#if u like mushroom dick come to the front of the room!

[abbysbasement]

also i am going to write something so gross soon, and it is for the real freaks. it is for the oviposition freaks it is for the monsterfucker freaks it is for the nasty bitches and if you're not one of them get to the BACK NAOW

[legend5911]

Bed to heart

An exciting morning in MPT where everyone is doing his/her job to make the place look beautiful. They all are very happy because after giving letters to the department from the last 3 years, now they send a new SHO to their station. Hm is extremely happy because now her workload will decrease and she can work on her character development and at last will get CR from her senior and she too can be SHO of any station.

Everything is looking good and it's time for new SHO to arrive, everyone after completing the preparation, sitting on their respective seats eagerly waiting for the new SHO to come.

Here she comes, a Jeep stops in front of station, and a 6ft lady with muscular strong arms comes out in her uniform with sexy goggles on her eyes. Everyone stood up in a line and saluted their senior.

Everyone introduces themselves, at last it was hm's turn.

"Jai hind maddam sir, haseena malik, SI of MPT reporting"

Ks nodded and stood in front of her, they both had an eye lock of 2 seconds, ks raised an eyebrow, hm did the same. Ks frowned at this, hm gives the same facial expression.

Ks smiles and says while looking at hm

"Ham hai Karishma Singh, SHO of MPT. Hamme koi matlab nhi hai kaam kaise kiya, kya kiya kyu kiya, hamare under kaam karna hai 2 cheeze dimaag Mai fir karlo, case jaldi se jaldi khatam hona chahiye jiske liye tumhe jo kaam bola jaayega usse jald se jald khatam karoge, aur doosra iss vardi pai koi daag nhi lagna chahiye, aur kooch gadbad ho jaaye toh public mai nhi aani chahiye warna ussi public mai Jeep ke peeche baand kar poore shehar ka chakar lagawayenge woh bhi hamari speed pe."

During all this conversation, both ks and hm were having eye lock, they were seeing each other's facial expressions and trying their best to make other break the eye lock and this will result in their victory in dominating other.

"Is that clear..?" Ks asked everyone said yess mam

" Go back to your work and u miss haseena, give me a visit of the whole thana including the record room and my cabin" ks said while going in another direction to pick up her stick and cap.

In record room

Hm is pinned to the wall, ks had her fingers wrapped around hm's throat and she pulled her up the ground.

"Your eyes are making me furious, if u continued your gaze, I will pull both of them out" ks warned

"Ahaan..? Don't u think I can say same lines to u" hm said with confidence.

Ks put her hand in hm's pant and inserted 2 fingers in hm, she raised an eyebrow, "wow, see what we have, a pool of precum flowing, does my words made u this horny..?" Ks asked.

"Yess you made me horny the moment u entered the mpt" hm said

"U too did the same, your curves and this hot face made me hard the moment I saw u" ks said to which hm's eyes pope out

" U have a dick..?" Hm asked

"U wanna see it..?" Ks asked

Hm nodded to which ks pulled her hand making hm fall on ground, hm sat in kneeling position after cleaning dust from arm, and she saw ks put her face near her pant and the imprint of dick was pretty visible, it was pretty big and thick, hm could say that just by seeing the imprint. Hm tried to open zip, which was a bit difficult because  it was pushing the pant away as it was growing making the pant to tore. Hm somehow managed to open that and she put her hand in boxer making her shaft to come out.

Hm gasped looking at size and thickness it was flaccid yet 9 inch long and 4 inch thick, with veins popping out making it more dangerous by looks and the mushroom head with pink tip was looking like a hammer.

Hm kissed the tip and then took the tip in her mouth making her face to stretch out. She took some length in her mouth making her to chock, and as she took almost half of it in mouth, her jaw started paining, here ks got fedup , so she took her face and started moving it in and out, in and out which made hm to moan and ks moaned as she was about to cum, after a min, ks came directly in her mouth. Hm drank each spurt and drop. Ks pulled it out and patted her head, "good girl"

Hm stood up and kissed ks passionately and stick herself to ks. She jumped on her and wrapped her legs around waist.

"I wanna have sex with u each day, or whenever one of us is horny, other will be present, just physical thing, no emotions." Hm said

"I wanna have sex with u each day, or whenever one of us is horny, other will be present, just physical thing, no emotions." Hm said

" I don't like it when anyone, gives me an order and u are my junior so never dare to do that" ks said.

" You are my senior only during job hours not after that" hm said

Ks looked at another side and after a snap of second hm was at ground having a hand printed with red ink on her cheek km looked down and pulled her up from the collar, "Haan senior kon hai ?" Ks asked

"Aap"

" Job ke. Baad bhi senior kon hai"

"Aap"

" And what I don't like ?"

" You being ordered by me"

" See how cute good girl u are, keep one more thing in your mind to always call me daddy, otherwise"

" Sure daddy"

Ks smiled and said " chalo jao abhi" and as hm turned, she received a very tight spank on her ass cheek making her tears in eyes because of heavy hand.

Hm's pov

Kya cheez milli hai aaj, badhiya. Aisa senior hona chahiye jab chahe sex karlo. Kissi din kaam na karne ka Mann karre to ilzam ispr lga do ki tumhare karn hi nhi chal pa rahe hai raat ko control kar liya karo.

But kya janwar hi milla hai, ladki chodo kissi ladke ke bhi kabhi itne heavy hand hote hai, aur chehre pe har waqt gussaa. Haan cum kaafi tasty tha aur amount bhi kaafi zada tha. Anu toh kacha khilaadi tha tik hi nhi paya hamare aage shayad ye tik jaaye, abhi Tak toh aisa lagta hai ki shayad ham khud na tok paaye karishma Singh ke aase. Ohhhhh..... Sorry sorry daddy, chaliye dekhte hai, what this new daddy do.

Ks caller hm in her cabin

"Yess daddyy"

"haseena Hamko ye pta chala hai ki tumhara CR par hamare sign honge. Mtlb agar ham chahe toh Aaj tumhe SHO bna de agar Naa chahe toh agle 10 saal tak tha raho"

"Daddy I wanna be SHO too please sign on it."

"Naah abhi nhi, abhi toh hamme bhut thakan ho rha hai, jao gate band Karo aur hamare samne nachna shuru karo"

" Ji"

She closed her door and started dancing In front of ks making her hard again

That night, ks fucked her very hard, let's go in the room where everything started.

It was around evening when ks and hm went together to hm's house. While whole ride, hm was roaming her hand on ks's pant and whole body which made ks hard. And once ks parked the car, hm ran to unlock the door and opened the door, but as she did that, ks picked her up on her hips and started kissing her passionately.

"Bedroom kha hai..?" Ks asked

"Upar jaake last room" hm said and again started kissing.

Haseena pov

While we both were reaching the bedroom, both had removed their shirts and bras in stairs.

Once we entered the room, ks threw me on her bed, and once we both removed our lower, ks jumped on me and sat on stomach, further wrapped fingers around my throat and squeezed my throat making me choak. She slapped me tightly,

"BEG !!"  She ordered

"What ?"

Again 3, 4 slaps

"BEG..!!" She ordered

"Daddy please....... Please fuck me." I begged

She moved her hands on my boobies and started massaging it making me moan, she squeezed it very tightly, I held the bedsheet very tightly making my knuckles to turn white. She pinched my nipples, they were very sensitive to her touch, I curled my toes at moan loudly.

After some playing with my boobs, she went down and entered 3 fingers making me pop out my eyes, she started in and out, in and out, in and out. I was only moaning and screaming at this. My walls started collapsing, and was about to cum when she stopped and took out her fingers and slapped my pussy 4-5 times, they were very very hard. I screamed at each. 

She stood up and pulled my head toward her dick, squeezed my face making me open my mouth and the next thing was her massive shaft in my mouth, it was just tip and i was feeling full, she pulled my head through hairs in a jerk which gave me extreme pain, almost half of her dick was in me, i was having tears in my eyes. I tapped her thighs making her know its very muchh, she ignored my taps and continued her work. After 2 mins, she pulled it out of mouth and started jerking it in front of me. In matter of seconds, she released 10 strings of her cum directly in mouth, i was about to spit it out when she closed my mouth with her hand and put her dick on my lips like we apply lipstick.

once i swallowed everything, she moved down and put her shaft in my main mart, it was about half of length when i screamed very loudly. 

"you are very tight"

next thing was like someone on drill machine in me, i was blank out unable to think anything, 

after i came 3 times, she cumed tons of load in me.

then i slept in her arms.   

Next day, when I woke up, I saw ks had left. I found it a type off movie scene and looked for the note she would have left for me. But nothing was present around me. I pout, "that's not fair"

I looked at time, it was 9:00 AM. I know I was late but no issue, now I am not the one who is only incharge of thana. So I took my time, had a bath then made breakfast. And went to MPT

As I entered,

"Jai hind haseena maddam " cc said

"Jai hind"

"Maddam aapko karishma maddam bulaa Rahi hai, unhone bole ki jab aap aao toh aapke paas bhejna"

" Okay"

I ran to her cabin

" Daddyyyyyy"

She glared at me and stood up from her seat

" Jai hind Haseena malik, SI of MPT"

"Jai hind ms" I said sadly, my whole mood got spoiled.

She went behind me and...........

Next thing was I pinned at table while her one hand in my head and other holding my both hands.

"U are late"

"Yss maddam sir"

"And what's reason"

"Because u screwed very hard and I was unable to wake up" I lied, because she was not that hard

"Ahhhhhhh......." I screamed at 2 spanks

"Now what's truth"

"I am lazy, I thought now u are present in mpt, I can go late" I said not daring to say lie again.

