#honey and firelight

[monstersholygrail]

Dragon bf takes care of his treasures like any proper dragon should. You, being his most precious treasure, always come first.

Before you, his favorite task of the day was polishing his treasures. Licking and rubbing them vigorously until they shined and sparkle like nothing you’ve ever seen. And now that he has you, his darling mate, you could say it’s still his favorite task of the day.

Except one minor twist being that you’re the treasure he’s polishing so intently.

Every day he places your pretty curvy body on his table and spreads your thick thighs so he can fully enjoy his task. Exposing your wet folds to the cool air and making your breath catch with anticipation.

A rumble of pleasure moves through your bf’s chest, watching as your slick makes your pussy shine brighter than any jewel or gem he’s ever seen. Though he knows you can get wetter and he won’t stop until you’re absolutely dripping.

Dragon bf moans lewdly as he starts lapping up along your wet slit. His eyes rolling back as he gorges himself on your delectable essence. Eating you out like he hasn’t had a meal in a century and now that he’s got it in his grasp he refuses to let it go.

Your cries echo against the walls of his cave and he growls in response, picking up pace, needing more of your sweet noises and the honeyed nectar that spews from between your thighs with each swirl of his tongue.

You swear you’ve never been more wet in your life. His tongue igniting every nerve in your body, making your cunt throb and gush with your arousal. Giving him exactly what he wants as your slick pools out of you, making a mess of your thighs and the table beneath you. Even his face is shiny and soaked with your essence, glittering against the lit torches on the wall.

Every orgasm simply falls into the next. His tongue building you up and making you drip with need until he latches onto your clit and sucks another orgasm out of your spent body. Over and over again, your body growing unaware of everything besides how soaked he’s made you.

When your Dragon bf lifts his head from your quivering and wrecked cunt, you sigh in relief, believing him to be done. He looks down at you with a satisfied smirk as your pussy glitters in the firelight and your face glows with the flush of your release.

But then he’s rolling his tongue over his thumb and something in your belly clenches. Your traitorous cunt fluttering around nothing at the implication of his actions.

“Did you think we were done, my mate? Tsk. No, a treasure such as you deserves only the best and I am nowhere near finished with you.”

[sixeyesonathiel]

love & war — ares!gojo x aphrodite!reader

part 2 of all’s fair. 18+, YEARNER gojo, LONG HAIRED GOJO I REPEAT, LONG HAIRED GOJO. jealous & sort of possessive gojo, he breaks your wedding ring. cunnilingus while u sit on ur throne, squirting.

the feast is decadent.

ambrosia drips like honey from silver goblets, pooling at the edges like nectar too sweet to swallow. laughter rings through the marble colonnades of mount olympus, reverberating against pillars gilded in gold, lilting and hollow—like a song sung too many times, a chorus with no soul. but the gods don't care for meaning. they care for spectacle.

and tonight, you are the show.

you sit at hephaestus' side, spine straight, expression the picture of benevolence. the torchlight catches in your hair, setting it aglow like strands of molten gold. the chiffon draped across your body slips just so—revealing the curve of your thigh, the soft swell of your shoulder, the shadow between your breasts. suggestive, never vulgar. worshipped, never touched.

you tilt your goblet, fingers tracing the rim like you're tuning a lyre. your lips, red and warm, brush the edge but never drink. your eyes flutter closed as apollo's laughter crescendos, and you feign delight—mouth curling in a smile that could bring mortals to their knees. beside you, your husband remains silent. his hand is steady on his chalice. he forged the ring on your finger with hands calloused from fire and fury, and yet you wear it like it's forged from spider silk—a fragile thing, breakable.

and you don't look at satoru.

not at first.

but oh, you feel him.

his presence seeps into the room like smoke. the god of war is leaned lazily against his throne across the hall, the picture of restraint. clad in armor darker than midnight, trimmed in crimson, his white hair is tied back by a ribbon dyed red, trailing down his back like a war banner, a declaration. but his restraint is a lie.

his goblet remains empty. always empty. he drinks nothing tonight—not wine, not ambrosia—because it is only you that he hungers for.

his blue eyes, pale and gleaming, fixate on you. they don't waver. not once. they drink in every movement of your fingers, every curve of your smile, every deliberate flutter of your lashes. he watches you toy with your ring like it's a sin he's yet to commit. he watches you lean closer to dionysus, watches your laugh tilt toward apollo, watches your bare foot slip from under the tablecloth like a secret invitation. it's cruel. deliberate.

it's punishment.

your favorite dress, ruined. your thighs, bruised. your lips, bitten and left cold in a tent heavy with the stench of blood and iron and war. he kissed you like a man possessed, like a god starved. then he left you aching.

and now?

he aches.

not with the sharp, glorious pain of battle—but something worse. duller. quieter. the kind of ache that sits beneath the ribs and gnaws like hunger, like longing.

when the feast ends—when wine-soaked laughter fades into sultry sighs, when silk rustles and marble floors grow slick with pleasure—you do not rise.

you stay seated in your throne, golden and still, carved like a statue of temptation by hands far crueler than fate.

you wait.

and like always, he finds you.

you don't hear his footsteps. only the subtle shift of air. the softest rustle of a crimson sash brushing against bronze armor. then the press of a shadow curling into yours like a secret.

“that's twice now,” his voice comes low, smoked silk and sharpened edge, curling around your spine. “once on the battlefield. now here. you like making me wait?”

his tone holds accusation—but the way he looks at you, moonlight caught in those cerulean eyes, it's not anger. it's reverence. it's ruin. it's worship.

he looks like war incarnate dressed in restraint—white hair tied back by a ribbon the color of spilled blood, pale skin brushed faintly gold beneath olympian firelight, armor kissed by countless hands but pierced by none. and he looks at you like he's starved. like he would gut himself if it meant dying with your name on his lips.

your lashes lower, slow. you don't turn to face him yet. you let the pause bloom between you, heavy with all the words you shouldn't say and all the touches you're not allowed to crave.

then—deliberately—you twist to meet him.

your gaze is lazy, liquid, the wine having turned your movements feline. your dress slips like a sigh over your thighs. your lips curve just enough to wound.

you reach to press a palm flat against his chest, over the gilded armor. his heat hums beneath it. a mortal man would be scalded.

“you ruined my favorite dress,” you murmur, voice hushed and sugared. your fingers curl, tracing the seam between plates of gold. “and left me in a tent that smelled of blood and glory and you.”

he breathes in sharply, jaw ticking once—just once—but it's enough. enough to unravel you.

his exhale is quiet, but charged, like the hush before a battlefield scream. his chest rises with restraint, sinewed muscle tense beneath his black tunic, straps of armor left discarded at the threshold like a promise he intends to break.

he steps forward. slow. deliberate. like the way fire creeps, hungry and patient. another step. then another. the weight of him warps the air. heat blooms in your lungs.

your hand stays raised between you like a shield, but your wrist trembles, traitorous. it remembers the weight of his grip, the way his fingers once mapped constellations into your skin. your mind whispers no. your pulse chants yes.

his eyes flicker—not to yours, but to your hand. to the ring.

“and you think this—” his voice, low and hoarse, curls at the edges like smoke, “—wearing this ring makes us even?”

he slides his fingers beneath yours, not with force, but with reverence. with fury disguised as grace. he lifts your hand like it's an oath he's been denied. like it's home.

he doesn't meet your gaze. his attention stays pinned to the band of gold—hephaestus' craftsmanship, forged in fire and jealousy, fitted for a goddess who never wanted to be possessed.

he looks at it the way a warrior looks at a wound he cannot close. as if it mocks him. as if it dares him to tear it off with his teeth.

his thumb ghosts over it. slow. scalding. like a brand.

you inhale, lips parting to say something cold, something final—but your voice crumbles before it can reach your tongue. all that leaves you is a whisper, soft and shaking, “you shouldn't even be touching me.”

his head lifts.

his eyes—blue, impossibly bright, like the sky just before it breaks—lock onto yours. and they don't just look. they consume. scorch. drink you in like a man dying of thirst, parched from years of wars he didn't win, undone by a beauty he was never meant to hold.

you feel it then, the tremble in the air between you. like something sacred cracking. like prophecy catching fire.

“then stop me.” he says.

his voice isn't loud. doesn't need to be. it's low, rough like gravel but sweetened with reverence, a thread pulled too tight, fraying at the edges. and it tugs at something inside you—something soft, something ancient.

your fingers twitch in his grip. not to pull away. gods, never to pull away. but to stay. to linger. to clutch the fleeting moment like it might fly from your grasp if you dared to blink.

you don't stop him.

instead, you tip your chin up, just slightly. prideful. defiant. divine. and you raise your hand higher between you both, baring the delicate line of your wrist like an offering on an altar. like a lamb to the slaughter. like a challenge written in perfume and silk.

“go on, then,” you whisper, lashes lowered like a veil. the words curl out of you like smoke, like honey laced with venom. “break another rule.”

and he does.

not with rage. not with thunder.

but with reverence.

he sinks to his knees—not like a soldier kneeling before his commander, not like a penitent before a god—but like a man who has already decided that he would rather burn at your feet than live untouched in another's arms.

the marble floor groans under him. the sound is quiet, but it echoes, somehow—sharp and cold, like the world remembering how to breathe.

his white hair, bright as new snow and wild as flame, slips loose from its ribbon and cascades around his face like falling starlight. it brushes against his cheeks, glows silver where it catches the lamplight. divine. disheveled. ruinous.

his hands are warm when they cradle yours. calloused from centuries of war, yet careful. trembling, just barely. he lifts your fingers like they might dissolve in his palms.

he bows his head to the ring—hephaestus's ring, forged in fire, in resentment, in the echo of zeus's command—and kisses it. once. twice. the third time, his lips linger.

then—he bites.

there's no warning. just a clean snap. metal splits beneath his teeth like fate surrendering. the ring breaks. falls. its fragments scatter across the marble like shattered promises.

and you exhale, shivering. not from fear. from recognition.

his mouth finds your bare finger again, lips dragging slow over skin where the band once sat. his teeth press again—gentler now, but no less possessive. he doesn't break the skin.

but the mark blooms anyway.

golden ichor wells to the surface. one drop. warm. pure. precious. it gleams like molten starlight, catching the flicker of torches. it doesn't harden, but it remains—a glimmering, radiant mark that pulses like a gem, impossibly beautiful against the curve of your skin.

no forge. no chains. no vows.

only power. only him.

his ring. your ruin.

he doesn't move. doesn't rise. just kneels there, his mouth hovering over your skin, his breath soft and reverent like a prayer whispered at the altar of something sacred. his eyes flutter closed, and there's a tremor in the air between you.

he lifts his head just slightly, the weight of his gaze pulling you deeper than any touch could. his voice breaks the silence, low and broken, the words crackling with something raw.

“this... is the only semblance of a ring i can give you.” he murmurs, as if the words are both a gift and a confession, an admission of a longing that has no end.

it carves through you like lightning.

you should pull away. remind him of the vows you wear like shackles. of your station. your symbols. that zeus did not gift you to hephaestus out of kindness, but as a solution. a ceasefire.

but instead—your hand lifts. as if guided by something older than reason. you cradle his face in your palm, thumb brushing the sharp angle of his cheek. your golden ichor paints him—bright against pale skin, like warpaint. like a claim.

“you'll get me killed one day.” you say. the words float out of you soft and slow, silk soaked in prophecy.

he laughs, low and broken and full of something starved.

“only if someone gets to you before i do.” he turns his head, catches your fingertip between his lips. kisses it. reverent. ruinous.

his lips trail down your wrist, slow—like he's savoring not flesh, but fate. your breath hitches. somewhere behind you, the world still feasts. but here, in this quiet ruin, it's only the two of you. the war god, and the goddess he was never meant to have.

“do you want me to stop?” his voice cracks, a threadbare rasp that trembles with something dangerous.

you don't answer, not right away.

your body shifts, the fabric of your chiton whispering against your skin, slipping like liquid gold, pooling at your hips, revealing just enough to stoke the fire smoldering in his gaze.

his eyes darken, pupils swallowing the blue entirely, consumed by the weight of you.

satoru, the untamed. satoru, the one who has never known restraint. satoru, brought to his knees by the soft curve of your thighs.

you lean down, your breath warm against his ear, lips grazing the shell, barely there. “then kneel properly.”

and he does.

the groan of his armor is deafening, the pressure of him against you—heat and steel—his forehead against the crest of your hip, his nose tracing the curve where skin is softest, most vulnerable. his hands, large and calloused, find the firm flesh of your thighs, not with the intention to mark, but to learn, to remember. every small movement you make, every breath you stifle, he maps them, tattooing them in his mind like a strategy, like war.

his tongue flicks, slow, deliberate, not a conqueror's claim but a prayer. grateful in it’s intensity.

you arch into him, your back a taut bow, the world blurring for a moment as the weight of his touch splits you in half.

the torchlight bathes your skin, casting molten gold over the sweat-slick column of your throat, the flutter of your lashes so delicate, like wings caught in the flame. your fingers twist in his hair, not guiding—never guiding—just holding on.

as if you fear the heavens might tear him away from you, pull him from your reach.

he notices. of course, he does.

satoru, who feels the tremor before the spear flies. satoru, who senses the precise moment an enemy's resolve crumbles to dust.

his hands slide upward, fingers finding the curve of your waist, thumbs pressing into the soft hollows beneath your ribs. it's a question without words. a question only you can answer.

and you do.

you roll your hips once, sharp, precise, and his groan cuts through you, the sound shaking your bones, a crack of thunder in the silence of the room.

“satoru—”

your voice breaks, a whimper caught between prayer and curse. the ceiling above, painted with the gods' own hands, seems to sway with the weight of it—or maybe it's just your vision, blurry at the edges.

he pulls back just enough to catch your gaze, a smile curling at the corners of his lips, glistening, intoxicating.

“louder,” he demands, voice as dark and thick as smoke from war-horns. “let them hear.”

you kick him, weakly, a distant protest, your heel sliding off his pauldron with a dull clang.

his laugh is ragged, breathless, a sound that rattles the air between you then he dives back in.

no hesitation. no mercy. just hunger, raw and relentless, like he's been dreaming of this moment for centuries. his hands grip your thighs, fingers pressing into the soft flesh hard enough to leave marks, hard enough to remind you who you belong to. his mouth moves with the kind of skill that comes from obsession—from nights spent imagining exactly how you'd fall apart for him.

and oh, you do.

It builds slow, then all at once—a coil tightening in your stomach, your back arching off the throne, your fingers twisting in his hair like you're clinging to sanity itself. you bite your lip hard enough to taste ichor, but it's no use.

the world simply narrows to heat and pressure and the slick drag of his tongue and you break.

a choked gasp rips from your throat as your back arches off the throne, thighs clamping around his head like a vice. golden ichor spills—not the slow trickle of a wound, but a flood, a surrender, dripping down his chin, painting his lips in liquid radiance.

he doesn't pull away.

he drinks.

greedy. reverent. as if this—your ruin, your release—is the only ambrosia he'll ever crave.

when he finally lifts his head, it's with a slow drag of his tongue along your inner thigh, savoring every drop. his breath fans hot over oversensitive skin as he surveys his handiwork—your trembling limbs, your heaving chest, the mess glistening between your thighs.

“look at you,” he murmurs, voice wrecked. his thumb swipes through the gold streaking your skin, smearing it like war paint. “all that pretty composure, shattered.”

your cheeks burn in embarrassment as you kick at him again, but it's weak, the force gone, the desire too heavy.

he catches your ankle with ease, his grip unyielding. his lips pressing to the arch of your ankle, tender, almost reverent. then his teeth find it—sharp, a bite.

you jolt beneath him, a shiver running through you like lightning.

“still sensitive?” his voice is dark with satisfaction, low and predatory. he runs his tongue along the mark he's left, soothing it, his mouth just as cruel as it is tender. “good.”

a/n : ares gojo brainrot so bad i wrote this instead of continuing my wips... dunno if i made some misconceptions since im not that invested on greek mythology but if i did yall can expect my apology video w/ tears 😔✌🏻 first time actually trying to write smut omg dont jump me i did my best... part 3 someday idk

[ice-man-goes-bwoah]

Marked||Remmick x fem!reader

Mndi +18

Summary—Remmick’s obsessed with your skin. Dark, warm, alive. He can’t stop licking, biting, praising—marking—it. He needs everyone to know you’re his. He makes you ride him slow while he worships every inch, telling you you’re the only light he’s ever seen.

Warnings—possessive sex, praise kink, interracial dynamic, body worship, dirty talk

Word count—739

Remmick has always had a thing for your skin.

Not just the way it looks though he could write poetry about how the dark gleam of it glows like firelight in the dark, how it shimmers when you sweat, how it drinks the moon. But the way it tastes. The way it feels. Warm, velvet-soft, stretched over muscle and strength and everything he craves more than blood.

He has you straddling his lap now, the slow rock of your hips driving him half-mad with need. But he doesn’t buck up. He doesn’t rush. He just watches.

Watches your curves roll like honey. Watches the way you tilt your head back, lashes fluttering, mouth parting with a soft gasp when his hands slide up your waist. You’re riding him slow, steady, so deep it’s practically torture for you both.

His chain clinks against your stomach every time you drop your hips. His fingers flex against your thighs. You’re gonna be sore tomorrow, and the thought makes his cock twitch inside you.

But he can’t stop looking at your skin.

“Jesus Christ,” he rasps, voice rough with hunger, Southern drawl thick. “You don’t know what you do to me, do you?”

You smile, lazy, teasing. “Oh, I have some idea.”

That gets a growl out of him. His hands tighten, dragging you flush against him until your chest presses to his, your breath ghosting his throat. “So fuckin’ warm,” he mutters, kissing your collarbone. “Like sunlight. Like sin.”

