#fits better than the lore one

[beardedhandstoadshark]

There‘s this one ask in the inbox about my oc’s reactions to their og designs, and this one plus an ask saying one of them looks like they belong to a spirit Halloween from…back when Halloween was still the hottest holiday have been haunting me - cuz I‘ve been trying to redesign almost all of them for weeks, if not months now and either circle back to the start or end up with something worse, help XD

[cdroloisms]

not to be salty abt the fandom again (but always to be salty abt the fandom again) -- it never fails to make me laugh abt how popular the concept of corrupt heroes c!dteam versus misunderstood "actually the good guys" villain c!sbi is as a premise in this fandom. like. c!dteam. you mean the group that is textually in the damn lore considered "the bad guys" according to the prevailing narratives in AND OUT of universe. what

[doodlingwren]

The brainrot is speaking... I need to create a side account for my DnD AU of Saint Seiya or I might turn evil for real this time

[life-despair-and-monsters-blog]

Kinktober Day 23 & 26: "Bondage/Restraints" & "Voyeurism/Exhibitionism" - For OTP: "Femme Fatale and the Apex" (Sonya x Jennifer)

Tagged by @socially-awkward-skeleton @imogenkol and @josephseedismyfather

Tagging @adelaidedrubman @spookyrares @derelictheretic @inafieldofdaisies @noodlecupcakes @direwombat @voidika @cassietrn @aceghosts @icecutioner @shallow-gravy @strangefable @statichvm @cloudofbutterflies92 @carlosoliveiraa @wrathfulrook @ladyoriza @la-grosse-patate @thewanderer-000 @omen-speaker @alypink @shellibisshe @josephslittledeputy @skoll-sun-eater @g0dspeeed @afarcryfrommymain @strafethesesinners @turbo-virgins and @florbelles + anyone else who want to join.

Prompt based on this kinktober post made by fellow mutual @starsandskies. While the main Kink of this post is "Bondage/Restraints" & some "Voyeurism/Exhibitionism", there's also some minor inclusions of "Dirty Talk", "Orgasm Control", "Praise Kink", "Knife Play" and "Dom/Sub dynamic". I would have put down "Naked-Clothed" but the "clothed" person in question is an almost 10-foot tall cyborg beastie (with a human's brain) whose only covering is metal welded into the flesh so... SHRUG!

Anyway, SimpleGenius here from my Life, Despair & Monsters Blog. Just making my first contribution to Kinktober. I'm not really an excessive smut writer, though with that being said, I have written it on occasion, just never posting it (...until now). This is a oneshot devoted to Sonya and Jennifer just being their kinky selves.

From the mature tag and the title you can probably already guess that this oneshot (which will also be uploaded onto my AO3 as well) contains explicitly sexual content meant for 18+ users only. Minors Do Not Interact!

Here's some more warnings to scare off any stowaways.

CW: Explicit BDSM, Teasing/edging, stripping, (tail???) knife play, the equivalent of thigh riding for these two (but on Sonya's tail), naked female with not kind of non-naked female (there's like barbie physiques/anatomy involved with Sonya), and minor mention of a blood kink (unsurprisingly Jennifer's kind of a freak too). Basically monster-fucking (maybe robot-fucking? Or would it be cyborg-monster fucking???). A mix between praise and degradation kinks. Sexual fantasies. Really freaky behavior coming from these two. But very enthusiastic consent! Also vulgar language. And whatever else there is.

I’ve tried my best to research the sex aspect of it all, and even if I don’t believe it’s all accurate I think I did good with what I could find.

TW: Slight mentions of referenced murder and maybe cannibalism (Sonya's got a human brain inside a very non-human body so I don't know what lines that crosses). And minor implications of a toxic dynamic. They're both possessive people who suck so bad.

With that out of the way, I hope you do enjoy what I've written below the cut. This will officially be my first smut that I've publicly published. I'll be sure to reblog this post with the link to the one that'll be posted on my AO3. Also I'll be publishing another Kinktober Oneshot shortly after this one from my @the-silver-chronicles blog, about the main couple of that series, Silva and Faith. So don't be alarmed by a random ping from an icon you may or may not recognize.

Title: The Tails That Bind

Series: Life, Despair & Monsters (Love Death + Robots)

Character/s: Sonya/Sonnie | The Apex/Khanivore (re-interpreted canon character with OC qualities), Jennifer, Dicko (referenced in passing) and Sir Enigma Malvolio (referenced OC).

Words: 5,635

She heard her before she saw her; the click-clack of heels on marble closing in to their quarters.

Sonya remained where she was though; hanging from the ceiling in the expansive space that was refurbished to specifically accommodate her massive form, the high walls adorned with deep claw marks and scrapes she entrenched her talons and tail spikes into. Certainly, better than the restrictive pod or the dirty paddocks.

In contrast to her usual straightforwardness, when it came to dealing with her "mistress" of all people, Sonya made an effort in entertaining her more dramatic flairs.

If only to piss off the shrewd woman.

The door opened with such force that when Sonya peeked through her only optic, shutters uncoiling from her lens, to witness the blonde slam the door shut with a ferocity that immediately turned her on.

Someone's already pissy today, Sonya noted as she continued to observe with growing interest.

Jennifer turned around, short blonde hair barely touching her shoulders, noticeably a little frazzled with a few more wild strands curling out than usual. Her yellow rose still managed to survive staying pinned in her hair in spite of the fact Jennifer looked on the verge of ripping her hair out.

Her brows were furrowed, her face was scrunched in anger and a lovely snarl adorned her lips. Blue eyes darted to her white laced gloves, ripping them off as she mumbled curses under her breath. Sonya's optic lingered on the curves of her body, covered only by the golden dress Jennifer preferred to wear.

Sonya preferred when she didn't wear anything. Ogling Jennifer had been the closest her human brain could get to experiencing arousal within a body that wasn't designed to feel it. She had to get creative and tamper with many of the strange machinations and codes Malvolio left in her cursed Beastie body to at least have her body acknowledge the feelings.

In spite of this, she was still so far from reaching her goal of actually feeling the satisfactory conclusion of pleasure.

"-that old fuck!" Sonya was brought back to reality by the enraged outburst from Jennifer.

"Which old fuck are you referring to this time?" Sonya spoke in a voice more mature and sophisticated than her original gruff and accented voice, the crackling of the speaker embedded in her throat alerting Jennifer to the other presence in the room.

Jennifer's alarmed blue eyes pointedly gazed up to meet her gleaming red optic. However, she relaxed once she saw it was just Sonya, who uncoiled herself to lower her body, but refrained from leaving the ceiling just yet.

"It's one of Dicko's closer business partners," Jennifer told the Apex, kneeling down to take off her heels, "And I thought you were down in your workshop."

That doesn't narrow it down to who it is at all, Sonya wanted to retort, but chose to respond with, "I was, but it's so hot down there that I decided to seek out the coolest room I knew of."

"The wonders of an air con," Jennifer remarked, moving over to her vanity desk to set down her yellow rose from her hair.

Sonya rolled her optic at the snide comment, and returned her attention back to the source of Jennifer's sour mood, "Which one of Dicko's partners had it been? Ross or Carmen?"

"Ross. Carmen took a vacation, lucky bastard," Jennifer grumbled about the latter, though the former's name was spoken with disgust, "He was countering every proposition I made. Questioning my ability as a successor to Dicko's business. And attempting to belittle me in front of every one of those weak and cowardly geezers. The absolute gall!"

Sonya lowered herself above the bed, talons underneath her jaw as she watched her mistress rage. If she could, she'd be squeezing her thighs together to add a little friction. Unfortunately, her body wasn't included with genitals, and rubbing her thighs together in this body would just be pointless, so she could only visualize the image to force herself from screaming internally.

"The fucker was also leering at me. Almost all of them were," Jennifer continued, sitting down onto the foot of her massive mattress with a huff.

"I don't blame them," Sonya replied, extending her neck so her head was close above Jennifer, "Your body is desirable. You're probably the only woman in their life they can jack off to. I know that's what I'd be doing."

Jennifer abruptly turned with a face full of red; not blushing red, but pissed off red.

"Oh, fuck you," she replied, standing up to move away from Sonya and the bed.

"You'd have to beg me for that," Sonya said in a sing-song rhythm, chortling.

Jennfier crossed her arms as she stewed in her anger more, "This is serious. I know they're conspiring against me. Honestly, I wish I could have them all dead by tomorrow morning."

Sonya piqued at that, red optic widening with optimism.

"You know, if Ross is being so bothersome," she spoke up, her next words a suggestion, "I could eat him for you."

Jennifer turned to look at the beastie, opened her mouth to chide her, but closed it as she considered the idea, a smile crossing her lips, until a frown swiftly replaced it, and she shook her head.

"While I certainly wouldn't be against the idea," she told the Apex with sincere consideration, she rebuked the idea, "I can't just make an example out of him. At least not right now. I require his cooperation to gain access to his assets, and if I killed him now, it'd harm my reputation and standing with the other partners. And without them, we won't have a chance of finding Malvolio."

The very name of that... thing made Sonya's entire nervous system shudder, the dark thoughts resurfacing. She let them fester at the edge of her mind, before dispelling them back to the pits. She'll let them re-emerge once they found the creature; let him face the result of his violation towards her body.

Jennifer huffed out a sigh, which returned Sonya's attention back to her even as she went to make her leave, "I need to let off some steam."

Sonya tilted her head as she watched Jennifer pause just a step away from the door. The woman's blue eyes glanced back to the beastie, gaze following the Apex's elongated muscled arms, thick metal-plated tails, their twitching rattles near the piercing pincers and closed sharp jaw.

She bit her bottom lip, her hands slid down to her hips as she slowly strutted back over to Sonya.

"You know," Jennifer said as she reached the bed, "I just remembered how I never thanked you for stopping that assassin. And a good beast like you deserves a fitting reward for protecting her mistress so well."

Sonya cocked her head, red optic narrowing down at Jennifer. Sonya remembered the incident clearly; there had been a scorned bidder who lost because of Dicko's fateful mistake of convincing them to bet a lot of money against Malvolio. He managed to slip past Jennifer's guards and got too close for Sonya's liking.

Luckily, the Apex was on Jennifer's patrol guard, and she had spotted the glint of the knife before it had even left its sheath. Fittingly, she gave the man the same end she gave Dicko when saving her mistress; a biting introduction to her maw.

But that had been several weeks ago.

"Is that so?" Sonya inquired, wishing she had a brow to raise.

Jennifer only nodded, wetting her petite lips. She slid two fingers on both hands underneath her dress' loose straps, letting them fall limply down her arms to expose more skin. She reached behind her back, tugging the zip down behind her dress so she could loosen her front, exposing a small amount of cleavage to the Apex.

Sonya was surprised of her own self-control when her lens zoomed in on the skin, how calm and collected she managed to breathe. She restrained herself though; she had too much pride in herself to lay down and roll over like a dog.

No, she had a better idea.

"Oh, don't bullshit me with your "reasoning" darling, you just want me to fuck your brains out until you forget your own name and can't remember your troubles in the morning," Sonya retorts, her talons touching the ground as she leans over the bed, bringing her head closer to Jennifer's face.

There was no fear in her mistress' eyes, only a waiting expectation and a carnality that involuntarily made the Apex shake in excitement. Sonya continued, "If you think you can flatter me into getting between your legs, then I encourage you to resume because it is working."

Jennifer grinned in triumph as she proceeded to pull her zipper down further, but halted when Sonya added, "However, as I said before, it'll require you to beg."

Jennifer scoffed and shook her head, "I'm not doing that. You fuck me, or you don't. Your choice."

Despite her confidence, Sonya saw through her act and huffed out a disappointed steam of air as she started retracting backwards, "Oh well, I guess I won't-"

With her bluff blown, Jennifer's eyes widened as she reached forward for the Apex's face, pleading, "Wait! Fuck, fine, please fuck me. Please plow my pussy with your long, flexible and magnificent tongue until my mind goes blank. Make me scream your name each time you make me cum. I'll do anything you want, Sonya."

Sonya wished she could grin just as badly as she wished she could get wet right now.

She decided to put an end to her mistress' misery.

"Since you begged so desperately for it, I guess I have no choice but to fuck your brains out," Sonya concurred, and hummed, "But I'm curious... you'll do anything I want?"

Jennifer paused, narrowed her eyes in challenge, and responded, "Yes. I'll... try whatever you want, as long as I get fucked in the end. Sound like a fair exchange?"

Sonya nodded and tapped a talon on her chin in thought. There weren't much things her body could be used for during sex that wouldn't be detrimental to Jennifer's health, with exception to her tongue and the rattles under her curved blades that tipped her tails.

Although, she recalled the night she and Jennifer had met and began their cooperation, specifically to the moment where the Apex had Jennifer restrained with her tails, That has been something I've wanted to do again.

Gaining an idea, she replied, "You know, I've been wanting to try some bondage on you."

Jennifer's face scrunched in confusion until Sonya's tails disconnected from the walls and awaited by the Apex's sides. There were three in total, all tipped with dagger like pincers, and two rattles that resided near the curve of the blade, which she's been allowed to use like a vibrator before.

Jennifer once again bit her bottom lip while she thought of those around her body.

"I have no complaints," she tells the beastie, though frowns at the state of the bed, "Though I'm not getting naked until the bed's cleared of your mess."

Sonya knelt up so she could get a better look at the bed. Her optic immediately spotted the dust and chips of the ceiling that managed to fall down.

Without much patience, Sonya took the solution of using her tails to tip the bed to the side and shake off all the unwanted variables, before setting it back down normally.

"That better?" she asked.

Jennifer looked at the newest state of her large bed, which now lacked the pillows and blankets that were unceremoniously tossed off. Though seeing that the silk sheets remained on, all Jennifer responded with was a calm yet exasperated, "Sure."

Sonya positioned herself closer to the wall of the bed's frame, knelt down so she wouldn't cover most of the bed's space when her head laid down, while also keeping her tails free and ready.

Jennifer crawled onto the bed, swaying her body seductively while she made her way over to the Apex's head, which allowed the straps of her golden dress to loosen further down, just above her elbows. The front of her dress barely hung close to her chest, and Sonya swore she felt her brain overheat when her optic focused on the view of more of Jennifer's cleavage barely hidden by the loose clothes.

Jennifer got close enough to the Apex's face just to lean upwards until she sat at her bare heels, one hand going behind to zip her dress down the rest of the way, while the other kept the front of her dress from falling down. Sonya slightly tilted her head up so her optic could capture everything.

"I know how excited you've been for this," Jennifer purred as she gazed into the red hue of Sonya's optic, "I know you've been craving to see these again."

She pulled one strap down all the way, and then freed her arm of the other, before grabbing her the front of her dress and pulling the golden gown down, slightly jiggling free her petite perky tits. Sonya shook with a passionate eagerness at the visual image, just about all her mind could express through the body without pouncing onto Jennifer to forgo the bondage altogether.

She wanted to restrain herself, to prolong this just long enough to enjoy the experience and ensure she actually succeeds in listening to Jennifer's only demand.

"I know you've missed them," Jennifer swayed her chest, catching the Apex full attention. She grabbed hold of her breasts, massaging and giving her tits a pleasing yet playful squeeze as Sonya observed, winding herself up while putting on a show for her beastie. She gasped as she flicked her nipples, gently twisting them between her fingers as the tingling sensations caused her thighs to rub together.

She was enjoying herself now, and from how she looked at Sonya's quivering form, she knew the Apex enjoyed this show as well.

Jennifer stood up, dragging her hands over her breasts as she brought them across the skin of her body, the ticklish senses stirring a heat to coil within her. She performed a sensual dance in view of Sonya's optic, bringing her hands down to her hips where her dress hung closely, thumbs digging under the gown's hem, teasingly dragging it below her pelvis.

She spun around in her erotic sway, much to Sonya's surprise, but leaned down as she dragged the rest of her dress over her sexy ass, nothing worn underneath. She let the golden gown fall the rest of the way and glanced back at Sonya's now widened optic. With a pleased smirk, Jennifer gave herself a resounding smack against one of the cheeks.

Sonya's talons scraped against the marble floor. She clenched her jaw as she clutched hold over her fraying self-control, deciding that Jennifer's teasing needed to end here.

Thankfully, it was just about time Jennifer finished her little striptease for Sonya, and her blonde mistress knelt on her heels, dainty hands grabbing hold one of the alien protrusions coming out the Apex's head and underneath the narrow chin of her sharp jaw respectively, intentionally pressing her petite breasts against the optic as she leaned her head down to a small slit beside Sonya's frame to sultrily whisper in her audio receptors.

"What now, Sonnie?"

The lustful softness of her nickname snapped Sonya out of her patient observations, and she lifted her head up out of Jennifer's hold so her red optic could meet her mistress' blue eyes below.

"Now, I'll require you to turn around," Sonya instructed, her tails moving closer to the bed, "Make sure your arms are crossed behind you, and legs spread apart."

Jennifer turned around as instructed; not without doing a little show of shaking her ass temptingly as she settled into the position. Sonya was fueled with even more excitement of the opportunity of returning some teasing of her own.

Jennifer crossed her arms behind her, and Sonya immediately coiled her middle tail around the smaller woman's waist which then extended to her dainty hands, earning a surprise yelp from her mistress as her arms were secured tightly.

"Do you trust me?" Sonya let the question out softly at the shell of Jennifer's ear, her middle tail's blade carefully and gently stroking its cool steel-like tip down the human's back. The bladed pincer soon curved to brush one of mistress' lower cheeks, sensing her body clench at the sensual contact on instinct while the other tails began to coil under and around her thighs, "To release your doubts? To let go of all your inhibitions?"

With me, Sonya left unsaid. She shunned the thought... the very emotion infecting it, aside to the corners of her mind. No need to mix feelings with pleasure. Especially when she was nothing more than a thing to Jennifer...

As both tails snaked up from Jennifer's thighs to her upper body, the left pincer delicately scraped along her stomach while the right began to curl around her right breast with the blade leaving a ghost of a kiss to her jaw in passing.

Jennifer gasped out a light moan when her middle tail began to rub against her wet cunt, in a back and forth motion, ensuring the blade's sharpness did not touch the soft flesh. Soon the sleek metal was glistened with her slickness.

"Fuck, yes," Jennifer answered approvingly, rocking her wet cunt in unison of the tail. She bit her bottom lip to suppress another moan as the left and right tipped tails coiled around her tits, the appendages lightly playing with her breasts with deliberate twists and squeezes, the blades lightly kissing along the sensitive flesh.

Sonya focused on the priority of not piercing the skin with her tipped blades. She teased the flesh with an expertise akin to a surgeon, with her only intent of not cutting in and letting Jennifer bleed.

God forbid Jennifer cums early to the sight of her own blood because Sonya got sloppy. The Apex wanted to prolong this for her own sense of pleasure as well.

Soon her tails lifted up Jennifer, much to the smaller woman's surprise. Sonya raised her above the beastie's head, claws brought on to the bed in case the Apex had to catch her.

Slowly, she rotated Jennifer upside-down so her optic could get a better look at her reactions. To her delight, Jennifer squirmed in her grip, like last time. Unlike last time, the cause of her squirming came from the vibrating rattles that grazed closer to her swelling clit, the tipped blade positioned to poke above her trimmed blonde pubic hair.

Jennifer whined when the rattles on the left and right tails began to move, flicking her erect nipples between the vibrating pair on both coiled tails. She tried to arch her back into the vibrating sensations, as well as attempted to widen her legs so the rattles on the middle tail would have more space, but Sonya kept her restrained in position, brushing the rattles to her wet puffy pussy but never staying for long. She was completely at Sonya's mercy.

Much to the younger woman's growing frustration. A frustration that transitioned into a filthy, primal need.

Sonya was enticed by the desperate whines that escaped Jennifer's mouth, her red optic hungrily filling it's view of her elevated bare body; held up by her, restrained by her, receiving and being denied pleasure from her.

She focused on the blonde's gaping pouts, faint blush forming across her face, her blonde hair flowing downwards. Sonya's tongue flicked within her closed maw at the sight of sweat beginning to break from her mistress' body, who uselessly rutted her hips in the air to reach the teasing rattles, how pronounced her small breasts were from their bound state and the slick juices surrounding her pussy.

Sonya's entire system felt a fluctuation of pleasure within herself from the visual stimuli. It wouldn't be enough to ever reach a satisfying conclusion, though it was fun, nonetheless. When her audio receptors picked up pleading mewls coming from Jennifer, Sonya knew it was nearly time to settle her part of this exchange.

"What was that?" Sonya playfully inquired, listening to the words being interrupted by soft gasps whenever her rattles vibrated too close to her sensitive cunt and swollen clit, "I can't hear what you’re trying to say over such lewd sounds darling. Could you perhaps speak up?”

Through shaky breaths, Jennifer swallowed her murmured pleas and choked out a strained, "Sonya... I don't know how much longer I can do this. I want to cum. Please, it's unbearable, let me cum already. Stop teasing and fuck me!"

Sonya ate up her begging cries; she could see a glimpse of forming tears at her eyes. She briefly wondered if she should just wait long enough for her mistress to start crying, so she could bring out her tongue and lap up the falling tears. She hadn't kissed the woman's face with her tongue in a while, it could be a nice change of pace to show she cared-

As quickly as that idea came, Sonya dismissed the thought with a visceral fear? rejection. If she did that, then she wouldn't stop at the tasteful tears; she'd continue stroking her tongue along Jennifer's sweaty and salty unmarked flesh, until she got down to between her thighs and fed on the fluids there.

She could make Jennifer cry from pleasure then, sure; but she didn't want to use her tongue to have the woman undone, she wanted her mistress gushing from her very touch.

Sonya refocused on Jennifer once more, her helpless form cursing underneath her breath as her breasts were continuously played with while her pussy received nothing but teasing touches that edged her on but denied her true release.

Sonya hummed, feigning pondering in thought, as she took a sweet moment to bask in the wanton whimpers that were caused by her.

"How badly do you want this?" Sonya asked her, bringing her red optic to Jennifer's pleading blue eyes, "How desperate are you to want to be undone by a terrible beast like me? Say it..."

Those two husky, imploring, eager words made Jennifer shiver, feeling hotter. Through the haze, she rasped out with a sense of urgent need she's never spoken in before, "I can think of no one else who can satisfy me like you..."

Though caught off-guard, Sonya was not unsatisfied with the answer. She absorbed those words into the very core of her mind, sparking a renewed sense of determination.

"Well then," the beastie said, Jennifer's words lingering on the precipices of her audio receptors, feeling her "heart" pump faster, "I think you've endured enough teasing. You deserve this for being such a good, patient girl."

Jennifer shrieked in surprise when the vibrating rattles were buried against her slick folds and sensitive clit. However, when the initial shock wore off, it was replaced with an alluring moan, followed by a symphony of gasps, the short bursts of pleased shouts, and the sweet curses that she managed through her panting. She closed her eyes and started to arch her back again, and this time Sonya adjusted her tails grip to accommodate Jennifer's position.

It wouldn't be long until she was finished. Though Sonya decided to speed up the process by taking advantage of one of Jennifer's weaknesses; her voice.

"You should see yourself," Sonya husked out, her voice thick with lust, "How fucking enrapturing you are right now. Above here, bound by me, fucked by me, you look like a goddess. Oh, your little noises make it so tempting to ravish your flesh and pussy so I can make you scream louder."

Jennifer failed to suppress the whiny, pathetic whimper with a tender lip bite, and Sonya snickered at the reaction.

"Oh, but it's true," Sonya responded, the quills along her back standing up, elated by such noises as she continued, "Though I never realized how restraining you like this could bring out even more beautiful noises from you. I could just have you like this whenever you're being so bratty. Rip that dress off. Bind your limbs. Tease your wet cunt, edging it as you rut like a bitch in heat chasing after that final release. But it'll never come. More accurately, you'll never cum."

The image of Jennifer on her knees in this bedroom, writhing in the restraints of Sonya's tail, desperately begging her to end the torment, brought a familiar sense of sadism into her system. However, she did feel an odd sensation of heat rise in her body.

She returned back to the assignment at hand, the heat radiating at the back of her mind as she hummed and said, "Oh can you envision it, Jennifer? How much of a writhing, filthy mess you'd be? You'd be left unsatisfied, without release. Not unless you crawled onto your knees and begged so pitifully. Maybe alone. Maybe not. But tell me, if you were to do that, should I give in and fuck you like I do now?"

A resounding and gasping "YES" was Jennifer's response as her hips jutted at the rattles faster. So close now...

"Such an enthusiastic answer. You must be so close now," Sonya noted, not noticing her own jaw gaping open as her red optic recorded Jennifer's unravelling, "You've taken me so well this far. Letting me taste you, ruin you. So strong and resilient. With the most perfect body just for me. You do these filthy activities so impressively, as a naughty girl like you should. Oh, I love the way your flesh bruises and reddens and scars from me. I love the taste of your tears, of your sweat and of your juices. And I love how loud I make you scream and cry and moan. Especially when the only word coming out of your mouth is my name. Makes me fantasize doing it all in front of everyone. What say you? Perhaps on a live hologram broadcast during a Beastie tournament? In the storage unit for all the passing guards and personnel to listen to? Or maybe in a meeting with those morons who dare to ogle you-?"

Sonya was interrupted by an abrupt and approving moan, which slipped into a pleased humming smile from Jennifer.

"Oh? You like that idea? Is that what you want?" Sonya inquired with an endeared curiosity, surprised by the quick nod that followed, "Does it turn you on? At the thought of me fucking you in front of those leering senile men? My, my. What a dirty little slut you are, wanting to be humiliated by me so desperately that you would want those old fucks to see how good I make you feel. Or perhaps it because you want to show them that you're mine. For me, and me alone. No one else. Maybe in one of your next meetings, I'll accompany you. And whenever you go to speak, I'll be behind you, my long, flexible and magnificent tongue lapping at the nape of your neck, nibbling at the flesh with teasing little bites, my claws digging at your glimmering dress. One tail snaking under your skirt. Maybe I'll leave small cuts in passing, letting that lovely crimson run down those fine legs of yours. But once that tail reaches its destination, I'll let the vibrations tease your wet cunt until your legs begin to wobble."

