#frankenstein: through the eyes of the monster | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

marvelwitchergilmore · 5 months ago

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Daisies and Haircuts

Summary: Logan x Fe!Reader -> Usually, Logan can get a read on everybody. Except, when it comes to you, he can't. So he makes it his mission to find out the truth, but when he does...he doesn't exactly know how to take the news.

Disclaimer: Mostly fluff with a bit of angst, some steam towards the end. Descriptions of blood, casualties and aftermath of a tornado. Not Proof Read.

If there was one thing Logan prided himself on, it was being able to tell when people were lying or telling the truth.

However, from the minute he met you…he didn’t have an explanation for it.

Most of the time, he could hear people’s heartbeats or their breathing. Both would quicken when they were lying. Even the best liars couldn’t hide from him.

But there was something about you he just couldn’t shake. Your voice didn’t change or shake, your heartbeat didn’t speed or falter - neither did your breathing.

And yet he didn’t believe a word you said when it came to you being human.

Professor Xavier had reached out to you to fill in one of the teaching positions when he met your cousin. And from his knowledge, your entire family was mutant. From grandmother, to grandfather, to cousins, to even siblings.

And somehow, you were the only human.

No mutant gene detected.

And even if his school did have a reputation for having mutant teachers, you were the first human to attend the school in any manner.

“Logan, if you’re gonna just stand there all day, you might as well offer to help.”

Your back was completely turned to him. You had been writing on the whiteboard for the last five minutes, not once looking anywhere near the door where he was leaning.

“How did you know it was me?”

You chuckled a little as he walked inside, picking up a pile of books on the way in. “Please, I could smell the cigar smoke.”

Logan shrugged, placing two books at the end of each desk as he made his way to you. “You know, I can scare Storm, Jean- even Scott. But never you. I wonder why that is?”

Logan stood beside you as you turned. He was looking at you like how he always did. A knowing smile (maybe it was a smirk), but a look of wonder and curiosity in his eyes.

You just smiled up at him. “Logan, I grew up with over twelve cousins. There wasn’t a day when you didn’t have to have eyes in the back of your head, and still at least one kid ended up hurting themselves.”

Walking around him and back to your desk, his eyes followed you.

“That’s not the only thing.”

“What ‘thing’ exactly?”

Sometimes it felt like this conversation between you and Logan happened every other day. You had been working at the school for a little over a year, and before that had shadowed for at least six months to understand how to truly help your kids.

He had been like this since day one.

Maybe a little more gruffer and scarier in the beginning…he had made you jump just a little when you closed the fridge door and found him standing there with that sceptical, over-protective look on his face.

“You know what ‘thing’.”

You shook your head. “I really don’t, Logan.”

He walked closer to your desk and leaned his hands against it, coming face to face with you. “You’re a mutant.”

As he was so close, your eyes scanned his face and around his body. “You need a haircut.”

“It’s not something to be ashamed of.”

“I can cut it for you. Just take a little bit off the sides.”

“Why do you keep avoiding the subject?” Logan asked with a laughing smile as he stood back up.

“Because you seriously need a haircut, Logan.” You moved your fingers through the top of his hair. “You look like a crazed mountain man who’s just escaped from Frankenstien’s lab.”

Logan stepped away from you during your analogy. “Are you calling me a green monster?”

“Frankenstein is the Doctor.”

“Huh.”

You shook your head. “Either way, you need a haircut.”

“Fine, but I will get it out of you sooner or later.”

“Goodbye, Logan.”

Those were Logan’s final words before he left your classroom, but not before taking a final look at you as your head was turned.

The next time he saw you was just before lunch when a couple of kids were playing a round of football outside. And for a while, Logan’s eyes remained on you as you read your book. It was like the world didn’t exist outside of your book.

And yet you were tuned in to everything that was happening.

Logan heard one of the kids shout before the ball went flying past the posts and it was heading straight for you. He could barely finish shouting your name before…

You caught it.

Without looking up, you had caught the ball in your hands, simply looked up and then threw it back. “Be careful!”

“Sorry!”

Logan was a little in shock as he stood at the top of the stairs, his arms folded across his chest. He’d seen your reflexes a few times before. You had caught plenty of mugs that were about to fall off the side of the counter, just as you walked into the room. You’d also stopped piles of books crashing loudly to the ground, opened windows just as tennis balls came flying at them, as well as catching them and throwing them back.

And now you had caught a football without even looking up.

You hadn’t been at the school two years and yet Logan practically had a list tallied in his head of the things that had happened that simply couldn’t just be explained away.

Could they?

“Oh, come on. Just admit it. You’re a mutant.”

Your lungs were tired of sighing. “Logan. I’m not a mutant.”

“Your entire family has the mutant gene.”

“So,” you shrugged, twisting some pepper into the pot before replacing the cap and setting it on the side. “It skipped me.”

“Your reflexes are barely human.”

“Logan, like I have told you a million times, I grew up around a lot of kids. A lot of mutant kids who had no control over their powers. I had to get good reflexes just to save on the amount we spend on broken windows.”

Logan moved out of your way as you walked across the kitchen, taking a couple of things from the fridge.

“You never get scared.”

You looked back at him. “Are you calling me brave?”

“Nobody can scare you, Y/n. Last Halloween it was like you knew when someone was hiding around the corner.”

“It was Halloween. Everyone tries to scare each other on Halloween.”

Logan closed his eyes in frustration for a moment. “Not even Halloween. Nobody can scare you. Even today, you knew I was standing by your door.”

Stopping what you were doing, you looked at him. “Logan, when it comes to you, I can smell the cigar smoke a mile away. And, besides growing up in a household where it was normal to try and scare each other, nobody in this school is exactly going to be the next Prima Ballerina.”

Logan’s arm practically shot out. “That’s another thing! Your sense of smell.”

You rolled your eyes. “Is this about the cigar smoke? Are you becoming nose blind to it?”

“You smelt Scott’s burnt breakfast before the rest of us did. You knew when Rogue had changed her shampoo. You even knew Storm had planted some new flowers in the garden.”

You went to open your mouth but Logan cut you off.

“And don’t say you saw the flowers because you were with me that whole afternoon and didn’t see Storm until after dinner.”

You sighed. “It wasn’t because I saw the flowers. I was going to say I saw the dirt on her hands when she walked inside. Plus, I knew she was looking to plant more flowers in the garden beds.”

Logan leaned forward. “Did you have a conversation about it?”

“About the flowers?”

“Because I don’t remember her telling us when she was going to plant them because she wanted them to be a surprise.”

You shrugged. “The dirt still gave it away.”

Logan shook his head. “That’s another one right there. You know…how do you know what we’re all thinking? I know you’re not reading our minds because if you were, it would be like when the Professor or Jean does it. No…it’s something else.”

Logan was truly watching you. Studying you. Listening to your heartbeat. Listening to your breathing.

“I was a psych major. I studied my ass off and read up extra things in my time. It’s not so hard.” You explained to Logan. “Most of the time it’s just body language. And remembering the small things. They go a long way in getting to know who a person is.”

“I don’t think it’s just that. Maybe it’s part of it.” Logan sat up straight. “But that’s not your whole story.”

“Why are you so fixed on my story?”

Except, rather than explain, Logan gave you that smile again and walked towards the door. “You’re the psych major, you figure it out.”

“You still need a haircut!”

And like clockwork, Logan was watching you and then questioning you everyday. He’d done it since day one.

When would he finally realise you were telling him the truth?

A couple of weeks later, you found yourself inside the Professor’s office with Logan and a potential new student and their parents.

Only, it soon became clear that as much as their child was finally happy to be somewhere where they didn’t stick out like a sore thumb because of their powers, the parents couldn’t have been more uncomfortable.

“But what about…what about his mutant…problem?”

You felt your back become straighter as your feet carried you forward, only to feel a small tug from the bottom of your jumper where Logan’s hand was pulling you back to stand beside him.

“I can assure you, Harry’s mutation is not a problem.”

“Yeah? Tell that to the three teachers he had quit because of him. You know we can’t even walk down our street without parents judging us for letting their kids' favourite teachers walk out on them.”

Harry seemed to fall into himself. “I already said sorry. I didn’t mean for them to-”

“Harry, it’s quite alright. Sometimes people don’t fully understand what it means to teach a mutant like us. Luckily, we have some of the best teachers right here.”

The father looked at both you and Logan. “These are the best?”

“We have a full staff, however most are teaching right now. Harry, this is Professor Logan. He will be your new History teacher and this is Professor Y/n. She will be teaching you some English, but mostly Social Sciences. She is also our school councillor, so if you ever feel you wish to speak to someone, she is the most qualified for the job.”

Harry gave both you and Logan a small smile.

He moved into his dorm a week later and started classes almost immediately.

“Okay, fine. Let me ask you this then.”

Logan hadn’t left you alone all day, so you had finally put him to work. Carrying the pile of books you were pulling from the shelves as you rolled along on the ladder.

“Why give a human a job of school counsellor in a school filled with mutants?”

“Other than the fact I’m qualified for the job.”

Logan shrugged. “Isn’t it better to put someone into the job who understands what the kid is going through? Rather than just put a diagnosis to it?”

You turned round and he looked up to you. “It doesn’t matter if your human or mutant, everyone has gone through something at some point. Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to be able to walk through walls, or have metal grow out of my knuckles. But I do know what it’s like to feel like an outcast. To feel lost. To feel alone.”

Logan just listened as you slowly turned back and started pulling the desired books from the shelves, adding them to the pile in his arms.

“I might have gone to a normal school, but everyone knew my family was different. I was too mutant to fit in at school, but too human to fit in with my family. They love me, and I love them. But there were times when topics would come up and…I’d feel alone. Like because I wasn’t one of you, I wouldn’t get it. Eventually, everyone grew up and went on with their lives. Of course it wasn’t easy for them, but they still had each other. Even if every other ignorant asshole pushed them away, they still had each other. But some days it felt like…like I had no one.”

Logan just continued to listen.

“So, I get your point. What would a human know about being a mutant? But sometimes that’s not the question that needs to be asked.”

A moment of silence passed between you both before finally Logan spoke up. “The kids…they’re lucky to have you.”

“Thank you, Logan.”

“And just so you know,” he added. “You’re not alone anymore.”

Looking down at him, you smiled. “I’m glad.”

Twenty minutes later, you were finished collecting books. Yet, just as Logan laid down the pile, half should have fallen onto the floor.

Except they didn’t.

Instead they glided off the top and landed in a semi-neat pile beside him with a soft thud. Logan turned around, shock clear on his face. But you weren’t looking at him, or at the pile. You were closing the doors to the outside balcony on the opposite end of the room.

“One day,” Logan told himself. “One day.”

“What?”

Logan looked up. “Nothing.”

You just shrugged and walked to stand beside him. “Thanks for helping me.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Without looking at him, you flip over the cover of a book in your hands. “You still need a haircut by the way.”

“Don’t mention that, either.”

Two weeks later, as you and Logan were eating lunch together whilst marking some papers, there was a knock at your classroom door.

Taking a bite of the chicken salad you had made him a bowl of, Logan flipped a paper round and handed it to you. “What does that say? I swear this kid just writes in scribbles.”

You took the page from him. “This is Rogue’s. Isn’t she your little sister or something? Shouldn’t you be fluent in this by now?”

“She’s not my sister. We just came here together. She was a runaway. Found me when I was a cage fighter and stowed away in the back of my trailer.”

Your eyes practically bugged out of your head before you tried your best to hide your smile. “You were a…cage fighter? You? Logan Howlett, as I live and breathe? You sat opposite me with your feet on my desk? You were a cage fighter?”

Logan rolled his eyes with a smile. “Okay, okay. Alright. I get it.”

You shook your head. “I mean, you’ve got the physique for it, I just…” you laughed. “I just never pictured you as a cage fighter. A cage fighter, really?”

“Are you done?”

You bit back another laugh. “I’m-” It came out. “Okay, yes.” You laughed again. “I’m done. Okay, okay,” you breathed through it. “I’m done.”

Logan just gave you a look and raised his eyebrow.

You nodded with a wide smile. “I’m done. Finished. Promise.”

You even made a cross above your heart. Logan smiled and turned back to marking the papers as you read Rogue’s.

“What did you picture me as?”

You hummed a questioned response.

“You didn’t picture me as a cage fighter.” You held in a laugh. “Stop it.” You tried. “What did you see me as?”

You shrugged. “I don’t know. A lumberjack? Bodyguard? A cowboy? Your tags say ‘Army’ but your personality says ‘Macho Man with a Protective Streak’.”

Logan hid his blush well as he turned his head away, the smile on his face not going unnoticed by you. “Alright.”

You loved seeing Logan smile. It wasn’t often he did it, but when he did…you wanted to take a picture.

Unbeknownst to you, Logan loved it, too. Maybe he wanted to keep up his reputation for how you saw him, as well as for how others saw him. But one thing he was glad of…most of the time when he did smile…it was with you.

However, as you both shared a laugh, a knock came from your classroom door where you looked to find one of your cousin’s standing by the door.

“I…there may have been a tiny accident.”

Pulling your own feet from your desk, you sat up and met your cousin half way across your classroom just as Logan pulled his feet from your desk and turned in his chair.

“Show me.”

Your cousin held out their hand to you. A deep gash was in the middle.

“Oohhhh kay.” You looked around you. “Logan, open up my top drawer in my desk. There should be some bandages.”

Logan did as you instructed and threw them to you. You caught them and turned back to your cousin. “How did this happen?”

“We were walking through the clearing. I slipped and tried to grab onto a tree branch.”

“And that caused the cut?” You asked as you wrapped their hand.

“Not exactly. I kinda…missed. And grabbed onto a rock instead.”

Logan stood beside you. “You must have found the sharpest rock in the forest.”

He said what you were thinking.

“How long will it take to heal?”

“That’ll depend.”

“On what?”

“On if you’re thinking about trying to climb the tree again.”

Your cousin panicked. “B-but we weren’t.”

Logan detected a lie.

“I have known you, your whole life.” You leaned in a little closer. “You need to stop climbing trees after it’s been raining.”

“Okay, fine.”

You took in a small breath. “It should be healed in a couple of hours. Just…wait until it’s dry before you do any more climbing.”

“Thanks, Y/n,”

As your cousin left, Logan remained fixed on his spot as you walked back to your desk. Pointing towards the door your cousin had just walked out from, Logan turned around to you.

“That was a pretty deep gash. That’ll take more than a couple of hours to heal.”

You looked at Logan for a split second before looking back to the papers in front of you. “It’s part of their mutation. Small things he can heal from, just not as quickly as you. We don’t all have super-healing, Logan.”

Logan gave you a soft smile, but it was still questioning. He walked over to your desk. “But their mutation gives them the ability to control water. Nowhere on their file does it say ‘heal’.”

Your heartbeat jumped.

Logan leaned up a little from your desk as you looked at him.

He’d caught you in a lie.

“Well, it’s not his primary power. My aunt mustn’t have thought it was important.”

Your heartbeat was normal.

So was your breathing.

Logan decided to drop it, but it was constantly on his mind.

Your heartbeat had jumped when he got closer to your desk and mentioned the mutation.

Either that was the very first lie you had told him, or your mask was slipping.

For the next two days, Logan practically watched you like a hawk. It was rare his gaze was somewhere else other than you.

He did question going to the Professor again, but considering he was adamant you weren’t a mutant, Logan considered it wasn’t worth the time.

He wanted to know why you had lied to him. Or why it was now he’d only just detected it.

However, it was at least another month before he would come to find out the truth.

“So why are we being called up?”

Scott turned towards the Professor, his arm across his chest. “Because last I checked, aren’t the fire departments meant to help with this kinda thing?”

“Usually, yes. However, we’ve been called personally. There are too many risks for just the average human being.”

A tornado had ripped through a small town, demolishing almost everything. From the brick buildings to houses to even schools. Some people were still trapped under rubble and others were hurt, if not worse. Except, the hospitals could only take so many patients at a time and the nearest hospital was at least two towns away.

“You’ll be working alongside the departments already stationed there but the main priority is helping people out safely.”

Twenty minutes later, they were headed for the jet.

And you caught Logan walking down the hall. “Where are you going?”

“There’s been a tornado-”

“In Oklahoma? I saw it on the news.”

“We’re going to help.”

You turned watching Logan walk further down the hall. “Wait, I’m coming with you.”

“What? Why?”

You threw your books into the nearest classroom, letting them softly slide against the desks and into their places. “I can help.”

Logan stopped and looked around. “They’ve already got too many casualties. We’re going because we’re less likely to get hurt.”

You sighed with a look. “Logan, I’ve seen at least half of the casualties. They’re gonna need more than just the X-Men. I can help.”

“Let her go with you, Logan.” The Professor rolled around the corner. “She knows what she’s doing.”

Logan took the Professor’s word for it. “Come on, before they leave without us.”

Passing your room on the way, you grabbed your jacket and a bag from under your bed. Logan looked at you curiously as you shut your bedroom door.

“Medical supplies.”

Logan just nodded and placed his hand at the bottom of your back guiding you down the hallway before you both set off running towards the jet.

Upon landing, everyone got to work.

Scott and Logan started helping those who were trapped under fallen buildings whilst Storm helped lift most of the rubble away as well as brush away most of the debris from larger areas.

Jean began setting up medical areas for people to be treated and seen to, and you helped her.

Thirty minutes later, you heard shouting.

It was a kid.

“Help! Please!”

Turning around, you yelled for Logan and he came running.

“Hey, it’s okay.”

“It’s my leg. I-I’m stuck. Please.”

“Okay, just stay calm. Logan help me lift it.”

Before Logan could even touch the wooden boards holding the kid down, the last half of the house shook.

“Okay,” you looked from the house to Logan. “We have to move. Quickly.”

From the count of three, you and Logan lifted the boards from the kid, except, as Logan helped the kid out, the rest of the house began to fall.

“Watch out!” A could firemen shouted.

Logan barely had time to react, covering the kid with his body, waiting for the impact of the house. Except it never came.

Slowly opening his eyes, Logan was met with a semi bright light of blue and when he turned around, he was more than shocked at what he saw.

Coming from you was a safety barrier. The house had fallen but it had fallen onto whatever blue dome you had created.

