#he's watching bachelor in paradise

[dancing-mylife-away]

i can’t wait for chimney to be revealed as bachelor nation’s #1 fan 😂🤣

[babiebom]

bachelors and their weird kinks/turn ons perhaps 👀

A/N: it took a LOT for me to find weird things that arent gross(literally shit or dead people sorry if you’re into these) and even then I don’t even think these are weird but there’s only so many sites that I can go on to find weird kinks or even kinks in general. Fun fact there’s a kink for watching people fall down the stairs!! Keep in mind I’m talking about these fetishes and kinks from my own memory from looking them up lmao.

Tw:nsfw like all of it, cursing etc let me know if I should tag anything else!!

Bc: at least 4 for each? One for what the kink is and one for the explanation?

Stardew Valley Masterlist

Sebastian

Dacryphilia the kink or fetish for watching or causing someone to cry(positive or negative). A kink for tears if you will

I don’t know if I’ve talked about this before (I might’ve?) but dude has a major crying kink. Like he needs to make you cry while having sex. In this instance it’s a good crying. Like from how good his dick feels inside you. How good it feels when he moves, when he touches you. It’s like overstimulation but the crying is the main thing he wants.

Somnophilia the kink or fetish for having sex with someone while they’re asleep.

AGAIN this is all consensual but he likes the way you look when you’re asleep. You’re fully content and relaxed, no troubles or worries. He just wants to make you feel even better to send you to a new level of paradise. And the way that you are free in your reactions instead of holding everything back. All of your sounds and the way you move…it just gets him off in a different way.

Sam

Katoptronophilia the kink or fetish for watching yourself or others have sex in a mirror

I think this kink more so has to do with his partner. I do think he would get off with watching you or him fucking you in a mirror. Like you both can see your own faces and it’s just hot how you can see how good he’s making you feel and the other way around. It’s like his recordings kink but in real time.

Claustrophilia the kink or fetish for tight spaces literally the opposite of claustrophobia

I think he would like the whole stuck in a small closet together thing or the whole (if you’ve seen kdramas bc this is the only time I’ve seen it) hiding from someone in a tight space and being forced to be close or touching.

Shane

Shibari the fetish or kink of Japanese bondage. It’s more artistic than regular bondage and can sometimes be nonsexual(meaning it can just be for the act of being tied/tying someone up)

I do think Shane might have a artistic side to him, he loves his blue chickens and even though he hasn’t particularly shown that he likes art I think he’d appreciate this form. Like yeah it has bdsm tones and he likes that, but he likes the time taken to tie you up, the time it takes to make the ropes look pretty on you. It gets the both of you riled up so the sex might be more passionate.

Electrostimulation the fetish or kink to being stimulated or stimulating someone with electricity

Oh dude is definitely a sadomasochist. He wants to shock you, he wants to be shocked (partially because he wants to feel something other than mental and emotional pain). It’s never so much that it hurts too much but it’s a little stinging sensation that he can’t get enough of.

Harvey

Quirofilia the kink or fetish for hands, but well taken care of/pretty hands

Oh I think Harvey HAS to take of his hands. As a doctor I think he would be happy if someone complemented how soft his hands were or how clean they looked. And on the other hand(heheheh) he would appreciate how nice your hands look, how soft they feel, how good they feel when touching him.

Breeding/Pregnancy the kink or fetish for pregnant people or getting someone pregnant. It has nothing to do with the child itself but the person carrying the child.

NGL I think once you two come to an agreement about pregnancy(in this case you agree to start trying for kids) Harvey is absolutely going to go batshit insane with this new development. Before he would’ve never said that this is something he’s into but once you two agree he’s so pumped up and actually starts talking dirty if he didn’t before. It’s crazy how different he is during this time.

Alex

Anasteemaphilia the kink or fetish for extreme size differences so either a giant or a dwarf(I hope this word isn’t offensive it’s what the website used)

Dude would NEVER reveal this but actually would love a giant girlfriend. I think because of the lowkey misogynistic views he has he would like a bigger woman and a smaller man. He would LOVE lady dimitrescu from resident evil. Like bffr.

Food Play the kink or fetish of involving food during intercourse so either eating it off each other or involving it in some way

Oh absolutely would love to eat food off of you and would want you to lick stuff off of him. Like whipped cream and chocolate syrup are MUSTS if you’re having a particularly long night. He thinks it’s so erotic to eat and consume stuff off of each other that don’t really have anything to do with sex.

Elliott

Psellismophilia the kink or fetish for stuttering

One of the weird ones I found. I think he would think it’s cute and if you do have a stutter or happen to stutter when you’re nervous he’s going to have such a confidence booster because of it. Like YES keep stumbling over your words and stuttering it actually is cute to him and he feels like he’s in a book or a movie or something.

Podophilia the kink or fetish for feet

I think this one is obvious? I think he’d prefer beautiful people and that includes feet. In a lot of erotic movies and books and even in romance books feet have some sort of importance to them. Whether it’s used to dominate someone or to pleasure someone he likes beautiful feet. He wants you to step on him(not in a rough way) and tbh I could see him wanting to recreate the scene in that one tarentino(is this his name) movie where he casts himself in the role that drinks I think alcohol from that woman’s food after it runs down her leg.

[sgt-tombstone]

someone remind me to write this later: grad student/dog sitter Johnny who stays in enigmatic, mysterious bachelor Mr. Riley’s mansion whenever he goes out of town to take care of his two massive English Mastiffs

Mr. Riley is very private (Johnny’s only met him once, when he got a tour of the house and a rundown of his responsibilities the first time) but also very accommodating. He tells Johnny that he’s allowed to live in the house as if it were his own; cooking with whatever he found in the pantry, sleeping in either the master bedroom or the guest bedroom, watching TV or playing video games, using the study for his homework, lounging by the pool in the backyard, etc. He even tells Johnny that he can invite friends over to stay with him, because the massive house is too much for just one person.

The two dogs, Ghost and Riley, are sweethearts. A brother and sister pair, Mr. Riley explains, and total opposites in temperament; where Ghost is standoffish and slow to trust, Riley is affectionate and playful. They get fed twice a day with food undoubtedly more expensive than any meal Johnny has ever had, get let out whenever they need it, and sleep in padded dog beds that look far more comfortable than Johnny’s own mattress at home. Mr. Riley presses a key into his hand and inputs his phone number into Johnny’s phone before sending him on his way, content in the knowledge that Johnny knows everything he needs to know in order to keep his beloved dogs alive during his business trip the following week.

The first time he dog sits, Johnny sits on eggshells the whole time. He sleeps in the guest room, taking care not to disturb the sheets too much, putting everything back exactly the way he found it almost as soon as he uses it. He doesn’t eat any of Mr. Riley’s food or use any of his personal items, despite having express permission to do so, and he’s gone before Mr. Riley returns home from wherever he had gone on his business trip.

The second time he dog sits, he relaxes into it a little bit. He still sleeps in the guest room, but he raids the pantry when he gets peckish, and he hesitantly sets up his computer in the study, the laptop looking comedically small in the massive home office.

The third time he dog sits, he invites his best mate and roommate, Kyle, to stay with him. Mr. Riley had been right; the house is far too large for just one person and two dogs, big as they may be. He and Kyle spend the week lounging by the pool, sometimes studying but more often reading spicy or humorous excerpts from their respective trashy romance novels. He even brings himself to use Mr. Riley’s bathroom to wash the chlorine from his skin, discovering a shower that could fit five people, complete with a rainfall shower head, three side jets, and an infinite number of buttons controlling temperature, water pressure, and countless other parameters that Johnny can’t bring himself to mess with too much.

After that, he falls into a rhythm. Mr. Riley is his only client, which is fine by him, because the money is fantastic. He arrives after the other man leaves, invites Kyle and sometimes Gary to stay with him, spends upwards of a week in literal paradise taking care of two angels in dog form, leaves as soon as the cleaning crew arrives (usually the night before Mr. Riley is scheduled to come home) and gets paid for his trouble. It’s a dream job. He only pushes the boundaries of Mr. Riley’s hospitality once, at the end of the term after final exams, when he invites his entire cohort to an overnight pool party, but Mr. Riley doesn’t mention it, and Johnny doesn’t ever do it again, quickly returning to their normal routine.

Meeting Mr. Riley for the first and only time had sparked an ember of lust. Taking care of his dogs and house fanned that ember into something like a burning crush. But it’s the voice memos that fuel the flames into a full-on bonfire.

Mr. Riley is a busy man. Usually, he writes out instructions for Johnny before he leaves, making sure that the younger man is informed of any contractors, cleaning crews, or maintenance workers that would be showing up at the house. But occasionally, he forgets. These are Johnny’s favorite occasions, because it means that Mr. Riley will send him a voice message, too rushed or impatient to type, and Johnny saves every single one. For reference, he’d say, if Mr. Riley ever asks, but he never does, so Johnny never explains himself. He just hoards the sound of Mr. Riley’s voice, the husk and gravel of it sending blood straight to his groin every time he listens to them. It should be shameful, considering the fact that he spends at least one week every month curled up in the man’s bed, rinsing himself off in the man’s shower, floating idly in the man’s pool, doing his homework in the man’s home office, and cuddling with the man’s dogs. Mr. Riley is a paying client, not a friend, and definitely not someone that Johnny can foster such a crush on without feeling guilty about it, but he can’t help it. And Mr. Riley will never know about it, so what’s the harm…?

[gloomwitchwrites]

Their bachelor party.. what kind of shenanigans are they getting in to?!

Hehe. Anon, I bow down to you. I had so much fun with this prompt. I was able to be super creative and silly with it. Really, I had a freaking blast with this. I also spent an insane amount of time researching stag night / stag parties / stag dos. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed putting it togther!

Presented in four double drabbles.

For the masterlist and how to submit your own request, click HERE

Content & Warnings (per the warnings MDNI): swearing, drunken shenanigans

Word Count: 800

ao3 // taglist // main masterlist // imagines & what if masterlist

John Price

“When you said ‘stag do’ I didn’t think…this.” Soap gestures vaguely.

“What were you expecting, Johnny? Strippers? A lap dance?” mocks Simon, keeping his gaze forward.

“You plan on giving me one, Lt?” asks Johnny with a devilish grin.

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you, Johnny?” replies Simon, downing the rest of his beer.

“Don’t know what you’re on about, Soap,” says Kyle from somewhere in the back. “Captain made a damn good choice. When are you ever gonna do this again?”

“It is my day,” says Price, settling back into his seat. “And this is what I want to do.”

Kyle drops off a fresh beer for Simon and clasps Johnny’s shoulder. “We’re at a sold-out football match in a box suite.” He gestures behind him. “There’s a buffet and beer on tap. More than the four of us could eat or drink. Fucking glorious, mate.” Kyle brings his beer to his lips, and sighs once he’s taken a long gulp.

“What about tonight, Captain?” asks Johnny. “We drinking?”

Price nods. “With some of the bride’s family actually.”

Kyle leans forward. “I got us all matching outfits.”

“I’m not wearing shit,” says Price over his shoulder.

“He is,” whispers Kyle.

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

“Holy fucking hell, Kyle. You did good!” Soap slides on his sunglasses and places his hands on his hips. “This place is fucking paradise.”

“Get in the shade, Johnny. You’re gonna burn,” says Simon, sipping on his piña colada.

With a grin on his face, Johnny stalks over and plucks the tiny pink umbrella out of Simon’s drink. He sucks on the end of the stick.

“I need someone to get my back. You up for it, Lt?”

Simon gives Soap a blank stare as he finishes the last of his drink. Kyle starts to laugh, leaning back in his beach chair.

“What the fuck are we in right now, Johnny?” asks Simon.

Johnny glances around and shrugs.

“A cabana.”

“Oh, aye. When we were on that mission—”

“Fucking hell,” mutters Simon. “I’m getting another drink.”

“Grab me something with tequila in it,” says Kyle.

“Who’s putting sunscreen on my back?”

“Have the groom do it,” growls Simon as heads for the bar.

Johnny shrugs and turns toward Kyle, the end of the pink umbrella still in his mouth. “Bit hairy back there.”

Kyle shakes his head and cups his mouth with both hands. “Price! Come get your sergeant!”

John "Soap" MacTavish

“Fucking look at us.” Johnny grins and turns around to face Price, Kyle, and Simon. “We ready to go?”

“You’re not fucking wearing that. And I’m not wearing this.” Simon takes off his hat and gestures at Johnny with it. “We look insane.”

“What? This?” Johnny glances down at his outfit. It’s a Pikachu onesie. Hood included. “Pretty fucking comfortable.”

Price, Simon, and Kyle are all dressed up like Ash Ketchum. Even the hats have the correct logo.

“We look fucking ridiculous,” grumbles Price, fidgeting with his jacket.

“I think we look pretty smashing actually,” shrugs Kyle.

“Didn’t you watch Pokémon growing up?” asks Johnny. “We sure did.” He drapes his arm over Kyle’s shoulder.

Simon stares blankly, arms crossed over his chest. “There better not be pictures. I don’t want to find myself on the fucking internet in this.”

“Or shown at work,” mumbles Price.

Johnny lightly punches Simon shoulder. “You look good, Lt.”

“If it helps,” interrupts Kyle. “We can fill these with alcohol.” He holds up one of the plastic pokeballs that he, Price, and Simon have clipped to their belts.

“Thank fucking hell,” sighs Price. “I’m in.”

“Simon?” asks Johnny.

Simon rolls his eyes. “Hells. Fine.”

Simon "Ghost" Riley

“Lads! Lads! Lads! Lads!”

Kyle and Johnny chant manically as Simon chugs his beer. It takes a few meager seconds and then they yell fiercely, beating their chests before grabbing Simon’s shoulders and shaking him. Simon wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Another!”

Kyle grabs Simon’s empty glass and heads to the bar to order another round. Johnny breaks out into song. It’s in Scots. He’s loud and off-key.

“Speak English,” laughs Simon.

Price crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in the booth, resting his head on the top. His eyelids shut.

Soap switches over to English but it lasts for only a few lines. He switches between the two, even tossing in a bit of Gaelic. Simon doesn’t understand any of it.

Kyle comes back with another round. Price opens one eye and groans. “Can’t. Heartburn.”

As soon as the words leave Price’s mouth, Johnny snags Price’s beer and downs it before picking up his own and consuming that.

“Fucking hell,” mutters Price. “I won’t be dragging your ass home. Any of you.”

Simon and Kyle clink glasses as down half of theirs.

