anymore. now he wonders how selfish he has been, and whether he should have been texting his ex all along instead of grieving what was.

Well. Jaehyun thought it couldn’t hurt to try.

Jeonghan sees him before you do.

It’s the way your best friend immediately starts cackling and turns back around to walk back into the library. You halt in your movements, looking at him imploringly. “Your ex, dude,” he tells you, visibly enjoying the way you immediately enter full-panic-mode. “You’re on your own.”

Your panicked “Hannie!” is drowned out by his snickers, and Jeonghan leaves you to your distress to pretend going to the bathroom. You met Jeonghan years ago, and even though he was older than you, you had become such fast friends that DK threatened to beat you guys up for laughing too loud whenever you were over at their dorms. He was your stupid older unnecessary brother that loved you more than anything, but he is also the most brutally honest one out of all of your friends. You do not go to Jeonghan for advice if you aren’t able to handle the truth. He cuts to the chase real quick and will call you out on your bullshit.

It’s also why he immediately told you that your plan wasn’t going to work out. “Let’s not pretend this is the most lovey-dovey you’ve ever been in your life,” Jeonghan had told you with a straight face. You wince at the memory; Jeonghan’s words are able to tear down buildings. “You love-love that man. You’re in deep, deep shit. Whatever it is you don’t want to tell me about, the thing that made you think up this idiotic plan in the first place, it won’t be able to amount to the feelings you have for him.”

Yes, you love-love him; you know just as much, and your heart sings with that knowledge. It pinches and tingles beneath your ribs, calling out a certain name. It rejoices at the sight of Jaehyun out there, in the rain, wearing not even a jacket but instead jeans and a hoodie that looks large even on him, and a bouquet in his hands. But you love him enough not to want to be selfish enough to endanger him.

The messages had blown up your instant message box for weeks then, each threat becoming more explicit. At first, you had resorted to deleting them. They were all the same at their core, anyways, the same hatred being spewed with different names. But then one persistent account had started attaching pictures to their messages, waking you up from the rose-tinted dream that was being in love with Jaehyun. Pictures of him at private events, including the other band members as well, even the youngest ones who were innocent. You hadn’t responded, but the fear had you making hasty plans; setting up everything carefully, writing the letter, while you prepared to leave Jaehyun in the most respectful way you could imagine because that is what you owed him. But then pictures of his own rented studio inside SM building had started popping up, a room you knew no one but Jaehyun and his aides should have access to, one single message with one ominous threat: Leave him or I’ll ruin the both of you. His life’s work being killed will be your fault.

Your lack of answer surely had made them furious.

You didn’t know whether to approach the managers, or even the police. Stalkers weren’t unheard of in the industry, one being caught and sued almost weekly by now, and Jaehyun had cycled through his fair share of them. No one had ever went for you in that way, though. You were certain that this wasn’t a singular threat, certain that this was someone who would pull out all stops to get rid of you. SM Entertainment was more tightly under lock and key than a literal jail. This person knew what they were doing. And so you did what you thought was right, at the cost of your own wellbeing. How much you had sacrificed and cried after distancing yourself from the man you considered your heart.

And yet here he was.

You shake the umbrella open before stepping out of the library, into the rain. In three quick strides, you’ve reached him. You try to convince yourself you’re just eager to be rid of him, but the corners of your lips quirk up way too happily for your brain to believe that. “Is this your equivalent of a boombox outside my window?” you question.

Jaehyun smiles, and it untangles the heavy knot of dread inside of you. The weather is awful, but you feel warm, spreading inside your chest like the soothing effects of medicine. “It kind of is,” he answers. He sounds like he is carefully weighing his words, but his voice is gentle. “I didn’t know which one your window was. And entering the building to go visit you in your apartment seemed creepy to even me.”

You tentatively reach out, brushing your fingers over the roses. They’re a deep red, plush and freshly bloomed. Expensive. Junseo has never even got you a three-dollar-bundle of flowers from the grocery store. “You know, I already have someone who’s giving me flowers,” you tell him, but the threat is empty. Every inch of you is bursting with happiness. Jaehyun is here, even though it’s the middle of the night and the weather is completely awful, just to give you roses.

(You never even make the connection someone must have told him you’re here. (DK was shitting himself for days in fear of you finding out he was the tattletale.)

Jaehyun hands you the bouquet, his hands covering your own as you grasp it. You watch him as he takes the opportunity to step closer to you, never once reprimanding him. His face is open and trusting, and the force of his loving gaze hits you right in the chest. “I know,” he retorts. “And the thought is killing me. It should be me. And so I will. I will keep buying you roses until you ask me to stop, sweetheart, because I don’t mind if you forget about me, but I was made to adore you. I can’t ignore my instincts.”

The confession does funny things to your heart, in a way that makes you beam at him for the first time in months. You haven’t smiled like this in so long, and your cheeks hurt from the lack of practise. Jaehyun, the damn fool; Jaehyun, the hopeless romantic; Jaehyun, the love of your life. “Killing you,” you muse, entertaining him. You are playing with fire, you realize, but you are coming to the understanding that even though you had made a decision for him in a completely unfair manner, because you felt threatened to do so, Jaehyun still chooses you. And he continues to choose you. He has respected your wishes, has kept his distance despite the grief you have caused him, and has only re-entered your life because you allowed him to do so. It was your own self-doubt about being the one for him that had forced your hand and made you not ask him for help about the threats; and despite the fact Jaehyun never understood why, he had still reassured you.

“Do you honestly mean that?” you ask him, even though you know what his answer will be. Even though your heart has always chosen him, this sweet boy who knew just what to say to cheer you up. Who listened when you talked. Who bought you gifts just because you mentioned liking some trinket in passing. Who remembers to kiss you every morning before you leave the house, even if it means dragging himself out of bed at 5am in the morning just to see you off because he knows he won’t see you the entire day. Who leaves little notes around the house for you to find when he is too busy to be with you. Jaehyun, your Jaehyun.

“I will always, always mean it,” he answers in the most earnest way possible. “I’ve been thinking about you all this time. I know how pathetic this sounds, but all this time, I kept envisioning you, and the thought of you kept me going even though I knew you weren’t a part of my life anymore. I like the person you made me become, sweetheart, and the way you have helped me shape my life into something I can be proud of. I just wish I had realized sooner that there was something bothering you - because there is, right?” His fingers gently squeeze yours in encouragement, and your little nod makes him press on. “I’m sorry,” he says, and surprises you. “I’m sorry for being so in love with your good and pure heart and failing to realize that it burdened you, despite how good and pure it was. You were going through something that you couldn’t handle, and I couldn’t see it, and I’m sorry.”

You tug at Jaehyun’s hands. His instantaneous, responding smile makes your heart skip a beat, and he lets you pull him down until you can press your lips to his soft, dimpled cheek. “You’re such a sore loser, Jeong Jaehyun,” you whisper then, but you loosen a hand from the bouquet and place it against his cheek to keep him there. To treasure him. “And such a sweet little idiot. You don’t have to apologize about a single thing to me.” He smells like home, like the only home you’ve ever known. Jaehyun hums, and nods in assent to the insults, and the agreement makes you laugh. You kiss his cheek again, and again, and again, until Jaehyun’s impatience makes him turn his head and kiss you so urgently that your head feels like it’s spinning. “Jaehyun,” you sigh into the kiss, feeling his teeth nip at your lower lip, feeling his hands close around your heart.

You have never felt so safe.

Jaehyun rests his forehead against yours, the pouring rain cascading around you both. “Does that mean I can kill your little boy toy now?” he asks, but you only smack him and smile shyly, your face radiant with adoration for him. “I am going to resolve some things first,” you tell him. “Until then, no murder.”

“And after that?”

“After that,” you say, “I am going to prove that my heart has always belonged to you, Jeong Jaehyun. Even when I made you doubt that.”

(For your information, Jeonghan has recorded that entire interaction and forwarded it to Johnny without context. Johnny had texted him back almost seconds later, asking, Who’s this and how’d you get my number? Hannie’s response, as you discover after he had confessed his betrayal, was I have my ways.)

Jaehyun,

I realize me writing another letter is cruel and ironic, but hear me out, please.

When I wrote my first letter, it was with the selfish intention of at least something of mine remaining with you. By the time you read this, I’ll hopefully have gathered enough evidence to explain my case to you and maybe have the guts to ask you to accompany me to the police, but what I first want to reiterate is: I love you. I love you the point of self-sacrifice. I love you enough that I turned my back on being selfless anyways and selfishly chose you, because you are the most important person in my heart. You will always come first.

When I wrote that letter to break up with you, I imagined a piece of myself embedding itself in the ink so that at least something could remain forever. In my mind, you were never ephemeral: no matter how many times I changed my paths and adjusted my future, it has always included you. I never once imagined building a life for myself that didn’t have you as its brilliant, shining center piece, the light of my life, my Jaehyun. I’ve always been afraid of falling in love head-first, always afraid of loving more than the other, but you have proven me wrong. And I love being proven wrong by you. I love the fact that you fiercely, sincerely, and lovingly pull me back to reality every time. Reality with you is more perfect than anything I could have ever dreamed of.

Since my first letter was supposed to be a goodbye, I want this letter to be proof that I choose to greet the future with you. I want this letter to be proof that I will never need a letter again. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you and telling you about it, and I will reassure you of that always, in the same manner as you have always me reassured me. You told me that my heart was good and pure, but I genuinely believe that I am constantly reflecting back what you give me: your kindness, Jae, your sincerity, your unbelievable humanity.

You are the only man I ever want roses in my life from, and that will never change. :) So if you finish reading this, stop creeping on my Instagram waiting for me to drop the other man and come bring me another bouquet so I can prove to you there has never been another. You are the only one in my heart.

With love,

your sweetheart

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kisspotion · 15 days ago

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matt murdock x reader | soft + emotion heavy sex | nsfw, mdni

desperate shower sex with matt before work 🫶🏻 not solely for the press of your body against his, but instead for the unspoken understanding. for the way you somehow always fall onto his wavelength, wordlessly feeling all the emotions battling inside of him.

a taste of calm envelops matt when his face falls in your neck, eyes tightly shut as water drops fall over your two intertwined bodies. the smell of your warm, clean skin was something he cherished and found a great deal of comfort in.

the gentle thrusts of his hips bring matt closer to you, deep inside of you. but still, there’s no rush. only deliberate and prolonged movements. he latched onto this connection, tuning out the rest of the world just to listen to how your heart fastened nearing your climax.

truthfully, matt wanted to stay like this all day. never leaving the warmth of you in trade for frustrating work. doing absolutely nothing but listening to the way your body sounded as it ached for him, pleaded for him to join you in complete pleasure.

beneath your breath, you begged softly. needing for him to cross the line with him. and who was he to deny you that? “i’ve got you, sweetheart. right there with you.”

#matt and heather’s scene did something to me #something about it was so much deeper than just sex and man… so here for it #kinda crap before bed but it needed to be written #daredevil #daredevil born again #daredevil x you #daredevil x reader #daredevil fanfiction #daredevil smut #daredevil imagine #matt murdock #matt murdock x you #matt murdock x reader #matt murdock imagine #matt murdock smut #matt murdock fanfic #daredevil fanfic #matt murdock blurb

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veneralice · 1 month ago

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art credit: @sesamefruit on x / twitter! all credits to the artist!

divider credits: @cafekitsune ! all credits to the original creator of the divider!

seaborn soulmates / rafayel (m.)

in a cruel twist of fate, it is the god himself who becomes the most fervent worshipper. after lifetimes of looking for you, rafayel has finally found his beloved bride once more - but this time, it is him sinking to his knees to chant your praises, not the reverse. (20.4k words)

content warnings: maybe ooc-rafayel idk i’m still an inexperienced writer, me making up lemuria lore as i go because my ass wasn’t playing the game when god of tides came out (also i’m clueless about lads lore), mc as an independent character called michaela (pushing my wlw agenda with her and simone fr), kind of dubious consent???? (past!reader worships rafayel and acts very self-sacrificing so uh? idk? i’ll note it just to make sure) (also drunk rafayel initiates some skinship but reader shuts it down because you cant give consent while youre drunk yall), they fucking, p in v, switch!rafayel (bc we all know it’s canon /j), some biting, some scratching (rafayel’s back bleeds), overstimulation (fem. receiving), violence (blood and cutting is involved in deity worship), is it stalking? 💀 (he keeps tabs on reader in the same way he kept track of mc in-game before they met), idek man, let me know if you need more content warnings 🙂‍↕️, kind of inspired by @poisonf0rest bc i read her siren rafayel fic and saw god and immediately decided i had to write a raf fic myself, so honorary mention of them LMAO (pls read their fics they are so fucking good)

A thousand moons and a thousand suns have risen and fallen on the waves, but none compare to the sight of you entering Rafayel’s court. You are the only celestial constant in this life from that day on, the planet around which Rafayel’s immortal life spins. How humorous, that mortals are so below Lemurians that they are not even worthy of appraising their worship, but it is a mortal bride that weakens the god of the tides.