"So I think you should get a punishment"

"But....."

She pinched my ass cheek tightly.

I nodded, "yess daddy punish me"

"No it's ms, your senior not your daddy"

I went and closed the gate and windows. I looked at her and put both my arms around her. I made her look at me and because of height difference my dominance was increasing. I asked, " why are you getting punished ?"

"Because I am late"

"What's time now ?"

"11 AM"

"And what should be your arival time ?"

"9 AM"

" So you are late by ? "

" 2 hours"

" So for next 2 hours you will remain nude in my cabin"

" Okay maddam sir"

I sat on my seat and commanded her to remove all her clothes.

She removed all of clothes nd knelt down looking at her knees

I threw 2 files down on ground.

Complete both files and you have two hours.

"Maddam sir I will complete them in half an hour" she said with a shock expression

"Still you ha e 2 hours for it" I said this because I am the one who knows the plan

She nodded and opened the file. It was having two vibrators and a pen.

She looked up at me

"Put one in your clit and another in ass" I ordered

She fearingly put them. Once she was ready, I ordered, " you have to keep file on ground"

She moved forward almost laying on ground.

I turned on the first vibrator i.e clit one it was at slow level and I can see her rubbing her legs.

After 5 mins I increased the speed of first while turned on another. I can see her getting turned on, and her speed of writing is decreased.

I without any warning turned both on maximum, she immediately started moaning and she dropped the pen, I can see her legs shivering.

She looked up at me and said, "dadddyyy........."

"Awww poor puppy"

I can see, she is about to cum and at that moment I stopped it making her whine.

She looked at me with teary eyes, and did a whine. "Pleeaaassseee .......?"

"My poor kitten wanna cum, but she is not allowed. It's your punishment so you can't enjoy it. Now complete those file asap" I said.

She didn't argue and immediately started her work. After a minute I too increased some speed making her breath to increase and her work to slow down as her whole concentration was between her legs.

I kept the speed same for some time. It was almost 45 minutes when she looked up at me after sometime first one.

"Aww puppy completed first one ?. I think she deserves to cum. Come in my lap"

She came up and I pulled both vibrator out and entered 2 of my fingers in her. She had a pool of precum downside. I smiled at her and started moving my fingers in and out making her moan. Once she was at her edge I entered third one and started biting her neck making her cum immediately. I smiled at her and brought the fingers near her mouth she cleaned them immediately.

Then I pushed her downside, she opened the second one and looked up at me shockingly.

[1kook]

skirt chasers - drabble iii

this a skirt chasers drabble in case u couldn't tell uhhh here’s i and ii lol

summary; “I think the alcohol broke my amygdala. Your epidermis looks pretty today— did you use that toner I told you about?” warnings; alcohol mention, tit sucking, unprotected sex, use of the pull out method, uhh making out??? ratings; mature (18+) misc; educational abolitionist!jungkook, drunk jk, mentions of throwing up lol, jk is an anatomy frEAK, more skirts, more jk has questionable kinks wc; like barely 2k

notes; i wrote this in like 40 mins bc i couldn't stop thinking about STIMBO jk from skirt chasers and how cool he is enjoy xxxx also i barely rmr shit from anatomy bc it was the worst course of my life so pls bear with me

His first mistake is getting drinks with the boys. You like to think you know your boyfriend pretty well, know what he’s good at, where he excels, where he thrives, and well. Drinking doesn’t rank too high on the list.

Jimin calls a little past midnight. “Kook’s on the table,” he slurs into the phone, too loud and too sloppy for a Wednesday night phonecall.

“Ha?” you mumble back, rubbing your eyes until you see stars. The room is dark, practically spinning from how out of it you are. Chaeyoung is dead asleep in her room, so even whispering feels like a crime. “Where are you guys?”

Some bar on the south side of town, that strip where all the newly turned twenty-one year olds go to get wasted. Jungkook’s supposed to be studying for some big exam he has on Friday— at least, that’s what he told you —so it takes a few minutes of convincing on Jimin’s part until you’re shrugging your coat on, blindly navigating through your apartment for your keys and wallet. You briefly consider taking an Uber, but ultimately decide you’d rather get stabbed to death on a public bus so at least your family can sue the city afterwards.

Jungkook is indeed on the table, except the table has long since tipped over. So now he’s just sprawled across some dirty bar floor, puppy-soft head of curls spilling over his forehead. He’s so cute, so adorable. You want to kill him. “Up,” you command, channeling the strength of twelve football players to haul your beefy boyfriend off the ground.

“Baby,” he beams, looking at you but not actually looking at you. “I think the alcohol broke my amygdala. Your epidermis looks pretty today— did you use that toner I told you about?”

You don’t even know what that means, can’t even question him, because then Jin is angrily yelling at you to cover his tab. You pay with a stiff middle finger, flail the three dollars in your wallet at him, before sweeping away your poor damsel in distress. “You’re supposed to be studying,” you huff, can’t even be mad when he stops to throw up in a bush outside the bar. You’re so embarrassed, pretend you don’t know him as you pull up the bus times on your phone.

He’s huffy by the time you get on the bus, sniffling against your neck as he cries about his common hepatic portal vein thing— you don’t fucking know.

Chaeyoung isn’t too impressed with you when you bring him home, dump him on the couch while she steals your AirPods from your room. “Explain yourself,” you demand, and his head rolls back.

“I hate school,” he complains, slaps a hand down against his forehead. You’re certain he’s concussed himself this time. Then he’s bending over, head held between his hands. “Wanna cry.”

You sigh, kneeling in front of him. “You’re almost done,” you comfort him, hand on the back of his head. He’s so sweaty, and smells like all his friends colognes at the same time. “You’re smart, baby, you can do this.”

Your words have the opposite effect, because then he’s rocking forward childishly, nearly rams your skulls together and kills you. He’s reached the point of his insobriety where he’s too sad and huffy to think, sadly leaning against your shoulder as if that’ll somehow solve all his problems. You doubt it will, but there’s really nothing much you can when Jungkook reaches this point, so you settle on softly patting the back of his head until the fool is fucking snoring against you.

Chaeyoung blesses you with her divine retribution the next morning by using up the last of your body wash, and then you’re left to deal with a hungover Jungkook on a Thursday morning. You’re pretty sure he had a class that morning, but he wakes up too late for you to even try to convince him to still go, and then he’s moping on your couch in last night’s clothes. You’re getting ready for your internship, blouse half buttoned, pencil skirt wiggled up to your waist.

“Abolish exams,” he mutters, numbly staring at the ceiling as you wipe his face with a cleansing towelette. He doesn’t seem remotely interested in the shower or the pancakes you made, which lets you know this is a much more serious issue than just a drunken episode. “Aren’t they stupid?” You nod. “Sure, test me on every damn thing we’re learning right now as if science isn’t always changing and I’ll have to keep learning anyway.”

He looks over at you, under-eye bags absolutely horrendous. “Tests are stupid,” you agree, and it seems to be exactly what he wants to hear as he sinks into your arms, face buried in your chest. “Too stupid for smarty-pants Jeon Jungkook.”

Jungkook groans, flops over you on the couch all smelly and gross. “They test you for memorization and not comprehension,” he adds, finally wiggling out of his stinky clothes.

With Jungkook, you can never tell where things are going. One minute he’s cursing the education system and the next he’s kissing along your neck in his rambling fury. “As if I these materials will somehow become nonexistent once I’m working,” he huffs, hands on your thighs. Your breath hitches in your throat, fingers digging into his biceps as he mindlessly kisses down the valley between your breasts. “Shit’s so fucking stupid,” he spits, bunching your skirt around your waist.

“Jeon—“

“I’m just trying to be a fuckin’ pediatrician, for fuck’s sake,” he growls, hastily undoes the front buttons on your blouse. Your black bra comes into view, heart pounding in your chest as Jungkook makes quick work of reaching behind and undoing it, pushing it away, and cupping your breasts in his palms. He guides one of your legs around his waist, tucks it around him as he gets to work raining down kisses on your tits. “So pretty, doll,” he murmurs, pretty pink lips leaving smooches down your chest.

You bite down on your lip, watch through hazy eyes as those big doe eyes flick up at you, tongue swirling around your nipple. “N— Not tired anymore?” you pant, hands in his hair. It’s still dry and knotted from last night’s adventures, but you don’t mind. Not when Jungkook’s hard cock is flush against your thigh.

“Nah,” he confirms, rolling his hips forward against your core. Oh he was horny horny this morning. Or was he angry horny? You don’t care, either way you were winning. “I serenaded you last night, y’know?”

You snort, but it morphs into a whimper when he captures your rock hard nipple between his perfect teeth. “Not a serenade,” you whimper, fingernails running along his scalp, “if I’m not there.”

Jungkook leans back, lets you breathe for a second as he unbuckles the front of his pants, jeans pulled down around his thighs. And of course he’s hard as fuck by now; this was Jeon Jungkook you were dealing with. He could get it up and going in two seconds flat at the mere sight of your collarbones. “You were there,” he insists, capturing your hand in his all romantic like until you’re flustered and shaking him off. He levels you with a cheesy grin, presses your palm against his chest. “Here.”

You gag. “That’s disgusting.”

Jungkook laughs, all squeaky and airy because he’s never given a fuck about looking cool in front of you. His next words only prove your point. “Why? Don’t like being nestled against my left lung and esophagus, all sexy like?”