Johnny grins. “We’ve got three more pubs to go, Captain.”

taglist:

@km-ffluv @glitterypirateduck @tiredmetalenthusiast @miaraei @cherryofdeath

@enarien @saoirse06 @ferns-fics @unhinged-reader-36 @miss-mistinguett

@ravenpoe67 @tulipsun-flower @sageyxbabey @mudisgranapat @ninman82

@lulurubberduckie @leed-bbg @yawning-grave81 @azkza @nishim

@haven-1307 @voids-universe @itsberrydreemurstuff @spicyspicyliving @keiva1000

@littlemisscriesherselftosleep @greeniegreengreen @umno-yeah @blackhawkfanatic @talooolaaloolla

@sadlonelybagel @kadeeesworld @iloveslasher @sammysinger04 @dakotakazansky

@suhmie @jaggersinclair @jackrabbitem @lxblm @beebeechaos

@no-oneelsebutnsu @kidd3ath @certainlygay @thewulf @lovely-ateez

@whisperwispxx @gingergirl06 @eternallyvenus @smileykiddie08 @arrozyfrijoles23

[babybatss-blog]

Hii, I'm Brazilian, so I'm sorry for this shitty writing

can you write something with SDV Sam? I rarely see fanfics with him and I wanted a creative boost to imagine what his married life with the farmer would be like (with all the scenes, even some spicy ones 😉)

WITH YOU

(Stardew) sam x reader, 1400 words

a/n: since you left it pretty vague I tried to make this not too plot heavy, instead it’s a simple drabble on marriage with out fav bachelor! I hope this is what you were wanted lovely x

cw: proposal with a ring instead of mermaid pendant, marriage, slight out of characterness (which makes sense trust me), mentions of adult activities but nothing explicit, slight swearing, kissing and making out. Talk of babies at the end.

How he managed it, you’ll never know. For a man so often oblivious and clumsy, he pulled of the proposal of your dreams.

It was 11pm on a Friday, and after Sam randomly disappeared from the bar under the guise of a full bladder you thought something was off. Abigail and Sebastian were oddly giggly, the other patrons far too watchful of you and Sam was taking way too much time than he should be. Eventually you got up, walking to the bathroom to only find Alex. “Oh, he left.” He simply stated, a matter of fact tone that lazily disguised a strange excitement. “He went to the beach.”

You walk down to the beach, muttering to yourself about what he could possibly be doing. He didn’t have much to drink so this wasn’t some dumb wandering, and he seemed relatively happy earlier so it couldn’t be that something upset him. Come to think of it though, he did appear overly fidgety, like a man with something stressful on his mind.

As you near the beach, shimmering lights start to appear. At first they remind you of Zuzu city, but once you see the man standing in the middle of them, you know that you are actually home. Your home stands within the candles, a grin on his face as you realise: this is it. The day you have dreamed for since you were a child, wishing you could have. It doesn’t take a very long nervous speech from Sam to bring you both to tears, choking out repeated agreements between lovesick kisses and hugs. The next couple of months are spent in a bliss, no matter how stressful. It turns out that Sam was contemplating the day of your marriage just as much as you were, so the collaboration of the wedding went by as a breeze.

What colour is the aisle? Blue. What type of bouquet do you have? Wild grass and Dandelions. What is served at the reception? A mix of pizza pockets and joja cola (despite how unprofessional it may be, this had to be done.)

And the honeymoon phase never ended. It may be because you never actually got to go on a honeymoon, but the two of you spent everyday in a comfortable paradise, going about your daily tasks and enjoying each other’s comfortable company. “Do you think you could teach me how to plant crops?” He asks out of the blue, when the two of you were cuddled up on the couch watching another horrible sitcom. Surprisingly, Sam has managed to mellow out in his locked down lifestyle, swapping his late-night escapades for meaningless conversations and the sound of heavy metal to the rain on a drowsy afternoon. You snort, shocked by his change in attitude. The Sam you knew, so boisterous and uncontrollable has been replaced with a lovesick old pup, preferring spending time with his partner over risking his life.

“You? Mr hay fever? No way!”

But less than a week later it happened, and he was collapsed in the grass, sweaty and pouty. “Who knew gardening would be so hard?!” He whined, throwing his head back like a toddler who was told they couldn’t have ice cream. You laugh, walking over and holding his chin in your hand, towering over his weak frame. Your gloves get dirt on his face, but neither of you care because his jeans have been ripped up, hair frizzy, and he even managed to cut himself with a shovel, however impossible that may seem.

“I warned you. But you insisted that you would be fine, dumbass.” “You should have forced me not too.” “I know beautiful boy. I’m sorry.” You croon, crouching down to his level. But all prior anger dissolves within him at the look in your eyes, leaning forward for a deep kiss. Despite his grown-up demeanour, the two of you still love like teenagers, hungry for each other’s touch and fragile after every little look. His tongue lurches into your mouth, exploring every nook and cranny like it’s the first time as you groan in pleasure at his unadulterated lust. You would never admit what happened next.

It's not even three months into the marriage now, and Sam wakes up to find you already up, as per usual. You stand at the window with a cup of tea in your hand, and he can smell the mouthwatering pancakes you made on the table. How he got lucky enough to have you, he’ll never know. “Good morning sexy” he teases, slinging his arms around your shoulder and looking out the window with you towards your hard work. That’s one thing he’s always admired from you… Your insane amount of dedication and resilience. When you inherited the farm, it was a battered mess, and after school he would go there with Abigail and Sebastian, always returning home with blackberry cuts and twigs in their hair. But now it is a utopia, alight with all types of plants, animals, and decorations. Plus, you managed to make an insane profit out of the whole ordeal, turning your struggle to pay the bills into shouting everyone at the saloon on someone’s birthday to a drink and a hot meal. “Have a good sleep?” You ask, looking up at him with an adoring smile. “Course, you know me.” Scoffing, you reply with a shaking head “like a baby.”

And honestly, it’s true. If Sam has one talent, it’s his ability to fall asleep in a split second. The moment the lights are off he’s obnoxiously snoring, often crushing you with his dead weight. If he was to be asked why, he would say it’s because of you. Just as much as you view him as your home, he also sees you as his. A safe haven, someone he knows will take care of him and always be there for him, no matter what.

“Like a baby.” He repeats, looking out the window with a strange, squinting expression. It confuses you, but you don’t push. After all, he just woke up. It’s not uncommon for him to struggle with opening his eyes or being a functioning human being in the morning, he’s like a bear out of hibernation. But eventually he lets you into his thoughts anyways. “Actually, I’ve been thinking… How would you feel about trying for baby. I know we are still pretty early into this whole marriage thing, but it just feels right. I don’t know. Maybe it’s dumb.”

For the first time in a long while Sam seems properly nervous, rambling his words and shuffling about. It’s nice to see that side of him, and truthfully you feel like you were at the start of the relationship too. Happy. Giddy. Excited. “Seriously?! Sam, I thought you said you wanted to take your time with that part of our life??” You place the mug down and turn to him, furrowing your brow. This unintentionally makes him panic, backing up on his words regretfully. “No, no I’m still happy for that. Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I know I wanted to take my time. Sorry.” Your heart melts, looking at your husbands worried face. Shouldn’t he know you would never judge? You peck his cheek, holding both his hands with a tender smile. “Don’t be sorry. I’d love that.” In a split second he lifts you up into his arms, kissing your face in a variety of places as you laugh.

“Baby baby baby!” he chants, jumping up and down. Soon he practically launches you onto the bed, lying on top of you and further peppering you with kisses, that uncomfortable stitch in your side forming from your pure laughter and ecstasy. It’s safe to say the next couple of weeks are spent tirelessly trying, in between sessions of rants about how great your little family is going to be.

[xanadontit]

Something's off

I was a latecomer to the Bachelor franchise and enjoyed it for awhile but I think that's because I was watching "with" coworkers and we had fun mocking/dissecting it the next day. This was in the "Colton the Closeted Virgin" era for reference. But now even Bachelor in Paradise is so blah. I don't enjoy it at all.

I'm pretty over Below Deck in all its forms. I think if they ditch Gary and Daisy next season I could get into Sailing Yacht (in this house we stan Captain Glenn! we love a short king!) but maybe not?

Tried Love Island last night and could barely get through ONE episode. Maybe I need to give it more time?

I could rewatch VPR from the start, no problem. RHONY, RHOSLC, RHOP, the Bethenny spin-offs where we see her enter into an abusive marriage in real time? Fire 'em up. What's different? Has the trash changed or have I? A true question for the ages.

General Hospital is gettin' LIT right now with some old school soapy goodness so maybe that's all I need now to scratch the mindless bullshit itch? I mean, Drew is banging Nina and making out with her daughter Willow! Willow is married to Drew's nephew! Cody just confessed to Mac that he's his son! There's always the promise of a Stephen A. Smith appearance! I should count my blessings.

[talltalesandbedtimestories]

“Let You Off With A Warning” - Beau Arlen x Reader

Part of the “Guardian of the Gulch” Series

Rating Teen

Beau Arlen x Reader (eventually)

Tags: Fluff and Flirting

Word Count: 1900

There's a new sheriff in town. And he just so happens to have parked his RV in your campgrounds. What's a park ranger to do with all that Texas charm strutting around on a fine pair of bow legs?

I'm participating in @jacklesversebingo and this part will fill my "Food as Bonding" square.

Image created in Canva (credit for photo used: ABC/Michael Moriatis)

Corey’s eyes are ready to roll right out of his eye sockets. He slumps over the counter, office phone pressed tight to his ear.

“Absolutely.” He enunciates every syllable. “Yes. I can see how that would be quite an intrusion.” Those stubby fingers snap to get your attention. 

You’re finishing up your checklist after vehicle patrol. When did fireworks become an every night of the week event for days prior to the Fourth? The annoyance can become dangerous in Black Sandy State Park. Especially when bored kids and drunk adults get it in their heads to light things on fire on campgrounds during drought conditions. You’re figuring that’s what the call’s about. Things had been relatively quiet so far that night.

You had hoped they were going to stay that way. All you wanted to do was clock out in the next five minutes, get home, and catch up on “The Bachelor” episodes filling up space on your DVR.

“We’ll have someone head over and take care of it.” Corey smiles at you.

You groan back at your Park Manager. You’re the only other someone.

~

You head to the campsite that phoned the office first. It’s a husband and wife with a large brood. They’ve got every creature comfort under the sun - or in this case, moonlight - in their parcel paradise by Hauser Lake. The Class A motorhome makes you wonder what kind of house they left behind. 

The wife is the one running her mouth at you even though the husband had called to lodge the complaint. You try to wrap your head around the noise she’s harping about and how it’s possibly bothering the four kids. All of the children are laser-focused on handheld devices. They don’t even look up when mom asks them to corroborate how annoying the sound from their neighbor is. 

If you had your way, you’d block all WiFi access in every part of Black Sandy. 

After the requisite pleasantries, you turn and trudge through the shadows to the lodger who’ll be getting a talking to. Though not the talk Mrs. Devonshire is expecting.

You adjust the cap on your head. The voice emerging from one solitary speaker is muffled and mono on your approach. The silver Airstream is curvy and sleek. A standout that manages to sparkle even in the dark.

Its owner sits in a lawn chair. He’s watching some old time western projected onto a white sheet tautly stretched between two poles.

His eyes have cottoned on to your movement seconds ago, you're sure of it. His day job requires him to be hyper aware of his surroundings at all times.

“To what do I owe the honor of a house call this late, Ranger? Raccoon invasion? Dump station on the fritz?” He stands to greet you. An open beer dangles from his fingertips.

“Nothing that exciting, Sheriff.” The Bachelor’s got nothing on this specimen. The handful of times you’ve crossed paths, you are never quite prepared to be in this man’s presence.

“I’m not on duty. Call me Beau, remember?” He grins to confirm the allowance of such informality.

You sigh. “Afraid I am on duty. And have to request a favor.”

He nods and tilts his head over to the Devonshires. “Let me guess? I’ve done something to upset Linda.”

You raise an eyebrow. “How’d you know?”

“I had her figured out as soon as she waltzed over to introduce herself bright and early this morning before I left for work.” His lids widen in emphasis. “Ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back. Is she about to release the kraken?”

You chuckle. “Just turn down the volume on your movie a smidge, please.” You pinch two fingers together. “We’ve never had a complaint about you before, so no worries. We’ll let you off with a verbal warning this time.” You grin.

He’s amused at that. “Mighty kind of ya. Well, let me do it right in front of you, so you can put it down in your incident report.” He strolls over to the speaker and dials down the knob. “Perpetrator immediately complied with the request.” He announces, a little on the loud side. “In case Linda’s watching.”

You stifle a laugh. “I’m guessing she doesn’t know you’re the Sheriff of Lewis and Clark County?”

He shakes his head. “How would she? I don’t think I got five words in this morning.” He lifts the lid of a green cooler with the toe of his cowboy boot, bends down and pulls out another beer bottle. He has a bounce in his step on his way back to you. “But, you know, I don’t reckon it would’ve even mattered. She still would’ve had Larry make the call.”

“How’d you know Larry called?”

He shrugs and offers you the beer. “Lucky guess.”

You wave a hand. “On duty, remember?”

A tip of his wrist has him checking his watch. “You getting paid time and a half? It’s almost nine.”

You smile at how well he catalogs information and smooth talks with all that easy Texas charm. By your second run-in with him he’d found out your work schedule and how important it was for you to stick to it. He even had you fess up, somehow, to your penchant for reality TV, especially shows of the love competition variety. You grab the beer and twist off the top. The beer tingles down your throat in a welcome swallow. “It’s all your fault I’m still here.”

“Well, then, let me make it up to you. Sit a spell.” Before you can register, he’s snapped open another lawn chair near his own. He presents it with a flourish.

“I guess I should hang around for a bit. Make sure you don’t get yourself in more trouble.” The chair settles into the dirt under your weight.

“Not the first time it’s been suggested I need a chaperone.” He sits alongside you.

You nod at the movie. “What’re you watching?”

He stares at you, disheartened. “Really?”

“I don’t do westerns.”

“Pale Rider. Clint Eastwood. It’s a classic.” His head shakes. “Kids today.”

You scoff. “Kid?”

“You can’t be more than 25,” he states with complete earnestness.

“You don’t need to butter me up, Beau. I already said you’d get off on a warning.”

“How about some bribery then, just to ensure nothing ends up on my permanent record.” He nudges a bowl on the tiny circular table in your direction.

It’s hard to make out the contents. You squint. Light from the projector brightens up the scene for a moment. “Oh, you found them.” You pull out a cherry and tug at the fruity flesh between your teeth to release the stem.

“I did. Saw ‘em at a farmer’s market in town. You were right. Flathead cherries are amazing.”

“Hm.” You concur and indulge in the sweetness. “So good.”

Beau snickers. “You two need some alone time?”

“So good,” you repeat. “First pick of the season reminds you of what you’ve been missing all year.”

He nods and grabs a couple for himself. “That’s what the guy at the stand was spoutin’.”

Beau Arlen has only been the sheriff for a few weeks. But you agree with the assessment that most have of him. He’s an affable and acceptable substitute while Walter Tubb recuperates. Arlen’s smart and ingratiates himself easily with everyone in the county. He knows those that keep things running in Helena by their first names already. And as you are someone that secures and protects a part of state land in the county under his jurisdiction– well, you get to share a beer and some cherries with him tonight. 

The conversation is light and dances about with no rhyme or reason.

“What’s your favorite meal to eat back home?” He asks with great interest. With an angling of his head upward, he shoots a cherry pit out of his mouth like a mini cannonball into the shadows. You think he’s intentionally aiming in the direction of the Devonshires. “Like, the kind that needs your undivided attention?”

“Easy. Grilled salmon and roasted asparagus with mashed potatoes.”

Beau takes a swig. “Found anything comparable here?”

“Not yet. Doubtful it’ll be anything close to what I could get back home in Oregon.” You course correct and try not to be too hard on the place you’ve called home for the past two years. “But, you can fish a decent dinner out on the lake.” You thumb at the water behind the trailer. “The trout and perch are tasty.”

“I haven’t gotten around to fishing in Hauser yet.” He sighs.