Despite the fact you had stopped the house from falling on yourself, Logan and the kid, there was a sting inside of you. How Logan was looking at you…pure shock and hurt…that stung you to your core.

“Get the kid out of here.”

Logan slowly jolted back into action, pulling the kid out as you turned around and pushed the house back and up before lifting it to a safe distance away from the rest of the people.

And Logan just watched you.

“Thank you, sir.”

Logan looked around for the voice after a moment, realising the kid was still beside him. “No worries, kid. How’s the leg? Think you can stand on your own?”

The kid nodded before looking down and paleing. “It’s bleeding.”

“Whoa, hey, okay. Take it easy.”

Logan helped him sit down on a cinderblock just as you got to his side. “Let me see.”

The kid slowly lifted his leg. “I don’t like blood.”

You knelt down and examined his leg. “It’s okay, buddy. Just close your eyes so you don’t have to look.”

“What are you gonna do?”

You looked at Logan who was all manners of concern, confused and intrigued.

Looking from him without answering, you allowed your hands to slowly ghost over the kids legs. Before his eyes, a blue light emitted from your palm and slowly healed the cuts on the kid's leg.

“Okay, you’re all sorted buddy.”

The kid opened his eyes and looked at his leg. The blood stains were still there, but the cuts weren’t.

“Thank you.”

“Do you know if there are any other kids around here?”

The kid pointed you in the direction of where a couple other houses had been standing only the day before and you and Logan went back to work.

Over the next couple of hours, Logan’s gaze towards you had gone from shock to confusion to anger.

You had lied to him.

Not only that, you had lied to all of them.

“Did you know?” Jean asked, standing beside Logan as he watched you with a little girl who had been crying. From nothing, you conjured up some daisies and whisked it into a flower crown for her hair. Logan’s heart was warm at the sight. The girl had gone from red and puffy eyed to smiling and hugging you.

Then he remembered.

“No. I didn’t.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell us? Why lie?”

“I don’t know.”

The girl almost skipped away from you and towards some of her friends she had spotted. You were still crouched down and as you turned, you spotted Logan and Jean.

One moment of eye contact with you and Logan started walking away in the opposite direction.

Jean watched as he walked away and you lowered your head, standing and looking around to see if anyone else needed help.

A firewoman approached you and asked you for help moving some old pieces of the school building.

When you returned an hour later, the only person you could find was Storm.

“Those were some pretty cool things you did earlier. My only question is, why not tell people about it?”

You looked at Storm as you helped her hand out small baskets of food for people. “Easier to keep to myself.”

“You know, the first day the Professor told me about you, he said you were something else. I thought it was just because you were the only human in your family. But clearly he saw something else.”

“I’m sorry, for not telling you all.”

Storm shook her head. “You never had an obligation to. It’s your life, Y/n. You get to decide how much you share with the world.”

You sighed, spotting Logan helping a couple of people out by the broken swings in the park. “I wish others could see it like that.”

Storm nudged your shoulder. “He’ll come around. He’s like a walking lie detector. He’ll be more mad at himself for not figuring it out.”

You gave Storm a thanking smile before going back to handing out supplies.

By nightfall, most things had been cleared up and the hospitals were less packed with patients thanks to yourself and Jean.

On the ride back you could practically feel the anger radiating from Logan. He would barely look at you. Jean and Storm seemed to be the only ones not pissed at you for not telling them.

By the time you landed, Logan was the first off the jet, his feet heavy against the stairs as he made his way back into the school.

“Is there anything else we should know, or do you have more lies stuffed up your sleeves?”

“Scott.” Jean warned.

“What? You can’t tell me you’re not pissed that she’s lied to us.”

“Scott, she didn’t have to tell us if she didn’t want to.” Storm told him.

“Still would have been nice to know.”

As Scott walked away, Jean touched your arm. “I’ll deal with him. He’s just hurt, he wasn't the first to find out.”

“How come you two aren’t mad at me?”

Storm and Jean looked at you with a faint smile on their faces. “The power you displayed today…we know what it’s like to want to hide that.”

“And we also know what it’s like to want to keep a secret. You didn’t have to share that part of your story with us, but you did because you wanted to help someone. No one can be mad at you for that.”

“Thanks, guys.”

Jean and Storm smiled as they hugged you. “Anytime. But this does mean you are making us all flower crowns. I wonder if we can get Logan to wear one?”

The three of you walked side by side back into the school. “He needs a haircut, first.”

The next day, you found yourself in the Professor’s office, the rest of the team already there.

And Logan didn’t seem any calmer.

Just eerily quiet as he watched you from the window, walking inside and standing in the middle of the room.

“I understand there is something you may need to share with the class?”

You nodded. “I guess you saw it on the news?”

The Professor nodded, but he didn’t seem mad. “That, and Scott was the first to come and see me this morning.”

You looked at Scott but he just scoffed. “They have a right to know we’ve got Class 4 mutant-”

“Class 5,” you corrected.

They all turned and looked at you with shock. Logan just stood, his arms still across his chest.

But the Professor smiled.

“It seems we have quite a lot to discuss. Everyone, please excuse myself and Y/n.”

Slowly, albeit reluctantly, they all left one by one.

Your eyes followed Logan but he didn’t look at you.

With your eyes still on the door he’d just closed, the Professor rounded his desk. “He’ll come to his senses. They all will. Please, have a seat.”

Logan didn’t see or hear from you or the Professor in over three hours. And by the time dinner rolled around, the only person he did see was the Professor.

“Where is she?”

“Gone.”

Logan nearly shot out of his seat as he looked from the library window to the Professor. “Gone? Where-”

“Relax, Logan. She’ll be back soon enough. I told her it was best if she went and got a little fresh air. You could use some, too. Your brooding is practically stinking this place out.”

Logan fell back into his chair. “She still lied.”

“And she had good reason, too.”

Logan looked back to the Professor. “She comes from an entire family of mutants, Logan. Her childhood was spent being surrounded by those trying to manipulate powers to be something greater than they already were. If she had shown who she truly was, I fear she wouldn’t have become the person she is today. Her family, for as much as they care for her…half of them would have wanted her to stay and have her powers trained into something for their own gain. The other half would have shipped her off to hide out in a country, alone for the rest of her life. They would have been frightened of her, Logan.”

“But why lie to us?”

The Professor sighed. “Logan, if you had spent your entire life being one thing, how long do you think it would take before you feel comfortable and safe enough to share a whole other side of you to someone?”

Logan was silent for a minute. “She said she’s a Class 5.”

Charles picked up the hidden question behind Logan’s statement. “I’ve read her mind, Logan. She’s not like Jean. She’s in full control. Always has been.”

The Professor waited for a couple of minutes. “I know you care for her, Logan. Try and find a way to forgive her for not telling you sooner.”

He made it to the door before looking back at Logan. “Maybe take a walk. It might clear your head. I hear Ororo planted some Evening Primrose. They should be opening up soon.”

With that, the Professor left.

And somehow, ten minutes later, Logan found himself taking the Professor’s advice.

Zipping up his hoodie, Logan placed his hands into his pockets as he walked down the steps towards the gardens. It was still a little warm but there was still that hint of chill in the air that let him know Fall would be closing in soon.

As time passed, Logan felt his mind working around the idea of you and the things you had told him, or rather hadn’t told him.

And the Professor was right.

The primroses had begun to open.

Logan had never really understood why people would watch flowers or do anything with them other than plant them and pull out the weeds a few months later. But as he was contemplating about flowers and why these off all things the Professor told him to look at, he looked up and spotted you.

You were sitting on an old swinging bench, watching the water softly ripple under the moonlight.

Logan watched you for a moment. You were calm. You weren’t writing or scribbling in a classroom, you weren’t buzzing around the kitchen or the hallways.

You were sat, alone, letting your mind concentrate on nothing but the constant movement of the water and the stars in the sky.

After a few moments, Logan noticed the soft blue glow by the ground around the water. Within a second, he watched as daisy’s and some other wildflowers started to push up from the ground. All the while, a blue wisp, almost like glitter, circled around them and then died away.

Then stems of grass began to lift before they stretched into what Logan figured out to be lilypads as they glided down onto the water.

“Figured you’d kicked down a few trees by now.”

Logan turned and looked back at you. Of course you knew he was there.

“Trust me, I thought about it.”

Slowly, Logan started walking towards you.

More flowers grew by the water's edge.

“You should open your own flower shop.”

You smiled a little. “Would you believe me if I told you I was allergic?”

“I don’t know. Is it the truth?”

You looked up at him. “You tell me.”

Logan could hear your heartbeat.

And he could hear your breath.

Both steady.

“I’m not hiding anything else from you, Logan,” you assured him.

Logan just raised his eyebrows and clicked his tongue as he moved to sit beside you. “Hard to tell these days.”

“I know you wanted to know but it was easier to keep it hidden.”

Logan nodded. “The Professor explained it to me. But everything you said in the library…”

“I was living a normal life, Logan. To my family I am human. To everyone else I was the only human in a mutant family. What I said to you that night…I meant it. I know what it’s like to be alone and to feel lost.”

“And now?”

You shrugged a little. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On you.” Logan looked at you. You turned in your seat and looked back at the water, your fingers picking at your own hands. “And Scott. And the others. The Professor wants me to stay on, but I don’t know if I can-”

“You should stay.”

You looked back at Logan.

“You should stay,” he repeated. “The kids…they love you. Besides, who else is gonna be able to read Rogue’s handwriting.”

“What about the others?”

Logan gave a slight nod. “They’ll come around. Scott will come around. Jean will see to that.”

“And what about you?”

Logan didn’t know what to say.

“I care about you, Logan. I don’t know if I could carry on working here knowing you hate me for lying to you. Even worse…not being able to trust me. I am sorry for not telling you the truth, but I hope one day you can see why I did.”

“I think the Professor explained most of it.” Logan told you. “And I get why you didn’t tell us. It still hurts, but I get it.”

Your gaze fell on Logan’s face as he watched the forest come alive under the stars.

“I care about you, too.”

Finally, Logan’s gaze held onto yours.

Part of you was held in suspense for when he would look away. Your heart braced itself for him to turn away. For him to say something your heart didn’t want to hear and for him to leave.

As Logan looked at you, your heartbeat was like an echo of his own. Faint in the background, drowned out by his own rushing through his ears.

“Promise me…” Logan tried to find his words as his own hand found yours on the bench. “Promise me you’ll keep talking to me. That you’ll tell me things. That you won’t have any more secrets with me? Good or bad…I want to know them.”

You nodded. “I promise. So long as you promise me something, too.”

Logan gave a slight smile. “Don’t think you’re in the right area to ask for promises jus-”

You sat up and turned your body towards him, your hands enveloping his hand. Logan remained silent the minute he saw your relaxed smile.

“Promise me you’ll talk to me, too. And that you won’t try and hide your smile from me.”

Your hand grazed Logan’s cheek and he practically smiled into it.

“I like seeing your smile.”

Logan smiled. “I like seeing yours, too.”

With his elbow propped up against the back of the bench, his fingers slowly brushed your loose hair from your face to behind your ears and down your neck. Logan turned his head for a moment, his other hand coming to hold yours against him before he pressed a kiss to your palm.

From there, he simply placed your hand over his heart.

And you smiled.

His heart calmed at your touch, and he could hear yours.

With a soft smile that was very quickly turning into a smirk, Logan leaned forward, holding you steady before he finally kissed you.

He wouldn’t notice until the next day but the wildflowers that bloomed by the waters edge, just as he kissed you, dug their roots permanently. Even when questioned why they could grow so close to the water without any other explanation than it being a fluke, Logan knew the truth.

And it anyone was to question their origins and their symbolism: Eternal Love

It might finally provide an explanation.

Pulling back to catch his breath, he heard you let out a small laugh.

“What?”

“You seriously need a haircut.”

Logan groaned. “Still?”

“Just a little.”

A few weeks later, Logan found himself being pushed into a chair in his room as you wrapped a towel over his shoulders and pulled out a pair of hairdresser scissors and a comb.

“You know, you could have just asked to cut my hair. You didn’t have to trick me into it.”

“Logan, I have been asking you for months. Be lucky I didn’t ask Hank to knock you out and drag you here.”

“Do you even know how to cut hair?”

You started the first couple of snips. “One of the first things I learned to do. Besides learning how to cook. People can only take so many bowl cuts and parsnip soup from Great-Aunt Vi.”

Logan smirked. “Sounds delicious.”

“Sure, if you love parsnip water with cabbage.”

You moved around to stand in front of Logan, his legs opening for you to step into them. It wasn’t long before his hands found your hips.

Your heart jumped a little.

“Stop it.”

Logan looked at you innocently enough. “I’m not doing anything.”

His hands glided a little higher before you whacked his knuckles with your comb. He tried his best to hold back his smirk.

“Tease.”

It was your turn to hold back your reaction. “I’m trying to cut your hair. Distractions don’t help.”

“Don’t look distracted to me.”

You smirked a little, continuing to comb through and cut his hair. “Believe me, I’m plenty distracted.”

Logan chuckled and his hands moved back down to your hips before making repetitive strokes up and down your thighs and back to your hips.

Time passed slowly, albeit calmly.

“Okay, all done.”

You held a mirror in front of him. “What’d you think?”

Logan nodded before pushing the mirror down and pulling you closer to him before you found yourself sitting in his lap. “It’s nice, but I think I prefer this view.”

You blushed before kissing him, his hand raking through your hair, his breath pulling you closer.

It wasn’t long before you were straddling his lap, his hands holding you steady by your ass and thighs.

“Shouldn’t we,” Logan kissed you. “Be getting ready,” He kissed you again. “For dinner?”

“Good thing it starts at seven.”

You giggled a little as Logan smiled before his lips made their way down your jaw line and down your neck. Your own arms wrapped around his neck as you rocked forward on him a little, a groan coming from the back of his throat.

“That’s in an hour.”

“Gives us plenty of time then.”

You smiled. “To do what?”

A small gasp came from you as Logan stood up with you, your legs wrapping around him. “To get ready.”

With a suggestive eyebrow raise and a small bite of his lip, you let out a small laugh before kissing him again, his chuckle vibrating against your lips as he walked you towards the en-suit bathroom.

A small wisp of blue turned on the shower, letting the water heat up, all the while Logan set you down on the sink counter, the blue wisp locking the door, and him slowly removing your clothes before his lips left a trail in their wake, your own hands working to remove his clothes.

By a stroke of luck, neither of you were late to dinner (this time) but there wasn’t much time left for drying your hair. Logan was still towel drying his before you both reached the dining room.

“I see someone finally got a haircut.”

Hank was dishing out mashed potatoes onto each plate.

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“Oh. honey.” Your hand pressed against Logan’s chest before you kissed his lips. “It was.”

“Didn’t hear you complaining afterwards.” Logan mumbled to you through a smirk.

You blushed brightly. Logan’s smirk prominent on his face, his hand trained down your back and over your ass before coming to pull you in by your hips.

Soon, everyone else piled into the dining room, you all finding your designated seats. With Logan’s beside yours, his hand remained on your upper thigh for most of the meal.

However, no one seemed to notice that with each squeeze Logan gave you, a small row of daisies planted themselves outside, just below the windowsill.

#logan x reader #logan howlett x reader #wolverine x reader #logan x fe!reader #logan howlett x fe!reader #wolverine x fe!reader #wolverine #hugh jackman wolverine #x men #x men x reader #fluff #angst #falling in love #work place romance #friends to lovers #dislike to friends to lovers #kiss in the moonlight #class five mutants #flower symbolism

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hairmetal666 · 4 months ago

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Eddie survived the Upside Down. The bats. Vecna. And after the hospital, the town recovery, the shady government agencies clearing his name, after all of that, he has the best year and a half of his life. A lot of it is due to Steve and Robin. Well. The whole group of them, really, but Harrington and Buckley specifically.

Except that, you know, he survived extra-dimensional horrors and now he's going to die anyway, brought down in his prime by his devastating crush on Steve Harrington.

It's a stupid way to meet his end. Even worse than going at the hands of a demented telepathic wizard named after a DnD monster. Though...it's not like he didn't see the crush coming a mile away. Eddie may not have any practical experience in matters of the heart, but he knows he likes a pretty boy and Steve is the prettiest of them all.

There is no dimension where his feelings are requited, so he flirts and he pines, and knows it means nothing when Steve matches him quip for quip, touch for touch. He keeps getting himself in these situations where he thinks--maybe--but Steve is straight, constantly goes out with pretty, bubbly girls.

The pining may kill him, but he's determined to leave this world with a little bit of grace.

Until Steve's Halloween party.

It's a whole thing. All the kids, the rest of their own group of young adults, plus the Hellfire Boys, and the actual adults. It's a weird mix, but Eddie figures that, well. It's a family thing.

Halloween is his favorite holiday, one he plans for all year, but this year he decides to take it easy, electing to do a take on the vampire gang from The Lost Boys. The party is in full swing when they walk in, Wayne quickly spotting Hopper and making his way to the kitchen, but Eddie doesn't see Steve in the chaos of kids and Jonathan and Argyle's dual Frankensteins.

He grabs a beer from Robin who keeps giving him this look all knowing and sparkling and he doesn't understand it, not until he hears delighted laughter and shouts in the main room.

Buckley squeezes past him, and he takes the moment alone to close his eyes, brace for whatever fresh, unwitting, torture Steve has in store for him tonight.

He steps into the living room and time freezes.

Steve's in the shortest shorts Eddie's ever seen, thick, muscular, bitable thighs on full display. He's wearing a pink sweatshirt, neon fingerless gloves that very distantly Eddie recognizes as belonging to El, and gold hoop earrings in both ears.

Eddie has to sit down.

Wham! Isn't his kind of music, and he finds George Michael grating because of it, but--he's seen men dressed like that in magazines he steals from bookstores in Indianapolis, had wondered if George Michael was gay too. And now here Steve is, looking like a fantasy ripped direct from Eddie's brain.

Before he can make an escape, someone turns on the Monster Mash. The two Frankenstein's lurch into the room and start dancing. The rest of them are quick to follow, even Wayne and Hopper, after some light cajoling from Joyce, Max, and El.