"I'll tear open the front of your dress, let those ravishing tits of yours breathe within a room where they've been dreamed about for so long, except the only one having any fun with them there will be me," Sonya had a tail squeeze promisingly around one of Jennifer's tits as emphasis, "I'll have another tail play with one while my tongue lavishes the other. Don't worry, I'll have my last tail free to ensure none of them stop us, and no one leaves, bound by their pathetic fear. I'll rip your dress off, exposing your body to them all, let them see how dripping fucking wet you are for me, and I'll pick you up, bring you to the table, splayed out like a feast ready to be dined. But only for one though."

She pressed her closed jaw to whisper, "None of them will touch you. We'll show them how well you take me. How beautiful you sing my name. How much you enjoy being fucked dirty by me, and how good of a naughty girl you are to me. Show them you find more pleasure whoring yourself to a beastie than being touched by any of their limp dicks. Reveal your deadliness to them, unleash your claws and mark my metal with your scratches as I leave my own marks along your beautiful body. I bet their hearts would give out at the sight. I don't think their weak pride could take it. The fact you'd cum to a- disgu- terrible monst- beast like me, wouldn't you agree, my sexy- gorgeous- beautif- fucking - goddes- belov- m-!"

Everything was so unbearably hot. Her mind seemed to be on some kind of fritz, just like her voice box. Diagnostics on the system returned with nothing of issue, nor of any errors.

And yet Sonya felt so unbelievably strained from the task at hand. As if exhaustion of all things was overcoming her body as she continued to bring Jennifer closer to her release.

And her voice box. She didn't understand what was wrong with it. It bugged out, replacing words she wanted to say with those she'd never in her life say to Jennifer. But most importantly...

Was that my voice? Not her current voice, the one she was forced to adopt, but the one that Malvolio stole from her.

It didn't matter much, focusing on it was too much of a strain while she was fucking Jennifer at the same time. She refocused her efforts in bringing her mistress over the edge.

Luckily, she didn't have to wait long.

Her words, in combination to the unrelenting rattles fucking her pussy and fondling her breasts, had culminated in Jennifer arching her back more while screaming out Sonya's name, accompanied by the gushing squirts onto the Apex's tail.

Witnessing the result, Sonya swiftly stopped the rattles and brought Jennifer down to the bed safely. She managed to lay the woman down onto her front before her usually durable limbs failed her. She caught herself from laying on top of Jennifer, and carefully positioned herself to lay down by Jennifer's left.

Both beastie and mistress heaved for air, the activity exhausting for both parties involved, much to Sonya's bafflement.

They laid beside each other, just for the moment, to catch their breath.

Jennifer opened her blue eyes to just gaze at the Apex, eyes taking in Sonya's strangely exhausted form. She brushed a strand of her now messy and sweaty blonde hair aside, let out a little laugh, and said, "That was... amazing."

Sonya grunted in agreement, unable to currently verbalize. She did use enough strength to bring the tipped middle tail to her view, the rattles and the curved blade under it glimmering in Jennifer's juices, not dissimilar to the woman's dress.

She opened her jaw to bring her tongue out, cleaning up the slick fluids. She rumbled approvingly at the sweetly sour taste.

Her audio receptors picked up on the soft sound of a slick pussy being gently stroked. Sonya looked over to see Jennifer still staring at her but with a newfound hunger. Sonya noticed that her ass was slightly bent up, with one of her hands massaging her cunt.

"You look so hot when you do that," she husked out, and Sonya felt her exhaustion dissipate when Jennifer asked, "Do you want to put that tongue to better use?"

Sonya tilted her head, her lens focusing on Jennifer's face, "Round two? Now?"

"Don't you remember what we agreed on? "Until my mind goes blank", "until I forget my own name" and "can't remember my troubles in the morning"," Jennifer recalled, and in that sultry mocking tone of hers, "Or are you tapping out after round one?"

A new edge burned within Sonya, and she leaned up, looking down at Jennifer's nude body, asking, "Is that a challenge?"

Jennifer though playfully shrugged, spreading her legs wider as she continued stroking herself with hushed breathy moans.

Sonya took the opportunity to place her right hand over on the other side of Jennifer, until she was above the woman. She retracted until she was staring at both her mistress' sexy ass and her glistened pussy.

Blue eyes glanced to Sonya's observing form, and removed her slick-covered hand, caressing it on one of her ass cheeks before giving it a smack to entice the beastie, as she returned her hand to under her chin.

Sonya let out an amused chuckle as she took out her tongue. However, she pressed it from her mistress' tail bone all the way up her spine, the heat and wetness of the elongated and rough bio-mechanical muscle causing Jennifer to gasp and shiver from its texture.

Sonya lowered herself so she was right on top of her mistress, her gaping jaw releasing a soft exhale of hot steam brush at the woman's ear.

"You're not going to make it to any meetings tomorrow," Sonya informed her mistress.

Jennifer only smirked at her words, not returning a reply as she got comfortable. The beastie retracted back to where her mistress needed her the most.

Though unnecessary, Sonya couldn't help but lick around her mouth as she prepared to satiate her hunger, as well as Jennifer's.

[A/n] And from there on, Jennifer decided bondage was an excellent excuse to get out of a meeting she didn't want to attend the next day.

I wanna say that I may have gone a bit overboard, but overboard is just in-character for them (at least in my series).

[ofbardsandmen]

greetings fellow genshin enthusiasts and fanatics!! once again, i'm generously presenting and offering my most beloved mondstadt character spotify playlists, free of charge and yours to consume, if you will.

[hassianlovebot]

"When she got sick, I felt my life losing its purpose. I’d do anything to save her. And I did! I don’t regret it!" this is one of reth's dialogues and like,, do you see what i mean when i say that the dialogue is So conflicting at times? like it's Just vague enough that it can very easily imply that tish Just got sick as an adult and that reth took action quickly afterwards. like it's worded in such a way that it doesn't Quite fit the vibes of tish being sick as a child. i'm not saying that reth wouldn't feel that strongly as a kid, but i am saying that it's worded in a way that implies a quicker passing of time between tish getting sick and reth getting into debt to save her life.

i feel like the devs really need to sort out the timeline and fix the dialogue to match up with it. either their parents died when they were like 5-10 or when they were teenagers/young adults. either tish got sick as a child or right before they moved to kilima. like,, you can't have dialogue that implies Both :')

[sunbathingleaves]

The cursors as various types of robots helping the Baker

This is probably the most farfetched theory I have, but there's only so much non-meta stuff you can do with cursors.

Cursors are the only building that interacts with the Big Cookie alongside the player and being placed on the opposite side of the screen, away from the other buildings, shows that they have a special status. In fact, they are placed on the 'Baker's side' of the game, along with other mechanisms he (and only he) interacts with directly, like clicking the Big Cookie or petting Krumblor, as opposite to the rest of the buildings, which are implied to be scattered across the world(s), depending on what their functionality is. So, they must be something that the Baker has constant access to and something that can fulfill the same role as him, mainly clicking the Big Cookie. Considering my last post, with the Big Cookie being a representation of all the ingredients the Baker personally uses to bake cookies, they must be something that can bake alongside him, or at least help him in the baking process.

All that being said, what if the cursors represent all manner of robotical help the Baker gathered around him over the course of his baking career? At the beginning they were tools built by him to make different parts of the baking process easier or more exact, like regulating temperature or controlling ingredient quantities, only to slowly grow more complex as he develops his cookie business.

Going over the cursor and clicking achievements will explain their evolution better. The first robots were simple and a little shoddy, built from whatever the Baker had around at the time. The first upgrade, 'reinforced index fingers' was when the Baker rebuilt his robots to be sturdier, more varied in appearance and functions and capable of more complex tasks. The 'carpal tunnel prevention cream' upgrade happened when the Baker figured out some kind of oil/lube for their robotic joints so that they can work at peak efficiency for longer. 'Ambidextrous' was when some robots became capable of successfully handling all sorts of objects, usually by getting hands/claws/whatever. But it was the 'thousand fingers' upgrade that made them an indispensable army for the Baker. After a lot of work, the robots were updated to be able to assist any building/job/position. They became capable of flying, navigating between far away coordinates, carry objects with them and maintain their temperature, memorize and relay messages, record videos or take pictures etc.

Since they became a vital part of the Baker's operations and represent his main and most trusted connection to the rest of his business, he makes sure that they are in top shape and constantly works on them and upgrades them with each important discovery he makes. The '-illion fingers' upgrades show when the cursors’ AI is upgraded to incorporate any new activities that are happening in the 'cookie empire' and the new information/discoveries the Baker is now relying on. The mouse upgrades like the 'titanium mouse' show the main material the Baker uses to upgrade the old robots and the basic material used from then on to build any new robots. This constantly changes as new and better metals and alloys get discovered or created.

As more esoteric buildings appear, the robots end up acting more like the classic hyper-competent robots you see in SF media, capable of analyzing huge amount of data fast or understand very complex orders, and with magic getting involved, they end up connected to the Baker and will only follow his orders. They will accept suggestions from other employees (and later clones), especially since they have to relay any important messages to him, but the Baker is the only one that can actually control them. (Mastering magic and soul bonds was a huge relief for the Baker since he could make sure his robots wouldn't get hacked into or hijacked by someone else.)

But to continue my original point, they are the Baker's robots. They basically work with and for him, and only a small part of their tasks has anything to do with the other buildings (even if they end up dealing with other buildings a lot). They mainly live with the Baker (I assume he lives alone and generally isolated from most other employees/scientists, in no small part because probably lots of people want him dead, with the whole psychopathic dictator thing going on), help him make obscene amount of cookies, bring him needed resources, deliver the cookies or his messages and help him in other small ways, like bringing his coat or whatever. They are one of the few things the Baker actually trusts and relies on.

While there's a wide variety of robots the Baker uses to ease up his daily tasks, there will be certain a type of robot that the Baker will end up being associated with in my verse. Specifically, actually mouse-sized robots (hence the cursor name) that can fly and carry small stuff or tiny amounts of liquid with them. The way the cursors move around the Big Cookie reminds me of bees and the way they swarm around an object, so I imagine the main part of the Baker's robots, the actual cursors, look and act a little like bees. They are capable of fulfilling a wide variety of orders perfectly, but they don't really have their own sentience, at least not an individual one. They act like a beehive, only caring about the swarm, their duties, and the Baker, who is basically their queen. They are always on the move doing different tasks, constantly mixing cooking ingredients and making dough like bees make honey, carrying the dough to the ovens like bees use the honey to feed their young, following the Baker's orders and aiding him throughout the day in any way possible, and even swarming around him if he is ever in danger, like bees would do to protect their queen. While they are his main helpers, they are also his last line of defence if something happens. And in turn the Baker builds new cursors and repairs and upgrades the old ones when needed, maintaining the swarm.

*

This is the first Cookie Clicker thing I ever wrote and had to re-write it a few times now to fit with the rest of my posts. I specifically started writing about Cookie Clicker because I wanted to explain how the cursors kinda look like bees. Eventually I moved on to the idea that the cursors are robots that probably look different and do different things, but I couldn't get rid of the bee idea from my head…

I especially like how flexible small and really intelligent robots are story wise. If, for example, a group of heroes manage to break into the Baker's villain lair headquarters, find him alone and try to attack him, they will suddenly get swarmed by dozens if not hundreds of small hard to hit targets that will attack from every side. And they will not stop no matter what. I imagine a scene where the Baker is in the centre of a huge and mostly dark room, pacing agitatedly because he knows he's under attack, when the heroes barge in and threaten him but then they stop as more and more small red lights start to turn on around him in the darkness. Then the cursors attack all at once. Some would also surround the Baker, making him difficult to hit or shoot, especially since the more advanced models are made from more enduring and exotic types of metal.

The Baker is generally always surrounded by cursors in his own facilities, but he can't bring hundreds of them with him when he goes outside, like for an interview or some political/business meeting. So, in part for defense and in part for any important task that needs to be done fast, he's always carrying with him a few cursors hiding under his clothes. They could also carry medicine with them. This way, if in his latest visit to some cookie farm or research facility the Baker gets contaminated with some dangerous substance a cursor will be able to inject the antidote immediately.

[loregoddess]

a sentence can be a paragraph, if you believe in your heart and use enough commas, em dashes, semicolons, and parentheses, maybe even an ellipsis

[amplexadversary]

I fucking hate what the race to the bottom has done to the "official" translations of more than one fucking manga now.

Fucking Kodansha started translating Witch Hat, so the scanlators stopped doing so, but the official version is so fucking lazy.

They aren't even checking if the romanizations of character names read as intended in the target language, let alone fitting the translated vocabulary to the context! You need people on your team that can read intent from the Japanese text AND the English one, because the latter is going to need proofreading! Getting the vibe of the text right of the original version gains nothing if you don't also have someone who can replicate it in the target language! If that someone's the same person that's great but you very much have to have both skillsets on your translation team!!!!

It's perfectly possible to preserve the meaning and style of the original, even to the point where from sentence structure that gets rearranged to preserve a reveal or a metaphor is introduced to the new audience for the first time WITHOUT the text feeling janky in the target language! I've seen it! It used to be the norm before the race to the bottom trend in business got so universal since the mid to late tens! Stop being lazy and give your fucking translators the time and pay to do a good fucking job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still haven't forgiven what this trend did to Dungeon Meshi and I don't think that grudge is ever going to go away. You could have called it "Dungeon Food," or "Cooking in the Dungeon" and kept the bluntness of the original. You could have spun it up fancily as a kind of title familiar to the audience, and called it "The Chef's Guide to Dungeoneering" or "The Survivalist's Guide to Dungeon Food," or even "Man Versus Dungeon," in a play on Man v Wild. You could have straight up kept the Japanese title and either explained in a translator's note or added a subtitle that repeats the concept in English. Even "Delicious in the Dungeon," while still awkward as all SHIT, still scans as a sentence that makes sense! Why did you go with your actual fucking decision???!?!?!??!!? How hard is "Dungeon Meshi: A Practical Guide to Cooking Monsters?" That took me less than a minute!

If it's worth doing at all in an official capacity, it's worth doing it properly and leveraging your fucking corporate-scale resources to do a better job! Taking advantage of the unspoken agreement that scanlators have to yield to an official translation only to basically undercut them and do a worse job is scummy as all hell! Just fucking pick one of the major scanlator teams and hire them if you're going to cut corners!

Stop lowering the standards of quality stop lowering the standards of quality stop it stop it stop it STOP IT STOP IT!

Like, there's room to argue whether a more literal or more tone-tailored or even a highly creative Ace Attorney-Style translation is most appropriate for a particular work but at least PICK ONE and put in the effort to do that style translation as well as possible! And by ''put in the effort" I mean pay your fucking translators enough that they can take the time to do it right!!!

[dravidious]

You're more amazing than flooding

Big fat combat trick to pump all your excess mana into!

Cards used as example for balancing the modes:

[arolesbianism]

The Joshua section of my oni playlist is looking great so far

[space-dreams-world]

Another Twin Au: D and T: Danyal And Talia

Also, potential Spirit Halloween.

Ra's had two children, Danyal Al Ghul and Talia Al Ghul, the Demon's Daughter and the Demon's Son. Talia might have been firstborn, but she was neglected over her father favoring Danyal.

Danyal was treated better than she was, and while Danyal didn't understand Talia's jealousy, he still tried to help her. Like for instance, Talia had a fight to prove her loyalty to the Al Ghul line and was tasked to fight to the death, Danyal seeing how tired she was from training, he poisoned the fighters, so that his sister could win and survive.

Even when Ra's schemed to transfer his mind into Danyal's body, he was overwhelmed by Danyal's spirit and was not able to do the transfer.

Danyal liked to play tricks on new recruits to the league, and when Bruce was there, he pretended to be his sister. (As Danyal constant exposure to the pits made his eyes green)

Talia was only able to develop a relationship with Bruce outside the compound,but Danyal and Bruce's love story was very brief. ( And maybe Bruce liked Danyal more as he could be bargained to live with Bruce, unlike his sister who was devoted to her father)

Ra's would have liked the detective with either of his children,but it was not to be.

In fact, when Talia was planning on wedding Bruce, Danyal was sent for extra protection and liked the little Robin (Dick) despite being on opposite sides. So, when Talia acquires Bruce's sperm to make Damian, Ra's did a test to see which sibling produced better offspring, and unfortunately, Danyal's won. So, Damian was the son of the Bat and Demon, but of Bruce and Danyal. The thing is that Talia and Danyal are identical twins, just one boy and one girl. So, Talia assumes Damian is hers by default, and when creating Heretic, she uses her DNA.

Danyal was someone more connected with the pits than anyone knew and spent some time with the spiritualists of the league. Danyal was there when Jason was in the league and tried to curb his most violent fits, and sometimes took care of Damien in the league along with Jason.

Now, unfortunately, during Ra's coup, Talia, sick of her brother favoritism, pushes Danyal into the pits where he doesn't resurface.

(A few years in Danny Phantom world is a few days in the DC verse, so Danyal as Danny Fenton speedruns the DP life, becomes phantom, follows cannon lore, except doesn't really stay in Amity Park afterwords,closes the two portals, and goes to find his original dimension,where Damien is about to sacrificed to the pit by Talia, believing she can make more,with the bats present kills him.

More in part 2...

[stllmnstr]

sacred monsters: part one

pairing: lee heeseung x f reader

genre: academic rivals to lovers, vampire au, slow burn

part one word count: 19.3k

part one warnings: swearing, blood and all sorts of other vampire-y things, semi graphic descriptions/depictions of violence, I don't know anything about publishing and wrote about it anyway, not quite as much in this part, but I want to forewarn you that while there is still nothing explicit, we do get a little ~sexier~ than most stllmnstr fics

note/disclaimer: I have been itching to write an enha vampire fic for ages because hello? the material is RIGHT THERE!! this is a story I'm super excited about, and it's definitely gotten me out of my comfort zone. in order to help build this world, I did draw from some outside sources. primarily, a lot of the vampire lore and some plot elements are inspired by the dark moon webtoon series. I did also pull some things from twilight and other well-known vampire myths. lastly, there is a section with "poetry" in it. these "poems" are translated lyrics from still monster, chaconne, and lucifer by enhypen. some are in their original form and some I altered slightly. everything else is straight from yours truly! as always, happy reading ♡

soundtrack: still monster / moonstruck / lucifer - enhypen / everybody wants to rule the world - tears for fears / immortal - marina / supermassive black hole - muse / saturn - sleeping at last / everybody’s watching me (uh oh) - the neighbourhood

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

A literature student in your third year of university, you’ve been dreaming of having your writing published for as long as you can remember. With a perfect opportunity dangling at your fingertips, the only obstacle that stands in your way comes in the form of a ridiculously tall, stupidly handsome, and unfortunately, very talented writer by the name of Lee Heeseung. Unwilling to let your dream slip out of reach, you commit to being better than the aforementioned pain in your ass at absolutely everything.

But when a string of vampire attacks strikes close to your city for the first time in nearly two hundred years, publishing is suddenly the last thing on your mind. And, as you soon begin to discover, Heeseung may not quite be the person you thought he was.

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

The last sip of your coffee tastes bitter on your tongue. Acidic, like it was left to brew too long. Or maybe not long enough. Your limited knowledge of coffee extends to its effects on your alertness and little else. 

Taste has always been an afterthought, something of little consequence. Besides, some bitterness is to be expected when you take your coffee black. 

Suppressing the small wince that always follows your final sip, you set the reusable thermos down on your desk. Next to your open notebook and favorite ballpoint pen, it settles in nicely with your other class essentials. 

Call it poetic or romantic or unbearably pretentious, but you actually do prefer to take your notes by hand. Partly because it feels more fitting for a literature major and mostly because your laptop is on its last leg and between tuition and rent, you don’t exactly have the funds to shell out for a new one. 

Frowning at the bitter taste that still lingers on your tongue, you feel another pang of regret for forgetting to pack your water bottle this morning. But no matter. Today is a day for optimism. The bitterness now only means that your imminent victory will taste that much sweeter in comparison. 

Because today is the last day of the fall semester of your third year. Which means that this is the last morning you’ll be sitting here in this lecture hall in the minutes preceding 9 am. 

Which means that today is the day of your professor’s long awaited announcement. You still remember the day, nearly four months ago, when he first told the entire room of undermotivated, overcaffeinated students about it. 

A publishing opportunity. A real, actual publishing opportunity. Something most literature students would sell their soul for. 

Because Professor Kim, while a rather mediocre professor who prefers to dish out criticism and bite back praise, has an excellent eye for great writing. So much so that nearly twenty years ago, he founded his very own publishing house. 

Known by the name New Haven Publishing, it’s a small operation that deals mostly in short pieces that are marketed more for niche literary circles than mass public appeal. Being published by New Haven may not be a straight shot to the New York Times’ Best Sellers List, but it’s still professional publishing. 

And a week into classes, he announced that for the first time ever, he would be choosing one of you to not only intern at New Haven the following semester, but also to publish an original piece of short fiction with them. 

You’ve been fantasizing about it for months now. You can already imagine it. A piece of your very own, marketed and edited by professionals. Published and complete with Professor Kim’s stamp of approval. 

It’s what you’ve been craving ever since you decided to switch paths and pursue literature studies at the end of your first semester. It’s everything you’re sure you need. Validation that your writing is good, that your words are worth reading. 

Hell, maybe it will even earn you the approval of your parents. 

And, perhaps most satisfying of all, you will have officially beaten Lee Heeseng once and for all. You don’t want to speak poorly of the rest of your classmates and their writing abilities, but this has always been a competition between you and him. 

Or, at least, it has been for you. 

It’s the last day of the semester, and honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised if Heeseung still had a hard time remembering that the internship was even happening. Then again, you wouldn’t exactly be shocked if he couldn't remember your name, either.  

And if you were hard pressed to choose only one thing, that would probably be what annoys you the most about him. Not the way his hair is alway somehow perfectly mussed. Not the way his writing is painfully beautiful and poetic that you swell green with envy just thinking about it. 

No, the root cause of your infinite ire when it comes to Lee Heeseung is how damn aloof he is. Like his classmates and professors and even his greatest rival aren’t worth the effort of remembering. 

And it’s not like it’s because he’s got some kind of crazy social life outside of academics. Other than mandatory discussion groups, you’re not sure you’ve ever seen him so much as talk to anyone. 

But that’s just the way he is, you suppose. 

Perfect Heeseung with his perfect hair and his perfect writing and perfect attendance record doesn’t need anyone but himself—

Wait. 

Perfect attendance record. 

Glancing at the clock mounted high above the front door of the lecture hall, you can hardly believe what you’re seeing. 

8:59. 

There’s no way. There’s no fucking way that the universe is rooting for you this hard, that the stars are aligning this perfectly. 

Despite your doubts, the second hand continues its onward march. You suppress the sudden urge to bounce your leg in a matching rhythm. 

He has five seconds. 

Four. Three. Two. One. 

And it’s official. A ridiculous amount of pent up tension drains from your shoulders as your spine straightens. You can’t believe it was that easy. 

A semester of agonizing over every word, every sentence, every assignment you handed in for this class. A semester of panicking over missed buses and waking up way too early just to make sure you always beat the clock. 

But today is the day where everything comes to a head. 

And Lee Heeseung is officially late. 

Professor Kim, at the beginning of the semester, had only two pieces of advice to offer his students that were suddenly all gunning for a shot at being published:

One: “Don’t make me read awful writing.”

And two: “Don’t be late to class. I have zero tolerance for tardiness.”

Heeseung has just broken a cardinal rule. One row down, nine seats to the left from where you sit. It’s the place that would usually be filled with an annoyingly broad set of shoulders and distractingly sharp jawline. In fact, Heeseung usually beats you here most days. Not that you’re keeping track, of course. And not that it matters. 

Because this morning, this fateful morning, that particular seat, his seat, is glaringly, gloriously empty. 

Your eyes flicker over to it again without your permission. But you can’t help it. You’re so antsy now, teeming with self-satisfied excitement. It’s almost unbelievable actually. A golden stroke of luck that he chose today, of all days, to be late.

In fact, you think the more you stare at the empty seat, Lee Heeseung is such a reliable presence that the entire lecture hall suddenly seems a bit off kilter. Tilted too far in some precarious state of imbalance. 

Your smugness is still there, yes, but now there’s also a heavy feeling beginning to settle at the bottom of your gut. Why on earth is Lee Heeseung late?

You’re so distracted by his absence, the endless loop of possibilities and explanations running through your mind, that you almost miss the second abnormality of the morning. 

Because now the clock reads 9:04, and Heeseung isn’t the only one missing. 

All at once, your attention is on the podium at the front of the lecture hall. It’s empty, too. And Professor Kim may be a hardass, but he’s no hypocrite. Never once throughout this entire semester has he ever begun a class even a millisecond late.

Frowning, you pull out your phone to confirm that the clock on the wall is not playing tricks on you. Maybe there was a power outage or something, and maintenance hasn’t had time to correct it yet. 

But your phone screen lights up, and 9:05 is the time that stares back at you. 

Glancing around, no one else seems too particularly bothered by this. There are a few titters, a few annoyed grumbles that sound like hypocrite and double standard where they reach your ears. 

But still, the clock ticks forward. 

The minute hand has fallen another two notches when the front door finally opens, Professor Kim striding in unhurried. Despite his lateness, his steps are steady, even. There’s nothing frantic or apologetic about the way he sets his briefcase down next to the podium, pulling out his laptop and a small stack of notes before clearing his throat. 