You are radiant, ephemeral in your beauty. There is a certain kind of delicate balance in your mortality, a rose so ethereal before it withers. Your skirts, although handmade and of unparticular material, a sign of your lowborn upbringing, part to reveal the soft skin hidden beneath, an image that makes Rafayel’s fingers twitch in yearning. He has never envied the land-walkers their bodies, not once. But at the sight of your clay-formed body, loved and created by the earth, he finds himself straining for the shape. Your feet land on the coral floor as if the ground there had been prepared for your stride, blessed by your existence.

It’s not love at first sight, certainly not. But it feels like brushing your fingers over a book and knowing the story already. It feels like helplessly wandering into the trap out of your own volition, although you know that trap will bite. But you let it. It creeps in, the sweetest kind of death you could imagine.

Like poison, the first taste of you condemns Rafayel to eternity.

“Your divinity, we have brought you your sacrifice,” the priests chant, the human part of your procession. The Lemurian guards accompanying them cast them a dubious glance. Not every sacrifice is deemed appropriate, but it is not like the world beneath the waves would balance itself without the human’s worship. A necessary evil, an ugly truth. Their sacrifices are not acknowledged, but appreciated nonetheless. A god feeds on what is given, no matter how all-powerful they are. Even blood as soiled by the human world’s elements is sustainable. “Your bride, your blood, your heart. We have brought you your sacrifice.”

When you walked in, your beautiful face had been angled upward. Even the most stoic of people are forced by the frescoes set in the wall to halt and wonder, because there is nothing else in this world that compares to the sea’s creations. Rafayel’s court was closed in by a dome, decorated with mosaic illustrations of the kingdom’s history. Painted in with elegant whorls of blue, white and red, the image depicted here showed the creation myth of his people, rising from the foam on his fingertips. You had looked straight at that painting, ignoring the gaggle of eyes that had looked on, feasting on the sight of you. But at the call of your entourage, you lower your gaze, meeting his straight-on.

There had never been a feeling so violent seizing him than in that very moment. He wanted to crush you. He wanted to own you.

He wanted to know you.

Rafayel is not the first monarch to hold this court in his blue-scaled fist. He is also not the only one whose heart has ever been stirred for something that could wreck this empire forever. It feels like being hunted, heady and dangerous and addicting. In your eyes lies a future more enticing than anything the seven seas could ever offer him. This is damnation.

What a powerful heart that frail chest must contain; secured only by the soft bones that would willingly give way to his monstrous hands, protected only by the warm flesh surrounding it. Rafayel is the king of sirens, monarch of the abyssal deep, but it was your song that drew him in. He wonders if the prayers you had dedicated to the waves tasted as sweet as your lips looked.

The soldiers surrounding his throne stepforward, signaling the silent message until here and no further. But Rafayel has already risen. Not registering the court which sinks to their knees as they pay their respects, he draws near enough that he could grasp your hands, tucked away in your companion’s crook of his arm. You lowered your head, obedient supplicant as you are. “Court of clay, I accept your sacrifice,” he announces, breathless. He doesn’t care how giddy that makes the humans, how his court begins to whisper. A scandal, an outrage. He only sees you. Not able to hold himself back, he reaches forward to cup your chin - you are shaking, an information he shouldn’t delight in, but does - and your gaze is steady, certain. You are a docile little lamb, not afraid of the knife about to fall. He could crush your right then and there; he could snap your neck if he wants to.

That was his first mistake. Gods have always been unmade by the most simple of human emotions, a fact every single predecessor had heeded. He should have struck you down where you stood, before you could lay the seeds of destruction. But Rafayel doesn’t heed his instincts. There is nothing else in the world anymore but you. Your eyes search his face, taking in every detail, as if the roles were reversed and you were the executioner who was gently lowering him to the chopping block. He imagines your hands roaming his body as you prepare him for certain death.

Deep inside his cold, scaled body, under the layers of divinity and immortality, his godly heart skips a beat.

Rafayel is coming undone, unravelling at the seams. It is only a matter of time until he dissolves into the sea, cupped by your gentle hands, until he finally disappears.

Later, when night draws closer and washes the world in darkness like a paint dissolving in a glass of water, he accompanies you and the bridal party to the rooms you will be residing in for the near future. Gentle, gentle fingers in his hands; you are ashamed of being able to touch him like this, and he notices it. Rafayel angles his head so he can look at you. Although this is nothing but a fancy dress-up of the matter at hand, which means your death at the end of this foolery, the sacrifice is still honored. That means becoming familiar with the heart that will soon bolster his powers, immortalized in him forever. It’s an excuse, of course, but it’s what his mind settles on as a reason for trying to commit your existence to memory. Your eyes are swimming around, looking like the schools of fishes that lounge around in his stronghold. Taking everything in. His own are obsessed with gazing at every inch of your face; soon, it will become more familiar to him than his own. “Your name, supplicant,” he says, breaking you out of your trance. “You have not given it yet.”

Your answer is quiet, and he has to lean even closer to actually hear it. Your female companions, who will wash you and prepare you and celebrate the wedding with you, are chattering behind him to the point of annoyance, but the excitement is understandable. The syllables of your name take physical shape as they go through him, and Rafayel finds himself closing to his eyes as he listens to the melody of your words. Settling in. Taking root. “But you may call me as you wish, Your Divinity,” you demure. Someone has trained you well in the niceties. “I am honored to become anything that you desire.”

“Bride of blood,” he says, and his treacherous fingers finally begin to wander. The supple flesh draws him in, and he adores the way goosebumps claim your skin. He is quite cold-blooded after all. And you are oh, so warm. Human bodies are so confusing and strange that Rafayel can’t help but wonder what moves them. The unreliable skin that gives way too easily to the lightest of bites, the awkward bones that bend at the simplest of angles. As Rafayel chases the muscles running down your arms with his fingertips, you turn your wrist so he can seize it, as if you know what instincts he is following. An instinct as old as time. Life was created when intuition turned into contact, after all. You watch as the deadly king of the abyss stares at your flesh as if it was a wonder to behold. As if he is not the father of all miracles.

Soft, soft flesh. Brittle as wood worn out by the water. Rafayel does not relinquish his hold on you as he speaks. “Bride of clay. You have already become what I desired. You are welcome to ask any wish of me for the sacrifice you will accomplish. Let no one speak that the ocean’s court is ungrateful to your service.”

“I would never imply otherwise, Your Divinity.” Your cheeks are aflush with your humanity, heating below his touch in reaction to being so close to the object of your worship. You do not seem like a typical, blushing bride. He has already taken notice of the harsher, roughened way you admonished your bridal party earlier. Often times, the brides sent to him are scared, chosen at random, unprepared for what the sacrifice means. Often times, it means that Rafayel chooses other brides, casting over the human’s lot. Every year they visit, fighting to compete in their adoration with other worshippers, not realizing that they cannot compare. But you are true in your faith. There are scars feathering all over the palms of both your hands where you have drawn blood to cast into the sea. A moon-shaped indentation, where the lunar priests of the sea (as his worshippers are called above, named for the moon’s strained effort to become one with the sea) brand themselves after ascending to their positions, is situated in the hollow of your throat, right above that precious collarbone he could snap like a coral branch. You are calm, clear-headed.

You could not have been more perfect.

He tugs you along, deeper into the cold water. You do not complain once. The court to strangers is built like a maze, intended to confuse and rattle. A safety measure that is laughable. There is no one who’s might parallels the god of the sea. But Rafayel had taken care to implement it nonetheless, to protect the weak, even though the most vulnerable Lemurian could still overpower the weakest of humans. It is why it so unsettling that you stir him like this. He has loved nothing else on this earth than he has loved the folk of the water. He angles another look at you, suspicious.

The moonlight makes every edge of you luminous with beauty. From the tips of your lashes, to the curves of your features, down to the shape of your human body. It is normal to experience attraction. You were very comely, after all; it wasn’t only Rafayel’s head that had turned to follow your every move. During your presentation, even the most cranky of attendants had lit up with pleasure at such a delicious sight. But he wonders if this means more. He shouldn’t be so attuned to you, shouldn’t be so drawn in by a first encounter. Fate had such a funny way of working its motives. Its cruelty and its humor affected the happenstances of all beings, even gods like him.

The doors to your room have already been affixed with a pair of guards. They are armed with lances, sharpened at the edge to stab through even the most enduring of scales. Warriors of the sea are trained to handle even the most extenuating of threats. Rafayel dismisses them at once, and they stand aside, each taking a few steps away to grant the party their privacy. They will return to their post when Rafayel has left. He gesticulates with his free arm that the women may enter; your companions mouths shape oohs and aahs of wonder as they step inside, but you remain where you are. Your warm hand still lies inside his, a fact that makes his fish-blooded heart tucker inside his chest. “Forgive me for this presumptuous question, Your Divinity,” you say then, affixing your gaze to his face. A face of polite pliancy. He can almost imagine you leading the prayers in the rooms of your faith, the prideful upraised head looking to the sea. “But might there be a fountain which we can use for our prayers?”

“Praying to what, when all your prayers have been answered?” Rafayel swipes a thumb over the blood-darkened veins inside your wrist, the blood you wish to cast into the waves in the same manner as starlight spills over the endless sky. Your skin is as malleable as sand. He wants to dig in, a primal urge from when Lemurians still hunted humans for sport. Some still do. “You may ask the guards to show you to an appropriate location to perform your prayers. But you have already become a symbol of faith, bride of clay. You are being rewarded as such.”

You dip your head in acknowledgement. “I have, Your Divinity. But it does not mean I should stop dedicating myself.”

He stares at you, hard. You are going to die for your faith. That precious little thing you seem to guard so weakly inside your mortal chest will be ripped from you like a human child is torn out of the womb. And yet here you are, asking to dedicate yourself to the very faith who will murder you. Piety is a wondrous thing, and it has moved you so far that you have surrendered to your own sacrifice, but is it really piety that is making you go through the motions of something as superfluous as prayer, when the very act of sacrifice is the highest religious duty you could fulfill? “What an interesting bride they have brought me,” he says, and you lower your gaze, the picture of humility. “Pray, then. As long as you meet me after you do.”

You hum in response, and he watches as you finally rejoin the women already appraising the room. One of them, a younger woman who shares the curve of your jaw and the color of your hair, reaches out to grasp your hand. You free it almost immediately to brush over her hair, a startlingly gentle display of affection in comparison to the chiding you subjected her to earlier. She must be family, though she does not share your beauty.

How confusing to be jealous of a simple gesture like this. How idiotic to yearn to be in that woman’s stead. Rafayel turns his back on the bridal party, before he can do anything that could tarnish his reputation.

Rafayel finds you where he guessed you would be. Your blood is still dripping into the fountain as he approaches you, the thick drops submerging quickly as they fall, like tears of pearl. It was once said, a myth unfurling in the motions of history due to the fascination other creatures often felt at the people of Lemuria, that his folk cried pearls, a myth they had been hunted for. “Wasteful, don’t you think?” he quips at the sight, but his touch is gentle when he takes your hand into his own. “Spilling blood when you will spill so much more when we are wed.”

“Nothing performed in service of the sea god is wasteful, Your Divinity,” you answer calmly. The supplicant at your side, not the family member he saw yesterday, sends you an alarmed look before she lowers it. You questioned the words of a god, an action most people would never even dare. Had you been anyone else, your bones would have already become the fishes’ supper. Even if you had been part of this court, such a comment could still have costed your head. But Rafayel feels himself begin to bend, turning over in your scarred palms. For being the most powerful entity roaming this planet, he feels as though you are the one holding all the cards. “It may not be worthy, but I beg you to accept our meager offerings to you. It is an honor to live in the light of your divinity.”

A memorized answer, devoid of anything personal. It is not the answer he craves, and he wishes to tug at your hair, to tear the secrets you carry in your heart from your head. It is a gruesome instinct, supped on the desire that is beginning to grow inside his heart. “Come with me,” he says, and then, addressing your companion, “You may remain here. I wish to become my bride’s acquaintance.”

The companion lowers her head in pliancy, but she seems nervous, apparently not trusting herself to formulate words in answer. Not because of his presence, perhaps. Rafayel has the inkling that it is you who’s distressing the bridal party. Something mysterious is unfolding in front of his eyes, and he itches to know more. He turns to offer you his arm, and you hesitate, shying away from the fact that he is an immortal being that is worshipped by everything the waves washes ashore on. But you take it, your warmth as shocking as the flash of lightnings the rainstorms sometimes inflict on his domain. Rafayel begins to walk, directing you to the royal gardens.

The weather is much nicer today. The sunlight fights to flood the scenery wherever it reaches, creating shadows of myth. Power is appearance. This court has been designed in a way to strike both fear and awe in hearts untouched by the heavens. You turn your head as far as it reaches, taking in the sight in the same way you had admired the ceiling yesterday. You must have an eye for art. “Tell me about yourself, daughter of clay,” he says, using the address most non-humans utilize to respectfully interact with an unknown land-walker. You whip your head back around to look at him. Today, your face is kissed by the sun, the lovely light enunciating every feature, every trace of the ancestors who had loved the idea of you so much that they willed you into existence. The sight rips into him like a shark bite, and for a moment, he finds himself envying whoever created humans. They had been much more adoring and obsessed with their work than he has, and it is reflected in the creation of you. “And none of the faithful derision today. I do adore being admired, but we are to be wed, and I wish to know whose heart I am going to consume.”