It's silly fun, the perfect way for Eddie to forget about Steve and the way his ass looked in those shorts. They dance and goof around, and Thriller comes on, so they all try to do the dance, him and Nancy laughing until their stomachs hurt with their stiff-limbed moves.

The song switches to Material Girl, making El and Max screech, and the next thing he knows, Steve is in front of him, shimmying along. It's the closest they've been all night and now Eddie can see the faint eyeliner smudged along Steve's lash line. Something low and hot tightens in his core.

Steve grabs his shoulders, pulls Eddie closer. "C'mon, Munson, even you have to dance to Madonna!"

He laughs through his breathlessness, can't believe he and Steve are dancing together, not with Steve looking like that, somehow innocent, sexy, and ripe all at once.

Their eyes meet and Steve smiles all slow and dangerous, knotting up Eddie's stomach with a wild kind of anticipation. He doesn't have time to stop himself feeling it, can only give himself over to the shrinking distance between their bodies, the way Steve is warm and muscular against him.

Eddie's not hearing the music anymore, unaware of all their friends dancing close by. He's hypnotized by the dark heat in Steve's hazel eyes, lets himself clutch at Steve's hip, drag their bodies together. He feels Steve's breath escape in a quick burst, and it's a crash of cold water.

He disentangles himself, rushes out the patio doors. The night air is bracing as it chills his heated skin, his burning lungs. He takes a cigarette out of his jacket pocket, lighting it with a shaking hand.

That was too much. He let himself feel too much; want too much. Got swept away by Steve in makeup and earrings and tiny shorts. On the street, he hears children laughing, music thumping from a passing car, tries to get lost in that instead of his embarrassment. It makes him miss the slide of the patio door opening again. Doesn't realize he's not alone until he hears Steve say, "Eddie? You okay?"

He nods, but doesn't turn. "Just needed some air." He lifts the smoldering embers of his cigarette before dropping it and stomping it out.

Steve stands close enough that their shoulders bump. Eddie forces himself not to flinch away. "What are you doing out here? You'll freeze." It's not all a deflection.

"I'm fine," Steve says. "Sweatshirt." He wiggles the sleeve in Eddie's face.

"Yeah, but your legs, man. C'mon." He pulls his jacket off his shoulders. "At least cover them up a little."

Steve gives him an annoyed smile, but takes the jacket, trying to settle the leather around his legs. It's kind of a losing battle, but it makes them both laugh.

"I'm sorry," Steve says. "For back there. I shouldn't have pushed."

"Pushed?" Eddie feels like he missed a couple of stairs on his way down. "You didn't--"

Steve runs a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I did, Eddie. And Robin said," he sighs. "Robin said to just talk to you but I'm shit with words, so."

"So?" He faces Steve now, completely perplexed about where this is going. "I'm the one who pushed too far."

"Of course you didn't." Steve laughs a little. "I wanted to dance with you. I wanted to be close to you."

Eddie takes a step back, nervous smile on his face. "Is this some kind of weird joke?"

"What? No! Why would it be? I'm trying to say that I like you, man."

"Wha--But you're--"

"Don't--don't say popular or a jock or any of that. I'm--you know who I am, Eddie, better than most people."

"I was going to say straight."

Steve stills, blinking. "I told you I was bisexual."

"You did not!" Eddie yelps.

"I did! After went to see The Lost Boys!" He grabs Eddie's leather jacket. "I said I thought Kiefer Sutherland was sexy!"

"I thought you were being hyperbolic!"

"I wore this for you!" Steve wiggles his naked calf in Eddie's face.

"I don't like even like Wham!"

"You stared at a picture of George Michael in this outfit in one of El's Teen Beats for fifteen minutes!"

"I did NOT!" Except now that Steve's said it, Eddie has a pretty good memory of doing that very thing. "Wait. You were trying to seduce me by dressing as George Michael?"

"Like you weren't doing the same with the whole hot vampire biker thing?"

"I didn't expect it to work!"

He doesn't--will never--know who closes the distance first, but they crash together in a clash of mouths and teeth and noses. Steve's hands fist into Eddie's t-shirt, Eddie yanking at Steve's belt loops, until nothing separates them.

The kiss breaks as Steve mouths along his jaw, down his neck, and Eddie's fucking helpless at the turn of events. Never in his wildest fantasies--

"Stay tonight?" Steve asks, voice muffled against Eddie's skin.

"Are you kidding, sweetheart? I'm going to tear these shorts off with my teeth."

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angsty-art-ist · 25 days ago

Text

been slow cooking a NMPD Monster High AU in my brain for a while now, so here are the nerds! height chart and design notes under the cut :]

Richie:

he’s a gillman/water monter (from Lake Michigan specifically) because of his fisher vest and the ‘wanna join the swim team’ line

in MH canon, freshwater monsters can’t breathe air, so he has a breathing aid around his neck like G3 Gil

cephalopod eyes as a nod to how he and Wiggly are both played by Jon

don’t ask how his fins go through the fishnets i truly forgot until i had already finished drawing him

it’s not shown here but he has pointy teeth like G3 Lagoona!

Ruth:

she’s a simulacrum/Frankensteinoid because of the planned NMT3 story ‘Frankenruth’

giant bolts inspired by Franken Fran’s Fran Madaraki that connect to her headgear and a sweater inspired by Soul Eater’s Franken Stein

shoes are lifted directly from a G1 Frankie fashion pack because they looked cute

one white streak like the Bride of Frankenstein rather than Frankie’s all-over highlights

not sure if the ‘mad scientist’ that re-animated her should be Hidgens or not. i think they would make a fun family duo… maybe that’s where she gets her love of musical theatre?

Pete:

he was going to be ‘son of the Goatman’ but i thought a ghost fit better :) no particular reason :)

the boxes on his chains are based on the Lament Configuration bc i always associate the Spankoffskis with Hellraiser

he’s always slightly translucent, but gets more visible in low light. he glows in the dark too!

his ghost was bound to Hatchetfield high after his death, for some reason. he’s been here a while- at least since bow ties were in fashion

no, those aren’t detention chains- this isn’t Haunted High. in the AU, in the living world, ghost chains work a bit differently

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ozzgin · 11 months ago

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Is it just me or can I imagine a yandere with a darling who’s immune system and possibly everything about them just screams weak and pathetic, BUT their darling is actually very strong mentally and has and will create the most fucked up, batshit crazy inventions from what used to be harmless to something that can help them escape and possibly destroy everything in its path.

But at the end of the day, they become sleepy koalas who hug whoever is near them and fall asleep :)

This could be a request or rant, whatever you can think of! I just wanted to see how different yandere writers would interpret this small imagination of mine <3

But as always, stay safe and take care! everyone needs a break some time to time~

Sorry, but the moment I read the Darling's description, I instantly thought of Dr. Finkelstein from Nightmare Before Christmas. You know, Sally's inventor. 😭 So let me quickly write this down while I'm in my Shelley vibes, because I like the idea a lot. With a little twist, if you don't mind. :)

Yandere! Monster x Inventor! Reader

A frail inventor, and their affectionate rag doll that has been carefully stitched together for the purpose of a caregiver. An artificial existence, trapped within the confines of your lonely tower. Or so you might think.

Content: gender neutral reader, monster romance, obsessive behavior

"I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel..." [Frankenstein]

You dangle an old, rusty bell for a good minute before leaning back in your chair. The barely audible chimes are quickly swallowed by the loud, mechanical groans of the gears and engines occupying most of this room. No matter, his ears are good. You picked them yourself. And surely enough, within moments, the door to your laboratory opens and someone cautiously walks in.

A tall, slender man. Or rather, something meant to resemble a man. The skin is a clumsy patchwork of blues and grays - you're no talented seamster, sadly - gathering together the body parts in what feels like a parodic attempt at mimicking God and his image. You gaze at the creature approaching you with a tray of tea and sweets. Scarcely your best work, if you must adhere to honesty. Regardless of the quality of your labor at the time of creation, you are proud of the result. How could you not be? You know this man better than you know yourself. Every organ, every artificial nerve cord, every blemish and stitch of his body was placed according to your intentions. A masterfully detailed project that took you years to complete; not an easy feat considering the lamentable state of your health.

"Here's your deadly nightshade tea." The man places a small, porcelain cup on the desk. "Do let me know when I should take you to bed, (Y/N)." You wave your hand dismissively and stretch out your limbs. "Not yet. I am almost finished", you respond, returning to the mound of metal scraps and pipes before you. "Can I ask what you're making?" The pale creature lowers himself to your level, a curious smile plastered on his face. "It's a mechanical heart", you reveal boastfully. "Like the one I have?" You run your hand through the creature's hair affectionately. "Almost. I'm testing out a different way to build the valves, for a more efficient pumping cycle." You continue to explain the intricacies of your novel mechanism, occasionally sipping on your tea. "Who knows, you might have a sibling in the near future."

The man's smile drops in an instant, and his sunken eyes widen at your statement. "What? Am I- am I not enough?" You glance at the creature as he becomes increasingly frantic. "Don't speak nonsense. If it comes out alright, I'll upgrade your own parts as well. I'm a disciple of scientific virtue, of continuous improvement." Nonsense? Vile treachery! You might've chiseled the brain that throbs within the walls of his skull, but his mind is his alone, and you seem to lack a fundamental understanding of his feelings and thoughts. His ardent confessions of love are met with mockingly pitiful grins, in the way a parent soothes a needy child. Even now, your eyes reflect nothing more than sympathy towards his protest. A childish tantrum is what you're most likely thinking. You've no time for emotional bagatelles. He can read you like an open book.

You simply won't understand. There is no place for a stranger in the life he's crafted with his very own hands: you, and him, and the evening tea with a side of butterscotch biscuits, and the bedtime talks, and the stripped branches of the decaying tree that rap at the windows on stormy nights. You might be the Inventor, but he is not just a mere, humble servant, a rag doll to be tossed around or toyed with. As you will soon discover, after all.

You awaken in the midst of night with your temples burning from a much too familiar headache. Although it's not just the pain that has disturbed your slumber. You can hear rattles and thuds coming from the upstairs laboratory. An intruder? Oh, your creations! The sound of glass breaking and metal scraping sends you into spiraling despair. You fumble to reach the nightstand, patting the surface in search for the bell and keys. You shake the handle in a panic, unable to find anything else in the darkness.

The chaotic rustle abruptly stops, followed by descending footsteps. You hold your breath as the chamber door opens, but it's none other than your creature. "Another flare-up? Shall I bring you some medicine?" the man asks with monotonous courtesy. "What have you been doing? What's all that noise?" you demand, agitated, but upon lifting yourself off the mattress you discover your legs are numb and uncooperative. The man hurries to your bed with a worried frown, and you hear the familiar clatter of the keychain coming from one of his pockets. "Have you taken my keys? Cease this foolishness at once!" Indifferent to your reproach, he places a firm hold on your shoulders and forces you back down, tucking you in effortlessly.

"You must forgive my impertinence." he says in a pleading tone. "I do not wish to impede the works of your genius. As your partner, however, it is my duty to prevent you from making mistakes." You furrow your eyebrows at his words. "What mistakes? My invention was flawless!", you argue fervently. "Indeed it was, but not its purpose. What need have you for another being?" It is the creature's turn for a passionate speech. He stands up with a confidence you don't recognize and continues: "You should know by now that I am fit to perform any role. That of your servant, your caregiver, your lover, or anything else you may desire. You can resume your tinkering starting tomorrow, but such blasphemies to our bond as the one today will not be tolerated." He straightens his vest and reaches for the door handle. "I will prepare some tea to help you rest."

Inconceivable. Your own creation, built with your own hands...Has something escaped your attention? His dialogue is deranged, tainted by madness. "Have I done something wrong?" you mumble to yourself, deep in contemplation. "Nonsense." the creature turns to face you briefly. "It was you who created me after all. Everything is perfectly splendid."

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere x darling #male yandere x reader #yandere monster #yandere monster x reader #monster x human #monster x reader #yandere oc #yandere oc x reader #gender neutral reader #yandere headcanons #yandere imagines #yandere scenarios #yandere creation

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muntitled · 8 months ago

Text

Clockwork | Park Sunghoon

Vampire!Sunghoon x Fem!Reader

Summary: “If there’s one thing stronger than your need to feast,” You lift that hand up once again, “-its your need to fuck."

Warnings: Language, Implied Violence, Dark Fic, Morally Ambiguous!Reader, Blackmail, Reader has a crush, Librarian!Reader, Implied age gap, Confrontation, Smut (+18) mdni, Blood Kink, Biting, Sadism, Masochism, Dom!Sunghoon, Sub!Reader, public sex, dub/Con, fingering, Degradation Kink, Praise Kink, Ownership kink, Pain Kink, Marking, Dumbification, Dacryphilia

Idek yall…

They are such stuff as monsters are made of.

That is the very last thing you are taught about Sunghoon.

That he is something to fear.

Predatory.

Killer.

But all you saw and all you’ll ever see is the boy casted in the shadows of library bookshelves. This is the setting that births your obsession- no- your love for him.

Every Thursday afternoon.

When the library has cleared out.

The only time he’s not with his family. The only time he’s alone.

Like clockwork.

“What do we have here?” A phrase you were obligated to say. Not many townsfolk valued literature and those that did, as per your boss, “needed to find every reason to come back.” Even if that meant mustering a robotic sunshine smile. As if you were a cashier at Starbucks and not a small town librarian.

How you managed to speak so coherently with Sunghoon looming on the other side of the desk remains a complete and utter mystery. If you were driven, otherwise, by the bundle of love knots in your stomach you might have stuttered foolishly and squeaked your way through scanning his books.

“Books.” He answers curtly, brusquely, leaving absolutely no room for further conversation- or interrogation, as it would apparently appear.

Sunghoon is not looking at you. His eyes - those endless golden voids-, are looking down at the mahogany desk you are standing on the opposite side of. You wish for more than anything to feel that otherworldly feeling of having those golden eyes focused completely on you.

What must that feel like?

To have Sunghoon’s sole, undivided attention.

You would soon have the unfortunate pleasure of finding out.

“W-Well I know they’re books,” You continue, stating this with an airy, light chuckle. A chuckle that indicated this conversation should have been over a long time ago and that you’re blatantly aware of that. Why aren’t you keeping your mouth shut?

“I mean- Well I just mean, you know it’s not everyday a 20 year old takes out,” You glance down at the book in your hands before sending it through the system, “Wuthering Heights?” Your brows furrow as you send a second one of his books through the scanner, “Turn of The Screw?” And the final, “Frankenstein-Mary Shelley?"

You quirk a questioning eyebrow up at him- one silently inquiring ‘what the fuck’s up with the archaic books, grandpa?’ But he, of course, is not sparing you a single glance.

Or wait- he does. But for the briefest moment.

"I enjoy literature.” It almost makes you keel over in inexplicable discomfort, the way the words were chewed on before they were forcibly spat out. You can see he is done entertaining your mindless spiel but for some weird, fucking stupid reason, you’re not done with him.

“Well yeah, sure. But I mean, the dust on these books are ageless, you must be the first man to borrow these in like, 40 million years-”

“21.” It is all he says. One little word that cuts your rant short like a heated knife. You glance up at him, hoping those dazzling eyes look down at you.

And they do.

Bloody, fucking, Christ. They do.

“You said 20. I’m 21.” Before you were about to ask how that could be the case- how Sunghoon could be older than you when you distinctly remember finishing high school the same year?

He decides to shock you.

“I got… held back a year. I was already supposed to have graduated.” You are not sure whether it’s the sprinkle of rain that has begun falling. Whether it was the weight of the impenetrable fact that Sunghoon fucking Park has just spoken to you more words than he’s ever said your entire high school career. Or whether-and this may exactly be it-you were affected by those blazing eyes that glided backup to look at you.

Not golden.

Blazing.

For the golden hues have simmered into something darker. They’ve literally bled into a darker shade of the gold-almost yellow hues in his eyes. The breath completely escapes your throat. This time he does not look away.

“R-Right. Of course. Sorry.” You had nothing to be sorry for. How could you ever have known any of Sunghoon’s and his weird friends’ ages when the only people they directly interacted with were the teachers and themselves? You could never have known Sunghoon was 21 and therefore did not need to apologise but… those eyes… they made you sorry.

“It’s just-” why the fuck, after everything, after all of that, is your mouth still moving? It’s like this was your only opportunity of bravery. Your only window letting through a sliver of courage before you would retreat in on yourself for the rest of your waning time in this town. Moving amongst the books like a spectre before you ran off to college.

This was your only opportunity.

“Well they’re all Victorian.” You finally let those words tumble out of your mouth.

You hear the sharp intake of breath.

“Bronte, James, Shelley.” You slide the books to him. “All Victorian… is this pattern the product of some trend I’m missing out on?” You chuckle lightly at the end of that, hoping to wrench one out of him too but you knew that was an impossible feat. Still, the chuckle drains down your throat when you hand him his books. Your fingers, still encircled around the hardbacks, brush over him accidentally.

“Jesus, are you cold?”

He pulls away quickly, evading eye contact like you’d turn him to stone. Evading your touch like your skin scorched his. “It’s raining. I-I could give you a ride-”

Sunghoon gulps visibly. In the span of a single conversation, those dark-golden eyes have stayed firmly on you but now they are prying you apart.

“That won’t be necessary.” He says, swallowing thickly once more.

“Of course.” You wave him off, immediately overcome by the embarrassment of your own presumptuous nature. Sunghoon's gaze drifts down to the books once more.

No. You can’t afford the dismissal. You can’t bear the non-verbal rejection any longer.

The faucet that is your mouth, just continues spewing.

“Vampires aren’t usually the ones being offered a ride, are they?” You turn your head, focusing on the raindrops shooting pellets at the tall library window. Your gaze appears far away but that’s what you want him to think. In your periphery, you see his eyes snap up from the mahogany desk with his head following; enough to make those dark strands bounce in surprise. You know you finally have him.

“I’m the victim,” You continue basking in the attention. Retaining more satisfying heat from his gaze alone than the husky fluorescent buzzing above you both. You are suddenly all too aware that the library is deserted.

“I’m supposed to be coaxed into your car. That’s how it works right? Like Bundy."

You lazily swing your gaze back from the window until you meet his eyes that have bled into an even darker shade of gold. So dark the gold has vanished completely, actually, leaving two soulless depths. His eyes scream, ‘how do you know?’

