#i was only responsible for the “inks” not colour

[humans-are-tasty]

I'm gonna be at TCAF this weekend debuting graphic novel The Rather Unusual Adventures of Ice Cream Girl & Mr. Licorice with my client

[gyuuberryy]

a love affair in colour

pairing: art tutor!jay x princess!reader

synopsis: as a princess exploring her artistic passions, you’re drawn to jay, your mesmerising art teacher whose lessons stir more than just creativity. what begins as a quest to master your craft quickly becomes a whirlwind of tension and forbidden desire. with every brushstroke and shared moment, the line between teacher and lover blurs. but when societal barriers and personal doubts threaten your connection, will you both find a way to embrace a future together, or will your love remain a beautiful but fleeting masterpiece?

genre: strangers to lovers, forbidden relationship, comfort

warnings: kissing, lots of tension, mentions of status difference, angst, a little suggestive

note: i used my experience in art to detail all the content related to it so bear with me if it seems a little modern, i don't know much about how they did art in the olden times. also jay just constantly raises my standards??? i love that man so much he's so husband material it hurts TT enjoy reading!

word count : 11.1k

royally yours masterlist | prev:heeseung | next: jake

if you liked it please reblog or comment to give me your feedback! <3

you’ve always been drawn to art. as a child, while other princesses were learning courtly etiquette or practising diplomacy, you were sneaking into the gardens to sketch the trees or hiding in your chambers, fingers stained with ink as you copied paintings from the castle’s grand halls. but those were mere indulgences, fleeting escapes from the rigid structure of royal life.

when your parents noticed your growing talent, they encouraged it—as a hobby, of course. something to amuse yourself with between diplomatic meetings, public appearances, and the pressures of royal expectations. but for you, art was never just a pastime. it was a passion. an escape. a way to express the parts of you that didn’t fit into the carefully curated image of a princess.

so, when you told your parents you wanted to pursue art seriously, it was met with initial resistance. a princess has duties, obligations, responsibilities. but you persisted, and eventually, they relented. if you were going to study art, they wanted the best for you. that’s how jay came to the palace—an accomplished artist in his own right, though he came from modest beginnings. he was hired to help you master the craft before your trip to paris, where you’d study under the finest artists in the world.

jay’s reputation preceded him. he was known not only for his skill but for his ability to bring out the best in his students. when he arrived at the palace, you were both eager and nervous, unsure of what to expect.

your first meeting was in the grand studio, a room that had once been your sanctuary. now, as you stand by the window, gazing out over the palace grounds, you feel the weight of what’s to come. you’re no longer a novice; this isn’t just a casual hobby. this is the beginning of something serious, something real. and the thought of it is both exhilarating and terrifying.

the door creaks open behind you, and you turn to see him—jay. he’s younger than you expected, though older than you by a few years. his clothes are simple, a stark contrast to the luxury of your surroundings, yet he wears them with a quiet confidence. his dark hair is tousled, as though he’s just come from a long day at work, and there’s a certain intensity in his eyes, a focus that makes your stomach flip.

“your highness,” he greets, bowing low.

“please, just my name,” you say quickly, hoping to dispel some of the formality that hangs between you. “if we’re to work together, there’s no need for titles.”

he straightens, and for a moment, you think you see a flicker of something—surprise? amusement?—in his expression, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. “very well,” he says simply. “shall we begin?”

you nod, feeling a mix of anticipation and nerves as you lead him to the easel set up near the window. it’s been prepared for your first lesson, a blank canvas stretched taut, waiting for the first stroke of charcoal or paint. you’ve done this before, hundreds of times, but never under the watchful eye of a teacher like jay.

“before we begin,” he says, setting his bag down on the table, “tell me why you want to do this. not because you have to—because you want to.”

his question catches you off guard. you’d expected him to dive straight into the technical aspects of drawing or painting, not to ask about your motivations. but there’s a seriousness in his tone that tells you he’s not just asking out of curiosity. he wants to understand. he wants to know you.

“i’ve always loved art,” you admit, folding your hands in front of you, feeling a little exposed. “it’s the one thing that’s mine. in a world where so much is decided for me, art is where i get to choose. it’s... freedom.”

jay nods slowly, as if weighing your words. “art is freedom,” he agrees quietly. “it’s expression. it’s telling the world who you are without saying a word. but it’s also discipline. and commitment. if you’re serious about this, i’ll push you. i’ll make sure you’re challenged. does that sound like something you’re ready for?”

your heart beats faster. his intensity is palpable, and it’s hard not to be swept up in it. “yes,” you say, though the word comes out softer than you intended. “i’m ready.”

he regards you for a moment longer, then reaches into his bag, pulling out a small sketchbook and a piece of charcoal. “we’ll start with something simple,” he says, handing you the charcoal. “i want you to draw me.”

you blink, surprised. “draw you?”

“it’s a good exercise,” he explains, moving to stand a little distance away. “if you can capture the essence of a person, you can draw anything.”

your fingers tighten around the charcoal as you sit at the easel, facing him. it feels strange, having him as the subject. his features are sharp, defined, but there’s something else—an intensity in his gaze that makes it hard to concentrate. you take a deep breath and begin to sketch, the sound of the charcoal scratching against the canvas the only sound in the room.

it’s not easy. his face is a study in contrasts—strong jawline, soft eyes, dark brows furrowed in concentration as he watches you work. you find yourself getting lost in the details, trying to capture the exact curve of his lips, the shadow beneath his cheekbone. but the more you focus, the more elusive it becomes.

“you’re overthinking it,” jay says suddenly, breaking the silence. he moves behind you, close enough that you can feel the warmth of his body, though he doesn’t touch you. “you’re focusing on the parts, not the whole. step back. see the bigger picture.”

you try to follow his advice, but his presence behind you is distracting, and the scent of him—earthy, with a hint of something fresh—fills your senses. your heart beats faster, though you try to ignore it.

jay steps closer, his breath warm against your ear. “here,” he says softly, reaching out to guide your hand. his fingers brush yours, sending a jolt through your body, and you almost drop the charcoal. “loosen your grip. let the lines flow.”

you do as he says, though your heart races at his nearness. his hand lingers over yours for a moment too long before he pulls away, but the connection between you doesn’t fade. the air feels charged, as if something unsaid hangs between you.

when you finish the sketch, it’s rough, imperfect, but there’s something there—a spark of life, of emotion. jay leans over your shoulder to examine it, his expression unreadable.

“better,” he says after a moment, his voice low and approving. “you’ve captured something real here.”

you look at the drawing again, trying to see what he sees, but all you can think about is the way his hand felt over yours, the way his voice seemed to wrap around you like a secret.

as he moves to gather his things, you realise that this is just the beginning. the first lesson. but already, something has shifted between you. something neither of you can name yet, but it’s there—in the shared glances, the lingering touches, the unspoken connection.

and as jay turns to leave, promising to return for your next lesson, you can’t help but wonder if this is really just about art—or if something far more dangerous has already begun.

the days following your first lesson with jay felt like a strange new rhythm. art had always been a deeply personal escape for you, something that existed in the quiet moments between royal duties, but now it had become something more. each session with jay stirred something inside you—not just the desire to improve, but a spark of something you couldn't quite name.

jay had been nothing but professional, his focus always on your craft. but beneath his calm demeanour, there was an undercurrent, a kind of intensity in the way he looked at you during your lessons. it was subtle, barely noticeable, but it was there, like the brushstrokes of a painting hidden beneath layers of paint.

today, as you enter the studio, you feel it more than ever. the room is bathed in soft light, the kind of glow that makes everything seem warmer, softer. jay is already there, setting up supplies on the table, his back to you. you watch him for a moment, your eyes tracing the broad lines of his shoulders, the way his hands move with such precision and care.

“good morning,” you say, finally breaking the silence. your voice comes out softer than you intended, the room swallowing the sound.

he turns, a brief smile crossing his face. “good morning.” there’s a hint of warmth in his tone, but as always, it’s controlled, measured. jay has never been one to show too much emotion, though lately, you’ve caught glimpses of something more.

“i thought we’d try something different today,” he says, gesturing to the large canvas in the corner of the room. “i want to work on your observation skills.”

you nod, intrigued. “what do you have in mind?”

instead of answering immediately, jay picks up a chair and places it in the centre of the room, angled toward the sunlight. he then takes his sketchbook and charcoal, positioning himself in front of the chair but far enough away that there’s space between you.

“i want you to sit,” he says simply, his eyes meeting yours for a moment before flickering away. “i’m going to sketch you.”

the request catches you off guard. “me? but... shouldn’t i be the one practising sketching?”

he smiles faintly, shaking his head. “today, i want you to feel what it’s like to be the subject. to understand how the artist sees you.” he glances at the canvas, and then back at you. “it’ll help you observe the world around you with more empathy, more connection.”

the thought of jay watching you, studying you so closely, makes your heart race. you’ve always been behind the canvas, never in front of it. to have his eyes on you, not just in passing but with the intention of capturing every detail—it feels strangely vulnerable.

but you trust him. there’s something about jay that puts you at ease, even when you’re unsure of yourself. so, you sit in the chair, adjusting your posture slightly, your hands resting in your lap.

“relax,” he says softly, his voice gentle. “you don’t have to pose. just be yourself.”

you try to do as he says, leaning back into the chair, though your heart is beating a little faster now. the room is quiet except for the faint scratch of his charcoal on the page, and you’re acutely aware of his gaze as it moves over you—your face, your hands, the way the light falls on your hair.

he works silently, his brow furrowed in concentration, and you find yourself watching him, trying to read the expression on his face. there’s a softness there that you hadn’t noticed before, a kind of careful attention that feels almost… tender.

for a while, neither of you speaks. you’re not sure how long has passed—minutes? hours? time seems to lose its meaning in this space, as if the world outside the studio doesn’t exist.

“so you want to pursue art huh?” jay’s voice breaks the silence, and you blink, surprised by the question.

“yes” you reply, shifting slightly in the chair.

he doesn’t look up from his sketch. “why did you choose art? out of everything you could have pursued?”

the question is one you’ve asked yourself many times. you think back to your childhood, to the afternoons spent sneaking away from your tutors to draw in the gardens, the way art always felt like a safe space in a world full of expectations.

“i think… it’s because art lets me be free,” you say slowly, choosing your words carefully. “in everything else, i’m the princess. i have to be perfect, poised, controlled. but with art, i can be messy. i can make mistakes. it’s mine.”

jay pauses, his hand hovering over the sketchbook for a moment before he continues. “freedom is important,” he says quietly. “especially for someone like you.”

there’s something in his tone, a weight to his words, and you wonder what he means by that. does he understand what it’s like to feel trapped by expectations? to want something more, something beyond the roles you’ve been given?

before you can ask, jay looks up, his eyes meeting yours for the first time since he started sketching. his gaze is intense, but not in a way that makes you uncomfortable. it’s more like he’s seeing you, really seeing you, in a way that no one else ever has.

“you have a natural grace,” he says softly, almost as if speaking to himself. “but it’s more than that. there’s something… untamed about you.”

your breath catches in your throat. no one has ever spoken to you like that before. not with such quiet certainty, as if they’ve seen beyond the surface of who you are.

you don’t know what to say. the air in the room feels heavier now, charged with something you can’t quite name. you shift in your seat, suddenly self-conscious under his gaze, but jay’s expression remains calm, thoughtful.

he tilts his head slightly, observing you with the same intensity he’s had since the beginning of the lesson. “there’s more to art than technique,” he says, his voice low. “it’s about connection. about understanding the person you’re drawing, not just how they look, but who they are.”

his words stir something inside you—a sense of being understood in a way you’ve never experienced before. you’re not just a princess in this room, not just another student. you’re you, with all your complexities and contradictions, and somehow, jay has seen that.

it makes you feel exposed in a way you hadn’t anticipated, and yet there’s a comfort in it, too. you’ve spent your whole life hiding parts of yourself, but with jay, it feels like you don’t have to.

finally, he sets the sketchbook aside, standing up and crossing the room to where you’re seated. he doesn’t hand you the sketch immediately, and for a moment, you wonder if he’s unsure about showing it to you.

“you can tell a lot about a person by how they draw,” he says quietly, standing in front of you now, his gaze unwavering. “but you can tell even more by how they let themselves be seen.”

your pulse quickens, the weight of his words settling deep within you. it’s not just about the sketch anymore—it’s about everything. the way you’ve been navigating these lessons, the way you’ve been letting him into your world, piece by piece.

he holds out the sketch to you, and when you take it, your fingers brush against his, a fleeting touch that lingers in your mind longer than it should.

the drawing is beautiful. he’s captured you in a way that feels both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. there’s a softness to your expression, a quiet strength in the lines of your face, and yet… there’s something else. something deeper.

“it’s beautiful,” you whisper, tracing the lines with your fingertips. “i’ve never seen myself like this before.”

jay watches you carefully, his expression unreadable. “that’s because no one’s ever looked at you like this before.”

the words hit you like a gentle wave, their meaning sinking in slowly. you glance up at him, unsure of how to respond. there’s a new tension between you now, but it’s not the kind that comes from desire or rushed feelings. it’s deeper than that—a connection, a shared understanding that goes beyond mere attraction.

for a moment, you sit in silence, the sketch resting in your lap as the light from the window shifts slightly, casting long shadows across the room. you can feel the change in the air, but neither of you moves to break it.

and as jay steps back, giving you space, you realise that this—whatever it is—will take time to fully unfold. you’re not rushing toward anything, but there’s something between you now, something real and undeniable.

but for now, you’ll let it simmer. there’s no need to rush. not yet.

the days have passed like pages in a book, each art lesson with jay slowly building a tension that you feel in the very air of the studio. his presence is constant but controlled, his touch fleeting yet always careful. you’ve found yourself looking forward to these lessons more than you’d ever anticipated, though not only for the sake of art. something else draws you here each time, something that’s harder to admit even to yourself.

when you arrive at the studio today, the familiar scent of paint and canvas greets you, mingling with the crisp morning air. jay is there, of course, already preparing the materials, his back to you as he arranges brushes and bottles of linseed oil. the sun filters in through the tall windows, casting long beams across the room, turning everything into shades of gold. today feels different, though you can’t quite pinpoint why.

he turns as you approach, offering you a brief smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. "good morning," he says, his voice as calm and composed as ever, though you think you detect a slight hesitancy behind his words.

"good morning," you reply, your heart already beating a little faster. the last few lessons have been charged with a new energy, a subtle yet undeniable pull between the two of you. you've tried to keep your thoughts focused on the art, but with each session, it’s become harder.

jay steps over to the large canvas he’s set up for today’s lesson. "we’re going to work on technique," he explains, holding up a palette of mixed colours, the vibrant hues blending like a sunset in his hands. "i want you to feel the texture of the paint, how the brush moves against the canvas. it’s all about control and release."

you nod, though the concept seems easier said than done. painting has always been more of a challenge for you, especially when it comes to finding that balance. jay, however, has a way of guiding you through each step without ever making you feel inadequate.

"let’s start with the basics," he says, handing you a brush. his fingers brush against yours for the briefest moment, and you feel a spark travel up your arm, though you’re sure he doesn’t notice.

you position yourself in front of the canvas, trying to steady your breathing as you dip the brush into the paint. the first few strokes are tentative, careful. you focus on the movement of your hand, but your mind is distracted by the weight of jay’s presence behind you. it’s as if the air in the room has thickened, every sound, every movement, magnified.

jay watches in silence for a few moments, then steps closer, so close that you can feel the warmth of his body behind you. "here," he murmurs softly, his voice right beside your ear. "let me show you."

before you can respond, he places his hands lightly on your waist, adjusting your stance. the touch is firm but gentle, and it sends a shockwave through your body. your breath catches in your throat, and for a moment, you’re hyper-aware of every point of contact—his hands on your hips, the warmth of his chest just inches from your back.

"relax," he whispers, his voice low and calming, though you can hear a slight strain in it, like he’s carefully keeping something in check. "you’re too tense."

easier said than done. you can barely think straight with him so close, let alone concentrate on the canvas. but you try, forcing yourself to take a breath, to focus on the task at hand. jay doesn’t move away. instead, he steps even closer, his chest nearly brushing your back as he moves his hands from your waist to your arm, guiding your wrist as you hold the brush.

"feel the paint," he says, his breath warm against your ear. "don’t fight it. let it flow."

his hand wraps around yours, firm but careful, and he moves your arm in a slow, fluid motion. the brush glides across the canvas with ease, the paint spreading in smooth, even strokes. his touch is light but deliberate, and you find yourself following his lead, your body responding to the way he directs the movement.

"you’re doing well," he murmurs, and you can feel his breath against your neck, sending shivers down your spine. "just like that."

the room feels smaller, the air thicker, as if the space between you is shrinking with each passing second. you try to focus on the canvas, but it’s impossible with jay so close. his presence is overwhelming, consuming, and you’re acutely aware of every shift, every movement.

"you don’t need to force it," he continues, his voice barely above a whisper now, his lips dangerously close to your ear. "let the brush move with you."

you nod, though your throat is too dry to speak. the closeness between you is intoxicating, and you can feel the tension building with each breath you take. jay’s hand tightens slightly around yours, and for a moment, you wonder if he feels it too—the pull, the unspoken connection that seems to have grown stronger with each lesson.

he guides your hand in another slow stroke across the canvas, but this time, the brush slips slightly, leaving a streak of paint that’s a little too heavy. you let out a soft, frustrated sigh, but jay only chuckles, the sound low and warm.

"don’t worry about perfection," he says, his voice rumbling in your ear. "art isn’t about being perfect. it’s about feeling."

his hand lingers on yours a moment longer before he lets go, stepping back slightly. the sudden absence of his touch leaves you feeling off-balance, as if the ground beneath you has shifted. you exhale a breath you didn’t realise you were holding and lower the brush, your heart still racing.

"good," jay says, his voice a little more distant now as he moves back to the table. "you’re getting better. it’s all about control and release, but it takes time to find that balance."

you nod, though your mind is still reeling from the intensity of the moment. you’ve never felt so aware of your body, of your own reactions, as you do when jay is close like that. it’s as though he knows exactly how to touch you, how to guide you, without ever crossing the line—but just barely.

you place the brush down on the easel, turning to face him. jay is busy cleaning the palette, his face unreadable as he focuses on the task. but there’s something different about the way he holds himself, a tension in his posture that wasn’t there before.

"thank you," you say softly, breaking the silence that has settled between you. your voice sounds a little shaky, but you hope he doesn’t notice.

he glances up at you, his eyes meeting yours for a brief moment before flickering away. "it’s my job," he replies, but there’s something in his tone—something almost… uncertain.

the silence that follows is heavy, filled with the unspoken tension that has been growing between you for weeks. you can feel it in the way he looks at you, in the way his hands linger just a little too long when he helps you. it’s as though you’re both standing at the edge of something, but neither of you knows how to take the next step.

finally, jay sets the palette down and steps back, putting a little more distance between you. "we’ll keep working on this," he says, his voice returning to its usual composed tone. "you’re improving, but there’s still more to learn."

you nod, feeling a little breathless, though you’re not sure if it’s from the painting or from the closeness you just shared. "i’ll keep practising," you say, though the words feel almost trivial in the weight of the moment.

jay gives you a small smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. "good," he says softly, before turning back to his brushes. "we’ll pick up again tomorrow."

you linger for a moment, watching him as he carefully cleans the paint from his hands, his movements precise and controlled. and as you leave the studio, you can’t shake the feeling that something has changed between you, something that neither of you can ignore for much longer.

the pottery studio feels different today. the atmosphere is heavy, thick with anticipation, but you try to ignore it as you sit at the wheel, your hands already messy with clay. the wheel spins slowly beneath your fingers, but no matter how many times you’ve tried, the clay refuses to cooperate, collapsing into a lump before you can give it any real shape. you groan in frustration, watching another failed attempt crumble under your touch.

“take your time. it’s all about feeling the clay, not controlling it,” jay says softly from behind you, his voice calm but carrying that familiar undercurrent of something unspoken. he’s watching closely, his presence as steady as always, but today it feels more intense—like a subtle hum in the air that makes the space between you vibrate with tension.

you sigh, wiping your hands on your apron. "i don’t think i’m getting this at all," you mutter, staring down at the shapeless mound on the wheel. pottery has proven to be a far bigger challenge than painting—there’s something about the unpredictability of the clay that throws you off balance.

jay steps closer, his footsteps almost silent on the studio floor. "you’re too tense," he observes, his voice low and measured. "let me show you."

before you can respond, he’s already moving behind you. the air shifts as his body nears, and suddenly, you can feel the heat of him pressing close. he slides onto the bench behind you, his legs on either side of yours. the intimate position makes your heart race instantly, your pulse quickening in response to his proximity. his chest brushes your back, his breath warm on the side of your neck, and suddenly it’s hard to focus on anything other than how close he is.

he pauses his movements. “is it okay if i sit behind you like this? i may need to touch your hands as well.”

you nod at his soft words, “yes that’s alright.”

the studio feels smaller, the world outside forgotten as you’re enveloped by his presence. you can feel the solid warmth of his chest against your spine, the way his thighs gently cage yours. every point of contact feels electric, the tension simmering between you palpable.

“relax,” he murmurs, his voice almost a whisper, low and soothing. his breath brushes the shell of your ear, sending a shiver down your spine. “you’re trying too hard to control it. you have to let the clay respond to your touch.”

his hands move to cover yours, his fingers sliding over your clay-streaked knuckles. his touch is firm but gentle, guiding your hands to the wheel as it starts spinning once again. the sensation of his fingers wrapping around yours sends a ripple of awareness through your body, and for a moment, all you can focus on is the warmth of his skin, the weight of his hands over yours.

"feel the clay," jay instructs, his voice quiet but filled with intent. his breath is warm against your ear, and the proximity, the intimacy of the moment, makes it nearly impossible to concentrate. "it moves with you. let it guide you."

his hands press lightly against yours, directing your fingers as they glide over the surface of the clay. the wheel turns slowly beneath your palms, the soft texture of the clay smoothing out under the pressure. you try to focus on the task at hand, but the sensation of his body against yours—the gentle weight of his chest pressed to your back, his legs framing yours—is overwhelming. the world narrows down to the feel of his touch, the sound of his steady breath so close to your ear.