“Faithful derision,” you repeat, clearly taken aback by him reducing the faith of the sea to a simple piece of doggerel. Most of humanity’s prayers go unanswered, after all, expected from an existence so frail it could be wiped out with the smallest of tsunamis. “You mock me so, Your Divinity. Very well. What is it you wish to know of me?”

How have you managed to bewitch me, you evil thing? Rafayel thinks, but does not say. The urge to consume not just your heart, but you in your entirety has still not left him, even after a cold night of serious self-reflection. He has never realized how much desire could blur into hunger. “Who raised you?” he asks instead. “Who were you before you came here? What is it that made you become the lamb to my slaughter?”

Your eyes glaze over, an unidentifiable emotion he only manages to glimpse before you veil it over with the distanced civility you employ to interact with him. “I never knew my father, but my mother is a shepherdess above the sea,” you answer, slowly. The words are chosen carefully. “My mother used to be a priestess, but she was released from her duty when she had me. I was born of sin, you know. A lunar priestess is supposed to remain unwed and untainted, but she became pregnant with me. I am absolving both my mother and me of that taint.”

What a human belief, Rafayel thinks. To categorize love and coupling and touch as something sinful. As if the simple act of dedicating yourself to another wasn’t the holiest experience one could live through. The wax and wane of desire is as holy as the kneel of prayer to a Lemurian, which live and die for love. Above all else, it is the connection to someone else that could be the most well-guarded treasure a Lemurian could ever possess. But humanity’s civilization keeps its own rule, and to laugh about their beliefs would mean disrespecting you, so he only responds with, “I am sure the taint you speak of does not exist.”

“You are kind to say so, Your Divinity.” You do not sound like you believe it. Your words are, like nothing else, an act of worship. But perhaps it is because you understand him that you accept the answer, and that means something to him: to be understood as he is. He guides you along until he reaches a pavilion in the middle of the garden. You sit down first, a distance away from him in the spirit of propriety, but Rafayel is done acquiescing to your silly human rules. He sits near enough that your knees knock against each other, and as he cages you in like a hunter would circle his prey, he takes hold of your hand again. A bone-deep ache has claimed Rafayel, an ardor he never knew he possessed. It is taking hold of him, surging up in him like a wave. It is more than just your body he craves, something that runs deeper and hotter than the center of his own existence. “There is something you are hiding from me,” he tells you, watching as your eyes darken. You do not like being perceived, and the realization almost makes him laugh. “I will not make you tell it. You are free to do whatever it is you wish. But you fascinate me, daughter of clay. It is rare to enrapture a god’s attention, you know.”

As the night before, you roll your wrist in his hold so he may grasp it properly. Perhaps you search out his touch in the same manner as he does yours. Your fingers graze the flesh of his thighs as he lowers your hand to his lap. “I will get in over my head, Your Divinity, if you keep complimenting me like this,” you say. It makes his lips quirk into a genuine smile. Clever human, to play along like this. Your pulse thrums below his fingertips, the rhythm addicting. A true siren song. “I may overstep myself. That would not befit me at all. I am here to be free of sin, after all.”

“You are free already.” Rafayel’s fingers trace patterns into your skin, lower and lower. He unfolds your fingers for you, stretching them as far as they go. The scars on your skin are hypertrophic and ugly, but they fascinate him as much as every inch of your body does. They tell the stories of experiences and lived memories. Each one contains another secret he wants to unveil, a pearl he wants to claim as his own. “And we are to be wed, aren’t we?” His fingers curl over your own, and then you’re holding hands, intertwined in all manners of fate. Rafayel leans in, close enough to make you uncomfortable, close enough to kiss you. You don’t lean away. “There is nothing sinful about being betrothed, or what you do in the name of love. You are mine now, daughter of clay. All mine.”

For the first time since you have arrived here, you smile, your teeth gleaming like knifes. He feels it cutting into his chest, cutting away at his restraint. Although Rafayel is part of a species that is the apex predator of all predators, hunting and reigning over all that lives and breathes, in this moment, it is you who becomes the huntress.

How easy it is to climb a throne. How easy to be torn from it.

In the following days, he feels that tear at his existence in everything you do. Your allure only grows with every minute spent in your vicinity, and finally he has grown so needy that he absolves you of your prayers. Instead, he makes you worship him in person, and the time blurs into eternity, the noose at the end of the road long forgotten.

Rafayel spends afternoon tracing the traces of your creation; every bone, every tendon he explores with the devotion of a fervent prayer. Your fathomless eyes, glinting with the knowledge and the plans you keep hiding away from him, draw him in like the bait at the end of a fishing rod, and even though he knows it’s a trap, he lets himself be caught. Three nights before the day at your wedding, he finds himself caught on the sharp hook as he submerges into a bath with you.

You are not naked, but it almost seems like you are with the way the fabric of your dress begins to cling to you as the water kisses your skin. The shivering claiming your human bones create little currents in the pool, the water much colder than the ocean that surrounds this make-shift castle. Rafayel presses you closer to him, and then his face is in your hair, breathing in deeply. You both have long stopped caring about the rules of polite society. Rafayel has not allowed you to. Every touch, every word, every smile has made you more pliant, until finally you have even allowed him to partake in your ablutions before the wedding.

Every sacrificial bride of the sea god is supposed to take a bath before her wedding, washing away her past so that she can present herself in her most purified state. Most times, the bridal party is asked to help her with that, but Rafayel has stolen that role. It is the single most blasphemous thing one could do. But he is a god, and it is him who dictates the rules, delivers the scripture. All it took was a jut of his lip, the allusion of a pout, and you had caved immediately.

And now you were here, in the curve of his arm, your ear hovering above his chest. His heartbeat was powerful, pounding as loudly as the waves crashing on the beach, the sound susurrating inside your very soul. You breathe in deeply, shaking. This is the most divine thing you have ever experienced, something your mortal shell never thought it would be able to feel. “Sweet conch shell,” Rafayel murmurs in to your ear, shocking you to your core. “I’m sure you know that we have to step in even further to be able to perform the purification.”

“Just a second, please,” you speak through gritted teeth. This man vexes you in the most alluring of ways, and you cannot help but acquiesce to his every whim. You know your pleading falls on deaf ears, though, because Rafayel’s immediate reaction is a smile so mischievous it borders on schadenfreude, and he is already tugging at your shoulders in an attempt to submerge you further. You try to stand firm, even though your determination is crumbling. “It’s cold. It’s really cold.”

“Hmmm.” Rafayel nips at your ear, then your throat; you shudder violently enough for the water to splash. In the silence of your private little bubble, it almost sounds like an explosion. It makes your eyes snap open, as if preparing itself to fight or flee. Never had you let a man so close into your proximity. The village had always been ripe with gossip-mongering and backtalk. Your mother, although the most honorable person in the world to you, had been a demonized figure, to the point where your own worship had made you cull out the presence of men. No one had ever expected you to follow in your mother’s footsteps. No one had expected you to become a bride worthy of the sea. The simple pleasure of his ministrations floods your cheeks with hot blood. “See, I already warmed you up,” he teases, mouthing the words against your carotid artery. Speaking the words directly into your heart. You are guided much easier now, the water sloshing as you are pulled in. “I’ll take care of you, my pearl. You’re with your god, aren’t you?”

With your god. You turn your face toward him. Rafayel’s fingers tug at your lower lip, and you watch as his eyes zero in on the flesh; he is weirdly entranced with the way your human body works, the strange reaction it elicits from him. It is something you have become accustomed to in the past few days. His nail is sharp enough to draw blood. “See, that wasn’t so hard,” he coos, mocking you outright. But his fingers are shaking. It’s you who’s got him wrapped around your little finger, and that feels both emancipating and sacrilegious, a conflict so confusing that you do not know where you have to draw the line. You don’t even want to draw a line. When you had joined the faith of the waves, the image you had conjured during prayer had been ephemeral and fleeting, as changing as the sea. Not in your wildest dreams would you have been able to picture a man, a deity as flawless as Rafayel. His beauty kills. It constricts your lungs and tugs at your heart, as if falling into the maw of a great beast. The still water does nothing to take away from your hypersensitivity to his proximity.

Mortals aren’t made for divine dalliances. You burn too easily. But here you are, playing with fire.

You aren’t delusional enough to think he loves you. You are clay-born, after all. Rough and hastily assembled, none of the precision that the sea god had employed to give birth to his people. You are dazzling in the same way as a fire is dazzling: a short burst of destruction that is as awe-inspiring as it is revolting. But even you can recognize that he is attracted to you, and to a simple servant of the faith, that is quite enough. You are basking in whatever affection he grants you, any scrap at all.

Although you are still on the cusp of youth, old enough to yearn but young enough to grasp the moment, you had never in your wildest dreams conspired of something like this ever happening. Love just wasn’t on your cards. You had your sister, and your mother, and your faith, and that was truly enough. It was fulfilling to the point that you had felt untethered to the earth, free from the judging glances of the village, free from all the expectations the convent placed on you. Living and breathing and becoming one with the sea. If you had died tomorrow without ever having glimpsed the miraculous sea god you had entrusted yourself to, you would have died happy anyways. It was as simple as that.

But this was life-changing. Altering. You were experiencing an out-of-body experience, mythology come true. After all those years you had thrown your love into the universe, the universe was reaching back. You were spinning off axis, losing sight of everything but Rafayel. He was the new epicenter of your existence.

You jump as his fingers trail the naked skin of your arms. He settles on your hips, the touch so electrifying that you bite the lower lip he is still so fascinated by, staring at it as if it were a treasure he discovered at the bottom of the sea. The moon behind him outlines his shape in silver and white, making him seem more like an apparition than an actual person. How fitting, when you have been fantasizing about him all your life. “We should perform the purification now,” you whisper, but Rafayel is still lazily drawing patterns into the flesh of your curves. “Certainly,” he drawls out, every syllable enunciated in the abundant leisure only a god could possess. Your nerves feel like they are on fire. “In a minute.”

“Your Divinity,” you caution.

“Raf-a-yel.” He pronounces the words slowly, but with a deadly intonation. His eyes are dark, unreadable. “Say it. Say my name.”

You look at him, unsure. He looks just as much the deadly hunter he is sometimes depicted as in the murals. Before humanity had started building shrines in honor of the sea god of the abyss, they had painted warning signs about him, about the quick and bloody death he delivers. Some sailors still caution against all interaction with the creatures of the sea, their doom-calling stories a fresh batch of nightmares every time you hear them. The way Lemurians used to drag their willing prey beneath the waves, where they watched as the light left their eyes. What remained of them were the last bubbles of air as they rose to the surface. You cannot say his name, not with your tainted tongue. Not with the bastardry you carry in your veins. Not when you are deceiving him for the sake of your sister. But … “Rafayel,” you whisper.

You should feel scared about the way his lips curve into a smile. Beneath the most beautiful skins still lies the deadly bite of a venomous snake. Somehow you don’t think it’s fear that spikes the speed of your heartbeat, though. It’s not adrenaline that makes you angle your face upward so Rafayel can nuzzle your neck, and you almost buckle at the swipe of his tongue. Tasting the salt on your skin, the earth you came from. “Here, I purify you,” he answers. “I’ll lick you clean.”

“Somehow, I don’t think that’s what the scriptures meant, Your Divinity. Rafayel,” you hastily correct. He had frozen in his motions, but resumed nipping at your skin when you had added his name. The cold water was doing absolutely nothing against the fire racing inside your veins.

“Don’t care about the scriptures.” Rafayel draws up, pulling you with him. The languorous stretch of his figure forces you upward, and following his guide, you wrap your arms around his neck until you’re flush against him. His eyes darken at the press of your breasts against his chest. You screw your eyes shut at the delicious pressure, the way your nipples had brushed against his skin. How easy it is to throw all caution into the wind. You were losing sight of everything you built, in the name of love. “My word is law. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, Rafayel.”

He almost seems to purr at the sound of his name, easily pleased. It’s a deeply unhuman sound that should make you shrink away in fear. You screw your eyes shut as his lips trace the shape of your cheeks, inching closer to your mouth. “My name sounds so delicious on your tongue,” he whispers against the corner of your lips, bordering on a kiss. “If only all your prayers had been like this. I would have flooded all the ports and claimed the land just to have you.”

“I am yours,” you tell him, and you mean it. Rafayel grips your hips hard enough to draw blood, and he doesn’t need to tell you to know what he wants from you. You repeat it, again and again, telling him you belong to him, until Rafayel shuts you up with a kiss that tastes of both sanctity and sin, and the poison he pours into you is so decadent you almost don’t realize it’s killing you. You forget that at the end of this, it will not just be his kiss consuming you whole. You welcome the knifes and the sharp teeth and let Rafayel devour you.

