#i love him very much i just also hate him | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hyukascampfire · 2 days ago

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everyone say it with me… betta late then never!!

first let’s watch our regularly scheduled broadcasting of rain suffering and hating me while reading

ash you're going to pay for this. I hate you.

fuck u ash.

You let him go. - SAY IT THEN FUCKING SAY IT

I refuse this. I rebuke this.

“I want to go. I’m ready.” damn it. damn it. damn it.

I hate you ash. I hate you so much, you'll pay for this. I hate you.

NO HELP ME I CANT DO THISS

I WONT LOSE U AGAIN WHAT HELP I CANT MY HEART HURTS

LOLLLLLL I WAS IN THE BACKSEAT OF MY CAR GIGGLING

off the bat, this is an insane quote. I love you, ash. I do. hehe

ASH. ASH. IF DEATH THINKS YOU ARE FLATTERED, HE MISUNDERSTANDS YOU. THIS LINE, IM SO GLAD IT HIT YOU TOO CAUSE IT HIT ME WHILE WRITING IT

ok, so I've prided myself on not knowing much of anything about this fic because I wanted to be surprised, so i'lll be writing my takeaways from everything. and from my understanding here, is it that everything she touches or is in contact with dies? I'm going to feel so dumb if I'm interpreting this all wrong lmaoo. you’re so smart cause this was literally right. now that you’ve read it, i’ll confirm that wasn’t yeonjun’s intention, but it was definitely his fault, because his proximity and affection for her caused things to die around her.

they are death made in the flesh. help. you're in their forest. I would genuinely be so scared. me too, i’d be running just like her

“There you are, love.” - oh I'm ready, I'm so fucking ready. THIS LINE THIS LINE I LOVE THIS LINE the foreshadowing and the fact that it implies that he’d been looking for her. and when he calls her love >.<;

is it fucked that I find this hot. & FINE ASF. & him wearing a cape just made him a thousand times more hot. LMAOO THE THIRSTING OVER HIM IS SO REAL and no it’s not fucked because he’s hot and he can’t help it. this yeonjun specifically was sexy asf while i was writing him like yes my panties were wet yes i needed him badly and i think it shows in what i wrote sometimes 😭 also RAIN YOU GET ME SO BADLY WITH THE CAPE idk if this is a fantasy reader thing but the cape is just hot

Should you run or thank him? Is Death as prideful a creature as the other kinds that inhabit Aethera? - I like this quote a lot. ily

Morbid curiosity is like that, though. - I really like all the subtle hints at death in this i love people who notice things. like youre just a noticer and i love it

A deep, familiar voice from behind you gives you pause. “Want some help with that?” Soobin says. He stands in the doorway, his head nearly brushing the top of the frame. It’s made too small for him. Most things in your tiny village were made too small for Soobin. There had been a time where you’d been taller than him, that had hardly lasted long enough. - are you wearing pants... WHEN I TELL YOU IT TOOK SO LONG FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND THIS CAUSE I WAS LIKE… yes he’s wearing pants?? duh??

“Cow shit isn’t an ingredient.” - LMAOOO loled when i wrote this poor guy

“I think you are very, very beautiful. Would you stop ignoring me, now?” - help ok why do I ship them now... never tell anybody you heard this from me but in my heart he definitely had an unrequited crush

“Don’t like you?” he asks, “What reason would they have for that?” - boy why are you acting like you don't know...it's your fault LMAO POOR YEONJUN HE DIDNT MEAN TO

he was human??? — “You were human?” oop me and her are the same. this made me giggle

THE DANDELIONS MY HEART. SHE DIED GIVING BIRTH??? — YOU FOUND HER YOU FOUND HER. also, "or a blade of grass in the forest" help. their love story is so tragic and i know that i wrote it like it came from my head but it still hurts. and yeonjun’s backstory especially. he loved her so much :(

I'm betting it's the reader. you clocked that. like i said youre just a KNOWERR

if only we cold know that death was actually like this, the comfort I would feel if it were. yes. exactly this. a big source of inspo for this fic was my own fear of death. it felt nice to portray it as something not so final and scary, but maybe something to look forward to. i’m still scared of it and definitely always will be, but it would be so comforting to know for sure that there’s something after death.

and one sec lemme compile all the little bits from the smut scene cause it’s my favorite part I LOVED READING THIS PLEASE

“Crawl to me, then.” - OH? THIS LINE IM ILL sir yes sir!!!

“Tell me to stop. Please, tell me to go. Because I don’t know how.” - HELP HELP HELP DONT GO DO NOT GO GOD I LOVE HIM I LOVE A DESPERATE MAN. i just love how he wants her so badly and lets it be known. HOT HOT HOT

“No, you don’t understand what you’re asking for. All I’ve ever done is ruin. All I’ll ever do is ruin. I won’t ruin you; not again.” - NOT AGAIN?????????? hell yes

“I want you so fucking bad. You are in the marrow of my bones. Fuck, I have done nothing but want you, but I am foul. I will only hurt you.” - what if I pass away huh?? what if I do that?! LMFAOOOO

“I want you to beg me for it,” he says, grinning down at you with cruel intention. “Beg me, and make it so pretty.” - I'm hot is anyone else hot or is it just me... i love you so bad for giving me the opportunity to read all this

“I could give it to you, or I could not…” He hums. “Wouldn’t that be so cruel of me? To leave you wanting?” - HELPPP MEEE RIGHT.

Think about it: do animals just fly into anybody else’s windows and die? Do the trees that they pick from just end up dead? It’s his fault that they all treat you the way you do.” - and ykw I cant be mad at him for saying this because the logic part of me agrees with him. he just cares for her and doesn’t want her hurt. soobin loved her so much. DAMN. but i also understand why what he says hurts her as well yk? it’s the worst. and this being the last time they speak is so awful, but sometimes it happens that way. :((

You were expecting wary looks, anyway. - awh no I feel so bad for her ): she tried to not blame them for being scared of her but omg it makes me so sad for her. she always just wanted be a part of the community. it’s messed up

It was by your hope that he’s gone. - SOOBIN NO. SSOOBIN NO NO NO. FUCK OFF ASH MY SHAYLAAAAAAA. WAS HE EVEN WEARING PANTS PLS WAS HE EVEN WEARING PANTS LMAO IM CTFU

The day moves along without you. You’re not sure how long you sit, but it stretches somewhere between a few minutes and eternity. No matter how long you wait, there are no answers. No matter how long you mull over it. - ok Bella swan WAIT LMAO YES

i loved reading this thank you queen. 💋💋💋

THE TERRIBLE HALF-TRUTHS OF THE UNDEAD ҜING

⠀(🍂 ) 𝓡EVENANT in folklore, a revenant is a spirit or animated corpse that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living ... ( 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 )

1︎5.5k revenant!yeonjun · ƒ ! r ft. soobin ⸺ ✴︎ 𝖿𝖺𝗇𝗍𝖺𝗌𝗒 ... smut, violence, angst, death, animal death & vivid descriptions of animal death, major character death, unprotected sex, cumming inside, dry humping (because bring it back), biting, dom yeonjun sub reader, mentions of death in childbirth, reincarnation, teasing, breast worship, yj calls reader ‘my love’, def some typos

🪶 ⦂ how fun is this collab? :,) this fic was so fun to write. i personally believe that tsfawc enjoyers will love this one,, but you'll have to read it to confirm that, right? hehe. and of course, go read everybody else's if you love this one! they're all set in the same world, and everybody worked so hard on these fics. send some love their way!

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

𝒪𝑁𝐶𝐸 𝒰𝑃𝑂𝑁 𝒶 𝒯𝐼𝑀𝐸, in a land far, far away, where the treetops touched the soft clouds of the sky and the water sparkled under the glowing sun, where mountains rose high, and long, deep caves ran through them, where the sea met shore in collisions of swirling, foamy punches, where the undead walked among the living, where the winged flew above the finned, there was a land where things beyond reason and rhyme existed perfectly true. Among those strange beings and within the veils of Aethera, there was a girl loved by death.

He sits on your shoulder, a dark, boding shadow and glared at those around you with promise in his eyes.

That’s how it seems, anyway. That’s how everybody looks at you. They dodge you, whisper about you, evade your gaze as if he might reach his claws for them next if they linger for too long.

Crows with dead eyes arrive at your doorstep like some lover’s cheeky gift, other poor creatures like fat grey mice are left to rot in the wheatfields, and yarrow stocks wilt outside the wall of your room. If Death thinks that you are flattered, he misunderstands you. You are terrified of nothing more than dying. The first time, it was a sly joke. Then it happened again, and you watched their eyes change. And it happened again and again, and your people are a suspicious type. Something can only be a coincidence so many times.

When you began to sneak into a little shack with a village boy, you thought that maybe, somehow, this would all pass. He died too. There’s really no coming back from that, is there? You don’t blame them. You’re not the freak that they all believe you to be—none of them get close enough anymore to know that, though.

The wickerbasket’s handle creaks under your fist. You usually only forage along the shallow line of the forest; you pluck from bramble bushes topped with plump berries that crawl between trees during the summer, and when the crab apple tree’s branches hang heavy with the fruit, you snatch those up too. You’re more useful to your family out here, in the woods that they deem just as cursed as you. Where you won’t be their burden.

Crisp autumn leaves crunch under your boots. You scan between them—more grey and rotted this late in the season than fresh and orangey—for the edible mushrooms and roots that you usually forage at this time of year. The basket’s already pretty heavy with a variety, black morels and sorrel and burdock, as you bend down to pull a truffle from the dirt against a tree.

You drop it down with the rest of your finds. The basket smells like earth, no doubt your hands do too. You dust your palms off on your skirts and go to rise back from your squat.

A deep, billowing horn pierces the forest’s silence. It’s both far away, wiggling between the whispers of rustling leaves, and much too close. It draws out. Long. Bone-chilling. You freeze, scanning between each tree trunk and praying that you won’t find what you fear you might.

You are much deeper into the woods than you usually are. Than you ought to be. And you know what that horn means—you know that it means something far worse than what you’d been afraid of, coming into these woods. Much more primordial than the hide-behinds you were scared you might find this deep, much less avoidable than the faerie rings you stepped around.

Why would The Wild Hunt be here? A shudder runs down your spine, and you curl your fingers into your skirts and lift them as if to prepare to run, but you don’t. Your feet find root in the forest floor and all you can do is stand terribly still in catatonia. Their horn sounds again, and a procession of wicked whoops and howls follow. Wild hoofbeat rumbles under it all—the hunt and their rides. You hope that they’re just passing through, and you won’t so much as see one of those wild riders. There were plenty of folktales that the matrons of your village would bolster to terrify you as children, but you knew even then that their stories of the riders, with their flesh falling away from them and their pale or beady eyes and their gnarled maws and frightening figures as they rode on the backs of equally terrible steeds, were not fabricated. They are not a bogeyman or a wailing banshee; they are death made in the flesh, and they are here. In your forest.

Your legs won’t work. You curl your clammy fingers tighter around your basket and lean into the tree beside you. How deep had you wandered into the forest? Hopefully not too far; when you gain the courage to run, you hope that they do not send their hounds to snap their foul breath on your heels. Maybe just standing here and blending into the trees is best. The Hunt would love a chase, and you don’t want to become their next.

The next call comes and you throw that all to the wind. Your heart pounds against your ribcage as you let your basket clatter to the leaves and you take off. You fly over roots and shrubbery and between the trees, your blood roaring in your ears faster. You’d oblige if you could.

Above the loudness of your frantic mind, the harrowing whinnies and The Hunt’s ruckus dulls until it’s faraway again, and then it’s gone. Well, you don’t stop to check if they’ve really passed through the forest. You just run.

“There you are, love.”

His voice cuts through your frantic escape and stops you dead in your path. You almost go crashing down over the ground with the force that you dig your heels into it. Though the voice is non-threatening, you don’t turn to face the source.

He speaks again. You already know who it is. He, old as the earth you stand on itself, leads that band of wild riders. Is the king of the undead, collects souls for reaping.

And he’s the one who’s plagued you with his attention. Death.

“Why do you keep your back turned to me?” he says. “I frighten you. That hurts.” His voice lilts with amusement and sharpness. “I wish that you would face me.”

You’re not fond of the way that he speaks to you with a familiarity. But then again, you’re not fond of dying, either. Your legs are boneless beneath you. Turning, you slowly indulge him, though it takes a great amount of willpower to not run again like your jittering jaw and trembling hands ask you to.

The King of Death stands tall and utterly preternatural, leaned against a crooked tree in the woods behind you. His smile cracks across his face in a jagged way that suggests he finds you amusing, but none of that meets his eyes. They’re the color of the greyish, rotted leaves beneath you. The dark shadows beneath his eyes are the only thing belying the weight that his infinite life might have on him. That, and the hollowness that rings from him.

And though he sounded entirely playful, you are shaken by the sorrow that you find in him now that you’ve turned. Even more so, you’re not sure why you feel it echoed somewhere in the hollows of your bones. “I’m sorry,” you say. It trembles terribly. You want to say that you’re sorry you caught his attention, but it seems you’ve always had his attention. It’s more that you are petrified down to your marrow that the time’s come that you face this… strange infatuation. Here he stands: the one who leaves hollowed out husks of creatures at your doorstep. Should you run or thank him? Is Death as prideful a creature as the other kinds that inhabit Aethera? “I don’t mean to…”

He pushes off his tree, fixing his cape that cascades over only one of his shoulders. It’s tattered and falling apart like the rest of his clothing, though you think that the bronze stitching and swirling oakleaf patterns in the black say that they might have been immaculate at some point. Or maybe they weren’t, and they had started that way. He is Death, anyway. “You’re sorry?” he says. “Why are you apologizing to me? You’ve hardly done a thing to warrant it.”

Faltering, you wet your chapped lips. You’re not really sure. Holding back another apology for fear that you’ve offended him and he’ll now strike you down for it, you say, “I thought that, maybe the hunt was…” Wow, you sound stupid. You can see in the sly smile his lips form that it amuses him. That’s almost worse than angering him: intriguing him. What you really should be doing is boring him so that he’ll find you a waste of his time. Then, maybe, he’d give up haunting you.

“After you?” he finishes. Shaking his head, he says, “My hunters only answer to me.”

“Oh,” you say plainly. Part of you wants to ask why that should comfort you, especially when you’re the one that he sends little bits of death to, but rationality keeps those words in the back of your throat. You don’t really want to know. “Why are you passing by here?”

Something akin to old longing passes through those witty eyes, and then he eats up the distance between you with languid steps of his long legs until he’s nothing more than one last step in front of you. The closeness consumes the air in your lungs, leaving nothing for you but short and shallow drags. The forest has gone dead silent aside from the sound of it. His voice is even more magnetic now that he’s so close.

You recoil when he brings a hand up to brush the pad of his thumb over your cheek and then cup your jaw, as if afraid that he might snuff you out here and now. His fingers are softer than you thought they might be, and the lines of his face sharpen into what you think is hurt. Hurt that you flinched?

“We go here and there,” he says, “but it’s been a very long time since we came here.” There’s a certain thickness to his words; a certain tension coiled over them from something that you’re not privy to. And yet, there’s a farawayness, too. You bet he’s full of a lifetime of secrets. Lifetimes of secrets. “But I think I’ve found myself a reason to finally return.”

Breathy and still struggling to flatten out your breathing, you ask him, “Why?”

The Undead King’s smile turns wicked once more, and he doesn’t answer you. It’s awfully eerie.

“Do you have… business here?” you try again. It’s a roundabout way of asking, do you have someone to take away?

“I have business wherever the living go,” he says, letting your face go but not giving you any more room. You narrow your eyes. He’s quite good at non-answers. “Nothing is more certain than that I will greet every living thing eventually. I’ll come to take you, too, when the time comes.”

Your mouth dries up. The entirety of your home, all the people you’ve ever known, fear you for all the death you bring. Not one of them fears it more than you do. You’ve seen it enough to fear its frightening finality.

The drop of your face must’ve told him how much that scared you. “Dying is not such an awful thing, love. Living pales in comparison.” Searching your eyes, he adds, “But I’ve not come to take you.”

That’s easy for him to say: that death isn’t something to fear. His words don’t calm your thundering heart, but you offer him a, “Thank you…” It trails off toward the end when you realize that you don’t have his name. If he has one, anyway.

“Yeonjun.” He tilts his head, strands of sparrow hair brushing over his watching eyes. “Most don’t know it, but you’re not most people, are you?”

Your breathing had just begun evening out. It’s a shame, the way that it kicks back up at the way he looks at you. “What do you mean?” you say, but of course you know. Nobody else is given dead things like you. It’s not like you yourself are very strange; you like pretty dresses and sharing gossip with friends just as much as any other girl your age.

Giving you another one of those knowing smiles that he uses just like words, he steps back. “I’m sorry that I scare you how I do.”

You don’t answer him. What could you say to that? That he doesn’t? That would be a lie, and he would know it.

Yeonjun’s eyes flit over your face, over your cheeks made pink by the autumn cold, lingering on your lips for a few unexplainable beats, and then landing on your eyes where he searches and finds something that sends his throat bobbing with a thick swallow. “I don’t mean to be your monster. It’s only that…” He steps back again. “You remind me a terrible amount of someone I once knew.”

“Who?” Though your shoulders relax a bit with some distance between the two of you, you do your best to not let your guard down. All the stories that you recall being told, all those cautionary tales passed down through word of mouth around a fire, end with some stupid girl thinking that the monster could be changed or tricked. You’re willing to bet that the man in front of you, no matter how human he looks or how enchanting his words are, could be neither.

That doesn’t explain the ache in your chest when he holds your eyes for too long. But you shove that feeling way, way down. It’s nonsensical.

His voice takes on a parting tilt when he says, “It doesn’t matter anymore. Death takes us all.” Yeonjun dips his head at you. His smile wavers. You’d think that crooked smile on his mouth was indelible had you not seen it twitch down at the corners only for a moment. If you’d have blinked, you’d have missed it. “You think I’ll hurt you,” he says, “well, don’t let me stop you. Go ahead, run. I apologize for your basket.”

Death takes us all. You’re not sure what that’s supposed to mean, coming from him, but it sends a cold wind up your spine and goosebumps crawling over your skin.

He watches you go. You don’t look back when you do, but his gaze sits on your back until you’re sure you’re out of his sight. When you return to your home, your mother asks where the basket full of ingredients for supper went.

You imagine what her face might look like if you told her the truth. But that was impossible, so instead you tell her some stupid story about a wolf that startled you so bad that you ran home paying no mind to where your basket was. It’s close enough to the truth.

༺ ꘏ ༻

It doesn’t matter what you do; you can’t get his face out of your head. While you cut butter into flour and then roll out dough, simmer fruits over flame and you slice cheese off blocks, you replay that meeting in the forest. The memory spins and turns over no matter how hard you try to put it away from your thoughts.

It’s not every day that somebody meets the likes of him. You can’t blame yourself; he had such captivating eyes. Dark, playful, and endless. There they are again. You sigh and dust your hands off. Maybe you are just as strange as they all think that you are. Morbid curiosity is like that, though. Taking the most normal of us and making you wonder what you absolutely should not wonder about.

And you absolutely should not wonder about him.

The sun has begun to hang high in the sky, but the breeze that crawls through the window you pulled open before you got to work is a crisp one. Autumn’s really come, now. Outside the window, a huddle of children play around in the leaves that you’d raked up. You’ll have to rake those back up, but you hardly have the heart to tell them to take their playing elsewhere. Their giggles and small voices waft in with the breeze, and a traitorous part of you yearns for a family that you know you’ll never have. No man would risk that fate, not after what happened to the last man who paid you any attention. You grit your teeth at the memory.

Having a face for the thing that’s made your life the way it is is strange. Seeing him in the flesh, with handsome eyes and a taunting mouth, looking something near human, you think you’ve come to resent him for it. How dare he ruin your life? He, more than anybody, should know how fleeting life is. What is in it for him to deface what little time you have? You keep going back to that thought: why did he ever even appear to you in that forest? There is not one story in which you remember Yeonjun showing his face to those he hasn’t come to claim. Death makes his visits swift and purposeful.

Moreover, why on earth would he even look your way? You wish there was a plain way to ask him why, or even to plead with him to stop. Whatever it is he’d ask of you, you think you might give him. To get back to living, you would.

“As if,” you dismiss and gesture at his dirty hands. He’d no doubt been out working his family’s field, his tunic sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “Cow shit isn’t an ingredient.”

Anybody else might’ve scoffed or taken offense, but he just laughs and invites himself in anyway. It never fazes Soobin. He doesn’t let you push him away.

It’d be better if he did. How long before he ends up dead, too? Alive one moment, and then a husk without a soul next. You don’t think you could handle seeing cold, dead eyes where the annoying, warm shine should be. Of course it would be better if he stayed away, if he had half the mind to. Even most of the children have heard enough from their mothers to stay a healthy distance. He’s not too much better than a child, though.

“Isn’t it?” he says. His cheek is smudged with whatever sort of dirt he’s got on his hands and under his nails. “I’m done with work for the day. Want to go out to the field?”

You two have always ran off and avoided your life in between willowy, flaxen wheat stocks. They were just tall enough at this time of year to hide you away. But, for some reason, your stomach does a quick flip at the thought of being outside. It’s silly; couldn’t he find you here, too? “I’m busy,” you say. You’d already kneaded this roll of dough plenty, but you dig your fingers into it and begin again.

“Busy?” he scoffs, “Since when are you too busy to get away from work?”

Gritting your teeth, you let the sounds of your kneading answer. Now, more than ever, he should keep his distance. You know one thing that you’re sure nobody else does: Death’s come to visit.

His brows shoot up in your peripherals. “I don’t get answers today?”

“I’m sorry,” you say, giving up working the over-kneaded dough only because your arms ache. “Why don’t you go talk off the ear of some other poor village girl? I’ve heard as much as I can handle today. And then when that one’s tired, you can bother the next, I’m sure.” You soften the words with a quick smile his way. No matter how many times you say something sour in hopes that it’ll send him away, as soon as you glance up at his face, you reel it in.

His company is all you’ve ever had. The least you can do for him is make sure he doesn’t end up like carrion, even if he chooses to take that risk himself. You don’t know why he does.

Voice playful, he says, “I’m glad to hear that you believe I’ve got ladies falling at my feet, but I’d rather not annoy a pretty girl, so you’re my only option.” He pokes at the sleeve of your simple cotton dress. “Should I drag you out of here? Don’t your arms hurt doing all that?”

“Oh, you are a refined man, aren’t you?” you say, shuffling out of his reach. Damn him, he makes it difficult. “Well, I am a pretty girl, so you should take yourself elsewhere.”

Soobin smiles easy. “I’m bored out of my mind. You’re just going to let me suffer?”

“That’s not my issue.”

“I’d argue that it is,” he says. “Come on. Why are you giving me a cold shoulder?” Leaning, he tries to get a look at your face. “Did I upset you? I wasn’t aware that you cared much about what I thought.” When you spare him a sharp glance, he says, “I think you are very, very beautiful. Would you stop ignoring me, now?”

You wish you could fall into the easy banter that comes with being around Soobin, but you can’t. You can’t let him be around you. “Soobin, stop it,” you say, draining your voice. You don’t look at him while you say it.

Going quiet, he seems to notice that today’s different. His gaze is heavy as he stares at you for a few long moments. Crossing his arms over his chest, he asks, “What happened?”

You swallow. “Nothing. I’m just doing something.”

“Oh, alright,” he says, tone inflicting in a way that says he doesn’t believe you one bit. He pushes off the counter. “I’ve put up with you pushing me away for years. You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

“Soobin,” you warn. If you look at him, you fear you’ll be forced to watch the only one who never cared much what a risk it was being around you leaving. So you don’t.

Your friend raises his hands in the air defensively. “Okay, then.” He makes for the doorway with languid, lingering steps. As if he doesn’t want to leave. “Tomorrow..”

That’s both a threat and a promise, knowing him. Sighing and watching the rowan tree out your window sway, you bid him a curt goodbye.

If only that jerk took offense to things. It would make things an awful lot easier for you.

༺ ꘏ ༻

Being out in the wheat fields brings you peace when you’re alone, but you find it to be terribly lonely. The earthy, sweet scent of it wraps around you, and the stalks whisper against each other in a soothing way.

When you look beside you, the patch of wheat imprinted with the shape of your bodies is empty on his side. You are quite weak; it makes you want to go knocking at his door for his company. But that would be the selfish thing to do, so you card your fingers between the golden straw instead.

A chill trickles down your spine. You feel his presence before you even see him; it’s a feeling that you used to get fleetingly, as if something far away was tugging at you. But then he became real, a living thing in front of you that can touch, and that is much different.

“Why is it that I always find you out in the wilderness?” Yeonjun says. His voice comes from behind you.

Has he been watching you? You stand and dust your bottom off, heart kicking to life. “It’s nice out here,” you say. In truth, you haven’t come outside since that day. You’ve dodged Soobin and made a million excuses as to why you won’t go anywhere past the fences of your home. “I like to… watch people go about their days. It’s interesting.” It’s true—you always watch from afar how the village folk interact. How groups of girls your age link arms and whisper to each other, how neighbors come together to fix up a shoddy fence. You watch them be a community that you are not a part of. Watching it tastes bitter sometimes, but mostly you take pleasure in imagining yourself there with them. You’re not sure why you try making small talk with him, but what else? Should you go running again? If you were to listen to your pattering heart, maybe that’s what you’d do. He’s hardly shown you any bad will, though, and he’s the one that’s come to you. Maybe it’s silly to wait until something bad happens to be cautious.

A thousand pounds in stones sit at the center of your chest, though, and his voice makes them feel lighter. Why on earth that is, you’re not sure. It’s a nice relief regardless.

He smiles. It's different from the ones he showed you before. It’s knowing; more sweet than cracking over his face like the smile you would expect from the likes of him. What use might he have in being sweet? “Could I join you?”

Blinking dumbly at him for a second, you nod. “Oh, uh… Yeah.” Settling back down into your spot, you spare him a few curious sideways glances.

The breeze billows over the gold stems, moving them like gentle waves over the ocean and blowing your hair in it too. The flattened bits rustle under his weight. He doesn’t even turn his face toward the village; instantly, his gravitational eyes are on you.

“Do you come here often?”

“I do,” you answer. Mostly when you and Soobin have too much to do and not enough will to do it. “It’s nice. The village doesn’t like me much, so it’s easier out here.” You don’t mention that mostly you don’t come here alone.

Yeonjun’s face becomes far away. It looks strikingly like somebody forced into an old, unpleasant memory. “Don’t like you?” he asks, “What reason would they have for that?”

“They fear me. Things go wrong around me, that’s all.” You pluck at the hay absentmindedly. “Things die. They’re smart to stay away.”

The hay whispers much louder for the long moment he remains quiet, digesting what you’ve said. Maybe deciding what to say, considering that it’s his fault.

“Die?” he asks, voice inflected with surprise.

Turning to him, your brow creases. Shouldn’t he know? He’s the one that’s done it to you. “Everything that gets too close ends up dead. Everything,” you say, resting your temple on your knee. “So, I guess, I just keep it all at arm’s length.” You look back at your tiny village, a collection of familiar, un-familiar thatch-roof homes.

Continuing to blink at you, his eyes narrowed in a strange grimace, Yeonjun says, “Death follows me, too.”

What? A laugh of disbelief bubbles up in your chest. Of course, death follows him. You cover your mouth with a hand to obscure your laugh, but you just giggle at him harder.

A laugh twitches at the corners of his mouth, too. “I mean it,” he says. The lines of his face become distant again, eyes both trained on your face and melancholic as if the sight reminds him of something.

It ignites a question in your mind about something he said in the forest. “You said that I reminded you of somebody,” you say, testing the waters. “Who?”

A muscle feathers in his jaw. He looks away, as if he can’t look at you while he says it. “I loved a girl from this village once. When I was human, no less than you.”

You falter, mouth falling open to ask all the questions that flurry through your thoughts. You settle on one. “You were human?”

“I was,” he says ruefully. “And I had everything. I had the love of my life. I think that even the most bitter of creatures on this island had envy for our love. She would braid dandelions into my hair, and then I’d braid them into hers.” He swallows thickly and pauses, as if the wound was still festering and fresh. “And then she died. She died starting our family. She died because of me, in my arms.”

You don’t know what to say, so you just look into his shining eyes as if that’ll help. You’re not very useful with people, much less comforting them.

“I couldn’t accept that. I wouldn’t. So I went where I shouldn’t have gone, and angered something much bigger than myself. They thought it would be a fitting punishment for me to live an eternity, the King of Death who could not bring back his dead lover.” The harrowed look that he gives you, only briefly, has your chest heavy all over again. “They have a sense of humor, the forces.”

You imagine what it would’ve been like for him to lose his lover in that way. How far he’d gone to try and have her back, but death does not give back. Where had he gone to have been turned into this? An immortal thing, forced to roam the world and scoop up the souls of the living for an eternity? To be bound in ancient bones and made to remember forever how you had lost your lover?

The grandness of what you want to say is too big, but all those words feel pitying and patronizing in a way that you don’t think will actually bring him any comfort. Rather, you doubt anything you say will be able to patch up a wound older than you could imagine. Simply, you offer him a raw, “I’m so sorry.”

Yeonjun lets a crooked smile replace the trembling at his lips. “As long as I live, so too will she,” he says, placing his palm over his heart. “Death doesn’t so much happen when we leave behind our bodies, but when we’ve left the minds of the living.” Narrowing his eyes at you, he brushes hair behind your ear with his knuckles. “I know she lives on, somewhere out there. Somewhere. I’ll find her.”

That intrigues you. “Is there some way that you could bring her back?”

The grim light in his eyes tells you his answer. “My curse is to take life,” he says, “not to give it. But the one who made me this, he is cruel in a twisted way. If I were to find her, as a human or an animal or a blade of grass in the forest, only then could I rest.”

It is cruel. “You’ve been searching, then,” you conclude. “When you find her, you’ll both be able to rest.” But how could he find her, if as he says, she could be any living thing? Where would he even begin?

Slowly, he shakes his head, throat bobbing. “Death needs a farrier.”

She would become what he is. You swallow thickly. Was it not him who caused the deaths that follow you? Or, at least, it was not on purpose?

Opening your mouth, you go to tell him that you’ll help him look. You’re sure you’ll be of no help. He’s spent an immortal lifetime searching, and he still hasn’t found his dead lover. Nobody would know better than him where to look.

The ground shakes beneath your palms with impact, and something cuts through the wheat. The noise of its bleating becomes nearer until the both of you scramble up to find out what’s in such distress.

A deer stumbles around wildly. It looks lame, but you don’t see anything wrong with its legs. Your throat tightens at the awful sound, piercing and sad. Frozen, you watch it try to stay upright before it finally collapses down, legs still kicking as though it still wants to run but its body has begun weakening on it. “Oh my god,” you say, stumbling back. The sounds; its sounds are awful, echoing in your bones and constricting your thoughts until they’re a pinched panic.

There’s an arrow lodged into its ribcage, deep and at a terrible angle. You already know that it’s pierced some vital organs, if not its heart. It continues to writhe on the ground, not ready to give up. You’re not sure if you should approach it—you don’t want to scare it, and you can tell by the look in its wet eyes that it already wants to be away from you.

Or, maybe it had come to you. How else had it found the two of you in the middle of this field?

Yeonjun’s already on it. He puts his knees into the dirt and dried wheat to kneel by it, running his hand over the beast's pelt in long strokes. The small buck flinches at first but relaxes once he learns that his touches are gentle, not the gnashing of hungry teeth ready to make him a meal.

Blood runs like lead through your veins. You say, “Can we help it?”

He shakes his head. “He’ll die.”

Whip-lashed, you swallow thickly. He says it so unphased, and you’re sure he is. You can hardly make yourself mirror that serenity that he exudes as he runs his hand over its flank, but you get on the ground beside him anyway.