“Seems like every time I turn on the local news, something major is going on in the area. Most of it ain’t good.”

“Tell me about it. I thought this would be a slow drip favor of a job for a friend. I was saying to Hoyt today that a dam holding back all the crime must’ve burst as soon as I got here.”

You make a note to give Jenny Hoyt a call. You haven’t hung out with her or Cassie in a bit. It’s time to catch up and get all the details you can about the new sheriff in town. “Well, what crime has Helena committed when it comes to your favorite meal back home?”

“Oh.” Beau’s lips flap as he releases air from his lungs. “Haven’t found a good T-bone yet. Tried grilling a couple myself but I don’t know, just not the same. What I wouldn’t do for a melt in your mouth steak with some buttered corn on the cob and a baked potato topped with sour cream and chives.” He licks his lips with a far away stare.

You grin at how fond his expression is over the memory. You kind of wish he’d stare at you like that for even a second.

Some soft pops ricochet in the night air. You both sit up at the sound.

“Fireworks.” Beau states. You nod and then wait to see if anything can be seen in the distance lighting up the sky. It quiets again after some seconds. “You better get home before you can never leave,” Beau decides. You open your mouth to protest. He only shakes his head and cuts you off. “Hey, if Corey’s got something to say about it, just tell him the sheriff can pinch hit if he needs backup.”

You smile. “Not sure if that’ll fly coming from me.”

“Then you tell him to call me if he needs confirmation.” He nods and this time the smile he gives you is fond and, dare you think it, a bit flirty. “Besides, you’ve got a bachelor waiting for you at home, doncha?”

The laugh bubbles out of you. “I doubt he’ll be any better company.” You purse your lips at the confession that gave more of your thoughts away than intended.

He stills at the compliment and takes it in for a long beat. The smile that curls up is soft and sweet. “Thank you.”

“Thank you.” You rise and leave the half drunk beer on the table. 

Beau rises as well, always the gentleman. 

“Have a good night.” You hurry out the words to match your steps.

You don’t dare turn to look back at the sheriff. You can’t stop grinning like a giddy school girl.

His voice, low and warm in the summer night, draws out, “You have a good night as well.” He adds, “Ranger.”

Read Part 2 Here

[monstersandmaw]

Male sharkman x male reader (nsfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

___

Commission #3 in the list of 5! Thank you for trusting me with your prompt! I hope you like it! (For reference, this sharkman is built like King Shark, not a merman with a shark tail).

Contents: human male reader who’s bigger and taller than most, and who usually (and happily) takes care of his friends, meets a big ol’ sharkman on a tropical getaway, who’s big enough and tall enough to take care of him for a change. Some very light D/s undertones but nothing hardcore - just some manhandling and consensual dominance and praise from our big sharkman in the bedroom. Also featuring a sporty werewolf, a sexy werewolf, a cheeky naga, a cinnamon roll satyr, and a smol and shy fellow human, a tropical beach setting, and some mention of alcohol.

Wordcount: 4656

The sun sent red and black patterns dancing over your closed eyelids, and the heat of it on your exposed skin was truly glorious. In the background, the sea brushed against the white sand, barely a whisper to let you know she was still there; that you hadn’t floated away in this blissful paradise.

And to think you’d actually been a bit pissed off with Eric when he’d first said he was having his bachelor party on a tropical island, so far from home. That had been before you’d seen the expanse of silver sand, with those picture-perfect palm trees leaning down over it like curious explorers all inspecting a rare seashell. The water beyond was so clear it looked like a moving glass sculpture, with the sand undulating away beneath it out towards the distant coral reef studded with starfish and shells and a thousand tiny fish.

Someone yelled a warning and you twitched awake, but too late. A wet, cold beach ball landed on your stomach and bounced off into the sand beside you. With a put-upon sigh, you opened your eyes and peered over at where Eric and the others had been playing volleyball with a floaty, too-big beach ball.

It was still within easy reach, so you scooped it up and lobbed it back at them one-armed, and they cheered.

“Thanks big guy!” Fennel hollered at you, and the little flash of the blond satyr’s white tail blended almost perfectly with the pale, glittering water behind him.

“No worries,” you chuckled with genuine affection for your mad bunch of friends before letting your head loll back onto the towel beneath you. You heaved another sigh and stared up at the sky between the fingers of the palm leaves. Deep contentment settled around you, despite the rising racket they were making.

When the roughhousing started to get a bit too boisterous about twenty minutes later, you sat up with a scowl and watched as Alban wrapped his thick, white, marble tail around Eric and held him in place, keeping him from reaching the ball. Eric suddenly doubled over and gave in to the shift, black fur rippling down his spine, claws sprouting at his hands, and Alban released him with a crowing laugh to let him fall into the sand on his face, while Eric’s red swimming trunks ripped open as his werewolf form took over.

“Fuck’s sake,” you muttered fondly and headed over to keep the healthy play from getting too out of hand. They were in public after all.

It had been like this since university, when you’d shared a house with Eric, Alban, Fennel, Sebastián, and Matt in your very first year, and every year after. Between Eric and Sebastián at the full moon, Alban during moulting, and Fennel at change of coat season, you and Matt had put up with an awful lot as the only humans in the house.

Now, Matt was standing on the sand at a safe distance, watching as Eric leapt at Alban, flattening the naga’s human torso into the sand and expelling all the air from his lungs with an ‘oof’ that was audible even as you crossed to them. Fennel, however, had been knocked on his ass and looked a little winded, if otherwise unharmed. You didn’t even think the naga and werewolf had even noticed that he’d been caught up in the fray, which was nothing unusual with them when they started shoving and barging each other around. Sebastián was still up at the restaurant, thank the gods, otherwise he’d have shifted too, and you’d have had two overgrown puppies and a snake as thick and heavy as a felled oak tree to wrangle. Even for a human your size, that was asking a bit too much.

“Oi!” you yelled like a football coach, and to your pleasant surprise, both Alban and Eric looked up and froze, mid-tussle. “Knock it off. This is supposed to be a tropical paradise, and you’re not making it feel like that.” Ignoring them for the time being, you approached Fennel first and held out a hand to him. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, shaking sand out of his golden curls. His hair spilled around his chunky, ram’s horns and ears and joined up with the stripe of pale gold fur that went all along his spine from his shaggy, ovine lower half. “Not the first time I’ve been swept off my feet by a naga,” he grinned as you hauled him back on his hooves.

“Won’t be the last, handsome,” you snorted and looked around at the rest of the beach.

Luckily, there was hardly anyone else about. A spectacular-looking mermaid with a glittering, teal and cyan blue tail that flashed pink when she moved it had hauled herself out of the water and was watching your group of guys with a slender, white-blonde centaur curled up beside her, and you couldn’t tell at that distance if they were impressed or appalled by your friends’ behaviour.

In the water, an orca mer breached the surface with his family, his children shrieking and also crashing back down into the tiny waves with as much glee and abandon as Alban and Eric had displayed on land. Not far from them, the triangular fin of a great white shark cut through the water like a knife through silk.

You paused, wondering if you should alert the family, but then you saw the orca mother clock it and dip beneath the waves. No panic ensued, so you dismissed it as another merfolk, and turned back to your group just as Sebastián sashayed down from the boardwalk and surveyed the carnage on the sand with a raised eyebrow.

“I leave for ten minutes to buy you all drinks, and look what happens,” he said in his lilting, Spanish accent. “Honestly. Here,” he added, and held out the tray of assorted drinks. As you glanced at it, you saw that they were all either beer or cocktails, and with the sun as hot as it was, you rolled your eyes.

“Didn’t you get any water as well?” you asked.

He did have the grace to look a little chagrined, but he didn’t seem all that keen to make the trudge back along the boardwalk to the restaurant at the far end of the beach, so you sighed and grabbed your wallet from your bag. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it.”

“You’re the best,” Fennel said from behind you, his hands already cupped around a piña colada that was almost big enough to bathe in.

“Go slow, yeah?” you said with a shake of your head at him. “And try not to kill each other while I’m gone.”

“Whatever you say, big guy!” Fennel giggled. “Oh, and can you get us a litre of Coke while you’re there?”

“And, like, a whole bucket of those amazing fries!” Eric added, his wolf’s voice deep and gravelly but his words still clear enough around his mouthful of fangs.

“Yeah, yeah, you got it,” you sighed with a placating wave of your hand as you turned away.

“You’re the best!” Fennel beamed, followed immediately by a hiccup.

At this rate you were going to need more pitchers of water than you could carry in one go.

The rush of someone rising out of the water behind you down the beach drew your attention — perhaps Alban and Eric had started up again — but your eyebrows rose when you saw a being you’d never actually seen before in person sloshing through the shallows on powerful legs.

Sharkfolk were rare and solitary, once shunned by their merfolk cousins as ‘beast men’ in the same way minotaurs had once been treated as lesser by centaurs simply because they had the head and shoulders of an animal instead of a human. Luckily, things had come a long way since then, but the sharkfolk tended to keep to themselves all the same. This one had red and white swimming shorts on that said ‘coastguard’, and he waved cheerily at the orca family as he left the water and made his way up the beach towards you, also heading towards the boardwalk.

He paused as he drew level with you and he looked you up and down in a way that made you grateful that your own boardshorts were still dry and hanging loose around your hips. His eyes seemed completely black, and his storm-grey head melted seamlessly into a thick neck and broad shoulders to give him a hunched-over look that spoke of immense power. His arms were thickly muscled too, his torso bare and monumental, and criss-crossed here and there with scars. He was also about seven feet tall.

“Big guy?” he chuckled at you, and it took you a moment to catch on; he must have heard Fennel’s enthusiastic exclamation. Yes, you were pretty big — for a human — but not compared to a naga and a shifted werewolf.

“Eh, long story,” you smiled. “And you’re only a foot or so taller than me.”

“I am bigger though,” the sharkman said, flexing his shoulders just enough to make his point, and more than enough to make your mouth go dry.

His smile was all sharp teeth, which didn’t help either. His lips pulled back when he laughed again, the sound deep and rich, and you swallowed, hoping his sense of smell wasn’t as good out of the water as you knew it would be in.

“Titus,” he said by way of introduction as he extended his three-fingered, webbed hand to you. “You heading up to the hotel?”

“Yeah. These losers forgot that only drinking alcohol in the heat is a dumb-ass thing to do, so… someone has to take care of them.” You smiled with affectionate exasperation around the words and rolled your eyes.

Something about that softened his almost brash expression though, and he shrugged his huge, round shoulder. “Big guy who takes care of his friends. Something else we have in common.”

You looked away, cheeks flushing hot when you realised he was flirting with you. “I guess.” You offered him your name as the two of you set off up the sand again, and then asked, “You work here all year round, or are you just here for the tourist season?”

He scratched the back of his head, his sharp, black claws rasping over his sandpaper-rough skin. You loved the watercolour tideline where the dark grey along the top of his head and down his back blurred into the milky white of his pale chest and belly. It made you want to run your hands over it to see if he was sensitive.

You tripped and refocused your attention on his answer.

“Yeah, just here for the season. I tend to move around a lot, you know? Never stay in one place long. Too much of the world to see. They needed a lifeguard for the summer, so I took the job. It’s been easy so far.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” you said, and he shot you another sharp-toothed grin that sent all your blood south.

“I’ll drink to that. Let me buy you one?” You’d been about to refuse, thinking that at least one of the group should stay sober, when he added, “Something soft for now, but maybe I can share a beer with you when I finish work tonight?”

You weren’t used to people being so forward with you, and it made your tongue falter.

Titus misread your surprise as discomfort, and immediately backed off. “Unless I misjudged…? Wouldn’t be the first time a guy’s not been interested…”

“No, no,” you blurted. “No, it’s not that. I just wasn’t expecting… I mean… I’m not exactly used to guys like you… You know… being into guys like me.”

“‘Big guy’?” he asked with incisive intuition, and you nodded.  

A slow, deadly smile spread across his face, lips pulling right back, and the image of him closing those powerful jaws around your shoulder blazed across your imagination; of him letting you feel the prick of each pointed tooth across your skin as he held you down in place beneath him and —

You swallowed.

“Well, it’s not every day I come across someone who’s so…” Titus began, and again, his black eyes raked the length of your body, taking in the shape of you in a way that should have made you self-conscious, but all it did was turn you on, “… exactly my type,” he finished. “Come on, or I’ll get too distracted by you to finish my shift.”

You bit your lip to keep the resulting grin contained, and walked with him along the boardwalk. He used his staff discount, and no small amount of natural charm and charisma, to get you a deal on the Coke and fries, plus another soft drink for you, and he carried two pitchers of iced water for you while you carried the rest, plus an extra pitcher, on a tray back to your friends.

“Thank you,” you murmured as you stepped off the boardwalk and back onto the hot sand.

“Pleasure,” he replied in a quiet, polite rumble and he set the pitchers down near your towel.

The sun had crept around while you’d been away, and the palm trees were now casting a shadow across half of it, so you set the tray down as if it were a picnic blanket and straightened to find him standing much closer than you’d expected.

“So will I see you at the bar tonight?” he asked, large head tilted slightly to the side.

“Yeah,” you croaked, swallowing thickly and nodding. “I’d like that.”

He surprised you then by reaching out and crooking his forefinger, gently lifting your chin a fraction with the knuckle. “Looking forward to it,” he said, and walked away down the beach, leaving you breathless and thrumming all over.

“What was that about?”

Matt’s wispy tenor beside you made you jump and you turned around to find him tucking into the fries and looking up at you with his big, innocent, blue eyes wide and curious.

Taking a deep breath, you turned to face him and smiled, feeling like the proverbial cat who’d at least been promised the canary. “Just a little something for myself… Make sure you share those with the others…”

“Just getting my turn in before the wolves descend,” Matt protested, but he stalked away towards the others all the same, and you watched him offer them around.

Titus was waiting for you at the bar that evening, wearing dark grey slacks and a form-fitting white shirt that showed off the hulking slope of his shoulders. You wondered vaguely if it had been tailored to include a slit for his sharp fin on the back, and when he turned slightly in conversation with the bartender, you saw that it had. Instead of looking ridiculous, it just looked… inviting; enticing, like it was just asking you to slide your fingertip along the jut of dark, exposed fin and tease the skin beneath the fabric…

He was perched on a tall, metal stool, leaning one elbow against the bar and chatting easily with the spiked lizardfolk working the bar, but when caught sight of you, he jutted his chin in a friendly summons, and you found yourself powerless to do anything but approach.

“Hey,” you said as you joined him, but he didn’t speak for a moment.

He let his jet black eyes roam the length of you again, and you wondered if you should have dressed smarter. When you blurted something about being there for Eric’s bachelor weekend and not having expected to need date clothes, he held up a finger and the words died on your tongue.

“You look perfect,” Titus said in a voice that should have been too quiet to carry above the music and the people, yet you caught every syllable as they shivered through you. “Come, sit,” he said, indicating the empty seat beside him. “Tell me all about yourself.”

To your surprise, it was easy to sit there and just talk to him.

He listened attentively, keeping his gaze locked on you, and although he had bought you both a drink, you almost forgot to sip from it, losing yourself in conversation. He touched you often, laughing and clapping you on the shoulder at a tale from your undergrad days, and when you told him how you usually ended up ‘designated driver’, and how no one believed quite how difficult it could be to wrangle two drunk werewolves and an inebriated naga into a taxi in the dead of winter, he leaned close and rested his three-fingered hand on your upper thigh. His weight pressed the back of your leg into the bar stool and the heel of his palm dug deliciously into the muscle of your quad, and your breath caught.