He sinks his teeth into your shoulder not to feed, just to mark. A claim. And God, he’s got so many of them on you already. Your neck, your tits, your hips all bruised, kissed, sucked red and purple and gold. His fingerprints might never leave your thighs.

You whimper when he bites, nails digging into his shoulders. “Remmick—”

“That’s it, sugar. Let me hear you. Let me feel you.” He lifts his mouth, eyes burning gold now. “Wanna ruin you slow. Wanna see my marks all over you tomorrow when you look in the mirror. Wanna remind you you’re mine.”

“You already did.”

His grip falters. Just for a second. Like your words physically stunned him.

You don’t stop moving. You roll your hips again, deliberately slow, grinding your clit against his pelvis. “You think I’d let anyone else have this?” You tilt his chin up so he has to look you in the eye. “I belong to you.”

He groans wounded, almost and grabs your ass with both hands, driving you down harder. “Say it again.”

“I’m yours,” you breathe, letting your head fall to his. “I’m all yours, Remmick.”

“Fuck—fuck—you’re gonna break me,” he gasps, mouth hot on your throat. “Only light I’ve ever seen, baby. Only thing worth prayin’ to.”

His lips move lower. Over the swell of your breast, down the valley between. He licks, sucks, tongues your nipple until you arch for him.

“Dark skin like a goddamn altar,” he moans, voice gone reverent. “Want to worship. Want to bury myself in you and never fuckin’ leave.”

You grind down harder, faster now, chasing the high he’s whispering into existence. He meets your rhythm finally, hips snapping up just enough to make your thighs tremble.

“Can’t stop thinkin’ about how you look like this,” he mutters, dragging his tongue down your sternum. “Ridin’ me like you own me. Drippin’ warm all over my cock. Shit, baby. You were made for this.”

“Remmick, please—”

He tilts his head back, watching you. Sweaty. Gasping. Riding him like you were born to. “You close?”

You nod, eyes fluttering. “Need to—need you to—”

His thumb finds your clit, rubbing tight circles with expert precision. “Come on then. Give it to me. Show me who this pussy belongs to.”

You sob his name when you come. Body shaking, thighs clenching, muscles fluttering around his cock as he watches, memorizes it. And he keeps you moving through it, holding you steady while he spills inside you with a groan that sounds more like a prayer.

For a moment, there’s only panting. Skin against skin. His necklace cool against your chest. Your arms around his neck.

Then, quietly, reverently:

“Gonna keep you like this forever.”

You huff a laugh. “You’ll have to let me walk eventually.”

He grins against your neck. “Maybe. If I can still smell me on you after.”

He kisses a bite mark on your shoulder like an apology.

But it isn’t one. It’s a promise.

[iyoonjh]

A Cure for Frostbite

pairing: royal!sunghoon x fem!reader – w/c: 7209

synopsis: In the hush of the imperial palace, a forbidden romance blooms between Sunghoon—the emperor’s youngest son—and Y/N, a quiet apothecary meant to live in the shadows.

What begins with stolen glances and subtle gifts deepens into something dangerous and all-consuming. Y/N knows the risk. Sunghoon does not care. When their closeness is discovered, she pulls away to protect them both—but Sunghoon, desperate and lovesick, would burn the whole kingdom for one more moment by her side.

genre: romance, longing, historical romance, inspired by the apothecary diaries, fluff? idk, this is just a short drabble

In the eastern quarter of the Imperial Palace—past the lacquered gates where the painted cranes arched their wings eternally in mid-flight, and where plum blossoms fell like memories onto pale stone—there resided a young woman of no lineage, no crest, no glory but for the clarity of her mind and the elegance with which she existed.

Her name was Y/N, though in the palace she was called nothing so intimate—merely the apothecarian, the clever one, or sometimes, in the hushed voice of women who admired and resented her in equal measure, the beauty in white. She wore no silk but her modest uniform, no gold save the sheen of oil that glossed her hands after grinding herbs for the dowagers' sleep and princes’ fevers. Still, she carried herself as if the air bowed for her passage.

She had eyes like tea under moonlight—dark, clear, reflective of depth not seen but only guessed—and a mouth that rarely smiled, though when it did, it made even the most solemn of guards avert their eyes, ashamed to have witnessed it.

Though she never meant to be seen, she was always noticed.

To the north of that same palace, behind the walls embroidered with dragons in thread spun from silver, lived the youngest son of the Emperor.

His name was Sunghoon, the frost prince. The court called him His Serene Highness, or sometimes simply the son of Winter, for he rarely spoke in public and bore himself with a distance that even snowflakes respected. He was as beautiful as a sculpture chiseled from ice and candlelight: all pale skin, raven-black hair, and long eyes that seemed to know too much.

Yet his closest friends—noble but not royal—knew another Sunghoon. Heeseung, with the mind of a scholar and laughter like wind through open fields, and Jake, ever the diplomat’s son, quick-witted and honey-tongued, both saw through the iciness. Behind the closed shoji of his chambers, Sunghoon was warmth incarnate. He laughed at Heeseung’s ridiculous poems. He argued passionately over the best blade oil. He lay on his stomach in boyish laziness while Jake debated love and loyalty like a playwright.

He was brilliant with the sword. Too brilliant. So brilliant, the Emperor forbade him from battle.

Still, sometimes—when the moon was fat and the guards were drunk with wine—Sunghoon vanished from his quarters. And when he returned, bruises bloomed like violets along his ribs. Jake sighed. Heeseung scolded. Sunghoon only smiled, one incisor peeking out as he whispered, “I’m not dead yet.”

The two might never have crossed paths—he, a constellation born to rule; she, a shadow who kept others alive—but fate has a taste for irony, and palace walls are not made to keep hearts in.

It was early winter when Sunghoon saw her for the first time. The palace was full of cold breath and firelight. The Empress Dowager had taken ill—fevered, delirious, calling for her lost sister—and the court physicians, all swollen with status and silk, debated in circles that bled into days. Decoctions failed. Prayers echoed unanswered.

Then the apothecarian was summoned.

She entered the Dowager’s chambers like a whisper. A bundle of vials at her hip. Hands scrubbed to sanctity. She did not bow to impress, nor tremble under the weight of royal eyes. She asked only for quiet and for linen steeped in white chrysanthemum.

Sunghoon was there, in the shadow of a carved screen, bored and suspicious, idly listening to the Emperor rage at useless cures. He had no interest in women of the court—they preened like birds but spoke like reeds: all rustle, no root.

But then she spoke. Calm. Certain. Clear.

“The fever is not of the lungs but of the gut. She was fed peach kernels in her wine. The poison sleeps in sweetness.”

And the world paused to listen.

Sunghoon leaned forward.

“Who is she?” he asked, voice barely more than a breath.

Jake, beside him, shrugged. “They say she’s from the southern provinces. No family of name. She treats the kitchen maids and concubines like they were sisters.”

Sunghoon’s gaze remained fixed.

“She’s lovely,” Heeseung noted, tilting his head. “Though you’ll find no courtship there. She is wedded to her work.”

Perhaps it should have ended there—a silent admiration, an echo of curiosity, something he could dismiss with a sparring session or a bath in the onsen.

But the gods had not designed Sunghoon’s heart for quiet.

Three days later, Y/N was tending to a minor injury in the soldier’s infirmary—a foolish boy had broken his thumb while wrestling a pig, and the shame hurt more than the swelling—when she turned and found him at the door.

She knew him by title. Knew him by face, too, for who in the palace didn’t? The frost prince himself, sculpted by the heavens, lips too red, eyes too clever.

But she did not lower her gaze.

“Your Highness,” she said with the same tone she used for burnt cooks and sobbing handmaidens. “Are you ill?”

His lips curved just slightly.

“No,” he said. “But I could be.”

She blinked. Not a blush. Not a smile. Not even a breath of amusement. Just—

“Come back when you are,” she answered, turning away.

And Sunghoon—youngest son of the Emperor, undefeated in sparring, master of every noble art—stood there, momentarily robbed of speech.

He was not used to indifference.

It was intoxicating.

In the palace, time did not move; it sighed.

The courtyards bloomed in sequence like breath drawn through the mouth of heaven—first the plum blossoms in the eastern court, then magnolias by the main veranda. In the inner palace, light slanted gently through latticed windows, dust motes dancing like polite ghosts.

And somewhere in the middle of all this—between the call of the imperial bell and the rustle of silk across polished floors—Y/N was busy being useful.

She worked like a hymn—quiet, necessary, elegant in rhythm. Her footsteps made no sound in the sick wards. Her hands moved with exactitude, her eyes alert, always measuring. When she passed, the guards straightened. The other apothecaries took note. She belonged to no noble family, had no title—but in the hush of the Emperor’s palace, her name was a soft reverence.

And still, she believed she moved unseen.

She was wrong.

It began with a fever.

Not hers.

Prince Sunghoon—third son of the Emperor, youngest of the blood, and colder than jade in winter—was brought to the southern infirmary with a low-grade fever and “mild dizziness.” A meaningless case. The other court physicians had deemed it unworthy of real concern, barely requiring an herbal rinse.

But still, the order had come directly.

“Summon her,” said the guard, voice subdued. “The apothecarian.”

So she went.

He was sitting up when she arrived, arms crossed, expression unreadable. He wore no crown, no badge of status—only a pale robe embroidered with cranes, the gold thread shimmering when the light caught it.

She bowed. “Your Highness.”

“You’re not what I expected,” he said.

She raised a brow. “And what did Your Highness expect?”

He tilted his head slightly, as though studying her shape might answer the question.

“I supposed someone less… something.”

That was the first time she was summoned to tend his wounds. She diagnosed nothing unusual—likely heatstroke from overexertion. He thanked her with a polite nod, then left.

Two days later, he returned.

“A headache,” he said. “Persistent.”

She asked the routine questions: pulse, appetite, light sensitivity. Nothing of note.

“Have you been sleeping, Your Highness?”

“Not well.”

“There must be reason then.”

He looked at her for a moment too long, then said, “Restless thoughts.”

She prescribed valerian, a gentle sedative. She handed him the powder in a folded slip of paper. He held it longer than necessary, fingers brushing hers.

“Your hands are cold,” he murmured.

She pulled away. “Apologies.”

He said nothing. But when he left, he wore a ghost of a smile.

The third time, it was a cut across his palm.

Thin. Clean. Precise.

She did not look up as she began to treat it.

“Sparring?”

“A door.”

“Really?”

“A very sharp door.”

She glanced at him then, and his mouth twitched.

“You enjoy being difficult,” she said.

“I enjoy seeing you.”

A pause. Her hands stilled, breath caught between one heartbeat and the next.

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Then I won’t.” A beat. “Unless you want me to.”

By the fifth visit—something about bruised ribs and “falling down”—Y/N was no longer convinced he had any true ailments at all.

Which is when she began to notice the pattern.

Every excuse was measured. A scrape on the right elbow just deep enough to require her attention. A cough that never quite returned once her tea reached his lips. He was never dramatic, never demanding. He didn’t beg for her time; he simply made her curious.

And curiosity was a dangerous thing in a place like this.

They were tucked behind the stables where no one came at this hour — too far from the scholar’s garden, too shadowed for courtiers, too ordinary for the royal sons of heaven.

But that’s what made it safe.

Jake leaned against the wooden beam, arms crossed lazily. His outer robe was half-unfastened, exposing the ivory collar of his undershirt, still damp from sword practice. Heeseung sat on an overturned water barrel, balancing a twig between his fingers like a fan. Sunghoon was the only one who remained standing, back to them, eyes on the cloudless horizon.

It had been quiet. But Jake, as usual, couldn’t let it stay that way.

“How’s your third fever this week?” he asked, voice dry.

Sunghoon didn’t turn.

“Gone,” he replied simply.

“Hmm. A miracle,” Heeseung added. “Must be that genius nurse in the infirmary. What’s her name again?”

“Y/N,” Jake supplied, the name slipping off his tongue like he’d been waiting to say it. “The one you pretend not to look at.”

Sunghoon’s shoulders rose — barely. Controlled. Still, his silence cracked the air like a blade drawn slowly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

Heeseung grinned. “You’ve had a cut, a cough, bruised ribs, and now a migraine. All in six days. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were fighting wild boars on the palace roof.”

“Or,” Jake said, pushing off the beam, circling him now, “you’re just in love with a girl who smells like camphor and violet water.”

At that, Sunghoon turned. Slowly. The sun lit one side of his face and cast the other into shadow — one eye unreadable, the other glinting like a secret.

“You think this is love?”

Heeseung shrugged. “We think it’s something. Don’t you?”

Jake gave him a meaningful look. “You show up to practice late, you disappear after council lessons, and you flinch when her name is mentioned.”

“I do not flinch.”

“Sunghoon,” Heeseung said carefully, tapping the edge of his boot against the barrel, “you’re the son of the Emperor. Not just any noble boy with a soft heart and an empty title. You don’t get to fall for someone just because she wraps your hand in silk and scolds you when you won’t rest.”

A beat passed. No one breathed.

Then Sunghoon said, very quietly:

“I know.”

And something in his voice silenced even Jake.

He wasn’t denying it anymore. Wasn’t laughing, wasn’t dodging. There was no smirk, no clever retort. Just a kind of quiet devastation, like a vase you see fall before it hits the ground — the knowledge that it’s already shattered.

“But I think about her,” he continued, voice barely above a whisper. “Everywhere. In court. On the practice grounds. When I try to sleep. I see her hands folding herbs, her lips when she speaks, the way she tucks her hair behind her ear when she thinks no one’s looking—”

“Gods,” Jake muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You’re doomed.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Heeseung sighed. “And what exactly is your plan? Keep faking injuries until someone catches on? What then? You’ll get her dismissed. Or worse.”

“I don’t have a plan.”

Jake leaned in, all sarcasm gone from his tone. “Then you better get one. Because this—this isn’t just a passing interest, is it?”

Sunghoon looked down at his hands. Pale, unmarked. The cut she stitched had healed already. But the memory of her touch had not. He could still feel her thumb against the bone of his wrist, soft and steady. As if he wasn’t dangerous at all.

As if he were just a boy.

“She sees me,” he said. “Not the title. Not the weight. Just me.”

“That’s what makes it dangerous,” Heeseung said gently.

Jake exhaled, long and slow, then clapped a hand to Sunghoon’s shoulder.

“Well,” he said, tone brightening with mock cheer, “if we’re going down, might as well go beautifully. Just… try not to fall off a roof next time, yeah?”

Sunghoon almost smiled.

“No promises.”

The palace was quieter in the mornings — a kind of hush that clung to the marble floors and whispered along the silk tapestries. Even the birds outside seemed to know not to sing too loud. In the East Wing, where few dared to wander without purpose, the apothecarian’s room remained still, perfumed with crushed herbs and sun-warmed parchment. Y/N had long made peace with the silence there. It filled the corners others found empty. She liked it, preferred it — until he began visiting.

At first, Prince Sunghoon had been a curiosity. Now, he was a habit. One she couldn’t afford, and yet, didn’t wish to break.

She was midway through grinding dried elderflowers into powder when his shadow slipped under the threshold — silent, and annoyingly graceful for someone so supposedly clumsy with “stairs,” “fencing accidents,” and “unexpected sword-related tripping hazards,” all of which had been excuses to find himself in her doorway these past weeks.

“Don’t you ever knock?” Y/N asked, not looking up.

“I tried.” His voice carried that unbothered lilt she hated that she loved. “But your door doesn’t make a very dramatic sound.”

She finally raised her gaze — and, as always, immediately regretted it. He wore blue today, deep like lapis, with gold stitching at the collar. He looked like a painting. Like something someone else should be allowed to look at. Not her.

“Let me guess,” she said, setting the mortar aside. “You’ve come to sprain your dignity again?”

“No.” His tone was mock-hurt. “Today, I come bearing peace offerings.”

He stepped inside and held out a bundle wrapped in deep crimson cloth. She frowned, but took it — her fingers brushing against his. A spark. Annoying. Predictable.

Inside was a tiny box carved from black walnut, the grain smooth and polished. She opened it carefully. Inside lay a pressed camellia — white, preserved perfectly in wax paper. It shouldn’t have meant anything. But her breath caught.

“You steal flowers now, Your Highness?”

“It wasn’t stealing,” he said, leaning against the wall like he belonged there. “It was a diplomatic transfer of assets. The camellias by the south pond were looking too proud. I humbled one.”

Y/N snorted despite herself. “And what makes you think I’d want this?”

“Because I noticed you keep dried petals tucked into your books,” he said, too casually. “And I thought — perhaps the apothecary who lives among crushed things might like something still whole.”

The words landed quietly between them, heavier than the flower.

Y/N turned away before he could see the heat in her face, busying herself with empty jars that needed no rearranging. “You should go,” she said, softening the words by not meaning them. “If your father finds out you’re sneaking around the herb rooms again—”

“He won’t,” Sunghoon replied, strolling deeper into the room, idly picking up a cork-stoppered vial. “No one follows me here. You’re the only one who bothers to talk to me for longer than a bow and a breath.”

She glanced at him sidelong. “That’s because I have no sense of self-preservation.”

“No,” he said, turning to face her properly. “It’s because you see me.”

Y/N froze.

There it was again — that subtle thread he always managed to pull. The one that tugged her thoughts loose, made her chest feel too full, her carefully composed indifference fray at the edges.

She recovered quickly. “You’re not very hard to see. You dress like a storm cloud at a wedding.”

He smiled. Slowly. “And you deflect like a cat cornered in sunlight.”

She looked down, trying not to. Trying not to give him the satisfaction of knowing how easily he undid her, just by standing there, just by bringing her quiet things and asking for nothing. Or pretending to.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she said after a moment. Her voice was steady, but only just. “Bringing me things. Spending time here.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” She turned to face him. “Because it means something.”