The night passes then with the two of you trading kisses in the dark, small touches bordering on disgrace. You bend so many of your rules that at the end of the night, you’re not sure whether your virginity is sacred after all. But Rafayel never asks you for it, and you both remain clothed, although the bath has made you drip all over the floor. Inside the enormous bed that Rafayel claims as his own, you watch the sun rise as his fingers trace your ears, your collarbones, the shape of your body. It feels intimate in a way that is devoid of sex. It almost feels like Rafayel is the supplicant and you his deity, with the reverence he dedicates to touching you. “You do not need to be purified, bride of blood,” he says, addressing you like he did on the day you met him. Once again, it is a sign of respect. A sign that although he doesn’t understand your beliefs, he still wants to adhere to them because you treasure them. “You are flawless as you are. I chose you because you are everything I want.”

Although your sight is already blurring from tiredness, you make an effort to look at him. “Even though I am human?”

“Despite everything,” he tells you. “My heart sings with the presence of you.”

The sincerity of that statement dizzies you. You fall back into the blurness, feeling light as a feather. Never in your life before have you experienced a joy as profound as this; you have seen the face of God, and God has looked back at you. He is only looking at you.

“You do not have to do this, you know.”

It is the sister who speaks. Rafayel turns over the ceremonial knife, staring at it as he strains to hear the soft voices in the room behind him. Technically, he was eavesdropping. It was a breach of privacy, of course, but there was the matter of intention; he had come to see you, to fall into your lap as you told him about the human world, to allow himself to be reduced to a lover at the beck and call of a mere human like you. The days were beginning to slip away like sand in an hourglass, the wedding inching closer with every passing second. He had been trying to identify where the pit of dread inside his stomach came from when he heard your sister speak up, a feat so rare that he had forced himself to stop behind the door before she stopped. Your bridal party was composed of the most annoying people in the world, all of them paling in comparison to you in both faith and creature, but your sister guarded her words like a clam her pearls. And now, when she finally spoke, it was to deter you from marrying at all.

Rafayel hears something shift. You must have sat closer to her. “Do not say those words,” you hiss, a tone he has never heard you take before. “Do you forget how easily it is for a human to lose their head down here? We are already on thin ice.”

“I’m serious. You do know we could all die anyways, right? How can you be so calm? I feel like I’m about to go insane!”

“Then keep it together!” The answer is too loud, a cat mother snapping at its young. The anger in your voice is palpable. For a moment, the silence claims the room alongside the tension created by the secret conversation, but then you speak up, much calmer. “We either die together for this treason, or I die and you will live to tell my tale. In either case, it’s fine by me. I don’t care about my own life, but so help me god, Alia, if you even think of ending this ruse I will send you above water myself. I’m your older sister. It is my duty to think of you first.”

Treason. Rafayel’s fingers skim the edge of the knife. Blood pearls at the tip of his fingers, the sight of it as nauseating as the thought of a possible betrayal by the human world. Already, the world above them has started to leave them behind, with their experiments of gunpowder and weaponry. More and more patrols return decimated, the serving soldiers reporting death and violence. Complaining, pointing fingers. It’s no secret that the bridal party at court has become somewhat of a group of hostages. And hadn’t Rafayel already known that you were hiding things?

But he thinks of the way you let him cup your face in the sight of only moon and sky, how your eyes glint with the unspoken tenderness between the two of you. It was easy to lie with words, but your souls sing to each other. You both know it. There is something tucked away inside your human heart that belongs to him and him alone, something that makes Rafayel forgive you for every past and future grievance you could possibly muster against him. There is something every living heart wants for itself, and his heart wants you. The metaphorical knife sinks and sinks and sinks into his chest, slamming into bone, stuck there like Rafayel is stuck on his throne. Forever a hand-width away from everyone else, even his happiness. Just then, your sister whispers, “You love him, do you not? You have already given him your heart.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you gently reprimand her. Rafayel closes his eyes; the hand twisting the knife is rough and scarred, but familiar. He imagines taking that hand to aid it. Stab here, he wishes to say. Just a little deeper. I permit you. Only you. “This plan isn’t going to work, and I don’t care. I’ll take them down with me if I can. If I’m dead, I can’t be blackmailed, can I? I don’t care whether I die, as long as you live.”

As long as you live. Rafayel thinks of hearts, and the consumption of them, and of weddings and happy endings. He tucks the ceremonial knife away, his insides cold with the grim certainty of what he is going to do.

Later on, Rafayel will not remember the way his wedding had crashed and floundered into flames. He will not remember the sharp sting of betraying his own people, how his power had bled and bled. It was always so gruesome when gods fell. They weren’t destined for tragedies of this scale.

The only thing Rafayel will be able to commit to his recollection is how stunning divinity looked on you. He will forget the way his home had tasted, how the blooming kingdom of Lemuria had seemed to explode with colors, how the laughter of his folk had accompanied him everywhere. The only thing left will be you, your radiant face and your warm, warm tears, as warm as blood, sparking a fire in even the coldest of deep sea creatures. It should make him curse your name.

And yet he cannot forget you.

He looks for you everywhere, at every time, in every moment. The way your smile looked like the warm rays of the sun as they broke through the rain-heavy sky. The way the sound of your steps seemed to echo like the drum-like rhythm of his heart. He races after people who seem to have just the right hair color, who seem to share the shape of your eyes, who remind him just too much of you, only to realize that it wasn’t the person he was chasing after. You are haunting him. In every waking moment, in every dream that tortures his sleep, it is always you.

The resulting soul-devouring longing has turned him into quite the artist. When Lemuria fell, it took everything with it. Every painting since then he has ever drawn up fails to compare with the real thing, and he is terrified by the idea that he is forgetting how his home looked like. Already the details begin to slip away from him, becoming eroded over time. What remains crystalline is the imagine of you. Devilish you, crux of Lemuria you. It torments him to love you, but what torments him more is the loss of you. He had never been prepared for this possibility. He had never even considered what giving his heart away would look like.

And yet, he would do it again, and again, and again. Selfishly, egotistically. What he wouldn’t give to be able to make you smile again. In his most desperate nights, he strains himself to remember the way you used to laugh, the sound more heavenly than any music ever composed on earth. Even the falsification of the sound still manages to bring him so much peace that Rafayel stills his hands and abstains from painting another death trap. Although revenge has become the new mistress of his heart, he doesn’t love her as much as he will ever love you. It is the memory of you that makes him halt, makes him grant mercy to a possible victim. That, and the everlasting fear it is your blood he could be punishing. Your wish had been granted, after all - it was your sister who had lived and witnessed the death of a civilization, your sister who had escaped all culpability.

It was one of the most earliest memories he managed to commit to his brain after the atrocity that was the destruction of Lemuria. He had dug your sister’s grave with his bare hands. He had never even known her, not closely anyways, but it was your blood running in her veins, your love that had raised her. After so many years of searching and retracing his steps, he had finally found the village you had been born into. But by then, his bride had disappeared, and your sister had grown old waiting for you, and she had barely been able to squeeze Rafayel’s hand before passing on peacefully. That had hurt him in an entirely different way. Here was someone, who loved you and missed you just as much as him, who would understand how severely the loss of you had impacted him, but then she went and died. A cruel fate, as usual. But he did not regret finding her. For a little while, someone had been able to share his grief. And for a little while, that had been enough.

In his worst nightmares, Rafayel dreams he will never see you again. He will live and die for his love, but it will not matter. The bond that connected your souls stretched on into nothingness, past the place where living beings could reach, and you have already passed onto a place he will never see, because you’re an angel and he’s going to hell. Whether he believes it or not, he has betrayed his people, his court, his duty. There was no redemption, no way to come back from that.

Sometimes he resents you for it, so much so that his soul grows heavy with the anger he carries within. He stares at himself in the mirror for hours, trying to claw off the Lemurian mark that bonds you to him, but then he dissolves into sobs. He is hollow of you, a carved out corpse, a mermaid drowned. An oxymoron, like he was. He loves you so much that he convinces himself the pain is worth it; he convinces himself that he can survive this.

He becomes a renowned artist, his paintings a manifest oh the emotions he tries to overcome. But in every single one, his muse remains the same.

Like divine intervention, it is his paintings you admire when Rafayel finally finds you again.

He almost doesn’t trust his eyes. After all, this is not the very first time he has chased after a mirage like a traveler lost at sea. The back that is turned to him is not as scarred as yours was, and the curls of your hair are tucked away in a neat coiffure that almost makes him look away; you had hated to have your hair up. His favorite part of the morning routine you both established was when you had let him sneak into your rooms, and you had let him brush your hair until it was smooth and silky to the touch. But then you cock your head at the painting, and Rafayel sees your face, and he almost buckles.

The moon pales in comparison of the sight of your face twitching into the amazed expression at the painting before you. The sharp teeth remember him of your knife-like grimaces, the ones you used to grace him with when he saw a little bit too much of the truth inside you. There is a horrifyingly familiar birthmark where your brandmark used to identify you as one of the most devoted priestesses of the sea’s faith. You are as beautiful as the day as he lost you, as stunning as the day you had walked into his life.

He stumbles into Thomas, who steadies him with an appalled noise. The rest of the world falls away as Rafayel drinks in the sight of you like a man completely parched with thirst, as if he might die from it. You’re staring at a rendition of how Rafayel had imagined you might look in a bridal gown. His legs carry him forward, and never has the burden of walking on earth hurt him as much as now; he feels that knowledge tearing at him, clawing away at every protective measure, before he even reaches you. Every step is razor-sharp and painful, a conscious memory of what he sacrificed to roam the earth for you. He already knows before you meet his eyes. Your eyes are as clear and amazed as the day you had been brought to him.

You have no idea who he is at all.

It had already been a weird day. You had woken up to your face wet with tears, but as you touched it, you couldn’t for the life of you remember what you had dreamt about. There was only the disturbing feeling that were was something missing, something you couldn’t live without. You had laid in bed for a very long time, your hand placed over your heart, before your bestfriend and roommate Simone had burst into your room and told you to ‘get your ass up before we miss work’.

In the subway, the feeling hadn’t subsided. Beneath the bones of your breast cage, your most vital organ sputtered and stuttered, strangely arhythmic. The thing wasn’t very reliable, anyways, and you already had monthly check-ups to ensure it wasn’t fucking you over and you could continue your work. And then sometimes, it performed miracles. So many times you had woken up in a hospital bed after having passed out with the certain thought that you were going to die, but every time your heart had won out, like it loved battling death and beating the shit out of it every time. It had mystified Zayne, your childhood friend, to the point where he had suggested setting up a field study for his university studies, but you had firmly declined. You didn’t want anyone else to know about this freak heart, thank you.

Work itself had passed by quickly either way, and you had almost passed over the opportunity of going out with your friends. But Simone had wheedled at you and whittled your rejection down until it turned into acceptance, so now here you were.

Staring at this stranger.

He almost looked familiar. In another life, perhaps, you would have walked up to him and struck up a conversation. You had a special weakness for pretty boys, even though you knew even the most beautiful of predators are still deadly. But you had sworn off men after college, the short dalliances that had sparked up remaining unfruitful, so you thought it was for the best.

But the look in his eyes was so heartbreaking.

If you didn’t know any better, you would have thought he knew you. He seemed to be looking at you like someone who he had believed dead had magically been brought back to life and returned to him. When you finally mustered up your courage to approach him, because he had been staring at you for quite a while now, the gorgeous man had turned and left. You quickly lost sight of him, which made you frown.

You were a Deepspace hunter, one of the best. You usually don’t lose track of your prey, especially not pretty ones like him.

It didn’t matter. You never saw him again afterwards. Your fake vow of chastity remained stable, even after the countless club nights Simone dragged you to and even after Tara’s desperate pleading to please, pretty please let her set you up with someone. You declined every time. Not because you were stubborn, but because there was a hollowness inside you that starved for tenderness, something so unreal you were sure you were never going to find it. There was a beast encaged by your veins and bones, starving for the scraps of affection. You had fed it and fed it and fed it, to the point where at the end, you were the one who had been left unnurtured, so you had abandoned the search.

You had never once thought it would find you instead.

There were times when the timing seemed almost too suspicious. The appearance of a fake account perceiving your social media posts. The feeling of someone keeping watch of you. Not following you, but checking in on you. The knowledge that someone was looking out for you, but every time you turned the corner, what greeted you was the sight of a whole lot of nothing.

It’s Wednesday night after Simone’s shift when the doorbell rings. “Did you order in?” you ask the girl, but she shakes her head, the freshly washed hair whipping around like a flag in the wind. “Maybe it’s Michaela?” she theorizes, and you shrug. You’ve met Michaela before; she was Xavier’s hunting partner, a competent hunter that was sure to rise through the ranks. You hadn’t realized that Simone and her had become so acquainted, though. You were definitely going to needle Simone about that.

You went to open the door, but it wasn’t Michaela standing in front of it. Instead, a delivery boy that looks like the most bored employee you’ve ever seen holds out a packaged bouquet to you. “Please sign here, miss,” he says, and holds out a board where a paper has been pinned to it. You scan it quickly to confirm it’s actually for you, then give him the signature he requires.