“You’re kind,” he said, stroking his thumb across the fabric of your trousers. “I hope your friends know that.”

Unexpectedly emotional, you shrugged and glanced down, breaking eye contact. “Yeah, they look out for me too,” you said, and you meant it. “I have to admit though, it’s nice to do something that’s… just for me.”

“You want to get out of here and go back to mine?” he asked, taking his hand off you and leaning back in his seat again.

The decision was in your hands, but you’d already made up your mind hours ago.

You nodded, and he smiled, all joy. “Come on.”

Your feet felt like they were floating as you followed him out of the bar and back out into the balmy evening. Pausing briefly outside, you breathed deeply and inhaled the salt air with a smile on your lips. When you opened your eyes, you found him watching you. He didn’t say anything, but you got the impression he was pleased to see you relax.

His cabin sat a short way from the main hotel, and was sparsely but nicely furnished, with a comfy couch in the living-kitchen area and big, picture windows that overlooked a seating area and the dark ocean beyond. He offered you a drink, but you both knew it was only a pretence. You shook your head and bit your lip, feeling your heartbeat quicken.

Silently, he led you through a door on your left into his bedroom, which had a large bed and white, gossamer curtains that framed a view of the sea. “Tonight is for you,” he said, leaning down over your shoulder from behind and purring in your ear. Your breath hitched again when his large hand landed at the small of your spine and he added, “Will you let me take care of you?”

Unable to form words for a moment, you just nodded.

“Good. Now, I can’t kiss you the way a human would, but I’m going to make sure you feel good, alright?”

“Uh-huh,” you managed.

Before he went any further, you clarified that you were comfortable going without a condom, since sharkfolk didn’t catch or transmit human diseases, and he nodded. That done, he turned you around and backed you slowly up against the closed bedroom door with just his advancing presence and a low, insistent growl. Given that most of your partners before that had been human, and smaller than you, the sensation was wonderfully foreign. Your body relaxed, your breath coming in fast, shallow gasps through open lips, and his growling grew louder, the sound filling the room like an idling engine.

“I can smell you,” he said, looming over you and nuzzling the tip of his nose against the soft, vulnerable side of your neck. “I can taste you,” he went on before nipping at your skin and letting his tongue lick a hot, wet stripe across your racing pulse.

You let out a weak ‘oh’ and tried to keep your knees from giving out.

Then his black eyes rolled back a little to show a delicate crescent moon of white in each, his lips peeled back off his teeth, and he slowly took the whole of your left shoulder joint and most of your neck in his mouth.

Under different circumstances, you might have been embarrassed by the high, broken wail that left you at the sensation of being pinned and held completely in place by someone so powerful, but in that moment, endorphins flooded through you and your awareness tunnelled down to just the prick of teeth through the fabric of your shirt and the massive hand that had closed around your right wrist.

“Fuck,” you hissed and he rumbled in pleasure at your reaction.

He ground his hips against you and you could feel how hard he was already. His tongue laved across your throat again, tasting you, and he drew back with a heavy exhale, eyes returning to that full, midnight black as he regarded you. “I’ve been thinking about this all day, ever since I saw you on the beach earlier,” he said. “Couldn’t stop thinking about you. Get on the bed for me.”

In no time at all, you had lain back, naked, and Titus was halfway out of his own clothes when he caught sight of you and swore softly, shaking his head.

“You are so fucking gorgeous,” he growled, resuming his efforts at undoing his fly. “I’m going to wreck you.”

Another little mewl escaped you and your cock ached to be touched, but he hadn’t said you could, so you just lay there with it leaking over your stomach.

“Good,” he said as he slid his trousers over his hips and you saw his cock.

 Thick, hard, and huge, it was everything you wanted, and you let out a barely restrained, “Please…”

“All in good time,” he purred, smiling again in a way that was hardly more than just a baring of his teeth. It was a smile that promised pleasure with the pretence of danger, and it lit you up all over.

To your surprise though, Titus actually took his time enjoying your body, but the thrill of having him run his tongue along the length of your cock while carefully keeping all his teeth out of the way was almost enough to make you spill. You could feel the way your body was practically there already, your thighs and torso shaking with want, your hands scrabbling at the sheets beneath you each time he took you into his mouth and curled his strong tongue around your cock, your spine arching, your blood pounding, but it wasn’t quite enough. Titus grinned and reached for the bottle of lube in his nightstand.  

After he’d teased your ass with his thumb for a while, being very careful of his claws around the sensitive ring of muscle, he knelt above you, lifted your right leg, and eased the tip of his huge cock inside you, inch by inch, until you were so full you could hardly draw breath.

“Oh fuck,” you hissed when he finally sank to the hilt inside you and went still.

“That’s it, I’ve got you,” he crooned, holding your hips in both of his three-fingered, claw-tipped hands. “You look so good like this for me. Gods, look at you, you’re so full. You’ve taken all of my cock…”

A garbled noise left your lips and you sobbed another ‘please’, which prompted him to draw almost all the way out again.

Slowly, attentively, he fucked you, moving with care until you were accustomed to the massive stretch of him, but before too long he began to pick up his pace, and each thrust grew a little stronger. Titus grabbed your hips and lifted you, drawing you closer so that he could fuck you deeper, and changing the angle so that each stroke caught you just-so, and you could no longer help the noises that left you in a constant stream of nonsense.

“Please, please… please…” you choked. Your cock was still untouched because he hadn’t said you could touch yourself, and it drooled all over your belly each time he thrust his hips.

He began to growl in an unending, uncontrollable strain that made your ears ring.

“Fuck, I’m gonna come,” he said, the movements getting faster and harder, and the rhythm a little unsteady. “Oh gods, you’re gonna make me come…”

He lowered your hips back down so that he could reach around your raised leg and wrap his huge hand around your cock while you held both legs up, fully exposing yourself to him. “Yes, good, like that,” he snarled and you offered him a dopey smile. “Just like that. You look so good for me. So good. You’re gonna make me come. I’m gonna come…”

He worked you hard and fast in time with his own movements, and in a few seconds, you came with a shout, your body clenching tight around his big cock.

Titus roared, and you opened your eyes again just in time to watch his black eyes roll back to reveal only the whites.

His lips peeled all the way back, showing his pale gums and that row of lethal teeth. Bellowing, he arched his back, pressed his hips flush to your body, and spilled inside you. He let go of your cock and grabbed your other hip, pulling you right down onto him as close as he could, and you yelled again at the beautiful oversensitivity of it as he came inside you.

When he finally finished, his eyes rolled back to normal, and he set you gently down onto the mattress again. Spent and drained of strength, your legs flopped listlessly, and he also stayed put for a minute longer as if he hadn’t expected his orgasm to be so intense. His cock still twitched from time to time inside you, and he bowed his head over you, breathing hard.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” he grunted. “You ok?”

“Mmm,” you sighed, body lax and exhausted and aching in all the right ways.

Titus offered you an oddly shy smile and then carefully withdrew.

He cleaned you up with a tenderness that surprised you a little after his display of dominance and strength, but he seemed to enjoy the process almost as much as he had making the mess in the first place.

When he caught you looking up at him with an almost misty-eyed expression, he quirked his head. “What? I told you I was going to enjoy looking after you.” After a pause, he added, “I saw how you were with your friends. You’re always taking care of them, aren’t you?”

Too embarrassed to respond, you just shrugged and let him keep wiping the warm washcloth over your upper thighs and across your stomach in slow, soporific strokes that made your eyelids heavy and your spine turn to water.

“You deserve to be taken care of as well,” Titus rumbled, and then he lowered his blunt, shark’s muzzle to your inner thigh and gave you the closest approximation he could of a kiss. He nuzzled the sensitive skin there and around the crease of your hip, just teasing your balls with his tongue and then moving up over your belly in an act that was as much admiration as it was clean-up.

“You’re exquisite,” he said, and then he lay down facing you on his side, wash-cloth abandoned somewhere out of sight, and pulled you into his arms. “Come here. You want to stay the night?”

“Please,” you nodded as you rolled over, letting his huge arms encircle you as he tugged your back flush to his front and then reached down to pull the sheets up around you.

You'd honestly never fallen so quickly or so deeply asleep in your life.

__

Thanks for reading this story, and I hope you’ll consider reblogging it (as well as leaving a like) if you enjoyed it, since that will help others find it.

Take care, and I hope you have a lovely day/night wherever you are, and whenever you read this.

Masterlist | Ko-fi (tip jar) | Library/Story Archive Blog

[starlightkun]

❧ word count: 11.9k

❧ warnings: cursing, mentions of death/dead people in the context of him being hades, probably more legal jargon than there should be but i tried to make it as easy to understand as possible i promise, it gets pretty existential at some points but never overtly angsty

❧ genre: fluff, getting together, greek gods/goddesses au, hades jaemin, human reader, nades au, paralegal reader, bit of a ham-fisted persephone allegory, inspired by the gods/goddesses assigned to the work it unit in 2020 for this video, appearances by bestie jeno and coworker yangyang

❧ author’s note: ahhh my first fic back after over a year hiatus!! not super accurate to the original greek myths, i was just havin fun with hades as a concept rather than a strict characterization. i also watched mike flanagan’s ‘midnight mass’ and read john milton’s ‘paradise lost’ during the time i was writing this so get ready for some slight spiritual/religious iconography and overtones. hope y’all enjoy, i had so much fun playing around with my writing in this one!!

❧ spotify playlist

⤷ sequel

The god’s—Jaemin’s—eyes continued to stare you down. It felt like he was looking into your soul. And you wanted him to.

“I didn’t summon you,” you told him cautiously. “Or at least I didn’t try to.”

“Okay, so I’m thinking she could accidentally be pushed into oncoming traffic—”

“And who exactly would be doing this accidental pushing?” You cut Jeno off with a scoff.

Currently, you were laying on your back on your bed, head hanging off the end of it and phone in hand. Your best friend, Lee Jeno, was on the other end of the line, jokingly scheming to get you a job at his workplace. Jeno somehow worked as a legal assistant at the best civil law practice in your city, and you, on the other hand, were unemployed. This was what you got for taking an extra year to get your master’s degree to become a paralegal instead of immediately jumping into the workforce after undergrad.

That was where you and Jeno had met: Intro to Philosophy on your very first day of college as two bright-eyed freshmen with surprisingly similar career goals and the same taste in 00s pop punk bands. Now you were a year and a half past graduating with your bachelor’s, and six months past your master’s. And what had that extra effort gotten you? Many, many interviews that all ended the same way: You’re “an incredible applicant,” but “too educated” for the pay of the position and/or “too inexperienced.”

Jeno, on the other hand, had declined your suggestion to further your education together and instead landed himself a legal assistant job right out of college. So now here you were, living off the remnants of your student loans and savings as you desperately hunted for a paralegal job.

Your best friend’s elaborate plans to get you a job at his firm would typically make you laugh, but this time you couldn’t even muster up a chuckle. Earlier today when you checked your bank accounts during a break from emailing out your résumé, you were confronted with the fact that your savings were running out; you didn’t have enough to even get you to the end of your lease in six months.

“God will, duh,” Jeno said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. His current plan was centered around a junior partner’s paralegal dying of a myriad of mysterious causes, and apparently this time involved divine intervention too.

“Oh, right, of course,” you rolled your eyes.

“I’m serious about the fact that Yejin needs to go, though. I have no clue how she’s still employed. And you would be the perfect fit for Ms. Haseul, she kind of does a little bit of everything, but her main focus is general corporate representation. Wasn’t that what you specialized in for grad school?”

“It is, yes.”

“Then there we go!”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Jeno.”

You sighed. All this talk about a job that you’ll never have was bringing down your spirits. “Anyway, I have half a leftover pizza in the fridge calling my name right now. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Alright, bye, Y/N! I’ll keep my ears peeled for any sign of dissent in the ranks so you can slip your way in!”

“Right, bye.”

Hanging up, another sigh tumbled out of your mouth as you tossed your phone somewhere further up your bed. Truthfully, you weren’t hungry in the slightest, you just wanted to get out of that conversation. You brought your hands to your face to rub circles against your temples and closed your eyes; you were getting a headache. Hanging upside down off the foot of your bed certainly wasn’t helping, but you couldn’t be fucked to move at this point.

A moment of self-pity later and you opened your eyes with all intentions to get up and take your migraine medication, but you froze when you were met by a dark shape. Squinting, it took you a second to process that the shape was someone’s legs and shoes, and you let out a yelp. Startled, you went to twist yourself around to face whoever was in your room, but just managed to fall off your bed instead. You very narrowly avoided snapping your neck, landing on your shoulder instead, eliciting yet another yelp, but this time one of pain.

Scrambling to your feet, you were now face to face with the intruder. It was a man, younger, maybe around your age, donned in all black. Black shoes, black slacks, black suit jacket, and black vest underneath that was buttoned but with a neckline cut plenty low enough to show a good expanse of his chest. He had an eerie beauty to him: his face just bordering on gaunt with pronounced cheekbones, a sharp jawline, and a hint of bags under his eyes as if he had just woken up from a night of restless sleep. But he didn’t seem to have recently awoken, very much alert and well put-together in every other aspect. His black hair was perfectly styled back from his face save for one stray lock towards the middle, and his eyes were so dark they reminded you of black holes, threatening to sweep you away forever into a cold unknown. He had more piercings than you could count in the moment, silver and the odd jewel adorning his ears. The vest showed off four or five separate silver chains around his neck.

“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?” You breathed out, desperately trying to blink away the vertigo from your sudden change in orientation.

The man was between you and the doorway, his body language not indicating that he was blocking your way out intentionally. His hands were tucked in the pockets of his pants as he cocked an eyebrow up at your question. He seemed entirely relaxed and yet the air around you still felt as if it were growing colder by the second.

“I should be asking you that. What the hell am I doing in your apartment?” He repeated your question back to you, amusement in his tone as he studied you from head to toe, then back up.

“What?”

“I was summoned by someone. I’m not summoned often, usually Eros or Aphrodite are at the beck and call of humans.”

The names made your head spin, “Eros? Aphrodite? Like, the Greek gods?”

“Yes, of course.” One of his hands left his pocket, the many rings along his fingers glistening in your ceiling fan lights as he went to push the stray lock of hair back from his face. “Humans are always wishing for love or beauty or fame. Not as often are they wishing for my gifts, or at least not with such an intensity that I’m inclined to entertain those wishes.”

Something about his candor inclined you to ask, “Who are you?”

“I’ve had a couple names. Pluto, and you probably recognize me as Hades. But you can call me Jaemin.”

His words made your heart thunder in your chest once again. You wanted to tell yourself that this guy was crazy, but he sounded so assured and calm that it gave you pause. Not mention that he had just appeared in your home out of nowhere.

“Hades? God of the Underworld? In my apartment?”

“The very same. Please, call me Jaemin. As long as I can call you Y/N.”

“Oh, you know my name already,” you stated weakly.

The god’s—Jaemin’s—eyes continued to stare you down. It felt like he was looking into your soul. And you wanted him to.

“I didn’t summon you,” you told him cautiously. “Or at least I didn’t try to.”