You roll your eyes, tug your panties aside to give him a full view of what his dorky anatomical talk has done to you. “Dick me down or go away,” you say, pointer finger nudging his chin up when he stares too long

He snaps his teeth at you, almost bites your finger, the fuckin’ weirdo. “Sassy today,” he teases, presses the tip of his cock against you. Both of you groan, watch as he glides himself up and down your folds, angry mushroom head pushing against your clit. “Always so wet for me,” he mumbles shakily, eyes zeroed in on your wet folds and how slick they feel against him. “Didn’t stretch you out again.”

“Yo— You’re mean about that anyway,” you pant, pulling him closer by those firm ass cheeks of his. “I can tell when you’re using me as a reference model.”

Jungkook gasps as if he’s genuinely scandalized by your claim, follows your wordless command and finally lines himself up with your quivering entrance. “I’m a hands-on learner,” he offers, his cheeky smile still on his face until he finally sinks into you and his features twist up all pretty. “Your pussy’s just so pretty, baby,” he grunts, hand on your hip.

Your face feels warm, from the pleasure that rolls over your body and the vulgarity of his words. “Shush now,” you say, try to sound strict and in command, but he’s got his other hand cupping your jaw, looking at you like you’re a goddess and not some dorky college student in their even dorkier internship uniform.

“Temptress,” he mumbles, pushes past your clenching lips until he’s flush against you, your walls spasming around his cock because he just feels so good. “Tried to sneak past me in that tiny skirt.” He draws back, lets his swollen head catch at the entrance before sliding back in, pace slow and sensual, too intimate for some random Thursday morning. “Little doll just needs to be fucked in the morning, doesn’t she?” A pitiful whimper catches in your throat, eyes rolling to the back of your head with every glide of his dick back inside of you.

“N- Not my fault you have naughty eyes,” you whimper, hand coming up to bite at your knuckles as Jungkook continues to fuck you so sweetly. “Fuck.”

Jungkook ducks over you, wavy hair tickling your forehead as his hot breath fans across you. Smells like the mouthwash you made him take and hints of last night’s alcohol. “Can’t help it,” he husks, capturing your lips in his. Sloppy and wet, tongue clashing with yours as he guides you along, hips slowing to rhythmic ruts that have you moaning after each roll.

A few drawn-out thrusts later and you’re coming, body so sensitive this early in the morning, and it certainly doesn’t help that Jungkook looks like that (sweaty and worn, dark eyes watching you writhe beneath him). Surprisingly, it takes him a few more rushed thrusts before he follows, barely managing to pull out in time before his sparkling cum is splattering over your tummy and the skirt bunched around it. “No,” you whine, melting into the couch. “Jeon, this is my only one,” you complain, rubbing a hand over your eyes as if that’ll somehow make your legs work again enough to push him off.

Jungkook says nothing as he tucks himself back into his boxers, chest heaving from exertion as he crashes back onto the couch. “Liar,” he responds after a moment, out of breath and half asleep again. He’s still technically hungover. Hand lazily drawing circles on your knee as you sit up, wiggling your skirt back down. He gives you this indecipherable look. “I hid the other one under your dresser.”

You smack his arm. “Why the hell would you—“

He tackles you back into the couch, presses the stain into your skirt. It must feel gross against his naked tummy, but Jungkook doesn’t seem to care. “Makes me too horny,” he announces, pout pressed against your neck. “I had a teacher fantasy the other day. Did I tell you?” You roll your eyes, resigning yourself to this new life squashed beneath your boyfriend. “You were my high school anatomy teacher and I failed, so you made me stay after school for supplemental lessons—“

“That’s an abuse of power,” you point out, back to carding your hands through his now sweaty and greasy hair. “And you would never fail an anatomy class, that’s literally your comfort area of study.”

“Listen,” he stresses, lifts his head until he’s peering at you with these humongous Bambi eyes. “You spanked me and—“

“Go get my skirt.”

Copyright © 2020, 1kook on tumblr. absolutely NO reposts allowed.

[bokutos-eyebrows]

Making Up for Lost Time

Part 2/2 of a Tsukki smut fic !

Read part one here !!

Tsukki is grateful you suggested sharing a tent on your bio lab camping trip...(and so are u) ((this is literally just tsukki smut))

Tsukishima x fem!reader 

Word Count: 1,799

Warnings: spanking, public sex, teasing, NSFW, 18+ under the cut!

 Tsukki couldn’t keep his eyes off of you. He was frustrated, annoyed, and impatiently horny. It didn’t help that you were provoking him. Bending over in front of him to tie your shoe, tying up your shirt leaving your midriff exposed, it was too much. 

He followed your lead to the spot you had chosen to set up camp. Tsukki watched the way your ass flexed with every step. He felt a low burn in his stomach when he remembered how that ass was grinding on him during the bus ride. Shit, I’m getting hard. Tsukki moved the bag he was carrying to cover himself as he regained composure. He knew you’d see his erection later, but he did not want to deal with a “pitching a tent joke” right now. 

“Okay I think this is good!” You said as you started to put down your bags. Tsukishima smirked as he realized you’d chosen a spot on the outskirts of the campsite, close enough to not warrant suspicion from your peers, but far enough away to have some level of privacy. Tonight can’t come fast enough. He looked around before playfully slapping your ass. 

“Harder.” you demanded as you looked back at Tsukki. He paused for a second, taken back by your sudden request but was happy to oblige. Tsukki grabbed your hip with one hand and smacked down hard on your ass with the other. You let out a choked moan not wanting to attract attention. 

“We only have an hour to set up the tent before the class has to meet up again” Tsukki leaned in to whisper in your ear, “But once we’re settled in tonight I’ll be doing more to your ass than just smacking it.” 

“Can’t wait!” You smiled.

When you had first brought it up prior to the trip, Tsukishima had been hesitant about sharing a tent. He was a private person, and didn’t want to be the focus of gossip. “It’s fine, Tsukki,” you had said to him, “We’re in college now, no one cares! Plus, I’ve heard most people are sharing tents with their lab partners.” You had pouted and begged, claiming it would be easier this way. Tsukki finally gave in and now that the trip was in action, he was glad you were so relentless. 

 It was true, you were all adults and there were many co-ed groups rooming together. But Tsukishima didn’t care about the others anymore. All he could focus on was you. Have you been planning this? He mused to himself while watching you fumble around with the tent poles and stakes. Tsukki loomed behind you, pressing his body to yours. “Let me help.” He smirked and after a series of lingering touches and wandering glances, the tent was up and it was time for the class to regroup. 

Tsukishima could feel himself growing more and more impatient as the day went on. The professor’s lecture had dragged on for what felt like an eternity, and now you’ve all been released to hunt for moss and mushroom samples to study. Adding to Tsukki’s dismay, you agreed to team up with a few of your peers to “make the search go quicker”. Great I can’t even have you to myself? He scoffed but went along with the group.

After collecting samples, another lecture, and dinner, Tsukki’s patience was wearing thin. You had teased him the entire day. An “accidental” brush against his crotch, bending over right in front of him to “pick something up” all while in a group so Tsukki couldn’t even act on it.  it was too much, and you were going to be punished for it.

As nightfall came, many of your peers had gathered around a small bonfire. Some had retired to their tents, but there was mostly the loud obnoxious chatter of the class drowning out any peaceful sounds of nature. If there’s any time to do this, it’s now. Tsukki realized. It seemed like you had the same idea too. You glanced over at him and silently got up, headed towards your tent. Tsukishima followed.

Once the two of you were far enough out of sight, Tsukki grabbed your arm, stopping you from going further. “You think you can get away with teasing me the entire day like that?” He growled, pushing you against the nearest tree. 

“Hmmm, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tsukki!” you smiled playfully, “I’ve been a good girl all day.”

“Tsk.” Is all Tsukishima says before grabbing you by the hips and grinding his aching hard cock against you. You let out a moan and start grinding back on his length. Tsukki grabs your face and kisses you roughly, wasting no time exploring your mouth with his tongue. The chatter of the group from the bonfire is loud enough to mask all the moans and lewd noises.

Tsukki starts to snake his hand down your torso into your shorts. You spread open your legs to give him easier access as you feel a finger run up and down your slit. To your dismay, Tsukishima broke away from the kiss and paused. 

“Is this okay y/n?” He looked you in the eye with genuine care.

“Yes, Tsukki… please, keep going.”

Tsukishima wasted no time finding your clit and gently rubbing the pad of his thumb against it. You moaned as he circled your clit and bucked your hips towards him. Tsukki started to kiss your neck, sucking and nibbling each sensitive spot, leaving small bite marks you’ll have to hide in the morning. His fingers found their way down your folds and to your entrance. Slowly, Tsukki slipped his fingers into you and rubbed your tight walls as he thrust in and out. You cover your mouth to not scream out in pleasure as Tsukishima finger fucks you.

He plays with your pussy, fingers deep inside rubbing your sensitive spot while his thumb presses into your clit. The friction of it all was almost too much to handle and you rolled your eyes back in bliss. It doesn’t take long before you reach your release, letting yourself cum all over Tsukki’s fingers.

“You’re so wet, y/n.” Tsukki smirked as he pulled his hand out of your pants and put his fingers in his mouth. “I’ve always wondered what you taste like.” He looked you in the eye as he licked his fingers clean of your flavor. 

“Tsukki please, I want you right now.” You pant as you start to unbuckle your shorts then pull them down to expose your ass. Tsukishima debated teasing you more, it was his nature, but his cock had been aching for you the entire day. All he could do was nod and start to undo his belt and zipper, releasing his hard length. 