As the students around you fall silent, class begins as it always does. Other than the time, nothing is out of the ordinary. 

But your spirits are still high, and you figure you can cut your professor some slack. Maybe he ran into a bad bit of traffic or spilled coffee all over his shirt. Maybe he’s too embarrassed to draw more attention to his error and has decided that not acknowledging it at all is the best course of action. 

Oh, well. It’s no use ruminating on it now. Settling back into your seat, you do your best to focus your attention on the front of the room and not that damn empty chair. But the distraction isn’t necessary for long. 

The clock is just striking 9:12 when a second late arrival draws the eyes of the class to the front door of the lecture hall. Like your professor, Heeseung maintains a certain air of composedness as he makes his way towards his seat wordlessly. 

There’s a moment, a fraction of a second, where Professor Kim pauses, letting a sentence drift into silence. 

Twelve minutes late. It’s a rookie mistake. For a fleeting moment, you almost feel bad for him. Because surely Professor Kim is about to make an example of him. No one walks into his lectures late and leaves unscathed. 

Wincing, you remember a handful of weeks ago when a poor girl that sits a few rows behind you arrived late. Not only had Professor Kim stopped the entire flow of his lecture to draw attention to her tardiness, he had also assigned her an extra short story for homework. One on the merits of punctuality.

But the ebb in the lecture begins to flow again, the moment passing as soon as it comes. Heeseung settles into his chair. Your professor resumes his sentence. 

For the remainder of the class, you do your best to pay attention, but you’re having trouble finding a point. It’s not like he can assign homework or an exam or a discussion on the last day of the semester. 

Like you, most of your peers are fully zoned out, just waiting for him to get to what everyone has been dying to know for months. 

Who’s interning at New Haven? Who’s getting published?

But distractions in this class have never been hard to come by. More than once, you find your wandering gaze drifting to the back of Heeseung’s head. Usually, you’d be bitterly admiring how soft his hair looks. But today, there’s only one question that plays in your mind as you stare. 

What on earth happened that made perfect Lee Heeseung late?

Your thoughts are only interrupted by the sudden shuffle of small movement around you as everyone sits up a bit straighter in their seats. 

“Ah,” Professor Kim glances at the time. “That wraps up our semester, then. As promised, I would like to announce the student who will be interning with New Haven Publishing this upcoming semester. And, of course, the student that will have the opportunity to publish an original piece with us.”

He pauses for a moment, looking down at his notes. You wonder if the people sitting close to you can hear the way your heart pounds in your chest. 

Please be me. Please be me. Please be me. 

The rushing in your ears is so loud that you almost miss it. But not quite. Because the sound of your own name is something you’d recognize anywhere. 

Because it was your name that he said. Not anyone else’s. Not Heeseung’s.

You. You did it. 

You’re officially going to be interning with New Haven. You’re going to be published. 

When he asks you to stay a minute after class to discuss the details, it’s all you can do to nod. Butterflies are still scattered in your stomach. 

As the rest of the students begin to file out, you pack up your materials with hands that shake slightly. It doesn’t feel real. It feels too good to be true. You poured your everything into this all semester long, and now it’s actually happening. 

Your mind is a mess, and an erratic movement almost sends your empty thermos flying. Luckily, you snap out of it long enough to  catch it before it hits the ground. With everything packed back into your bag, you make your way down to the podium on slightly unsteady feet. 

A handful of passing classmates congratulate you on their way out, and you smile in return. 

You’ve almost made it to the front of the lecture hall when a body blocks your path. It takes a moment for your brain to register the identity of the offender. And once it does, it spits his name with venom. Heeseung. 

Oblivious and self-centered as always, he nearly knocks you over. Rolling your eyes, you move to step around him. Apparently whatever gift he was given for writing doesn’t extend to his spatial awareness or consideration for others. 

But as you lean to the left, he follows the movement, still in your path. Your gaze snaps up, eyebrows raised when you find him already looking at you. 

Oh. So it’s not a spatial awareness problem, then. He’s in your way on purpose. 

As always, his expression is infuriatingly blank. You can’t get any sort of read on him, and it unnerves you. Irritates you. Here he is, blocking your path, and the only thing he has to offer you is an empty, silent stare.

You could just say excuse me, force your way around him, and be done with it. You should. The semester is over, your professor’s decision is made, and you have no stake left in this game. 

But you’ve been biting back snarky comments and masking irritated expressions with mild indifference for months. The nerve he has to block you. The utter gall of it all. To physically stand in your way when he’s been your metaphorical obstacle to success all semester. 

When every time you look at him, you still remember that one sunny afternoon, early in the semester. The time you tried, actually tried to be his friend. When he waved you off like a buzzing fly that was nothing more than a nuisance. 

You inhale, weighing your options. His head tilts slightly at the movement, and it’s your last straw. 

There’s poison in your voice when you bite, “Oh, what? Now that I’ve proved myself, you can spare some time out of your day to talk to me?”

Heeseung’s eyes widen, lips parting slightly. It’s the most emotion you’ve ever seen from him, and he’s wasting it on shock. As if he can’t quite comprehend why the girl he’s been giving headaches for months might not want to stop and have a friendly chat with him. Not that you imagine he’d even be capable of that if you tried. 

Already, you regret your comment. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have said anything. You’d be just as detached and cold and aloof as he was on that day you hate to think about. You still remember it like it was yesterday. Without your permission, the memory floats front and center to your mind. 

It was warmer, then. The last clutches of summer were still holding on tight. Sunlight was bright in the sky, and it felt like a good time to breach the barrier of your comfort zone. 

Class had just ended. Usually, Heeseung was one of the first to leave. You had to pack up abnormally quickly just to catch him in the quad right outside the lecture hall. 

But you did catch up to him.

And in a voice braver than you felt, you asked, “Hey, it’s Heeseung, right?” 

You’d been brighter, then. Still full of an energy you haven’t been able to muster since midterms. Not yet burdened by the weight of assignments and rejection, your disposition was as sunny as the sky above. 

Heeseung hadn’t bothered to dignify your question with an actual answer, but he had at least stopped walking, and that seemed like an invitation at the time. Now, with the power of hindsight, you wince. You should have spared yourself the regret.

You remember watching as he pulled out his earbuds, tucking them back into his pocket before turning his attention to you. Or at least half of it. Even then, you never felt like he was truly looking at you, hearing you. His mind always seemed off in the distance, preoccupied somewhere you could never quite reach. 

You recall being nervous, heat in your cheeks as you tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear. His eyes tracked the movement like a cat tracks a ray of sunlight. Lazily, intently. With an energy you weren’t quite sure what to do with. 

Instead, you had stuttered, “I, uh, I wanted to tell you that I thought your analysis today was brilliant.” The worst part is that it really was a brilliant analysis. Although you’d never admit that today, and much less to his face. 

Instead, you cringe just thinking about it. You should have taken his blank stare as a sign. You should have just let the one-sided conversation die there. With at least a little dignity and some of your pride left to spare. 

But you hadn’t. 

“I never thought about the use of sunlight as a metaphor for life. I mean, now that you’ve pointed it out, it seems kind of obvious.” The memory of your nervous giggles settle like rocks in your stomach. “Anyway, I feel like I’m rambling, but if you ever want to get together and look through assignments or review each other’s analyses, I’d love to—”

You’d heard his voice before, of course. In class discussions and presentations. But never this close. And never directed at you. 

He kept it short, his interruption, his response to your shaky offer. 

“I’m busy.”

And that was it. Two words. Two fucking words. And not even an explanation or an I’m sorry or a sheepish expression to go along with them. 

With that, you’d watched, a bit helplessly, as he pulled his earbuds out of his pocket, put them back into his ears and turned away from you before you could realize just how thoroughly you’d been rejected. 

With a sudden haze in the air and hope dying in your heart, your friendly smile slipped into confused dismay as you watched him track a steady path across the quad. 

If your cheekbones felt warm before, you were sure they must have been aflame by then. After all, it was your body’s natural response to the crushing weight of the embarrassment and thoroughly bruised ego he’d left you there standing with. 

Fine then, you’d resolved after walking as quickly as you could in the opposite direction, sending a prayer to the heavens that no one from your class had just witnessed the most mortifying interaction you’ve ever had. If Lee Heeseung wanted nothing to do with you, the feeling could be mutual. 

In fact, it was probably for the best. You were vying for that internship and if the past class discussions were anything to go by, Heeseung would be your only real competition. If he was too busy for you, then you would just have to be too busy for him. 

Too busy perfecting every assignment and acing every exam. Too busy drowning in dictionaries and thesauruses and reference materials to make sure everything you submitted was perfect — no, scratch that — better than perfect. 

Too busy to attempt another conversation or interaction or do anything but nod along politely whenever he did make an unfortunately great point in class. 

So, no. Heeseung doesn’t get to dictate your time or attention or conversation now that you’ve actually been awarded with a publishing opportunity, now that all of your efforts and dedication and late nights have paid off. 

If Lee Heeseung wants a bit of your attention on today of all days, at this moment of all moments, then you’re just going to have to be too busy to entertain him. 

Standing in front of you, still blocking your path to the podium, Heeseung has the nerve to look confused. As if you have no reason to give him the cold shoulder. As if you’re the one being unreasonable here. 

His brow furrows further. “What?” It’s the third word he’s ever spoken directly to you. It makes your blood boil. “No, I…” he trails off. You can practically see the gears running in his mind, like this wasn’t the conversation he expected to be having. Like he has no idea how to navigate it now. “I was just going to say that you should maybe reconsider.”

Your voice is ice when you ask, “Reconsider what?” 

“Well…” He’s treading in dangerous territory, and he seems to realize it too. “The internship,” he clarifies, and it’s the second most insulting thing he’s ever said to your face. 

You screw your eyes shut. Cold and detached. Blank and aloof. All the things you should be. But you’ve always run a little hot. And end of the semester exhaustion finds you more willing to throw caution to the wind. 

“You have got to be fucking with me.” Eyes reopening, you’re met with that same expression of mild shock. Brows raised, lips parted. And god, he even looks good like that. “Yeah, right. Let me guess, so you can do the internship and publish a piece of your own? If all you came over to do is insult me, then save your breath.”

“What?” He still looks so damn confused. “No, I—”

You don’t want to hear it. “I have nothing to say to you.” If he won’t get out of your way, you’ll just have to go through him. The shoulder check is maybe slightly more intense than it needs to be as you shove your way past him. He barely stumbles back an inch. It makes you want to rip your hair out. “Besides,” you add, not bothering to turn back to look at him. “I’m busy.”

It’s a dig at him, yes, but it’s also true. You are. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and Lee Heeseung is not about to ruin it for you. 

To your unending gratitude, he doesn’t try to intercept you again. Your path to the front of the lecture hall is clear, and Professor Kim is just tucking his laptop back into his briefcase when you reach the podium. 

Ultimately, it’s a watered down version of the million times you’ve imagined this moment in your head. Even coming on the tail end of the most annoying interaction you’ve had in months. Professor Kim congratulates you again, and hands you a printed schedule of when you’ll be expected at the publishing office for the first time. 

There are also submission dates. Deadlines for you to submit drafts of the piece that you’ll be publishing. You take it all in with a beam and enthusiastic nods, mishap with Heeseung from minutes ago all but forgotten. 

That is, until Professor Kim’s gaze lands somewhere over your shoulder after he tells you he’ll also send you a follow-up email with all the information you need. 

You watch as his expression shifts, something uneasy, distrustful entering his gaze as he looks beyond you. “Something I can help you with, Mr. Lee?”

Following his gaze, you turn to look behind you. The lecture hall is empty, students cleared out from the class that dismissed nearly five minutes ago. All except for one, that is. 

Gone is the shock from Heeseung’s delicately sharp features. Instead, he wears his mask of indifference again, betraying no emotion. You must be imagining the way it looks almost strained this time, as if he’s forcing his expression into neutrality instead of it there of its own accord. 

Wordlessly, his gaze shifts to you. 

And now it’s your turn to be confused, but you won’t let it last long. At least not outwardly. You’re quick to match his gaze with nothing but pure ire, venom dripping seeping from every inch of your glare. 

Is he seriously still trying to ruin this for you? So much for being busy. 

“No, sir.” Heeseung shakes his head. He’s addressing your professor, but he’s still looking at you. A muscle ticks in his jaw, betrays a hint of tension. “I was just on my way out.”

True to his word, he begins a steady descent towards the front door. 

Your professor clears his throat, turns his attention back to you, resuming the wrap-up of your conversation. 

You’re extra grateful for that follow-up email now, given the way movement in your periphery distracts you from Professor Kim’s last few statements. Instead, your focus hones in on the even footsteps that carry Heeseung to the door, allow him to slip through it silently. 

It must be a trick of the light, must be a figment of your overworked, over irritated imagination. But you swear you see him linger there, just on the other side of the small glass window carved into the door. 

Professor Kim says his parting words, and you thank him one final time. If there’s an unnatural quickness in your footsteps as you turn to leave, you tell yourself that it’s because you’re excited to get started on your draft, not because you have the sneaking suspicion Heeseung is still standing just on the other side of the door. 

But you swear that’s his silhouette you see as you draw closer, shrouded in shadows but distinct all the same. You’re debating the merits of shouting at him or maybe accidentally shoulder checking him again as you pull open the door handle, a little more roughly than you intend. 

But the only thing that greets you on the other side of the door is a nearly empty hallway, save for the pair of students bent over a laptop a few paces away. You ignore their twin expressions of shock as you let the door fall closed behind you, much more calmly than you opened it. 

…..

The blank expanse of your notebook stares at you accusingly. 

You’d stare back, if that would somehow make words appear on the page. Sighing, you reach for your long forgotten cup of tea sitting on your desk. Taking a slow sip, you realize it’s gone cold. 

That just makes you double down on your frustration. How long have you been sitting here, waiting for inspiration to strike? 

People always talk about the merits of a change in scenery, but ever since you started your first semester of university three years ago, your favorite place to write has always been here, at the small, simple desk that sits in the corner of your bedroom. 

Back then, writing was a hobby. Something to do when the last of your biochemistry homework was finished. A way to release pent-up stress and tension from long days in the university lab and long hours feeling like you were drowning between all of the extra study sessions, TA workshops, and office hours. 

At first, it had been worth it. You maintained high grades and high spirits. Mostly because of the small sprinkles of support your parents showered you with. 

Every little You got this! that lit up your phone screen on dreary afternoons and We believe in you! that made your evening lectures a little more bearable felt like tokens of your parents’ affection. Something tangible to show for the care they held for you. 

Most of all, you cherished the We’re proud of you messages. You can’t remember the last time you received one. 

And it’s not like they were mad, exactly, when you told them you wanted to change majors. They did their best to be supportive in the ways that they knew how. 

For your father, that was concern. “Are you sure? Literature? What do the job prospects after graduation look like?”

And for your mother, that was letting you know that she thought you were capable of more. Of better. “It’s not that literature is bad, sweetie. It’s just… Well, you’ve always been such a smart girl…”

You get it; you really do. All the questions and prodding comments that felt like criticism were wrapped in nothing but love. But that didn’t do much to soften the sting. 

In the end, it was this desk that made you follow through with your change in major. Slumped in your hand-me-down chair late one Friday night, half finished lab report sitting untouched in your bag, the threat of tears burning at the corners of your eyes, all you wanted to do was write.  

To put into words the feelings and emotions and fantasies and frustrations that you could never seem to express otherwise. To commit a piece of your soul to paper and wonder if maybe, just maybe, there was someone else out there who would read it and find a sense of solidarity, of common ground. 

You submitted your official change request the next morning. You never regretted it once. 

But your parents still make comments, still share their concerns. And for the last three years, you haven’t had anything to show for it except for empty promises. But now, you have something. A real something. 

Publishing a story of your own is the exact validation that you need that your choice was the right one. And it’s the proof you need to assuage your parents’ fears, to show them that pursuing literature was the right call. That you can carve out a life for yourself with it. 

You’ve fantasized about this for years. For the chance to have your voice heard, your words read. There are a million half-baked thoughts and partially written drafts scattered in your notebooks and digital documents and on the corners of takeout napkins that have been lying in wait for a moment just like this. 

But no matter how hard you stare at the page in front of you, the words just won’t come. The more old drafts you scour, the more amateur your writing feels. The more you feel like maybe Heeseung should have won the internship over you. 

It’s a miserable cycle your brain works itself into. The less you write, the more you criticize, the more you wonder. 

What if he hadn’t been late that morning? What if Professor Kim was hoping to choose him instead? What if the reason he didn’t say anything when Heeseung finally arrived in class was because he was so disappointed that his first choice wasn’t an option anymore?

Groaning out loud to an empty room, your head falls on your desk with a muted thud. 

It’s there, facedown on your desk, where an idea strikes you. If you can’t manifest a draft out of thin air, maybe you just need some parameters. A general guide to get the creative juices flowing. 

Lifting your head back up, you push your notebook to the side and reach for your laptop. Opening a web browser, you navigate to New Haven Publishing House’s homepage. 

It’s a simple website, reflective of its simple namesake. Chin in one hand, you click the link that reads Recently Published. 

The list that pops up is modest. Unlike a larger, more corporate publishing house, your professor’s self-made enterprise is churning out new releases at a slower rate and smaller volume. 

Perusing the titles and descriptions, you note that the vast majority of the works are short form fiction. There are very few full length novels. The majority is made up of essay and poetry collections, short stories, and memoirs. 

Scanning the list again, a title close to the top catches your eye. 

The Thirst for Revenge: An Analysis of Contemporary Vampire Activity. It was published less than a month ago. 

Your cursor hovers over the link, brow furrowing. It strikes you as odd that something so… archaic would be published so recently. 

Professor Kim has always come across as a discerning man. Someone that prides himself on his well curated taste. 

But vampires… that’s hardly a headline worthy topic these days. 

While most people still practice caution walking down dark alleyways at night and some even go so far as to carry charms infused with garlic cloves, monsters of the night are by and large a thing of the past.

The entire species of bloodthirsty, ravaging immortals were hunted to near extinction almost two hundred years ago. Those that survived relocated to remote areas. Some adapted to life in the countryside by learning to enjoy the taste of animal blood. Others found humans willing to donate small portions of their own blood intermittently. You won’t pretend to understand, but you suppose it’s preferable to the alternative.  

Some still hunted in the traditional way, of course, but vampire attacks on humans are few are far between these days. After all, vampires, as a means of survival, have all but forsaken major urban areas. Population density spells demise for their species. 

You’d have to confirm through research, but if you remember correctly, the last recorded vampire-related death in your city was nearly two hundred years ago. 

Without bothering to click on the link, you continue scrolling down. Honestly, it was probably just a fluke. After all, who knows? Maybe there’s some niche circle out there that enjoys analyzing vampire literature, regardless of how outdated it is. 

The next title seems a bit more promising. Shadowless Nights. The brief description marks it as a short story published half a year ago. 

You click on it, take a sip of room temperature tea while the page loads. 

Night was my favorite time of day, the first line reads. 

I loved the stillness of it all, the all encompassing serenity. With the moon in the sky and stars in my eyes, every moment felt like a secret between me and the universe. Something we alone shared. 

I whispered secrets to the earth and held hers in return. My days felt like dreams. Distant, blurry, faded. It was only then, in the distinct stillness of midnight, that I truly came alive. 

Interesting, you think. It’s a bit more melodramatic than you expected, but maybe your professor prefers a poetic touch. 

In the night, I earned peace. And in the night, I learned fear. 

It came slowly at first, that sinking feeling of dread. The horrible suspicion that made the hair on the back of my neck feel sharp, the air in my throat feel shallow. 

But if I have learned anything of monsters, it is that they revel in that fear. That sickeningly overt reminder of mortality, of humanity. The way I couldn’t help the racing of my pulse, the darting of my eyes. 

He enjoyed it, toying with me from the shadows. Watching me become desperate, watching me become weak. 

But it paled in comparison, I’m sure, with what came next. Every story has its climax, and every beginning has its end. For him, it was the sweet, clean taste of my blood. 

Wait. Another vampire story? One was strange enough, but for the last two published works at New Haven to be vampire related doesn’t feel like a coincidence. Especially since the more you read, the more you realize it’s not as much of a story as it is thinly veiled anti-vampire rhetoric. 

The dramatized descriptions of a weak, innocent female lead being victimized by a faceless, bloodthirsty monster. It just feels… strange. Outdated. Irrelevant, even. 

Clicking back to the list, you scan over the next five entries. All of them are more or less the same. Some are more metaphorical than others, abstract in their rhetoric, but the topic is always the same. And the conclusion always affirms the immense, inevitable, irredeemable blight that vampirism is to the world. 

It’s just bizarre. Especially considering that Professor Kim never once had you analyze any anti-vampire propaganda throughout the entire semester. In fact, you were never assigned to read anything vampire related at all. 

If this type of literature is so central to his professional career, it doesn't make sense to you that he wouldn’t incorporate it into his class. Especially considering the fact that he was awarding an internship at New Haven to one of the students. 

You take another long sip of cold tea. Well… you could try to come up with something that aligns with the current profile of New Haven’s recently published works. It’s not like you’ve ever written anything related to vampires. Maybe you just need to think of it as a writing exercise, a challenge of sorts. Producing a piece that feels relevant and fresh even if the central topic is a bit out of style. 

According to the revision schedule Professor Kim gave you, your first draft issue in a week and a half. The same day that you’re set to go to New Haven for the first time and tour the office you’ll be interning at once winter break is over. It’s an ambitious timeline, but he did specify that he’s looking more for a solid concept than a well polished draft. But something in you wants to have more than just a concept. You want his approval, to impress him. 

So you have a week and a half to come up with a draft that will catch his attention, that will convince him that you were the right choice for this opportunity. Not anyone else in your class. Not Heeseung. You. 

A concept that will excite New Haven Publishing House’s usual reader base, that will maybe actually earn you some commercial success. 

A story that will prove to your parents that literature was the right choice for you. That your words do matter, that you can make a name for yourself with your writing. 

Well, you think, suppressing an internal groan, it looks like you have your work cut out for you. 

…..

Despite your admitted lack of vampiric knowledge, once you have your topic, the words start to flow. You’re not sure if it’s your best work. You’re not even sure if it’s good. But it feels a hell of a lot better than staring at a blank page for hours. 

This afternoon finds you in the corner of your favorite coffee shop. Mostly because they offer half priced lattes on Wednesdays. As you make a dent in yours, the pen in your other hand continues to fly over the pages of your notebook, occasionally stopping to scratch out a word or rewrite a sentence. 

The bare bones are there. Just like in the handful of stories you perused on New Haven’s website, your plot features a young woman. It’s a historic setting, mostly because you still can’t quite bring yourself to write vampires into the modern day when the reality is so starkly different. 

And it’s not a vampire story. At least not at first glance. Instead, you weave an enduring metaphor to symbolize a parasitic relationship between two lovers.

The woman in your draft is young, full of life and energy and optimism. And she dreams. Vivid, brilliant dreams that she clings to in order to escape the harshness of her reality as a lower class woman in the countryside. 

Her husband, however, is a brute. Older than her and with a decidedly less sunny disposition. When he learns that his health is failing, he discovers that he can heal himself temporarily by stealing these dreams from her. 

So, no. It’s not overtly about vampires. But it does fall into step with some of the more abstract anti-vampire tropes you came across in your preliminary research. 

Crossing a dark line through the word you just penned, you sigh. 

This is the fastest you’ve put a story together in ages. It’s cohesive, and the writing is solid. Your use of metaphor is strong and concise, and the prose feels true to your identity as a writer. 

But something in you withers a bit with every new word you commit to paper. It’s not that you hate your topic. If anything, it’s just that you have no stake in it at all. It doesn't feel innovative or exciting or representative of your creativity. 

No matter how easily the words flow out of you, something about it just feels… flat. One dimensional. 

You need something new. A different angle or an alternative perspective or… Or a fresh set of eyes. 

Struck with a sudden idea, you pull out your phone, plan taking form in your mind. The literature club at your university hosts bimonthly peer review sessions, and you haven’t taken advantage of them nearly as much as you should. They’re a chance for any writer, literature major or otherwise, to come together and workshop any piece of writing of their choice. 

Tapping your finger impatiently on the table, you wait for the page to load. The fall semester did end almost a week ago, so it may be a long shot. You’re not sure if the club typically holds sessions over winter break. But as you pull up the club’s calendar of events, a small smile tugs at your lips. 

Luck seems to be on your side this time. It’s written there in plain, bold font that there will be a session this upcoming Friday evening. That means that if you attend the session and get some solid ideas for revision, you’ll have exactly five days to refine your draft before you present it to Professor Kim. 

The idea of having not only a topic, as the schedule outlined, but an actual complete,  well-written draft to show him next Wednesday, turns your small smile into one that overtakes your features. 

Energized with a new vigor, you reach for your pen again. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you remind yourself, even as a turn of phrase makes you cringe. Even as a piece of punctuation feels out of place. It just needs to be written. You just need to have as much content as you can to share on Friday. 

Besides, you’re sure that a second opinion will help you fine tune this story into something you’re proud to share, something you’re excited to attach your name to.

The afternoon is quick to blur into early evening, and you’re still bent over your favorite corner table. Coffee long drained, you’re full of a new confidence. The thought of proving yourself suddenly doesn’t seem like such an unachievable, out of reach task. 

And when you do finally gather up all of your belongings and make your way back to your apartment for the night, you’re sure that this is the exact boost you needed. 

That same stroke of self-assuredness carries you all the way through a finished first draft. It’s rough and messy and littered with loose ends, but it’s tucked away in the bottom of your tote bag with a smile as you haul it to classroom number 105 in the university liberal arts building Friday evening. 

You pause at the door to the classroom, only for a moment. The inhale you breathe in is deep, full. Nodding to yourself once, you push open the door. 

