#i know this is way longer than most of what i've been sharing

[quinngefail]

Is Lawrence a “no Adam, we are not keeping the stray cat you found” but then immediately falls in love with the cat type guy. Is he. I need to know

SHAKING

💥 Rambling Beast Incoming 💥 Because I will not lie. I've thought about this a lot LMAO

I am also putting a cut. Because this got to be way longer than anticipated, and also slowly pivots into just being a short fic HRKGMGKGK......

But uh I've imagined that the conversation came up during a late night. They'd been staying together, and just being together for a few months now. They have a lot of conversations that revolve around just asking each other about all sorts of things, getting to know one another more and more. And just being able to freely ask things that certainly weren't important during their six hours in hell. 'Getting to know you's in significantly less stressful environments, basically.

At some point that night, Lawrence asks Adam what some things on his bucket list are. Adam gets a little flustered, and sorta mumbles, "I promise it's nothing that exciting."

But of course, Lawrence wants to hear anyway. Doesn't matter if it's 'I want to have a concert on the moon', or 'I want to find a lucky penny on the subway'. He just wants to hear anything and everything from this man, no matter what Adam's harsh inner voice may repeatedly insist.

So Adam begins to explain one of the biggest things on that list, which is that he's just always wanted a pet. A cat, specifically, as they're his favorite. Because even in a world where his parents could have afforded to take care of one, they wouldn't have anyway. They both just did not care for animals, and weren't exactly hesitant to very bluntly express their disdain for them, in far less kind words. And even if Adam had been existing on his own for about 6-7 years now, he certainly wasn't ever in a comfortable enough financial state to take care of a pet. And he could truly never forgive himself if he was the reason for any amount of harm coming to something that was so innocently dependant on him... The man who had struggled to feed even himself.

So, he had just shoved that idea to the back of his mind. But the longing never stopped, of course.

Once he's finished, Lawrence gives a saddened nod, and offers his sympathetic words. But, there's a few moments of silence before he perks up a bit. Why don't they just get one, then.

Adam blinks a few times in surprise, but he can't keep a little smile from creeping up his face.

"Well, you know I'm not going to say no to that," he responds. "But only if you're really okay with having a little bastard running around your place,"

Lawrence first starts with a dry chuckle. "Oh, I don't think I'm a stranger to that anymore, darling. In fact, I'm rather acquainted with the little hellion I've already welcomed into my home. And you know, I am quite fond of him."

Adam's smile only grows larger, and more crooked, as he rolls his eyes. "Yeah okay, whatever, asshole." But it's only a second or two before their shared laughter fills the bedroom.

"Well, it'll certainly be loved." Lawrence remarks in the lull of their banter. "And completely spoiled."

"Oh, abso-fuckin'-lutely." Adam nods, cracking a cocky smirk. "It'll have no idea that I've been waiting 20 some years for this shit. Poor bastard's in for of some of the most obnoxious, sappy, lovey dovey shit ever. It'll hate us so much."

"Oh yes, nothing but malice towards us. It'll want us both dead." Lawrence smiles back. "Well, we can start looking around for our unlucky candidate tomorrow, if you'd like."

"Fuck yeah," Adam grins, curling both hands into eager fists. Really though, on the inside, he was running rapid, ecstatic laps around his brain.

His ass was not going to be able to sleep tonight.

"...And thank you," he quietly adds, highly masking just how much he wanted to repeat his gratitude again, and again, and again, and again- though, he was sure this masking was to limited success, for the shaking of his hands were at least one thing that currently betrayed him-

"Of course, Adam."