His jaw is tightened like screws and his fist is clenched so tight it should spout blood.

But there is no blood, is there? Dead things lose all of that.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about-” You lift a hand up. Right there, right in front of his stone face, silencing him immediately.

“That dance gets a little bit tedious, doesn’t it?” You laugh loudly into the hollow air filled with nothing but raindrops and thunder. “A little bit boring?” You give him a smirk. “I know one thing your little family specialises in isn't boredom.”

You make the unforeseen move of stepping back from your computer, slowly making a show of sauntering around the desk. Sunghoon's dark irises track you like a sniper and you revel in it.

You must stop your hands from fisting at your own sides.

You must maintain the little control you have, or it might just cost you your life.

“You're wrong,” he says, “The books. They’re not all Victorian.”

He’s stalling. Deflecting. Trying to distract himself from your nearing frame.

“Frankenstein,” he continues, “Shelley published it in 1818, that’s just short of the start of Victoria’s reign.”

You give him a small, tight-lipped smile.

“Hm. You would know though, wouldn’t you?”

He is pulled into silence.

“But back to your little lie.” Your path is set and your mind is made. “Vampire's daylighting as average university students? That’s a good fucking story.” You nod slowly, “A good fucking story.” You take small, tentative strides closer to him. Not wanting to engage too quickly. Sunghoon was big, tall and looming. Having that kind of frame tense- more tense than he already is, would only result in a blood bath. Your blood bath.

“Everyone at school, everyone in this town thinks you’re all so goddamn close but you wanna know what I think?” You saunter closer and he inhales sharply.

“No.”

You tsk and click your tongue, not stopping your calm gait whatsoever until his scent completely enveloped you. So empty and… dead.

A smell that can’t be masked by the most expensive cologne and yet you enjoyed it. It made your blood race and if what you knew was true, then he could hear the erratics of your heart as well. You wanted him to.

“See, Hoonie-”

“Sunghoon.”

“Hoonie. Why else would you be entertaining this nonsense?” You continue moving closer until his back is pressed against the wooden desk, looking down at you with a near pitch black abyss. You look up at him, feigning innocent doe eyes as you pressed your voluminous chest against him. You dare even let your hand drift over his black, cotton sweater.

“I could-” Sunghoon's eyes flutter closed before he snaps them open again. “I could hurt you. But you know that, don’t you?” A finger slips itself under your chin, tilting your head up to look at him.

Or so you thought.

He continues to lift your chin until you were looking up at the fluorescent light. Then, and only then, did you understand that he was baring your neck to him.

“Aw, Sunghoon.” You chastise lightly, still letting him do with you as you please. Unbeknownst to him, you were leaning in closer, letting your hand slip onto the desk behind him until you found just what you were looking for.

Letter opener.

“I’m counting on you to hurt me, Silly.”

You finally pull back, before he can lower himself further in-before he could go in for the kill.

You aim the sharp two-edged blade of the letter opener into your left palm and, with all the reserve in the world, you cut a long, shallow gash all the way in.

The very second your palm stains crimson, Sunghoon's entire build begins to shake. His chest begins to heave uncontrollably. His face is perfectly the same but somehow you still hear the hungry tufts of air leaving his nostrils, even over the raging rain outside and you smile.

“Trust me.” You say,

“I’m counting on you hurting me,”

“You’re really goddamn stupid, you know that?“ He says cockily, feigning his control when his pitch black eyes are a dead giveaway. The pupils are trained on the beoken skin along your palm and that alone. The blood has begun dripping aimlessly down your palm and you hold it up to him, showing him his prize. Showing him everything he’s been missing.

"Maybe I am. Maybe I’m crazy and stupid.” You discard the letter opener on the carpet beside you. It clunks to the ground and you let out a little sigh.

“You can go ahead and bite me Sung-” You might not explicitly be on a nickname basis, but you figured now was as good a time as any to familiarise yourself with each other, since-

“You’re gonna turn me."

Sunghoon finally rips his onyx eyes away from the dripping crimson faucet and he stares down at you questioningly.

"Why would I do that?” Some hair has fallen in front of his left eye but he makes no move to brush it away, so naturally, you do it for him… using your bleeding left hand.

“Well… because you’re you. And self restraint isn’t very you, Sunghoon.” You tuck the dark strand, now stained lightly with your blood, behind his ear and you begin to trail your hand slowly down the side of his face. Sunghoon's eyes flutter closed and he leans, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, right into your bleeding grip. He turns his head sideways and inhales sharply.

“I knew it.” You marvel at the boy before you. “Sure it was just a theory but- it all fell serendipitously into place: The absent days when it’s sunny out. The deathly paleness. The untouched lunch trays. The old ass books that probably give away your real age.” His eyes are still closed and he is still moving his cheek against your bleeding hand. He hums unintelligibly.

“The ice cold skin was my final check.”

“How clever.”

He produces the first smile you’ve ever seen and the beauty of it releases a wave of endorphins and butterflies in your gut. “You want a cookie for that?” He has a dangerously gorgeous lopsided grin that, coupled with the gleaming, pointed canines that have emerged, leaves your pulse quickening in more places than your heart.

“What’s to stop me from ripping you open right now? There’s no one here. No one will be here in time to stop me from killing you.” He turns to look at you and you almost gasp at how severely sexy your smeared blood on his cheek looks.

“Give me reasons.” He urges with his voice bouncing off the walls.

“I need reasons or-” his eyes flutter closed “-or I just might do it. I will kill you.”

You needed to maintain control. But in that moment you knew and feared that you and him were beginning to realise that your dominant reserve was slipping right through your fingers. It was your turn in the hot seat. Okay.

You got what you wanted. Find out what you needed to find out. But all that came at a price.

You try to keep your voice steady as you answer him.

“As much as it annoys you and me, Sunghoon, it is a fact that you wanna fit in with everyone else.” Sunghoon's eyes never leave yours as you continue talking. “You probably never really had a home and this town allows you to blend in with the rest of us.” He breathes deeply through his nose. “Killing the bookkeeper would put this little fantasy life you've built for yourself in jeopardy,” Your breathing is irregular and harsh and you look at his lips and oh god you need to taste him.

“But you’re still you, Sunghoon. This town can’t and never will change that fact. You’re not like the rest of us,” You finally say, “You’re not-”

In a blur and manipulation of time, space and all the little things in between, you’ve been transported with a swift dash across the room until you were being held by the throat against a bookshelf. Pain stems from the sudden and rapid movement but the firm and unwavering squeeze on your throat, elicits a wave of lust.

“I’m done playing your little mind games.” He’s seething and he’s angry and he’s right where you want him.

“Oh? But we were having so much fun, Sung-” He squeezes your windpipe, so incredibly close to crushing it.

“What do you want?”

You let the first ever genuine smile slip onto your face.

“For you to turn me, Hoonie."

He pauses. Quite literally.

Sunghoon's rapid breathing goes to a complete stand still and his form goes as still as a statue. You deduce that this is him thinking. He’s mapping out all the possible shit storms this would conjure up for him and his precious family and you hold the will to roll your eyes. After a few stunted seconds, Sunghoon eases back again.

"Once I start-”

“You won’t stop? Sunghoon, we’ve been eye fucking this entire time. I'm not sure what it is about Blackmail that gets you off but it's not difficult to see how bad you need it.” He squeezes your throat again in warning, already telling you all you need to know.

He's not sure why he's attracted to you. He shouldn't be. Whether its the fact that you should already be dead for even knowing his secret- for thinking you can offee him an ultimatimatum- its your sheer fucking guts that has him warming with attraction.

Your words slowly bring him up for air. “If there’s one thing stronger than your need to feast,” You lift that hand up once again, “-its your need to fuck. Vampires are immortal so they draw pleasure from the little things. The pleasurable things. That bulge in your pants can’t go unnoticed, Sunghoon, no matter how long you want it t-”

Sunghoon rolls his eyes before he murmurs: “Just shut up,”

He crashes his lips right onto yours. The kiss is not only electric but it’s magnetic. As if you would not be able to pull away even if you wanted to. And his firm grip on your throat keeps you there. It’s strong and he squeezes as he licks on your bottom lip, coaxing the opening out of you. So naturally, you moan, and the bastard uses the opportunity to slide his tongue into your mouth.

You needn’t open your eyes to see he was half-smiling into your kiss. That little nugget of information made you need him even more. During your kiss, you squeeze your legs together. Sunghoon hums disapprovingly in your mouth, sending his other hand down your thigh, urging them apart.

“You can’t do that.” He breaks the kiss and says the words at a perfectly even breathe, meanwhile you were a heaving mess.

“What?” You inquire dumbly, all too focused on his hand on your jeans to rather give a fuck about anything else.

“Pathokinesis.” Is all he says before he ducks down into the crook of your neck, ripping the gasp out of your lungs by force. His large hand around your throat moves up to your cheek, rubbing the skin with his thumb softly.

“Don’t do that.” He says into your neck before venturing to flick his tongue out, licking the skin and driving you all too insane. You almost don’t register his words but the weight of his revelation has you tumbling to your senses momentarily.

“What? So you can like-”

“Sense and manipulate your emotions?” He says, coming up from your neck. “Yeah.” He nods once before he takes your mouth in his once more.

“What you feel,” he mumbles in between the kiss, “I feel too."

Yet another gasp strains your throat when you feel two sharp teeth graze against the skin of your plump bottom lips as Sunghoon pulls away.

Have you really thought any of your movements through?

What if sex with a vampire was fatal?

You’re about to spiral into oblivion before Sunghoon speaks up.

"No.” He says curtly, and you’re all too aware of the hand trying to push past your denim jeans. “You’re not pulling back on me now. Not after everything.” You’re in awe of his words.

“Jesus, so you really can feel everything.”

That life threatening smile again.

“Pretty much.”

He begins to undo the buttons of your pants tentatively, almost meticulously, as if you were fortunate to have all the time in the world. You’re about to urge him to hurry the fuck up but one of the shelves behind your head collapses. Books fall to a sad heap on the floor and the wood is snapped in tiny pieces. Sunghoon's hand was leaning against that particular shelf.

Maybe he’s not as calm as he’d like to convey.

“There is one thing,” the buttons are undone but he’s stopped moving his fingers. They are in fact paused on the lining of your underwear. The material is calmly in between his index and thumb, creating the sickest, most twisted need you’ve ever felt. You almost abandon modesty and grind into him right then and there.

His next words however, have you almost wanting to keel over in grief.

“I’m not gonna fuck you,” he says with a sick smile.

“Why?” It's all you can manage and suddenly, you think the universe must be smiling at the irony of this situation. The encounter had begun with You as the master of this blackmail, yet here you were, grovelling for him.

“I think you’re really good at getting what you want,” he says, leaning forward and slowly, oh so slowly, letting his hand slip into the fabric. The graze of his fingers on you cunt alone making you almost sob out in need.

“And I’m not gonna allow that.” He concludes before pushing his hand all the way in. Sunghoon does nothing but snicker when he feels the pool of wetness.

“This is how this is gonna work,” he uses his free hand to pick up your limp left one. The wound is of considerable size however, the blood is not flowing as much but it’s still there.

“You’re gonna give me this.” He lifts your limp hand up and you comply like a puppet on a string. “And I’m gonna give you this.” His fingers-the index and the middle,- flick over your clit, causing you to let out an aching whimper.

“Got it?” He’s already placing your bloody palm against his plump lips and you’re too enamoured. Too enamoured at the sight of his tongue sticking out and lapping at the blood as if it were a healing potent. You’re too enamoured to respond and he does not like this one bit.

Sunghoon flicks another finger against your clit.

“JESUS!” You scream into the empty library. Sunghoon, who’s eyes were closed, shoots open and he hums disapprovingly.

“No,” he says irritably, “Sunghoon. Say Sunghoon.”

You’re a drunken, sex filled mess. “Fuck-Sunghoon.” He smiles, satisfied, before returning to your palm. You begin to grind into his fingers and his chuckles.

“Sung… Sunghoon please.” There are tears staining your eyes and you’re so completely torn apart. The thrill of it being in a public setting. The rain. The licking on your palm. It’s too much.

Way too fucking much.

“Please? Please let you finish?” Sunghoon asks mockingly and a sob releases from your throat as your hips begin to buck into his hands. “You’d like me to let you cum all over my hand?”

“Please, Hoonie. Please.”

“That’s a shame…” He replies, “I thought we were having so much fun.” You do not even have the strength to act stunned at having your words being flung back at you, you’re too focused on the fingers that have slipped inside of you and the hissing noise escaping Sunghoon's throat.

It’s all so unbelievable. Sunghoon pulls back and hisses loudly. Your heart stops at the sight of his canines elongating even further but that all falls away when he sinks them further into your palm. Biting down.

Hard.

“Hoon..” You're completely out of it. The fingers slide in and out and in and out, searching rapidly for your g-spot, but in the very same breath, there’s a sharp, bright and blinding pain in your left palm, letting the tears fall as they may.

“Fuck, Sunghoon! Oh god! It hurts! It hurts so fucking bad!” You’re sobbing but his fingers inside you are relentless and his sucking, even more so. You feel like nothing but an object of his pleasure as your hand begins to grow numb. Sure he was bringing you to orgasm, the very same time you felt even that was for his own pleasure.

Never had you experienced a pain quite like this. This pain felt otherworldly. Diabolical. As if someone were ripping the nails right out of your fingers. As if you slammed the car door in on your hand repeatedly.

And the pain. God, the pain is white and bright, you fear passing out may be inevitable.

Sunghoon brings his head up, releasing his fangs from your palm but continuing his assault by licking and sucking on the two indents. “I know, my beautiful, beautiful girl,” he says, “I know."

The sobs stop, perhaps because you want to hear his voice. Perhaps because you feed on his praises. "You’re so beautiful, you know that?” he mutters unsoundly in between his licks, “So pretty, so perfect.” You realise he’s as delirious as you, his eyes are wide, gazing down at the madwoman before him with his own madness swirling in his irises. His lips are stained red and somehow that sets you over the edge.

“Hoonie?”

His eyes are red. Blood red. You gasp. “I’m-” You don’t finish the sentence, already feeling your orgasm crest as you carelessly fling yourself over the edge. It hits you and you forget all about the pain. All about the blood.

“That’s it, my pretty, pretty girl.” He encourages and your body is shaking violently against the book rack. Your eyes are screwed shut and you’re rocking uncontrollably into his hand.

In that moment, Sunghoon may have thought that he gained everything, but you gained far more. And when you come out of that high, once the fog cleared and the rain simmered down to a tiny, light pitter patter.

You begin to feel…

New.

“Welcome to immortality, Beautiful.” He whispers in your ear with that recognizable lopsided smirk.

You feel… empty. Drained. You feel nothing at all.

“Population… You”

#enhypen #enhypen smut #enhypen x reader #sunghoon #sunghoon x reader #sunghoon smut #park sunghoon x reader #park sunghoon #park sunghoon smut #enhypen x black reader #enhypen headcanons #sunghoon x black!reader #park sunghoon x black!reader

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facts-i-just-made-up · 4 months ago

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Five Famous Book Monsters Drawn: EXACTLY AS DESCRIBED BY AUTHORS!

Many movie adaptations of famous novels change the character and creature designs, some very drastically. Here are five famous monsters or villains that I've rendered with great care toward their original descriptions in their first books. Some aren't what you might expect from the movie versions! Enjoy!

#1- The Exorcist

The Exorcist by Ira Levin features a demon named Pazuzu. In the book, we see a few glimpses of a wicked face and a horribly injured Linda Blair, but in the original novel, Pazuzu is described as a skeletal ghost with a snakelike spinal column that ends in a devil tail. His hands float separately, and his many horns are topped by a hat with a pigeon feather, much like the biblical description of the demon.

#2- Jaws

Jaws by Peter Benchley was much more of a sci-fi novel than the movie based on it. In the original story, the shark had a human-like mind and arms and legs. It was well armed and killed not with its teeth, but its two AK-47s. It is only defeated when the sheriff ties its loose shoelaces together.

#3- The Lord of the Rings

Sauron is described by J.J.R. Tolkien not as the fiery eyeball or armored mammoth seen in Peter Jackson's movies, but rather as a beautiful long haired man in a white robe with chubby cheeks and enormous, pendulous bosoms. Over 30 pages are spent describing the Mounds of Doom, or in Elvish "Orodroobies" and in Sindarin, "Amon Amammaries."

#4- Frankenstein

Mary Shelly's masterpiece is considered the dawn of sci-fi and horror alike, but it's iconic monster looked nothing like Boris Karloff in the text. Rather it was a tentacled half-octopus, half-man, half-dragon that caused madness in anyone who saw it emerge from its home, the lost island of R'lyeh. Note that the name "Frankenstein" is not that of the monster itself, but is the closest a human can come to pronouncing its true name, as recorded by Igor Alhazrad.

#5- The Lorax

It's hard to guess what Roald Dahl pictured just from the descriptions in his novel, but the title monster from his 15-Volume Norwegian language epic "The Lorax" is nothing like you may have seen in the popular CGI erotic film. In the novel, it has orange hair and big eyebrows but is more like a spectral demon with crystal eyes and jagged fangs that bounds through the Norwegian desert on its two massive feet, each of which has one claw. A similar fate met Agent Smith from his novel "The Matrix" who was a big green robot in the book, but is clearly a Hugo Weaving in the movies.

#lorax #lort #tolkien #cthulhu #frankenstein #unreality

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luveline · 4 months ago

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If you’re doing requests could you do KBD during Halloween?

uncle Eddie makes sure Steve has the perfect costume. mom!reader

Steve smiles at himself in the mirror. Wren, in his arms, smiles back.

“We look handsome,” he says, lifting her so her face is level with his own. “I look handsome. You look beautiful.”

“Hi,” she says.

Steve turns down to her. “Hi, baby.”

Avery climbs onto a chair and waves at the mirror. Her fairy princess dress is shiny blue. “Hello.”

Beth climbs onto the chair after her, wrapping her arms around Avery’s shoulders. “Hi!” she says, force of her greeting sending her pirates hat careening to the floor.

“Are you ready?” you call from upstairs. “Everyone still has their shoes on?”