"you need to feel the shape," jay continues, his voice lower now, more intimate. his hands move with yours, guiding your fingers as they dip into the soft clay. his touch is deliberate, patient, and it feels like he’s not just teaching you pottery, but something deeper, something far more personal.

your hands move together as you both shape the clay, your fingers sliding inside the hollow of the vase. the action is slow, almost sensual, and the suggestiveness of the movement doesn’t escape you. the pressure of his fingers over yours, the way his hands direct yours in shaping the delicate interior, feels too intimate, too deliberate. the tension that has been building for weeks now feels almost unbearable.

your breath quickens, your heart hammering in your chest, and you can feel the heat rising to your cheeks. jay’s chest presses more firmly against your back as his hands guide you deeper into the clay, shaping it from within. his fingers dip, mirroring yours, and the act of molding the vase becomes something far more intimate than you could have ever anticipated.

"just like that," jay whispers, his voice huskier than before, his breath hot against your ear. his hands slow, his fingers lingering on yours as you move together. the wheel spins quietly, the clay yielding to your touch, but it’s hard to focus on the art when the closeness between you feels like it’s about to explode into something more.

you can feel every movement of his chest against your back, the rise and fall of his breath growing uneven. the heat of his body is overwhelming, making it nearly impossible to concentrate on the clay. your pulse is racing, and you’re certain he can feel the way your body trembles slightly under his touch.

suddenly, you realise you can feel his heart. it’s beating erratically against your spine, matching the rapid rhythm of your own. the awareness crashes over you like a wave—he’s feeling it too. the tension, the pull between you, it’s not just in your head. his hands tighten slightly over yours, his chest pressing more firmly against your back, and for a fleeting moment, it feels like the world is tilting.

you bite your lip, trying to keep your breathing steady, but it’s impossible with him so close, with the weight of his body grounding you while simultaneously setting you on fire. your fingers dip into the clay once more, but all you can feel is the warmth of his hands over yours, the way his presence fills every corner of your mind.

jay’s breath hitches, barely audible, but you hear it. you feel it. the tension between you has been simmering for weeks, and now it’s at a boiling point, undeniable and heavy.

after what feels like an eternity, jay finally pulls his hands away, the absence of his touch leaving you cold and disoriented. his chest moves away from your back, and he stands slowly, as if he, too, is struggling to shake off the intensity of the moment.

"good work," he says, his voice quieter than usual, almost strained. he steps away from the wheel, his hands clenching and unclenching as though he’s trying to regain his composure.

you remain seated, your hands still coated in clay, your heart still racing. the silence between you is thick with everything unsaid. you can still feel the echo of his hands on yours, the warmth of his body lingering against your skin.

finally, you glance over your shoulder, your eyes searching his face for some kind of answer, some indication of what he’s thinking. but jay’s expression is unreadable, his gaze fixed on the now-complete vase on the wheel.

"you did well," he repeats, though his tone is quieter, almost distant. there’s something unresolved in the air, something that neither of you dares to acknowledge aloud.

as you stand, your legs unsteady, you can’t help but feel that something between you has shifted irreversibly. the line you’ve both been walking for weeks feels dangerously close to being crossed, and the question now is whether either of you is ready to take that step.

the last day of your art lessons starts with a sense of melancholy that you try to push away. you know that this will be your final session with jay, and although you’ve learned more than you could have imagined, the thought of no longer spending time with him feels like a loss. he greets you at the studio with his usual warm smile, but there’s something different about him today—a lightness that wasn’t there before.

“we’re not staying inside today,” jay says, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “i figured we’ve done enough of that. you’ve been using my supplies, so i thought it’s time you get your own.”

you blink, surprised by the suggestion. “you mean we’re going shopping?”

he nods, a small smile playing on his lips. “you deserve your own tools. besides, i want to show you my favourite spots.”

the idea excites you more than you’d expected. it feels intimate, personal—like he’s sharing a part of himself with you outside the confines of the studio. and so, you follow him out into the bustling streets, the city alive with activity as you walk side by side, the sky overhead a muted grey that promises rain.

the first shop is a small, unassuming place tucked between two larger storefronts, and you wouldn’t have noticed it if jay hadn’t pointed it out. inside, it’s a treasure trove of art supplies—shelves stacked high with paints, brushes, and sketchpads of every kind. the scent of paper and wood fills the air, and you can’t help but feel a little like a child in a candy store, overwhelmed by the endless possibilities.

jay moves through the aisles with ease, clearly at home here. he picks up brushes, testing their weight in his hand before handing them to you to feel. “this one’s perfect for detail work,” he says, holding up a fine-tipped brush. “and this,” he adds, pulling out a thicker, more rugged one, “is for broader strokes, more expression.”

you watch him as he speaks, his voice low and sure, and you find yourself more captivated by him than the tools he’s showing you. there’s something about the way his hands move with such confidence, the way he seems to understand the soul of each item, that draws you in. it’s a side of him you haven’t seen before, one that’s less restrained, more passionate.

he catches you staring, and a small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “what?”

you quickly look away, feeling heat rise to your cheeks. “nothing,” you mumble, pretending to examine the brushes in front of you.

but you can’t hide your growing admiration for him, and you suspect he knows it. he moves closer, his arm brushing lightly against yours as he reaches for a set of soft pastels. “try these,” he says, handing them to you. “i think they’ll suit your style.”

you take the pastels from him, your fingers brushing against his in the exchange, and for a moment, the air between you feels charged. you swallow hard, trying to focus on the colours in your hand rather than the way his touch lingers in your mind.

from there, you move to the next shop, a slightly larger one filled with canvases of all sizes and shapes. jay pulls you toward a display of stretched canvas frames, explaining the difference between cotton and linen, the various textures and how they interact with different mediums. he talks with such enthusiasm that you can’t help but smile, his passion contagious.

“pick a few,” he says, gesturing to the rows of canvases. “you’re going to need a variety if you want to keep experimenting.”

you nod, feeling a sense of freedom in the choice. as you select your canvases, jay hovers nearby, occasionally offering suggestions but mostly watching with a quiet intensity that makes your skin prickle. you wonder what he’s thinking, whether he’s just as aware of the subtle tension that’s been growing between you over the weeks.

the third shop is more modern, filled with high-end supplies—gorgeous palettes of oil paints in jewel tones, sleek metal easels, and handcrafted wooden boxes for storing brushes. it’s clear jay has saved the best for last, and as you wander the aisles together, he shows you some of his favourites, his voice soft and reverent as he talks about the craftsmanship behind each item.

“i’ve always wanted one of these,” you say, running your fingers over a beautiful wooden palette, its smooth surface gleaming under the soft light. “it’s almost too nice to use.”

jay grins, standing beside you as he watches you admire it. “you should get it,” he says, his voice warm. “every artist needs something that feels special, something that inspires them to create.”

his words send a shiver through you, and you glance at him, the closeness between you suddenly palpable. the quiet intimacy of the moment, standing together in the softly lit store, surrounded by the tools of your shared passion, feels heavy with something unspoken. you nod, slipping the palette into your basket, trying to shake the fluttering in your chest.

as you leave the last shop, your arms full of bags and supplies, the sky opens up, releasing a sudden torrent of rain. the drops fall fast and heavy, soaking you within moments. you yelp in surprise, pulling your hood over your head, but it’s no use—you’re drenched almost immediately.

jay laughs, a rich sound that cuts through the noise of the rain. “looks like we’re in for it!” he shouts over the downpour, his hair already dripping wet as he holds a hand out to catch the rain.

you can’t help but laugh, your spirits lifting despite the sudden storm. the two of you stand in the rain for a moment, looking at each other, before jay suddenly grabs your hand.

“come on!” he says, pulling you into a run.

you follow him, laughing breathlessly as you race through the rain-soaked streets, splashing through puddles and dodging other passersby who huddle under umbrellas and awnings. the bags of art supplies jostle against your sides, but you barely notice, too caught up in the exhilaration of running with him through the storm.

the rain comes down harder, drenching you completely, your clothes clinging to your body and your hair sticking to your face. but none of it matters—you’re both laughing, the world around you a blur as you sprint through the narrow streets, your hand still held tightly in his.

jay pulls you into a narrow alleyway, ducking under a stone archway for shelter. it’s barely enough to shield you from the rain, but you’re both out of breath, giggling uncontrollably as you lean against the cold stone walls.

you’re both soaked, your clothes dripping water onto the ground, but the warmth between you is undeniable. jay’s hair is plastered to his forehead, droplets sliding down his face as he looks at you, his chest rising and falling with each breath.

you can feel the heat radiating from his body, even through the dampness of your clothes. you’re pressed so close to him in the narrow space that you can feel the tension building, the awareness of every inch of space between you—or rather, the lack of it.

jay’s laughter fades as his eyes meet yours, and for a moment, the air between you shifts. his gaze softens, his usual playful demeanour replaced by something more serious, more intense. you’re both still, the rain beating down around you, but inside this tiny archway, it feels like time has slowed.

he reaches up, his fingers brushing a strand of wet hair from your face, and the simple gesture sends a shiver down your spine. his hand lingers by your cheek, and you can feel the warmth of his touch even through the coolness of the rain.

for a moment, neither of you say anything, the space between you heavy with everything that’s gone unsaid. you can feel your heart racing, your breath catching in your throat as his eyes drop to your lips for just a second, but it’s enough to make your pulse quicken.

then, without thinking, without hesitation, he leans in.

the kiss is slow at first—tentative, as though he’s testing the waters. his lips brush against yours softly, almost delicately, and for a moment, it feels like the world stops. the rain, the city, everything fades away, and all that exists is the warmth of his mouth on yours, the softness of his kiss.

your heart stutters, your body frozen for a split second before you kiss him back, your hands finding their way to his chest. the kiss deepens, and the tension that’s been building between you for weeks unravels in a rush of heat and longing. his hands slide to your waist, pulling you closer, and you respond in kind, pressing into him as though you can’t get close enough.

the rain falls around you, forgotten, as you lose yourself in the kiss. there’s a desperation to it, like neither of you knows when—or if—you’ll ever get this chance again. it’s intoxicating, overwhelming, and everything you’ve been holding back spills out in that single kiss.

when you finally pull away, breathless, jay rests his forehead against yours, his hands still holding you close as though he’s afraid to let go. you’re both panting, your chest heaving as you try to catch your breath, but you can’t seem to move, can’t seem to break the connection between you.

the kiss lingers in the air, an invisible thread still tying you to jay even as the rain continues to fall. his forehead rests against yours, his breath shallow and quick, matching the erratic rhythm of your heart. for a moment, everything feels right, the world outside forgotten, the storm cocooning you in your own little universe.

but then something shifts. you feel it in the way his grip on your waist tightens briefly before loosening, in the way his eyes darken, filled with a sorrow that cuts through the joy of the moment.

he pulls back, just a fraction, enough to put space between you but not enough to break the connection entirely. his gaze drops to the ground, as though he can’t bear to meet your eyes.

“we… we can’t,” jay whispers, his voice heavy with regret.

the words hit you like cold water, the warmth of the kiss suddenly feeling distant. “what do you mean?” your voice is soft, confused, almost pleading. you take a step closer, unwilling to let him slip away. “jay, what are you saying?”

he sighs, running a hand through his damp hair, his shoulders tense. “you know what i mean,” he says quietly. “you’re a princess. you belong to a world of crowns and thrones, and i… i’m just your art teacher.”

you shake your head, the rain beginning to soak through your clothes, but you hardly notice. “i don’t care about that! my parents wouldn’t either. jay, this—this connection we have, it’s real. you can’t just pretend it isn’t.”

his eyes finally meet yours, and for a moment, you see the same longing reflected in them. but then he looks away again, his jaw tightening. “maybe your parents wouldn’t care, but i do. i won’t let you throw away your life for me. you have responsibilities, a future. i can’t be the reason you turn your back on all of that.”

your heart aches at his words, at the way he’s trying to protect you even as it tears you both apart. you reach for his hand, holding it tightly. “you’re not asking me to give anything up. i’m telling you what i want. you. you’re what i want, jay.”

he looks at your hand in his, and for a second, he doesn’t move, as though he’s frozen between what he wants and what he believes is right. “you don’t understand,” he says quietly. “you’re used to a life of luxury. i can’t give you that. i won’t let you settle for less.”

the frustration bubbles up inside you, mixing with the hurt. “it’s not about that. it never was. do you really think any of that matters to me if i’m not happy?”

jay’s gaze softens, but the doubt lingers in his eyes, a shadow of the barriers between you. “i need time,” he says, his voice pained. “i need to think about this.”

you bite your lip, the tears you’ve been holding back threatening to spill. “take all the time you need. just… don’t take too long. please.”

he nods, his face filled with a mix of guilt and sorrow. then, like the gentleman he is, he steps closer, offering you his arm. “let me take you home,” he says softly, his voice carrying a tenderness that only deepens the ache in your chest.

the walk back to the palace is quiet, both of you wrapped in your own thoughts, the sound of the rain the only noise between you. his arm around yours feels protective, grounding, but it’s bittersweet knowing that he’s still holding a part of himself back.

when you finally reach the palace gates, jay pauses, turning to face you. the light from the lanterns casts a soft glow over his features, and for a moment, it feels like time stands still.

“goodnight, princess,” he says, his voice gentle, though there’s an unmistakable distance in his tone now.

you look up at him, wanting to say something—anything—to make him stay, to convince him that this is worth fighting for. but the words stick in your throat. instead, you nod, forcing a small smile despite the heaviness in your heart.

“goodnight, jay.”

he gives you a final, lingering glance before turning and walking away, the rain continuing to fall as his figure disappears into the night. you stand there for a long time, watching him go, your heart aching with every step he takes.

as you finally turn and walk inside, the warmth of the palace feels stifling compared to the cool rain outside. the emptiness left in jay’s wake presses down on you, and the realisation that you might not see him again for a while hits you like a blow.

in the days that follow, the quiet is suffocating. you try to fill your time with painting, with other lessons and royal duties, but nothing seems to lift the weight pressing on your chest. each moment stretches on, and the palace, usually filled with the comfort of familiarity, now feels hollow without him.

your parents notice your change in mood but don’t pry, their knowing glances suggesting they’re aware that something more than art is on your mind. still, you keep jay’s name on the tip of your tongue, unable to speak it without feeling the ache of uncertainty.

and so, you wait. you wait for a letter, for a word from him—anything to tell you that he hasn’t let go, that he’s still thinking about you as much as you are about him. but with each passing day, the silence only grows louder, the doubt harder to ignore.

what if he doesn’t come back? what if he decides you aren’t worth the risk?

the thought makes your heart tighten painfully. you sit in your art studio, staring at an unfinished painting, the brush limp in your hand, as you wonder if jay is fighting the same battle within himself.

it feels like an eternity has passed since that rainy day, since that kiss that felt like the world shifted. and now, all you can do is hope that he finds his way back to you before it’s too late.

the days stretch long and quiet after that night in the rain, and the distance between you and jay feels more unbearable with each passing moment. you keep replaying his words, the look in his eyes, the way he had kissed you—like he wanted to hold on forever but didn’t know if he should.

you throw yourself into your art, hoping the colours and brushstrokes will distract you from the weight of his absence. but the empty space he’s left behind is hard to ignore, especially as you finish the final piece you’d been working on for weeks—a vibrant painting of a parisian street, your future awaiting you there.

paris. the word itself sounds like a dream. the trip is supposed to happen soon—your long-awaited opportunity to study art in the heart of a city known for its creativity and beauty. it’s everything you’ve worked toward, yet now the thought of leaving without jay feels hollow.

what was once the pinnacle of your aspirations now feels incomplete. you had imagined this adventure, this new chapter of your life, and pictured jay being a part of it. but now, with his silence lingering between you, you’re uncertain of whether he’ll still be there when it begins.

sitting at your desk, you stare down at the blank parchment, the quill hovering in your hand. you haven’t spoken to jay since he walked away that night, but you can’t bear to leave for paris without reaching out, without giving him one last chance to understand how much he means to you.

the words come slowly at first, but then they start to pour out, your emotions and thoughts spilling onto the page.

dear jay, it feels strange writing to you after all this time—after all the moments we shared that now seem so far away. i’ve been thinking about what you said that night, about how we come from different worlds, about the future you think i deserve. but you need to know that none of it matters to me if you’re not a part of it. i’ve wanted this trip to paris for as long as i can remember, to learn from the best, to immerse myself in art and culture. it’s something i’ve dreamed about for years. and yet, now, as the day of my departure gets closer, all i can think about is you. i don’t want to go to paris and leave you behind, wondering what could have been. you’re as much a part of my passion for art as any paintbrush or canvas. you’ve shown me new ways to see the world, to express myself, and i’ll always be grateful for that. but more than that, you’ve become someone i can’t imagine my life without. i know you think i’m giving up too much, that i’m risking my future. but my future isn’t just about royal duties or titles. it’s about choosing the life i want—and i choose you, jay. i wish you could see that. paris is calling, but so are you. i can only hope that when you think of me, it’s with the same longing that fills every moment of my days without you. i hope that when you think of our time together, you’ll realise that this isn’t about status or sacrifice—it’s about love. i’ll be leaving soon after my birthday, but before i go, i need to know: will you come with me? or will i have to leave you behind? with love, [your name]

after sealing the letter, your heart is heavy with both hope and fear. you send it to jay, knowing that the next move is his. each day that passes without a response stretches the wait longer, the ache of uncertainty growing.

you try to stay busy with preparations for your trip, packing supplies and finishing your artwork. your parents notice the change in you—the excitement for paris dimmed by something you can’t quite bring yourself to share with them yet. they ask if you’re nervous, if you’re ready for the adventure, and you smile, telling them what they want to hear. but deep down, all you want is to hear from jay.

paris is just around the corner, but so is the decision you’re waiting for—the choice that could change everything.

the ballroom is a swirl of colour and laughter, filled with nobles, artists, and well-wishers all gathered to celebrate your birthday. the chandeliers above glitter like stars, casting a golden glow over the elegant space, and the music weaves through the conversations like a living thing, light and joyous. your parents spared no expense for this occasion, not only to mark your birthday but also to celebrate the upcoming adventure to paris.

it’s your birthday ball, but your mind is elsewhere, your heart tugged toward a memory that refuses to leave. you stand in front of your painting, the centrepiece of the night, hanging proudly on display for all to see. nobles and artists alike gather around it, marvelling at the vivid colours and delicate brushstrokes. you nod and smile politely as they offer praise, but inside, your thoughts are distant, wandering to a day not long ago when everything felt simpler.

the painting is of the marketplace—a bustling, lively scene full of energy and warmth. it’s the day you and jay had gone shopping together for art supplies, the day you let yourselves be ordinary, blending in with the crowds. the colours are bright and rich, capturing the vibrant chaos of the market: vendors calling out, the smell of freshly baked bread, the sound of coins clinking and people bartering for goods. in the corner of the canvas, nestled in the shadows of an alley, is a small, quiet space. it’s where you and jay had shared a moment away from the crowd, a stolen minute of peace amidst the noise, where the world had seemed to slow just for the two of you.

every brushstroke is infused with that memory—the warmth of the sun on your skin, the soft brush of his hand as he reached for yours, the unspoken connection that had blossomed between you in that hidden corner of the market. it was a day that felt like freedom, a glimpse of something more, something forbidden but undeniably real.

“your highness, it’s simply breathtaking,” someone says beside you, pulling you momentarily back to the present. a noblewoman in an exquisite gown stands at your side, her eyes wide with admiration as she gazes at the painting. “the light, the detail… it feels as though i’m standing there in the market myself.”

you nod and smile, offering a polite thank you, but her words barely register. all you can think about is him.

the weight of his absence has been heavy, pulling at your heart with every passing day, each one more difficult than the last. and now, on the night of your birthday, as you prepare to embark on a new chapter, all you can think about is the chapter you left unfinished.

you glance at the painting again, tracing the familiar lines of the marketplace, the hidden alley. that was the moment you knew there was something between you and jay, something more than just student and teacher, more than just friendship. it was the moment you allowed yourself to hope. but now, standing here alone, you wonder if that hope was misplaced.

and then, through the hum of voices and the soft strains of music, you hear it—a voice that sends a jolt through your entire body.

“you captured it perfectly.”

the sound of his voice makes the air around you seem to freeze. your heart skips a beat, your breath catching in your throat. slowly, you turn toward the source, and there he is—jay, standing just a few steps away, his eyes locked on the painting, his expression a mixture of awe and something deeper, something raw.

for a moment, you’re not sure if you’re dreaming. after weeks of waiting, of wondering, here he is, standing before you, his presence filling the space that had felt so empty without him. he looks different tonight—still himself, but dressed in a way that blends with the formality of the event. yet, there’s something in his posture, in the way his dark eyes flicker between you and the painting, that betrays the turmoil he’s been carrying.

“jay,” you whisper, your voice barely audible. but he hears you, as he always does.

he takes a step closer, his gaze shifting to meet yours, and for a moment, the world around you disappears. the ballroom, the guests, the music—it all fades into the background, leaving only the two of you in this fragile, suspended moment.

his eyes soften as they take you in, and there’s a vulnerability in his expression that you hadn’t seen before, something that makes your heart ache even more. “you remembered,” he says quietly, gesturing toward the painting. “the marketplace. that day.”

you nod, your throat tightening. “how could i forget? it was…” you pause, searching for the right words, but nothing seems adequate. “it was perfect.”

jay’s gaze lingers on the painting, as though seeing the memory play out all over again. his lips part, but no words come. instead, he takes another step toward you, his presence so close now that you can feel the pull between you—the unspoken tension that had simmered just beneath the surface for so long.

“i’ve been thinking about that day,” he says, his voice low and rough. “about us.”

your heart hammers in your chest. “and?”

his eyes flicker with a mix of emotions—regret, longing, and something you can’t quite place. “i thought i could stay away. that it would be easier, safer, for both of us. but i couldn’t.” his voice wavers, just slightly, and the vulnerability in it makes your pulse race. “not tonight.”

you swallow, your chest tight with the weight of everything left unsaid. the distance between you feels unbearably small, but also impossibly vast. he’s here. after all this time, he’s finally here. but the question still lingers, heavy in the air between you: what happens now?

just as you open your mouth to speak, to ask the questions that have been burning inside you for weeks, jay steps closer, his eyes locked on yours. the noise of the ballroom fades even further into the background, until all that’s left is him. and in that moment, with his gaze so full of emotion, you know that nothing has been forgotten. every stolen glance, every brush of hands, every whispered word—it’s all still there, between you, as real and undeniable as ever.

the night may be full of celebrations, but the only thing that matters is this: jay is here, and nothing will ever be the same again.

the grand ballroom continues to pulse with life around you, but the world feels quiet in the cocoon of jay’s presence. you haven’t even fully processed the fact that he’s here, standing in front of you after weeks of silence. his eyes—deep and full of an emotion you’ve longed to see—are fixed on you, as though he’s drinking in the sight of you, afraid to blink in case you disappear.

the weight of his absence, the unanswered letter, the uncertainty—it all rushes to the surface, but you force yourself to stay grounded in the moment. you open your mouth to speak, to ask the questions burning in your chest, but before you can, jay takes a step closer.