His gaze softened, the jest in him gentled. “It already means something,” he said. “The difference is—I’m not afraid of that.”

Y/N’s breath trembled before she could catch it. The truth was, she was afraid. Not of him. Of what he made her want.

The room felt too quiet then. The walls too close. She hated how much she wanted him to stay.

She didn’t stop him when he sat across from her on the low bench by the window, nor when he rested his elbow on the table, propping his chin in his palm like a boy too young to be royal, too sincere to be a prince.

“Tell me what you’re working on,” he said.

“You’ll be bored.”

“I’m already bored,” he replied. “That’s why I’m here.”

She hesitated. Then reached for a bundle of dried angelica root. “It’s a formula for headaches. Not that you nobles ever suffer from such mundane ailments.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “Palace life is a headache.”

She looked at him again, and this time, allowed herself to smile — just a little. He smiled back, like it was the only thing he needed today.

Outside, the sun crawled along the stone floor. The silence returned, not unwelcome, but newly charged — no longer an absence, but a presence.

And when he left — hours later, after they’d spoken of everything and nothing, after she’d almost, almost leaned too close — he left another camellia on her desk. This one pink.

And Y/N sat there long after the quiet reclaimed the room, staring at the flower, and wondering which would be her undoing first: the silence… or the boy who kept breaking it.

It had rained that morning— one of those patient, whispering rains that speak not to the ears but to the bones— making everything soft and grave, as though the earth itself bowed its head. The palace corridors, built of quiet and secrets, gleamed faintly with light that had not quite forgiven the clouds.

The apothecary wing, tucked in its solemn corner, held stillness like a breath. Y/N stood at her worktable, grinding valerian root with the sort of focus born only of desire to forget. She knew he would come. He always did. Before she heard him, she felt him—a shift in the air, the drop in her stomach that never warned, only reminded.

“You’re early,” she said, not lifting her gaze.

“You sound disappointed,” came his reply—low, silk-lined, already smiling.

She ground the root with more purpose. “I’m not. Only concerned. Your appearances are beginning to resemble habits.”

“I’m told habits become sins,” he mused, stepping further in. “And I do enjoy sinning, when it leads me here.”

Y/N looked up, against her better judgment. He stood with the storm still clinging to his cloak, a soft sheen to his hair, lashes damp from the air’s affection. And that face—he wore it like a mask of royalty, but his eyes betrayed him every time. Too honest. Too intent.

“Cloak off,” she muttered. “The floors are older than your lineage.”

With a theatrical sigh, Sunghoon complied. “How tragic, to be bested by floorboards.” He hung the garment neatly by the door, revealing a simpler tunic beneath—though even his simplicity was threaded with gold. A boy born of thrones pretending to be common.

She turned back to her bench, her fingers now arranging glass vials. “I should forbid you.”

He approached quietly, placing something beside her hand—a small, folded parchment. She opened it. Inside, between wax paper, lay forget-me-nots. Bruised blue, delicate as breath.

“They grow by the east garden wall,” he said. “No one ever looks. I thought of you.”

She swallowed. Her hands, traitorous things, lingered too long on the stem.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, softer than before.

Sunghoon leaned on the edge of her table. “Nothing,” he said, “you do not already give me freely.”

“That’s dangerous talk.”

“I’ve never feared danger.”

“You should.”

“I do,” he said. “But I fear you more.”

She dared glance up again. Mistake. He was too near. Too near and too beautiful and too aware. His smile did not ask—it confessed.

“Your Highness,” she said, voice barely spoken, barely hers. “This is madness.”

He tilted his head. “Then let us go mad together.”

Before she could reply, the world shifted—sharp as a blade drawn in sleep. A knock. Firm. Two strikes against the heavy door.

Her heart caught flame. Sunghoon moved faster than breath. To the back wall, where apothecaries kept their less lawful secrets, and she, without speaking, reached under the second shelf. A hidden panel. It clicked open. He vanished.

By the time she turned, her hands had already remembered calm. The High Steward’s assistant entered—neat, bloodless, and suspicious.

“Apothecarian,” he said, “the Empress’s physician requires belladonna.”

“Of course,” she replied, not smiling. “It’s ready.”

She retrieved the sealed vial. “Two drops, no more. It is a generous poison.”

He took it, then paused. “I thought I heard voices.”

She let her lashes fall. “Dried herbs whisper, when they settle. They are not polite.”

His lips twitched. He left.

She waited. Waited—until the silence returned to its rightful shape.

The panel creaked. Sunghoon stepped out, brushing cobwebs off his shoulder.

“Herbs whisper?” he said.

“Do not ever make me lie like that again.”

He looked at her—not with amusement this time, but with something gentler. Almost reverent. 

“You risked yourself.”

“You would’ve done the same.”

He stepped toward her, his expression rare and unfamiliar. Stripped of wit.

“I’ll stop,” he whispered. “If you ask.”

The room stood still. Even the tinctures held their breath.

But she—she said nothing.

A quiet exhale left his lungs. He stepped closer, not touching, never touching. His eyes were dark and steady. His lips slightly parted, like he wanted to say something else — or kiss her instead.

“Next time,” he said, “I’ll bring violets.”

And yet, the next time Sunghoon came to see her, he broke his promise — and brought no violets.

Y/N no longer startled at the sound of his boots on the stone. Her breath always caught, but she no longer flinched.

Sunghoon had a manner of entering her space as if it were a secret they shared. He never announced himself loudly. He would lean a shoulder against the doorway, gloved fingers smoothing over the doorframe like it was a violin string, something to coax sound from. His voice, low and calm, carried the weight of meaning only she could hear.

"Tell me," he said once, eyes trained on the steam rising from a copper pot, "do you ever mix something too beautiful to use?"

Y/N glanced up, wary of the trick behind the question. “Sometimes,” she said. “And sometimes I make it just to see it undone.”

He smiled — one of those half-smiles that never touched his mouth, only his eyes. “Like poetry. Or politics.”

They talked. Always. Yet always around the thing.

Each word was a petal plucked and dropped, an offering, a risk. There was a strange formality between them, as if they had signed a treaty neither remembered writing, and it held — barely — by the virtue of long, drawn glances and averted eyes.

She should not have liked how often he stayed. Or how he never came without a token. Once, a thin chain of silver, smooth as river water. Another time, a piece of pale blue sea glass. “I found it on the windowsill,” he had said. “Or perhaps it was meant for you.”

He didn’t ask to stay. But he did.

Tonight, it was nearing dusk. The sky beyond the narrow slats of the window had turned pale with lilac — that sharp color of confession — and the wind scratched at the stones. Y/N moved quietly between shelves of vials and scrolls, her fingers absently arranging things that were already arranged.

She could feel him.

He had been sitting at her worktable for nearly twenty minutes, one leg crossed over the other, running his thumb along the edge of a small, leather-bound book he hadn’t opened.

“You know,” he said, his voice sudden in the silence, “if I were less restrained, I might steal a bottle or two. Something to fake my own death. Or sleep for a hundred years.”

Y/N exhaled, slow. “And what would that accomplish?”

He tilted his head. “It might buy me time.”

She turned her back to him. The scent of clove and crushed rosehips masked her disquiet.

“You already steal too much,” she said, her voice cooler than intended. “You take my hours.”

That made him laugh — a sound like snow melting too fast.

“But you never ask me to leave.”

She turned then, the twilight catching in her lashes. “Would you, if I did?”

He looked up at her. Really looked.

“No.”

There was a beat — long, strange, reverberating.

The room pressed in with its warmth, the scent of boiling thyme, the hush of wind through stone. Outside, the palace was a thousand windows lit with a thousand lies. Inside, the air between them crackled — but softly, the way a fire does when no one is watching.

He rose, slowly, as though standing undid something inside him.

“I brought something,” he said, reaching into his coat.

Y/N’s breath hitched. The offerings always frightened her more than his gaze. A man like him — born to the edge of crowns and war councils — should not know how to choose soft things. But he did.

He placed the object in her hand. It was a ring of carved wood, shaped like a lily, the grain polished until it glowed like honey.

“I saw it,” he said simply, “and thought of your fingers.”

Y/N did not reply. She couldn’t. Not with her throat tightening.

Sunghoon leaned a little closer — closer than the day before. His voice dropped into something just above a hush.

“Will you ever tell me the truth?” he asked. “If I asked for something dangerous.”

She met his eyes — foolishly. It was always a mistake, but one she made again and again.

“What is it you’d ask for this time?”

He didn’t smile this time.

“Your want.”

The words were clean. Precise. Unflinching.

Y/N held her breath so tightly it hurt her ribs. She wanted to step back, to be clever, to vanish into tinctures and linens and respectable restraint. But all she could say — weak and scalding — was:

“You wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

Sunghoon's mouth curved, slowly.

“No,” he said. “But I’d like the chance to try.”

And then he was gone. The door clicked shut behind him like a confession swallowed.

Y/N stood alone in the warm hush of her chamber, her heart knocking against the ribs that kept it captive. The ring sat in her palm, delicate and treacherous. Like him.

Like her.

She closed her fist around it.

The apothecary’s workroom lay quiet beneath the weight of late afternoon, gold and shadow laced across the stone floor in slow, flickering patterns. The air smelled of dried rosemary and orange peel, warm and crisp, as though the walls themselves had absorbed the scents and refused to let them go. Y/N was slicing valerian root with studied precision, the motion mechanical, her thoughts far from the blade. She had not seen Sunghoon in days.

And yet, it was the memory of the last time that haunted her most.

He had come empty-handed, no violets, no little token tucked behind his back or cradled in his palm. Only his voice, low and honey-warm, and his eyes — luminous, exhausted, pleading for something he hadn’t dared name. She had been laughing at some dry, clever nothing he’d said, her fingers stained green from herbs, when the door opened with a hush, not a bang — but it was worse that way. Quieter things cut deeper.

She didn’t hear them at first. Only the change in Sunghoon’s eyes — that flash of something gone cold — made her turn.

Heeseung stood just inside the threshold, expression unreadable, though a shadow of amusement danced at the edge of his mouth like a secret he hadn’t decided whether to keep. Jake lingered just behind him, eyes sweeping the room with a curious sort of slowness, like someone looking for the shape of something they already suspected.

“Didn’t know you’d taken up herbal studies, brother,” Heeseung said softly. Not biting. Not warm.

Y/N went still. Not a dramatic gasp, not a flinch — but the kind of stillness born of instinct, like a deer in tall grass.

She did not look at Sunghoon. She looked at her hands. She looked at the flask of steeped feverfew she hadn’t yet poured. She looked at the distance between her and the prince and found it suddenly, unforgivably small.

They didn’t look at her face.

That was what made her throat tighten.

They looked at the curve of her spine, at the disarray of the worktable behind her, at the ribbon coming undone from the end of her braid. Jake’s gaze caught on the worn edge of the stool where Sunghoon had been sitting. Heeseung’s gaze drifted to the windows — closed. The door — bolted before they'd arrived.

There was no accusation. Just awareness.

Sunghoon, to his credit, did not falter. His voice was the same careless silk he always used when pretending not to care.

“A tincture,” he said, lifting an empty bottle like a jest. “Terribly dramatic cough, as I’m sure you’ve both heard.”

Heeseung arched a brow, not smiling, not frowning. Just seeing.

Jake tilted his head. “And only our palace apothecary could soothe it, of course.”

There was no laughter. Only the echo of it, implied.

Y/N moved before she could think. She turned from the table — not toward them, not toward him. Just away. She gathered stray petals with trembling fingers and tucked them into the herb press, not trusting her voice, not daring to exist more loudly than the silence had allowed.

She had not looked at Sunghoon. She had not spoken. She had wrapped herself in the invisible distance that women like her were always meant to maintain in palaces like these — the veil between the bloodlines and the hands that tended them.

And now, in the dim, the world was quieter without him. But it did not feel safe. It felt like exile.

She did not go near the eastern hallways where he often walked. She passed his shadow in the garden without turning her head. She handed tinctures to court ladies with her voice like poured water, never lingering. And though no one said anything — though Heeseung and Jake made no scandal, no whisper behind fans or folded letters — she knew what the silence meant.

Sunghoon, for his part, did not relent.

She found, three days after the visit, a folded slip of paper on her table — the corner weighed down with a smooth, black riverstone. She told herself not to read it. She did.

“If you must pretend not to see me, then at least let me look. You’re in everything I notice anyway.”

Her hands had trembled the entire morning.

Then came a sprig of lavender tucked beside her mortar. A note scrawled in a lazy, boyish script: “This smells like how you speak. Calm, but with the threat of storms.”

And finally — this morning — a book.

Worn, water-stained, slipped between her ledgers. The cover, a faded brown. Inside, pressed between pages, a feather. Pale, grey-blue. His writing on the inside cover:

“I found this and thought of you. Even when you avoid me, I find you.”

She nearly wept.

But she could not go to him. She dared not. She saw the way Heeseung watched her now. The way Jake’s eyes softened with pity.

Sunghoon was the emperor’s son. She was a woman who smelled of rosemary and flame, whose hands healed but did not belong at court.

And yet—

And yet, when she heard his voice at the edge of her door one evening, whispering her name as though it was something holy, her resolve crumbled like dried petals.

“Y/N.” A whisper. “I know you’re in there.”

She did not respond. Her breath caught in her throat.

A pause.

“I think of you at night. When the palace is quiet. When the oil lamps make everything look like candlelight. I think of you every time I walk through the gardens, and I hope — I hope you’ll look at me again. I’m not asking for scandal. Just… a moment. A breath. Yours.”

Silence.

“I never cared what Heeseung or Jake thought. But I care that you won’t meet my eyes anymore.”

Her hand rested on the doorframe. Her body leaned toward him before her mind gave it permission.

“I feel,” he murmured on the other side, “as though I’ve done something terribly wrong. And yet, I’d do it again, just to hear you laugh.”

A throb in her chest.

She stayed silent. But her hand drifted to the door, fingers pressed to the wood where his voice had lingered. And he—on the other side—rested his palm in the same place.

No words.

Only that stillness.

Only that ache.

He left soon after. She heard his steps retreat, slower than usual.

But when she opened the door ten minutes later — the hall empty, the lanterns flickering soft — she found a single violet pressed to the floor.

A promise. A waiting.

And for the first time in days, she allowed herself to smile.

It was not a clean absence.

Y/N did not vanish in the elegant way of snow melting at dawn, nor in the dignified manner of a flower curling back into itself at dusk. She withdrew with a surgeon’s precision — averted eyes, shortened words, missing hours. Her distance was quiet, but brutal. A thousand tiny cuts beneath the surface.

And Sunghoon was bleeding.

He had tried to be patient. Dignified. He had tried, in the first day, to believe she was simply tired. Busy. The second, he convinced himself she was angry — justly so — and would come around. The third day, he stood at the far edge of the apothecary’s corridor like a man waiting for an execution, watching the door remain closed, listening to the echo of her not coming.

By the fourth day, he began to unravel.

There was a peculiar kind of madness that accompanied wanting someone you could not touch. He had endured the ceremony of court, the empty chatter of noblewomen, the endless scrolls of diplomatic grievances — all with her ghost pressing against his ribs. Her voice, her frown, her mouth — her mouth — all of it lived behind his eyes now. Memory had sharpened her into a weapon.

He saw her everywhere. In the slope of a wrist at dinner. In the laugh of a passing servant. In the lavender light before morning. And it was never her. Not her.

She had ruined solitude for him.

He could no longer sit in silence without imagining what she might be doing — where she stood, if she was thinking of him, if she hated him now. And worse — far worse — he feared she did not hate him at all, only feared him. Feared them.

As she should.

Because what they had — what they had almost had — was blasphemy. An apothecarian and a prince. A quiet girl with ink-stained fingers and a man raised in silk and distance.

But he had tasted the idea of her. And now everything else was ash.

He did not sleep. Not truly. When his body did surrender to exhaustion, he dreamt in fever. Of her breath against his throat. Her voice saying his name in a tone no court would dare speak it. He woke with the taste of longing like metal on his tongue.

He kept the ribbon she had dropped. Blue, frayed, unremarkable — and now the holiest thing he owned.

He would take it out at night, when the palace was still and the moon lay against the windows like a watching eye. He would hold it between his fingers and imagine the weight of her hair, the curve of her neck, the warmth of her cheek if he ever dared brush it.

His thoughts were obscene. Not for their vulgarity, but for their intimacy.

He thought of her hands — not on him — but doing ordinary things. Threading a needle. Stirring a tincture. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. He thought of her voice in the morning, low and rasped with sleep, and what it might sound like laughing beside him in bed.

He thought of her in every version of a life he was forbidden to have.

It made him furious. And hopeless. And alive in a way he had never been before.

She had become a wound he did not want to heal.

And so he found himself haunting the spaces she might occupy. Not speaking, just… hoping. A glimpse. A shadow. A sigh. He would take anything.

He told himself he would not go to her again. He had already given her too many chances to break him.

But then the rain came — thick, sudden, angry — and he remembered the way she never ran from storms.

And that was all it took.

He did not think. He ran. Not for the court. Not for the family name. Not for dignity.

He ran for her. Always, always for her.

And if she did not want him — he would hear it from her lips. Not her absence. Not her silence.

Her voice.

If he was going to be destroyed by love, it would be by her hand. And he would thank her for the mercy of it.

The rain had begun sometime past dusk — first as a whisper, then a warning. The sky bruised violet and steel. The clouds sagged with a weight they could no longer bear.

And Y/N ran.

Not fast. Not foolishly. But with a resolve that burned through the marrow of her bones. She had meant to go only as far as the conservatory’s side door — meant only to clear her thoughts, to feel air that wasn’t thick with dread and guilt and his name in her chest.