The buck’s breaths slow to desperate drags for breath. For a few long minutes, the two of you sit in silence and stay with him until he no longer fights, until his breaths are ragged. You feel his side, still warm and alive, but you see the life going from his eyes. You sit here, talking to each other about nothing just so it hears gentle voices as it goes, for a while.

Eventually, he’s gone. Quiet and at peace, no longer hurting. This time, when you look over to Yeonjun who still smooths over the deer’s skin even as he goes, guiding him delicately into whatever greets us when we go, you see death as a gentle thing.

༺ ꘏ ༻

Though you never seek him out, Yeonjun always finds you. In hidden places, away from prying eyes, he appears behind you and makes himself known. Well, you have a feeling that he watches you for a while before saying anything. It’s hard not to feel the strange tingling of his gaze over your form. It’s akin to the sixth sense that’s supposed to keep you safe out in the dark hearts of forests, an innate feeling that tells you some beast with a rotten, pale maw watches you between the trees.

Yeonjun doesn’t feel rotten, though, preternatural and eerie as he is. As you shirk your duties and talk with him for hours, you stare into ancient eyes and watch his crooked mouth move around his words and you feel an odd comfort. As if he’s the only one who’s ever understood you, or maybe that your strangeness pales beside him and for once you’re nothing but who you are. So many nights, the sun fell on your talking until the night insects buzzed from the grasses and your eyes were heavy.

Sometimes, as you dozed off with your back to a hay bale or a hardwood wall of the abandoned home beside yours with its sagging thatched roof, you caught such festering longing in his his eyes that you’d let your lashes fall and pretend to sleep so that you could imagine what it was that he longed for. No doubt his lost lover. When you imagine him, bound in bones and coming back to haunt the living for an eternity as he mourns her infinitely, searching for her in impossible places, your chest aches with a gnawing intensity.

It’s a terrible, cursed existence. Even the nothingness of death becomes a paradise beside it.

“Is it scary?” you ask into the air, sat criss-crossed on the thick duvet of the bed. He sits across from you, looking perfectly lazy. Moonlight pools in like sterling mist through the shutters.

“What?” He watches you, sitting in your plain dress, as though you’re the only thing in the world.

You’ve begun to wonder. Wonder about those looks he gives you.

Shifting, you fix the shoulder of your soft chemise where it’s slipped down when you catch his eyes lingering on it. His throat bobs. “Dying,” you elaborate. “Is it really nothing? After we go, all of it was for nothing?”

A slow smile tugs his full lips, made a bit red in the middle where he likes to worry it. It’s such a human habit to see on something so far from human. “Hardly,” he says. “It’s like going home, right where your soul is supposed to be. Who do you think rides with me?”

Furrowing your brows, you tilt your head toward one shoulder and let your hair pool there. “The riders are dead?” You had thought they were undead in some way like Yeonjun, other sorts of revenants come back to life with their own purposes. Then, are their creepy horses dead, too? A chill goes down your arms. Sometimes, sitting here with him when his face is made soft by the orange glow of the fire he puts on, you forget what he is.

“They are.” He nods, leaned back onto his elbows, his eyes alight with a hunger that makes your insides feel funny. “It doesn’t stop once we’ve died. You don’t need to be scared, my love. So many things end, but then so many things begin. The earth no longer holds you down, the weight of being is gone. You don’t know anything like it; you don’t know leaving behind the pleasures of earth to know the ones that only the afterlife can show you.”

His eyes laced with something entirely else, he adds, “And it’s not the end. Not for everything. For some it’s only the beginning, and for others, those who have not yet fulfilled their purpose, they come back to the flesh. They return.”

You can’t tell if he means himself, or something else. The weight in his eyes, dark, endlessly swirling pools, makes you wonder again why it is that he’s lingering here: the place that he had not visited once since the death of his lover, for the fact that it still hurts too much. Why his shadow of death, his fault or not, was tangled in your soul enough to brush its fingers over the things around you.

“It’s scary,” you say, breathy. The thought of eternity.

Soft hairs brush over his eyes as he tilts his head at you. “Do I scare you?”

“No.”

“No?” he echos, pushing himself up so that he leans back onto his palms. “Isn’t that strange? Pretty little thing says she’s not afraid of death, but her heart races when I’m near. Her sweet heart jumps at just the brush of my leg. Are you sure you’re telling me the truth, love?”

Your blood roars in your veins, inflaming your cheeks and making your head dizzy. Nobody’s ever looked at you like that before. Hair prickles on your skin. “Yes,” you breathe.

Feral delight sparks in his eyes, black as pitch. His smile turns up all feline at the crooked corners. “Crawl to me, then.”

Like how fire licks up oxygen in any room it is in, his words steal the breath right from your lungs. What does he think you are? You blink at him wide-eyed and dumb for a moment.

How can he say that as though it were nothing? Moreover, how does the ravenous flare in his eyes, his head tilted back as he watches you down his nose expectantly, do that to your belly?

Your mind glazes over with something thick and heady, and you damn the nerves in your belly and begin to crawl from your end of the bed to his. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, making sure you feel every inch of the taunt in his eyes as he trains them on you. When you’ve gotten to him through the thickness in the air, you settle into his lap and bracket his waist with your thighs.

Yeonjun takes the soft fat of your hips in his fingers. “Fuck,” he says. It sounds like he’s barely holding the gates on something endlessly consuming. Something that might break loose on the two of you, and leave you changed forever with its hungry, gnashing teeth. His head hits your collarbone. “Tell me to stop. Please, tell me to go. Because I don’t know how.”

“Don’t,” you say. “Don’t stop. I want it, Yeonjun. I want this.”

He straightens, pupils blown and eyes as tense as his set jaw. “No, you don’t understand what you’re asking for. All I’ve ever done is ruin. All I’ll ever do is ruin. I won’t ruin you; not again.”

That rings bells somewhere outside the heavy fog that’s infiltrated your mind, but they don’t sound too alarming when he looks as though he wants to drag his teeth over your heart to taste its beating. It doesn’t touch the ground, when you want him to, so badly. So badly that you taste it on your tongue and it tinges your words as you tell him, “I do know what I’m asking for. I want you. Yeonjun. Don’t you want me too?” Voice and confidence wavering, you pull back. Maybe you’ve read this all wrong. A tickling shame crawls over your skull. “Do you not want me?”

“You think I don’t want you?” he says, straightening up and meeting your gaze. His breath is hot on your mouth. “I want you so fucking bad. You are in the marrow of my bones. Fuck, I have done nothing but want you, but I am foul. I will only hurt you.”

He takes your hand and places it over his chest, where a heart should be. Beneath your palm, you do not feel the thumping of an alive thing. Yeonjun has no heart. You knit your brows and examine the strain of his features. Does he think that you’ll be disgusted? Maybe the girl you were in that forest might’ve been, but being near Yeonjun has changed you in ways you couldn’t start to put your finger on. “I’m asking you to,” you say. “Show me what you want to do to me. What you’ve wanted to do to me.”

Searing silence burns between you as he drinks that in, and then he shoves you onto your back. Supporting himself with an arm beside your head, he curls his fingers into your hip and nudges your thighs wider. He doesn’t lift the hem of your chemise like you expect him to. No—Yeonjun begins to grind himself into your cunt through all the layers of your clothes. Though your dress is bunched up and his pants lay between any real contact, Yeonjun’s hard and that friction tastes fleetingly sweet.

“I want you to beg me for it,” he says, grinning down at you with cruel intention. “Beg me, and make it so pretty.”

You let little sounds linger in that back of your throat and become hungrier each time he grinds against you. It’s so much, mind swimming and sparks spraying up your spine, and yet each time it is not near enough. Damn that foxish smile on his face; you beg for him anyway. “Yeonjun,” you breathe, curling your fingers around the wrist of that hand with which he pins your hip. “P…lease, will you help me? It feels so good; I want more, please.”

He raises his eyebrows at you and an eager grind comes right over your throbbing clit.

You know he wants more than that, but mortification already is making your voice unsteady and your cheeks burn. “Yeonjun,” you huff, hips wiggling.

The king of the undead delights fully in your shame and rewards you with more of those pointed, dry grinds. Your legs tremble; he’s giving you so little, and yet your need takes it and magnifies it into something grand.

Though he pretends he’s on some high ground, you hear his shuddering breaths each time his fucks his hips against you. He feels that roiling, liquid need in his belly just as vehemently as you do. The room fills with your breathy pants and grinding bodies. You catch your lip in your teeth and begin to meet him half-way. Your moans are low and sweet, and each one sends his jaw tighter.

You twist and grind against each other like fumbling teens until you’re coiled up so tight that he has to pull himself away. Your throbbing cunt protests, but you know he doesn’t want you cumming like this.

“You want me to show you what I’ve wanted to do to you?” he says, working at his pants. His eyes are so drunk on you, and his cheeks betray his state. “Open your legs, my love. Let me show you a little death.”

Throat gone dry, you slowly let your thighs fall open. The dull throbbing between your thighs roars to life. He slides your skirt up your leg, stopping when he frees your knee to pepper a few hot kisses into it. Once he’s got it bunched up at your ribcage, he runs his tongue over his dry lips to wet them. “Fuck. Such a pretty pussy. I want to fucking eat you up.”

“Yeonjun,” you whine. His name is all you can muster out, anticipation sharpened to a knife point.

Flashing his teeth, he purrs, “You like that, you filthy thing. I bet you’d like for me to fuck you till your brain’s gone and all that’s left is my name. Isn’t that right? Is that what you want?”

Your thoughts stall and you nod, making your mouth into a filthy pout. God, how you want that. Maybe he’s right about you being filthy. Coming from him, it sounds like a delicious thing to be.

The pretty, leaking tip of his cock brushes your clit as he slides it up and down your slit to collect the mess there. Your thighs jump to close before your mind gets the better of it. He does this a few times—up and down, letting you feel and get used to the size and length of him all the way till his cockhead kisses your clit and you squeak.

“Are you comfortable, love?” he asks, shifting your hips with strong hands. “Do you need anything from me?”

It’s so at odds with his other, nastier words. Your head spins, the moonlight blurring. “I’m okay,” you tell him. “I… just want you. Want you to put it in, want to feel you.”

His cock catches on your hole, and he begins to push forward with promising pressure. But then he pulls back, smiling downturned. You whine; why can’t he save his capriciousness for later? You’d almost had it…

“I could give it to you, or I could not…” He hums. “Wouldn’t that be so cruel of me? To leave you wanting?”

You flutter around nothing. Every inch of your body buzzes. Alive. You are more alive now, at the promise of Death’s touch, than ever before. The irony might be something to wonder about if you weren’t dribbling down onto the bed sheets with crude need. “Stop it,” you say. Your voice is whiny. You’re glad you can hardly hear yourself past the pounding in your bloodstream.

That delights the King of Death. He wrinkles his nose at you, burning you alive with his eyes as he presses his palm to your belly and guides himself into you with his free hand. You wrap around each inch of him slowly. The air between you bows under the weight of your gazes; he holds your eyes the whole way, inch by inch until he’s seated fully into you with his groin flush to your body. He stretches you to fit, and yet it’s just right. You could ask for no more or no less; you might even think your body was made for him, were you not too busy circling your hips to feel him.

“Good?” he says, squeezing your hip. “Do you need a moment?”

Pursing your lips, you test out the shape of him with another wiggle. “Maybe… Maybe a second.” Truth be told, you need a moment to grapple with the sparks sprinkling over your mind more than you need a moment to adjust to his stretch. You let out a shuddering breath.

He traces circles into your belly, just beneath your navel. The pad of his thumb goes round and round, warm on your flesh. “As long as you need,” he says, but it’s more like a triumphant, playful coo. There’s that lopsided smirk. One day, you’d like to kiss it off him. Taking that hypnotizing finger, Yeonjun trails it up your stomach, over your ribcage. He hooks it beneath your dress and drags it higher, revealing the soft swells of your breasts to the air. You shudder, body so, so hot that your nipples peak and tighten against the cool air.

“Such pretty tits,” he says, brushing his knuckle up the underside of one. “Everything about you. Such a pretty, pretty body. God, I don’t know if I want to worship it or ruin it.” His breaths fan over your skin as he bends down and pops an eager nipple into his mouth, lavishing it before releasing it with a lewd pop and letting his mouth fall all over your breast. Lick here, nip there, until you’re squirming adequately and squeezing him like a virgin. Then he blows cool air over it and watches with eyes like a cat toying with its prey as you shudder harder, your chest jumping. “Fucking look at you,” he sneers.

“Junnie,” you say, lost for breath. You think you’ve walked yourself into the lion’s den.

His breathy laughs fall over your breast. Taking his teeth, he drags them over your skin, right over where your heart thunders a rhythm fully for him, and then he bites. Nothing more than a shallow mark, the shape of his teeth in your soft tit. He lingers there, admiring the sight before he straightens himself up again.

“Fine.” He pulls out of you slowly, but you know what comes after that, so you savor every second of it. “I suppose you’ve wanted after it long enough. Let me hear your sweet voice again, my love.”

Yeonjun fucks you just right. His cock nudges right up on your sweet spot as if he’s done this before. Like he knows where to find it. You gasp and whine—you’re just happy he’s finally giving you something.

“Oh, fuck,” you mewl. His shoulders wear the red crescent marks of your nails. “That’s—so good right there.”

Ever egotistical and cocky, he croons, “Yeah?” Rolling himself back, he makes it his mission to hit it ruthlessly.

A sharp, pitchy sound comes tumbling past your lips. You bring your hand up over your mouth, letting your eyelids dust your burning cheeks so that you can brave the flipping in your spine and deep in your belly. It’s nearly insufferable—the way pleasure licks up your spine, how it spreads out into your veins and takes control of you.

“No,” Yeonjun growls. “Don’t you dare close your eyes. Let me see that look in your eyes when you cum.”

Your eyes are heavier than they’ve ever been, but you open them. The sight that greets you is worth the effort. Yeonjun’s lip twitches and then he throws his head back, the column of his neck on display as his Adam's apple jumps around a thick swallow.

If that sight wasn’t enough to send you teetering down into whatever depths of lust and ecstasy that he crawled out from, then the angle he hits as he pushes one of your thighs to your chest is. The world frays, deep tremors starting at one small point in your cunt and then exploding up through your stomach and down the back of your thighs. Your chest arches off the bed and you mewl helplessly, fighting and embracing your orgasm in an intoxicating death.

“Oh, fuck,” Yeonjun growls, strained with something whinier as he watches you shake beneath him. “Fuck. I’m gonna—fuck, I’m gonna cum…” His voice chokes as his hips become stuttered more than pointed, the slick sounds of your own release tangling up with his grunts and pants until he shudders and stills, cumming into your puffy, fluttering cunt.

You both catch your breaths as if there’s no air in the room left for a while. His hair’s damp on his forehead, as is yours on your neck, and his eyes droop lazily. More lazy and content than you’ve ever seen him.

Collecting you to his chest, where only your heart thumps away frantically, he presses his mouth to your ear and says, “Do you think death is so scary now?”

With your limbs nothing more than boneless and liquid pleasure floating slowly through your thoughts, you smile.

A little death can be more visceral than living, you think.

༺ ꘏ ༻

The tree stump beneath you makes your tailbone ache. You sit criss-crossed, watching Soobin work away at the soil and tend to that section of the fence that’s begun to rot and sag. Your mouth moves endlessly, filling the space that would otherwise just be made up of his grunts of hard work.

“You know, you ought to help me if you’re just going to sit and watch,” he says, straightening to swipe at his forehead, sweaty despite the cold in the air.

“Totally improper,” you say, smiling at him cheekily. “Are you saying that you can’t handle yourself, strong man?”

He glares at you with the venom only somebody made to put up with hours of chatter could muster. “What’s got you so talkative?” he says.

You know he means why you’re suddenly not glaring him away. You can’t tell him that you’ve spoken with Death himself, so instead you say, “Nothing.” Letting your legs dangle down, you smile at him.

Yeonjun hadn’t done any of it. It’s a comfort, to some degrees, to know that. It’s not your fault that they died. Being around them, being around Soobin, won’t make them turn up dead. The rest of them still don’t know that—and they wouldn’t believe it, anyway—but the black shadow hanging over your shoulders dissipates.

For the first time in so, so long, you do not feel marked by death.

“Sure.” His smile tilts. “A week ago, you wouldn’t even look at me.”

Rolling your eyes, you decide to give him a hard time. “Not true. You just have a way of getting on my nerves.”

“I take pride in that.”

“Take pride in what? Being insufferable?”

Crinkling his nose, he says, “Knowing how to bother you best.”

“Get back to work, stupid.” Your heart soars. It’s good to have friends. To let yourself have friends is an ever better thing. Is this how it is? To be with others and not feel like their burden, or like they’re crossing their fingers behind their back to ward off whatever bad things you might bring onto them? He’s made it his mission to hover around you no matter what, but this feels different.

Maybe, for so long, part of it has been your own gloom that’s obscured it all. Maybe if you didn’t bare your teeth to anybody who got too close, it could’ve been like this always. You hate to think that your own isolation could be some part your own fault. But how were you not to show your teeth when someone tried to reach their hand out to you?

It doesn’t matter now. You shove that all down and let yourself feel the slight warmth of the sun’s glow on your skin where it peeks through the clouds. It’s a nice day, you shouldn’t ruin it with those thoughts.

The sun’s begun making its descent when Soobin’s done. He takes a long drink of water, hissing with relief and crumpling down to the ground with his back to your stump.

“Are you making any way with that girl you were talking to me about?” you prompt.

Giving you a long look over his shoulder, he says, “Don’t.”

“What?” You laugh a little, raising your brows down at him. “I’m not doing anything.”

“You know what you’re doing,” he says, voice flat as he picks stickers out of his fingers.

Soobin’s had a thousand different crushes. There was that daughter of the shepherd, and then the wealthy merchant’s daughter and her long pretty hair, and then the neighbor… Well, you could go on. None of them ever really came to fruition for the poor guy. He thinks that it’s because he’s a poor farmer’s son, but you always tell him that it’s because he’s got an insistent mouth, and that he should be more grateful that you deal with him. Your lips turn up at the corners a little thinking about it—he’ll find the one eventually, but you like the indignant look on his face when you say it.

“I mean it!” you say, nudging him with your leg. “Tell me. I want to know.”

“You won’t even tell me what’s happening with you. Until one of us quits keeping secrets,” he says, placing accusation heavy over the words, “I’ll keep my dealings to myself. What’s it to you, anyway?”

Feeling the weight of his head as he lets it loll lazily against your thigh, you decide that it couldn’t hurt to tell him. The itch to tell somebody crawls under your skin. Especially to tell him. “You know the other day? When I was… being awful?”

His body shakes with a vindicated laugh. “If you’re nothing else, at least you’re self-aware.”

You skirt around that with your own, more awkward, laugh. It’s nice that he thinks so, but you don’t feel it. “Stop,” you huff and nudge him again. “I was foraging out where I usually go. But I guess I wandered out farther than I thought I did. You remember when they used to tell us stories, right? Like the bogeyman. That he’d come snatch us up if we didn’t listen.” Your mom especially had loved that one, back when she cared what became of you. Would she care again, if you told her that everything was fine? “Well, I don’t know if you remember the one about The Wild Hunt, but… Anyway, I was picking some stuff, and…”

Sitting up from his exhausted slouch, Soobin looks like he’s suddenly come back to life. “What?” he interrupts. His voice is strangely serious.

“What?” you say, brow creasing. “They travel here and there… but they were here. In the woods. Like, I heard them.”

Tersely, he asks, “What were you doing that deep in the woods?”

“I mean, I just kept on finding nice stuff until I just… was deeper.” You survey him. You hadn’t thought that he’d react like this. “So I ran, and then there was this guy,” you say, watching realization fall over his face. He knew those stories as much as you do—knew where you were going with this. He is as starkly superstitious as the rest of your people, you forgot. Pushing past the grimace on his face, you say, “And I knew that he was the king. The one from the stories. It was so weird; it’s like you can feel it. And I spoke to him, and then…”

Stood up now, he cuts you off once more. “Are you kidding?”

“Why are you being like that?” you say, messing with your skirts to quell the defensive bite in your tone. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t do anything? Are you trying to get killed?” He throws up his hard-working hands. “We have rules for a reason. Don’t go out into the forest, don’t make deals with faeries, don’t follow a banshee scream. And then you go and talk to the king of death? How am I not supposed to be upset about that? You know that…” Soobin blinks a few times as if second-guessing what he’s about to say, but he says it anyway. “You know that he’s the reason that they treat you how they do. You know that he’s the one who ruined your life. Why would you ever mess with that?”

You push yourself up from the ground, eyes burning. That stings like a cut. “He didn’t do it. None of it is his fault,” you say, furrowing your brows. “What are you trying to say, Soobin? Just say what you want to say. Come on.”

“He didn’t do anything?” He scoffs, letting a heavy silence hang suspended in the air for a moment before saying, “Is that what he told you? And you just believed it? Listen to yourself, does that make any sense? He’s played with your life like it’s some fucking toy, and now he’s come to rub it in your face. Think about it: do animals just fly into anybody else’s windows and die? Do the trees that they pick from just end up dead? It’s his fault that they all treat you the way you do.”

Mouth opening and closing, you don’t know what to say.

He sees the hurt in your burning eyes and tries to reel it back in. “What I’m trying to say is—”

“I know what you’re saying,” you say, grabbing up the lunch you’ve been nibbling on. “I know exactly what you’re saying. I just never thought you’d say it out loud.”

“Say what?” Soobin says, his voice raising behind you as you storm off.

That you think it’s my fault, you want to say. That they all die because I am a plague, and you are a charity worker for being my friend. Instead, you just leave and try to choke down the tightness in your throat.

༺ ꘏ ༻

You curl your arms around yourself, the night biting cold. Yeonjun had dragged you from bed, and who knows what hour of the night it is? If the heaviness beneath your eyes is to judge it by, it’s far too deep in the dead of night to be outside with your boots half-laced and nothing but your sleep chemise on.

You might’ve just stayed wrapped up in your blankets if you weren’t so lonely as you’ve been. Soobin’s been scarce. The most you see of him is in the fields from morning to afternoons. You hope that he’ll stop by your doorstep and knock so that you can groan about it but swing the door open anyway each time, but he doesn’t. He thinks that you won’t want to see him, and so he allows you your space.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s hard to be the one to come back after a conversation like that, though. You watch him from the windows and hope he understands at some point instead. It’s an awful lot easier.

Other than preparing meals and window watching, you’ve been up to nothing much at all. You hadn’t realized how much you had, but you feel him in his absence.

“It’s cold…” you say. The fog of breath that punctuates it makes your point. Whatever he’s brought you out here for, you have no doubt it’ll be something strange. The grin on his face tells you as much.

Leading the way, he heads for the Darkwood. “Only you would come rushing out without a cloak for your shoulders.”

“Well, only you would drag me from my nice, warm bed at this time of night. For what?”

“Can’t anything be a surprise with you?” he says, shooting you a cheeky glance over his shoulder. “Surprises are fun.”

“Surprises!” you say, working your legs to catch him. “Not surprises that involve you bringing me out into the woods. You know, it’s awfully suspicious. Somebody who sees this might think that I am the type to… sneak out with men.”

“Aren’t you now?”

Your lips tug down. “You know what I mean.”

He laughs in his airy way, a twig snapping under his foot. You’re well in the woods, now. Probably somewhere near where you’d first met him.

Lifting a brow, you look at him expectantly. Maybe a will-o’-the-wisp will come floating through with its light bouncing off the trees. That would be a nice surprise, you admit.

Yeonjun circles you. His presence behind you tingles in the way it always does, but true chills erupt when his breath puffs against your ear. “Close your eyes. I have something I want to show you.”

Your mind wanders back to what Soobin had gotten so twisted up about. It might be naive and reckless and against everything you ever learned, but you let your eyes fall shut to blackness. If he was going to hurt you, you imagine he’d have had that opportunity a mind-numbing amount of times before.

“Are they shut?” he asks, waiting for your nod. His voice comes from in front of you now. “I want you to keep them shut. You can’t open your eyes, or it will all go away. Okay?”

“Okay,” you breathe, mind full of a bounty of questions. You don’t even know where to begin to assume what he’s got going on, so you stand there shifting your antsy feet.

There’s a strange, rustling sound that catches you off guard with your eyes closed. It drags on for a long moment. Curiosity pries at your eyes; you want nothing more than to just crack an eye open to spy the source of the ruckus.

It’ll be gone if you do, anyway.

You let out a surprised squeak as something rises up beneath you, as if risen from nothing more than the dirt and roots of the forest floor, bringing you up from the earth. You wobble and send your hands out to find a perch.

A horse. It’s a horse, its mane so tangled and windswept, but matted and clumped with leaves that crunch under your palm when you find them. It reeks of mud—everything around you begins to smell of earth and decomposition.

You know that if you open your eyes, you’ll find yourself sat upon the pale white steed of the Undead King, its eyes white and its knobby knees almost as famous as the leader of The Hunt himself. It chuffs beneath you.

“Are you ready?” Yeonjun says over your shoulder. You can hear the feral grin in his voice. It’s the leader of The Hunt, a creature of folklore, that sits behind you now. He curls an arm around your waist and tugs you closer to him, securing you against the wall of his chest. “Hold on tight, my love.”

The call of the wild, that horn, bellows again like it had the first time you heard it. Rather than coming from nearby as you thought it would, it dances between trees far off just like it had that time, too. Your heart jumps up into your throat.

Taking off with a howl, the Wild Hunt follows it.

You dig your fingers into Yeonjun’s at your waist. Weight melts away, and you know you’re in the air. Your belly swoops in tandem with the howls and hoots of the riders, heart palpitating to the hoofbeats. How there’s hoofbeats as you ride through the air, you’re not sure. The ghostly fleet manifests around you in vivid imagery, though you squeeze your eyes shut. They are wild enough to imagine just what they might look like: with their clothes and flesh in tatters, with their eyes beady or pale, with their hounds piercing the air with their calls and running alongside them, they are a perfect personification of freedom.

Whip-lash sends you reeling, body going rigid. You grit your teeth and squeeze your eyes harder, wishing that you’ll touch ground soon and that everything would become real again.

Yeonjun feels you go stiff. Bringing his head back to your shoulder from his own delight, he says, “It’s okay. You’re okay. Let it into your bones. Do you think I would let it hurt you?”

He is their leader. If it got too much, you know Yeonjun would be there to catch you. Curling your fingers into his, you release that tension and allow their drumbeat to echo through you.

And when it does, your blood begins to sing along. The wind whips your cheeks and your hair, and you begin to laugh with them. The Hunt twists and turns and dances through the air, an apparition in the night, but nothing more than that.

It comes to a slow, eventually, until the noise and even your steed crumbles back down into the dirt it appeared from. Your eyes pop open hoping to catch at least a glimpse of them, but only the dark forest and pale moonlight answer. Your legs threaten to give out on you, veins still thrumming, but, oh, do you feel alive.

You feel more alive than you ever have, more than you ever could have hoped to have known. Mind spinning, you stumble. Yeonjun catches and steadies you before you can go scraping your knees on a rock.

“Oh my fucking god,” you say.

The laugh that Yeonjun breaks into has you sending him a glare, but you break too. Everything about him is ironic; and how ironic indeed that Death himself should show you how to be alive, rather than to just live?

༺ ꘏ ༻

The air is so fresh in your lungs when you step outside that it nearly burns. You clutch your basket of warm fig tarts. Songbirds trill and fly between tree tops that slowly become more bare the deeper you fall into the season, singing their sweet songs that sound like new beginnings.

Raising your hem from the ground churned up into mud from the afternoon’s trickle, you prance into town with a lively pep in your step. You spent all last night making these—Yeonjun had kept you company, watching you how he always does as you pored over making them just right. His cruel snicker when the jam had simmered over flame for too long and became too thick bounces off your bones in a sweet melody. You’ve come to adore his wicked delight, the way his smile cracks over his face and the facetious raise of his brows, more than you fear it.

Sending small smiles to the people that you pass, you stop by a huddle of kids digging sticks into the mud. They look up at you with curious eyes, stopping to gawk.

“Hey, guys,” you say, pulling back the cloth laid over the sweets. “I’ve made some fig tarts. Do you like fig? I bet you’ll like them; they’re sweet.”

The kids stand up, eyes big as they share a look. They don’t let out so much as a peep before they scurry off home.

You blink. Well, you’re used to weird reactions, but that was… different. Picking up your deflated shoulders and hesitant limbs, you make a shoddy attempt at not letting it dampen your good morning. You were expecting wary looks, anyway.

You head down a little further toward the far side of your home village, the side that breaks off after a fenceline into a great, grassy field. There’s a bustle, mothers washing their clothes in pails and hanging them up to dry and a few others whispering at each other lowly as they go about their days.

An old woman so old her back curves and her fingers have gone knobby makes her way to wherever the day’s duty demands her to be. Your neighbor—an eccentric old lady bound in her times. You decide on her: the elderly are forgotten by the young. She might enjoy knowing that her neighbors still know she exists.

“Hello,” you say, showing her your basket with a hopeful, excited heart. “I have some treats that I was wanting to give out. I know they might not be much, but would you like one? I’m not the best baker, but I do it often enough.” A face like that, dragged down by her years on this earth and not long to death, has no doubt spent many years making meals for her family. You imagine your goods would be nothing beside hers, but it’s the gesture, no?

“Oh, girl,” she says, voice crackling as she clutches her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I’m afraid it’s best if you found yourself missing from this place. Hurry yourself up and spare the drama.”

The incessant cawing of a crow from a clawed tree fades into the background as you furrow your brows and lower your basket to ask, “...Huh?” Your belly goes up in knots; terrible knots done up tight and fast. You haven’t got a clue what she’s talking about. Elders always did speak a bit strange, though. It could be nothing much; she’s a stern old lady.

But her eyes are not angry and glaring in the way that a harrowed old hag might turn her nose up at the youth. They drag down with a cold pity.

“Listen to me, girl.” She points at you with one of those worn, sun-spotted hands. “You had best leave. The boy’s gone, and they are already not fond of you. Who will they point their fingers to?” the woman says. “I hardly know you, but I would hate to see it.”

The rest of her words fade into the roaring in your ears, the feral drumbeat of your heart like a wardrum in the cage of your ribs as it beats against them as if to escape from you. You don’t feel the basket in your hands, don’t feel the solidity of the earth beneath your feet, and don’t feel a single one of your thoughts like tangible things. They flit as if liquidated into a rotten, sick mush.

Nothing. You can think of nothing. Nothing real; nothing holding you to the earth.

“What?” Your voice hardly reaches your ears, but what does is weak and broken and like a plea for her to tell you that it’s not really what you think it is.

And if you could see or hear anything beyond your fraying little rift in reality, you would’ve heard the man coming up to you. You would’ve heard the words coming from his angry, sneering mouth, and would’ve done something when he picked up a pail of water, and you would’ve been shaken by the nasty ice water that runs down your frozen body and plasters your hair and clothes down as he pours it over you. But none of it cuts through your stupor.

He yells some awful, stabbing things at you, and a few others join him. They tell you that you are nothing but a plague, tell you to leave and to not come back here.

But this is your home. Where else would you go?

With your sopping wet dress clutched in your shaking fists as though that might keep you grounded, you choke down the tightening of your throat and sift through their faces, searching for his face. Those brown eyes, brown and always shining with nagging playfulness, do not come up anywhere. Jaw trembling, you search harder. Out on the field where he should be at this time of day, at your doorstep demanding that you go spend the day doing nothing with him, in someone’s yard helping them fix up a broken fence, no matter where you look, neither his broad silhouette nor his cheeky, dimpled face is there. You continue to stand stricken dumb, looking for him even though you know by the churning in your belly that it’s true, and you’re just hurting yourself trying to find him right where he should be.

Fine. Alive. Untouched by your disgusting, destructive presence.

When you can no longer fight the strangling tightness in your lungs and your dress is as heavy as your heart, you take off. The hem of your dress drags in mud and sticker bushes and catches on stray twigs, and you don’t know where you’re going, but you just run. You’ll give them what they want.