“you never stopped painting,” he says quietly, nodding toward the marketplace painting, his voice filled with a mix of awe and relief. “you’ve grown even more since i left.”

his words are a gentle balm to the ache in your heart, but they only skim the surface of what you truly want to know. you swallow hard, the emotions too thick in your throat to speak.

your breath hitches. “why didn’t you respond to my letter, jay?”

there’s a beat of silence before he looks away, the rawness of his feelings flickering across his face. “because i didn’t know if i was strong enough to walk away again,” he admits. “and i wasn’t sure if i could give you the life you deserve.”

“after everything we’ve been through, you still think i care about that?” you whisper, your voice trembling with the weight of all the unspoken words. “i just wanted you, jay. that’s all i’ve ever wanted.”

his jaw tightens, and he takes another step forward, closing the distance between you until his presence is overwhelming. “i couldn’t respond, because i knew that if i did, i wouldn’t be able to stop myself from coming back to you. and once i did, i’d never want to leave. but you… you have paris, you have a future.”

“and i want you to be part of that future,” you say, your voice stronger now. “i’ve had weeks to think about this, jay. i’m leaving soon, and i need to know where we stand before i go. please, just tell me how you feel.”

jay’s eyes flash with a storm of emotions—hesitation, fear, and something deeper, something that has been bubbling just beneath the surface. he reaches out slowly, his fingers brushing yours, the touch sending warmth rushing up your arm. “i’m terrified,” he admits in a voice so soft it makes your heart ache. “i’ve never felt like this about anyone before, and i don’t want to ruin it.”

“you won’t,” you say, stepping closer until your hands are fully entwined, your pulse quickening as his warmth floods your senses. “i don’t care about titles, status, or what anyone else thinks. you make me feel alive, jay. that’s all i need.”

his grip tightens on your hand, and for a moment, it seems like he’s grappling with the depth of what you’re offering. his breath comes in shallow, uneven bursts, as though he’s trying to hold himself together.

“i don’t want you to sacrifice everything for me,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. “you’re a princess, destined for greatness, for a life most people can only dream of. i’m just... a man who paints.”

you step even closer, until there’s barely any space between you. “and that’s enough for me. more than enough.”

for a split second, he looks at you as though he can’t believe you’re real. but then, before you can say anything more, he steps forward, pulling you into his arms in one swift motion. the warmth of his body against yours is overwhelming, but in the best way, and as his arms wrap around you, holding you tightly, you feel the tension that’s been building between you melt away.

“i’m so sorry,” he whispers, his breath warm against your ear as he holds you close. “for leaving. for making you wait.”

you close your eyes, leaning into him, your heart swelling with the relief of finally having him here. “you’re here now,” you murmur against his shoulder. “that’s all that matters.”

he pulls back just enough to look at you, his hands resting gently on your arms as his dark eyes meet yours. and in them, you see everything—the love he’s been holding back, the fear, the hope. “i love you,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. “i’ve loved you since the first day we met, and i’ve been fighting it ever since. but i don’t want to fight it anymore.”

your heart swells at his words, the weight of them settling deep in your chest. “i love you, too,” you whisper, feeling a rush of warmth spread through you as you say the words out loud for the first time. “i always have.”

the smile that spreads across jay’s face is like sunlight breaking through clouds, and before you know it, he’s lifting you off the ground, spinning you around in a burst of joy and laughter. the world around you spins with him, but you don’t care—because for the first time in what feels like forever, everything is right. everything is exactly how it’s supposed to be.

when he finally sets you back down, your feet touching the ground once more, his hands stay on your waist, grounding you in the moment. his eyes, full of love and warmth, search yours, and for a second, neither of you speak. you don’t need to. the silence is filled with everything you’ve both been waiting for.

“i want to be with you,” he says softly, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. “but i don’t want you to lose yourself for me.”

you smile, shaking your head. “i’m not losing anything. i’m gaining everything i’ve ever wanted.”

jay’s hand finds yours, his thumb brushing over your knuckles as he looks at you, his gaze full of the future. “paris,” he says, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “you’re still going?”

you nod, your heart racing at the thought of what’s to come. “i am. and i want you to come with me.”

he hesitates, just for a moment, as though the reality of what you’re asking is still sinking in. but then, his smile grows, and he nods, his grip on your hand tightening just slightly. “i’ll come with you. we’ll go together.”

your heart leaps at his words, the hope you’d been holding onto finally blossoming into something real. paris—together. it’s everything you’d dreamed of, everything you hadn’t dared to believe could happen. but now, standing here with jay, it’s all within reach.

“we’ll see the world,” he says, his voice soft but filled with excitement. “we’ll paint, we’ll live, we’ll—”

“we’ll be happy,” you finish for him, your smile widening as you lean into his touch.

he nods, his forehead resting gently against yours. “yes. we’ll be happy.”

and in that moment, as the ballroom buzzes with life around you, as the painting of your shared memory hangs on the wall behind you, you know it’s true. you and jay—together, free, and full of love. the world is yours, waiting to be explored. and with him by your side, you know that this is only the beginning.

as you stand there, wrapped in each other’s arms, the future stretches out before you like a blank canvas, waiting for you to fill it with all the colours of your love, your passion, and the adventures you’ll share. together, you’ll paint a life full of beauty, one brushstroke at a time.

and as the night fades and the dawn of a new chapter begins, you know—this is your happily ever after.

𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 ©𝗴𝘆𝘂𝘂𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗿𝘆𝘆 on Tumblr

˚ · .𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗱

taglist: @punchbug9-blog @firstclassjaylee @capri-cuntz @addictedtohobi @jaysfavoritegirl @yuniesluv @isa942572 @academiq @missychief1404 //the ones in bold could not be tagged for some reason. im so sorry guys tumblr is acting up :(