Their hands then find one another, and squeeze... One shaking hand unable to keep itself from squeezing down hard.

~~~

AND THEN...... THERE WERE CATS !! >:3

And they are indeed spoiled rotten and deeply loved by the both of them LMAO

[redvexillum]

Hey there my sweetest, beloved Vexi ♡

I just wanted to share something personal with you that you can then share with others because I know that they feel the same.

Writing has always been my passion. It's been the one thing that has kept me afloat in my life. Regardless of whether people love my writing or hate it, I would continue for the sake of continuing because it is my life.

But when I rejoined fandom spaces, I was terrified after hearing stories of how the culture had changed significantly. Interaction is lower, and hate has unfortunately always made its home in these communities. Given I share fanfiction solely to share with the aforementioned communities, I found myself afraid that I would get hate messages. I was afraid I wouldn't have a community that would stand up for me if that were to happen. While it would never deter me from what I love, I was scared that friendships and positivity were long dead in this space. Fandom felt lonely.

You know what though? I have met wonderful person after wonderful person. And then I met you too. There you are, getting some of the most horrendous messages I've ever seen sent to another human being, and you continue to push for positivity - smiling and laughing with us about how much you just want to see people happy.

Then you went on to start share some of the wonderful messages you recieved throughout that ordeal, only to begin writing positive affirmations and thoughts for us. Once upon a time, I struggled to accept this sort of positivity, I will admit that. When I was having a rough time, I would often see messages like that as 'hollow' for a lack of better words. I would be angry or bitter that others could think like that when I struggled so much to feel like those words should have meant something to me.

While time has passed since I was that person, I still remember the feeling of hopelessness, yet that doesn't deter from the fact that people like you - and countless others - single handedly restored my faith in these communities.

People like you remind me why I cling to my ideals of treating everyone with kindness no matter what. To try to understand other people. To help others. These are all things that bring us closer together. People like you, @silva-daemonium, @fraugwinska, @macabr3-barbi3, @chrisemrysfics, @melodyonthewireless, @dewdropdinosaur, @xalygatorx, @kewpikayo, @jurijyuu, @jalicecookie, AND SO MANY MORE do so much to support those around you.

All of this came about because I wanted to say thank you for posting those short little messages of encouragment. I know that I have appreciated them. Sure, they might seem a little cheesy to me on a morning when I'm tired - but they really make me smile, and prepare me to tackle whatever the day gives.

You're the beating heart of positivity.

It's a fairytale ending to the horror stories I expected.

I know that other people will see this too, so I just wanted to wish everyone that sees this a relaxing morning, afternoon, evening - timezone in general! You're here, and you've worked hard to be here all this time. Everything you've needed to do to achieve that, you've done. That's huge. I'm so proud of everyone, and my DMs are always open to anyone who might be struggling or just wants to talk. I'll always aim to help my community in the same way that Vexi has demonstrated.

Love to you all, and again, thank you for your messages, Vexi!

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Cirice, I honestly don’t have the words to fully capture how much your kindness means to me. You are truly one of the most thoughtful, beautiful souls I’ve ever had the honor to meet, and I can’t thank you enough for your words. Knowing that something I’ve done has made even a small impact on people like you is still so surreal to me. I’m just deeply grateful that you’re part of this community.

You and so many others are the reason why I’ve stayed here longer than in any other fandom. It’s been the most heartwarming experience. This community, especially people like you, has genuinely transformed my perspective on what fandoms can be: a space filled with compassion, creativity, and connection.

Thank you for sharing your story, for giving me (and others) a piece of your heart. I hope your words reach others, inspiring them to create, to feel they belong, and to understand how wonderful it is to be part of something like this. Knowing we’re all here together, finding meaning in these connections, it makes the world feel a little less lonely and a lot brighter. 💖

Also tagging the people that didn't get properly tagged because tumblr is broken: @dewdropdinosaur @xalygatorx @kewpikayo @jurijyuu @jailcecookie

[queenlucythevaliant]

🪆would love one featuring Russian thoughts on God! ✝️

SO. I could have sworn that I've posted "Avvakum in Pustozyorsk" on this blog before, but I can't seem to find it so here it is.

(For context, this is written in the voice of a 17th century Russian Orthodox priest and religious dissident (an "Old Believer"). Avvakum was sent to the military outpost of Pustozyorsk where he was imprisoned four fourteen years, then eventually burned at the stake. It uses this historical voice to reflect on the religious persecution of the Soviet era. Also, it's fairly long, so I've highlighted my favorite stanzas.)

Avvakum in Pustozyorsk The walls of my church are the ribs round my heart; it seems life and I are soon bound to part. My cross now rises, traced with two fingers. In Pustozyorsk it blazes; its blaze will linger. I’m glorified everywhere, vilified, branded; I have already become the stuff of legend: I was, people say, full of anger and spite; I suffered, I died for the ancient rite. But this popular verdict is ugly nonsense; I hear and reject the implied censure. A rite is nothing – neither wrong nor right; a rite is a trifle in God’s sight. But they attacked our faith and the ways of the past, in all we’d learned as children, and taken to heart. In their holy garments, in their grand hats, with a cold crucifix in their cold hands, in thrall to a terror clutching their souls, they drag us to jails and herd us to scaffolds. We don’t debate doctrine, of books and their age; we don’t debate virtues of fetters and chains. Our dispute is of freedom, and the right to breathe – about our Lord’s will to bind as he please. The healers of souls chastised our bodies; while they schemed and plotted, we ran to the forests. Despite their decrees, we hurled our words out of the lion’s mouth and into the world. We called for vengeance against their sins along with the Lord; we sang poems and hymns. The words of the Lord were claps of thunder. The Church endures; it will never go under. And I, unyielding, reading the Psalter, was brought to the gates of the Andronikov Monastery. I was young; I endured every pain: hunger, beatings, interrogations. A winged angel shut the eyes of the guard, brought me cabbage soup and a hunk of bread. I crossed the threshold – and I walked free. Embracing my exile, I walked to the East. I held services by the Amur River, where I barely survived the winds and blizzards. They branded my cheeks with brands of frost; by a mountain stream they tore out my nostrils. But the path to the Lord goes from jail to jail; the path to the Lord never changes. And all too few, since Jesus’s days, have proved able to bear God’s all-seeing gaze. Nastasia, Nastasia, do not despair; true joy often wears a garment of tears. Whatever temptations may beat in your heart, whatever torments may rip you apart, walk on in peace through a thousand troubles and fear not the snake that bites at your ankles – though not from Eden has this snake crawled; it is an envoy of evil from Satan’s world. Here, birdsong is unknown; here one learns patience and the wisdom of stone. I have seen no colour except lingonberry in fourteen years spent as a prisoner. But this is not madness, nor a waking dream; it is my soul’s fortress, its will and freedom. And now they are leading me far away and in fetters; my yoke is easy, my burden grows lighter. My track is swept clean dusted with silver; I’m climbing to heaven on wings of fire. Through cold and hunger, through grief and fear, towards God, like a dove, I rise from the pyre. O far-away Russia – I give you my vow to return from the sky, forgiving my foes. May I be reviled, and burned at the stake; may my ashes be cast on the mountain wind. There is no fate sweeter, no better end, than to knock, as ash, at the human heart.

--Varlam Shalamov

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

for whom good omens is being written

Hey maggots and the rest of the fandom, it's the Good Omens Mascot here. Today I read a post about this tweet:

The accompanying video genuinely made me cry. And I've been thinking about this for a long while, as far back as February, when I saw a lot of conflicting opinions on what people wanted from the third season. It really is true that no matter what you do, some people will be dissatisfied. But what matters is that Neil is writing this for Terry.

And I was reminded of some paragraphs from the Good Omens TV Companion, which I'd read in Amazon's sample excerpt of the book. I know this is a long post, but I really truly do think you all need to read these, I've done my best to select only the most important parts. Here you go:

'His Alzheimer's started progressing harder and faster than either of us had expected,' says Neil, referring to a period in which Terry recognized that despite everything he could no longer write. 'We had been friends for over thirty years, and during that time he had never asked me for anything. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from him with a special request. It read: “Listen, I know how busy you are. I know you don't have time to do this, but I want you to write the script for Good Omens. You are the only human being on this planet who has the passion, love and understanding for the old girl that I do. You have to do this for me so that I can see it." And I thought, “OK, if you put it like that then I'll do it."

'I had adapted my own work in the past, writing scripts for Death: The High Cost of Living and Sandman, but not a lot else was seen. I'd also written two episodes of Doctor Who, and so I felt like I knew what I was doing. Usually, having written something once I'd rather start something new, but having a very sick co-author saying I had to do this?' Neil spreads his hands as if the answer is clear to see. 'I had to step up to the plate.' A pause, then: 'All this took place in autumn 2014, around the time that the BBC radio adaptation of Good Omens was happening,' he continues, referring to the production scripted and co-directed by Dirk Maggs and starring Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap. ‘Terry had talked me into writing the TV adaptation, and I thought OK, I have a few years. Only I didn't have a few years,' he says. 'Terry was unconscious by December and dead by March.'

He pauses again. 'His passing took all of us by surprise,' Neil remembers. 'About a week later, I started writing, and it was very sad. The moments Terry felt closest to me were the moments I would get stuck during the writing process. In the old days, when we wrote the novel, I would send him what I'd done or phone him up. And he would say, "Aahh, the problem, Grasshopper, is in the way you phrase the question," and I would reply, "Just tell me what to do!" which somehow always started a conversation. 'In writing the script, there were times I'd really want to talk to Terry, and also places where I'd figure something out and do something really clever, and I would want to share it with him. So, instead, I would text Terry's former personal assistant, Rob Wilkins, now his representative on Earth. It was the nearest thing I had.'

(...) As Neil himself recognizes, this is an adaptation built upon the confidence that comes from three decades of writing for page and screen. But for all the wisdom of experience, he found that above all one factor guided him throughout the process. 'Terry isn't here, which leaves me as the guardian of the soul of the story,' he explains. 'It's funny because sometimes I found myself defending Terry's bits harder or more passionately than I would defend my own bits. Take Agnes Nutter,' he says, referring to what has become a key scene in the adaptation in which the seventeenth-century author of the book of prophecies foretelling the coming of the Antichrist is burned at the stake. ‘It was a huge, complicated and incredibly expensive shoot, with bonfires built and primed to explode as well as huge crowds in costume. It had to feel just like an English village in the 1640s, and of course everyone asked if there was a cheap way of doing it. 'One suggestion was that we could tell the story using old-fashioned woodcuts and have the narrator take us through what happened, but I just thought, “No”. Because I had brought aspects of the story like Crowley and the baby swap along to the mix, and Terry created Agnes Nutter. So, if I had cut out Agnes then I wouldn't be doing right by the person who gave me this job. Terry would've rolled over in his grave.'

And, finally, this paragraph:

"Once again, Neil cites the absence of his co-writer as his drive to ensure that Good Omens translated to the screen and remained true to the original vision. 'Terry's last request to me was to make this something he would be proud of. And so that has been my job.'"

I think that's so heartwrenchingly beautiful, and so I wanted you all to read this, too, just in case you (like me) don't have the Good Omens TV Companion. It adds another layer of depth and emotion to this already complex and amazing story that we all know and love.

Share this post, if you can, please, so that more people can read these excerpts :")

Tagging @neil-gaiman, @fuckyeahgoodomens and @orpiknight, even if you've definitely read these before :)

[emeryleewho]

I keep seeing posts talking about the WGA/Sag-Aftra strike, which yes, good, but in all this "support writers" sentiment I'm seeing no one talk about book writers, which I think is something people should know more about right now.

We are at an all-time high for book bans, namely targeting queer & PoC-authored books. This means that a lot of schools and libraries are no longer stocking diverse YA books, and if you're not in publishing, you may not realize this but school & libraries are by far one of the biggest markets for diverse YA books.

This means that in 2023, YA book sales are down. This is also in part because Barnes & Noble (the largest physical book retailer in the U.S.) is no longer really stocking YA hardcovers. This means that marginalized authors and debut authors are struggling to sell books.

But it's a LOT worse than that. In the past couple of years, marginalized authors are *really* struggling to get new book deals. Most books are acquired by a publisher about 2 years before they release to the public, so this isn't all that noticeable yet, but a LOT of marginalized authors I've spoken to (myself included) have been unable to sell a new YA book since 2020. So while I had a book out last year, even if I sell one right now, you won't see it until 2025-2026. That's three to four years without a new release or the income I get from publishing those books.

On top of that, Big 5 publishers have started closing imprints (namely their diverse imprints) and have started telling their marginalized YA authors to just go. I've had multiple authors tell me their publisher basically said, "eh, we don't care to put in the work for you anymore. You can just go somewhere else". Of the authors who *are* getting offered new contracts, we're being offered pay far below the cost of living and we're being handed contracts that split our payments 4 or 5 ways and require we sign over our work to be used to train AI so they can replace us a few years down the road.

Authors are freelancers who own our IPs, which means we can't unionize the way Hollywood writers can, and despite authors showing up in droves to support HarperCollins employees when they went on strike for fair wages, we're being hung out to dry when it comes to our own rights.

If you enjoy diverse books, especially diverse YA, please understand that many of the authors you loved over the past 3-5 years are being forced out of the industry. We're being exploited, and we have no way to defend ourselves. Our books sales are drying up thanks to anti-queer legislation, our rights are being eaten up by AI, and our publishers are degrading us while profiting of us and refusing to share those profits with us.

Within the publishing industry, we've all been watching this decline happen over the last decade, but outside of it, I know most people have no idea what's going on so please spread the word. And if you care about diverse books especially in YA, please support marginalized authors in any way you can. The industry needs to be reminded that it needs us before we're all eliminated from it.

[sincerelybubbles]

hotch x shy!bau!reader <3 fem content: slight age gap implied. reader is new to the team and more on the introverted side! not proof read, as is my hubris.

Tired, nerves buzzing from a night spent up and chasing sleep that was not welcoming, you throw your bag down on your desk and go off in hunt of coffee. You usually try to curb your caffeine intake, especially with the travel associated with your new job, but this morning is a happy exception to your new rule.

"Here," Emily says, watching you scan the cabinets of the kitchen. You hadn't heard her walk in, but she's offering you a mug with a sympathetic smile. "Long night?"

"Yes," you say, tone thankful, and spin to figure out the coffee machine.

"Three weeks and i haven't seen you use that once," she comments, sipping from her own warm mug and watching you settle the filter in place.

"I've stayed away. it's harder to sleep when I get back because of the jet lag, anyway, don't need to add coffee at all odd hours to the list, too."

It's the most you've said in casual conversation like this. To say you've been shy with your new team would be an understatement. You're good at your job, you were pulled from the academy early to do this for a reason. You fit well into the team, generally. You like listening to Spencer ramble, especially on the longer flights. Rossi's dry humor reminds you of one of your old professors you grew up admiring. JJ is a constant breath of fresh air, Morgan's consistent strength has built up your own moral. Garcia took no getting used to, lifting you up and settling into your life easily. Hotch is intimidating but kind under the colder-tones, long glances sometimes distracting but oterhwise comforting. Emily is easily one of your favorites on the team, friendly and whip-smart. But, at the core of it, you're shy. Painfully so, even.

The team caught onto this quick, settling into the truth that your observational nature that makes you so adept at noticing the smaller details is bound to weep into your social life as well. So, despite your comfort levels rising with the team, you find these situations hard. Do you explain your nightmares to Emily? Share that you're a diagnosed insomniac who spent the night watching FRIENDS reruns after chasing sleep that pranced beyond reach?

"You're better than me, then," Emily says, smiling over her mug. Her eyes tell you she's pleased at the little crack into your life that you've let her see. They're all like that: insufferably kind and polite with your introverted nature but greedily sipping up everything they can learn about you.

"It's a new development," you admit, clicking start on the machine and settling back against the counter facing her. Something about your sleepiness makes it easier to talk, your tongue looser, your ache to let loose around the team more profound. "I'm sure most of us are insomniacs, though."

"Not me," Emily says, chuckling. "I get home and feel like I don't wake up until I get back here."

"Ah, well, I'm sure it can feel like a curse no matter what way you fall," you say with a shrug. Emily lifts her coffee in cheers to that.

"Morning," Morgan says, turning into the kitchen and giving you a surprised smile. "Hello, sunshine, you're looking bright eyed today."

You let out a small laugh, shaking your head. "I know, I know."

Emily points with her chin at you, "She's making the coffee this morning."

"Ah-ah, remaking it because you and pretty boy always get here first and finish the first pot." Morgan teases her with a slight shake of his head, grinning and opening the fridge to pull out the creamer.

"Well, you snooze you loose. Or," she sends you a smile, complete with a little nose wrinkle and a tilt of her head, "you don't snooze and still loose."

"Clever," you say, voice dry with humor, hiding your laugh by turning around as the pot finished brewing. "I'll remember this later."

"Careful, she's got teeth," Morgan warns Emily, reaching around you to grab the coffee before you can and filling his cup.

"Hey!" You call in protest, voice raising louder than usual and a pout hitting your lips. Morgan laughs, white teeth on display, eyes crinkled at the corners.

"Here, here," he says, placating, tipping the pitcher to fill your cup as well. "Any sugar or cream to placate the beast?"

Before you can answer, a laugh on the tip o your tongue, Hotch walks in and settles his watchful eyes on you, interest sparking them. You shrink, not in fear but in self-awareness, and send him a closed lip smile. Stepping away from Morgan, you turn quickly to fix your own coffee.

"Good morning," Hotch says, nodding at Emily and Morgan, answering Emily's question about Jack's recent sickness (he's recovering well, thank you) and trying to catch your eye.

You duck away, cowardly and regressing back into your shell, deciding it's time to get to work and stop indulging. You catch Morgan tease Hotch as you leave, though, "Aw, you've scared her off."

You try not to think about it as you duck away, pushing all thoughts of your boss away.

You're unsuccessful.

The problem isn't that you're afraid of him because you think he's mean or unkind in any way. He's done his best to welcome you to the team, allowing you to take investigations in your own direction and listening to your insights since day one. There was a brief moment in your first week where you felt tested, like his questions weren't to gain your insight but to see if you were up to the task, but you slipped past that easily. you have the credentials to back yourself up. you're quiet, yeah, but you're always right on track to where you need to be. pulled early from academy to jump into investigating was hard but it made this easy. a few years of experience under your belt and the job feels natural and, even with the shift in teams to join the big guns in Quantico, you feel like you're exactly where you're meant to be.

No, embarrassingly, this has nothing to do with you not liking your boss or being afraid of him. Rather, he makes you too comfortable. He ducks his head to hear you speak as you walk and talk, settling deep eyes on your face. He's sturdy, dependable, and exactly everything you're all too interested in.

You hate it, harboring a school crush on your boss like you're a teen pining over your teacher. You know it's normal, you know it's perfectly reasonable and there's absolutely nothing wrong with being attracted to him, but you still slink away from him more than the others because of that attraction.

Because it's more than physical.

He listens when you talk. Granted, so do the rest of the team - they're profilers, of course they catalogue everything everyone is saying for future reference. But, beyond that, you catch him paying attention. He complimented your new blouse earlier in the week and it caused air to catch in your throat, suffocating you. It looked new, bright white and without wrinkles, but you knew he must have been looking, noticing, to remember you not wearing it before. He's kind, remembering details about you and the team and using them to aid in everyone's comfort. He knows Spencer can't handle dairy and you've heard him reminding an intern to stock the dairy-free alternatives for creamer in the jet. He brought you a neck pillow on your second flight because you didn't have one.

That gift you accepted with stuttering thank-you's and a flushed face. It hadn't flared this crush, but it definitely aided in your ability to accept it when you finally got around to no longer avoiding how he made you feel with every kind smile and gentle good morning.

You settle down at your desk, putting your steaming mug on a pile of paperwork you really need to sort through, and try to physically push the thoughts out of your head by ranking your hands through your hair, lifting it from your forehead and squeezing your eyes shut. Today isn't the day. You're too tired, sure that the team will be flying out today, and really need to be on your A-Game.

"Everything okay?" A calm voice asks from your elbow. When you look up, you decide the universe hates you. Hotch is leaning on the desk adjacent to yours, holding his own travel cup full of fresh coffee, chin tilted down to check on you. His gaze is kind, light on your face, and his eyebrows are lifted slightly. You get the feeling that he's doing everything in his power to present himself as less imposing.

"Yes, of course," you answer automatically, heart thudding in your throat.

"You know, you shouldn't lie to profilers," he says, tone teasing, voice still low. "If you're tired, it's okay to admit it to me, too."

You're about to brush him off when something in your brain freezes before clicking into place.

He's looking at you, pleading, expression open. He's usually guarded, professional. Caring, but with a guard up. Rare are these moments of genuine asking, especially rarer so are the moment of pleading hidden behind a mask of gentle humor. You think, briefly, about how it must seem to him. He heard you, Emily, and Morgan joking in the kitchen. You haven't been here long, you're shy, but slowly thawing to everyone but him. He doesn't know your reasons, he couldn't, you've made a genuine effort to hide them, and you force yourself to see it from his perspective.

"Sorry," you say, softly, slowly. "I didn't sleep well. First nightmares and then insomnia. Hence," you gesture toward your mug. You shrug, heart beating out of your chest, eyes searching his. Nice, be nice, be open and kind and yourself. "At least I have FRIENDS reruns to keep me company."

You see something relax in him at your gentle offering of the information. He sends you a not-quite-smile, nodding once and pushing himself off of the desk he was lightly leaning against.

"Take a few minutes, I'm sure JJ will call us in soon." He scans your face for a moment before looking down at your desk. He reaches forward, slowly but with purpose, and lifts a file that has been nagging you for days. The new computer system is hard to get used to and the paperwork load is heavier than you've experienced before. "I can help you with this to ease some of your load, too."

He's walking away before you can protest, tucking the file under his arm and ducking into his office. He moves swiftly, leaving no room for argument, and you're left at your desk, mouth agape and heart in your mouth.

"Wow," Spencer says, jolting you in your chair to spin around and face him. His desk is near yours, across a walkway, and you hadn't registered him sitting there. You think he was nose-deep in a book when you walked in but you hadn't been paying attention. "I don't think I've seen him warm up to someone that fast," Spencer admits, leaning back in his seat and giving you a confused look, eyebrows lowered. "Actually, he's never offered to help me do my paperwork. Ever."

"That's because you read far too fast for it to actually help you," you offer, mind racing, words hollow as your thoughts are elsewhere.

Eyes trained on the windows of Hotch's office, you take his advice and relax for the few minutes before JJ comes to gather you all in the conference room. Coffee on your lips, you let yourself smile behind the rim of your mug. You can't imagine how you could think of anything other than that, really.

[ja3hwa]

♡ 𝐌𝐫. 𝐑𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐨𝐰𝐝𝐲 | 𝐒𝐚𝐧𝐇𝐰𝐚 ♡

Day Twenty-Three - Masked man

【Synopsis】 : You haven't seen your friends in years given you had been overseas studying. Now that you're back, you've noticed how much they've all grown. And what better to celebrate your return than an innocent party.

『Word count』 : 13.34k

-> Genre: Smut. Dark Romance. Pwp.  

Pairing: ChildhoodFriends!SanHwa x Female!Reader 

[Warnings] : Swearing. Alcohol.Cnc themes. Dark themes. Predator/Prey Play. Rough play. Slight dubcon. Strangers-friends-lovers themes. Mention of Mingi and the others joining in. Wearing masks during sexual activities. Pervi mingi, hehe. Breast play. Dirty talk. Fingering. Clit play. Multiple orgasms. Unprotected sex. Breast play. Hickies. Biting. Pet names (doll, darling sugarcube, bunny, good girl. Princess). Degrading (use of slut, whore and fucktoy). Photographs and videos taken during sex. Seonghwa has a tittie obsession...(whoops) Mentions of mxm and jerking off. Swearing. Heavy making out. Handjob. Ass play. Anal finger. Dirty talk. Messy sex. Manhandling. Threesome. Mention of fucking eight men at once (whoops). San and Seonghwa tagteam the reader. Face fucking. Oral.

Note: So... I finally have been able to repost this fic. I know a lot of you enjoyed it, but truth be told, the person who i considered a friend had used my trust to "help" me make this fic, since it was my first time writing dark cnc themes. They had taken the idea and some of the plot ideas from another writer from a different fandom. And i later found out from someone reaching out to say this fics shared a similar plot. So I've taken the time to scrap the fic and rewrite it, taking most of the contribution of that person out of it. So this will be different from what the one i originally posted. Again, this is a public apology to the mix ups and to a warning to be careful who you trust on the internet. ♡

Networks: @wonderlandnet @illusionnet @cromernet @k-vanity

Masterlist | Navigation | Kinktober List | Tip Jar ♡

The party was loud and crazy. Not your type of scene at all. But your best friend, Yunho, threw it to celebrate him and his dance crew winning their first competition and, of course, to celebrate you finally coming home. At first, you pleaded with Yunho, not wanting to have the attention put on you, so this was the best alternative.

A joint celebration.

Getting ready for this stupid party got you anxious beyond knowing. It had been years since you’d seen them. You were close with all of them as you all basically grew up together in your teen years. But when you went to college overseas for a couple of years. It was like meeting different people when you had graduated and came back home. They had all grown so much, and since you were out of the country, it was hard to keep in contact with all of them. All of them except Yunho, who even flew over a couple of times to see you.

But you were back now and hanging out with eight grown-ass men that still act like children has become increasingly hard. Most of them act as if nothing changed and as if you weren’t gone for over six years. But then there was Seonghwa and San. They were different. Not in a bad way, of course, but still... strange. It's like they were more touchy. San’s hand would linger longer on your lower back when you were all out heading to a restaurant when you first got back. Or when you were over at Yunho’s place getting ready for said night and you couldn’t get your dress zipped up, and luckily Seonghwa just happened to walk past Yunho’s room and spot you struggling.

His finger gazed over your long back tattoo you had gotten while away, whispering so softly that it was beautiful and how it suited you. For a moment, you swore he was going to zip it down instead of up just so he could get a peek at your soft plump ass. Cause you see both San and Seonghwa liked you—a lot. Ever since you were teens, both men had a crush on you. They loved spending time with you, listening to you laugh, and they loved how you were always comfortable around them. Freely snuggling, late-night chats.

But they needed more.

San used to sneak into Seonghwa’s room and chat about all the filthy things they thought of you. And god, the shyness you had just made them know that if they were to say those things aloud, you would certainly freak. No, they were both under the assumption you were too innocent to know how much you affected them. You tortured them. Like the way you cuddled up to San on his couch, acting all sweet with your tits pressed firmly against his side and your head resting on his chest while you watched movies. Or when you had asked Seonghwa to spoon you sometimes cause you were stressing about work and your soft ass would be pressed so nicely against his lap. Just inches away from his aching hard cock.

Oh, the way he would imagine shoving his cock between your thighs fucking them roughly. San would continue saying he sometimes pictures coming deep inside your pussy, claiming you as his. Both of them were drugged on the idea of you. And as years went by and you disappeared for six years, it broke them. All the others went on to dating and enjoying life but the two of them were stuck on you. Like they were unable to move on from you.

And then you came back. You were just as beautiful. More even, as the day you left. You were a grown woman with lustful desires. And they were just the men to help you.

They got their friends to help them get out of the friend zone, getting plenty of suggestions for cute dates and lovey-dovey confessions. But San came up with an idea that Seonghwa knew would be even more perfect than their friend's proposals. Now, all they needed to do was play their cards right, or risk ruining their friendship and / or coming off as a creep.

“Come on, yuyu, I already agreed to this party. What more do you want.” You laughed, sipping on your drink that Wooyoung had fixed for you. It was just you, Wooyoung, and Yunho sitting on the couch in the boy's house. Yunho was trying to get any gossip out of you about your life away, but you really had nothing to say. And then he asked about any special someone. “I’m not about to let you play matchmaker. Last time you tried, you set me up with a skittish boy.” It wasn’t like that poor boy wasn’t nice at all, but he just wasn’t exactly your type.

“Oh, so who would you prefer? Mingi or San, perhaps? Oh, what about someone like Seonghwa,” Wooyoung chuckled, entering into the lounge with a tray of snacks. Your face became flustered all too quickly, hearing Wooyoung call out a bundle of his friends' names, but who really caught your attention was San and Seonghwa. They were both so sweet, like true gentlemen, and they were very attractive, but there was always something missing.

“I mean... They are hot and all.” You trailed off feeling a wave of embarrassment. You’ve never been one to talk about your love life, especially to your friends. You looked briefly around the room, staring at the hallway for a moment, making sure there was no one else in the room. But little did you know Seonghwa and San were in the kitchen getting their own drinks to come and join you. They had asked Wooyoung to slip in the idea of the two, curious of what your answer might be. They had both realised you had never really called them attractive before, let alone something like hot. San gave the other man a surprised expression at the sheer thought of them being good-looking in your eyes. Like a hint of pride burned in their chests. But something got stronger... A feeling... a worried feeling.

“I think there’s a but...” Seonghwa whispered to the younger male.

“I just... I don’t really know..” You rubbed your thumb against the cold glass.

“Let me guess,” Wooyoung tucked his feet under his ass before taking a quick sip of what you assumed to be Soju with some strawberry soda mixed with it. “You need someone to fuck the living daylights out of you and you think they won't make the cut....” His words made you spit out your drink.

Then Yunho continued, “You probably want someone to fuck you like a whore. and you can't deny this, we have gotten drunk to many time for you to hide any of your secrets.” Yunho cackled, making you slap his shoulder, almost making him spill his drink. You felt so embarrassed but it wasn’t because you were worried they’d wouldn't fuck you like a slut. You were worried you’d like fucking them in general too much if they did. So you had to correct them.

“They are sweet guys. Gentlemen. They wouldn’t do such a t-thing.”

“No, no, I get it.” Wooyoung chimed in, wiping his tears from the corner of his eyes from laughing too hard. Frustration built up in the men that stood in the kitchen, San even going as far as mouthing ‘what the fuck’ to Seonghwa as he began to pace around the room. That was the ultimate reason you never really showed them they had a chance. You thought neither of them could fuck you properly? They were too nice for you? All this time hiding their secret desires from you, being too worried they’d scare you off cause you were such a shy little thing. They never even thought that you were just as sex depraved as them?

Seonghwa and San decided to sneak back to Hwa’s room in order to complete their plan now that they know about your secret desire to be fucked like a bitch in heat. They were going to have fun and this party was going to be the perfect cover for their sinister plan.

-