You turned around with your back to Tsukki, steading yourself on the tree that hid your location. Tsukishima grabbed you by the hips and you arched your back, preparing to finally feel him inside you. He rubbed your slit with the tip of his length, earning a low moan from you. 

“y/n I know we’re far from the group and they’re all pretty loud over at the bonfire but remember to keep your voice down, hmm?” Tsukki teased you before sliding himself into you, cursing at how tight and wet you were for him.

“Yes, Tsukki, anything for you,” You said breathlessly as he pumped his throbbing cock in and out of you. He reached his hand around to play with your swollen clit while he fucked you. You could feel another orgasm building up as Tsukishima started to thrust into you hard. 

Tsukki had to release the pent up frustration he’d had since being turned on during the bus ride to the campside all the way up until now when he could finally fuck you. So he was going to show you just how badly he had wanted to be inside you all day.

He grabbed your hips and pulled you down onto his dick as he pumped in and out of you. You could feel him hitting every sensitive spot deep inside your walls. Taking his lead, you start to push your ass back on Tsukki falling into the rhythm of his thrusts. He took this opportunity to bring a hand up to the base of your hair and tugged on it, pulling your head back to look at him while he fucked you. 

You maintained eye contact as he started fucking you harder, motivated by the sinful faces you made as you felt dis length stretching you out. He slapped your ass with his free hand, harder than you were expecting and you let out a loud moan.

“Tsk,” Tsukki paused from ravaging you, “Let's take this inside the tent before you get us caught.” You protest as he slips out of you but follow him the short distance to your tent. 

Once zipped up inside, you lay on your back, looking up at Tsukishima, and spread your legs wide. “Please fill me up, Kei.” You blushed.

Tsukishima was taken back by your sudden use of his first name and how exposed you were under him. But that only lasted a second as he felt his length twitch and grow even harder than before. He scrambles to get back inside of you, yearning to be wrapped up in your warmth. 

Kei kisses you sloppily as he thrusts into your core. You put your hands on his hips pulling him into you to signal you want him to fuck you harder. He smirks into the kiss as he starts roughly pounding into you, making you yell his name.

“Kei!” You shout in pleasure. Tsukishima kisses a trail from your face down your neck until he reaches your chest. You feel your mind going blank as he takes one of your nipples in his mouth, swirling his tongue around the erect bud. The vibrations of his own moans pass through your sensitive nipples and you feel yourself shake in pleasure. Your walls tighten and for the second time, Tsukki makes you cum. 

The pressure of your orgasm clenching down on his length pushed Tsukishima over the edge and he pulled out of you to shoot his release out onto your stomach. You are both a panting mess as he searches for a towel to wipe you off. Once you’re cleaned up, Tsikki lays next to you and wraps you in his arms.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.” He admits, turning away from you to hide his pink cheeks.

“We’ll just have to keep going then,” you smiled and turned to face Tsukki, getting up to straddle his hips, “To make up for all the lost time of course!” 

THANKS FOR READING <3

tag list: @alienvarmint

[themockingcrows]

Dream Eater

This fic is rated M! John/Dirk, John/Hal, Dirk<3<Hal AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26464264 cw: nuditty, kidnapping, fae and faeries, spirits, vomiting, soul theft, dreams and nightmares, mentions of dream sex, Hal is a trashbag.

When John starts having dreams about his boyfriend, he assumes nothing is out of the ordinary. When the dreams turn to nightmares, he's concerned. When dreams become reality and he's faced with a creature hellbent on keeping him in his world, will he be able to find a way home again?

    It was summer when the dreams first started, but autumn when they really came to a head for John. Near nightly he’d see his boyfriend in his sleep, and while he assumed it was just fondness that drove the visitations, or the fact they were together so often to begin with during the daytime hours now that it had been four years together, it was seeming more and more like something else was going on inside his mind.

    The Dirk in his dreams was oddly affectionate, showering him in kisses and touches that usually only came after a prolonged period of relaxing in one another’s presence. The Dirk in his dreams was also ethereally attractive, almost as if a halo were burnishing his pale hair, obscuring parts of his face and eyes with the reflective light. Butterflies tended to dance around, sunset colors on their wings, some with bright electric blue eye spots. Whenever John was with this Dirk in his dreams, everything felt better. The kisses, the attention, even the sexual escapades felt realer than real, leaving him aching in the morning for more when he woke. More than once he’d had to feverishly jack off just to be able to clear his head and function the following day.

    Dirk in reality didn’t seem to want to pay the dreams any heed. He found them amusing, or at least said he did, but didn’t want to discuss them further than the bare minimum. It was kind of frustrating, really. It made John not feel heard, but what could he really do? Dirk wasn’t into dream stuff, and that was that. On the recommendation of his friends he wound up searching for dream meanings, and found that the sex, mind blowing as it was, was just a sign that he could have that kind of passion in real life. The butterflies had a meaning too, more positive, dealing with longevity and romance, spirituality and joy, creativity. Great sex, long life, romance and joy sounded like a pretty good omen.

    Now if he could just get Dirk to actually listen to him about them, maybe they’d be able to tap into the elements he’d been experiencing and they could recreate them.

    Tonight was another dream, the butterflies leading a nude John from a circle of mushrooms where he’d ‘awoken’ to what looked like a grand table set with food and elaborate tea sets, some scene from Alice in Wonderland he was sure. All that was missing was a rabbit and a mouse, for the mad hatter’s position seemed to be filled by a similarly nude Dirk, who sat pouring two cups of tea for them to partake of. The liquid was a rich reddish color, matching the decadent desserts and fruits and jams that speckled the table. Dirk smiled as he approached, and beckoned for him to take a seat. The chairs all looked overstuffed and plumply comfortable, but John settled into one nearest Dirk’s right hand and accepted his cup, drinking some of the liquid.

    Even in a dream it tasted like what he assumed ambrosia tasted like, sweet and fulfilling to his very core, warm down his throat and settling in his stomach like a syrup. He was quick to drink a bit more as Dirk spoke to him.

    “Do you love me?”

    “Well. Yeah, of course I do,” he said with a soft laugh.

    Dream logic, he supposed. Calling into question any doubts he might have. At least there weren’t any, at this point.

    Dirk smiled softly before taking one of the cakes on the table and slathering it with a bit of jam, then took a careful bite.

    “Would you tell me anything?”

    “I try already but you’re kind of a dick sometimes,” John said with a smirk, looking over the spread again from where he sat before he reached for a raspberry and ate it, surprised by the perfect balance of sweet and tart. It’s like these things were made just for him, ripened and blended just right.

    “Would you give me anything, if I needed it?” Dirk asked with the same smile.

    “Uh, yeah. ...Wait, do you need something?” John asked, suddenly a bit concerned. In his dream hunting he’d learned that sometimes dreams were portents of the future or deep insight. Maybe Dirk was needing something that he didn’t want to ask for? It wouldn’t be the first time John had had to drag something out of his boyfriend.

    “I do,” Dirk said, looking sad suddenly. “I need all of you...”

    “Dirk you’ve uh... You’ve kinda had all of me before,” John laughed slightly, brows coming together as his face reddened. “Multiple times? Even in dreams? What more is there to give?”

    “A lot,” Dirk said, finishing his treat before standing up. The table seemed to sink into the ground in front of him, all the treats disappearing beneath the grass as butterflies flocked in ever increasing numbers. When nothing was in his path, Dirk came and leaned on the arms of John’s chair, getting right in his face. This close, John could finally see Dirk’s eyes, a piercing red that reminded him of Dave’s in a way. This might be a dream, but somehow the wrong eyes and the suddenly threatening, shark like grin that his boyfriend was giving him made John cower in his seat. He was far too exposed to be feeling scared, the warm sensations of the tea party giving way to the ice cold of a nightmare.

    “U-uhm...”

    “Your heart. Your body. Your soul ,” Dirk rasped, his voice too low. His red eyes looked crazed, his teeth too sharp, and his laughter that came sounded like breaking glass to John’s ears.

    He woke in a cold sweat, tangled in his sheets, huffing for breath, eyes wide in terror. The alarm was going off on his bedside table, leaving him to wonder if he would have woken up at all when things went sour, or if things would have gotten worse. John rubbed his damp face and yanked his sweat soaked blankets off of him to get up and change clothes, dressing for the day as much as he needed to before grabbing for his phone.

    He had to tell Dirk about this one. He absolutely had to.

    The phone rang before he finally heard the familiar voice on the other end, tired, as if-

    “Did you not sleep again?”

    “Did you call me just to antagonize me about my sleep schedule?”

    “No, I- Look, I had a dream. Another one.”

    “Here we go.”

    “Listen! You were in it again! And you were wrong!”

    “... I was in your dream and I was incorrect about something? Wow, what a nightmare,” Dirk said sarcastically. John smacked his forehead and groaned in annoyance.

    “No, no, I mean you were wrong. Like something was wrong with you. Your eyes were the wrong color and you were talking about my soul and laughing like a maniac.”

    “John, you had a nightmare,” Dirk rationalized. “I’m sorry you had a rough night’s sleep, but they happen.”

    “I was looking up dream stuff the other day an-”

    “And that’s probably why you had a fucking nightmare, do you know how hokey all that dream analysis stuff is?”

    “I don’t know, man, some of it was pretty interesting. It explained a lot of things I’ve been thinking about, an-”

    “You’re just as likely to get reliable information from horoscopes,” Dirk sighed. “Look. I’m not wanting to piss on your parade, but really John. I was just a nightmare. The dreams are just dreams. We’re near each other all the time, your brain just remembers the things we do and say and parks them in new orders and mishmashes them with everything else you’ve ever seen and done and thought till it’s like new.”