You haven’t been to one of these workshop sessions since the second semester of your first year, back when you had just switched to a literature major. You remember being wide-eyed and incredibly protective over your work. It was hard to part with it, to let anyone else read over the sentences you were so unsure of. The writing you had little confidence in. 

But your partner had been kind. Another girl in her first year, she had nothing but gentle feedback to give and reassurance that your writing was worth reading. Honestly, it was such an overwhelmingly positive experience that you would have come back for more sessions if you weren’t constantly struggling to find minutes to spare in the day. 

You’re hoping that tonight will be just as rewarding as you enter the classroom, tote bag in tow. But as you survey the space around you, your face falls flat, easy going smile dropping from your lips. 

You weren’t expecting a big crowd, considering that it is winter break and most students are deliberately avoiding campus right now, but you were hoping there’d be more than one other person in attendance. 

Well, you think, deciding to look on the bright side of things. At least you’re not the only person. 

The other attendee is sitting in the far corner of the room, occupying a desk near the front of the classroom. At the sound of your entrance, they turn to face you. 

With that, your small disappointment is quick to snowball into an intense wave of exasperation. Because why is the universe so hellbent on playing games with you?

Your mouth drops open without your permission. “Heeseung?” 

Your sudden outburst fills the room and lingers long into the awkward silence that follows. You hadn’t meant to say anything, but really, what are the god forsaken odds?

If he’s bothered by your reaction to seeing him, Heeseung doesn’t show it. Instead he looks strangely… relieved. It makes absolutely no sense for him to feel any sort of relief at the sight of you, but it’s hard to put a more apt descriptor to the way tension drains from his shoulders, crease between his brows softening as he looks at you, scans you from head to toe. 

A moment of stilted silence passes between the two of you. Another. Your heartbeat feels too loud in your chest.

You exhale, a cross between a scoff and a laugh so humorless it could freeze a flame. Weighing your options, the most tempting by far is to just turn on your heel and exit the way you came. 

Heeseung seems to read your intention before you can commit to it. 

Breaking the heaviness in the atmosphere, he acts as if you’ve greeted him like an old friend, not as the source of all your recent headaches. 

“Hi,” he nods, so tentatively you almost want to let your jaw drop open in shock. Almost. 

Because what the fuck does he mean by ‘Hi?’ This has to be some kind of mind game, some way to get in your head and ruin this for you. 

“Right.” Your lips pull into a tight line. You don’t bother to return his greeting. “I’m just gonna go, then.” Hiking up your bag on your shoulder, you turn to do just that. Your first draft will just have to be unpolished. Oh, well. You’re sure Professor Kim will have better feedback for you than Lee Heeseung ever would anyway. 

Once again, Heeseung’s voice cuts across the classroom. “Wait.” There’s a command in his voice. Gentle, but firm. Insistent. So pervasive that you find yourself following without really meaning to. 

Mind made up and dead set on leaving, now you’re just annoyed. What a waste of a Friday evening.

“What?” You turn back to him. You’re not sure if there’s more venom in your voice or your eyes. 

And Heeseung, who commands a classroom with quiet grace, with his steady, unwavering presence, suddenly looks so damn unsure. As if tormenting you is uncharted territory. As if he’s never once left you in the cold with flaming cheeks and a thoroughly shattered ego. 

“I…” he trails off, not quite meeting your furious gaze. “Didn’t you come here to get feedback?”

“Right.” You scoff again. “Because I’m sure you’d love nothing more than to tear my writing to shreds. Forgive me, but I’m not interested in being the butt end of your joke tonight.”

“What?” If you didn’t know any better, the ignorance he feigns would be rather convincing. “That’s not why I’m here.” He shakes his head. “I brought something I want reviewed too.” 

Your brow arches. He can’t be serious. “Even if I did stay,” you counter, “you’re actually the last person I would want to read my work. Feel free to be offended by that, by the way.”

For a solid minute, Heeseung just looks at you. He wears that same damn deer-in-the-headlights expression he had after you brushed him off when he intercepted you in class the other day. He pauses, weighing words on his tongue. “Look, ____.” The sound of your name on his lips strikes a strange chord in you. Until now, you were certain he didn’t even know it. “Did I do something to offend—”

And no. Absolutely not. No way are you rehashing that day in the quad with him now. 

“You know what,” you interrupt. You need to go. Now. You need an out. “I’m actually, like, super tired. I think I’m just gonna head back, and—”

But then it’s his turn to cut off your train of thought. “It’s your piece for Professor Kim, isn’t it?” Heeseung takes your silence as confirmation. “Publishing is a big deal. A second set of eyes will only make your work stronger. And if you hate my feedback, it’s not like you have to use any of it.”

You hate it. You despise the way his reasoning matches your internal monologue nearly word for word. The way your thoughts align exactly. 

You pause, a decision weighing heavy on your mind. He is an excellent writer… There would probably be substance to his feedback. Real, actual, good substance that you could use to make your writing bloom into something truly amazing. He could be the exact spark you need to make your story come to life. 

You purse your lips. “What’s in it for you?”

Heeseung smiles, a nearly imperceptible quirk of his lips. He knows he’s won. “Like I said, I brought something I’ve been working on.” There’s an intention you can’t quite read behind his gaze when he adds, “I want to know what you think of it.”

Hook, line, and sinker.

With a grumble, you take reluctant steps towards where he sits on the opposite side of the classroom. And if you slide down into the seat next to him with a little more force than necessary, well, it’s just because you’ve had a long week. No other reason. None at all. 

“Fine,” you relent, reaching to pull your notebook out of your bag. “You get twenty minutes.”

“That’s not nearly long eno—”

“Thirty,” you concede. “And don’t push it.”

Sensing your disdain, Heeseung doesn’t respond. Instead, he accepts the notebook you reluctantly hand him with an outstretched hand and an open palm. The transfer between the two of you is gentle. You have the distinct sense that he’ll treat your work with care, in more than one way. 

Still, something in your heart seizes at the thought of letting your work be read. Of letting him be the one to read it. 

In return, he offers you a notebook of his own. Bound in brown, aged leather, it’s certainly much more refined than yours. Of course. 

He hands it to you still closed. Staring down at the cover, you ask, “What page?” It feels intrusive to start flipping through his writing uninvited. 

“There’s a bookmark.” Heeseung nods his chin towards the small piece of paper sticking out of the top edge that you missed at first glance. 

And then the transfer is complete. A piece of your heart is spread open on his desk, and a piece of his soul is in your hands. 

Ignoring the way your fingers tremble with a slight shake, you delicately open his notebook to the bookmarked page, letting it fall open on the desk in front of you. 

At first glance, the writing strikes you as odd. The paragraphs are strange lengths, ending at random junctures instead of extending all the way to the margins. And then it hits you. They’re not paragraphs. They’re stanzas. 

Poetry. Lee Heeseung writes poetry. 

You sneak a sidelong glance at him out of your periphery. He’s already engrossed in the pages of your notebook, pausing occasionally to jot a note down on a scrap piece of paper. His brow is furrowed, and there’s a tension in his jawline that only makes it sharper. 

Still, the image of his profile is shrouded in a distinct sort of softness. The kind of effortless beauty that feels like it should be reserved for intimate moments in the dead of night, secrets passed between lovers. It’s wasted under the fluorescent lights and patchy, beige walls of an underfunded classroom, but you waste another minute staring at him all the same. 

For a fleeting moment, it’s not hard to imagine those hands, those long, delicate fingers maintaining an even grip on a ballpoint pen to write something as romantic as poetry. 

Shaking your head, you clear the errant thoughts. Instead, you turn your focus back to the page in front of you and begin with the first poem. Forcing your eyes to focus, you read. 

As if nothing happened,

She looks at me

With shadowless eyes.

But it is me who has been 

Forgiven and reborn countless times.

You inhale. Exhale. Short and succinct with a distinct twinge of tragedy. That was… not what you were expecting. Pushing forward, you move onto the next entry. 

Even the stars in the universe

Will close their eyes one day.

Underneath their watchful gaze,

All of these moments are precious.

For memory, for regret,

I will carve them

Into the repetition of the moment.

Again, you pause, taking a moment to breathe. It’s so… melancholy, so poignant in its evocation of pain, of regret. While you’ve been familiar with Heeseung’s ability to analyze the hell out of a novella, this was not something you thought you’d find in his repertoire. And the more you read on, the more you realize these aren’t flukes. This is his identity as a writer, or at least a significant part of it. 

The world that abandoned us

Slowly turns to ash. 

But I don’t feel the pain. 

I only feel the cold.

My god. You nearly close the notebook on instinct. Without your permission, your eyes flick ove to the desk next to you. The broad set of shoulders that fill the seat. What has this boy been through? Why is he letting you read this? 

Heeseung looks up. Not at you, but the movement is enough to startle you out of your staring. Returning your eyes to his notebook, you read the last entry on the page. 

A shaded castle with no sun

The thick scent of dying roses never fades. 

In a broken mirror, I see myself. 

And my reflection whispers, “Monster.”

The breath you release is long. Audible. You’re overcome with the urge to run your fingers over his words, to feel the indents his pen made as he carved pain into the page. His writing is gorgeous. It’s beautifully, tragically haunting. Of that much, you’re certain. But you have no idea what to do with that information. 

His words feel too raw, too terribly intimate. Like something that was never meant for your eyes. You can’t understand what on earth possibly possessed him to let — no — to encourage you to read these. 

You can’t fathom any kind of feedback you could offer him. These feel like pieces of his soul, not something to be commodified or commented on in a writing workshop. Discussed in the cold, unfeeling walls of an old classroom.

Despite the discomfort that lingers with each passing stanza, his writing has an almost addictive quality. Over and over, you find yourself rereading each brief poem. You’re searching for meaning, for clarity, for something hidden between the lines that you missed on your first handful of reads. 

Thirty minutes pass in a trance, and Heeseung, true to his word, is the one to break the silence when your half hour is up. 

Mind still reeling, you realize with a sinking feeling that you have absolutely no feedback to give him at all. 

Instead, you turn to face him. Throwing a meaningful glance at where your notebook still lies open on the desk in front of him. Doing your best to not look too hopeful, you ask, “Well?”

For a moment, Heeseung just looks at you, an unreadable expression on his face. Tension pulls at his temple, his jaw. Frustration seeps from beneath his skin, and you can’t tell where it’s directed. 

“Oh, come on,” you prod when his silence extends even longer. “I know you’re dying to spill the gory details of how grossly incompetent I am and how horrifically amateur my writing is, so don’t—”

Heeseung wastes no fanfare. “This is awful.”

Your lips flatten. “Or just cut right to the chase.”

He’s quick to clarify. “But not for any of the reasons you just listed. I mean, sure, there are some craft issues here, but even those seem like a result of your concept.”

“What’s wrong with my concept?” The edge of defensiveness in your voice escapes without your permission. 

Heeseung just levels you with a look. Returning his gaze to your notebook, he reads from your draft verbatim, “...Stashing away the light from her life. Tucking it into his back pocket like extra change just for the satisfaction of temporary happiness. It was never love that bound him to her, but the promise of a never ending fountain of life. Of wishes and thoughts and hopes and dreams that he could use to sustain himself as long as he subjected himself to the numbing pleasure of existing at her side.” 

He raises an eyebrow, turns back to you. “I mean, really, ____? I’ve read some nauseatingly vitriolic vampire pieces in my life, and this just about has all of them beat. Besides, the whole vampire thing just feels so… irrelevant. Do people still read this stuff anymore?”

Your first instinct is to defend yourself, your work, even if his thoughts mirror your own. Before you can, Heeseung is pressing on. You don’t have the space to get a word in sideways. “I mean, what happened to the writing from that piece you presented back in September? I don’t remember all the details, but there was something about watching birds land on water and connecting it to the feeling of belonging but never truly fitting in.” He looks at you again. There’s more emotion, more glittering life in his eyes than you’ve ever seen from him before. “That was a fresh take and a well done metaphor.”

Your mind is reeling. It’s far too much information to take in all at once. But something stands out amongst the rest. Because that almost sounded like— 

“Was that a compliment?” It seems unlikely, but you can’t find another way to take his words. “You paid attention to my presentation?” 

You liked it? You don’t ask that question out loud, but the needier parts of you crave his answer anyway.

“Yeah, of course I did. Peer review was a mandatory component of the course.” Heeseung’s cheekbones remain the same, even, honey-tinted tone, but you swear you see a flash of embarrassment in the way he averts his gaze. 

“Well, yeah.” It’s not a justification that holds much weight in your mind. “But you don’t exactly seem like the type to really pay attention to other people’s stuff. Especially if you think it’s not worth your time.”

“I just told you your presentation was good, didn’t I?”

You arch a brow. “Yeah, right after you finished calling my draft horrific.”

Heeseung shakes his head. “I didn’t say it was horrific…”

“Oh, please. Spare us both the semantics. That’s what you meant.” You’re not sure why your mind always goes back to that day in the quad, but you find yourself still sore from his rejection, his new assertion of your work poking at old wounds. Picking at poorly healed scabs. “And it’s not like you were jumping for joy at the chance to review my work back then, either.”

Heeseung’s brow furrows. You can practically see the gears turning in his mind. You’re not sure if it makes you feel better or worse, the fact that he doesn’t seem to remember that day at all. 

In the end, you decide to spare him the effort of empty recollection. With a sigh, you spill your shame. At least this time around, you’re the only two that will bear witness. “That one day in class. Back at the beginning of the semester. We had to present our analysis of that one short story. You remember, the one about planting seeds in bad soil.” Heeseung nods, but there’s no spark of realization. Not yet. 

Continuing, it only pains you slightly to admit, “Your analysis was brilliant, and I gushed about it in front of the whole class. Laid it on thick with the compliments. And then after class, I stopped you in the quad.” Something flickers over Heeseung’s features. A memory tugging at the back of his mind. “When I asked if you wanted to review each other’s pieces for the next assignment, you completely brushed me off.”

Brow still pulled downwards, Heeseung is thinking back to that day, too. But it doesn't seem to hold the same awful, leaden weight in his mind. “I didn’t brush you off,” he argues. “I think I said I was busy.”

It takes a lot of willpower not to let your jaw drop open. “That’s brushing someone off!” Your voice is too loud for the near empty classroom, for your close proximity. “Like literally the textbook definition. Everyone knows that ‘I’m busy’ is code for ‘leave me the hell alone.’”

Almost imperceptibly, Heeseung’s features soften as he watches yours strain. The fluorescent light bulbs that fill the room suddenly don’t seem quite as harsh when he says, “Well, that's not what I meant. I was busy.”

It’s hardly a satisfying answer. But you suppose it makes little difference. If he wants to stick to his story, you’ll continue to feign indifference. “Whatever. It’s not like it matters now anyway.”

And then your mind is back on his poems. His beautiful, tragic, gorgeously phrased stanzas scribbled in his handwriting. Fragments of vulnerability that he handed to you without hesitation. 

It’s like comparing apples to oranges in a way, but there is no doubt in your mind that between the two of you, the writing he brought tonight is better. Better than your story, better than most things you’ve ever written, probably. The imagery is evocative, striking in a way you’ve never quite been able to achieve no matter how many seminars and workshops and lectures you attend. 

Not for the first time, your brain dangles a dangerous thought in a place where you can’t avoid it. What if Professor Kim chose wrong? What if Heeseung hadn’t been late to class that day? Would you be sitting here with a mediocre draft and a raging inferiority complex?

You’ll never know, not really, but you find yourself asking anyway, “Why were you late to class that day?”

As soon as the words leave your mouth, you wish you could take them back. It’s not like his answer will change anything. And it’s invasive. Far too personal to ask someone you barely know. That up until thirty minutes ago, you actively avoided. 

But maybe the universe is on your side for once. Maybe you got ridiculously lucky and he didn’t hear you, despite the fact that it’s dead silent in this classroom. Maybe—

“What?”

Or not.

Well, you’re committed now. “The last day of class. When the winner for the publishing opportunity was announced,” you clarify. “You were late. Honestly,” you add with a wry smile, “you’d probably be the one writing overdramatic vampire slander right now if you hadn’t been.”

It’s a self-deprecating joke. It might land poorly, but you’re hoping it will lighten the atmosphere. 

A dark shadow crosses Heeseung’s features. “Trust me, ___. You winning had nothing to do with me being late that day.”

If he thinks flattery will get him anywhere, he’s wrong. You can feel your frustrations bubbling in your throat, clawing at your mind. You won. You beat him. So why doesn’t it feel like it? Why doesn’t it feel like anything you do is ever good enough?

“C’mon, Heeseung.” He doesn’t deserve your anger. At least, not now. But he gets it anyway. Insecurities and inferiority and frustration all wrapped in rage. “You were practically a shoe-in, and everyone knows it.”

He’s just as insistent. Leaning towards you slightly, he looks anything but aloof now. “No I wasn’t. Professor Kim chose you to intern with him. He read both of our submissions all semester and chose you to publish with his firm. I told you, your writing is good. Really good.” Glancing down at your notebook, he adds, “Even if this one is a bit… uninspired.”

A compliment and a slight. His version of the truth, wrapped up in a bow and delivered right to your waiting ears. You don’t know whether to be furious or overjoyed. Maybe it would be best to feel absolutely nothing at all. It scares you, just how much weight his opinion holds. 

But approval from him has its way of feeling like a long sought victory, and now the air feels fraught with something delicate, fragile. Precarious, even. 

It’s early evening in a threadbare classroom. The most neutral territory imaginable. But it’s the two of you, alone, secluded. And suddenly, that frightens you. 

“Right.” You won’t tell him ‘thank you’ for the compliment or ‘go fuck yourself’ for the criticism. Both options feel like you would be revealing too much. 

Instead, you take a glance at the clock. It’s not late, but it’s an excuse. “I should probably get going.”

Heeseung exhales. Leans back in his seat. “Of course,” he concedes easily, reaching to hand you your notebook.

You do the same with his, almost sad to watch his poetry pass from your hands to his. It’s odd, the way his words already feel like something you’ll miss. 

You realize then that he hasn’t asked you for your opinion on his work. For your advice on how to make it better. In all honesty, you’re relieved. You haven’t the slightest idea what you would say. 

So instead, you busy yourself with repacking your tote bag. In your haste, you knock your pen off of your desk. The sound it makes as it strikes the thinning carpet can’t be loud, but it feels thunderous in your ears. 

As you reach to pick it up, Heeseung does the same. There’s a moment, fleeting but unmistakable, when the skin of his hand brushes against yours. 

Instantly, Heeseung recoils as if you’ve burned him. His hand is back in his own space at a speed so fast you nearly miss it. 

It was an accident, a tiny blip with no real consequences, but the way he’s looking at you with those damn eyes makes you feel like you should be apologizing. 

“Sorry.” The severity of his reaction stings like rejection. It’s not like he’s exactly your favorite person either, but at least you have the common decency to not look repulsed at the thought of touching him. At the accidental brushing of your hands. 

Heeseung frowns. Shakes his head slightly as if to clear his thoughts. “No, I…” he trails off, letting his words hang in the air for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he concludes, but it feels disingenuous. And he doesn’t bother to elaborate. Looking over your shoulder, he reads the clock on the wall. “It’s getting kind of late. Where are you parked? I can walk you to your car.”

His hands are busy putting his notebook back in his back. It’s a considerate offer, but coming on the tail end of everything else, it doesn’t hold much weight with you. His words don’t match his actions, and you decide you’d be a fool to take them at face value. 

“Don’t bother. I’m walking home, not driving.”

Heeseung freezes, hand still inside his bag. He’s not looking at you, but you feel the weight of his attention all the same. “Do you need someone to walk with you?”

The way he phrases the question makes you feel like a burden. He’s asking if you need someone to walk with you, not offering because he wants to. A subtle difference maybe, but the last thing you want is to feel like you owe him any favors. 

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” He does look at you now, concern painted across his features. “It’s getting dark earlier these days, and—”

His words are wasted on you. You’re already halfway to the door. “I’m sure.” But before you leave, you decide one more hit to your pride can’t worsen the damage that’s already been done. At least this time, it will be by your doing. Standing under the doorframe, you turn back to him. “Thank you for your feedback. It was good to hear an honest opinion.”

Your words sink into the air. Linger for a moment. 

Heeseung nods. Something in his jaw tightens. “You know, if you do decide to change topics, I’d be happy to read whatever you write.”

It almost sounds like another compliment. Or maybe another insult. Either way, you’re sure that even if you figure it out, you’ll still have no idea what to do with it. You nod, only once, and then your back is turned again before you can linger too long on any of it. 

But his words, the sweet ones this time, replay in your mind the entire walk home. 

Maybe if you weren’t so distracted by the ghosts of compliments, you’d have noticed the pair of quiet, even footsteps that trailed after you in the distance. That only retreated once the front door to your apartment was pulled shut and locked tight behind you. 

Then again, maybe not. Heeseung has always had a knack for going undetected. 

…..

You wake up the next morning with Heeseung’s words replaying in your mind. 

Awful. Irrelevant. And of course your favorite, ‘nauseatingly vitriolic vampire piece.’

In the faded glow of morning light, you groan out loud to your empty bedroom. The worst part of it all is that he’s not even wrong. But it’s Saturday morning, and your first draft is due on Wednesday. The thought of starting a new story from scratch and writing it to completion within that time frame is enough to make you want to curl into a ball and screw your eyes shut until you can pretend the world outside your bedroom is nothing but a figment of your imagination. 

So no, you don’t think you can start over entirely. But maybe, just maybe, you can rework things. Tweak the narrative to feel less cliche, less outdated. More true to you. 

Part of you wants to abandon the vampire concept entirely, convinced it’s what’s holding you down. The other part is hesitant to do so based on New Haven’s list of recently published works. 

And while Heeseung’s criticism was the confirmation you needed that your story needs reworking, it’s not like he gave you any ideas as to what you should change. What direction you should take.

Nauseatingly vitriolic vampire piece. That seemed to be Heeseung’s biggest problem with your draft. Not that it alluded to vampirism. No, you think he disliked that it was a tired and rehashed propaganda piece on the inherent evilness of vampires. 

Everyone knows that vampires were monsters. Writing about it, no matter how many metaphors and symbolic phrases you wrap it up in, just isn’t interesting. 

That’s the route you’ll take, then, you decide. You don’t have to invent a new concept out of thin air. You just need to find a way to bring something new to the table. Something worth reading. Climbing out of bed, you switch your pajamas for clothes more acceptable in public. 

And then you make your way to the university library. 

Just as you suspected, it’s essentially empty. Between long rows of meticulously shelved books, vacant study rooms, and community computers, the only other person you see is the librarian that greets you as you arrive. Even her eyebrows raise in mild shock to see someone else during the break, and on a weekend at that.

Heading to the second floor, the first section you peruse through is historical records. But between old newspapers, reports, and journals, the content itself is quite cut and dry. Detached descriptions of vampire attacks that only contain details of the date, time, and death toll aren’t exactly riveting. And you don’t think they’ll do much for your feeble draft. 

Before long, you move away from the nonfiction section. Navigating to supernatural fiction on the third floor, you start browsing titles. Vampire stories make up a rather small portion of the texts, and from what you can tell, the vast majority align with what you found on New Haven’s website. 

From Demons of the Dark to Left in Cold Blood, you doubt that most of what you find will offer any kind of new perspective. But on your third, slightly desperate scouring of the shelf, you make a discovery. 

It’s a small, nondescript book. The muted tones and faded lettering on the spine go easily undetected amongst the much flashier copies of anti-vampire propaganda it’s nestled between. 

Pulling the book out from the shelf with a delicate touch, you flip the cover face-up in your hand. 

Sacred Monsters: A Collection of Essays on the Origins of Immortality

It piques your interest. At the very least, it seems different from all the other novels. 

Book in hand, you make your way to a nearby desk. Once you’re settled in, you pull out your notebook, opening to a new page with the intention of taking notes. 

The book you lay on the desk next to your notebook seems like it’s lived a long life, the old scent of dust and aged paper and time all contained within its pages. Flipping open the front cover, you look for an author or publication date. But there’s nothing there, not even a title page or a table of contents. 

Glossing over the slight oddity, you decide the beginning is as good a place as any to start. 

The Taste of Blood, is the title at the top of the page. 

And the first sentence begins:

It is neither sweet nor particularly savory. There is no distinct aroma, no compelling flavor profile, nothing that appeals to the eye or excites the taste buds. The only merit is the fact that it is necessary. For even those blessed with immortality know what it means to survive. And even those cursed to live forever know what it means to die. 

Frowning, you flip back to the cover, as if that will provide any clarity for the strange passage you just read. But nothing is different. Nothing new stands out. Just the same, faded title. No author or indication of any kind of publication date. 

Intrigued, you turn back and resume where you left off. 

Some are said to enjoy the act. The purity of release, of giving in to the instincts that can be convinced into domesticity but never fully silenced. I have never found such relief. The ghost of my humanity has always been stronger than the voice of the monster, even as he screams with unbounded ferocity. 

Without it, I feel incomplete. With it, I feel irredeemable. Even now, I dodge the truth, omit the profane. I have seen many moons, enjoyed their silver glow. I have stolen the very same pleasure from countless others. And yet, I struggle to call it by name. I cannot reconcile the battles waged in my bones, the war fought in my mind. 

There is no winner in either. All that remains in the taste of it. Lingering on my breath. Haunting my waking dreams. That which I cannot name. 

The taste of blood. 

In my fervor, it soothes like honey. In my regret, it turns to ash. 

And still, nothing changes. And still, nothing remains the same.

-- Anonymous

Well, if you were looking for something different, you found it. Because what the absolute fuck are you reading? If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it were written from the perspective of a vampire. 