He took a step towards you. “And yet here I am.”

Another step. “I was brought here by a desire, your desire. So, what do you really, really want, Y/N?”

His words dripped off his tongue and wound their way through your mind. “A loved one back from the dead? The death of an enemy? To die yourself? So much money you could never spend it all in one lifetime?”

Another step.

“No, none of those,” you shook your head vigorously, feeling like every sense of yours was alight with his proximity to you. Every sound was deafening, your skin tingled, and the scent of cinnamon and citrus danced around you. One more step and he’d practically be on top of you. “I don’t want any of that.”

Another step. He was right in front of you now, his startlingly cool breath washing over your face as he asked, “Then what do you want?”

“I just—” your hands were clenched into fists at your sides, fingernails digging into your palms as you struggled to find the words. “Want to work at Kim & Moon.”

Jaemin’s head cocked to the side as he studied your face, “Why?”

“It’s the best civil law firm in the city. I know it’s where I belong, if I could just get a job there, I know I’d do well.”

“This job? Does it pay well?”

“I-I don’t know,” you confessed. “Jeno hasn’t ever told me how much he makes, but that’s only part of why I want to work there. If all I cared about was paying my bills, I would’ve taken the first job at any sleazy ambulance chaser’s office I could find. But I’d be wasted on something like that. I’m smart, well-studied, and I’ll be good at what I do. I just know it.”

He chuckled, the sound sending a shiver down your spine.

“Yeah, I like that.”

Then all at once, Jaemin was no longer in front of you, and you felt like you could breathe properly again. He dropped himself onto your bed, settling in to recline leisurely against your headboard, legs crossed at the ankle.

“Alright, I’ll grant your wish,” he declared, slipping one of his rings off to roll it along his knuckles. The silver band caught the light and nearly distracted you from his words.

Pulling yourself out of your momentary trance, you immediately said, “But I didn’t ask you to—”

“Of course you did, or I wouldn’t be here. Do we really have to go through this again?” His eyes were fixed on the ring. “Now do you want that job or not?”

“If I say yes, what do you want in return? I doubt Hades himself is in the business of charity.”

“Smart. There will be an exchange, obviously.”

“Then my answer is no, I don’t want to be selling my soul or something.”

Jaemin suddenly flicked the ring up, watching as it did one, two, three flips in the air before landing in the palm of his hand, “As lovely as I’m sure your soul is, I’m not particularly interested in taking it.”

“Well then what would you want from me?”

“A third of your life.” He said it simply, as if you two were talking about him borrowing a cup of sugar, not your life.

“Wh—”

“Let me finish,” he instructed sternly, firm gaze once again on you. “Spend two-thirds of your year here, then spend the remaining third of it with me.”

“If I take four months off work I won't be able to keep the job you get me.”

“It doesn’t have to be consecutive. Give me your nights and I’ll call it even.”

“Why? Why me? Why would you give me so much for just… hanging out with you?”

He shrugged, “I’m tired of spending all my time with dead people.”

Despite his casual tone, you swore you saw something much sadder flash across his face for a moment. It was gone as soon as you had registered it, making you wonder if you just imagined it. When you remained quiet, chewing on the inside of your cheek in thought, he stood up and crossed the room to once again stop just a mere inch or two in front of you, “Do we have a deal, Y/N?”

A chance to use your degree and skills like you’d always dreamed, just for hanging out with a god every night? It sounded... not quite too good to be true, but definitely too easy. You couldn’t remember Hades being portrayed as a tricksy sort in the myths, and everything Jaemin had done tonight—aside from appearing in your room out of the blue—made you think that you could probably trust him.

“Yeah, sure,” you agreed, looking up from where you had been twiddling your thumbs anxiously to his hauntingly beautiful face. “Do we have to do anything to make the deal official or whatever?”

“What, like a kiss?” He grinned at you mischievously. “Since you asked…”

“Jaemin!” You scoffed, feeling like he was teasing you now.

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

“No I didn’t!”

“Anyway, a handshake will do just fine,” Jaemin held his right hand out in the small space between your bodies.

You took it, feeling the cold from his fingers seep into your own, and gave it one firm shake. Before you could take your hand back, he’d tightened his grip and turned it over. His other hand came up to slip a ring onto your ring finger. It was the same silver band he had been playing with before, and it magically changed size to fit your finger perfectly. Jaemin bowed slightly, bringing your hand up to press a feather-light kiss to the knuckle of the very finger he’d just put the ring on. His lips were cool like the rest of him, but you still felt warm at his actions.

“There,” he straightened back up and let go of your hand finally. “That should do it.”

You looked down at the ring he’d just put on your finger. It was a simple silver band of medium width that reminded you of your father’s wedding band.

“Goodbye for now, Y/N.”

“Yeah—” you cut yourself off when you brought your eyes up to see that Jaemin was gone. Staring at the empty space where he just was, you murmured, “Bye, Jaemin.”

That night you dreamt of a man cloaked in shadows guiding you to a tree, instructing you to pick the golden fruit that was growing on it. You gazed at the fruit, in a daze, mesmerized by their beauty. They were so inviting, the man’s voice soothing, and you lifted a hand up towards one.

You groaned against the bright sunlight streaming in through a crack between your curtains. Directly on your face. You threw your left arm over your eyes to block it out as you continued lying in bed, letting your mind and body wake up gradually.

Memories of last night’s visitor came back to you, and you sighed. Surely it was a dream. A weird, weird dream that your mind conjured up in an attempt to fulfill your wish for a job.

But when you squinted your eyes open and brought your right hand up enough to look at your fingers, the silver band that sat there let you know that it was real. You’d been visited last night, by Hades, who said he’d grant your wish for a job in exchange for a third of your life. And you said yes.

The loud sound of your phone buzzing on your nightstand prompted you to roll over and grab it to look at the caller ID. Lee Jeno.

“Yeah?” You couldn’t even muster up a proper greeting as you picked up, still bogged down by sleep.

“Y/N, great news!”

You glanced at the time on your phone before bringing it back up to your ear, “Jeno, it’s not even 9:30 a.m., why are you calling me? You can’t be on lunch.”

“I know, but as soon as I heard, I had to tell you!”

“Tell me what, exactly?”

“There’s a job opening at the firm! You have to apply!”

That woke you up.

“An opening?” You asked, shooting up into a sitting position.

“Jo Haseul, the junior partner at the firm I’ve been telling you about, her paralegal won the lottery and quit on the spot. No two weeks’ notice, they’re urgently hiring her replacement. I’ll text you the firm administrator’s email for you to send your résumé to!”

“That would be great, thank you, Jeno.”

“Of course!” He said brightly as another phone began ringing in the background. “I’ve got to go now, Ms. Kang is buzzing me.”

“Right, thank you again.”

“Bye!”

“Bye,” you brought your phone down to see he had already ended the call.

As you went to grab your laptop from the foot of your bed to begin drafting that email, your eyes got caught by the silver ring on your hand.

A week later and you were walking into your first day of work at Kim & Moon. The firm administrator, Jeong Jaehyun, was showing you around, and finally stopped his tour in an open-floor plan portion of the office where a grouping of eight desks were. A couple of them were empty, the others filled by various men and women hard at work, and also Lee Jeno.

“Y/N!” Jeno waved at you enthusiastically from where he was on the other side of all the desks, and you lifted your hand to give a small wave back.

“Oh, you know Lee Jeno?” Mr. Jeong asked as he guided you over towards your friend.

“Yes, we were in the same undergrad program.”

“Good, it should be easier to settle in with a familiar face nearby.” The administrator smiled as he gestured to the empty desk behind your friend. The one beside it was occupied by another young man incredibly focused on his screen, headphones in as his fingers flitted over his keyboard and he fervently typed out a court document.

“This is your desk, Ms. Y/L/N. Ms. Jo, your attorney, is on a call right now but she has been informed of your arrival. I’m sure she’ll meet with you when she can. In the meantime, please acquaint yourself with your workspace. Your computer is already logged in, and all of your passwords are on the paper right there. Is there anything you need at the moment?”

“No, no. Thank you so much, Mr. Jeong,” you bowed your head politely to him.

“Of course. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.” He pointed to the landline sitting on your desk next to the computer monitors, “I have a quick-dial button right next to Reception’s. Buzz me if you need something.”

“I will, thank you.”

And with that, Jeong Jaehyun took his leave of the pod that you were in. You sat in your chair, taking in the sparse supplies on your desk: two computer monitors, keyboard, mouse, a landline phone, a couple pens, and one sheet of paper laid across your keyboard. It was a list of your login credentials for your computer, work email, and the firm’s file management software, along with Mr. Jeong’s extension and quick-dial button name.

You turned back around to where you knew Jeno was already waiting for you. Your friend was practically vibrating with excitement in his own desk chair.

“This is so exciting!” Jeno exclaimed, momentarily drawing the attention of all the other employees in your vicinity before they went back to whatever they were doing. He continued on much quieter, “I told you you’d kill it at your interview.”

“Right,” you nodded, trying not to think about the silver ring on your right hand. “Thanks, Jeno, I’m excited to start.”

“I’ll give you the rundown of everyone at the firm, come here,” he scooted his chair over to make room for you to roll yours up to his desk.

His fingers quickly flitted across his keyboard and mouse to pull up the firm website. Hovering over the tab labeled ‘Our Attorneys,’ you saw a list of names drop down. He clicked on the first one, Kim Chaeyoung. It pulled up a profile, the picture showing a very determined older woman, her arms crossed over her chest as she very resolutely stared down the camera.

“This is Kim Chaeyoung, the ‘Kim’ in Kim & Moon. She’s the most senior attorney at the firm, and mostly does corporate compliance and medical malpractice law. She just stepped down from being managing partner at the end of last year.”

He clicked the next name on the list, Moon Taeil. This time a man was on your screen, a bit older than you, but not by too much. No more than ten or fifteen years for sure, quite young to be a managing partner at such a large firm. His gaze wasn’t quite as intense as Kim Chaeyoung’s, but it held an intelligence and wisdom clearly beyond his years.

“Mrs. Kim stepped down to let this man, Moon Taeil, take over as managing partner. Something about wanting younger blood in charge but…” Jeno looked around the pod before he dropped his voice to a whisper so soft you had to lean in to hear him, “The rumor is that Mrs. Kim is going to announce her retirement at the holiday party at the end of this year.”

“And what sort of law does Mr. Moon do?” You questioned.

“Mostly insurance litigation. He tends to get the nastier incidents though: shootings, stabbings, fires, the odd dog bite.”

You then went through the senior partners before getting to the first of the junior partners on the list.

“And here is Jo Haseul, your attorney. She’s the most senior of the junior partners, and rumors also say that she’s going to be made a senior partner by the end of this year.”

“You love your office gossip, don’t you?”

You studied the woman on screen. She was younger than you had expected, a fierceness in her eyes that both intimidated you and inspired you to follow her wherever she led.

“This isn’t even the juicy stuff, wait until you hear about the affair Mr. Noh supposedly had with his assistant in the 80s,” Jeno scoffed, then turned his attention back to the woman on screen. “Anyway, Ms. Haseul is Mrs. Kim’s protégé. She mostly does general corporate matters, medical malpractice, and the occasional pro bono representation for women in need. Restraining orders, child custody, divorce, whatever comes in the door. If you really want to get to know her, ask about those cases.”

“She sounds incredible.”

“I told you you’d be perfect for each other.” Your friend then pulled up the next junior partner, “This is Kim Doyoung, he’s Mrs. Kim’s son but you’d never be able to tell by how they act around each other. All business. I think he doesn’t want people to assume he only got his position because of his mother, but nobody who has actually spoken to Mrs. Kim would ever think she’d do something like that. She’s got some serious integrity.”

Jeno was about to move on to the next attorney profile, a ‘Qian Kun,’ when you heard a ringing from behind you.

“Oh, that’s you, Y/N!”

You quickly wheeled yourself back over to your desk, picking up your desk phone after the third ring, “Y/L/N Y/N speaking.”

“Ms. Y/L/N,” a woman’s voice was on the other end, and when you glanced at the caller ID, you saw ‘Jo Haseul’ across the screen. “This is Jo Haseul. Please come to my office now.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I’m down the hall. Ask another assistant if you need help finding it.”

“Will do, thank you.”

She hung up, and you rushed to stand up. Grabbing one of the pens you saw earlier, you frantically scanned for a notepad to write with, but there wasn’t one on hand at your desk. You whipped around to face your friend, “Jeno, do you have a notepad I can use? Ms. Haseul wants to see me.”

“Here,” he handed you a notepad slightly bigger than your hand, spiral-bound at the top.

“Thank you!”

“The attorney offices are down that hall,” he pointed. “And Ms. Haseul’s will be on your left.”

“Got it, thanks!” You hurried in the direction he gestured.

Thankfully, everyone’s names were engraved on metal nameplates on the doors, making it easy to know when you had stopped in front of your attorney’s. Rapping your knuckles against the wood, you waited for a response.

“Come in.”

You entered already bowing, “Y/L/N Y/N, ma’am. It’s an honor to be here and I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with you.”

Jo Haseul appraised you for a moment from where she was sat behind her desk. She then nodded, “It’s nice to meet you. Now please sit, Y/L/N.”

“Yes ma’am,” you quickly sat in the armchair she had gestured to.

After brief introductions, Ms. Haseul gave you the rundown of the kinds of cases she tended to deal with—which generally lined up with what Jeno had told you earlier, her management style, workflow, and an overview of the duties you’ll be expected to fulfill as her paralegal. At the end of it, you left with pages of notes, a stack of papers in your arms, and your first tasks to do for her.

Stopping at your desk, you didn’t even sit as you organized the papers into three stacks: to correct, to file, and to copy. You picked up the last stack of things that Ms. Haseul wanted copies of, then turned to your friend, “Hey, Jeno, where’s the copier?”

The assistant sat at the desk beside yours was the one who spoke up in response, his headphones set aside now, “Oh, I’m going there right now, I’ll show you!”

“Thanks, Yangyang,” Jeno said, then nodded for you to go along with the other man.

Yangyang grabbed his own paper before leading the way out from the desks. He took off in the opposite direction from the offices down a different hallway, “It’s down this hall, first door on the right.” He then opened said door to reveal a room with four large copy machines in it.

“I’m Liu Yangyang, by the way,” your coworker introduced himself, stopping in front of one machine. “I’m Qian Kun and Dong Sicheng’s legal assistant. They’re Ms. Haseul’s associate attorneys that work under her so you and I will overlap quite a bit. Sicheng usually handles corporate matters with Ms. Haseul while Kun does the med mal portion.”

“I’m Y/L/N Y/N. It’s nice to meet you, Yangyang.”

“You too, Y/N. And I’m sure you’ll meet my attorneys at some point today. I apologize in advance, and yes, they are always like that. Kun’s a workaholic who would be here until two in the morning if somebody didn’t send him home, and Sicheng… you are allowed to say no to him, and I encourage it, actually. Booksmart but doesn’t quite get social cues. I’ve seen him accidentally sweet talk his way into having an assistant pick up his dry cleaning before.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah, I had to intervene to ensure feminism wasn’t set back fifty years,” Yangyang scoffed.

“Women everywhere commend you for your service to the cause, Yangyang,” you nodded solemnly, to which your coworker snickered.