But she had wandered too far.

And he had followed.

The storm cracked open overhead, not loud — not yet — but with a rolling growl like something ancient waking up.

Y/N turned only when she heard his voice, ragged against the wind.

“Y/N.”

She froze, the syllables like a thread caught at her spine. She had not heard that voice in days. She had avoided him. Faithfully. Brutally. She had turned corridors. Sent messengers in her place. Hidden behind propriety and fear and trembling silence.

And yet here he stood.

Soaked. Disheveled. Breathing as if he’d been running after something he could no longer bear to lose.

“What do you want, Sunghoon?” she asked, without turning.

“I want—” his breath caught on the storm — “I want to know what crime I committed that was worse than loving you.”

Her eyes stung. Rain or not.

“You don’t get to say that,” she said, voice low. “Not when it can ruin us both.”

“I would be ruined a thousand times over,” he said, stepping closer, “if it meant one more moment with you.”

The wind dragged his hair into his eyes. His cloak was soaked through; he hadn’t brought a hood.

“You are the Emperor’s son,” she said bitterly. “And I — I’m the girl who measures out lavender in teaspoons and brews fever tinctures for people who forget my name.”

“You think I forget your name?” His voice cracked. “You think I forget the way you speak when you’re tired, or the way you smell like chamomile even when you’re angry? You think I don’t remember every time you touched my wrist without meaning to, or the way you never look at me the same way twice?”

She turned then, water streaming down her cheeks, rain or tears — she couldn’t tell anymore.

“It’s not fair,” she whispered.

“No,” he said, voice thick. “It isn’t.”

Lightning shattered the sky in the distance — silver slicing through blue.

“Do you know what it’s been like?” His voice trembled with the storm. “To be watched every moment? To have nothing of my own — not even my heart? And then to find it — you — and realize even that I cannot keep?”

Her chest ached. Her hands trembled at her sides.

“You were never supposed to come into my life,” she said. “Not like this.”

“And yet,” he said, a crooked, broken smile on his lips, “I have memorized your footsteps in the hallway. I know the exact hour the light hits your table in the morning. I carry the sound of your laugh like a prayer.”

“Stop,” she begged, voice splintering. “Please.”

He took a step forward.

“Do you want me to?”

Her silence was a wound.

The rain beat against the marble, against the ivy-covered walls, against the skin of two people too young to know how to carry love like this, and too old to pretend it didn’t matter.

“You make me want to be reckless,” he said, quietly now. “You make me hope, even when I know better. You make me believe I was made for something more than duty.”

“I’m afraid,” she admitted.

“I’m already afraid,” he replied. “Being with you wouldn’t change that. But at least I’d be afraid with you.”

She didn’t move.

And then he whispered, “Tell me to go. Look me in the eye and say you feel nothing and I will never trouble you again.”

The air hung between them like the breath before a kiss.

Her lips parted — but no lie could form.

Instead, she said: “If you stay, Sunghoon, we fall. You and I — we lose everything.”

“I’d rather fall with you than rise without you.”

And finally — finally — she closed the distance.

Rain between them. Fire within.

She touched his face, trembling. He leaned into her palm like a man starved for warmth.

Their kiss — when it came — was not soft.

It was desperate. It was furious. It was years of loneliness unraveling in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

The storm howled on.

But in that moment, neither of them heard it.

author's note: hiiiiiii! so… surprise?! I decided to write this short story because, as you can probably tell, I became obsessed with The Apothecary Diaries (I fell in love with Jinshi and my best friend—shout out to heejamas—and I haven’t been able to think about anything else).

after I finished the frog episode (if you know, you know), I dreamed of Sunghoon as the emperor’s son and I just knew I had to write something about it.

this is my first time writing a short story, but I think I managed to put everything I wanted into words! I hope you enjoy it—it's very different from what I’m used to writing, but it was necessary to remind me that I love writing and that it’s a hobby that brings me so much joy!

[godricgryffinsnore]

Like Hell You’re Flirting with Her ♡ : A Sirius Black Fan Fiction.

pairing : Sirius Black x fem!reader

summary : A hilarious, heart-melting moment unfolds in the Great Hall as Sirius Black’s feelings come to a head—complete with mischief, fluffy confessions, and a whole lot of teasing from his fellow Marauders.

warnings : Mild Jealousy/Possessiveness (Sirius gets very territorial—but it’s all fluffy and loving), Excessive Fluff (seriously tooth-rotting levels of affection), Public Displays of Affection (clingy Sirius alert!), Strong Language (light cursing, e.g., “like hell” and “damn”), Heavy Teasing/Banter (from James, Remus, and Peter—Sirius gets roasted, lovingly), Minor Embarrassment/Secondhand Embarrassment (poor Hufflepuff boy), Unhealthy Levels of Handsome Sirius Black Energy. Please let me know if I missed any.

author's note : English is not my first language, so please forgive me for any grammatical errors or spelling errors. Re-blogging is completely fine with me, but please don't copy my work. I love you all. Enjoy <3.

word count : 0.6k

main master list <3

banners : @kodaswrld and @cafekitsune

The Great Hall was bursting with golden light, chatter bouncing off the enchanted ceiling. Laughter spilled from the Gryffindor table like honey—sweet, endless, sticky. You were sitting between Remus and a charming Hufflepuff boy, one leg tucked under the other, laughing softly at something that boy—James thought his name was Owen?—had said.

Sirius Black was not okay.

He was sulking. No, worse than sulking. He was brooding with a vengeance, stabbing at a poor piece of toast with such venom it crumbled under the pressure.

“She’s laughing,” he muttered darkly. “She never laughs at my jokes like that.”

James, chewing on a mouthful of eggs, barely glanced up. “Maybe because your jokes aren’t funny, Pads.”

Peter snorted into his pumpkin juice.

Remus, very serenely, turned a page in his book. “You’ve told her the one about the goblin and the cactus twelve times. And you always forget the punchline.”

“I don’t forget the punchline,” Sirius hissed. “I build suspense.”

“Oh, is that what you’re building?” James said sweetly. “Because it looks a lot like irrational jealousy.”

Sirius dragged a hand through his already wild hair. “She’s mine.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “You do realize you’ve never actually told her that, right? You just... follow her around like a very pretty, very loud dog.”

“Yeah,” Peter added, “A possessive one. Like a kneazle with abandonment issues.”

Sirius didn’t even blink. “I am not possessive.”

James pointed toward the Hufflepuff boy—now holding your wrist to admire your bracelet.

Sirius stood up so fast his bench screeched backward. “Like hell you’re flirting with her.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Remus muttered, half-laughing as he shut his book.

The Great Hall fell into a hush as Sirius strode—yes, strode, as if his boots were fueled by fury and forbidden poetry—toward you.

You blinked up, halfway through a giggle. “Sirius?”

He stopped just in front of you, jaw clenched, storm in his eyes, the kind of storm that made you want to open your arms and drown in it. He looked you up and down, looked at the poor Hufflepuff’s hand still lightly holding yours, then very deliberately slid his arm around your waist.

He turned to the other boy with a dazzling, razor-edged smile.

“She’s taken,” Sirius said smoothly. “Thanks for admiring what’s mine.”

The Hufflepuff blinked. “Oh. I didn’t—”

“Mine,” Sirius said again, to be clear, tugging you a little closer until you were practically in his lap.

You felt your cheeks bloom with heat, but your heart was already hammering a giddy rhythm. “Sirius—”

“You’re mine,” he repeated, softer this time, to you and not the world, voice like silk dipped in honey. “You always have been.”

You should’ve teased him. You meant to tease him. But the way his eyes bore into yours, all firelight and unspoken poetry, it cracked your ribs open a little.

“I know,” you whispered. “So are you.”

The table behind you erupted.

James was howling. “He said it! He actually said it!”

Remus looked delighted. “Took you long enough, Padfoot.”

Peter started miming dramatic kisses behind Sirius’s back.

Sirius didn’t care.

He tucked his face into your neck, arms wrapped tightly around you like he’d waited a thousand lifetimes for this, like your laugh was a song only he had the lyrics to.

“Mine,” he murmured again, and this time, it wasn’t a warning or a claim—it was a promise, etched in starlight, whispered into your skin like a vow.

── .✦

Later that night...

“Sirius?” you asked, curled in the Gryffindor common room, his head on your lap as he traced idle patterns into your knee.

“Mhm?”

“You know I only laughed at that guy’s joke because he had broccoli in his teeth, right?”

Sirius blinked. “You what?”

You laughed. “He had no idea.”

He stared at you, then collapsed into your lap with a groan. “I ruined his life for no reason.”

“Jealousy looks cute on you.”

“You look cute on me,” he muttered into your jumper, and you could feel the pout.

James passed by, grinning. “Oi, don’t forget to snog your property goodnight, Pads!”

Sirius flipped him off without lifting his head, but you kissed his hair anyway.

[beloveds-embrace]

(you and john price, your bear of a man, spend a winter day together. Chubby!reader)

The snow piled high against the cabin windows, muting the world outside into soft, endless white. It was the kind of winter storm that promised days of quiet seclusion- a chance to disappear from the world and pretend it was just the two of you.

Wrapped in a thick quilt, you lay curled against John’s furry chest, your body pressed so close to his that you could feel the slow, steady rise and fall of his breathing. He was impossibly warm, his body heat wrapping around you like a living furnace, and his scent- smoke, pine, and something uniquely him- made you feel so safe and content.

His large hand rested on your hip, fingers splayed wide as if to remind himself of just how much of you there was to hold. He traced idle circles through the soft fabric of your sleepwear, but the barrier did little to dull the sensation of his rough fingertips against you.

“You’re so soft.” He murmured, voice low and honeyed with sleep. He shifted slightly, pressing his nose into your hair to breathe you in. His beard scraped lightly against your skin, and you shivered despite the warmth.

“Too soft, some would say.” You mumbled, though your voice was half-hearted.

He pulled back just enough to look at you, his blue eyes catching the firelight as they roamed over your features- lazy and reverent, like he had all the time in the world to admire you, admire every inch of soft, supple flesh.

“There’s no such thing,” he said firmly, his voice like gravel but softened by the affection in his tone. “Not for me.”

His hand moved again, trailing from your hip to your waist, then higher, brushing over the curve of your belly. He lingered there, his palm flattening against the plushness as his thumb stroked gently.

“Love this,” he murmured, grumbling, almost to himself. “Every inch of you- soft, warm. Like you were made just for me.”

Your breath caught, and you squirmed slightly under his touch, but his grip tightened- not enough to hold you still, just enough to let you know he wasn’t letting go.

“John-”

“Let me look at you,” he interrupted gently, pulling back more so he could take you in. The blanket shifted as he guided you onto your back, his body following so that he loomed over you, one arm propping himself up while the other continued its slow exploration of your curves.

His gaze dragged over you, lingering at the soft swell of your stomach and the plushness of your thighs. He made no attempt to hide his admiration- his eyes darkened, his lips parting slightly like he couldn’t quite find the words to describe how much he loved what he saw.

“You’re perfect,” he said finally, thick with conviction. He leaned down, pressing a slow, lingering kiss to the curve of your collarbone before nuzzling into your neck, the soft skin of your chin. “So damn perfect, love.”

Your heart fluttered, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look away from him. It wasn’t just lust in his eyes- though there was plenty of that, too. It was adoration, raw and unfiltered, as if he couldn’t believe you were real and with him.

He trailed kisses down your shoulder, his beard scratching lightly against your skin, but his hand never stopped moving- palming your waist, gripping your hip, sliding down to cup the curve of your thigh. Every touch felt reverent, like he was memorizing you all over again.

“Always thought I’d end up alone,” he murmured, his voice low and rough as his lips brushed your ear. “Never thought I’d be this lucky, having such a sweet, soft lady waiting for me at home.”

“John-”

“Shh,” he whispered, his thumb brushing over your lips to quiet you. “Let me show you.”

And he did. He pressed gentle kisses to your cheeks, your chin, your jaw. He worshiped you with his hands, tracing every soft curve and plush line like he was afraid you might slip away if he stopped.

Eventually, he settled back against the pillows, pulling you with him so you could curl into his side once more. He tucked you close, burying his face in your hair, and the rumble in his chest was unmistakable this time- a low, contented sound that almost made you laugh.

“I knew it,” you teased, your voice muffled against his chest. “You can purr.”

His chest vibrated again, but this time with laughter. “Only for you.” He admitted, tightening his arms around you.

Outside, the snow continued to fall, but inside, the world was warm and quiet. Wrapped in John’s arms, with his steady heartbeat in your ear and his hands never straying far from your soft, warm body, you couldn’t imagine anywhere else you’d rather be.

[gold-onthe-inside]

a pearl

who? spencer reid (post-prison) x fem!reader based on: a pearl by mitski (and also pearl diver also by mitski) written for: @mggslover's event lyrics: “You’re growing tired of me. You love me so hard and I still can’t sleep/Sorry, I can’t take your touch. It’s not that I don’t want you.” word count: 0.9k content warnings: mentions cat adams, reference to addiction/drugs & sobriety

He stared at the flickering flame in the living room, knowing he’s left your sleeping frame upstairs, and rubbed the sobriety chip between his thumb and forefinger, and he remembers the moment he had fallen in love with your smile, a warm saccharine thing that had brightened your whole face when he tried to pull a coin from behind your ear, but it hadn’t worked, only for you to find it in your pockets. He hasn’t made you smile like that in a while. Not in 3 months, 20 days, and 14 hours. Not since Cat Adams had made it her mission to ruin his life, and yours along with him. This year had just been the tip of a long-building iceberg of issues that you kept having to put up with because of him.

And sure, things were okay now. His mom was in a good home in DC, always a call and a drive away. They had gotten his murder conviction overturned. He was supposed to be safe. Then why did he feel this uneasy all the time?

He’s so lost in himself, the firelight reflecting in his soft and worried hazel eyes, that he doesn’t hear you coming down the stairs, doesn’t see the cute donut pyjamas that usually make his heart melt, and physically flinches when you touch his shoulder, the chip in his hand falling to the floor. “Sorry,” you said instantly, “I didn’t mean to… You just weren’t in bed, I wanted to make sure you were—”

“I’m fine,” he said, a little too sharply, and usually, you’re better at controlling your expressions, but it’s 2 in the morning and you’re tired, so the concern is visible on your sleepy face.

“Honey, you don’t seem fine,” you said softly, approaching him like he was a skittish horse.

He let out a breath, bending down to pick up the sobriety token, while you wait and watch him straighten. “Can we not do this right now?” he asked, sounding tired, and he can see your concern deepen, adding another wrinkle to your brow, the corners of your lips turning down. He can see the battle that rages inside you every day, every time he acts like this — do you confront him? Do you put your foot down like you had all those years ago when he was coming to work while in withdrawal? What would it take for you to finally retaliate?

“Okay,” you said, in your gentle but firm way, looking at him evenly. “Two choices. We sit here and talk, or you come back upstairs with me and get some sleep. Either way, I’m not going back up without you.” Your arms come up to cross against your chest in what you think is a firm, decisive position to take, but Spencer’s sorely tempted to smile at you, and then his heart sinks all over again. It must have come up on his face because your arms start to fall and you walked over to pull him to sit next to you on the couch. “Sweetheart, will you please just tell me what’s going on with you?” you asked, and you think your heart might crawl out of your throat when Spencer pulled his hands away from yours.

“It’s nothing,” he said, and you can see his body closing off, all your work to bring him out of his shell, to coax him into the sunlight, vanishing like smoke. “Everything’s, you know, it’s fine. The team’s fine, my mom’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Which means it’s only a matter of time before things aren’t fine again,” you said, tilting your head to meet his eyes. “Right?” You’d be a liar if you said you hadn’t felt it too — the panic in the middle of the night when he’s not there, the reminder you have to give yourself that he’s not in prison anymore, that he’s safe.

“I’m so tired,” he told you, his eyes falling to your hands, where you were gripping each other for fear of reaching out to him again. He was tired of waiting to get the phone call saying his mom was gone. Tired of the nightmares. Tired of feeling afraid in a house that was supposed to be his refuge.

“Sweetheart, you can’t rest when your body still thinks it’s on the run,” you told him gently.

“Then how do I get it to stop?” he asked you, a hint of desperation rising into his throat, causing his words come out more broken and shaky than he meant for them to, and it just made his chest ache more.

You leaned closer, pressing your forehead against his and cupping his cheek, feeling the light stubble on his jaw. "Stay here," you whispered. "In this moment. You and me. Nothing else."

“In this moment,” he echoed, his voice soft and quiet, barely more than a whisper. “You and me, and nothing else.” A hint of a smile spread across his lips, and you pressed a butterfly kiss to the corner before laying your head on his shoulder while he slid his arms around your waist. You don’t move, just eventually shift so you can both lay on the couch, the fire dying out into embers as he finally fell asleep to the rise and fall of your chest.

[zrvllya]

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

────────────

sweater weather, the neighbourhood

────────────

remus lupin x reader ! one shot ⏾

and if i may just take your breath away.

ᵎ!ᵎ post-full moon , slightly explicit/mature , fluff , hurt/comfort , hogwarts era , heavy emotional vulnerability , “tell me to stop” , emotional & physical intimacy

word count [ 1,200 ]

────────────

the dorm is too quiet without the others. james left his quidditch jersey slung over the bedpost, sirius’s boots are kicked haphazardly near the door, and peter’s half-eaten chocolate frog sits abandoned on his nightstand. but they’re gone now—off to hogsmeade with the girls, laughing and shoving each other in the snow. you stayed. you always stay.

remus sits cross-legged in front of the fireplace, his back to you. the flames paint his skin gold, but they can’t hide the new bruises on his neck, the way his shoulders slump under the weight of what he becomes once a month. his sweater is too big on him, the sleeves unraveling at the cuffs. you want to thread your fingers through every hole, stitch him back together with your hands.