“Who was it?” Simone appears in the hallway, scrubbing away at her hair. You are momentarily distracted from the bouquet and stare at her instead; you always scolded her for walking around with wet hair. “Is that a bouquet?” she asks before you can say something, her voice amazed. “I thought you were a chaste nun and all that!”

“I’m not dating anyone!” you immediately defend yourself. But your heart is racing as you pass her, and you quickly walk to the kitchen counter where you reach for the scissors in the drawers. Simone rejoins you and watches as you free the flowers from their paper cage.

It is the prettiest bouquet you’ve ever received. Nestled inbetween baby’s breath and foxgloves, water lilies in full bloom reach upward, filling the kitchen with their dizzying fragrance. Simone begins to sneeze almost immediately; she is violently allergic to foxgloves. You, on the other hand, breathe in deeply, almost light-headed with the violent longing the flowers fill you with.

You stare at the flowers for a very long time.

After almost an hour of theorizing and reaching to no conclusion, you place the bouquet on the windowsill in your room where it can be seen from the street. It’s intentional, because you are almost sure that the feeling of that watchful stranger was not just a feeling. Maybe it was a secret admirer or something. But your heart was at peace with that knowledge, and the feeling that encapsulated you was as familiar as a dream; a dream where you are loved as you are, with every inch of your being. You sleep deeply and restfully for the first time in a very long time.

As someone rounds the corner, he angles his eyes upward to stare at a certain window. He passes by here almost daily, just to see whether you were sleeping and taking care of yourself. Worrying about whether when the lamp burned deep into the night, it meant you were overworking yourself or haunted by nightmares. Reassured when the light was off and your shutters closed, because it meant you were home and sleeping. When the shutters are open, he doesn’t even bother to pass by this street, having learnt quickly it meant you were on a business trip of some kind. He has quickly become resentful of your vocation because of how much it drains you. But today, he sees the bouquet he sent you, proud on display on the very windowsill he is able to see from below here, so far away from you.

Almost unwillingly, because he has yet to relearn the motion, his lips curve into a smile. Rafayel walks home, his heart as light as it never has been before. Well, maybe once. Back when the waves were still the emperors of the world. When love meant a certain, moonlight-illuminated face.

It doesn’t take long for Rafayel to re-enter your life under the guise of a part-time job. A bodyguard, for a painter. The joke almost writes himself. But you couldn’t deny how you had clapped your hands in joy when you saw him again, the pretty face with no name you had seen on that day of the art reveal. You let him seduce into the worst side-gig ever, which might as well have been a babysitting job instead of a bodyguard position.

You learn that he’s a recluse, famous painter with the weirdest quirks. You’ve never met a man as strange as him. He was immature, and whiny, and a brat. Most times, you were too exasperated to handle him, despite the ridiculous amount of money he was paying you (the dude was rolling in money) and the bonus of getting to see his gorgeous face every day for free. Sometimes, though, when you are careless, your heart jumps to your throat when your fingers brush. Other times, when you watch him paint, you have the counterproductive urge to grasp his face and kiss him until you’re breathless. You cannot understand it. You don’t know where the instinct comes from. But it runs deep in your blood, a calling as old as time.

Simone calls you a horny freak, almost guffawing when you meekly admit to having developed a crush on him. And hey, sure, maybe you were a little horny. (A woman gets quite desperate when her only sexual encounters were the reliable appendages of her own hand.) And sometimes you did want to jump Rafayel’s bones until you were sure you (or him) wouldn’t be able to walk for a least a week. But it’s not what stirs you when you look at him. Deep inside your heart, something yearns for Rafayel, something that’s even hungrier than the beast you call your own heart.

You’re never sure what will overcome you. On most days, where Rafayel mooches off the vacation days you get from Deepspace hunting and calls you in to watch him live his life, your cravings run on the need of wanting to touch him. You want to ruffle your fingers through his hair to discover whether it’s as soft as it looks like. You’ve even candidly wondered what it would be like to hug him while he sleeps; Rafayel often falls asleep on his own job, curling into a sleeping position right in front of his unfinished paintings, the elegant fingers unfurling around his brush. The need to touch him can get so severe that you brush your fingers over his hand as he sleeps, just to satisfy it; it feels like fire grazing your skin, as dangerous as his Evol. You never tell him about anything of this, though, even though you know the secret is burning you.

Sometimes he looks at you as though he can tell exactly what you’re thinking. Like now.

He looks up before you can tear your gaze away. You had been staring at him for a little too long, admittedly, but he was looking downright ethereal today. You had almost collapsed on his porch when he had answered the door. The man was already a threat because of his looks, but he had opened the door looking like he fell right out of the bed and walked to the door without doing anything. The sight of his sleepy face and frazzled hair was doing a number on your heart. He claimed he’d already had breakfast and had laid out a plate of pancakes for you (not prepared by him, of course, the man was too lazy to stand in the kitchen without incentive), then gotten straight to painting. You were fantasizing about what it would be like to wake up in bed with him, to wipe away the sleep from his eyes and kiss the eyelids, when he caught you red-handed. “What, do I have something on my face?” he quips, and you jerk upright.

“No. Why would you think that?”

“You’re looking at me as if I sprouted another head. I’m not an alien, you know.”

“Technically, you are. Aren’t you?” You blink at him, the question innocent. Rafayel rolls his eyes, though, as if he had both expected your stupidity but had hoped you would overcome it. “Lemurians are from the ocean, idiot,” he retorts, turning back to his painting. He was swiping away at another creation, something that looked like the abstract rendition of a hurricane on the sea. “Last I checked, that was still on earth.”

Well, he got you there. Before you could think of a smart response, your phone rings, bringing the conversation to a halt. Rafayel clicks his tongue in annoyance; he likes to be the center of your attention and has often hidden your phone during work hours just so you couldn’t distract yourself. As someone with the attention span of a goldfish, you had rebelled pretty soon. You turn your attention to the device in your hands and read Simone’s name on the display before you answer the call. “Hello?” You drawl out, gaze still fixed on Rafayel.

“Where are you?”

“Working. At Raf’s.” You don’t miss the way Rafayel straightens up at the nickname, looking like the satisfied cats he often chases away due to his hatred of them. It’s your turn to roll your eyes; he was easily pleased. At the same time, his simple joy at a nickname makes your heart soften. Although his dramatic flair ensures that he is never taken seriously, deep beneath it all, you have come to realize that Rafayel is a genuinely tender person. And who are you to judge for being needy when it comes to affection? “I told you that this morning. You know, when you were in bed with Michaela.” As far as you knew, they weren’t dating, since Simone claimed Michaela had only slept over yesterday because they had stayed out late, and she had refused to let Michaela walk back home in the dark.

“Do not say that out loud,” comes Simone’s buzzing response from the other end of the phone, and you momentarily hold your phone away as you cringe at the sound. You put it back just in time to hear her add, “I do not need the fish-man to know about my private business, thank you. He’s an employer after all.”

“Everyone knows about your fat crush on Michaela.”

“Well, how about your fat crush on…”

“NO!” you shout down the phone before she can speak it out loud and ruin your life. You manage to startle Rafayel so strongly that he topples from the chair he was situated on; you wince and turn around guiltily, not wanting to deal with the consequences of that. Simone had almost given away your secret feelings for the man currently painting his heart out on the canvas. “Alright, point fucking taken. Is that why you called me? To bully me?”

“You decided to bully me first! Anyways, I called to let you know that they emergency-scheduled you for this afternoon. Something about you being familiar with that no-hunting zone.”

You narrow your eyes. She was probably talking about the suburb north of Linkon that had just recently been declared a no hunting zone; they were still carrying out evacuations from the area, although majority of the place had been abandoned ages ago due to a factory accident. You often ran patrols there and had been the one to notify the agency about the rising threat-level which had ultimately led to the declaration of it now being a no hunting zone. Still, it must be pretty serious if they scheduled you without checking back with you first. Jenna usually didn’t take advantage of your willingness, since you often offered to cover shifts for your colleagues.

“When?”

“7:30 at the subway station. North exit. You’ll patrol alone, but I can join you if you want to.”

“No, that’s fine,” you answered absentmindedly, already racking your brain about what could have happened and how you could get there. Perhaps another luminivore? But you had cleared out a nest of wanderers just a week ago…

You barely remember to say goodbye to Simone before you whirl around to face Rafayel. He’s still on the ground, pouting, his full lips jutted at you in irritation. “Let me guess,” he grumbles. “You’re gonna abandon me again. Forget aaaaall about me on your fancy wanderer-hunting job.”

“Rafayel,” you sigh. He always got vexed about this, the fact that you had a life aside from basically being his handbag that he carried everywhere. Rafayel doesn’t even like public appearances, and rarely appears often enough where the necessity of a bodyguard was warranted. You step towards him and offer him your hand so he can let himself be pulled up, but he turns his face away like a child. “Don’t be like this. I’ll literally be back tomorrow.”

“Oh, will you? And what if you get another emergency? And what when your free days are over and you have to go back to your regular work? Since you’ve managed to forget to text me every time you’ve been busy, I’m assuming you’ll check back with me as soon as sharks have started walking on land.”

“Now you’re just being dramatic.”

Rafayel turns his head to glare at you. It’s the only thing your register before the world is flipped upside down in a rapid whorl of colors. Rafayel has taken hold of the hand that had intended to help him and had pulled you down. The movement is so swift and sudden that you squeak in indignation before you can remember your training, but your fight-response dies down as soon as Rafayel leans over you, his hands pinning yours over your head. You could easily free yourself if you wanted to. You were a Deepspace hunter, for crying out loud. But it’s Rafayel who’s pinning you down, Rafayel whose lovely hair is as blue as the swirling sea, his eyes capturing you like a predator hypnotizing its prey. “You’re a liar,” he tells you. It’s an insult, but your skin tingles as if the word was a caress. You squeeze your hands into fists in his hold, and he grips your wrists tighter, as if he can imprison them. As if he can imprison you. Rafayel’s eyes are as hard as flint, and you recoil from the real anger inside them; he’s never looked at you like this, never. The air is thick with tension. “You humans always lie. You’ll leave me and forget about me.”

The situation seems so silly, but there’s something urging you to take it seriously, something in Rafayel’s eyes that tugs at your heartstrings. You feel like a deer in the headlights, yearning for the approaching car. “I’d never lie,” you tell him after a few moments, unsure where the words are coming from. “And I’d never leave you.”

Rafayel scoffs, and you feel the embarrassment creep up on your face. Well, it’s not like you were the one who initiated this ridiculous situation! But you cannot help but feel this isn’t a joke. You scan Rafayel’s face, but he’s as unreadable as the calligraphy of a foreign language, unavailable and unreachable to you. “How can you be certain?” There’s a tang of anxiety to Rafayel’s voice, a tone so disquieting that you feel desperate to get rid of it. The urge is strange, but not unwelcome. You think for a long time before you tell him, “I can’t be. I’m only human, after all. But I mean it with all my heart when I say I would never intend to.”

Rafayel’s eyes visibly soften at the words. It’s a confusing, mind-muddling reaction. Although your relationship to Rafayel is indescribable by words and constrained by its professional setting, you would still be able to claim that you had grown close enough to realize this was an extremely uncommon reaction. What’s even more confusing is when Rafayel lowers himself to tug you closer; you fit like puzzle pieces as he cradles your head in the hollow of his neck, holding you against his heart. You return the embrace with a racing heart. This is everything what your touchstarved brain had asked for and more. You turn your face to tuck it into the crook of his neck, and the man above you sighs with what sounds like content. After a few moments, he finally releases you, his arms unfurling like the petals of a flower. He’s still pouting, but he looks appeased. “Go, then,” he says, sitting up and crossing his arms. “But don’t expect me to miss you or anything!”

Like a sea creature that’s washed up on the beach, unable to breathe air, you gape at him. Meanwhile, Rafayel dusts himself off, as if nothing ever happened. He goes straight back to his art, sparing you not even a glance as he says, “Be sure to lock the door behind you, will you? I really don’t want Thomas to crash in whenever he wants again. I like my privacy.”

That damned fish!

This is the shape your relationship takes on, the constant push-and-pull between tearing each other apart and digging into every crevice you can reach in the other. What has started as a simple crush is starting to drive you insane, what with how Rafayel begins to take advantage of how familiar you both become. It’s on a night like this where he makes every effort to blur the lines between you two, like colors mixing and washing over each other, creating something new. It’s the middle of the night, and you should really be in bed sleeping before your newest mission in the morning, and yet you’re standing in front of the art gallery in the middle of nowhere. Thomas’ face looks like a tomato. He’s been blushing and apologizing for at least ten minutes, begging you to forgive him and spewing excuses about how he absolutely couldn’t call anyone else. He pawns Rafayel off like a discovered item being handed in to lost-and-found, abandoning you to your new task so he can hush back inside and hide the fact that a) the artist in question being discussed in there is drunk out of his mind and b) he’s pulling the Frenchest exist ever known to humankind, having slipped out the backdoor that is supposed to be reserved for the staff. You stare at the label that marks the closed door as such long after Thomas has left you, ignoring the whiny little sounds Rafayel is making. Asking for your attention, probably. Eliciting a very different kind of response in both your pissed and tired mind, but also your easily excited abdomen.