“The dude’s wicked smart but dumber than a box of rocks. Associates, you know?” He shook his head then returned to instructing you about the machine.

After Yangyang had shown you how to use the multipurpose machine—scanning and uploading, printing, copying, faxing—he took the copies that he had made and left you there. Nobody was at the other copiers, making you the only one in the room. You took a deep breath to compose yourself after having so much information thrown at you from all sides. Right now, at this moment, all you needed to do was make a copy.

Putting the first document in where Yangyang had shown you, you’d just started tapping the touchscreen through to the copying option when a dark figure appeared at the edge of your vision. Your head snapped up to look at the man leaning against the wall beside the copy machine you were at.

You hadn’t seen Jaemin since the night you’d made your deal. You’d spent the entire next night anxiously waiting for him to appear, but he never did, and you eventually gave up and fell asleep. He didn’t come any night after that, and you kind of thought he might’ve forgotten about you, or maybe didn’t really want you to hold up your end of the deal. Realized that he could find better company than you.

But here he was, in your workplace, smirk on his face and delight in his tone, “Surprise! I came to visit you on your first day of work. I’m so proud!”

First rolling your eyes at the sarcasm in his words and the fake tear he wiped away, you then fervently glanced towards the door to the copy room, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m checking on my investment,” he answered coolly.

“What, me? You can check on me at my home tonight, not at my job on my first day of work! Somebody could walk in, how would I explain you?”

“Nobody’s coming.”

“The deal was that I would give you my nights. Sun’s still up.”

“Yes, you’re doing just fine,” he nodded as he adjusted his black tie, seeming satisfied with his ‘check in.’ “I’ll see you tonight, Y/N.”

And he was gone in the blink of an eye.

You immediately flopped down onto your couch when you got home that night. That was the most work you’d done in a while; you were tired both physically and mentally. But it was a good sort of tired. You finally had a job.

“Hi, honey, how was work?”

You shot up at the voice, knowing exactly who it was. Jaemin was poised in your armchair, half a smirk already on his lips. He was in all-black again, though a slightly different suit from last time, his slacks and suit jacket had thin dark grey pinstripes, over a black silk dress shirt with the top three buttons open.

“Oh, uh, it was good,” you said.

Silence fell over you two, and you started fidgeting uncomfortably as it dragged on. Finally, you said, “So... what do you want to do?”

“Have you eaten dinner yet?”

“I feel like you already know the answer to that, but no. I just got home.”

“Let’s get dinner then. Where would you like to go?”

“Uhm...” you wracked your brain for some places nearby. “There’s a ramen place down the street. Let me change out of my work clothes first, hold on.”

Re-emerging from your bedroom in more casual clothes, you saw that Jaemin had moved from his spot on your armchair and was instead standing, gazing out the window. And again, for a brief moment, you could’ve sworn he looked... lonely.

“I’m ready,” you announced yourself. It felt wrong to keep looking at him like that.

Jaemin turned around, focusing a dazzling smile on you, “Lead the way, Y/N.”

The place you were thinking of really was just a couple blocks down the street. Mumbling a thanks to Jaemin as he held the door open for you, you were immediately met with a packed restaurant. It was seat-yourself, and you managed to spot a small table for two in the very back corner, right beside the entrance to the kitchen. Guiding Jaemin over to it, you felt your face turn warm as he pulled your chair out for you.

The menu was a singular piece of laminated paper taped to the tabletop, and your eyes skimmed it. You ordered the same thing every time at this point, but it was something to look at other than the god in front of you. Speaking of, he was a god. Did he even need to eat?

“Jaemin.” You said his name as you looked up from the menu.

His eyes flicked up from where they’d also been reading the options, “Hm?”

“Do you even eat, like, normal food?”

“I can if I want to, I just don’t need it to survive like you do.”

“Oh, I see. And do you... like it?”

“Quite.”

It was then that a familiar waiter came up to your table, “Hi, Y/N! It’s been a while. Almost didn’t recognize you at a table instead of the bar.”

Typically, you would come by yourself and sit at the bartop to eat alone alongside all the other solo patrons. You rolled your eyes at the slight jab, “Thank you, Chenle, I feel so welcome.”

“Aw, you know you’re one of my favorite regulars,” the young man snickered.

“Yeah, whatever. Sorry I haven’t been by lately, I didn’t exactly have the funds to eat out.”

“That’s okay. But you’re back, does that mean that you found a job?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Congrats!” He then focused his attention on the man across from you, “Hi, I’m Zhong Chenle.”

You moved to introduce the two before Jaemin could open his mouth, afraid of what he would’ve said. “Chenle, this is Jaemin, a... friend of mine. Jaemin, this is Chenle, he’s a server here.”

“And I’ll be serving you two tonight. So, what can I get you?”

After taking your orders, Chenle took off to put them in. You shifted in your seat awkwardly. What were you and Jaemin even supposed to talk about?

“You usually sit at the bar?” Jaemin questioned.

“I’m not an alcoholic, despite how Chenle made it sound,” you scoffed. “I usually come by myself, and the bar is the quickest place to get your food and get out. And that way I don’t take up any tables that groups can use.”

“I feel honored that you brought me here, then.”

You searched his face for any hint that he was teasing you, but all you found was sincere curiosity. Suddenly feeling uncomfortable, you changed the topic, “So why did you show up tonight? You didn’t come all last week.”

“Well, I had to hold up my end of the deal first.”

“Right, that... makes sense.” Realizing that you hadn’t even thanked him for whatever he’d done for you, you added, “Thank you, Jaemin. For you know, the job.”

“You’re welcome.”

Chenle returned then with a small bottle of soju for each of you, informing you that your food would be ready soon.

“So is it everything you’d dreamed of? Working at Kim & Moon?” Jaemin asked before lifting his bottle to his lips.

“Today was only my first day but... yes. I’ve already learned a lot, was listened to when I spoke, and the partner I work for seems like an incredible woman so far. It’s wonderful.”

“I hope it stays that wonderful for you, Y/N. I’d like to see your eyes light up like this often.”

Looking down at the green bottle in front of you, you twisted your ring around your finger nervously. You didn’t know what to say back, your heart fluttering around in your chest. Jaemin was charming, too charming for your own good, and you sort of felt like you really shouldn’t have expected any less from a god.

“Are you curious?”

You snapped your head up to look at your companion, not even attempting to hide your confusion at his words, “About what?”

“What I did, to get you the job.”

“I mean, I am. I assume you had something to do with Yejin winning the lottery? You’re the god of everything below the Earth, including precious gems, gold, silver. The god of riches, wealth. In the modern day that would translate to how we view wealth and riches now, since I’m not really out here buying my groceries with rubies and gold coins. Right?”

Jaemin’s obsidian eyes practically glittered as he listened to you speak, his lips curling up at one corner before he took another swig of his soju. When you were finished, he set the bottle back onto the table to answer your question, “Hit the nail on the head.”

“Honestly, I’m just glad you did that instead of killing her or something horrible.”

His head jerked back as he looked at you with bewilderment, “Now why would I do that? I’m the god of the dead, not death. If you wanted her dead you’re talking to the wrong deity.”

“I don’t want her dead, that’s my point. That’s what Jeno was joking about on the phone before you showed up; I didn’t want you to get any ideas.”

“I don’t really find it fun to just push people into traffic.”

“So you were listening to—” You cut yourself off as you saw Chenle approaching with your food. Not a conversation to be having in front of your normal human waiter.

After he had left your table again, you returned to what you were saying before, “So you were listening to our conversation.”

“Can’t help myself, I’m nosy when it comes to the humans who summon me,” Jaemin admitted.

“So what does Hades do for fun then?” You asked lightheartedly, slurping at some of your broth.

“While I don’t necessarily enjoy pushing people into traffic, I do find it much more fun to let a human become suddenly awash with money and watch what happens when they eventually lose it all. See what they spend it on, who they spend it on. Themselves mostly, sometimes others, trying to get people to be their friends or lovers simply because of what they’ll buy them. I’ll watch them do what humans do best, use and abuse the gifts that were given to them. And then once they’ve been sucked dry both in their finances and their souls, find out how they try to move on.”

“Is that what you’re doing with me?” You set your spoon down, voice wavering. “Watching and waiting for me to end up like that?”

Jaemin took a pause, shifting forward in his seat before responding, “One of my favorite things about humans is how resilient you are. Always trying to bounce back. It’s fascinating to find out your breaking point, when you have no more bounce left.”

An absolutely devilish smile played across his features as he seemed to take delight in the notion. He didn’t exactly answer your question, but the lack thereof felt like enough.

“Why?”

“Because it’s different for every person, and always further than I think it’ll be. Even after so long, knowing that humans can still surprise me, it’s refreshing. Makes me think that…”

You blinked at him, waiting for him to finish. He was definitely well aware that he had your rapt attention, basking in the drama he had created by pausing. His eyes settled on you firmly, holding eye contact as something softer entered them.

“Maybe you’ll surprise me, too.”

Jaemin came back to your apartment with you after you’d decided you were full. You hadn’t had much of an appetite after that harrowing conversation over dinner, and he’d left you with a lot of thinking to do. It wasn’t every day that you heard a god’s perspective on human lives—on toying with human lives, watching for their eventual breakdown in the aftermath of the ‘gifts’ he gave them. If that’s what it did to them all, it seemed much more like a curse to you.

And you were of course thinking about whether it would happen to you too. You hadn’t wished for riches or wealth directly, definitely not so much that it would have the same effect on your life as winning the lottery. But that didn’t mean that you weren’t worried. And the idea of Jaemin watching you every step of the way, waiting to see when you’d slip up, when you’d meet your breaking point, made you shiver instinctually.

“Are you cold?” Jaemin’s question broke the silence that had been hovering over you two since you started the walk from the restaurant back to your apartment.

“Oh, no, I—”

But he had already shrugged his suit jacket off and laid it over your shoulders. There was no residual body heat in it, but it did help block out some of the breeze blowing past you. You hadn’t noticed the temperature at all, too wrapped up in your own thoughts.

“Thanks,” you muttered, wrapping the jacket tighter around your shoulders. It smelled faintly of spiced citrus.

“No worries.”

Back in your apartment, you wanted nothing more than to lay in bed staring up at your ceiling as you gave yourself over fully to the existential crisis you were descending into. But you still had a god to entertain.

A glance at the change in time on your stovetop clock let you know that you were only a couple hours into your commitment. You hoped he didn’t expect you to stay up all night with him. Leaving Jaemin in your living room once again, you changed into pajamas in your bedroom. If he was going to be with you every night from here on out, you were at least going to be comfy for some of it.

Jaemin was back in the armchair he had appeared in at the beginning of the night, one knee crossed over the other and a book in hand. You paused behind him on your way back into the living room to peer over his shoulder, trying to read the title at the top of the page he was on.

“The Turn of the Screw?” You questioned, walking around him to plop down onto your couch.

“I found it on your shelf,” he gestured to the built-in shelves in the walls around the recess that held your TV. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Knock yourself out, I haven’t touched it since I had to read it for a ghost literature class like… four years ago.”

“Ghost literature class?” Jaemin lowered the book to rest on his leg while he regarded you with an eyebrow raised. “Did you go to school in the Underworld or something?”

“It was actually called like ‘Ghost Stories and Haunted Fiction of the 19th Century’ or something. The students just called it ghost lit. We read all these spooky stories, including The Turn of the Screw,” you explained, then looked around your living room. “I have a few more of them around here somewhere. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein— I can’t remember the full reading list, but they’re scattered around.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He raised the book back up to continue reading intently.

Since he seemed occupied for the moment, you pulled out your phone to distract yourself.

A couple hours later and you let out your first yawn of the night. You’d thought that Jaemin was so enraptured by the book that he wasn’t paying any attention to you. The chuckle he gave from across the room proved you wrong, however. There was definitely nothing funny in that story. You threw him a scowl, but he neither looked up from the book nor said anything.

Shifting in your spot to get comfy again, you returned to the article that you’d been reading on your phone and your guest was quiet once again. Another yawn split your mouth, and the words on your screen swam in your vision as your eyes teared up.

“Tired, Y/N?” Jaemin’s eyes still hadn’t left the book as he continued, “You should go to sleep, early day at work tomorrow, right?”

“And what are you going to do?”

“I thought I’d finish this book, if that’s alright with you. I’ve got about… thirty, forty pages left.”

“Oh, uh, sure,” you were surprised both that he was encouraging you to go to sleep during the time you’d agreed to forfeit to him, and that he wanted to finish the book.

Standing up from the couch, you shuffled into your kitchen to fill up a glass of water. After knocking back your nightly medication, you placed the water on your nightstand and went into your bathroom to do your nighttime routine. You found yourself hovering at the threshold between the hallway that contained your bedroom and bathroom, and the living room. It felt weird to just go to bed with someone else in your home, at least not without saying goodnight to them.

“Uhm,” you cleared your throat.

Jaemin turned to look at you from over the back of the armchair, “Yes, Y/N?”

“I just wanted to…” you felt the words catch in your throat. Pushing through your awkwardness, you twisted the ring around your finger as you forced the words out, “Goodnight, Jaemin.”

“Goodnight, Y/N.” He smiled at you before turning back around to face his book, “See you tomorrow.”

And with that, you retreated into your bedroom for the night, falling asleep almost as soon as your head hit the pillow.

The man of shadows was in your dreams again that night, drawing you to the tree with the golden fruit. His voice once more invited you to partake in picking the fruit, and your hand inched up, up, up, towards one. Your fingers had just wrapped around the fruit, ready to pluck it off the branch, when you woke up.

When you awoke the next morning, you went through the motions of your morning routine, strolling from your bathroom out to your kitchen, toothbrush sticking out of your mouth. You continued brushing your teeth with one hand as you grabbed the freshly popped toast from the toaster to put on a plate. As you went to lean over the kitchen sink to spit the toothpaste foam out of your mouth, your eyes got caught on something in the living room, which the sink overlooked. There was a small black pouch sitting on the coffee table, on the corner closest to the armchair.

After wiping your mouth off, you walked over to your coffee table, intrigue building as you picked up the velvet drawstring pouch. Looking around, you were only greeted by your empty apartment. This wasn’t here last night. Or at least, not before you went to sleep.

Pulling it open, you gently shook the contents out onto your palm. It was a silver bracelet, intricate filigree running along the band that was inlaid with gorgeous green and blue gems.

Jaemin’s words from dinner last night echoed in your head.

‘I do find it much more fun to let a human become suddenly awash with money and watch what happens when they eventually lose it all… It’s fascinating to find out your breaking point…’

A foreboding feeling colored your vision, and you rushed to tuck the bracelet back into the bag and throw it onto the table.

When Jaemin came that night, you were cooking dinner in your kitchen. He appeared there with you, leaning against the counter next to your sink as you were standing over the stovetop.

“Good evening, Y/N,” he greeted you.

“Hello, Jaemin.” You steeled your nerves, giving as nonchalant of a nod as you could towards the living room, “You left something here last night. It’s on the coffee table.”

The god regarded you with a tilted head, and you felt his eyes on your empty wrists, “That was for you.”

“I didn’t ask you for anything like that.”

“I know. It was a gift.”

“The job was plenty, Jaemin.”

He was silent as he continued to watch you cook. After a grueling couple of minutes of absolute silence, his eyes burning into you the whole time, you finally turned to properly look him in the face. Throwing on a smile, you informed him, “Dinner’s ready. Ravioli, would you like some?”