    “I know how dreams work!”

    “Then you know how nightmares work, too.”

    “UGH forget it, forget it... Why’d I even bother, you never want to talk about dreams.”

    “If it’s aspirations I’ll talk till your ears fall off and your voice goes creaky, John. But dreams are just made up things your brain creates to keep you pacified at night. They’re hallucinations. Try not to get too hung up on’em, okay? You keep having the same types of dreams because you’re so focused on figuring them out, of course the themes will be similar.”

    “But the nightmare…”

    “Was a nightmare.”

    John was quiet for a moment before he grimaced.

    “It really scared me, Dirk. Like, honest to God scared me.”

    “...Okay, look, that was probably a dick move on my part.” Dirk sighed quietly, considering his words more carefully. “Do you want me to come over?”

    “You haven’t slept yet, have you.”

    “No, if you must know, I was busy.”

    “Take a nap and then you can come over,” John reasoned. “I don’t want you half dead, I want you to be comfortable to lay on.”

    “If you just want to lay on me, wouldn’t a nap be the perfect thing to do at your house?”

    “No, I’ve uh. I’ve gotta change the sheets.”

    “...John, you didn’t-”

    “I DIDN’T PISS THE BED, GOD, I just sweat a lot from the nightmare!” John cried, leaning down with one hand to yank the bottom sheet off the mattress in one hard tug. It came free and dragged the entire contents of the bed down to the floor with it on his feet, leaving John grumbling in annoyance.

    “Okay, okay, I was kidding. I know you would never admit to it even if you did.”

    “DIRK.”

    John could almost hear the smirk in his voice. “I’ll call you after I’ve slept, then. Catch you later, John.”

    Annoyed, John hung up when Dirk did and dropped his phone on his desk before turning and crouching down to gather the sheets and pillowcases up off the floor. What a mess, he didn’t feel like doing laundry, but apparently that’s what he was going to do first thing in the morning. The bedding joined the other laundry in his hamper and he headed downstairs with it, wandering the short trip to the utility room before freezing, hand ready to reach into the darkness to flick the light switch on. For a split second he swore he saw eyes in the darkness, red eyes and sharp teeth that made his heart clench in panic, before he shoved his hand in and turned the light on. Illuminated, there was no obvious threat in the room aside from an early morning chill for his bare feet.

    He did his laundry. He ate breakfast. He spent the afternoon laying on Dirk playing videogames together and shooting the shit to make up for Dirk’s attitude earlier in the day and because they had planned to do so anyway. The nightmare was all but forgotten as the days turned to weeks and new dreams filled the void left from the nightmare, proving Dirk’s theory correct about the dreams increasing frequency because he was focusing on it. Sometimes he still saw red eyes in the dark, or right as he was about to wake up, but it was easier to forget them.

    ...At least till the night the dream returned, larger than life.

    John could feel his head sagging, his body going all but limp on the soft mattress, but knew he was still awake. He could feel his surroundings, the strange half sleep of a nightmare where he could just picture his sleep paralysis demon forming at the foot of his bed to loom over him, a shriveled hag there to suck the breath from his lungs. Yet, the hag never came. Instead, Dirk came, surrounded by ethereal butterflies.

    “Time to get up, John Egbert. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us,” he said softly.

    How had he gotten in here? Dirk didn’t have a key to the house, and it was so late he didn’t think his father would have let him inside. He’d never heard a knock, though he’d also been kind of concerned about the paralysis and potential demon coming to eat his face before he could fully wake up.

    “Up, up, up, we’re going to be late,” Dirk cooed.

    As if he were a puppet on a string, John pushed back his blankets and stood up, glassy eyed and silent, trapped inside his body like a sleepwalker who was aware of where his body was going. Dirk watched him silently as he pulled on his glasses and a hoodie, one of the ones Dirk himself had left during one of his many visits that John had started living in because it was comfortable. He didn’t recall giving his body the order to put on clothes on top of his pajamas. Was he going to put on shoes, too? Where were they going?

    To the window, apparently. That’s how he’d gotten in. John could have sworn he’d locked it, but he’d also be lying if he said it was the first time Dirk had ever snuck into his room late at night. Dirk exited first, and extended a pale, ungloved hand John’s direction to urge him to follow. John came right along, though on the inside he was getting more and more frantic. He wasn’t in control of his body, could Dirk tell that? He didn’t want to go outside, the roof was slick from rain recently, and it’d be cold. He didn’t want to go outside barefoot at all, but the roof would just be dangerous.

    He tried to pull the plug on his waking nightmare.

    He failed.

    He took Dirk’s hand and followed him steadily out to the roof, perfectly balanced despite his fear, the night sky overhead cloudy and speckled with stars whenever the rain laden puffs would move out of the way enough. A crescent moon illuminated the grass below shimmering like diamonds with dew, far enough below that John would definitely break his neck if he slipped.

    Dirk jumped backwards and landed with catlike grace on the ground below, barely bending his knees… and opened his arms upwards with a grin that showed too many teeth beneath the sharp bottom edges of his dark shades. He reminded John of a shark, unappealing and dangerous, even more dangerous because apparently he knew how to make John’s body listen to him. Following an unheard command once more, John approached the edge of the rooftop, bare toes peeking over the edge of the slick eaves to the gutter that definitely couldn’t hold his weight.

    He extended a leg, and screamed inwardly, panicked, not wanting to land in the hospital.

    John fell, weightless and full of panic, only for Dirk to catch him as if he weighed nothing, setting him down on his feet on the wet grass once again. He lifted a hand and gestured as if he were calling a pet to heel, and John continued his sleepwalkers shamble after him, first through the grass of his yard and then onto the cold asphalt of the road.

    John lost track of how long they walked, toes long numb from the cold and the repeated contact with dirt and stones and sticks, mind in a frazzle over what to do as he followed his pied piper boyfriend into the woods. The chilled scent of pine needles and wet, spongy earth flooded John’s senses, normally so soothing, but now terrifying. What was happening? What was going to happen? Why the fuck was he being taken out to the middle of nowhere like this by his boyfriend?

    Had he snapped?

    Was this some weird surprise? Some… some experiment he was keeping secret?

    Was he in danger? He’d caught him after jumping off the rooftop, but this was crossing some serious boundaries that John couldn’t quite put together in order right now due to how scared he really was.

    They continued walking until Dirk suddenly stopped and turned around, opening his arms once more with the same shark like grin that had chilled John to his core earlier, the least Dirk-like thing that he’d seen in his life. Dirk never smiled like that. Dirk’s smiles were subtle, fleeting flashes and soft shying away before finally warmly rolling out beyond his control.

    This smile was threatening, all danger.

    “Come here, John… That’s right,” he said as John took more sleepwalker steps forwards into what looked like a circle of mushrooms. Once in range, Dirk grasped him into a tight hug and crooned, grasping his chin with his hand to make him lift it, planting a kiss onto his lips. “Perfect, sweet John Egbert... and now you’re mine…”

    The lips were cold as ice, sending a chill down his spine even as the night sky seemed to sickly shift its cast from a deep blue and starlight to something more akin to dawn in the blink of a swirling eye. Where were they? This wasn’t the same forest they’d been in minutes before that John could tell, this was… this was different. Different, but he could recognize it from his dreams. The mushroom circle, the pathway the butterflies had led him along before, and in the distance a table sat empty of tea and pastries.

    As if on cue, the butterflies appeared, some massive and bigger than his head, others small as his fingertip, all the colors of the rainbow. Things seemed too vivid suddenly, too bright, and nausea ate at him. John’s eyes rolled back into his head as his knees went slack, losing the vision of the world and the strange Dirk to darkness.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    When John woke, it was to a butterfly perched on his nose, its delicate feet tickling his skin and its large eyespots visible as it fluttered its wings slowly in front of his eyes. He reached a hand up to swat it away before he looked around in alarm, trying to figure out where he was. This was definitely a space he’d never seen before, not even in his dreams. He had been resting on a massive cushion the size of a small bed on the floor, legs curled up to make himself as small as possible in his sleep. His hoodie was gone, as were his clothes he’d been sleeping in, replaced with what at first looked like a sheet of its own. On closer inspection though, it seemed to be a sheet of some kind of fine fabric with butterfly patterns of varying sizes  on it, blue silk with white and silver details, pearls emblazoning some of the more detailed portions, the style loose and held with clasps and pins. It was honestly the prettiest thing John had ever seen, let alone the softest on his skin, but it didn’t change how strange it was that it was suddenly on his body. Where the fuck were his clothes?

    “Ah, you’re awake. Excellent. I know the transfer between worlds can be kind of a lot even for beings like myself, I suppose a human constitution just isn’t up for it.”

    The voice was familiar, causing John to jerk his head around towards the source, but he only frowned upon seeing it. There Dirk was, though not his Dirk, dressed in a similarly styled silk garment, though in red with black and gold accents, butterflies big and small with the same small pearls. Around his neck rested a silver cage necklace, with a small electric blue marble resting inside. The not-Dirk Dirk approached with what looked like a breakfast tray laden with sweet berries and tea, pastries and crockery identical to that of his dream. His throat ached just from the memory of how sweet it would be, how perfectly ripe the berries, before he felt a cold chill as another memory came to the forefront. Dirk seemed to recognize his fear, because he smiled at the same time.

    “I mean you no harm, I promise. After all, I have all the time in the world to get to know you now,” he said, setting the tray down near John’s cushion before going to take a seat on another cushion near a table. “Please, eat. It should settle your stomach somewhat.”