[bee-the-loser-recs]

~~~☼ My Vernon One-shot Fic Recs ☼~~~

𖤓 You get me so high By @cheolhub 6.2k, college au, best friends to lovers, idiots in love, smut, fluff, weed, recreational marijuana, humour

𖤓 Every page is empty By @neonun-au 3.3k, college au, writer reader, friends to lovers, project on love, realisations, fluff, really cute, sharing their feelings together, romance

𖤓 My sweatshirt By @luvidzy 1.6k, idol au, boyfriend Vernon, tired reader, stealing partner's hoodies, fluff, cuties

𖤓 Prove it By @viastro 3.6k, college au, fuckboy Vernon (sort of), reader's best friend is his cousin, fluff, making him work for a date

𖤓 They were pretty By @viastro 2.1k, soulmate au, colour is only seen with soulmates, seeing colours for the first time, fluff, meet cute

𖤓 Say you love me (I love you) By @viastro 5.7k, college au, reader wants to get Vernon to say I love you, lovers, fluff, cuties, sassy response at the end

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[cirqosmos]

My Little Angel

2023 | 18+ | ONESHOT | PARK SUNGHOON × READER

WARNING yandere fallen angel!sunghoon, noncon smut, pure filth. 🗿 minors don't interact but i'm not your mama that are able to supervise you, you have your own brain so consume content responsibly.

WORD COUNT 1.3k

AUTHOR'S NOTE just a small practice of ehem yk, cuz i don't write smut rlly and this is my second smut story obv, since route 1 has me coughing sm. so it might be rlly bad. plus sunghoon's hair is just giving me sm feels 🗿

SUNGHOON WOULD NEVER LET YOU GO, you who were his pretty little angel. One that had brought him to complete euphoria and at the same time to his demise.

The first time he laid his eyes on you was when the priests summons spiritual angels for a holy ritual, and you were amongst the young nuns presented. Your existence took his breathe away that it cause one sinful thought arising within him.

That alone had him shaking his head in pure agony, trying to shake those thoughts away but strangely, those sinful thoughts only multiplies, slowly devouring his innocence and turning his prayers to God into prayers for you.

His mind no longer whispers the name of God but rather consumed by your name.

For a couple of months, he watches over you with his presence invisible, that the nun with a great psychic ability beside you one day asked if you were aware that you had a guardian angel remaining by your side, and that your guardian angel's energy wasn't the colour of light but rather of darkness.

That ripped your peace of mind into ashes, praying to the God for protection, answers of what has fall upon you, and so on.

Sunghoon saw it all, only remaining silent. Sure, he had fallen in love with you but he chose to stay behind the curtains, but one day when a man came into the frame—it broke him to pieces, and another type of sin arises in him; greed and desire for a human blood.

It shook you to your core when an angel who you often imagine as supreme beings with the light enveloping their magnificent wings—were soaking in crimson blood.

That was the first time he showed himself before you, voicing out a rather simple sentence. "I'll return again."

Even when you dared to break off the rules he created for you and escape through the white door that was supposed to protect you from the outside world, just like he said.

But you didn't listen to him, so now you had to pay the price because you were a bad girl—ruining his image of you being his obedient angel.

Sunghoon pushes you off to the bed with his enormous strength. As an angel, he's far more stronger than you are and now that he had fallen to the underworld, strangely he gained more power and strength—feeding on dark energies from the underworld creatures.

And the day he turned into a fallen angel with his once glowing white wings drenching in pitch black ink, was also the day he took you away from the church, stripping your right of freedom.

Locking you inside this room bathed in silk red, where behind those doors were engulfed with dark creatures you were beyond frightened to lay your eyes upon. But what you didn't knew was how they were afraid of you, who Sunghoon absolutely adores. That's why it had them at the edge of their life when your existence was nowhere to be found in the room.

Yet, it was not difficult for Sunghoon to capture you back but oh did it irritates him beyond his expectation. He expected you to be good and obedient just like when he saw you for the first time.

But this, such an atrocious act for him that he desires to give you a suitable punishment.

Your small and petite figure aroused him even more, adding the fact that you're nervous and writhing like a prey waiting to be devoured.

You knew there was no escaping, not when the windows and doors were locked, completely sealing you from any escape possible, not when this boy in front of you were much stronger than you are.

You are truly doomed.

He climbs on top of you and grips both your wrists on the mattress amidst your protests and cries, mouth trembling as the hot breathe of his mouth slides down to your neck, and licks it with his tongue.

"I've been too good to you, love. I guess it's only wise I take what's mine now," his finger slids down to your tummy, in which you immediately tighten your thighs together but he was quick to put his hand in between, using his strength to open your legs again.

And in a split moment, his hand cupped your private part making you panic along with a hint of arousal hitting your core.

"I really wanna make love with you since the first time I saw you.." Sunghoon growls, pressing his finger inside your clit making your back arched in pleasure.

You don't want this. You really don't want this.

"To feel what it's like it to be inside you.."

You pressed your lips tight, tears threatening to come out from your eyes as he pressed his body closer to yours, the warmth of him engulfing your entire body.

"Hear your sweet little sounds.."

His eyes filled with nothing but love and lust.

"Make you cum and all.."

The desire to eat you raw and stain your innocence with his hands and mouth were driving him utterly insane that his eyes and hands rattled immensely.

"Because of what I'm about to do to you, is driving me crazy right now, love." Sunghoon presses a soft kiss on your forehead, his lips brushing down your ears as he uttered another dirty words that sent shivers down your spine. "You would be so cute under me, so fucking innocent and yet so fucking dirty just because of me."

"But I was too kind, too lenient to let you do what you want. It's my fault you turn out so bratty like this.." he softly murmurs, as his fingers dig even deeper and deeper into your clothed clit.

"I should teach you now then, train you on how to be my sweet little good girl.." Sunghoon breathe out, "My little angel."

"N-no.. I'm s-sorry!" You choked on your tears, begging for this to just be a dream.

"Shh.. then show me how sorry you are while I'm fucking you raw."

He pulled your skirt down but you tried to stop it, yet he was stronger and faster and now the cold air hits your bare thighs. His hands slapped your arm away, gripping it against the mattress as he kissed your neck and licked it.

He buried his knee between your legs and his other hands cupped your breast making you let out a tiny moan — a sweet melody to his ears. His fingers made its way under your shirt, giving you goosebumps as his hand travelled to your bare tummy up to your breast, then he pinched your nipples and played with it.

You could only cry, and take what he's giving you. The more you resist, the more he gets aroused. The bed creaking, blankets wrinkling, and wet spots forming on your panties as you felt his hard and growing bulge against your core.

You were getting a weird delicious feeling under your clit and you hate it that you like it.

In a split moment, he gets rid of your shirt, exposing your breast and all. You tried to cover yourself but he growled, eyes narrowing as his hands harshly prevented you from doing so.

"So fucking cute.." he breathes against your ear, his hands forming circular patterns on your bare back.

He licks your neck with his tongue then the edge of teeth sank just below your shoulder, marking you as his as blood trickle down to your bare chest, a mixture of arousal and pain engulfed your entire body as he pushes himself deeper and closer to you.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

All you can think of was to get him to stop but the way your body reacts to his sinful touches was saying a different thing.

The clock hanging on the wall across the room were the only thing you were left to observe as he devours your body with his lips and tongue, the edges of his fingers and hands travelling it's way every edge of your skin without your consent.

1:05am

It has been nearly two hours since he was forcing himself on you, your clothes scattered around the floor with his and yet it doesn't look like it's gonna end anytime soon.

Your ears catches the sound of a belt unbuckling on its own and your tired teary eyes glanced towards the source of the noise, your breath hitched nervously as he unzipped his pants, his face were wild flushed and lips swollen with the amount of contact he forced against you and his soft hair gone into a wild mess, his toned body having bead of sweat on his neck streaming down to his torso.

He slowly puts his cock inside you making your back arched in both arousal and pain, your lower part felt so full, getting filled with wet and girth.

Then he starts to thrusts in you—loud, lewd and dirty slaps echoing through the room. The smell of sex strongly lingering in the air, beads of sweats forming on your forehead as your hands gripped his shoulders, nails digging in his skin bound to form fresh red crescent marks that will serve as a form of achievement for him tomorrow when he sees it in the mirror.

Sunghoon's fucked up expression contorts even wilder as he shuts his eyes and his mouth hangs low and his head throws back, leaning back down again to kisses you roughly, tongue meets tongue, lewd sound forming along with it — everything was incredibly wet and dirty.

His hand gripping your left thigh up to let himself sink even deeper inside you, you could feel every part of him inside your body, it was as if you were being filled with so much pleasure and pain at the same time. Your toes curling up in the air, and you could feel wet liquid dripping down to your wet hole.

Soon you couldn't suppressed your moans even though you bit your lips, he chuckled at how cute you are under him. "Fucking cute.. my little angel."

You felt a knot forming under your stomach and he realizes you were coming, your knees weak and a burning arousal all over your body as he keeps thrusting in you, his cock hitting all the sweet spots inside you.

Then he bends down, taking your neck with his hands as he deeply kisses you as you experienced your first orgasm, knees vibrating in pleasure while his tongue plays with yours.

Hot and wet liquids trickling down to your thighs, seeing it gave him satisfaction that he was able to pleasure you and also be the first man to ever take your innocence away just like when you stripped the innocence of his mind away.

「 © talesofyuan on tumblr 2023 」 all rights reserved. do not copy or post without permission.

[unsoundedcomic]

Whumptober 2024 - 23 - “Forced Choice”

((First part here))

When first the Lady whispered to me of a cache of forgotten wisdom hidden in the heart of Mmatont Anchert, the image of a library had blossomed in my mind's eye: dusty parchments, fat worm-eaten tomes, crumbling scrolls crowding each other for space on warped and collapsing shelves.

What I had not envisioned was what Rahm and I found when our gruff guide opened the Living Wood door.

A breeze colder than ice assailed us from a chamber of unbroken blackness. I could see no ceiling and see no walls; only a rectangle of floor smeared golden before our feet by the light of the Soud's torch. I stepped into it. My boots crunched over the fragile granules of ancient insect carapaces and layers and layers of… bird droppings?

The door closed behind us suddenly - very theatrical, pissmop! - and Rahm and I were in the dark.

"A moment, a moment," he muttered. I imagined him smacking his lighter against the heel of his hand and yes, it cracked suddenly to life with a muted blue burst. Despite the chill, Rahm's face was shiny with sweat, eyes wide, nostrils flared. I imagine my expression was similar, though more handsome of course.

"It stinks like Juste," I whispered.

"Birds."

Aye. Birds. I hooked his elbow with my own and we moved deeper into the room. Rahm thrust the wee pymaric light before us, but it made few inroads through the ink: no walls, no structural planes to catch the glow and reveal themselves; only an empty void where we had expected so much.

"I hope that boy is all right," Rahm said suddenly. I yelped a nervous laugh - I could not help it! - and he tensed against my arm.

"You know they have killed him. Let it go. He was nothing to us. Perhaps he touched children or worse! Licked his fingers at the supper table! Put your mind on why we've come."

My arm was colder and the room a bit blacker when he pulled away from me. "You're an asshole, Bastion. I know where your mind is."

"My mind is fixed firmly upon obtaining the algorhythms needed to chase the pieces of the scattered human soul, I have never hidden this-"

"In order to bring your sister back!" Rahm sounded triumphant, as though he was exposing to the light some long hidden and grimy secret. I always did love my self-righteous friend. And so I hated to scoff at him, but I cannot control my ego when it is in control. Which is often. Daily. Hourly.

"I had to pick SOME deceased subject, Rahm. She is as good as any other. I knew her well, I can identify whatever mind that reconstitutes as either belonging to her, or evidencing too aberrently. Should I have chosen that lovely young soprano who threw herself off the Spire last year, bashing her pretty brains out all over Rue Jonovan? I didn't even know her favourite colour."

Rahm's lips worried over his teeth with unvoiced emotion. I frankly did not give a whore's fart whether he believed me or not. I continued: "You? Your mind? You are after the resurrection of your dead son. And not for the good of us all, not to overcome the gods' crime, not to raise us from the muck that mortality condems us to; you wish it to apologise to your wife and to mend your cracked heart. Well, I think that is a WASTE - a disgraceful WASTE of a spellwright's intellect and a great man's mind!"

A strange expression passed over Rahm's face. For a moment I was fearful he would weep. But that was not quite right. It was sorrow yes, but… why, if I hadn't known better, I would have thought it was sorrow for ME.

What a fool that Rahm Ripa.

"What is here!" he suddenly challenged the emptiness, and wheeled away. He spun about, blue light feebly punching at the black, dust motes wildly bobbing. I saw a single small feather catch, then vanish again. "We were told of this place by Lady Ilganyag, Eldest of the Old! Who heard the First Words spoken and saw the Arbiter Khert take hold!"

No response.

"Try it in Tainish," I suggested. Rahm glowered deeper. Understandble. Dreadful bother to translate and localize verse, you always lose something. One really must learn Continental to enjoy the written works of Gari Fiat at all.

"Look onto the khert," he bade me sharply.

"Ach, very well, but you watch my back while I am vulnerable." I felt the Lady stir in my thoughts but say nothing as I complied. With a steady inhalation, I imagined my breath sweeping the flesh and blood and baggage from my bones; my bones themselves crumbling like ash behind me as I stepped forward through myself, and opened my eyes to the khert-lines.

I stumbled. Rahm caught my arm. A fool, but a friend.

Cutting golden through the blackness, the khert-lines here were thick as hawsers, knotted and twisted around themselves, Aspects and ghosts both sluggishly pulsing through them as though as cold as we were. Phantoms fitfully fluttered in the far, far corners of the room, and still more spiraled against the ceiling far above, skittering blind ghost fingers for some khert-line to follow towards freedom. Feeling Rahm watching me, I dropped my gaze and squinted through the gilded slashes, leading him deeper in.

There. An undefined void against the golden glow of the khert, I saw a Shape. It was a well-known shape to any son of Juste and follower of the Lady. The lines skittered around it, unable to intersect, and the ghosts themselves seemed repulsed. I heard Rahm gasp. A familiar belch of panic gripped my midsection when I tried to return to my fleshly eyes and found them sluggish. Then I steeled myself and with a moment's concerted effort the khert was blinked away, the blackness was returned - burning with no after images, no scintillation of pupils dilating - and I was immediately able to see the blacker black that loomed before us.

Every filament of Silver throughout my body burned hot. The torc at my throat clenched enough to leave me breathless.

In crackling old Tainish, the great Agib asked: "What do these Humans desire."

Oh, what a creature! Imagine a great avian raptor as tall as two men, of ebon plumage and silver razor talons. Now stretch its neck out to thrice the length of its body, give it the beak of a crow, golden human sclera, and irises red as fresh blood.

Rahm gibbered a moment and grabbed his own collar. Then our torcs relaxed, leaving us panting in tandem. Distantly sexy. The bird cocked its head to the side, then level again, then back. It was looking at Rahm's wee lighter. It occurred to me that a creature such as this must not often see such devices. In fact this was a newer design out of the Fluirstadt workshops, using starfly lymph and mirrors, and likely completely revolutionary to such a Mmatont shut-in.

"Give that to Agib," croaked the bird.

Rahm moved to comply and I snatched at his arm. I swear to the dead gods these Crescians do not know how to negotiate.

"We are come for knowledge," I interjected, making the lighter my own. I crushed the shiny bargaining chip to my chest, afraid he'd snatch it. "Lady Ilganyag sent us. She-"

The agib exploded into movement! It drew up on its claws, extended its legs, and shook open its dusty wings! They reached to the ceiling, embers of red burning deep at the roots of the primary quills. "Not the Lady of this Agib!" I think it said. The words were so garbled, the vocabulary so archaic. "Not the Lady of this Agib!"

Inside my head, my own bird was still.

"She wants not a thing from you!" I called, "My compeer and I wish only discourse with a brother scholar, one that I recognise has a savvy appreciation for pymary and pymarics! We have more than this lighter; we have an entire collection with us - in our luggage - of the most modern devices in use today. More than I can say of these savages keeping you prisoner."

"Agib is no prisoner," said the bird. Indeed, I realised suddenly there were no chains on this creature. But what a black, sad room it had been crushed inside. How was this more than a cage of stone, the floor a morass of shit and feathery down-

Oh, shit. SHIT. It had been shitting. Eating. Senet beasts only eat to repair wounds.

"Great injury," the bird lamented, folding its wings. Looking closer, I saw gaps in its primaries, and grievous half-healed fissures in its breast and legs.

"You fought with something," Rahm guessed politely. The monster shifted. All its plumage puffed suddenly, throwing off dust and muck in a choking cloud. It shook, then settled, its down sinking and skirting over its fearsome First Silver talons. Red eyes swung between my face and Rahm's.

"What do these Humans desire?" it asked again, "Humans of Ilganyag. Agib will give you single thing. You will all your precious creations give. Give to Agib all your precious creations. Single thing will Agib give."

Doubt nibbled at me. I knew that these creatures had for all time been the keepers of pymary, for they were the keepers of Old Tainish, the first language of the world. They alone fluently spoke the first words, and had taught them to men when they had thought them ready. If there were secrets, these testy great squawkers would have them. Having had one nesting inside of me since I was a boy, few know them as well.

But this monster did not seem as… put together, as my Lady Ilganyag.

Rahm must have had similar thoughts for he asked: "Who are you, my Lord? How can Humans know what it is Agib… Agib has to give?" It was charming to hear the Crescian try to modulate his Tainish into the old cadence, and use the older words.

"Agib knows," it replied simply.

"Agib knows words," Rahm agreed, "And Agib… knows that words can be spoken to… mirror reality, or to conjure a reality that is not real."

The beast twitched and threw its head, frustrated with the pair of us. I think it had grown accustomed to its solitude. "Humans," it said, "Humans invented the thing that is lying. Ilganyag lines her nest with it! Agib do not lie. Agib love the garden, admire the garden, protect the garden; never is there cause to speak untrue words about the garden!"

"But how can we KNOW?"

The beast puffed its breast and throat again, weaving its long, long neck in a serpent pattern. Rahm extended mollifying hands, his rings flashing in the soft blue light. The sight of them captured the bird's wandering eye. I chuckled. Apparently it loved shinies just as much as my mistress.

Without looking away from the glinting jewellery, in hisses and croaks it recited: "The garden is the garden, paths and stones fixed. Motive and movements determined. The world is in this garden grown and for this garden meant. To change the garden is to KILL the world. Agib alone know how to plant, to prune; the tools are of the Agib and the Agib alone have the tools. To lie is a tool to shape humans; a lie cannot shape the garden. Human tongues never can twist the heart of the garden; only the hearts of humans."

"That was true once," I said, not caring for its arrogance, "But there is a reason Agib have become passing rare, isn't there? Humans have surpassed you and taken your tools-"

The Agib's terrible eyes flared. "AGIB COULD PRUNE YOU NOW, ILGANYAG HUMAN."

Incomprehensible pain opened my insides like a knife. The sun itself burst out of my entrails, up through stomach and esophagus, into my mouth and devoured my eyes, my sinuses, my brain in fire. I have no memory of how I came to be on the ground but then I was, all of reality shrinking away from me - I was in the dark, screaming.

When sensible again, I saw Rahm crouched protectively over me, shielding me, and the wee lighter was in the Agib's beak. All of my friend's rings were gone. Rahm's lips moved but I couldn't hear his words through my groaning, through the echoing pain.

How was I alive? Briefly, I did not wish to be.

Small red hands come from the beast's silver maw. They drew the lighter in, greedily in, clinking against the other jewellery already in its mouth. Then its bill shut, and we were all of us left in the dark. I sobbed like a child in Rahm's arms.

"He did not speak!" I wailed, "He did not speak!"

"What do these humans desire," asked the Agib a final time.

I desired nothing more in that moment than to flee from this room, from this structure, from this island, and away from this monster. It was nothing like Ilganyag. My Lady leads me on a merry dance, but I know the steps. I can sense her moods like a hound turning its snout to the wind. She hates me, but she loves me too. She feels the same about every one of us.

No similar ambivalence from this bird in the black. I knew it cursed us all, and would peck the eyes from a newborn's skull. It had, too. Somehow I knew that it had, countless times. It had been the God of the Soud Vaghal; one of the things on the mountain beneath whose shadow the primitive Tains had cowered and sacrificed.

"I want nothing," I whispered. I'd never said that before. I'd never meant it. I've not meant it since.

Rahm held me tightly as I shuddered, but he was not so defeated. I wonder now what thoughts were behind his eyes as he cast them through the lightless room and towards the unfathomable power of the Agib in the Dark. Did he think of Iori sobbing over their dead boy? The boy himself, dissolving into the khert like sands captured by the surf and pulled into the sea... I wanted to tell him that no answer this creature gave would be answer enough for any of it.

Rahm shifted softly against me and drew his shoulders back to speak. "I wish for us to fly," he said, "Humans cannot shape the garden, but to look down upon it as the Agib does, and behold its splendour, might inspire our tongues towards the same reverence as yours."

A long moment passed. Very faintly I could hear the muffled clinking of metal inside the bird's body, as its tiny hands turned its new treasures over and over. Then:

"A good trade."

---------

A few days later, Rahm and I were back in Tain. Our boat had landed in a little fishing town called Orniers, similar to Lurick and quite as dull. Still, our inn served a fine side of pork and I had ordered a bottle of Omid Red, stewed apples, and a wedge of that soft cheese they make in the west. Rahm swirled his pour in his slim brown fingers, naked now of their pymaric finery but no less elegant.

I'd felt sour and cross since returning. I had left the monster's room to be ill, but Rahm had stayed behind, conferring with the bird and watching it produce formulae of incredible complexity. Now he had a stack of notes and numbers written with impossible precision - they nearly looked pressed with type.

"Did it use its wee mouth hands?" I asked, piling cheese and pork on a slice of good rye, "Did his human moiety ever emerge?"

"I don't know," Rahm answered, expression distant, "It never rose the lights again and I was afraid it would change its mind if I reached for my second lighter. Sitting in the dark for hours, the great monster writing away, my best friend abandoned me for the toilet-- by the Lady, I've only been that afraid for that long a few times. He may have given me new direction for the flying machine, but he may have taken a fucking year off my life."

"Same," I admitted. Rahm narrowed his eyes at me.

"You have many more to spare."

"That is true and it is not my fault. I say if I do not begin taking Ilganyag's suggestions with more caution going forward, it may not matter. Sometimes I cannot tell if she is trying to get me killed, or merely to humble me. Try these apples, there is some rum in them."

My friend moved a few to his plate. He picked at them with little interest. "What does she say about all this?"

"She is amused," I sighed, "But largely silent. I think she and the Agib in the Dark have some history. She wishes me to instruct you to keep its existence a secret."

"I already promised it the same. Senets and their mysteries."

"Aye."

Night was falling. The fishermen had already docked and I could hear the shout and clamour of the lads unloading their catch. We'd stay one more night there, then hire a vliegeng to take us over the mountain in the morning. I thought again about that mountain; the sacred mountain from the top of which, it was said, all pymary had sprung. What had the Tains given the Agib for it? Surely more than light; more than rings.

"I thought you were after the same thing I was," I baited, pouring my friend a second glass.

"So did I."

"Lose your nerve? I say, men accosting senets for information on how to raise their loved ones must be the most tedious trope to them."

Rahm shook his head. "Didn't you listen to it? We can't shape the garden, Bastion. To attempt to… it would kill the world. Death is a part of it. There is no undoing it. But if I finish the flying machine, then… then there was a point to what happened. There was a reason."

He put the wine to his lips. He never said if he cared for the apples.

I'll be honest with you, my dear and patient readers: my friend's answer stuck in my throat like a stone. It sits there still, and galls me when I visit them; when Iori is fingering her gaudy ugly necklace sadly, and Rahm has red eyes after a late night in his workshop. To look for a reason is to look for your own madness. There is no purpose and no reason. We pattern-seeking rodents exhaust ourselves in pursuit of melody within this maelstrom, but there's only noise, and our ringing ears. There is no purpose and no reason, Rahm.

Yet I know he must live each day acting as if there is. That is the thin membrane of sanity we all tread upon so heavily but so carefully, trying not to snap through.

I love my friend Rahm Ripa.

But I will not be put off by the arrogance and tyranny of created things; things that have seen firsthand what the determination of the grown thing can accomplish. Do you remember it tucked away hiding in its own shit? Do you remember? Something brought to great ruin, that Agib in the Dark. Something rent its breast and broke its wings. Was it another senet? Or was it someone wielding our clever pymarics, and our constructed weaponry, and our determination to obtain the tools we need to shape the garden for ourselves?

I don't know for certain, reader; but I ask you to believe with me, sincerely and with your whole heart, that it was one of us.

[tadpolesonalgae]

Can’t Bring Myself To Remember You

Azriel x Third-Oldest-Archeron-Sibling!Reader

a/n: I’ve thought about it a little and I don’t think this adds anything to the story—it really just feels like a trashy filler episode.

word count: 4,173

-Part 14-

——————————————————————————————————————————————

It’s not an unusual occurrence for you to open a book near dusk then pull out of your mental wandering after dark, frequently falling so deep into immersion, so consistently dragged under by lonely curiosity that time itself seems to slip through your soft, tender fingers. A shadow twirls a lock of hair about, a gentle approach so you know he’s there.