“Dove doesn’t,” Avery says.

“Tattle!” Dove cries, a picture of fury in her kitty cat onesie, her glued-on whiskers twitching fiercely.

“Well, you don’t.”

“My toes are warm,” Dove whines, thrusting herself at Steve’s legs. “Daddy, she’s telling on me.”

“I know, and now you’re telling on her. You’re my little band of tattle-tales, I don’t love it.” Steve smooths along Wren’s face with his finger and takes in a breath big enough to fill his lungs. “Can you let Beth put your shoes back on?”

“No.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

You fit Dove into her shoes and get the kids to the car. Four car seats is tough work but nothing you can’t handle, and you’re still in chipper spirits when you arrive at the Munson house. It’s decked out in cobwebs and great big spiders made of tinsel and bendy framing, carved pumpkins leading up the steps with fleshy teeth and candles unburned in their maws. Wren gives a comical gasp when she sees it all, a tad scared but quickly soothed when you pretend to be scared too.

Beth races up the steps first to knock.

The door opens a slither.

“Who goes there?” a dark voice asks.

“Uncle Eddie, it’s me!” Beth says quickly. Her excitement again sends her hat to the stone patio beneath her cons, but she doesn’t notice it, vying to squeeze through the door and see her favourite uncle.

“I don’t know any Me’s. You’ll have to come back another day, I’m waiting for my very favourite troupe of little girls.”

“It’s BETH!” Beth shrieks, “Come on!”

“Bethany?” Eddie pushes the door open, unsurprised when Beth throws herself full force into his legs. “Why, you look dastardly. How very scary of you! You have a parrot!”

The fake parrot glued to Beth’s shoulder waggles.

“His name is Sherbet.”

“Wow.” Eddie gives her a hug, his eyes blowing wide over her shoulder. “Oh, wow! Ave, you’re a princess with wings! And Dove, meow.” He grins at Steve. “And your dad is what, Frankenstein’s monster? A zombie?”

“Dad doesn’t have a costume,” Beth says happily.

“Are you sure?”

Steve encourages Dove over the threshold, four wrapped plates of sandwiches and finger foods balanced in the other hand. “That’s not funny. What are you supposed to be, anyways?”

“I’m a vampire, duh.” Eddie slips a pair of fake fangs into his teeth. “I vant to suck your blood!”

“Ew, Uncle Eddie,” you say.

“Don’t think you’ve escaped me, second favourite Harrington,” Eddie says, frowning as you slip around him. “You owe me a hug.”

“Creep,” Steve says.

“With pride.” Eddie takes the plates from his arms and somehow, the Harrington troupe makes it safely indoors, no further costume parts fallen nor lost.

There are more people here than Steve expected, Eddie’s friends, their kids, even Eddie’s elusive boyfriend sits out in the open.

“What are you supposed to be?” Dove asks him with a grin.

He turns his head to show a painted bite mark on his neck. “Victim.”

“He’s a dead guy,” Eddie tells her, helping her where she’s struggling to sit in one of the barstools. “Alright, babe, dad said last year we partied too hard, so here are the ground rules. No pixie sticks, no soda, and no climbing on the kitchen counters. If you follow these rules, I am being allowed to give you a Hershey bar the size of your dad’s massive head. Deal?”

“How big?” Dove questions suspiciously.

Eddie goes to the cabinet. Inside, there’s more candy bars than one person should ever have purchased in one go. He pulls out a huge one and holds it nexts to Steve’s head, laughing when Steve bats it away. “Huge.”

“Dad, dad, can I go play with Milly and Joe?” Avery asks.

Steve was hoping she would. “Sure, baby. Good manners, okay?”

Avery whizzes off to find Gareth’s kids. Beth stays by Steve’s side and he forces himself to believe that it’s him she wants to be with, not Eddie. “You don’t wanna go play?” Steve asks her.

“Not yet.”

You appear again where you’d been missing with Robin in tow. Steve grins at the sight of her, though he’d spoken to her on the phone last night, and seen her the day before at home. “Buckley!”

She’s wearing a black dress with a belt and her hair is teased into a short cloud. “You aren’t wearing your costume?”

Steve moves Beth around unthinkingly. “Yeah, it still smelled like vomit. Wren had too much yoghurt. Rob, you really look like Madonna. Your makeup is–”

“It’s trippy, right?” Eddie asks.

“Mora did it. It’s like, face sculpting.”

“It’s weird.”

“I like it,” you say, Wren on your hip giving an agreeable gurgle. “I like your real face more, but this is cool.”

“And where’s your costume?” Eddie asks.

You frown down at your nice dress. “You can’t tell?”

Eddie falls for the trip in your voice and attempts to backtrack, only realising that you’re kidding when Steve laughs.

“The baby got sick on both of us,” you say, turning Wren so everyone in the kitchen can see her face. “But that’s okay. She’s so cute, she’s forgiven. Aren’t you, gorgeous? You didn’t mean to eat all that yoghurt, daddy just kept feeding you.”

Steve holds his hands up in surrender. “I feed her every day, I know how much yoghurt she can handle.”

“Clearly not,” you croon, shooting him a loving smile. “You did save us from those awful costumes, though.”

“Oh, worry not,” Eddie says, “I figured something like this would happen, and I’ve prepared.”

Awesome, Steve thinks, groaning as Eddie takes his wrist into his hand and begins to pull on him. Knowing Eddie, Steve’s end up dressed as a demon with giant horns, or a fairy.

The reality is much, much worse.

“Hey, look at that! It still fits!” Robin laughs.

Steve looks down at his little sailor’s uniform and sighs. “Barely,” he says.

“Say the slogan!” you demand.

If it were anyone else, Steve would refuse, but you’re sitting at the breakfast bar with Wren tucked under your chin, so he takes a deep breath and straightens his white hat. “Ahoy ladies,” he sighs. “Would you like to… uh, set sail on this ocean of flavour with me? I’ll be your captain, I’m…” —his voice drags reluctantly— “I’m Steve Harrington.”

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probablyasocialecologist · 5 months ago

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Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein is not, of course, an example of the imperial gothic but instead a still relevant anti-Enlightenment fable. If a novel ever illustrated how the sleep of reason begets monsters, it is Shelley’s story of how a scientist’s urge to create artificial life leads to utter destruction. However, in Universal Studios’s 1931 Frankenstein, the many pertinent philosophical issues that the original gothic novel explores reshape into thinly veiled imperial gothic through the introduction of a eugenic and highly racialised discourse that changes the monster from a rightfully vengeful and eminently intelligent being into an atavistic criminal. In its Hollywood guise, the monster is not a tragic, lonesome and then understandably vengeful product of unethical science but instead a reincarnation of the degenerate criminal whose brain the monster is provided with in the film. This takes on a peculiarly American dynamics in the movie. As Elizabeth Young suggests in Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor (2008), a connection between the monster and the supposedly primitive black American was made as early as during the immediate post-Civil War period when ‘the “hideous progeny” of Shelley’s novel was symbolically reborn in racist parody as the symbol of the miscegenated nation’. An important reference to American Reconstruction history is also the ending of the movie. Instead of escaping to the North Pole, as is the case in Shelley’s novel, the monster is exorcised by what amounts to a lynch mob. In Frankenstein the movie, as in the American South, justice is done by the people on the spot; by ‘lynch law’. The violation of the sanctified space and body of Frankenstein’s fiancée, Elizabeth, as much as the accidental drowning of the little girl, justifies this public rage in the eyes of the movie audience. This is the end that comes to those who dare violate the purity of white women, or oppose the progress of modernity in any form, be they black Americans in the South, Native Americans on the reservations or unruly natives in the Philippines. Like so many lynching victims, Frankenstein dies in flames. In this way, the discursive conditions that informed the British colonial enterprise as well as the racism that structured black and white relations in the US permeate Frankenstein. The childlike and aggressive monster is an example of the kind of human category that can never ‘possess the intelligence to make a rational choice of political allegiance’, as Lansing put it. In addition to this, the audience is also free to imagine an alternative narrative in which Fritz never drops the jar with the ‘normal’ brain to the floor. It is not science or faith in modernity that Frankenstein fears, it is atavism. The resolution to the crisis that atavism constitutes is the sad but necessary violence of the lynch mob. When the monster has been burned, the movie can end with the happy union of the film’s central white couple.

Johan Anders Höglund, The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence

#imperial gothic #frankenstein

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see-arcane · 7 months ago

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See Arcane's Scribbles Substack

Do you like classic horror literature? Do you have a below-average fear of disembodied eyes staring at you from the screen while you try to read? Then have I got the Substack for you!

Mine. It’s my Substack. See Arcane’s Scribbles is where I’ll be compiling a number of preview chapters for works-in-progress as well as a few other eerie odds and ends that might not end up on Tumblr. It’s a hell of a lot easier to scroll through and you can chuck a little support my way too. Hope you’ll give it a gander! Likewise for my official author site.

The Vampyres and Harker

The Vampyres (novella)

Set in the modern day, one very practiced bastard of a bloodsucker realizes that his fellow undead have started disappearing. All suddenly gone to dust and decay. Which would hardly bother him, except the entity responsible is now on his track. The eponymous Vampyre finds himself caught between a desperate investigation to uncover what this impossible psychopomp really is and making moves on an enticingly oblivious new victim he can’t wait to drain…supposing he keeps his head on his shoulders long enough to get a taste. If you're interested in a copy, check out the following links:

eBook - Print

Or to search by ISBN:

eBook: 9798218374594 - Paperback: 9798218374587

Preview Chapters

Chapter 1 🩸 Chapter 2 🩸 Chapter 3

Harker (WIP)

Jonathan Harker opens and closes the story of Dracula. He is the character who spends the most time with the dreaded Count in person. He is there for the torturous stay in the gothic castle, he is there when the monster preys upon his beloved, he is there at the very end of Dracula's vicious undeath. And yet, so many questions are left unanswered about Mr. Harker and what he endured between the lines. What happened in those missing dates within Castle Dracula? What happened as he ran through the Carpathians? And what was the source and result of that eerie change that came upon him on the 3rd of October? It’s about time we found out.

Preview Chapters

Chapter 1 🩸 Chapter 2 🩸 Chapter 3 🩸 Chapter 4 🩸 Chapter 5

Ko-Fi

In case you want to drop me a buck or commission some art.

Playlists

Some tunes for your contemporary or classic undead horror of choice:

The Vampyres 🩸Harker 🩸Was Frankenstein Not the Monster? 🩸 Nosferatu: Death and the Maiden

Also I'm on Bluesky if you want to say hi. 🦋

#my writing #c.r. kane #horror #dracula #bram stoker #dracula daily #re: dracula #the vampyre #john william polidori #jonathan harker #harker #the vampyres #Spotify #Substack

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thefrontmanscockwarmer · 6 days ago

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Teacher’s Pet

Player 001 x reader📖

Masterlist <- comment on this post to be added to the Taglist

Note: !teacher in Ho, also note the reader is 18 and a senior in high school. Also yes, I’ve watched the actual movie he’s in, it’s just less confusing to refer to him as In Ho bc not everyone has seen that movie.

You stared at your piece of paper, nothing written but you name a few flowers in the top right corner. You saw a dark shadow appear over your desk, you looked up to see Mr. Hwang standing above you. You smile shyly.

“Hi” you say.

“(Y/n), are you serious? You haven’t written a single thing down.” He sighs exasperatedly. The class was looking at you now. You peered up at him.

“Not true. I have flowers and my name.”

“Yes, i can see that, but i asked you guys to write a reflective page on how Frankenstein’s Monster was perceived by the village versus what he was actually like.” He adjusts his glasses, “you’ve not a sentence down and it’s due by the end of class.”

“But sir,” you began.

“Not another word, (y/n), write so I don’t have to give you an F” he turns from you and sits at his desk. Going back through the stack of papers. You sat and started at your paper once again, not knowing where to begin. You wrote: ‘Frankenstein’s monster was not a monster at all. He educated himself and was perceived as worse than he was. In my eyes, he’s more educated than half the men in the world, no man could ever compare to the educatedness of Frankenstein’s Monster; whom even Frankenstein himself treated like a disease and cast him away before finding him to end the life he created.”

The bell rang, everyone began turning in their papers and leaving before Mr. In Ho could say anything. The end of the day was such a glorious time, especially when it’s just moments away from being Friday night. But, not for you, you’d be going a few days without seeing your “life source”. You stand and pack your bag as the last few people filter out of the room. You approach his desk, sliding your paper across it. You turned to leave and had just barely crossed the the threshold of the door before you heard his voice:

“Wait.” He sighed pointedly. Everyone was outside, running to their cars. “This isn’t wasn’t what I asked you to write.” He began. “I asked for a comparison between the monster and the town, not how to tell me how educated and compare him to society today”

“He wasn’t a monster” you said coldly. “He was a work of art. He was life. he was no worse or better than humanity. The town treated him like a monster because that’s what he looked like, not what he was. They hated him because he was ugly.” You said. “But, had they gotten to know him, they would’ve seen he was brilliant, and beautiful. He was educated. Better than any man I’ve ever seen.” He peered at you through soulless eyes before softening his gaze. Your (e/c) bearing themselves into his soul.

“I was going to say, that the writing was great. It may not’ve been what I wanted, but it was a perspective drawn from conclusions you made on your own. It was real worldly and granted, you’re right, he was perceived in a way that was very judged by the cover, not of the pages.” He removed his glasses. “You’re free to go, (y/n), enjoy your weekend.” He gestured towards the door. Butterflies that had erupted in your stomach had been fluttering, heat between your thighs as you realized it was just the two of you in a room together.

“Have a nice weekend, sir” you nodded. And left, letting out a deep breath that you didn’t realize you were holding.You walked slowly down the stairs, preparing yourself for the walk ahead of you as you usually did at the end of the day. You exited the building, nearly everyone was gone, save for a few stranglers.

meanwhile, Hwang was gathering his items, tucking your page away in his bag to read it again later. He hated to admit he was obsessed with your handwriting. Writing assignments were his favorite, your hand on a piece of paper for him to take home and reminisce and think about and reread over and over again. If only you could just graduate sooner, he wouldn’t mind going on a date, or even following you to whatever college. If you’d have him that is. He wished he knew how you felt.

You had made it to the crosswalk, awaiting your turn when In Ho had turned the corner. He saw you standing, rolling down his window.

“(Y/n)?” He called.

“Hello, Mr. Hwang” you waved, “Haven’t ever seen you on this road”

“Yeah, well, I have to pick up some dry cleaning” he says. “Would you like a ride?” He offers.

“Actually yes please.” You say. Turning around and walking towards the plaza, his followed your lead, stopping his car in front of you as you stood in front of the shops. He took a moment to admire you. Your hair flowing through the Spring wind, your skin being kissed gently by the sunlight. You smiled as you opened the door. “Thank you so much, it’s so hot out and I’d have to walk an hour” you sighed as you clipped your seatbelt.

“An hour?! Do you walk everyday?” He asks his eyes wide as you nodded.

“Yeah, my parents are too busy to get me” you shrugged, i pretty much live alone” you chuckle.

“Well, I’m glad I was able to give you a ride, walking that distance everyday sounds harsh on your legs.” He says, he looked at your body, the realization setting in, you were neglected and walked so much you couldn’t help it. You were thin, your clothes barely fit, and your jacket was frayed. I need to take care of her he thought to himself. “Are you hungry? I can stop anywhere you’d like before dropping you off at home.”

“Oh it’s no bother” you say, looking at your phone, letting your mother know you going home. He decided to stop anyways. Your eyes lit up when you saw the Golden Arches.

“What do you want?”

“A small fry, a small dr. Pepper, and a 10 piece chicken nugget.” You repeated. Suddenly your stomach was growling.

“Hi, can i get a #3, make it a large please. And I’d also like a 10 piece chicken nugget, large dr. Pepper, and a a large fry” he spoke to the lady, pulling through and paying at the next window. “If you’re going to eat, you’re going to eat well” he told you as he handed you the food.

“Thank you” you said. He hummed a response and drove. “My address is NW 24th ave, house number 13”

You quickly and discreetly wrote your number on a napkin, letting it fall on the floor. As he pulled his car to your driveway. He leaned over and kissed your cheek.

“Sorry” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to, i forgot that you’re my student” he chuckled nervously.

“It’s okay” you said, blushing lightly. Butterflies flying your stomach again. Your heart fluttered as you made your next move. You pulled his face to kiss his lips, gently and quickly. His face riddled with shock, his own heart fluttering at the experience. “Thank you, for dropping me off and getting me food. I owe you one some day” he gulped and nodded. You opened your door in a swift motion he reached over and closed it, pressing his lips to yours once more, kissing you fiercely.

Your tongues gliding together before he separated from you. His hand tangling itself in your locks, pulling you closer to him, both of your bodies pressed against the center console, painfully marking your ribs. But pain was subjective, anything endured in those moments where you were entangled together, nothing could possibly hurt. He reluctantly pulled away from you. You both sat breathless, staring deeply into each other’s eyes. He moved a piece of hair out of your face. You were flushed and stumbling over your thoughts.

“Uh my dry-cleaning” he chuckled. “I’m sorry, I- I- I need to go get my dry cleaning. It’s clean and probably going to close soon. I have no clue what time it is” he stuttered.

“It’s okay, i should probably go inside too” you giggle.

“Okay, yeah, okay sounds like a plan.” He said as you opened your door.

“Well, good bye Mr. Hwang” you said as you closed the door, walking up your driveway. He watched as you entered your house before driving away. His mind swirling and his erection straining against his pants. He looked down as he came upon a red light, daring himself to unzip and stroke his cock. Shaking the thought away, he turned up the radio, everything around him reminded him of you.

“Fuck me” he thought as he laid his head back on the headrest. “Fuck me, (y/n)” he groaned.