“you should’ve gone with them,” he says, voice rough. he’s been saying variations of this since you slipped into the dorm an hour ago, your knees bumping his as you settled beside him. “you’d be warmer there. butterbeer. the three broomsticks. not… this.”

you don’t answer. instead, you reach for the sleeve of his sweater, tugging it gently until his hand is in your lap. his fingers twitch, cold and scraped raw. you press your palm to his, measuring the difference—his knuckles broader, your fingertips softer. he exhales, shaky.

“see?” you murmur. “i am warm.”

his throat works. the fire pops. he turns his hand over in yours, his thumb brushing the inside of your wrist. his touch is hesitant, like he’s still afraid you’ll pull away. but you don’t. you never do.

“you’re ridiculous,” he mutters, but there’s no bite to it. just that quiet, tired fondness that makes your chest ache. “sitting here with me when you could be drinking butterbeer and listening to sirius make a fool of himself.”

you grin, nudging his knee with yours. “sirius makes a fool of himself every day. this is more special.”

he huffs a laugh, low and rough. “special. right. watching me brood by the fire like some tragic hero.”

“you are tragic,” you say, leaning into him just enough that your shoulder presses against his. “but not in the way you think.”

he goes still for a second, then tilts his head to look at you. the firelight catches in his eyes, turning them honey-gold. “oh? enlighten me, then.”

you pretend to think, tapping a finger against your chin. “hm. tragic because you’re so dramatic about everything. tragic because you refuse to admit you like my company. tragic because—”

“alright, alright,” he groans, but he’s smiling now, just a little. the kind of smile that only shows when he forgets to hold it back. “you’ve made your point.”

“have i?” you tease, tugging at his sleeve again. “because i could keep going.”

he rolls his eyes, but his fingers tighten around yours. “you’re insufferable.” “you love it.”

the words slip out before you can stop them, light and joking—but the second they hang in the air, something shifts. his breath catches, just barely. the fire crackles. your heart pounds.

and then, softly, so softly you almost miss it:

“...yeah. i do.”

the silence stretches between you, thick and sweet like honey. his words hang in the air—yeah. i do.— and suddenly the room feels smaller, the fire brighter, the space between your bodies electric.

you don’t speak. you don’t need to.

his fingers trace idle patterns against your palm, calloused and careful, like he’s memorizing the shape of you. the firelight flickers, casting shadows across his face—the curve of his mouth, the dip of his throat, the faint scar cutting through his brow. you want to touch all of it. you want to taste the salt on his skin.

slowly, so slowly, his hand slips from yours. for a heartbeat, you think he’s pulling away—but then his fingertips brush your waist, tentative, testing. your breath hitches. his eyes dart to yours, searching for permission, for protest. you give him neither. you just watch him, lips parted, chest rising too fast.

the touch lingers, warm through the fabric of your shirt. his thumb presses into the dip of your hip, and you shiver. he notices. of course he does.

“cold?” he murmurs, voice rough.

you shake your head. “no.”

his fingers tighten, just a little. “liar.”

but he’s smiling—that rare, real smile, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes. the one he saves for moments like this, when the world outside doesn’t exist, when it’s just the two of you and the fire and the quiet.

outside, the rain starts to fall. it patters against the windows, soft and steady, but inside, it’s warm. inside, his hand is on your waist, his breath mingling with yours. inside, his heart is beating hard enough that you can feel it where your knees touch.

you lean in. just a little. just enough.

his gaze drops to your mouth as the rain drums harder against the glass. his fingers flex at your waist, gripping like you might vanish if he doesn’t hold on. your lips are so close now you can almost taste the words he hasn’t said—the ones stuck in his throat, the ones that smell like wolfsbane and sound like a heartbeat.

“remus,” you whisper.

his name is a spell, a plea. his eyes darken.

for a second, he hesitates. you see it—the flicker of fear, the old ghost of i ruin everything i touch. but then your hand finds his chest, right over the scar padfoot swears looks like a crescent moon, and he makes a sound so quiet it’s barely there at all.

when he kisses you, it’s not sweet. it’s not soft. it’s a collision—lips bruising, teeth clashing, his hands tangling in your hair like he’s drowning and you’re air. you gasp, and he swallows it, pulls you closer until there’s no space left between you, until you’re pressed so tight you can feel the shake in his bones.

it’s messy. it’s perfect.

he breaks away first, forehead pressed to yours, breath ragged. “...sorry,” he mutters, but he doesn’t let go. his thumbs dig into your hips like he’s mapping the shape of you. “i didn’t—i shouldn’t have—”

you bite his lower lip, sharp. he groans.

“shut up,” you murmur against his mouth.

and this time, when he kisses you, he doesn’t stop as the fire sputters, casting jagged shadows across the walls while his hands slide under your sweater, rough palms skating over the dip of your spine.

you arch into him, nails scraping the nape of his neck, and he growls—actually growls—low in his throat. it’s not human. it’s not safe. but still, it makes your stomach flip.

“remus,” you gasp again, but he’s already dragging his mouth down your jaw, your throat, teeth scraping where your pulse jumps. his breath is hot, uneven. you can feel the tension coiled in him, the way he’s holding back, always holding back.

“tell me to stop,” he murmurs against your collarbone, voice wrecked. his fingers dig into your hips hard enough to bruise. “please.”

you don’t.

instead, you fist your hands in his hair and yank his head up, forcing him to look at you. his pupils are blown wide, gold almost swallowed by black. there’s a wildness there, something barely leashed. it should scare you. it doesn’t.

“i’m not afraid of you,” you say, slow, deliberate.

his breath hitches. his grip tightens. for a heartbeat, he just stares at you, chest heaving, like he’s waiting for the punchline. then, with a broken sound, he crashes into you again, mouth desperate, hands frantic.

the couch creaks under your weight as he pins you down, his body a solid line of heat against yours. his lips are everywhere—your neck, your shoulders, the hollow beneath your ear—each kiss more bruising than the last.

you can feel the tremors running through him, the war between what he wants and what he thinks he deserves.

“you’re shaking,” you whisper.

he stills, forehead pressed to your sternum. “i know.”

you card your fingers through his hair, gentle now. “look at me.”

when he does, his expression guts you—raw, vulnerable, aching. you kiss him softly this time, just a brush of lips, and he makes a noise like it hurts.

outside, the storm rages. inside, he comes apart in your hands.

[xx-dinah-writing-xx]

Blood of my blood

Daemon Targaryen x bastard targ! reader Smut- MDNI!

warning: virginity loss, blood play, piv, unprotected sex, manipulation, and I think that’s all.

A/N: I’ve got no idea what this is. Just go with it.

————

They kept you in the cloister for sixteen years. Far from court. Far from dragons. Far from fire.

But blood has memory.

And your blood, despite the silence that wrapped you like a shroud, remembered.

It whispered in your dreams, speaking in a language no one around you could name. You chanted the words under your breath until they sounded like lullabies. The septas thought you touched by madness. They were half-right.

Then he came.

Daemon Targaryen.

You knew his name before he ever said it. You knew it like you knew how to breathe.

When he found you in the overgrown garden of that dying sept, white-haired, strange-eyed, barefoot and cloaked in silence,he said nothing for a long time. He only stared.

“You have the eyes of old Valyria. And the mouth of a sacrifice.”

He brought you to Dragonstone the next day. No one questioned him.

And you… you didn’t know if he wanted to crown you, or carve you open. You learned quickly that with Daemon, the answer was always both.

————

Now you kneel before him. Still cloaked in white. Still untouched.

Your wrists are bound in red silk.

Your hair is loose around your shoulders, perfumed in dragon’s blood resin and firelily oil. You are painted with ash and ink, marked with Valyrian runes you don’t yet understand—but he does. He traced each one with obsessive precision across your thighs, your belly, the slope of your breasts.

You tremble. But you do not flinch. You want to be afraid. He won’t let you.

“Do you know why you were kept hidden?” Daemon asks, voice low and slow as honey sliding from a knife. He circles you, bare-chested, barefoot, eyes gleaming like coals. “Because even your mother knew what you are.”

“What am I?” your voice is barely audible.

He stops behind you. Leans in. You feel his lips at your ear.

“A gate,” he breathes. “A vessel.”

His hand moves down your chest. Slowly. Purposefully.

“You were born to be opened.”

You gasp, but he hushes you with two fingers pressed to your lips. He guides you toward the stone altar. You lie back, legs trembling. Daemon parts your knees with reverent cruelty, exposing everything. You want to look away. But his gaze pins you in place.

“You think purity is weakness?” he murmurs, running a warm palm along your inner thigh. “No. It’s currency. You’ve been kept sealed like a relic. Like something holy.”

His mouth descends to your breast as his fingers find your entrance, slick and tight and unbroken. He doesn’t thrust, not yet. He slides one finger along your slit, catching the wetness on his fingertip. Holds it up to the firelight.

“This,” he says softly, “is what the dragon gods demand.”

You tremble. You ache. You need him. And he knows it.

Daemon mounts the altar.

You stare up at him, his lean, muscled frame, the carved dragon ring on his finger, the madness in his eyes. The tip of his cock brushes your folds, hot and swollen. Your breath stutters.

“This is your gift to them,” he says. “And your gift to me.”

Then he thrusts inside, slow, deliberate, brutal.

You scream. Pain blooms like fire through your core. Your virgin blood spills onto the stone in ribbons. He groans, deeper than before, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment like he’s tasting ambrosia.

You try to turn your face away. He grabs your jaw.

“Look at me,” Daemon commands.

You obey. He starts to move. Your blood makes it easier, but not painless. He makes you feel every inch.

His hips roll with terrifying control. Each thrust presses into the most tender part of you, burning and splitting and reshaping. Your hands grip the edge of the altar, your back arching with every stroke.

“Good girl,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “Let them watch.”

The shadows dance wildly along the stone walls. You realize they’re not just shadows. They’re faces.

Watching.

Silent.

Smiling.

“Don’t cry,” he whispers, kissing your tears as they fall. “You were made for this.”

The pressure builds inside you. Pain and pleasure blur. You cry out his name without meaning to.

Daemon fucks you harder. Not faster. Deeper.

“You will bear a dragon,” he grits. “That is why they gave you to me.”

You don’t know who they are. But you believe him.

Your climax takes you like a fever, violently, unexpectedly, ripping through your bones.

Daemon spills into you seconds later, growling your name like a curse, a prayer, a brand.

He stays inside you, trembling, breathing ragged against your throat.

Then he licks the blood from between your thighs.

All of it.

When he finishes, he presses his lips to your womb.

“I’ve unlocked you,” he says, satisfied. “Now they’ll come.”

You ask, breathless, broken: “Who?”

Daemon just smiles.

“The old gods. And our child.”

[obsessedwhyyes]

The Learned Observer

Fic Request: Voyeurism

Summary: On a sleepless night, Gale notices the distinct sound of hushed voices outside his tent. It couldn't be you and Astarion… could it? When he decides to take a peek - to satisfy his scholarly curiosity, of course - he gets more than he bargained for.

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 2623 Pairing: Astarion x Fem!Reader, implied Astarion x Gale x Fem!Reader Content: Gale's POV (first person), voyeurism, dry humping, handjob, public sex, male masturbation, a little bit of jealousy.

A/N: Gale, in my humble opinion, would not use the word, “cock.” I cannot express how hard it was to not use the word, "cock" in a smut fic. I frigging love that word. Anyways, writing entirely in Gale’s voice was honestly the most fun mini challenge I’ve set myself so far, and I would gladly do first person BG3 companion POVs again. Thank you, dear anon, for the request!

Another sleepless night.

The orb pulses beneath my skin, each throb a reminder of my predicament.

I implore my mind to wander to the events of our journey, to the challenges that lie ahead, in pursuit of a worthwhile distraction. But the orb’s hunger grows stronger, like a raging maelstrom, each tribute to its insistent pull a mere ripple against the tide of its endless consumption. Perhaps I should consult the others about–

… Voices drift from outside my tent before I can finish my thoughts. Curious.

Hushed laughter and whispered words. Astarion's distinctive timbre and… you.

The sound is soft, subtle - a quiet exchange. Yet, here I am, catching fragments of something private, something perhaps not intended for outside ears.

I shift, the faintest spark of curiosity pulling me from my solitude. It's innocent, surely - a late-night conversation, perhaps a shared joke. And yet, as the moments pass, I can't ignore the intimacy in your laughter, the way Astarion's voice drops to that silken murmur he reserves for his attempts at enticement.

Just a glance, I tell myself. Merely to understand what could be so amusing at this hour.

Slowly, carefully, I draw back a sliver of canvas, just enough to peek through.

My breath catches as my eyes adjust to the firelight outside. There, on the other side of the campfire, resting against a fallen log, you sit beside him, close - very close - your faces inches apart.

Your legs are entwined, and there’s an intensity in the way you look at each other. I’m taken aback by the hunger in the kiss that follows - one neither timid nor restrained. Your hands begin to explore each other with what I can only call fervour - the kind of urgency I hadn't known either of you possessed, let alone with each other. 

The way you move together speaks of raw desire rather than tender affection - this is clearly a new physical relationship.

When did this start? How did I miss the signs? Though perhaps I was too caught up in my own concerns to notice the lingering glances, the way you always seemed to find reasons to be near each other…

I tell myself it’s simple curiosity that keeps me here, observing. A certain academic interest, if you will. After all, Astarion has always been something of a hedonist - a man who indulges in his desires with a recklessness I sometimes envy, though rarely approve. But to see him like this - in action, as it were - offers a unique perspective on his character.

You murmur something I cannot make out, a teasing lilt in your voice, and Astarion laughs in that rakish, honeyed tone of his, as though thrilled to have you so wholly entranced. His hands grip your waist, and with a practised grace, he pulls you into his lap, the hem of your skirt spilling around you both. As his hands settle on your hips, you grind against what I can only assume to be a prominent hardness in his trousers, judging by the satisfied smirk on his face. 

You seem eager, pliant under his touch, responding in ways I confess I hadn’t thought you capable of - no, not like this. Not with him.

My heart hammers in my chest, a tension spreading through me that’s… increasingly difficult to ignore. And yet, I remind myself, this is mere observation, nothing more. A clinical exercise in understanding the intricacies of interpersonal attractions between a vampire and a mortal; the undercurrent of danger that befalls such an arrangement.

He holds you with a blend of confidence and entitlement that borders on decadent, his mouth at your neck, lips brushing against your skin with a maddening leisure that’s somehow indulgent and teasing all at once. His fangs linger there and, for a moment, my heart stops - surely he wouldn’t… Ah, no. No, he’s not feeding. He merely kisses your neck, fangs scraping lightly against your throat - close enough to tempt and tantalise. I see the goosebumps flare on your skin.

He whispers something low and unintelligible, and you let out a soft giggle, yielding in a way that speaks of trust - trust that’s he’s earned, somehow, despite his nature.

And then your hand drifts between you both, touching him through his trousers.

Gosh. I hadn’t thought you so bold.

Astarion’s body arches into your touch, his gaze darkening as he watches you with a hunger that’s both terrifying and… strangely beautiful. I find myself entranced, my breath shallow as I observe the way your fingers trace over him, the way he leans into you. The noise he makes when your fingers flex, squeezing him gently over the fabric… Gracious. 

There’s a strange, reluctant curiosity building within me. I should look away. I should grant you both the privacy you likely assume you have. And yet, my gaze remains fixed, drawn to the details of your encounter: the way his hands tighten on your waist, the way your breaths synchronise, the way he murmurs softly into your ear…

I am aware - painfully so - of the ache low in my body that has built with each passing moment, each glance, each touch. I am no stranger to restraint - I have spent years tempering my desires, sacrificing comforts in the pursuit of knowledge, of power. Yet, here, now, I feel that restraint begin to falter; to dissolve like ink in water, dispersing until it is all but unrecognisable. It has been so long, after all. So, so long.

When your hands move to the waistband of his trousers, my breath catches. Gods above, surely you won't, not out in the open... but yes. Yes, it seems you will.

When you pull him free, well - I’ve always wondered about vampire physiology, purely academically, of course. But the sight of him prompts rather less scholarly thoughts. He’s impressively endowed - perhaps it is wishful thinking to believe that this is but another gift of his condition. It’s fascinating how vampiric transformation affects every part of the body - he’s almost luminescent in the firelight, every inch of him perfect and unmarred. I notice the veins that trace along his length, faintly visible beneath his skin. He is, even now, a study in confidence, exuding a subtle power that one can only achieve when utterly comfortable in one’s own skin.

Your hand wraps around him, sliding up and down his length at a teasing pace, drawing forth a sound I have never heard our pale companion make - a soft, broken gasp, caught somewhere between a moan and a sigh. It sounds almost reluctant, as though he hadn’t meant for such a sound to slip past his lips. He twitches under your ministrations, and his grip on your hips tightens enough that there will surely be bruises tomorrow.

My fingers rest at my thigh, trembling ever so slightly. A small part of me - a remnant of reason, perhaps - tells me to pull back, to look away, to let this moment pass without surrendering to the need that has taken root within me. But my body, the traitorous thing it is, does not heed such commands. Instead, I find my hand drifting lower.

My fingers trace over the fabric of my trousers, over the aching hardness beneath. A gentle palming, barely enough to ease the tension that coils tighter with each passing moment as I watch the scene unfold.

Your hands elicit quiet murmurs from Astarion that grow deeper and more insistent with each passing moment. For a moment, the two of you share a look - one of conspiratorial mischief, perhaps - and then a soft, shared giggle, the sound mingling with the crackling of the fire. 