Even when his steps don’t subconsciously take on that soundless whisper, it was too often you’d startle at the sound of his voice, almost strangely so, spun around looking slightly flustered. Azriel had always assumed it a side effect of being stolen from your home all that time ago, being thrown about in the ocean of your life, only now beginning to settle back into relative calm.

You turn now, meeting his soft hazel eyes, shadowed by lovely lashes and defined by a strong brow. A mouth that appears so soft your heart aches at the faintly curved edges, appearing so warm and inviting. The steady certainty about the way he moves, so calmly assured of each step, unrushed but quietly determined, driven forward relentlessly by his unfaltering loyalty, the dedication to helping those under his brother’s rule.

A smile pulls your mouth apart, surely gleaming in your eyes, warming your cheeks as you meet his gaze. “What a surprise to see you here,” you say, closing the book silently, balancing the thick and heavy edge on your hip, the leather of its wrapping weighing comfortably into your waist. “Looking for something?”

He smiles, pushing off from the bookcase he’d been leaning against, dark hair flopping over his brow, as soft as silk and looking as warm as fur. How lovely it would be to run your fingers through, gently playing with it like how you would do when you were younger, sat before an open fire in a wobbly line, crafting intricate patterns with your sisters.

“I’ve found it now,” he replies, amusement written clearly across his features, more open than usual, your pulse increasing. His eyes drop away from yours, landing on the book at your hip, nodding to it with a faint smile. “What have you gotten your hands on this time?”

You reciprocate the expression with a little more enthusiasm, almost beaming as you shift the volume to present the cover to him. “It was tucked near the back here,” you explain, eyes darting to the shelf you’d been stood before. “It looked a little forgotten so I had to move some of the others around to get to it. It’s a book on botany, and the different plants that can be found throughout the courts. It’s amazing how such a range can be contained to such a small land mass given the shift in climates.”

His eyes twinkle, and your heart flutters in response, smile broadening a little. “Were there many books in your first home, or did your curiosity come from seeing your father’s study?” He asks, watching you calmly, gaze skating over the beautifully crafted cover of the book appreciatively. “There weren’t as many as there are here, but there were a few I could get my hands on,” you answer honestly. “Elain and I used to flip through the pages to look at the illustrations when we were younger, though they were mostly done in ink so only black and white. Sometimes when we found ones with colour in—there were some wonderful ones. I mean, really so full of colour and shimmery paints they really looked from another world—but we would fold the corners over at the top to show to Feyre later. Then sometimes they’d have diagrams with names underneath that we didn’t yet know how to pronounce, so would fold the corners over at the bottom to ask Nesta later since our mother wouldn’t want to be disturbed. Then later because she wasn’t there.” You come to a stop, lips drawing themselves into a thin line.

“Do you miss her?” He asks quietly, those shadows of his rolling like mist from his back, weighing to the floor to cover the boards in an inky black fog. “I…it’s complicated,” you answer, head dipping as you pull the volume back to your torso, as if it will act as a shield against the complex emotions you have no idea how to articulate. “You have plenty of time to figure it out—should you wish to,” he says gently, and you peer up at him, heart fluttering at the warmth in his eyes. The faint softening at the edges of his wonderful mouth.

You remember to respond, dipping your head in a subdued nod. Tongue swiping over your lips. “Is your…I mean, your mother…?” He blinks those lovely hazel eyes, so filled with swirling colour, and you inwardly cringe, seeing how he shifts to stand more upright, posture more rigid. That sweet curve of his mouth replaced by a polite smile, one he probably knows he should give to keep anyone from feeling bad. “Alive, yes,” he answers, his tone not inviting anymore questions, without being clipped.

Lips pursing into an awkward line, your gaze drops down to the book, to your feet, nodding in confirmation. “I…I’m happy for you,” you say quietly, hoping it’s the right thing and she isn’t a terrible woman. Female. That would be quite awful, if she turned out to be.

Azriel hums lowly, and your throat rolls, toes curling a bit in your shoes. You inhale, managing to look in his vague direction, “how was your day?” It comes out much more muted than you had intended, heat spreading throughout your features as you again dip your head, felled with embarrassment. A moment of silence passes, and you feel like you might crumble into a heap of sand, simply disintegrate right then and there.

But, “good,” he answers, chuckling lowly.

Peeking up nervously, you can make out the slight twinkle in his eyes, the relaxed softness to his mouth, and relief washes through you, crushing and sweeping in its intensity. “Training’s going well,” he continues unprompted, and you perk up more, shifting on your feet, attempting to straighten out your shoulders. “It’s becoming a nice, well-rounded group. Nesta seems to be doing well, too. They all are.”

You manage a smile, drinking in every word, basking in the richness of his voice, imbued with a tinge of royal blue emotion. “Sounds like you’re having fun,” you say, trying to match the mirth of his intonation, how genuine it sounds. You don’t really succeed. “Between the strain of practice and learning, I think they do,” he answers, still smiling faintly, and you pause to take a moment to try and capture what’s different about his features when he’s smiling. The curve beneath his eyes, how his cheeks round a little, the way his lips stretch out and curve. Something about his ears raising a little higher, too.

“Have you ever considered joining?” He asks tentatively, and you freeze up.

“Training?” You manage, forcing down the splutter, cowering at the thought. His features level out, but his eyes remain amused as he nods. “No. I don’t think… It’s not for me,” you stumble through the answer, looking away. Then heat warms your cheeks, embarrassment heating across your chest, meeting his gaze. “Should I be?” You ask, quieter than before, stomach tensing as you pull the book closer to your front.

He shrugs, “only if you’d like to. You might find it enjoyable.”

You manage a tight smile, not knowing what to say without sounding rude, so choosing silence.

“Nesta…she has friends there,” Azriel says hesitantly, and you can feel his gaze on you. “They enjoy reading, too. Maybe it would be good for you to go. Exciting.”

“Really?” You ask, managing to meet his gaze, shifting on your feet as you grip the book tighter. “What sort of things—do you know?”

“I could find out,” he offers, the edges of his irises softer.

But you shake your head, “it’s fine. I’m— I’m happy. Where I am, I mean. As I am.” You dip your head slightly at the awkwardness. Should you be saying something like that with pride? There isn’t much to be proud of. Hardly anything you can say for yourself.

It’s a bit worthless, if you’re honest, to only have that to cling to.

“You are?” He asks, gently.

Your stomach drops through your toes, heart plummeting deeper than the depths of the ocean’s floor. Shifting on your feet. Even he can tell… But you nod, head dipping further as you peer at the ground, heart straining for some reason. “Besides, I love getting to read the things in here,” you manage, clutching the volume a little tighter. “And, I’m not sure Nesta…her friends would be interested in reading encyclopaedias.”

“You don’t know until you try,” he says quietly, matching your level of volume. “Wouldn’t it be nice having more people to talk to about the things you like?”

You shift again on your feet, readjusting your grip on the bound book. “Maybe? I guess…”

“So why not try?” He asks, able to hear the slight smile in his voice, and you want so desperately to look at him. “Just one lesson, or even a few minutes to see what it’s like. The first step is usually the hardest.”

“I don’t know…” you hedge, discomfort lodging itself in your throat; between your ribs. “What are you unsure about?” He asks, leaning up against the bookshelves. You shrug, not meeting his gaze. “I guess…I don’t see the point in it,” you answer reluctantly, quietly. Knowing he won’t like that response.

Sure enough, you can hear the frown in his voice, disapproval sharpening into something bladed, disappointment in your lack of enthusiasm. “You should still try,” he says gently, wings shifting at his back, refolding themselves. But you shake your head, more firmly this time, “I don’t want to intrude. That’s her space that she’s made. I don’t want to contaminate it.”

“You wouldn’t be contaminating it,” he sighs, arms folding casually over his broad chest, and you feel like he’s telling you off for something.

Slightly desperately, you aim to switch topic to something he’ll be willing to move on to. You don’t doubt he could keep you here if he wanted, simply returning to the original topic of conversation, so you have to be careful with your new selection.

“Have you asked Elain if she would join?” You ask, not meeting his gaze.

You feel his pause, heart beating a little harder in the hopes he’ll go along with it. The irony of you being the one to bring her up isn’t lost on you—after you’ve wanted a conversation free of her for some time now. So it’s just the two of you, even for one discussion.

“Elain?” He asks, bemusedly, and you nod. “Do you think she’d be interested?”

“You thought I might be. Why not her?” You reply, wincing at your tone. Shifting again on your feet. But instead of tense silence, he chuckles faintly. “I understand the two of you are sisters, but you’re very different from one another.”

Your eyes close briefly, allowing no more than a moment for the condemnation to sink through you.

You’re nothing like Elain, and he can see that clear as day.

So you smile faintly, trying to bring some life into it. “Just a thought.”

———

It had felt like being tossed to the grimy, half-rotten wooden boards of the old hut in there.

They hadn’t bothered with chains—you were human, what could you do against them?

Strange, magic, powerful creatures, hewn from nature herself. Like gazing upon perfect marble sculptures and wishing for their cold grace, sacrificing flesh and blood for stone-cold immortality.

It’s strange how distorting panic can be. How acutely aware of the smallest hairs rising on mostly bare legs, yet forgetting the faces of the fae who’d thrown you into the deep dark of the cell. Warm bodies pressing tight to one another in the dim light of the stone cell, trembling hands gripping one another, grown out nails inadvertently scraping. Shaky breaths misting in the damp, winter deep air.

Few words had been traded in the perpetual night, a cold, spindly hand passing meals into the room through some method of magic. It had been good. Cold and plain yet disgustingly pleasant.

The first time Feyre had returned from Prythian and eaten human food she had gagged, it was unforgettable seeing how she’d changed. Such a small moment with such vast implications. Having then sampled the food, likely the worst of the worst of their own pallet, you could understand the insufficiency.

It doesn’t matter now though. Not now you’re trapped, locked away from the light.

Unknown time passes, and you never hear them coming. Like the night you’d been removed, they come on silent feet, utterly predatory and entirely invincible.

He’d appeared then, sat on a throne constructed of what you think vaguely reminds you human remains—long, stretching bones bound together to be sat upon, forced to serve long after death, condemned to relentless work, never to be lain to rest. The King you’ve been warned about.

At your side Nesta stiffens, observing something you can’t, struggling to remain alert after the numbing darkness of the cell. The strange isolation that had been enforced upon you despite company.

Even to human senses, the smell of blood is apparent, stark and piercing in the barren throne room. Though everything is secondary to the dooming thrum of pressure coming from the dais. Even the lives around you fade into something lesser when confronted with the concentration of Everything before you—a culmination of everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will across the four-dimensional planes, universes stretching and thinned, brought together before the Cauldron that sits, hunched on the stone floor. Watching. Observing. Waiting.

Words jumble from the king’s mouth, but you doubt even Nesta is entirely listening, not with the white-knuckled grip she has on you and Elain, pulled taut together, bound tighter than you’ve ever been before, a refusal to release one another. Even as numbing pain sets in, you don’t try to escape, each of you understanding the aches of the grip are small safeties, reminders you still exist with one another.

Grey-blue eyes catch yours across the hall, wide and fearful as they gaze upon the three of you. The youngest, yet the strongest. The strongest of your sisters, yet maybe the weakest in the room beyond yourselves. The power imbalance so stark the world tilts a little, as if nodding its head sadly in agreement.

Awareness is dunked over you like taking an icy bath, coming to in time to hear the damning words that have your heart jittering in your chest. Lurching and fumbling with fear.

“Who is the youngest, over there?”

And like a moth drawn to flame, your terrified eyes lock with his, singled out as a knowing smile tilts the King’s lips. “You.”

It’s a new terror, you understand. Being noticed by a being so incomprehensibly greater. How to rationalise and understand the fear in the fleeting seconds that tick faster and faster with each blink of your eyes. How time falls flat, and eventually pulls apart as a guard’s hand rips you clean from your sisters, a snarl of rage only adding to the ringing buzz that glistens though your ears, feet fumbling numbly over the cobbles, cracked and jagged in places.

The world fades in and out of focus as ice prickles from beneath your skin, at once hot and at once freezing the skin from your flesh, so cold it will start peeling back at any second, shedding until you disintegrate onto the floor. You’re helpless as you’re pushed onto the dais, far too close to the prowling beast of the Cauldron to ever come away. Even if they released you, the understanding is clear to you it would not allow the escape.

Noises break through the lilting haze of your world, vision clearing enough to pick out the wide, hellish eyes of your oldest sister, the conflict of terror and undeniable rage that blazes away in full view, and you wonder how she can sustain it. How she can muster up an emotion so overpowering your attention is pulled away from the Cauldron. From the King, and Queens.

Her teeth gleam in a snarl directed to the male atop the throne, and you wish for even an ember to take root in your soul. The inadequacies of your own self rising to the surface like bodies buried in muddy land.

“Put her in.”

Every muscle strings taut in your body, jaw nearly breaking itself from pressure, nearly vomiting the food you’d been given from squeezing your stomach in, every part of your being inherently recoiling from the eerily calm pool of black water before you, so still it looks like glass, contained in metal that reeks of something that should not be touched. Even borne witness to.

You’re lofted into the air, unable to so much as kick, terror taking control of your body, feeling as though you’re freshly dead, held stiff by catatonic shock while breath still whispers from your lips. Screams are choked back by the tightness in your throat, lungs burning with cries that would surely curdle blood, piercing shrieks that might at least serve to deafen their keen hearing.

But their large, spindly hands release you, and you slide into the yawning mouth. Gaping, and grinning.

Ice-cold water shocks your system, and you sink like a stone into the liquid. Sinking. Sinking. Sinking.

Dropping through the barriers of the realm. Falling off the edge of the world.

You drop further than possible, and nightmares resurface. Of rivers that swell and break their banks, flooding wetlands and tearing livestock from their home in the torrents of the winter melt. Rain lashing down day after day, heart pounding in your chest, hoping the rising water will never reach the already shaky beams of your rotting hut. In those night terrors there’s no escaping the rising tides, the currents gripping your ankles as you’re snatched from your feet, dragged away and under, swallowed whole and torn from your family in the blink of an eye.

Liquid like mercury surrounds you whole, submerged in the quicksilver of the Cauldron’s contents, dredging up long forgotten memories as though your life is passing before your eyes. Laying on the floor of your father’s study, flipping through books on food, plants, fauna and flora. There had been one nightmarish creature that had always stuck with you, lurking in the depths of your mind no matter what comforts Elain had provided, nor the goofy drawings Feyre had done in attempts to reduce the terror, nor the reasoning that such a small creature whose home was the deepest, murkiest parts of the sea would ever be able to find you.

And yet the Cauldron seems to seek it out specifically, conjuring the memory of the slimy pale blue paint that had been used, the ink that sharpened razor like teeth, the small spot of white on the page that illuminated the fish’s grotesque features.

Like an angler fish, you can’t help but feel now, sunken so far below, sucked in a whirlpool to the bottom of the Cauldron, that its icy surface had been the light, the power rolling from its dark metal the warm glow, and you’d been thrown toward it.

Now past the shredding ring of teeth, cast into its stomach.

The inky water pushes at your lips, squirming at your squeezed-shut eyes, wriggling like icy maggots trying to crawl beneath your skin, to worm their way inside and infest. It seems impossible to hold them out—everything had come from the Cauldron, how were you supposed to barricade yourself against that which you’d been born of?

You pull as tight as you can, wrapping in on yourself as blood recoils from your extremities, all you can salvage of yourself pulling taut and compact, stitched closer than rock, squeezed denser than ice that’s had centuries to compress. Air has long since lost its value among your turned around preservation instincts. Air is a pathway in, and you fear its intrusion with a conviction that spears deeper than any fear of death.

But the Cauldron is a prime creator, second you suppose only to the Mother, and has no concern for time.

No matter how long you keep it out for, minutes, hours, days, years, time is endless and stretching, a new metric confined to the swirling depths of horror contained within its malice-imbued metal. No matter how long you keep yourself walled off, hibernating deep within the parts of yourself you hadn’t even known existed, it waits just outside, prowling, circling, slowly squeezing and constricting. Until like even ice, or rock, you’ll split open. Pressure so steep it could cleave universes.

Even after the walls you’ve hidden behind, the only things keeping out the idle swirl of pure, liquid power, it’s not enough. Everything will fall to time, eroded and grated down to dust beneath the relentless drip of ticking seconds.

Your mind feels too numb to register as it creeps in, cold and deadening as it spreads calmly throughout your blood, filling you up from the inside out, infusing into your skin—numbed from slumber. Creeping and contaminating with cold, needle slim fingers, rearranging and knitting pieces together than should not be joined within a mortal.

It holds you with a familiarity that’s at once startling and reassuring, a puppet returned to the puppeteer, a dress returned to the seamstress, a splintered leg returned to the carpenter. All of them at once, without the care of a mother for her child. Cold and analytical, examining its past creation, exploring its functions with harsh fingers. Peeling back your skin, then your flesh, then your skull, retrieving the centre of your thoughts to discover your foundations.

Wishes and desires, tucked away secrets even you’ve forgotten, passing thoughts unworthy of being voiced, wants that deserved to be spoken but tied down by your tongue. Its ladle scoops you out, hollowing your mind and stomach, dipping a spoon into soup to retrieve a mouthful, except this space will be replaced with something else. Something to push the bounds of humanity and transform you into the sharp-featured creatures who had taken what scraps of your world had remained.

Something with the tremendous strike of lightening but worse fills the empty pockets it’s made. Capable of burning like the blazing rage contained within quicksilver eyes. Something slower. More insidious. You aren’t made for brute force, so a more subtle route will have to be afforded.

Like it had selected the nightmarish memories, so does it haul up the secret wishes. The wants so desperate they have heat kicking back against the icy touch of the Cauldron’s waters. To blaze like Nesta, to protect like Feyre, to soothe like Elain. But more.

A use.

If not a warrior, then a blade to be harnessed.

The Cauldron plucks the desire from your bones, and your body slumps. Skin without its stuffing, a heart without its thump. You could swear you feel it smile as it finds what it’s looking for, now conjuring up its match. The piece to fill the void it’s created by removing the wish, replaced with something sturdier, to lift your body to immortality.

With each possibility the prices rise steeper, and yet you no longer recoil.

The craving to have something—something entirely new, something entirely your own taking control of your mind and soul, driving you forward. How deeply you yearn to be someone with possessions that are your own. Not passed down, nor borrowed or shared, but your own. Something only you can have.

The desire is so acute you feel salty wetness push out from beneath closed eyelids.

To be sought after. Craved. Pursued.

Valued, treasured, fought for.

To have something that made you become both desired and capable of protection.

The cost would always be irrelevant for an offer like that.

Down to your roots, clipped at the foundations, an entirely human desire to be wanted. At whatever price, the yearning so innate and so acute your heart aches within the cage of your ribs. It runs deeper than a want, or a wish, or a need. So inherent to your ideal that now you’ve discovered its existence, returning without it would be a new death with every second, every breath drawn taking you further apart from the moment your could’ve had it.

The Cauldron smiles, dangling it before you, quietly hiding away what it’s already taken, not giving you a chance to consider what you will lose.

And with a still human heart, your soft, trembling fingers pluck the glowing green star from the inky darkness. Fooled by inexperience.

——————————————————————————————————————————————

general taglist: @myheartfollower @tcris2020 @mali22 @amygdtjhddzvb @sfhsgrad-blog @needylilgal022 @hannzoaks @hnyclover @skyesayshi @nyotamalfoy @decomposing-writer @soph1644

az taglist: @azrielshadows1nger @jurdanpotter @positivewitch @nightcourt-daydreaming @assassinsblade @marvelouslovely-barnes @v3lv3tf0x @kalulakunundrum @vellichor01 @throneofsmut @vickykazuya

[borathae]

↳ Index [Snippet #46 - Affection]

"When Jungkook wants some affection."

Genre: married life!AU, domestic Fluff, a hint of suggestive themes

Warnings: they're in love, snuggles & cuddles in bed, kisses, they also talk about alien dick at one point lmaaoaao, and how Kook would use it on her hahha listen they're both nerds <3, Kookie wants to be praised and kissed!!!, they are the one true couple <3

Wordcount: 2.1k

a/n: they're so important to me :( i love them so fucking much istfg :(

You and Jungkook have a to-do list on your fridge. On there, you write all the things needing to be done this day, which aren’t part of the usual schedule. During the colder months, the list could include things like “make the greenhouse storm proof” while in the warmer months, things like “mow the lawn” finds its way onto the list. You even have the list separated in two sections. One for you and one for Jungkook. Because you hate doing some tasks, while Jungkook loves them and instead he hates other tasks you love. So some tasks will always find their way onto Jungkook’s side while others will be cozy on your side. The list works wonderfully and saved yourselves from many sleepless nights when the sudden realization set in that “oh shoot, you had to do something today but forgot”. It is also a perfect tool to prevent useless bickering about “who does it”, because once it’s on the determined side, it is clear to both who will be responsible for it. 

The day is almost over and you are on your way to the shower when you decide to check the list just one last time. Just in case. Your brain has been awfully scattered throughout the day because of a bad night's sleep, so just to be sure, you want to make sure that the list has actually been worked through. 

You and Jungkook have a pen each to write your lists. Jungkook’s side is written in black ink and his handwriting, while your side is written in blue ink and your handwriting. He had swipe the driveway, clean the bike gear closet on his side today. Both tasks are crossed off. You had water the upstairs plants and wash the upstairs curtains, kiss husband and tell him you are proud of him on your list. Both tasks are crossed off. Your eyes do a double take. 

“Kiss husband and tell him you are proud of him?” you read out loud. You didn’t write that. Your eyes flit down to yet another task you didn’t fulfill, “Pin husband by the wrists and tell him he is yours? I’m sorry? I didn’t write any of this.” 

Wait a minute. This is written in black ink. And it is Jungkook’s handwriting.

“Oh my god, Kook”, you gasp, having to laugh, “you genius doofus.” 

This is such a Jungkook thing to do. It is silly, clever and exactly the kind of flirting that gets your heart racing. You married such a goofy sweetheart.

You abandon the list so you can take the quickest shower in wife history. You have tasks to fulfill, husbands to kiss. You slip into a cute two piece pyjama set once clean and hurry to his room. 

The door is closed and so you knock. 

“Come in”, he answers after the third knock.

You slide into the room, closing the door behind you. In typical Jungkook fashion, he has the big lights off and only his colourful LEDs on. The room is hued into a mixture of red and pink. 

Your husband is sitting by his computer with his knees pulled to his chest. He is dressed in loose boxers and a white oversized shirt. His short hair is silky and on top of his nose, a pair of black framed glasses is perched. He started wearing prescription glasses. Well, in yet another typical Jungkook fashion, he only wears them occasionally because he either forgets or can’t be bothered. Whenever he does wear them however, he looks so handsome in them that it gets hard to function. 

“Hey sweetie”, he greets you, studying you from head to toe, “this is such a cute set. It fits you so well.” 

“Thank you. It’s satin. Touch it”, you hurry to him.

Jungkook touches your upper waist, sliding his hand down to your hip softly. His eyes follow his touch.

“Wow, so soft and silky.”

“Right? It’s so comfy. And? Check this out”, you say and grab the pants at the crotch part to drag it into his vision. You have to do a little bend for it. 

“What are you doing?” Jungkook asks, having to chuckle at your silly antics.

“No middle seam”, you say, fixing your pants again, “which means no pussy and ass crack discomfort.”

“Ah that’s what you tried to show me. It looks so comfy. Yay to no crack discomfort.” 

“I know. I’m so happy”, you say and turn to look at his screen. 

He has a character creation window open. It seems like a sci-fi shooter game. 

“Am I disturbing you?” 

“No, it’s okay. I’m creating a character for the next round. I wanna be an alien this time.”

“I see. That seems cool”, you say and suddenly you feel so guilty for coming here. This is Jungkook’s recharge time, you shouldn’t ruin this for him. Maybe you can fulfill your tasks later. Once he’s in bed with you.

“What brings you here, sweetie? Fashion show or something else?” Jungkook asks, caressing your lower back as he talks.

“Yeah, no. Fashion show”, you turn to him, giving him a little sway of your shoulders, “I wanted to show you my new set.”

“I love it. You are beautiful in it”, he praises and smiles.

“Thankies”, you murmur shyly and wiggle your shoulders, “do you want any snacks? I’m making tea so I can drink some as I read in bed.” 

“No, thank you. I have my beer and my crisps”, he says and gives your buttock a little squeeze, “you’re my favorite snack anyways.”

You nudge his cheek, “sweet talker.”

He chuckles, shifting his eyes to the screen again. Yes, you will definitely do your tasks later in bed. They will hit so much better this way.

“Okay, I’m in bed then”, you say, leaving his room again.

“Yeah okay. Have fun reading.”

“I will, heh. Have fun being an alien.” 

Jungkook laughs, “I will.”

You already finished the chapters when Jungkook comes to bed. You are on your phone, watching a video, when he enters the bedroom. You pause the video and lock your phone, following your husband with your eyes.

He is walking to his bedside table so he can put his glasses there for the night. He massages the bridge of his nose afterwards, taking on a path to the bathroom.

“It was your turn to put Bam to sleep, right?” he asks.

“It was, yeah. He’s been sleeping for two hours.”

“That’s good. Our son”, he says, disappearing in the bathroom afterwards. Moments later, you can hear him pee.

You shake your head in disbelief, chuckling to yourself. He couldn’t even close the door for that. 