Taglist

@christinamadsen @sebbymybaby21 @player279achlys @galaxygurlll @whamzou @watasinekoru @angelofthorr @whamzou

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thatbirdrestaurant · 4 months ago

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the outsiders characters going through haunted houses

ponyboy is the only one who doesn't try to throw a punch on a scare actor or one of the props. yes, johnny went for a swing.

steve makes fun of ponyboy for getting a little startled then immediately has a much bigger reaction.

two-bit uses darry as a shield from scare actors.

tim and curly are both banned from the haunted house for pulling a knife on one of the actors.

dally is banned for nearly setting a table cloth on fire but he sneaks in so he can keep an eye on ponyboy and johnny.

soda and darry went in telling ponyboy they'll protect him and that he shouldn't be embarrassed for getting scared, and came out gripping his shoulder's looking like they've witnessed a murder.

an actor dressed to look like a zombie looked a little too much like johnny's father and his fight or flight kicked in. ponyboy has to wrap his entire body around him while dally wrestles his switchblade out of his hand.

soda and steve always go through as soon as they can, so they can go back in with cute girls and look brave. two-bit will tag along to point out all the spots they got scared by.

darry accidentally scares the gang because he doesn't make a lot of noise and he's a lot scarier than usual when he randomly emerges from the shadows.

everyone thinks cherry is going to flip out but she comes out completely unphased and complaining about the costume quality. the soc boys she came with are literally shaking in their boots.

ponyboy gets scared by a frankenstein actor then rambles to the gang about how "frankenstein is actually the one who made the monster" and all that nerd shit, and it successfully distracts the gang long enough to get out.

#the outsiders #ponyboy curtis #sodapop curtis #darrel curtis #darry curtis #johnny cade #dallas winston #dally winston #two bit matthews #steve randle #tim shepard #curly shepard #cherry valance

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forlix · 1 year ago

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𝐜𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠・h.h.

— you're uninviting, there's no doubt about that, your resolve like unpolished diamond and tongue like broken glass. but hyunjin finds you're not half as impossible as everyone assumes you are.

words・11.1k

pairing・idol!hyunjin x female stylist!reader (inspired by this)

genres・fluff, angst, eventual smut so MDNI, some hurt/comfort, some humor, mc is a bad bitch and hyunjin is a #simp, enemies? to lovers, sexual tension, workplace relationship, mutual pining, slow burn, nonlinear narrative

warnings・reader vividly remembers an anxiety attack, alcohol is consumed, lots of compartmentalization and imperfect communication, complex people feeling complex emotions, smut warnings under the cut

playlist・farewell, neverland by txt・like crazy by jimin・black friday by tom odell・collide by justine skye・crying lightning by arctic monkeys

a/n・call me victor frankenstein bc i've given birth to a MONSTER (except i actually love and care for mine ofc). this was easily the greatest challenge of my fanfiction-writing career and it feels like my magnum opus; i hope it's worth the wait! also a huge shoutout to sahar for being my voice of reason and my biggest supporter :’) i don’t deserve u i love u

smut warnings・cunnilingus, overstimulation, creampie (practice safe sex!!), mild dacryphilia

Present day. Cannes, France. 5:54 P.M.

You’ve long made peace with the fact that Hwang Hyunjin is incapable of shutting up for more than five minutes.

As it is, the man has a mouth that runs like a cross-country marathon; then throw in his uncanny aptitude for annoying you, and what do you get? A nonstop slew of terrible jokes and teasing quips, tailored according to his thorough mental manual of what gets under your skin hardest and fastest.

This is the reality you live in, presumably because you were evil in your past life, and you’ve steeled yourself to see it through.

But twenty minutes have passed since you and Hyunjin ducked into the back of a cab and gave the driver the show’s address—and, as stunning as the red rooftops and lazuline coastline of Cannes are, you find you’re more interested in Hyunjin’s peculiar silence.

You move your gaze to his face. He’s looking outside, his chin resting upon the palm of his hand, the afternoon sunlight dusting over his chiseled features like polish on pottery; his complexion an exuberant gold against the cream-colored linen that makes up his clothing.

Maybe it’s because you opted for a simpler makeup look today, leaving the most telling contours of his face warm and bare, or maybe it’s because you’ve spent the last year committing his every mannerism and expression to memory. Nevertheless, you see through his pursed lips and tight brow right away.

“Nervous?”

Hyunjin’s head swivels towards you with a small snap, like he’s forgotten you’re here. His lips fall open, their glossy peach color glinting with the small shift.

“No,” he replies reflexively, but then his facade flickers. “Fuck, maybe a little. It’s just hard to believe, you know?”

You do know. It was a huge honor for both of you when Hyunjin was named the newest global ambassador of Versace. For you to be attending the brand’s pop-up show in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, among some of the world’s most prolific creatives, is truly incomprehensible. Even you’ve been feeling antsy since you landed; you can only imagine Hyunjin’s anxiety.

You have never been good at consolation. You think your mouth is too coarse, your propensity for honesty too strong. But you’ve always known just what to say when it comes to him.

“Just remember who you are.”

Hyunjin takes a few seconds to process your words, but his understanding washes over his whole body; straightens his back; hardens his gaze. You don’t see this change in posture, though. You’re too busy looking anywhere else, all of a sudden feeling quite embarrassed.

Nor do you see the private smile that disperses across Hyunjin’s lips; his eyes softening so, so marginally when they peer at your profile; his hand twitching where it rests on his knee, as if contemplating reaching for you with a mind of its own.

Thirty seconds. That is the amount of time you have left to bask in this otherworldly tranquility. And then he speaks.

“I want you to meet my parents.”

Your arm reacts before your mind can. Without having to turn your head an inch, you smack him squarely in the bicep, sending him crumpling against his door with a bark of a laugh; “please,” he adds, and you’re biting back a smile as you hit him again, with less conviction this time.

The cab driver nearly misses an exit, too busy wondering about the peculiar pair in his backseat and the nature of your relationship. He can’t tell if you hate each other or if you’re married.

One year ago. Seoul, South Korea. 8:42 A.M.

“I still can’t believe you’re abandoning me.”

“For my newborn daughter.”

“Yeah, okay. I still can’t believe you’re abandoning me for your newborn daughter. What does that brat have that I don’t?”

“My genes, to begin with.”

“That’s unfair. She’s using—”

An important-looking pair of women step out of the nearest elevators, the clacking of their heels ricocheting sharply off the lobby walls. Hyunjin straightens his back so quickly he thinks he pulls a muscle. He and Seojun incline their heads in perfect sync, their “good morning”s prim and professional.

“She’s using cheats,” Hyunjin hisses the second the women are out of earshot again, and this wrests a laugh from the older man at last.

Around one month prior, Seojun confided in Hyunjin that he and his partner were expecting their first child soon, and that he would be putting his career on indefinite hiatus to welcome her into the world.

Hyunjin had never felt so conflicted in his life. On one hand, he’d grown closer to his stylist over the last two years than he’d thought possible, and he knew it was stupid to be anything but delighted for him and his expanding family. On the other hand, it was precisely because they’d become so close that he wanted to grab the man by the ankles and shake the decision clean out of his body. He couldn’t imagine a dressing room or tour bus without him.

Today is a Saturday, but it’s also Seojun’s last day with the company. Hyunjin dragged himself to the JYP building at half past eight with much less reluctance than he let on. He wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

“Fourth floor,” Seojun instructs after the pair enter the elevator, and Hyunjin presses a knuckle to the according number. “Thanks.”

The doors slide shut; the floor numbers tick upwards.

“What was her name again?” Hyunjin asks.

“Y/N,” Seojun returns. “Y/L/N.”

“Is she here already?”

“No, she’ll be here at nine.”

There’s a small pause.

“Hyung.”

“Hm?”

“I feel like I’m being married off to another family for political reasons.”

“God, I can’t wait to be free of your theatrics.”

At this, the two men make eye contact; exchange smiles. The elevator announces their arrival to the fourth floor, and they step through the doors.

“You’ll be in good hands,” Seojun reassures. “She’s the best of the best. I hear she’s basically running the industry these days. I’m surprised she agreed to take you on.”

“I’m surprised an old fry like you knows someone like her,” Hyunjin replies, and the look Seojun gives him is so withering that he thinks he pulls a muscle again with his apologetic bow.

“You’re not wrong, though,” Seojun concedes. “We happened to work on the same project back when she was still a small name, and we’ve kept in touch ever since. She’s a great kid. Ambitious, hardworking, strong as hell—”

They arrive outside their destination, and Hyunjin holds open the door to the conference room. Only to find that Seojun has stopped in his footsteps, temporarily stunned by a new realization.

She reminds me of him.

“He’s forgotten how to walk,” the him in question whispers like he’s narrating a nature documentary, and the moment is over. “Is this what fatherhood does to a man?”

Seojun kicks Hyunjin into the room by the seat of his pants.

The minutes pass slowly. Seojun moves his eyes between the door and his phone every few seconds, visibly antsy about the imminent meeting. In the meantime, Hyunjin makes the groundbreaking discovery that these office chairs are absurdly and almost suspiciously comfortable. All it takes is a chin upon his palm and a few seconds of shut-eye, and he’s suddenly slumped over the table, snoring softly into the crook of his elbow.

At 8:57, Seojun’s phone lights up with a new notification. At 8:58, he notices that Hyunjin is asleep, and closes his hand around the crumpled receipt in his pocket. At 8:59, he scrunches said receipt into a ball and launches it in Hyunjin’s direction. It hits him squarely on the head, and the boy is nearly knocked to the floor like a bowling pin.

“For that,” Hyunjin sputters, “I’m the godfather.”

“Absolutely the hell not.”

Then, it is 9:00.

When the door of the conference room opens, Hyunjin is still trying to gather his wits, wondering if the bastard is leaving the makeup industry to secretly pursue a career in professional basketball. He just barely notices the unfamiliar figure who steps into his line of vision.

“There she is,” Seojun greets warmly, rising to his feet right away. “God, how long has it been? Two, three years now?”

You’re not doing anything remarkable when Hyunjin sees you for the first time, simply walking across the room and bowing graciously in Seojun’s direction, but he is immediately under the vague impression that you’re cutting through space as you move, scorching the particles of air that dare obstruct your path.

With his head cocked slightly to the left, like a fascinated puppy, Hyunjin watches the stunning smile that forms on your lips when you take Seojun’s hand; your finger as it tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear with the elegance of rippling silk. His mind feels impossibly slow, like you’ve tapped open his skull and robbed him of his ability to think.

Then, you toss Hyunjin a look over your shoulder, and he’s reminded of lightning forking towards the earth. Terrifying, volatile, beautiful.

“Something like that,” you say, turning back to Seojun, and time starts to move again. “It’s great to see you again, Mr. Lee. Congratulations on the baby.”

“Please, Seojun is fine,” he answers hastily. “And thank you. Thank you for all of this, actually. I can’t tell you how excited we are to have you.”

“You’re too kind—I’m excited too.”

Upon uttering the word “we,” Seojun delivers Hyunjin a fleeting side-eye; he takes the hint and pushes himself to his feet, feeling uncharacteristically clumsy as he moves towards you.

The second time he meets your gaze, it feels wrong, almost, for him to hold it for as long as he does. Like he’s approaching your throne with his chin held high and eyes fixed forward instead of his head sweeping the ground.

Except he swears he senses a strange warmth within the rings of your irises, and he spends every second of eye contact following, chasing it, almost craning his neck with how badly he wants to get a closer look. Until he’s as close to you as is socially acceptable for a first meeting and comes to a halt.

He ends up losing its trail, but he won’t forget that it’s there.

“My client, I’m guessing?” You say, extending your hand. “Y/N. It’s a pleasure.”

Your fingers are freezing cold where they meet his, and Hyunjin already knows that melting the permafrost that coats your flesh and guards your soul will be the tallest task of his life.

But he finds his next words accompanied by an involuntary smirk; he’s nothing, if not tenacious.

“Hyunjin,” he returns. “Pleasure’s all mine.”

Nine months ago. Paris, France. 6:16 P.M.

Hyunjin isn’t sure why—maybe you forget that he can still steal glances at your reflection over your shoulder or through the gaps of your fingers—but he’s learned over the last four weeks that you’re different, gentler, when you’re doing his makeup.

Your cold hands request instead of demand that he angle his head a certain way or suck in his cheeks. Your syllables are rounder somehow, your voice never traveling above a murmur. Even your eyes mellow out when you move in really close, your pupils dilating as you detail the final touches to the fresco you’ve painted upon him.

Your expression doesn’t give you away (it never does), but his hunch is that there’s a sprinkle of doting somewhere among the intense focus. That would explain why he feels like a flower in the moments when your fingertips and gaze move so carefully over his skin, like you’re touching his petals, trying not to tear them.

Too bad you never let him daydream for long.

“Close.”

“Huh?”

“Your eyes. Close them.”

His lashes have hardly brushed his lower lids when you begin to empty what feels like an entire bottle of setting spray on him. At the moist surprise, Hyunjin’s features scrunch up around his nose and he lets out a distraught hack like an old man.

A few seconds later, the barrage stops, and he cracks open a wary eye to scope out his surroundings. You wait until he does this to give his face one last spurt.

“Witch,” Hyunjin mutters, clawing back up the vanity chair.

“Thank you,” you reply, completely earnestly.

And whatever Hyunjin was going to say next suspends instantly on his tongue when you bring the pad of your thumb to the very edge of his lower lip and drag it across the soft flesh. He wonders if you know how hard he tries not to look at your mouth whenever you tend to his. He wonders if there’s anything you don’t know.

“You smudged your lipstick already.” There’s a small streak of coral pink on your hand when it falls back to your side. “See? That’s why we need the setting spray.”

“Uh huh.” And Hyunjin spots a ghost of a smile flit across your face, gone nearly as soon as it appears. The only evidence of it ever existing is the quickened heartbeat it leaves behind within him.

“You’re done, by the way,” you say, stepping aside. “Take a look.”

He slips out of his seat and moves closer to the vanity, peering at his reflection as curiously as if he’s never seen it before. But that’s how he’s felt since he started working with you.

Seojun was right: you are the best that the makeup industry has to offer. Hyunjin has come to understand this for multiple reasons. Your phone screen is incessantly illuminated by new notifications and incoming calls. The other stylists heed your advice like it’s the law. Brushes and pencils move like water when it’s you maneuvering them. And then some.

He would call what you have “talent,” but he knows it’s more than that. You show him a new version of himself every time you turn a mirror in his direction, like there are facets of him that are visible to you and you only. As much as he delights in the notion that you have such intimate knowledge of him, it should be impossible, considering you’ve only known him for two months. So no, it’s not just talent that you possess. It’s some combination of talent, hawkish perception, and raw artistry that is utterly inhuman—and sexy as fuck.

Speaking of sexy. Hyunjin’s look is relatively rudimentary tonight, the makeup light, the outfit a simple black tank top beneath a jacket and pants made of bright red velvet. But it’s the details that tie the whole thing together: the wide, loose sleeves causing the jacket to slip continually off his shoulders; the inner layer tight in all the right places. His face doesn’t look half bad either, with the sultry carmine powder that fringes his eyes and the intentionally mussed state of his hair. He pushes a hand through the dark locks, regarding himself with thorough appreciation.

You appear in his periphery as you start cleaning up your work station. “You can just take the jacket off when your sweat glands start malfunctioning, by the way. I thought you’d appreciate that detail.”

At this, his smize cracks into a laugh, the sound loud and uninhibited and uniquely yours to hear. “You suck.”

He looks away from his reflection just in time to glimpse another of your phantom smiles, and he thinks it’s so painfully on brand that the two times it’s appeared tonight have both been from you making yourself laugh. You might be the most insufferable person he’s ever met. He might be obsessed with you anyways.

“Well?” You implore. “What do you think?”

“No notes.”

It’s the answer you’re expecting. You survey him from head to toe one last time, decide that you, too, are satisfied, and slip your makeup into your bag; hike its strap over your shoulder.

“I’ll see you after the show, then.”

You have an important conference call to attend before tonight’s concert, hence why Hyunjin had to come in early for hair and makeup. This is also the reason why the two of you have been the only people in the dressing room for the better part of an hour.

It’s rare that he ever gets you alone, and he doesn’t want it to end. Not just yet.

“I lied, actually,” he calls. “I do have notes.”

You already have one foot out the door when you hear this, and you turn around so slowly and in such disbelief that he has to fight to constrain his laugh—the concept of imperfection is truly unthinkable to you. Insufferable, like he said.

“Do tell,” you say, dropping your bag back onto the floor.

“You have any jewelry for me?”

You chew on this for a moment. You did have a selection of necklaces prepared for tonight, but they were heavy and numerous, not exactly the best-suited for the group’s dynamic sets. You still like them, granted, and you know Hyunjin would as well.

You articulate all of this to him, and he asks if he can take a look at them anyways. “Come here, then,” you say, the words so tantalizing when they fall from your lips that nearly trips over himself trying to obey.

You take out a flat rectangular box from your bag and set it down in front of the lightbulb-studded mirrors. Hyunjin observes quietly as you show him its contents: three thick, gold chains with varying lengths and boasting different pendants, plus a beaded bracelet and an assembly of rings of the same material. His devious plan aside, he does love the selection.

“You’re sure you won’t be uncomfortable?”

He nods, and you pick up the longest of the three chains; turn to him expectedly. He takes this as his cue to move closer to you, except he overshoots a little, and he feels the tips of his shoes accidentally bump into the ends of yours; discerns the warmth emanating from your body against his own. He expects a withering glare, a kick in the shin, maybe, but you don’t seem bothered by the proximity at all, unblinking as you bring your hands around the either side of his neck and fasten the first necklace with a soft tap. Your fingers then brush over his collarbones to adjust the pendant, and he thinks your hands would have to be numb not to perceive the frantic heartbeat threatening to burst straight out of his skin.

Entire minutes pass before Hyunjin musters the courage to actually look at you. By then, you’re already working on the third and final necklace. It’s not a surprise that your face is mere inches away from his; he’s been watching your reflections out of the corner of his eye; he knows you’re closer to each other than you’ve ever been. But there are parts of you that the mirror doesn’t show—the soft curve of your lashes, the concentrated narrow of your eyes, the shapely protrusion of your pursed lips—and these surprise him so thoroughly that he slips and slides out of his right mind.

You are the type of beautiful that’s been around longer than humans have, the same as that of the true blue color of forget-me-nots. And Hyunjin feels enveloped, intoxicated by you from this minuscule distance. The idea forms numbly in his head that maybe, just maybe, he was put on this earth to admire you.

In this inebriated state, he makes a venturesome decision.