You stumble, probably like some lost, undead thing, until you find yourself at the edge of the forest. Only then do you let the wall of whittle-edged tears roll down your face. And you assume you sound like a choking, dying animal with how you choke and heave on them, but he was the one you might’ve dropped your head and cried to, so what’s the use of making it pretty? No; you let it all fall as it is.

Soobin’s dead. Soobin’s dead, and it’s nobody else’s but your own fault. You clutch your chest to staunch that old ache that’s grown teeth and tears at your heart; you have and will always be the end of everything that comes near. You are just as much the plague that you began to pretend, to believe, you weren’t. It was your stupid hope that maybe you could have something and not watch it become carrion that drove that pick. It was by your hope that he’s gone.

The hair on your arms begins to raise. You pick your head up and find Yeonjun standing in front of you.

There’s a few beats of long, dreadful quiet as he takes in the state of you. He drags his eyes down and they become liquid flame—something different from the impious delight that he is made of. He becomes the King of Death.

“What happened?” he says. The chills on your arms prickle furiously at the words, furling out distant and yet furious like the center of the fire.

You shake your head, wiping your soaked cheek.

“What the fuck happened?” he growls again, taking your face into his hand. “Who did this? Who did this to you, my love? I need you to tell me who the fuck did this to you.”

Letting the venom in your mouth out, you shove his chest and say, “Get away from me. Don’t fucking touch me.”

Yeonjun’s face twists up, looking scalded. Not surprised, though. “Don’t do this,” he says. “Let me hold you while it hurts. Don’t push me away. I can’t… I won’t lose you again.”

All the pieces that you had been putting into the corners of your mind snap together at that. As many suspicions as you had, though, it feels sour hearing it confirmed from his mouth. That you are his dead past lover, reincarnated or whatever you are. That it was his presence—because even though he stayed away for centuries, a part of him still lingered with you—that now has torn down everything you ever thought you could love. He, standing there in front of you like a kicked puppy, is the ruination of your life in the flesh. The flipping of your stomach is nauseating.

“I hate you,” you spit. “I hate you so much.” You repeat it a few more times, and you sob it into his chest as he takes you into his arms. “Is this what you wanted? You’ve been waiting for this forever, haven’t you? To find me again, so that you can die and fucking leave me here. So that you can make me exactly what you are, while you get your peace. You are a liar and a thief. All you’ve ever done is steal and take. How could you do it? Huh? Tell me…” Your voice trembles and staggers off. “Tell me how you made love to me, how you made me believe that you loved me, and all you ever wanted was to save yourself? You betrayed me.”

Pulling back, Yeonjun says, “No.”

“Yes,” you say, stumbling back away from him with a shaking, accusatory finger pointed at him. “Yes you did.”

Fingers itching to reach out to you, he holds them back by curling them into fists. “No. That’s not fair. I have spent an eternity loving you. I spent the entirety of my immortal, monstrous life searching for you, just so that I might find you in any form. I would have been glad to find you as a leaf in a tree, as long as I found you. But, then, I find you alive. Alive and back, as if… it never happened.” He steps toward you, aching to be near you. His voice wavers. “Please, don’t do this to me, love. Please, just let me have you again. I’ve waited… I’ve waited and I’ve waited, and I finally have you, and now you’re looking at me like I… Like I’d ever hurt you. Finding death—finally getting to die would be worth nothing if you weren’t there with me. It was never about that.”

“I could never love you,” you say, matching his steps forward with steps away from him. “I could never love a monster that does… Does nothing but kill. Take.” You know your words are cruel, but you need them to be. You need him to hurt, you need him to go so far away from you that never again will you cause another living thing’s death.

“You did.” Yeonjun’s mouth cracks into a pained smile, sharp at the corners. “You loved me just as much as I love you, once.”

“Just leave me. Leave me, and I wish to never see you again. If you love me, then you’ll give me that.”

He looks at you, clever eyes intense and glassy, for a long time. And then he says, “Would that make you happy? Would it make it so that you could live a happy life, and find yourself something to live for?”

What’s left for you? A small village that won’t ever embrace you? No, it wouldn’t fix your life. But you open your mouth and tell him, “Yes.”

“Okay,” he says, brushing his knuckles over your cheeks reverently. He swallows in your features, running over them for what he knows is the last time he’ll be seeing you—the very last time he’ll see the face of his undying love. When he finally opens his mouth again, his voice is gentle. “I’ll leave you. If my being here hurts you, then I won’t be selfish. I love you, darling.”

Don’t go, you want to tell him. Please don’t leave. Please, hold me. But your mouth is dry, and you let the radiant hurt in your chest stop you. You let him go.

༺ ꘏ ༻

There’s only one place you can think of going to. It’s the only place your vagrant feet take you.

His spot still is held sacred by the flattened, gold wheat stalks. Your best friend, still living here on Earth in at least one way even if he’s not here to listen to your stupid rambling. And he would maybe complain, but he’d always listen.

The last thing you’d done was fight with him. What an awful thing—what an awful way to repay him for being the only one who ever dared to get close.

You sit in your spot, beside his, and rest your chin on your knees. If only the ground beneath you would open up and swallow you whole. You’d deserve it.

What’s left for you? Is there a place in the world that would keep you happily once they see what you do? No. There is not. You wish you knew what to do; you wish you had somebody to ask.

Releasing a long, tight breath, you just sit and wait for something to give you answers. A gentle breeze makes your hair dance, but it does not whisper anything to your ears. Something’s circling over head, but it doesn’t caw in the cadence of his laughter.

Conceding, you begin to push yourself up from the ground. A rustle in between the foliage stops you before you stand.

A tawny hare leaps out in front of you. It sniffs around you, nose twitching. Then it stands back on its haunches. It stares straight at you, an intelligent light in its eyes that knits your brows. The wild thing stands there with a purpose that is uncharacteristic of a forest animal.

But entirely familiar in the face of your best friend. That shine in its eyes as it stands there, nose still twitching, makes your chest tighten up.

“Hey,” you say, as if it might answer you. Your eyes well up with hot tears again. Of course, it doesn’t.

Maybe you’ve gone mad, but you know that it’s him. That idiot, coming to show you that he’s okay in the afterlife—to visit one last time and to let you know that you shouldn’t worry for him or cry for him. Look at him, full of life once again, he seems to say. The hare blinks its beady eyes. It lingers there for a long time, the ease of peace found in his gaze that Soobin hadn’t had in this life, saying that there is still something waiting out there for us once we go. You reach out a hand. He does not flinch as you scratch behind its ear.

“Okay,” you whisper. “I’m glad to know you’re alright. I know what I need to do, now.”

He blinks.

You laugh a hoarse, breathy laugh, familiar in only the way that Soobin could achieve. “You look stupid.”

Indignantly, the hare stops a bratty foot in a way reminiscent of one of Soobin’s huffs before it settles back down onto its forelegs and scurries off. He goes to live out this new form of life, because it’s true: life does not end in death. He’s shown you that.

Maybe, like this, he’ll find that pretty lady that loves him the way he deserves. That loser.

༺ ꘏ ༻

You spend only one night in your home and you know that what you’ve chosen is right. After spending your day out in the field, you sneak under night’s cover into your husk of a room and let yourself sleep there under the covers one last time. When morning breaks through the window, you gather your weary bones up and leave.

You run into your mother on the way out. She doesn’t yell at you to leave, but her eyes have gone cold. Colder than you’re used to. You’ve killed again, in every way that counts. So you don’t bother with bidding her or any of them any grand goodbyes. You couldn’t handle the relief you might find falling over them, should you.

Plopping down to the floor, you take a few bites of the cheese and bread lathered in sweet jam that you’d swiped from the kitchen. The grass is long and willows in the wind, bending and dancing prettily. It’s so soft; you enjoy the feeling of it beneath your fingers in your quiet serenity. The scent of it, fresh over the baseness of dirt, you breathe into your lungs.

It would be the loveliest place to spend the rest of eternity.

For the first time, Yeonjun appears in front of you rather than behind you. He materializes from nothing, his elbow on his knee as casual as if he’d been sat there the whole time. The darkness beneath his eyes seems heavier, but then again you know that exact heaviness. It sits right in the very center of you.

You both are quiet for a bit. You let the tall grass whisper, instead.

“Bread?” you say and slant your lips into a smile. Bringing it up, you offer it to him.

His smile wrinkles his nose and curls at the edges. Entirely him. Yeonjun accepts the bread, ripping a bite out before throwing it away into the sea of green. Once he’s chewed, he leans in and captures your lips in a kiss that’s utterly at odds with his sharp mouth. Your lips move over each other gently, save for an indulgent nip or bite here and there.

He pushes you back into a bed of sweetgrass, never letting your lips go. Not to breathe, not to say something that’ll pale in comparison to the sweetness of your mouths on one another. He kisses you until he’s had enough to fulfill a lifetime without it, and then some more.

“My love,” he whispers into your skin, his breath hot on your collarbone. “Mine,” he says, pressing a kiss into the column of your neck, and then he says it again with a hot kiss to the place where your dress suggests your breasts. He says it a handful more times as he pushes your skirts up your thighs. “My love forever. I waited for you so long, and I would do it again.” Lowering his voice to a honeyed whisper, he adds, “I would find you no matter what.”

Laughing softly, you run your fingers through his raven hair to better see his eyes. You know he would.

Gently giving you one more of his lingering kisses that make your skin tingle, right into your bare shoulder, he presses into you. You loose a soft breath, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. The beating in your chest slows to a content purr as he begins languid thrusts in and out of you, rolling pointedly and unhurried.

Yeonjun makes love to you in a thousand dusted kisses and sweet words, your hands holding each other’s soft edges. Yeonjun traces the lines of you, taking the pads of his thumb down your cheeks and your lips and then his hand over the swell of your breasts and down your belly and over your thighs. Clamping down on him as your belly grows tight in the way it had the first time you had done this, your thighs begin to shake.

Breathlessly, as you hurdle over the edge, all that you can say is, “I love you, ‘Junnie.”

Yeonjun smiles at you and then presses his face into your neck. He doesn’t even brace himself against the grass to chase his own peak. Neither of you want this to end; you want to hold on to this moment and let it span forever. Slowly, Yeonjun rolls up into you until his hips finally stutter and he cums into you, his cheeks pink. The weight of him above you as he shakes with your shared ecstasy, and even as you both have come down and are nothing but lazy, is the only thing in this world. He is the only thing in this world.

Once you’ve both evened your breathing out, you roll apart and face each other, still just two forms bending the grass into your shapes. Blinking slowly and digesting his features one at a time—the angle of his eyes, softened but never tamed, the line of his nose, the line of his mouth always so proud and playful, and that pretty dot below his left eye—you let them solidify fully in your mind.

“Yeonjun,” you say, finally meeting his eyes across from you. “I want to go. I’m ready.”

The gentle, knowing look that he gives you soothes over the way your heart begins to race in your chest in rebellion. “I know,” he says.

Of course he had known. Yeonjun had been called here to ferry you into the afterlife. He had known the moment he appeared in front of you that his last soul to reap would be you; an ironic circle of karma that should be cruel, but you two make it something sweet. Chewing on your lip, you will your hands to not shake as you curl toward him. You’re no longer scared of going. You know that if you’ll be with him, it will be okay. It won’t be so scary. A hot tear rolls down your temple and then drops into your hair. “Will you be with me? I won’t be there alone?”

He tucks some hair behind your ear reverently and then leaves his hand there. “I don’t know,” he answers. “But I won’t leave you. I’ll stay right here with you.”

You lay there for a long time. Chatting and giggling and just looking into each other's eyes, until your heart becomes slow and all you feel is the wind singing in your blood. Yeonjun presses one final kiss to your forehead.

Maybe, in some years, somebody might dig up your bones and find you immortalized like this in your love. Your bones bowing toward each other, as if even death were not enough to stop you from reaching for each other. Or maybe they’ll just find yours, and Yeonjun still curling into them how you know he will for an eternity more.

Either way, the going is still slow and gentle, as death always is.

🪶 ⦂ tears. omfg i cried writing this which could totally be me being a bitch baby but it DAMN. omfg.

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

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puppysuke · 2 days ago

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Hii! Could you please do if the tulpar crew was dating an autistic reader? Or someone with neurodivergent traits? (As in like would they understand it/know how to handle them.) So sorry if this is a difficult ask!

oh my GODS i love this one so much being someone neurodivergent. i am so excited for this, it's not difficult at all! i'll get to my other asks after this one, but i'm just super excited for this one :3 thank you for the ask anon!

notes: continue reading under the cut!

tulpar crew dating autistic reader.

꒰ curly .ᐟ ꒱

𖦹 he really tries his best to understand everything ans make you as comfortable as possible.

𖦹 he honestly makes a lists of what your sensory needs are, like what you don't like to touch and when textures you're okay with.

𖦹 he doesn't fully understand what you feel, so he often asks you to explain how you feel.

𖦹 "what are you thinking?" curly asks, noticing you seem farther away from your mind than usual. "is something too loud? not feeling right?" he asks, talking in a soft and quiet voice.

𖦹 curly does a lot of research on what you have and how to customize things for your needs.

𖦹 he also asks you a lot about your opinions. like how you feel about things, how your brain works.

𖦹 he doesn't realize at first that autism is different for everyone, so he kinda gets you basic autism special interest things like dinosaurs things, especially.

𖦹 if that's not your special interest and you tell him and explain autism a little more to him, he panics a little.

𖦹 "i'm sorry, i swear i'm not ableist!" he says quickly, eyes wide. "i just wanna do this right!"

𖦹 he treats you like a normal person when you explain everything to him, because you are a normal person. and he knows that.

𖦹 loves to listen to you info dump and gets you things based on the things you ramble about, he loves seeing how excited you get.

꒰ jimmy .ᐟ ꒱

𖦹 he actually knows a lot about different disabilities, including autism due to studying a lot about it.

𖦹 he hates that he sees a lot of himself in you, certain things you do and traits. he doesn't like it.

𖦹 but he loves you (vine boom sound effect), so he tries his very best to not do anything wrong.

𖦹 jimmy is honestly pretty chill about it, i think. he just tries to read you and figure you out without having to ask.

𖦹 he lets you ramble to him about your hyperfixations / special interests, but he doesn't particularly listen, it's in one ear and out the other.

𖦹 he doesn't push you to talk when you're nonverbal and enjoys just sitting in silence with you when you're not talking.

𖦹 he makes sure to wear things that have textures you don't mind if you have bad sensory issues. he doesn't wanna drive you away from touching him.

𖦹 he likes to lay on you like he's a weighted blanket tbh and gets you a weighted blanket for when he isn't around.

𖦹 overall, he understands and knows how to help you, he just has trouble adjusting to dating you.

꒰ daisuke .ᐟ ꒱

𖦹 "woah, you're autistic!? i got a touch of the tism myself!"

𖦹 you guys share interests and stuff so yap sessions all the time.

𖦹 he definitely knows what he's doing when it comes down to comforting you, whether it's with over stimulation or lack of understanding social cues or something else.

𖦹 he literally learned sign language with you for when you're non verbal tbh.

𖦹 not really much to say about daisuke here i think, he's just also autistic/nd, i wish i could say more but he def just gets it.

꒰ anya .ᐟ ꒱

𖦹 she didn't exactly study psychology or brain things, but she does just to learn more about how to care for you and help you out.

𖦹 it doesn't take long for her to get used to dating someone nd, she just makes sure to read up on it a lot.

𖦹 again, i feel like there isn't much to say about anya. she learns quickly and spends lots of time trying to figure everything out to help you.

𖦹 she does pay attention when you talk about the things you like and tries to learn about those things too.

꒰ swansea .ᐟ ꒱

𖦹 honestly, i don't think he handles it all that well at first, saying some ableist shit like "oh we're all a little autistic."

𖦹 yeah, turns out he also is autistic, just refuses to acknowledge it!

𖦹 he finally decides to research a bit and ask you about your own experiences and starts to handle it better.

𖦹 he babies you a little at first but soon starts to realize that's not the thing to do and treats you normally.

𖦹 gets more well versed with neurodivergencies as time passes and figures everything out and is pretty good with it after a while!

i hope you enjoyed! if you liked this and have anything you'd like me to write from this fandom, or any other fandoms listen in my intro post, my requests are open! just ask me in my inbox and i'll write / make hc for you <3 thank you for reading!

#mouthwashing #mouthwashing fanfic #mouthwashing game #headcanon #jimmy mouthwashing #daisuke mouthwashing #anya mouthwashing #curly mouthwashing #swansea mouthwashing #jimmy x reader #curly x reader #daisuke x reader #swansea x reader #anya x reader #puppysuke's asks.

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ficsiwontwrite · 3 days ago

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!!! System! Shen Yuan AU !!!

Airplane wasn’t changing things, and no matter what tasks the system tried to put forward the only difference in the world was that the An Ding Peak Lord was more stressed and overworked

So a new variable was needed, and since the system tasks have been completed perfectly chances are the problem is in the system… so the solution is to shove the work to someone sentient who would be invested into changing the story!!

So yeah airplane gets a notification that the system is being upgraded and suddenly his terrible system has a personality

System Shen yuan would consume (?)all the information the original system had and before going online would have created an entire tasks tab that include daily/weekly/monthly/yearly/unlimites tasks plus main tasks and as soon as he was online he would great airplane with a passive aggressive message and send him to work

Shen yuan would be much more generous with points but he hates the shop system, the dumb things that can be bought there will them have descriptions like “this scenario pusher will make clothes tear like in a bad horny donghua” being 100% ready to turn it into sqh himself if he dared to be a scum and use it on some unsuspecting woman

The first time sqh failed a s!sy task he was full of dread, punishments are very trauma inducing after all, but them the worst punishment sy can bare to deal is making him 1st pov some of binghe’s more tame suffering, like hunger, bullying and the tea spill first meeting… which could have been bad if the senses and feelings where in sync but it was all toned down to zero… SQH them understands the new system as some kind of softie tsundere lmao

S!sy would feel bad about the harsh punishment and send some easy task with a high reward the next day….. “there needs to be a carrot, not only a stick!” (I do love me a dumbass shen yuan)

They of course would banter and end up caring about each other, everytime sqh says/does something sy thinks is stupid he’ll give tasks like “read 10 books about x and write a 10k words essay about x” or when he is tossed around in a mission or by mbj he’s send missions for Jim’s to get stronger…

By the second month there’ll be missions like “eat 3 times a day”, unfortunately for shen yuan sqh already trusts him and feels safe enough to bend the tasks, so not only he will half-ass boring tasks to get the hide of y magical beast and making a coat (sending liu qingge to do it, mostly) which sy approves for being smart BUT he would also eat like melon seeds instead of stopping to eat full meals

Shang Qinghua will end up having to scroll detailed 1k worded self-care tasks…

This au would be focused mostly in cumplane dynamics yes but I thinks it would be really hilarious if sy started to make sqh do tasks that would take him close to xxx because sy wants to see them (choose the SQH x SY x ??? of your preference)

Of course s!sy would be making his mental gymnastics and justifying his tasks as totally no homo “wdym i want to look to lqg’s pretty face? I just want you to be strong enough not to dumbly die!” “Yes you do have to ask for a book on monsters from Shen Qingqiu himself, he’s so greedy he must have hidden away the best one” “you get hurt so frequently, you simply must go to Mu Qingfan and get personal classes on first aid” “No, you can not send a disciple with a mensage to Yue Qingyuan, it’s important to communicate face to face with your sect leader in such matters” etc etc

#svsss #shang qinghua #shen yuan #cumplane #System! Shen Yuan AU #sy’s tasks making sqh wifebeam everyone and he has no idea but sqh thinks he’s pulling his leg #cucumber-bro I don’t want a harem plEASE #also bing bing having a crush in his shishu for all the things he did for him (?) and sy gushing about binghe to sqh and sqh standing there #‘I can’t believe you’re using your powers over me to pamper your blorbo’#also #I’m sure that I’m some point they would be able to give sy a body #the other unofficial harem members can’t even get upset a him #the wife beam is too good #they’re okay with sqh having a co-harem master #…. ALSO #regardless of the wife beam allegations sqh could and would seduce everyone fair and square !!!#he would doubt it tho. clearly those were sy actions #except he doesn’t take in consideration that he has been putting his own spin into the tasks since he got close to cucumber bro

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juststicktoit · 2 days ago

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answering all of these i am so sorry op

1. honestly!! not really!! i'm bffs (lie. we're chill though) with the two other introjects from my source and my source is the only source we've introjected from (excluding one of our old friends) (wow that's a mouthful).

2. this panel comedy game show that i'm hesitant to mention by name because the fandom scares me

edit: just realised OP said fictives. we don't have any fictives, so i think i'm still in the clear, but just for the record we're factives lol -still ster

3. statistically yeah. kian half kept her name and half changed it. graham & i both changed our name (which, btw, massive upgrade for me. tim to ☆ ~ Sterling ~ ☆). mark is the only one who kept his name.

4. me B) no okay assuming i can't just say myself; liinu (see: kian's other name) has the coolest name i think

5. it's v queer & disability inclusive :) mae is probably one of my favourite contestants of that show and the cast using their correct pronouns without commenting on it or making it a thing was so <3 (bare minimum i know). also it's Funny As Fuck

6. too much rpf of my friends. /j

7. my instinctive reaction was "GOD NO" but that feels harsh. listen! they're okay! as far as fandoms go, they aren't often that toxic. they just. i just. i don't know!!!! the show is one of our spinterests and we hardly interact with the fandom haha. idk. maybe it's just my sliiiightly major aversion to fanfiction because god knows that fandom has a lot of it x

8. seen? yes. met? no, and i don't think i'd want to. actually maybe i would. if you find out other TM factives exist from this post, you can dm us, but i'm not making that first call i'm scared LOL

9. "your heart is a muscle the size of your fist; keep on loving, keep on fighting, and hold on for your life" (i laurv that song dearly)

10. popular is subjective here. popular where we live? yes. popular globally? ...kind of? a really good spin off got successful in new zealand and a few other countries have done their own versions too so i'd say that's good enough to say it's popular

11. probably mark - our sources are best friends too :) that's not why we're best friends tho i could batter that kid i tell you

12. literally everyone who was on season 1 of that show. i rewatch it sometimes and my only thoughts are "WOW that was a dumbass move from me" and "oh my god my friends i miss u so bad"

13. despite being a factive very specifically from when my source was on TM, i kinda just look like him back when he had long hair if he shaved his face. this, almost, basically.

14. walking all day by graham coxon :)

15. past as in source or past as in the deep dark days of when i first split off lol? source is whatever i find it funny to talk about. insys past. i was a very stupid preteen don't @ me

16. mushrooms and no it has nothing to do with source i just hate them and they make my skin crawl xo

thank u for reading and i am sorry again op !

Introject Ask Game

(This ask game will probably continue to be updated, feel free to check the original post to see if there's more.)

Are there any in-sys friend groups that wouldn't happen in canon, but make sense to you?

What source do you have the most fictives from?

Do people often change their names after splitting?

Who has the coolest name in your opinion?

What's your favorite thing about your source?

Least favorite thing about your source?

Do you like your source's fandom? Why or why not?

Have you ever met any sourcemates outside of your system?

What's a quote or lyric that reminds you of yourself?

Is your source popular?

Who's your best friend in-sys? Would your sources be friends, do you think?

Do you miss anyone from your source?

What do you look like in the head? How does that compare to your source? The body?

What's your favorite song?

Do you like talking about your past?

What's your biggest fear? Is it related to your source?

#🪕 ☆ ster #ster's specific syapping

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1nthedarknessofthenight · 2 days ago

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﴾ i drink your blood and i eat your skin, part thirteen.

pairing: hwang hyunjin x f!reader

genre: vampire au

word count: 23K

warnings: angst ⋆ gore

masterlist

main masterlist

playlist

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You couldn’t quite recognize yourself. The first glance at the mirror before you reflected the sadness, fright, and pain that you feel — the dark circles under your eyes, red from the restless nights you have spent here. Though after a while, under all these layers that lay over your features, it was still you. The girl afraid of so many yet, compared to now, little things. The girl who never imagined herself being in this situation — too scared to even try and survive what her future self did. Your melancholy circled around you, wrapping its cold arms around your neck, but at this moment, for the first time in a while, you truly enjoyed seeing yourself… like it was for the first time.

You can still remember your first breath this morning — remember the feel of his body behind you, cold as ice, but his touches warmer than the sun kissing your skin. You remember waking up from a restless night, but him being by your side gave you everything you needed. You blink a little too harshly at the light shinning down on the side of your face. You couldn’t sleep because you didn’t want to miss the feel of the sun’s warmth — which you haven’t felt and seen for a while. You got so used to the ways of a vampire life that you forgot you are human after all — ignoring your very much human feelings.

Watching yourself in the mirror, your gaze trail over the soft hue of browns, pinks, eyes circling around the redness of your cheeks till they fall on your lips. They are red, bitten, the color of blood, the lipstick the maids put on for you nothing, but a stain now. Your chest tightened, breaths short, mostly from your anxiety, but also from the corset tightened around your body. The dress on you was heavy — layers, upon layers of fabric, the deep maroon color seeping through your skin. You didn’t know that a color could give a person an heartache. It only reminds you of the blood that was shed because of you.

You don’t even flinch back when the woman next to you almost punctures you with the last hair pin, the small sting not lingering for too long. You can see her leave your side, because you still weren’t done with looking at yourself. The more you look, the more your mind swirls, eyes tired. Everything was so quiet…Maybe no one said a word to you, because they know — but hearing words of pity really wouldn’t make you better. The only thing you could hear were the voices coming from behind the closed doors of the bedroom, footsteps of the people making the old wooden floor creak. Everything was a show — this dress, your hair, even your own face. You felt like a pig for a slauther. Was it really necessary to do all of this, if it maybe not end well? Maybe…you have to remember that. Maybe you are truly just overthinking things, just overwhelmed, but Hyunjin certainly didn’t take anything lightly.

You are alone in this room, basking in your ownself and you hate the fact that you have never felt more prettier and loved than right now. All of this now requires a payment. Your body reacts first than your own mind, hair standing at the back of your neck, before you feel cold fingers tickling your shoulder. Your body also recognizes the person touching you, already having many of experiences to know at just a subtle touch. Your eyes look away from yourself to the place next to you, where he should be standing, but there was nothing but thin air.

The rings on his finger scratch you, as he trails his hand to your exposed collarbones, palm pressing down on the left side of your chest, feeling your heart. “You are cold.” Says Hyunjin and you push your own frozen hands into the thickness of your skirt. You can hear something in his tone — concern perhaps, but you are not particularly shocked by his statement.

Your eyes look down your slowly rising chest, watching his fingers dance across your skin, stopping right where the sun shines down on you. You are not cold, but your side that is next to his pulls you into the darkness. Looking up again, you sigh, glancing at the view peaking from behind the curtains. “Hold me, Hyunjin.” You say, eyes blinking away the tears from the light of the setting sun.

He moves you at that closer to him, you now nearly fully galloped by the darkness and coldness that somehow felt better than the kiss of the sunset. Hyunjin pulled you to him without a word, wrapping his hands around your naked shoulders and you can feel your eyes meeting his in the mirror. “You are breathtaking–“ You close of your mind, closing your eyes a little, when his breath hits your ear, your earring clinking, when he puts a small kiss to your earlobe.

Your head rolls back, falling onto his chest. You lean into his touch, begging almost — desperate for more. You don’t see the look in his blue eyes that trailed over the length of your neck in the mirror, but you do feel the deep inhale he takes, when his goes to dig his nose into your skin. Shaky breaths leave you, when his hand slithers to the middle of your chest, pressing you even further to his chest to run his mouth over your neck. The kisses Hyunjin covers your skin with are almost bruising, but you still can tell that he isn’t fully letting himself go.

You want him to and by the way his teeth trailed over the jumping vein under your skin — he wants it too. His low, long hum makes his chest rumble, air getting caught in your throat at that sound. “I almost want to leave you bare like this — so soft.” Trailing wet kisses across your neck, his breath fans over the spots he touched with his lips, shiver going down your spine. “However I have something for you.” You want to say something about him and his gifts, but seeing the look in his eyes, you don’t have the heart to reject him.

Giving you a one last kiss to your collarbone, his mouth leaves you, slowly dragging his lips up to your ear again, before he departs from you with a small shaky sigh. Your skin tingles, fingers releasing their tight grip they had on your dress. In the corner of your eye something glimmers, turning to look at him finally, only to gape. In his hands is a necklace — big, filled with diamonds in all different sizes and their beauty reflects in your eyes that stop at the bloodied stone in the middle. The necklace shines so brightly your breath is taken away from you from such sight and as your gaze travels over its beauty you look at the way he is holding it — two ribbons hold the whole necklace, its weight making the strings strech at its limit.

Looking at his fingers that are wrapped around the ribbon, you then meet his eyes. Hyunjin’s lips held a small satisfied smile and you hope that at that moment your eyes hopefully give him the gratitude he deserves. You are just speechless — watching him move behind you, before you look back at the mirror. The sight of the necklace floating in the air is almost comical and if it weren’t for its captivating beauty, you would for sure laughed.

The metal is cold on your skin, which seems to be suddenly flushed for some reason and you immediately feel the heaviness of the necklace as he ties a knot at the back of your neck. You wish you could see him, but maybe it is for the better — his whole presence is already screaming. The jewelry completes you, melting into your body that is covered in the color of blood. “Perfect — you are so perfect.” The side of his face falls against yours, shielding the bashful look on your face just a little.

Your hand goes to the necklace, trailing your fingers over the sharp stones, while you watch him move the few small pieces of hair away from your neck. “Thank you…for everything.” You don’t see his reflection in the mirror, but you basically can feel his questioning look that makes you turn around to face him. Looking up, you stop to admire his features like it was for the first time. The pull at his eyebrows is small — softening at your own face of vulnerability. “I wish that–“ The words, which you wanted to say get stuck in your throat, shutting down your mind instantly to let your heart speak. “I thank you for making feel something that I thought I never would. I thank you for seeing me for who I am.” You say, voice little and you will always be grateful for not having to scream to truly be understood. He already knew you so well…

Gazing at you he can tell that it wasn’t everything that you truly wanted to say, but your glossy eyes told him everything he needed to know. He brushes away the loose strands of hair before your face and his heart stings at your fighting — you don’t want to crumble anymore. “No, I thank you for letting me know that in this world there still could be someone, who would feel for someone like me.” You softly shake your head at his words, but you do not stop him for continuing. “Once a man turned into a monster, who somehow was bewitched by a simple glimpse — feel of someone like you. You make me feel human.”

Your eyes fall shut, lips quivering against your will, his words hitting you so deeply. You gasp, breathing in harshly, your hands falling to grip at his white shirt. “I don’t want to–“ You don’t want a lot of things to happen, but somehow the most realistic one that might happen isn’t the scariest.

“Please.” His on hands fall on top of yours, gently, not pushing your clamming hands away, even as they are so close to ripping apart the material between your fingers.

“Please, Hyunjin-“ The whisper of his name is sweet — you glance up from his rising chest, with soft, yet broken look, but you do not let your tears win. Your eyes hold determination, making him momentarily shake. “If something happens…promise me that you won’t try anything — that you won’t put yourself in danger–“

“Y/N-“

You don’t let him speak, silencing whatever he wanted to say, because you do need to hear him promise — promise you that he will not try to safe you. So much has happened and if it will have its ending, it should be only you, not the man that grew so close to your heart. That thought scares you even more than your maybe incoming death. He now knows what you want and you know that you don’t have to repeat yourself. The expression on his face tells you everything. Trailing his hands down yours, they hold you gently to his chest as he kneels down before you.

You can see everything in his eyes — every passing moment you two had shared, yet you only see the Moon…the Moon on the night you first met. You remember each breath you took, while you looked at his distanced figure, drawing this unforgettable moment and sealing it forever. You wish that you didn’t try and pull away from his ever touch that became so dear to you — you wish to relive everything. The man before you is cold as a stone, hands freezing, but they shake, seemingly on the edge of crumbling. “Hyunjin…I am sorry that I wasn’t kind to you firstly, that I didn’t–“ You ramble, because you want him to know how much everything meant to you — how he didn’t leave you, even after what you had done in the past.