“Yes, please.”

You set two places at your dinner table before plating two portions of the pasta. Jaemin was still in his place next to the sink, observing your movements.

“Go ahead and sit, I’m just going to grab a couple glasses,” you gestured towards the kitchen table.

Without even waiting to see if he’d obey, you bustled over to a cabinet and took out two wine glasses, then grabbed a bottle of white wine you’d been meaning to finish off. When you turned back to the kitchen table, you were pleasantly surprised to see Jaemin waiting there patiently, fidgeting with his silverware. Setting the two glasses down, you noticed that Jaemin’s silverware was in different places than you had put them in when you hastily set the table. The fork was on the left of the plate, the knife and spoon on the right with the knife directly beside the plate and the spoon on the other side of the knife. Yours on the other hand were in the haphazard places atop the napkin that you had put them earlier.

“Apologies for the subpar fork placement,” you said, uncorking the wine to begin pouring it out first for Jaemin.

“Oh, it’s just a habit,” he explained. His tone then turned as teasing as yours had been, “My apologies for making you think your fork placement was anything other than above par.”

You then poured for yourself as you continued the banter, “Yeah, you know, I really pride myself on my utensil arranging skills. My feelings have been gravely wounded. I’ll never recover from this.”

“Then would you consider taking this,” he procured a small black pouch from his pocket, and you had a suspicion as to exactly what was in it, “as repentance, with my sincerest apologies?”

A bitter sigh came out of your mouth at him ruining the perfectly normal moment you were enjoying, “Jaemin, I told you I don’t want any more gifts from you.”

The way you spat out the word ‘gifts’ was apparently a lightbulb moment for him as he set the pouch down on the table and all playfulness dropped from his face. Disinterested in whatever he was going to say to try to convince you to take it, you picked up your fork, using the side of the tongs to cut one of your raviolis in half.

“Y/N…” he said your name almost wistfully, leaning forward towards you earnestly. “I really do just want you to have it. It’s not a test or a ruse, just… a token.”

“A token of what?” You snorted, spearing half of the ravioli that you’d just cut and bringing it up to your mouth.

“My affection?”

You choked momentarily on the pasta in your mouth, chewing and swallowing it as quickly as possible and taking a sip of your wine to wash it down. Jaemin still hadn’t touched his food, utensils undisturbed as he waited for you to collect yourself. When you searched his face for a smirk, a mischievous glint in his eyes, anything to indicate that he was being less than truthful, you found none. You were just met with deep open pools of black in his eyes, his mouth set in seriousness, and his hand once again holding the pouch back out to you.

“Your what?”

“I know you heard me.”

“Yes, and now I’m asking for clarification.”

“I find you fascinating, and not in the morbid kind of way like I described to you last night. I’ve found myself starting to become fond of you, and I wanted to show that to you with a… present.”

“What, like getting your puppy a new chew toy because they’re so darn cute?”

Jaemin chuckled, “Not quite. But still, will you please accept it, Y/N?”

You thought it over for another moment, chewing on the inside of your cheek. He was being sincere, you were sure of it. You’d caught brief glimpses of the kinder side to Jaemin just in the few times you’d met him: when he’d leant you his suit jacket walking home last night, telling you he was hoping you’d continue being in love with your job, the gentlemanly peck he’d left on your fingers the night you’d made your deal. And now, as he patiently awaited your answer.

“Alright,” you agreed, taking the small bag from him. “Thank you, Jaemin.”

“Thank you for letting me give it to you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Pulling the bracelet back out of the pouch, you saw that it had a hinge mechanism on it that you couldn’t manage one-handed, and held it out to the god sitting in front of you, “Will you help me put it on?”

“Of course,” he took it, opening the band up with ease.

You held your right hand out towards him, and he brought the open bracelet up around your wrist. But you weren’t watching the way his deft fingers put it on around your wrist, the tips of them brushing over the sensitive skin at your pulse point, leaving coolness behind. You were watching his face as he focused on the task intently, his brows furrowing in concentration then relaxing after the bracelet had clicked shut. A small but tender smile took over his face, his eyes softening as he turned your hand over palm down, thumb running up your ring finger until it reached the silver band that resided there.

Your skin buzzed in the wake of his touch, an electric cold. You could hear your heart thudding in your ears and hoped that he didn’t have supernatural god hearing or something and could hear it too. If he did, he gave no indication of such. He withdrew his hands, leaving you more dazed than you should’ve been at the minimal contact you had. Jerking your hand back to your side of the table, you turned your gaze down at your food, trying to ignore how hot your cheeks were.

A light laugh came from Jaemin, but you couldn’t force your eyes back up to him, knowing that his were already on you.

That night you dreamt once more of the man cast in darkness, leading you to the tree of golden fruit. This time when he encouraged you to pick one, you grasped at the fruit with two hands, pulling it right off the branch with a firm tug.

Just about one month into your… arrangement with Jaemin, you were rooting through your fridge for something to make for dinner when there was suddenly a cool breeze on the back of your neck. Except you were indoors.

Spinning around, you were immediately met with the god extremely close to you, and let out an exasperated sigh, “God damn, Jaemin, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“I can’t help it if I make your heart race,” he grinned, the mischievous glint in his eye making your heart pound in a different way that it had been.

“Yeah, because you jumpscared me,” you rolled your eyes, shutting the fridge doors to then lean back against the appliance. “Anyway, it’s not looking like I have anything to make for dinner. You okay with eating out tonight?”

“More than, I was actually hoping you’d let me take you somewhere tonight.”

“Where?”

“My place. You’ve been such a gracious host this whole time, it’s time I repay the favor.”

“Your place, as in... the Underworld?”

“Yeah, why not?” He shrugged nonchalantly, an enticing grin on his features. A grin that invited you to follow its owner to places you’d never been before. “I promise you’ll come back.”

“In one piece?”

“Of course.”

You’d be lying if you said you weren’t intrigued, that you hadn’t tried to picture what the Underworld looked like. All you could come up with was the standard image of hell: flames, pitchforks, eternal torture. But now you were getting an invitation to go there with Hades and come back alive.

“And I’ll be back in time to go to work in the morning?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Alright, sure,” you finally acquiesced. “I’d love to, thank you for inviting me.”

Jaemin offered his hand out to you then, and you placed your atop. He gave yours a light squeeze, “Just focus on me, Y/N. Just look in my eyes.”

“Okay?” You agreed despite your tone pitching it up into a question, unsure of why exactly he was asking you to do that.

Nevertheless, you settled your gaze on his eyes, even as he drew you in closer by the light grip on your hand. You gave him an awkward half-smile, unsure of what exactly to do as you just stared him directly in the eye. His dark eyes had a calming effect, however, as you felt your breathing even out and your heartbeat slow. This close to him, and being able to unabashedly look at him, you were entranced by the unearthly quality to his beauty. It should have been disquieting, this spectral vision in front of you, but you just found yourself drawn even closer in body and mind.

Then suddenly everything around you was darker, as if someone had dimmed your kitchen lights. The air was cooler too, and you had the suspicion that you were no longer in your kitchen. But you were still looking at Jaemin, just like you said you would.

He was looking right back at you, unflinchingly, and a fond smile crossed his lips before he announced quietly, “We’re here. You can look.”

And you finally tore your eyes from him to take in your new surroundings. It was dark, just like you’d noted before, as if it were nighttime. The room you were in had black floors, black walls, and at the very tippy top of the black vaulted ceiling, a black wrought iron chandelier with flames glowing... blue? But you couldn’t focus on the flickering up above you as Jaemin’s fingers entwined with yours and he gently tugged you towards the other side of the room.

“Come on, this way.”

It looked like you were maybe in an entrance hall of some sort. It was then that you spotted a large black throne adorned with silver detailing and embellishments at the front of the room. Jaemin kept walking right past it, though, down an adjoining hallway.

Your wide eyes that had been taking everything in turned downwards to your hand that was holding Jaemin’s. His skin was the usual coolness you had come to expect, and your fingertips brushed against the multitudes of rings on his fingers. Seeing the lone silver band on your hand, the one that he was holding, made your face hot for some reason.

You passed through another doorway into a dining room. It contained a large dining table crafted from dark walnut wood, the twelve high-back chairs around it made of the same. A deep red table runner went across the length of the tabletop, matching the upholstery of the chairs. A feast was already laid out, and place settings for two of the seats were prepared.

Jaemin let go of your hand to pull out a chair for you. You thanked him quietly as you sat down, eyes still scanning over the food options. He sat in the chair caddy-corner to yours, at the head of the table.

“Go ahead, Y/N,” Jaemin encouraged you as he reached forward to grab the bottle of wine that had been on the table as well.

“Everything looks... so good,” you said, not sure what to try first.

He uncorked the bottle, pouring the red wine into your glass first, then his. When he put the bottle down, you still hadn’t moved, too overwhelmed with all the delicious-looking choices.

“Do I need to make your plate for you?” He teased, already standing and grabbing your plate.

“This is good, you’ll probably like this one, oh you’re going to love this one, everyone likes that, mmm definitely not that,” he mumbled to himself as he loaded up your plate with food after food.

Your heart did flips as you looked up at him, the simple kindness of his actions making you feel warm despite the coolness of the Underworld.

Jaemin set your plate back down in front of you between your utensils, spoon on the far right, then the knife beside the plate, and the fork on the left. You waited for him to prepare his own plate of food, then finally be seated. When he’d finished scooting his chair up to table, he looked up from what he’d been doing, eyes catching yours, and a small, affectionate smile crossed his lips before he grabbed his wine glass. Then a wide, charismatic grin overtook his features as he held his glass out towards you, and you followed his lead, picking yours up to clink them together.

“To one month of… you and I. Thank you for agreeing to come here tonight, Y/N.”

‘You and I.’ His words both squeezed your chest and made it feel airy, like someone was inflating a balloon inside of it.

“Thank you for hosting tonight, Jaemin. And here’s to one month of…” you took a sharp inhale as you stumbled through your mind for any other word but couldn’t find one in that moment. “Us.”

You saw Jaemin’s pale lips softly, silently repeat the word before pulling into an alluring smirk.

And you each took a sip of the wine before digging into your food and kicking off the discussion. Over your month of dinners and nighttime socializing with Jaemin, you were used to your conversations meandering between the casual catching up of your workday to the serious contemplations of life and the universe. After all, if you were dining with a god, you were going to pick his brain for some philosophical inquiry. But on the days where some of the medical malpractice or domestic pro bono cases had hit you exceptionally hard and you wanted to leave well enough alone, Jaemin let you keep the topics light and surface level, keeping it at office gossip and the like.

Tonight though, with the special venue on your mind, you immediately delved into the existential, “So what are humans to you?”

“How do you mean?” Jaemin arched an eyebrow at your question.

“You’re a god. You’ve lived for thousands of years. You’ve seen millions of humans live and die. Surely, we all just kind of… blur together for you. Seem the same. Inconsequential.”

“No, not at all.”

“You’re just saying that because I’m here,” you teased before returning to your debate. “Most of us live and die without ever leaving a lasting impact on the world. Not that I think that’s necessary for having lived a meaningful or good life, I think that making even one person smile means that someone lived a good life. But in relation to you, a god, surely that makes us all indistinguishable from one another.”

“Is a play bad because it ends? Is a flower no longer beautiful because it will wilt? I think that humans and your lives are so intriguing because they’re finite.” He was as impassioned as ever when getting into your metaphysical dialogues— voice strong with resolve, leaning forward towards you earnestly, brow set just the slightest not with anger but determination, and hair falling into his onyx eyes that looked into yours without hesitation. “An incalculable but unquestionably limited amount of time, one chance, and each of you choose to live differently.”

“You still think that every human life is different from all the others?”

“Of course.” Apparently sensing that he hadn’t convinced you yet, Jaemin continued with an example, “Just look at you and your friend Jeno. Sure, the two of you converged pretty closely in college, but he made the choice to begin his career while you made the choice pursue higher education. Your two lives aren’t the same.”

“There’s also another major difference between the two of us.”

At the imploring tilt of his head, you deadpanned, “Only one of us made a deal with Hades for a third of our life.”

“An astute observation, Y/N,” Jaemin chuckled, relaxing back in his chair now that you’d changed up the tone of the conversation.

When both of your plates and glasses were empty, Jaemin took you by the hand once again to guide you from the dining room, as he apparently wanted to show you something. You emerged onto a patio of some sort, but that wasn’t what you were focused on. In front of you was a tree maybe ten or fifteen feet tall, an elegantly thin and sloping trunk, and along its many branches were round golden fruit the size of your palm. You couldn’t help the soft gasp that came from you as you took in the dazzling sight. Everything about the tree was normal from the texture of the brown bark to the dark green leaves, and even the dappling of the outer shell of the pomegranates that grew on it looked real, aside from the gilded color. It was magical, and you were happy just to know that something so beautiful existed.

“Thank you for showing me this, Jaemin,” you said, turning to look at the god who had stopped beside you.

You thought that he’d be looking at the scenery too, but his eyes were on you. He had a familiar look on his face, a small, tender smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, dark eyes holding a latent warmth like coals after a fire, and you felt tempted to get even closer to indulge in it.

But instead, you steeled your nerves to ask, “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

Your tone wasn’t as accusatory as your words were, it was a sincerely curious question.

“Like what?” Jaemin was quick to reply with a question of his own, keeping his attitude light but genuine.

“You keep smiling at me with this soft little smile.”

“I keep doing it? When was I doing it before?”

“When we first got here, when you sat down at dinner tonight, and just now, when you brought me out here.” It had made your heart go haywire every time you noticed it, so you were able to list the instances from tonight off the top of your head. But that wasn’t all, there was a reason why it was imprinted into the back of your eyelids like a burned-out LCD screen, “It’s like… like… you want to kiss me.”

“I do,” Jaemin declared, eyes never leaving yours, voice never wavering, so damn sure of himself. Even as you were here in front of him feeling like you were nearly ready to rip your hair out from just a few little smiles from him.

He was always like this. So charming, so smooth, playfully talking around your questions. Pulling you along with him, dancing with you through your conversation. You had to meet him head on, even if it felt like you were going crazy doing so. You did it during your dinners, you could do it now too.

“Is that why you’re smiling at me like that?”

“Do you want me to? Kiss you?” He took a step towards you. For a brief moment he was all you could see, all dark hair, dark eyes, and silver earrings.

“I want to know why you look at me like that.” You stepped back from him, wrapped in the heady smell of his cologne. Cinnamon, bergamot, an earthy scent too maybe? Your head was swimming with it, but you needed to focus on the conversation at hand.

“And I want to know if you want me to kiss you or not.” Another step, once again narrowing the distance between you.

“I asked first, Jaemin,” you poked your pointer finger against his chest as a warning. “An answer for an answer.”

He stayed put, seeming to be fighting a delighted smirk from his face as he looked between your face and the finger you held up defensively between the two of you. Jaemin’s features relaxed as he clasped his hands together behind his back, looking into your eyes earnestly, “All of those times that I’ve been looking at you tonight, I was thinking to myself, ‘It feels like she’s come home.’ You just looked like you belonged here, in my home, with me. It felt like I belonged with you. And that made me want to kiss you. That’s why.”