    “I’m not hungry, I want to know what the fuck happened!” John insisted, ignoring the tray. “Who are you?”

    “My name is Hal,” said the not-Dirk. When John continued to look confused, he only smiled again. “I take it my form isn’t pleasing to you?”

    “It’s too similar to someone I care about a lot.”

    “Ah, that’s his problem, not mine. I’ve had this form for a lot longer than he’s had his. The resemblance is uncanny though, I admit. His family is likely displeased. Or they would be, if they were still keeping tabs on me.”

    “Tabs? What about his family?” John asked, shifting his weight and the fabric to face this person more head on, not trusting him to be out of sight for a spare second.

    “His family has known about me for generations, though the newer groups don’t know all the details,” he chuckled.

    “...What are you.”

    “Ah, that’s difficult to answer,” Hal said. “I don’t think your kind has a word for precisely what I am. For now, let’s just say I’m a spirit of sorts.”

    “A spirit? Am- Wait, am I dead? Did I die when we went off the roof?” John asked, panicked suddenly. His dad would find his body and- “Fuck, how do I go home?”

    “You don’t. You’re not dead, you just live here now,” Hal said simply. “I’ve brought you to my home to enjoy you for the foreseeable future.”

    John gaped at him. “Wh-?”

    “Humans are such fragile creatures, John. Wouldn’t you say so?” he asked. “Small things can cause their ends so quickly. Accidents, illnesses, acts of God, each other. Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to worry about that? To be able to live forever by my side?”

    “I don’t even fucking know you,” John said bluntly, reaching up to adjust the fabric on his shoulder so it fell differently, feeling more and more exposed in the line of those eerily red eyes. The more he looked, the less like Dirk this person appeared in some key ways. His hair wasn’t blonde so much as almost silvery platinum, and his skin was pale as porcelain instead of sun kissed. He looked like some kind of doll, too smooth, too perfect. Too inhuman.

    “Ah, formalities,” Hal said with a shake of his head, looking cockily amused that John was paying so much attention to him.  “We have the world at our fingertips and you’re concerned about not knowing me immediately. I doubt you knew Dirk when you first met him, yet you came to love him, to be his beloved did you not?”

    “I need to go home,” John said, rising unsteadily to his feet on the cushion. The swaths of fabric hung down to his feet almost like a dress, elegant and fitting around the right portions of his body.

    “You are home, John. My home is your home now,” Hal said. “You’ll come to love it in time.”

    “Where’s that fucking mushroom circle, I’m going home ,” John insisted, looking at Hal once more before glancing to the doorway and back, as if afraid he’d get attacked. Instead of looking upset, Hal gestured towards the door.

    “The circle is outside in the woods near the courtyard. Shouldn’t be too hard to find. By all means, go enjoy it, it’s lovely this time of the day.”

    John paled somewhat and felt his stomach flip as he backed up a few paces, then grabbed the silk cloth around his legs and lifted it in front of his feet so he could run, dashing out of the room and down a set of stairs. He was panicked, blind and deaf save for the sound of his heart hammering in his ears, a deer caught in the sight of a predator as he fled, turning left and right into different rooms and hallways of the maze-like complex. It took a while, but John made it out of the sumptuously decorated building and outside into the courtyard, manicured grass and flowers so stunning that his steps actually slowed to look at them, mesmerized. Butterflies lazily danced through the air around him, flitting from one flower to the next, lighting on an outdoor set of chairs and topiaries before taking flight again. He swatted the air in front of his face before picking up the silk and running towards a gap in the trees soon as he spotted it, following the path till he came across something familiar.

    The table sat prepared for tea, same as in his dreams, packed with the same treats and drinks as before, the same that Hal had brought him. Again his stomach sang for something to eat, his parched throat for something to drink, but he needed to reach the mushrooms first. Needed to look and see for himself, needed to understand how to get home.

    The circle was simple, large white mushrooms decorating a perfect circle, their tops looking almost glassy and opalescent to match with what looked like mermaid tear stones and polished glass in the grass around it. The area shimmered and shone in the light, and he could understand now why he’d gotten so overwhelmed when he first stood in it. Even standing there now with nothing happening to him it was too bright, too vivid in color, too hyper-realistic. 4D in the 3D realm.

    Notably, though, he wasn’t going home. The mushrooms were mushrooms, there was no button to push, no magic circle lighting up at his presence. He tried saying “HOME” loudly and clearly as if the command would do something. He recited his address. He said his name. He begged. He pleaded.

    He kicked a mushroom so hard it went flying and smashed against the trunk of a tree, and stomped to sit at the tea table. Agitated, he poured a cup of the hot liquid and drank it straight, not even caring that it somewhat burnt his throat, that it needed a bit of sugar. John rubbed his chest when it felt not only warm but uncomfortably hot for a moment, muttering to himself in annoyance. Of course he’d burn himself, it was just his fucking luck, but at least the discomfort was quickly over. He helped himself to a few raspberries and was angry at how perfect they were, how sweet, exactly ripe enough on his tongue.

    The magic and mystery of these surroundings in his dreams had been interesting before when he thought he was talking with a dream Dirk, imaginary places with his lover of a world that didn’t quite make enough sense, somewhere that they could just be themselves and indulge in their fantasies. Somewhere that, till fairly recently, had felt like a welcoming space.

    Groaning miserably, John sank his head into his palms and leaned on the tabletop, wracking his brain to try thinking of a way home.

    “Ah, realized it doesn’t work yet?” came Hal’s voice from nearby. John lifted his head with a frown as the… whatever he was came closer, hand near the small cage necklace with its glowing blue stone, putting pressure over whatever heart he had.

    “Yeah, thanks for letting me find out on my own,” he muttered. “...Why is this place so creepy?” asked John. “Where’s everyone else? The animals, even? All I’ve seen here is butterflies and you!”

    “Oh, you’ll start to see them around soon enough. I thought for the first while it would be better for us to get to know each other better without much outside interference. For you to adjust to your new home.”

    “This isn’t my home,” John growled aggressively, hand planting on the tabletop so he could stand more upright. “I’ll figure out how to make you understand that. I’m going home, this isn’t my home, I’m a human and you’re a… whatever you are. That thing in your head isn’t what’s happening.”

    Hal gestured to the necklace he wore with a sharp smile.

    “Oh. But it is, John. It is…”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    Dirk’s phone rang early in the morning, early enough that even his meager sleep wasn’t enough to make him less groggy on the phone. He slapped at his phone a few times before rubbing his eyes and pulling it to his face.  ...Hm. Okay, nine AM wasn’t that early, all things considered. But it was still pretty early for him. The number that was calling him was familiar, but rarely used.

    “John? Dude, why not just call me from your phone, I’ve got a ringtone set up any everything,” he yawned.

    “Dirk?”

    “Oh. Sorry, Sir, I thought you were John.”

    “No, no, there’s no need to be sorry,” James promised. He was quiet for a moment before speaking. “By any chance is John there with you?”

    “No, he hasn’t come around today yet. Why?”

    “I went to get him for breakfast and he was gone. Bed unmade, window open, windowsill damp. I’ve been up a few hours and never saw him leave anywhere, and there’s no way he’d be foolish enough to go out the window. I was wondering if he’d left late last night for some reason.”

    Dirk sat up a little straighter. “No, but I’ll keep an eye out for him and call you if he turns up, okay?”

    “Please, do. I’ve called his phone and it was left in his room, it’s very not like him...  Dirk, he didn’t even take his shoes, they’re still on the floor.”

    Dirk frowned, brows furrowing in concern. That definitely wasn’t like John. He wasn’t a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, nor was he the type to worry his dad if he could help it. He racked his brain trying to think of different places John might have gone, apparently phoneless and barefoot. “Is his wallet there?”

    “Yes, it’s on his desk too. I can’t imagine where he’s disappeared to, it’s like he just vanished,” James said, voice sounding more concerned.

    “Maybe he went for a walk, or sleepwalked or something,” Dirk said. “Look. Call the police and see what they say, maybe he’s at a hospital or something.”

    “The hospital, oh, God, I didn’t even think-”

    “Hey, it’s just a possibility, right?” Dirk said, wetting his lips. “I’ll go canvas the area near my place while you make your calls. Keep me posted?”

    “Of course. Could you call some of his other friends for me while I’m talking to the police? I don’t know if I have all of their information on hand, I’m a bit frazzled.”

    “Sure. You got it, Sir.”

    James hanging up to get on to his calls left Dirk holding his phone, staring at it, stunned. Where would John have gone that early, barefoot and without his phone or wallet? Why would he leave his window open in this weather? None of this was making sense, and it was just making Dirk more and more anxious. He crawled out of his nest of blankets and pillows to stuff himself into a pair of jeans, already starting to call down the list of people they both knew.

    An hour later and there were more questions than answers. A followup with James promised a bit of hope as police took the case as a suspicious disappearance, given the wallet and phone and shoes being left behind. Yet, even that didn’t help quell Dirk’ upset stomach. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had heard from John since he’d been online the night before, and even then it had been brief. He’d been tired apparently, wanting to go to bed at a decent-ish time for John. There’d been no suspicious activities, no strange questions or out of character discussions.

    John was regular, normal, everyday John, and it had just been another night as far as anyone was concerned.

    Dirk spent the day checking his neighborhood, different haunts they had. Different places they’d gone on dates, or to hang out outdoors. He even went to the woods to check around where they’d found salamanders before, to no luck. By evening, with still no leads, he made his way home and started searching online.