How did you even get here?

“Can you pleaaaase stop staring at that door and stare at me instead? And I made all that effort to look pretty, too.”

Your eyes snap back to Rafayel, momentarily distracted. “Surely you didn’t dress up for me, mister,” you huff, although you did take note of his attire. It’s an elegantly cut suit and tie, the cuffs of his shirt studded with something that looks like glinting stars in the dark. As you step closer, you realize that the buttons are not buttons, but rather pearls. From Rafayel’s left ear dangles an ear ring, a silver fishing spear that seems to pierce through the earlobe. “Because you best believe I didn’t agree to be dragged out at the ass-crack of dawn to pick you up just because you can’t hold your liquor.”

“I can hold my liquor!” Rafayel complains. You want to muster up a snarky response, but then he grabs your calf and falls forward, his head coming to rest on your thigh. The proximity is making your breath catch in your throat. “That was just …. a lot of piña coladas. They were just so delicious. It’s not my fault.” The drunkard at your feet squishes his stunningly beautiful irritating face against your leg, looking up to catch your gaze as he pleads you to swallow the lie.

You are robbed of speech.

It’s one thing to have an unrequited crush. It’s another thing to live with it. And then it’s something entirely different to have that crush used against you. Rafayel’s cheeks are red from intoxication, his eyes lidded, seemingly in a haze. But his hands are steady, goal-oriented. They feel their way along your legs, up to the hollow of your knees, until finally Rafayel digs his fingers into the back of your thighs and closes his eyes.

If anyone knew how fast your heart was racing right now, you’d never live to hear the end of it. You are shy and overwhelmed and in love. Before you can embarrass yourself even further, you take Rafayel’s hands into yours and pull him, the sound of your blood rushing in your ears reminiscent of the way the thunderous waves crash on Whitesand Bay when it storms. “Let’s get you home,” you hear yourself speak as if from a distance. For once, Rafayel is obedient. He nods eagerly, wrapping both his arms around the one you offered him, and you manage to find your way back to the main street as you round the art gallery and hail a cab.

The driver looks as tired as you are. The meter, calculating the price for the amount of distance travelled, sets a ticking rhythm for the drive. As you settle in and buckle up both Rafayel and you, the former uses the chance to inch closer to you. You direct your gaze to the roof of the car, thinking, dear god, please help me survive the ride back home.

Because this is just plain torture. It takes Rafayel five minutes, tops, to fall against you and hide away his face against your throat. His breath comes more steadily now, not as erratic, and he’s still got the scent of coconut syrup and rum on his breath, but beneath all that, he smells like the Rafayel you have come to know. That strange smell of salt and paint and mint, the latter being part of the perfume he prefers to use. He’s close enough to bite through your throat if he wanted to.

Somehow, the thought doesn’t terrify you. The lack of fear ought to be a warning sign, but all you can think about is how lovely it would be die on those teeth, like the drowned sailors crushed to pulp as the waves throw them against the cliffs over and over again. You curl your fingers to your fist in your lap, willing yourself to endure it. In the darkness of the cab, every touch seems amplified.

“Missed you,” Rafayel mumbles then, almost making you leap out of your skin. He hadn’t been loud, but you’re growing incredibly hypersensitive to his every mood. His lips brush your skin as he speaks. “Thought you wouldn’t come.”

You slightly turn your head to create some life-saving distance. Your heat is threatening to jump right out of your chest. “Of course I would come to get you, silly fish,” you whisper back. Through the window, you see the cab cut by the city, drifting through its streets like a snake through a flower field. Even in the middle of the night, Linkon City doesn’t seem to sleep. You try to fixate on the sight outside, instead of the man beside you that was threatening to make you lose your grip on sanity.

Rafayel grunts, then shifts his position. As he sits up, his hand falls into your lap, and with an ease you usually only ever see him exert on his brushes, he claims your hand for his own and turns it over. He presses a thumb to your palm, the touch light, but something feathers in your muscles. Your hand twitches. “You sound so sure,” he sighs, sounding petulant. He doesn’t believe you.

When finally the sight of Rafayel’s humble appears on the horizon, Rafayel manages to step outside the cab without falling over once. In the time it takes him to step outside and stand up-right, you’ve already paid and thanked the cab driver, who only nods and speeds away as soon as the door to his vehicle closes. You watch for a few moments until the cab merges with general traffic and then disappears, then turn back to your drunk, pouting companion, avoiding your eyes as if the eye contact could be embarrassing to him. For being so touchy in the cab, he sure has some nerve of acting like this. Without another word, you enter the passcode to his door, and Rafayel slips inside.

The studio looks like a mess. Clearly, nothing had been cleaned or tidied up before someone left to attend their oh, so important event. There is paint everywhere, even on the couch you know costs more than an entire year of your salary. You avert your eyes and press your hand on Rafayel’s back; you would talk about that tomorrow. The studio usually was a representation of Rafayel’s mental state. Whatever bothered him, had exploded into the artful reorganization of his home. “Quit pushing me,” Rafayel nags at you. He winds around so that he can free himself from your touch, then glares at you as if this was somehow your fault. “I can walk on my own.”

“Well, then maybe you’ll take yourself home, too.”

Your voice comes out too harsh. You know it as soon as you close your mouth, but Rafayel has already flinched. “I’m sorry,” you say as you try to soften the blow, and it feels ridiculous. Why is it you who has to apologize right now? But you continue speaking as if compelled, because you can’t stand the thought of hurting him, of him thinking he meant nothing to you. He doesn’t answer, so you step closer, intending to make him look at you so he’d see that you’re being earnest. That’s not what happens, though.

What happens is that Rafayel’s hands find your shoulders, and you’re about to ask what he’s doing, and then the only thing you can feel is the shape of Rafayel’s full lips crashing against yours, swallowing your words. It’s not even an actual kiss, too messy to be actually deemed one; his teeth clack against yours, grazing your lip painfully enough that you’re almost sure he’s drawn blood. But then he re-angles his face and Rafayel is actually kissing you, tasting you, stealing the air you breathe. Your brain shortcircuits. For a second, you forget why you’re here, and your fingers act faster than your mind does, gripping onto Rafayel’s shirt so forcefully you almost rip the pearls off them. Thankfully, your brain snaps back to reality almost immediately, and you push Rafayel away before the realization that you had been tasting his sinful tongue can actually hit you. That would be an information your brain would deconstruct later. “You’re drunk,” you exclaim. It is the most difficult thing you ever had to do, tearing yourself away from Rafayel. His face is the very picture of longing, an expression that makes you want to eat him alive, bones and all. But you did it anyways, because it would not be fair to him, and this is something that would have to be discussed when he’s sober. “Come on, Raf, I’ll take you to bed.”

“I don’t want to go to bed.” His fingers haven’t left you. They wander up the sides of your throat, digging into the space beneath your jaw, forcing you to angle your head up. Like this, he almost looks like the deep-sea predator he is. There’s a dangerous glint in his eyes that seems to reflect your own hunger, a kind of starvation that will not leave a single scrap of you to scavenge. If you’re not dangerous, he will drag you into the depths of the ocean, never to be seen again. “I want to make you feel good and make it up to you, please, pretty please. You’ll let me, won’t you?” He tugs and tugs, unrelenting. His wicked lips are shaping his typical pout, his favorite expression of getting you to do his bidding. He almost gets away with it, too, and the only thing keeping him from kissing you again are your quick hands, placed on his mouth before he can even think of capturing your mouth again.

“Raf, I will not take advantage of you while you’re being drunk!” you exclaim. It’s unbelievable how his face grimaces into the most heartbroken expression ever, just because you refuse to be the villain here. It physically hurts, to see him in so much anguish. You quickly spin him around so you don’t have to see his face, directing him to his bedroom. “You can make it up to me tomorrow,” you say tentatively. Secretly, you hope he will forget all about this, and you’ll never have to talk about it all. You’ll file away the kiss in your secret drawer inside your mind palace and polish the memory until it physically deteriorates, like it’s your last dinner on death row. You’ll make that memory last. Because you know he doesn’t love you; you had just been a warm body who had been kind to him at the wrong time.

“You’re so mean.” Rafayel sniffs, but this time, he comes more willingly. In the bedroom, the atmosphere has almost returned to its original tranquility, the silence enveloping you both seeming to sober him up. The bed feathers, creaking as Rafayel falls into it, but then the only sound left is his quiet muttering as he continues to complain about your attitude. He falls asleep like that, grumbling about how you would regret not letting him kiss you, how he could make it worth your while. He almost looks innocent like this, his face relaxed and devoid of his usual dramatic flair. It smoothens out the deeper he falls into sleep, sinking further into the mattress, looking like a pre-Raphaelite angel in a painting. Peaceful. Neutral. Entirely ethereal. He’s so surreal, you wonder if you might not be imagining this moment, the way you imagined him doing other things to you as you laid awake at night.

You fan your burning face, wondering what exactly had Rafayel intended to with you. It only adds on to the maladaptive daydreaming you dedicated your time to every day, ever since the fish-eyed king who called you his bodyguard had stolen your heart.

You stare at him for a very long time, until every ethereal feature of him is burned into the back of your eyelids. Your heart is light as a feather, floating, yearning. It sings his name in a steady pattern, synching almost naturally to the breath that stirs in Rafayel’s chest.

From then on, there is a current of tension underlining every interaction.

It’s not on purpose, of course. You just can’t help yourself. Every single nerve is on fire, at the beck and call of your favorite painter’s whims. You twitch when your fingers accidentally touch. There’s an involuntary gasp whenever he comes near, a sound tugged out of you against your will. You would have never thought that love would feel like a thousand fireworks going off at once. Soft, resounding explosions going boom, boom, boom in your chest.

You are so very conscious of Rafayel. Your heart jealously guards every moment you share with him.

Amor vincit omnia, famous poet Virgil once said in his own works. Love conquers all. Poets have to describe it like that, for emotions to be so consuming. It’s supposed to be a fun little tale, a nice piece of text, to be read and enjoyed. It’s not supposed to be something that happens to you, in the most violent way possible. Rafayel, although his own empire has been laid to rest centuries ago, his claim on the throne long faded, has succeeded in conquering you after all, heart and soul.

But, spoiler alert: you do not talk about what happened. In fact, you make every effort to escape the conversation whenever Rafayel tries to bring it up.

Why, you ask? Well, that’s something not even you can answer. Your friends have grown intolerable with frustration, to the point where Simone has staged an intervention to get you to fess up and confess to Rafayel. (Michaela, finally dating Simone, had planned an entire powerpoint dedicated to the benefits of admitting your feelings to someone. Which is ironic, because it was Simone who had finally gotten her shit together and told Michaela about how she felt.) Even Zayne, uninterested in your love life and its endeavors, had chipped in with his own opinion, which you had quickly ignored, because Zayne was the only mentally-sound, responsible adult in your friend group, which meant unresponsible you didn’t want to think about his advice at all.

It probably has a lot to do with how Rafayel is the epitome of perfection in your eyes, and you are nothing. You know it’s completely idiotic to think of someone as flawless, although Rafayel, being a sea creature of mythological background, might be a little closer to fitting that description than a human would. But you do. He is tender and attentive and all-encompassing. You refuse to lose him like this, to lose him to an unrequited crush that he had nurtured on a whim because he had been intoxicated.

No, you’d rather dance around it and be able to stay in his vicinity. Even if it kills you to be the outstander in his life forever, you’ll sacrifice yourself for it.

Unluckily for you, Rafayel is entirely fed up with sacrifices.

To say the door was closed would be to put it gently; it crashes into the hinges as Rafayel shuts it in front of your nose, cutting off your only route of escape. The evening sunlight paints him in a rosy hue that only adds on to the weakness your heart feels when you see him. He is exquisite. “We are going to talk about this,” Rafayel states, crossing his arms in petulance. “Whether you like it or not.”

“Ah, I’d love to, Raf.” Your lips quirk into a nervous smile. The memory of those arms wrapping you up in their embrace is so powerful, it manages to spike your blood with adrenaline. You theatrically check your wristwatch, then point at it, as if Rafayel needed some kind of extra confirmation that you were out of time. “But I really have to get to this meeting, and I already told Simone that I would…”

“Nope, don’t care.”

“But I…”

“Nooooope. You want me to say it in Lemurian?”

“Raf,” you groan out. “Don’t be like this.”

“Me, not be like this?” It seems as if you’ve missed some kind of signal in his communication, because suddenly Rafayel draws up, taut as a bowstring. There is a palpable taste of anger on your tongue, like a shark tasting blood in the water, and the realization dawns on you that you probably shouldn’t have answered him like that. “You’re really one to talk. You know, I thought we were finally getting closer. But you can’t even look at me properly! Have I done something to you?” His eyes are unhappy, glassy with emotion. It tears at you. His anguish has always been like a knife in your gut, disembowling you like a fish being gutted.

Your breath hitches. Yes, you have done something to me. You’ve ruined me. All I can think about is you, and the way your smile looks like the first streak of warm light at the break of dawn, and how even your annoying jokes make me float with joy. You’ve done something, alright. But all you say is, “No, of course not. I mean, no you haven’t done anything. I like spending time with you.”