The toilet flushes and moments later, you hear him brush his teeth. He even manages to make himself gag once as he scrapes his tongue, following it up with a “made myself gag” to which you answer him with a chuckled “poor man”.   

Afterwards he finally appears, grinning at you.

“Wah baby, I just pissed so hard”, he says.

“I know. I heard. Couldn’t you have closed the door?”

“I could have. I was lazy”, he says and plops down on bed.

“You’re so weird sometimes.”

“You love me for it.”

“Mhm, yeah I guess I do. I hope you sat down.”

“Wah baby, who do you think I am? A heathen? Of course I sat down.”

You chuckle, “good boy.”

He snuggles into his pillow until he is cozied up on his side and with his big eyes gazing at you. “I was an alien”, he says, reaching out to intertwine his fingers with yours. He caresses your knuckles mindlessly.

“You were?”

“Mhm. It was fun. Hey babe, would you still love me if I was an alien?” 

You laugh, lifting your brow at him in question. He flutters his lashes at you, expecting your answer.

“Obviously”, you say, “I’d call you my little alien and we could go on dates in your UFO.”

“Yeah that sounds romantic. Also, alien dick. Hello? Would you prefer tentacles, an egg laying one or a double trouble deluxe one?” 

“I love that we instantly went from cute UFO dates to alien dick” you say with a chuckle on your lips.

“That’s important miss ma’am, I need to know your preferences.”

“Fine okay”, you give in, “tentacles? Fill me in.”

“Okay so. I would have no dick, you know, like Ken. But then I could grow tentacles and these tentacles produce their own lube so I can fuck you with them. And there’s lots of them so I can fill out whatever you want me to.”

“Alright”, you snort in amusement, “egg laying? What’s that about?”

“I don’t know, I saw it somewhere.”

“You mean porn?”

“Yeah.”

You laugh, “so it’s like a normal dick that lays eggs inside me?”

“Yeah basically, but it’s purple and is thicker at the tip and it also produces its own lube so I can be really wet and nasty with it. And, oh my god, I want it to glow as well so I can see it inside you. Yeah.”

“I feel like that’s your favourite.”

“Maybe, I want a glowing dick”, he says and pouts, making you laugh.

“Yeah it sounds fun. But I gotta carry your eggs inside afterwards?”

“I mean…yeah. You do that normally too, they’re just smaller.”

“You’re gross.”

He grins. You give him a roll of your eyes affectionately, nudging his cheek.

“And the last one? Is the double deluxe one your dick but just twice?” you ask him.

“Yeah, basically. Yup, my dick but twice”, he decides, nodding his head way too proudly. 

“Then I’ll take this one. I like your dick. Having it twice sounds like fun.”

Jungkook scrunches his nose in a cute bunny smile. He looks way too giddy for the nature of the conversation. 

“Do you really like it?” he asks.

“More than anything.”

“Is it perfect?” 

“The most perfect ever.”

Jungkook giggles, kicking his feet. 

“Thanks, yeah”, he clears his throat to make his voice appear deeper, “thanks babe.”

You laugh because you know he is being goofy again. Your little goofball. You roll onto your tummy and push him to his back. He lets you, looking at your face with sparkly eyes. 

You take his wrists and pin them above his head. The sparkles in his eyes grow, his breathing speeds up just a little.

“You’re a goofball”, you speak softly, gazing at his pretty face.

Jungkook wiggles, grinning goofily. 

“But you’re my goofball. All mine”, you say, giving him a knowing smile, “and I’m proud of you.”

Jungkook squeaks out a little snicker, smiling so brightly his eyes turn into crescent moons. You make it grow with one smooch to his lips and another one to the left side of his neck. He leans into the kisses, wiggling his toes because he is so, so happy to finally receive your affection.

Afterwards you lift your head, raising your right hand to draw invisible checkmarks in the air.

“Check and check”, you say, placing your hand back on his wrist.

Jungkook wiggles his feet. His pulse is racing under your palms. He is so giddy. 

“I was already scared that you didn’t even see it”, he confesses.

“I did. I was so confused at first because I didn’t remember writing it, but then I saw it was in your handwriting and I knew.”

“Heh”, he snickers, scrunching his nose, “it was clever, wasn’t it?” 

“Mhm so clever”, you praise and kiss his lips, “I married a genius.” 

“You really did”, he says and uses his strength to wiggle out of your hold just so he can wrap you in his arms and hug you against him, “my honeyyy.”

You squeak a giggle, accepting your sweet fate gladly. So now you and he are rolling around the sheets as Jungkook cuddles you aggressively. Limbs tangle, sheets get messy and distances erased. It is truly such a delight. He also regularly smooches whatever part of your face he can reach, mumbling giddy words against your skin.

“Wah baby, you saying that you’re proud of me really made me so happy. It felt so good to hear.” 

“I am, you know? I actually meant it, I’m really proud of you.” 

“Thank you, my love”, he nuzzles his face into your neck, giving you little kisses whenever he can, “I’m proud of you too, my love. Wah baby I wanna melt with you, you’re so cute.” 

You smile, closing your eyes to really enjoy his affection.

“You’re cute too”, you mumble into him, pulling him closer.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Drawn Together 1

Warnings: non/dubcon, obsession, intimidation, and other dark elements.

Character: Steve Rogers

Summary: You get a tattoo on an impulse to break your routine, but you walk away with something else as permanent as the ink.

I saw this and had to

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging.

You are not a rebel. You are clean cut. You live within very precise boundaries. Minimizing every part of yourself to evade notice. Rules are not meant to be broken, despite that old cliche.

That is until that day. It's foolish, you know it. That voice in the back of your head repeats your foreboding. You know you can't go back. There isn't a magic eraser for this one.

Shut up.

You're over it. Over yourself. Over your boring life. You've never done one fun thing for just yourself. It's always been what has to be done. What must be done. You're thirty years old and you don't even know if you understand the concept of 'fun'.

You sit on the leather bench. Nervous and shaky as hell. There's still time to change your mind. You can take your deposit and go, with clean untainted skin.

No! You're not going to chicken out this time. You want one memory that doesn't end in you tucking tail and running.

"Do you like the sketch?" Sam, your assigned artist asks.

You glance over at him as he pulls on a pair of black gloves, his gun laid out and sterilised. You peek at the open sketchbook, the drawing of a simple red poppy outlined in black with a thick spiraled green stem. Nothing too big or extravagant, easy to hide. If your mother or father ever saw that, you would be excommunicated.

"I love it," your voice quavers and you clear your throat, "I'm sorry, I'm just a little anxious."

"That's fine. First time, right?"

"Uh, yeah, I don't even have piercings," you give a brittle chuckle, "I'm not really the adventurous type."

"I'm sure you are in your own way," he grins, a look that calms you. "So, we still set on ankle?"

"Um, yeah, I think that's good."

"As good a starting place as any. Glad I talked you off the ribs. Those are tender."

"Just an idea," you breathe, "I don't know much about these things."

"Not to worry, you're in good hands," he winks, "you can just relax," he rolls his stool to the foot of the bench, "and pop your leg up here."

"Right," you gulp down another chest full of air and follow his direction, "that's it?"

"And keep still. Tell me if you need a break. The pains a bit much at times so don't be afraid to speak up."

"Okay, sounds good," you try to settle in but your blood feels thick and your vision speckles with silver. Oh god, you're really going to do this.

"Don't hold your breath," he says, "really, I don't like my canvases passing out."

"Sorry."

"It's okay, you want something to drink before we start?"

"No, I'm good."

"Awesome," he says and grabs his gun, double checking the tip before moving back to your ankle. "Alright, I'll count down so you're not too surprised."

"Thanks," you fold your hands over your stomach as he positions your leg and bends forward.

He counts from three and you focus on not moving at the first stab of pain. Don't be a weak bitch. You grit your teeth and let out your breath as the gun buzzes loudly. The pain keeps a steady sear in your skin but you slowly get used to the sensation.

As he works, your eyes wander along the dark red walls and the artwork hanging all around. Tattoos in colour and black and white. The schematics of a tattoo gun. A falcon crest wrought in brass.

You hear the door open and the smoky voice of the other artist, Nat greets the newcomer you can't see past the pillar. The response is a deep, rocky timbre. You can only imagine the inked up brute behind it.

"Always with the notes," you hear a paper crinkle, "I'm the artist here, Rogers."

"Hey, I'm an artist too," the man counters lightly.

You peek over as the redhead woman appears on the other side of the pillar and guides her client through to her open workspace. An open curtain drapes against the wall at the other end of the shop. She sets down the page and tuts as she looks it over.

The man slides off a pair of dark sunglasses, black lenses with golden frames. He slips them into the pocket of his denim jacket and tugs at the sleeves. Their actions seem to be routine and you can see why. His arms are covered from wrist to shoulder in ink, a few smaller tattoos on his knuckles. Now you really feel out of place. 

"Sam, what's up?" The other client calls over as he hangs the denim on the coat rack.

"What's it look like, Steve?" Sam says, his eyes not leaving your ankle.

You take in the interaction silently. You're a stranger among the usuals. The poser getting their taste of artificial danger. Your ankle tweaks and you smother a grunt between your teeth. The noise catches the blue eyes of the man, Steve.

You quickly avert your eyes back to Sam and knot your fingers together. Steve's shadow moves away. The artist at your bench hardly seems bothered but gives a shake of his head.

"You want the curtain?" Natasha asks as she approaches the black drapes.

"Nah, you know I don't care."

Your eyes flick up as the man peels off his tank top. Wow. You blink rapidly and make yourself act normal. 

He lowers himself onto the leather seat as Natasha takes out her tools and starts sterilising. You once more force your attention back to Sam's careful work. It's going to take a while.

"You good?" He asks as he glances over, lifting the gun from your skin.

"Great," you murmur in an airy voice.

"Still nervous?"

"No, actually, kinda excited," you try not to speak too loud, overly mindful of the other client in the shop.

"Good," he hunches again and you suck in as he put the needle back to your skin. "So, what do you do? When you're not getting sick tats, that is?"

"Um, I, er, I teach. Music lessons."

"Music, huh? You seem like… the drummer type."

"Piano," you correct him, "I can carry a beat–" you pause to check the pain in your voice, "but I mostly teach piano."

"Classy," he remarks, "so, a poppy, any particular meaning to that?"

"Er, no, uh," you rub your neck nervously but make yourself quit moving, "it's my favourite flower."

"Pretty sombre fave but I get it," he remarks.

"Yeah, I guess…"

Your attention is drawn at the soft slap of skin and the rattle of metal. You look up as Steve retracts his hand and Natasha points at him with a sharp nail, "this is a sterile workspace."

He chuckles at her irritation and shows his palms before he sits back. He rolls his shoulders as he leans casually and twiddle his fingers against his jeans. Once more, your eyes meet and his mouth slants slightly. You gulp and look down again.

"So, any ideas for a second piece?" Sam asks.

"I think I'm gonna stick with one."

"Not gonna get a full bouquet?" He wonders.

"Not yet."

"Better get cozy, Rogers," Natasha says.

You look up as she sprays shaving foam onto his chest.

"You know this is my second home," he teases as he relaxes and she spreads the cream.

"Don't remind me," she grumbles as she takes a razor.

You tear away from your distraction once more. Gosh, it is painful. You don't know how people end up like him. Your tiny little flower will be more than enough for you.

You close your eyes and groan. Sam rests his hand on your calf. He squeezes as he pauses again.

"Need a break."

"No, keep going," you puff out.

You grip the side of the leather bench and bite down. You've always been a big baby. You bat away the gloss of tears threatening to confirm that and take another breath.

The subtle creak of leather pulls your gaze back across the room. Steve leans slightly around to see you past Nat as she shaves one side of his chest. You grimace and hide beneath your lashes.

Why is he looking at you like that? It must be amusing, someone like you in a place like that. Now you know this is definitely a mistake.

[blushingteddy]

Precious Things: Chapter 1

Plot: Rio visits Westview after The Hex comes down and finds Agnes O'Conner in Agatha's stead. She must team up with an unlikely ally to help get her wife back and confront the past to make sense of the future ahead. (Agathario x Rio/Mrs Hart unlikely friendship)

---

The beep of machines is a reliable monotone to measure the accrual of time to it’s exact and precise end. There was a knack, in her experience. A correct moment that was neither a heartbeat early nor a single beat overdue. The strangely comforting taste of artificial banana pudding felt as good a place as any to ground her overworked thought processes. Rio blew out her cheeks and straightened her criss-crossed ankles, elbows dug into the arm rests, prodding the plastic spoon around with marked disinterest.

She was putting off the inevitable.

Largely, because Agatha had been putting off the inevitable - for such a long, long time. The Scarlet Witch had taken the Darkhold. Agatha finally vulnerable. The dark magic that had shrouded her all of these centuries had lifted like a veil. Rio could feel that Agatha hadn’t run or attempted to evade the inevitable this time.

Perhaps she was finally ready.

“I imagined you differently.”

Rio stopped moving the plastic spoon. 

The ghost of a smile tugged up her lips, because they always imagined her differently, whether she came in one form or another—friend or foe—all of it was subjective, always it was some other version of her they had imagined and built up in their head. Ink black linen shrouds and milk white bones. Deep green aspen leaves ornately woven into clothes with spun spider silk stitching, rust coloured gold, dried sea moss for beading. Rio laughed quietly, amused on private levels, she was never dressed correctly for the occasion. 

Her lips tapered down into a serious expression. “Do you want to finish this?” Rio glanced at the frail elderly man drowning in his blankets and wires. “You always think you know how banana pudding tastes until you’re eating it, and then you realise it doesn’t taste like bananas at all. It tastes like something else. Something pretending to be a banana. Strange, right?” She angled the dessert toward him.

“Will there be banana pudding where I’m going, or…” His voice was a strained murmur - the whites of his eyes a dull cloudy colour. He gestured his finger downward.

Hell.

Rio’s expression gave nothing away.

She said nothing in response and idly scraped the spoon around.

“Not the time or place for that conversation, got it.” He nods perceptively. “Jill. Will she be there?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

“Kinda hope she isn’t.”

“Trust me, I know that feeling better than you think I do.”

“You do?”

Rio smiles, nodding slightly, and with that the tension breaks.

He draws a laboured breath. “Were you human once? You look…” Rio watches him gesture her up and down.

From the corner of her eye, the hospice nurses offer discrete, confirming nods. The kind that never require further conversation. Rio resists the sudden urge to show him her face—her true face—in response to his prying. The staff all knew when Rio visited. They knew when she left. She was a regular in this neck of the woods, a person they could feel in the air like the scent of perfume - invisible and entirely distinct. She didn’t like to trouble them anymore than they troubled her.

Sometimes, they caused her trouble.

But never the hospice nurses.

“I don’t know if there’s banana pudding. And there’s been a lot of Jills, far too many to remember. And I think you know I’m not here to talk about myself, don’t you?” Rio levels at the elderly man. “I’m here to do my job.”

“Do you enjoy your work?”

There isn’t time for this - the back and forth.

The question amuses her nonetheless.

“Not particularly. I punch-in, punch-out, I do it very well, if that gives you any comfort. Did you…have a job like that?”

“Yeah, I wish now I hadn’t.”

“Well.” Rio pushes out her cheeks, slightly exasperated. “Too late for regrets.”

“Everything…hurts.” He looks at her tiredly. “Can we take the pudding to go?” 

Rio likes that.

That makes her smile. 

“Sure we can.”

A deep peaceful sigh left him - he was finally ready.

Expectantly, the elderly man extends his weathered hand toward her. His fingertips graze against her fingertips, wrinkly and warm, ready to be taken away from this place despite the fear of her never leaving him for a moment, as though with the lightest tug of his wrist he could rise from the bed, light as a feather, and Death will take him for a long scenic walk to the next place beyond this world.

Rio took his hand gently.

“Hold this for me a sec.” Rio precariously rested the banana pudding cup on his collarbone. She took the blade from her thigh, haphazardly tossing it round to catch the handle, then quickly stabbed his chest several times as though jabbing a hot pen knife into butter. “Thanks.” She flipped and holstered the blade - the soul collected.

She let go of his limp wrist, allowing it fall down against his stilled chest in a thud. The alarms bleeted loudly into the echoing long corridor - then the cries, always the cries of concerned family and visitors with no further business that concerned her - Rio left and thought nothing of their distress.

They always imagine her so differently.

Express delivery only, Rio had a busy night ahead.

She had to be in Westview come sunrise.

***

Deep and dark was the persistent endless night. The entire mountain fell upon her in a storm of heavy jagged rocks and unbreathable, thick sharp dust that scraped her skin and stung her eyes as it slowly settled. The stagnant heat of harsh beating sunlight, somewhere out there beyond the persistent constant dark, was how Wanda kept track of the time. In the evenings, the cool air brought damp cold mildew which coated the boulders pressing every inch of her body, and the water droplets struck her forehead from a single crack above in awkward unpredictable rhythms. The first night, she willed her survival.

Perhaps Kamar-Taj would pity her once Stephen explained the condition of her maddening grief. He would save her, of course. He had to save her. He was a hero. The Sorcerer Supreme, the protector of earth, the lone sworn sentinel against magic and mystical threats out there between the darkest shades of reality. And what was she?

Who was she if not a hero? 

A woman relentlessly tormented into madness.

Perhaps this was the condition of all villains, Wanda decided.

The third night came, the sound of scraping rocks and movement disturbing her tomb above finally greeted her ears. She strained into the noise, welcomed it like a friend, then thought of her sons and felt her heart retreat backward in shame. The fourth night, the digging grew louder, and tears carved across her dry scabbed lips. Wanda clung to life like a leech. She hungered to survive. Lame, broken, disfigured and dying, she fought with insurmountable will to save herself—to persevere against the mountain.

Until she heard the faint howls.

The hungry snarls of scavenging pack animals disturbing the sediment above.

Wanda went slack, still, quiet and madder than her body could contain. Nobody was coming to save her. She closed her eyes, summoning her scarlet, imagining herself provoking wefts of bright glorious red from her palms, how the dust and sheets of rock would explode outward around her. She would rise in a tide of chaos, fire and glorious red—bright, burning scarlet.

But nothing came.

And Wanda wept and finally wished for Death.

“I have waited so long to say these words to you…” A woman in a crown of obsidian black glass laid beside her as though she had always been there. “Hello, Wanda Maximoff.”

She is there but not there. She is contorted around the jagged rock, her body stretched like ribbon strewn around each obstacle, more viper than woman—more creature than person. A dull green light exudes from her, bright enough to make Wanda wince and turn her cheek, but she feels sharp nails slip along her belly, her ribs, calling back her attention. She smells petrichor and…

Fermenting fruit, rotting cherries, the kind her step-father would stew and seal tightly in jars stacked neatly under the dank kitchen sink, and how the pungent smell of spoiled black cherries and sugar separating into alcohol would puncture their home as the jars were filtered months later, how she would slip into bed with Piotr and cradle his ears when their step-father drank to much of it, how their mother would place herself in front of the bedroom door like a barricade and bear the brunt of it.

A voice rumbles low like an earthquake, “Look at me.”

Wanda obeys instantly, terrified and without other choices to make.

Her fear delights Death.

Wanda’s voice frays with inactivity, “You came. I imagined you so…”

“Differently. Mhm. The name’s Rio.” She cranes her neck to get a better look, assessing the damage. “Your hips are shattered. Pretty nasty cranial bleed. Traumatic amputation at both knees, yuck. Your elbow is broken in…three places? That must be”—her eyebrows go upward in amazement, her head nodding enthusiastically—“Pretty painful, huh?”

“Please make it stop?”

“I will.” Rio smiles. “In time.”

Wanda watched in horror as the faint dull green smog begins to fade like the flicker of a dying candle. “Where are you going!”

“You took something special from me.” Rio stares down at the Scarlet Witch. “Somebody I have loved very, very much for centuries, Wanda. I don’t like it when people take my things.”

“Don’t leave me here!” 

“Then tell me how to lift the spell?”

“The spell?”

“The nasty little hex you trapped her in for the last nine months!” The woman rears forward with maddening grief in her eyes. “Give her back to me and then we can talk about your mortal soul.”

There is no further explanation needed, Wanda understands perfectly well, knows exactly who Death is referring to. Agatha Harkness. She doesn’t know how to admit the truth—how to tell her the only answer she has to offer.

“You don’t know how to lift it.” Rio closes her eyes. “Well, Wanda, until we figure that out? I’ll know exactly where to find you. That’s what you said to her, right?”

“Please don’t do this.” Wanda lurches forward. “Please! Please take me with you, I’ll help you! I swear. Please…please you have to take me from this place!”

“I said I would take you, didn’t I?” Death plays with the tip of an ornate knife. “You just have to suffer for a little bit first. Agatha would like that. Let’s circle back in a few days. You’re not going anywhere, I’m sure you’ll be available,” her voice and light fades away.

[kitorin]

to you, my lover.

in which, shinonome akito surprises his favourite writer.

contents. shinonome akito x gn!reader, just fluff really, <- might've ruined it with an attempt of crack, unproofread and messy bc i can't think properly anymore a/n. this was supposed to be my birthday fic, i didn't finish it in time and was considering deleting but nah not today

You're tired. Really tired.

It's not a complaint, being permitted to stay out late to celebrate your birthday, now returning on a long yet peaceful and empty train ride. With the occasional rattling, it was silent, with the exception of your tired breathing and the rustle of your clothes every time you shuffled around a bit.

And your boyfriend.

Arms crossed and back leaned against his seat, his eyes remain shut, resting a bit after such a long day. Fatigue pays a visit to you as well, a yawn claws out of your throat, earning an immediate reaction from Akito.

Arm snaking behind your head, he pulls you in by the shoulder, making sure you rest comfortably against his. You snuggle against him, the scent of his cologne makes you crave more of him and his touch. The jacket that was once resting on his lap is thrown over you, and carefully he adjusts it, without moving his shoulder.

"Tired?"

You nod, resting your eyes a bit.

"If you're able to stay awake, I want to give you my gift."

"Excuse me?" As if you weren't ever exhausted in the first place you sit up, staring at him with confusion. "Akito, you bought me pretty much every book on my 'to be read'. Not to mention the promise rings too." Your glance at the silver wrapping around your finger, amber and saffron imbedded into it. "I told you so many times I didn't need anything, let alone something that would've costed so much."

Akito shrugs casually. "There's no such thing as 'too much' when it comes to you."

"And there's a thing called being financially irresponsible..."

"I'm managing my money carefully, I swear." He pledges with breathless laughter. "I assure you it wasn't expensive, I promise. I'm going to give you the world when I go professional, anyways." He fishes for something out of his bag, something small and wrapped with colourful paper.

"This feels like a book." You comment instantly, it's easy to identify when you've received so many for your birthday.

Akito shrugs again in response. "Check it, then."

You oblige to his words, unwrapping the package in a manner that didn't make a mess on the train. Your guess was correct, it is a book. Only this time with an unrecognisable title and author— it didn't have either. It was white, with nothing else.

"Who's the author?"

Another shrug, and you decide not to bother asking anymore questions. You turn to the first page.

Table of contents. This time you recognise the titles.

Because they belong to none other than you.

"You printed it out all of this?" You've re-read your writing constantly, whether it be proof-reading or trying to figure out how to elevate your prose. But when it's in your hands in the form of a book instead of the words you type up on your laptop, it feels surreal, maybe even a bit wrong. It's everything you've sent and shown him, whether it be fan fiction, attempts at poetry, extracts of screenplays, or snippets from future novels you plan on publishing.

"'Course I did. You love books, I love you and your writing." Akito says it all the time, always being the first person to read your works, sending a plethora of text messages about his thoughts on them.

You inspect the contents of the book, and as he said it's all your work. But, pale highlighter adorns the pages, black ink decorating in between lines, hearts and even more words committed to paper.

The imagery here is gorgeous here. I love these words especially ->

Although I can't and don't, I feel like I can relate to this character, the way you express their internal thoughts and actions makes me feel like I've become them

Why is he so adorable?? The dialogue is so sweetly comforting.

I think this one's my favourite. It was super cute. Short and simple but enough to make me smile all day.

You turn to another story, this one with a darker premise.

SHE DESERVES BETTER !!

This hurts so much ╥﹏╥ Internal monologue is a 11/10 (as always)

Uh oh...

PLEASE HAVE MERCY

SCREW YOU SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A HAPPY ENDING

This one's my new favourite. Thanks for making me cry

(my tear stains) Small arrows point towards (formerly) wet patches on the page, the evidence left there shocks you.

"You actually cried? And annotated your tears?" Not once, but multiple times, on each work that connoted anything sad.

"Love, your writing, just like you, makes me feel a lot. It's not often I cry, you know." He leans in to kiss you on the cheek. "Hope my annotations did it some justice."

Each comment makes you smile irresistibly, whether it was a serious paragraph breaking down and analysing specific moments or 'someone cooked here.' being scrawled. No details were missed by him, ones that you assumed were too subtle and therefore unnecessary because no one in your comments noticed them.

"You noticed all of this? None of my friends or readers did."

"Of course I did. I've read everything over and over again and love you too much to miss any of those details."

"And every note at the end is synonymous for 'new favourite'." It's not a complaint, it's quite adorable really, watching him struggle to make up his mind. "You even compiled your favourite quotes at the end? You think my stuff is quoteworthy?"

"How could I not? Heck, I don't think an anthology is enough. I need it tattooed somewhere on me." A gasp severs his words. "I know exactly what I'm going to do on my eighteenth birthday."

"Don't. Think about it." But the prospect of him loving your prose enough to permanently etch it into your skin makes you smile. "But seriously. This is beautiful, thank you." You're not sure why it feels so different, despite Akito always texting you these sorts of comments. Perhaps it was it's physical manifestation that had evoked so much emotion.

"I remember, when I first opened up to you."

And so do you. It was certainly awkward, with a plentiful amount of tears and uncertainty. But in the end you found yourself comprehending Akito and his character more, which was worth any sort of unpleasantries.