So this brings you back to the present. Wandering through crowds of people dressed in various stage outfits the boys had performed in. Most of them dressed at these people called "evil ones" or as fans started to call them "halateez." The clothing was cool, Gothic cyberpunk. Something you've never really worn before. You decided on one of their more light-hearted dance costumes. It was during when they first started doing competitions, and someone had suggested white outfits for one of their performances, and luckily, they all agreed. So here you were in bunny ears like Seonghwa had and a white knee-length poofy dress with a sweetheart neckline, and instead of a silver puffer jacket you opted for a silver shawl.

To say you stick out like a sore thumb was an understatement.

But you tried to enjoy yourself nonetheless. Wooyoung had dared you to sleep with someone, and you now being a full-grown adult able to make perfectly reasonable decisions, of course, took up Wooyoung’s stupid bet even though you were freaking out about it. This wasn’t something you would normally do. No, you are someone to stay home, cuddle up with your favourite plushie as you friend the filthy dark fantasies no one knew about. But here you are, scanning your eyes around the house from just standing in the doorway of the lounge room, looking to see if anyone caught your eye and let's get this straight, proving Wooyoung wrong was something you took great pride in...

The whole house was open and lively. The large living room had all its furniture against the wall, making room for a dance floor and table with a huge speaker set, blasting loud music.

You had to shake your head at the fact you were actually contemplating Wooyoung’s stupid idea. The said man and one of his friends found you. They linked their arms with yours, leading you down the hallway to the kitchen where your best friend and host, Yunho, was hanging out. He was dressed like a pirate—completed with a hat and sword— and held himself with the confidence of one. You took in all the other boys, seeing all their various spectator costumes. Hugging each of them, you notice Mingi and his open vest outfit with big round shades on the top of his head. He finished his fit with a cane. Kinda making him look like a sexy version of Willy Wonka.

"Where's San and Hwa?" You asked, well half-shouted in Mingi's ear as they all went back to chatting amongst themselves. The only two boys that weren't present were the two you were hoping to see. You had to brace yourself on Mingi’s broad shoulders, standing up on the tip of your toes to make sure he could hear every word you said.

Mingi just smirked at you while you leaned in close to him. He gazes down your body as you speak, letting him see perfectly down the dress you're wearing. "They seem to be running late, Princess. Something about missing a part of their costumes." Mingi answered sweetly, turning his head so his jaw rubbed against your cute little chubby cheek, making you hum slightly, all the while he eyed your plump chest without being too obvious about it of course.

Your whole body shuddered at the feeling of Mingi so close to you. His hand snaked around your waist so he could support you up. You tried to ignore the rush of thrill he managed to send through your body. Opting to pull away and pout at him for what he said. Trying to shake any lusting thoughts that started to appear. "Damn… Okay well could you hold my stuff please, so I can go dance.”

You hummed, holding your purse tightly in your grasp as you gestured to your dress not to be very accommodating for your little purse and phone since there were no pockets. Mingi had to sigh, letting his eyes now freely raked down your body. Taking in your outfit that besides being a knee-high dress, it matched Seonghwa's stage outfit to a tea. He was kind of jealous that you dressed like one of his members instead of him.

You could tell Mingi was bluntly checking you out, playing it off like he was just simply looking at you. Redness appeared slightly on your cheeks, feeling a sense of pride mixed with shyness. The beefcake of a man grabbed your stuff before you could say anything else;

“Of course I’ll look after it, princess. Don’t you worry your pretty little head,” He gave you a charming smile watching him slip your stuff into his large pant pockets before zipping it up, making sure it wouldn’t slip out. You murmured a little flustered, thank you having no idea how Mingi could have possibly heard it over the music, but your hand on his chest let you feel the little hum he made, making you know he heard you. And for just a moment, it lingered. Your bodies close to one another. Mingi smelt like fresh pine, musk, and wine. The scent etching in the back of your brain making you dizzy. You needed to pull away from him now before you do something stupid.

“I-I’m going to go find the others now.” Your eyes caught his in an intense gaze, making you feel hot and bothered. A smirk curved on his full lips while his tongue poked out to trace them ever so slightly. You hadn’t realised you were fixated on them until someone shouted, getting your attention.

“Have fun, princess. If you ever need something, come find me.” He brought your face only inches away from his so he could whisper in your ear, making sure to linger there for a moment before letting you go entirely.

-

After you left, most of the other boys flaked, heading to the dance floor or to mingle with whoever else was invited. Mingi and Yunho, on the other hand, stayed in the kitchen, watching all the chaos unfold as they took another round of shots together. That was when San and Seonghwa finally showed up, walking swiftly through the halls towards the other men. Mingi had kept his eyes on you the whole time, seeing you were now standing and chatting with some old high school friends near the dance floor. His stare dragged from your ass to finally look at the men of the hour, seeing San and Seonghwa were definitely dressed to impress.

“She's is already here.” He said while Yunho nodded in confirmation, pointing in your direction so the two men who were dressed head to toe in black tackle wear, and scream masks hanging off their belts could take a look at you. Both Seonghwa and San glanced in your direction knowing full well who their friends were suggesting to. They both eyed your figure, seeing the outfit you were wearing. The way the end of your dress was fluttering while you swayed side to side, clearly deep into whatever conversation you were having. And the way you were dressed looked like Seonghwa’s stage fit, in particular got Hwa aching in his pants. He wanted nothing more than to bend you over where to stand and claim your pussy while everyone watched in shock.

Hwa had to shake the lewd thoughts from his mind as both him and San turned back to their friend, who happened to be holding out a phone. Your phone to be exact. “She gave this to me to hold onto.” Mingi smirked as he noticed jealousy was brewing in both men in front of him. And for a moment the thought of you letting anyone but them hold onto your things circled in their minds. Mingi could sense the shift in their eyes, only smirking at the thought of successfully getting under their skin. And the worst thing out of it all, the two men weren’t oblivious to the way their friend looked at you. Heck, they all looked at you just the same. Seonghwa and San had planned to get to the party before you to ensure the others didn’t get any ideas towards you. But deep down they knew, none of them would encourage you or give you any offer you wouldn’t like.

“I’ll be taking that.” San grabbed the phone before slipping it into his large pant pocket by his knee. All the boys then gazed back in your direction, spotting you were now dancing with some random people you most likely knew from school. Both men got a better look at your outfit this time. How soft and shiny the material of your flowy dress was that sat beautifully on your body. How your breasts swelled at the top, or how your ass was perfect enough to grab. The cherry on top was how your legs looked, plump thighs on display for everyone to see. When you twirled again both San and Seonghwa watched the way your tits jiggled with every move you took. San let his eyes wander to your hips, watching them twist and jitter to the sound of the music around you, curiously wondering what kind of underwear you had on. Were they cute, pink even, a little bow in the front or were they sluty? Something he could easily rip in half if he needed too.

“She seems pretty rowdy tonight...” Mingi’s words caught the attention of the two men. He then quickly glanced around the room, making sure no one was eavesdropping the conversation. It was then he noticed Yunho had been whisked away to get refills. Typical, leaving him alone with these two crazies.”She was ready to kiss me before. But she ran off towards the dance floor.” Mingi chuckled, seeing the pure shock on their faces. He got up from the bar stool he was sitting on so he could pat both of their shoulders, “Have fun with her, doubt she’s gonna come quietly.”

Mingi laughed at his little joke as he waltzed off to find Yunho. Both San and Seonghwa on the other hand but simply smirked, not letting themselves think with anything less than pure confidence that they’ll get you begging them by the end of the evening. Crying to them to take you out of the friend zone. They were going to make it their mission to get you outta your shell and make you confess your deepest, darkest secrets. Neither of them could wait any longer to watch you come apart on each of their cocks, have you bent in half with your ass perfectly displayed for them while one of them pounded your cunt.And then pining you in another odd position so the other can fuck your mouth until you were crying through your release. Although San and Seonghwa have clued in their friends to their plan to fuck you, they hadn’t told the extent of the rough plan they had to completely ruin you for any other man.

“Oh don’t worry, we have a plan,” Seonghwa answered confidently, flicking his gaze at San with a knowing expression.

“Why, you wanna go around with her or something Min?” San cocked his brow, making Mingi give the male in front of him a long firm glance, trying to think whether the question was a trap or not. But he just shrugged, downing the last of his drink as if to say he’d fuck around and find out.

“Hey, man I’d be more happy to dick her down.” He said smugly. “But you know you probably should accept your prize before you go around waving the trophy like some sort of offering.” Mingi shot a cheeky look before disappearing into the crowd without another word.

-

You started to feel a sense of loneliness filling your emotions as you too amongst sweaty bodies and loud beats of music. you had explored the second floor and most of the rooms on the first, but you could seem to find San or Seonghwa. You were starting to think they weren’t going to show. You had to shake your head in embarrassment thinking about what if Wooyoung spilled the beans about your stupid plan to seduce them. Let's face it you weren’t cut out with all this flirting and wooing and blah blah. You weren’t cut out for anything, but your alone time.

You turned to look back into the kitchen to see if any of the boys were still there, but then an overwhelming presence caught your attention that loomed against the wall of the large hallway. Your breath hitched seeing the two very tall men standing out in the crowd. Even though you couldn’t see either of their eyes, you knew their intense gaze was on you. They were both dressed the same head to toe, and their ghostface masks matched except one was the original mask, and the other was a shiny red style. Your eyes trailed down, finding their t-shirts were tucked into black cargo pants that hung low on their trimmed waist, the bottom of their pants both disappearing into black combat boots.

You shook your head, trying to shake the idea of any other men other than the ones you wanted. So you turned and almost blotted towards the garden, hoping to see if the boys were there. The two men looked at one another, knowing they both had a confused expression. This was going to be harder than they expected. The shyness was going to be harder to crack than they thought.

-

Standing out on the patio, you see partygoers dancing and cheering on the deck. Your eyes once again met one of the masked men. And even though their faces were covered, you knew their gazes were constantly fixated on you. There was no doubt they were grinning like Cheshire cats. You needed to know who these two men were. But more importantly, needed to get away from the loudness. You noticed the fire pit down the small hill of the back yard, and if you stretched your stare further, it led to forestry. a forest that just so happened to have a clubhouse you and your friends built way back when. No one knows about it other than the boys and you.

I wonder if it's still up? You thought, quickly forgetting about the two men that you have been coincidentally running into the past hour, but yet neither of them made a move to talk to you. You noticed fewer people milling about the further you walked. Some still circled around the fire pit while others were making out behind oak trees. You ignored them all, heading down the slow-sloping grass hill. The sound of the party and the thumping ear-bashing bass grew distant the further you walked.

Once at the edge of the trees, you dug your heels into the soft earth so you would stop yourself for a moment. A strange feeling circled you at the thought you were being watched. Looking around, you saw nothing, which in toe, made your gut twist further. You looked back at the house and spotted Mingi standing on the deck, leaning on the wooden railing. Though It was too far to tell exactly, you had a feeling Mingi had been watching you the entire time. It doesn’t appear to ease the jitters in your gut though, but you decide to keep going, shaking the walking red flag that seemed to loom over your body. For some reason, you had become desperate to see the old little clubhouse. See if it’s still standing. Maybe it was nostalgia or just the alcohol running through your veins. Whatever it might be, you pushed past the feeling of having eyes on your back as you finally spotted the old rustic tree house you came all this way out for.

Opening the latch with a little tug, you managed to climb the wonky stairs that led into the old oak cabin-like structure. It was built around the trunk of a large old elm tree, so the trunk went straight through the ‘living room’ as you and the boys called it. The rusty creak of the door catches your attention, and your heart jumps out of your chest suddenly spinning back to where the gate is. “I’m losing my mind...” You shake your head, pinching the bridge of your nose. Maybe you shouldn't have had those shots of soju with Yeosang before heading down here.

“I wouldn’t sell yourself short there sugarcube.” Your head snapped in the direction of the voice, and if it wasn’t for the full moonlight shining through the plastic-covered windows, you wouldn’t have seen the man who owned the said voice. He was one of the men wearing the Ghostface masks. Unlike the other male who wore the traditional one, he wore a red one with little devil horns on the top.

“W-Who are you?” The two men had been following you all night, and it's only now come to your attention that they were the eyes you felt while you walked through the woods. They had followed you here. To sacred ground. You and your friends hide away from the real world. But what really started to cloud your mind was the fact you couldn’t help but notice his voice. Without the loud music and wasted people around you, crashing into you every time you moved. You sensed a hint of familiarity. Your head tilted slightly as you tried to take the mysterious man's full statue. Now that you thought about it, his whole demeanour was familiar.

“Well aren't you the cutest thing.” you were starting to wonder where the other man might have been given these two had seemingly always travelled in pairs from your knowledge. And though his voice startled you, you were not surprised to hear it.

“I…” You replied to the white Ghostface.

“I could eat you all up. You would like that Bunny?” he urged this time, a thread of desperation in his tone. You felt your head spin at his tone, wondering just how you managed to end up in some kind of dark fantasy of yours. Not that you were complaining. But the man's voice started to buzz around in your brain... you thought for a moment you recognized it, but you didn’t know for sure who it might belong to. You were fighting an inner battle of logic and lust and you were about to throw all the screams of caution your brain was giving you out the fucking window. And besides, you knew if there was any true danger and you no longer wanted to do anything, Mingi would most likely stay on the patio until you showed up again, so he would come running if you screamed loud enough.

“I...Yes” You murmured in a short hum as you watched him relax physically at your vocal approval. You could practically hear the giant smirk in his voice as the other man replied...

“To be eaten it is, sugarcube.” The red ghostface held his gloved hand out for you to take. And for a moment, you just stared at it. Stared at him. Your eyes tracked up his toned arm to the spooky ghostface mask then past him, looking into the pitch black of the thick woods beyond the window. You weren’t sure what they had planned for you, but the way your core was begging... leaking at the pure thought of being railed in your high school hang out had you thinking about all the red flags in this scenario. As your gaze lands on the black eyes of the red ghost mask you slowly let out a staggered breath, feeling his body heat consume you. Maybe you should be scared. Maybe you should just use the safe word or try to run back to the party and forget about everything. But with their sinful aura and their lingering words, you pressed closer.

“Oh, Bunny.” The white ghost face man growled, tugging your waist from behind until you were turned around, facing him. He slowly walked you back until you were pressed firmly against the old oak wall. Your little fabric shall had luckily protected your shoulders from the itchy chipping wood, and with his rough grasp just below your ass, he lifts your legs up with ease until they wrap snugly around his hips, successfully pinning you to the wall. You could feel the man's massive bulge in his pants against your dripping core. Your mind spun at the feeling of him being so close and for the first time tonight you had sworn you had in fact lost all of your marbles. “We are gonna fuck you so hard, you'll be begging for us to stop.”

With that lustful whisper hanging in the air, your mind went blank. The red ghost face reached down and shoved your poofy dress up so it could sit around your hips, showing off your frilly black panties with a cute little bow on the front. This adorable piece of fabric was the only thing protecting your sweet pussy from these two very large men’s eyes. The white ghost let out a deep, sadistic growl at the sight, while red whistled, “Fuck sugarcube, ain’t these the cutest darn things.” He muttered, his black-gloved fingers tracing the side of the garment. Without a second thought he wrapped the fabric around his fingers and pulled, snapping the thing cotton from your shivering body. “Too bad I had to do that.”

You let out a loud gasp as you shivered under Red’s big arms. You’ve never experienced such roughness before and it sent your mind into a haze. You could feel a warmth drip down between your thighs. Good god you’re enjoying this a little too much. Before the man discarded the broken fabric, he took notice at the obscene amount of silk that coated the cotton. You could suddenly feel the cool night breeze against your most sensitive area, making you whine.

Not a moment after, the whine from the cold air changed to one of pleasure as you felt white this time, sliding his gloved fingers between your folds, pushing lightly against your clit. You couldn’t help it… you shifted your hips in time of the strangers movements. Trying, silently begging to let him slide his appendages inside you. Your cunt was already so wet and ready, and the feeling of being empty was beginning to drive you insane. It was like every nerve in your body was being set on fire, screaming to be fucked by your pretty strangers.

“Such a needy fucking thing,” Red, or was that white? Gritted his teeth like he was clenching his jaw. Whites fingers pinch your clit making you cry. He couldn't get enough in his sight if only he didn't have this fucking mask on. they both craved the way your body responded to them, their sweet little friend, practicality begging for them to fuck you. "She's so fucking wet and warm. it's like this pretty cunt is just begging for our cocks, isn't that right bunny?"

“Please. Yes.” You answered him with a sigh, your voice shaky and pitched higher than normal. “Need you both, please.” You pleaded again, reaching out to tug on White’s belt, silently asking him to take it off. But he swatted your hands away with a grunt making the other man laugh.

The red ghost face gripped your face in his hand while the other teased the top hem of your dress. he brought his covered face just inches from your own, as if he was trying to get an close up look at your desperate expression “I don't think you sound nearly as desperate enough just yet for either of our cocks, hmm?" you could basically hear the sharp grin in his voice.

A large hand is placed upon your chest, making you hold your breath. You can feel the heat radiating from just a simple touch. You swallowed thickly as Red gripped the front of your dress, pushing white away so he could pull you off the wall and tug you towards the floor. You can’t help but cry out as you land onto one of the old long floor cushions in the clubhouse. He’s so lucky it was there otherwise this entire thing would be over. You blow out a huff of air as you look at both men with a devious smirk. You can feel how intense both of their gazes are. Looking you up and down and taking everything in. If this is how they want to play, then....

“If I knew this was how my night was going to end. I would have spoken to you two sooner.” You giggled, opening your legs, your dress hiked up your thighs to reveal yourself slightly on accident. But both men growled either way...

Red quickly dropped down to you a little too eagerly. His hand placed firmly on your navel, pushing a small amount of pressure. The touch itself left you breathless. White joins your side, and his hands are quick to your breasts. You grab his wrist, a little hesitant. You meet his gaze under the mask, and he waits for you. Biting your lip, thinking, and wondering, you venture and guide his hand under your dress to your bare breast. You hear White shakily breathe out a quiet ‘fuck’ which goes straight to your gut. He flicks a thumb over your nipples before giving your breast a firm squeeze.

You whine softly as two fingers easily slip into your slick cunt. By instinct or just by pure need, you go to close your legs in order to gain friction but a strong hand on your inner thigh stopped that. Giving you a light tap to keep them open. You find yourself breathing heavily and lost in thought. God is this really happening? You thought, arching your back upwards.

The white ghost-faced man pulled your dress down from your breast, revealing them to the cold air. Your nipples harden and white runs his thumb over them again, fixated on the way your body responds to his delicate touch. If only you could kiss him, see who was exactly gifting you the pleasure from your fantasy. You felt a slight guilt twinge inside you, swearing at yourself for imagining your friends, Seonghwa and San. Would they ever do this to do? That was the thought that mixed with flashes of their face as white leaned closer to you, letting his mask almost touch your cheek. You reach out for the mask on the man’s face, your hand shaking from Red’s fingers fucking into you at a slow but brutal pace. But white’s hand comes flying up and grabs your wrist, moving your hand back away.

“Not now, bunny,” He chuckles lightly. His voice was so familiar, but it was becoming very hard to concentrate when a third finger was added amongst the others. The stretch made you feel dizzy, but with how wet you are, it’s an easy fit. You felt Red shift your legs higher up his hips so he was able to reach for something out of his back pocket with his free hand.

 "I think we should record this, don't you?" he asked, but not to you, no, he asked his friend that was sitting so patiently next to the two of you.You mind was too fuzzy to even hear the rest of the brief conversation, it was only until you heard a quick flicker of a camera and a flash being turn on that you shook your head slightly out of the clouds. The bright light near blinded you as your vision was still a blur, he moved the angel of the light towards his gloved fingers, capturing a glance of his long appendages deep inside your soaking cunt. You suddenly became all too aware that he was taking a video of his actions. He was filming himself pleasuring you.

He could see the way your clit throbbed in pleasure and the way you clenched around nothing. You never knew you’d be into being recorded but here you are, feeling a sense of desire from just being on display for these two men. You rolled your hips for him, watching how his shoulders visibly shifted with a groan following. He watched intensely through the phone alone with white as his fingers slid in and out of your soaked hole. “Fuck, I’m gonna watch this later while I fuck my hand.” His breathy voice shattered around you as he picked up his thrusts of his fingers, making you cry.

“Please, f-fuck.” You screamed, wanting to feel everything he could possibly gift you. Craving to feel the stretch of their cocks. Begging to feel anything from them. And the way his fingers hit you in all the right spots was almost perfect as you feel another high building quickly in your lower tummy.

“Fuck, you’re so fucking wet, Bunny,” White groaned, watching Red fuck you harder with his fingers. “Can you hear the sounds of your pussy from here.” he laughed, leaning over to grab the camera off Red so he could continue recording while Red used his now free hand to circle your clit while he continued to assault your hole. You could feel a sense of humiliation mixing with the blissfulness of pleasure Red gifted you. Even with your heart pounding in your chest and both men’s harsh breathing in their masks, you could still hear the lewd sounds that came from fingers pumping in and out of you.

He fucked you faster. The sounds only grew louder with your moans as each thrust sent your mind into a daze. “More, please,” you begged, breaking into a sob, feeling tears pool against the corners of your eyes.

“Mmm, that’s it Doll, beg for me,” Red growled, shoving his fingers out of you to give your pussy a harsh slap before plunging his fingers back inside you. You choked out a ragged moan as your head shook against the old cushion with your hips writhing against his body.

“Please. I’m gonna cum. Please, I need it so badly.” you chanted, begging, just needing a little push. But Red seemed to understand what your body was craving, so when he suddenly whistled over his friend, that’s when you felt a hand cover your eyes and then a wet sensation met your nipples. It was white's mouth, suckling on your tit with a sharp inhale. Your back arched at the feeling followed by the most degraded you ever made.

“Good girl, take my fingers. Cum all over them.” His praises, mixed with a raspy voice that was muffled by the mask caused your head to spin. “We need to stretch you out nicely before we fuck you.” he continued with a sadistic chuckle. The way he was so consumed with your body was almost insane. You were so focused on your own pleasure the alarm bells, questioning who these two men were, in your brain had become only a distant natter. You were almost there. Pushing against white more, tugging on his bicep, you felt his hand slipping from your face. The alarm bells that were going off before were even louder now, trying to warn you about something. About them? With fumbling, impatient hands, your fingers gripped around the hem of white's shirt before tugging one last time. His hand slipped completely off your eyes, what you were faced with left a loud, sharp gasp to leave your lips.

”Seonghwa!? San?!” your scream came out with gasping confusion. Suddenly everything around you became very real. The two men who were strangers only seconds ago and the camera that was still in fact recording. You were utterly stunned by your two friends. Their faces are dark, cold with smug smirks. Their usually neat locks were now messy from the masks. Lust shot through your body as your cunt tightened around San’s fingers, fearing he would pull them out. But in the next breath, the feline male shoved his thick fingers mercilessly into you, his thumb rubbing harshly against your clit with the mission of getting you to your release. Everything becomes overwhelming. You were already on the brink of the best orgasm in your life and now the shock of your friends being the ones beneath the masks had caused a mixture of pleasure and excitement, throwing you completely over the edge. You hit your head slightly on the floor, you jaw slacked as you scream their names while you can all over San’s fingers. Seonghwa never stopped his assault on your breasts, leaving love bites in his wake.

“Fuck, you’re so fucking good for me, such a pretty little thing.” San uttered softly as he helped you through your high. His arm stretched out to take the phone from the other male, who still refused to unlatch his lips from your mark skinned. Widening his finger, San watches your walls clamp down on them, capturing your cum leaking out of you on camera. “You’re doing so well, baby. Fuck look at you, clenching around my fingers like a good fucktoy.”

Lost to the feeling of your mind-blowing orgasm so all you could do was whimper in response, feeling overly sensitive with Seonghwa still abusing your tits. “S-Sannie, Hwa…” You cried, moving one of your hands until it found Seonghwa’s toned chest, snaking it upwards till you met his shoulders.

San seemed to have understood what your little plea meant as he quickly and swiftly switched off the phone, the bright light no longer lingering over your body. And in a heartbeat, he was gently placing your legs to the ground. It was now Seonghwa's turn to sit between your thighs, covering your body with his, making you hold in your breath. You couldn't help your heart from racing, trying to process the fact that your two friends—Kind, sweet, and caring Seonghwa and San— had been the two men under the masks all along. It almost somehow didn't feel real. You had known them for years after all, and you would have never thought they'd be like this. The fact that San had finger fucked you in your guy's old hangout while Seonghwa litter your chest with hickies just didn’t make sense.

"Oh my god..." You whispered in confusion against your hand as you pinched your brow. You had to push Seonghwa's chest so you could sit up away from them for a moment. Both of them carried a guarded expression, eyes wary. But there was a lustfulness still in their features. Something you’d never seen before in either of them. Something they managed to keep buried deep inside so you would never see it.

You didn’t have time to ponder how your friends were able to make your pussy throb with just a simple look as Seonghwa grabbed your hips, pulling you back down onto the soft cushioning. San snatched both your wrists, pinning them above your head with a proud smirk as you both watched Seonghwa grope a handful of your tits roughly, giving them a sloppy kiss.

"God these fucking tits. You are so perfect, Bunny." Seonghwa groaned as he ducked back down to suck your right nipple harshly, "beautiful.." he murmured against your skin as if he was only talking to himself. You grind your hips against his, desperately trying to find any type of friction your body seemed to crave. A whine broke free from your lips, making your head spin. You were so needy already and a part of you couldn’t believe such a thing. Especially after the leg shaking high San had only gifted you just minutes before.

"H-hwa, please." You had no real idea why you were begging, but you felt like you needed to nonetheless.

Seonghwa grinned against your chest, but San was the one to whisper in your ear, "You sound so fucking beautiful when you beg Sugarcube."

San wasn’t paying attention it seemed, like he had falling into his own little world while he slid his fingers against your neck and along your arms slowly, like he was taking his time to explore your body, "You have no idea how long we've dreamt about you." he admitted, gaze now fixated on the way Seonghwa kissed down your chest towards your navel. “Do you know how many times, we would be up late, fucking our own fists or each others to the thought of what your sweet little cunt might feel like.”

A growl ripped free from Seonghwa, the sound barely human, from the words his friend spilled. Seonghwa then moved swiftly, digging his arms under your back so he could hold you tight. You could feel the breath being forced from your lungs as he tugged you up until, in an instant, his lips found yours. This kiss was not the sweet gentle one you imagined Hwa would give you, no, this one was rough and filthy as he poured all his pent-up emotions from these months into you, shoving his tongue down your throat, taking what he deemed his. But you showed to be just if not more needy than him, using your now free hands, you grabbed on his dishevelled hair, tugging harshly on the soft strands like your life depended on it. Seonghwa’s lips found your jaw, then your collarbone, letting you draw in a shaky breath of fresh air. He sucked on your soft skin, knowing he was going to leave more marks.

You tangled your digits in his fluffy hair, tugging him closer to your trembling body. It was almost like you fear if you let him go, he would seemingly disappear.You needed more. You needed all of him, both of them. You needed him to empty his load  deep inside you until he was leaking out all over the floor and then San to do the same. “H-hwa, please—please,” you begged in a worn whisper.

San turned your face towards him by your chin, growling at the fucked out expression you bared. Seonghwa continued his assault on your skin while San leaned forward to steal a fierce kiss from you. You broke one hand free from Hwa’s hair to dig into San’s fluff to hold him close, but he wrenched himself away before you could get a tight enough hold on him. His face held a cheeky grin as you watched him stand up.

He eyed the way your legs were wrapped around Seonghwa as the man knelt in front of you, still attacking you with love bites. You watched intensely with your mouth slightly agape as San reached down to his belt buckle, pulling the leather free with one swift motion making your cunt throb against Seonghwa's thigh. He then pulled his zipper down slowly, teasingly. You were practically vibrating in anticipation against the older male, one from his lips still dotting on your skin and two for the performance the younger was gifting you. 

“Fuck.” You gasped at the sight of your friend pulling his cock out of his tight jeans. You had a feeling both boys were well off, but San was big. Your gasp made Seonghwa’s cock harden more against your core, twitching at the pretty sounds that left your lips. San’s cock was thick rather than long. His fingers barely met as he fisted it, stroking up the length in a slow motion. You could feel your soaked cunt clench tight as you stared at San’s thick cock, eyeing every detail from his wide tip to the girth and veins.

“Like what you see?” Seonghwa asked you, letting you pull away from him so his face could meet you once again. A big grin painted his features. It was dark and lustful with a hint of curiosity. You nodded to his words, making him let out a simple hum, “You want to see mine?”

“Yes please.” You said a little too quickly, but at this point, you no longer cared. Both men just chuckled at your eagerness as you pushed yourself back to give Seonghwa some room. San, in the meantime, walked back over to sit beside you, helping you undress completely, removing the awkward fabric that was pooled around your waist. Almost dazedly, you watched Seonghwa undress until his cock sprung free and unlike San, Seonghwa’s cock was long. You reached forward without a second thought, wanting, needed to have him in your grasp.

But Seonghwa gently batted your hand away, before stroking his own cock. “Not now, bunny.” He chuckled before grabbing your hips, tugging you back against him. He and San helped to lay you back down softly, letting the older male hover above you, pressing his tip against your aching hole. You then eyed San as he leaned over to his nice pile of clothing, grabbing the phone he had recorded you on prior. He gave it to Seonghwa this time so he could capture a delicious shot of his cock resting on your pussy.

“H-hwa please, please.” You begged, needing him to put it in already. But yet he didn’t, he just held his one hand against your wiggling hips while he slid his hard tip length against your wet folds. San held down your shoulders, making sure you wouldn’t move. Seonghwa bit his lip as he got his full length soaked in your arousal before settling back down on his heels. You watched in awe as his whole body shook while staring intensely into the phone, completely transfixed on the side of his dick twitching against your abused cunt. He stopped recording, placing the phone down before gripping your hips tightly.

”Do you have a condom bunny?” He choked out feeling a sense of restlessness, his eyes wide filled with desire. Your gaze never left him watching him looking at you like you were the one woman left in this world. You nod your head now staring at him with worry.

“I-I don’t have one,” You murmured, trying to look around the room in order to avoid his eye contact but ending up catching San’s instead. You hadn’t had anywhere to keep it in your dress, so you’d given your purse and phone to Mingi to hold onto. San’s eyes flicked to Seonghwa with a cheeky expression. You finally looked back at Hwa, noticing his gaze was flared with hunger but also with a hint of anger.