“Then, what is it?” Rafayel has stepped closer. You instinctually step back, craving distance from him so that your heart won’t explode in your chest, but it seems like he has had enough. He ignores your attempt at evading him and grabs your arms, shaking you like a child would its toy. You look up at him, helpless. “Please. I can’t stand the thought of being apart from you.”

“Don’t say that, please.” Your voice is meek. You cannot believe he is even saying those things to you, that he could possibly replicate all the feelings in your heart, both the light and the dark.

Rafayel sucks in a breath, as if the words were a slap to his face. “Does it disgust you? That I feel like this? Because if you don’t want me to take liberties, if you don’t want me to bother you, then that’s all you have to say. I promise I’ll go back to any role you want to cast me in, as long as we go back to what we were, and you will talk and laugh with me again.”

What even is this moment right now? You are dizzy with emotion, incapable of producing speech. In all your wildest dreams, never once had you thought that it would be Rafayel begging for even a scrap of your attention. It was always in reverse, the natural order of things. You shake your head, appalled at his words, heady with them. “You can’t possibly feel like this,” you manage to say through gritted teeth. “You can’t possibly feel like you’re the one being pushy, when all I’ve done is ruin things between us. I shouldn’t have let you kiss me. I knew you did it because you were drunk, and I’m not mad at all, but I should have been the responsible one, and now I’ve ruined everything.”

“Ruined everything?” Rafayel’s voice is ripe with incredulity. When you finally gather courage to look up, you see Rafayel’s face suffusing with blood, although you can’t tell if it’s in anger or frustration. You don’t understand that in reality, Rafayel has spent his entire existence living in devotion to you, praying to you, deifying you. There is a split second where you both look at each other, completely silent, but then Rafayel’s painter-roughened fingers circle around your wrist and guide you back into the studio.

There are art supplies strewn everywhere, littered on every surface, but the actual paintings have been draped in curtains, hidden from view. Sometimes, even the most talented of creators gets shy about his works, and you’ve never once pushed him or teased him for it, respecting his privacy. But now you’re standing in the middle of his domain, his one hand still gripping your flesh, the other curling around the soft fabric that hides his art. “Then believe this,” he scoffs, and before you can protest, he rips the curtain off to reveal what is beneath.

You are robbed of speech.

That day in the gallery, your eyes had been cloudy, blind. You never once thought to stop about whether Rafayel had a muse that he venerated, something he enshrined with his paintings in an effort to cage in the feeling. Like the visionary described in Plato’s allegory of the cave, you are stumbling towards the light, blinded by the grace Rafayel utilizes in everything he shapes and touches.

Blooming all over the canvas is a rendition of you, floating in the ocean, kissed by the sunlight straining to reach you in the depths of the water. You almost reach out to feel the brushes, each stroke of the paintbrush a loving word, a compliment to your existence. Rafayel has painted you with the loveliness of an artisan completely entranced with their source of inspiration. There is an unspoken language of love woven into the material of the canvas itself, every color, every shade fondly handpicked to highlight your radiance. The drawing of you is glowing, basking in Rafayel’s attentiveness, completely wrapped up in his adoration.

“This,” Rafayel speaks up at your side, leading you back to reality, “is how I feel about you. I worship you.”

“Worship me?” You are breathless. It’s an impossible feat to tear your eyes off of the craftsmanship, but you manage to do so. The sight of Rafayel almost knocks you to your knees anew. His gaze is so full of warmth that for the first time in years, your heart is expanding, feeling full and hungry at the same time. Rafayel takes your hands in his, pulling them towards him. “You sound so shocked,” he laughs gently, the reaction so untypical for him. You let yourself be guided closer into the circle of his arms, into your safe haven that Rafayel represented for you. “Is it so hard to believe that I love you? There is no one else I’d want to kiss, no matter whether I’m drunk or sober. I dream and think of you all the time, and I hate it, trust me. Did you really think there would have been anyone else that could take your place in my heart?”

You are still adoring the painting, but when you angle your head back to look at him, Rafayel is already looking at you. It’s a soul-connecting look, the kind that reaches deeper than his eyes, the color of them ressembling the star-speckled sky reaching to kiss the pink waves. He is literally cracking open inside his chest so that you may look within, so that you will believe him. There is a memory at the edge of your consciousness, something that washes the saltiness of the ocean and the strangely sweet taste of divinity over your tongue, something that you cannot recognize yet. But what you can recognize is the heart inside Rafayel’s chest, so similar to your own, even hungrier than yours possibly could ever be. “Say it in full,” you plead with him, just to hear it once more. To realize that this incomparable man, more legend than reality, in all his heavenliness and gracefulness, belongs to you. That although your heart has always been the most insatiable creature alive, it has finally found a twin that matched its voracity. “Say you love me.”

Rafayel’s hands come up to cradle your face, cupping it like one would hold their most precious treasure. He is looking at you like a devotee who has seen his salvation, like you are the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on. It’s the look of love you’ve always, always wanted directed at you. “I love you,” he says, sounding entirely to exultant for a moment like this, his voice like the bells of heaven. It is utterly unlike your sassy crush, the man who’s outwitted you countless times, who always tugs a laughter out of you whether you want it or not. This is someone else, someone who’s set fire to the earth just to dig you out of its ashes. “I will love you until the day I die and if there is another life after this one, then let me love you in that one too, in all lives that may yet come.”

You screw your eyes shut then. You are blinded by joy, amazed at what just a single string of words can do to you. There is a key turning in the lock inside your chest, something that opens up a tsunami of emotions inside you. I love you. I love you. I love you. “Rafayel,” you whisper, and then you stumble forward at the same time as Rafayel tips down, and you collide like stars. When Rafayel finally kisses you, it tastes of cosmic dust and red strings of fate and it tastes like eternity. Your hands reach upward, seizing at his clothes and shoulders, until finally your fingers claw at his cheeks and you are probably hurting him. Neither of you cares. You fold around each other until no one can tell where you stop and he begins.

Rafayel groans into the kiss, a sound of such profound relief that you almost manage to stop kissing him just to laugh. There is no opportunity to do that, though, as Rafayel keeps dragging you back for another kiss, and another, and another. “My pearl,” he gasps against your lips, and you swallow the sound eagerly, lips moving against his like the tide crashing back into the shore. There is a loud crash as Rafayel moves backwards; you are momentarily distracted and look downwards to see the palette having strewn all its paint and contents all over the floor. In the heat of passion, you had completely forgotten your surroundings. “Whoops,” you murmur, not feeling sorry at all. It makes Rafayel burst into laughter, and for a moment, you are two idiots stumbling in the dark, two boats in a storm.

Holding on to another.

“It’s so typical of you to make a mess when I’m trying to be romantic,” he whines, becoming your unserious Rafayel again, love of your life Rafayel. You brush a lock of his storm-blue hair aside, and he tilts his head until his cheek is fitted against your palm. “You exist to sabotage me, admit it.”

“You admit something first.” Still love-drunk from the kiss, you swipe your thumb over his cheekbone, the touch electric. “When did you paint this? Do you really like me for as long as I have liked you? Because if I’m being honest, I’ve been having the most embarrassing crush for the longest time. Simone can tell you all about it.”

Rafayel dips his head, looking at you straight on. “You have no idea,” he tells you, entirely honest. He looks as if he can tell that your heart is racing, like he’s speaking the words into your veins, carried to your heart with the steady pump of your blood.

You step closer to him then, the need so primal you feel your entire body shivering. The urge is so tantalizing that you threaten to choke on it, succumb to the threat that Rafayel’s love poses. He is a walking siren song. “Help me understand then,” you whisper. “You’re always so chatty. Chat to me now.”

“But I’ve done all the talking, you know.” He pouts, the expression entirely bratty and so Rafayel-coded that you can’t help but giggle. The corners of his own mouth twitch, clearly pleased by the reaction, the sound the only symphony in his ears he likes to hear more than the swell of the ocean.

Your arms come to wrap around his neck, and you slot together like puzzle pieces, every rib fitting into the hollow of Rafayel’s chest. It feels like you are made for each other. You place your lips on Rafayel’s ears, your own only hearing the rush of the ocean, the sound of your blood racing. “Tell me, please, Raf,” you whisper. He shudders violenty, a reaction that reaches deeper than evolutionary instinct. His hands find their home on the dips of your curves, every finger digging in. “I want to hear about every single thing inside your head. Always.”

“You are unfair.”

You kiss the curve of his ear. “Of course I am. I’m the human that stole your heart.”

Rafayel’s lips are seized by a helpless smile, an expression you’ve never seen before. It’s almost as if he’s reminiscing about a secret that you don’t know, something that feathers along the edge of your memory. But he answers you nonetheless. “But there was no theft, my love,” he purrs. It’s the sound of pure, languid affection, the kind that wells up from the depths of one’s heart. “I’d give you my heart again and again and again. You can tease me all you like, but in truth, I’d sink to my knees whenever you’d like and worship you forever.”

Your lips part in astonishment. You don’t miss the way Rafayel’s eyes zero in on the reaction in hunger. “You were right, you shouldn’t talk,” you stutter then. “Your words are gonna go right to my head.”

“And it’s such a pretty head, too.” Rafayel’s lips begin to chase the soft slopes of your face, tracing a fiery path across your cheeks. It is unbelievable how such a simple act unravels you, how you are going to explode beneath the simple touch of Rafayel’s kiss. You almost preen beneath the ministrations. You angle your head to entangle him in a kiss, but this time, it’s him who moves before your lips can touch. “Let me prove it to you,” he whispers, the words itself as soft as a kiss. It’s a dangerous promise, an even more dangerous game. “Please, pretty girl, let me prove it to you, show you how much I adore you. I’m all yours. Let me show you, I beg you.”

You bite your lips. You’re pretty sure the bar is in hell, but this is the single most attractive thing a man has ever done for you. Here he stands, his heart on a silver platter presented to you, his entire being at your whim. You are heady with power, dizzy with the implications. But at the same time, you have never felt so safe. You are in the palm of Rafayel’s hands, safe and comfortable and oh, so loved. “Show me,” you tell him, biting your lip. “Please, Raf, show me.”

Those are the magic words. You didn’t even need to plead. Before a single ‘please’ has left your mouth, Rafayel’s lips once again crash into yours, and this time, he kisses you properly. His tongue, as commanding as his personality, tastes like a weirdly enticing combination of cherry coke and ocean salt; there is a loud, embarrassing squeak that escapes you when Rafayel’s teeth drag over your lower lip, but the sound quickly changes into a drawn-out moan when he gently sucks on it. He releases it with a groan of his own, and his eyes, like mirrors to his soul, reveal the depths of his hunger. “God, you have no idea what I’d do for you,” he gasps out, his brain working faster than his own mouth, the words hurtling from some part in his soul he has been jealously guarding. You are his only vulnerability, the only one. “What I have been looking for all my life. Light of my life, my love, my pearl. Need to show you.”

“Show me what?” You’re so drunk on his kisses, you’ve already forgotten what Rafayel requested from you in the first place. He tugs you in the direction of his bedroom, and you follow with a scary compliance. Maybe all those stories about the sailors drowning at sea had more than just a kernel of truth to them. Who wouldn’t throw themselves into the waves, for a chance to experience Rafayel’s experiences, even if it was only mere seconds? Your haziness chases you into the bedroom; your head is still spinning when he pulls you down into the luxurious bed you’ve always mocked him for. Suddenly, all that space begins to make a lot of sense. You spread out on the bed entirely too easily, unfolding beneath Rafayel like the blossom of a flower.

He sucks in his breath, his chest rising rapidly. Even though you are dizzy in your stupor, your brain still registers with a delight that it’s not alone in its sensation. You are doing this to him, you are undoing him just as much as he is you. The knowledge is so sweet that every inch of your body seems to sing. “Show you how much I love you,” he says. “Never gonna make you doubt me again. You’ll never think about anyone else after this. No one will ever love you like I do, I promise.”

The promise sounds entirely too harrowing for the romantic atmosphere you had been cultivating since the reveal of the painting in the studio. You almost sit up. Not too argue against him, but to question where the need for the promise came from; after all, you’d be just as ready to prove to him that no one in your life would ever come close to the reign he held over your heart. But then Rafayel bows over you, and you’re entirely engulfed by his shadow, and Rafayel’s hands are carving their way out to your abdomen.

It almost makes you shy. You’re not a blushing virgin, but you’ve never let anyone into your body in this way, not like this. You’re afraid that Rafayel’s gonna get inside and seize evey cell of your body for him, and he’ll settle in your bones and your marrow and your blood, and he’ll stay there forever. It’s a delicious fear, a kind of anticipation that makes you peer into the void, listen to its call. You want it so bad that your own fingers dig into the way-too-expensive fabric of Rafayel’s blankets, tearing, anchoring. Finally, finally, his lips kiss their way down the shape of your hip bones, chasing their way to the edge of your jeans. “May I, please?” He asks, his voice laced with desperation, the picture of a petitioner.