You're so utterly engrossed in him; so utterly unselfconscious.

You shift, a question in your eyes, and as he nods, giving his assent, you rise just enough to shift, positioning yourself over him. Your skirts drape around you both, providing a veneer of modesty, though there's no mistaking what follows when you sink yourself down on to him. The way your lips part in a gasp as he enters you, the way his head falls back with a victorious grin - it makes the tightness, the great ache between my legs, almost unbearable.

I find my hand slipping beneath my waistband.

Just a little relief, I tell myself. Just enough to ease this maddening tension.

There is a certain poetry to it, I suppose - this surrender to the pleasures of the flesh. I allow myself to imagine, as my hand finds the throbbing heat of my arousal, what it might feel to be in your place, to have someone look at me with that same confidence, to experience touch imbued with the certainty of one who knows precisely how to elicit pleasure - a knowledge gleaned from centuries, no doubt, of indulgence and conquest.

It’s enough to leave me aching for more than mere observation.

The fervour with which you move against him… it’s hypnotic, each roll of your hips drawing forth increasingly wanton sounds from you both. Astarion's carefully crafted demeanour gives way to something more roguish, a playful daring that glints in his eyes as you rise and fall and rise and fall on his length.

I find my hand instinctively matching your rhythm, every shift and motion, as though I, too, am bound to the undulating tempo that you and Astarion have created.

Gods… what must it be like to be him? To have someone so openly, eagerly drawn to you, meeting every touch with matching fervour? To hold someone close and feel their raw desire, the thrill of each laugh, each gasp, offered without hesitation? I wonder what it must be like to inspire such a response, to be desired so freely, without need for pretence or restraint?

With Mystra, I was ever the pursuer, striving tirelessly to earn even the barest hint of her approval, each moment together feeling like an examination I desperately hoped to pass. But Astarion… well. He needn't chase or convince. Despite his vampiric nature - or perhaps, in part, because of it - he is simply desired, freely given all that I once had to beg for. The inequity of it all would be rather poetic, if it weren't so personally vexing.

“A-ah!”

Your gasp cuts through my ruminations, pulling me back into the scene.

Astarion’s hand has slipped between you, guiding you to that final crescendo with a practised touch. The sight of it is utterly spellbinding: his fingers moving with a precision that speaks to centuries of experience, knowing just where to press, where to linger. The control he exercises over you is enviable, each movement of his hand coaxing you closer to that peak, his attention wholly focused on your reaction, even as your hips rock back and forth on his length with an increasingly frantic, unrestrained urgency.

The way your eyes roll back... Gosh.

The expression on your face, one of pure, unfiltered abandon, is a sight to behold.

Your body trembles as you reach your peak, and a sound - a cry, too loud in the stillness of the night - escapes your lips. Astarion’s palm clamps over your mouth, a futile attempt to muffle you in the throes of your climax. Though he hushes you, his expression suggests that he is not in the least bit concerned. In fact, he seems rather pleased - more than pleased, really. 

There’s a thrill in such a public display for him too, no doubt.

I swallow, the sound almost too loud, my heart pounding against my ribs as though it seeks to betray me. Astarion's head tilts slightly, his gaze flickering to the shadows, and for one heart-stopping moment, I think he has sensed me, that his attention has shifted from you to this invisible interloper, the scholar caught red-handed in his quiet act of voyeurism.

Could he... sense me here, lingering on the fringe of his private moment? Could he smell the stir of my own arousal, feel the faint tremor of my breath as I fight for composure? For several heartbeats, my hand freezes. I dare not even breathe.

But then his attentions return to you, and I breathe a sigh of relief. 

He brings his hands to your hips, holding them firmly in place as he drives himself upwards into you, deeper, with mounting desperation. It seems he seeks to chase his own release, content with the pleasure he has wrought you.

You respond eagerly, pressing closer, your own sounds growing louder, heedless of who might hear, and I can see that thrill in his face - the satisfaction of knowing he’s eliciting every reaction from you, drawing out each gasp, each shudder.

My hand glides hastily across my arousal, my own breathing growing ragged as I watch his control begin to slip. Even from here, I can see the tension in his shoulders, the way his head tips back in pure abandon.

In the final throes, he presses himself against you, buried firmly to the hilt. It’s almost animalistic, all thoughts, all calculated movements, making way for one singular goal: to empty himself into you, filling you with all he has to offer with breaths rugged and low. All composure is stripped, replaced with instinct and pure need.

I find my own movements quickening to match his pace, as though some invisible thread binds us all to this moment. My hand tightens as I lose myself in the same tempo, every sound from you both spurring me closer. The sight of his final shudder, the look of utter satisfaction crossing his face as he reaches that height, is enough to tip me over the edge.

For a heartbeat, the night seems to hold us all in perfect suspension - your quiet gasps, his satisfied murmurs, my own silent echo of shared pleasure - all woven together in this clandestine tableau.

Only then, as the euphoria begins to fade, does a most uncomfortable awareness creep in.

Gods above, what have I... A scholar of worldly acclaim, reduced to voyeur, caught up in base desires like some common... No. Best not to dwell on such things. Though I suspect sleep will prove rather elusive tonight, haunted by questions of propriety and... other matters.

With a groan, I roll onto my back, the orb’s steady throb now a minor annoyance compared to the tangled thoughts that flood my mind. Perhaps I can chalk this entire… incident up to fatigue, a wandering mind, even a fevered dream. Yes, that must be it. The product of a restless night and, possibly, a touch of indigestion. After all, who could believe that I, Gale of Waterdeep, would be brought so low as to... well, that.

As morning light spills across camp, I attempt a façade of normalcy, willing my cheeks to cool and my mind to settle. Just as I convince myself the night’s events were nothing more than a peculiar dream, Astarion sidles up, his expression one of leisurely amusement.

"Restless night, Gale?” he murmurs, just loud enough for me to hear. His gaze is as sharp as his tone, a knowing glint in his eyes that makes my stomach twist in the most uncomfortable way. "I thought I heard a... stirring from your tent."

The corner of his mouth quirks up in that infuriatingly smug way of his, and I nearly choke on my response. 

He knew. 

Astarion knew. 

I force a cough, pretending to inspect the morning sky.

"A dream," I reply a bit too quickly. "Perhaps the cheese at dinner was... overly ripe."

But Astarion merely chuckles, a wicked sound, before strolling away with a satisfied air. And as I watch him saunter off, I’m left to question just how much of the night was a dream - and how much, mortifyingly, was very, very real.

Masterlist can be found here!

No Pressure Tags: @roguishcat @davenswitcher @silverfangmarks @sparrowbard @chonkercatto @stokzr @trafalgarussy @asterordinary

[colouredbyd]

Poly Marauders: Masterlist .ᐟ

🌷= fluff 🌙 = angst 💌 = hurt/comfort 🌱= crack 🍄= smut ♡ = d's favs

A Moon For Moony 💌🌷(4.3k)

when remus admits he's never seen the moon, you create one just for him.

We Will Be Okay 🌙💌 (4.6k) (part 1)

after an argument with the boys you nearly lose your life, the marauders realize too late what their silence cost.

↳ ♡ We Heal, At Last 💌 (8.8k) (part 2) after your attack, you pull away, wounds aching. but love finds you again, gentle and patient, proof that even after ruin, there can still be light.

Sweet Things Melt Slowly 🌷(2.6k)

winter comes softly, and in firelight and snowlight, three boys and their girl fall a little more in love.

Secrets Have Teeth 🌙💌 (10k)

a prank sirius sets for snape backfires, leaving ruin and silence in its wake. forgiveness flickers, but secrets still bare their teeth.

↳ Secrets Have Teeth: part two 🌙 (6.3k) after a reckless prank shatters everything, you're left with a bite mark and a truth too big to bury. as blame spirals and the full moon nears, one question lingers: did they lose you for good? ↳ Secrets Have Teeth: final part 🌷💌 (3.2k) as the full moon fades, you’re left raw and aching, held by the ones who never let go. through pain and fear, one truth remains: this is for keeps.

♡ Bitter Sweetness 🌙💌 (7.5k)

in which you mistake your boyfriends worry for pity, leading you to pushing them away to prove you’re not fragile.

♡ We Are All Gonna Die 💌 (3.4k)

after a nightmare where you lose your boyfriends, you wake breathless, only to find them pulling you close until the fear fades and the night feels safe again.

🐾flicker & the marauders ( red panda!reader x marauders)

↳ meet flicker 𖹭.ᐟ: meet flicker, a red panda navigating life with the marauders by her side. this is a glimpse into her world, her quirks, comforts, and the people she loves most! ↳ The Secret's Out (5.2k)🌷💌 : you keep stumbling across your boyfriends in your Animagus form, a clumsy red panda. their gazes linger, sensing something familiar. But not all secrets last. ↳ The Secret Life Of Pets (7k)🌷🌱: after a botched transformation, you’re stuck as a red panda, posing as the marauders' pet—but staying hidden proves harder than they thought ↳ Lost And Found(4k) 💌: after a reckless fight, you hide as flicker, overwhelmed by fear. when they find you, their gentle words and touch ease your heart, bringing fragile peace ↳ Just A Scratch(5.3k) 💌🌙: on a full moon night, an accident injures you and tests the bond with remus, sirius, and james. sometimes, lies are the kindest way to protect those you love. ↳ Bird-napped! (2.1k) 🌷🌱: a peaceful afternoon spirals into chaos when the marauders mistake an eagle’s prey for flicker, sending them into a full-blown panic. ↳ The Great Honey Heist (3k)🌷🌱: in which flicker and raccoon!barty attempt a honey heist that spirals into sticky chaos, and ends with a furious regulus catching them red-pawed.

want to plant a seed? requests are: open!

[cambion-companion]

Knot

Alright, it was put in my head that devils knot when mating/having sex. So...had to write this little ficlet.

Raphael x f!reader/Tav | SMUT | 18+ only

Scorching tension, the aching coil of your muscles as they stretched and clenched to accommodate him. Your fingers sought purchase, something to tether you to reality as ecstasy rocked with every thrust.

“Raphael.”  His name tasted like honey, burnt like whiskey upon your lips.  Your tongue felt leaden as he claimed your mouth, swallowing your pleading as he claimed you.

Amidst the haze and the heat, you noticed what a mess you were making of the cambion’s lush bed. “The sheets…”  You murmured, attempting to sit up and regain some semblance of control.

Your hair stirred in the rush of wind the sudden beat of his wings created, the leather appendages stretching wide as Raphael pushed you by the throat back against the mattress. “Are replaceable.” Raphael’s sharp claws dug against the tender flesh of your thigh as he dragged your body closer to him, drunk on the sensation of you so pliable and wet around him. He grinned down at you before a rumble of pleasure dragged from his throat. “So willing, little mouse.”  He leaned over, the skin of his wings turning the ambient firelight into a red haze. “Take all of me.”

Your eyes widened, feeling the flush of heat and heady lust his words aroused. Your body became taught as a bowstring seconds before the kill, his name spilling from your panting mouth, sweet to the taste.

Raphael fought to keep composure, failing spectacularly, burying himself deep within you, his sinful orisons of pleasure echoing your own cries. You felt his seed spill, the painful heat of it overshadowed by the pleasure as your body drank him in.

Your skin stung and broke as Raphael’s teeth pierced where your shoulder and neck joined, marking you as his own outside as well as within. He continued rutting into you, stretching you as the infernal knot took hold. You whined and he silenced you with his fingers pushing into your mouth.

Hellfire eyes found yours, your foreheads pressed together in a semblance of twisted intimacy as you nearly choked on his long digits. “Good, little one. Take me.”  

You wanted nothing more than to give in. To whatever end. Pain and pleasure mixed, your whines muffled around his fingers until he withdrew them only to replace the void with his lips and tongue. He was anchored inside, the languid thrusts of his hips sent spasms along your spine as Raphael pressed your legs down against your chest.

The two of you remained interlocked, twin flames made one, until Raphael was satisfied you’d been properly mated.  When he finally withdrew, he dragged a single nail down your chest to your navel, pressing almost until he drew blood over your womb. His tail flicked against your side as he gave you a lazy, self-satisfied smile. “You’re the image of sin, my dear.”  His palm flattened against your abdomen possessively. “Now, go clean yourself.  I will join you shortly for a thorough examination of your progress.”

[psformybss]

Home for the Holiday

drew starkey x reader

based on this ask

warnings: soft domesticity, light teasing, childhood photo embarrassment, implied intimacy, holiday fluff, emotional warmth, minor chaos

═══════════════

The drive to Hickory isn’t long—barely two hours—but it feels like stepping deeper into a painting the farther you go. The mountains swell on either side, slopes brushed in goldenrod and copper, the winding road slicing through valleys that shimmer with late-autumn light. Trees bend toward the shoulder like they’re listening. The air sharpens, turns crisper with each mile, and when Drew cracks the window, the breeze slips in cool and earthy—laced with woodsmoke, pine, and something older still, like nostalgia.

“You sure you’re ready?” he asks, one hand draped lazily over the wheel, fingers tapping in an absent rhythm. He’s wearing that half-grin that makes your stomach flip, but his eyes flick your way like he’s actually asking. “Last chance to fake a tire blowout and drive straight to Florida.”

You glance over your coffee cup, raising a brow. “You want to spend Thanksgiving at a beach motel with vending machine food?”

“I mean… could be fun. No chaos. Just us. Low risk of being tackled by Logan.”

You snort. “Tempting. But I think I’ll take my chances with the Starkey family stampede.”

Drew’s grin widens—lazy, crooked, and so familiar now it feels like home. “You’ve met my siblings before. It won’t be that bad.”

“Right, but not in their natural habitat. Last time, Brooke wore heels and didn’t scream at anyone. I think she was trying to impress me.”

“She’s definitely over that phase.”

By the time you pull into the driveway, the Starkey house looks like something straight out of a Southern Living holiday issue. White columns frame the porch, and a few stubborn pumpkins cling to the steps, leftover from Halloween, now nestled among scattered oak leaves. The air smells like damp bark and someone’s been baking for hours. A car is already in the driveway, and from a cracked window, music spills out—Fleetwood Mac, you think—soft, scratchy, and just a little chaotic.

You barely get a chance to knock before the front door swings open.

“Took you long enough,” Brooke says, holding a glass of red wine with the confidence of someone born to host. Her hair’s in a high ponytail, and one perfectly arched eyebrow lifts as she smirks. “Mom’s been pacing like she’s expecting royalty.”

“Hi, Brooke,” you say sweetly, stepping in behind Drew.

“She even fluffed the couch pillows,” Mackayla calls from deeper inside the house. “That never happens.”

Drew shoulders his duffel bag with a grunt. “Did y’all coordinate this roast in the group chat, or—?”

Brooke sips her wine. “Oh, honey. This is just muscle memory.”

Mackayla’s next, sweeping into the entryway and pulling you into a hug that smells like cinnamon, hairspray, and some expensive perfume. “Glad you survived the drive. Asheville traffic this week is practically apocalyptic.”

“Logan still narrating the Macy’s Parade?” Drew mutters, kicking off his sneakers.

From the living room: “I can hear you, and I’m providing valuable commentary!”

You peek in and find Logan draped dramatically across the couch like a Roman emperor, a bowl of Chex Mix balanced precariously on his chest, eyes glued to the TV. “The Rockettes,” he announces, “remain undefeated.”

The house is warm in the way only lived-in homes are—firelight flickering in the hearth, a distant clatter of pans, the smell of roasted turkey and sage rolling in like a tide. The walls hum with activity. Someone yells for a potholder, Brooke’s playlist is at war with the TV, and laughter crackles from the kitchen.

Family photos line the hallway—graduations, toothless grins, beach trips. A penciled height chart runs along the laundry room doorframe. There are shoes by the stairs, dog-eared cookbooks in a basket, and a lone wine glass abandoned on a windowsill like it’s mid-conversation.

Jodi rounds the corner wiping her hands on a red-checkered dish towel, her face lighting up like a porch light when she sees you.

“There she is! Oh, honey, come here,” she says, pulling you into a hug that smells like cinnamon rolls and dryer sheets. “I’m Jodi. It’s so good to finally meet you in person.”

“You too,” you say warmly. “Thank you for having me.”

“Of course. We’ve heard plenty about you.”

“Okay, and we’re done here,” Drew mutters behind you.

Todd appears a moment later with a cheerful, “Welcome, welcome,” and a firm handshake. “We’ve got a seat at the table with your name on it.”

“Dad,” Drew warns, tone sharp with dread.

“I’m just saying, your mother and I were starting to wonder if we needed to set you up again.”

“Again?” you ask, your eyebrows lifting in delight.

“Long story,” Todd says.

“Not long enough,” Mackayla quips, sailing past with a tray of deviled eggs. “You should’ve seen the girl from church. That was… a choice.”

Drew groans. “Can we not do this today?”

“No promises!” Brooke sing-songs from the kitchen.

Within minutes, you’ve got a cider in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, helping Jodi stir cranberry sauce while Mackayla debates garnish strategy like she’s on Top Chef. Brooke drifts between rooms with a Bluetooth speaker tucked under her arm, spinning like she’s in a musical.

“Logan!” she yells. “Stop changing the song—this is the good playlist!”

“Says who?” he shouts back.

Drew pops into the kitchen just long enough to swipe a cube of cheese, only to catch an elbow to the ribs from Jodi.

“Put her to work already?” he teases.

“She volunteered,” Jodi says, grinning. “Keeper behavior.”

You shoot Drew a look. “I just didn’t want to get benched for being the new girlfriend.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Brooke says, breezing in with a fresh glass of cider. “We’re judging you silently and putting you to work.”