You regret behaving how you did, even if it were just a normal and very understandable reaction after learning about the secrets of this world…you still have so much to learn. Hyunjin doesn’t want you to regret it, because it only made his dead heart beat more — it was still you and that’s what he loves the most. His eyes trace over every small wrinkle, dip, curve and invisible imperfections, which he will spend his whole undead life painting, but he knows that he will never be able to truly portray the enchanting beauty that you are. He can’t help, but press his finger to your lips, silencing you. “Please, stop it now, I can’t anymore–“ A frown falls on his face, but he is not so upset — he just wants to take you in one more time, with nothing in his way. “…just let me hold you, feel you…” He can hear your heart pounding as he puts your face into his hands. You let him him cool your hot skin, sighing softly, eyes fluttering and he has to bites down on his tongue. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” Hyunjin says, tone hard and you blink your eyes open at the decision he seems to stand by.

“Hyunjin…”

Your sweet voice almost make him crumble, you have too much power for him to not say no to you — however he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he doesn’t help you, safe you…he has become selfish, he knows that, but he is fortunate enough to have a family, who would understand. His hands tremble at the thought, moments of his life flashing before him, but somehow the only thing in them is you. “No, listen to me — you are safe, nothing will harm you, when I’m with you, we will get through this…together.” Saying those words you feel your eyes stinging, chest tightening painfully. You hate that he won’t change his mind, you hate that he won’t let you go, you hate the thought of losing him — he hates the thought of losing you. You both know at this moment that there is no other way. Whatever happens, it will be together.

You lean into his hold, breath mixing with his. “Together.” You whisper, closing your eyes. You play with the ringer on your finger, feeling your own blood rushing in you ears, but you don’t notice his gaze traveling across your features. The only thing you feel is dread.

The hair on your body stands up, limbs twitching, still under his hold. Your heart stops, a wave of cold fanning over you, stabbing you. Everything turns dark. You can’t hear anything — oh, but you feel it. You feel its claws digging into your flesh, dragging you, pulling you away from this moment of peacefulness into a pit of despair and darkness. You feel a sense of weakness, making your eyes widened in fright, ears ringing. A low hum echoes in your mind, like a whisper and the sun’s light shinning down on your back seems anything, but warm. You try to make it go away, eyes going back and forth, staring at the carpet, not really looking, because you can just feel something creeping up on you. It’s so close…you can’t breathe. You can’t feel anything, but the wave of your melancholy luring you to look — ‘see me’.

The air that was left in your lungs is released but you do not take another breath in as you turn slowly to the slit in the curtains. You don’t feel Hyunjin trying to pull you back, this was something stronger than him. “Do you hear that?” You say, your whisper lingers in the air for s moment, before it fades into the pit of nothingness. Your eyes pool with tears, the harsh sunlight burning you, but it feels like if you would blink it will only come closer. You hear low, yet screeching sounds of something, perhaps another whisper and it only seem to get louder — way closer.

The man kneeling before you watches your pupils dilate, not speaking, completely frozen from the moment your hands in his turned cold. He tried to pull you back to him, but the look on your face — it was like you weren’t even here with him…in your own body. He listens carefully, unwillingly leaning away from you because of the sun shinning down on you. He can’t even reach out to you, you are completely lost. He can hear your slow heartbeat, the blood rushing in your veins, but he can’t hear what you are talking about. He feels your hand slipping from his, your hold turning weak. Hyunjin lips fall apart, when he looks back at you only to see your eyes moving rapidly — you were asleep. Panic rises in him just as he hears the door to the bedroom slamming open.

Gasping you pull your hands away from the vampire to your chest, your heart suddenly jumping back alive and somehow you knew that the sound of the door opening wasn’t the thing that scared you awake. Your head whips to that direction, eyes locking briefly with the dark haired man in the doorway, who mostly has his eyes on the vampire next to you. “Something triggered the traps.” Say Changbin, voice breathy and heavy, like he was running till exhaustion that you know he could never feel.

Your poor heart stops again at his words, your fear becoming real as you look at him in disbelief. “What?” Your question is quiet, going to turn back to the man before you only to be met with nothing, small wind blowing past you. You rapidly glance back at his brother only to be left with nothing again and you almost cry out at the realization that almost knocks you off your seat. “Hyunjin!” It was no use to call for him — he won’t listen to you, he won’t hear you…everything that you felt moments ago was more than an imagination — outside was death.

You swear that you can feel Hyunjin’s rage and with the way he disappeared you know he will do something you won’t forgive him for. You stand up, your legs feeling so heavy you nearly fall over. You still try to find your breath as you quickly gather up the layered skirt of your dress, before rushing out of the room. You don’t even need to ask where he had run of to, it was so obvious that it only made you run faster, seeing the sun still high up enough to feel its warmth on your skin. The hallways are brimmed with people — too many people, who moved out of your way, faces showing their own flashes of concern and small confusion at your state.

The tightness of your dress gives s little too no air, breathing heavily, feeling each one of your breaths coming short, chest pushing against your corset. Your muscles scream at your every move, but the adrenaline pulsing through you helps you. You can feel him — you run down the stairs, through the corridor, passing numerous of doors, but like you knew where to got to, you rush into the direction of the back doors, leading to the garden.

The first thing you see is the big stream of light on the floor, that almost blinds you as you come around the corner, stabilizing yourself quickly enough not to fall into the person running past you. You shield your eyes, turning to look, only to be met with a dozens of mem, who for a moment block the open doorway right before you. “Go!” You hear someone yell at the human guards, who without a word run through of the open door to the outside.

You are again blinded by the sun, eyes traveling next to the door, where Felix is. You can see the way he is trying too look outside like the others, who are hidden in the shadows behind him. He looks distressed, fidgeting in his spot, like he was trying to jump out of his hiding — or not…no. Your eyes filled with horror, realizing that the worst of your prognosis came true. The gasp leaving you alerts the blonde and also his company and when you meet his gaze, you can see it in his eyes. “Oh, my God.” Your cry is broken, heart hammering under your skin and bones, staring out of the open door. You knew that you couldn’t help much, but so the human guards, who ran past you few moments ago to fight whatever was out there — but you knew it wanted you and Hyunjin also knew that…The thought of seeing him hurt or worse — you don’t even want to picture it. Your stomach flips, nausea filling you as you stare out to the open, sun still shining. You don’t care what happens to you, the only thing you are worried about is the man who went out there, because of you.

With a sharp inhale you run down the lightened path before you, your naked feet dragging across the floor. You can see the others from the corner of your eye coming out of the darkness, eyes filled with horror at your move. “No, Y/N!” You don’t know who it was, but someone’s hand came to grab you, only retrieving, when their skin touches the sunlight. The awful hiss of skin makes you stumble, nose being hit with the smell of burned flesh that made your skin crawl. You ignore the need to turn around and make sure they were okay, but what of Hyunjin? Such a stupid thing to do…was really revenge so sweet? The shouting behind you pierces your ears, shivers going down your spine at the cold that had nothing against the star in the sky. “Come back!” You can hear their tone of desperation, but you knew there was no turning back.

The garden which you have seen only once — the statues, the roses, which Hyunjin gifted you were covered by a thick fog. The sunlight only made it harder for you to navigate through the miss, your feet digging into the moist ground. You can’t see nor hear anything and you desperately try not to let the panic rising in you win. Your lungs hurt from your running and the cold air, tasting blood in your mouth.

You run blindly, suddenly hearing shouts in the distance, but from what direction you can’t quite tell. You want to scream out his name, but the more you go further, farther from the mansion, more trees surround you and you knew that your own voice would only echo. You can see nothing before you and you almost run into a statue, palms slamming into the stone. Because of your stop you can fully feel the exhaustion and lack of oxygen, dark spot appearing right before your eyes and you can’t help, but cry softly at how useless you are.

You call out to him in your mind, pleading to the heavens above that nothing has happened to him. Your skin tingles painfully at the thought of him, making you press your hands to your arms at the sudden feeling. Your whole body is already bitten by the cold, your hot breath only filling up the mist surrounding you. Searching with your eyes, you make a small turn around the statue, its face guiding you back to the house if you would get lost. You blink, watching the black spots in your vision disappear, till there is only one left — but this one doesn’t go away.

Stilling in your spot, you lean on the stone behind you, feeling — feeling it again. The pain, sadness and fear as you stare at the mist of darkness before you. It moves suddenly, but it is still at its spot, it seemed like a shadows slowly materializing before you…into a figure. Your body leaps closer to it, only to stop yourself. This wasn’t Hyunjin. The tall figure in the fog wasn’t him, you could feel, smell it even — like a stench of a corpse. Rotten, yet sweet in such a sickening way you feel your stomach turning. Like the time you were sleepwalking, in every corner of your mind, it reeked of filth, filling you with the most horrible emotion and leaving you in a state of nothingness.

You back away, small twig snapping under your naked foot and you don’t even feel the small sting of it piercing your skin. But then it only steps closer to you, making you release a shaky sigh of terror. It isn’t real…it just your mind playing tricks on you, the person trying to hurt you is not a day walker, it’s just playing with your head again. However your own words that tried so hard to calm you sounded so forced and wrong you have to shake your head. You for once truly believe it, there is nothing that could make you believe this was just your imagination.

You watch it mimick you, though the last two steps that you take — it seems to get way closer to you, its strides way longer and more consistent than yours. You don’t want to look away, you can’t run, you can’t find your breath and you chase after it desperately, hand falling on top of your closing chest. And then suddenly you do breathe, only for it to not be yours. The sound of air puffing out of lungs wasn’t yours, but its. The sound sends shivers down your spine, hair at the back of your completely exposed and vulnerable neck standing. You can feel it fanning over you, even if it was still standing far away from you — so why can you feel it breathing down on you? Why can you hear the sound of their throat closing around each of their exhale? Why can you see their chest rising? Why does it seem like a silhouette before you — not a phantom, nor mass of darkness, but a real person.

The air fanning over you makes you freeze, taking in the smell of rotten flesh and blood. It makes your eyes sting, tears gather in your eyes, standing in the mist of nothingness — like in your omen, you and this were the only things present. Your limbs are so heavy, your body fuzzing and mind swirling. Screeching pain shoot through you, so sharp you had to press your fingers into your temples. Your nails dig into your skin, like trying to dig up the immense pain. Your mouth opens in a silent cry, eyes barely open, because you can hear — feel the whispers coming back to you.

They scream over each other, each different, some high pitched, some so low that you can feel their voice rumble. You are trying, but you can’t keep your eyes fully on the figure in the distance whose distance seemed even shorter than before. You can’t move, but your whole body shakes in your spot. The sun shines less and less and it seems to get even closer to you — was it really hiding in the darkness, the one you go so used to? It was hiding in each dark corner watching you and each time you felt it — each time you thought about it, each time you tried not to think of it…it was so close.

You hear it suddenly. In the depths of those whispers a voice rings louder than the others. You didn’t recognize it, nor understood it, but your body seems to. It felt just like the other time, just like yesterday’s night — you hear another. You gasp silently, eyes searching the cold ground under you. It was like the voices were fighting for who will pierce your poor jumping heart. They scream, words you cannot understand flying around your mind, but one of them calls to you. It says your name so sweetly, breathlessly and you swear you can hear the pain in their voice. Pain — ‘Y/N’, it repeats. It was in pain, pain, pain…it is in pain — he.

“Y/N…” Your heart stops, head turning into the direction from where the voice call out to you. You could recognize it everywhere…”Y/N–“

Hyunjin — his voice was broken, filled with pain and the sound tears your insides apart, completely silencing the others that die down, leaving nothing, but the memory of their screams. You blink, unleashing the tears that gathered in your eyes and the small plea in his voice makes you run into the direction of its owner. You don’t know where he is, you just feel him. The dark figure is forgotten, almost like it wasn’t even there to begin with — it tried to lure you, but the man calling out to you overpowered your corrupted mind, pulling you out of the suffocating darkness.

You run on your frozen feet, feeling the strain in your muscles that still fuzz with each of your step. The sun was getting lower, but it still was high enough to make shadows dance on the ground under you. Your eyes search through the garden, looking at each statue hoping that he hasn’t turned into one of them, but then a small cry is heard. It makes you stop, turning around you, searching, before your gaze travels to a tree not so far away from you. It was tall — tall enough to make a shadows big enough for someone to hide and go unnoticed.

The small specks of hope sparkles, when you see movement behind the tree and you breathe out in small relief to be only strike by another cry, that was full of pain. You move with a start, eyes wide in fear as the more you near it, the more you can smell the scent of burned flesh. Your eyes are sat completely on the figure hiding in shadows, your footsteps so loud you can hear the ground rumble and you weren’t the only one. From behind the tree you see pair of familiar eyes, but they now looked so dim that you can feel your own skin burning. You run towards him, watching his blue eyes widened, his hand so shaky and weak reaching towards you. You thought he was calling for your help, but no — he was trying to push you away. Your foot lands on the ground, but you freeze at the small distant click.

“No!”

You gasp, throat closing as the air is taken away from your lungs. Your eyes sting from the cold, hair fanning over your face that scrunches up at the force you feel on your chest. The world becomes a blur around you, colors and shapes in one for a small moment that seemed way longer than it truly was. The pressure on your chest tightens, pushing into you with force so great that you can’t breathe, till a silent cry leaves you. You feel yourself falling, head bumping into the ground, your body struck with sharp pain, but it is smaller than the one coming from your back. Your head doesn’t burn in pain, your vision slowly coming back to you, watching the world spin around you, till you blink. The pressure on your chest is torn away from you, making you cough, rolling onto your side, only when your hands come to support you they fall on top of a wooden floor.

Confusion strikes you, before it becomes all clear and real to you, when you hear a horrifying scream of pain, which makes all the hair on your body stand up. You sit up quickly, making your head spin for a moment from such a sudden move, but you don’t seem to register the pain in your limbs, when your eyes are met with a sight, that leaves you filled with complete shock. Hyunjin — his whole face and body is covered in lesions, skin puffy, red and raw. His friend support him to grasp at a stake that is pierced through his left shoulder.

“No…no, no, no–“ You crawl your way over to him, gasping in horror at his state. His whole body shakes, gripping onto the hand of his blonde friend. His eyes meet yours, filled with pain, lips opening and closing, gasping for air. You can feel the setting sun shining down on your back as you shield him, your own lips curling into a pained cry.

Hyunjin reaches out to you once more, but it is for you to come closer to you. You grasp onto his burned hand, ears ringing from the yells of others, but the only thing you can focus on is his raw skin — you don’t want to hold on to him, scared of hurting him, but he himself tightens his grip on your hand, eyes trailing across your face. Something falls from his mouth then, but it is nothing, but a splatter of blood costing his lips. “God, what did you do-“ You whisper, crying, your voice cutting through the small hallway, that quiets down, when Chan kneels behind Hyunjin.

You know what he did, but you hate the thought of him truly doing this and it wasn’t all — looking at the stake coming through his left shoulder, you have to sigh in agony at the way the man behind him doesn’t take it out right away. You watch his own hands shake, you see the way Felix tightened his grip on him, as Chan wraps his hands around the wood. “Hold him down!” He says and you are at that pushed to the side by Han and Jeongin, your hand falling from Hyunjin’s, who desperately reaches out to you again, only to be held back by his brothers.

Your breathing stops, with wide eyes watching as the stake is slowly pulled out his body. You frown deeply at the short scream leaving his lips, body twitching in the hold of his family, who doesn’t look at the painful expression on his face. Your eyes strain at his, the only thing left that could make you recognize him — his features were eaten by the sun. His eyes shine red, bloody like his raw skin, staring into yours and you can’t look away from the way you can see the absolute agony in them.

When the stake comes out of his body, everyone sighs out in small relief and you choke at the hightened emotions filling up the room. Sobs shakes his body, but no tears fall from his eyes, nor cries, it was more like he was trying to breathe. He couldn’t — but he needed you. You move closer to him, clasping his hand once again, tears falling onto his body, but he doesn’t even twist at the liquid seeping into him. His mouth opens again, head rolling back, but the the man who has his body in his lap helps him face you. “I had him…I almost–“ His voice is hoarse, words almost unintelligible as blood flows from his mouth.

Hyunjin chokes, coughing uncontrollably and the sound seem to snap everyone back in the real time. “Somebody find a maid!” Seungmin yells, walking back and forth across the floor. His words is strong, seemingly collected, but you can hear the sadness and pain in his voice.

You shake your head softly at the man before you, feeling him grip at your hand more tightly till you feel bone touching you. His eyes are wide, but they hold nothing, but anger for a moment. Hyunjin coughs again, blood flowing down his chin as he gritted his teeth in pain. Your lip quivers, lump in your throat of trying to stop the sobs that want to so desperately shake your whole body. The words he said fly over your head, but they are not unheard by the others, who look at him with hard gaze, just as he turns to look at you again.

“Wolfs–“ He sneers through his bloodied teeth, the word being spat out like a venom. Even a single word is enough to make him cough out blood again, the liquid pooling from his mouth and seeping into his raw skin. You are completely deaf to what he is saying, you are on a verge of falling apart at his state. Your eyes trail over his lips, gaping, gulping at what seem like air, but it all comes to you instantly.

You lean closer to him, knees buckling under you as your hand hovers over his heaving chest, the rasp and almost whistling sound coming from his lungs makes you sick. In his wide eyes you can see the need for warm flesh, squirming in Felix’s hold that only seem to tighten more, when he looks between you two. “Drink from me.” You say, desperately trying to get closer to him, but he only backs away from you.

“No-“ He doesn’t know if he can trust himself right now, knowing that the subtle pulsing of his dried out veins crave the blood pulsing through yours. His need is taking control of his body and it is worst than ever before and the others surely can tell by the look in his red eyes. He is on the edge of losing control…but you however don’t see it or actually you do not seem to care.

Your hand reaching out for him is grasp into a tight grip, making you turn to its owner, who shakes his head at your move. “No, Y/N, you cannot-“ Han looks at you with sorrow in his eyes and you shake your head at him stopping you.

“I don’t care! Do you see him?” You raise your voice, though it is still quiet and broken as the eyes of the man pushing you away. You don’t care that the look in Hyunjin’s is pleading — pleading you for not to go closer to him, while pleading for your blood all the same. You know you are maybe not in the right mind right now, but you can’t stomach seeing him in such pain any longer, surprising the trembling man holding you by throwing yourself to Hyunjin, but unfortunately you are not quick enough for the man behind you.

You see for a split second how Hyunjin leaps at you also and you for a moment feel your heart skip a beat at the primal look in his eyes. It only makes you remember his true nature, but you still naively try to give it to him. You are harshly pulled back by the arms of the sandy blonde, who wraps his arms around you, caging you against his chest. You squirm instantly at the sudden and sharp move, momentarily looking away from the injured man, not seeing the way his three brothers push him down on the floor. “It’s gonna be alright–“ Minho’s words hit your ear, grip ever so slightly tightening around you, leaving you room to wiggle around in his hold, but it only makes you realize that even by a such small use of his strength you have nothing against him. You hear the hurt in his voice, while you shake and the raw emotion in his words makes you cry softly. “It’s nothing, calm down.” He shushes you, whispering to you.

You let the tears fall down your hot cheeks, your feet squeaking on the polished floor. Your eyes fall back to Hyunjin, who is already looking at you, sighing in pain as the hands holding him down pierce through his skin. The sight makes you slowly stop moving, exhaling. Footsteps follow, making you look up for a moment to the two figures nearing you. Changbin is holding s unknown woman, a maid that seems vaguely familiar to you and she certainly doesn’t seem to be unfamiliar in such position also. Her eyes widened a little as she looks down on the injured vampire, but she doesn’t miss a single beat after, kneeling down next to his head and he for the first time looks away from you to the wrist with she offers him.

You hold your breath, while watching the small interaction. Hyunjin lips parted, shaky hands wrapping around her hand, pulling it towards him, but even in his state and the desperate need for the warm blood in her veins, he doesn’t bite her. You can hear more than you can see it — the small sound of skin being pierced by his nail that cuts into her. You for a second thought he did it because he didn’t have the strength to even bite down, but when he suddenly looks at you, it becomes clear to you. Her blood drips down to his open mouth, making him lightly gasp, before he finally pushes her hand to his thirsty mouth.

The gulps he takes are loud, long, yet quick and you watch his skin slowly melt back together before your very eyes. He doesn’t move his eyes away from you, making you shiver slightly. The way he drinks makes something rise in you — his eyes bloom lighter, body and face healing with every drop of blood. He is shaking once again, but not in pain anymore, more in relief that over comes him and Changbin has to pull the maid away from him, before the hunger could overpower him.

You glance at the maid briefly, who shakily breathes out, pressing her hand to her chest, before she is pulled back. “Y/N.” Hyunjin voice makes you turn your attention back to him, lips partying at the sight of his face, that is now almost without any injury.

The rasp in his voice is still there, but when he reaches out for you again you are not pushed back away from him. Minho lets you go, everyone watching as you crawl your way to him, your hand hovering over his body. “Your face…” You trail off, moving your hand to his cheek and he softly leans into your touch with a gentle sigh.

Relief washes over you, as his breath fans over the dried tears on your face. You fight the argue to break down again seeing him healed, but in his eyes flashes something. He sits up slowly, with a helping hand from his blonde friend pressing onto his back, as he still recovers from his state. “I’m alright-“ Hyunjin says then, seeing the look of concern on your face and he feels guilty, because he knew what he did, but now that it is not as important as thing he says next. “I saw him — I almost had him-“

Him — same as you, you are now sure that the thing that has been haunting you is a person. His confession sparks up interest in the room, everyone going closer. The thing truly wasn’t just nothing, not your imagination or a spirit, but a man, who has been torturing you with his powers. Your expression betrays you, making Hyunjin realize that you already knew yourself. His mouth opens again, but he is interrupted by Chan who leans over his now uninjured shoulder.

“What did he look like?”

He was looking at Hyunjin, but no one could miss the empty look on your face, as your mind goes back to the moment in the garden. You do not know what he looked like, but your body seems to have the power to recognize him in every dark corner. “I did not see his face.” Says the vampire for you, already aware that he is not the only one, who saw the dark figure. “He was…there were wolfs with him, they bit me-“ You look back at him at such information, glancing at the noticeable tear at his side.

You become confused. Were you really not paying attention to anything around you? You have not seen a wolf, not even heard one. To you this doesn’t make any sense and you didn’t seem to be the only one. Though maybe the figure that you saw was one of them — a day walker, yet a supernatural being. No…it can’t be a warewolf. You have not seen any of them even once, but this answer cannot be so simple. The vampires whisper amongst themselves, in same disbelief like you, but it is certain that the now healed wound at his side was a bite.

“A warewolf?” States Felix, the word laced with confusion, yet anger. No guards had seen anything, other than his brother and you — you both saw him.

“No-“ You say, making everyone turn their heads at you, including Hyunjin, whose foreboding is proven right. He straightens just a little at your confession, but he doesn’t let the obvious concern win over him. The fact that know everyone realizes you have seen the same figure too, made the thought of the person seeking revenge all too more believable.

“He wasn’t one of them.” Continues Hyunjin for you, gazing at you with glimmering eyes. “He was like a phantom, I couldn’t feel him, but I knew he was present.” There is a pull at his eyebrows. He now fully understands you and what you are feeling, but the others still seem to be not so sure about such reality. Would it be possible that something else is out there, that they didn’t know of? Even after centuries, could there still be something beyond their imagination?

“Your mind maybe be playing tricks on you because of the sun.” Even Minho doesn’t seem to believe himself as he says those words, but he still can’t except the fact that there maybe be things out there that don’t have an explanation.

The dark haired vampire shakes his head and you for second see the reflection of yourself in his eyes that plea to be understood. “No…I know, he was real. Standing right outside of our bedroom window — he knew I would go after him, the wolfs were just a distraction.“ He doesn’t even have to say that. Everyone already knew that maybe this was the answer — werewolves might be behind this, but none of you fully believe such statement. It was so obvious that this was really just a distraction, so the unknown entity would make you confused. But who would convince werewolves to side with them? Who could be so powerful enough to use them for a simple distraction?

Sigh falls from Felix, placing his hand on his shoulder. “You must rest-“ He says, but Hyunjin only wiggles out of his hold, sitting up once more.

“I’m alright.”

“No, you are not.” Seungmin says, almost sneering at his words.

Standing up, the short haired man comes to stand behind you, towering over you both as the others come to stand next to him. “Brother, promise us that you won’t do anything so stupid ever again.” Says Chan, glaring down at the sitting man, who only gives him a look back. He doesn’t answer him, because if he did it would only be a lie.

Frowning, you fall back to your knees, hold leaving Hyunjin and that makes him glance back to you with a small alarmed look. He needs your touch so much, but you simply don’t have the heart to do anything else, but to stare at him. The reality hits you again — what he had done…There is nothing, no injuries, nothing that would remind you of what he just did, other than his torn up clothes and blood on his lips. Everything happened so fast that you didn’t even have the proper time to fully grasp what he did.

Others can feel the tension rising in the small hallway, noticing the dimming light from outside, nothing, but their eyes lighting up the room. “The sun is getting low.” States Hyunjin, turning away from your piercing stare to look upon his family. “We will have guests soon.” You want nothing more than to turn his attention back to you, so he would look into your eyes and see the hurt in them. He doesn’t need to — he can feel your anger and saddens…betrayal radiating from your body.

The words hold importance, seeing that what has happened isn’t something that they should talk about anymore, as it was just the beginning. They let it fly over their heads for now, but you do not. That is something you can’t just accept and forget so easily. “Wolfs…are you sure he isn’t one too?” Asks Felix next to you, looking down at the dark haired vampire, who still stays seated on the floor with you.

“Yes.”

“How do you know?” Hyunjin almost shrugs, but he chooses to look at you instead.

“I just know.” He says, voice so little, his dead heart skips a beat, watching your eyes fill up with salty tears.

You hear some of them walking immediately away after his words and in their fast pace you can feel their emotions that only linger in the small hallway. It only pushes you more to the edge of crumbling apart — the thing he did effect everyone, but some couldn’t spend anymore time looking down on him and see him take all of this so lightly. How can he think that what he did is right? Does he know how much it hurt everyone?

This all truly seems to be just the beginning and if it weren’t for the thing that’s about to happen next, few of them swear that they would kill him themselves for the stupid thing he did. “I want every corner of this house watched, no one gets out or in without my permission–“ Chan voice cuts through you, making for a split second come back to yourself.

“This will only raise curiosity–“ Says Changbin, tone slow and steady, but the man only shakes him off his shoulders.

“I don’t care.” You turn to look at him from the corner of your eye, meeting his gaze. At your stare he gestures to you and if you didn’t notice the look in his eyes, you would think he was angry with you. “They won’t care about anything else than her anyway — put up a show, we will all have our eyes on you.” The last part is meant mostly at the man next to you, silently watching him for a split second, before him and the others lingering behind disappear into the darkness.

The silence that follows is loud, screeching and you can feel the heated eyes of Hyunjin, who comes to sit down next to your shaking form. You can feel his hand hovering over you, but not touching you. You think of the fact that you might have not feel him again — how could he do something like that? “Y/N.” He calls out to you and you close your eyes for a moment, letting the tears fall down your face. He sounded so gentle and reassuring, but could he really not see, what he did? His hand falls to your naked back, shivering lightly at his cold touch that only leaves traces of fire. You hate how he is sounds, how he tries to calm you like it was a simple thing that you can forget about. His skin — burned to the bone, raw, his lungs screaming, with a simple breath, the blood pouring out of him…You tremble at the memory and when you suddenly feel small circles being drawn on your skin, they become anything, but calming.

Pulling away from him, you turn back to him, ignoring his eyes lingering on your teary state. “You idiot–“ It comes at as a choked sound, hiccuping as you gulp at the thick air around you. “You could have…” You can’t even finish the thought, you can’t — you don’t want to imagine him like that again.

Your shake in silent sobs, face scrunching up in pain and he feels immense regret fall on him. No — he doesn’t regret it, that’s the thing. He doesn’t regret going out there after him, but what he does regret is making you feel like this. You look absolutely broken and he knows that you know he doesn’t care. Hyunjin’s hands come to touch you again, but you only shake your head at his ways. “I’m alright.” He says and you want to laugh at his tries to calm you.

“Stop lying.” You spit out the words, chest heaving and eyes glaring. “One thing is running out there, when the sun was still high, but jumping in front of me-“

“It would have hit you!”

“And?” There is a small pause and his lips parted in disbelief. “It almost went through your heart, you almost–“

You fall apart then, placing your hands over your mouth to silence yourself. You felt pathetic in front of him like this, you hate that he try to gaslight you into thinking this was alright. The worse thing is you understand him and he understands you — it truly is like you are both alike and feel everything the other feels. It just was too much for you to handle, too little of time to truly get through this situation as your future is closing on to you. Hyunjin watches you for a moment — how you shake and cry into yourself, because of him. The dried blood on his lips cracks as he presses his lips into thin line.

He needs to be stronger — there is still the ball and knowing that he needs to not let his emotions take the win so he could be by your side. You don’t know it, but he is a coward. He doesn’t show his emotions, because it would only mean that the man haunting you was winning, but is it even necessary? The unknown man already knew the feelings he held for you, he knew that he would come after him and he knew that he was trying to kill him — he didn’t even have to dirty his hands and he almost won. He almost had you.

Hyunjin mind races with thoughts, but they dim at the broken sound of your cries. He pulls you then into his arms, now not pulling away from his touch, pressing your face into his chest. “I didn’t, I’m alright—“ His chin falls on top of your head, hands digging into you, pulling you closer to him. Your own tears fall on the already destroyed fabric of his shirt, your lips against his chest and right over his not beating heart.

With being so close to him, it is like you can see yourself through him. You understand why he did it, but it is just so hard to except it. “I know, what I did was stupid, but I c-couldn’t just leave you out there.” Hyunjin stops you, pulling you away from his chest to look down on you. You however don’t meet his gaze, staring at the sliver of skin peaking from his torn up shirt. You graze the tear left behind, before trailing it down to his chest. It was so close…”It almost went through your heart-“ You have to shake your head again at the awful thought and he helps you by pulling you to meet his gaze finally.

Both of his thumbs smear your tears away, but even that still doesn’t make the new ones leave your eyes. “Shhh…I am alright, you are alright–“ His last sentence leaves his lips with a sigh, blue eyes staring into yours. “We will figure this out together.”

You frown, surprising him by completely pulling away from him, straightening in your spot. “I don’t want to.” He holds his breath, watching your face turn stern. “This is all because of me, so promise me that you won’t try to do anything like that ever again.” Each word is said slowly, your tongue rolling over each syllable and he knows he doesn’t have a choice, but to answer. There is no way from him to back away, shield himself from your words and hard gaze. Though like a coward that he knows he is, he doesn’t answer you right away. You shake again, now in frustration and anger at his silence. “Hyunjin, promise.“ He doesn’t, he doesn’t even seem to fully look at you and it makes you push against his chest to wake him up from his thoughts. However he is right here — he hears you clearly. “Promise me, goddamit-“

“No.”

His tone is cold, pupils dilating his eyes as he finally answers you. It is no use to lie to you, he knows it would only anger you more, if he would break another promise. You are however still in disbelief, not so much of his answer, but from the way he says it. It is so selfish of him…The word together now seems nothing, but another lie. You can’t stomach the look on his face any longer, standing up to your feet and leaving him in a state of despair.

────

You can feel the pressure on your chest. You can feel your pulse, blood rushing through your vein that you push down on to with your thumb. The skin of your wrist blooms red, moon shapes dancing across your arm that you have been scratching with your nails. Staring at the wooden door in front of you, listening to the soft music only made you more nauseous. It is so amusing that behind the closed doors are vampires, just waiting for you to come in. You know that they can feel you — smell your scent, hear your poor heart. They have to know about you. A single human under the same roof as them, you can only imagine how they would feel, when they learn about your true position. Who you truly are…

It is all so quick, time ticking and the more you stand behind your possible death, the more it eats you. Your skin — blood that they all so crave maybe be splattered across the ballroom the moment you step inside. You can’t no longer think, find a plan. Now you only have to face it, with the last bits of bravery left in you. You circle the stone in your ring with your finger, watching it glimmer in the candle light, listening to the sound of violin cutting through the silence, before you can hear soft masked footsteps following the music.