“What were you planning if you met someone tonight bunny?” he snarled, “Did you plan from random fuck you with no protection?” His brows crossed in frustration, inching closer to your face. “Would you have let Mingi fuck you raw? Risk getting knocked up?”

His voice was shaky, almost like he was afraid, but all your mind could think of was how incredibly handsome Seonghwa was with fury contorting his features. How could something feral look so elegant? It suddenly occurred to you that even though these two were, in fact, your friends, you should be scared, no? You should stop them and explain yourself about leaving your stuff with Mingi, right?

But it was apparent how overwhelmed you had suddenly gotten for both men at this moment. your pussy practically leaking all over the floor. your lust for him consumed you as if it was holding your tongue. So all you could do was stare with wide doe eyes, dazed and innocent. When you didn’t respond or defend yourself, both men took this as a defeat on your part. San lightly tsking behind you while Seonghwa shook his head. He was trying his best to hold his anger, keep it in check with some visible effort, raking his hand through his hair, making his already messy locks messier, "So fucking irresponsible, Bunny.”

"Well if our baby here was happy with the idea of getting fucked raw, you wouldn't mind if we do it, huh?" San smirked looking down at you with a slight head tilt.

It felt like a jolt of electricity just surged through your body straight to your core as you clenched around nothing. You whined loudly at San's words, showing just how much it affected you. You needed them both so badly that you finally found the courage to speak up, "Please, Seonghwa, please fuck me bare. I need it, I need you so badly." Your whimpers were music to their ears, tears trickling down your cheeks while your hips bucked up so your soaked cunt slid against his cock.

Seonghwa just stared at you in pure shock for a moment, his jaw slacked and his eyes dazed in fog. He was completely in awe of just how filthy you were truly deep down. You indeed are minx underneath an innocent exterior. Tilting his head back, he squeezed his eyes shut for a second as the grip on your thighs tightened, threatening to leave bruises. "Fuck, Bunny..."

It was San's turn to talk, grabbing your hand and giving it a little squeeze, "Such a filthy fucking whore ain’t ya baby? You, really begging to be knocked up. So cute." His voice was dripping in eagerness, making your heart beat wildly. Seonghwa jerked his cock tightly in one hand while he lined himself up with your hole before he pushed his tip against you.

“Is this what you want, baby? Do you want to be our little whore? our baby to care for and fill whenever we want?” His voice was laced with lust, a feral grin curling on his features. Still holding your gaze, he brought his cock down onto your clit, gifting you a hard smack. You jerked at the sting mixing with pleasure. San used this moment to tug your hand towards his cock, letting you wrap your hand around the thick appendage.

You squeezed, causing San to let out a stagnant hiccup. Seonghwa took this moment while your focus was on the other man to press his cock against you, pushing until the cock head slipped inside your dripping cunt. Your walls clenched around him quickly, drawing a ragged moan from both of you, “Fuck we are never gonna let you go after this Bunny,” he muttered pure filth as he inched deeper and deeper inside you.

"Fuck, you're so b-big Hwa." You babbled out staring up into Seonghwa’s dark eyes. His face scrunched with concentration as you cried louder when he sunk the rest of his thick cock into your cunt. He growled in your ear, sounding almost like an animal as he does not give you any time to adjust to the feeling of him but luckily from your previous high, you were wet enough that he slipped in and out with ease. San bit the other ear whining as he felt your hand move in time to Seonghwa's thrusts.

“We are gonna make you our pretty little cock sleeve.” San emphasised every word in his words as Seonghwa thrusted roughly into you making your tits bounce. You squirm, writhing but San just pinned your shoulders down while Seonghwa pinned your hips. Your thighs started to ache as they were spread wide, riding up the side of Seonghwa’s waist while you tried to cling to Sans's biceps. You felt so ruined, so used, and they’d barely even fucked up yet.

“Please, sir. Yes, please. Only for you two,” You cried out a little too easily, coming to terms no one would fuck you the way your friends could. “Do whatever you want with me. I’m yours, all of me. Have me as you please. Just please fuck me harder.” You became a blubbering mess, tears streaming down your face from frustration and desperation. A simple pleased grin painted Seonghwa’s angelic features, leaning down to steal a kiss from you. His tongue lathering your lips with such possessiveness it made you swoon. His lips trailed down until they landed on your jaw, it was then when you only realised you were smiling, brightly... Happily

Seonghwa sat up slightly again, looking over to San, who looked pleadingly as if he was being left out. The older male just smiled, pulling the younger by his thigh to bring him closer, letting Seonghwa wrap his hand around your smaller one that still slowly tugged on San’s cock. A moan left all of your lips as Seonghwa began to thrust against but in time with the pumps he gave San. “That’s it. Stroke him like this bunny. Be a good little slut and help our Sannie out.”

The nickname he gave his friend sent your body into a dizzy haze, simply nodding at his words in agreement. Seonghwa sat up, letting go of San so you could continue before he swiped the phone from the ground. He held the device above your bodies angling it to get all of the action in one shot. For a moment you wondered why the flash didn’t turn on but simply just clicked once, it was then you realised he took a photo. He threw his head back for a moment, basking in the way he could feel your body react to every thrust he gave you. “Here Sannie, wanna go?”

Your friend pulled out of your delicately, making sure you feel every inch slip out of your abused pussy. You shivered suddenly, one from the loss of body heat and two from being stuffed full. But before you could protest to anything, San gently tugged your hand off him before getting up, walking off towards the door. This gave you a perfect view of his plump ass. Without warning, Seonghwa thrusted back inside you, filling you up with a quick, brutal stroke, completely pulling your mind from the tall drink of water back to him. “Eyes on me bunny I’m still the one fucking you.”

The sharpness in Seonghwa’s voice got you spinning. So he was possessive even when he shared, noted. You thought, but before you could say anything to him, you noticed San had returned with some pillows. Fresh clean ones? He must have parked his trucks near and the fucker just walked outside butt naked to grab pillows. Seonghwa moved over, pulling out of you quicker than you could comprehend before San took his place between your shaky thighs... The younger male then lifted your hips with the strength you had no idea he possessed, placing a folded pillow under you. Seonghwa had taken San’s old spot but this time he was stroking his own cock, telling you to focus on the other man in the room.

You watched intensely as San brought his thick girthy cock to your wet hole. Once you were settled and San started to push his way into the point you felt nicely stuffed from his giant cock, you felt him place a hand on your stomach, feeling the bulge poking out. “Fuck sugar, If I knew you felt this good, I would have fucked you ages ago.” He moaned, shaking at the way your walls clenched around him. Your hazy gaze noticed a flash from a camera again, taking another photo of you, and another from another angle.

“See how petty you look all stretched out and stuffed full of San’s cock. Seonghwa growled, turning the phone so you could see the photo he had taken. Your eyes widened as you stared at yourself. Legs spread, forcibly open by San’s thick thighs while your cunt was snugly around his cock. Hwa had caught the perfect moment. Your pleasure in one single frame. From the way your breasts were on the perfect display and your face conveying pure bliss. It was single-handedly the filthy photo that you had ever seen of yourself. And you couldn’t help but admit it, but you loved it... Your eyes stared at the image feeling yourself tingle at the sight, tightening around San by the thought of your own pleasure.

You almost whine when Seonghwa turns the phone away from you. It was too soon, you hadn’t finished examining every detail yet. But your focus landed on San, seeing hunger dressed with dark eyes as he gazed at the photo Seonghwa was showing him.”You look so hot baby, like the perfect little cock warmer.”

San’s eyes suddenly snapped to Hwa’s taking out a short breath as he kept slowly fucking you with deep, sensual strokes of his hips. Hwa’s brows were raised in response to the other male, almost as if he was considering something. You squirmed, wanting to be in on the thought, but also wanting to be fucked harder. “Should I send this to Mingi?” Seonghwa chuckled watching intensely as your expression changed from blissed out to pure shock.

Out of all the fucking thing’s this wild card of a man could say, that wasn’t something you thought you’d ever leave his lips. Since practically being fucked beyond your freakiest dreams, you had completely forgotten about Mingi. You felt guilt riddled through your heightened body, feeling a little ashamed at how you whined as soon as he spoke. “He told us how needy you seemed when you saw him tonight. And let's be honest he has always liked you. We just happened to call dibs first.”

Seonghwa’s words were cruelly calm, like he was just having a simple conversation. For someone who had only shown possession even before this situation you thought he would be more angry, heck jealous even but he seemed more entertained. San snapped his hips, bringing your attention back to him. He must have sensed the confusion in your eyes because his grin explained everything, “We know how he looks at you, Sugar. They all do. They would all love to get inside your pretty cunt here...” San placed his hand over your pelvis, the gesture dominant, and asserting. “Even your best friend, Yunho...”

“But none of them will do it... Not until we say so...” You shivered at the certainty in San’s voice, goosebumps rising all over your skin at the sheer thought in his words. Not only had he and Seonghwa wanted to have you. But all of them had wanted you enough that San and Seonghwa had laid claim to you first before any of them so much as looked in your direction. It was at this moment you finally realised that this one-night stand was something more. Not just for you but for them also, which made you feel a sense of relief, like a weight was lighted off your shoulders. If they were telling your friends to back off, then they both definitely wanted more than a hookup, and that made your heart ach in pleasure.

Seonghwa smirked as he watched your face contort from confusion to understanding of what San had just said. “Mingi and the others were even nice enough to help us set all this up,” Seonghwa explained. “I think they deserve a little thank you for their hard work, no?” There was a teasing curve to Seonghwa’s lips as if he didn’t expect you to agree.

For how long you've been friends with all these men, they certainly did not know you as much as they thought. Seonghwa's suggestion... Not only did it make you burn with need but the sheer idea of him and San showing off to your friends with photos of you being fucked out on San's cock was even better, "Do it." you said with desperation, staring Seonghwa dead in the eyes. "My body is yours to do what you want. please, please share it if you want to."

Both men's faces went slack with surprise, making them both freeze and San slowing his thrusts. San's body was still except for his eyes, which raced around your expression that was still glued to Seonghwa.. You then sat slowly up on your elbows, tilting your head so it was inches from San before whispering with a smirk, “Please, send it...” Then slipping your lips on his. You felt him groan in your mouth, snaking his hand on the back of your neck. You felt Seonghwa shift before walking off somewhere else in the room, almost drawing your attention away. 

San then pulled away slightly, resting his forehead against yours, staring into your eyes with nothing but devotion and lust. He had to take a moment, your words affecting him more than he realised.“I trust both of you, you know that right...” You sealed your lips against his again in a feverish kiss but he pulled away again with a smirk, making you whine before falling back onto the soft cushions. “Fuck, just send the photo to the others already...” you muttered dramatically. “I want them to see it.” Your confession went straight to his dick, your cunt clenching tightly around him at the thoughts looming open in the air.

San started to rut his hips into you without a second thought, living in the feeling of your warm cunt. But he shook the thought, gritting his teeth while forcing himself to stop his hips, and then he heard a whistle. “Hey, here.”

San gave Seonghwa a mouth pop, pulling out of you entirely, making you gasp at the sudden empty feeling. He chuckled before standing up, letting you see him in all his glory. “You’re not thinking properly...” He accused a little too harshly, watching you twist yourself until you sat on your knees in front of him, licking your lips. Before you could latch your grippers on his cock, he grabbed your face, squishing your cheeks together, tugging your face up to look him in the eyes. “You’re thinking with your cunt, love.”

He helped you up, with Seonghwa suddenly standing behind you, sandwiching you between both men. You turned around to face Hwa this time, snaking your hands along his chest, kissing his neck. “How is this any different to you two wanting to fuck me raw hmm?” You whispered against Seonghwa’s soft skin, letting him grip your hips, and basked in the kisses you were littering on him. You were starting to get frustrated with every moment spent with neither of them fucking you. “Sending a pic to the boys seems less risky if you think about it now huh?”

San just rolled his eyes, walking over to where Seonghwa was before. Hwa, on the other hand, took this moment to capture your wandering lips while slowly walking you backwards towards the table, and Seonghwa had laid blankets over. Your knees hit the edge of the wood, making you break the kiss. Hwa helped you put onto the piece of furniture, laying you down gently. You looked up and saw Seonghwa between your legs and San with an irritated yet lustful expression, staring down at you dominantly. “You think, we’d actually risk knocking you up?”

He didn’t give you any time to reply before he continued, “I know you’re on birth control ‘cause I heard you complaining about it to Yunho.” He was now inches from your face, his breath tickling your cheeks as he also held your shoulders down. “You also slipped up and said that you would never fuck someone raw when we were all drunk the other night while playing truth or dare.” his dark eyes were wild with frustration, “We are your friends...We do listen.”

Tears swam in your eyes at the realisation that the two men you had been fearing didn’t like you back and not only were they in love with you also but had paid attention. You couldn’t help but smash your face to his in a fierce kiss. Your hands held his cheeks, trying to pull him as close to you as possible. He let you take the reins for the moment, slipping his tongue inside you while Seonghwa began to thrust inside your waiting cunt, snapping his hips against your bruised ones. Your moans fell into San’s mouth, panting and mixing your breath with his as you felt Seonghwa’s cock stretch you once again. “H-hwa!” You couldn’t help but cry his name out.

Seonghwa leaned down to kiss your chest, thrusting into you at a slow, steady pace. San pecked your cheek before grabbing the phone he had been using this whole night. He clicked his tongue before slyly holding it up to your face, whispering. “Look at the phone sugarcube.” You looked down with confusion seeing the phone unlocked with a face ID. Your eyes widened at the realisation that these two men had been using your phone this entire time, recording your body on your own camera. That meant that if these two wanted to send or see these videos and photos again, you would have to send it to them. You couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of heartfeltness as if these two men couldn’t get any better.

San didn’t seem to notice your reaction as he scrolled through your camera roll. Your hands gripped the sides of the table as you moaned Seonghwa’s name on repeat. Seonghwa latched his plump lips on your nipple, hiking your left leg over his shoulder to fuck you at a rougher angle. “I’m gonna send this photo to myself so I can make it my background.” He bit his lip checking out a photo of you with Seonghwa’s cock deep inside your throbbing pussy. He would never admit it but the sight of Seonghwa fucking you made him go wild.

“We’ll talk about the others later.” He huffed, throwing the phone gently onto the blanketed table next to you and tugging you upwards so your head dangled over the table slightly so he could mouth your cute mouth. You whined, parting your lips willingly so you could let him sink his cock into your mouth inch by inch. You hollowed your cheeks and took a deep breath while you clung to his thick thighs as he started moving.

His hips gave a short thrust as all three of you groaned. “Fuck, you feel so good on my cock, baby,” San muttered, his hands holding the side of your face while Seonghwa gripped your ass cheek with one hand and your breast in the other. “It’s like you were made for me.”

“You’re much to talk, this cunt is the best I’ve ever had. So fucking warm. I could sit in it forever.” Seonghwa kneaded your ass as his hips jackhammered into you. He grunted against your tits focusing on your pussy clenching around him. Then you suddenly felt his finger press against the tight hole of your ass, making you jerk a little, gagging on Sans's cock. “You gonna let us fuck this ass one day, Bunny? I bet Yunho would love the feeling of it. Mingi and him love to tag team you know.”

You moaned around San, bucking your hips in a silent plea at Seonghwa’s filth words. A dark chuckle is all the older male could rumble up mixing with the sounds of pure sin as he pulls his finger away from your ass to coat it in his own saliva before placing it right back where it was, slowly pushing on your tight hole. What was worse was that your senses have now become heightened over your vision being taken away from the angle you lay in. You feel him push again on your puckered hole before his tip breached it, making you swallow thickly. San shivered at the feeling, making him whine out, “And to think, you were scared we wouldn’t have been able to fuck you like the whore you so desperately want to be.”

“Hgnm?” you mumbled against his cock. You questioned if they had heard your thoughts or worse you had started accidentally speaking out loud at some point, but it turned out it was none of those things.

“We heard you, Bunny” Seonghwa bit out in a choked tone, frustration lacing his deep voice at himself as he felt himself nearing his climax... “We heard you talking to Yunho and Woo when you were at our place last week,” he explained. “You said ‘They are sweet guys. Gentlemen. They wouldn’t do such a thing’…Remember?” Each word he spoke he punctuated with a deep harsh trust making you jerk backwards against San. San held you still against him with a firm grip, driving himself so deep you could feel him go down your throat. You felt so ashamed... of course they overheard you, you hadn’t been as sneaky as you thought. But then again, deep down you had hoped they heard. With Seonghwa’s finger still in your ass, his cock driving harshly into your cunt and San deep down your throat, you were completely at their mercy, and it felt fucking heavenly. All you could do was lay there and take it while listening to their filth.

“We’ve been such good friends to you, bunny, I think we deserve a little thank you don’t you?” He snarled, thrusting his cock inside your abused cunt with a rough snap, making you whimper at the pain and pleasure. “Fuck, look at you, all spread out, taking our cocks. Our fingers, in all your holes like a good little slut.” He said, tugging his digits in and out at the same pace as his cock. Your eyes clouded and your jaw went slack as you struggled to scream. He repeated the movements driving you wild with the sensations. “our good little fucktoy.”

Both men were breathing heavily as their paces quickened. You didn’t know how much longer you could last, as they were pushing you closer and closer to the edge with every thrust of their hips. “Such a good girl.. fuck hngg..” San praises, throwing his head back at the feeling of you swallowing around his shaft. They both drilled their cocks into fast and rough while Seonghwa kept his finger lodged deep in your ass. “You’re ours and we can do whatever we want with your delicious holes okay Darling? Maybe even share you with the others... but not until we get our fill.”

The thought of all your friends fucking you at the same time almost pushed you completely over the edge, but you tried to hold out. Just last a bit longer. “Gonna let all eight of us fuck you at once bunny?” You cried out around San feeling tears pour out of your bloodshot eyes.

San suddenly barked. “fuck baby i need you to cum so Seonghwa can feel you clench around his cock like the filthy fucking slut you are and I can come down this fucking throat of yours..”

Immediately, you let go of the table, eagerly sliding it to your front. You quickly rubbed your clit making you push you right over the edge to your climax. But it wasn’t until Seonghwa growled out his next words that you truly let go and fell. “Come around me Bunny baby. Come for us.” His voice echoed with desperation almost like he was begging for you. A soothing whimper of need makes you let go.

Then, with a couple more driving snaps of both Seonghwa’s and San’s hips, they both tipped over the edge. You all came with a scream. For a brief moment, it felt like you were floating on a cloud.. a million miles away from your body. Weightless and surrounded by warmth and comfort.

Seonghwa let out a loud high pitched sound that sounded so angelic, you didn’t even know if you could call it a moan. But it was so beautiful and filthy it made your cunt clamp down on his cock. You could feel him twitch inside you, as his load spills out more, filling you with his warm cream. San came quickly after, emptying himself down your throat, letting you slowly swallow every drop he gave you. For a moment, you and the two men just basked in the pure blissfulness of pleasure. Seonghwa slowly slipped out, watching his cum leak from your pussy and drip down to the blankets beneath you.

Gently, Seonghwa detangled himself from you, guiding your leg slowly off his shoulder and onto the blanketed table while San pulled out of you and helped you lay your head on the oak furniture, giving you space to breathe. With the same tender care, Seonghwa eased his finger from your tight ass and pulled his cock out of your still-fluttering pussy. Seonghwa then slowly pulled up to sit up so he could wrap his arms around you, gathering you against his chest.You felt San’s hand firmly on your back as he leaned down to kiss your shoulder. 

And with your face tucked in the crook of Seonghwa’s neck, you couldn’t see either of their faces, so you didn’t know exactly what their expressions were but a simple ‘hmm’ got you began to speak, “We’re not just friends anymore are we?”

San just chuckled, patting your head, taking you and Seonghwa in his arms... “Fuck, Darling,” he mumbled on a deep exhale, “of course not. You're our girl now. If that's okay with you?”

You felt your heart swell over with happiness as you chuckled in delight. Your fingers dug into Hwa’s arm and reached to find Sans too. Neither of them tried to pull away, both only pressed close, groaning loudly like you were killing them. You pulled away, letting both men stand up properly to gaze at you. You kissed both of them. San first and Seonghwa. It was slow and sweet. But when you went back for another one with San you could feel it slowly turn as he licked your lips so his tongue slipped into your mouth. He kissed you possessively as Seonghwa bit softly on your collarbone. It left you gasping for air as you whispered against your friend’s lips. “belong to both of you, for as long as you’ll have me.”

[hiitsm]

Whispers of Desires

You and your girlfriend are navigating the tender stages of experiencing your first time together.

Whispers of Desires is for 18+ only.

This piece contains intimate conversations about sex, characterized by a mix of awkward, shy, and loving moments. It also includes a depiction of soft, slow, and tender sexual activity, with a focus on emotional connection and mutual care.

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Note: I’ve spent a lot of time crafting this piece, and while it may be a bit longer than initially planned, I felt that each moment deserved the detail it received. I've adjusted it a little. I hope it meets everyone’s expectations. Thank you so much for the kind messages and support after the teaser. I appreciate it a lot.

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The kitchen is warm with the scent of freshly baked pastries, the lingering aroma of sugar and butter mixing with the comforting familiarity of Alexia’s home. You stand at the counter, carefully folding a dishcloth, trying to keep your thoughts focused on the simple, repetitive tasks. The to-do list lies nearby, a silent reminder of the things you can control, and the one thing you can't seem to face.

You glance at the list, its contents scribbled in your neat handwriting:

To-Do List: 1. Clean up the kitchen 2. Fold laundry 3. Talk to Alexia about her sexual desires

Your eyes linger on the third item, the one you've been dreading. With a sigh, you quickly strike through it, the pen's ink cutting across the words as if that could erase the anxiety gnawing at you. You can’t bring yourself to talk to her about that, not yet. What if the rumors are true? What if her desires are something you can't fulfill? You don’t want to lose her, but you also don’t want to lose yourself in the process.

You’ve heard all the rumors about Alexia Putellas. That she loves to dominate, to pull her partners apart with a fierce intensity. That she revels in control, in the thrill of the chase. That her passion is raw and fast. Each whisper you caught only fueled your anxiety, a churning storm of nerves that seemed impossible to quiet. You tried to ignore them, to push the thoughts aside, but they lingered in the back of your mind, casting shadows over the love you share.

And now, with the possibility of taking the next step in your relationship looming before you, the fear has only grown. You’re scared to take that step, terrified that your desires aren’t the same as hers. What if you can’t match her intensity? What if what she wants is something you can’t give? The thought of not being enough for her, of failing her in some way, sends a cold shiver down your spine.

You start wiping down the counters, moving in a methodical rhythm, each swipe of the cloth offering a brief distraction from the storm brewing in your mind. The sponge glides over the cool surface, removing traces of flour and sugar, but the tension in your chest remains.

As you straighten up the scattered baking supplies, your eyes drift toward the small, framed photo on the windowsill. It's a candid shot taken on a sunny day, the two of you caught mid-laughter, arms wrapped around each other, the kind of joy that feels almost too good to be true. The memory makes you pause, your fingers brushing the frame lightly as you wonder if you’re letting your fears overshadow the truth of what you have.

The whispers, the rumors, they all seem so distant when you think about the woman you know. The Alexia who smiles softly at you over breakfast, who texts you in the middle of the day just to say she misses you, who holds your hand like it's the most natural thing in the world. But still, the doubts linger, making you question whether you truly know her as well as you think.

The front door clicks open, and you hear the familiar sound of her footsteps, steady and sure, as they approach the kitchen. You barely have time to turn before she’s there, her presence filling the room with an effortless grace.

“Hola, amor,” she greets you, her voice soft and filled with warmth that wraps around you like a blanket. She glances around the kitchen, taking in the clean counters and organized space. “Cómo va todo?”

You quickly grab the to-do list, folding it in half and slipping it into your pocket before she can see the items you’ve been obsessing over. “Everything’s good,” you reply, hoping your voice sounds more steady than you feel. But Alexia is already closer, her eyes searching yours with a mixture of affection and curiosity.

Before she can ask anything more, you close the distance between you, leaning in to kiss her softly. Her lips are warm, and for a moment, the world outside fades away, leaving just the two of you in this quiet, shared moment. She hums contentedly against your lips, a small, pleased sound that makes your heart flutter.

“Mmm, that was nice,” she murmurs when you pull back, a playful grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. She switches to English, her accent making the words sound even sweeter. She wraps her arms around you, pulling you closer into the safety of her embrace. “What were you up to, amor?”

“Just trying to get things sorted around here,” you say, your voice quieter now, more intimate. “How was your day?”

“Busy, but good,” she replies, her voice a little softer now, as if the closeness between you demands a gentler tone. “I missed you, though.” The sincerity in her voice makes your chest tighten with emotion.

“I missed you too,” you admit, your hand resting on her arm, tracing small patterns on the sleeve of her shirt. You can feel the steady beat of her heart through the fabric, and it gives you a small sense of calm. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

Alexia’s eyes soften as she leans in for another kiss, this one more urgent, more filled with the longing that has been building up in both of you throughout the day. Her lips move against yours with a tenderness that quickly deepens into something more, a hunger that you feel echoing in your own chest.

Your heart races as you return her kiss, your fingers threading through her hair, holding onto her as if she’s the only solid thing in your world. For a moment, you lose yourself in the warmth of her touch, in the way she makes you feel safe and cherished.

But as the kiss grows more intense, a wave of anxiety crashes over you, pulling you back to the surface. You break the kiss abruptly, your breath coming in short, uneven gasps. Alexia pulls back just enough to look at you, concern etched on her features.

“Qué pasa?” she asks softly, her hand coming up to cup your cheek, her thumb brushing against your skin in a soothing gesture. Her eyes search yours, trying to understand what’s going on inside your head.

You struggle to find the words, torn between the love you feel for her and the fear that’s been gnawing at you for days. You want to be honest with her, to share what’s been weighing on your heart, but the words stick in your throat, refusing to come out. You’re scared, scared that your desires don’t match hers, scared that what she wants is something you’re not sure you can give. And more than anything, you’re scared of losing her, of the possibility that this might be something that could drive a wedge between you.

Alexia waits patiently, her gaze steady and filled with a quiet strength that both comforts and intimidates you. She deserves the truth, but you’re not sure you’re ready to face it yourself. Not yet.

Alexia's concerned gaze remains locked on you as you struggle to find the right words. Your chest tightens with the weight of your fears, and you can feel your face flush with a mixture of embarrassment and anxiety. The warmth of her hand on your cheek feels comforting, yet it only amplifies your nervousness. You take a deep breath, trying to steady your racing heart.

“I—” you start, your voice trembling slightly. “I’ve been... thinking a lot about us, and, um, there’s something I need to talk to you about.” You stumble over the words, each one feeling like a hurdle you’re barely able to jump. You clear your throat, trying to regain some semblance of composure. “I mean, I know we’ve been... close and everything, and I love you so much, but... but I’ve heard some things, and I—”

You stop abruptly, your hands gesturing awkwardly as if trying to physically grasp the right words. The shame of not being able to articulate your feelings is almost overwhelming. You glance around, desperately searching for something to focus on.

Alexia, sensing your distress, gently guides you towards the couch. “Come on, amor,” she says softly, her voice soothing. “Let’s sit down. You look like you could use a minute.” She leads you to the couch and gestures for you to sit, her touch light but reassuring.

You sink onto the couch, feeling a mixture of relief and dread. Alexia moves to the kitchen, her movements quick but purposeful. She returns with two glasses of water, handing one to you. “Here, drink this. It might help you feel a bit better.”

You take the glass, your hands still trembling slightly as you sip the cool water. Alexia sits beside you, her proximity comforting, yet her eyes are filled with an inquisitive tenderness. She reaches out and takes your free hand in hers, squeezing it gently.

“Whatever it is, we can talk about it,” she says softly. “I’m here for you.”

Feeling the pressure of your emotions building, you fumble for the to-do list you’d tucked away in your pocket. With a sheepish glance at Alexia, you pull it out and hand it to her. Her eyes widen slightly as she looks down at the list, and you see a faint blush spread across her cheeks.

“I, um, I had this list,” you admit, your voice barely above a whisper. “It was supposed to help me keep track of things... but I couldn’t bring myself to talk about... that last item.” You gesture vaguely at the paper, your cheeks burning with embarrassment.

Alexia’s eyes dart to the list, and she blushes lightly as she reads the crossed-out line. The color in her cheeks deepens, and she bites her lip, clearly feeling a bit awkward about the whole situation. “Oh, um...” she stammers, her cheeks growing warm. “I see you’ve, uh, crossed out that part.”

You can’t help but feel a pang of guilt as you watch her reaction. The sight of her blushing and stumbling over her words makes your heart ache. “I’m sorry,” you say quietly, feeling the weight of the situation pressing down on you. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just… I’ve been hearing these things, and I didn’t know if we were on the same page.”

Alexia’s eyes soften with understanding, even though she’s clearly flustered. She reaches out, gently squeezing your hand in a gesture of reassurance. “I’m sorry if I’ve given you the wrong impression,” she says, her voice a little shaky but kind. “I really didn’t mean to cause any worry. I guess I didn’t realize how much those rumors were affecting you.”

You nod, feeling a lump form in your throat. “Yeah, they’ve been on my mind a lot,” you admit. “I’m just scared that my own desires might not match up with what you want. I’ve always preferred things to be a bit softer, you know?”

Alexia’s blush deepens, but she quickly shakes off her shyness, her eyes meeting yours with a sincere intensity. “I understand,” she says softly. “And I want to make sure you feel comfortable with us exploring this together.” She pauses, then adds, her voice growing more confident but still tinged with a hint of awkwardness, “I, um, like to be in control and, well, sometimes a bit rough. But that doesn’t mean we can’t adjust things to fit what we both want.”

You feel a wave of relief wash over you at her honesty. “Thank you for sharing that,” you say, your voice tinged with gratitude. “I really appreciate you being open with me. Can I ask you something? What do you like, exactly?”

Alexia takes a deep breath, her shyness melting away as she becomes more animated. “I, um, really enjoy taking the lead, feeling like I’m in charge,” she says, her eyes brightening with a newfound confidence. “But I also love hearing what you like, what makes you feel good. I want to make sure we both have what we need.”

Her willingness to adapt and consider your feelings makes you feel incredibly valued. You squeeze her hand back, your heart swelling with appreciation. “I like it when things are gentle and tender,” you admit, feeling more at ease now that the conversation is flowing openly. “It’s important to me that we both feel good about what we’re doing.”

After the conversation, the dynamic between you and Alexia shifts subtly but significantly. There’s a new warmth in her gaze, an added layer of intimacy that wasn’t there before. The initial awkwardness has melted away, replaced by a deeper understanding and a tangible current of desire that flows between you.

In the days that follow, the air seems charged with a new energy. You notice the way Alexia's touches linger a little longer, the way her kisses are filled with a gentle urgency that wasn’t there before. Conversations take on a more flirtatious tone, filled with playful teasing and soft, suggestive glances. The connection between you feels more electric, more alive, as if the boundaries between affection and desire have become wonderfully blurred.