When you finish centering the last pendant upon the his chest, you are about to take a step back and review the updated look, but you’re debilitated by the feeling of fingers grazing over your hip—lightly, so lightly that you mistake them for a gust of wind at first, but the contact is enough to push the small of your back against the edge of the counter. Then, both of Hyunjin’s hands reach behind you, pressing flat against the marble surface, and, just like that, he has you right where he wants you, ensnared between cold stone and hot flesh.

And so begins an equilibrium so fragile that it’ll shatter if one of you so much as blinks the wrong way, your rattled breath fluttering against his lips, his eyes dark and hooded and out of focus as they survey the fine lines of your expression. It still doesn’t give you away (it never does), but he finds that in this moment he just doesn’t care.

“Let me take you out,” he murmurs. “One date.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” You reply under your breath.

“You know what I’m talking about, beautiful.”

Upon uttering that last word, he angles his head almost imperceptibly, the movement challenging, daring you to say something about it. But you don’t. You merely hiss out a whetted “you’re fucking crazy,” and that’s his opening to drag this on a little longer; push your limits a little more.

“About you? Damn straight.”

At this, finally, fucking finally, there is a semblance of something in your face that isn’t just your usual mildly-irritated nonchalance. Instead, he detects surprise in the whites of your eyes as you widen them; as you part your lips with a response that only comes much later.

And he’s surprised by your surprise. Surely, with your skills of observation, you would’ve noticed long ago how his world shrinks down to only you and your gorgeous voice and your confident glare and your shitty sense of humor whenever he’s been granted the privilege of your presence.

This might be the first time he’s admitted it out loud, but he hasn’t tried—hasn’t been able—to hide how he feels about you, not now, not ever. It’s been that way since the moment the sole of your shoe met the carpet of that conference room on the fourth floor of the JYP building.

“Hwang—” You begin.

“Hyung!”

At the sound of a third, new voice, your arms tense like you’re about to shove Hyunjin off of you, but he only leans in further, so that his lips almost graze your jaw and your hands have nowhere to go except the taut surface of his chest. The surprise is gone; now you’re just pissed. He can feel the heat of your furious eyes and the tremor in your hands as you form fists around the fabric of his top. But he takes his sweet time in scooping up the bracelet and rings, and only afterwards does he pull away from you and straighten to his full height.

“Hey, Innie!” Hyunjin chirps, and Jeongin materializes in the doorway, looking thoroughly perturbed by the older boy’s sunny tone. “What’s up?”

In the meantime, you turn around to snap the lid of your jewelry box shut, and it takes a singular glance in the mirror for a truly horrible realization to settle upon your shoulders. You don’t think anybody would be able to tell even if you announced it outright, but you know yourself and the little nuances of your face all too well.

You’re flustered.

You feel like a horror movie heroine breaking the fourth wall.

“Nothing, weirdo. I was just announcing my arrival,” Jeongin says. Thank fuck you did, Hyunjin thinks to himself, completely unaware of the epiphany you’re having behind him. “Chan-hyung mentioned you were here already? Why?”

“She’s in high demand.” Hyunjin points out the she in question by jutting his chin in your direction. “The usual.”

“Ah.”

Jeongin inclines his head towards you in polite greeting. You return his hello, but your expression starts to feel tight when his eyes dart between the strange smile on Hyunjin’s face and your awkward stance (still glued to the edge of the counter) as he drops his duffel by the couch. The boy isn’t stupid, unlike his older counterpart.

“I saw a vending machine on my way here,” Jeongin says, turning to leave the room again. “You want anything, hyung? Noona?”

“I’m okay, thank you,” you say.

“I’ll have whatever you have,” Hyunjin says.

Jeongin flashes a thumbs-up and dips out of the room, perhaps a little more hastily than he intends to come across. And then there are two. Again.

You wait until you can’t hear his footsteps anymore, and then you turn to glower at Hyunjin so intensely that he thinks you’re about to place a curse on his whole bloodline.

Then, your phone starts vibrating, and he knows he’ll live to see another day.

“You still owe me an answer,” Hyunjin calls as you turn around and leave the room.

“Don’t hold your breath,” you reply.

One day, I’ll break her, is the predominant thought that resides in Hyunjin’s head as he slips on the remaining jewelry; watches your figure disappear around a corner. One day, I’ll break his face, is the predominant thought that resides in yours as you stalk away. That’s the two of you, in a nutshell.

Six months ago. Osaka, Japan. 3:03 P.M.

When you walk into the dressing room, you find Haeun hunched over an overflowing photo album with her hands forming fists in her hair, muttering to nobody in particular, “I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.”

There’s an amused look in your eye as you set your bag down by Hyunjin’s empty vanity chair. She hasn’t noticed your presence yet; approximately three hallways down, the members are rehearsing for tonight’s performance on the main stage of the Kyocera Dome, and the music is so loud that you think you actually saw the walls vibrating while you were in the hallway moments ago.

You rise to your tiptoes and encroach upon her, waiting until she’s within reach to tickle the back of her neck. She nearly flies out of her seat with a shriek that can be heard over the heavy bass.

“Never gets old.” You hand her the photo album that went soaring also, and Haeun snatches it back with an affronted flourish.

“I can’t remember the last time you said hi to me normally, unnie.”

“Me neither, now that you mention it.”

Haeun and Han are your favorite stylist-idol duo in the world because they’re so eerily similar—and it’s adorable. They both illuminate every room they walk into; they both have grins too big for their faces, laughs too loud for their lungs. You always regret leaving your sunglasses at home when you catch sight of the effulgent pair.

But today you cannot detect the usual radiance in Haeun’s voice, nor so much as a hint of her easy grin. Then again, that’s another quality that she and her client share; they’re both well acquainted with the burdens that come with unwavering passion.

Every stylist has their own modus operandi. Haeun’s is a scrapbook of images that she cuts out and saves from catalogs, advertisements, newspapers, et cetera. You’ve seen it many times before, but never in such a state: messy handwriting stuffing the margins to their very brims, numbers and symbols like clusters of rainclouds over a sea of different outfits, arrows and circles and squares highlighting pant cuffs and cascade collars and dangling earrings. Telltale signs that Haeun hasn’t a clue as to what Han will be wearing tonight.

You gnaw on your lower lip, deliberating your next move. You end up placing a firm hand against the album’s cover and pushing it closed.

“Come with me,” you say. “We’re gonna try a new approach.”

Haeun opens her mouth to protest, but unfortunately you have an extensive track record of being right.

“What do you have in mind?” She sighs instead.

“You’ll see.”

With that, you stand up, tuck a small towel under your arm, and angle your head in the direction of the music.

The two of you make your way through the labyrinth of hallways that comprise the venue’s backstage. Eventually, the color of the floor changes from speckled white to solid black, and you step onto the part of the stage that is concealed from the audience by drawn curtains and heavy equipment. You say a quick hello to the group’s manager as you dip past him, and eventually reach the edge of the curtains, where you and Haeun have a good view of the eight members as they run through their setlist for tonight’s concert.

Haeun settles into the spot beside you, still confused as she follows your gaze.

“Let me ask you this,” you say, just audible over the din. “Can you style a performer if you don’t know how he performs?”

And understanding seeps over her features like poured tea.

“I want you to watch him,” you continue. “Tell me how he performs.”

Han’s part begins, as if on cue. His voice rings out through the empty stadium as he ducks to the front of the formation, a microphone held loosely to his lips, his face taut with focus. Haeun stares at him for some time, silently trying to fathom her observations, but she sees you shaking your head in the corner of her eye.

“Don’t think, Haeun. Just speak.”

She blows out a deep breath before obliging. “It’s hard to picture Han doing anything but laughing or making other people laugh, he’s so goofy and lighthearted most of the time. But he’s like a different person on stage. He’s so intense, it’s almost intimidating. Not intimidating in a douchey way, though—you just get the impression that he’s very confident in himself and his music.

You don’t say another word, but don’t need to. She’s hit her stride.

“His voice and enunciation are so clear. It’s crazy how he sounds exactly like the studio recording. Plus, his delivery feels genuine; he’s not just reciting lyrics, but speaking straight from his heart.

“And this is gonna sound bad, but I didn’t know Han could dance. Like, yeah, I knew that he could dance, but not like this. His movements are so sharp that I feel like my attention is being—”

Right there.

She cuts herself off, reaching the same conclusion.

“It’s his turn to talk, and he wants you to cling to his every word," Haeun articulates slowly. "He’s demanding your attention. He needs you to listen. That’s how he performs.”

A satisfied smile bolts across your face like lightning. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Haeun pictures her scrapbook again, and there are now only a few articles of clothing and accessories that fit the framework you’ve helped her forge. She’s almost dizzy with disbelief, tearing her eyes from Han to look at you instead.

“You’re brilliant, you know that?”

“I do, but I appreciate the reminder.”

She can’t help but giggle. It’s a you answer if she’s ever heard one. “Do you do that with all of your clients?”

Haeun asks the question arbitrarily, without thinking. But you respond in a way that she doesn’t think she’s ever witnessed before, and she’s momentarily baffled by the sight: you hesitate.

As the song’s final chorus approaches, Hyunjin is the one folding himself into the center of the eight-person throng. You can only see his back from this angle, but even then it’s palpable how expertly and effortlessly he molds his body to the modulations of the music; how much fervor and feeling he expresses with every jerk of his spine and flex of his hands.

Within a few short seconds, innumerable descriptors and sensations skim the surface of your mind—but one word knocks the rest clean out of the water, the way it always does when you watch Hwang Hyunjin perform.

Artistry.

“No,” you reply. “Not all of them.”

And where better to find inspiration than inspiration himself?

Haeun furrows a brow, understandably puzzled by this response, but you don’t elaborate. Partially because you feel like being coy, but mostly because you know that any explanation you offer will sound like a confession.

The song ends, leaving your ears ringing with the abrupt absence of sound. The members hold their poses with heaving shoulders, staring out into the empty stands until the stage manager’s voice comes through the monitors.

“And that’s a wrap! We’re all set for tonight. Good work, everyone.”

There is a ripple of movement around the stage as the boys relax. Jeongin jogs over to Minho, hoping to review a particularly challenging dance break; the manager asks Chan if he has a second to discuss travel logistics; Seungmin plops onto the edge of the stage and downs the rest of his water; Hyunjin beelines toward you the second he sees you, because of course he does.

You get a good look at him as he skips closer. Stray blonde locks plastered against his damp skin, tank top dyed several shades darker by the perspiration rolling down his neck, the muscles of his arms actually rippling as he swings them around stupidly, a shit-eating smile plastered across his stunning face.

You’re annoyed before he says a word.

“I didn’t know they were letting fans backstage now,” he hums happily. “Want an autograph, gorgeous?”

“Put a sock in it.” You whisk the towel you’ve been holding in his direction. “Wet freak.”

But he catches and tosses it over his shoulder straightaway, and your heart sinks to your fucking ankle. You’ve seen this movie before. You know how it ends.

“No.” You take a shaky step back. “No, nope, don’t even think about—”

The next thing you know, Hyunjin is lunging towards you and winding his arms around your waist, nearly sweeping you clean off your feet as he pulls you into his sweaty embrace. To your complete dismay, your face presses flat against the clammy plane of his chest. “Call me a wet freak again, go on,” he manages to say through his laughter.

In response, one of your hands wriggles free of its slippery prison and snatches the cuff of Hyunjin’s ear with impressive accuracy. He yelps and loosens his hold on you, but doesn’t relent completely, not even when he catches sight of the murderous expression on your face and cackles so forcefully his whole head is thrown back.

You tighten your grip. “Wet,” you seethe, “freak.”

“Ow—okay, don’t make it hot, what’s wrong with you?”

“Wha—what’s wrong with YOU?!”

As the two of you dissolve into your fatuous arguing, Haeun is no longer sure that she’s still standing here. She’s not even sure if she’s in her right mind anymore. She thinks she might be hallucinating the way everything about Hyunjin softens next to you, or the way your biting tone only seems to nibble when it’s him on the receiving end.

“Psst. We’ve been placing bets on them. You want in?”

Han suddenly materializes next to Haeun, and she would have been jumpscared into a different dimension if she wasn’t so fixated upon the bizarre occurrence before her.

But what if she’s not hallucinating?

No, not all of them, you’d said, like you were disclosing a forbidden secret.

“Yes,” she says, and Han beams. “Absolutely.”

Three months ago. Seoul, South Korea. 2:26 A.M.

On a tranquil Saturday night, you’re sitting at your desk, your knees tucked to your chest, the newest episode of your drama playing quietly on your laptop, a half-empty glass of rosé and open sketchbook laid before you. This is your happy place—a safe haven that the trials and tribulations of the real world can’t reach. But you think you’ve really gone and lost your mind when you find yourself thinking about your job.

Well, not your job, exactly. More like the man who makes your job feel fucking Sisyphean.

You know your way around fabric and foundation better than anyone, but you have never struggled with anything as much as you have trying to navigate Hyunjin. You show up to work every day ready to just put some makeup on the man; instead, you wind up stumbling around the potholes of his dimples and the hills of the veins that run over his forearms and hands like a hopeless drunkard. Scouring the creases of his smile and the oscillations of his voice like they’re topographical maps. Mentally replaying your interactions with him time and time again like you’re monitoring security footage, trying to detect illicit activity in every casual touch he leaves on your shoulder or waist; every babe or gorgeous he throws your way, seemingly without a second thought.

You’ve been trying to understand him and his intentions for seven months now, and your efforts have yielded no fruit whatsoever, save for a few theories that you feel insane for even humoring.

You down the rest of the blush-colored liquid, and as you set down your empty glass you notice your fingers itch with a familiar urge. The pen that you’ve been twirling over your knuckles stills, then swivels; its tip hovers over the last free corner of the sheet of cartridge paper below you. And then it presses upon the surface and starts to move, as naturally as if on its own.

When you were little, you came across a children’s book that you no longer remember the name of, about a little girl with a magical pen that brought her every drawing to life. You decided then that you would one day be that girl.

At some point, the subjects of your incessant sketching became almost exclusively runway models and makeup advertisements. You cemented that you wanted to work in fashion as early as your high school graduation, and by then you already possessed the conviction and charisma of the industry’s most experienced members. Your portfolio was stellar; your personality prophesied of wild success. So your career took off, propelled by the neverending positions and projects that various companies continually laid before your feet.

You stand and pad to your kitchen to refill your glass, only to bring the entire bottle of wine back to your room instead. With one hand, you flick the cap off and lift the whole thing to your lips; with the other, you seize your pen again, not wanting to lose momentum.

For the year or so after you joined the industry, you basked in your idyllic prosperity. Even the doodles you scrawled on random napkins during banal business lunches would appear on some of the world’s most renowned faces the next week. You had indubitably become the little girl from your story; made a career out of giving your imagination tangible form. And what a fruitful career it was going to be.

If only you knew how it would strengthen you in ways you never wanted.

The first time someone called you cold, it took you a while to realize that they were talking about you. The phrase was said so casually and lightheartedly that it sounded at first like a piece of unimportant small talk. But the whisper of cold bitch was then followed by a bout of stifled laughter and what was undoubtedly your name. Your heart stopped along with your footsteps, and you looked towards the source: two interns whose names you had yet to learn, while yours was already in their mouths.

You felt nothing until you were three stops away from your apartment, and then the bottom of the subway gave out beneath you and suddenly you were feeling everything. Only confusion, hurt, and rage at first, but then the other emotions that you’d been smothering tirelessly for who-knows-how-long tore free of their cerebral shackles too, and together they formed an amalgamation of anxiety that closed up your throat within seconds.

As your pen studs details into a shapely jawline, you remember how you’d shoved your way off the subway and made a mad dash into the night air. You remember how you collapsed against a utility pole in an unfamiliar neighborhood, how your knuckles paled around the ashen wood, how your tears tumbled over your lips and salted your tongue. You remember wanting to go home so badly that you thought your ribcage would cave in on itself with the weight of it. You remember begging for air, for you.

By the time the oxygen had returned to your lungs, the streets were empty save for you, crouched on the curb, your face buried in your arms, spent, shattered, and alone. You were only nineteen at the time.

You are now twenty-two, and the word “cold” has become a regular guest in the lodgings of your heart. You never invite it over, but you’re no longer surprised to find it at your door. It’s a thief, swiping pieces of you when it thinks you’re not looking—a fragment above the fireplace, a scrap from the cracks between the couch—and you know whenever you’re being robbed, know that you lose parts of yourself upon its every visit. But better that than acknowledging what you lose.

You allow it to walk away with full pockets every time.

Hyunjin does not.

“Three words to describe yourself. Go,” he said a few days ago, the two of you heading back to the tour bus after a filming session.

You were so used to these irrational inquiries of his that you didn’t bother trying to dodge this one. “You first.”

“Smart, sexy, suave,” he said immediately, but burst into a sheepish laugh at the sight of your weary glare. “Fine, fine, let me think. Ambitious, for one. Introspective, definitely—maybe overly so. And artistic. I’d like to think so, at least. Satisfied?”

The most creative person you knew doubting his own ingenuity was absurd to you, but you nodded begrudgingly. It was a good answer, for the most part.

“Now you.”

Honestly, the thief had surfaced the moment you heard the question, but you weren’t sure if you wanted to inform Hyunjin of its existence. Not because you didn’t trust him—you did, more than you had anyone in years—but because you didn’t know what you’d do with yourself if he agreed. You weren’t sure your heart would be able to take it.

When you met the boy’s gaze, though, the carob brown of his eyes was so curious and so comforting that you suspected that was never a possibility.

“Cold,” you mumbled. “I’ve been called cold before.”

There was a pregnant pause. You found yourself holding your breath. And then—

“That’s a joke, right?”

Hyunjin began to count off his fingers.

“Mean. So mean. Impossibly, infuriatingly confident. Talented, stubborn, strong. Funny, sometimes, I guess, though I’d rather you hit me with a metal pipe than admit that ever again.”

At this, you caved; a laugh erupted from your lips, leaving a genuine smile in its wake.

“Determined. Eloquent. Bossy. Some kind of evil, twisted genius. Contemplative, caring, compassionate. Fearless,” he went on. “You get my point. You’re a lot of things, Y/N, but cold isn’t one—”

He was about to say something mind-numbingly stupid. You could sense it in the air.