Later, leaning against the counter as you stir gravy, you nudge him with your shoulder and murmur, “You weren’t kidding about the chaos.”

“Never do,” he says, brushing his hand gently over your hip in passing.

Dinner is everything—loud, barely manageable, and so perfectly alive it makes your chest ache a little. Everyone talks at once. Todd gives a theatrical toast that earns four synchronized groans from his kids. Logan drops his fork mid-meal and never retrieves it. Jodi refills your wine glass twice before you can say no. The stuffing disappears in seconds. Someone gets emotional over sweet potatoes.

After dessert—pecan pie so good it could start a cult—the cleanup turns into a full-contact sport. Dish towels fly. Brooke hums along to the Mariah Carey playing on the speaker. Logan somehow gets out of helping by claiming “decorative supervision.”

Drew kisses your temple as you collapse beside him on the living room floor, your backs against the couch while the rest of the family filters in around you.

The fire crackles low. Someone hits play on a cheesy Christmas movie—probably Brooke—and nobody objects.

Halfway through, Mackayla stretches like a cat and says innocently, “Has she seen your room yet?”

Drew stiffens. “She hasn’t?”

Brooke gasps, scandalized. “Drew. Show her your room. Immediately.”

“You act like I’ve got a dead body hidden in there.”

“No, but you do have that weird basketball trophy with your face on it,” Logan chimes from under a throw blanket. “And the Buzz Lightyear blanket.”

“That blanket was iconic,” Drew says, wounded.

You glance up at him, a smirk tugging at your lips. “Now I have to see it.”

Drew groans but stands, offering a hand. “Fine. Come on. Witness the shrine.”

The hallway creaks beneath your steps, lined with school photos and a penciled height chart just outside the laundry room. When his bedroom door opens with a familiar squeak, you’re hit with a wave of teenage nostalgia —posters on the walls, a crooked hoop on the back of the door, a Buzz Lightyear blanket folded neatly at the end of the bed.

You step inside slowly, taking it all in. “It’s cleaner than I expected.”

“My mom probably snuck in here with a can of Lysol the second we left for college.”

You trail your fingers over the comforter—soft from years of use, that distinct Carolina blue faded from washing—and sit on the edge of the bed, giving him a teasing smile. “This is kind of hot. All-American baller-boy vibes.”

He narrows his eyes. “Please never say ‘baller-boy’ again.”

“Make me.”

He doesn’t hesitate. Two steps and he’s in front of you, hands cupping your face as his mouth crashes into yours. The kiss is unhurried but deep, purposeful. Like he’s been holding back all day and finally let himself give in. You tug him down with you, falling back onto the bed as he settles over you, his body a perfect weight against yours.

Your hands slip under his hoodie, skimming warm skin, and his breath hitches when your nails lightly scratch down his spine. His lips trail from your mouth to your jaw, to the pulse beneath your ear, making you shiver. The room spins slightly, but in a good way—like everything else can wait as long as this lasts.

Eventually—slowly—you untangle yourselves. Clothes straightened. Hair smoothed. Heartbeats still a little too fast.

He helps you up, pressing a final kiss to your cheek before pulling the door open.

“You know if Logan heard us, I’m never living this down.”

“Then we better walk back out like nothing happened.”

“Think we can pull that off?”

You grin, smoothing your sweater. “Let’s find out.”

You return to the living room just in time for the second half of the Christmas movie. Mackayla gives you a look.

“Y’all took forever.”

“We were just talking,” Drew deadpans.

“Uh-huh.”

Jodi pats the spot beside her on the couch. “Come look at these. I pulled out the old albums.”

You sit beside her, and she flips to a page of plastic-covered memories. “That’s Drew in kindergarten,” she says proudly. “He used to call himself Captain Defense.”

“He wore elbow pads to school,” Mackayla adds, grinning.

Your eyes land on a photo of five-year-old Drew in a Buzz Lightyear costume that’s three sizes too big, face smeared with chocolate and pride. “Oh my god.”

“There’s more,” Jodi promises, turning the page. “This was his mullet phase.”

“Mom,” Drew groans.

You lean in. “Is that a rat tail?”

“A beautiful one,” Todd says solemnly from the recliner.

“I’m obsessed,” you laugh, as Drew drops his head onto your shoulder, groaning into your sweater.

The night winds down in soft layers—Brooke scrolling half-asleep, Logan snoring into a throw pillow, Jodi still humming beside the photo album. The fire burns low, shadows dancing across the ceiling.

Drew wraps an arm around your waist, voice low against your hair. “Thanks for coming.”

You melt into him, full and warm and happy.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

[mylovesstuffs]

The Night He Knelt — Wen Junhui

By day, he’s the heir to the throne. By night, he’s just a man knocking at your door. Prince Wen Junhui never followed rules when it came to you. What begins with just friendship and stolen glances soon spirals into something deeper... and far more dangerous. Behind closed doors and under the hush of candlelight, secrets are whispered between silken sheets and robes that slip a little too easily. But how long can a love like this survive—when one of you belongs to the people, and the other to the crown?

Genre: Royalty au, forbidden love, romance, friends-to-lovers

Pairing: Crown prince!Jun × commoner fem!reader

Content: Late-night visit, vulnerability and longing, dual lives (public vs private), secret relationship (?), royalty sneaking into commoner’s room, mutual pining, robe slipping scene, friends to lovers with hidden mutual feelings, affectionate banter, emotional confessions mid-intimacy, firelight ambience, soft dominance, kneeling symbolism, prince/Jun falling first, touch-starved, devotion as rebellion, subtle powerplay through vulnerability ig???

Warnings: Partial undressing, suggestive imagery, lingerie mention, mentions of sickness (reader feeling unwell), social class divide, implied secrecy and court politics, restraint breaking down, power imbalance somewhat explored

A/N: I don't even know how this happened; it was supposed to be a short drabble, and it was a drabble!!! I wrote up to, “Let me stay tonight.” and then just wanted to explore a few more lines but ended up writing 500 more words 🙂 I don't mind; it's Jun after all. But it'd be better if I could actually take a deep dive and explore slowly lol. I didn't even have a proper title because everything sounded either too dramatic or too cliché. HELP. But please enjoy this anyway. Thank you for reading 💌

Jun, have a very wonderful birthday! Since he holds the entire day, the only post that will be posted today is of him. I only hope that wherever he is, he feels all the love 🥹🫶🏼 I'm grateful that you introduced me to seventeen. I'm grateful that you let me in. My love for you will forever continue to grow 💖

Word count: 1191 words

You had been curled up on your divan with a book balanced on your knees — some obscure, poetic piece of literature you were too tired to actually finish. The fire had been dying, the heat of the hearth flickering low, and you'd barely gotten through the next paragraph before you had heard the knock.

You didn’t answer, just looked up in surprise as the door creaked open.

There he was, but his gold-trimmed armor, or his guards, or the title that the court had boasted so loudly about, weren't in sight. It was just, Jun. Soft sweater with tousled hair, and uncharacteristically barefoot.

“I heard you were feeling sick,” he said, stepping inside. “So I brought... provisions.”

You raised an eyebrow at the small tray in his hand, which you assumed to be fresh fruits, honey, a little jar of tea. He looked too proud, but also too shy all at once. “You walked through the palace carrying these?”

“Well.” He cleared his throat, placing the tray on the side table. “The royal facilities weren’t providing anything you'd actually eat.”

You smiled. “So the Prince plays nursemaid now?”

“I prefer concerned friend.” Jun glanced away, then caught your eye again. “Unless you’d rather I leave.”

“No,” you blurted out too quickly, betraying your calm.

He walked over slowly, the fire casting shadows around the room. Golden lines were crawling over the sheets of your bed, the spines of the books stacked beside it with your legs tucked beneath your robe. He didn’t speak as he sat next to you, his knees brushing against each other.

Your voice softened. “Jun, I’m not that sick, you know.”

He turned to look at you. But this was the look that always made your pulse jump, that pulled the air from the room and made you feel like you were in someone’s orbit; unable to, unwilling to break away. “Maybe not,” he said, lowering his voice. “But I needed to see you anyway.”

A silence stretched between them, perhaps warm and aware. Your robe slipped a little at the shoulder. His gaze followed—then quickly darted away. You followed it back to the corner of the room, where a silky set of navy lingerie lay forgotten over a chair, something you'd tried on earlier out of boredom and never folded away. Your face flushed. “I wasn’t expecting company,” you murmured, adjusting your robe.

His lips twitched. “I’m... aware.”

More silence started crackling like fire. The lukewarm tea on the side table was long forgotten, eyes not meeting but also never quite parting. “You always do that,” you whispered, your voice dipping unconsciously into a much softer range than previous.

“Do what?”

“You look at me like I’m your whole world or something. Like I’m... someone royal.”

He turned to you without any hesitation. “You are,” he said. “To me.”

And in that moment—with the storm slicked against the windows, the forgotten books, the tray untouched, the crown far away—you smiled, a smile that glowed from the inside out. He leaned closer, one hand gently brushing back your hair.

“My dear,” he said, barely a breath between them. “Let me stay tonight.”

The words just hung there. It wasn't a command, or even a request, but a confession, per se. One wrapped in silk and longing and the aching restraint that only years of secrets can carve. You didn’t answer right away.

Because if you did, if you said yes, it would mean pulling him into a world where duty and desire couldn't breathe in the same space. Where the Prince was not allowed to fall asleep in a commoner’s room, and where you were not allowed to look at him like that.

But you were looking at him like that, and he was already in your orbit. His shoulders were tense, breath quiet with his eyes flickering between your lips and the pale curve of your neck beneath the robe.

“You’re not staying just because I’m sick,” you said softly, testing the water.

“No,” he admitted, voice roughened by restraint. “I’m staying because I can’t keep pretending I don’t think about you… constantly.”

Your fingers tightened in the fabric of your robe. His hand rose tentatively and slowly, and brushed the edge of it, where it tied over your ribs. He wasn't pushing, just resting there; asking you.

You let it fall open just slightly. An exhale followed out of his lips from the affirmation.

The firelight kissed the lace of your bra, barely visible beneath the silk, a deep red that made your skin glow like candlelight. You watched him take you in like a man starved; not for flesh, for you.

“You wore this…” he breathed, eyes tracing every line. “Was it for someone?”

Your smile was wicked-soft. “Maybe. A dear friend who had wandered into my chambers.”

A low chuckle escaped his lips. “Then I hope he knows how to thank you properly.”

You leaned in until your lips were near his ear. “Maybe you can show him.”

That made Jun's self-control crack like thin ice. His hand slid behind your neck as he kissed you; it wasn't like a prince or like royalty at all, but like a man lost in the taste of someone forbidden. Your lips parted easily, greedily, as he pulled you closer, fingers tangling into the sheets behind you. The tray tipped on the side table from the impact of their doings, fruit rolling to the carpet. Neither of them had taken notice.

Your hands explored his back beneath his sweater. It was warm, taut muscle, heat radiating off him in waves. You tugged him down with you, mouths never breaking, hearts hammering out unspoken verses like their own private literature.

“You drive me mad,” he whispered against your collarbone. “You always have.”

You laughed breathlessly. “You're the one sneaking around palace corridors like a lovesick boy.”

“Oh, I’m sick, alright,” he said as he slid the robe off your shoulders. “Sick for you.”

His mouth found your skin, reverent, slick with heat and need, following the lines of lace like a map only he was allowed to read. You arched beneath him, fingers tugging at his clothes, stripping away the last symbols of control.

“Have I mentioned,” he growled, voice thicker now, “how your mind turns me on as much as your body?”

“No,” you gasped, eyes fluttering shut, “but say it again.”

“I fall for your humour,” he said, trailing kisses down your torso, “your passion, your stubbornness, your mind… You could burn this whole royal world down and I’d still kneel at your feet.”

You let out a shivering laugh, heart molten. “Then kneel, my prince.”

And so he did; not as sovereign, nor as the heir to legacy and crown, but simply as a man, undone not by sword or war, but by love. There, in the sheets and lace tangled, amidst shadows woven by firelight and longing, he surrendered. Their union was not inscribed in the decrees of law, but in breathless sighs, in the poetry of touch, and in the sacred little rebellion of two souls choosing each other wholly, without condition.

⌦ 👑 © mylovesstuffs | est. 2025. thank you for reading—your reblog means everything. until we meet again, stay cozy and keep dreaming! ◜ᴗ◝

[mofongomuncher]

𝘼𝙣𝙨𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙨 [!𝙎𝙈𝙐𝙏¡]

(Ekko X Reader)

❥ cast : ! Ekko and Reader ¡

The brothel was dimly lit today, the pungent scent of incense and lust hung heavily in the air. The soft whispers of conversations and secrets echoed through the corridors.

As a dancer known for your attraction and intentions, you've seen your share of shady characters seeking refuge from the harsh realities.

Tonight however, was so much more different.

Ekko.

The leader of the firelights, decided to stroll into the brothel with his dark green jacket—its distinct graffits swayed with each step, and his owl like mask made him stick out against the rest of the people around the building.

He was here looking for answers about Silco's people, specifically a woman who once worked here. The only person that actually knew who this woman was, is you.

As he approaches, you feel the heat of his gaze and the weight of his reputation. His sharp, owl-like eyes lock onto yours with unsettling intensity.

You knew he was the type to take what he wanted without hesitation. Babette had warned you about him and the Firelights not long ago.

But tonight... tonight, things would be different.

With a gesture, you lead him to a private room.

"Tell me about her..." Ekko says, his voice rough as he carefully removed his mask, and sat down in front of you. His white locs and hourglass face paint were now visible. The flickering candlelights casted his features, making the intensity of his gaze almost tangible.

You, in your revealing lingerie, feel a thrill of excitement as you danced slowly in front of him. Your movements are fluid, your hips swaying to an unheard melody as you speak, your eyes never leaving his.

You dance closer to him, your fingertips tracing the line of your collarbone as you speak of her, your voice dropping to a whisper. "Her name was Lila....Silco took her in, trained her, used her for his... needs." Your eyes flicker to the side, a hint of sadness in them."she was so clever, always looking answers." Ekko's eyes narrow, his interest piqued. He leans forward slightly.

"What makes you think she'd be of any use to me?" he asks, his voice sharper then ever.  You dip down, your chest brushing against his knee, making him suck in a sharp breath. "Because she knew his secrets..." you murmur, your breath warm against his skin. "And she knew when to keep them...and when to share them." Your hand slides up his thigh. "Anddd...you asked me about her, she must be some good use, hm?" You teased him.

You can feel the tension spiraling within him.

He's a man of the streets, he was used to the cut and thrust of battles, but this... this is different.

Way different...

You move to straddle his lap. He looks up at you, his big hazelnut brown eyes searching yours for a moment as if trying to determine if this is just a trick.

You grab his gloved hands and place them on your hips—forcing him to pull you closer to him.

You lean down, your lips brushing against his ear. "Tell me what you want Ekko.." you whisper, your voice seductive and demanding.

"I want... I need to know." he gasps. "What did she tell you?" His desperation is tangible, his eyes never leaving yours as he speaks. You lean back, a knowing smile playing on your lips. "Everything..." you promise, your voice sweet like honey. "But firsttt, let's make a deal...just you and me." You trace a finger along the line of his sharp jaw, watching as he nods nervously, his breath coming in ragged bursts. He knew exactly what kind of deal you were trying to offer him.

Ekko had never been in a situation like this before. He'd always been too focused on the Firelights, on the constant grind of surviving in Zaun, on fixing what was broken around him. Intimacy had never been something he made time for. His life was chaos.

Now, here he was, sitting at the brothel, with you on his lap, your body close to his in a way that made his heart race. The soft material of your lingerie pressed against him, and he could feel every inch of you. It was all too much, too fast, and yet, it was impossible to ignore the heat flooding his chest.

He hadn't asked for this, hadn't come here for this kind of attention, but now that it was happening, he was finding it hard to pull away. His hands rested lightly on your hips, the pressure of his touch not quite sure of itself, but needing to stay there all the same. His mind was a jumble of thoughts, conflicting desires and responsibilities, but his body was reacting against all of it.

This wasn't a relationship. It wasn't anything deep, he knew that. Yet, there was something in the way your body pressed against his, something in the way the heat built between you, that made him feel a way he couldn't describe. A part of him felt like he shouldn't be here, that he should be focused on something else, find answers elsewhere—but another part of him just... didn't want to stop.

It was messy, it was chaotic, and it wasn't lovely but it was real.

The air in the room seems to thicken as you get off his lap—moving in front of him. Carefully you remove his overalls down to his boots, before dropping to your knees.

As you free his cock from his boxers, you can't help but admire it—thick and long, slightly pulsating, it was like a testament to his masculinity.

Looking up at him through your hooded eyes, you lean in and take him into your mouth, your tongue swirling around the tip before you take him deeper. Ekko's eyes widen in surprise, he throws his head back, his hand reaching for his mouth to cover his groans.

"H-Holy—Fuck" he hisses.

You couldn't help but feel a swell of pride at his reaction.

You suck harder, feeling him pulse against your tongue, his thighs tense beneath your palms. He tastes so sweet and a tad bit bitter, a mix that only fuels your own desire.

Ekko's eyes are squeezed shut now, his teeth gritted as he fights to keep his composure. But you can feel the storm building within him, the tension in his body coiling tighter with each passing moment. His breaths become more erratic, and his hips start to buck. You moan around his length, the vibration sending a shiver down his spine. His hand reaches for the armrest of the chair to steady himself.

"Tell—tell me" he grunts, his voice now strained. "What...What did Lila tell you?"

You pull back, your lips shiny with his precum, and give him a soft smile. "well....only that she had something valuable." you say, your voice a breathy purr. "Information that could help bring him down." Ekko's eyes flash with determination, and he nods, urging you to continue.