The dress you are wearing is suffocating, tight around your middle and the heaviness wears you down. You can already feel your feet hurting, still tender from the outside and the shoes do nothing, but hurt you more. However this small bits of pain aren’t as strong as the one in your chest. The nearing footsteps stop right behind you, feeling the person’s breath blowing over your naked neck. It is cold, but not unwelcomed as the one you felt in the garden. This one is somewhat soothing, knowing who it is, but you don’t instantly turn around.

“It is time now, we have to go.” Each word bounces off your skin, piercing through it and traveling straight to your soul. The small nod of your head is nearly unnoticeable, even for the vampire. Hyunjin lets you for a moment drown in the small silence between you two, eyes traveling over your figure, listening to the small click of your nail makes as it meets the red stone on your ring. With his gaze traveling back to your neck, his fingers graze over the thin skin, watching goosebumps appear. He doesn’t even have to listen to your heart, seeing your pulse jump right before his eyes. “Look at me.” It’s more of plea than anything and you find your body already turning to him, before you can stop yourself. The look in your eyes makes him swallow the lump forming in his throat, feeling his chest tighten as he withdraws his hand from you. “Please, don’t look at me like that.”

You look at him all the same, trailing your gaze over his sharp yet soft features. “Like what, Hyunjin?” With furrowed eyebrows, your hand falls back to your side, ruffling the material of your layered skirt.

He sighs through his nose, momentarily looking up to the ceiling, before turning back to you. “You are angry with me.” He states the obvious, the small ‘still’ silent in his sentence.

You crain your neck at him, small pull at your lips from his words. “Now you understand?”

“You know why I went out there.” He says, taking a small step closer to you and it makes you stutter for a split moment.

“I know.” Saying that you look up at him fully again, your next words now a little clearer. “But do you know how selfish it was?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“I know.” He is only repeating himself again and you have think that it must be some kind of unspoken rule you didn’t know of. “But what if-“ You cut yourself off, closing your eyes as you can feel them burning again. “What if the stake did go through your heart…you would leave me and everyone, because you thought you could kill him.”

His face now mirrors the same frown. “You don’t think I’m powerful enough to kill him? To protect you?” He says and you have to sigh a little.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it, you know, what he wanted and you still went out there — you left me–“

“I would never–“

“No–“ You shake your head. “But you would risk your life for me…I don’t want you to safe me.”

“Y/N.” He gasps out your name, placing his hands on top of your naked shoulders and he can see the visible shudder going over you. He is taken back by your words, by the audacity to even think of something like that. Do you really think that he will listen to you? Let you go and do nothing against it? Do you even realize what it would do to him…your death. You are both so selfish, yet not. “Stop saying those things, you would had done the same.”

You nod lightly again, looking at him through your darkened lashes, mesmerizing him for a moment. “I would — but would it not pain you that the person you care so deeply about would sacrifice themselves for you, leave you?” You almost stutter again, feeling your throat closing on you as you finally say those words. They still were quiet, but was it even necessary to say it out loud? The word scares you still and still you keep it hidden, but you hope he sees it shine in your eyes, in your words and your touch. Hyunjin’s hands on your shoulders soften as his features, lips parting. “You said we will do this together and if you want that, you can’t do something like that.”

Pain shines brightly from your whole being and he can’t fight against his own emotions any longer. “I am sorry.” His apology needed to be said, but it felt so little. “I just couldn’t stay put, knowing that the thing that has been doing these awful things to you was out there — I had to do it.” You close your eyes again, letting single tear escape, only to be caught by him. He breathes you in — taking in your state, the soft skin of your cheek melts into his and he wants to memorize this moment before him. You are so brave, you aspire him. He can’t even imagine what it must be for a human to experience this. The fact your nature is different, yet seem like such small thing. “Look at me–“ His own voice betrays him, but he doesn’t come to mask his expression as you open your eyes again. “I am sorry.”

You shakily exhale, placing your own hand over his. “We almost lost you, Hyunjin-“ You just can’t forget it.

He comes even closer to you, lips hovering over your forehead in a gentle kiss. “But you didn’t, I’m right here with you, I will always be….” In your heart and soul. You place your hand to his chest, that doesn’t rise nor a heartbeat is felt under your fingertips, but you can feel him. Your vision clears, letting his words fill your corrupted mind. You become calm again — the best you could, because the music playing behind the closed door only repeats to you your future. You feel his lips pressing to your skin, making it tingle and even if his hand falls back to his side, he pulls yours with him. “We have to go.”

Nodding your head, you let him put your arm over his, his eyes lingering on you a little longer and you can’t seem to look away either. His longer hair is brushed, kissing his shoulders and you finally take in his own clothes. The suit on him is black, but golden embroidery decorated his shoulders. Swirls turning into small leaves and flowers, the same ones that decorated your cleavage. The small details distract you a little, as he leads you to the entrance of the room. He mostly walks for you both, your legs too weak and shaky to even take a full step. It makes you glance back at the door, tearing yourself away from his heated gaze that you can still feel on the side of your face. A small squeeze on your arm makes you sigh a little and you try to focus only on him as you watch the doors before you open.

The music is the first thing that pours out of the room, orange and golden light shining down on the ground before you. The subtle sound of voices follows, while you step a little closer. Calm — you have to keep calm, you say to yourself as Hyunjin leads you. You don’t breathe for a moment, when you finally near the room and soon you have to gasp a little at the sight before you. You thought you have seen nearly everything that this place holds, but you are again left speechless.

Your eyes look up firstly at the high ceilings, painted with beautiful frescoes and decorated in gold. Candles only enhance the beauty of the room, reflecting on the metal and covering the room into warm orange light. You trail your eyes over the paintings, before they fall on the sight before you. People, upon people — wearing tailored clothes, styled in such perfection that it truly told you they cannot be humans. The whole room looked like a cathedral, with its hight, but the sin reeped from every person you laid eyes upon.

Dancers in the center of the room mesmerize you with their smooth moves, that hold passion so great it makes you shiver. The soft voice, simply angelic melts into the music and you take your attention to that direction, where a woman stands with her lips parted. Her voice is alluring and you feel absolutely hopeless by its magic and like she could feel it, she exchanged her hands to you, calling out you. The gesture is anything, but simple, because even from this distance you can feel her eyes turning into something dark. It makes you look away from her, only to be met with another sets of eyes and then another. They do not turn their heads, nor stop dancing, talking or performing, but you knew you were being watched.

Your heart dances to the beat of the music, hammering against your chest. Hyunjin however doesn’t stop leading you deeper, more into the crowd, like he thought you would both simply vanish and be forgotten in the sea of undead creatures. You don’t look away however — you can’t tear your eyes away from the scenery before you. Passing by the first figure you come upon on and their glare makes you cover, sneaking your other hand to hold your companion’s. “Everything alright?” Hyunjin asks you and you try to ignore the fact that everyone can hear him — everyone can hear and see your heart beating faster, blood boiling under their eyes.

You try to focus on him instead of them — the hand holding yours held a grip tight enough to make you see, that you are safe. You still can’t shake off the eyes on you, however you still stare right back at the people around you. It is so distracting, but still nerve racking. However the more you go deeper into the crowd, the more it makes you realize something…If they truly thought you are, who they think you are, the room would have certainly erupted by now. Maybe they are also not believing what they are seeing, or simply they don’t act on their instincts from the fear of Hyunjin and his family. Maybe they are just here for the show…

“I think so…” You say quietly, glancing up again and you stop in your tracks at the sight that hasn’t been there before. You don’t know their culture, but the thing you know is that vampires do enjoy entertainment — drama. You lips part in small gasp, while you watch two figures flying through the room. Their bodies twist and turn, before the separate themselves from the swing they held on and your sudden stop and simple look of astonishment makes the man holding you look into that direction also. “I have never seen this place before.” You say in amazement big enough to make your heart slow down a little.

“We don’t use it much, but I wanted something special for you.” Hyunjin leans closer to you so you could hear his words better, as you quite didn’t have a supernatural hearing like everyone else in the room.

His breath hits your ears, blowing away the small, loose strands of hair and you almost pull away at the sudden tickling sensation. You can see his own eyes on you, but you still have yours on the room, now especially at another performers in the distance. “It is…certainly something…” Your voice dies at the end, trying to get over the fact he made this all so grand just for you. You somehow slowly got used to being given such gifts from him, but everything from this to the dress, jewelry and mostly the one piece glimmering on your finger could not make you feel at ease.

Your own naturally tense body senses the change in his grip as his hand tightens around your arm. It makes you tear your eyes away from the things around you, glancing up. You can see the subtle clench at his jaw, eyes set straight ahead. “What’s wrong?” You ask softly, eyebrows pulling together, before turning to the spot his eyes are on, only to be met with the face of his two brothers.

You can see it in their eyes that something wasn’t right, Felix’s and Han’s usually soft features now hard and cold. Looking back at Hyunjin you don’t mask the concern on your face, watching him tilt his head down at you, but his gaze still drifts away. “I-I…stay here.” You haven’t heard him stutter like this, voice so full of concern, anger and panic — everything circled around his irises.

Your breath cuts short, shaking your head immediately, grasping on to his hand, when he start to withdraw from you. “I don’t want to be alone–“ You swallow the lump in your throat, slowing down your own words so you wouldn’t stutter also — everyone can hear you.

He finally looks at you fully, his blue eyes flashing darker and you know that he didn’t want to leave you alone either — something truly is happening. “You are not, you are save, there is nothing to harm you, trust me.” You hear the urgency in his words, squeezing at your hand a little too painfully, but it is so it would leave a residue of his touch and presence. “I will be right back.” Your lips fall apart, but before you can even make a small sound he detaches himself from you.

Watching him turn his back to you, disappearing so quickly in the sea of people, you can’t help, but pull your hands closer to your chest. His reassurance of you being watched over seem so little, highly aware of how many vampires were around you. However you try to forget about — forget that they were blood thirsty creatures that could jump on you in any given moment. You have to wonder, how many of them are actually the ones on your side, the room was too big to see it in its full glory.

Turning around, you fumble a little with the skirt of your dress, looking down at the details that seem to only swirl before your eyes. You take a deep breath, glancing up again. People walk past you, some giving you a small glare of interest of why a human is trying to disguise themselves as one of them and some don’t even a spare you a simple look. Though it felt lime they were circling around you, like sharks, predators creeping up on its prey. It doesn’t help you feel any better, that you are standing in the center of the room, so you decide to take a small — falsely confident stroll.

You know that Hyunjin told you to stay were you are, but how? You would only be giving them a full angle view and it seems unlikely for you to disappear somewhere, where he wouldn’t find you. As you maneuver through the room, passing by the cold figures, your eyes don’t move away from the wall. You can hear them taking a deep breath, their noses twitching at your scent and your shoulders slightly shrug in uncomfortableness. You soon learn that room is way bigger than you anticipated — it stretches so much and you only realize you walked into a different section of it, that was hidden by high columns.

Amazement strikes you, looking back, before your gaze trails all the way to the ceiling again. You quite frankly haven’t seen something like this before — it was like a one big hall that even by its size hides so many secrets. You have to wonder again how it is possibly that no one knew of this place, but you realize that you still don’t know where you truly are either…maybe you are way farther from home than you think. Your thoughts distract you enough to not perceive the vampires, your pulse slowing to a steady pace as you admire the room.

Your eyes then flicker to a staircase on the other side from where you are standing, music flowing around you. The multiple, grand stairs lead to a door and you swear you can feel something pulling you towards it. It calls out to you the same way as the voice of the singer, whispering sweetly into your ears. However something suddenly washes over you — something you have felt many times before. You feel this something watching you, so different from the stares of the others. This one goes straight through you, shiver going over you, turning your gaze to the direction you don’t even know — it felt like it was everywhere.

The figures blend together, creating a smear of colors as you turn around searching, but you couldn’t quite pinpoint where this awfully feeling striking through you was coming from. Your skin tingles, blood boils under your skin and you nearly stumble from the wave of distress going over you. It can’t be…You can feel everyone watching you, listening to your heart that starts to pound wildly and you so desperately try to breath through your feelings. You can only seem to focus on the ringing in your ears, which increases only more, when the music and the singer’s voice rise high. You can feel it nearing, cornering you more, as the music comes to an end.

Pain — cold, freezing fingers wrap around your arm so tightly it makes you snap back to your body, gasping from the sudden sensation. You don’t even have the time to turn to its owner completely, before your feet drag across the polished floor. Eyes wide in fright they meet two black ones, hidden behind a highly decorated mask that reaches just above the man’s lips. You don’t recognize this man and you are sure he isn’t one of the men that are here to look after you. His whole demeanor was cold, sucking the life right out of you and filling you with terror. Your lips fall apart, naively trying to pull yourself out of his hold, but he only drags you further with him and at that the scream of help gathering inside you is ripped away from you, when you are suddenly pulled away from the room completely.

The world is a blur for a moment, your eyes too slow to catch anything from the fast movement. Your head whips back, pain shooting through your neck as just as that you are pull back into the slow world you are use to. You have to cough a little, your eyes stinging, vision blurry, but you feel the stranger’s hands on both of your arms. Facing him, you can’t do anything, but to catch your breath, barely catching the new scenery around you. A small hallway, that doesn’t seem familiar, but you can’t even get the details around you strait, because the man opens a door your back have been pushed onto, shoving you inside the room and your mind is completely blank for a moment from all what happened in just meer seconds.

You watch the door slam shut before you, breathing unsteady, your heart almost jumping out of your chest. You can feel fear overtaking your whole body, almost hyperventilating from how fast you have been taken away — you felt so useless and powerless under the man’s hold. You hear a click of lock next and you knew that there is no way for you to get out. So you turn around finally to face the room who have been pushed into, but the sight you come across off makes a strangled noise come out of your mouth.

You can feel them, way before your eyes land on the seven figures standing right before you. You can your chest closing onto you, freezing in your spot, because only with just one glance you knew — you just knew it had to be them. They looked and felt so different from any the other vampire you have come across of. You thought the fear you felt in the ballroom from the stares of the undead creatures was already great, but theirs…You can’t even describe how much their whole presence intimidated you — you could even smell it. Their mouths are shut, their eyes in the same color of gold, yet distinct from each other. They glare at you, staring at your squirming form, lingering on the left side of your chest where your heart thumps against your ribs. The are like statues, letting you take in their beauty and you can help, but trail your eyes to the one closest to you.

He had a tall figure, black hair framing his high cheekbones. His posture reek of confidence and there doesn’t even have to be smile of pride on his full lips to show that. The other next to him seem to be even taller, with soft, blond hair and prying eyes. He looks at you from beneath his lashes in interest, standing before the others in a sense of authority. You can’t move away from their eyes and you know it, but you still aren’t able to fully look into them, in fear you would melt into the floor right under you.

When you look to the other, standing just behind the blonde, his gaze didn’t seem so tense, but it still lack warmth. On his longer face danced shadows from the lit candles, only to remind you that the sliver of softness in his eyes wasn’t still inviting. And so weren’t the ones of the man next to him. His hair, dark as the night, reached his shoulders, small earring glimmering under the light. His face didn’t necessarily seem stern and hard, but it was so cold it send shivers down your spine.

A shorter, light haired man stood by him and his whole presence seemed to be the complete opposite of the one next to him. You could see the twinkle of amusement in his eyes, full lips pulled into a small smile. His other companion held his softness hidden, but he didn’t shy away to show it and that made you feel a lot more on the edge. The silence was so loud and you brace yourself for any incoming impact, but it never came. They still stared at you and you did the same, but not like them, you couldn’t figure out anything about them. Over the light haired man loomed a taller figure and you are taken back by his youthful appearance. Still his eyes showed you his true age, how much he had seen and you feel so inexperienced standing here before him. His jawline is clenched, eyes a little darker in the shadow covering his features. But in the same shadows you could still see the figure standing behind him. The small freckle under his eyelashes leads you two his golden stare, that was anything, but warm. You can see the questions in his gaze like the others, but he seem to be truly looking at you.

You wanted to come to him closer.

However you are startled by the sound of a door opening right behind these seven men and you finally seem to be able to move from your spot to look into that direction. Relief washes right over you, when your eyes meet Hyunjin’s, who momentarily glanced at your company, but seeing your fear filled eyes made him instantly rush over to you. “Y/N.” You breath out shakily, carefully going around the still silent vampires. They finally move also, turning to look at you both, before facing the others, who stood in the doorway.

In Hyunjin’s eyes flashes small concern, that only you could see, while you shorten the distance between you two. With a small stinging in your vision, you let him pull you into him, his hold strong and soft, not freezing like the one of the man, who lead you here into this room. He only has eyes on you for a moment too long, because he can feel the heated stare on his back as he shields your body. He hears the quiet footsteps of his family behind him and he at that faces the seven. “You came.” His voice shows disbelief and his whole family’s faces can’t help, but show the same. It surprise them all so much, that they already feel the suspicion that their presence was anything, but good. “Why?” They really thought, prayed that they maybe wouldn’t show up for the sake of you, so the problem that they would have to deal with would be the vampires in the ballroom. But they would learn about you sooner or later and Hyunjin already puts you behind him to protect you.

Just this simple question finally answers yours. These seven men are the oldest vampires, the ones that turned them. When you first saw them, you already knew, but hearing it being confirmed, made you tremble. The blonde, tall vampire in the center doesn’t show a sign of anger or anything, only looking at you from behind Hyunjin’s shoulder. The way all eight of them dig their feet in the floor, though seem to spark amusement in him. “You think we would miss our dear friend’s ceremonial?” With smooth voice, his gaze jumps between you two and you close your eyes a little at the obvious pause in his words.

The shorter blonde man takes a step closer, feeling how Hyunjin tenses a little, but as you watch the man, he doesn’t seem to be particularly frightened. “Hyunjin…is that woman by your side really her?“ His eyes meet yours for a moment, but you instantly look away from his stare.

The question is met with a small silence, seeing that there really isn’t any need for it to be spoken outloud. “A Human…” Says the man with longer hair, his voice deep and you can feel it rumbling in his chest. “Tell us — does she know?” His tone becomes cold so quickly, you really can’t help it, but grasp onto Hyunjin a little tighter.

“Does she know of what we are?” The tall, dark haired vampire tilts his head at you, but more so his gaze lingers on the man holding you behind him. “Is it perhaps why your letter sounded so urgent?“

“I can explain–“ Hyunjin only breathes out this much, before he is cut off by the man in the front.

“Oh, you will — you will definitely explain in a detail, why a human is standing here in this room, with the knowledge of our existence and exactly why is she holding onto your heart so tightly.” The tension rises in the room, like the flames of the candles behind you that lick at your skin.

Your heart hammers against your chest, pulling your eyebrows into a frown, when Hyunjin speaks in a small tone of desperation. “Her being human doesn’t matter.” He tries to argue, but can he? Even you know what this means — it is not forgivable that you are human.

“Doesn’t?” Spits out the blonde, turning to look at all nine of you with fire in his eyes. “Do we have to remind you all of the first rule, that you all signed in your names — the biggest out of all of them…” Gaze falling on the vampire holding you, the feeling of small repent is obvious by the posture of others, but they don’t turn away from you. “I would never thought of you as a traitor Hyunjin, siding, falling for a thing that is supposed to be nothing, but food — I certainly wouldn’t believe it, if I didn’t saw her standing in a room full of vampires, seemingly not too frightened or unaware as she should be–“

“We wanted to keep it a secret, at least till we would understand it fully.” Speaks up Chan, hands trying to indicate their innocence, but it is ignored.

“And you thought we would forgive you?” With wide eyes, the short blonde’s voice cuts through the thick air. Looking over the vampires you learn to care so much for, makes him release a small unamused laugh. “Are you really that naive?”

Closing his eyes, Hyunjin sighs, stepping a little aside, but not letting go of your hand. “At least hear us, before you give your verdict.” He says, pleading — pleading for your life and you have to look up at him with wide eyes as you now finally realize the situation. Everyone is tense, hand formed into fists, eyes on your now unhidden figure…if Hyunjin didn’t speak in such unmasked desperation, you might have been in their claws by now.

“Please, do.” Hearing the demand, Hyunjin couldn’t care about anything else other than you. Turning to you, your fingers laced together, he listens closely to your heartbeat. Only thing that matters is you — you, looking into his eyes so softly, with specs of fear and sadness, but under those emotions he focuses on the woman, who came to his life so suddenly, yet dreamed his whole life. Everything around you is just a background — you only have eyes on him.

“I can feel her…I can feel everything. I have never felt so close to anyone like this before. I knew from the moment that I saw her — you that this feeling was something different.” You blink away the small tears gathering in your eyes at his words. Him talking about you so dearly made you completely blind of the eyes watching you. “Please, trust me that I didn’t even believe it myself firstly and I did try to pull away, but I couldn’t, I simply couldn’t. I tried to understand why — why do I feel so deeply for a person I met so briefly. I spend multiple nights searching, but I found nothing, nothing, but the obvious. I wanted to be sure myself — convince myself that this is real…soulmates in a form of a vampire and a human.” The single word hits you so deeply now, you finally understood. Hyunjin then glances at the oldest vampires, but your are still stuck hazing at him. “I wanted to be sure myself, before I could convince you, but someone else found the truth way before I did…” They listen carefully to his words, analyzing his whole being as he stood there before them, telling his confession. Everyone seem to be looking and listening to only him, however you can feel a pair of eyes on you, but before you could look ar their owner, everyone turns to you at the next words. “Someone got into her room and left a message completely unnoticed, but it was clear…We found no trace, even after each of their appearance, every one more direct than the other and we think this someone is seeking revenge on me, us, through her.”

These words seem to make them forget about you a little, attention now on their first creations. “You think someone would be stupid enough to try, what you are applying?” Says the tall, short, dark haired vampire.

“The more important thing is–“ Minho steps aside, making you all look at him, as he glares at the men infront you. “Would you let them?“ You see a small challenging look on their faces, lips formed into thin lines for a moment. The question holds a deeper meaning and Minho really is asking them pf one thing only — do they trust each other enough to be on the same side together again after all these years…The man in the center, sighs and was it melancholy in his eyes?

“We are no family to you and certainly not friends by any means, but the thought of someone taking over our trusted…” The last word rolls out of his tongue slowly, looking around the room slowly. “Is not pleasing–“

Chan seems to sense something in him, frown falling on his face and you for the first time see him truly act on his emotions more than actions. “Really now? Are you really worried about of said thing, that someone is trying to destroy everything that we build or are you concerned only about her?“ Venom drips from his words and his question is answered instantly, when the vampire’s eyes drift to you firstly.

“Human…” You can hear the genuine confusion and the tight smile that follows doesn’t ease you. “Chan — my old ears might have disobeyed me, but did you said we? As in you?”

You feel so small, powerless in the room that you can’t help, but pull your hands to your heaving chest. Hyunjin looks at you at your move, but you don’t meet his heated gaze as you listen to the words being thrown out of his brother’s mouth. “If it weren’t for the fact that you cannot be killed — it doesn’t matter. All of this, all of them–“ He points to the direction from where you all came from, voice rising in volume. “We have the whole right to defend ourselves.”

“You broke the first rule!” The voice of the vampire that spoke before his blonde companion booms in the room so loudly you flinch. Then he points directly at you, his emotions firing so strong you can see the flicker of red in his golden eyes. “No human can know of our existence — you are all so lucky that we didn’t punish you the moment we heard of her–“

Your lips fall apart, the others next to you straightening their back. Hyunjin steps before you, shielding you and you don’t have the see his face and the others’ to see the anger. “So you knew…” There is no remorse on their faces and you yourself are in disbelief. “You knew, we needed your help and yet you all didn’t do anything — like cowards.” Felix comes so quickly behind Hyunjin you have to blink rapidly. All of this — everything falls onto you and you helplessly stand there unmoving, only watching the blonde pushing down onto his shoulder, so he wouldn’t do the stupid thing you were so afraid of.

Another laugh, but now filled with true amusement leaves the short, blonde. “Oh — so now you need us?“ You can feel that in this whole situation that it wasn’t so much about you as it seemed to be.

Hyunjin closes his eyes in small defeat, pushing away his pride and nodding his head in what almost seemed like a small bow. “Yes, even if it pains me yes, because if something happens to her…” The words die on his tongue, but he doesn’t turn to look at your deep frown that pierces through his heart. “Everything will be destroyed.”

The long haired man puts his hands in his pockets, leaning over to his and the others direction. “Maybe it’s time for a change.” His whisper sends shivers down your spine, fidgeting in your spot.

The long pause that follows makes the short haired blonde sigh, rolling his eyes. “You all bore me.” He says, however it doesn’t cut the tension. His eyes travel to a one specific person as he says that and in small curiosity you can’t help, but look over, only to spot Han, who stands next to Minho. His gaze is turned to the floor and with furrowed eyebrows you glance back at the other, only to find him already staring at you. “How is it that you can feel the same way a vampire can?”

That question makes them all turn their attention back to you. You yourself have been asking this same question every day — you didn’t believe it, but as your mind goes back to the moment few hours ago, you could still feel it. Your skin was tingling, was it maybe because of Hyunjin? Is it because that you started to open up, let your feelings guide you, that you can finally really feel this invisible string between you two? You don’t have an answer, only staring back at them in silence, the only noise being your heart and the cracking of fireplace.

The more your lips stay sealed, the more their gaze seem to darken and you desperately want to back away and run — your human instinct. Glancing at Hyunjin you come across the same questioning gaze, but in the corner of the eye theirs won. With your racing heartbeat and silence Chan seems to realize what you were thinking or more less he spoke again to distract them from you just a little longer.

“We had encounter with wolfs today.” That seems to do the job, but still it doesn’t help you calm down. “Just minutes before the sunset–“

Another genuine expression forms on the face of the vampire in the middle and you have to think how almost unnatural it felt. “Wolfs?” He exclaims, the word lingering in the air and for a second he just stares at Chan. They all look at each other and you distinctly remember why — said creatures were the thing why they were made for. He seems to not instantly believe such thing, but with the unwavering expression he sighs. “That would make sense yes, they certainly never liked us.” He says, stating the obvious.

“But their way of thinking, acting–“ Changbin speaks, shaking his head softly. “Till now they never showed up.” He argues with his own family right now, but that doesn’t make the others unaware.

“Maybe it is your doing?” The taller vampire with dark hair points out, glaring straight at Chan, who clenches his jaw. “Maybe they do not like their once companion playing for the other team–“

“We both know that doesn’t make any sense, there are just few clans left and we know they rather stay away from us.”

“Maybe some were sniffing around, heard about you and thought of revenge.” Shrugs the amused blonde again and his remark seemed to anger Chan so much, that Minho has to take a step between them.

“Revenge?” It is obvious that someone is trying to do that through you, but werewolves seem like such a unlikely enemy in this situation. It is way closer than you think. “If they did think of it, don’t you think you wouldn’t be the main target?”

The vampire before him tilts his head mockingly at his words. “Like you said, you are the strongest…and even so they are not stupid enough to try and fight.”

“Exactly.” Fires back Minho, waiting for just the moment he says that, words already flying from his lips. “We think someone is hiding behind them, using them to make us confused–“

“Don’t be ridiculous–“

“You think someone would be so hungry for a revenge?” The vampire cuts of his own companion, silencing him as his curiosity grows at such thought.

The sandy blonde shrugs lightly and you grip onto your necklace a little tighter at each of their sentences — it felt like you are a ticking bomb, ready to explode at any given moment, because you can just feel the heat in you rising from waiting. You keep track of their conversation, but you can’t seem to fully function as your mind turns into fuzz. Maybe you are now a little selfish, but you can’t help, but think of what they might do to you after this conversation ends. You focus back on Minho, glancing at Hyunjin, who is for that moment unaware of your struggle. “Don’t see why not.” Says his brother. “We all know what it is like.”

The man before him shakes his head, knowing already where this is going. “It can’t be a vampire–“ He argues.

You hear someone take a couple steps across the floor, eyes following the sound, landing on Seungmin, who you realize has been awfully quiet till now. “Are you sure? You have not shown gratitude for what we had done. You have all done nothing over three hundred years, no wonder every vampire thinks of us as the most powerful.” Grimace falls on his face, but you can see the glimmering pride in his eyes and that seem to make them snap.

It all happened so fast, the rising tension snapping so suddenly you gasp, head whipping around as you hear a loud noise. Turning into that direction your mouth opens in shock at the sight of Seungmin colliding with a wall. Your human senses are not quick enough to realize what just happened, staring with wide eyes at the sight before you. The long haired vampire, whose demeanor seemed so calm, yet cunning turns south, as you watch Seungmin being picked up from the floor in a blur. The vampire has his hand around his neck and you panic yourself, when the man under him struggles with the grip on his throat. “Watch your tongue-“ Spits out the vampire, his hair hiding his expression of anger and you can only stand there frozen in your spot, while everyone goes to stop the vampire from breaking his neck. “Remember who gave you this power, you are nothing, but a fledgling just like everyone.”

His outburst surprises even his companion and the furry radiating from the brothers of his creation makes the air taste bitter. You feel so useless, just standing there and watching, but even the vampires don’t act on their impulses. They stop themselves from getting between them, knowing that it would only make this worse. Seeing Seungmin holding helplessly onto the hand around his neck makes you really see how much power these vampires have. The man, who seem to be holding the most authority steps closer to the pair. “Let him go.” His voice is calm, yet demanding and you watch the family of the other straightening their backs, when he doesn’t do that. “Yoongi!” Snaps again the blonde vampire and at the sound of his name he finally releases the man in his hold.

Seungmin can’t help, but double over a little, breathing in shallow breaths, hand pressing onto his neck. Even from the distance you can see the small imprint of the man’s hand, Yoongi, but the marks instantly disappear by a blink of an eye. “You are even more weak than I remember…” Mumbles the long haired vampire, whose name is the only one you knew so far. Seungmin stands to his full hight again, his family taking a step closer to him with hard looks, but that really doesn’t move him at all, as he now turns to look right into your direction.

That move only makes the others follow his line of sight and you are only reminded of why you stand here with them. However now no one is standing beside you — you are completely alone and can’t help, but feel vulnerable under their gaze. The anger that was still present in the room doesn’t weaver, when the taller, dark haired man steps before the man, who you stare at for small insurance. Hyunjin now is hidden and you can’t do nothing, but face the unnamed vampire. “Now…” The air around you shifts, almost like everyone forgot about what just happened, but you can’t — they are so strong that even with their brother being choked to his last breath, they couldn’t do anything. So what does this mean to you? You are now finally being asked, interviewed and they all finally look right at you.

“How can you be human, but still be his soulmate?” You don’t move, not even shake your head, because you yourself don’t even have an answer. “Do you feel it? Do you feel your heart beating just for him? Breathing just for him, living every passing moment with him like a spear going through your heart?” Your eyes meet Hyunjin’s behind him and the fear in you melts away for a moment. Being asked this infront of all them is so different, than whispering it to each other alone. But you don’t care about the audience, eyes only on his — so soft, sweet, vulnerable like yours.

“Yes.” You finally spoke, voice strong in emotion, but so quiet. There never wasn’t a need to raise your voice to be heard by him.

Unfortunately he is torn away from your sight as the vampire steps before him again, making you turn back at him and you can see it on his face that he did it on purpose. “And you are still human…impossible.”

You can’t help, but frown at his words and you push away your surprise, when they let you speak again — maybe do respect humans in some part. “Why can’t it be?” Your shoulders shrug a little, turning to all of them and you try to hide the fear rising, with their expressions. “Anyone and everything can feel these emotions, why can’t it be me?” You say and your words hit them harder than your thought they would. Was it truly because you can understand them better than no human ever did? You always held your emotions high, sometimes so strong that you couldn’t control them and even now it was certain in your voice.