You look down at him, at this siren bewitching your body and spirit. Although he looks like something straight out of a pornographic movie, you don’t think you’ve ever seen anything this beautiful. Rafayel was like the most ethereal pictures, his lovely features carved out with the tender carefulness that makes even stone seem soft. His eyes are hopeful, open, trusting. You are falling in love with someone more divine than your mortal mind could have ever conjured, your every dream come true. “You better,” comes the weak response from you.

It’s all the consent he needs. Rafayel all but tears the pants off of you, his hands chasing flesh, craving connection. “Thank God,” he moans, and you almost think he’s enjoying this just as much as you are, more than you are. You watch his own hips buck into the soft mattress, chasing the mock-sensation your pussy would offer him, and you clench your thighs so hard your kneecaps almost pulverize. He grinds into the blankets, the torment of his own desire seemingly making him delirious, but his touches are determined, measured. Your curves fit perfectly into his hands, the elegant painter fingers gripping into your ass to angle you to his liking. “I thought I’d die without ever tasting you again.”

Again? You repeat in your mind, thinking you misheard. But Rafayel doesn’t permit you to think. Another pull, another tug, and then his treacherous mouth is around your core, kissing you through the cotton, mouthing around the shape of your pussy. You cry out, more in surprise than pleasure, but that quickly changes when he begins to drag his tongue across your pussy in a long, languorous swipe that makes your insides twitch wantonly. “Get those panties off of me or so help me god, Rafayel,” you manage to push out between gritted teeth, your own hips flying up to chase his touch. His grip is unrelenting, pinning you back into the mattress. “Weren’t you gonna prove something to me?”

Rafayel’s answer comes in a purr. “Your wish is my command, beloved.”

He pulls your panties to the side in a swift motion, placing another kiss on your clit. “Fucking hell,” he seems to mutter in amazement, and you’re not sure you were supposed to hear that. A mere moment later, Rafayel digs in like a man starved, moments away from the death sentence. You are not just a death row meal: you are the entire five-star course. You cry out entirely too loud as Rafayel plunges his tongue into you, the flexing muscle angling up to trace the soft, sensitive spot you chase with your own fingers when pleasuring yourself. You have no idea how he knows that, but you have no time to ponder as his left hands begins to trace circles around your clit, bullying the bundle of nerves with the pencil-roughened pads off his fingers. “Raf, oh my god!” you gasp, the sound dragged out of you in the same steady rhythm as his tongue pumping into you.

“I’m your god,” comes the moaned response, the sound’s vibration making your insides twitch in response. His fingers don’t let up, the ministrations steady, slowly picking up in speed in tandem with the coil of pleasure tightening inside your belly. You are twisting like a snake, your body shortcircuiting. “Say it.”

“Rafayel.” You are suprised in the coherency you fathom in expressing his name; your mind is already blurring at the edge, falling apart in soft colors like the confetti inside a kaleidoscope. “You’re my god, Rafayel, mine all mine.”

“Yours,” Rafayel keens. You notice the admission make him almost feral; he immediately puts his mouth back to work, slurping your essence in the most obscene manner. You are way beyond proprieties, way beyond embarrassment. All you can hope for is that he catches you at the end of this, as he hurtles you past the point of no return, the death-drop on a scary rollercoaster. You almost scream his name when he sucks your clit into his mouth, nursing on the spot like he’s going to die from thirst. The flick of his thumb makes you come undone; you fall back into the mattress into oblivion, shaking out of existence as Rafayel’s skilled tongue continues teasing your slit until you push him away, over-sensitive. “Stop, stop, stop,” you chant, the words slurred around the mind-blowing effects of your orgasm. Your tongue is heavy, your throat scraped raw. Did you scream that loud? “Can’t, Raf, can’t anymore, stop. So sensitive.”

“But I wasn’t done,” he whines out. His fingers still chase after you, even after you hastily sit up, dragging your unwilling body up the bed. He crawls after you, looking deliciously pathetic, his stunningly beautiful face pulled into a heartbroken grimace, as if the world was going to end if he couldn’t keep you eating out. There’s an unmistakingly large tent inside his thousand-dollar-designer pants, one that makes your mouth run dry again with hunger.

Heavens have mercy, you’ve never wanted to suck someone off so bad. You wonder if his pretty eyes would roll back into his head if you took it deep enough into your throat.

You don’t get to fulfill that wish, though. Rafayel pounces on you almost immediately, your sight taken over by his beautiful face as he kneels over you. His hips knock aside your thighs, demanding entrance, and you open up to him too easily. “Wanna make you feel good,” he begs you, but you’re too distracted with how delicious his kiss-swollen lips look. You trace your thumb over his lower lip, watch him as his mouth chases to suck on it.

He almost gapes when you place your thumb into your own mouth, tasting yourself. If he didn’t look so fucking attractive like that, you’d have laughed.

“You’re killing me,” he admits. Despite how vulnerable that sounds, he doesn’t hesitates at tearing at your legs until you’re laying below him chest to chest, ignoring the way you squeak at being manhandled into position. “Are you doing this on purpose?”

Now you laugh. “I have no idea what I’m doing. But I’m definitely not trying to kill the person I love.”

His face softens. It’s that expression you’ve begin to adore, categorized in your mind palace which is entirely dedicated to being a shrine for Rafayel. It doesn’t matter that he’s the one submitting to you at the moment, wrapping himself around your finger. It’s you who’d move all the seas in the world just to be with him. “I love you more,” he tells you, and he sounds earnest. “I love you so much more. Here, I’ll show you.”

The kiss he places on your lips is entirely too sweet for the debauchery his lower half is committing. While his teeth gently tug at your lips, begging for entry, his hips have begun to grind against your pussy. You mewl into the kiss, the sound quickly swallowed by Rafayel’s greedy tongue as he curls it around your own, tasting you, tasting him. There’s a string of saliva connecting your lip when he disentangles from you, and you’re too busy staring at it to notice the way he stares at you like you’re the single most important thing in his world.

He’d die a thousand times just to live through this night once more.

You’re only pulled out of your thoughts by the realization that Rafayel has begun tugging off his clothes. You quickly mirror him by shedding the last of your own, tugging aside all the fabric until you’re as bare before him as the day you’ve been born. You feel a little self-conscious, but to him, you must look glorious: this time, you visibly see the way his chest expands with the sheer joy, the admiration that drowns out all the color in his eyes. “Like what you see?” you tease him, but there’s an edge of nervousness tainting the words. You’re literally offering yourself up to him like a sacrificial bride.

“I adore you more than anything,” he answers, his voice reverent. His fingers shiver with tremors as they brush their way down the curves of your breast, enveloping your waist until you’re snug in his grip. It makes you blush; he’s looking at you as if he’s seizing up every detail so he can paint you anew, the devotion only a painter can muster up for a muse he loves. “This is the single greatest thing I have ever experienced.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You haven’t been inside of me yet.”

His eyes darken then, returning to their sinful mischievousness. “No, I haven’t,” he retorts, and then he pulls you towards him, the head of his cock nudging aside your labia, knocking at your entrance. You yelp, and he snickers like the bastard he is. “May I come in?”

“Fuck you,” you tell him, breathless. It was supposed to be a harmless insult, your usual banter with Rafayel that most often ends up in you guys thinking up the most creative “your momma” jokes until you guys dissolve in laughter.

This Rafayel doesn’t. “You should not have said that,” is the only warning you get, before Rafayel drags you down on his cock, sheathing you entirely on it. Your back arches off the bed as if your heart was trying to escape your chest; the intrusion is so sudden that the nerves in your brain spasm before you register there’s something kissing your cervix. Not possible, you think. Not fucking possible. He can’t be this big.

Oh. Oh.

Rafayel bundles you up in his arms and pulls back his hips just to snap back into you with the deadly precision of a predator who’s killing its’ prey. This time, you’re fully conscious of the scream you let out, your insides squeezing the living hell out of Rafayel’s dick in a desperate attempt to contain him. The only thing that amounts to is him being spurned on; you turn your head to the sound of Rafayel’s sinful moans flowing into your ear, tingling right down into your abdomen. “Rafayel, slow down”, you manage to squeeze out, but at the same time, you raise your hips to meet his every thrust, your eyelids fluttering at the same time as the rapid rhythm Rafayel sets as he pounds you into the mattress.

“What was that, my pearl?” Slap, slap, slap. The lewd noise of his Rafayel’s balls smacking against your entrance makes your toes curl in delicious pleasure, and you wind around in his hold, sobbing from how good he makes you feel. His cock cruelly bullies into you, your cervix screaming up through your nerves every time the circle of muscles makes contact with his cockhead. Your fingers claw at his back, desperate to steady themselves somewhere, anywhere. You barely even register the fact that there’s blood dripping from where your nails dig in; you’re too distracted by the fact that the pain you’re inflicting on him only seems to make him fuck you into the mattress harder. “You want me to go faster?”

“Can’t,” you wail, feeling incredulous by the fact that sex can illicit a response like this in you. You’ve severely underestimated how much everything changes when you do something with the person you love. “Can’t, Raf, it’s too much, too much.”

Rafayel’s only response is to ignore your begging. He frees a hand from where it’s digging into the mattress above of you to balance himself and cradles your face in it easily, angling your face up so you look at him straight-on. “Wish I could stop, my angel, but I’m obsessed with you. Need you to cum all over me, mark me as all yours so I can never run away again. Can you do that for me, sweet thing? Cum for me, please?”

“Raf,” you whine out, the tell-tale sign of your orgasm approaching muddling your mind again. How exactly does he expect you to form a coherent thought when he’s fucking you like it’s his last night on earth? Your fingers search for purpose, gripping into his shoulders, weaving a cradle around his neck. He bows then, kissing you like his life depends on it, never once stopping his rhythm of fucking into you. “Gonna cum.”

“You promise?” he whispers against the curve of your lips. He angled his head, instead kissing his way down your throat, swallowing the sound of your heartbeat screaming his name inside your veins. Every thrust claims your soul more and more, until you’re nothing more than a prisoner to his love. “Please, my seastar, I can’t fucking take it. Need to cum with you so bad.”

“Pleeeease.” The sound is a single cry, hollowing out your chest as you hug him closer. Rafayel bites into the soft flesh of your shoulder, and you interlock your legs behind his back, seeing white. It should hurt, but it doesn’t. His bite feels like the soft brush of a kiss, violence mingling with lust. “Come with me, Raf, I’m coming, coming, coming.”

Your orgasm washes over you like a tidal wave. You arch off the mattress, weightless for a moment; Rafayel continues to fuck you through it, chasing his own release as the most lewd moans tumble from his lovely lips, which are probably going to haunt you and your daydreams forever. His semen mingles with your release, the messy sound making you hide your face in the hollow of his neck; you slap at Rafayel’s chest when he doesn’t relent, almost wailing when the pleasure gets too much. Your heart feels raw and cradled at the same time; Rafayel doesn’t pull out when he falls off from you, instead pulling your leg with him so that you’re locked in an embrace while you both lay there, panting like animals who’ve been chased. For a long time, no one says anything. There are no words for the way your souls have converged. You’re almost not sure whether what you did even can be called sex. But then you feel Rafayel’s cum drip out of you, and the blush that rises to your cheeks reassures you that yes, it still is sex.

Rafayel squeezes your hips, hugging you against him like someone would a teddybear. “I love you,” he drawls against your still naked skin, kissing the raw teeth marks he left behind on your shoulder. You sigh out, a sound of pure contentment. Your heart still feels like it’s on the tip of your tongue. “Love you more,” you tell him, but Rafayel, stubborn as always, shakes his head. He kisses you into silence, hands cradling your face gently as he angles you upwards to receive his kisses. “Never,” he murmurs into each one. You don’t argue with him. As the moonlight bears witness to the whispered love declarations you speak in the dark, the two of you curl around each other until you’re an indistinguishable tangle of limbs, cuddling into each other like cats bathing in the sunlight.

You fall asleep like that, head pillowed against Rafayel’s chest as he props you up against him. He continues to mumble compliments into your hair long after you’ve fallen asleep, thousands of words of adoration he’s had to keep to himself in the years that have passed waiting for you.

It’s finally his turn to become your worshipper. Finally, finally, Rafayel’s hearts soars with happiness again. The sea always returns what it takes. You have washed up on the shores of his life again, mate of his soul, love of his life. And this time, he’s never going to let you go.

#ૢ་༘࿐ ALICE IS DAYDREAMING #the entirety of that sex scene was written while listening to kalamantina by saint levant because i needed the inspiration LMAOOOO #how the fawk do you write sex scenes #the way it took me weeks to finish this because i was procrastinating it so bad LMAO #like the inspiration kept hitting me and then i sat down and BOOM. writer’s block #this fic was also kind of practise in the sense of me getting back into writing #so there might be some awkward phrasing here and there or a lot of words repeated #wanted to get it out anyway tho bc i love raf! and i need feedback on my writing to get better 😭#lnds rafayel #l&ds rafayel #l&ds #lads #lnds #lads rafayel #love and deepspace #love and deepspace fanfiction #rafayel x reader #lads rafayel x reader #lnds rafayel x reader #l&ds rafayel x reader #rafayel fanfiction

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