    On so little sleep, it was limited in what he’d be able to do beyond what he’d already done, the information he’d already given the police being more than they’d expected from a single person. He yawned as he typed, debating coffee to get a few more hours of awake time with a clear head, but soon decided against it. What use would he be strung out on caffeine and exhausted? What more could he do tonight? Very little.

    Regretfully, almost against his will, Dirk made himself sleep that night by sheer force of will. He took his shades off and flung himself back into his bed, tossing and turning for hours till, at last, sleep took him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    John stared uneasily at Hal’s necklace, sensing something… off from it. Menacing in the way it glowed. But. Had it been glowing earlier? He couldn’t recall, but some part of him was sure that if he saw a glowing thing in a little silver cage he’d remember it. It felt threatening, but John wasn’t certain how much was coming from Hal himself and how much was coming from that soft blue glow at his neck.

    “Look familiar?” Hal asked, rattling the cage gently. Something in John’s chest stirred and he swallowed hard. “Or are you going to be left in the dark, little hummingbird of mine?”

    Hummingbird? John opened his mouth to complain, to question the nickname suddenly bestowed on him, when Hal clasped the cage in his fist and squeezed. The strange feeling in his chest amplified, and with it, nausea. Panic. He put his hands on his throat and wheezed, suddenly terrified. Asthma attack? He hadn’t had one of those since he was a kid! Why now? Why couldn’t he seem to get enough air in every pull?

    “Humans are really so fragile,” Hal said, either ignoring or ignorant of John’s predicament entirely. “So simple, as well… Then again, that’s what happens when knowledge of the beyond isn’t taught like it used to be. Simple things. Don’t go in mushroom circles. Don’t name the darkness. Don’t give your true name to some creatures… don’t eat the food,” he hummed, lifting a brow as John began to cough and wheeze harder. He released his fist, and just as quickly as it had begun, John’s discomfort ended.

    John gulped fresh air in heavy gasps, not wanting to be without it anymore in case anything else happened to come up and disrupt his airways.

    Wait.

    Don’t eat the food?

    “You’d think that Dirk would at least have had the interests in protecting his own lover from creatures like myself, but no, even he’s negligent,” Hal said, gently rattling the glowing marble in its cage. John felt like his heart was shuddering, and suddenly he realized he couldn’t look away from the light within that silvery cage.

    “...What are you doing to me,” John asked, voice shaking. “I know it’s you causing this, what are you doing to me!”

    “Doing? Doing. What am I doing,” he asked, curling his fingers gently around the cage again. Instead of squeezing though, he stroked gently at the cage. “I’m playing with my new favorite trinket, John. I think you’ve had it just about long enough, it’s my turn to play with it for the next while. You’ve no need for it here in the world beyond the mortal plane anyway,” he sniffed.

    John wet his lips. “What’s your new trinket, Hal.”

    “Something that belongs to me, now that you’ve bonded with this world,” he said with a grin. “I thought I’d have to trick you into eating my food here, but no, you did it all on your own.”

    John’s stomach plummeted. “Is. ...Is that my-”

    “Soul? Oh yes. Funny how small it is, isn’t it? When you condense a soul it becomes perfectly portable like this,” he chuckled. “I’ve collected others over the years, of course, but yours is the prettiest color yet once it finished transferring over... I was worried it would change colors once you gave it up, but no. It’s the same enchanting blue as your eyes.”

    Without thinking, John lunged forwards to try snatching the necklace from Hal, scrabbling to catch it till his wrists were caught and squeezed so hard he could feel the bones creaking from the compression. His fingertips went numb, and his joints screamed for release till even he was crying out and trying to retract his hands.

    “Let go!”

    Hal got close to his face, turned his head and went to his neck instead to take a deep inhaled sniff of his scent before laying a chilly kiss on the skin. “You’ll come to love me soon, hummingbird. Just accept your new little cage, and we can live in peace and harmony… The sooner you give up your humanity, the sooner I can give you the world itself. An entire kingdom at your feet, a new home, a new form. You could shed your human skin and become what your truly are capable of becoming. Isn’t that amazing?”

    “G-get off of me,” John insisted, continuing to struggle despite the chill of fear down his back. Hal was too close to his throat, too close to too many vital points for him to relax in the slightest. “Give me that back and get off of me! I want to go home!”

    Hal let go of John suddenly, shoving him backwards hard enough he collided with his chair and toppled over backwards onto the ground, silks flying awkwardly to expose him till he scrambled to cover up again and right himself upright. There were marks on his wrists, and for all the world it felt like irons rested on his skin, weighing him down. Never in his life had he felt more trapped than now. When Hal stood, it looked as if the sky darkened, but John realized it was just the butterflies coming to roost around their master’s form in a storm from all sides, thick enough to nearly blot out the sun.

    “I’ll give you some time to yourself, John. Give you some more time to come to terms with what’s happening. Let you appreciate the gravity of the situation… When you’ve come to your senses, if you wish for me sooner than I return, call for me and I’ll be there.”

    “I’ll never call for you, stay gone forever for all I care!” John yelled, fury boiling in his chest. He rose to his knees and picked up a glass of tea, throwing it where Hal had stood. The most he did was catch some of the butterflies, several falling to the ground with damp wings, unable to join the swirling wall that whisked away their master.

    “John… Hummingbird… You’ll learn… You’ll learn just how much you should appreciate me, how much you should enjoy your new role as my bride. I’ll give you time. Even humans learn things with enough time…”

    “SCREW YOU AND SCREW YOUR TIME!!”

    But Hal was already gone, and now John was stuck, out of breath and enraged, at a fantasy filled tea table that had, if he understood correctly, sealed his fate. Gritting his teeth he jumped at the table, flinging things this way and that, breaking dishes and spilling liquids on the ground, throwing treats into the forest. Eventually, he summoned the same strength his father possessed and upended the tea table entirely, flipping it onto its side with the remaining settings and food. The effort left him drained physically as he was emotionally, but fuck it had felt good at the time.

    He explored for a bit after this, back to the building he’d run from earlier, poking around. Hal could apparently come and go as he pleased, but he’d be away for a while. Maybe there was some clue to getting home hidden inside the walls.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    Dirk’s eyes opened, but he wasn’t certain if he was awake or not. He couldn’t tell where things were in relation to each other, be it items in his room or the open space of some vast new world in the darkness. Form held no meaning. He could feel his stomach roil from the weightless feeling, dizzy, unsteady as if his inner ear were malfunctioning. He reached a hand out to grab his sheets, but found nothing. Instead, he reached behind himself to grasp at the headboard, knowing something solid would help with the dizzy feeling by orienting him upright. If that failed, he’d just need to roll to the floor and hug it for a second to stop feeling the sick sensation in the back of his head.

    Something moved in the corner of his vision, catching Dirk’s attention instantly. A butterfly, small and blue, fluttered around in wobbly circles. It seemed to be made of energy instead of something solid, no sign of its legs or antennae, the fluttering mechanical and fake the closer he looked at it. He tried to walk towards it, but his feet wouldn’t connect with the floor, so instead, assuming it was a dream, he made swimming motions till he propelled forwards. Up close the butterfly flickered and flashed before turning to tongues of blue flame, flapping for all they were worth.

    The flame, suddenly, was caught up in a cage and pulled backwards from Dirk’s face. The cage was massive, but shrank and shrank until there was hardly anything left of it to be seen aside from the unmistakable silvery shape.

    A flame in a cage. Heh. Sounds like something John would come up with in one of his dreams. Dirk wondered what meaning such a dream could have, then remembered that John was actually missing, chest giving an uncomfortable ache in response.

    “Dirk!”

    “...John?”

    Dirk perked up immediately, looking around in the darkness for any sign of new visible objects, but failed to see anything further than the strange silver cage and the blue flame.

    “Dirk!” came John’s voice once more, sounding more desperate. “Please, I want to go home. I just want to go home!”

    “John! John, where are you?!”

    It was pointless to scream, if this was a dream. ...But maybe, just maybe, there was something to dreams after all. What if John was right? What if this was the once in a lifetime chance where a dream really was prophetic? What if John was hurt somewhere, scared and alone, and this was a clue? It made no logical sense, it was so illogical it made Dirk’s head pound, but he shouted all the same.

    Any chance was better than no chance.

    “I’m scared! I’m scared, what are you?!”

    Dirk stopped breathing. ‘What are you?’ Was that what he’d said? Not where are you but what are you. He was scared. He was scared of something, of something an-

    “Dirk, help!” shouted a voice overlapped with Johns, which once more gave Dirk pause. It was… his own voice?

    “John? I-. ...John, what’s going on?”

    “Heeeeelp~” said Dirk’s doppelganger voice in the darkness, before it broke down into a laugh like breaking glass. A face appeared above the silvery cage, then shoulders, a full body, pale and terrifying wrapped in red silks, face accented with red marks on the outside edges of piercingly cold eyes. The figure was smoking from a long pipe, trails of rich red smoke swirling around its body and up into the air. On its back were butterfly wings, massive and decorated with large, striking eye spots that seemed to shimmer when they flapped slowly.

    “Who in the fuck- ” started Dirk, before he was interrupted once more.

    “Really, Dirk, you finally see me for yourself and that’s all you can say…? Your family’s more pathetic than I thought, if their youngest doesn’t know what I look like,” he said. “My handsome face should haunt all of your dreams from the first to the last so I can eat all your delicious nightmares like candy. And all you can say is ‘Who in the fuck are you’,” he added mockingly.

    It took a moment for Dirk to catch on, but when he did his blood ran ice cold. Hal. This was Hal. This was the dream eater he’d been warned about, the spirit who could ensnare wayward sleepers, the soul drainer. The creature that looked unnervingly like the face he saw in the mirror every morning.