“—and not just because you’re hot.”

You smacked his bicep, the smile on your face now an uninhibited, helpless grin. And as he vanished into a fit of high-pitched laughter, you thought you sensed him crack open your door and slip your missing artifacts back to their rightful places.

Hyunjin began to climb into the bus, and you caught the cuff of his sleeve, your feet still planted on the pavement.

“Thank you,” you said.

The tremors of his fond chuckle traveled to your very core.

“Idiot,” he sighed softly.

Idiot, you write, and the drawings are complete.

When you stand up, the bottle is mostly gone—and so are you. You splash some water on your face in lieu of your skincare routine and prod the inside of your mouth a few times using a dry toothbrush, and then you dive beneath your duvet and are dead asleep in minutes. Your slumber is interrupted only by dreams of a world where your theories about Hyunjin aren’t just theories.

If you’d had even one mouthful less of rosé, you might’ve remembered that you picked up your phone and opened your most recent conversation somewhere between steps two and three.

[3:10 A.M.] To: Hwang Hyunjin (Stray Kids, JYP) Audio Message.wav

Hi. I’m drunk and I’m going to regret this tomorrow. But that’s tomorrow’s business. There’s something I need to tell you tonight.

After I moved to Seoul, I used to get these bouts of homesickness. Not in a standard ‘I wanna go home’ kind of way, but in a way that felt like a hole had opened up in the ground below me. I was always ready for it to swallow me alive. I would’ve been happy for it to.

But I haven’t felt that way since I met you. I realized this not too long ago, and it threw me for a fucking loop. I’ve never felt seen the way you see me. I’ve never been known the way you know me. Every time I look at you or hear your voice, it feels so much like returning home that I don’t have to dream of it anymore.

You called me fearless the other day, but you’re wrong. I’m terrified. I’m terrified that history is going to repeat itself, that another home will slip through the cracks between my fingers and there will be nothing I can do to stop it. And that’s why I’m so hesitant towards you, towards whatever this is, because I don’t want to go through that ever again.

So the thing I need to tell you is that I care about you. I care so much that I’m scared speaking it into existence will make it real and vulnerable to all the worst parts of the world. But it’s not speaking it into existence if I’m drunk, right? Maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about. Maybe you’ll never even hear this. So it doesn’t count. That’s how that works, surely.

Sorry if this was totally nonsensical. And sorry that I’m so bad at feelings. You must think I’m impossible, and I don’t blame you.

Good night, Hyunjin. Thank you, again.

One month ago. Los Angeles, United States. 12:37 A.M.

When Hyunjin steps out of the hotel’s tall glass double doors, he’s wearing a teatree facemask, and his bags are draped over the crooks of his elbows like he’s an upper-echelon socialite on his way back from a lavish shopping spree. And then he sees you standing next to the curb, and the situation dawns on him in bits and pieces.

You’re the only one here. The vans that were supposed to take you to the airport are nowhere to be seen. Boarding begins in four minutes.

A soft flinch crimps his features. Oops.

“Tomorrow night,” you’re saying into your receiver, but your attention is on him only, your penetrative gaze putting the dead in deadpan. “The absolute earliest. You’re sure?”

When you finish listening to the manager’s response, you heave a sigh that sags your shoulders and end the call with a jab that should’ve splintered your screen protector.

Then, you start walking towards him.

“Hi,” Hyunjin says, his eyes pleading for mercy. “You are so talented and beautiful. I don’t tell you that often enough, do I?”

He expects you to grab him by the cuff of his ear again, to throw him a retort that’s twice as mean as it is witty, something along those lines. But you merely push your suitcase in his direction, and it is then when he notices that your face is hard enough to chip enamel; that your eyes are eerily, entirely empty. The tendril of warmth that’s always dancing among the subtleties of your expressions, that he’s always pursuing to the very borders of his dreamscapes, is nowhere to be seen.

A shiver travels down Hyunjin’s spine as he curls his fingers around the plastic handle.

Something’s not right.

“We’re gonna have to stay here another day,” you say. “Can you check us in? I have some calls to make.”

“Us?” Hyunjin repeats.

“Junghan could only reserve one room,” you reply, your phone already glued back to your ear. “The hotel is fully booked for the next few months.”

With that, you’re already preoccupied with the next thing, turning to the side to reschedule a meeting. But Hyunjin can only stare blankly at your profile, trying and failing to grasp that he’s going to spend a night with the subject of his every daydream. Though you might be leaning more towards the nightmare end of the spectrum at the moment, considering the way your head snaps back in his direction like a woman possessed.

Go, you mouth, and he obliges.

A few minutes later, Hyunjin is in the elevator by himself. He speculates it’s an ingenious, intentional choice that the lights are turned off, so that whoever’s inside can watch the psychedelic lights of Los Angeles sprawl further and wider the higher they go. But he can’t think of anything except for the subzero nothingness where your irises should’ve been.

Hyunjin’s initial guess was that he crossed a line with this missed plane, but the more he thinks about it the clearer it becomes that this isn’t an isolated issue. It’s the culmination of something bigger. Something continuous.

You have become as familiar to him as the lines of his eyes or the ridges of his knuckles. He’s learned where to look for your feelings when he can’t find them in your face; studied your words and the undertones of your voice like they’re verses of scripture. Yet, it was around two months ago when Hyunjin looked at your side profile and couldn’t recognize you. He’d blinked, startled, and then you’d asked why he was looking at you so strangely, and everything returned to normal. He wrote it off as a side effect of sleep deprivation and paid it no more mind that day.

Except it happened again a few days later; again, not too long after, and Hyunjin began to suspect that he was losing his mind. You didn’t seem all that different—a bit more taciturn than usual, maybe, but you’d been busier than usual, too, your workspace always full of empty coffee cups by the end of the day, the pages of your planner more colorful and crammed than ever. The minor variances never struck him as a reason for worry.

“Stupid,” Hyunjin whispers bitterly.

He replays your interaction one more time. You, shoving your suitcase against his palm, telling him to go check in. Him, fastening his hand around the handle, sensing the bottomless void within you, feeling like he’d been dismissed from before your throne.

As he steps off the elevator and walks towards your designated room, he doesn’t understand how or why—but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s failed you.

Nearly an hour passes. The room only has one bed, so Hyunjin turns off the lights, folds himself onto the armchair by the floor-to-ceiling window, drapes a complimentary robe over his shoulders, and tries to sleep. He doesn’t know why he even tries. He’s exhausted, but he knows damn well there’s no hope of him getting any rest until he has you in his proximity again.

He doesn’t look at the door when he finally hears it open, but the knot of tension in his chest comes undone as soon as your silhouette appears in the hallway. He takes out his first real breath since leaving you at the hotel’s entrance.

You hear the sound it makes. You fall still.

“Hyunjin?”

His heart physically aches at how tired you sound. “Yeah?”

“Oh, you’re awake,” you answer. “Move to the bed. You’re not sleeping on that thing.”

He remains where he is, his chin resting on the side of his fist, his eyes glued to the flickering panorama of neon lights below him. You crouch to unzip something, and there’s a heavy thud of metal meeting cloth, presumably your laptop being tossed onto the bed’s mattress.

“Hello? Did you—”

“Is everything okay?”

A short pause follows his interruption.

“I still have a few emails to write, but everything’s been rescheduled, so as long as you don’t miss tomorrow’s flight, too, we should be—”

The robe slides off his lap as he pushes himself to his feet. “That’s not what I mean.”

The only source of light in the room is the lone light above the entrance, but it’s enough for him to see your face and the surprise etched upon it. You open your mouth, utter one syllable, and stop yourself immediately after, stunned into silence by the sobriety in Hyunjin’s expression.

“Enlighten me, then,” you say finally.

“You really don’t know?”

“What is there to know? That you missed a flight and pissed me the fuck off? Trust me, I’m aware.”

“No, that’s not—”

“So what are you talking about, then? Why are you talking in riddles? Fuck, what is it that you want from me?”

There’s real frustration in your voice, and it’s the first time you’ve shown him any emotion in pure, unadulterated form. With this, Hyunjin understands that he was right; this conversation is heading towards a culmination of some kind, and so are you, with the devastating force of a natural phenomenon.

He wonders if you’re prepared to destroy yourself, too.

“I know how you are around me,” you whisper. “You’re always acting like you’re trying to unearth something, and I figure this ‘something’ must be wonderful, because you look at me like I’m made of stars; you speak to me like you’re serenading a lover. But I am constantly, ceaselessly haunted by the possibility that this ‘something’ doesn’t exist, that you’re looking for the wrong thing in the wrong person.

“I know it’s selfish to ask for anything more than what you’ve already given me—you’re so kind, Hyunjin, and you’ve been nothing but since the day we met. But grant me one more wish, even if it is the last time you ever do.

“Tell me what you see in me,” you plead. “Otherwise, I will spend the rest of my life mourning the months of yours that you wasted on me.”

With that, it occurs to Hyunjin, falls upon and cracks open his mind like a piece of firewood, that you have never been aware of—never asked for—the throne you sit upon.

For an indeterminate amount of time, the two of you stay there, standing in silence on opposite sides of your dark hotel room. You haven’t felt anything like this in a long time, your chest heaving with your heavy breaths, your vision muddied by both the lack of light and the desperation searing through your windpipe.

When Hyunjin finally begins to speak, his words wrest the oxygen from your lungs.

“After you moved to Seoul, you used to get these bouts of homesickness.”

Your mind careens; your heart reels.

“They came in a way that felt like a hole had opened up in the ground below you.” He takes a tentative step towards you. “You thought it was going to swallow you alive. You would’ve been happy for it to.”

You never got to listen to your voice note. You were blacked out when you recorded it and horrified when you discovered it in your chat logs the next morning; the wretched thing was unsent so quickly that you couldn’t check for a read receipt.

But there’s not a doubt in your mind that these are your words falling from Hyunjin’s lips.

“You haven’t felt that way since you met me, though.” He is only a few feet away from you now, and getting closer still. “You’ve never felt seen the way I see you. You’ve never been known the way I know you.”

God, you said that? Did you propose to him too?

“You’re terrified that another home will slip through the cracks between your fingers and there will be nothing you can do to stop it.” Hyunjin flattens his left hand upon the drywall next to your ear; pushes you back ever-so-gently against the hard surface. “I must think you’re impossible.”

And he brings his face so, so close to yours; looks at you with so much adoration, so much tenderness, that you feel the final bulwark around your heart fracture—

“I don’t,” Hyunjin breathes, cradling your cheek, “because you’re not. And I want to prove it to you, even if it takes me the rest of my life. That’s what I see in you.”

—and crumble.

You form fists in the lining of his hoodie. Hyunjin’s hand tightens where it lays over the curve of your jaw.

When you crash your lips upon his, he tastes the metallic sheen of electricity and the salt of tearwater both; he witnesses crying lightning, for the first time in human history.

Present day. Cannes, France. 9:15 P.M.

Hyunjin never thinks when he fucks you.

One part of it is that he physically can’t; his cognitive facilities shut down when he has you quivering beneath him, like his desire to pleasure you is too overwhelming for his mind to bear. The other part is that he doesn’t want to. He’s afraid that the voices of cynicism and trepidation that plague his mind every waking moment will taint the actualization of his wildest dreams.

Lucky for him, you manage to erase his mind on a daily basis with only one accidental touch or an apparition of a smile, so he doesn’t stand a chance whenever you let him between your legs.

“Trust me?” He whispers, imprinting the words upon the inside of your thigh.

“More than anyone,” you breathe, and just this has him tenting against his satin slacks.

Hyunjin used to see you scolding managers or moving racks twice your weight and think that was you in your element—tonight, he learned otherwise. You were so confident that even just the way you puffed your chest out prompted heads to turn and low voices to ask for your name; so charming that even by the end of your self-introduction you had every guest you spoke to eating out the palm of your hand.

Eating out your pussy, though, is Hyunjin’s privilege alone.

He wraps his fingers around the hem of your dress and pushes it upwards, creating a halo of red fabric around your midriff; slides your panties off your legs and tosses them over his shoulder. All obstacles out of the way, Hyunjin winds his arms around your thighs and pins your hips to the mattress, slotting himself between your knees as they fall apart. Your ankles fold over the top of his head, and you’re about to ask if he’s okay like this, but then you feel the hot muscle of his tongue trace over your dripping folds—and every word of every language you’ve ever known is dispelled from your brain and your mouth in the form of a stuttered, euphoric moan.

He teases you first, drags his mouth over you so that he’s lapped up all of your slick, and just when you feel your patience thinning he pulls you apart with reverent hands and begins to suckle on your clit, as attentive to your every solicitation as always. You arch your back so high off the bed that your ankles knock Hyunjin’s head down a few inches, but the new angle is even better; grants him access to more of you.

He reinforces his grip around you, presses his torso right up against the side of the mattress, and gorges: sluices your labia until you’re spilling from his chin onto the sheets; flicks against your bundle of nerves until it’s pulsating and swollen on his mouth; fucks his tongue against your favorite spot until you’re curling your toes, seeing the whole solar system.

“Coming,” you blabber after some time. Tell me something I don’t know, he thinks to himself. “Coming, Hyune. I’m—fuck—”

Hyunjin is aware of the way you clench so hard around nothing that your pelvis hurts. He is aware of the way you’re so dilapidated from pleasure that you’re genuinely struggling to breathe. He doesn’t care. He wants to get the cadences of your climax tattooed into the gray matter of his brain, and there can’t be rests in the sheet music, can there?

He presses a hand flat on your stomach in preparation for your body’s protest, then returns his face to its place between your thighs; starts to leave kitten licks around the edges of your puffy folds before you can finish riding out your high. You press your tongue against the back of your front teeth, emitting a pained hiss as you draw a sharp breath, tears stinging at your eyes.

“Son of a bitch—”

“Trust me?” He asks again, his voice vibrating against your sore cunt, and your complaints quiet into whimpers as you bring a hand over your quivering mouth, and nod.

At least Hyunjin bridles his thirst the second time he eats your pussy open, his lips smacking openly and slowly over your every inch except the one that would be truly unbearable for you right now. He’s so rough and so fucking careful at once like he can’t decide between obliterating and worshipping your cunt.

He’ll end up doing both.

Within a few minutes, your legs have gone slack on either side of Hyunjin once again, and another coil has begun to tighten behind your bellybutton, equal parts pain and pleasure—but he knows your pussy just as well as he does your person by now, and it’s not long before the former is compounding with the latter.

Round two has a faster ascent and a steeper drop. He finds your spot again with the precision and ease of a trained marksman and fixates upon it like a man starved. It has your cries devolving to incoherent profanities and, to his unfettered delight, your foot actually shaking, your heel tapping against the back of his neck every time it comes down.

As if referencing a metronome, Hyunjin matches the rhythm of his tongue to your accelerando. Only when your leg is nearly convulsing does he wrap his lips back around your clit; slide two fingers into the place he leaves empty and pumps them into you until you are liquifying, igniting around him, your mewls lamenting the second orgasm he plucks from your core.

After your body has stilled, Hyunjin lifts his head, his face drenched in perspiration and saliva and you. His eyes travel over the slopes of your arms and the hills of your breasts, over the tears streaming from your eyes and staining the pillow you lie on. It is this last bit that has him shrugging off his shirt and undoing his dress pants with one hand, palming his throbbing cock with the other.

He clambers over you, and the kiss that follows is filthy, your mouth falling apart when he rolls your nipples between his fingers, strands of spit suspending between your tongues before dripping down onto your collarbone. You can sense what he wants in his craving lips, his pleading tongue—and you know he won’t ask for it. He’s tested you enough tonight; he’d rather your comfort than his pleasure.

But you guide his leaking head to your entrance, returning his stupefied look with a watery smile.

“Love me?” You ask this time, for the first time.

There is not even a nanosecond of hesitation when he answers, “with everything in me.”

He comes inside you the moment he bottoms out, your name leaving his lips in breathless, desperate repetition like a broken prayer as he topples off the same cliff he’d dropped you from moments ago. You curl a hand in his hair as he stutters against you, bring your lips flush against his ear, and whisper that you love him too—and the sight of you beneath him blurs he also starts to tear up.

This is the reality Hyunjin lives in, presumably because he was a saint in his past life, and it would be his utmost pleasure to see it through.

Two years later. Milan, Italy. 11:28 A.M.

For the last half hour, a ray of sunlight has repeatedly struck the diamond that sits between the second and third knuckle of your ring finger, and the Vogue journalist on the other side of your desk thinks he is slowly losing his vision. But when he asks his final question, your hand comes to a much-appreciated stop, the fountain pen you’ve been twirling around clattering to your tabletop.

“Where do you find your inspiration?”

As the journalist blinks the phosphenes from his eyes, he finally manages to get a good look at the face of Versace’s newest designer, and he detects something ineffable and warm in your expression.

“My inspiration, hm?” You fall silent for a short time, thinking. “If you asked me this at the start of my career, I’d have said ‘people.’ Their postures, their expressions, their wardrobes. I knew I was a goner when I watched a fashion show for the first time and noticed how the models’ attire helped them harness their innate power and grace—I wanted to orchestrate that kind of symbiosis, too. In that aspect, nothing has changed, actually. I still find wonder in human beings, and not just the ones on the runway. I think it would be difficult not to, don’t you?

“Some time ago, a good friend of mine was having trouble with an outfit for her client. She asked me a similar question, and only then did I realize that it was no longer just people that inspired me most, but a singular person. I had always been skeptical of the idea of a ‘muse’ until I met him. But I could only spend so long denying how he ventured closer to my soul than anything ever had, how he knew me and saw me like nobody ever could. He understood my art. He was my art, so—”

Your eyes dart over your ring, and the journalist would’ve flinched out of habit if he wasn’t so mesmerized by your eloquence.

“—where better to find inspiration than inspiration himself?”

A few seconds elapse, and then you clear your throat and straighten your back, returning to your office from your trip down memory lane.

“That’s the long answer, anyways. The short answer would be my fiancé.”

The journalist laughs, and he doubts you’ll give him this next piece of information—but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try.

“And who would that be?”

He’s right. You don’t answer the question. But you do flash him an enigmatic smile, and for some reason it reminds him of lightning.

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