"You ended up analysing every song I covered or wrote. And you still do. I kept those notebooks with me, and read them whenever I felt worried. It's you. You're the reason why I can listen to recordings of myself without wanting to hide. Took me a while, but without you I wouldn't've achieved it."

You peer up at him, as he gazes at the train's roof, reminiscing those memories. You had contemplated for so long, wondering whether that act would've truly done anything, whilst worrying about embarrassing yourself. Now, being able to admire the peaceful expression he wore, you can easily say you have no regrets.

"I wanted to do the same for you. I didn't like how you weren't able to see the perfection your writing held." Akito's hand reaches for yours. "I know what it's like. To hate your own art because of what other people say and growing fearful of another's opinion, or how subjectivity doesn't seem to be in your favor. It's suffocating, that's why you mean the whole world to me for freeing me of that insecurity." He bites his lip, a method he relies on to quell any strong emotion.

He's spot on. The words of others are equally as capable of hurting as they are uplifting. It's common advice to not heed any mind to others, but when it comes to writing it always felt necessary to you. No matter how well you wrote to satisfy yourself, it didn't mean anything if no one else liked it; it meant no sales, meaning no money, which only meant that writing was an invalid career for the future unless it pleased others.

Even if it weren't a professional pursuit, it doesn't feel like something one can establish its value, at least, not without the validation of others.

"You were the lens I needed to see the beauty in myself. And I want to be the one you need."

You smile, planting a kiss on his lips. "Think you already are."

Akito sighs with a grin, "Then, I can die happy now."

A playful, gentle, slap hits his shoulder. "Quit being so overdramatic."

"What? Would've been a waste if the best author in the entirety of human history didn't get to see how amazing them and their writing were."

"Now you're just hyperbolising everything."

He pokes you in the cheek. "I see you smiling."

"Because of how ridiculous you are." You thank the train for being empty tonight, otherwise you wouldn't have the freedom of quarreling. "You're an idiot. Sometimes."

"And I still think having one of your quotes tattooed onto me would be a good idea."

Akito's persistent, even when it came to things that appeared to be mere jokes. "That's so random—? No you're not getting any of my writing tattooed onto you."

"Fine, but left pec or right pec?"

"Oh my god." Though you scold him, the rest dissolves into breathless laughter, as he pulls you in for a hug.

He scatters kisses all over your face, as you savour the warmth of his body. "Happy birthday, love."

taglist (send ask to be added) : @yuzurins, @pokkomi, @chigirizzz

© kitorin : do not repost, plagiarize, change, or translate

[voids-colourful-creations]

Ring Around an Iris - A Splatoon 2 Marie Fic

[Read on Ao3!]

Rated: T Splatoon 2 Story Mode Words: 5.6k

In the corner of Inkpolis Square is a grate, with a woman standing over it. Twirling a parasol in her hands, scanning the crowd for just the right Inkling to pass by. And above her head, every two hours, the same new bulletin plays. The same two voices laugh together like clockwork, and Marie continues to stand, alone. (Or, another one of Marie's days before she finds Agent 4, standing across the street from Inkopolis News)

--

It had been a warm and restless summer night. The chirps of nocturnal insects echoed out into the countryside composing a natural lullaby, a tune for Marie to drift asleep to. Slowly, she could feel her thoughts blurring, mind sinking into her dreams. She’d almost made it, almost, but not before hearing tapping at the window.

It’s always the same rhythm when it’s Callie; one knock, then two knocks in quick succession against the glass. Before Marie had even fully pulled herself out of bed, Callie had already slid the window open, sticking her head inside.

“Mar…” Her voice was audibly damp with tears, “Are you awake?”

Marie, even as young as she was, just rolled her eyes. “Mghhn... Am now.”  She replied, crawling out from the covers and heading to the window.

They were up late that night, or at least late for their ages. Still blobby at the edges, not quite mastering the art of permanent physicality.

Callie climbed in through the window, as she had many times before, lugging a large backpack behind her. Despite the size, it hung loosely on her shoulders. The canvas was deflated with hardly anything inside to keep its form.

“What are ya doin’ here, I was sleepin’.” Somewhere in the back of Marie’s mind is a little voice that tells her to be more cautious with what she says. It goes ignored.

“I…” Callie said, pausing for dramatic effect, “--Am running away. I’m going to Inkopolis to become a star.”

“Got in a fight with your mom again ?”

Callie whimpered quietly in response, which Marie took as a yes. 


“Well, what’re you taking with you?” Marie asked, flopping down to sit next to Callie on the edge of her futon.

“Important stuff,” Callie replied, still sniffling slightly.

Marie, unimpressed, took the bag from her cousin and turned it out on the floor.

A few things spilled out, but only a few. Some colourful ribbons to tie her tentacles back, a pair of pyjamas and a spare outfit, some flip flops, and a bright pink plush shaped like a little squid.

“You’re going to need more than this,” Marie said matter-of-factly. “You can’t get on the train without money.”

Callie pouted.

“I already spent all of my allowance.”

Marie sighed and stood up, stretching out as she went. She tiptoed across the room to her dresser. Carefully, Marie pulled open the top drawer, rummaging around for a moment before fishing out a small drawstring bag. Blindly, she reached in, feeling for the coins by their shape. The bag jingled as it swung around.

They’d been on the train to Inkopolis a dozen times together with the rest of their family, so Marie knew the fare by heart. Just nine of the biggest coins.

Marie pulled them out one by one, willing her fingers to stay solid instead of melting down into ink.

One, two, three.

It’d be so easy to forget a coin. The little voice in her head whined. Leave one behind.  

Four, five, six.

It would be easy to keep her from leaving.

Marie tiptoed back over to the futon, sitting down with one big flop backwards.

“Here ya go,” Marie said, dropping nine coins into Callie’s lap, “For the train.”

Callie, somewhat surprised, began scooping the coins up and tucking them into the bag.

“Is that everything?” She asked.

Marie shrugged.

“I dunno. Maybe?” She said, while the voice in her mind protested louder. A growing feeling of dread welled up in her chest, ignored by her lips.

Callie squinted, but Marie made no move to fetch any other items, or speak any further on the subject. Her heart protested more and more, and yet her mouth still remained shut.

“Then I guess I’m leaving now. Next time you see me, I’ll be in a big stadium with thousands of adoring fans.”

Marie just scoffed, despite the voice in her mind protesting louder than ever.

“Sure.”

Callie stuck out her tongue.

“You should be nicer to me! I’m leaving! What if you never see me again?”

It really makes Marie sick to her stomach, but the only reply she gives is a little laugh, a giggle she tries to cover with her lime green tipped fingers.

Callie whipped around, tentacles flying outwards with her twirl. Standing up and moving back over towards the window, she sighed. 

“Well… thanks anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Marie replied, “Good night.”

Callie simply rippled in place there, for a moment. As she sat out on the windowsill with her legs dangling off the ledge, she looked over her shoulder. A final glance towards Marie. When their eyes meet, Callie’s mouth jarringly warps into an otherworldly smile, with teeth far too sharp and teary eyes that Marie doesn’t recognize.

“Goodbye.” Callie replied. Before Marie can do anything else, Callie is diving backwards. Falling, falling, tumbling over and over into inky darkness with no end, to an unseen underworld– Marie lurches– beyond reach– Marie falls–  beyond help– and finally Marie wakes up as her body collides with the ground.

A steady stream of sunlight falls across her face. Morning has arrived in Inkopolis yet again.

It doesn’t take Marie long to collect herself from last night’s dream. Nightmares aren’t new to her, by this point she’s more annoyed than disturbed. This is what she gets for sleeping at the apartment for once.

That memory mangled into dream was something Marie already remembered quite well. For one, she hadn’t had enough money to give Callie for the train anyway. She’d given her… half the price? Maybe? It was ages ago now, but Marie still remembers that part at least.

She drags herself into the bathroom, pulling the green toothbrush out of the holder. The pink one still lays abandoned at the edge of the sink and Marie makes no effort to move it. She stares blankly in the mirror as she goes through the motions of brushing her teeth, not particularly registering her appearance. It didn’t matter much, she wasn’t going to work anyway.

Despite herself, the dream and memories remain at the forefront of Marie’s mind.

Mainly, she remembers snippets. Callie’s knock at the window, the chill of the breeze as she climbed in. Callie’s face, the tear tracks that sparkled in the glow of Marie’s tiny lamp. How she’d looked so determined. 

And Marie remembers how she wasn’t scared.

No matter what Callie had said, she wouldn’t just disappear like that. Marie knew, so Marie had nothing to be afraid of. They had dance practice tomorrow, and the festival was next weekend. There was nothing to worry about, and so Marie didn’t.

She leaves the bathroom, ducking back into her room to put on her clothes for the day. The motions are near mechanical now, habit enough that her mind wanders as she pulls the layers on.

Back then… When she’d woken up that next morning, Callie’s mother had already come over to bother them. Sure as Marie had been, Callie was back home again. Safe and sound and grounded for the rest of the week.

Marie hadn’t batted an eye as Callie’s mother recounted the whole story to her own mother. As both women chatted profusely at the kitchen table, Marie paid them no mind. Preparing breakfast as if they weren’t there.

Marie muses about her breakfast for today as she closes the bedroom door behind her. It’s already quite late, she’ll just grab something on her way to the square. With that set, Marie headed towards the entryway to grab her sandals.

That whole dream, that whole “incident”... It had all been so silly. There wasn’t really anything to worry about. They had gotten all worked up but everything had been fine. Like Marie knew it would be.

Silently, Marie slips out the door to the apartment, locking it behind her.

What a stupid childhood memory. Back then, Callie had only been “missing” for about 3 hours.

***

It’s been 3 weeks since the announcement of Callie’s disappearance hit Inkopolis News. That doesn’t mean it’s been 3 weeks she’s been missing necessarily, just how long people have been talking about it. Talking about her as if they understood anything that was going on.

Marie herself isn’t sure exactly how long it’s been. It scratches at her. The precise moment, the specific location and the exact method are all a mystery. Callie had been here and now she’s not. That’s all Marie had to go off of.

…That, and a bit more, of course. More that the rest of Inkopolis had no idea about, and hopefully never would. It’s not substantial really. It’s not enough to bring her back, to make this any easier. Everything she knows is just enough weight to bother her, watching people try to solve the puzzle of Callie’s disappearance knowing she’s got half the pieces shoved deep into her pockets. 

It still bugs her, everyone talking like they understand, but there’s no room for those kinds of feelings, so Marie tries to push them aside.

Another scorching hot day in Inkopolis Square, and Marie’s starting to hate the place. Not that she’d been all too fond of it to begin with, more so that it hadn’t been on her radar.

Nevertheless, spending her free time lingering in the square was certainly not endearing it to Marie any faster. If it helps bring Callie home though, Marie supposes she’ll forgive it. With every day that goes by, that forgiveness grows a little harder to earn. Case in point, those new girls who’d taken over as news casters.

In all honesty, Marie had barely registered the new duo taking over when she and Callie left. One of them was short, the other was tall, and that was about as much as she’d cared at the time. A whole myriad of projects were lining up, both her and Callie’s schedules becoming more and more crowded by the day. They’d outgrown Inkopolis News. Marie didn’t have the time to feel sentimental about it, even if she’d wanted to, not with the kind of scheduling management had her under at the time.

Right now she almost wishes for that back.

She gets the feeling her whole production team’s on some kind of order to treat her like glass. They all look at her like she’ll burst into tears any moment, all the interns speaking in hushed tones every time she’s near like they think she doesn’t realise.

For the first time in months, Marie’s gotten some of the free time she’d been wanting. All it took was losing the person she’d actually wanted to spend it with.

But it’s more time to stand here, to keep waiting and watching, until the right someone falls into her lap. Scanning the crowd while maintaining every air of mystery she’s managed to cultivate, gaze brushing against strangers to find one with that “look” she’s supposed to find. Whatever that was meant to mean.

Lately Marie’s taken to lingering at this one corner. It’s a good spot, not in the dead centre of everything, not too far into the shadier back streets. Deca Tower’s shadow loomed over her for much of the hour, but most of the turf hungry squid kids passed her by. Good, Marie thought, because the last thing she wanted was just some random splat happy teen.

The only real drawback is the current Inkopolis News building. It sits across the street from her; massive window proudly displaying the new hosts inside as they air their reports.

Sure enough, every other hour like clockwork, the cacophony of advertisements above her head shifts to the live broadcast, displayed proudly on several of Deca Towers' many screens.

Overlapping audios all harmonise for a brief window, and the trill of a pair of voices Marie’s come to recognise.

Today the news starts as it always does, 2pm on the dot.

“Y’all know what time it is!”

“It's Off the Hook, coming at you live from Inkopolis Square!”

The two voices don’t blend together like hers and Callie’s used to. One is shrill almost, rough slang tumbling out of a high pitch. The other is even toned, polite and calming. There was a lilt of an accent there, almost unnoticeable.

Marie notices.

The rotations are the same as always, and Marie begins to tune them out automatically. Sorry as she was to disappoint; it was just… a tad difficult to care about turf war right now.

As the transition music plays for the 3rd time this broadcast, the first speaker's tone changes. Pearl, her name was, if Marie remembered right.

“Callie Cuttlefish, beloved Inkopolis idol, is still missing. If you have any information regarding her whereabouts, please contact the number down below.”

Which is the same thing they’ve been saying every other day for two weeks now. Marie stares blankly ahead and doesn’t let her gaze turn towards the screens or the news building.

“Oh, uh~!” The younger idol–  her name slipping Marie’s mind at the moment–  stumbles over her line.

“We’ve got a statement here to share as well,” She says, regaining her composure. Marie knows that kind of cadence from experience, her words coming straight from the teleprompters mouth. “So here’s a message from Callie’s fellow Squid Sister, Marie.”

Oh, right.

That.

Marie begins echoing throughout the square, or something like her. She never sounds quite the same in recording as she does in real life. Part of that she blames as persona, her voice changing cadence every time a camera’s trained on her regardless of whether she intends to or not.

So then her own voice saying everything expected of her right now. Half the statement was written by management anyway. What was she supposed to say? Help us find Callie? Call the number on screen if you have any leads?

That, yes, and she had said it all. The futility of it grates at her.

Marie knows where Callie is. She knows why she’s disappeared. It’s the how that eludes her. How it happened, how she’ll find her. How she can fix all of this.

“For the time being, I will be withdrawing from public appearances,” Her voice continues, “Such as live performances, meet and greets, or award shows. No new projects or music will begin production. I’ll be continuing some activities in limited capacity, following a short hiatus. Thank you for your support, I hope we will both be able to thank you all soon.”

And then finally , it’s over.

First time they’d shared that little piece on the news, but Marie knows it won’t be the last. Reprieve for now, but in 2 hours time it’d return just the same.

“So keep an eye out, y’all! The sooner she’s found the sooner Inkopolis’s best idol gets back to making music!”

Marie feels herself tense ever slightly on that line. It doesn’t matter, but something about the barb of competition never seems to let them free.

It doesn’t bother Marie so much, but maybe that was just because she won? There she was, getting full of herself again.

Marie bites her tongue and focuses back on the newscasters banter.

The younger idol's voice lilts upwards, shyness fading away.

“Best idol, hmm~? Are you so sure about that?”

Pearl laughs, loud and rough.

“Aw, ‘Rina, have you finally come around after your pick in last year’s Splatfest?”

‘Rina’ gasps loudly.

“Absolutely not! And dear viewers I hope you know Pearlie is a little sneak because she knows full well I was a proud Marie queen.”

“Weeeere you?” Pearl says, stretching out her words in mock confusion. “It was soooo long ago, I can’t seem to remember…”

“You were so shocked to lose you've completely forgotten?! But never fear Pearlie, I’ve still got my shirt to prove it!”

“Pretty sure Squidforce makes ya return those things at the end of the festival, Marina you didn’t—“

Marina hastily cuts Pearl off, “Oh, lookit that, we’re short on time. Well, keep an eye out everyone! Now, speaking of Splatfests–!”

And the transition music sweeps over their words once more. As the girls debate the pros and cons of movie genres for the 8th time this week, Marie lets her gaze drift over to the recording studio.

A cluster of excited Inklings crowd around the massive window, patterned with Off the Hook logos across its entire expanse. It’s awfully gaudy, or at least so says Marie.

With the mass of fans plastering themselves against the glass, Marie can’t get a good look at the idols inside. There’s the tips of Pearl’s crown she thinks, but the girl’s height certainly isn’t doing her any favours here.

Marina is a good head taller, but one awfully persistent Inkling keeps hopping up to get a better look over his taller friend, so Marie can’t make out her face. Just the edges of her tentacles, seafoam green and curling at the edges as she speaks.

Enough. There’s no point in standing around if all she’s going to do is make the most basic possible observations of their replacements. That’s not why Marie’s spent what feels like years lingering in the Square.

She’s supposed to be trying to find… someone.

Some look.

Gramps had tried to explain it to her once, a late night at the Cabin over in Octo Canyon.

A long day of setting up a new outpost, though a sizable portion of junk, Octavio included, remained over in the valley.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, light fell across the uneven stone in odd shapes, obscured by floating stones.

Marie sat carefully, watching the shadows shift while trying to move as little as possible.

Three had, as they were prone to doing, pushed themself to frankly unnecessary levels and wound up exhausted. Again. Callie at least had some form of excuse, a long morning of shooting refusing to deter her from coming by in the afternoon to help out. But regardless, the both of them had wound up drifting off only a few moments after sitting down for a “short break”. Marie, having made the unfortunate mistake of sitting beside them, now remained stock still. 

Three’s head lulled to their right, ear poking Marie’s neck slightly and one of their longer tentacles spilling over into her lap. Callie was worse, but at least she was spilling onto Three. Her tentacles, taken down from their typical bow for the sake of the role, had never gotten tied back up again. Instead they were tangled in Three’s left arm, and pinned under the weight of Callie’s shoulder as she slid slightly forward in her sleep. Her head landed somewhere between Three’s shoulder and chest, a precarious position from which she could fall at any second.

And hyper aware of all of it, Marie. Wide awake.

Cuttlefish’s voice echoed over the canyon, just finishing rigging up some cord or another he’d been fiddling with on the other side of the cabin.

“How’s it going over there, kiddo?” He asked, taking a glance over at Marie and the others.

“Great,” She replied, deadpan, “Getting a ton done.”

Cuttlefish had laughed at that— laughed at her! — turning to rummage around in his pile of junk.

He wobbled over, towing along a couple paper lanterns Marie vaguely recognized, if not from where.

Shakily balancing on his wooden sandals, Cuttlefish strung the edge of the lantern on the handle of his cane and painfully slowly, reached up to hang it on a hook above Marie’s head.

“Gramps,” She pleaded, “You cannot be serious.”

Cuttlefish, the absolute bastard, just looked down and giggled. At his age too, the nerve.

“I’m hanging the lanterns.” He said, like it wasn’t extremely obvious what he was doing. The yellow strings hanging from the bottom of the lantern skimmed across Marie’s face and she worked very hard to keep a blank expression. Thank goodness for media training.

“I can see that. Do you have to do that now? ”

The lantern successfully slid into place and Cuttlefish, slowly , pulled his cane back, leaving the lantern’s tail hanging right in front of Marie’s face.

“Well, it’s got to get done, don’t it? I can’t be waiting around for the right moment at my age!”

Marie rolled her eyes.

“You better not hang that other one. If you wake up Three I won’t be responsible for what they do to you.”

In the few years Marie had known Three she’d only learned a handful of information, a drop in the ocean compared to her lifetime of knowledge on Callie. One of the things she’d learned right away was that waking up Three before they were damn well ready to wake up was not how you got on their good side.

“ Pwahh, I wouldn’t worry, kid loves me.” Cuttlefish said, but he put the second lantern down on the bench anyway.

Marie stuck her tongue out, one of the few things she could do without risking waking anyone.

“I can’t believe this. Giving Three special treatment over your own granddaughter. Next you’ll tell us Three’s your favourite agent.”

Cuttlefish smirked.

“Three is my favourite.” 

“How could you do this.” Marie replied, zero hint of any real upset in her voice.
 Carefully, Cuttlefish lowered himself down to sit on the stone, leaning back against the edge of the bench.

“Now don’t you start with me. Besides, I have it on good authority you’re pretty fond of them yourself.”

Marie looks away from Cuttlefish and over towards an odd plant, poking up out of the cracks in the rock.

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Ha, says the squid with them curled up against her right now!”

“This means nothing to me.”

Cuttlefish just smiled, looking over at the trio.

“Mar’, you can lie to your parents, your cousin and friends and coworkers, but you can’t lie to your old gramps. I see right through you. Always have.”

Marie sighed, turning her head to look over.

“I was only joking. No need to make things all serious.”

Cuttlefish isn’t looking at her anymore, letting his gaze wander out towards the training dummies they’d started setting up. The leftmost one is deflating slightly and the one in the centre hasn’t been filled at all. There’s still a lot of work to do.

“I suppose I don’t. You do a pretty good job of that all on your own.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Marie spat back, frustration bubbling out, “I get you’ve got the whole cryptic old man shtick going on, but keep this up and I’ll think you really have lost it.”

“Ha! Ya’ always were set like a hair trigger. Part of why I recruited you. Makes for a good sniper.”

Marie didn’t have any reply to that, so she let them both sit with the silence.

“I always knew you’d be good at it, you’ve got that look to ya.”

“Look?” Marie asked.

Cuttlefish tapped the edge of his cane against the stone as he spoke.

“There’s a look about ya, all of ya. It’s in you, and Cal, and Three too. S’How I knew they’d be the right one for the job.”

Marie scoffed.

“I thought you chose Three because they were the first kid who didn’t think you were completely off your rocker.”

“Joke all you like, kiddo, but there’s a trick to these things. You can tell the sort of squid someone is in their eyes. What they’d be willing to do, how far they’d go. Whether ya’ can trust them to do what’s right when it comes down to it.”

Now who’s making things too serious, Marie thought, but she didn’t say it. What she would’ve said now given the chance to talk to him again. Scour for a little more info on this supposed look , this way of reading people just right. A way to tell who to rely on when you need them.

But then, Marie had just rolled her eyes like always.

“Whatever you say, Gramps.”

Cuttlefish chuckled as Marie’s gaze wandered back over to Three and Callie as they continued to sleep.

“You’ll get it someday, when the time’s right.”

But if there’s ever a time isn’t it now? Nothing suddenly makes sense. Marie just grips onto an old parasol and lingers between an alley and a trash can, waiting for something to click into place.

Just like how to be a good sister, how to smile for cameras so they don’t know you’re faking, and how to fire a charger without having your hands shake. Another thing Marie’s just going to have to figure out, because no one will be able to explain it to her.

If Cuttlefish were here, things would be easier. She could balance the media a bit more, let him take the reins on finding another new recruit. They’d train the newbie together maybe, but Marie doesn’t let herself daydream anymore than that.

Because he’s off somewhere and won’t respond to any of her messages.

If Three were here things would be so much easier. She wouldn’t even have to say anything, they’d be halfway to the bottom of Octo Canyon already. They’ve always liked Callie better, most people do, and they’d jumped at any chance to patrol or train or whatever , if it was for the NSS. Marie’s pretty sure she could get them to clean her bathroom if she claimed it was some kind of training, but she won’t get the chance to test that, because Three isn’t here.

They’re off somewhere, with Cuttlefish, and won’t pick up their phone.

If Callie were here…

Well.

If Callie were here, right? If Callie were here.

Marie tightens the grip on her parasol, rolling it clockwise and back again. It won’t be much longer. She won’t let it be much longer.

Definitively pulling herself away from the memories, Marie forces herself to focus on the square, on the crowds. She can’t be getting caught in her own head now , not when any passerby could be the person she’s looking for.

She sweeps her gaze along the crowd, turning with a swath of teens heading towards Deca Tower. Laughing with each other they all head inside the open elevator doors, disappearing from Marie’s view in a split second.

She stays staring, left alone with just her reflection in the glass dividers outside the entrance.

It’s odd to say even she doesn’t recognise herself, but then that’s the point. She doesn’t need someone who’s here for Marie from the Squid Sisters . She needs…

Marie squints, looking over herself. What is it about her that has this so-called look? Where is she supposed to find all those little things that make a person right for this?

The only look she sees in her eyes is a lack of sleep and a bitter after taste.

Sunlight fades into the skyline, dipping just low enough to reflect off the glass and bounce back towards Marie’s face.

She looks away, casting another glance into the crowd.

Nothing.

She’s spent so long in a reverie that the sun’s starting to set. Even the Inkopolis News reports on the screens above were over now, just non stop ads until morning came.

Frustration bubbles up in the back of Marie’s throat. It’s another day nearly gone and she’s no closer to getting Callie back. How long of this? How long of waiting, of searching for something she doesn’t even know how to look for?

Marie bites the edge of her lip, hard, enough to know it’ll split. Makeup department would throw a fit, but then she’d have to be actively performing for that. 

She’ll have to leave soon. There’s not much point to sticking around as the nights go on. Crowds thin out, most people who come out late at night wouldn’t have the time to devote to something of this scale anyway. Much as she’s loath to admit it, Marie does need to sleep at some point, so she can’t just stand here forever. During a festival, maybe, when the crowds make up for the sleep deprivation, but tonight she has no excuse.

Marie drags her sandal across the manhole, trying to find any reason to idle a bit longer. She’d have to make up her mind on where to go tonight at least, before she left.