Turning to Hyunjin, the vampire lets you see him again, meeting his gaze immediately, before it turns to the man as he gives him a question that has been in the back of all of their minds. “How did you know she was the one?” He asks and Hyunjin flickers his gaze to yours again. He wants to say everything, let his emotions speak for him again, but he knew that wouldn’t make them believe.

“I can’t compel her.” He says and everyone instantly disagrees, not believing even a little.

“Lies-“

“He can’t.” You say, raising your voice to be heard even if you know you don’t have to. With you letting your presence known, with nothing in the way of getting to you now, they don’t held back anymore.

The whole room turns to you, you are now the center of attention and even if you hate it, even if you can feel your terror overwhelming you whole, you don’t shy away. There is no way for you out of this. “Show us.” Demands the blonde man, gesturing to you both.

Hyunjin at his words steps closer to you, slowly, like he was giving you time to calm yourself or maybe turn your attention fully to him, but it doesn’t help. You trust him, you trust yourself — you know the truth, but you still shake nervously. What if it doesn’t work? No, you know he can’t compel you. It is the thing that lead you to him. The man who doesn’t mask his own small speck of fear, which only you can see stops infront of you and you look at him so closely. You already remember each curve, dip, mark on his features, but that doesn’t stop you from admiring him for the thousand time.

It is like the first time you met. You can still remember his eyes, the emotions held in them as he was the first man, who truly look at you and see you. Even you can smell the emotions in the room, slowly cutting through the thick fog of darkness caging you. Hyunjin can’t help, but graze his hand softly over your cheek, seeing the stains of tears you shed since meeting him — the tears that you shed for him. With his eyes he searches for something, using this moment to take you in and with the feeling of your skin he doesn’t even feel the ominous presence of the others.

His lips then lift up a little and you are taken a little back at such move under this situation, but then it becomes clear to you, why he did that. “Don’t smile.” He could’ve said anything, but he chose something so sweet, you truly couldn’t help yourself, but do the same.

Your small move is not unseen by the others and seeing the short blonde in the corner of your eye, you can feel his mocking grimace before you can even see it. “Oh, is that it?” The mocking sweetness in his words makes your face turn sour, but that change of expression doesn’t move him, as he eyes you closely. “You are lying, Hyunjin.” He states, clicking his tongue a little and said man turns to him with hard stare, however the vampire’s eyes are only set on your form. “I can smell the silver from here.” His nose wrinkles and the others, even you, look down to your necklace. That’s why he gave it to you — he didn’t want you to fall for the tricks of any vampire. Though that doesn’t make Hyunjin any less confident, stepping aside just a little, but what comes next he wished that he didn’t do that.

“Jungkook.”

The unknown name belongs to the vampire with youthful features, who kept himself hidden till now. He doesn’t even look back, his attention fully on you. You can tell that there is something whispered, when they said his name. He stalks to you so slowly, you have to back away a little at the look on his face. With his hands behind his back, he walks up to you, stops right infront of you. His whole presence and posture screams of power that you could only dream about of having. His eyes trail all over you and you feel yourself twitch in your spot, when he suddenly comes closer to you. You don’t want to turn around and face him, when he stalks behind you, but you do squirm at the subtle touch of his fingertips on your skin.

His freezing hand moves so slowly from your naked shoulder up to your neck that you have to shudder. Something about his touch makes your stomach turn, maybe it is because of the way he stops for a second to press his thumb over your jumping pulse. His hand leaves your skin freezing, blindly following his touch with your senses and your chest tightens, when with just a single move he unties the knot on the necklace. “Your bride has a beautiful neck.” He says, but it felt anything, but a compliment. He pulls it away from you just with two of his fingers, dangling the heavy jewelry, like mocking the try of keeping you safe from a vampire’s powers. You hear it being thrown across the room, the heavy noise making you flinch a little to harshly, but you can’t help it, when he walks back to face you again. He is so close to you, looming over you with blown out pupils. Your lips fall apart a little, almost missing the quick look behind you.

You couldn’t even blink, so fast you feel yourself twitch, mind being emptied with just his voice and you don’t even fully grasp, what he so suddenly puts in your hands, as you feel your pupils dilating just like his. “Kill yourself.” You inhale sharply, body freezing just for a second and your mind screams in panic, when you look down into the dagger in your hands. It felt horrible — you couldn’t control your own body, your hand turning the dagger to your chest so fast you can’t even blink.

Next you feel pain. Your body shakes violently as your hands move to dagger yourself, but that never comes. Someone wrapped their arms around you before you could do it, the clanking sound of the weapon hitting the ground loud to your ears and you fight harshly under their hold as they pulled you with them to the ground. Your eyes are wide, not particularly looking anywhere, but your mind only screams at you, repeating those words said over and over. You can’t — you can’t control your spasming body, mind screaming at you to stop. The tears rolling down your cheeks are the only thing coming from your doings and the panic rising in you is nothing, but fake. You have to do it — your own body betrays you, when your teeth start to dig into your tongue.

You cry silently, tasting the blood coating your mouth, praying for it stop, but you can’t do anything. You realize, who the touch belongs to, who is holding you, but you couldn’t focus on anything else other than the pain. Choking, your hand immediately grasp the hand of the man holding you down, when he suddenly shoves his fingers into your mouth. With his strength he is able to pry your teeth away from biting your tongue off, as he presses down on the muscle. “Stop!” You cry, choking, teeth digging into his fingers, tasting iron. “Stop it now!” It isn’t meant for you, but for the vampire named Jungkook, who watches with others the scene infront of them.

You can’t even breathe through your nose from the blood that pools down your throat. The compulsion literally makes you powerful enough that Hyunjin couldn’t contain your spasming body, your feet dragging across the floor as you struggle — Deja Vu. Your body betrays you again, when your lungs don’t take in any air and your head spasms at the lack of oxygen. You can already see the black spot in your vision, but before you can slip into unconsciousness — Jungkook finally speaks.

“Stop.”

Hyunjin’s withdraws his fingers from your mouth, making you choke out and lamp for the oxygen. Everything swirls around you, body slumping and falling to your side. You struggle with getting air to your stinging lungs, body shaking in pain at the tenderness on your tongue. In your state you don’t even see Hyunjin charging at Jungkook with nothing, but anger. Someone helps you sit up and your teary eyes meet Felix’s, who softly holds your head up. You gasp, cough in his hold and the more you get your breathing stable, the more the hidden sobs in you escape your lips. Your ears still ring, but even in your state of helplessness your head turns to his direction.

Hyunjin true form is uncontrollable — eyes vibrant red, face pale as alabaster and even though your vision swirls, you can see the veins on his face pulsing with anger. Three of his brothers struggle to hold him, his attention only on the man responsible for your pain, but on his face is anything, but regret. They don’t show mercy or sympathy, nothing, but amazement — and that only made him more furious. They did this only out of spite, not even caring if he wouldn’t be fast enough to stop you from piercing the dagger through your heart.

“You knew! You knew what was happening and you still choose to do the nothing!” You have never seen Hyunjin so out of control, shaking so much in emotion and you for a moment don’t recognize him. His face controls, hurt so big on his face, your breath gets stuck in your hurting throat. “After all we have done for you?” His voice breaks in the end, his chest heaving.

“You haven’t even marked her!” Yells the vampire before him, short, black hair falling into his eyes as he gestures to you. That word strikes small confusion in you and you look at Hyunjin, who at your soft gaze stops to shake with anger. His eyes turn slowly to blue at your state. You have an idea what he meant by that — the memory of your teeth barely grazing Hyunjin’s vein the time he let you feed of him…is this also why he never drank from you before? Because he knew he would sink his teeth into your pulse to make you his forever?

Hyunjin stops to struggle under the grips of his brothers, vulnerability going over him at your state, but when he decides to turn back to the man before him his softness dissolves. “There is an enemy right infront of us.” He says through gritted teeth, glaring at the seven vampires before him.

“You broke our rule!”

There is no need for Hyunjin to try and compel you again — they know. The quiet blonde, who has been watching from afar, detach himself from the others to stand between them. “You will lose us all if you won’t respect it–“ Says Jeongin, before gesturing to you. “Someone is trying to get through us through her.” He repeats the same words said before, but even with the emphasis, they only repeat themselves also.

“You think someone is that stupid enough?” Exclaims the tall blonde in disbelief that they still stand by their words. “We would kill them immediately!”

Seungmin, who you learned is standing right behind you and Felix, who still keeps you in his hold, shakes his head. “How can we trust that you would? You haven’t appear in years…no wonder they are going after us and not you–“ That makes the long haired vampire release a short, dry laugh in complete awe.

“Strongest…”

The mockery is strong, filling up the room with sourness that you could taste on your tingling tongue. You swallow your saliva mixed with the irony taste of blood, cringing lightly. The blonde still holding you puts a hand on your back and you are thankful for so such gentleness. Hyunjin still stands there in his spot, watching the silent interaction and he has to push away the anger for your sake. The silence is loud, everyone breathing through everything that just happened and you have to stare at them all — waiting. Their verdict is taking really long, but one of them finally asks the question.

“Are we going to kill her?”

It is such a horrible question to be said about a person, who is right infront of them, thinking of their life like nothing, but another waste they might needed to get rid of. You waited for this the whole time. Since you got here, why they came — did you convince them to let you live? Did the moment of you almost killing yourself convince them that you are completely devoted to a vampire? Do they trust your words? That you can feel the same way as them — and so deeply. The question is still unanswered. Do they care enough for them? Would they care if their first ever creations would be killed? Their once friends…family?

The one in the middle, the one who tried the most to understand your situation and you the most, stares at you in thought. You don’t have the strength to make yourself look stronger, but that doesn’t mean he can’t see how strong you truly are. Even if you don’t feel like it, you somehow are just as significant as them.

Vampire or not.

“No.” He says, his tone is soft, while he still looks at you. “Rules are meant to be broken sometimes…” No one — nothing is said to disagree with him and you have to release a small cry of relief, just as everyone. That man doesn’t ignore it, turning to step before Hyunjin, who was ready to walk away to you. “I hope you know what you are doing-“

“I know.”

His tone holds determination, ending into a loving whisper, when he turns to you. The vampires before them all agree with this decision, even if they didn’t show it through their words and actions. They somehow now understood, when they watch him walk up to you. There was nothing else to be done or said at this moment, but you do thank to the heavens in small, silent cries.

The blonde leaves you as Hyunjin takes his place, both of you falling to hold yourselves close to each other. Everything, the big weight of your shoulders is lifted now for the moment and the relief of not being taken away from the man holding you is now the thing laying on top of your shoulders. He pulls you to his chest, holding head under his chin as you wet his shirt with your tears. The others now see no use of being present anymore, but they can’t help, but linger just a bit longer to watch your shaking form. They never seen Hyunjin so broken, greatful — so full in emotion.

You know that this isn’t over, it is just the beginning somehow, but you can’t help, but melt into his arms in happiness. They all leave you both sitting in each other’s embrace on the floor, but someone’s footsteps slowly come over to you. Hyunjin is the one to look up first, pulling his head away from yours, but his arms around you don’t move. You do the same, glancing up to the figure standing over you, trailing your eyes up their body before you stop at their face.

It is the same man, the last one, the one that haven’t spoke, the one, who hid himself in the shadows. He doesn’t speak even now, only pulling your necklace that has been rip away from you from behind his back. Your face shows a speck of greatfulness at the gesture, taking the dangling jewelry from his hand, unaware of the looks being shared between him and Hyunjin. You are not so much thankful, because of the fresh memory of that vampire compelling you and when you turn back from the necklace to him, he is already no where to be found.

You are now both alone in the room, quietly holding onto each other for a few moments, but Hyunjin then puts your face into his hands to look at you. However your lips fall apart at the sight of tears on his face, eyes still glassy from them, while you let him look over you. He never cried before. “Where does it hurt?” He says in whisper, but you are still stuck staring at his face.

The touch of your hand on his cheek makes him snap back to the reality — the reality where you are with him, alive. Your thumb swipes over his skin lightly, other hand coming to his to lace your fingers together. “I am fine, your blood healed me.” His blood only healed you physically and you can’t help the small bits of tears escaping your eyes again, when you trail your fingers over his, remembering your teeth digging into him. “I am sorry-“

“We have been through this, Y/N–“ Hyunjin shakes his head at your apology, eyebrows pulling together. “You could never hurt me.” The painful, yet real smile appears on his lips and yours lift ever so slightly in shared relief. “It pains me that someone is targeting you because of me…but now you do not have to worry — we have them on our side.”

“How can you be so sure?” You ask truthfully, but you know it really must mean something that they let you live — that they didn’t punish him for breaking the most sacred rule of them all.

“I am not.” He says, but you don’t shake in fear of the fact that they might change their mind. Something told you that they wouldn’t — do they really care? “But I know you somehow convinced them…” Hyunjin smooth down softly the few pieces of hair covering your face, before his palm meets your cheek again, smearing away your dried tears of pain and sadness that leaves only warmth behind. “We don’t have to worry no more, at least for now — so I can fully enjoy my bride.”

You match his wide smile, watching the light come back into his eyes at that word. “Bride? Is that what I am?” You say, small playfulness in your voice and you take his words to not worry about anything, atleast for now.

“If you let me have you…” That sentence sends your heart racing, looking down to your hands. He doesn’t push you to answer such thing, but it still is left to be answered — some day. You can now finally wonder, you finally don’t have to wait and only you can only live now, but…there is still something out there haunting you. However your mind and body is so tired that you truly can’t think about what might happen next, now you have nothing to guide you or get you ready. Now it is only your destiny and that can’t be changed.

Hyunjin reminds you to not worry for now, when he takes the necklace from you to put it on to you again. It maybe now lacks a little security, but you remember that you are now more safer than you think. Their methods and way of speaking isn’t forgotten nor the fact that they might not be trusted, but that is a feeling not coming from you. Hyunjin thinks that, he doesn’t want to trust this someone so easily, when they had wronged him and all of them so maybe times before.

“We should go back.” He says and you nod slowly,pushing away your tears of exhaustion away, picking yourself up the best you could. You can’t stop now…There are still those vampires waiting for you and you know that the arrival of the originals really peak their interest. They must already know…

Standing up took you a little time, wobbly legs ready to give up on you, but Hyunjin steadies you, till you got your strength back. Even with his blood you feel the tiredness creeping up on you, but it changes into nervousness, when he lead you then out of the room. Like before, you feel the nerve racking pressure on you, as you near the ballroom again, but now you held onto Hyunjin a little more at ease. Still what if this confirmation will lead the other vampires to snap? No, like said they are not stupid enough to try and even say a word.

“Focus on me.” Hyunjin says to you, when you both stop before a door. Even in the dim light you recognize the door — it is the same one that called to you, now being opened slowly, letting out the still softly playing music out, but it seemed to waver, when you take a step closer.

Your eyes fall bellow you, traveling across the whole room, as everyone turns to look at you. Before you is the staircase that you have been looking at before you were taken. You understood that the calling you heard was maybe your own future. With the originals present, completely unmoving from the sight of you and Hyunjin, the room fills with looks of wonder, soft whispers flowing around you. His hold tightens around you a little, guiding you down the stairs, while you watch the vampires around you move aside.

They were making a room for you…even if some of them didn’t look pleased by a sight of a vampire being so close to a human — they didn’t do anything against it. You are surprised by the way they seem to respect you or maybe they are just too afraid to doing anything against it. Descending down the staircase you find the gazes of his family, who watch you both, with softness in their eyes. Being so distracted, so out of your body, you don’t even register Hyunjin stopping in the middle of the empty space everyone made for you, but you do glance at the few couples taking their stands around you.

His movement makes you look at him again, letting him put your hand on his arm, while his lands on your naked back. He can feel your goosebumps under his palm, only smiling softly at you again, as you both lace your hands together. The nerves and anxiety leave you at that and so the other people around you. He is now the center of your world and you listen closely to the music gaining in volume.

It is so different from the last time you danced with him, but it still felt the same — so warm and full of…love. Your heart beats faster, but in said emotion that has been kept hidden in your heart till now. You don’t feel any repulse, you are finally not afraid to feel. Hyunjin guides you like before, twirling you around and dipping you softly, but you somehow don’t need him to. It is like your hearts formed into one and this dance its just their making.

This dance is different from that one you danced before, it is more complex and quicker, so you don’t expect him to move away with you, your hands instantly reaching out for him. However before you can stumble or move out of rhythm someone takes you in their arms. “I don’t think we were properly introduced.” You breathe in sharply a little at the sudden move, but you don’t look away from the man infront of you. It is the tall man, with high cheekbones and longer face, also the one that haven’t spoke to you till now. You remember his eyes filled with softness and now there is no mask to hide their natural sparkle. “I’m Hoseok.”

Your mouth falls open at his light hearted tone. You don’t know if you want to even say your name back, because after all his family did to you, it really wasn’t no need, but you fall victim to his charms. “Y/N.” You say back quietly, eyes searching for Hyunjin, however his subtle touch tickling your skin leads you back to him.

“I don’t say this often as it is in my nature, but I want to apologize–“ You frown a little at that, not because you didn’t know why, but it is simply because you are taken back by it. Dipping you, he sees a look of small disbelief and confusion on your face, making him continue. “You seem to be a clever woman, vampire or not.” You look at him closely, analyzing his expression. Was that a compliment? Did he really think it would warm up your heart after what his family had done? His apology seems to be truthful, but you don’t fall for it. Hoseok only smiles at the expression on your face, just a little wider, before he twirls you into arms of another.

Their hold is strong and you flinch slightly at such differences from the man before him, who actually controlled his true strength when holding you. Your eyes meet amber and you feel your heart stop beating for a moment. It is the man from before, the one that gave you back your necklace — the one that has his hand on the upper part of your naked back. Not like his companion he doesn’t hover his hand over you, he almost digs his fingers into you, but under his gaze you don’t even feel the slight sting of his nails.

Cold — you feel coldness creeping up on you, hand that is held in his shaking slightly. The more he twirls you around, the more he dips you, the more he gets closer to you. You almost feel his chest against yours and you can’t seem to find the will to move away or anything against it. When he dips you again — so low that your feet hover over the floor. he presses his palm on the back of your neck as your head rolls back at the sharp move. His fingers tangle slightly in your hair, tugging just a little to make you shake, you looking at the upside down world, however you only feel his breath fanning over your sternum. “I will help you.” He says and you gasp at the voice. It is sweet like honey, like from a dream, it wakes fire in you, burning your skin. Your head becomes fuzzy and not just from the way he pulls you back to him, as the music ends. He doesn’t let go of you and you something prevents you to do the same, but that wasn’t the same for the someone, who walks up to you both, pulling you away from his hold.

Hyunjin stands next you, now being the one to have in his hold, glaring challengingly at the man before you, but he only gives him a sliver of his attention as his eyes still trail over you. You are puzzled by such deep look, hand falling on top of the vampire’s holding you and that seem to move his attention.

You watch with choked breath as he turns away from you, but with a one last shared look between him and Hyunjin, he disappears in the crowd like nothing happened — but something did and your body can’t seem to forget it. With that interaction you let your mind wander, while the holding you close, pulls you to fave him. “Are you alright?” Hyunjin asks you and you turn to look at him with a small sigh. Just like you, he seem to take this small interaction to his heart, something flashing in his lightly colored eyes.

You don’t answer this question, shrugging away the lingering memory, ignoring the eyes of the room watching you both. “Is there somewhere we can talk — privately?” You ask him, already feeling the tiredness weighting you down. The room is so full and even with being filled with nothing, but the walking dead you feel heat rising inside of you. It is too much for you — all of it. You truly wanted to give Hyunjin, what he wanted and truly enjoy yourself, but you couldn’t. Though you didn’t know that it doesn’t matter if you two won’t stay — everywhere is everything he wants, when he his with you.

He eyes you a little, seeing the distance look on your face, but he doesn’t question it. “Yes…come with me.” He could feel the pressure of eyes on the both of you, when he quickly leads you out of the room. The vampires’ lips are parted, questions and remarks on ready to fly of their tongue and he knew you could feel them judging you. You didn’t deserve any of it, but what did he think? Almost everyone present holds disgust for humans — seeing them as nothing, but food. The only important thing has been done and he doesn’t have to mark you for them to see it. He doesn’t care, he holds pride with having you by his side.

You do almost pull away from him, when you realize he guided you back to the same room, where it all happen. Staring at the floor which you were struggling for your life on is so hard to look at. You know that there maybe isn’t a room safe enough to speak in without being heard, but you are confused by his choice. “Is it safe to speak here?” You question, turning to him, when he closes the door to the room. “I though everyone could hear everything that happened here–“

“No, we can speak here clearly.” Hyunjin reassures you, walking up to you slowly. “Before we got here I smelled burned sage — small spell, but it does work on vampires.”

Your raise your eyebrows in bewilderment. “Spell?” You repeat in shock and small realization. “They have a witch on their side…” It is not a question and he already knows, what you are thinking.

“Propably…” He sighs, but he already knows the truth.

There has been time — still is, when him and his family thinks that a witch being the reason for your tortures is the only thing that made sense and you both share the same look at the memory. “You don’t trust them.” You say and you are in agreement with yourself. You have already thought of them not being necessary on your side, only caring about themselves and how it might effect them, but hearing this information makes you talk of it again.

“No, I don’t.” He repeats himself again and you can see the battle in his eyes — it is so hard to trust them, even if they did let you go. His head is a mush. “However I’m certain that they will keep a close eyes on you and everyone else in that matter.” He says, looking at you through his hand as he pressed his fingers to his nose bridge. Hyunjin then sighs through his nose, eyes falling to your raising chest with a frown. “I will never forgive them about that, I would kill them if it was possible–“

You walk up to him at that, hands grasping onto the material of his suit. “That doesn’t matter anymore.” It does and you know it. He only lets you bewitch him into thinking that it doesn’t. You both don’t know what to truly think, but one thing is certain — you are alive. Your skin is still warm under his hands, he can still hear your heart beating. Hyunjin is distracted by your beauty once more and he truly thinks you must be some kind of enchantress. So, your next question really makes him twitch.

“That man…is he your maker?”

He instantly knows, who you are talking about and his lips form into thin line at the reminder, but he holds himself together. He doesn’t burst into anger at the memory of him — him touching you so boldly, right infront of everyone, right infront of him. Hyunjin only nods, head hanging low, before he glances at you from beneath his eyelashes. “Taehyung.” He says, letting you put a name to his face finally, not missing the bitterness in his voice as he says his name. “Did he tell you that?”

You blink at the tone, shaking your head. “No, I just had this feeling…” You can’t describe it. Maybe it was because he reminded you of Hyunjin in some way, maybe you just knew somehow. Maybe you knew, because of the interaction in this room between you three or maybe it were the looks being shared between them. Maybe it was his touch…

You have to shake off the sudden thought, hand touching your forehead. Your head hurts from everything and you can feel the pain pulse under your fingers. “I’m tired…” You whisper, sighing at the wave of exhaustion, feeling Hyunjin’s hand on yours.

“You can rest now.” He says, rubbing soft circles onto your skin, but even with your pulsing head you open your mouth to ask him something — the thing that made you speak to him in the first place.

“Hyunjin…” Your look of sadness and the whisper of his name in a plea makes him tremble for a moment, but his shoulders quickly slump at your next words. “I want to go home.“ You say, reminiscing the faces of the people you left behind, the ones you miss so badly and care for so deeply. “I want to see my own family, I want to see them-“

Hyunjin can feel your pulse quickening and hear your breaths come out short, shushing you softly. “Alright.” He nods, smiling softly at you and he gleams at your look of thankfulness, before he pulls you closer to him again. You had never felt so safe and warm like this in someone’s arms before — not like this. “But for now, stay with me for a little while. I want to enjoy my beautiful bride a little longer.”

The title makes you warm inside, smiling into his chest and you know he can feel your lips stretching on his skin. “Alright.” You repeat, your smile not leaving you and Hyunjin can’t help, but do the same. However you don’t see the flash of emotion in his blue colored eyes…

Dismay.

──────────────────────

taglist (still open);

@babrieeee @akaligogrrr @hyuninslutbbgirl @satosugu4l @lovemeorleavemetonight @dandelions-143 @skzfelixlove @syedazarintasnim @rylea08 @ahluvisyou @oddracha @annairacheyenne @dabiscrustyfeet @blankdyean @chartrucewhore @shuporangporang @palindrome969 @vv-us @reignessance @koalanacho @skz1-4-3 @hanonlymeuu @mlink64 @hopefulrascalstatesmantoad @ilprofumodeifiori @amanstiles @sofiadaputa @luvehhj @stayytthenight @eastjonowhere @black-sunshine-00 @lailac13

for @shotoslover23

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dreamersparacosm · 13 hours ago

Text

under the checkered flag - epilogue blurb 1!

prompt ; in which your boyfriend, who’s normally all confidence, cockiness and self-assured, turns into a pouty, jealous mess when he remembers how much of a catch his girlfriend really is.

warnings ; unprotected sex, lil bit of oral (m recieving) (also this is not even a blurb. this is a whole ass story. also wrote this hungover so if there’s grammar errors… welp. idk how i got so ahead of myself pls help)

request ; linked here

part of the under the checkered flag universe

You’re not entirely sure why you agreed to this.

The room is packed: it’s loud, buzzing with conversation, glittering lights and expensive diamonds you could never dream of affording, filled with the kind of people who look like they walked off the cover of Vogue. Jungkook, of course, is in his element, shaking hands, flashing his signature grin, seamlessly weaving through the crowd like he was born for this.

Meanwhile, you are hiding behind him like a child.

“Baby,” Jungkook murmurs over his shoulder, amused. His hand rests against your hip, keeping you tucked close as he greets another executive, another industry legend who already knows exactly who he is. “You gonna say hi or just use me as a human shield all night?”

You huff, clutching onto the sleeve of his tailored suit, peeking past his shoulder just enough to offer a shy, “Hi.”

The older man chuckles, shaking his head. “Cute one you got there, Jungkook.”

Jungkook beams, unbothered. “I know, right?” His fingers tighten around your waist, clearly very proud of you, and he wants everyone in this room to know exactly who you are.

And, to be fair, they already do. Your face has been plastered across every media outlet since his last race a few weeks ago, the headlines barely able to contain themselves. “Jeon Jungkook Off The Market: Meet the Woman Who Stole His Heart.” Paparazzi shots of him running to you after his win, kissing you in front of thousands, wrapping you in his arms like you’re his greatest trophy. Really, it was getting a little overwhelming.

You smile up at him as the aforementioned man turns away to entertain another person “Why are you doing this?”

He bites back a smirk. “Doing what?”

“Introducing me to every single person like I’m some mystery. They know who I am, Jungkook.”

“Do they?” He grins, leaning down, voice dropping just enough for only you to hear. “Because I don’t think they know you’re the love of my life yet. Want me to make a bigger announcement?”

Your face bursts into flames. You slap his side, making him laugh as he pulls you closer, not letting you escape even an inch.

“Relax, my love.” He presses a kiss to your temple, warm, grounding, very much second nature now. “Just wanna show you off a little.”

You groan, burying your face in his shoulder. “I hate you.”

“Liar liar pants on fire.” He says it so easily, so confidently, because he’s right. You’re completely, stupidly in love with him actually. However, the worst part of that? So is everyone else in this damn room.

The buzz of the party hums around you as you trail behind Jungkook, hands still lightly clinging to his arm like it’s your lifeline. He doesn’t seem to mind, laughing lightly as he introduces you to every person who approaches, all the while keeping one eye on you, making sure you’re still there, still close. You’re the quiet one, always in the background, but tonight? You’re sticking to him like glue.

The chaos around you only adds to the sensation of feeling out of place, and your mind pulses with the need to break free for a moment.

“I’m gonna get some champagne,” You tug on his arm to get his attention, hoping he won’t follow, aching for just a second alone.

“Alright,” Jungkook says, winking at you. “Dont wander far, I’ll miss you too much.”

You roll your eyes, the slight teasing in his voice making you smile despite yourself.

And finally, with a little space between you two, you head for the bar, where the bartender is already pouring multiple glass of champagne, a brand you hardly recognize besides the times that Jungkook has sprayed it over your head in his locker room after a win. You grab one, thank him with a smile, clutching your drink tightly, letting the warmth of the alcohol loosen some of the tension in your shoulders. You lean against the bar, taking in a deep breath, trying to shake off the intensity of the room.

You shift slightly, your heels pinching the back of your feet. Even though Jungkook is across the room now, deep in conversation with some high-profile men, you can still feel him, like a phantom touch, like gravity pulling you toward him even from a distance.

You’re halfway through your first sip when someone leans in beside you. His voice is warm, easy-going.

“Is it safe to assume you’re with Jungkook?”

The voice comes from your right, definitely belonging to someone who’s good at conversation.

You glance up, blinking at the tall, well-dressed man beside you. He’s… handsome, you suppose. Friendly. Dressed in a navy suit, collar slightly open, drink in hand. Polished, but not in an obnoxious way. He leans against the bar with a casual kind of confidence, the kind of presence that blends in rather than commands the room.

“Yeah, I am,” you admit, still feeling a little shy. “I’m his… well, girlfriend. Sort of.”

He raises an eyebrow, amused. “Sort of? That’s an interesting answer.”

You huff a small laugh. “I mean, yes. I am. He just… likes making a big deal out of it.”

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” he chuckles, taking a slow sip of his drink. “I take it you’re not used to all this?”

You shake your head immediately. “Not even a little.”

He laughs, genuinely, like he understands. “I get it. These events can be overwhelming.”

You tilt your head slightly, curiosity creeping in. “You say that like you’ve been to a lot of them.”

He grins, and that’s when it clicks. You suddenly recognize him, the familiar face.

“Wait—” Your eyes widen. “You’re a driver too, right? You raced today.”

His smile turns a little playful. “I did. And I did alright, if I say so myself.”

“You placed third, didn’t you?”

He blinks, slightly impressed. “Didn’t expect you to know that.”

You blush slightly, shrugging. “Well… I may have learned a thing or two from Jungkook.”

“Ah, so he’s been turning you into a racing expert, huh?” He teases.

“Not even close,” You laugh, shaking your head. “But congratulations. Third place is still huge.”

“Thanks,” He says, tipping his glass toward you. “Though, I have to admit, Jungkook is damn near impossible to beat. The guy drives like he’s invincible.”

You smile softly, the kind of smile that only comes when someone you love is being praised. “Yeah… he does.”

“You must be proud of him.”

“I am.” The words fall out before you can second-guess them, before you can hide them behind your usual shyness.

That much, you know is true. You are proud of Jungkook, more than he’ll ever know.

The man watches you for a second, a knowing look flashing in his eyes. Then, he smiles, shaking his head slightly. “He’s got a good one.”

You tilt your head. “What do you mean?”

He gestures toward Jungkook, who’s across the room, entertaining the guests, bright and effortless. “I mean, it’s not every day you see him this… settled. The guy used to be a bit of a wildcard.”

Your stomach flutters. You know that. You know exactly who Jungkook was before you.

You swallow, about to respond, when his next words catch you off guard. “Though, I have to admit…” He leans in slightly, voice dropping just a bit, teasing but still measured. “It must be tough, standing next to him all the time, knowing you stand out. ”

You feel your heart skip, your fingers tightening around your glass. You’ve always been completely oblivious when it comes to flirting. It’s not intentional—you just never assume anyone would be interested in you like that. Compliments fly over your head, teasing remarks get brushed off as jokes, and subtle advances? You don’t even register them.

Even with Jungkook, it took months of playful taunts, agreeing to do whatever you wanted, and blatantly flirty texts before you even considered the possibility that he might actually like you. And now, standing here at the bar, faced with a man who is clearly steering the conversation into dangerously suggestive waters, you’re a little slow to catch up. The moment finally clicks a beat too late, the realization washing over you like a delayed shockwave—oh. He’s not just making conversation. He’s flirting. And you? You walked right into that trap.