One evening, after a particularly busy day, you find yourselves curled up on the couch together. The soft light of the lamp casts a warm glow around the room, creating an intimate cocoon where it’s just the two of you. Alexia’s head rests on your shoulder, her fingers tracing delicate patterns on your arm as you talk about your day.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what we talked about,” Alexia murmurs, her voice low and warm. Her breath tickles your skin, sending a shiver of anticipation through you. “I’m really glad we had that conversation.”

“Me too,” you reply, your voice soft. “I feel like things are... different now, in a good way.”

Alexia lifts her head, her eyes meeting yours with a sparkle of playful mischief. “Different how?” she asks, her voice taking on a teasing edge.

You smile, feeling a flush of warmth at her proximity. “Well, for one, there’s this new... tension between us,” you say, your words coming out with a hint of nervousness and excitement. “I feel it every time we’re close.”

Alexia’s smile widens, her eyes darkening with a mix of affection and desire. “I’ve noticed that too,” she says softly. She leans in, her lips brushing against yours in a tender kiss that quickly deepens into something more passionate. Her hands find their way to your face, cupping it gently as her kisses grow more fervent.

As the days pass, the physical connection between you both becomes more intense. You find yourselves stealing kisses whenever you can, your touches lingering with a newfound intensity. Each caress, each look, becomes a promise of what’s to come, a gentle build-up to the moment when you’ll finally give in to the desire that’s been growing between you.

With your heart full of anticipation and a touch of nervousness, you decide to make tonight special. Something that reflects the tender connection you both cherish. You spend the afternoon preparing, wanting every detail to be perfect.

The apartment is filled with the warm, inviting scent of your cooking. You’ve prepared a simple yet elegant dinner, something that you know Alexia loves. The table is set with your best dishes, a bottle of wine breathing on the side, and soft, flickering candlelight casting a golden glow over everything. The lights are dimmed, the apartment bathed in a warm, romantic ambiance that feels almost magical.

You’ve added little touches around the room. Fresh flowers in a vase on the table, the soft strains of music playing in the background, the living room rearranged slightly to create a more intimate setting. It’s a space that feels safe and inviting, designed to make tonight memorable.

As the time draws near, you catch yourself fidgeting with the edges of your dress, smoothing out invisible wrinkles, adjusting the candles on the table one last time. There’s a nervous flutter in your stomach, a mix of excitement and anxiety as you wait for Alexia to arrive. You want everything to be perfect, but more than that, you want to show her just how much she means to you.

As the final touches are set, you hear the front door creak open, and your heart skips a beat. You quickly smooth down the fabric of your dress, a soft blush warming your cheeks. You’ve chosen something special for tonight. An elegant dress that flows gracefully, making you feel beautiful and confident, even if your heart is still racing with anticipation.

When Alexia steps into the apartment, she pauses in the doorway, her eyes widening slightly as she takes in the sight of you. Her reaction is immediate and genuine. A wide, happy smile spreads across her face, lighting up her features. For a moment, she just stands there, staring at you as if she’s seeing you for the first time. The look of admiration in her eyes makes your heart swell with warmth.

“Wow,” she breathes out, her voice tinged with awe. “You look... increíble, amor. So beautiful.” She takes a step closer, her gaze sweeping over you with a mixture of affection and admiration. “I—I’m so lucky,” she stammers, her usual confident demeanor giving way to a shy, almost bashful expression.

You feel a blush rise to your cheeks at her praise, and you can’t help but smile shyly. “Thank you,” you reply, feeling a rush of warmth from her words. The way she’s looking at you makes you feel like the most beautiful person in the world.

Alexia’s gaze then shifts momentarily to her own outfit—casual training wear that she’s clearly worn just for comfort. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, a slight blush creeping up her cheeks as she nervously tugs at the hem of her sweatshirt. “Oh, I, um... I didn’t realize I’d be, uh, underdressed,” she stammers, her eyes flitting between you and her own attire. “I didn’t expect—”

You cut her off gently, stepping closer and taking her hand in yours. “You look great,” you say sincerely, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “I love how soft and relaxed you look. I just wanted to make tonight special for you, for us. It’s not about the clothes. It’s about being together.”

Alexia’s blush deepens, but she seems to relax at your words. She looks into your eyes with a mixture of gratitude and affection. “Thank you,” she says, her voice softening. “You really didn’t have to do all this, but it means so much that you did.”

Without another word, she leans in and presses a tender kiss to your lips. The kiss is warm and full of affection, a perfect encapsulation of the love and understanding that has blossomed between you. When she pulls back, her eyes are filled with a soft, loving glow. “I’m really lucky to have you,” she murmurs, her voice full of emotion.

Her words are reassuring, and you feel your nervousness begin to fade, replaced by a sense of calm. You lead her to the table, pulling out her chair before taking your seat across from her. The candles flicker between you, casting soft shadows on her face as she looks at you with a tenderness that makes your heart swell.

Dinner is a quiet, intimate affair. The conversation flows easily, filled with laughter and shared glances that say more than words ever could. The food is delicious, but it’s the company that truly makes the evening special. With each passing moment, the connection between you deepens, the unspoken promise of what’s to come lingering in the air.

After the last bite of dessert, Alexia leans back in her chair, her eyes never leaving yours. “This was amazing,” she says, her voice low and warm. “Thank you for doing all of this.”

You smile, feeling a flush of pride at her words. “I’m glad you liked it. I just wanted us to have a night that’s... just for you, for us.”

Alexia’s eyes soften even more, and she reaches across the table to take your hand, her thumb gently stroking the back of it. “You’ve made me feel so special tonight,” she murmurs, her voice filled with emotion. “And I want to make sure you feel the same.”

The intensity in her gaze sends a shiver down your spine, but it’s a different kind of shiver than the anxiety you’ve felt before. It’s one of anticipation, of knowing that you’re about to share something incredibly intimate and meaningful with the person you love. You nod, unable to find the right words to express what you’re feeling, but knowing that she understands.

She stands, pulling you up with her, and with a gentle smile, she leads you into the living room. The atmosphere here is even more intimate, the music playing softly in the background, the candles you’d placed around the room casting a soft, romantic glow. Alexia pauses in the middle of the room, turning to face you, her hands resting lightly on your waist.

She looks at you with such affection, such care, that it takes your breath away. “Are you okay?” she asks softly, her voice filled with concern and love. “We can take things slow, amor. There’s no rush.”

You nod, your heart full of love for her. “I’m okay,” you reply, your voice steady despite the fluttering in your chest. “I want this... with you.”

Alexia’s smile is soft and full of warmth. She leans in, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips, one that speaks of all the tenderness she feels for you. The kiss deepens slowly, her hands moving up to cup your face, her thumbs brushing your cheeks in a gesture that is both protective and loving.

As the kiss lingers, your hands find their way to her back, holding her close, feeling the warmth of her body against yours. The room seems to fade away, leaving just the two of you in this bubble of intimacy. The fears and doubts that had once clouded your mind now seem distant, replaced by the certainty that this moment, this connection, is exactly where you’re meant to be.

When she pulls back slightly, her forehead resting against yours, you can see the love and desire in her eyes, tempered by the same care she’s shown throughout the night. “I want you to feel safe with me,” she whispers, her breath warm against your skin. “And I want you to tell me if there’s anything you need, anything you want.”

You nod, your heart swelling with emotion. “I feel safe with you,” you say, your voice trembling slightly with the depth of your feelings. “And I want to be with you... just like this.”

Her smile is full of understanding, and she takes your hand, leading you to the couch where you’d spent so many nights talking, laughing, and just being together. But tonight, it feels different. There’s a sense of anticipation, of something new and beautiful blooming between you.

She sits down, pulling you gently onto her lap, her arms wrapping around you in a way that feels both protective and possessive. Her lips find yours again, the kiss slow and tender, her hands exploring your body with a softness that speaks of her care for you. You feel her breath hitch slightly as her hands move over the curves of your body, her desire evident but tempered by the gentle way she touches you.

You respond in kind, your hands moving through her hair, down her back, holding her close as you both sink deeper into the kiss. The world outside ceases to exist, leaving just the two of you, wrapped in the warmth of each other’s embrace.

Her lips trail from your mouth to your neck, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses along your skin, each one sending a shiver of pleasure through you. Her hands continue their gentle exploration, never rushing, always mindful of the pace you’ve set together. You can feel the tension in her body, the restraint she’s holding onto, and it only makes you love her more.

You shift slightly, straddling her lap, your hands resting on her shoulders as you look into her eyes. “Alexia,” you whisper, your voice filled with all the love and desire you feel. “I want this... with you.”

Her eyes darken with desire, but there’s also a softness there, a tenderness that reassures you. “I want this too,” she murmurs, her hands settling on your hips, holding you close. “More than anything.”

The moment feels like it’s wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and mutual affection. Alexia’s fingers gently trace the curves of your waist, and you can feel the connection between you growing stronger with each passing second.

Suddenly, with a playful glint in her eye, Alexia shifts slightly beneath you and starts to rise. You yelp in surprise, your arms tightening instinctively around her shoulders as she lifts you effortlessly from her lap. Her strength is both reassuring and exhilarating, a reminder of her athletic prowess.

“Whoa, careful!” you laugh nervously, gripping her tightly as she stands up. Her eyes sparkle with mischief, and she chuckles softly at your reaction.

“Relax,” Alexia teases gently, her voice low and soothing. “I’ve got you. I’m an athlete, remember?” She holds you securely against her, her muscles flexing as she adjusts her grip to make sure you’re comfortable.

With a tender smile, Alexia walks slowly towards the bed, her steps measured and deliberate. As she reaches the edge of the mattress, she carefully lowers you onto the soft surface. Despite her careful movements, you cling to her, your arms wrapped around her neck as if reluctant to let go.

She pauses for a moment, her eyes roaming over your body with a mixture of admiration and affection. Her gaze lingers on you, taking in the sight of you stretched out on the bed, your dress clinging to your form in a way that makes her eyes darken with desire.

A warm, affectionate smile spreads across her face as she looks up at you. The connection between you both feels electric, charged with an intensity that makes your heart race. Without breaking eye contact, Alexia leans down and presses a gentle kiss to your lips. The kiss is soft and lingering, a promise of the intimacy to come.

As she deepens the kiss, she begins to lay her own weight down beside you, her body pressing against yours with a comforting warmth. You can feel her heartbeat against your chest, syncing with your own in a rhythm that feels perfectly natural.

Her hands explore your dress, her fingers tracing along the fabric as she starts to unfasten it. You help her, your movements synchronized as you pull the dress up and over your head. The dress slides off with a soft rustle, leaving you in your underwear.

Alexia’s fingers trail along your exposed skin, her touch light and teasing. She smiles up at you, her gaze filled with adoration. “You look beautiful,” she murmurs, her voice low and sincere. The way she looks at you makes you feel cherished, every inch of you appreciated.

She then starts to peel off her tracksuit, her movements slightly awkward as she tries to juggle her clothing while maintaining her focus on you. You help her, your fingers brushing against her skin as you assist with removing the tracksuit. Her clothes fall to the floor in a soft heap, leaving her in a simple, form-fitting top and underwear.

With the room filled with a tender, expectant silence, you take a deep breath, your fingers hovering hesitantly above her skin. You let your hands drift toward her chest, your heart racing with a mix of excitement and nervousness. You want to trace your fingers over her beautiful breasts, but you hesitate, unsure if you’re crossing any boundaries.

Shyly, you lift your gaze to meet hers, seeking reassurance in her eyes. The vulnerability in your expression is met with a soft, reassuring smile from Alexia. Her eyes, full of warmth and encouragement, seem to invite you to continue.

“Está bien, amor,” she whispers in Spanish, her voice soothing and full of affection. She gently takes your hands in hers, guiding them with a loving touch to cup her breasts. The warmth of her skin beneath your palms is both exhilarating and comforting.

As you make contact, Alexia lets out a soft, breathy moan, a sound so beautiful and intimate that it sends a shiver of pleasure through you. The sound resonates deeply within you, amplifying the connection you share and making you feel incredibly close to her.

With a gentle yet assertive grace, Alexia begins to take more control of the moment. She shifts her weight slightly, pressing her body more firmly against yours, allowing her warmth and softness to envelop you. Her hands glide over your body with a tenderness that feels both exhilarating and reassuring.

“Just let me guide you,” she murmurs softly, her voice a mix of confidence and tenderness. “Tell me what you like, and we’ll explore this together.”

You nod, your breath coming in soft, uneven gasps as you let her lead. Her fingers trail down your sides, exploring your curves with a careful touch that sends waves of pleasure through you. She lifts her gaze to yours, searching for any sign of hesitation, and you respond with a soft, encouraging smile, giving her the silent permission she needs.

Alexia’s hands continue their journey, gently slipping beneath the waistband of your underwear. She eases them down slowly, her movements deliberate and careful as she uncovers your skin. The cool air against your exposed core contrasts with the warmth of her touch, intensifying the sensations you're experiencing.

As she removes your underwear completely, she turns her attention to her own, her fingers deftly working to peel them away. The sight of her undressing, her body illuminated by the soft light, makes your heart race with anticipation. When she finally discards her last piece of clothing, she pauses, letting you take in the beauty of her fully exposed form.

Overwhelmed by the intimacy of the moment, you slowly shift into a sitting position on the bed, reaching out to wrap your arms around her. The softness of her skin against your body is electrifying, and you hold her close, your breath mingling with hers.

You lean in to plant gentle kisses on her exposed breasts, your lips brushing against her warm skin with a reverence that conveys just how much you adore her. Each kiss is tender, filled with love and a desire to show her how much she means to you.

You then trail your kisses down her left inner arm, admiring the beauty of her tattoo as your lips make contact with her skin, adding a layer of intimacy and appreciation to the tattoo. You slowly and softly set you teeth in her soft flesh.

The sensation of your kisses and bites elicits a soft, appreciative sigh from Alexia, her body responding to the gentle affection. “I like that,” she murmurs softly, her voice laced with warmth and pleasure. “It feels so good.”

She continues to revel in the intimacy you’re sharing, her hands tenderly caressing your back as you continue to kiss her. The closeness between you both becomes even more palpable, each touch and kiss a testament to your deep connection.

After a while, with a loving and considerate touch, Alexia gently guides you back onto the bed. “Let’s take our time,” she says softly, her voice filled with reassurance. As she helps you settle onto your back, her gaze remains tender and attentive, ensuring you feel both comfortable and cherished.

Once you’re comfortably situated, Alexia positions herself above you with a graceful and deliberate motion. Her core makes contact with yours, and she begins to move with a slow, rhythmic motion. She rocks back and forth with a gentle, deliberate pace, creating a sensation that blends pleasure with the perfect amount of pressure.

Her movements are tender yet purposeful, each shift and glide against you enhancing the intimate connection you’re experiencing together. The rhythm she sets is both soothing and stimulating, allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the shared moment of closeness. The feeling of her body moving against yours is a harmonious dance of pleasure and tenderness, deepening the bond you share and making each moment feel incredibly special.

As the pleasure builds, you finally allow yourself to be vocal about how good she makes you feel. Soft, breathy moans escape your lips, each sound a testament to the intensity of the sensations coursing through you. You find yourself unable to keep quiet, your voice betraying the immense pleasure you’re experiencing. The sounds you make only seem to encourage Alexia, her own movements becoming more attuned to your responses, amplifying the mutual pleasure you both are sharing.

As the pleasure between you builds, Alexia’s focus remains unwaveringly on you. Her eyes, filled with a mix of adoration and passion, roam over your face and body. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispers, her voice tender and filled with genuine appreciation. “And you make me feel so incredible.”

Her words are a soothing balm, adding to the warmth of the moment. The pleasure between you becomes almost overwhelming, and in the throes of it, her movements start to quicken. The rhythm of her grinding grows faster, her passion driving her actions as she becomes more lost in the sensation.

In her heightened state of desire, Alexia’s hand reaches out and firmly grabs your right breast, her fingers pinching your nipple roughly. The unexpected intensity makes you gasp in surprise, your body reacting sharply to the sensation. Her eyes widen in alarm as she notices your reaction, and she immediately halts her movements.

“Oh mierda, lo siento, lo siento mucho,” she breathes, her voice laced with concern. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Despite the sudden stop, the sensation had been unexpectedly pleasurable, and you find yourself blushing, feeling exposed but also intrigued. You look up at her, your cheeks flushed with a mix of embarrassment and arousal. “It, um, actually felt good,” you admit shyly. “If you want to, you can continue.”

Alexia’s expression shifts from concern to a warm, relieved smile. Her eyes reflect a blend of affection and excitement as she takes your words to heart. “Are you sure?” she asks softly, her voice tender and filled with a gentle eagerness.

You nod, feeling a newfound confidence in sharing your desires. “Yes, I’m sure,” you affirm. “I trust you, and I want to experience this with you.”

With your reassurance, Alexia resumes her movements, her touch becoming more deliberate and attentive as she finds a rhythm that balances both pleasure and sensitivity. Her continued exploration of your body is filled with a renewed passion and care, ensuring that every moment is both thrilling and deeply intimate.

As the sensations between you intensify, Alexia’s movements become a rhythmic dance of passion and tenderness. Her body rocks gently but purposefully against yours, each motion sending waves of pleasure through you. She maintains a steady gaze, her eyes never leaving yours, communicating unspoken affection and desire.

“You feel so amazing,” she murmurs softly, her voice a tender caress against your ear. “I love the way you respond to me.”

Her words are a constant comfort, her sweet reassurances adding an extra layer of intimacy to the moment. She leans down to kiss you, her lips finding yours with a fervent yet gentle touch. The kiss is a melding of emotions, a silent conversation of love and longing that deepens with each passing second.

As the pleasure reaches its peak, her hands move with a delicate precision, enhancing the sensations and making sure you feel cherished and adored. She holds you close, her body pressed against yours, and the steady rhythm of her movements becomes a perfect symphony of shared ecstasy.

The culmination of your mutual pleasure comes as a breathtaking crescendo. You both feel the rush of release, a powerful and overwhelming wave that washes over you, leaving you breathless and blissful. Alexia’s soft, contented moans mix with your own vocal expressions of pleasure, creating a harmony that is both beautiful and deeply personal.

You kiss her tenderly, your lips moving in a gentle rhythm that matches the lingering waves of pleasure. The kiss is a promise of love and devotion, a sweet exchange that further cements the bond you share. Her hands cradle your face, her touch tender and reassuring as she pulls back slightly to look into your eyes.

“Thank you for being so amazing,” you whisper, your voice filled with genuine affection. “I’ve never felt this close to anyone before.”

Alexia’s eyes shine with a mix of love and satisfaction. “It’s because of you,” she replies softly. “You’ve made this so special. I love you so much.”

As the euphoria of the moment begins to settle, Alexia’s teasing smile makes a reappearance, her eyes twinkling with playful affection. She leans in close, brushing a strand of hair from your face before speaking, her tone light yet filled with meaning.

“I don’t stand a chance of having a normal life with you, do I?” she teases, her voice laced with warmth. “You’ve made me want to do this with you every single moment, exploring new things, finding out what we both like. We’re just getting started, and I’m so excited to explore even more with you.”

She punctuates her words with that little shy smile of hers, the one that always manages to melt your heart. It’s a perfect blend of her natural confidence and the sweet, awkward vulnerability that makes her so endearing.

You can’t help but laugh softly at her words, feeling both exhilarated and a little overwhelmed by the intensity of your connection. “Gosh, what have I gotten myself into?” you tease back, your tone playful but your heart swelling with affection.

Alexia chuckles, her smile widening as she leans down to kiss you again, this time more slowly, savoring the moment. “Whatever it is, I hope you’re ready for it,” she murmurs against your lips, her voice carrying both a promise and a challenge.

“I am,” you whisper back, feeling a surge of anticipation for the adventures yet to come.

With her by your side, you’re ready to explore everything. Every desire, every emotion, every new discovery. As you lie there in each other’s arms, the future feels wide open, full of possibility, and you know without a doubt that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.

As you hold Alexia close, the warmth of her embrace and the depth of your connection make you realize how unfounded your doubts had been. In this moment of intimacy and understanding, you know with certainty that your fears were unnecessary, and that what you share is stronger and more beautiful than you ever imagined.

-

Note: I realize that some transitions might not be as smooth as l'd like, and plan to refine them later. I just wanted to share this now, even though I haven't done a thorough grammar check yet. Please be gentle with your feedback!

[nostalgebraist]

Honestly I'm pretty tired of supporting nostalgebraist-autoresponder. Going to wind down the project some time before the end of this year.

Posting this mainly to get the idea out there, I guess.

This project has taken an immense amount of effort from me over the years, and still does, even when it's just in maintenance mode.

Today some mysterious system update (or something) made the model no longer fit on the GPU I normally use for it, despite all the same code and settings on my end.

This exact kind of thing happened once before this year, and I eventually figured it out, but I haven't figured this one out yet. This problem consumed several hours of what was meant to be a relaxing Sunday. Based on past experience, getting to the bottom of the issue would take many more hours.

My options in the short term are to

A. spend (even) more money per unit time, by renting a more powerful GPU to do the same damn thing I know the less powerful one can do (it was doing it this morning!), or

B. silently reduce the context window length by a large amount (and thus the "smartness" of the output, to some degree) to allow the model to fit on the old GPU.

Things like this happen all the time, behind the scenes.

I don't want to be doing this for another year, much less several years. I don't want to be doing it at all.

----

In 2019 and 2020, it was fun to make a GPT-2 autoresponder bot.

[EDIT: I've seen several people misread the previous line and infer that nostalgebraist-autoresponder is still using GPT-2. She isn't, and hasn't been for a long time. Her latest model is a finetuned LLaMA-13B.]

Hardly anyone else was doing anything like it. I wasn't the most qualified person in the world to do it, and I didn't do the best possible job, but who cares? I learned a lot, and the really competent tech bros of 2019 were off doing something else.

And it was fun to watch the bot "pretend to be me" while interacting (mostly) with my actual group of tumblr mutuals.

In 2023, everyone and their grandmother is making some kind of "gen AI" app. They are helped along by a dizzying array of tools, cranked out by hyper-competent tech bros with apparently infinite reserves of free time.

There are so many of these tools and demos. Every week it seems like there are a hundred more; it feels like every day I wake up and am expected to be familiar with a hundred more vaguely nostalgebraist-autoresponder-shaped things.

And every one of them is vastly better-engineered than my own hacky efforts. They build on each other, and reap the accelerating returns.

I've tended to do everything first, ahead of the curve, in my own way. This is what I like doing. Going out into unexplored wilderness, not really knowing what I'm doing, without any maps.

Later, hundreds of others with go to the same place. They'll make maps, and share them. They'll go there again and again, learning to make the expeditions systematically. They'll make an optimized industrial process of it. Meanwhile, I'll be locked in to my own cottage-industry mode of production.

Being the first to do something means you end up eventually being the worst.

----

I had a GPT chatbot in 2019, before GPT-3 existed. I don't think Huggingface Transformers existed, either. I used the primitive tools that were available at the time, and built on them in my own way. These days, it is almost trivial to do the things I did, much better, with standardized tools.

I had a denoising diffusion image generator in 2021, before DALLE-2 or Stable Diffusion or Huggingface Diffusers. I used the primitive tools that were available at the time, and built on them in my own way. These days, it is almost trivial to do the things I did, much better, with standardized tools.

Earlier this year, I was (probably) one the first people to finetune LLaMA. I manually strapped LoRA and 8-bit quantization onto the original codebase, figuring out everything the hard way. It was fun.

Just a few months later, and your grandmother is probably running LLaMA on her toaster as we speak. My homegrown methods look hopelessly antiquated. I think everyone's doing 4-bit quantization now?

(Are they? I can't keep track anymore -- the hyper-competent tech bros are too damn fast. A few months from now the thing will be probably be quantized to -1 bits, somehow. It'll be running in your phone's browser. And it'll be using RLHF, except no, it'll be using some successor to RLHF that everyone's hyping up at the time...)

"You have a GPT chatbot?" someone will ask me. "I assume you're using AutoLangGPTLayerPrompt?"

No, no, I'm not. I'm trying to debug obscure CUDA issues on a Sunday so my bot can carry on talking to a thousand strangers, every one of whom is asking it something like "PENIS PENIS PENIS."

Only I am capable of unplugging the blockage and giving the "PENIS PENIS PENIS" askers the responses they crave. ("Which is ... what, exactly?", one might justly wonder.) No one else would fully understand the nature of the bug. It is special to my own bizarre, antiquated, homegrown system.

I must have one of the longest-running GPT chatbots in existence, by now. Possibly the longest-running one?

I like doing new things. I like hacking through uncharted wilderness. The world of GPT chatbots has long since ceased to provide this kind of value to me.

I want to cede this ground to the LLaMA techbros and the prompt engineers. It is not my wilderness anymore.

I miss wilderness. Maybe I will find a new patch of it, in some new place, that no one cares about yet.

----

Even in 2023, there isn't really anything else out there quite like Frank. But there could be.

If you want to develop some sort of Frank-like thing, there has never been a better time than now. Everyone and their grandmother is doing it.

"But -- but how, exactly?"

Don't ask me. I don't know. This isn't my area anymore.

There has never been a better time to make a GPT chatbot -- for everyone except me, that is.

Ask the techbros, the prompt engineers, the grandmas running OpenChatGPT on their ironing boards. They are doing what I did, faster and easier and better, in their sleep. Ask them.

[ramblings-of-a-chaotic-neutral]

Hello again everyone! Thank you all so much for the overwhelming support for the last part of the "Merlin accidentally conquers Camelot" au! I've had so much fun writing this au, and I'm so glad that you've all enjoyed it too! This will probably be the final part of this au (for now), since I have more au ideas to share with you all, but I'll probably revisit this au some day! For now, I'm approaching two pretty big tumblr milestones, so I'm working on an extra-special au to post in celebration of those (and I won't give anything away, but I think that this new au may be my best one yet, so stay tuned)!

Also, warning, this one is a long post! Be prepared!

Now, onto part four of this au! You can find part one here, part two here, and part three here!

As it turned out, planning a royal wedding was no easy feat.

Merlin had thought that simply adding a quick and (hopefully) painless wedding ceremony at the end of his coronation would make everything go smoothly. After all, the castle would already be decorated, they'd already have all of the important lords in attendance, and everything needed for a consort's coronation ceremony would already be there.

However, when Merlin announced to the lords and the steward in charge of preparing his coronation ceremony that he'd also need a quick wedding and coronation to take Arthur as his consort, they reacted with so much shock and horror that Merlin thought for a second that he'd accidentally announced that he was ordering their executions instead. The only person in the council room who didn't look like death itself had just appeared before him was Gwaine, who took advantage of he shocked silence following Merlin's proclamation to start laughing so uncontrollably that he doubled over and had to grab the wall for support.

Merlin had expected some shock and pushback from the council at his decision, not... this. All of the lords on the council had gone as pale as parchment, some trembling in their seats with fear. What on earth...

"Sire," the ever-unflappable Geoffrey called out, jolting Merlin from his confusion at the state of terror that had gripped the other council members, "while such a marriage would not be unlawful, it would certainly be unprecedented. I'm not questioning your judgement, I know that establishing yourself as a strong ruler this early in your reign is paramount, but are you sure that this is the best way to go about it? I'm certain that the citizens of Camelot will accept you as their rightful ruler as soon as they witness their true power for themselves, so taking the former king as your war prize isn't entirely necessary to show your dominance over the land."

The lords grew several shades paler at Geoffrey's words, and the trembling councilman sitting next to Geoffrey leaned in to fearfully hiss something into the librarian's ear. Merlin watched with growing confusion as Geoffrey's eyes went wide at whatever had just been whispered to him, and he rushed to speak once more.

"Of course, if this decision was made as some form of revenge or humiliation towards the Pendragon line, that is well within your right as a conqueror, Your Majesty. We would simply advise you to take the disgraced king as a concubine, perhaps, instead of your official consort. As a ruler, you must now also consider the issue of one day producing legitimate heirs, which can only be borne to you through your consort."

Merlin blinked, desperately trying to follow whatever logic Geoffrey was using. Take Arthur as a concubine?! Had the old man gone insane?! And Merlin certainly wasn't concerned about heirs, since if he got his way, then his reign wouldn't last longer than this week!

Still, with most of the council looking like they were being plagued by waking nightmares, they weren't likely to listen to Merlin's very reasonable objections to being king in the first place, so Merlin just had to get them off his back until the wedding.

After a deep sigh, which made most of the council members flinch back with a still confusing amount of fear, Merlin addressed Geoffrey's concerns.

"Thank you for your input, but I'm afraid that my decision has already been made on this... issue. I will be taking Arthur as my consort at my coronation, and my decision is final. And don't concern yourself with the topic of heirs, that will be sorted out shortly."

Several lords choked on the air at Merlin's last comment, with a couple outright fainting at his words. Merlin's brows furrowed even more with befuddlement. What... what had he said that garnered such a reaction?! He was just telling them not to worry about it!

(Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Merlin, the lords had a very different idea of what their new king- a powerful, brutal warlord and sorcerer- had planned. They interpreted Merlin's intent to marry Arthur as an act of revenge against the son of the man who killed off so many of his people during the purge. It apparently wasn't enough for the mighty Emrys to defeat his enemy and leave him with nothing to his name. No, this ruthless new king of theirs planned on forcing the former king into a life of humiliation and servitude in the court that was once his own. To a king, that must be a fate worse than death.

These lords, who were some of the most active and complicit members of Uther's purge, looked at the punishment that Emrys had planned for Arthur and thought if that's what happened to the king, what's he going to do to us?!)

The days went by quickly after that meeting, with Merlin's time being filled with a never-ending list of his new duties and things that needed to be done before his coronation, not to mention organizing the coronation itself and the subsequent wedding (which Arthur didn't know about yet, as Merlin had been deliberately avoiding the dungeons after his last conversation with Arthur).

It took the better part of a week for everything to finally be prepared for the official coronation ceremony. The ceremony itself would consist of Merlin being crowned in front of the court (a nauseating thought for Merlin himself), the vassal lords and knights willing to swear fealty to him taking the oath of loyalty, and finally Arthur being handfasted to Merlin and crowned consort.

Merlin was, for once, thankful for the amount of work that he had to do over the days leading up to the ceremony, as it kept his mind busy and his thoughts away from the pit of self-loathing that had taken up permanent residence in his head. After all, what kind of friend stole everything from the person they love the most in the world and then turns around and forces that same friend (and unrequited crush) to marry them?!