Then again, shelved in the fiction section, you suppose it’s plausible. Actual vampires may have housed little room in their consciousness for anything outside of bloodlust, but it is an interesting idea to think of vampires as conflicted. Haunted by the brutality of their innate instincts. 

You’re not exactly sure how or if this will be able to influence your own story for the better, but something about it makes you want to keep reading. 

Alone, tucked amongst the dusty shelves of a neglected section of the library, you lose yourself between the pages of the mysterious book. 

As the title indicated, it’s a collection of essays. Most are quite short, around the same length as the first one you read. And none are claimed by an author. All are signed off with the same boldface type that spells Anonymous. There are subtle differences in the writing though, stylistic choices that make you think that more than one person wrote these essays. 

Despite that, they’re all woven together by a common thread. The first essay, as you discover, was not a fluke. Every single one is written in first person from the perspective of a vampire. 

The writing is compelling, humorous in places and deeply upsetting in others. It seems odd to you, just how much humanity is captured within the pages, within each turn of phrase. 

You feel inclined to root for the narrator in some stories and abjectly horrified by them in others. But never once does the writing make you think that vampires are incapable of self-actualization, of reflection, of morality. 

In all honesty, aside from Heeseung’s poems, it’s the most interesting thing you’ve read in ages. So much so that by the time you realize you’ve finished the last essay, the winter sun is teeming dangerously close to the horizon, and the library is nearing its closing hours. 

The notebook page you intended to use for notes, to jot down points of inspiration, is still woefully blank. But as you make your way back to the front of the library, the small, strange book comes along with you. 

Stopping at the front desk to formally check it out, the librarian frowns when she enters the number from the spine into the system. She clicks around on her computer for a moment longer before handing the book back to you. 

“I’m sorry, but the book isn’t coming up in our system for some reason. Would you mind writing down your student ID number for me? I’ll have to enter the information manually.”

You oblige her request, tucking the book into your bag before you leave. 

It’s chilly outside, the cold clutches of winter gaining a full grasp on the crisp, frigid air. After a long day in a stuffy library, the freezing air is almost soothing. Tucking your hands into your pockets, you turn towards the direction that will take you home. 

You’ve barely taken five steps when a voice calls your name from behind. Pausing, you turn to find the source of the sound. 

“Heeseung?” But there’s no mistaking it. That is most definitely Lee Heeseung, currently jogging towards you on the otherwise empty sidewalk in front of the university library. 

He catches up to you easily, no sign of perspiration or even a hint of breathlessness when he asks, “What are you doing walking alone at night?” As if you’re the strange one in this situation.

You give him a once over. The loose jeans and dark winter coat he wears are nothing special, but he wears them well regardless. You suppress the urge to sigh. “I could ask you the same.”

“Fair enough.” His tone is too light, too casual. Like he’s forcing it. Like he’s hiding something. “Are you headed home? I’ll walk you there.”

And if you weren’t suspicious before, you sure as hell are now. Why on earth would he want to walk you home? “I’m fine, thanks.” You turn away from him, heading in the direction of your apartment and hoping he’ll take the hint. 

Your wish goes ungranted. He matches your pace easily, even as you try to quicken it. “It’s after dark, ___. And there are a lot of…” He trails off, searching for the right word. “strange people out at night these days. I’m not letting you walk home alone.”

Lips tight, you don’t bother looking at him. The idea of Heeseung letting you do anything makes you want to throw things. “I’ll be fine.”

But he’s persistent. He’s all smiles and a strange amount of desperate when he says, “Either you let me walk you back or I’ll just follow you at a weird distance, which will be far more uncomfortable for both of us.”

That makes you stop in your tracks. And now you do turn to look at him. “Well, when you put it that way…”

Heeseung nods, “Exactly. So—”

You arch an unimpressed brow, crossing your arms over your chest. “It sounds like you’re the strange person at night I need to stay away from.”

Heeseung sighs, matches your eye. A strand of hair falls into his eyes, and he pushes it away with long fingers. “Are you gonna start walking or are we gonna stand here and argue a little longer?”

“You don’t even know where I live.”

“What a great night to find out.”

You stare at him a moment longer, lips tight. You don’t want to be the one to give in, to hand him any kind of victory, no matter how small. 

But it is getting late. The walk from campus to your apartment is never one that’s made you uneasy, but it never hurts to have someone at your side. Besides, you think he was serious about following you. He’s made it clear that he’ll be tagging along one way or another. 

“Fine,” you huff, arms still crossed over your chest. “But only because the streetlight a few blocks away is out.”

Heeseung inclines his head, a minute acknowledgement. There’s a hint of movement at the corner of his lips. “Naturally.”

You resume walking, and he falls into your pace with a practiced ease, hands in his pocket, eyes on the stars. It’s a cloudless evening. The sky above you feels vast, immense as the last rays of daylight lie to rest on the distant horizon. 

With a slight shiver, you pull your jacket tighter around your body. Heeseung notices the movement. Parts his lips as if he wants to say something. Changes his mind. Closes them. 

You’ve just reached the far edge of campus when he breaks the steady silence. 

“How’s your draft coming?”

“It’s…” You trail off, not sure how well honesty will serve you here. It feels vulnerable, like a blatant weakness to admit that you’ve got nothing. But something about cold air and the vast expanse of night has you wanting to tell the truth. “Not great.”

Heeseung lets your response settle. Turns it over in his mind a few times. You’ve noticed that about him. He’s careful with his responses. Weighs his words before breathing them to life. “Still looking for inspiration?”

“I don’t know if it’s inspiration I need.” It’s easier to talk to him like this, when your eyes have something to focus on, when your body has the constant repetition of steps to occupy part of your mind. Without little distractions like these, Heeseung has a way of becoming all consuming. “I feel like I backed myself into a corner with the vampire concept. I’m not sure if there's really anything there to explore that won’t feel outdated and irrelevant.” 

“Mm,” Heeseung muses. It’s noncommittal, neither an agreement nor an argument. “Maybe. You said it yourself; vampires are nothing but bloodlust. Riled completely by instinct. Nothing left of their humanity.”

Frowning, your footsteps almost falter. “I didn’t say that.”

“Forgive me.” If there’s a tinge of bitterness in his tone, you suppose it must be because of the cold. The fact that he’s wasting his Saturday night walking you home. “Heavily implied it.”

“Honestly, the only reason I even wrote that story was because there were a lot of similar ones on New Haven’s list of recently published works.” Your reasoning feels almost stupid when you admit it aloud like this. You’ve always prided yourself on your originality, your commitment to staying true to yourself as a writer. But when push comes to shove, you let your desire to impress your professor get in the way of that. “I wanted something that would align with their usual publications.” 

You’ve admitted a weakness, a poorly made choice. You’re expecting ire, more of that haughty contempt. But Heeseung’s mind is going in an entirely different direction.

He’s not questioning your abilities, not even alluding to them at all when he asks, “What do you think of vampires, then?”

His question catches you off guard. Why on earth would he care about that? “What’s it to you?”

“My bad. We can just walk in awkward silence if you prefer.”

It takes a ridiculous amount of your energy to swallow the laugh that bubbles in your throat. Since when did Heeseung crack jokes? Since when did you have to fight the urge to giggle at them like a schoolgirl with a crush? You suddenly find yourself grateful for the cover of night, the way shadows make the heat on your cheeks undetectable. 

But his question still lingers. Ruminating on it, your mind flickers to the small, odd book currently sitting at the bottom of your bag. 

Sacred Monsters. 

It feels like a strange combination of words, two concepts that shouldn’t fit together. 

“I think it’s more complicated than that,” you breathe. You don’t know if it could possibly be true, the idea that creatures of the night have a high level of consciousness, the ability to moralize, to feel conflicted. But it certainly makes for a more interesting story. 

“I mean, vampires had to have some level of base cognition, right?” You’ll never know for sure, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. “They were hunted to near extinction, but they put up a good fight. They hid. They fled. They tried blending in as humans. Some resorted to drinking animal blood. I guess there’s no way of knowing, but that doesn’t feel like pure biology or an evolutionary response alone. It feels like… something a human would do.”

“Wouldn’t that be worse?” Heeseung’s voice is low. If the faint hum of faraway traffic were any louder, you might not hear him at all. “For them to know what it means to be alive and still make the choice to take that away from someone else? To exist as a parasite.”

“It would certainly be tragic.” The words of the first essay come back to you. 

For even those blessed with immortality know what it means to survive. And even those cursed to live forever know what it means to die.

“It’s a fatal flaw, a cruel design. They need blood to survive. The very thing that their bodies used to create on their own. It’s parasitic, yes, but that doesn’t make it animal instinct. I can’t imagine the horror of having to experience that with the burden of human consciousness.” 

You feel the weight of Heeseung’s gaze on the side of your face. “It’s still evil, is it not?”

His words feel heavy, weighted under moonlight. Though you can’t imagine why, you have the distinct sense that your answer is important to him. 

“Like I said, I think it’s more complicated than that. Taking someone’s life is evil, yes, but that was never unique to vampires. Is a vampire that chooses animal blood still evil just because they’re a vampire? Is a human that chooses to kill another absolved of their crime just by virtue of being human?”

Your words settle into the space between you. 

“That,” Heeseung finally breathes, “would make a much better story than the one I read last night.”

This time, you do laugh, a light airy thing. It feels easy, lighthearted as some of the tension drains from the atmosphere.

“Unfortunately, I’m not so sure Professor Kim would agree. Based on everything New Haven publishes, he seems to have some weird anti-vampire vendetta.”

As you round the corner, your apartment comes into view. Nodding toward the staircase that leads to your front door, you tell him, “This is me, by the way.”

Heeseung glances at the stairs, then back at you. He shoves his hands into his coat pockets. “When is your draft due?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” you groan. “Wednesday.”

“Mm,” he winces, an offer of understanding. “What time?”

“I’m supposed to be at New Haven by three, so—”

“What?” Heeseung cuts you off, expression suddenly tense, voice suddenly sharp. “You’re going to the publishing office?”

“Yeah.” You nod slowly, unsure why that would possibly warrant such a strong reaction. “I’m dropping off my first draft and getting a tour. The internship starts right when spring semester does, so he told me I could come in person to familiarize myself with the space first.”

“Right.” Heeseung nods. The tension in his jaw doesn’t relax.

It’s all so strange. He always seems to be speaking in riddles, dealing with invisible problems you can’t detect. 

You’re tired and confused, and the moon that hangs above you doesn’t feel like a remedy for either of those things. In fact, it might be making things worse. 

Because despite the way you feel like you’ll never quite understand him, bathed in the shimmering glow of moonlight, Heeseung looks… 

He looks like all the things you’ve been trying to avoid calling him for the duration of the semester. Ethereal. Beautiful. Maybe even kind, at least when he wants to be. 

After all, you’re standing at the base of your staircase with company, and it wasn’t due to any insistence on your end. 

The silence lingers. A string somewhere is pulled taught. 

You’re standing still, and you’re still a little breathless when you tell him, “I should go.” You don’t want to. You’re not sure why. 

Again, Heeseung only nods. 

The movement sends shadows dancing over his features. The bridge of his nose. The plane of his cheek. The line of his jaw. Things you’ve never let yourself linger on. Things you’re having a hard time looking away from now. 

 But he’s seen you home safe and sound, and even nights under the stars have their inevitable end. 

It occurs to you then that you have no idea how he plans to get home, or even how far away he lives. 

After he walked you home,it’s the least you could do to offer, “Do you live far? I could help you pay for a cab or something if—”

Heeseung shakes his head. He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It won’t take me long. Besides, I like to walk at night.”

“Okay.” It feels strange, trading these bits of kindness. You’re craving some normalcy, something unwavering. So with a final wave and a small goodnight, you climb the stairs to your door. 

You couldn’t say for sure if his eyes follow you on the way up. You feel the heat of them, the weight of a steady gaze on your spine. But it’s a fickle sensation and you’ve been wrong before. And you can’t quite bring yourself to turn around and look. 

The door closes behind you. Surrounded by the stillness of an empty apartment, you release a long held exhale. It drains out of you audibly. You hadn’t even realized you were holding your breath. 

…..

Dawn breaks Wednesday morning and carries with it a certain kind of dread. 

Despite your efforts, and there have been many, your draft remains far too close to its original state for your satisfaction. No matter how many times you pour over Sacred Monsters, you can never quite seem to find a way to make your submission more interesting while also staying true to New Haven’s general themes. 

If anything, the book has been a distraction. Long hours that you could have spent editing or revising or rewriting were instead dedicated to detailed web searches with a variety of keywords and spellings that never seemed to bear any fruit. 

It doesn’t matter which search engine you use. It doesn’t matter which database you browse. Other than the copy sitting on your desk, Sacred Monsters doesn’t seem to exist. 

But the annoying, wonderful, awful thing about time is that it passes. Time doesn’t care that you haven’t found it in yourself to produce a draft you’re proud of. Time doesn’t relent just because you always feel like it’s slipping through your fingers. 

And Wednesday morning turns to Wednesday afternoon with the same steady predictability as always. 

You’d like to think that you know the area around your university quite well, but New Haven’s main office is in an entirely different part of the city. You’ll have to leave now if you want to catch the bus with a little cushion of time to spare. The last thing you want to do is be late to your first day. Especially since the draft tucked neatly into your bag isn’t one you can hand over with confidence. 

To your relief, the bus is relatively empty. You tuck yourself into a seat and thank your lucky stars that you missed the afternoon rush. 

Popping your headphones in, you’re searching for something to fill the time. There’s the draft sitting in your bag, of course, but the last thing you want to do is spend the next thirty minutes agonizing over it. For now, it will just have to be the mess of mediocrity that it is. 

Instead, you reach for your phone. Maybe some mindless scrolling will be what you need to put your nerves at ease. 

But when the app loads, the first post you see doesn’t have you giggling or rolling your eyes or scrolling on without a thought at all. Instead, your spine straightens, shoulders suddenly tense. 

Because the words you’re reading are not something you ever expected to see in your lifetime. 

Three dead in suspected vampire attack, the latest headline from your local news reporting channel reads. 

Clicking on the article, the details are hazy, but that does little to lessen the grip of fear that makes a sudden grab at your throat. Fragments of sentences capture your attention as you scan the page. 

Three bodies found near the river…

Bite marks on their necks…

No trace of recent animal activity in the area…

Eyes widening with every new piece of information, fear claws at your throat. 

Bodies completely drained of blood.

Two hundred years. Two hundred years of the belief that vampires have all but been eradicated. Shattered in one fell swoop. 

And in your city, of all places. At the river. Somewhere you’ve been. Somewhere you wouldn’t think twice about going. It’s not particularly close to your apartment or university, but it’s not exactly far enough away for comfort.

You shudder, suddenly grateful that Heeseung was there to walk you home last night. Not that he would be able to do much if you did stumble across the path of a vampire, but—”

Oh god. Oh god. 

Heeseung. 

You have no idea if he made it home safe after parting ways with you and you have no way of checking. He hadn’t made any indication as to where he lived before saying goodnight. For all you know, he could have been heading in the direction of the river. He could have been at the river. Right when the attacks occurred. 

Doubling down on your phone, you scour the article for any information you can find on the victims. Objectively, it’s probably a good thing that they’re described only vaguely. Probably an intentional choice to protect the privacy of grieving friends and families. 

But ‘three victims, two men and one woman, all in their early twenties’ does very, very little to assuage your terror. In fact, it only heightens it. 

Blood pounding in your ears and dread pooling in your stomach, thirty minutes passes in the blink of an eye, you nearly miss your stop. But as you get off of the bus, you’re spiraling. Should you even be here? It feels wrong, leaving such a terrifying loose end untied. 

But then you think it through a little further. Even if you got back on the bus, rode it all the way to the stop by your apartment, you have no idea where you’d go from there. You may have shared insults and confidence and a moment under the moonlight with Heeseung, but you don’t know anything about him. Where he lives, where to reach him, where he could possibly be right now. 

But Professor Kim might. You’re sure that student information is strictly confidential, but if you explain the situation to him, he might be understanding, might just be willing to bend the rules a bit for you. 

So with a heaviness in your heart and fire in your footsteps, you double check the address of New Haven’s office and start walking away from the bus stop. Your surroundings are not a primary area of your focus, but it does strike you as odd how deserted the whole area seems. 

Other than a few residential looking buildings, the street you walk is mostly empty lots. Abandoned houses. Not the kind of place you would consider ideal for any business. 

Despite the cold morning sunshine, the afternoon has brought a cover of clouds. Squinting towards the distance, you wonder if you should have brought your umbrella, just in case. It almost looks as if it’s going to rain. 

When you do finally find the building, you have to stop to double check the address. Not only is there no signage, but New Haven’s supposed headquarters looks just as run down as all of the other buildings in the area. 

Frowning, you reread your email. The address does match the faded numbers next to the front door, and Professor Kim seems too meticulous to make a mistake like an incorrect address. Then again, he also seems too well off to run his publishing company out of a decrepit building far away from any of the city’s major business centers. 

But you won’t bother worrying about it now. Even your dreary first draft feels like an afterthought at this point. Who cares if the building’s not what you expected, if the location isn’t ideal? Right now, you need to focus on finding Heeseung, on making sure he’s okay. 

Because the alternative…

No, you refuse to let yourself spiral there either. But the pressure of grief borrowed from the future is already pressing firmly against the backs of your eyelids, blurring your surroundings. 

As you approach the front door, you notice a small, faded placard. 

New Haven. Well, at least that confirms that you’re in the right spot. Even if it is a bit odd that they left off Publishing. 

Standing at the door, you hesitate. Should you knock? Just walk in? You take a sidelong glance at the window, scanning for any sign of movement. But there’s nothing there. In fact, it looks as if the lights are off. 

Dark, quiet, desolate. Strange, yes, but not something you’ll waste time ruminating on now. 

You knock once. Twice. The sound echoes; the only response is the whistling of the wind.

Deep in the pit of your stomach, a sense of unease begins to build. It feels off, like something is wrong. Senses on high alert, you force the feeling aside. You need a way to find Heeseung, to make sure he’s okay. Besides, the lingering unease is probably just the anxiety of not knowing if he’s safe. 

Steeling your resolve, you reach for the door handle, twisting it tentatively. It opens slowly, the hinges groaning in protest. As if the building itself doesn’t want you there. Stepping inside does little to shake the feeling. Dark and devoid of any decoration, the interior is nearly as gloomy as the sunless sky outside. 

And even the layout of the building is strange. The front door opens to a long, dark hallway with no lights on. It’s eerily quiet. Too quiet. Too empty. You weren’t expecting a welcoming party by any means, but it’s hard to imagine anyone, much less Professor Kim, even being here. 

“Hello?” You call, clutching your bag a little closer to your body, suppressing the shudder that licks at the base of your spine. “Professor Kim?” You wait a moment, but sustained silence is the only response. 

Forcing your footsteps forward, you tread tentatively down the hallway. After all, you didn’t come this far just to turn around. Especially now that Professor Kim might be your only way of finding Heeseung. 

Taking slow steps down the dark hallway, you pass two doors, both of them pulled shut. The end of the hall opens into a larger room, still empty of any furnishings. It certainly doesn’t look like a publishing house. It doesn't look like much at all. At the very least, there’s a bit more visibility here, faint traces of faded daylight streaming in through the half drawn blinds on the other side of the room. 

Turning to your left, you see another door. This one is also pulled shut, but there’s a name placard on the front. Drawing closer, you read your professor’s name. It still doesn't feel right. Ducking down slightly, you check the gap between the bottom of the door and the hardwood floor for any sign of light, of movement. But it’s just as dark, just as quiet as the rest of the strange building. 

As you stand back up to your full height, you raise a hand to knock. Just before your knuckles make contact with the door, you see it. An odd array of crimson stains near the handle. Peering closer, your brow furrows in a combination of disgust and confusion. 

If you didn’t know any better, you’d almost think it looked like blood. 

But that doesn’t make any sense. None of this does. You won’t pretend to know Professor Kim, but he’s never shown up to a lecture with so much as a hair out of place. Why on earth would he run his publishing company out of a building that’s nearly falling apart? Why would there be strange, suspicious looking stains on the door to his office? Why would it be empty at the time he asked you to come present your draft and tour your future internship location?

You have no idea what to do. Opening the door to his office and letting yourself in would feel like an inappropriate invasion of privacy, but you’re at a loss. This entire thing is so strange. 

Before you can decide how to proceed, you hear something. A faint noise, barely there, but distinct from the wind that still whistles outside. It’s disjointed, arrhythmic like the sound of hushed voices. Overlapping. Arguing, maybe. 

Inclining your head, your brow creases further. It sounds like it’s coming from your professor’s office, but how could it be? The noises are too muffled, too distant to be coming from right in front of you. 

You lean closer. Deciding you’re past the point of maintaining decorum, you press your ear to the door, careful to avoid any of the suspicious looking stains. 

For a moment, you hear nothing. Half convinced the voices were nothing but a figment of your overactive imagination, you almost pull away. 

But then you hear them again. Still muffled, still indecipherable, but undoubtedly louder than before. Which means they must be coming from behind the door. The voices pause, suspend you in silence once again. 

And then you hear another noise, different this time. Less like a voice and more like movement. Scuffling, maybe. Feet dragging against the floor. It’s punctuated by a strange gurgling noise. Something wet and thick and throaty. The kind of sound that makes you wince in a subconscious reaction. 

And then a sudden thump has your bones jolting beneath your skin, everything muscle in your body tensing as you suppress an uninvited gasp. Because that didn’t sound far away. It was loud, too loud to be anywhere but right on the other side of the door. 

Mild unease is quick to transform into sheer panic as you stagger backwards on shaky footsteps. You need to leave. You need to leave now. 

You’ll find another way to get ahold of Heeseung, to make sure he’s okay. And maybe there’s a rational explanation for all of this. Maybe this is an old New Haven office and Professor Kim forgot to send you the new address. Maybe there’s an email in your inbox now, and he’s apologizing for the oversight and rescheduling your draft meeting. Maybe he’s—

The sound of the front door you walked in through minutes ago slamming shut kills the train of thought. This time, you can’t bite down the noise that crawls up your throat. 

It’s stupid, from a logical perspective. A fatal flaw of human nature that your first instinct is to scream. To alert whatever danger surely lurks nearby of your exact location, the precise depth of your fear. 

But the terror that leaves your lips is muffled. It comes from behind, the palm that covers your mouth. The outline of a body that presses into your back, forces you into submission with a hand around your wrist.  

You thrash against the ironclad grip to no avail. Dig your heels into the ground but find little purchase in the hardwood floor as you’re dragged backwards, every nerve in your body singing with terror as you’re forced into a dark room. Even with your elbows flailing and head jerking, the grip on you remains steady, firm. 

In the end, it’s a bite that frees you. The hand that covers your mouth drops away as soon as you sink your teeth into the flesh of your captor’s fingers. There’s a muffled grunt of pain in your ear as you spin on your heel. 

Again, it’s stupid. You should be running, sprinting in the opposite direction, but everything in you is begging to know. To gain some sense of control over the situation. Eyes still adjusting to the dark and blinded by fear, you turn to find—

“Heeseung?” Your mind is spinning a million miles a minute. There are too many thoughts, too many emotions to keep up with. Relief. Fear. Confusion.

Relief, because he’s okay and he’s here, but—

“What are you doing?” You have a million questions that demand answers. “Why are you here? Why did you grab me like th—”

“Are you okay?” Heeseung takes a step closer to you, reaches his hands out as if to grab you again. Thinking better of it, he lets them fall back to his side with a slight shake of his head. There’s terror in his eyes too when he clarifies, “You’re not hurt?”

“No, I…” What the hell is going on? “I’m fine, but—”

A flash of relief makes itself apparent on Heeseung’s features before they’re morphing again, regaining all the urgency, the fear that was there before. He’s serious, gravely so when he tells you, “We have to get out of here.”

“Okay,” you stumble forward as he reaches for your wrist again, intent on tugging you behind him. “But I don’t understand. What’s—”

“I’ll explain everything later.” He’s frantic, you realize. Desperate. And so terribly afraid. Emotions you’ve never seen him wear. Not in the cool, calm mask of indifference he had in class. Not in the faint flickers of vulnerability from stolen moments under moonlight. This is different. This is so much worse. “But we have to go. Now.”

With that much command in his voice, that much fear in his eyes, you’re putty in his hands. But in the end, it makes little difference. The door to the room he’s dragged you into opens with a resounding bang before the two of you can make your escape. The sound is so loud, so frightening that you feel reverberations in your marrow as the door collides with the room’s interior wall, no doubt leaving a sizable dent.

And standing there, shrouded by the gray tones of sunless winter daylight, your professor blocks the room’s only exit. 

Instinctively, you take a step closer to Heeseung. He does the same, pulling you towards him, behind him, until half of your body is covered by his. Peering over his shoulder, the sight that greets you is one that will haunt waking nightmares for a long time to come. 

Professor Kim, who always prided himself on maintaining a neat, clean appearance couldn’t be further from that now. His clothes are ripped, hanging from his body at odd angles, adding an element of disfigured monstrosity to his silhouette. 

And his eyes. His eyes. Bloodshot and so wide they must hurt, they dart around the room, narrow in on you and Heeseung like he doesn’t see humans. Only targets. Enemies. Prey. Mouth open and snarling, you swear you see a glint in his mouth, the shape of a tooth far too long and pointed to belong to any normal person. 

But even those things you could force yourself to forget. 

What horrifies you the most is the blood. Even in the shadows, the unnaturally potent shade of crimson is unmistakable. It stains him, covers him, drips from him. Seeps from his clothes and his skin and his mouth. 

Panic clawing at your throat, you suppress the urge to vomit. 

“Get behind me,” Heeseung whispers, low. “Now.”

But a split second of averted attention is all your professor needs. Professor Kim, lover of literature, beacon of taste, a role model you’ve looked up to since the first time you stepped foot in his class a handful of months ago, pinches a tiny object between his long, bony, blood-covered fingers. And then he throws it. 