You let out a soft laugh, playing with the hem of your dress, trying to ignore the way his words sit uncomfortably in your chest.

“I mean, yeah,” You say lightly, swirling the champagne in your glass, forcing yourself to play it cool. “Jungkook has a lot of eyes on him. That’s kind of the deal when you’re one of the best, right?”

You try to steer the conversation back to Jungkook, hoping it’ll naturally fizzle out, but he gives you a look. A slow, appreciative glance. The kind that lingers just long enough to make your stomach twist in anxiety.

“That’s true,” He muses, his voice casual. “But I think most people would be looking at you tonight.”

Goddamnit.

Your fingers grip the glass so roughly it might shatter in your hands as you blink at him, processing. You laugh again, but this time it’s a little awkward, a tad nervous, like you’re trying to buy yourself a moment to think.

And then, as naturally as breathing, you look for him. Jungkook.

Your eyes search the crowd, scanning past the fitting dresses and tailored suits, past the photographers and the industry elites, until they land on him.

Of course, he’s right at the center of it all.

He’s laughing, head thrown back slightly, looking so alive, so magnetic, exuding the kind of confidence that made the world fall in love with him (and you as well, for that matter.) His suit jacket is long gone, probably thrown off on the back of a chair somewhere, replaced with a perfectly tailored white button-up, his sleeves pushed up just enough to tease the tattoos running along his forearm. He looks stupidly good.

He’s glowing, genuinely happy, his eyes crinkling as he talks, hands gesturing animatedly, completely and utterly in his element.

You bite your lip, a new kind of frustration blooming in your chest. How is he over there, completely fine, while you’re over here trying to figure out how to escape this conversation without being rude? Why must the universe put you, of all people, in the ring of fire?

“So,” The driver’s voice pulls you back, making you blink and turn your attention back to him. “How did you and Jungkook even meet? I don’t think I ever heard the full story.”

You shift again, clearing your throat, desperate to reroute the conversation away from yourself. “Oh—uh, through work, sort of. It’s actually kind of funny—”

Focus. Focus on Jungkook. Keep it safe. Keep it neutral.

You take another sip in between your sentence, the champagne fizzling against your lips, but the tightness in your chest doesn’t ease. You keep your focus on the man, trying to steer every single word back to Jungkook. It’s a delicate balancing act, keeping the conversation polite while dodging every veiled compliment, every lingering glance, every slight shift in tone that threatens to turn friendly into flirtatious.

“Yeah, it’s kind of funny, actually,” you pick up where you left off, still trying to keep it collected. “I had no idea who Jungkook even was when we first met. Everyone was freaking out about him, and I was just..”

You pause, shaking your head with a soft laugh. “Well, completely clueless.”

He chuckles, leaning in slightly, interest still flickering behind his eyes. “And now you’re wearing his jacket, front and center at every race.”

“Guess I learned who he was real quick,” You joke, though your fingers tighten slightly around your glass.

He tilts his head, like he’s about to say something else, perhaps even heavier, when two warm hands slip around your waist. They’re firm, familiar. A voice, deep, steady, and close enough to feel the breath of it against your temple. “Didn’t realize you two were getting so close.”

You blink, your entire body reacting before your mind even processes it. His presence is instant, all-consuming. You barely have time to react before you feel him pull you back against him, his grip on your waist just tight enough to send a message. The warmth of his chest presses against your back, solid and unwavering.

And when you tilt your head slightly, looking up at who you know damn well is your boyfriend — Oh. Oh, he’s not happy.

His jaw is tight, his lips pressed into a firm line. His usual easy-going expression is replaced by something darker, sharper, a quiet intensity simmering behind his eyes.

The man clears his throat, shifting awkwardly. He knows. Everyone in this room knows. Hell, even the higher powers know better than to mess with Jungkook’s girl.

“Jungkook,” he greets, nodding slightly. “Good race today, man.”

Jungkook doesn’t move. Doesn’t nod. Doesn’t blink.

He just keeps his eyes on the man in front of you, expression unreadable, until he finally speaks.

“Yeah?” he muses, voice deceptively smooth. “Guess I’m lucky I had my girl with me.”

His hold on your waist tightens, just slightly, as if reinforcing the point.

Your pulse spikes, warmth creeping up your neck as you become painfully aware of how close he is.

You’re not usually the center of attention. But right now, you may as well be standing in the eye of a storm.

The tension lingers for a moment more. Jungkook’s hands are possessive, fingers pressing slightly into the fabric of your dress. His presence is impossible to ignore, a wall of warmth at your back, his cologne—deep, musky, with some woodsy notes—wrapping around you like a second layer of skin.

The man shifts, clearly picking up on the shift in atmosphere. Still, he offers an easy smile, nodding toward you.

“She’s beautiful,” he comments, like it’s the most obvious fact in the world. “Guess I can’t blame you for keeping her close.”

Jungkook hums smugly.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, tilting his head slightly, like he’s weighing his next words carefully. “Prettiest girl in the whole damn room.”

Your stomach flips violently, a cage of butterflies releasing themselves in your body. You’ll never get used to the way he speaks about you.

The driver gives one last chuckle, his eyes flicking between the two of you before wisely deciding to move along with his night. He excuses himself, raising his glass towards both of you before scurrying away as quick as his legs can take him.

And then it’s just you and Jungkook.

You exhale, not even realizing you had been holding your breath, still feeling the ghost of his touch on your waist.

You’re about to say something, but before you can, he turns to you, leans down, presses a soft, lingering kiss to your cheek. The warmth of it spreads across your skin like wildfire.

He pulls back, just slightly, his lips hovering over your skin, his voice dropping into something quiet, “You really let that guy talk to you for that long?”

Your eyes widen. “What? I wasn’t—”

Jungkook pulls back, finally looking at you, and he’s pouting. Actually pouting. The 27 year old man. Lips jutted slightly, brows furrowed, his usual confidence slipping juuuust enough to reveal the jealousy simmering beneath. It might be the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.

You can’t help it. You giggle, heart swelling in your chest.

“Jungkook,” You breathe out, leaning up, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

He grumbles something under his breath. You kiss him again, again… one more time for safe measures. Tiny, peppered kisses, soft and teasing, trailing across his cheek until you feel the tension in his shoulders start to ease. He exhales slowly, tilting his head, still acting like he’s suffered through the potato famine, furthering your agenda on the sassy man apocalypse.

“I just don’t get it,” he mutters, dramatic. “Why does everyone love you?”

You giggle again, nose brushing against his as you murmur, “Maybe because I’m soooo beautiful?”

Jungkook scoffs. “You think I don’t know that?”

And for the rest of the night, Jungkook doesn’t let you go. Not for a millisecond.

His arm is wrapped around your waist like an iron band, keeping you flush against his side as he guides you through the afterparty. He greets people, nods along to conversations, but his attention never fully strays from you.

Every so often, he leans down, his lips brushing against your temple, the shell of your ear, whispering things only for you.

“Having fun, pretty girl?”

“Gonna keep breaking hearts tonight, or am I enough attention for you?”

“Can’t believe you almost let some other guy steal you away. The blasphemy.”

You laugh every time, eyes sparkling, cheeks warm from the champagne and from the way his voice wraps around you like velvet.

By the time you’re finally in his car, it’s even more obvious.

The moment he pulls onto the empty streets, one hand gripping the wheel, the other immediately finds your thigh. You’re all giggles and smiles, alcohol-induced laughs spilling from your lips as you shift beneath his touch.

“You’re being so touchy,” You tease, voice teasing, light, dripping with warmth.

Jungkook barely glances at you, but you see the smirk pulling at his lips. “Don’t see you pulling my hand away.”

You roll your eyes, but your skin betrays you, heat pooling everywhere his fingertips graze. His thumb circles slowly, rubbing absentminded patterns into your thigh, like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

“You’re ridiculous,” You mutter, biting back another laugh as you lean against the headrest, the world outside the car nothing but passing trees and shadows.

“And you’re also tipsy,” Jungkook counters, stealing a glance at you, his eyes dark, amused, playful.

He licks his lips, the silver of his piercing catching the streetlights, and you hate how mesmerizing it is.

“So?” you huff, crossing your arms in mock defense.

“So,” he drawls, fingers squeezing slightly around your thigh, watching with interest as you visibly react. “You’re all giggly and sweet right now, and I think I like it too much. My bad for wanting to get my hands on my girlfriend.”

Girlfriend.

God, the word rolls off him so easily it makes you dizzy.

“You like me all the time,” You poke his hand that’s on your thigh.

“Yeah, but I like you even more when you’re like this,” He plays with his lip ring as his eyes focus on the road.

You peek up at him through fluttering lashes, watching the way his jaw flexes, the way he glances at you just a little too long at a red light. And then, without thinking, you lean toward him, voice dropping into something soft, just shy of teasing. “You’re really that possessive, huh?”

Jungkook’s fingers flex, grip tightening, and for a split second, he looks like he might mount you in that car. “Oh, you have no idea.”

And, he proves it to you. The second his front door swings shut behind you, there’s barely a beat of silence before his lips crash onto yours. It’s immediate, it’s urgent, all-consuming from the tip of your scalp to your toes.

His hands are already on you, fingers digging into your hips, pulling you in like he’s been starving for this. You gasp against his mouth, the taste of champagne still lingering between you, and it makes you giggle yet again like a little high schooler. “Jungkook—”

“Mm,” He hums against your lips, not even bothering to let you finish.

“You’re so cute when you’re needy ,” You chortle in between, barely able to keep up with his pace. Jungkook groans, grinning against your lips before kissing you again, longer, slower.

“What did I tell you about calling me cute?” He mutters, voice low (definitely playing up the octave to seem even more menacing.)

“That it’s true?” You tease, bubbly from the way he won’t stop kissing you.

In a single swift motion, Jungkook grips your thighs and lifts you off the ground, your legs instinctively wrapping around his waist, and a squeal exits your mouth.

“Jungkook!” You yelp, arms looping around his neck in surprise. Except it’s really no surprise, because the man has made it clear he’ll throw you around like a rag-doll. He’s already moving, already carrying you toward the bedroom with so much ease your head is spinning.

“Tired of you running from me,” He murmurs, smiling cheek-to-cheek, his bunny teeth poking out as he shuffles quickly down the hall.

You can’t stop laughing, light and heady, fingers threading through his dark hair as he all but sprints the rest of the way. He nearly flings you onto the bed like you’re deadweight.

The laughter is still spilling from your lips when Jungkook slots your mouth with his again, swallowing every giggle, every teasing remark before it can fully form. He kisses you like he needs you to stay quiet, like he’s trying to erase every last trace of your playful remarks before they slip past your lips.

But, you are not letting him off that easy.

“You were so jealous tonight,” You whisper between kisses, smiling against his lips.

Jungkook groans, tilting his head back just slightly before diving back in, his mouth brushing yours in a way that feels punishing.“Maybe. Or maybe I was just passionate.”

You roll your eyes, your fingers curling into the front of his shirt as he leans into you.

“It was kinda hot,” You mock. “You couldn’t stand it, could you?”

Jungkook grumbles something under his breath, his fingers pressing into your waist, pulling you closer, as if kissing you harder will shut you up. But the moment his lips trail down to your jaw, your pulse leaping beneath his touch, you decide to take control.

In a swift motion, you push against his chest, sliding out from underneath him and standing up.

Jungkook stumbles back onto the bed, eyes wide for half a second before something darker, more intrigued, flickers through them.

You smirk down at him, your confidence surprising even yourself.

“Oh?” Jungkook muses, grinning as he props himself up on his elbows. “Taking charge today?”

You hum, sliding onto his lap, your knees pressing into the mattress as you settle yourself atop him.

“I think you need to be reminded,” You murmur, your fingers ghosting over the silver chain around his neck before trailing downward, nails grazing the buttons of his shirt.

“Of what?” He questions, eyes dark, eager, watching your every move.

You lower yourself, pressing your lips to the corner of his mouth, not quite kissing him, just kind of floating.

Slowly, with a purpose, you start kissing down his jaw and the column of his throat. “That I’m all yours,” You whisper against his skin, letting your lips brush over him with every word.

“All mine?” His voice is rough, strained, his fingers practically imprinting upon your skin. He needs to hear it again.

You pull back slightly, rolling your eyes just a little. The man knows very well you’re all his, but the desperation in his voice has you a little more soaked than you’d like to admit.

“Yes, baby,” You breathe out, cupping his face, your thumbs brushing over the faint pink tinge dusting his cheeks. “All yours.”

Now, Jungkook has seen many sides of you. The quiet, reserved girl who hides behind him at events, the sweet and hesitant thing who blushed at every flirty remark he threw your way, the one who overthought every touch, every glance, every lingering silence between you. However, that’s not to say he’s not thoroughly enjoying how unbelievably attractive you looked sitting on top of him.

The girl—the one who is straddling his lap, fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt, murmuring sinful things in that soft, teasing tone, the heat of breath sending shockwaves straight through him—he does not recognize.

His heartbeat pounds in his ears, blood rushing to his cock. He can hardly breathe or think, all logic stripped away. Jungkook watches, wind knocked out of him, as you shift in his lap, your hips rolling against the growing bulge in his pants. He is ever the patient man; almost as if he wants to see how far you’ll take it.

He continues to stare as your fingers reach behind you, tugging at the zipper of your dress, the soft fabric peeling away from your shoulders, slipping lower, revealing more, more…more. Good lord.

The room is silent except for the soft rustle of fabric, the faint collective gasp in his breath as your dress pools around your waist, leaving your bare skin kissed by the golden lamp light in the room. Jungkook is entranced, his pupils dark. He’s still propped up on his elbows, yet he’s barely keeping himself upright.

Your body is soft curves and slow movements, every roll of your hips against him smoother, more confident than the last, every movement calculated and precise .

His head tips back against the mattress, his long lashes fluttering, his cock throbbing beneath the confines of his pants. Just when he thinks he might combust, you lean down, your lips hovering near his ear, whispering something he doesn’t even hear properly through the haze in his mind. He doesn’t even know what language you’re speaking.

Every teasing shift of your body against his, every brush of bare skin against fabric is driving him to the brink of insanity.

“Tell me what you want, baby.” Your hands trail up his chest, slowly undoing every button, nails barely scratching the heated skin beneath his shirt. Your jaw slightly drops as you let out a soft, needy whimper, a sound so devastating it makes his cock twitch beneath his slacks. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

Jungkook’s resolve crumbles, and his hand flies up, fingers wrapping around your jaw. He tilts your face toward his, making sure you see him. His eyes are feral, his pupils so black and wide they nearly swallow you whole. “Want my cock in your mouth.”

The words send a bolt of heat straight to your core, your body clenching instinctively. There is a small part of you that’s not all that experienced, despite your past boyfriend and you having sexual experiences. It’s just.. different with Jungkook. You think he expects more, although he tells you he doesn’t. But you’ll do your best for him, like you always do.

He moves up, sitting against the headboard, and you wiggle down, your lips parting just slightly, like you’re already imagining how he’ll feel pushing past them, how he’ll taste on your tongue, which you 100% are.

Your fingers work slowly, methodically, undoing the zipper of his slacks with a deliberate precision that has Jungkook shaking beneath you.

The sound of the zipper unfurling is deafening in the quiet room, drowned only by the unsteady rhythm of his breath, the way it stutters every time your fingers brush against him, every time you shift or press a kiss just a little lower. The man is putty in your hands.

You slip his pants down his thighs, fabric pooling around his ankles, and you throw them somewhere in the room; it doesn’t even matter. What matters is beneath them, he is hard, aching, straining against the waistband of his boxers, the fabric doing nothing to hide just how much he needs you, letting you take control while he teeters on the edge of losing it completely.

Your lips press softly to the fabric, your breath warm, your hands gliding up his thighs, fingertips tracing the defined muscles there, feeling the way they tense under your touch, how they twitch with anticipation.

Jungkook watches you, his dark lashes heavy, his chest rising and falling too quickly. He gathers your hair for you gently, fingers running through the strands, pushing them away from your face, tucking them behind your ears, cradling the back of your head, making sure he can see you completely.

For the first time in a long time, you want to be seen.

You want him to watch as you shift, as you lean back, as you slowly kick off your dress, letting it slip down the length of your body, letting it pool onto the floor in a forgotten heap, leaving you bare and exposed.

The black lingerie set you had worn underneath is still intact, a stunning contrast against your skin, the delicate lace barely covering anything at all, making you feel utterly unbreakable under his gaze.

You finally pull his boxers down. His cock springs free, the thickness of it always making you gulp. It’s flushed an angry shade of red, the tip glistening with precum, leaking and throbbing.

You swallow, your mouth already watering, your thighs pressing together as you wrap your fingers around him, feeling the weight of him in your palm. “F-fuck, baby,” Jungkook gasps, his head tipping back against the headboard, his hands gripping your hair tightly.

You stroke him slowly, taking your time, watching every little reaction, fascinated by how his body responds to you, by how his hips barely lift off the bed, chasing your warmth, chasing more. There’s normally a slight hesitation from you, but between the mix of the champagne and how fucking good he looks, you lean in. The first kitten lick to his tip is tentative, barely a flick of your tongue, just a taste.

Jungkook groans, his body jerking, “Jesus fucking Christ,” he curses, his voice shaking, his grip trembling against your scalp.

You hum softly, the sound vibrating against him, your lips parting slightly, your tongue flattening against the tip this time, lapping up the bead of precum that had gathered there, savoring the salty, musky taste of him on your tongue.

“That’s it, baby, fuck, so good,” Jungkook moans, his thighs tensing, his abs clenching, eyes screwing shut, then flickering open again, desperate to watch you, desperate to see you taking him, loving him, making him fall apart in the most beautiful way possible.

His praise makes you braver, makes you bolder, makes you want to see him even more undone, even more at your mercy. You press a soft, open-mouthed kiss to his tip, feeling him pulse beneath your lips, hearing the way he gasps sharply.

“You’re so fucking perfect,” He whispers, his voice awe-struck that you’re letting him have this piece of you.

His cock is heavy, filling your mouth so perfectly, stretching your lips as you slowly bob your head, taking in as much as you can. You feel the weight of him glide over your tongue, your throat relaxing, your jaw straining in the best way possible.

“Shit, baby,” Jungkook groans. You’ve always loved how vocal he gets for you.

You steal a glance up at him, and that’s when your eyes meet. His gaze is so dark, pupils blown out, his lips parted, damp. The moment he catches your heavy-lidded, pleading stare, something in him breaks like a live-wire.

“F-fuck,” He chokes out, his abs flexing as his breath breaks. “You’re so beautiful like this.”

You get the urge to keep going, faster now, the wet, lewd sounds of your mouth working him filling the room. Your tongue flattens along the underside of his cock, the heat of your mouth searing, your hand wrapping around the length that won’t fit, pumping in time with your movements.

“So, so good, so fucking good,” He pants, voice cracking like a prepubescent boy, his self-control hanging by a thread.

You feel it when he starts to twitch on your tongue, when his hips stutter, when his grip tightens, when he pulls your hair just slightly, as if he’s trying to stop himself from spiraling completely.

“Shit, fuck, wait—” He pulls you off him suddenly, his cock leaving your mouth with a wet pop, a string of saliva still connecting you. Your lips are swollen and glossy, your breath ragged as you look up at him, dazed and a tad cock-drunk.

“But…” You sigh, your voice small, your fingers still gripping his length, feeling the way he pulses in your palm. “I wanted to keep going.”

Jungkook groans, pulling you up onto his lap where he needs you most. His lips find your cheeks first, then your nose, your forehead, your jawline, kissing you everywhere, like he’s seconds away from breaking.

“I know, baby, I know,” He pants, barely coherent. Before you know it, he’s positioning you, guiding you to straddle him, to let him sink inside you where he belongs. “But I need you to sit on my cock, baby, please.”

His forehead presses against yours, his lips brushing against your mouth, his breath mingling with yours. “Need to feel you, need to be inside you.”

You whimper against him, the words sending a shudder through your body. Your core throbs and aches for him, whole body on fire like you’ll die if you don’t have him.

You align yourself, rolling your hips just slightly and letting his tip press against your folds. You glide it through your slick, coating him in you. It’s disgusting how aroused you are by him, but there’s comfort in knowing he feels the same way about you.

The sensation sends a jolt of pleasure through you, and your head tilts back, your mouth falling open, a soft, breathless moan slipping past your lips as the friction sparks along every nerve in your body.

Jungkook is completely gone, eyes glued to where your bodies meet, his jaw clenched so tight. He’s doing everything in his power to not completely lose control before he even gets inside you.

You sink down, slow, so slow, inch by inch, your walls stretching and molding to accommodate him.

The moment his thick length pushes inside, Jungkook groans, low and broken, while he holds you steady. The slide feels endless, like it always does, stretching you out like you’ve never taken him before, and he’s still struggling to ground himself, trying not to explode right then and there.

“Oh, f-fuck,” He hisses, his thighs tensing beneath you, his muscles coiling so tightly. He’s barely keeping himself from thrusting up into you, from taking what he wants, from losing himself in you completely.

You are getting split in half. Or, it feels like it. Your walls squeeze around him, your body shuddering.

“That’s it, baby,” he pants, his voice low, as his fingers trail up your spine. “Taking me so f-fucking well, feel so good, so tight.”

You only really sit comfortably when your clit presses against his pubic bone, when he is fully, completely inside you, when his cock is buried to the hilt, stretching you so perfectly, so devastatingly deep that it feels like he’s become a part of you.

“Oh my fucking god,” He chokes out, his grip on you bruising, completely lost in the feeling of you milking him already, pulling him in deeper, deeper, deeper. “I almost, fuck, I almost came just from that—”

The thought of it, the idea that you could make him cum just from sinking onto him, has your brain on autopilot.

You start to move, hips rolling in smooth undulations, dragging yourself up his length, feeling every ridge, every inch, before sinking down again. It’s a steady rhythm, one that has you both gasping for air.

But you don’t let him look away from you.

Nails pressing into his shoulder blades, you keep him anchored to you, your body flush against his. You tilt his face back up, your lips ghosting over his. The eye contact sends a shudder through him, his pupils blown wide, begging without words.

“You’re mine,” You murmur, your voice soft but firm, dripping with possession. Your hands trail up to cup his face, holding him there, making sure he hears you.

“Yeah?” he pants, his voice slightly slurred and drenched in adoration “Show me, baby. Let me feel it.”

Your walls squeeze him with every movement, every drag of your hips. And it’s all too much: his cock reaching even deeper, grazing that spot that paints stars in your vision.

“You’re so fucking good to me,” He groans, his voice choked, eyes desperate.

Your hands slide into his hair, tugging slightly, and he whimpers, his lips grazing over you, kissing wherever he can reach, mouthing at your skin. “All yours, baby, fuck. No one else, just you.”

Your heart swells, his jealousy from earlier feeling so distant, so insignificant, when he’s begging for you like this.

“Mine,” you whisper again, your lips ghosting over his ear, your hips picking up the pace, making him writhe beneath you.“Always fucking mine.”

Jungkook shudders, “Yours, baby.” And the words are just being repeated over and over like babbles, barely coherent to either of you as the feeling of being full by him overtakes all.

His hands lift you slightly, just enough for you to feel the drag of his cock leaving you, before he pulls you back down, filling you again in one smooth, deep motion. You cry out, your walls fluttering around him, the pace shifting from teasing to something more consuming, more needy.

“That’s it, baby,” he mumbles, his hips meeting yours now, pushing deeper, guiding you exactly how he wants you. “Just like that, ride me just like that.”

“Kook,” You whimper, nearly shaking, nearly crying from how good it feels, your hands sliding down to press against his chest.

You’re practically soaking him, your slick glistening at the base of his cock, collecting there, and he might need to be put in a mental institution after catching sight of it.

“Look at what you’re doing to me,” His eyes lock onto yours, hand slightly moving your face to avert your gaze elsewhere. You glance down, and fuck, he’s right. He’s glistening, his cock shiny with your arousal. Every time he pushes back inside, there’s more slick coating his length, dripping onto his thighs, pooling at the base of him like a sinful masterpiece.

“You feel that, baby?” he whines,“This is all yours.”

Everything becomes messier, sloppier, you’re not even sure where you are anymore. Jungkook is barely holding on, his thrusts erratic, his hands tight on your waist, slamming your hips down over and over again.

Your walls are fluttering, pulsing around him, the pleasure so intensethat you can barely even think or form any thought that isn’t jumbled.

“Jungkook, fuck,” You sob, your body jolting forward every time he drives into you, every time he hits that perfect spot inside you, over and over and over again.

“I got you, baby, fuck, I got you.” And then you really can’t take it anymore when he says things like that. Your hand flies between your legs, fingers pressing to your clit, rubbing furiously. You’re trying to tip yourself over the edge, trying to chase the orgasm that is so close, building like a wave, curling at the base of your spine, ready to crash over you at any second.

Jungkook watches, lips slightly parted. He can’t tear him away from the way you touch yourself, how you look so absolutely fucked out on top of him.

“You gonna cum for me, hmph? Hm, baby?” His words send a shockwave through you, his pace stuttering for just a second before he pounds up into you without a single ounce of restraint left.

“Fuck!” You cry out, your release inevitably waiting for you. Jungkook grins, knowing how close you are, already used to how you look when you finish.

The pleasure crashes over you like a tidal wave, drowning you in pure, white-hot ecstasy. Your entire body locks up, breaking apart as your orgasm rips through you with violent force.

“Oh, Jungkook,” Your walls are squeezing around him so tight it nearly forces him out, your head tipping back, mouth falling open, but no sound coming out. Your fingers slip from your clit as your body gives out, but Jungkook doesn’t stop. His hands are locked onto your waist, his hips still driving up into you, prolonging your orgasm, forcing you to ride it out until you’re whimpering.

“Holy fuck, squeezing me so tight,” He’s shaking with restraint, his muscles taut.

Watching you fall apart like this, feeling your walls clench around him like a vice, holding him, owning him, milking him—it’s a lot.

Jungkook grits his teeth, his grip on your waist turning bruising, his chest rising and falling in frantic, erratic pants as his orgasm hits him like a fucking wrecking ball.

“Fuck, mineminemine,” He gasps, and for the first time since you two started dating, he doesn’t ask for permission to finish inside of you. Doesn’t wait for your sweet little nod, your usual whispered “yes” into his ear.

No, not tonight. Tonight, he needs to claim you, needs to remind you, remind himself that no one else is going to have you.

Tonight, he slams you down onto his cock one final time, burying himself as deep as he can go, he spills inside you, filling you up.

“Take all of it, baby,” He gasps, his hips jerking up, riding out his high. Your bodies tremble together, both of you completely wrecked. Yet still, he stays inside you. Still buried to the hilt, his arms wrapping around your waist, pulling you flush against his sweaty body. His lips press lazy, open-mouthed kisses to your temple, your collarbone.

The room bathes in the warm afterglow of post-sex air. Your limbs are tangled with his as you lay with your head sprawled across his chest, his heartbeat still hammering beneath your ear. For a long moment, neither of you speak. Just deep, ragged breaths. The faint hum of the city outside. The lingering warmth of his hands tracing slow, absentminded patterns across your bare back.

“So… still wanna deny how jealous you were tonight?” You laugh, the words muffled slightly against his skin.

Jungkook groans, his arms tightening around you instinctively. “Don’t start.”

You grin, tilting your head slightly to catch the faint pink creeping up his ears.

“No, but really,” you hum, your fingers lazily tracing the chain around his neck, feeling invincible. “You almost lost your mind over a five-minute conversation. Kind of insane, actually.”

Jungkook lets out a low, gravelly laugh, the sound vibrating through your ears. “You don’t understand how fucking attractive you are. Seriously.”

“Jungkook—”

“No, really,” he kisses your forehead, watching you so intently you feel like he’s seeing right through you. “You walk into a room and I lose my goddamn mind. Every single time. You could have anyone, and yet… you chose me.”

He exhales slowly, lips brushing against your forehead in a way that feels so domestic. You don’t know what to say to that, so you sit with the words for a minute, let them reverberate through your chest. And it almost feels like your chest can’t contain it, like the pressure is building too fast, too much, like your ribs might crack beneath the weight of it. Behind them, your heart swells, expanding at least three sizes larger than its usual.

You pull him back down, lips curving into a soft smile as you kiss him again. “Always gonna choose you, Kook.”

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

masterlist + request

#jeon jungkook #jeon jeongguk #jungkook #jungkook smut #jungkook x reader #jungkook x you #bts #bts army #bts jungkook #bts x reader #bts x you #jungkook fanfic

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pinkbowsxo · 2 days ago

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Corrupted Innocence - Part 2

Choi Su-bong x F!Reader

Part 1

summary: you thought about how thanos grabbed your hand the last time you watched that horror movie together, but you eventually let go of that thought. but when he and nam-gyu came over to your place to hang out, you suddenly had his tongue down your throat.

warnings: swearing, vaping, smoking, kissing, touching

a/n: nam-gyu wanting to hang with you guys when he’s actually never around and just being on your balcony the entire time to smoke😭

anyway i enjoyed writing this part and again i hope there isn’t to many mistakes because my english still isn’t perfect :/

i have so much in things in mind for the next few chapters so let me know if you wanna see them!!

have a good day everyone, love from me!!

You had a nice evening, you enjoyed the time you spent with your friends, you kept thinking about Thanos grabbing your hand, he probably just wanted you to relax, that was nice of him.

“Maybe he’s not as bad as I thought.”

⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡

You have been so busy with university this week, there was a lot to do.

You really want to become a nurse, you've always wanted to help people, so now you have to work really hard to achieve that.

As usual, when Thanos and Nam-gyu know that Se-mi is with you, they will also come to hang out with you two, even though they weren’t invited.

They always play crap music that makes your ears bleed. Sometimes Thanos would play his own songs because he was proud of it, of course with his big ego.

They always ate your entire food supply, Thanos was always vaping and eating your favorite cookies, while Nam-gyu was sitting on your balcony all the time with his smoking addiction.

Se-mi stormed off to your bedroom because she hated the music that was playing, you tried to ignore the awful music as you sat on the couch and tried to concentrate on some homework.

Sitting with Thanos on the couch as he was eating your cookies and the music pounding in the background, he looked at you, seeing your concentrated expression and the pencil tapping against your notebook. He raised an eyebrow, intrigued by your dedication to your studies. But he decided to tease you a little. "Are you really going to study now?"

You didn't even look at him. "I have to finish this before tomorrow."

He raised an eyebrow and leaned back against the couch cushions. “You’re so boring,” he teased as he took another drag on his vape. “Can’t you just relax?” He watched as you ignored him and continued on with your homework with stern focus.

“I can relax once it's weekend again,” you said, as you were really concentrating on your homework at the moment.

“God, you’re such a nerd,” he muttered softly as he watched you intently. He loved how focused you were—your nose wrinkled slightly as you tried to solve a problem, your lips pursed in deep thought.

“Su-bong, you have no idea how much work university is.” You said as you heard his mumbling.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he said, rolling his eyes playfully. But inside, he was enjoying the sight of you, so devoted and innocent. He couldn’t help but think how easy it would be to break through that focus and make you see the world in a different light—his light.

While he was playing some music in the background, he also had a TV program on, but it was very boring.

“This show fucking sucks,” he muttered, dramatically throwing an arm over his eyes. “There’s nothing good on TV.” He heard your pencil pause, then resume its tapping rhythm.

Then suddenly he had an idea.

“You know what would be fun?” He said with a teasing tone. “If you put that pencil down and make out with me.” He waited for your reaction, curious to see if you would take the bait.

You stopped tapping the pencil because you had to get back to what he had said.

He waved a cookie in front of your face, raising an eyebrow. “Hey, earth to bookworm. Want a cookie?” His lips curled into a playful smirk as he waited for your reaction, amused by how you were taking his crude suggestion. Maybe the teasing about making out was a step too far.

You gave him a small, awkward smile as you took the cookie from his hand. You bit into it slowly. You had to think as your heart pounded in your chest. Then you put it out. “We can do that.”