Merlin had attempted to rationalize his selfish decision to keep Arthur in the dark regarding his plan to reinstate him as king by telling himself that if Arthur didn't know about the wedding until the last minute, then he would spend less time worrying about it in the long run after he was king again! Besides, if Merlin's plan worked, they would only be married for a day or two, so there was no reason to get Arthur worked up over that by telling him earlier!

Truly, Merlin was not being a complete scumbag by doing this, he was just looking out for his friend's best interests and mental wellbeing! This would all blow over in a a matter of days anyways, Merlin was certain of it.

Still, Merlin found himself anxious and pacing the floor of his room on the morning of the ceremony. He had sent a team of servants and guards to retrieve Arthur from his cell and prepare him for the ceremony, so he likely wouldn't see Arthur until he was brought into the great hall for the handfasting ceremony. However, he still worried over Arthur's reaction when he learned what exactly when was being prepared for.

This worry lingered in Merlin's mind and consumed his thoughts throughout the entire day and into the coronation ceremony, so much so that his own coronation seemed like a blur to him. One moment he was standing in the great hall in front of the assembled crowd of lords and knights, and in the next, he was sitting on Arthur's throne with Arthur's crown on his head, with the crowd shouting "long live the king".

The sound of it almost made Merlin sick. Those words should never be directed at him, but he'd make this right soon enough. He just had to suffer through this ceremony to appease those disloyal lords who had turned their backs on their true king.

Perhaps the worst part of the coronation itself was the ceremony in which the lords and knights willing to pledge their fealty to him took an oath declaring such. It was no surprise to Merlin to see those weasels on the council of lords pledging themselves to save their own skin, but the knights who showed up to pledge their fealty were... very unexpected.

Look, Merlin had assumed that it would just be Gwaine and a small handful of guards and younger knights that he had roped into his mischievous scheme swearing loyalty so him. All of the other knights with their wits intact would surely still be down in the cells of the dungeon, holding true to their prior oaths of loyalty and keeping their true king company.

What Merlin did not expect, however, was for nearly a quarter of all of Camelot's knights to take a knee before him and pledge their loyalty, led by a highly amused Gwaine, who was no doubt enjoying every minute of this. Merlin quickly scanned the crowd of knights, trying to take count of who all had turned their backs on Arthur and could no longer be trusted.

Gwaine, of course, came at no surprise. Many of those assembled were commoner knights whom Arthur had taken in, including Percival, but the giant regularly got pulled into Gwaine's nonsense, so this wasn't truly that much of a shock if Merlin thought about it. There were a fair number of noble-born knights in the crowd, including all of those whom Merlin had noted had a softer outlook on magic. And then, of course, there were a decent number of pompous, high-born knights who had never given a lick about magic or loyalty, they just wanted to preserve their own wealth and power no matter the cost.

Merlin narrowed his eyes at the cluster of those knights. All the rest had logical reasons to side with Merlin, between Gwaine's persuasiveness, solidarity between the lower class, or a connection or sympathy towards magic, so they would be allowed to stay in court after Arthur had retaken his rightful throne. But these knights? These cowardly snakes had to be dealt with at the first opportunity. But how could he get rid of them without people becoming suspicious?

... Wait a minute, Merlin was king now! He might only have that title for a day or so, but in that time, he could certainly use it! (And he absolutely was not using this as a tactic to prolong this part of the ceremony so that he had a few more minutes of peace before the wedding began.)

Right, but how was he going to play this? He couldn't exactly just announce that he wanted those knights to leave because he wanted them gone before Arthur took over again.

Merlin narrowed his eyes at the group of treacherous knights and noted how they squirmed a bit under his gaze, with even some of the people around them shuddering. Right, he looked like a ruthless and powerful sorcerer to them now. He could use that to his advantage.

As the knights finished reciting their oaths, Merlin held up his hand, signaling for them to stay in place. The knights did so, but a confused and concerned murmuring started buzzing around at this strange departure from the normal ceremony. Slowly, Merlin lifted his hand and pointed at the assembled group of knights in the back.

"You lot. In the back."

The murmuring died down the instant Merlin opened his mouth and was instead replaced by an oppressive dread weighing down the ornately decorated hall. If Merlin wasn't trying so hard to keep a straight, intimidating face, he would have winced at causing such a wave of fear with nothing more than a few words.

Hesitantly, one of the called out knights stepped forward, addressing their new king.

"Yes, your majesty? Is there something you require of us?"

Merlin held back the urge to smirk as an idea, and a very satisfying one at that, formed in his head. He quietly cleared his throat and put on his most imperious "Emrys" voice that he could muster.

"I can sense insincerity in your hearts with my magic. Just as you abandoned the previous king, you would also turn your backs on me at the first opportunity to do so. Do not even attempt to deny it, you know just as well as I do that this true. I cannot trust any such men as knights of mine."

The group of knights went pale as Merlin called them out for their flimsy loyalty, and at once whispers began fly in the crowd. Perhaps they were intrigued by this show of his "powers"? Were they scandalized by this public shaming of a group of high-ranking knights?

Either way, the knights immediately began groveling, begging Merlin to let them keep their positions, their wealth, their power, but Merlin dismissed them with a wave of a hand and publicly revoked their knighthoods. The murmuring of the remaining people in the great hall grew louder as the disgraced former knights made their way out of the hall, no doubt intimidated and scandalized by how quickly their new ruler was purging his court of the disloyal.

However, with the loyal knights having taken their oaths and the untrustworthy ones having been cast out, the coronation ceremony was now officially complete, meaning that Merlin could no longer stall what would come next.

Merlin sat still on his stolen throne, trying his best not to fidget with nervousness as Geoffrey gave some traditional speech that had to be done before the doors of the great hall opened to let consort walk down the aisle to the throne.

After a couple minutes, Geoffrey's monotonous voice became nothing but a buzzing in Merlin's ears as he stared at the doors of the hall, desperately trying to imagine any scenario where those doors wouldn't open to an Arthur who was filled with nothing but rage and betrayal.

All too soon, Geoffrey's droning speech ended, and the trumpets in the hall announced the arrival of the soon-to-be-consort and signaled for everyone of lower rank to stand. Merlin's heart leapt to his throat as he jumped to his feet, even though he was the only person in the room who didn't need to. Ever so slowly, the doors to the hall swung open, revealing... Arthur.

Merlin damn near choked on his own saliva at the sight of him. He had seen Arthur in a wide range of states over the years as his manservant, ranging anywhere from sleep-rumbled to solemnly prepared for battle. But this... he had never seen anything like it.

Merlin couldn't decide if whoever had been in charge of dressing Arthur and preparing him for the ceremony ought to either be promoted to Arthur's personal tailor or immediately banished. In place of Arthur's usual surcoat and chainmail for official ceremonies, which was what Merlin had foolishly assumed the servants would dress Arthur in, there was... a monstrosity that would haunt Merlin's dreams for the rest of his life.

Merlin didn't even know how to begin to describe it. The garment that the servants had no doubt forced Arthur into, as Merlin knew that he would never wear such a thing of his own accord, was somewhere between a set of intricately intertwined robes and a dress, which hugged Arthur's shoulders, upper arms, and thighs, highlighting the muscles there. Most of the outfit appeared to be made out of a rich velvet, dyed in a majestic royal blue that both looked entirely out of place on Arthur and brought out his eyes like nothing Merlin had ever seen before. And dear gods, was that lace on there?! And why the hell did the outfit need elbow-length lace gloves?!

(The servants who had been in charge of dressing Arthur for the ceremony had assumed that their brutal new warlord would probably want his war prize to look as far from a warrior as possible, in order to further prove that he had beaten the previous rulers. So, they selected a delicate and elegant outfit for Arthur in the hopes of appeasing their new king.)

Merlin swallowed dryly as Arthur slowly began making his way down the aisle with measured footsteps. The movement snapped Merlin out of whatever temporary madness the outfit had sent him spiraling into, and Merlin finally locked eyes with Arthur.

Merlin winced at the sheer amount of rage that Arthur managed to fit into one glare as he took another step towards the throne that was rightfully his. Merlin tried to give Arthur his most reassuring smile, but he was almost certain it only came across as a nervous grimace.

Just go along with this, Merlin tried to beg of Arthur with only his eyes. Their bond had always been one that allowed them to communicate without words, and Merlin prayed that their connection would hold strong once more and get his message across to Arthur.

Neither Arthur's impressive glare nor his furious scowl let up though, but he kept his pace towards the throne steady, which Merlin decided to take as a good sign. After all, if Arthur truly did not any merit to this impromptu plan, why would he still be walking of his own accord towards the altar?

Still, as Arthur grew closer and closer to the altar prepared for the handfasting, his eyes became darker with rage as Merlin winced. Yes, this would certainly be harder than it needed to be, but this had to be done to get Arthur back on the throne! Surely Arthur would understand that!

After what must have been an eternity, Arthur finally reached the altar and, ever so slowly, walked around to stand at a fidgeting Merlin's side.

As Geoffrey began yet another speech that had to be done before the handfasting took place, Merlin quietly turned to Arthur and gave him a small smile, trying to a least let Arthur know that everything was alright, that everything would turn out fine.

That little smile, it seemed, turned out to be the final straw for Arthur. Merlin wasn't even entirely sure how it happened.

One moment, he was standing next to Arthur in front of the altar, with the only sound in the room being Geoffrey's boring voice. And in the next, there was a savage war cry coming from Arthur, who was now armed with a sword, and a decent amount of screaming coming from the crowd.

It spoke volumes about Merlin's state of mind that his first thought upon seeing Arthur run at him with a blade in hand wasn't get back, dodge! but was rather that dress is tight, where on earth did he hide that sword?

However, Merlin's sense of self-preservation wasn't nearly as terrible as Gaius accused it of being, as his second thought was I should probably try to avoid getting stabbed at my own wedding.

Reluctantly, Merlin gathered his magic, ready to disarm Arthur and hold him still if need be. Arthur could stab Merlin later if he really felt like it, but Merlin needed to at least officially make Arthur his consort and heir before Arthur did that!

However, to Merlin's surprise, rather than trying to run Merlin through, Arthur instead stabbed at the wooden handfasting altar, sinking his blade deep into it. Merlin carefully kept his eyes on Arthur as the other man viciously pulled off one of the dainty lace gloves and threw it on the ground at Merlin's feet.

Dumbfounded, Merlin stared at the thrown glove on the floor and then looked back up to stare at Arthur, not quite getting what Arthur was trying to tell him here. Did he just really hate the outfit? Or was it this whole marriage plan that he objected to?

"Pick it up."

"Huh?"

Arthur nearly started growling, his rage apparently rising with Merlin's confusion.

"It may not be a proper gauntlet, since you have denied me such a dignity, but it will suffice for this. Pick it up, King Emrys. I challenge you to a duel in single combat for the throne of Camelot. You may have defeated my sister, but you did not defeat me! I am no prize for you to claim!"

Merlin simply blinked, completely thrown off by this turn of events, while loud shouts started erupting from the crowd. By the time his mind caught up to what Arthur had said, Arthur had taken up his sword from where he had struck it into the altar and was pointing it threateningly at Merlin again.

As Merlin's shock wore off and he finally understood what exactly Arthur had just done, he had to fight back the urge to scream into the sky with frustration as yet another one of his plans to reinstate Arthur as king had just been ruined by the obstinate clotpole himself. Couldn't the prat just let Merlin help?!

With his frustration rising, Merlin glared down at the thrown glove. While a duel would certainly allow Arthur to retake the throne, Merlin wasn't entirely sure how his magic would react to such a fight. Merlin would never consciously hurt Arthur of course, but who knows if his magic would strike out in self-defense?!

And, besides, formally accepting and preparing the duel would take days. And, in Merlin's opinion, this whole farce has gone on for long enough.

"No. I will not accept your challenge."

Arthur's face went red with anger at Merlin's refusal.

"You are just as much of a coward as the rest of your kind, sorcerer! You would not even grant me the opportunity to take back what's mine!"

Merlin bit back a frustrated scream at that. Arthur would be getting his throne back if he just followed through with any of Merlin's plans instead of ruining threm!

Merlin took a deep breath and sighed on the exhale, trying the rein in his own anger. He just needed to go through with this ceremony, and then everything would be fine.

With a quick flash of gold in his eyes, which had Arthur flinching back (and didn't that just sting?), Merlin turned Arthur's blade into dust had Arthur's glove fly back onto his hand, setting everything right as it had been before Arthur had pulled out a sword and all hell had broken loose.

"That's enough! I've been trying to restore you to your rightful position as king this entire time, and yet you push back at every opportunity! I am not about to let you sabotage your own destiny! So, here's what's going to happen!"

Distantly, Merlin heard the wind outside whipping around, like his own frustration and stirred nature itself into a frenzy.

"You are going to stand here, complete this ceremony, be named my heir, and then retake your throne when I abdicate! Are we clear?"

Arthur, who still looked rather shaken at Merlin's display of magic, scowled, but still nodded his head. Merlin, satisfied by this, turned back around to face the shocked crowd.

"And do I make myself clear to all of you?! There will be no more interruptions of this ceremony, and Arthur will take back his throne!"

The frightened crowd went silent at Merlin's outburst, seemingly relenting to Merlin's demands.

Merlin then turned to Geoffrey, who was still standing in front of the handfasting altar with the rope in his hands.

"Now, Geoffrey, I would greatly appreciate it if you would get a move on here. I don't want to wear this stupid crown for any longer than I have to."

The only indication that Geoffrey gave that he was surprised by Merlin's outburst was a mere uptake of his eyebrows, rather reminiscent of Gaius's signature look. Without further ado, Geoffrey tied Merlin and Arthur's hands together, declaring them to be now married in the eyes of the gods of the Old Religion.

(Merlin tried to ignore the hurt and longing that built up in his heart in that moment. How many times had he dreamed of something like this? But he never wanted it to happen like this. This was Merlin's dream come true, but it was all wrong. In that moment, Merlin didn't dare look at Arthur, too afraid of what his dearest friend thought about this grievous overstep of boundaries.)

Immediately after Geoffrey untied the handfasting knot, Arthur's coronation as consort began. The ceremony itself went smoothly, but Merlin's heart broke both at the sight of Arthur kneeling before him, waiting to be crowned, and at the furious glare Arthur gave him as he gently put the consort's crown upon Arthur's head, officially naming Arthur as his heir.

As soon as Arthur stood from where he was kneeling, applause broke out from the crowd. Someone (Merlin heavily suspected Gwaine) started a chant of "long live the kings!", which caught on quickly. Merlin winced again at the chant, not daring to turn and look at Arthur's face.

Still, Merlin reminded himself as he took a deep, calming breath, everything was coming along. Arthur was now officially his consort and heir, and all that was left to do... was the copious amounts of paperwork finalizing his abdication.

Yeah, no. Merlin wasn't going through that process when he could just take care of it here and now.

"Citizens of Camelot, on this most joyous day, I, King Emrys, abdicate the throne!"

Even though he had made his intentions clear only a few minutes earlier, shocked whispers flew around the crowd, like they hadn't truly believed that he would go through with it.

Merlin couldn't help the grin that was forming on his face. Finally, everything would be set right again!

"I am no longer your king, and as per the laws of the kingdom, the throne now rightfully belongs to your true king, Arthur Pendragon!"

With that, Merlin reached up and yanked the crown off of his own head, marched over to a dumbfounded Arthur and, without any hesitation, replaced the consort's crown on Arthur's head with the true crown.

"There, that's much better," Merlin whispered to himself as he gazed upon Arthur, finally looking like himself again, but he was certain that Arthur must have heard it too, as Arthur's eyes went wide at his words.

But that was a conversation for another day, as Merlin was now done here. This entire calamity was over, and now Merlin was going to savor its end.

Merlin turned back to face the crowd once more with an undoubtedly crazed grin.

"Goodnight everyone! Be sure to obey your true king! In the meanwhile, I'm off to bed for my first full night's rest since this nightmare started!"

And with that, Merlin merrily skipped out of the great hall, made his way to his cramped room in Gaius's chambers, and slept soundly.

Bonus Scene!

THE NEXT DAY:

Arthur: Busts into Merlin's room

Merlin, unwillingly woken up from the best sleep he's gotten in years: Ugh, what do you want you prat?! You're king again, aren't you?! Don't you have kingly duty to be attending to?

Arthur: Merlin you idiot, you abdicated the throne.

Merlin: Yes, and now you're king again. You're welcome!

Arthur: But you never dissolved our union!

Merlin: Huh?

Arthur: A divorce can only be granted by the same ruler who authorized the marriage! You know what this means, right?!

Merlin: Yeah, that you can just declare us to be not married anymore and we can all be on our way.

Arthur: No, YOU were the ruler who authorized the marriage, and now that you've abdicated, you can't dissolve the marriage! Legally, no one can!

Merlin, turning pale: What?

Arthur, looking weary: Yes, apparently it's some legal technicality that Geoffrey cited from Bruta's code. I've spent all morning arguing with him, but there seems to be no way around it.

Merlin: So... what you're saying is that we're stuck being married to each other.

Arthur: Yes, you buffoon, that's exactly what I'm saying! Now, get up!

Merlin, feeling incredibly guilty over this entire situation: Arthur, I'm so sorry, I take full responsibility for this, I never should have forced you into-

Arthur, cutting him off: Let's go. We don't have much time before the rest of the castle is up and about, and I'd rather us not be seen here.

Merlin, confused but complying: Arthur, where are we going? Why don't you want us to be seen here?

Arthur, blushing: It would reflect poorly on the king if word got out that he let his consort sleep in this dirty broom closet on their wedding night, wouldn't it?

Merlin, blushing: Ah, I suppose it would.

And that's a wrap for this au for now! I hope you've all enjoyed this story!

A huge thank you for everyone who asked for this continuation! (and holy cow there were a lot of you!! Thank you all so much!)

@magic-mushroomss @miyriu @whole-buncha-snakess @achillesuwu @aerismoon

@tidalwavesandthunderstorms @marki9 @isaidno @retro-wallflower @samwinjester

@lascienzadellafantasia @sugar-coated-prat-dragon @theoldfroglady @ryeallytired @mind-of-a-crow

@whynotreinventmyselfeveryday @likeapaperplane @odinjm @orliththedragon @aglmry

@caraspud @aostrek-236 @justaz @slippysalt @coffee-shop-gay

@the-king-and-the-druidess @theroundbartable @fanfic-library-for-me @linotheghost @scuttlingsleipnir

@guiltyscarlet @cinnabon-sweetroll-tiramisu @247merthur @veryroadpartystatesman-blog @verxen

@lascienzadellafantasia @jareicanon @arrowlovesdragons @juliairian @thesuperstitiousoldelf

@lovermyme @bootprivileges @rem-the-moth @hippielittlemetalhead @ole-to-you-nonetheless

@lordmushroomkat @starchaos01 @reynaharmonia @anastasia0614 @starlight-crow

@wheneverfeasible @savlikesbluengreen @fuckingdeadinsidetm @notquitehumanwrites @purplesandwichtiger

@rocks-d-xerxes @olli-is-a-fish @luluzealand2565 @dangerhumming @tireddruid

@spiralingtowardtheabyss @mundaneone @anxiousdragoncollector @catface233 @bennedict

@elementalpirate4 @bertolio @vadis-protenus @chaosofbelievers @floating-on-avalon

@merthurogies @justaz

And, as always, thank you all for reading through my ramblings! :D

I'll see you all next time!

[delewlew]

the prettiest girl: charles leclerc x black fem! reader smau ⋆.˚ 𓇼⋆.

request: a friend of Charles is hitting on y/n and like he likes all her Instagram pictures talking about her, send her messages so it makes Charles jealous. - @kayleen0

warnings: jealousy, suggestive content

author's note: for the sake of this request im using one of charles' friends, hugo. this is no hate to him and this is a work of fiction not to be taken seriously. i hope that you enjoy what i've written!

the first time you noticed that something weird was going on between one of charles' friends and you was a random afternoon you all were on a yacht having a friends day. it was nothing crazy, just charles' childhood friends and their girlfriends for the guys who weren't single. the way his eyes lingered on you a moment longer than everyone else's, the way he ended up by your side if charles wasn't there as he tried to make attempts to get you to talk to him. from the beginning of it all you were fairly cautious about it. all the answers to his questions were one or two words, laughs were forced and smiles were awkward and ingenuine. yet for some odd reason you got the feeling that he just didn't get the hint, or chose to ignore it. however you weren't completely sure if maybe it was all in your head, after all a lot of his friends were friendly and told you that you looked nice so maybe that's all it was...maybe?

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

isthatyn

liked by charles_leclerc, hugomicallef, and 15,304 others

isthatyn summertime livin' sweet summertime lovin' 🍭☀️🌈 💗

view all 2,209 comments

havanaroseliu bring me back a bag of bubs pls  🥺

⤷ isthatyn you know i did <3

charles_leclerc loving every moment i spend with you ❤️

⤷ isthatyn i love you so much wow 🥹

cocojones i miss you :(

⤷ isthatyn yet you never answer my calls 😒

⤷ cocojones girl i been working ntm on me 😭

⤷ username1 OOP COCO BOOKED AND BUSY!

hugomicallef the prettiest girl 😍

⤷ username2 oh thats...

⤷ username3 chill out he's just stating a fact

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

your gaze lingered on your phone screen as you read his comment over and over again.

the prettiest girl 😍

no matter how many times you tried to rationalize it, something just didn't sit right with you about it. you tried to tell yourself that maybe he was just being nice, charles' fans were always calling you variations of "queen slayer" , "prettiest f1 wag", and "most beautiful woman ever" but that just seemed different when it came from someone you knew closer than some strangers online that happened to support you.

charles' voice snapped you out of your trance, "qu'est-ce que tu regardes, mon cœur ?" you jumped slightly and put your phone down quickly, tucking it under your thigh, "nothing just instagram comments." charles eyed you up and down then asked, "why do you have this shocked look on your face? did someone say something to you?" you debated on actually mentioning hugo's comments but at the last minute you changed your mind, "no you just startled me, i wasn't paying attention that's all." his shoulders relaxed and the features on his face softened, "ah i'm sorry my love, i didn't mean to scare you." he kissed your temple and walked off elsewhere in your shared apartment. [what are you looking at, my heart?]

not a minute later you felt your phone buzz and you received a DM on twitter. you checked and noticed that it was hugo responding to the message you sent him earlier. the minute you opened it your heart sank to your feet as you read his very obviously flirtatious reply. instead of just ignoring it you decided to respond, telling yourself that maybe if you didn't match his energy and kept it brief maybe he'd read the room:

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

you felt your phone DMs on twitter go off once more and you didn't even have to check them to know who it was. at this point you decided to just post a little more obviously on instagram that you were happily in a relationship, in your mind that's what this dumbass guy might need to see...right?:

isthatyn

liked by hugomicallef, charles_leclerc, and 16,203 others

isthatyn avec toi, je sui moi [with you i am me]

view all 3,771 comments

lilymhe the prettiest! 😍💗

⤷ isthatyn no that's definitely you 🫶

charles_leclerc Mon cœur t'appartient [my heart belongs to you]

username4 did charles play her a song-

⤷ username5 girl pls that man has probably composed an entire symphony for that woman 😭😭😭

hugomicallef a work of art photographing a work of art 😍💕

⤷ charles_leclerc 🤨

⤷ username6 here this man go again with these weird ass comments 😒

sabrinacarpenter it was so nice running into you <3

⤷ isthatyn you too! i can't wait for the album to drop soon!!!

francisca.cgomes i'm about to make pierre learn to play piano now :)

⤷ isthatyn omg girl do it

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

knots formed in your stomach as you noticed that charles did respond to the comment left by his friend. you knew that he was sending you pictures that you posed and just responding to them with whatever weird ass comments he thought of. you'd seen the messages and read them, gut wrenching disgust filing your stomach. at this point you knew that telling charles was no longer an option, it simply had to be done. however the idea of showing your boyfriend what his friend was saying to you brought a worry that you never thought you'd feel. the idea that rather than being mad at his best friend, he'd blame you instead for the unwanted attention became a thought on the forefront of your mind. you'd seen similar things happen in friends' relationships and even in some of your past ones as well. you knew you had to tell him, you just didn't want to knowing that maybe you'd lose him in the process.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

charles had seen the way hugo had been liking his close friends instagram stories but only the ones with you in it. he noticed the way hugo was amongst the first to like and comment under your posts as well. the first comment he noticed to be...off putting was calling you a work of art, that's not something you say about a friend let alone a friend's girlfriend. he'd kept his mouth shut not wanting to upset you into thinking you did something wrong by posting pictures of yourself, so he left it alone. in his mind, hugo was a good friend who had always respected him in his past relationships so why would that suddenly change? it shouldn't, at least that's what he told himself. but on the off chance that maybe hugo was 'confused', he simply posted something that got the message across:

charles_leclerc

liked by isthatyn, hugomicallef, and 1,773,906 others

charles_leclerc mes deux cœurs  💕

isthatyn ur so fine i neED YOU RN 🤤

⤷ charles_leclerc baby pls-

⤷ isthatyn that's what i would be saying if you were here with me rn 😤

username7 what ever happened to hello, how are you?

⤷ isthatyn CAN YOU BLAME ME LOOK AT HIM

oscarpiastri i miss the person i was before reading all that ☹️

⤷ isthatyn don't disrespect your mother

hugomicallef a shame we can't see her gorgeous face 😔

⤷ charles_leclerc you can't but i can 😉

username9 LMFAO GET EM SHARL

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

you sat across from charles on the bed in your shared bedroom and noticed the way his brow furrowed as he looked at his phone. a feeling of dread settled in your stomach as soon as he asked, "baby have you seen your comments under our instagram posts?" you closed the book you were reading and pretended to not know what he was mentioning, so you changed the subject before he could focus on the person you didn't want to think about. with that specific gaze saved for the most intimate of moments you pulled his phone from his hand, "the comments you did nothing about when i left them?" slowly you crawled over to him and settled right on his lap so you were straddling his hips.

almost as if it was an instinct, charles' hands found their place on each side of your body, his thumbs gently rubbing circles at your hipbone. your fingers tangled into his hair as you pulled his head back slightly to bring his lips to yours once you leaned down. the taste of your vanilla mint chapstick filled his mouth as his tongue lightly brushed against your plump bottom lip. he was lost in all that you were for a moment before he remembered what he was going to say. abruptly he pulled away, "y/n-" you cut him off, hoping that he would fall under your spell, "don't deny me, not right now." his blue eyes locked with yours, those long thick eyelashes that framed your glittering eyes pulled him in once more and all it took was a soft whispered, "please charlie..." he pulled your shirt off and tossed it aside before flipping you over so you were now under him. charles began kissing your neck gently right at that spot you loved so much. your eyes began to fall shut as you finally let the worries you held on to leave your mind, opening up your thoughts to be taken over by the man above you.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

isthatyn

liked by hugomicallef, tiffanyandco, and 992, 711 others

isthatyn never want this break to end 💐🧡

tyla everything about you 🩷

⤷ isthatyn TYLA- PLS WAIT I LOVE YOU PLEASE LOVE OF MY LIFE

⤷ tyla ilysm pretty girl, we have to get together sometime

⤷ charles_leclerc excuse me 😐

⤷ isthatyn charles_leclerc STOP EMBARASSING ME IN FRONT OF TYLA ✋🏾

altonmason u r so hawt

⤷ isthatyn LMAOOOO TY ILY ILY ILY 💖💗

username10 y/n pls may i have your hand in marriage 💍

⤷ isthatyn no you may not - charles

⤷ username10 sharing is caring charles 😔

⤷ isthatyn i don't care. therefore, she's mine - charles

hugomicallef can charles fight?

⤷ charles_leclerc yes he can. would you like to come find out? 🙃

username11 ion mean to be rude or nun but do he realize he's talking to his PROFESSIONAL BOXER of a friend about fighting...he'd lose...badly

⤷ username12 how do u kno? he could be able to throw down

⤷ username13 baby the dimples and blue eyes aren't gonna help him in a fight. he'd be cooked in under 30 seconds 💀💀💀

hugomicallef like an angel of the sea, a siren calling my name 😘

⤷ isthatyn ambulance sirens are going to be calling your name if you don't get out of my fucking comments you sick fuck 🖕

⤷ carlossainz55 this is really not cool man...

⤷ landonorris she's not calling your fucking name dipshit

⤷ oscarpiastri get out of here

⤷ alex_albon BOOOOO 👎TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO!!!! 🍅🍅🍅

⤷ lewishamilton have some respect dude

⤷ pierregasly she doesn't fucking like you

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

there was no point in trying to avoid having the conversation that you should have had days ago. hugo was very obviously flirting with you and judging by the fact that multiple drivers hopped into your comment section coming to your defense, it was obvious charles had told them something. the minute charles came home from a workout you made a beeline to the bathroom to hide. as much as you knew there was no point, that worry of him blaming you and leaving controlled all rational thoughts.

you remained silent in the bathroom until charles slowly pushed the door open and didn't say anything to you. he was very obviously infuriated by the entire ordeal but he didn't even know the entire thing. silently you watched cautiously and he simply walked up to you and placed a hand on your cheek before kissing you so gently against your lips. he pulled away and asked quietly, "i'll shower and then we talk, yes?" you nodded silently and shuffled away into your bedroom where the ten minutes he took felt like ten hours.

when charles was finally out of the shower you were staring out the bedroom window watching people outside. you jumped when you felt a pair of warm hands around your waist turn you to face the other direction. charles held your gaze as he asked, "why didn't you tell me that he was messaging you?" tears immediately filled your eyes and panic coursed through your veins as heat warmed your cheeks, "i didn't- i'm sorry i-i didn't want to ruin your friendship i knew that you two were childhood friends and i thought if i ignored him then he'd leave me alone but he didn't and i should have told you immediately but i was scared you'd blame me and i didn't want to make you mad and-"

your boyfriend held onto your hands and led you to the edge of your bed, "darling please take a deep breath. i'm not mad at you, i'm mad at him for disrespecting you and our relationship. i also should have talked to him sooner, but i didn't want you to feel guilty for anything that happened. you shouldn't have had to deal with this, and i'm sorry for not being there to defend you when it started. i'm no longer friends with hugo, the entire friend group is no longer friends with him....also i will admit you did make me laugh with the last messages you sent him to tell him off." when you looked up with a worried gaze he clarified, "he sent me all of them to try to make you look like the one at fault."

you let out a sigh and charles pulled you closer to his chest where he could still feel your heart racing a mile a minute. he kissed the top of your head and said, "i'm sorry my darling." you melted into his embrace and you sniffled softly, "thank you...but i still feel like....guilty?" charles squeezed you tighter, "the only thing you are guilty of is being my only love, my pretty girl." you finally let out a small laugh, the first he's heard from you in a week. there was a warm gentleness to his voice as he told you, "i never want you to feel like you can't tell me something, especially when it's something like this okay?" you hummed in understanding and he kissed you once more, giving one last squeeze before letting you go.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

the end.

[nnight-dances]

CASUAL

PAIRING: karina x fem!reader

GENRE: fluff, angst, smut (explicit, but not too much?)

TROPES: fwb to lovers except you're roommates and best friends, unrequited love but not really.

LISTEN TO: casual by chappell roan

NOTE: i may be having a bit of a military wife moment rn but i'm still a sapphic at heart yearning for something more... my first gay fic i've posted on this account yay! cannot reveal if ive been in a similar situation but you could say this is based on real life! whose life, i will not say. hope u enjoy and stay safe everyone <3

knee-deep in the [twin bed] and you're eating me out

you want to say you're in control when it happens, but you'd be a big fat liar if you did. truth be told, karina had you wrapped around her finger since she moved in. (in more ways than one, if you catch my drift.) 

you met her late freshman year in college when you shared a gender studies course with her – which alone would've been enough of a clue to which ways she swings, if not for the black leather jacket and unnecessary amount of rings she wore to class. she'd sat next to you the first week in and approached you after class. "this class is a bore," she said as a matter-of-factly, "wanna get coffee with me?" 

you'd agreed because you were mesmerized (even though secretly, that was the favorite course you took that year) and followed her into a cafe, letting her sweet talk you into all kinds of things from there. she had a big friend group which welcomed you generously when they found out you were friends with karina and eventually, that became your everyday life. 

you worked on papers sincerely while karina watched you with an unreadable glint (maybe it was unreadable, maybe you didn't want to read too much into it), swirling her untouched coffee. eventually one day, she asked you, "wanna be roommates next year?" 