With startling precision, it whistles through the air, races through a hazy cloud of confusion and panic before it strikes its target true. 

It doesn’t hurt, not really. The hand that flies to the side of your neck is instinct, more than anything. But the fingers that linger on your pulse point don’t find the smooth expanse of your unblemished throat that they usually would. 

Because there’s something there now. An object lodged just beneath your jaw. Delicately, you draw your hand back in front of your face. There’s no blood on your fingers, but that doesn’t stop them from shaking. 

As you look over Heeseung’s shoulder, the world starts to blur around the edges. Darken, as if your eyes are closing of their own volition, against your will. You see him retreat, the terrible ghost of your professor. In the dark, he looks almost forlorn. Regretful. 

“Fuck,” Heeseung whispers. He doesn’t see the way your professor spins on his heel, runs in the opposite direction. His attention is trained fully on the space beneath your jaw. “Fuck.”

“Heeseung?” Your voice sounds strange to your own ears. Distant, muffled as if you’re submerged beneath water. You have so many questions. 

But it’s suddenly so cold. And you’re so tired. Wouldn’t it be nice to just lay down? Rest for a moment? Surely that couldn’t hurt anything. 

Your legs are wobbly beneath you, and you would collapse to the floor in an ungraceful heap if it weren’t for the two hands on your waist, supporting your weight. 

“I’m here,” he tells you. Cold. When did it get so cold? Your eyes try to focus on Heeseung, but your vision is swimming. You wonder if he would be warm. “I’m right here. Just… fuck.”

Gently, he eases you both to the ground. The floor is hard beneath you, but it feels like a reprieve. You’re tired of holding the weight of your body upright. Your blinking is becoming slow, lethargic. Your head is suddenly far too heavy for your neck. 

Slowly, Heeseung removes his hands from your waist, relocates them to either side of your jaw. With the care of someone well versed in patience, he delicately maneuvers your head to the side, exposing the length of your neck. 

Whatever he finds there must be displeasing. You can’t imagine why. You can’t think much of anything. The world has taken on a sort of dreamlike quality in which everything feels loose, fluid and unburdened by the laws of any physics. 

“Fuck,” he whispers for the fourth time. The curse scatters over your cheekbone like a kiss. 

Pulling back slightly, he meets your half-closed eyes. “I’m sorry.” It sounds like a prayer. “This might…” he swallows, something in his resolve wavering. “This might hurt.”

Pain. You can barely conceptualize the sensation. It feels like a distant memory. 

And then he’s tilting your head to the side again. His face draws closer, overcomes the last of your remaining senses, demands the full attention of what’s left of your consciousness. 

You think he might kiss you. Whatever desire remains in you almost wishes he would. 

Your eyes flutter shut, lips parting slightly as your eyelashes fan against the tops of your cheeks. 

But his mouth never finds yours. Instead, you feel the soft caress of his lips against the side of your neck, a fleeting touch against the sensitive skin just beneath your jaw. Inhibitions whittled to nothing, you shudder against the sensation, release the airy ghost of a sigh.

He was wrong, you think. With his mouth on your neck, pain is the last thing you feel. 

You feel his lips part against your skin, chasing away some of the cold that has only seeped deeper into bones, into the very essence of your being. 

And then you feel it. Whatever capacity for sensation that remains all focuses on the sudden flash of agony as his teeth pierce the skin of your throat. 

The tiny moan that escapes your lips is pitiful. Your ability to think, to rationalize, feels like something that’s dangling in front of you, just out of reach. Your body is too heavy, too weak to respond to the flash of searing pain as your skin is pierced deeper. 

He can’t speak, but you feel the shallow vibration of a hum against your neck. Soothing, calming. His hand that doesn’t bear the weight of your head moves to push a stray strand of hair from your forehead. It’s gentle, reverent. In complete opposition to the war he wages against your neck. 

Mouth still full of you, a groan escapes him. It’s heady, throaty, and you feel it travel the length of your spine, settle in the pit of your stomach. Sensation is the only thing tethering you to this world, and you can’t quite tell if this is pleasure or pain. 

He pulls back, the absence of his steady heat leaving your jaw vulnerable to the chill in the air. 

“Hold on,” you hear. You can’t pinpoint where the noise comes from. Sound surrounds you, washes over you in a strange uniformity. You feel the ground fall away, something warm and solid behind your shoulders and under your knees.“We’ll be there soon.”

Floating, you think. You must be floating. It’s hard to tell. Moments are bleeding into one another too quickly for you to keep up. 

Eyes closed, body molten, you relax into the steady grip that carries you. 

And the last thing you hear before reality loses its hold is the fervent, whispered sound of your name. 

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

CONTINUED IN PART 2 (which can be found on my masterlist!)

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

note: THANK YOUUUUU for reading!!! this is pretty different from what I usually write plot wise, so I hope it made for a good read. vampire heeseung and this oc are near and dear to me, and I'm excited to continue their story. the rest of this fic is fully plotted and partially written. I'm actively continuing to work on it, and hearing your thoughts/theories/screaming/feedback/etc. is great motivation! as always, I love know what you're thinking. ♡

[tiredsmashbros]

LIP BITE COMIC PART ONE {CLICK HERE}

GOOD GOD IT'S FINALLY DONE... maybe. even though i still plan on making a part 3 i'm going to take a fatass break first + plan it out more better in the future. for now enjoy this meal silly goobers

aight now for some quick behind the scenes lore: this took way longer than i was expecting with 17 PAGES in total while taking the opportunity to experiment this type of sketch + comic style. i have a BAD habit of starting a story with just a minor draft idea, and with the more i progress the more i start changing the plot. like- this was supposed to end with smg4 in the bathroom embarrassed but i didn't like it anymore + the scene of smg3 opening the pickle jar was rewritten to fit a better narrative. i have a difficulty elaborating a short story so i might do mini comics for now as practice. furthermore, i tend to get wAY into making sure the character's are accurate as possible to the original material. been doing my best to get out of that strict mindset and just enjoy it being fun and remind myself it's okay to break some cracks. doesn't need to be perfect after all ;^)

other than that, i want to sincerely thank everyone for supporting and enjoying the first part of this silly comic. never have i ever received such a positive response that not only has scared the shit out of me, but motivated me to make more for me as a person, artist, and for everyone in the smg4 community. genuinely has made me so happy this past month and i can't explain how much i am so excited to just start drawing these guys and everyone else in the cast + other fun stuff!! 💛

now i'm going to play wuwa and hide for a day bye bye :3c

[hannieehaee]

raindrops (an angel cried)

18+ / mdi

summary: being assigned watching duties over humans was usually a task reserved for high level angels. on jeonghan's first week of promotion, he finds himself far too curious about licentious human activities, becoming infatuated with his assigned human. what happens when his interest goes too far, it gets him kicked out of heaven?

content: fallenangel!jeonghan, jeonghan is your guardian angel up until he gets kicked out of heaven oops, infatuation, inexperienced jeonghan, even as an angel he's still a menace to all, heaven is super strict, afab reader, smut, oral (m receiving), mentions of masturbation, penetrative sex, etc.

wc: 11.1k

a/n: the lore on this is so nonsensical pls just work with me. i hope despite that u guys enjoy thoughhh<3

masterlist | kofi/patreon

support me through a one time tip<3

"Who is that?", asked Jeonghan, apprehension in his eyes.

"That's your human."

"My human? I'm getting a promotion?"

"Listen, Jeonghan. I had to call in a lot of favors to get the higher ups to let you get this promotion. You better follow the rules to the letter. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Kwannie, I know," he rolled his eyes, "Why do you have so little trust in me?"

"I'm serious, Jeonghan. If you keep messing up, you might get kicked out of heaven. Do you really want to be down there with the humans? Being a mortal?"

Jeonghan couldn't help but think the idea sounded enticing.

He hadn't had too much exposure to humans thus far, but he had always had great interest in them. They just sounded so free and different from one another, unlike in heaven, where specific behavior was to be expected from every working angel.

Within heaven, you were either born as an elite sort of angel, – with all their angelic duties assigned – or you were born human and then admitted into heaven as an angel, getting to enjoy eternal happiness with your loved ones. Jeonghan, sadly, was the former. Having been born into an angel position, it meant that although his life was not miserable by any means, it was just a closed box of responsibilities to fulfill until the end of eternity. He truly envied all the humans-turned-angels in heaven, often asking them about their memories as humans and trying to live vicariously through them.

Due to his constant curiosity of humans, Jeonghan often got in trouble as he stuck his nose in places it shouldn't be. As an angelic being, Jeonghan's duties as an angel were mostly clerical, managing which human each angel would be assigned to as a guardian angel. Ever since being born as an angelic entity, Jeonghan's dream had been to be promoted into a guardian angel position. In his current job, the most interaction with humans he ever got was the ability to see a quick overview of their timelines in order to assess which guardian angel would be the best fit for them. His job was comfortable and stable, never causing him any trouble. But he wanted more. He wanted to be down there, on the playing field as he watched over his own human.

So he would cheat occasionally, maybe snooping into human's lives for more than he was allowed to. Sometimes he'd pause on certain bits that drew a little curiosity and simply observe. He'd also on occasion tried to make his way down to Earth, only to check things out on his own. All his attempts were always met with reprimands from his higher ups, claiming that a soul as curious as his own should not be near humans. The existence of angels was meant to stay a myth, after all.

When Seungkwan took him into one of the offices designated for guardian angels, Jeonghan had been shocked. He had been banned from being brought here a few years back, so it was a very well appreciated change of pace for him. What was even more shocking, however, was when Seungkwan led him into one of the sphere rooms, which contained a view of any and every human in existence in real time. The most shocking thing, though? The pretty girl reflecting on the globe, very deep in slumber as Seungkwan revealed Jeonghan's promotion.

"Her old guardian angel retired. Chose to move to the land of humans-turned-angels. Angel Jihoon was simply going to ask you to assign her a new angel, but I put in a good word for you, so he gave you the job. Don't fuck it up, Jeonghan. Do you understand?", his friend was quite stern as he warned him.

"Big words for an angel."

"Don't go puritanical on me, Jeonghan. Your behavior in Heaven doesn't matter. It's when you meddle with humans that you'll get in trouble. Just ... Please follow the rules and don't step out of line."

Seungkwan was right. From all the accounts he heard from angels who had died and gone to heaven, Heaven and Earth were quite similar. People held jobs, lived a day to day life, had relationships. There were a few stark differences, though. There was no suffering in Heaven – no illness, no tiredness, no debilitating feelings. Sure, frustration and annoyance were a thing (God knew Jeonghan had felt those things), but it was virtually impossible to be truly unhappy in Heaven.

Jeonghan had no problem with Heaven, he was just far too curious about humans to stay still and do nothing. He was not allowed to admit it, but he had always wanted to know what it'd be like to be human. To live through pain, struggle, confusion. He just wanted to experience it all.

Angels had no needs in heaven. Hunger didn't exist, neither did aging or an itch to do or feel things humans usually engaged in. For instance, while Jeonghan had heard of sex and romantic relationships, this was something that angels did not have the innate desire to feel, as they were born fulfilled in every sense. Human-born angels, however, brought their humanly experiences and emotions along with them to heaven, sometimes telling tales of such things, always drawing Jeonghan's curiosity to new heights.

Looking at you through the sphere, Jeonghan felt excitement at thinking of what humanly emotions you may be feeling. He also felt giddy at knowing that you would one day come to pass onto his heavenly realm, where he would meet you after having known you for the entirety of your lifetime.

"Woah, really? You got a human now? Congrats, man," Joshua gave Jeonghan a bro-shake, clinking his wine glass with Jeonghan's in a celebratory manner .

Joshua was one of the few former humans that Jeonghan tended to hang out with on his down time. Despite having died of old age, he had been able to choose his 25 year old self to manifest himself as such on Heaven, conveniently matching Jeonghan's age range. He was also one of Jeonghan's main informants about what life on Earth had been like during his own time there.

"What are they like?"

"Not sure yet. I start tomorrow. She's a pretty thing, though," Han admitted, remembering how peaceful you looked in your sleep.

"Oh? Well, you gotta tell me everything about her when you start watching her. Man, I'm excited for you. You've been shooting for this since I met you."

"Yeah, sure, man. I'm kinda nervous. What if I fuck up? They'll throw me out of heaven," Jeonghan recalled Seungkwan's warning, also remembering every other reprimand reminding him of his punishment if he ever stepped out of line again. He wasn't sure what being kicked out entailed, as it wasn't a common occurrence in Heaven, but as much as he wanted to feign indifference, he did not want to leave his current lifestyle altogether.

"It'll be fine. As long as you don't try and meddle with her life, you'll be okay."

Yeah. Joshua was right. He just needed to follow the rules and nothing would go wrong.

Jeonghan's streak of good behavior did not last him too long on the job.

He couldn't help himself, not when you kept enticing him minute by minute of your day.

It wad almost as if you knew you were being watched, the way in which everything you did caught his undivided attention.

Guardian angels were not supposed to keep constant watch of their humans. This was just Jeonghan's personal choice, entirely fed by his curiosity of humans – and specially due to you. In usual terms, guardian angels would go through their regular lives, only ever checking in on their humans whenever their angelic senses felt a need to take a peek at their lives. Sometimes angels would end up checking in on their humans only once a month or so, never feeling the need to watch over every single moment. Other times, certain humans led lives that required a more watchful eye, causing their angel to keep better track of them. That was actually Jeonghan's previous job – assigning the right guardian angel to the right human, ensuring they'd get just the right attention from their angel.

Jeonghan's human did not require such close attention, but he just couldn't help himself. Within one day he was already enamored with you. And he only became more and more enamored as the days passed. He let go of all his other daily activities in favor of watching you, swooning over you. Although he still gave you your privacy whenever you did things such as go to the restroom or wash yourself, he was present at any other time.

He had actually made the mistake of staying present on what appeared to be one lonely night of yours.

As an angel, – a perfect being – Jeonghan clearly knew what you were doing. Contrary to popular belief back on Earth (at least by many of those who believed in Heaven), sex was not seen as a negative thing by the greater powers. Though such acts did not take place in Heaven too liberally, all angels were well versed on the carnal acts humans took part in. They just had no innate interest in such things. They could still engage in it, but it was just less common. This was yet another aspect of human life that guardian angels usually looked away from, seeing no need in guarding their humans during such an intimate setting.

Jeonghan always wondered how the physical act of sex manifested itself among angels. This was something that was entirely unspoken in Heaven. He knew angels could seek pleasure in such ways (he had done it to himself a few times, but wasn't well versed enough in it to truly find much pleasure in it), but since there was no innate desire for it, he guessed that most angels just didn't do it. If anything, it was more likely to be done by humans-turned-angels, since they had already done such acts in their previous lives. Jeonghan had meant to ask Joshua about this at some point, but he felt ashamed for some reason. He felt as if he'd be breaking a rule if he talked about it. This belief still did not prevent him from watching you play with yourself late at night, all while he laid on his own bed and attempted to play with himself in coordination.

As the days passed, Jeonghan could've sworn he fell in love with you. From your angelic appearance to your sense of humor, to your wit, (God, you were just his perfect match in every way), Jeonghan fell for you more and more each day. He came to wonder if becoming your guardian angel had actually been a punishment; to show him Heaven but not allow him to have it.

Luckily for him, he would soon find out.

~

"Let me go down there," he demanded after days of trying to get the heavenly council to give him the time of day.

The council consisted of a few of the highest regarded angels, along with a jury of angels that would rotate every so often. Luckily for Jeonghan, he saw some familiar faces within the jury on that day, with his buddies Jun and Seokmin taking part in it.

Currently, Jeonghan was directing his demands to head angels Jihoon, Seungcheol, and Minghao, who – with help from the jury – would decide whether his demand would be granted or not. He liked to think he had some pull with Seungcheol, but judging by the frown his face was adopting at the moment, he wasn't too sure anymore.

"Jeonghan ..."

"No, listen! Let me make my case."

Jihoon sighed, but gestured at Jeonghan to continue.

"You've been saying you'd send me down there as punishment for my behavior, but it wouldn't be punishment for me. I've watched humans for years," he winced at his own admission of guilt, knowing that only certain types of angels were meant to watch humans, and he wasn't one of them up until one week ago, "and I just know that I'd be an amazing guardian angel if you'd just let me go down there and see her."

Jeonghan had done all the math in his head. This would simply be a harmless experiment, causing no damage to anyone as he got a chance to live human life in the same way other angels had in their prior lives. Ultimately, he promised to cause no trouble on Earth and come back whenever the head angels decided.

These were all the arguments Jeonghan presented to the council, hoping that his selfish desire to meet you didn't somehow slip through the cracks.

The three angels huddled together after Jeonghan finished his long argument, surprising Jeonghan and all other angels present in the jury.

After a few moments, the three angels nodded at one another, seemingly coming to an agreement and turning to Jeonghan again.

"Fine. You may go," Minghao said decisively.

"W-what? Really?!"

"You're troublesome here on Heaven, I'm sure you'll somehow be worse on Earth," sighed Jihoon before continuing, "But, your arguments are valid. Heaven has been far too strict on working angels. Allowing you to experience what all other human-born angels have lived will cause no harm, and since you'd only be guarding your human, not much damage can be done."

"So I can go? I can be with my human?", he asked for confirmation, eyes still wide and mouth agape.

"Yes, Jeonghan. You may go. You will remain an angel as you stay with her, so you will have to learn to behave as a human. We will come to decide how long you get to stay, and whether or not you get to come back. I'm sure this will prove reasonable to you, with your curious nature," added Seungcheol, a small smile on his face at being able to grant Jeonghan's wish.

"Do you agree to these terms?", asked Minghao.

"Yes! I agree! Send me!"

"One last thing," interrupted Jihoon, "Only she can know your identity. We have assessed your human to be trustworthy enough for this experiment, but even this much is a risk. You must keep a low-key image while on Earth and not step out of line. Anything happens and we pull you back out. Understand?"

"Yes," Jeonghan nodded with all seriousness he could muster through his excitement and nerves, "I'll follow all rules. I promise."

"That's a first", chuckled Cheol before turning to the jury, "Any objections?"

Jeonghan looked to his friends in the jury with pleading eyes as they grinned at him and nodded in encouragement.

At receiving no objections, all three angels sounded their gavels, granting Jeonghan the wish to be a fallen angel, for however long they may wish.

Jeonghan's departure had been quick.

He bid his goodbyes to his closest of friends, promising to come back as soon as he could (though maybe that had been a lie – he wanted this to last as long as possible).

Despite his desire to leave and be with his human, he was still a bit sad he'd stay separated from his friends for a while. Time in Heaven passed quickly, but he would feel their absence all the more while on Earth.

The council had also granted him with the ability to rid himself of his wings whenever he wished. This way he'd be able to blend in with other humans in Earth.

Today was his last day here, which coincidentally was the exact same day the verdict had been ruled. He was happy to know the anticipation wouldn't last long.

"So, you fell in love with your human?", asked Seungkwan as he helped him make his appearance as humanly as possible.

"Maybe. Is that not a thing that happens to other angels?", he asked, knowing the answer already.

"No, Jeonghan. Angels don't feel romantic love for humans. I'm dating an angel, couldn't you just do that too?", he berated his friend, "Also, what did I tell you about following the rules?"

"Hey! I'm still on the job. I just might've done it a bit too well. And now, I get to meet her," he couldn't help but sigh in contentment at the thought of meeting you.

"What's so special about her?", asked Joshua, who was also there aiding Jeonghan in his makeover.

"Are you kidding? Joshua, you've been human. You've been in love. Hell, I was there when your partner finally arrived to Heaven. You know what it's like to fall in love."

"Hmm," he clicked his tongue, "I guess you're right. Still, I can't believe you're willing to leave Heaven for her."

Jeonghan couldn't really believe it yet either. He was so giddy about it, knowing just how perfect for him you were. Along with that giddiness, though, he felt nervous at the possibility of you not liking him as much as he did you. He expressed this concern to his friends.

"Are you serious? You're an angel. No matter if you try to hide it, which I know you won't, she'll know. I'm surprised they're even letting you go knowing she's 100% going to fall in love with you."

"Wait, really? What do you mean?"

Seungkwan sighed as if Jeonghan had just asked the most obvious question ever, "Dude, you're an angel. Angels have an alluring essence by nature. It won't take her long to see it and fall for you, specially since you're already interested in her yourself."

He had a point. And Jeonghan would likely do anything to get you to like him.

"Well, this is as human as I can get you to look, Jeonghan. You might just be too pretty for Earth. The women are gonna eat you alive," chuckled Joshua, stepping away from Jeonghan so he could look himself in the mirror.

They had trimmed Jeonghan's long locks ro shoulder-length hair, making him look a bit less ethereal (though his long, blonde hair still made him look angelic). Joshua had also styled Jeonghan in usual Earth fashion, ridding him of his white gown and putting him in some casual clothing.

Jeonghan liked it. And he had a feeling that you would too.

Holy fuck.

Jeonghan couldn't believe the sight in front of him.

It was you, in all your beautiful glory.

He had been transported directly onto your home, appearing in your room as he watched you sleep.

Luckily, you lived alone, which meant that he did not have to deal with anyone else's presence as he tried to figure out the best way in which to approach you.

When the council had transported him here, they gave him no advice on how to interact with you or even introduce himself into your life. They had left him to his own devices, so he was entirely unsure on what the best next steps should be.

Should he let you know he was an angel? Should he try to pretend to be human? There were no guidelines for how to do this; no Seungkwan to lead him in the right direction.

None of that mattered to him too much, though. He knew his internal instincts would lead him to the right

However, things didn't go as smoothly as he wished.

Despite knowing human customs, – they were mostly the same as that of angelic ones – Jeonghan admits to having been a bit of a creep in the way he first approached you.

Maybe caressing your cheek as you slept had not been the best of ideas, specially since you woke up almost immediately after, screaming at the sight of a stranger in your home.

Wingless and having the same appearance as any other human, Jeonghan stood like a deer in headlights, trying to calm you down and let you know he wasn't here to cause any harm, and that if you just let him explain, everything would make sense. Except he had no idea what that explanation could possibly be without taking the risk of freaking you out even more.

When you continued to freak out, locking yourself in your walk-in closet and yelling at him to get the hell out of your house, he decided to use some of his angel magic to get you to come to reason.

Teleporting himself into your walk-in closet, he held onto your arms as soon as he saw you lift them in fear at his sudden apparition, not understanding how in hell he had made it to the other side of the door while it was locked. He attempted to soothe you, which didn't work. So he went for the next best thing and covered your mouth with his hand in order to quiet you down.

He felt terrible at holding you hostage like this, but he just needed you to give him a chance to explain what was going on.

"I need you to listen to me, okay?"

"Hmph! Hmph-mhph!", you mumbled, words muffled by his hand.

"Please just tell me you'll let me explain. If you tell me to fuck off, I will, but just give me a chance."

He meant his words too. Even as infatuated as he was with you, he was willing to respect you if you found the situation too strange to deal with and asked him to get out of your life.

It took you a while, but eventually you visibly relaxed, nodding at him to take his hand off your mouth so you wouldn't feel as retained as you listened to what he had to say.

The two of you were sitting on the floor of your small closet, entirely too close to each other. But Jeonghan liked it. It allowed him to truly feel your presence for the first time. You were even more beautiful than he saw through that sphere. He hoped against all hope that you wouldn't be scared of what he was about to tell you.

"I'm your guardian angel," he started. It wasn't part of his original plan to tell you straight away, but looking at you, he knew he couldn't lie to you, "I know it might sound crazy, but I promise! I ... I was sent to Earth so I could watch over you. I, uh, I actually asked to be sent here. With you," he wasn't sure why he felt so embarrassed at revealing that. He was so sure of his feelings for you, but having you here in front of him made him lose some of his usual confidence.

You stared dumbly at him, eyes wide and confused. You didn't seem scared, but Jeonghan was also sure you probably thought he was insane. Then he remembered he could show you proof of his truth.

"Look, I'll show you, okay? Just, please, don't be scared," he hesitantly grabbed onto one of your hands, bringing it up to his own, surprised you allowed him to do so, "Promise me you won't run."

Seemingly thinking it over for a second, you nodded a moment later, intertwining your pinky with his own, "Okay."

Your voice while not taken over by fear was soft and alluring. Jeonghan couldn't wait to hear more of it.

Taking a deep breath before activating his wings, he grabbed onto both of your hands for support, closing his eyes as tight as possible as he allowed his wings to open up, creating a rip in the back of the shirt he was currently wearing.

As his wings opened up, the usual shine that came from them lit up the small space of the closet, tiny sparkles brightening up.

Hearing no reaction out of you, Jeonghan slowly opened up his eyes, scared that he'd find fear in your eyes.

But he didn't find fear.

Your eyes showed the opposite of what he was expecting. It was awe.

Unable to break eye contact with your eyes as you stared at him like he had put the stars on the sky, he moved closer, bringing up one hand to caress your cheek softly.

"Y-you're ... you're an angel?"

"Your angel," he clarified.

You disconnected from him, getting up and exiting the walk-in closet, making him deflate but continue to follow you.

You walked around your room in circles, seemingly trying to make sense of the situation in your head. After some moments, you halted your movements and turned to look to him, "Why are you here, if you're my guardian angel? Shouldn't you be in heaven?"

Although he had already kind of explained it, he guessed that maybe a more detailed explanation was necessary considering the strange circumstances he had put you in.

"I wanted to see you, see what being a human was like," he started, hoping you didn't find his statement strange, "I've only been your guardian angel for a short time, but you just brought out this curiosity in me that made me want to come down here more than ever. I know this might be too much all at once, but I just ... I just wanted to see you."