Thanos’ eyes widened slightly in surprise as you suddenly agreed. He hadn’t expected you to actually consider his suggestion. A slow, mischievous smile spread across his face as he set the cookie and his vape aside. “Oh?” he said, his voice low and intrigued.

He leaned closer, his eyes locked on yours, challenge and excitement dancing in their depths. “Come here then,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. He remained silent, giving you the power to make the first move, to close the distance between you.

You scooped up a little as he grabbed the back of your head, you let go of your cookie as it fell on the couch, he was wasting no time in crashing your lips on his.

The moment your lips met, Thanos’ hand clamped around the back of your head, ruffling your hair and pulling you closer as his lips crashed against yours with a fierce hunger. He forced his way into your mouth, his tongue demanding and dominating as it entwined itself with yours.

You also put your hand on the back of his head, he devoured your lips as if he was hungry like crazy. You were so into it that you made a bold move and sat on his lap.

Thanos growled low in his throat as you sat on his lap, his hands immediately gripping your hips to pull you even closer. He continued to devour your mouth, his kiss rough and demanding. One hand remains pressed on your ass, squeezing surprisingly gently, yet firmly.

You then heard the door to your bedroom upstairs open and close, knowing that Se-mi was about to come downstairs. You ended your make out session as you slowly got up from his lap, just in time for Se-mi to come downstairs.

Thanos quickly wiped his lips with his thumb as your lip gloss was all over them. He casually adjusted himself as Se-mi’s footsteps came closer. His other hand casually grabbed his vape again and brought it to his lips as if nothing had happened.

You picked up your homework again, very nonchalantly.

After a minute, Se-mi finally walked down the stairs, her eyes scanning the room before landing on the two of you. "Hey guys, what are you up to?" she asked casually, completely unaware of the tension that had just filled the room. Thanos just shrugged and mumbled something inconclusive.

“I'm just finishing up some homework,” you said, trying to act nonchalant.

"-Mhm." Thanos mumbled through another drag of his vape, his eyes flickering to you briefly but giving nothing away. He knew you were having trouble focusing and for some reason that little fact made him oddly satisfied.

#thanos x reader #thanos #choi su bong x reader #choi su bong #squid game #squid game 2 #player 230

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buckbuckbarnesstuff · 20 hours ago

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Helloo, this is me @marvelstoriesepic ♡

Don’t feel pressured to answer this, I just want you to know what this series means to me and that my heart is jumping up and down every time I see you've updated. Like, I'm seriously sitting here every time, just basking in that atmosphere you create with those two.

I am loving your writing style so much. You mention so many things that might seem small but that's the point, they feel so important. It makes everything so intimate and real. It makes my heart ache in the best way.

Let me dive a little deeper into my feels here:

His phone is on full volume, waiting for a notification. He made sure his floor access was open. His windows are not blacked out. He has even left his door cracked open slightly, which feels wrong to the fundamental fibres of his being.

God, I love this so much. Felt a little giddy when I read that, because hell, for all his annoyance with her entrances all the time he doesn’t act like he hates it omg

“Dunno where he is,” Bucky mumbles. Which is a lie, because Steve was very much in his room, waiting for him but Bucky had ghosted him to instead come be a clown outside your door.

Little liar. But again, ahhhh, I am loving it. He was so worried and I live for it.

Finally, with a deep sigh, he walks back toward your door.

He just loves spending time with her, can’t tell me otherwise

That makes you pause. What’s the plan? Like he’s already factored himself in, as if whatever comes next includes him.

Grinned so hard, wow. He won’t leave her alone with this

Bucky doesn’t react. At all.

This is everything omg. He can read her so well and he tries to get something out of her without being pushy and I love that so much

And for a second– just a second- maybe he forgets how to breathe.

That causes me to lose my breath because AHHHHHHH. I am sensing tension 👀

You stop mid-sentence when Bucky shifts, leaning back slightly, arms stretched behind him, his body loose and relaxed.

Oh hell yesssss he did enjoyed it so much

And suddenly, you’re aware of how close you’re sitting, how he feels bigger in the small space, how there’s this awful, annoying sense of recognition curling at the edges of something you’re not ready to name.

Speak of tension... we are getting something here omg I am relishing it

“Hey spirits. What’s the real reason why this one’s hiding from everyone?” Bucky cuts in smoothly.

I love him for this. He couldn’t get it out of his head so he just needed to speak it out.

He stretches his arms over his head, not looking at you as he says, “You’re avoiding.”

I also love how he never tries to avoid a conversation with her about deeper stuff, even if it could get weird or triggering or idk. He cares and that makes me so happy

And before he fully registers it, your head is in his lap.

I was so excited you wouldn’t believe me.

And then before he can think too hard about it, his fingers brush lightly over your scalp.

This did me in completely OMGGGG. I am swooning and grinning, damn!!!

You have such a gift for creating atmosphere and feeling. Every sentence has such a smooth flow, every little detail adds character and another layer of depth. It’s poetic without being overdone and vivid without being overwhelming (which happens to me a lot of times if I'm being honest lol)

This is everything, and I am absolutely obsessed with it. You outdid yourself, again, and I just want to live in this world you created forever 💖

unsolved (xi)

Summary: Bucky doesn't even believe in the paranormal. So who the hell thought it was a good idea to stick him in a series about everything haunted for the internet's amusement? With his loose-canon of a teammate who has no concept of subtlety or shits left to give, to make things even worse. (Buzzfeed unsolved AU)

Warnings: swearing, frustrated bucky, obnoxious reader, ghosts,

A/N: hai. we're into the double digits. thanks for sticking around this long!! jsyk there are like 17 parts planned to this series so

Previous part || Series masterlist

This is a dream scenario.

It’s the weekend, which means he should be out somewhere fighting off bats in a haunted cave or sitting in a dark room muttering Bloody Mary’s name fifteen times like a broken tape recorder because you insisted the first three didn’t work.

Instead, by 5 p.m., he’s in bed. With a book. There’s even a cup of coffee sitting beside him, growing cold.

Really, he should be enjoying this. It’s rarely this quiet, and especially as the sun went down, the absence of your shenanigans, the lack of you dragging him into another bullshit horror hunt should be greatly freeing.

But something feels wrong.

Because something went wrong in his childhood, and then something very definitely went wrong in his adulthood, Bucky feels uneasy with the peace.

He turns a page. At least, he thinks he does. He’s not sure he’s actually read a single word. Gun to his head, he would not be able to tell you the plot.

By 6 p.m., his eyes have zeroed in more on the door than the actual book in his hands.

Nothing.

By 6:30 p.m., his coffee is still half full and lukewarm. God, he did not like that drink. The only thing he's done is flipped through pages for the sake of feeling like he’s accomplished something.

By 6:37 p.m., he’s out the door.

His grumbling is only half-hearted, which he hates. There is something much heavier that sits in his chest. Anticipation. Worry. Fucking blergh.

He’s never been on your floor before. He knows you share it with Nat, the way he does with Steve, but he's never actually visited it. Sure he regularly makes sure you're dropped off to your floor now , but he hasn't actually stepped foot there, no matter how much you invite him in to your bedroom.

He assumes it’s similar, just with fewer World War II relics and less The Price Is Right.

By 6:45 p.m., he’s knocking loudly on your door.

There’s no answer.

His jaw tightens.

He wouldn’t blame you if you had just upped and left. He just thought Maya would beat you to it, because the second the article dropped, it was like the Avengers personally made it their mission to have the next week become a shitstorm of them making headlines for the most insane things. He thinks she's on sick leave. Or she should be, at least.

Clint posted a picture from inside a JP Morgan bank vault. Nat walked straight into a national live broadcast and joined in on a debate she had no context to.

Sam did something. Bucky wasn't sure, but he saw Maya rubbing her temples and assumed it was bad.

Then, after Steve gets in an argument online and matches donations to Planned Parenthood and ends up donating nearly 100K, Maya declared a state of emergency.

Every single one of them was put on lockdown, all social media passwords were changed, and every future press interview was canceled.

Bucky never even got the chance to plan what his disaster would be.

But even after all that, he had heard from you. Big, congratulatory messages flooding the group chat. Dumb memes. Responses to inside jokes no one else understood.

So where the hell were you now?

He bangs his fist against the door again.

Nothing.

A muscle in his jaw twitches. He raises his metal hand, just one second away from really turning the door into a pile of splinters-

It swings open before he gets the chance.

And there you are, staring at him like he’s the crazy one. The audacity.

“Wha– oh.” You blink at him. “Why are you trying to break into my room?”

For a moment, it is just two idiots staring at each other.

Finally, he lets out a low, “What’s wrong with you?”

You raise a brow. “Could you be more specific?”

Only then does he really look at you.

The skin under your eyes is darker than usual, your arms crossed tightly over your oversized sweatshirt. Official Avengers merch, two sizes too big and the same colour you got him because you insisted you had to have matching fits. There’s a slump in your shoulders that wasn't there before.

“No video today?” he asks gruffly.

“Nah,” you sigh. “You’re free to do whatever.”

He stares.

You stare back.

“What?” you demand.

“Is this because of the news?” he asks slowly.

“I’m just tired, Buck.” You rub at your temple, like you're already exhausted with the conversation. “Haven’t I annoyed you enough this week?”

Logically, he should be happy about this. You did annoy him. Constantly. Every day. Even off the clock.

So why the hell is he still standing outside your door?

“Don’t you have something better to do?” you ask, leaning against the doorway. “I thought you were watching True Detective with Steve.”

“Dunno where he is,” Bucky mumbles. Which is a lie, because Steve was very much in his room, waiting for him but Bucky had ghosted him to instead come be a clown outside your door.

You squint at him. “What are you doing here?”

He shifts his weight. “Thought you were dead.”

A snort escapes you before you can stop it. “Why? ‘Cause I didn’t come knocking today?”

He doesn’t respond.

Your jaw drops slightly. “Wait. You came looking for me because you missed me?”

“I didn’t–” he starts, then immediately gives up halfway through the sentence because he already knows he’s lost.

Your grin is too smug. “You came all this way because you missed me.”

His entire body tenses. “I just came to check.”

You press your lips into a thin line, fighting back laughter. “That is so cute. Just say you’re in love with me. I’ll even kiss ya if you ask nicely.”

Bucky turns immediately on his heel. “Goodbye. You can die now.”

You laugh outright at that, and he shakes his head as he stalks back down the hall. Which is good. Which means things are back to normal. He can go find Steve and get done with the stupid fucking vampire show or whatever--

“Actually--” your voice calls out behind him. “D’you wanna come in?”

His body actually stops. Turns back slightly, warily asking over his shoulder, “…Why?”

You shrug, leaning against the doorframe. “No pressure. I was just gonna watch old conspiracy theories and figure out whether they’re legit or just old Avengers missions. You can sit in the corner and brood or whatever it is you do.”

“I do not brood,” Bucky says, brooding.

“Sure, buttercup.” You wave dismissively. “See you next week, then.”

Bucky stares for a second longer, then pivots.

Then pivots again.

Finally, with a deep sigh, he walks back toward your door.

Bucky doesn’t expect your room to look like his room. His room, by standards, was the second worst room in the Tower, only second to Clint’s fucking swamp dungeon.

But he also doesn’t expect it to look like this.

It’s too empty.

A bed, a desk, a laptop. A single, half-empty mug on the nightstand.

The only thing that makes it yours is the box shoved in the corner overflowing with fan mail, little gifts, and trinkets from people. Stickers, keychains, neatly folded letters– even a framed cross-stitch that says "if we die, we die together."

Which he doesn’t remember you saying, but sounds exactly like something you would. The thought makes his chest feel weird.

But beyond that, it looks like a room doesn’t require much time to be packed up.

Something about that sits wrong with him.

“You’ve done a lot with the place.”

“Finally get you into my bedroom, and the first thing you do is insult my interior design,” you say. You gesture at the lamp on your desk. “Look at that lamp. I got it from the same trashcan I found Alpine in. It’s got character.”

Bucky squints at the lamp. Now that you mention it, the shade is bent at a weird angle and the base is slightly burnt.

“Really livens up the space,” he tells you.

“Thanks, I try.”

You flop onto the bed, stretching your arms overhead with a sigh.

He hesitates for a beat before finally settling onto the floor, knees pulled to his chest.

You blink. “Why the hell are you sitting on my floor?”

“I’m comfortable,” he grumbles.

“You– I have chairs.” You gesture to them. “They’re free, I swear. You do not have to do this.”

“I’m good.”

You narrow your eyes, but let it go, shifting to sit near the edge of the bed. Your knee almost bumps his shoulder.

For a moment, there’s just the hum of your laptop, the faint flicker of the TV waiting on a selection screen.

“How are ya?” he asks, voice lower than usual.

“Mighty fine. You?”

He gives you a look.

You blow out a breath, arms crossing loosely over your stomach. “I’m fine.”

“Then why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you haven’t slept in a week.”

Your lips curve up in the corners. “We can change that. Wanna sleep with me now?”

Bucky doesn’t react. At all.

Which is worse. Because he should roll his eyes. Should scoff. Should grumble some insult under his breath.

But he doesn’t. Your smirk falters slightly.

You clear your throat. “God, you’re no fun.”

“Why’d you call off the video shoot?”

“Why must I work all the time? Why can’t I take a simple break without being interrogated?”

He just keeps looking at you. It’s that new kind you’ve noticed him doing now. The kind that lingers half a second too long, that feels heavier than it should.

You shift. Rub at the edge of your sleeve.

“It’s…” You hesitate. “Not been the best week.”

Bucky adjusts how he sits. He doesn’t doesn’t dig, only keeps his eyes trained on you.

You take a deep breath, then force a grin. “Been watching Glee compilations till, like, 1 a.m. Pretty sure that’s the real issue.”

Bucky makes a low, unimpressed noise. Still, he lets it go—for now.

Instead, he asks, “So what’s your plan?”

You blink. “Huh?”

“For making yourself feel better.”

That makes you pause. What’s the plan? Like he’s already factored himself in, as if whatever comes next includes him.

You open your mouth, then shut it.

“Paranormal shit.”

You weren’t even thinking about it. It just… happened, probably because he’s here and it’s the subconscious working in mysterious ways.

But Bucky’s reaction is not what you expect.

He does not shut it down instantly. Call it nonsense. Leave the room. All of which he has done before, to varying degrees.

Instead now he looks at you like he’s used to it. Like he’s thinking about it.

Something in your stomach tightens. You beat it down with a stick.

You grin. “Oh, you want to.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

He exhales sharply through his nose. “What paranormal shit?”

“Well, I don’t know. I didn’t expect you to agree.”

“I didn’t agree.”

“You told me so with your eyes. You gave me signals.”

“You’re insane,” he mutters. "I did not give you signals."

But you suddenly perk up like it’s given you an idea.

“What?” he demands.

“You ever talked to ghosts?”

Kinda.

“No.”

“Well, that’s what we’re doing today.”

“What?”

“Ouija time, baby,” you say, already moving towards the box in the corner. “Now I don’t have a board but fear not. I shall make one. Custom-built. And then we will auction it off for a lot of money when you fake your death.”

“Why do you already sound like you’re prepared for that?”

“Because I am.” You rummage through the box. “Let’s see. We’ll need a marker, some cardboard–”

“You got a ring we can use?” he asks with a sigh.

“No, ‘cause you haven’t put one on me yet.”

Bucky shuts up after that.

You grin, pulling out a shot glass and wiggling it between your fingers. “Classy, right?”

Bucky stares at it. “Has that been used before?”

“Any remnants are just a little treat for the ghosties” you reply, flopping onto the floor and immediately getting to work, drawing out letters in marker.

Bucky watches you, something unreadable flickering across his face.

This is so fucking stupid.

Still, all he does is shifts to sit properly, arms crossed over his chest, watching as you finish drawing out the board with little squiggles decorating the corner and everything.

He doesn’t even realize how close he’s leaning until you glance at him, something teasing and careful in your gaze.

And for a second– just a second- maybe he forgets how to breathe.

Then you smirk, knocking him right out of it.

“Alright, soldier,” you say, grinning. “You ready?”

Bucky gives you a flat look.

The room is quiet, except for the hum of the TV and the scritch-scratch as you add in finishing touches.

You hold up the board.

It’s terrible.

The letters are uneven and the numbers are already smudged from where you’ve dragged your sleeve over them.

You sit back, admiring your work, before grabbing the shot glass and plopping it in the center.

You nod solemnly. “It’s ready. Now put your hands on the planchette.”

Bucky sighs deeply, metal fingertips touching the top of the glass.

You clear your throat dramatically. “Spirits, if you are here, make yourselves known.”

Silence.

Bucky nods. “Guess that’s our answer–”

The shot glass suddenly shoots out.

His muscles tighten immediately. His fingers twitch like he’s ready to grab a knife out of thin fucking air.

You, however, fail miserably in hiding a grin.

Bucky’s eyes narrow immediately. “You’re pushing it.”

“I am not,” you lie.

He stares.

“…Okay, maybe a little.”

Bucky groans, dragging a hand over his face. “I cannot believe I am wasting my night on this.”

“You’re just mad that the ghosts like me more.”

Bucky does not dignify that with a response.

“Put your hands back there, boy.”

So he reluctantly places his fingers back on the shot glass.

You clear your throat again.

“Oh great and powerful spirits, what secrets do you have for us?”

Silence.

Bucky watches unamused, watching as the letters spell out in lightning fast speed:

Y - O - U - R -

A pause.

M - O -M.

Bucky lifts his hands and leans back.

“That’s the ghosts talking, not me.”

Bucky just sits there, silent.

You wiggle your fingers dramatically over the board. “Maybe you’re the problem. Maybe the ghosts just don’t like you.”

Bucky snorts, “Right. I’m the problem here, not the fool who used a shot glass to talk to them.”

“The shot glass is genius, alcohol is an ice breaker in most social situation."

"What about this is a social situation?"

"Well it's you, me, and a couple of babes from the underworld. By definition it's a social situation, and a cool one at that."

“Why aren’t your ghosts talkng to us then?”

“Maybe they’re ageist.”

Bucky glares at you.

“You’re practically ancient. Maybe they just hate old people.”

“Maybe if I was a centuries-old spirit and the first thing I heard from the afterlife was your voice, I’d go straight back to hell.”

Your mouth falls open, before you let out an outraged scoff.

“Oh, that’s rich coming from–”

You stop mid-sentence when Bucky shifts, leaning back slightly, arms stretched behind him, his body loose and relaxed.

There’s a stupid smile ghosting at his mouth.

“Oh my God.” You latch onto it instantly. “You’re enjoying this.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

The sleeves of his hoodie are pushed up just enough to expose the solid cut of his forearms, the angle of his jaw sharp against the dim glow of your terrible table lamp.

His expression is too neutral, too blank. Like he’s waiting for you to react.

Something about it catches you off guard. It’s not intentional. It’s not even anything. But your stomach tightens anyway.

Bucky notices the way your expression shifts even if it was just for a second, his eyebrows knitting together.

You clear your throat immediately. “Anyway. Let’s ask them something real.”

“Oh, now we’re asking real questions?”

“Spirits!” You slap your hands onto the board. “What is Bucky’s deepest, darkest secret?”

He rolls his eyes.

The shot glass has not moved in half an hour.

It’s honestly humiliating at this point.

You refuse to acknowledge this.

Bucky, however, has fully accepted it.

“So what now?” he asks, leaning back against your bed, fingers drumming idly against his knee.

You stare at the board. “Maybe it’s a slow connection.”

Bucky blinks. “Slow how?”

“Like two bars, not four?”

“You think ghosts have bad WiFi?”

“I don’t know, Bucky, I’ve never died before.”

“I have. WiFi’s not the issue.”

You shove his shoulder.

Bucky’s stupid smirk does not fade.

“Can we pack this up, or are you going to keep going until your humiliation kink ends?"

"I see you've been thinking about me and kinks in--."

"Stop talking."

You narrow your eyes at him, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like ‘fascist’, but place your fingers on the shot glass.

Bucky does the same.

You inhale deeply. “Spirits, is there anything you would like to say to us?”

Silence.

“Maybe they don’t know English.”

“Sure.”

“Should we try Morse code?”

“No.”

You hum, ignoring him. “What about—”

“Hey spirits. What’s the real reason why this one’s hiding from everyone?” Bucky cuts in smoothly.

It just slips out.

He looks as surprised as you do, but he recovers way quicker.

He keeps his eyes on the board, like maybe if he doesn’t make a big deal out of it, it won’t become a big deal.

The shot glass doesn’t move. Of course.

But you pull your hands away first.

Bucky watches, quietly, as you sit back, pressing your palms against your thighs.

“That’s a dumb question,” you mutter.

Bucky hums. “Yeah?”

You exhale sharply, shaking your head. “Yeah.”

A beat.

You force a grin and shove the Ouija board aside.

“Well,” you announce. “That was disappointing.”

He stretches his arms over his head, not looking at you as he says, “You’re avoiding.”

You pause mid-movement. “Avoiding what?”

“You know.”

You freeze for just half a second, then shake your head, laughing awkwardly. “I haven’t–”

“You have,” he says simply.

It’s the certainty in his voice. Like he already knows the answer, and he’s just waiting for you to say it out loud.

You sigh. “It’s stupid.”

Bucky shrugs, looking back at the board. “Not what I asked.”

A moment passes.

“It’s the name thing,” you say finally, voice flat.

“The name thing?”

“Maya’s trying to relaunch me. Or, like, reintroduce me. Whatever.” You wave a hand. “She’s planning this whole… thing. New identity, new codename, new brand. Something public-friendly.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything.

“She’s just doing her job,” you say quickly, like you’re cutting him off before he can say anything reasonable. “I get it. I do. But it pisses me off.”

Bucky hums. “Why?”

“It’s dumb,” you mutter, kicking at a loose thread in the carpet. “I shouldn’t care this much. But now, instead of just letting me deal with it, I have to make it a thing. I have to let everyone see me deal with it. They want me to launch like I’m some new product. Like they get to decide what version of me gets to exist.”

Bucky is silent for a long second.

Not because he doesn’t get it, but because he does.

Finally, after a while, he leans back slightly, “So what do you wanna do?”

You blink. “I don’t know. That’s the problem.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “You don’t know? Or you just don’t like your options?”

Your mouth presses into a thin line.

Because hes right-- it’s not that you don’t know what to do. Stay silent? People fill in the gaps themselves. Let Maya spin it? You become someone else’s project. Reject it outright? You’re the problem.

It’s not even a big deal. It’s just a name. A stupid PR campaign. But every option feels like losing. Like a trap.

You exhale. “I just don’t wanna think about it right now.”

Bucky nods. Like that answer’s good enough.

And for some reason, that makes your shoulders loosen a little.

For the first time all week, it feels like someone actually heard you.

You shift, stretching your arms dramatically. “Anyway. That’s my tragic backstory.”

Bucky exhales sharply. “More tragic things have happened to you.”

“Yeah, like some blue-eyed Avenger-boy not asking me out.”

“No.”

“Let me have my moment.”

A silence rests lightly.

“Alright,” he mutters. “What dumb shit are we doing next?”

“I don’t know. You want pizza?”

“I meant about your situation.”

You sigh, stretching your legs out in front of you. “Nothing. It’s fine. It’s not like I have a choice, anyway.”

Well that’s not entirely true.

It’s an idea that creeps up a little too fast. It makes him worry about how much influence you’ve actually had on him.

Bucky hums. “You’ve got one more option.”

You quirk an eyebrow. “Oh?”

He tilts his head, casual, almost lazy. “Yeah.”

When he finally tells you, your entire expression changes.

Slowly, deliberately, a grin spreads across your face.

“Oh,” you say, “you are evil.”

Bucky just leans back on his hands, completely at ease. “I had nothing to do with this.”

Twenty minutes later, the board is still on the floor.

The shot glass is still doing absolutely nothing.

You and Bucky are back to arguing over whether or not ghosts have good taste in movies when your phone explodes with a call.

You barely have time to read the caller ID before--

“You released a fucking internet poll?!” Maya’s voice bursts through the speaker, loud and borderline hysterical– but not in a bad way.

Bucky immediately presses his lips together, suppressing a smirk.

You, however, grin like a criminal.

“Define released,” you say, like this is the most casual thing in the world.

“Oh, you know exactly what you did.”

“I do,” you agree easily. “But I like hearing you say it.”

Maya groans. “You put your entire name change up for a public vote.”

Bucky coughs into his hand.

You tilt your head. “And?”

“And?!” Maya lets out a breath, “They're all chaotic fucking names and the poll already has two hundred thousand votes.”

Bucky immediately stares at you.

You blink, turning to look at him dramatically.

“Two hundred thousand?” you repeat, voice too calm.

Bucky raises an eyebrow.

You grin.

“Oh, I’m so famous.”

Bucky groans, while Maya is losing her mind on the other end.

“Oh my God,” she mutters. “Why are you like this.”

You shrug, flipping onto your back, staring at the ceiling. “I would say I was born this way but I was created. In a test tube and everything.”

Maya scoffs.

And Bucky, for some reason, has a look on this face, like he’s enjoying this more than he should.

Then, after a second, he mouths, “Have an actual conversation.”

You roll your eyes but tilt your head back toward the phone.

“Alright, fine,” you sigh. “Lemme step out. Yell at me in private.”

Maya exhales. “It’s not yelling.”

“It’s a little yelling.”

You roll onto your feet, shuffling toward the door

“Back in a sec,” you tell him.

Bucky just nods, watching as you disappear into the hallway.

And just like that he’s alone. Sitting on the floor. Next to a completely useless Ouija board.

And he doesn’t know why, but his fingers twitch.

Not because he believes in it. Not because he thinks it’ll work.

But… just because.

Instead, he just shakes his head, rolling his shoulders back.

“You’re losing it, Barnes,” he mutters under his breath.

But then, without warning-

The shot glass moves.

Bucky immediately stiffens, staring at the door but you’re still having an animated conversation with Maya, fingers pressed into your forehead.

Bucky’s gaze drags back to the board.

He doesn’t move an inch. Doesn’t even breathe.

Just watches as the glass drags itself across the board, slow and deliberate.

One letter.

Then another.

Bucky’s jaw tightens.

His stomach twists.

Then–

And the shot glass tips over.

His heart stops.

And suddenly, he’s not in your room anymore.

He’s eight years old, sitting on the floor of a Brooklyn apartment, scribbling nonsense into a notebook while Rebecca Barnes, all of six years old, with messy braids and jelly-covered fingers, sticks a homemade label on his lunchbox.

“Becca.”

“What?”

“That’s not how you spell James.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

Bucky presses a hand against his face. “Mom—”

He blinks.

The board is in front of him again.

The shot glass is still. He doesn’t know how long he’s been staring at it.

His head feels weirdly light. His chest feels too tight.

The door clicks shut behind you, and Bucky keeps still, in a way that says nothing happened.

Because if he doesn’t deal with it now, then it isn’t real. And if it isn’t real, then he doesn’t have to think about it.

You flop onto the bed, letting out a long, theatrical sigh.

“Well,” you exhale, dragging the word out. “That was a wild experience.”

Bucky registers the words, but not the meaning.

It’s like he hears you, but the sound is coming through the wrong frequency.

“Yeah?” he mutters, barely processing it.

The sound of your voice fills the space, but it doesn’t quite pull him in.

“Oh, yeah.” You roll onto your stomach, kicking your feet behind you. “First, she yelled at me. Then she was impressed, which honestly I think pissed her off more.”

Bucky nods. Because that’s what he’s supposed to do.

You’re still talking. That should ground him.

And yet his mind is somewhere else entirely.

The air feels off. Like the word JAM is still written in front of him.

“--already drafting apology emails before I even hung up.”

Bucky blinks once, twice.

He knows he should be engaged, responding, moving.

But instead, he just mutters, “Yeah.”

“You’re not listening to me.”

Bucky blinks. Finally, he fully snaps back.

His eyes flick toward you, registering you properly for the first time.

The way you’re watching him now, eyebrows raised, like you’ve been waiting for him to catch up.

He searches for the last thing you said.

Finds nothing.

Shit.

You press a hand to your chest, looking deeply entertained. “Are you ignoring me?”

Bucky scoffs. “Not right now specifically.”

“What was the last thing I said?”

Bucky opens his mouth. Then closes it.

“Wow. Incredible.” You clap your hands together once. “I’m heartbroken. Betrayed. Ignored.”

Bucky shakes his head, dragging a hand down his face. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah this must be what he felt like."

"Wow."

"No, no, it’s fine.” You wave a hand, mock casual. “I’ll just go die then.”

Bucky groans. “I’m back.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because if you need to space out again, just know that I have an open window–”

Bucky balls-up the ouija board and tosses it at your head.

You shriek.

He’ll think about it later.

Whenever later is.

The laptop screen flickers in the dim room, casting weird shadows against the wall.

You and Bucky are back on the floor, legs stretched out, backs leaning against the bed, watching one of the most ridiculous conspiracy theory videos you’ve ever seen.

The narrator speaks with the conviction of a man who has nothing to lose.

“--and that’s why I’m telling you, there’s no way the Pentagon incident was just a gas leak. Witnesses reported a mysterious figure in black who allegedly disappeared into the shadows–”

“That was Nat.”

You pause the video. “What.”

Bucky doesn’t even look away from the screen.

He gestures lazily toward the blurry figure circled in red.

“That’s her. Right before she cut the power and knocked out two guards. The whole thing took, like, a minute.”

You stare at him.

Then at the screen.

Then at him again.

“I fucking knew it.” You gesture vaguely at the screen. “I called this years ago. Everyone told me I was an idiot. ‘Oh, the footage is too blurry, you can’t even tell if it’s a person.’ Amateurs.”

“Feel validated?”

“Oh, hugely.”

He shakes his head, amused.

You squint at the screen. “What else? What’s real, what’s bullshit?”

Bucky thinks for a second.

He points to another clip.

“Alright, see this?”

A new segment starts playing, showing grainy footage of someone scaling the side of a high-security building.

The narrator’s voice kicks in again. “--but the real question is, who was this shadowy figure? And how did they evade detection when–”

“That’s me.”

You blink.

Bucky nods. “Stockholm. 2012. Whole mission went sideways, had to improvise.”

You exhale, pressing a hand over your face.

“Oh, my God.”

Bucky smirks. “Something wrong?”

“You’re telling me that a significant percentage of government cover-ups are just you and Nat running errands?”

Bucky shrugs. “I wouldn’t call them errands.”

“What would you call them, then?”

He thinks about it for a second.

“Side quests.”

You nod slowly.

“Right,” you say. “Of course. Are the lizard people real?”

Bucky huffs a short laugh. “I’m not answering that.”

“Wow. Interesting.” You stroke your chin. “You didn’t say no.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. You grin.

The videos keep playing, but neither of you are really watching anymore.

The narrator is still droning on, something about classified operations and shadow governments, but the energy has shifted.

Your eyes feel a little heavier now.

Bucky can tell.

You’ve stopped fidgeting, stopped making comments, stopped cracking jokes at his expense.

You’re just there, leaning into his side, slowly sinking deeper into the moment.

He exhales, tilting his head back against the bed, letting himself relax, too.

The silence between you is comfortable. Easy.

And before he fully registers it, your head is in his lap.

Bucky freezes.

It happens so smoothly that for a second, he wonders if you even realize what you did.

You don’t say anything.

Just curl up slightly, tucking your arms under your head, pressing your cheek against his thigh like it’s nothing.

Like this is normal.

Bucky forces himself to breathe.

To not react too much.

To not make it something. Because it’s not.

Right.

The glow from the laptop screen flickers, illuminating the soft edges of your face.

Something in Bucky’s chest tugs.

You sigh, voice quiet, almost lazy.

“Thanks for hanging out with me,” you murmur. “I needed that.”

Bucky swallows.

“Don’t mention it,” he mumbles.

And then before he can think too hard about it, his fingers brush lightly over your scalp.

A small, absentminded gesture.

Barely there.

But you don’t move.

Just breathe slower. Sink deeper.

Bucky knows he’s going to regret this later. His back is already complaining, his brain is already filing this away for future analysis.

But you look too at ease to move.

So he stays right there.

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