that was karina. easy-going and confident. she didn't hesitate to ask you to do things with her, even if they were often bending the boundaries of what friends could do. exhibit a: she'd asked you to make out with her at a party just so she could shake off a creep. in general, she was touchier than the normal person, finding a way to cup your stomach under your shirt when you weren't looking. you get the idea. 

that's how when she moves into the same room as you sophomore year, you lost all sense of self and reality. you have to thank your mom who convinced you to arrive on campus a day earlier than most, so you could settle in without the bothersome crowd. 

you're in the middle of fixing a poster of your favorite band, the strokes, in the wall when she lets herself in with a, "you're already here, jagiya!" you almost lose your footing on your chair in order to face her, heart already a fluttering mess thanks to her shameless flirting. 

"karina!" you call out, thrilled to see your friends, complications aside. you step down carefully before throwing yourself in her waiting arms. "you're here earlier than i thought."

she pulls away with a devilish grin, "missed you too much so i came early." she looks around the room, "i see you've already made this place home."

you smile, unsettled by the way she's still holding you in her arms, your bodies attached at the hip as she takes in her home for the next year. she smells like she always does: like grapefruit and spicy cedar. you feel relaxed in her embrace, taking in her appearance. she's wearing a cropped tank with a large flannel that slips off her shoulder thanks to the heavy tote she carries.

with a sigh, you take the tote off her. "your hair grew longer," you comment as you place the bag on her desk. karina does a little spin for you, giving a full view of the wavy locks that came all the way to her navel. it only made her that much more charming (you couldn't resist wanting to know what it would feel like to run your fingers through them). 

you watch as karina lugs all her stuff into the room, refusing your help with a strict look. "can't have you spraining something already, jagiya," she quips and that's all it takes for you to sit back obediently. she takes off her flannel, letting you take in her arms. was it just you or did her biceps get bigger? (it wasn't just you. karina spent her summer the gym rat way.)

"you barely have any stuff…" you murmur mindlessly when she's nearly done in half an hour. for reference, it took you three whole hours for two days to set your stuff in place.

"you just have a lot of stuff," karina laughs, closing her closet with a satisfied clap. "thoughts on ordering in for din'?"

you raise a brow, "shouldn't we at least go see if everyone's back?"

she shrugs, "we can just go after we eat." she approaches your bed, resting her forearms next to you. "come on, i don't feel like eating that prison food just yet."

despite karina's exaggeration (your dining hall makes perfectly edible food), you let karina order for you. who are you kidding? the thought of sharing a meal with your newly established roommate in your new room on your first day together… it was sweet, you had to admit. so you give in and tell karina exactly what toppings you want on your bowl. 

but where you had expected to bond in all kinds of cozy ways with karina, the night quickly an unexpected turn. you're not sure how it happens but you end up caged under karina's body on your bed. her hot breath is hitting your face, "you got even prettier over the summer, huh?"

her words make it harder to think. to think about how this your best friend slash roommate slash the person you would do anything for. fuck, it's too late and you're too helpless when it comes to her. karina's already sliding her hand down your stomach, eliciting a mewl of her name from your throat. 

she looks pleased, chesire grin lighting up her face when she reaches your panties. "mhm, karina–" you claw at her shoulder when a cold finger meets your slick folds. she kisses your cheek and then your mouth, so strong that you can't do anything but hold her closer to your chest till she's ripping a scream from you. 

"karina, what are we doing?" you cry out, still coming down from your orgasm. what the fuck, this not a situation to be with your roommate.

"what?" she whispers, lips attached to your neck without a care in the world, "i'm just doing what i've been wanting to all summer."

"okay, that's enough," you push her off until you're both sat. you're breathless so it doesn't help the gravity of the glare you hold karina captive under. she sits back on her palms, eyes hooded. 

"we're friends," you start and sensing the protest rising in her, you hold up a hand, "and roommates. you know what they say about that, don't you?"

"don't shit where you eat," she deadpans, "but i don't care. i'm not shitting anywhere. i like you, you like me. that's why we're friends. if we want to fuck around a little, what's the big deal?"

you contain a scoff at how unbothered she is. at the same time, her words stab you in the heart, the subtle friendzoning nature of them not going unnoticed (that's why we're friends? what if you wanted to be more?)

"listen, jagiya," karina shifts dangerously closer, a thumb wiping away the sweat on your lip. "it's chill. we don't have to if you don't want to. but i'll tell you right now; i want to do things with you."

"things?" you breathe even though you know you shouldn't fall into her trap.

"yeah," she caresses your cheek, licking her lips, "want to kiss you. make you come. that sort of thing."

you fall against her weakly, feeling the soft strands of her hair envelope you like a dream. with your eyes closed, all you can feel is warmth of her body and none of the cold of her words (kiss, fuck, chill. no love.) 

"only if you let me eat you out, too," you finally murmur against her skin. feel her shake with laughter.

"thought you'd never ask."

you wake up in karina's arms. she'd dozed off in your bed as if hers wasn't two hops away. the thoughts makes you flushed (despite everything) and you turn around to face her. she's still asleep, peaceful as ever. you trace the mole below her lips, envious of how little she was attached to you.

not to drown yourself in self-pity, you had always been too attached to karina for your own good. a week into being friends with her, you would jump at a text from her, dropping everything to meet at her the cafe she had wanted to try or to help her get ready for a party. 

but it wasn't without reason. she was sweet to you, genuinely. karina sensed your moods smoothly, knowing when your silence was more than comfortable and when your drunk crying meant you were actually upset over something. she listened to you, no matter how little you claimed the problem to be, her reliable shoulder always yours when you were in trouble.

so you couldn't blame the butterflies in your stomach at waking up with her. right?

"we never made it to meeting our friends," karina mumbles through a yawn later. you're both in the middle of getting ready for the day, thankfully still a grace day before classes start. 

"you clearly had other plans," you purse your lips in the mirror, working on fixing a bump in your hair. stupid karina and her arm under your head all night. 

she comes up behind you with a playful smile, taking the brush from your hands to rake it through your hair herself. "you say that like you didn't have fun," she says. she brings your hair into a bun, taking a hairtie off her wrist to secure it in place. patting your head with eyes on you in the mirror, "there. you look cute."

you heave a deep sigh at the motions that stir up at her actions, sliding away to pretend to busy yourself with your bag. "we should go meet them today," you say, "or they might declare us dead."

"definitely," karina laughs.

meeting your friends helps you a little. maybe it's because you're seeing them after so long or maybe it's just the fact that you have normal friend feelings for them. but it's nice, you can lose yourself in a nonsense conversation with seungkwan about your recently acquired obsessions with various mobile games.

he's in the middle of offering to show you his brand-new coffee machine when karina shouts, "guys! gather up! minjeongie is driving us to get ice-cream! on her!"

you spot the short blonde attacks on karina at the presumably false declaration. your rommate dodges well, bent in a fit of laughter at minjeong's tantrum. "okay, i lied! everyone buy your own ice-cream."

as it turns out, minjeong's car is definitely not big enough to fit all 8 of your friends. "looks like we're fighting it out the fairest way," seowon declares, readying her fist for rock paper scissors. 

"since only five of us can go," karina starts, somehow finding her way next to your side. you shiver when her hands clasps yours. "minjeong, y/n, and i are definitely going."

you watch in shock as everyone wreaks havoc at her words. "now why would we allow that–"

"see, it's technically just two seats taken," she explains calmly, "y/n's sitting on my lap anyway." you gape at her audacity as she holds up your intertwined hands, like a wedding announcement.

you try to weasel out of her grip, mumbling, "that's fine. i don't really want to go–"

"what? of course you do," karina's hand tightens and you curse her strength, "you love ice-cream, jagiya. come on. let's go."

your friends seem dubious of the interaction but with a few statements along the lines of they're in their honeymoon phase as roomies, they return to the rock-paper-scissors battle at hand, now the stakes reduced to four seats now. 

"calling shotgun by the way!" karina calls as she pulls you after. you don't know what to say honestly, overwhelmed by her hand in yours. you had expected her to pretend things were the same as always but clearly not: you had never gone as far to sit in her lap with your friends around (alone was a different story. but you swear you'd only ended up in her lap because she'd wanted to hug you through your breakup with your ex.) 

"karina, you're crazy," you tell her, finally shaking your hand free. you cross your arms and karina simply takes a chug of water from the brita in geum's minifridge. 

"why? because i volunteered my lap so we'd get to go?"

before you can really give her a piece of your mind, minjeong interrupts. "looks like they figured out the winners. we're leaving in the next five minutes or the offer's off the table."

– 

two weeks and your mom invites me to [lunch]

"y/n, it's so nice to see you again," karina's mom is saying, sliding a menu toward you. thanksgiving week was around which meant parents were abundant on campus these days. it also meant your own mom couldn't make it because she was swamped with work, no thanks to her job as an on-field reporter. 

"of course, you've lost so much weight since we last met, eommeoni," you smile.

this is fine for the most part of it. you genuinely enjoy karina's mom's company. she's kind and sincere, always bringing a gift for you along with karina and treating you like her own. but this time around it's different because it's the first time you've been sleeping with her daughter.

in fact, just that morning, karina had kept you in bed longer than usual, complaining because you had gone to bed earlier than usual. it had been part of your plan to keep your conscience clean for when you met her mother, to make sure you didn't lose her respect. but being the nefarious idiot she was, karina had crawled up your torso, eyes going sweet at you, "please, just once?"

so now you had a dirtier conscience than usual, having been panting in karina's lap just hours before this lunch. 

but even if you tried to maintain composure in front of her mom, karina made it impossible. she slid close to your shoulder, hand splayed across your bare thigh (curse you and your decision to wear your sundress out today). it's honestly harmless and even excusable as a friendly gesture, but ever so occassionally, her hand climbs up, reaching closer and closer to a position that was far from appropriate.

"so tell me, do you two have any classes together this semester?" karina's mom asks you between mouthfuls of rice. you take the chance to peel karina's hand off but it ends up at your knee like a magnet. 

"not really," karina answers easily as if unaware of the power struggle going under the table. probably because she was winning by a mile. 

"i told karina she should take an elective with me but she refused," you complain, deciding if this was the way you could hit back then so be it.

"i think you forgot to mention it was an economics elective," she corrects you, hand basically clawing at your inner thight by now. you shift uneasily and karina's mom laughs.

"you know jimin," she shakes her head, "she doesn't take the serious courses. only painting all day long."

"eomma," karina groans, "how many times do i have to tell you? it's not just painting. i'm an arts major. that's like the second hardest major at this school."

"really? what's the hardest major?" (the only right question for a mother to ask.)

the rest of the lunch goes by quickly, fortunately for you. you're the first out the door, eager to put some distance between you and karina. you pretend to fan yourself out of the hot mess she's made of you.

"i have to say," karina's mom says as she gets ready to leave, "you two seem to have gotten closer since you started rooming together."

"really?" karina wonders as if clueless to the arm around your shoulder, where it had been the whole walk back to campus from the restaurant. (insufferable, you whisper to her. cute, she accuses you.)

"thanks for sticking next to her, y/n. who knows where my little girl would be without you?"

you brush of karina's mom's words of flattery, not voicing the thoughts that arise. where would i be without your daughter? 

– 

i know what you tell [our] friends

imagining a life without karina becomes terribly real when it becomes clear to you that karina truly has no intentions of treating as anything more than a friend who she sleeps with and not just as roommates. 

it's a cold slap of reality that you finally feel one day when you're eating with minjeong and seungkwan. karina's next to you, like she so often is, hand on your elbow for no good reason.

"so everyone's been wondering…" minjeong starts to say and seungkwan shoots her a glare, realizing where this was going.

"...are you two a thing?" she points to the point of contact between you and karina.

"what?" you squeak, pulling away at the call-out. but your mind goes blank, all the excuses you had practiced in your head deserting you. you had expected someone to catch on sooner or later, but somehow right now all you can think of is how you already miss karina's touch. i'm in love with her, it occurs to you to say. (wait, you love her? you wonder distantly as if the answer hadn't been crystal clear the minute she crossed lines with you.)

karina shrugs, "we're fucking. but it's casual. no attachment or anything." she adds with an arm around you, "just girls being girls, right?"

you muster out a laugh to agree with her, ignoring the concerned look seungkwan pins you with. minjeong seems convinced though, "no way! you're sleeping together? i guess it must be convenient… you live together."

"yeah, you could say that," this time it's you responding, swallowing the tremble in your throat. you'd rather die than let karina get a whiff of your true feelings. you stand up.

 "it's easy." it's the hardest. "not a big deal." you thought about it every waking second. "i have class now though. see you guys later." 

you did not have class. you ran to the nearest bathroom stall to lock yourself in and let out the sobs that had been threatening your system for the past three weeks. you make sure nobody can hear you and then wipe your tears with the spare tissues you carry in your bag. 

you leave, hoping nobody notices your red eyes. 

that night, you go to your room later than usual, counting on karina to be asleep. you should know better though because she's up, in nothing but her night shorts, sitting on your bed. 

it almost frustrates you for a moment, the sight of her curled up so comfortably on your bed like you were lovers. but you weren't. you weren't even close. but she perks up like maybe you are, calling out your name sweetly, "you're so late today. is everything okay?"

"yeah," you say, not making eye-contact for too long as you rest your bag on your desk. you contemplate leaving the room just so you didn't have to feel this hot volcano erupt in your chest. but instead, you undress, aware of karina's unwavering gaze. you make sure to slip off your pants and put on a baggy shirt. no shorts, like karina liked.

"we're a fully dressed person put together," she liked to joke when she'd bring your bodies close. you laughed along but all you wanted was to actually be one person with her. maybe that would justify why you were so attracted to her. 

"come on,," she coos when you jump into bed. "i know something's wrong. your eyes are red. your shoulders heavy."

"can't lie for one second with you, can i?" you sigh into her skin when she hugs you. 

"sorry, jagiya. maybe if i was a man, you could get away with it."

maybe that would make it easier. if one of you was a man. at least then someone would bat an eye at the concept of a no strings attached situationship between best friends. you were practically begging for someone to object to its apparently platonic nature. (you were begging yourself.)

"i didn't even shower," you complain when she explores your bare stomach with her fingers.

"it's fine. we'll just take one in the morning."

she holds you to the promise, waking you up half an hour earlier than usual just so she could drag you into the shower. two girls showering together, a sight nobody would see because it was dead quiet until an hour from now. 

– 

i try to be the chill girl 

you knew it was too good to be true, your friends-with-benefit situation with karina. but now that your feelings are actually catching up to you, you can barely hold in the tears that overwhelm you when you look at her.

then, when you finally decide to suck it up and show up to dinner with your friends, it all goes south. thanks to some dumb group project karina's doing, a guy named taeyong was at your table. you knew him by name from college gossip. he was fit to be the protagonist of a rom-com, nice guy with the looks to go with it and he was friendly, fitting right in with the group of friends. 

bitterly, you reflect on how long it had taken you, in comparison, to warm up to everyone. a month, maybe? plus, he looked perfect next to karina, their unusually good looks matching each other's quality.

you're not the only thinking that because geum pipes up, "you two look good together! when's the wedding?"

seowon hits his arm though most of the people on the table join in laughter. (you don't.) "come on, you can't force it, geum," she says, "they're clearly still getting to know each other."

"so it'll be official in say, a week from now?" minjeong teases, earning herself a blush from taeyong. karina is unruffled but she does smile a little at the teasing comments, side-eyeing the boy next to her.

right. they did look good together. 

much to your discomfort, karina and taeyong only seem to become closer, with the latter frequenting your table at every meal. he assimilated easily with the group, already circulating inside jokes that you were conveniently not a part of.

speaking of which you were circulating a word tornado yourself: casual, no attachement, chill, convenient, easy… not a big deal. as taeyong became a regular with your friends, you became increasingly absent, coming up with excuses to take your meals at much earlier or later hours.

you're officially spiraling, doing your best to avoid karina. but avoiding karina meant avoiding your friends. it was a harsh truth but you came to realize you were only friends with them because of her and if you decided to break things off with her, you'd also end up a loner.

it was a cold, miserable place to be in, your mind. you left your room early and came back late to karina asleep. she'd tried to stay up for your sake a few times but you'd made your arrivals later and later, until she gave up and went to sleep. 

you know you can only avoid her for so long before she caught you and grilled you but for now, you just had to come up with a way to keep yourself occupied. that afternoon, you get a text from her, asking to talk to you after dinner. you leave her on read for hours before texting back a quick "sure," afraid to go too far. you may be mad at karina for treating you in ways that left you confused, but you didn't actualy want to hurt her. 

but come the time when finally face her and you realize it may be too late. 

"so… why exactly have you been avoiding me?" more than anything, karina's voice is weary. she appears worried when you first take a seat across from her but when you don't look like you're in actual physical pain, her expression morphs into one of frustration.

"i'm not," you sigh, "i'm just busy."

"busy during every single meal? busy enough to leave before i wake up?"

"i'm taking more classes than usual," you say and though it's the truth, it's far from being the reason why you were acting this way. karina seems to know this. 

"i'm taking an art class that has me staying back in the studio till 11," she tells you. only then, you notice the black charcoal marking her cheek. "but i still come home."

"sorry," you mumble, averting your gaze. "i'm not– you didn't do anything. i'm just… thinking through some things. i'll come back to the room earlier today."

"great, so now we're not close enough for you to share your thoughts with me?" this time karina actually sounds hurt. it was the indication of your friendship finally falling apart that has her sitting forward, eyes blinking in panic. "y/n, what the fuck?"

what the fuck, indeed. you try your best to reassure karina but it seems like she's done talking to you after that point so you see yourself out. a small part of you manages to wonder whose jacket was laid across the chair next to her. taeyong?

you find the answer the hard way when you come back to your room at a reasonable hour for the first time in a week. only to run into taeyong himself.

he seems like he's in a hurry when you step in, rushing to put his jacket on (yes, the jacket that you saw next to karina earlier today) and avoiding your gaze. you don't even pretend to seem pleased encounter him there.

you fix your glare on karina, kneeling on her bed. she lets out a sigh when she sees you. "you're finally back."

you watch as taeyong leaves without a goodbye and you scoff, "i feel like i interrupted something. maybe i shouldn't have come back." you feel the blood rush to your head, all your convictions to lay out your unreciprocated feelings out to karina because she deserved an explanation.

right now, you just feel empty. and mad. so as soon as you rest your bag, you get to changing. but not into your night clothes.

"are you going somewhere?"

"...maybe."

"and what happened to our talk earlier?"

with a huff of disbelief, you throw your sweaty shirt on your bedroom floor. "well, i decided it meant nothing when i saw that guy leaving our room."

"taeyong?" karina looks baffled and you want to shake some sense into her so bad.

"yeah, i don't know, karina, the thought of you already replacing me with some dude–" you cut yourself off when your voice breaks. "it's not a great feeling. so i'm just gonna leave."

"wait, what?" karina jumps out of her bed. "is this what you've been mad about all week?"

you pause your angry movements about your space when she comes close to you, touching your arm, first contact in days. you breathe unevenly, "karina, i just need some time–"

"are you crying, jagiya?"

you want to say it's stupid nickname that gets to your nerves finally breaking your walls down. but really, it's the warmth in her tone, the sound of her breath hitting your ear so close. you'd missed karina. that's why you end up sobbing, arms finding her neck to support you. 

"karina, i'm–" she rubs your back calmly through your sobs. "i'm sorry."

"what's wrong, baby? why are you crying? please, talk to me."

"i think… i'm in love with you."

your confession is quiet, just like your love for karina has always been. actually no, that's what you want to think but no, your love is loud: you look for her in every room you enter, hands already welcoming hers when she runs over to you. you're the first to laugh at her jokes, no matter how nonsensical or how many times she's told them to you. you may be a flustered mess when things got intimate, but you always made sure karina felt good, too – going far beyond your comfort zone to please her.

karina pulls away with a soft gasp. "that's not what i expected you to say."

"i know," you sniffle. "but it's been killing me. i know you wanted to keep things casual. and i know you and taeyong are–"

"okay, just so we're clear for once and for all– there is nothing between me and taeyong."

you freeze in shock, having been rock-solid in your assumption of their relationship. "what?"

"come on, i barely know the guy. but apparently, everyone's teasing got to his head," karina sighs, "he came here to confess to me earlier today. and i rejected him."

now his urgency to leave the room makes even more sense, you realize slowly. but you realize another thing: karina had looked cold when you'd entered, ending things with him clearly. yet, here you were, standing with her arms around your waist as if you hadn't declared your love for her.

"...and?" you prod her, biting your lip hopefully.

"and?" karina echoes you, eyes locking in yours to understand your hint. "oh, you wanna know how i feel?"

you nod coyly, a stray tear falling down your cheek as if on cue. 

"well, let's start with a recap of this week. you ignored me so i felt like shit for most of it. and then you ignored me some more and i had to go to sleep lonely and sad. then, you stopped showing for meals so i didn't even want to eat anymore. what happened next? oh right, this evening. i had to practically beg you to talk to me–"

"okay, i get the idea!" you stop her with a groan, "i'm sorry, but i clearly had good reason to act the way i did."

"did you?" karina is suddenly holding your face, smiling turning bittersweet. "you idiot."

"huh?"

"i wanted to keep things casual because i wasn't sure how you felt about me. i wanted you to keep your options open till someone who you actually liked came along–"

"but–"

"this was long before i knew you were into me like that. you're really hard to read, you know? but yeah, i kept things casual because i'm selfish. i wanted to sleep with the girl i love without losing her friendship. i was obviously an–"

"idiot!" you hit karina's arm repeatedly at her revelation, tears filling up your vision yet again. "you love me?! why would you do that to me, then? are you–"

karina catches your fists in her with a heave, "i know, i know. i'm sorry, jagiya. but–" she brings your first to her chest, exposed by the deep neck of the tank she wore to sleep. "i'm serious about you, okay? i didn't want to gamble someone i cherished over some fucking around."

your body feels weak now that the truth is out in the open. you lean into karina. "you're so mean," you say into her neck, "i thought… you were chill."

she laughs at your complaint, "sorry. i'm dumb. dumb in love?"

you let karina coax you into her bed that night, kissing your body free of the tension you'd carried all that week like she was nursing you back to health. you can't help the tears that escape at her sweet touch, not new for her by any means – but different for you nevertheless, now that you knew how she felt. later that night, when you're falling asleep in her arms, in her twin bed this time, you feel her snuggle closer. warm nose against your cold cheek, she kisses you goodnight. (and a soft love you that you can barely distinguish from a dream.)

[meirimerens]

(ran this reblog through a discussion with some people who have more experience in storytelling/gamedev than i do and some who are central asian indigenous [which i'm not] to get their point of view on the Kin so it's probably going to be long because I'm condensing multiple discussion pieces in one, it's gonna be one of them Long Posts)

while the Kin is obviously heavily inspired by the Buryat, including in its language which does contain a lot of Buryat words, but also a lot of not-Buryat words (Yargachin, pointedly incredibly important in the game, is Mongolian directly. as stated above, Yas & Merdrel are also Mongolian), I do not know if I agree that finding the other inspirations is "forgetting that and trying to match them to other cultures". The Kin is not "its own somewhat distinct culture", it is its own, imagined, invented, imaginary culture, which takes inspiration from (/plainly steals) from existing ones. It is an imaginary people with heavy foundational roots, in the same way the town is imaginary with heavy foundational roots, and the disease itself is imaginary with heavy foundational roots. It is obvious the game takes inspiration from the Buryats (and from others), but it also, in the name of storytelling, creates a religion which is almost an inverse of Buryat Tengrism (Tengrism, with Kyuk-Tengri, father-sky-god as head of the pantheon, being, from what i'm understanding, pantheistic [the Main God is in everything, and everything is a manifestation of him], polytheistic [while Tengri is the main one, there is a heap of other gods, goddesses and spirits under/around him, with great importance placed on those spirits [44/55 associated with different things]], and of course with a main head of a father-sky-god; whereas the Kin's religion, with Boddho, a mother-earth-goddess* [whose name seems to relate more to Mongolian], is pantheistic [mother Boddho is in everything and everything is a manifestation of her], monotheistic [she is the only one, the all-mother, all-creatoress] OR duotheistic [her + Bos Turokh are the only deities], and lacking in spirits entirely, which are so important to Tengrism), has an important spiritual caste of women (the Herb Brides) who have no resonance within Altaic/Mongolic/Turkic cultures because no culture has Naked, Dancing Young Pretty Women Whose Sole Job is Dancing For Harvest (some types of goddess-priestesses / witches / oracles have always existed, but the Herb Brides are a distinct, obvious invention, which deserves scruteny. you could argue that they correlates with shamans, but in the text it appears evident that is more the place of Burakh [father, then son], and the Herb Brides directly go against a widespread shamanic practice which is the wearing of many layers made of animal skins, bones, antlers, horns in order to disguise oneself, to wander between worlds, to trick the tricksters, etc), and also like. Worms. "crude", "unfinished". half-man half-dirt.

*the cult of an earth-mother/mother-earth exists in Buryat Tengrism with Umai, because earth-goddesses exist/have existed in most pantheons, especially before the advent of pastoralism; however, she is daughter of Tengri, whereas Boddho is all-mother. Mongolian Tengrism has her be named Etugen, and while she is said to have all control over the natural forces and all living forces be subordinate to her, Kyuk-Tengri is still "above" her, she is the "second highest" after him. the existence of a earth-goddess within two religions does not make them more similar than any others (the Greeks had an earth-goddess, Demeter, with theories that she was there before the advent of the hellenic pantheon as an all-mother... etc etc so on). there is also sources stating that at some point, Tengrist or proto-Tengrist peoples might have worshiped him/a sky-father exclusively or so majoritaly that the other deities were aside, but it could also come from biased or outside sources.

we are also unsure about your claim that the Kin represents the Buryats in "interesting and careful" ways. We do not know of your position wrt indigenity (and it's none of my business specifically, might be the business of those in the group who are indigenous but i'll let them decide if they want to contact you directly) and if you were doing research on the Buryats out of a reconnecting journey or intellectual curiosity/desire and personally feel that the Buryats are respectfully represented in P2 as one, but I have read many other Central Asian Indigenous people in this fandom write, since the release of P2 (and possibly before that about P1, as well as in the discussion we were Just Having about this ^) about how the Kin does not represent them faithfully, or even sometimes just kindly, and the treatment of it and its members being insulting in multiple ways (including the fact that their beliefs and language are a hodgepodge of languages and beliefs that feels to "steal" from multiple sources [=appropriative instead of appreciative] which itself is another discussion, do not represent any real-life religion while obviously being inspired by some, and on other levels just the fact that the Kin's clothes do not resemble the vibrant, intricate, and historically-significant clothing of the Buryats, or any of the peoples they are inspired by. That and the fact that they literally have non-human/in text sub-human members [the Worms]). Most of the discussions around the Kin that i've seen, from Central Asian Indigenous people, recognizes and celebrates the inspirations (plural) while still interrogating how callous, cruel, sexualizing and misogynistic the narrative and metanarrative treatment of the Kin is, a far cry from a "careful and interesting way" of representing the Buryats (or any of the other inspirations).

last thing: I am personally curious as to where/how you've found the "half Chinese" data piece, because I have not been able to find anything of the sort online (doesn't help that my grasp on Russian is nonexistent). I have seen it going around, without a source, and I also have seen (in the tags of this) the data of "1/16 Manchu or Han", which is a far cry from "half-" anything, and not related to Shenekhen Buryats. [deleted the rest to add:]

Dybowski, from his own mouth, is not half-chinese, and the tagger who mentioned it being 1/16 was right: on page 57 of [this interview], he mentions his grandfather's father (so great-grandfather) having married a Chinese woman (when he was 60 and her 20, but that's a whoooole other story), making him 1/16 chinese (possibly Han or Manchu as the tagger mentioned). I do not doubt this informs his view of the world and how he is treated, even if he mentions being "the only one in [his] family who really looks Russian", but it is a far-cry from "half-" anything. that does not change the general discussion i've read for years at this point around the Kin, which is that the inspirations are obvious and should be celebrated, but it is obviously imaginary/invented, and in the hazy lines of imagination lies a treatment of the Kin which is cruel, crude, sexist (more specifically misogynistic), often racist and feels more like appropriation for a morally gray ethnicity that pays lip-service to its inspiration but mistreats it nonetheless rather than full, hearty representation.

great discussion! 👍🫂 i'm genuinely glad we can exchange on this. but what is contained in your reblog is, from what i've seen and read, pretty far from the consensus on the Kin. we all can recognize (and we should appreciate and take good care in handling) the real-life inspirations while still seeing that, in the blurry lines of storytelling and "invention" for the sake of (technically) a ~fantasy~ ethnicity, lies like. a racist mistreatment with appropriative qualities. which i've seen people talk about for years at this point.

the pathologic Kin is largely fictionalized with a created language that takes from multiple sources to be its own, a cosmogony & spirituality that does not correlate to the faiths (mostly Tengrist & Buddhist) practiced by the peoples it takes inspirations from, has customs, mores and roles invented for the purposes of the game, and even just a style of dress that does not resemble any of these peoples', but it is fascinating looking into specifically to me the sigils and see where they come from... watch this:

P2 Layers glyphs take from the mongolian script:

while the in-game words for Blood, Bones and Nerves are mongolian directly, it is interesting to note that their glyphs do not have a phonetic affiliation to the words (ex. the "Yas" layer of Bones having for glyph the equivalent of the letter F, the "Medrel" layer of Nerves having a glyph the equivalent of the letter È,...)

the leatherworks on the Kayura models', with their uses of angles and extending lines, remind me of the Phags Pa Script (used for Tibetan, Mongolian, Chineses, Uyghur language, and others)

some of the sigils also look either in part or fully inspired by Phags Pa script letters...

some look closer to the mongolian or vagindra (buryat) script

looking at the Herb Brides & their concept art, we can see bodypainting that looks like vertical buryat or mongolian script (oh hi (crossed out: Mark) Phags Pa script):

shaped and reshaped...

[gyummigon]

☆ my days with you (they are always happy)

beomgyu x gn!reader

୨୧ genre: fluff/comfort ୨୧ word count: 4.4k ୨୧ summary: after having a crush on your best friend for months, you have a silly, very silly, confession of feelings. ୨୧ a/n: truth be told, this is a little silly, and cheesy, but I wanted needed to write something that felt easy and refreshing. it's a little longer than i originally thought it would be, but it was fun. hope you like it, have a nice day:))

You liked Beomgyu. You liked him because of the way his eyes sparkled when he hummed his favorite song while doing the dishes, when he collapsed on the bed after an endless list of complaints about how tired he was, or when he spoke with overflowing emotion about the things he liked. You liked him because you found in him a kind of gentleness that you didn't find in the rest of the world, that you didn't think you could get from a man. And the amazing thing is that he was a man, but when you were with him, it was as if you saw the world through the eyes of a child. Eyes that saw happiness and didn't twist it, but made it bigger, spread it out and expanded it until those eyes - brown and deep and enchantingly beautiful - were the last thing left.