You looked affected by his words, maybe feeling for Jeonghan and his words. Your arms were wrapped around yourself, making yourself smaller while also protecting yourself from the strange situation. He hated that he made you nervous, but he understood. Still, he wanted to go back to a few moments ago when you were looking at him with awe in your eyes rather than confusion.

"You wanted to see me?", you parroted his statement.

He nodded, taking a tiny step towards you.

"Why?"

"I ... I don't know. I had no idea angels could fall for their humans in such a way. I think this might be unheard of," he chuckled humorlessly.

"So you're a fallen angel, then?" you joked, laughing awkwardly along with him.

"Hah, yeah."

Taking a seat at the edge of your bed, you patted the space next to you, inviting him to sit next to you. Putting his wings away to not get up in your space, he sat down, appreciating the gesture.

"I'll help you," you turned to him decisively.

"Huh?"

"If you wanna explore human life– if you want to explore your ... feelings for me, I'll help you."

"You will? Really?"

He was surprised at this, having expected fear or disgust out of you more than anything.

"Yeah. I mean, how often does a girl get to meet her guardian angel. And you seem harmless, so I don't see why not."

"Fuck," he breathed out, getting up, "Thank you, I .. Where do we start? Should we head out? Maybe–"

"Hold on," you put your hand on his chest to prevent him from walking away, "It's 3AM. I don't know if angels get any sleep, but I kinda need it ro function, so ..."

"Oh, right. Where should I sleep, then?"

"Angels sleep?"

"I can if I want to. And since I'm trying to assimilate to your people, I might as well."

"Okay. You can sleep, uh ... do you wanna share my bed?", you offered, pointing to where you'd just been sitting.

"You want to sleep with me?" he asked, a small smirk making its way to his face.

"God, I didn't know angels could even make innuendoes ... No, we'll just sleep next to each other, that's it," you clarified, rolling your eyes at the angel in jest.

"Fine, I guess we'll save the sleeping with me thing for later," he snickered at the groan you let out at him.

The two of you were already beginning to get along.

You began preparing an extra blanket for him, leaving the room for less than a minute, only to come back to him already laying in your bed.

"You ..."

"Oh, hey," he patted the space next to him, "C'mere. Need your human sleep, right?"

Bringing the blanket over with you, you used it for yourself, now that Jeonghan was using the one you'd been wrapped around in before he'd materialized into your apartment.

"Goodnight, Y/N," he mumbled sleepily.

"Goodnight ... Wait, what's your name, again?"

"Jeonghan. Yoon Jeonghan."

"Goodnight, Jeonghannie. Hope you enjoy your life as human," you bid him goodnight, quickly falling asleep after.

Jeonghannie ... Fuck, you were already beginning to get to him.

"Okay, there's gonna have to be some ground rules if you're gonna be leaving the apartment today."

It had been about an hour since you'd woken up, once again finding Jeonghan hovering above you as he watched you with endearment in his eyes as you slept.

The first thing you'd done was tell him that that was far too odd behavior to showcase around humans, to which he reassured you that he only felt like doing so to you.

After that, Jeonghan had insisted you let him accompany you everywhere you went, claiming that he could pretend to be a distant friend or something in order to get away with being with you while he explored human life. Reluctantly, you agreed, thinking it might've been too soon but reasoning that he had already come all this way just to be with you.

He nodded to your statement, enjoying your commanding tone as you listed out your rules.

"You cannot say any weird shit that gives away the fact that you're an angel,"

He nodded along.

"You have to stick by me at all times and never stray away from me."

He hummed, eyes attentive and on you.

You made eye contact for a quick second, gulping before looking away and continuing with your list.

"No meddling with my life or anyone else's with your weird angel powers, and no, I don't want to know what they are, just don't use them."

You continued to list more and more obvious things, most of which he had already heard from the angel council (and Seungkwan) before leaving Heaven. Still, he enjoyed listening to you, so he sat and stared at you with all his attention completely on you. Occasionally, you'd make eye contact with him, always looking away as if you'd been burned.

"And– and fuck, stop looking at me like that!"

He tilted his head to the side in confusion, "Like what?"

"You keep staring like I'm the angel, it's unnerving me!"

Chuckling, he nodded, "To me you are."

You sighed and ignored his flirting, continuing with your list.

"Are you willing to obey all these terms?", you asked once you had finished.

"I'll do anything you ask me. I'm here for you, after all."

It had only been a few hours since he met you, but he already enjoyed how you'd try to hide your flustered state any time he'd express his liking of you.

This was going to be fun.

~

As per what you told him, you did not have work today, which meant he could be with you the entirety of the day without getting in your way.

Due to this, today you were going to take Jeonghan out to a 'get-together' with some of your friends. He was looking forward to meeting the people he'd seen were part of your life. There were only a few characters he was curious about, not having watched over you long enough to figure out the nature of your relationships.

Vernon was one of the main characters he was interested in. He seemed to be just a friend, but considering human customs, Jeonghan couldn't be too sure.

When he asked you whether you'd be meeting him today, you were confused as to how he knew him for a moment, then remembering who he was and confirming that yes, Vernon would be present today.

Your morning routine proved to be quite interesting to Jeonghan. Unlike him, who could become dressed and presentable from his slumber with a snap of his fingers, you had multiple steps to take. He knew of the mundane human activities beforehand, of course, but seeing you partake in them in person was extremely intriguing to him.

The amount of needs you had was also quite interesting. From showering, to using the restroom, to eating, to even scratching your arm when it itched. Humans were truly complex and needy. Yet Jeonghan liked that. He ached for that. Being a perfect entity grew quite boring for him. He knew most people enjoyed it, but he wished for at least the chance to experience the mundane once.

This was the closest he would get, he guessed. And he still had no idea when the superior angels would pull him back up.

"Dude, what the fuck? Did you get a boyfriend?"

You slapped the boy's arm – Vernon's arm.

"Stop! We're just friends. I met him on twitter a few years back and he came to town, so, uh, yeah. This is Jeonghan, everyone."

Jeonghan currently found himself at an almost empty pub, standing in front of a booth filled with a few of your friends.

From Jeonghan's recollection, these were Vernon, – your best friend, as per your own words – Mingyu, Chan, Wonwoo, and Soonyoung.

Jesus, did you have to be friends with all men? And did they have to look almost as angelic as Jeonghan himself?

Despite Jeonghan's feelings of envy (an emotion he had not dealt with much in his existence), he was still glad to know that you had your own little group of friends here on Earth, just like he did in Heaven. Vernon was kind of like your Joshua, he assessed.

"Well, your friend's hot," Soonyoung broke the silence.

"Yeah, I know," you grumbled, taking a seat next to Mingyu. Before Jeonghan could complain about having no seat, you patted your side to gesture for him sit next to you, making him grin boyishly.

"So, Jeonghan. Tell us about yourself," Mingyu sipped his drink as he asked, "Oh! Chan, get him a drink, yeah?"

While Jeonghan tried to improvise some response, Chan handed him an open beer, seemingly expecting Jeonghan to drink it.

Grabbing the bottle, Jeonghan sipped it a bit, wincing at the rancid taste of it.

Is this what humans drank for leisure? Jesus.

"I'm Y/N's friend," he said blankly as a response.

Chan chuckled, "Yeah, but like, what do you do? How did you two meet?"

"Oh. I-"

"He's, uh, a social worker a few cities over," you interrupted.

This caught Wonwoo's attention, "Shit, really? I'm a social worker too. What do you do?"

"I watch over people, mostly."

That was half true.

"Nice. Anyways, work's boring, let's move on!", Soonyoung pushed even more drinks onto the table, "Tell us about your relationship with Y/N. Have you slept together?"

"Soonyoung!"

"It's a valid question! He's just your type."

"You've always liked them pretty," added Chan, nodding.

This peeked Jeonghan's curiosity, but it wasn't too surprising to him that your friends thought him to be your type. He had already caught you staring at him a few times through the past day.

"I didn't bring Jeonghan here so you could berate him about his sex life, okay? Stop," you took a frustrated swing of your drink afterwards.

The way in which your friends bantered with you made him think back to his friends in Heaven. But he pushed this sad thought aside to respond to the question.

Jeonghan took advantage of your mouth being busied by your drink to answer the inquiries about your friendship.

"We're just friends," he responded, "For now."

This caused a small commotion among the booth, making your friends throw childish 'ooo's at you.

Once again, you rolled your eyes and told everyone to shut up, lightly hitting Jeonghan's chest to reprimand him.

"So you brought your situationship to hang out? Doesn't that go against the rules of situationships?"

"He's not my-"

"I thought I was your situationship," whined Mingyu next to you, leaning his head against your own.

That caught Jeonghan off guard.

Although he didn't know what this word meant, he assumed it must've meant some sort of relationship. Maybe a relationship of sorts? Which meant that you and Mingyu must've had some sort of thing going.

This confused Jeonghan immensely. In the short time he had watched over you, he never once saw any evidence to show that you and Mingyu were anything more than friends. You'd usually see your friends once or twice a week, with Vernon being the only one you really saw on a daily basis. Did he miss something at some point? Had Mingyu been who you were thinking about that night he watched you masturbate? It must've been, if what Mingyu had just said was true.

"Your what?", he decided to ask, turning to you and ignoring all other eyes on him.

His eyes landed on Mingyu for a second, not liking the way he was so close to you. He hadn't minded it previously, but if the two of you really had something going on, then Jeonghan was going to have to break some rules and intervene.

Before Mingyu could respond (with that damned smile on his face ..), you interrupted.

"He's kidding. It's an inside joke. We accidentally went on a blind date together once so now Mingyu acts like he's my ex. He's an idiot, ignore him," you pushed Mingyu aside jokingly afterward, something which made Jeonghan smile.

"Okay. Good," he responded, going back to a relaxed stance despite the curious look a few of your friends were sending him.

The rest of the evening was spent like this, occasionally interrupted by Jeonghan's questions about human terminology that he did not understand (earning him multiple questioning looks from your friends at being so out of date), and frowning whenever there was any mere insinuation at you being anything more than platonic with any of your friends.

Overall, it went well. Jeonghan decided that he liked your friends (though he still wanted to keep an eye on Mingyu). It wad enjoyable to Jeonghan to watch human behavior first-hand, specially while he sat next to you, shoulder to shoulder as he occasionally allowed his eyes to quietly drift to you, admiring you while everyone else engaged with one another.

A few months had passed since Jeonghan arrived to Heaven, and Jeonghan was having the time of his life spending every waking moment with you. And he wad happy to say that it seemed like you were enjoying it just as much.

In order to show Jeonghan human life as much as possible, you had decided to work from home whenever possible, even using up a few of your sick days to take him out with you to explore your city and introduce him to as many fun human activities as you could.

When Jeonghan had informed you that he was unsure when he'd be pulled back to Heaven, you seemed genuinely upset, pouting at him that you were enjoying his company too much for him to get taken away. Your friends had also taken a liking to him, you confessed after a few more outings with them. He fit perfectly into your group.

Jeonghan had grown to become an integral part of your life. The two of you shared a bed every night, even waking up to partake in your skin care routines together every morning (a routine which Jeonghan did not need but simply copied for the immersion of it all). You were quite affectionate with one another too, always being called out by your friends on the unspoken nature of your relationship.

The two of you were practically twin souls as far as Jeonghan was concerned. You got along perfectly and existed in such harmony. Jeonghan couldn't help but grow to like you more and more as the days went by, constantly being told off by you for watching you so consistently. He had also caught you staring at him a few times, specially when you believed him to be asleep, but he decided to keep that to himself, simply enjoying the knowledge that you swooned over him as much as he did you.

Unfortunately, as the time passed, you seemed to run out of new experiences to show Jeonghan. You had taken him to work a few, allowing him to shadow you at your office. You had taken him on every single outing you could think of (most of which Jeonghan had come to find were usually considered to be romantic dates). You had shown Jeonghan mundane household activities, such as cleaning and cooking. You had also strictly prohibited his usage of his angelic powers, stating that they'd ruin the immersion you were trying to show him.

As you ran out of things to show him, he had one last thing plaguing his mind, but he wasn't too sure how to bring it up, or whether he should.

He could still think back to his time in Heaven, when he was first assigned to watch over you. It had been late into nighttime on Earth when he saw you, your lower half under the covers as you slowly removed your tank top.

He had been good, had decided to look away any time you undressed or needed some privacy, but your state had intrigued him. You looked desperate to undress yourself, quickly kicking off your covers and your bottoms along with them. As Jeonghan watched you in the nude for the first time, he salivated at the sight. He had seen all kinds of beautiful sights in Heaven, but you had been truly the most captivating of them all.

Jeonghan felt dirty, but he couldn't help but look as you began touching yourself, letting out the prettiest sounds he had ever heard. Your hands had gone to your breasts, tugging at your nippled with desperation as you whined. Jeonghan's own hands went to his pants, trying to calm a foreign feeling he had never felt before.

He had tried masturbating before, knowing that it was an act some angels also partook in, but he had never felt anything arouse him into doing it in the way you had. In Heaven, sex was really just a leisure activity, not usually caused by arousal. Angels had no necessities, so calming that ache was not something they ever had to deal with. This led Jeonghan into confusion, not understanding the effect you were having on him, though his desire caused him to ignore his confusion, instead continuing to palm himself as he followed your own rhythm.

After finding his high with you, he sat in the most satisfying post-orgasm glow he had ever felt. He had never experienced such a satisfying release, which made him become even more infatuated with you at the time.

This was the last time he had ever allowed himself to watch you as you got off, having felt like he was breaking a rule by doing so. Which he technically was, as angels were advised against intruding their humans' privacies to the extent in which Jeonghan had done.

And now the curiosity kept on itching at him. He wanted, no, needed to know what came after that, what such a carnal act would be like when done with someone else. In his time on Earth with you, he had already experienced arousal a few times. Waking up next to you was not something that really helped matters in that area, as he would be reminded of your beauty as you touched yourself every single morning you woke up pressed up against him.

You hadn't masturbated during his stay on Earth, or at least not as far as he knew. Jeonghan wondered if you felt as needy as he did, waking up tangled up together.

Then one day an answer to his question came along.

He had been watching you all morning, noting how pent up and easily alarmed you seemed. You had jumped back when he lightly nudged you in the kitchen while making breakfast, goosebumps forming on your skin. You had also looked away with a blush when he came out of the shower, only a towel hanging from his body. Even when he played with your hair as he usually did, you had shivered at his touch, avoiding his eyes.

All signs led to sensitivity. The same sensitivity he had felt any time he stared at you for a little too long, eyes shifting to the breasts he had once seen nude, or the lips that had released those pretty sounds that still played on repeat in his head.

So he went on a whim and threw all cares to the side, knowing that what he was about to do probably broke a thousand rules back in Heaven.

"Will you have sex with me?"

He couldn't blame you in your reaction, dropping the plastic bottle you'd been holding and having some of the liquid spill to the floor.

"What?!"

Getting up from his seat at the kitchen table, he walked over to where you were leaning against the counter, standing in front of you as he responded.

"You said you were running out of human activities to show me. You haven't shown me this," he said quite matter of factly.

"Y-yeah, but-"

"I see the way you look at me. You want me. And you know I want you," he lifted a hand to run a lone finger on your cheek, "don't you?"

"I ... I know you like me, Jeonghan, but you're my guardian angel, we can't. What if ..."

Moving his finger over to your lips, he shushed you.

"I'm in love with you. I know it may be far too soon for a human, but I've loved you since the moment Seungkwan assigned me to you."

"Who- who's Seungkwan?"

He chuckled, recalling that he hadn't told you too much about Heaven so far.

"He's my friend back in Heaven. I'll tell you more about him someday, okay, pretty?", his hand left your lips in favor of caressing your cheek, holding its round form against his palm as his thumb rubbed softly at it.

"Don't you wanna go back to your friends? What about when you have to leave me? What ... What will I do if I start feeling the same for you?", you asked sadly.

"I'll see them again, baby, don't worry. And I'll never leave you," he got closer, wrapping his arms around your waist as he leaned closer to you.

"But, Jeongha-"

"Shhh," this time it was his lips shushing you rather than his finger, "It's okay. You don't have to worry about anything. Just ... Show me. Teach me, yeah, angel?"

Closing the gap, he kissed you, soft and angelic as he did so.

You fell into the kiss quite quickly, using your own hands to play with his hair as your lips touched.

Jeonghan had never kissed anyone before. He could've at some point or another, but he had just never felt anything for any other angel before. The first time he ever experienced such feelings had been as he watched you through that sphere, thinking you the prettiest soul in all of existence.

He had thought of kissing you many times, but the actual act was better than any imagination he could conjure. You weren't shy in your desire for him, quickly taking control as your expert lips danced against his own. While he started off shy, he attempted to match your pace and expertise, licking at your tongue in the same way you did his own. Anything you did that got his eyes rolling back, he did in return, wanting you to experience the same sensations you were giving him.

"Hannie ...", you pulled away with a struggle as Jeonghan's lips attempted to follow your own, "Let me ... Let me take you to bed," you held onto his hand without waiting for a response, walking him to the room you'd been sharing these past months.

Jeonghan was surprised at whatever had taken over you after your kiss as you pushed him onto your bed upon walking into your room. He had no complaints, though, allowing himself to be maleable to everything you might to do him.

His desire took full control of his body as it worked against him, hips canting up towards your own with no finesse whatsoever, hands feeling up every inch of your body in an animalistic manner. For once in his life, Jeonghan was imperfect in his actions.

This proved to be no issue for you, though, as you moaned all the louder at his sheer desperation for you.

After making out for a good while, you disconnected once more, hands on his shoulders as you hovered over him.

"What do you wanna know, Hannie? What should I teach you?", you asked against his lips.

Without a response, his hips continued grinding up against your own, his hands aiding him as he pushed your hips down towards his crotch. He was fully out of it, his body taking a mind of its own. It was a bit embarrassing how clearly desperate he felt.

"Can I- Fuck, can I fuck you? I'll know what to do, I promise. Just wanna take care of you," he whispered back. And he was sure of it. He knew his body would show him what to do; how to take care of you as he discovered the pleasure your bodies could bring.

"Yes, Hannie. Anything you want."

So he flipped you over, laying you down beneath him as his hands slipped under your pajama top, feeling the soft skin underneath. Asking for permission before removing it, his hands lifted it up and threw it to the side, eyes never leaving your torso as you revealed yourself to him. He repeated this process with your sleeping shorts, leaving you fully nude apart from a pretty pair of white panties you were donning.

Just as expected, you were the prettiest sight he had ever beheld. Despite being an angel himself, he truly thought you to be the most angelic thing he would ever get to hold in his arms.

His hands touched and caressed every inch of bare skin, drawing goosebumps across every part of you he made contact with. Your soft gasps as he toyed with your nipples had him reeling. The pretty whines you let out when he wrapped his lips around your nipples and kitten licked at them sent him on a frenzy.

The more he touched, the crazier he felt. His hips had begun grinding down against your own the moment he got you under him, leading to a constant stream of pleasure as he explored your body with his hands and lips.

"You're the prettiest thing I've ever seen ..." he mumbled while his lips made their way up from your tits to your neck, nibbling at your skin every so often, "Came all the way from Heaven just for you, my pretty angel."

He could tell you were growing more and more desperate by the second, something which he understood. Unsure of how much longer he could take without feeling your bare skin against his own, he undressed himself and discarded your panties, groaning at the slickness that connected your panties to your cunt. Hovering over you once again, he couldn't help but feel sheepish at the way your eyes scanned every inch of his bare skin, practically salivating at the sight of him.

Your hands went up to toy with him, feeling him up in a similar fashion as he had done to you. His nipples were tweaked with, causing a high-pitched whine to leave him. Then your hands went to his aching cock, which was the final blow he needed before thoroughly losing his mind.

As much as he wanted to be the one in charge and the one to take care of you, you had him at the palm of your hand the moment you touched him.

"A-angel," he gasped as you began playing with his cock.

"Hannie ... Let me take care of you? I'll teach you everything, just ... Fuck, you're so pretty, Hannie. Such a pretty angel," you repositioned the two of you as you said this, hypnotizing him into following your directions as you toyed with him.

Once again, you were above him, leaning down for one last wet kiss before crawling your way down his body, resting on your knees before him.

Kissing up and down his thighs, you mumbled praises at him all throughout. Jeonghan felt weightless under you, like he was floating as you shamelessly expressed your lust for him. He truly thought he felt the most extreme ends of pleasure while you kissed and licked and sucked at his thighs, but he was fully unprepared for the moment your lips arrived to his cock.

Fuck.

In all his years in Heaven, he had never felt such bliss. Your warm lips wrapped around his cock as you took him deeper and deeper, bobbing your head as you suckled at him. His eyes rolled back and his back arched against the bed, whining endlessly at the feeling.

You worshiped him like a god, making him feel like the most powerful entity to ever exist. He was reaching heights he didn't know possible. How had he lived his entire life without ever feeling such lust? Specially when said lust was being rewarded by the prettiest thing he had ever seen.

"Angel ...", be breathed out, fingers wrapping around your hair, "Please .."

You gave him a nod in confirmation, not needing a verbal warning before he started grinding his hips against your mouth. He was mindful of the pace, allowing his body take control as he tried to reach his high.

Jeonghan kept at it for a while, slowly grinding his cock into the warm hole that your mouth offered him. He was entirely gone, not even aware of how desperate his movements were beginning to become.

"Are you gonna cum, Hannie?" you mumbled as you disconnected from him to catch some air, continuing your ministrations in the form of licking at the veins on the side of his cock.

He nodded in confirmation, eyes furrowed and unable to speak anything that wasn't a high pitched whine, "P-please, I ... Fuck, oh fuck- Yes! Keep- Fuck!"

Just as he attempted to respond to you, you put him back in your mouth without warning, suctioning as you hollowed your mouth and went as deep as you possibly could. Had he had time to process the act a bit better, he would've claimed you a minx for making him lose his mind so suddenly, but his pleasure completely overtook every other though.

Jeonghan whined and writhed on the bed, back arching into the perfect slope as his high reached its crescendo.

You only gave him a few seconds to recover before pulling him out of your mouth with a sweet kiss to weeping his tip, climbing up his body to fondle his tongue with yours. Despite his exhaustion and lack of breath, he couldn't deny any intimacy from you, so he kissed you with all he had. He kissed you with all the passion left in him, silently thanking you for the otherworldly pleasure you had given him.

"Need to fuck you," he whimpered against your lips. He could feel your dripping cunt lying directly atop his cock, mixing both your juices on the surface of his stomach.

You disconnected from him with a gasp, looking down and seeing his cock already hard again.

"You're already hard?", you looked puzzled as you asked.

"Yeah," he said as if it were the most obvious thing, "You literally made me discover the concept of lust, of course I'm hard."

You stuttered shyly at his statement, making him chuckle before you continued, "Do you not need time to recover? I-"

"Baby, I'm an angel. I don't need anything but your cunt wrapped around me," he spoke in words likely never spoken by an angel before.

Blushing again, you grumbled at him to shut up and did just so by kissing him again.

Jeonghan couldn't imagine not wanting you time and time again – even if he were a human. He was entirely certain that any man would defy human nature to harden for you over and over just to feel the pleasure your pretty body could give.

Luckily he didn't have to worry about that as you ground your bare cunt against his cock, reaching an angle that had you crying against his lips and him writhing under you, hands squeezing every curve he could reach.

"Gonna sit on you, okay, angel?", you whispered against his lips, licking at them as you pulled away.

You got up, positioning his cock against your cunt. His anticipation was at an all time high, entirely too desperate to feel the warm home that laid between your legs. But of course, before he could find his way home, you rubbed his tip against your cunt, making his head throw back in frustration.

His hands took action on their own, slapping your own away and positioning yourself so that you would finally sink down on him, giving him access to the greatest heaven of all.

There weren't enough words for Jeonghan to understand the myriad of sensations cruising through his body. His nerve endings were on fire, while his body writhed and arched uncontrollably. His body seemed to have a mind of its own, holding you against him as he canted his hips upwards at the most pleasurable rhythm his body could find.

The beautiful sight above him did not help matters.

Through your time together, Jeonghan had seen you in every state possible, having spent every waking moment by your side. Yet nothing could compare to you now. Your sweaty skin, shinning under the bedroom light as your tits bounced up and down. Your expression revealed one of utmost pleasure, eyebrows furrowed and eyes almost crossed in ecstasy. Jeonghan couldn't look away, despite how harsh of an effect your beautiful form had on him.

Jeonghan knew sex between angels was a thing. He knew it differed from human customs in many ways, yet he had never partaken in it. Not once had he ever felt lust or excitement at the thought of another angel. You had been the one to wake him up to this brand new realm of pleasure. You were the one bringing him to Nirvana with every touch.

And every sound too.

"H-Hannie ... So good, fuck. L-love your cock. It's so pretty 'n so fucking good ... It's all for me, right. Right, Hannie?", you breathed out between breaths of exhilaration, "My pretty cock, just for me."

He was yours. His existence orbited around you. Heart, body, mind, it was all for you.

Fuck, how could he ever go back to Heaven now?

There was no time to think about such things now; no time for any rational thinking as your hands came down to pull at his nipples, whimpering to him that your high was on the way, and that you needed him to get there with you.

"With you ... I'm gonna cum, just- fuck. Kiss me. Please ... Need you to kiss me-"

Moments later and his lips were trapped between yours, relishing on the feeling of your tongue dancing with his own. Your bodies were in perfect coordination, with the both of you receiving nothing but never ending pleasure.

Your high found you first, triggering his own as his hips went on a frenzy against yours, attempting to milk out every second of his orgasm.

The aftermath was two limp bodies lying against each other, eventually finding a way to cuddle and caress the other with all the love your souls allowed you to give.

Jeonghan laid there, the most content he had ever been. Your time together had proved to be the happiest of his life, but nothing compared to having such an intimate connection with the girl he knew was the love of his life – this one and the next.