"But she didn't tell me what it was." you add, tracing your fingers along his thigh. "Not until I made her feel good..." You stand up, your legs shaky from the excitement.

"And—And did you?" he asks, his voice quivering. "Make...her feel good?" You nod, your chest heaving with anticipation. "Of course I did," you reply, reaching back to untie your lingerie, letting it fall to the floor. Your bare skin glows in the candlelight. "And now.." you say, turning to face him, "it's your turn. Hm?"

Ekko's eyes froze to you, observing your naked body, lingering on the wetness between your thighs. You make his way to him, removing the rest of his clothing, revealing his muscular form. You couldn't help but caresses his beautifully toned chest.

"Tell me..." he says, his voice low and slightly nervous, "everything she said."

You bite your bottom lip, feeling a thrill of power as you hold the key to Ekko's quest. "She spoke of a hidden book..." you murmur, stepping even closer to him, your breasts now brushing his chest. "A list of names, areas...transactions with some of the pilties..." Ekko's eyes widen at the implication, and you can feel his cock twitch against your stomach. "But she never told me where it was.." you add, running your fingertips down his abs, tracing the lines of them.

"Only that it would bring him to his knees."

He sighed in frustration, but the desire in his eyes hadn't weakened. "Then what good are you to me?" he demands, but there's a hint of desperation in his voice.

You lean in, your breath hot against his ear. "Perhaps I can reveal more.." you offer, your hands still tracing his abs.

"If you're willing to make another deal."

Ekko's hand snaps up, gripping your wrist. "You drive a hard bargain, hm?" he says, releasing your wrist away from him. "What do you want?"

You look up at him "Protection..." you whisper. "For her and for me. We're both basically targets if he finds I told you..." Ekko's gaze softens slightly as he nods. "If I find it, you'll have the deal" he promises.

"Really?" You look up at him surprised. He nodded as hand drops to your small back.

For a second you both stared at eachother, that was until the space between you evaporated as you crush your mouth into his, your tongue delving deep into his mouth, You moan into the kiss, enjoying every second. His hands roam your body, exploring every curve, leaving a trail of fire. He lifts you up, your legs wrapping around his waist as he carries you to the nearby bed.

Ekko lowers you onto the velvet sheets, his eyes never leaving yours as he positions himself between your thighs. He kisses down your neck, his teeth grazing your skin, making you gasp.

"Tell me how she felt when she talked about this book." he murmurs softly, his breath hot against your ear. You bite your lip, remembering the desperation in Lila's eyes. "Scared..." you admit.

He nods, understanding flickering in his gaze.  your hand slid down to grip his cock, guiding it to your entrance. His expression tightens, a mix of lust and fear. You position the head of his cock at your opening.

Ekko couldn't help himself anymore, He tried so hard to keep calm, telling himself that he shouldn't do this, he shouldn't feel so aroused by you—that it wasn't right.

But he couldn't, he couldn't control his lust for you.

With one powerful thrust, he enters you. Your back arching off the bed as he fills you completely. His grip on your hips is firm, his movements deep and rhythmic. Each stroke sends waves of pleasure crashing through you, making it hard to focus on anything but the feeling of him inside you.

"Oh F-Fuck." you breathe, your nails digging into his back as he thrusts into you. "Lila... she—she was terrified, but she had this... this fire in her eyes when she talked about the book. She knew all of his secrets.." Ekko's eyes darken, his strokes becoming more urgent as he hears the desperation in your voice. He leans down, capturing your mouth in a kiss.

You break the kiss, panting heavily. "She never told me where it was hidden. Only that it was somewhere in his office." Ekko's grip on your hips tightens, his thrusts becoming more deliberate, as if he's trying to claim his victory over Silco through your body.

"I—I need to know more Y/N." he grunts, his eyes burning into yours.

"All I know is that—that it's well-guarded" you murmur, your voice a soft whine of pleasure as he hits just the right spot. "But she said there's a time when he's...distracted."

Ekko's strokes slow, his eyes narrowing. "Distracted?" he repeats, his voice a low growl. You nod, your body trembling beneath his. "Whe-When ever the Last Drop has those party nights.... His guards are always...shimmered up and distracted." You can feel his cock pulse within you at the mention of the last drop, a place he knew too good and well. "That's when we can get it.." he says, his voice filled with the promise of victory.

He leans back, the sound of skin slapping against skin was starting to turn him on. You wrap your legs around his waist, urging him deeper.

"The Last Drop.." Ekko repeats, his eyes gleaming with excitement. "We'll get that book and bring him down." He leans down to look at me. You gasp, your body tightening around him, your walls pulsing. "Then.." he murmurs.

"we'll see about that deal."

You tighten your legs around him, urging him closer, the pressure building within you. "Pleasee..." you whisper, your voice thick with desire. "I'm gonna—" Ekko grins, understanding exactly what you meant. He doubles his efforts, hitting that perfect spot with each stroke.

Your breaths come in short pants, your eyes squeezed shut as you feel yourself teetering on the edge. You could feel the room spinning, the candlelights playing tricks on the walls as you feel yourself climbing higher and higher. "F-Fuck Ekko!" you cry out, your body arching as the orgasm hits, wave after wave of ecstasy rolling through you.

With a roar, he releases his own climax, filling you completely as your bodies spasm together in a symphony of pleasure.

For a moment, you lay there, panting, your heart racing as you come down from the high. Ekko's head is buried in the crook of your neck, his breaths hot and erratic against your skin. You run your fingers through his slightly dampened undercut.

"Thank you..." he murmurs, his voice rough with satisfaction. "For what?" you ask, your own voice a little shaky.

He lifts his head to look at you, his brown eyes filled with something that looks suspiciously like affection. "For your help..." he says, his thumb stroking your cheek. "And for... that." You can't help but blush, the heat of his gaze making you feel vulnerable. "It was nothing..." you murmur, trying to play it cool. But the way his eyes travel down your body, lingering on your heaving chest, tells you that he doesn't believe you.

Ekko rolls off you, leaving you to lay there, feeling empty and a little lost. You watch as he stands up and starts to gather his clothes. He pulls his clothes and jacket on, the graffiti on the hem fluttering as he moves. You sit up and watch him, pulling the sheets around your naked body.

Ekko's gaze turns to you—his eyes softens for a moment. He made his way to your sad little figure lying on the bed—his hand reaching out to cup your cheek. "when I get this book, we can talk about that freedom you're after." His thumb traces your bottom lip, and you bite back a whimper.

He pressed his lips against yours before making his way out, leaving you behind,your heart fluttering for the very first time as you hear his footsteps faint away.

Check out my Ekko one shots on Wattpad for more stories!! :3

[monserelates]

Clueless Idiots 2 ; James Potter

⇨ f!reader x James Potter

⇨ summary: basically f!reader and james potter being oblivious idiots..again. But this time they kiss..right?

⇨ warnings/notes: use of y/n, fluff, mutual pining, excessive idiocy, professors betting again, Sirius being so done, more background chaos

⇨ a/n: thank you guys so so so much for the support i've gotten in the last few days! literally couldn't be more grateful, i love every single one of you. part 2 as requested, hope you enjoy! Also, feedback really motivated me so if you have something to share please do!

word count: 1.7k

There were a few more constants at Hogwarts:

One: Peeves would never pass up the chance to drop ink on someone carrying parchment.

Two: You could always count on the library fireplace to be too hot or not hot enough.

And three: James Potter still hadn’t confessed to Y/N Y/L/N.

It was nearing midnight, and James couldn’t sleep. His mind wouldn’t shut up. About Quidditch, about NEWTs, but mostly about the way Y/N had looked at him earlier.

Like she knew.

Or didn’t. Which somehow made it worse.

He gave up and padded out of the dormitory, barefoot, hair a mess. He wasn’t expecting company in the common room.

But there she was.

Sitting on the windowsill, knees pulled to her chest, the firelight glowing soft against her face. Hair loose, wrapped in a blanket.

She turned her head. "You couldn’t sleep either?"

His chest tugged. "Yeah. Figured I’d come down here and pace like a madman."

She smiled, small and sleepy. "Or you could sit."

He sat beside her, shoulder brushing hers.

For a moment, they just looked out the window.

"Do you ever wish we had Astronomy this year?" she asked.

James raised a brow. "Since when do you like Astronomy?"

"Since I figured out Orion is shaped like a really dramatic bloke showing off his belt."

He laughed, low and tired. "That is literally the point of Orion."

"What’s your favorite constellation?"

He blinked. "Er... I dunno. Maybe Canis Major. Big dog."

"Of course it is."

"Hey, it’s loyal. Follows Orion everywhere."

She hummed. "Mine’s Lyra. The harp."

He tilted his head. "That tracks. You’re all poetic and stuff."

"Not poetic. Just... curious. It used to be a turtle."

He blinked. "What?"

She laughed. "The Greeks thought the first lyre was made from a turtle shell. It became a constellation after Orpheus died."

"So... music, loyalty, tragedy. Sounds like a Hogwarts afternoon."

She nudged his shoulder. "Don’t be dramatic."

"You just compared stars to death."

"You brought up dogs."

"Touché."

Time passed like honey. Slow and warm.

They fell into a lull, the silence comfortable.

Then, softly:

"Do you ever think about after Hogwarts?" she asked.

James swallowed. "Yeah. All the time."

"What do you think you’ll do?"

He shrugged, staring out the window. "Auror, maybe. I want to help. I want to make it better."

She nodded. "You’d be good at that."

"You think?"

"You care too much not to be."

He glanced at her. Her hair was half in her face. His hand itched to tuck it behind her ear.

Again.

But he didn’t.

"What about you?" he asked.

She leaned back against the window. "I want to write. About real things. Real people. Maybe travel for a bit."

"Travel where?"

"Everywhere. France. Greece. That island where the firecrabs sunbathe."

He smiled. "You mean Fiji."

"Do I?"

"You do."

She smiled back, then yawned.

Without thinking, he pulled the blanket more around her.

"Thanks," she mumbled, eyes half-lidded.

She rested her head on his shoulder.

He froze.

Then slowly, cautiously, he let his head rest against hers.

James was scared to take a breath, he really didn't want her to move her head.

When Remus came down for tea at dawn, he nearly dropped his cup.

James was on the couch. Y/N was on top of him. His arms were wrapped around her waist; her face buried in his chest. Both fast asleep.

..

Back in the staff lounge, McGonagall adjusted her spectacles.

"I hear Mr. Potter and Miss Y/L/N fell asleep in each other’s arms."

Slughorn chuckled. "A very compromising position, I’m told."

Sprout grinned. "New bet: who confesses first, now that they’ve practically napped their way into a relationship?"

McGonagall smirked. "My money's still on her."

..

The sun rose on Gryffindor Tower with the kind of golden softness reserved for early autumn mornings, and the Common Room was quiet.

Except for the hushed snickers.

James woke up to a tickle against his cheek and the very distinct feeling that something—or someone—was lying across his chest. And that he, very stupidly, had an arm slung securely around them.

“Merlin’s saggy balls,” came Sirius’s voice, somewhere above.

James groaned.

Y/N stirred.

She blinked up at him. “Why are you—why am I—why are we—”

“Why are you both literally spooning on the Common Room couch?” Lily supplied helpfully, crossing her arms with a knowing smirk.

Remus, sipping his tea behind them, raised an eyebrow. “Comfortable?”

James scrambled up. “I—It’s not—we were talking about constellations.”

Y/N smacked his chest lightly. “Don’t make it sound weirder.”

Sirius pointed to the small blanket still tangled around their legs. “You both fell asleep. Cuddled like a pair of puffskeins.”

Remus looked deadly serious. “This is a violation of the forty-eight-hour deadline I issued.”

“What deadline?” Y/N asked, rubbing her eyes.

“To kiss. To confess. To do something,” Remus deadpanned.

“You hexed us?” James looked betrayed.

“I threatened to. Still might.”

Behind them, a voice chimed from the portrait hole. “Ah, young love.”

McGonagall.

Everyone froze.

She gave them a long, knowing look, eyes twinkling. “Five points from Gryffindor for inappropriate use of the Common Room. And five points to Gryffindor… for finally making progress.”

“Finally?” Y/N squeaked.

McGonagall just smirked and left.

—

Word traveled fast.

By lunch, someone had drawn a very accurate sketch of James and Y/N asleep on the couch and tacked it to the Gryffindor bulletin board under the title THE CHOSEN ONES.

By dinner, Slughorn cornered Y/N and casually asked if she'd like to bring James to his next Slug Club gathering "as her plus one." When she choked on her pumpkin juice, he just chuckled knowingly.

At bedtime, Marlene had had enough.

“Y/N,” she said sternly, hands on her hips, “this is getting pathetic. If you don’t make a move, I swear I will lock the two of you in a broom cupboard with only one pillow and unresolved sexual tension.”

Dorcas leaned on the bedpost. “It’s like watching a romance novel in slow motion.”

“I like slow motion,” Y/N protested.

Lily tossed a pillow at her. “This isn’t slow motion. This is emotional molasses.”

—

Meanwhile, James was pacing.

“Padfoot,” he said, running a hand through his hair for the sixth time in three minutes. “What if I messed everything up?”

“You mean by spooning your crush in public and then still not confessing?”

Peter squirmed. "Don't say crush, it makes it sound like he's thirteen."

James groaned. “I panicked. She looked so peaceful. And I—”

“You what?” Sirius pressed.

“I almost kissed her.”

“YOU WHAT—”

Remus chucked a book at Sirius. “Indoor voices.”

James collapsed on his bed. “I’m an idiot.”

“You’re our idiot,” Peter offered.

“I don’t deserve her.”

“No,” Remus agreed. “But you have her. You just don’t know it yet.”

—

Two days passed.

Nothing changed. Not really.

Except now when James tucked her hair behind her ear, everyone screamed internally. When Y/N offered him a bite of her treacle tart, two Hufflepuffs bet ten Galleons on a Christmas confession. When they accidentally brushed hands in Herbology, Professor Sprout nearly cheered.

It was becoming a school-wide crisis.

And they were on the eye of the tornado.

—

One evening, James found himself back in the Common Room, late again, just like that night.

Y/N was there. Of course she was.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked softly.

She looked up from her book. “Not a wink.”

He flopped beside her, their knees bumping. “You know what Sirius said to me today?”

“What?”

“That we’ve gone from Clueless Idiots to Catastrophic Morons.”

She snorted. “Honestly? Fair.”

A beat of silence.

“Y/N?”

“Hmm?”

“What if I said I like you?”

She turned, slowly. “Then I’d say it’s about time.”

His breath caught. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And then—

Finally.

She leaned in, and he met her halfway.

It wasn’t perfect. It was a little clumsy, a little breathless, but it was theirs.

And when they broke apart, cheeks flushed and hearts racing, Y/N whispered:

“Took you long enough, Potter.”

He grinned. “I’m still getting us that Honeydukes window.”

“Especially the sugar quills?”

“Especially the sugar quills.”

—

The next day it was a quiet, peaceful Wednesday morning.

Well, until Peeves found out.

“THEY KISSED! THEY KISSED!” he bellowed at the top of his ghostly lungs, cartwheeling through the Great Hall mid-breakfast. “JAMES AND Y/N IN THE COMMON ROOM, SNOGGING LIKE LOVESICK FLUFFY GNOMES!”

James nearly dropped his toast. Y/N choked on her pumpkin juice. Lily patted her on her back.

“WE HAVE WITNESSES!” Peeves sang, doing loops around the enchanted ceiling. “KNEES TOUCHING! EYES SPARKLING! AND A SCANDALOUS FOREHEAD KISS, OH MY!”

“Peeves—!” James hissed, red as a Gryffindor banner.

Y/N slapped a hand over her face. “I hate everything.”

Sirius was howling with laughter. Remus had calmly pulled out his wallet. “I believe this means I win the side bet about it not happening in a broom closet.”

“DO YOU, MISS Y/N, TAKE THIS MESS OF A MAN TO BE YOUR LAWFULLY OBLIVIOUS HUSBAND?” Peeves hollered, throwing confetti made of shredded homework.

Peter leaned in, whispering, “You did kiss him, right?”

Y/N glared. “Not that it’s any of your business, but—yes.”

James stared at her and smiled.

"What? Do I have something on my face?" Y/N asked.

"Nothing, you're just gorgeous, love." He said, followed by a couple of playful groans of his friends and the stares of a lovesick y/n.

“Oh my Merlin,” Marlene muttered, rubbing her temples. “I’m moving schools.”

Above them, Peeves looped the final loop, pausing dramatically midair before screaming:

“THEY KISSED, THEY KISSED, THEY BLOODY WELL—FINALLY—KISSED!”

And Hogwarts, once again, erupted into cheers, catcalls, and the sound of one exasperated McGonagall muttering into her tea, “About bloody time.”

Flitwick clapped politely from his seat, beaming. “They make such a charming couple.”

Slughorn chuckled, already scribbling their names into a guest list for a hypothetical future wedding. “Ah, young romance—always knew James had it in him.”

Sprout wiped a tear. “I feel like I’ve just watched the finale of my favorite romance drama.”

And Dumbledore, of course, simply twinkled behind his spectacles. “Love, as always, finds a way—even if it takes a little extra chaos.”

McGonagall cleared her throat, hand outstretched.

“Pay up, Pomona.”

Sprout groaned and dug into her robes, fishing out a pouch of Galleons. “Worth every Knut,” she muttered.

Slughorn handed over a few sickles to a smug-looking Flitwick, who waved his tiny hand triumphantly.

“I told you it wouldn’t take until Christmas,” he said.

Somewhere in the back, Binns floated through a wall just to mutter, “I had June,” before vanishing again

—

THE END… probably.

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