Of all the answers you had been expecting, that hadn’t quite been one of them. Grand declarations of love were a faraway possibility, sure, you’d seen movies before. That’s not what this was, though. This was both more and less. You hadn’t anticipated for Hades’ answer to be so simple yet all-soul-encompassing as the idea of coming home. While everything tonight had definitely been new and unfamiliar to you, you hadn’t been intimidated or uncomfortable in any way. With Jaemin at your side, you’d been able to take it all in with wonder and an open mind, knowing that you had him right there watching over you.

“I believe you owe me an answer now too, Y/N.” Jaemin’s voice was quiet, low, meant only for you. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

Your gaze fell to the finger you had to his chest, your right hand. It had lost all the force you started with, limp and simply resting against him. You could see the silver ring there, and lower on your arm was the bracelet he’d given you, both pieces of jewelry glinting in the hazy light afforded in the Underworld. You briefly wondered if they had come from here, from deep under the Earth; if they’d come home tonight, too. The god in front of you remained silent, waiting for your response. If there was one thing Jaemin was good at, it was waiting— after he’d given you his final push.

Then you finally looked back up at his face, into the sunken obsidian black that greeted you there. That ever-stubborn lock of raven hair was hanging between his brows, and you had a sudden and smitten urge to fix it. But you had something more important to do in that moment. After all, he’d given you his answer, now you owed him yours. And you’d made up your mind.

Your mouth had barely started forming around your answer before it was captured by Jaemin’s in a kiss that was equal parts tender and ravishing. It felt like he was trying to devour your ‘yes’ right off your tongue and keep it all to himself. Admittedly, your head had started nodding before your vocal cords could work.

If you thought you were swimming in spices and citrus before, you were drowning in them now. Cinnamon, oranges, and… cedar. Your hand that had previously been poking at his chest was now crumpling the collar of his dress shirt, the other hooking a finger in one of the belt loops at the front of his slacks to yank him closer. His own hands were doing their part, too. One cupped your cheek while the other held you by your waist. The sweetest nectar was being dripped into your veins, and you hungrily took more and more with each wanton kiss from Jaemin.

When his lips finally parted from yours, you couldn’t help but steal just one more kiss. He let out a breathy chuckle as he clasped a hand over the one you were grasping at his shirt with to gently pull it off, his thumb then rubbing slow circles into your palm. His hand that had been on your cheek dipped to gently grip your chin, and as he looked at you, you knew exactly what he was thinking.

“I’m home,” you promised.

The shadowy man was back in your dreams that night, and this time the golden fruit was already in your two hands. He was encouraging you to break it open, feed on its juicy flesh that he promises will taste so good.

You woke up before you could follow through on the decision you’d already made.

⤷ series masterlist   ⤷ blog masterlist

[striderepiphany]

Reddie headcannon: Eddie watches a ton of reality TV because Myra used to insist on it. He mostly watches it because he's invested in the later seasons. Richie protested and teased eddie about it quite a lot at first but now he's just as into it if not more.

Eddie likes that it's something they can enjoy together now however he regrets not having the foresight that Richie would pick up on all of their speech patterns and mannerisms to create yet Another Voice to annoy him with

As a fellow reality TV enjoyer I cosign all of this 👌 The thing about reality TV is it seems so stupid until you watch it with someone else, and you realize it gives you an excuse to be bitchy in a safe environment. Something they would both thrive in.

I imagine Eddie doesn't realize how invested Richie is at first, because he always insists he's just humoring Eddie's love of Bachelor in Paradise, until Richie goes on tour and Eddie brings it up on a phone call and Richie is like "...you watched the new episode without me?" And sounds like genuinely heartbroken about it

[sunflowervoltwentyeight]

Hi! This is a fic rec of my favorite reality show au's organized by word count from longest to shortest. You can view my other fic recs here. Enjoy!

As You Are by Zarah5 (139k)

AU. Five years after The X Factor launched his career as a radio host and songwriter, Louis Tomlinson returns as a judge. Falling for a contestant is the last thing he needs. It's also against his contract.

The only reason Harry auditions for The X Factor is because his best mate signed the two of them up as some kind of joke. Harry doesn't get the big deal—not until he's faced with this season's judges and realises that one of them used to be his desperate, impossible teenage crush.

For the Right Reasons by juliusschmidt / @juliusschmidt (105k)

Harry doesn’t agree to be the Bachelor expecting to find love. He’s just hoping for an exciting jaunt around the world, half a dozen new friends, and, if he’s lucky, an amazing hj or two.

Louis may have signed up to be a contestant on the Bachelor, but he’s not interested a ring or a proposal, not from Harry, not from anyone. He wouldn’t turn down a few more Instagram followers, though.

Somewhere In Between Lightning by jassy117 nauticalleeds shiningdistractionwrites / @nauticalleeds @shiningdistraction (99k)

As Louis took another bite, he thought back to how he had once believed that the hardest thing about being on Love Island would be Liam handling his social media.  He had been wrong. It was Harry Styles, peeking over at Louis as he forked a pancake into his mouth, and gauging his reaction. It was having to quench the swelling of his heart, which felt simultaneously like hope and the breaking of a thousand pieces.

---

A summer gone wrong (or very right) when, under Liam’s persuasion, Louis finds himself drunkenly applying for Love Island, and getting accepted. Oh, well. A summer spent on an island paradise couldn’t be all that bad, right?

Imagine his surprise when Louis arrives in sunny Majorca to find that his first love and ex-boyfriend, Harry, is another contestant, about to capture the hearts of everyone in the villa. Most normal people don’t have to face their ex on an otherwise straight TV show. Most normal people don’t fall for their ex again in front of the whole nation, either. Too bad this whole situation isn’t normal.

The Stars Are Guiding Me Back by coffeelouis / @coffeelouis (80k)

Directing the first ever season of The Bachelor with a bisexual star is a huge career move for Louis. After throwing himself into his career, he finally has the opportunity to prove himself as a director with a unique vision.

For Harry, being cast as the first ever Bi Bachelor means finally putting his ex-boyfriend behind him and starting anew. He's taking a chance on finding love and determined to do it right this time.

They didn't exactly think this through.

[or, the BACHELOR AU where Louis directs his ex-boyfriend Harry in his season as America's first bi bachelor.]

The Wicked Game by cherrystreet / @cherrystreet (70k)

An AU in which The Bachelor is gay, Louis is a contestant, Harry is the bachelor, everyone drinks a lot of champagne, the entire world gets to watch them fall in love, and no one plays by the rules.

Outwit, Outplay, Outlast by dancesongsoul, lookatyourchoices (60k)

“Tommo and Harry are gonna do it. I don’t know when, but they’re gonna do it. They’ve got the mattress, the pillows, everything’s in place, and they’re gonna do it. I really wish those two the best of luck.” –Taylor Swift, "Chapera"

Or a Survivor All-Stars AU in which Harry and Louis are just in this game to win the million dollars, but they end up with something better.

Featuring Harry's yellow swim shorts, Louis in snapbacks, and OT5 shenanigans.

Becoming Us by sweariwouldnt (59k)

Married at First Sight is a television show in which hopefuls looking for The One are matched by experts deeming them to be the perfect match. The twist? They meet each other for the first time at the altar. When they exchange their ‘I do’s’. And get married for real.

One Harry and Louis find each other at the altar. They have five weeks to make or break the set-up marriage.

Playing To Win by jacaranda_bloom / @jacaranda-bloom (36k)

Big Brother UK alumni Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles are selected for the UK vs Australia All Stars series with a massive one million dollar prize in the offing. They’re both fit and smart and would make a great alliance... if only they can stop their feelings from getting in the way.

OR the one where Louis really doesn’t want to like Harry, Harry is struggling to quell his growing fondness for Louis, but sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t fight fate.

[sayhallou]

Don't tell me you don't want a man like him. He is strong, cute, a cat person, doesn't hide emotions, watches Bachelor in Paradise, can cook, dance, sing and he will love you with all his heart ❤️

[rye-views]

Physical: 100. Season 2. 7.7/10

I would recommend this season to my friends. I would not rewatch this season.

When Jung Dae Jin first entered, I thought it was Taecyeon.

I love how supportive everyone is of each other despite the competition and despite all the arrogance most or all people have. I like when we do hearts to the others. The pullups were fun to watch. The speed in the monkey bars is crazy. All the women who made it really far are sooo cool to me. Like so much respect to Hayan in the roller quest. Soojin in the mine quest is crazy cool. Not attracted to Hong Beom Seok, but he's so cool. The challenges for the final four is so intense. I'm on the edge of my seat.

I'm attracted to Kim Dong Hyun, Kim Minsu, Lee Won Hee, and Amotti. Kim Minsu got me salivating. I'm going crazy for him in the mine quest.

I can't do any of this, but I just want to know what it all feels like. They should do like a Bachelor in Paradise for this show where all the winners of each season go against each other later on.

The roller challenge made me think about how they could make this show so that the challenges they do have a positive impact on something like farming. Something that has like an external result too. The hard part is I want them to take care of their body and safety first over winning, but I also see the mentality of like mind>body and this is how they even got here.

[cellsshapedlikestars]

So, I recently learned that there's going to be a 'golden bachelor'? My country only managed a few seasons of the show before it petered out and everyone kinda lost interest, so it's wild to me that it's still going strong elsewhere. Will you be watching? I loved your bach fics so I'm already imagining a GOT version, with Olenna being wooed by the likes of Tywin, Hoster Tully, John Arryn and Walder Frey lol

Sigh. I can never be concise about the bachelor lmao

I can't say the Bachelor is truly "going strong" here. The audience is down to 10% of what it was in its heyday (25.9 million viewers at its peak, 2.9 million watched the latest season), Granted, that's a delcine over a 20 year period, but still. Its reputation is in the trash (not that it's ever had a great reputation) but now on top of "this is trash TV", they have to deal with accusations of racial discrimination (host & show creator) as well as bullying (show creator). (Both of them have now left the show.)

They know the show is declining. I didn't even watch the end of the last Bachelor season, and I didn't watch the Bachelorette at all this year. And I've never watched the gimmick spinoffs (the musical one or this golden bachelor one). At this point, I genuinely can't believe the show hasn't been cancelled. I say this in an exhausted way, as someone who used to get a lot of joy out of the franchise. I don't know if it's me getting older, the show changing, or simply the times changing, but I can't do it anymore. (I genuinely think part of it is the fact that the show is TWO HOURS LONG, with half of that being commercials, and it goes until 10pm and I'm SLEEPY)

It just feels like the show is still on the air because... well, it's always been on the air. It's been going on for 21 years and has 27 seasons (along with 20 Bachelorette seasons and 8 Bachelor in Paradise). The show is a full grown adult who can legally drink in the US.

ANYWAY. Despite all that, I would absolutely watch Olenna getting courted by a bunch of men. It would be incredible. And Tywin? Yikes, imagine him trying to be romantic. His opening line out of the limo would be something about how disappointed he is in all his children.

[joaquinastacioyflores]

is that DIEGO LUNA? oh, no, that’s JOAQUIN ASTACIO Y FLORES, a FORTY year old EMT AT VALAPARAISO CENTRO MEDICO who uses HE/HIM pronouns. they currently live in LAS VILLAS DORADAS in QUILPUE, and the character they identify with most is DR COX FROM SCRUBS. hopefully they find their own little paradise here in el país de los poetas!

basics

full name: joaquin rafael astacio y flores age: 40 date of birth: december 28th, 1983 zodiac: capricorn sun, cancer rising, scorpio moon gender & pronouns: cisgender man, he/him relationship status: single sexuality: bisexual spoken languages: english, spanish occupation: emt at valaparaiso centro medico

appearance

face claim: diego luna height: 5'10"(117.8 cm) dominant hand: right hair color: brown eye color: brown distinguishing features: tbd tattoos: tbd

personality

positive traits: hard-working, compassionate, intelligent, reliable, passionate negative traits: sarcastic, impatient, overworked, touchy, harsh

mentality

phobias: fear of failure disorders: n/a allergies: n/a

background

hometown: viña del mar, chile birthplace: valaparaiso, chile education level: bachelor's in emergency medical services

headcanons

first became interested in emergency medicine as career by watching medical drama tv shows. once he got older and realized how unrealistic these shows are, his interest shifted more to the aspect of helping people. joaquin also really likes the fast-paced environment of working in emergency services, though it is sometimes overwhelming for him. his guilty pleasure is telenovelas and he doesn't tell anyone except his close friends. this probably started because his mom watched them and he got invested but is too embarrassed to admit it. when he's off the clock and he's not out he can be caught catching up on his favorites. enjoys going out to bars and browsing the street market in his free time. joaquin doesn't drink very much but he enjoys the atmosphere and talking to other people. new vendors pop up all the time in the street market so he always feels like there's something new to discover, whether it's food or someone's creation. is perpetually exhausted, from a combination of being on call a lot and insomnia. with the irregular hours of his job he has a hard time getting a manageable sleep schedule. he has tried melatonin, white noise, essential oils, you name it, they tend to just help him for a short period of time and then it goes back to him not being able to sleep. in-between trips he tends to powernap, though he's usually woken up before he gets any real rest.

[snakedifferentskin]

They're both seventeen when they visit the cottage by the sea. Both of them sit over a beach towel as they watch the shore rush in and back out, and the sun has begun to disappear with the daylight. It's peaceful, blissful even. Oliver's so consumed by his own awe and thoughts that the silence which fell over them quite some time ago is unnoticed.

He's supposed to be going to College next year, majoring in something that brings him no real joy. That's just how it's always been, hasn't it? He's never had a say in what his future will look like.

"We should stay here." The words are abrupt, breaking through the silence and not looking over at Marc just yet as the images unfold in front of him. Sand bleeds through his fingers when he absentmindedly grabs a handful. "We could... we could do it. I have enough money in my name to last us a long time. I could find work somewhere in the area."

Oliver is not a risk taker. That much has become obvious over the years. But paradise is right here, at the tips of their fingertips, just waiting to be explored and experienced. No one else knows of this cottage, so they'd be blissfully forgotten by the cruel world at some point. Nothing good is awaiting them back in the city, but here...

He can't go back. Not when the future he doesn't want is so terrifyingly close.

Since they were kids, they’d snuck off somewhere off by the coast. It used to be the almost-shack that his mother had owned and train trips to the seaside for the day. Oliver and him had been going alone more often, making the journey in Oliver’s car. Every time, Marc promised that next time he would be able to drive them down in his car. A car that he couldn’t even dream of affording yet with his dreary work in bars that barely could afford electric lights. But he always said it as they drove down the empty road, one of his hands near the middle of the car. Almost touching him, the same bubbling excitement like a fizzing drink up in chest.

Lying back on the beach towel, Marc has opted for much more scandalous wear. Only bathing shorts, a few patches sewn on the sides from a few unfortunate waves crashing him into the rocks. A sun hat atop his head and leaning across his face as the sea gently crashes against the sand. Marc had university waiting for him, an arts degree that he didn’t have an idea of what he could do afterwards. Acting was his dream, but getting anywhere with it felt impossible. But he treated it as if he already had a contract signed.

“What? Are you serious? Ollie, we can’t..I can’t. I’ll never get any work in this town, and what about you? I don’t think that you’ll have any money once your father finds out that you’ve dropped the degree to live here. And live with me no less. Why would you want that anyways? Thought you’d find a nice girl to settle down with, and I’d be the bachelor best friend.”