Perhaps you were in love with one of your closest friends. Or maybe you were just in the right place.

This thought was even harder to resolve when you arrived at your parents' house that Sunday afternoon, having checked off every single item on your mother's shopping list. You had only been out shopping for an hour, but it was as if you were returning home for the first time after the days out of town you had left behind. You didn't even know when you'd left the bags of groceries at the front door, or when you'd turned back to the garden to see that beaming smile with the wrinkles in the cheeks, let alone when your voice, shaky and too anxious for your taste, uttered an embarrassed "hey".

Beomgyu, who until then had been laughing at a ridiculous joke he had shared with your father, turned to look at you with an enchanting calm that could only be found on a beach at sunset, when the moon was doing its thing and the tide was ebbing in deep, sentimental sighs. The boy seemed to see something you couldn't define on your face, for his smile shrank to a soft, almost shy line.

You didn't take your attention off your face as he approached, hands hidden behind his back, and stopped in front of you. Despite your father's loud voice, the mischievous laughter of your younger siblings, and your mother's scolding of the dog to keep it away from the meat ready for roasting, the only thing you found yourself paying attention to was the disturbingly fast beating of your heart.

"Hey," you repeated, no less awkwardly. "What is this, I travel for a few weeks and suddenly my family has already adopted you?"

Beomgyu kept his shy smile and leaned against one of the wooden boards of the porch for a moment. His checkered shirt billowed slightly in the soft summer breeze.

"I think it's your father who decided to adopt me. He says I'm the exact representation of his youth: charming, talented, and outrageously beautiful."

"I think he says that to every young person he meets."

"Are you saying I shouldn't believe him?"

You didn't know when you started smiling, but your cheeks were sure to hurt if you didn't relax the muscles in your face soon.

"No, I'm just saying my father talks too much."

"A sincere and open man, I like him."

"As sincere as a politician in an election debate."

Beomgyu laughed and looked out into the garden, where your father was still sitting in a folding chair with a scowl on his face, trying to light the wood-burning barbecue. In a measured, polite voice that you didn't know he could have and that almost made you want to mock him, Beomgyu offered to help; but when your father looked up and - in the most millennial, bland way possible - gave him a thumbs-up before shouting a friendly "I've got it under control, son," for some stupid, irrational, and probably childish reason, you blushed. You blushed badly.

What the hell, since when did your father call Beomgyu "son"? And since when did your family normally invite one of your friends to join them on Burger Sunday? Was that your mother putting another plate on the table? Was that what Beomgyu did while you were away? Eat your burger in your place?

Beomgyu seemed to read the thoughts embodied in your expression very well, because he laughed softly and lifted a shoulder with an unseemly shyness. Surely, that's how you had captivated them all.

You little harpy.

And yet, to see him as vibrant and jovial as when you left was like a Band-Aid that lightened the burden of stress you'd endured these past few days. When you arrived in town last Thursday night, the first thing you thought of was to look for him, but the idiot had gotten sick from drinking bad milk and had begged you not to visit him until his diarrhea was over. He hadn't texted you since the night before, and you were beginning to think he'd dropped his phone in the toilet during one of his diarrhea attacks, but what you didn't expect was to find him at your house on your way home from the supermarket, nor did you expect to feel the way you felt: nervous, with words thought but never spoken, with desires intensified but more terrifying than ever.

"So... how was the convention that starved you for almost a month?"

You looked up as your younger brother ran past you, the dog not far behind. Before reaching the short stairs that led into the house, Beomgyu scooped your brother up in his arms and spun him around in the air before setting him down and encouraging him back to where your parents were. Your brother ran off with the dog behind him.

You blinked.

"It was a month of physical pain. I didn't know what an international accounting convention would be like until I went to one. I thought it would be like the boring lectures we had in high school and college, but apparently businessmen have fun with taxes and returns."

Beomgyu snorted in amusement and shoved his hands into his pants pockets as he turned to lean against the railing, looking you in the eye with that sweet smile of his.

"I missed you."

"Oh, did you?" you asked, keeping a neutral expression on your face as you raised an eyebrow. Despite your coolness, it wasn't hard to notice a slight blush spreading across your cheeks. It wasn't that you had been away from him for a long time, you had been apart for months at other times, but there was something different about his words this time that made you wonder if he really missed you or if he missed you the way you felt.

"Is that why you snuck into my house as an undercover usurper?"

"See, I've been taking over your family members one by one," he said with mock seriousness as he gave you an exaggerated look. But then the mischievous smile returned to his face, and he took a step closer. "What's the matter with you, aren't you going to confess that you missed me, that you were writhing in agony without my presence?"

"You've been texting me almost every day for the past three weeks, Beomgyu. I don't know how I could have missed you."

Her lips curled into a pout of indignation as she frowned. You noticed that one of his hands was on the railing, inches from yours. "That's really cruel. He was really unhappy."

"Right, how's your diarrhea?"

"Uhmm," he hummed, and from a distance you could tell he was trying to maintain a disinterested expression as he looked away. "I'm a feisty guy, you know? A diet based on soda crackers and oral electrolytes and puf, good as new. Why, are you going to make fun of me? Because let me tell you, you won't make me suffer as much as Yeonjun and Soobin already have."

"Diarrhea teasing is not my strong point."

Beomgyu let out a gasping, feigned sigh and placed his right hand over his heart, his eyes dramatically wide. "Is this empathy real, is it possible you'll come back a little softer?"

You snorted and shook your head. You couldn't remember when last summer had been like this: quiet conversations, laughter, and a silence that seemed somehow comfortable even when tension was building between you. You had forgotten the ease that had always existed between the two of you. You used to hate these months of excessive heat and aimless days, but ever since you met Beomgyu, you begged for every chance to laugh together, no matter the season.

"I'm not going to laugh," you said, lowering your eyes to your hands. You were about to say something else, but the words died in your mouth as he moved even closer, sliding his hand over yours on the railing.

You nearly choked on your own saliva. God, why did you get so nervous, didn't you just talk about diarrhea a few seconds ago?

You said nothing, and neither did he, but you watched his cautious, anxious expression before looking down again at your joined hands with his hand: yours flattened against the light wood, covered by his slender fingers and the soft, delicate pads of his thumbs, almost always rough and calloused from constant use of his guitar. His hand was warm, and you felt your heart flutter as he ran his thumb over the knuckles of your hand. It was a gentle, casual, maybe even innocent gesture, but it felt like a million fireworks on the skin of your hand.

"I... I thought about you while I was away."

He didn't answer, he just turned to look at you, and you couldn't help but feel your heart beat faster when you saw the look on his face. His smile was still there, but it had changed, it had become softer, and you felt like it was the only thing you could hold onto to keep from blurting out the pile of words that had begun to form on the tip of your tongue.

"It's stupid, isn't it?" you added, trying not to notice the butterflies fluttering in your stomach as his fingers brushed harder against yours, as if encouraging you to speak, to spit out the words before they bloated your stomach and turned you into a useless ball of desire and... God, weren't those lips so beautiful? "I've missed you. I've missed you all week."

"All month?" He corrected quietly, and you just rolled your eyes as you tilted your head toward the floor and kicked an invisible rock.

"I guess I miss you every day since I met you."

Even though you saw his smile widen out of the corner of your eye, he didn't respond right away, and that made the knot of apprehension in your chest grow. However, the wave of fear dissipated as soon as it came. His thumb was right on your pulse, probably sensing the way it had quickened for him. His touch was tender, nothing more than the gentle pressure of his thumb against your skin, but you were so mesmerized by the soft gesture that you barely noticed when he took a step closer, his body so close to yours that it was as if you were enveloped in the soft scent of his cologne. It felt like a secret moment, the way that even with your whole family gathered around the grill preparing dinner and the two of you, separated by the noise, just a few feet away, you didn't seem to notice anything but each other's presence.

"Tell me more about it." His voice was lower, softer, sending shivers down your spine.

"You want me to talk about how I missed you?"

He bit his lip as he gave you a mischievous, perhaps very silly smile and... No, it definitely wasn't the smile of someone who wanted to grab your heart and run away, was it? Because, hell, it felt like that.

You forced yourself to look away from his lips. Nothing could make you stupider. Nothing could make you freak out more. You had to avoid them, avoid the madness. But it was in vain, a deluded attempt to escape the traps of your heart, because just as you looked into his eyes, he dropped his gaze to your mouth for a moment, and you were convinced he could feel your pulse fluttering under his thumb. He took another step. Now he was close enough to push your back against the railing, his hand fully clenched over yours, and his eyes lost on your lips, begging you to speak up and do something stupid.

And so you did.

"I... I can tell you how I think of you when I see something funny. Or something frighteningly beautiful. Like those pink sunrises we barely see if we're not lazy and stay in bed till noon. Or two cats curled up on the sidewalk. Not that I want to cuddle with you, mind you... Well, it's not that I don't want to. The point is, cats are cute. Like you."

With a grimace, you paused to take it in and then forced yourself to pretend you hadn't said that. But you were strong, and you didn't let yourself stop, because you had already screwed up, and you knew that if you didn't say those words right then, you could never say them again.

"Today I was surprised to see you with my father, laughing and joking, when my father doesn't laugh with any boy who is related to me. Then I was even more surprised that it felt so intimate, so familiar, so close. I don't know if it was like one of those equations that I know at first glance will make me lose my mind and want to give up life at the slightest attempt to solve it, or one of those formulas that, even unsolved, look like one of the most beautiful in the mathematical world. Yes, I... I just made a metaphor using the words "beautiful" and "mathematical" in the same sentence. Okay, okay, stop laughing. It's just... You laughing with my father, what a disaster. What a disaster to realize that every aspect of my life likes you and what a disaster that every aspect of my life clings to you so much. I think that's why I miss you even when we're close. I don't want there to be any distance between us.

There it was, you said it. Done. Now you could breathe. Now your heart could relax a little, take a blanket and wait for the rainbow or the misfortune. It could go get a bunch of duct tape and Band-Aids or get naked and pole dance around an artery. It could get a funeral box or start believing that it's immortal. And it all depended on the guy in front of you.

Beomgyu's gaze was soft, as soft and gentle as the scenarios that automatically began to form in your head when you saw the mixture of surprise and tenderness that ran through his expression when you finished speaking. He looked down at his hands clasped against yours and exhaled a laugh that came out a little shaky. Then he returned to your gaze and stood there, silently studying you.

"I want to answer you," he whispered, "but I want to make sure I find the right words.

Idiot.

You tried very hard to keep a serene expression on your face, as if your world wasn't hanging by a thread. Then he did something you'd never seen before: he swallowed spit, his gaze sliding down to linger on your lips for a moment before returning to your eyes and swallowing again. "Wait a minute," he said hoarsely.

Without warning, he turned and walked away, leaving you standing against the railing as you struggled to catch your breath.What the hell had that been? You watched as he walked over to the garden table, grabbed a soda, then walked back over to you and leaned against the railing next to you.

He cleared his throat, took a sip, then looked back at you.

"Are you kidding me?" there was a mix of emotions in your voice, amusement, confusion, embarrassment, insecurity, indignation..., the urge to grab the soda can from him and bash his head with it.

Beomgyu blinked, seemingly surprised by your statement, then laughed, his mouth twisting into a smile that felt like a prize.

"What?" he asked, his eyes flashing. You tightened your mouth and he laughed even harder. "I can't believe you just said that!"

"What an asshole," you muttered, nudging his side.

He laughed, but his arms shot out to hold you, just as your nudge knocked him off balance for a moment. His hands wrapped around your arms and he straightened up, but he didn't let go of you or wipe that goofy grin off his face. You struggled to keep up the gesture of annoyance, though it didn't work very well when he pulled you to him.

"I... I'm actually pretty nervous."

His gaze had dropped to your mouth again, and when it came back up to meet your eyes, he bit his lip. His gaze was intense, as if he was struggling to find the right words to say whatever it was he was thinking. He let go of your arms to lean against the railing next to you, keeping his distance so close that your shoulder was trapped between his right arm and his side.

"I want to kiss you, but your dad is right behind me and I'm afraid he'll leave me without a burger," he joked, but his laugh came out too quickly and you realized he was really nervous. His gaze landed on your mouth again and he held it there for what seemed like an eternity before he let out a loud breath and closed his eyes. You were still processing the fact that the words "I want to kiss you" had just come out of his mouth.

"I'm sure you can live without a hamburger, Beomgyu."

His gaze returned to your mouth and your heart skipped a beat as he came even closer. Now he was so close you could feel his breath caressing your lips as he brought his hand to your waist to pull you even closer, and his lips - so soft, so tantalizing, and so agonizingly close to yours - parted and they were about to say something when suddenly your father's voice boomed across the yard.

"Hey, guys," he said in a hoarse voice. "Dinner's almost ready."

The sound of his voice made you jump, and you were surprised at how quickly Beomgyu turned away, taking several steps back and moving as far away from you as possible. His face was red and he held his arms carefully at his sides as your father looked up at the two of you.

"Is everything okay here? You two looked very... lovey-dovey," your father joked, his eyes narrowing as he watched both of your reddened faces and Beomgyu desperately trying to act normal.

"Eh-" Beomgyu opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He opened and closed his mouth as if he was struggling to come up with an excuse. Your father, who was now smiling broadly, looked from Beomgyu to you and back to Beomgyu, who was still struggling. "Sir, I am in love with your daughter."

His unplanned statement came out in a rush, and your face quickly turned to him, mouth agape. He was also surprised by his own words, his eyes widened even more and he now looked at you in disbelief, his lips parted slightly as he processed what he had said. My goodness...

Your father had dropped the lid of the grill, your mother had stopped making the salad, and your brothers had stopped torturing the dog to look at you and Beomgyu. There was silence; no one moved or said anything. For a moment there was only the humming of the grill and the whisper of an occasional breeze. You were sure that Beomgyu could hear your heart beating in your chest and you were sure that you could hear it when he swallowed spit. He was so red, so shocked, that you thought he would faint right there, or run out first and then pass out in front of your house.

"Gee, well." After a long silence, your father nodded and added, "I'm sure dinner will be a long one."

You wondered if the seriousness in his tone was real.

Beomgyu shivered like a tired old oak leaf. Your mother shook her head, struggling to keep a smile from peeking out of her lips. Your siblings, like you, just stared at him, eyes wide.

Your father broke the second silence by clearing his throat and tapping the lid of the grill.

"I think the burgers are ready."

Before you could find the stability to move towards your family, Beomgyu's hand wrapped around your arm and his eyes, now wide and ridiculously expressive, shouted the words you had been waiting for.

"Listen."

"Yes?"

"I... I... It slipped out of my mouth."

"I know." Oh, God. No. You didn't know. You didn't know anything. You weren't thinking clearly. Your heart had eloped to a party and your brain had followed.

"Your dad likes me, look, it doesn't look like he's going to let me go without a burger."

"Beomgyu, I..."

"Listen," he repeated, and you would have told him to lower his voice if you hadn't seen his determination. "If your father banishes me from your house and I don't survive the heartbreak to tell you, I want you to know that I've been thinking about you all this time, every day, at all hours; especially in the morning, which is why every day starts out well now and is all happy and pretty and cheesy and all that. You're so... so fucking cute and distracting, which is why you saw me with my shirt on backwards the other day, which also explains the toothpaste stain on my sweater; oh! And the different colored socks. I didn't know that... This, that... you know, yeah... Love made people so clumsy and clueless, but now I know that if I get hit by a tricycle going three miles an hour, it will be because I was thinking of you”.

He was still talking, the words coming out of him as fast as the stream of water coming out of the hose one of your brothers was using to wash a sausage he had dropped on the floor. You just stood there, mouth agape, struggling to take in and process all those words.

"And just a moment ago I was so excited, so high, such an idiot for what you said to me, I can't believe I almost left without telling you, because I've been wanting to tell you forever. I don't know if it was those beautiful cheeks that I want to cradle and pull and pinch and bite all the time, or if it was the way your lashes whispered romantic tales and happy endings to me. I... I don't know how you did it, or what seductive trick you used to trap me, but you can take as much from me as you want; I don't know how much I have, only that I was empty until you came”.

Beomgyu finished, paused for a moment, and then smiled and shrugged, such an adorable and nervous and yet ridiculous and funny gesture. "Well, that... that's it."

There was no air in your lungs. Your heart, which had come back drunk, racing and out of breath, was beating so fast that you couldn't think of anything but the deafening sound it was making in your chest. One, two, three minutes passed and you still hadn't regained your mobility. Beomgyu inhaled sharply, shrugged again, and gestured to the table where the rest of your family was already sitting, looking at you, trying to pretend they weren't listening.

"I think they're all waiting for us to eat."

Fortunately, he made the decision for you and took your hand to lead you to the table. You still had your eyes fixed on him and your mouth hanging open as he led you to your seat. You sat down and your trembling legs were grateful, but your hand felt empty, sweaty and scared when it came away from his.

Beomgyu cleared his throat, blushed at the sight of you and murmured, "I'll be back in a minute, okay?" Then he left, mumbling something about going to the bathroom.

Your father looked at you as if he expected you to say something, but he must have seen the embarrassment and confusion on your face, because he then turned to your mother. "Did you understand him? I didn't understand him."

Your mother laughed. "I love that boy, but God, he talks fast."

"He wants to bite her cheeks," said one of your siblings.

"And pinch them." Said the other.

Your father nearly choked on his soda, and you nearly fell out of your chair.

"What? What is he talking about?"

"He wants to bite her!" your younger brother nearly howled with laughter. "He's always talking about biting her cheeks."

"And pinching them."

You covered your face with your hands and grinned like a fool. You didn't mind the dozens of questions your father asked and the teasing of your siblings; you looked at your mother's smile, full of peace, hope, promised laughter and dreams to be fulfilled, and you admitted to yourself that the days with Beomgyu would always carry a load of happiness that was capable of subtracting the importance of everything else.

At the same time, Beomgyu was leaning against the wall and facing the closed bathroom door, trying to sort out his thoughts. As he stood in front of you, the words came out of him so fast that he didn't even have time to realize how hasty and awkward his statement was. He felt exposed, vulnerable, he needed a moment or two or many to recover, but he was undeniably happy.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, thinking of you and laughing for no reason.

"Oh my God..." he murmured. "I'm so fucked up."

୨୧ txt - masterlist ୨୧ © gyummigon | all rights reserved. copying or adaptation prohibited.

[purel6mbie]

'𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬' .. !

꒰ calcharo x reader

꒰ domestic au, fluff, i love him sm .. a bit longer than usual ♡ was planning to post it a bit later but take this as my celebration gift for finally pulling him yayyy !!

there was no bigger sin than cruelty. the way people could find joy in hurting others was beyond you. resonators were always confronted to all kinds of dangers while out on the field, but the scars they'd get from their battles would later serve them as trophies, some memorabilia of their bravery. there were scars, though, that were destined to stay buried both deep into one's skin and under layers of fabrics. those were by far the most painful.

you were far from knowing all the details of your lover's history. calcharo was a reserved man that spoke little and never about himself; but while most would qualify him as 'rude' or 'cold', you had learnt to appreciate the silent love he offered to you. he was a caring and faithful lover, making sure you were never missing anything, although he doesn't speak it out like most would. his love was in tender glances, gentle touches and loving actions.

the need to protect him grew on you like a mold, from what you didn't know yet. but you knew that you'd never hesitate to give all of yourself to him, for him. just like he has for you.

when he comes home, later than most would, calcharo isn't anymore surprised to see you had been waiting for him in the living room, reading a book. you act like you didn't see the slightly reprimanding glint in his cerulean eyes and come meet him at the door, welcoming him silently. you weren't much of a loud person yourself.

'i hope your day wasn't too tiring. i've missed you,' you smile gently at him as you make a move to free him from his sword; but his long gloved fingers catch yours to stop them, holding them like rare antiques and you can't help but blush at the touch.

'you don't have to, I'll do it myself, dearest.' his low voice assures you. you look back at his eyes and see the exhaustion behind them. 'I've missed you too, today.' calcharo whispers, bringing your knuckles to his pale lips before walking to put his weapons away.

the dinner you both share is mostly spent in a comfortable silence, some words being exchanged about each other's activities throughout the day. however calcharo always made sure to keep most of the details away from you : you didn't need to hear about the gruesome things he has to see daily.

your lover knew you by heart, and so when you muster the confidence to reach over the table and wrap your hand around his, he looks over at you and gifts you with a small, barely noticeable smile, that still manages to free the butterflies in your stomach nonetheless.

'let me do the dishes,' his voice interjects as you put on your gloves. the hand on your shoulder stopping all your movements. his voice is gentle as he breathes out the words. 'you should get yourself ready for bed, i won't take long.'

you know you won't be winning that argument so you defeatedly let him do, heart bursting at the sight of your lover doing such a domestic task. you were blessed to be loved by him.

when he is in fact done, calcharo joins you upstairs, tiredness pulling at his features. he doesn't hesitate taking your extended hand that guides him to bed, on the thick and pricey mattress covered in dark blue satin sheets. no matter how tired he might be, the man never would dismiss you as you sat behind him, brushing his long hair and braiding it before you both lie down. this had become some sort of ritual between you both, and rituals helped calcharo stay grounded both in time and space. it gave him something to look forward to at the end of each day. he might not express it as vocally, but the way he closes his eyes as the hairbrush slides down his scalp tells you everything you need to know. the mercenary trusted you fully, ready to risk being vulnerable while his back is turned on you.

'im done,' you whisper, setting the hairbrush down.

calcharo turns to take your hand, giving it a thankful squeeze to which you answer with a tender smile, peeling the cover off the mattress and silently inviting your lover under.

he pulls the warm fabric over your shoulders and makes sure your feet are covered before letting his head fall onto the pillow, facing you. his blue eyes seem to glow under the moonlight spilling from the window and you bring your still intertwined hand between your faces, on the plushy pillow. your lips lean in to press an adoring kiss on the rough skin of his hand, and his soon move to do the same on yours, lingering there slightly longer before he pulls back.

you contently close your eyes, squeezing his fingers in between yours thrice, a grin playing on your lips as you fall asleep in an instant.

calcharo knew what that meant : each squeeze for one word I.love.you. you're the one who initiated it, and it since then has become yet another ritual you both shared.

contemplating your resting features, never letting go of your hand, the man renews his vow to someday manage to say the words to you, like you deserve to hear them, and not just through secret codes. once he feels like a man again, he tells himself, and not like some failed experiment, 'I will say the words back to you. dozens of times a day. as much as you'd want me to. I'll be a man to you, the one you deserved all along.' and, feeling from the vibrations of your unconscious that you've reached dreamland, he allows himself to close his eyes too, giving your hand three squeezes.

©purel6mbie 2024 | do not copy, translate, repost !

[mysteryshoptls]

SSR Jack Howl - Room Relaxation Vignette

"Happy Birthday"

[Sports Field]

[tup, tup, tup]

Jack: Pant, pant… I could really feel the burn on those last 20 meters.

Jack: What's my time…? Oh, not bad. I'll have to remember this feeling for next time. Alright, guess it's time to stretch and head back to the dorm.

Riddle: Are you doing solo practice after your club activities once again? You sure are diligent, Jack.

Jack: Oh, Riddle-senpai. When you say "again" like that… did you already know that I always stay behind longer?

Riddle: Well, when the Equestrian Club ends our activities for the day and leave the stable for our respective dormitories, we do pass by the field.

Riddle: I've spotted you running by yourself many times before. Are you training for a meet of some kind?

Jack: Ah, actually, recently my times have been fairly stagnant, so I've been trying to adjust my running form.

Jack: Nothing I was doing was really working… But I think I've really started to figure out what I need.

Jack: For now, I plan on heading back to my dorm and, starting tomorrow, I'll focus on working on my newest running posture.

Riddle: A good decision. It would not do for you to injure yourself by overworking.

Riddle: Besides, a student's priority should be their studies. Passion is well and good, however you would do well to not neglect your studies.

Jack: No need to tell me twice. I don't plan on neglecting my practice nor my studies whatsoever.

Jack: I made it here to Night Raven College, after all. I'll put forth even more effort so I can achieve even more.

Jack: Even if it's the day before my birthday, I'll have to continue doing my best… No, I'll have to do even better than my best.

Riddle: Oh, is your birthday tomorrow?

Riddle: Then I'm sure there's much for you to prepare. It would be rude of me to continue to keep you, so I'll leave you now.

[Riddle walks off]

Jack: Eh…? Oh, sure. Thank you, Riddle-senpai.

Jack: …Did I just say out loud that it's my birthday tomorrow? I hope he doesn't think I'm excited about it, or anything…

Jack: Ughhhh. Nah, it's no good worrying about something that's already done! Time to stretch!

[Savanaclaw Dorm – Jack's Room]

Jack: Whew… I feel much better after a shower. Guess it's time to finally get to my homework.

[Savanaclaw Dorm – Jack's Room]

Jack: Guess that's enough of reviewing today's lessons. I gotta put my homework in my bag before I forget, too…

[Roommate A speaks up]

Jack: … Huh? You wanna copy my homework before I put it away? I didn't work on it to help you guys out, why would I show it to you, anyway?

[Roommate B talks back]

Jack: You don't know the answers? Well, that's your fault for not listening during class. Don't come begging me for scraps.

Jack: Ugh, look at 'em, all grumbling over something stupid. Anyway… I guess I just have "that" left to deal with before going to bed.

「Survey on Quality of Life Improvements for the Student Body」

Jack: So they're looking for campus life improvements, huh. Well, there's the fact that some can be irritating just because they're a year or two older…

Jack: But it's not like the academy can really do anything to help improve personal problems. So, I guess…

Jack: I know I'd like it if they could do something about the rule that freshmen must live 4 to a room.

Jack: It's stressful enough having to share a small room with someone else, let alone 3 other people.

Jack: I can't wait for next year. Sophomores live 2 to a room, so it should be way better than right now.

Jack: There'll be more space in the room then… And I'll be able to find more sunlight for my cacti as well.

Jack: Even though I was able to beat the others to the spot that would provide the most light back when I first got here…

Jack: It's still not enough. Compared to the rooms reserved for the upperclassmen, it's still not as bright here, so I have to take extra care of the little guys.

Jack: Cacti are just like humans in that they don't do well if they don't get enough sunlight.

Jack: …That reminds me of back home for some reason. When winter comes, I always see people here and there sunbathing.

Jack: As a kid, I thought they were just lazy, and couldn't figure out why they'd want to just lounge out under the sun…

Jack: When I learned that there were health-related reasons behind it, I was both surprised and impressed.

Jack: It's not like I've been lacking any chances to be out under the sun ever since I've come to Sage's Island…

Jack: But if I could have a room big enough to roll out a rug, it might not be so bad to lay out and sunbathe on it a bit.

Jack: Alright… I've finished filling out the survey, so I guess it's time to sleep.

[roommates chattering]

Jack: Hey! You guys are being way too loud. How long're you gonna be at it?

Jack: You all better go to sleep right at lights out tonight… 10PM is bedtime! Don't keep me awake!

Jack: …Yeah, like those guys'll listen to what I say.

Jack: I should go back to the survey and ask for a canopy bed… Or maybe a partition.

Jack: Sleep is important for me to build my muscles… So I can't have them keeping me up… Yaaawn…

[Savanaclaw Dorm – Jack's Room]

[alarm blaring]

Jack: …Mm, is it morning already? Welp, then. First things first after waking up…

Jack: There's no question about it. TIME TO REPLENISH QUICKLY WITH SOME PROTEIN!!

Jack: I need to gain back all the nutrients I lost while sleeping. I'll swing by the kitchen for a protein drink and then head towards the washroom.

[Savanaclaw Dorm – Washroom]

[splash, splash]

Jack: Whew… No one's awake at this time, so it's nice and quiet here.

Jack: …Man, no matter how I look at it, my hair is tousled into a real mess. This happens every morning, sure, but…

Jack: Since I have thicker hair, it's so hard to tame the bedhead. Ah, tsk, there's even some pillow marks on my ears.

Jack: Well, I guess I'll just start with wetting the roots of my hair and then use the dryer while pulling the strands back…

[blow-dries hair]

Jack: Once the unruly strands are tamed, I'll comb it… Good, it's more or less better now. If I don't do this first, it ends up taking longer in the end.

Jack: I've tried a bunch of different hair products, but I ended up liking this wax the best.

Jack: Hair gel might be better to keep the shape, but it gets too stiff and takes too long to wash out.

Jack: Only using wax means that my hairstyle starts to lose its hold around evening time, but all I need to do for that is to just fix it up in the afternoon.

Jack: Nice, that looks good. All that's left is to spray it a bit…

[sprays hair]

Jack: Normally I won't use it 'cause I don't like it to get on my ears, but I want to make sure I look spot on today of all days.

Jack: As for makeup… Nah, I'll go without, like usual. I'd like to look good, but I don't want to get all dolled up or anything.

Jack: I'll just use my normal sunscreen. Can't say I really like how it feels on my skin, though…

Jack: But I remember the first time I ever went skiing by myself and the pain I went through when I forgot to apply sunscreen.

Jack: The way I got burned by the sun reflecting on the snow and I had to live with the embarrassment of the goggles leaving that imprint on my face… Augh, I don't even want to think about it again.

Jack: But thanks to that, I finally understand why my parents wouldn't shut up about not forgetting to put on sunscreen.

Jack: Looks like there's a bunch I'm able to understand more as I grow up, like that whole sunbathing thing. Guess that's another reason why it's fun to grow older.

[Savanaclaw Dorm – Jack's Room]

Jack: Alright. Now that I look presentable, I think I'll stretch out my muscles to prep for morning practice.

Jack: Phew… This old chair they supplied the room with really comes in handy for stretching.

Jack: Right after we got grouped together, none of us wanted it so we kept trying to shove it onto each other, but that was just a pain to deal with, so I kept it…

Jack: It's hard, sturdy, and it doesn't wobble so easily. Plus, the size is just perfect for someone of my height.

Jack: Next, I'll step onto the seat and… I guess I'll look over my class notes while I stretch, as usual.

Jack: I think we were on this page of the textbook for Magical History…

Jack: "The following year, the ancient incantations that were inscribed on the cave walls were successfully deciphered. The gathered mages then attempted to speak the ancient incantations…"

[Roommate B complains]

Jack: …Huh, what, I'm too loud? My voice woke you up? Well, good timing, the sun's almost up. Get up, already!

[Main Street]

Jack: Urk, is that who I think it is over there…? …Good morning, Riddle-senpai.

Riddle: Good morning, Jack. Have you finished with morning practice already?

Riddle: Happy Birthday. That's all I came here to say.

Jack: …Of course it was about that. Sorry to be a bother about it. I didn't mean to let it slip yesterday…

Riddle: Heh, you're no bother. We may be of different dormitories, however it is the duty of us upperclassmen to support our underclassmen.

Riddle: You should continue to do your utmost. …Of course, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that.

Jack: Yes, sir! I'll keep on improving!

Requested by @farfalla049.