Just as Jeonghan was about to verbally voice his feelings for you as he had done time and time again since meeting you, you interrupted him with your own confession.

"I love you," you said as you nuzzled yourself against his chest, "Please never leave me."

Your voice sounded sad, making Jeonghan frown before masking his worry with a smile, choosing instead to bask in your reciprocation of his feelings.

"I can never leave. I love you too much."

One more month passed like this, with nothing but bliss between you and Jeonghan.

By now, Jeonghan was an integral part of your life. Not only was he now close with all your friends, but he had been promoted to the role of your boyfriend, sticking his tongue out at Mingyu any time he'd joke about you replacing him.

The two of you slept together regularly, finessing the art of your physical love to an extent Jeonghan was sure was incomparable.

It had been a total of four months by now, and Jeonghan was nothing less than enamored with his current life. He missed his friends dearly, wishing he had some way to communicate all his happiness to them, maybe hear about their own happy happenings in Heaven. But this was a sadness he needed to push aside in favor of enjoying the unknown time he had left with you.

His doubts about Heaven did not last long, however.

One sleepless night, Jeonghan was distracted by a higher power calling to him. He was surprised at the feeling of sleeplessness, seeing as he did not need sleep as an angel. This was new.

Pushing such thoughts aside, Jeonghan followed the voice in his head, telling him to meet them in the living room. As carefully as he could, he detangled himself from you, heading to the living room in curiosity.

That's where his emotions truly took over.

Standing in your living room was none other than a beautiful angel donning the classic white gown – it was Boo Seungkwan, Jeonghan's best friend and confidant.

Without a single word, the friends held ran to each other, holding one another in a tight embrace. Their didn't need to verbalize how much they'd need each other, the hug said it all.

"Kwan, what are you doing here?", Jeonghan chuckled incredulously.

"The angel council is pissed at you man," he started, "You slept with your human, really? No, wait. You've been sleeping with your human!," he whisper-shouted, well aware that said human was in the other room sleeping.

There was no use in fabricating some type of ruse. Jeonghan was proud and honest about his feelings as he explained the happenings of the past few months, letting Seungkwan in on how hard and fast he had fallen for you, and how you had done so in return.

Surprisingly to Jeonghan, Seungkwan's reaction wasn't to reprimand him. Rather, he chuckled amusedly before responding.

"You know, we all expected it. We had a bet going to see how long it took you to officially get together."

"Y-you've been watching us?!"

"Hey! You're practically human now. Someone had to be watching over you. Not my fault Jihoon thought me the man for the job."

Jeonghan grumbled despite feeling glad at knowing his friend had had his back this whole time, never truly leaving him to be on his own.

"I'm here with news," the tone shifted, "I ... The council has given you an option."

Seungkwan paused for a moment before continuing.

"As the time passes away from Heaven, angels begin to lose their powers. They eventually regress to the state of humans," he explained, taking a breath, "If you ... If you choose to stay, you will become fully human within a year, and then you will age accordingly."

"I- I get to choose? That's a thing?"

"You're not the only fallen angel, Jeonghan," Seungkwan explained, "Jihoon was one once too."

"He ..? What?"

"The reason he never exiled you was because he wanted you to find your way here on your own. Like he once did. He, like you, fell in love with his human and descended. All angels have that option, they just need to want it. Most angels find happiness in Heaven alone, like me. But others need to live through all cycles of life to find their own bliss. I'm happy that you found your own."

Seungkwan chuckled at Jeonghan's wordlessness, a sight he probably had never seen before.

"The council sent me here to give you an ultimatum. You've blended here well. They want the choice to be yours."

Jeonghan couldn't believe his friend. He could stay and live out his life as human? With you? But then he remembered something.

"Wait. What about ... Will I ever see you guys again?"

Once again, Seungkwan chuckled at this.

"As long as you behave and live out your life dutifully, you'll end up in Heaven once more. This time with your human by your side."

That sounded like an awfully long time without seeing his friends. But it also meant a lifetime with you, followed by another one.

"Don't worry. I know you've gotten used to Earth, but time in Heaven passes so much quicker. In my time, you've only been gone for a week. I'll see you in a few months," Kwan assured his friend.

Even if he didn't express it while in Heaven, Jeonghan would miss all the people he loved. He was happy to know his absence wouldn't be felt, knowing that you'd also help him fill the hole he'd feel at missing his friends. Looking forward to reuniting with them would also help him not miss them too much.

Seungkwan watched him think with a smile, "I take it you've made your choice?"

He hesitated for a moment, but ultimately nodded, "Yeah," he breathed out, "I'll stay."

Seungkwan nodded back, "I'm happy for you, Han. I'll see you soon."

With one last hug signifying goodbye, Seungkwan made his exit, leaving his friend behind to his choice.

Feeling a bit solemn, Jeonghan made his way back to your room, tangling himself up in your sheets once more as he seeked your comfort.

His shuffling woke you up, making you flip to face him and inquire if anything was wrong. Your arms wrapped around his form sleepily, cuddling further into him.

"I'll stay," Jeonghan said, breaking the silence.

"Hmm?", you looked to him in confusion.

"The council got back to me. I can stay," he said with a smile in his voice.

There was immediate worry in your eyes, surprising Jeonghan, "Jeonghan, I- I know I wanted you to stay, but you can't. What about your friends? Your life?"

He chuckled silently, bringing his hand up to caress your cheek as he loved to do, "I'll see them again, angel, don't worry", he explained, "and next time I'll bring you along with me."

He decided to save the explanation for another time, currently too happy to function at the thought of the long life that awaited him. The thought of reuniting with his friends with you by his side also made its way into his mind, making his chest tighten with contentment.

a/n: in my little headcanon y/n, jeonghan and all their friends live long and fulfilling lives and end up in heaven with the rest of angel-svt<3

to read short 2.2k word continuation you can go join my monthly tier on kofi or patreon!

content: established relationship, goes back and forth between jh's pov and reader's pov, jh wakes her up for sex, penetrative sex, oral (f receiving), body worship, depraved!jeonghan, etc.

wc: 486 (teaser); 2291 (full drabble)

sneak peak:

After just a few more months of staying on Earth, Jeonghan had finally fully lost his angel powers, and with them, his essence as an angel also went away.

For any other angel, this would've been bad news, but Jeonghan was excited for this change. Okay, maybe he had been a little anxious about it, but after constant reassurance from Seungkwan and the council that he would get to come back to Heaven once he fulfilled his human life, he felt quite at ease. As one last goodbye, he had been allowed one last visit to Heaven, which he spent raving about you to all his friends. Apparently his months-long absence had only been a mere week in Heaven. This also reassured Jeonghan, now knowing that his friends wouldn't miss him too much while he was busy growing old with you.

And you were the best part of it all.

Your day to day remained quite similar. The two of you were a well established couple by now, which to Jeonghan meant that this was only the beginning of eternity with you.

However, even after being on Earth for quite a while, he was barely beginning to truly understand what being a human was like. He could now feel every human emotion to its fullest extent. He could feel pain, sorrow, anxiety. But, he could also feel all the positive emotions – happiness, excitement, and his favorite, horniness.

You had been his awakening to lust back when he first met you, but now emotions felt all the more intense. Without his angel powers, he felt everything to the extent every human would. He believed that his previous lust for you was the most invigorating it could possibly get, but he was swiftly proven wrong when his angel essence fully left him.

Jeonghan's discovery of lust (and sex in general) gave him the libido of a perverted man.

Every morning, you'd wake up with a huge boner pressed up against you. Not only that, but Jeonghan would purposely grind against you like a dog in heat, far too horny to hold back.

When Jeonghan began to feel these heightened human emotions, the two of you had agreed that it'd be okay if Jeonghan woke you up to take care of him. The sex with the angel was more than ethereal, so you saw no downside to it. However, you hadn't expected just how horny Jeonghan would be once his human form fully took over. You'd fuck every day, sometimes even twice a day.

Even now, after having fallen asleep immediately after riding Jeonghan to completion, the first thing you felt upon waking up was a hardness against your ass, bumping against you with a pathetic desperation.

You considered pretending to still be asleep, but ultimately decided that it'd be more fun to mess with Jeonghan a little. He was always so pretty when he got desperate for you, so what could really be the harm in it?

...

find the 18+ continuation on kofi or patreon!

if you have trouble finding it on there, just let me know!!<3

[theoldsports]

SPONTANEOUS.

Art Donaldson x Reader

oops. it’s gonna be a series. i’m developing Lore. let me know what you think and where to go next.

warnings: 18+ please, drug use mention, drinking (underage), kinda sexual content.

LINK TO SORRY SERIES

Fancy parties were loathsome. [Y/N] thought so, at least. She hated being told to stop calling them fancy parties and shindigs and to call them by their proper names: galas, benefits, balls, whatever. It was exhausting. Her feet weren’t meant to be elegantly jammed into spike heels. [Y/N] liked the height she was, thank you very much.

Did supporting charitable causes have to feel so degrading?

Capitalism at its finest.

[Y/N] had been attending these things since she was a little girl. Seven or eight years old. So young, in fact, that she now can’t remember what demographic or ailment-research, or political party this goddamn yearly spring shindig was for. Mr. and Mrs. Zweig were always nice to her when she was a child. She wasn’t just a family-friend, she (and her parents) felt like friends that were family.

What made the lavish Zweig parties tolerable was Patrick Zweig. She had known Patrick as long as there had been parties to get dressed up for. He had scraped her off a marbled staircase step as a little girl when her polished pleather mary janes didn’t have the traction to keep her upright. She had cried when she fell. He had said: “you’re really loud, you know that?” And she had laughed. So they were doomed to spend eternity hiding in coat rooms and getting tipsy together at these things.

Patrick was never one of those boys that felt the need to turn his back on [Y/N] during the cooties years, or the so-she’s-your-girlfriend? years. The pair of them always managed to be simply themselves and that was enough. He was merciless and unapologetic, but he made a hell of a best friend.

[Y/N] was two months older than Patrick, and had been taller for their first two years of friendship. When his shift in stature occurred, it happened fast.

Patrick went away to boarding school and came back a gangly beast. [Y/N], though they hadn’t spent every waking moment (weekends and school days) together since he had left her for a racket and a tennis ball, was always pleased to see Patrick was still himself every time he came home. Louder and stupider each time, but still Patrick.

Though, one spring break was different. Eleventh grade, if [Y/N] recalled correctly. Patrick came home, tall and stupid as ever, toting a boy named Art Donaldson.

Art Donaldson was considerably smaller, and debatably less stupid than Patrick Zweig. [Y/N] understood that day why all the girls in her grade giggled about boys. [Y/N] could never tell Patrick that. He would have been insufferable about it.

Actually, [Y/N] felt jealous. That was also a secret. Because Art, unlike she and Patrick, was nice. Everybody liked him. Nobody ever talked shit about him. Adults loved him and his small-town boy manners. He actually was a rambunctious little jerk, but nobody else saw that. Everyone else got yes sir, yes ma’am, I’m well, how are you? He could turn that charm on and off like a faucet. Infuriating, right?

[Y/N] was also jealous because it was clear she had been replaced.

Patrick lit up like a Christmas tree when he was with Art. He never looked at her like that. Art must have been a better friend to him then she was. Patrick called her once a week to talk for years, but Art slept, like, six feet away from him. It simply wasn’t fair.

Because of that, [Y/N] remembers spring break was really hard. [Y/N] was acutely aware she had lost something she didn’t know she could lose to the human version of a fucking beagle.

[Y/N] couldn’t remember the grade they were in exactly, but she did remember the dress she wore to the Zweigs’ party that year. It was light green and had spaghetti straps. It was longer and more form-fitting than what she was used. Most of the girls her age had settled for lots of tulle and cheetah-print so [Y/N] looked more mature by comparison. It was the first time [Y/N] remembered feeling grown up at all.

To think she thought that all her excitement and contentment was wasted. [Y/N] sat in a plastic pool chair in the backyard curled up with her cork wedge platforms resting dangerously close to the water. She nursed a bottle of vodka she had swiped two months ago from her parents liquor cabinet to surprise Patrick. Meticulously, she had waited for them to be out of town and found the key to the liquor cabinet. A whole bottle just for [Y/N] and her best friend. [Y/N] had barely managed to keep it a secret that she had taken it. She had been so proud of herself and thought Patrick would be too.

Now, she was the only one around to drink it.

Patrick had put his warm, familiar hands on her shoulders and told [Y/N] to wait right there and that he and Art would be back in a sec. The two boys had vanished upstairs presumably to Patrick’s room with laughter spilling from their mouths. [Y/N] sat at the base of the stairs alone for twenty minutes.

According to the garish clock on the wall, at twenty-one minutes, [Y/N] disappeared to the pool. She officially hated Patrick too. He had left her alone at parties plenty of times, and she him. They’d dance with others, or sneak off for a makeout session with a pretty stranger. It had never been a big deal either way. This felt like deliberate abandonment for no good reason. That was a first.

“Whoa, save some for the rest of us.” A reedy voice called out. Art Donaldson. [Y/N]’s head glanced over her shoulder so fast at the sound that she almost made herself dizzy. It took little time to realize there was no Patrick with him.

[Y/N] pulled the bottle closer. “That was a really long one sec,” She replied. She planned to say that eventually in the wasted minutes she waited, but it sounded less cool now than it did in her head. [Y/N] sounded plain mopey and that was a shame. “What’d you guys do anyway? Where’s Patrick?”

Art shrugged and walked further into view. He looked a bit sheepish. “Being Patrick,” He didn’t answer the first question she asked. There was a half-smile tugging at his lips. Art looked nice. Brown dress shoes, navy jacket, white shirt. No tie. She could have sworn that had been a tie at some point earlier. His shaggy blonde hair was mussed, but she had yet to observe it being neat. It was fustrating how effortlessly nice he looked. [Y/N] thought that everyday from day one. “It’s getting kinda cold. You wanna head back inside? I was looking for you—“

“I’m alright here, but thanks,” she slurred slightly. “You head in. I’m not here to ruin your fun.” It had sounded bitter. She hadn’t meant for it to.

Art sighed and glanced away from her. He paused a moment and sighed. “I’m not here to ruin yours either, y’know.”

“You don’t have to make this into a thing. It’s fine.”

“Well, too late. Patrick’s being an ass. I don’t want you out here feeling like I’m some homewrecker. I’ve been on the receiving end of shit like this from him, too. He’s not trying to be nasty to you, ‘promise. Come on, I’m not gonna let you freeze out here.” Art said, stepping in a bit. The glow from the pool left green and white wiggly lines across his cheeks.

“It’s spring, It’ll warm up. Get back up to that party, man. Patrick’s waiting for you.”

“You’re being impossible.”

[Y/N] set the half-empty bottle down beneath her chair. “Nuh-uh.”

“Jesus… if you’re gonna be a jerk about it, at least take this.” Art frowned, shrugging out of his suit jacket. He seemed disappointed.

“Oh, Art, please—“

“No, no! You made your choice. Don’t let me spoil your fun with you and the… the vodka,” Art said, making a show of taking the jacket off and throwing it over to [Y/N]. The balled up lump of fabric landed in her lap with a soft thud. Her stomach churned. “All hunky dory now,” He said, holding his hands out to show he was no threat. Art’s brows were lowered protectively close to his eyes in what [Y/N] thought was an effort to mask slight hurt or rejection. He turned to walk away as [Y/N] clutched the fabric of his jacket between her fingers. Art turned back to to look at her for a moment. [Y/N] didn’t know what that expression was meant to mean. “Be careful, okay? For what it’s worth, you—you look lovely tonight. It would be a shame for such a, uh, such a pretty girl in a pretty dress to end up face down, stuck in the pool drain. ‘Night [Y/N].”

[Y/N] was glad for the dark because she felt her face heat up and dopey smile start to form at the compliment. Maybe she was drunk, but that had to be flirting. In the most fucked up way possible, but still. Why? Art Donaldson didn’t even like her.

Art had only managed to take a few steps into the dewy grass when [Y/N] begrudgingly called out: “Art, wait!”

She hated that she liked the smirk on his face when he turned around. He could tell what she wanted by her tone. What kind of fucker takes no for answer happily and still sets himself up for a yes in the end. “Yes?” He asked, trying not to smile.

“Listen, you’re right—“ [Y/N] stood up confidently, sliding Art’s jacket around her shoulders. And she stood up too fast and knocked her sandals into the pool. “Shit!” She cursed. She was still an age where cursing felt cool and unfamiliar. [Y/N] stood on her unsteady feet and watched her sandals bob out to the middle of the pool, propelled by her kick. She was embarrassed now as well. The stakes of everything felt so much higher than sandals in the pool of her best friend’s backyard. Booze will do that to the sanest of folks. [Y/N] dropped her face heavily into her hands. Great.

Quickly, Art cut his eyes between her and the shoes and back again. “Where do they keep the pool net?” Art asked calmly, without missing a beat.

“The shed.” [Y/N] said miserably and pointed a few feet away. Art bounded across the pavement around the pool to the shed. He tugged once, then twice.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath. “It’s locked,” He reported to [Y/N] from practically halfway in the pruned hedges. Art started the walk back to her. Once he was beside her, Art placed a hand gently at her elbow. “Come back inside with me. Please. Patrick may be able to get us a key and we can…”

But [Y/N] looked so sad from behind her hands. Even though all of this was so childish. She was also wearing Art’s jacket now and that did things to his brain. Her dress wasn’t not low cut and he froze for a second. All he could do was stare.

“Just do what I would do,” Patrick said. “It’ll be fine, man. She’s already into you, I can tell.”

“Well, if she’s into me, why would I do what you would do? That’s an awful suggestion, Patrick.” Art protested.

Patrick spun around in his desk chair to face Art as he rolled a joint. “I’ve known her since before I knew you. Just, like, be spontaneous. That’s what I mean. Spontaneous. She’s into that because she’s like that too. And she’s… wicked mean, so don’t start shit. She’ll surprise you, but like, in a good way. What I said before makes me sound like a jackass,” Patrick paused to laugh. “Be in the moment. Don’t get in your head about it. Which you’re doing right now— I can tell, Arthur…” Patrick drew out Art’s full name (which he hated) to get under his skin.

Art stood up from the floor in frustration. He glanced at his watch. Too much time had passed. The window was metaphorically closing. Hastily, Art dashed to the door. “I’m going down there. Poor girl’s been waiting all this time because you, my friend, are a shitty advice-giver.”

“Spontaneous!” Patrick called after him with a grin.

Art stared at [Y/N]. Then he blinked. Then tilted his head to the side. Spontaneous. Before he knew it, he was tugging his shoes and socks off and diving into the pool. Art had been right, it was getting decisively cold and the pool water reflected that. Art swam out to where the wedges had floated too, which had actually been fairly far. He wasn’t sure if the net would have gotten them that easily. Art nicked the shoes by the ankle straps and shook his wet hair out of his face. As he paddled back, he glanced at [Y/N]’s expression. She smiled wide with joy and surprise at Art’s sacrifice.

“Art! Thank you so much!” She said when he flopped the waterlogged shoes onto the concrete. Art looked up at her from the water and he only looked up her skirt a little bit.

“It’s no trouble. Repayment’s in order, though.”

“Repayment…? What do you—“

Art wrapped his wet, callused hands around both of [Y/N] ankles and flipped her into the pool. She screamed as she splashed into the pool. Then laughed hard. Art wanted to hear that laugh for the rest of his life.

“Wait, fuck, you can swim, right?”

Fortunately, [Y/N] could, and that’s the move that won Art Donaldson his wife.

—

“Honey, you have to get up so you can get ready…” Art’s mouth moved against the shell of [Y/N]’s left ear. His arm was tossed over her middle. Normally, it was Art that dreaded getting out of bed, but clearly they enjoyed switching roles once in a while.

A nap had turned into two-and-a-half hours of [Y/N]’s soft snores while Art held her. He couldn’t sleep much, but luckily he had something beautiful to look at. She ripped into him about his staring problem all the time. Art couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. “No.” She mumbled.

“Please…” Art’s hand trailed under her shirt and climbed up, up, up.

“No,” she sighed. Art’s hands groped her left breast and [Y/N] didn’t particularly mind. She shivered at the contact. Art had known every inch of her body over years. Neither was bored yet, though.

“It’s one night. One party. We don’t have to stay all night… He’s not going to be there, Lenora told me when I RSVP’d.”

They had an unspoken rule. They did not name Patrick in conversation when sober. The wound was too fresh still.

“Don’t talk about him, or his fucking mom when you’re touching me like that,” [Y/N] all but moaned as Art’s left thumb circled her nipple. “‘Thought we had to get up…”

Art smirked. “We do. At least you’re awake now.” He teasingly withdrew his hand entirely from out of her shirt and scampered out of bed in one agile zip of a motion.

“Art!”

She groaned. Rolling on her back to look at the ceiling, she glanced over at Art walking through the master bathroom doorway in his briefs. What an incredible ass that man has. “Motivation to leave the party early.” Art said and popped off into the shower.

Maybe it was selfish. Patrick and [Y/N] and Art hadn’t spoken in almost a year. It was no surprise to the Donaldsons that Patrick was an addict. He had been addicted to almost everything and everyone that crossed his path. What they hadn’t expected was him becoming so out of control that he missed the wedding of his two best friends and was sent into rehab once he was declared medically stable. The one person that both Donaldsons had fought to have in their own personal half of the wedding party. And he wasn’t there. And the wedding was expensive enough to go through with it amid all the bad feelings over Patrick.

Still, they were invited to the Zweig family’s charity or whatever gala. They would go like they always had, too. But it would be their first time alone, so to speak.

[Y/N] regretfully got out of bed while Art showered. She moved to the closet and unzipped her paper thin dress bag. The gown itself was beautiful, but not all too expensive. The year had been tight in terms of money. The wedding and the honeymoon were pricey enough before you added in rackets and competition entry fees and coaching. Art was an expensive husband to have. He made up for it. He was playing at his best too, so [Y/N] hardly cared. Who could put a price on seeing Art smile like that?

[Y/N] cringed if she had to pay more than two-hundred dollars for shoes or a dress anyway.

The dress was green. She’d worn a lot of green since she met Art. [Y/N] dreaded wiggling into shapewear and spending too long on her hair. Art had it easy. A tie, a jacket and trading his nasty watch for his nicer one. It wasn’t fair. It never was with Art.

She got ready all the same. The straps rested on her shoulders, thicker than the early 2000s straps she had been dumped into the pool in. It was longer than that dress. Almost floor length instead of mid calf. It was elegant for its price tag.

Once the dress was on, [Y/N] tumbled into the bathroom to do her makeup. The shared counter was way too small for both of their shit to sit nicely on. She would complain about that when there was more money in the bank account to do something about it. Art was taking longer than normal in the shower. Boner, [Y/N] thought.

As she started to put her face on, she could see Art’s face in the foggy mirror behind her. The sound of the water stopping and the shower curtain being tossed back had gone unnoticed. He was smiling slightly. “You look nice.” He said softly. Art toweled off his shaggy hair harshly behind her. He kept looking at her.

This is how Art was. He made these remarkable heart eyes at her every time he saw her. [Y/N] could be wearing a potato sack and she would feel beautiful. That look, that staring problem, was worse a hundredfold when she was dressed up. He kept glancing at her. She could see him in the mirror. He wanted [Y/N] to see. The blue and brown of his eyes cast further and further down her body.

“Staring.” [Y/N] said simply. She didn’t even look away from her own face in the mirror.

“Yeah. And?” Art smiled cheekily. His face was bright red not from the warm shower water. He wrapped his towel around his slim waist. [Y/N] applied too much concealer and less blush. “I, of all people, am allowed.”

“Idiot.” [Y/N] said. Art dried his hands profusely on his towel, knowing she would squawk at him if he left wet handprints behind on her dress.

Art’s hands wrapped around her waist. Great pains were taken to prevent other wet spots from splopping up her dress. So, so gently, he kissed the left side of her neck from behind. “I was thinking—” Art was always gentle in his own way.

“Ooh, dangerous.”

“Shut up. Y’know, this is the first Zweig party where your placecard is going to say Donaldson on it…”

[Y/N] nodded softly. “Huh. Yeah. That’s true.” She said, smiling a bit.

“I’m really, really excited about that. On the seating chart, we’re the Donaldsons. Isn’t that so crazy…?” Art whispered into her plush skin. “Plural. Two of us.”

Teasingly, she nudged him back with her elbow. The smile was still wide on her lips. “You’re being such a girl about it.”

Art didn’t let go or relent. He pressed feather-light kisses between [Y/N]’s ear and collarbone. “Am I? Hadn’t noticed.”

“We’re going to be late to this thing you want to go to so bad, Mr. Donaldson, if you don’t stop.” [Y/N] whispered, incapable of doing more. She did set down her makeup sponge and pot of foundation with a clack.

“Would that be such a bad thing? Only a couple minutes, right? We could-we could cut out some of the boring small talk and…” Art said, daring boldly to drag his tongue up her throat as the steamed up mirror cleared some. He never finished his sentence verbally.

[Y/N] gasped at the feeling. That was a brave move for Art. “You drag me out of bed early so we can be late anyway. You don’t make any s-sense, babe.”

He huffed impishly. Art spun [Y/N] around to face him. His face and shoulders were damp from the water collected in his hair, which desperately needed a trim. Carefully, Art brushed [Y/N]’s hair away from her face. “You’re right… I’m sorry. Please let me make it up to you?”

“How?”

Then, Art’s mouth quirked into that crooked smile she loved so much.

“Please.” Art said in a hushed voice and boosted [Y/N] smoothly onto their rickety counter. “Give me ten minutes.”

“You can do better than ten.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Clock’s ticking.” When she said it, she heard Art’s knees hit the tile in front of her.