Back to the apartment again, practically untouched since she’d first returned home? It’s a bit of a mess, but Marie can’t bring herself to move anything that wasn’t in danger of actively rotting. Callie’s comfortable shoes are still thrown across the living room from where she’d kicked them off last time she was home. Her laundry is still in the dryer, a bowl of dry cereal Marie can’t stand just sitting on the kitchen table.

The other option is the cabin, the old sofa with the out of place spring. At nights Marie spends in the cabin she keeps her radio on, trying to get any hint of where to even start looking in the crackling static that drones endlessly on. She doesn’t sleep much those nights, ears straining for anything hidden in the white noise.

She’s spent most nights at the cabin.

With the clouds over the (now empty) Inkopolis News building growing an ever more vibrant magenta, there’s not much daylight left.

Marie takes a breath. It’s time to go.

But as she lifts her foot her gaze sweeps out into the crowd one last time.

...There’s someone. Frozen in place, staring Marie dead in the eye.

A moment passes, Marie unable to tear herself away. A breath, and then she’s moving , the woman in the distance is approaching Marie. It’s only a few steps, just enough for them to be within earshot of each other, but it’s the closest anyone’s been to Marie in weeks. She feels like she’s suffocating.

“Excuse me…” The woman says, toned, polite and calming. The slightest lilt of an accent. The voice that Marie’s heard every few hours, ringing out above her head like clockwork.

Marina from Off the Hook looks towards Marie and says nothing, words seemingly caught in her throat.

She’s so much closer now. Marie’s eyes flick downwards, to her beat up sneakers, then upwards, to her tied back tentacles, cups facing the sky.

Heavy headphones tuck her ears away, and a snug teal and cream coloured hoodie hides much of Marina’s body. Not enough for her to be unrecognisable. Not enough for Marie to not take one look and know.

Marie’s breath gets caught in her throat.

“Yes?” Marie hears herself ask, voice more distant than every recording she’s ever made.

However she speaks must have some kind of effect , because she watches Marina’s gentle smile chip in real time, media training washing away to an anxious expression. Marina clutches her pointed teal fingertips to her chest.

“I’ve… um… I see you hanging around here a lot! F-from the news building. On my break,” Marina’s head whips around, pointing at the obvious glass room behind her. “I- I recognise you.”

That’s my line, Marie thinks. What’s that supposed to mean? She’s without the charger, sure, but if she’s already been recognised she’s more than happy to provide. It would be nice, even, to do a bit of agent work. Relieve a bit of stress.

“Do you now?” Marie says in reply. She can’t meet Marina’s eye, so she settles for looking at the small tentacle curling out above her forehead.

Marina nods profusely, practically bowing over.

“I- I just… If… If there was anything I could help you with—“ Marina says, and before she’s even finished Marie is already caught entirely off guard. “I’d be happy to. If there’s anything I can do for you. Either of you.”

Somewhere in that sentence she’d screwed her eyes shut, now peeking one open to look over at Marie for her response.

Marie just stares. Deep into pale seafoam and pastel pink. The shape of a figure eight, watery and waiting. She feels a bit sick.

“…No.” Marie answers finally, voice thick and heavy. “There isn’t.”

Marina seems almost surprised for a moment, but she hides it well.

“W-Well then! I… I wish you the best of luck.”

And Marie just breathes, because if she says another word she’s not sure what they would be anymore. A moment to collect her thoughts, but by now she can’t think of anything but how much she wishes nothing had happened to get her this far deep in the first place.

More than a minute, silence between them and Marina’s awaiting face, until Marie finally replies the only thing that feels right.

“You as well.”

Then melts away, lets herself dissolve into ink right then and there down into the grate and away from any eyes. Only about a metre down she drops before shifting back, sticking her arms out to brace herself against the inside of the drain. There’s just barely enough space for her here. She stares upwards, the small beams of light filtering in through the grate. There’s a clanging, shadows flickering as Marina steps over. Marie holds her breath for a moment, but Marina doesn’t move to follow her.

Another bang, then a high pitched voice echoing downward, filtered through the metal.

“Hey, ‘Rina! Sorry, the fans got me, yada yada, whatever— who was that you were talking to? Someone you know?”

Even from this distance, Marie can hear the sharp inhale Marina takes. That small moment of hesitation.

Marie doesn’t need to hear this. Pulling herself away from the sides of the drain slowly, she lets herself spill downwards again, back towards the cabin. To radio static and waiting, a sleepless night until daybreak, when she’ll try all this again.

So she only hears this last bit as she’s already leaving, Marina’s ever-so-slightly shaky voice as it’s swept away.

“No,” Marina says, “I guess not.”

[end]

[leathfaic]

Ghost and Soap tattoo headcanons because the brain worms demand it right now!

In my mind at least Ghost has a lot more tattoos than just his sleeve, it's just not common knowledge because until he gets together with Soap no one ever really sees him undressed except maybe for medical staff.

The sleeve was the beginning but he's adding to them whenever leave allows, on his chest and back, on his legs and his other arms and even his hands. Ghost is also the kind of guy that is very stoic while getting tattoos, the pain doesn't really bother him, he's been through so much worse, but he's not the guy who's chatting with the artist either. He just sits through it. Similarly afterwards he's pretty disciplined about the aftercare required. Sun rarely is an issue with the way he dresses and he plans his leave times around the appointments so he can take it easy for a while.

When the inevitable itching starts he just glares at the spot, never actually touching it, but he gets fucking irritated for a few days.

And while he's not the best at taking care of himself in many aspects of his life I can actually see him take good care of his tattoos in the long run, because I imagine him getting them to cover up scars, especially those left by Roba and his men. It's his way of reclaiming his body. The motive itself often isn't as important as the fact that he chose to have it put at that spot. The meaning isn't in the design either it's in the fact that it was his decision to wear it, unlike the scars that were forced upon him.

And then there's Soap, he's only got the one tattoo that we know, at least when he meets Ghost.

Its faded from sunlight exposure and because he never took proper care of it while it healed, even caught himself scratching it once or twice when the itching started. Its always exposed and he rarely thinks of putting sunscreen on, so naturally the tattoo has a hard time and the colour fades quick.

So at some point Ghost asks him if he wants it touched up. He's making an appointment with the artist he trusts anyways and he'd be happy to bring him along. Ghost knows that for Soap his tattoo does have meaning, that he's fucking proud to have made it into the SAS and that he got kinda sad comparing the crisp lines of Ghost's tattoos to his own.

Soap ends up agreeing although he's wary since he can't see it go better than it did last time. But if anything the fact that Ghost is allowing him to come along for this is such a huge sign of trust that he just can't refuse it.

And Ghost's tattoo artist is going to have to recover for a moment because Soap is so fucking chatty compared to Ghost, the pain is kinda exciting to him so he talks more and more and the artist hears more words out of Ghost in response to Johnny than he ever did before. Would wonder if it was the same man if they weren't literally continuing work on a tattoo they had started.

Once they are both done Ghost makes sure Soap takes proper care of the new ink. Threatens to tie him to the bed if he starts scratching at night (something Soap finds entirely too exciting). Shares his care products with him and makes him wrap it up for the first weeks and months. Is always at hand with some sun screen, at least for the arm, even when they are in the middle of nowhere. It's worth the trouble to squeeze some sun screen in his pack when he gets to see Johnny so happy about how good his tattoo looks again.

And once he sees how a properly taken care of piece will look Soap wants more. Ends up accompanying Ghost to the studio whenever he goes.

He's creative, most of what ends up on him is based on his own sketches, always with meaning behind it for him. The next thing he gets is a certain skull based on a specific mask that he wears close to his heart (making Ghost go through emotions he wasn't aware he was capable of having). He also helps Ghost with giving some of his ideas form often redrawing endless variations to make sure Simon doesn't just pick one that seems okay and fitting for its purpose but one he really likes to look at too. Poor man almost loses it when he sees one of his sketches inked on Ghost for the first time and its a good thing they are on leave because he's not gonna let him out of their bed any time soon. Purely to protect the new ink from the sun of course.

[memelovescaps]

Beneath the Surface chapter 21: Returning to the dungeons

Gently, painfully slowly, Harry reached and nuzzled his nose. The touch was so light, so soft, it felt like the brush of a feather, the warmth of it delicate yet grounding. It was a gesture so tender and warm it made Severus close his eyes and breathe in, pleasant tingles spreading from the base of his spine.

There was no distance between them, Severus could feel Harry’s steady gaze on him.

The gentle pressure of Harry’s hand on his hair sent a shiver of warmth coursing through Severus. The scent of him, of parchment and ink, of home, wrapped around him, anchoring him in this moment.

“I see you did think that,” Harry murmured, “well, you heard Pomfrey, you are not totally recovered and the wound is not healed yet. That’s one.”

The silence stretched, their breaths mingling in the space.

Severus took a ragged breath. He opened his eyes and saw a fiery fire in Harry’s eyes. But it was warm. Warm and welcoming. He swallowed around the lump in his throat.

“And—what’s two?” he rasped.

Harry smiled and he pulled away, only a bit, to be able to see him. Severus kept staring at those glistening green eyes, he could get lost in those. The colour was clear and bright, and they were looking at him with such warmth he felt the heat rise to his cheeks.

And then, Harry closed his eyes a split second before his lips pressed against the tip of his nose.

His nose.

One of the features he most hated about himself, one of the things that made him stand out in the crowd. He’d suffered abuse and ridicule about his nose for decades.

But Harry was kissing it.

Harry’s lips were soft against the sharp ridge of his nose, warmth blooming beneath Severus’s skin. As his lips brushed against the skin, Severus's heart raced in his chest, he could even hear it ringing in his ears.

He couldn’t tell if the world had stopped spinning or if it was whirling too fast for him to keep up. He wasn’t sure whether he was still standing or if gravity had ceased to exist, leaving him weightless.

The only thing grounding him was the fistful of Harry’s shirt in his hand; as if that alone tethered him to reality.

“Two… is that I want to spend time with you, as much as we can, before the term starts and we’re drowned in responsibilities,” Harry murmured. He paused, nuzzling his nose, and he smiled, “If you will have me, of course.”

Also available on Wattpad and Fanfiction.

[its-adeucen]

The once powerful eccentric guild Fairy Tail reduced to a laughing stock in the loss of their most powerful wizards, within their small numbers stands their last Dragon slayer–once one of four has now been reduced to the last. Hands dripping with ink, destruction left in their wake, uprooted trees and craters litter the ground. Scattered around sparsely, the bodies of bandits unconscious lay covered in ink.

“Ink Dragons Roar!” Inhaling deeply, your hands curl into a fist like shape–holding them up to your mouth, as if you were holding a flute–you inhale deeply before shooting out a bullet like wave of ink towards your opponent. The black coloured magic circle glowing brightly in front of you, and you watch as the bandit flies backwards.

Sighing, you throw yourselves backwards, splaying out on the cold grass beneath you. “Man, the reward for this won’t even make a dent in the guild rent…” Gazing up at the starry sky, you bit your lip before covering your eyes with your arm.

What am I supposed to do…The loss of your fellow guildmates hit you hard, there was no way your guild could keep afloat–that became obvious after the first few years–and after a while, people started to disappear. Guild members who used to ruffle your hair, give you tips on your technique, who would laugh and let you sit in while they played cards, who answered your nonsense questions. People you grew up around, started to leave. By the time you turned thirteen, your once renowned guild hall was reduced to a farmhouse and your family was barely keeping it together. Four years and still no sight of your lost members, you began to take on more and more—more jobs, more house work around the guild, more responsibility—three years later you stand as one of the guild top earners and it’s still not enough.

“Maybe if I pick up a few more odd jobs on my way back…” in the distance, you hear the sound of hooves hitting the ground and the rattling of carriage—the thought of a carriage, leaving you nauseous—groaning you resign yourself to getting up and cleaning the road before some angry merchant gets out and yells at you about road blockage. Just as you start to sit up, you are hit with a sudden feeling of vertigo, your vision starts to go black as you lose consciousness, back hitting the ground.

• You wake up in the coffin confused before resigning yourself to waiting, used to the ridiculous ‘adventures’ that come with being a Fairy Tail member, hoping that it would just be some Dark guild that you’d be able to pummel to the ground before going on your way–maybe grab a snack on your way back to the guild.

• Standing in a library at odds with a talking cat–not an eleceed at that–spitting fire at you, you know that your hope to just fight your way out of this and call it a day has been pulled right out of your hands and thrown into a blazing fire. Especially after some random crow man whips the cat up.

[ The nature of this one's soul is…how curious it appears as if there are two souls, one a childish offspring of the other. A roaring dragon and its child… fit for so many dorms, and yet, non at all–it would seem that this soul already belongs to another group there for, they are fit for No Dorm! ]

• Dorm? Soul? Did that mirror just call you childish?? Oh wait, the cats setting everything on fire. Watching as (nearly) everyone around you begins to run around like headless chickens, you step forward ready to cast a spell and take care of the cat before you find yourselves stumbling backwards–you haven’t eaten anything to replenish your magic yet.

• Soon enough the cats dealt with by a red head and a guy that smells strongly of seafood, everyone’s getting sent off, the bird man’s going to help you get back and what do you mean “What's Fiore!?!!??” You panic, pulling down the collar of the robe you’re wearing, showing your guild mark proudly displayed on the side of your neck only to be met with confusion.

Is this another world?? Is this another Edolas situation?? What am I gonna do?? Is there any way back??

• Later, when you’re lying on an old dusty bed with a flaming cat asleep by your head, in an old abandoned building that is infested with ghosts of all things, your heart skips a beat as you stare up at the crumbling ceiling. THE REWARD MONEY—

• The next morning, you’re presented with a dress shirt and some slacks—no blazer, on account of you being a janitor—and the bird man dodges any questions of pay or food before pushing you out of the house and onto the streets (more like walkways, really) of the school.

• Cleaning up was never your strong suit, considering the role models you had growing up, you’d even consider it the opposite of a strong suit. A Fairy Tail member cleaning up? as if.

• So when the flaming cat—Grim—torches the statue of some queen lady after being egged on by a random ginger, suddenly all feels right in the world.

• It feels even more right when you and your ragtag group of…whatever you all are, destroy an expensive chandler!

“What’s your name again? Juice or something??”

• Making it to the mines, you pick up Grim and begin to flail him around like a torch as you search for the Magic stone. Ace and Deuce bicker behind you and you feel a twinge of nostalgia hit you as you think back to Natsu and Grey.

• All this reminding is tossed aside in favour of running away from a giant monster in the mines, hurling attacks at you and the boys. There’s shouting and yelling before you stand your ground, instructing the boys and Grim to fight the monster.

• It’s only when you’re out of the mines and onto a field of grass, the monster's glass head shattered into a million pieces, the grass burnt, you notice the ink staining the ground. Bending down to dip a finger in it, you cautiously flick it with your tongue before your eyes widen.

What was that thing?

• You and Grim are enrolled into the school as one student—due to your ‘lack of magic’—and you are actually given a blazer, still no vest though, and a striped ribbon to use like an arm band. Grim looks at it and cackles, pointing towards his neck; “Look! We match, Henchmen!”

• Ace nudges at you with his elbow, jokingly calls you Prefect, before saying goodbye and heading off with Deuce. You smile as you wave the two off, finding the new friendship exciting.

• It’s less exciting when you throw your front door open at, way too early in the morning o’clock, to find Ace in his pyjamas, collar around his neck and a bag slung over his shoulder like a kid who’s just run away from home after a fight with his parents.

“Ace, why are you here at…whatever time it is.”

• School sucks, and Dormhead’s seem to suck even more seeing as thanks to Ace's rude interruption you weren’t able to sleep any longer. Sitting still was always, hard, not being able to move was like torture. Not being able to move while being forced to learn things was even worse.

• You barely managed to learn how to read from Erza, and that was traumatizing—you did not come out unscathed.

• Lunch is a godsend, finally some food—you barely managed to keep yourself from stealing and dismantling Deuces pen just for a quick little snack the class before. This too is horribly interrupted by another ginger as well as some green haired guy with glasses, giving you a run down on the school dorm.

• You tone it all out until you're shocked out of your thoughts by a shrill shout of,

“And You! Fix your shirt collar, and wear a tie that is horribly out of uniform—is, is that a tattoo!?”

• “Oh, I never noticed before…” Deuce mutters from your side, leaning in closer. “No way prefect, where’d you get someone willing to tattoo you so young?!” Ace also leans in, collar shining under the light.

• “I wanna know too, come on why don’t you tell upper class man Cay-Cay, I promise not to tell!” Ginger number two makes a motion to fake zip up his mouth as he stares at your neck. “I’m more curious as to what the tattoo means.” Glasses smiles at you, but he also leans in to look.

• Looking away as all the eyes stare at your neck, you place your hand over it to cover your guild mark as you laugh—trying to change the subject—before Redhead shouts something about tea and the subject it dropped completely.

• The week breezes by quickly, and before you know it, you’ve made some tarts, pissed off some guy with lion ears and a tail, got yelled at about said tarts, learned all about some magic history, alchemy and Redheads traumatic backstory.

• Finally, you stand and watch as Ace and Deuce try—and fail—to beat their Dormhead.

• And then you feel it.

Your heart jumps a beat, and the hairs on your neck stand up—the air changes, turns sharper as the feeling of bloodlust and anger fills the air. Your ears are ringing as you watch the Redhead warp and change, ink clinging onto his small form and a familiar bottle headed monster emerges up from behind him—people behind you gasp and run—you feel the Birdman grab your shoulder and shake you warning you to run as the monster behind the Dormhead lets out a roar before sending a wave of ink towards Ace.

“Prefect wait!—” There’s a shout behind you as you wrench yourself from the Headmaster's grip, throwing your body infront of Ace, taking the attack head on.

“No way…” Ace gapes from behind you, the attack disappearing, having been eaten by you. Licking your lips, you smile as you stare down Redhead, high on adrenaline—excitement rolls off you in waves—inhaling deeply, you go through the familiar motions of curling your hands into near fists.

“What are you doing!? Get out of there! You don’t have any magic—”

“Ink dragon…” The words leave your mouth easily, you plant your feet firmly on the ground as you lean back every so slightly before lurching forwards—a magic circle appearing in front of you. Magicless my ass.

Your lips curl into a smile as you shout out. “ROAR.”

I’m tired, and I picked this prompt from a wheel spinner—honestly, there were other options like KHR, KNY, Madoka, PJO and a few more on there so we’ll see if I ever go anywhere with those, maybe i’ll make another thing. (am open to suggestions for more ideas)

Originally, ‘Yuu’ was going to use Maker magic, like ‘Ice Make’ and the such but the idea of a cat companion was way funnier so dragon slayer it is! This isn’t proof read or anything so 🤷

ALSO i haven’t watched fairy tail since around the like, seventh grade and it’s been forever since I’ve seen the prologue of Twst

[callmewrinkles3]

Fresh Ink

Summary: Dan decides to get a new tattoo that Em has inspired. She decides to be a little more spontaneous.

A/N: we don’t have a full oneshot, so have a lil drabble we’ve been keeping close to our chests!

August 2018

In the short time she’d spent with Dan, Em learned to not be surprised by the weird ways their days could go. From sitting on the couch for a lazy day, to being surprised with a trip to see the Reputation tour, anything could and did happen. Which was why she wasn’t surprised when she got a text from Dan saying he was going to get a new tattoo and wanted her to come with him. Daniel “I’ll just get a big one and then no more” Ricciardo getting a tattoo wasn’t a new thing and she loved the ink already on his body and the differences in the artwork they both had. But what did surprise her was what he was getting.

A couple of weeks before she’d sent him a text before a race. She was up watching and it had been a shitty practice and qualifying, the car kept failing on him. Her little Shine on, Handsome, text was supposed to just make him smile. She didn’t want to call and distract him, or wish him luck make him think his performance was what she cared about. She didn’t expect his little heart emoji response to make her grin and giggle like a kid. But her Sky Sports subscription was on the telly and she watched with rapt attention until he had yet another DNF and she wanted to throw something at the stupid car that kept failing him.

But they never mentioned the text after that. Not that Sunday night when he arrived at her front door with flowers and his suitcase. Not the next day when he kissed her goodbye before going to the sim and coming back to her that night. It was too easy to spend time together.

But he’d come back early from his summer break to spend time with her and had dragged her to a fancy tattoo shop in the middle of London to show her the perfectly printed font for her text. The “shine on” that was going onto his bicep where everyone could see it and she felt stupidly proud of it. He’d just asked if she wanted to be there while he got a new one and surprised her when they got to the shop. If he hadn’t mentioned that he knew the owner the tears might have come out in pride but she held them back.

“You are actually insane, you know that. Right?”

“I drive a car hundreds of kilometres an hour every single week. We knew that.” He grinned and gave her a shrug as the rest of his answer.

They were waiting for the tattoo artist to finish setting up as she looked in the glass showcase of piercings. The only ones she had were the gold studs in her earlobes. She’d had them since she was a kid and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually changed the studs in them. She just liked looking at shiny things and ended up staring at a tiny little nose stud with a small opal on it. The colours hit it and showed the iridescent sheen and she loved looking at it while Dan was talking to someone she didn’t know. At least he was until an arm went around her shoulder and his lips were against her temple.

“Find something you like? Cause I just found someone I really like.” He smiled against her ear, whispering lowly so only she could hear. “Gonna get a new one? You’d look cute with a tragus, or maybe something in your upper cartilage.”

“Nah, not really. Besides I don’t even want to know how much one of those cost here.” It was only half a joke as she glanced up at Dan and then back to the accessories.

“Did you plan to get a new one? You’ve loads of space in your ears for whatever you want.”

“Ha, no, I’m too cool for that now. I mean I always wanted to get my nose pierced. Mum would have killed me if I did it when I was younger and now I’m too old for it.” Her mother’s words echoed around her head that she’d look like a cow with a ring in her nose, how would anyone ever want to marry her with it? She shook her head a little to try get it away from her.

“You just turned 28. I’m barely 29. Are you calling us old?” It was mostly a joke.

“Definitely.”

“Meanie.” He squeezed her shoulder to soften the word. “But you should get it. You’d look really good with a nostril piercing. A little gold hoop would be cute and match the rest of your jewellery.”

“What if I don’t like it?” That knot of anxiety bubbled up a little.

“You take it out and let it heal over. It’ll leave a tiny mark that nobody will see. The only person who gets close enough to see something like that is me, and I won’t care about it.”

“Who told you that you’re the only one who gets that close?” It was said jokingly but she saw how he stiffened slightly.

“Hey!”

“I’m joking!” He was still tense and she squeezed his arm. “I’m joking, Danny. You really think it’ll suit me?”

“You’re gorgeous anyway but it’ll look good on you. Plus, there’s one there with a shiny lavender opal so I call it destiny.” He pointed at the exact one she was looking at.

“And I’m calling you a bad influence.”

“I’m a bad influence who’ll hold your hand when the needle gets close to your face. Sound good?”

“And I’ll hold your hand when you’re getting your tattoo?”

“See, teamwork.” He turned around and called someone over. “Em wants to get her nose pierced, do you have space?”

She grinned and started filling out the paperwork, signing it and picking out the temporary jewellery while it healed. And true to his word, Dan held her hand for the entire time.

[cafeeeeeeeeee3]

Time to ramble about Dream (again)

Firstly.

I hate that skimpy onesie this mfer wears

It probably has utility, but those skimpy clothes are usually about stealth or something, which, let me tell you, unless this man takes off his cape, his 11 blue belts, his boots, his gloves, his circlet and the tunic, he's not achieving. I'm convinced the wind makes noise when he moves.

The worst part is that,,, the first art actually had him wear something much more acceptable? It looks much more presentable to going around in, it is a fun little nod to Sans' design and even his own OG design.

Maybe what got it taken out was how fluffy it looked?? I dunno, maybe it's really valid, but I'll never not have a negative response to that skimpy shit. This man's legs are likely eroded at the middle from the friction. He steps a little bit too wide and they're gone.

But now, though, I like that shit a lot despite that inconvenience.

First and foremost, put it into perspective with his old design — I'm fairly sure there is a post about how his new design is not an override, like Ink's, but something that actively marks his acceptance of his brother's death. Maturity, like women cutting their hair short in anime!!!!

I am a sucker for this design. I LOVE the bee pattern, because, y'know, yellow is REAAALY dope as a colour.

This is the colour you'll see in nurseries and in the warning you'll see just before you die. It's the colour of your best friend's favourite shirt and the sclera of the dragon that will eat them alive.

Yellow is an amazing colour, and it is perfect for somebody like Dream, who has to fight at an active disadvantage and cannot afford to simply rely of defending forever, who can only afford a less worse ending through his efforts. Who has to bring something down at the same time he has to lift people up.

Blue, the colour of his old design, is the colour of inactivity. Of calmness and melancholy. He cannot afford to mourn, because every moment is one he's lost in double, he cannot afford to be calm, because to be trying to solve this problem in anything but 2x speed is dangerous.

Sooo, uhhh, yellow is a really amazing colour for Dream. I think his favourite colour would be blue, though, because it is a somewhat nostalgic colour, y'know? I always interpreted the belts he has as somewhat of chains, almost a reminder that he, too, pays for their sin (at least in the way he sees it).

Btw I think is, more than nostalgic, just something he kinda,,, yearns for. He wants peace. Calm.

Anyways, dumb fucking brainrot Ig.