    “Hal,” he breathed. Then, an instant later, “JOHN-”

    “Is safe and sound with someone who’ll take good good care of him,” Hal said with a wicked grin, taking a leisurely step into the darkness as if he were walking on pitch black water instead of being stuck floating and swimming like Dirk was, a swimmer without surface tension to work against.

    “Let him go, Hal.”

    “Mmm… You make such a good argument, but...” Another drag on the pipe and Hal exhaled another puff of the thick red smoke, perfumed and enchanting. “No.”

    Dirk tried to mimic him to take a step, but was stuck floundering and flailing in the darkness as Hal walked around him in slow, lazy circles. “Hal, I swear to fuck, let him go. Don’t you have business with my family? Why not target me? Why target John?”

    “My hummingbird is inconsequential to the eventual extinction of your family line,” Hal said. “A lovely trinket all my own to savor and enjoy. Tell me, Dirk. Once a human stops being human, do you think they become less or more beautiful?”

    Dirk tried to grasp Hal’s leg, but was disappointed when his hand went right through him. He may as well be talking to a mirage, this was his natural realm of dreams after all, the rules weren’t the same.

    “I’ll tell you. They become something spectacular, something humans fear naturally, subdued creatures that you are. I can’t wait to pick him apart and put him back together again for eternity.” Hal smiled and crouched down in front of Dirk, grinning, showing too many teeth. “...Would you like to see that? Have sweet dreams of my hummingbird each night? I could show you everything I plan to do to him starting tonight, if you wish.”

    “Don’t you fucking dare , don’t touch him, don’t do anything to him!” growled Dirk, swiping at Hal’s body again and again. “Come on, if you want a fight, I’ll bring a fight to you! That’s what you want, right? My family line, something about my family line, it-”

    “Something!” crowed Hal. “Oh that’s rich , you’re wanting to play Prince Charming and rescue your beau but you don’t even know what it is your family means to me! You’ve a deathwish, Dirk, mind that pretty head of yours.”

    “I don’t care if I have a deathwish, better me than John being your… Your plaything,” hissed Dirk, continuing to swat in vain at the mirage figure in front of him.

        Hal reached out and grasped Dirk’s hair then, suddenly very solid and very much a threat.

    “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, boy, your goal is worthless. Pointless. John is mine, and will remain mine. He’s broken a golden rule, and not even you can fix that,” he said in a soft hiss. He took another drag from his pipe before suddenly turning it, shoving the heated end against the flesh of Dirk’s neck with a crisp sizzle sound.

    Dirk screamed in pain… and sat bolt upright in bed, wild eyed and drenched in chilled sweat. His heart was hammering in his ears, and he could still feel the burning on his neck. He reached up to slap the site of the pain and winced, retracting his hand a half second after impact. A burn. A real, honest to God burn lay on his nape, melding the dream world and reality in ways that, on any other given day, Dirk would have assumed was an impossible way.

    He’d heard the family stories, but they were just that, he assumed: stories. Fairytales. Folktales passed down through the family and altered through the generations, not this… this thing. Dirk had assumed Hal was his family’s boogeyman, meant to keep children afraid to step out of line.

    The real thing was much, much more terrifying than some monster in the closet.

    Dirk scrambled out of bed to get dressed in fresh clothes, trying to wrack his brain for whatever else he could remember his family telling him. Stories. Rhymes. Fairytales. Fuck, what else was real? Ghosts? Vampires? Fucking Bigfoot and Mothman? Maybe Little Red Riding Hood was gonna turn up and beat the shit out of a wolf or something the second he turned his back.

    No, no, that was stupid. Focus.

    Hal. What did he know about Hal. Dream eater. Dropping your guard could invite him. Things to avoid ran through his mind, the things drilled into his mind by his brother, ranging from giving up true names in the past, something about salt, or milk and bread, to not standing in mushroom circles and-

    … Mushroom circles.

    Mushroom circles were portals between worlds. There was no way John was taken through dreams alone, his body would have been left behind. If he went somewhere, it had to be physically. There had to be a mushroom circle somewhere nearby. Shoving his feet into his shoes, Dirk ran as fast as his feet could carry him to the woods near John’s home, looking high and low for any signs of circles in the dirt.

    When he finally spotted the white mushrooms gaily arranged in their near perfect circle a hop skip and a jump away from a stand of trees, he wanted to shout with relief as he jumped inside to stand, prepared for what came. He’d get there and get John and…

    And…

    Fuck, what was he going to do? How was he going to defeat Hal? He could remember some of the things faeries were apparently weak against, or that they hated, but would they really work against a spirit like Hal that ate dreams and drained souls? It would be like trying to use mosquito spray against an angry polar bear. He was essentially going to be turning up bare handed to try getting John back, and yet even when he thought about it he was hard struck to think of anything he really could have brought that would prepare him better. A normal weapon wasn’t much use in a world where the rules weren’t the same.

    Maybe, if he was lucky, he could take a note from the fairytales and use his wits to his advantage.

    Dirk was still weighing his options when the surroundings suddenly went blurry, colors running together like wet on wet watercolor gone berserk. He felt nauseated once again, same as he had in his earlier dream, as butterflies began to emerge from the swatches of color and swarm him. Things went dark for a moment in the cloud, Dirk with his arms up to guard his face from the thousands of wings, worried he wouldn’t be able to breathe safely with all the insects flapping about. When they brightened, Dirk dropped down to his knees and promptly threw up outside of the circle.

    He shook for a moment before slowly getting back to his feet, wiping his mouth with his forearm. Ugh. Not the best way to make a dramatic appearance, that was for sure.

    The forest air was warm, inviting, comfortable enough to sleep in. Leaving behind the mess and the oddly damaged looking mushroom circle, Dirk advanced till he found the ruins of the tea party nearby, then hurried his steps even further beyond when buildings appeared in the distance. No, not buildings, a single splendid compound of topiaries and butterfly gardens, high arching architecture and brightly colored stained glass windows. A castle in its own right, it lay unguarded, an open invitation for Dirk.

    “JOHN?” he shouted. There was no point for secrecy. He’d essentially been invited, Hal no doubt knew his home had been invaded. The only reason Dirk was here to begin with was John, and somehow, something in his heart told him he was nearby.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    John had searched every single room he could manage to open the door of from top to bottom. He’d discovered a large kitchen, a library, tons of living quarters ranging from servants rooms to grand suites, and even a music room. He’d found treasures that were no doubt either real or imaginary made real like everything else in this creepy ass fantasyland, and yet he had no interest in touching them or looking them over. Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders struck in his memory, touching the treasure and becoming trapped forever, but it would be overkill even if it were true.

    Best not to fuck with the powers that be and get Double Screwed, John decided.

    He was about to give up and find somewhere to curl up and wait out a growing headache when he heard his name being called. He grimaced, wrinkling his nose automatically. It sounded like Hal. ...But, wait. If it was Hal, wouldn’t he just appear and do his usual creepy advances and actions? He couldn’t imagine that… that thing doing anything normal like calling for him from a distance instead of just appearing behind him like something out of a B grade movie or teleportation meme. That meant-

    “DIRK?” John called, freezing, waiting. Listening. Hoping. Prayi-

    “JOHN. DON’T MOVE, I’M COMING!”

    Holy fuck.

    Holy fucking shit, it was Dirk. It was Dirk, and he was here and he was going to get to go home, and-

    “FUCK YOUR NOT MOVING, I’M COMING TOO!” John shouted, already grabbing hold of his silks so he could lift them and run in the direction of Dirk’s voice, taking stairs two at a time as he tried to guesstimate where the shouting was coming from.

    “NO, STAY STILL GOD DAMN IT, I’LL BE THERE IN A SECOND.”

    Yep. That was definitely Dirk.

    “SCREW YOU,” John shouted back, happy enough he could cry.

    They reconnected at the foot of a set of stairs, John jumping the last four steps to all but tackle Dirk head first to the ground. Winded but satisfied, Dirk didn’t have a word of complaint. He just grabbed John tight around the middle and squeezed him, head bowed to his shoulder.

    “Jesus fuck, don’t ever scare me like that again,” he insisted. “Come on, we’ve gotta get you home, your Dad’s losing his goddamn mind worrying about you and the cops are already-”

    “The police??” John said, startled. He figured his dad was upset, but the cops? Holy shit, this was another order of extreme. “I don’t.. I don’t know how to get back,” admitted John. “I tried the mushroom circle I got here through and it didn’t work.”

    “We’ll figure it out, maybe it’ll work now that I’m here,” Dirk said. “I managed to come through on my own, without assistance. So. Maybe it-”

    “That’s not all,” John admitted, worrying his lip with his large teeth. “It’s. ..Dirk, I fucked up,” he croaked.

    “Fucked up?”

    “I. I ate something. And drank something,” he said. “I was frustrated and thirsty and crammed something in my mouth after drinking tea like in my dream and. ...Dirk, I fucked up bad, I don’t know how I’m going to leave. He’s got my-”

    “Shhhhhh. We’ll figure it out, okay? I promise,” Dirk soothed, squeezing John again. “For now, get off me. We’ll go back to the mushroom circle and see if we can get anything to happen, then we can look for-”

    “For me?” Hal asked, strolling in from outdoors. “Lovely weather we’re having. Though it does seem to have brought the pests in from outside,” he sniffed, taking a drag on the same pipe that had marked Dirk’s neck earlier. Dirk flinched instinctively when he saw it as if it would burn him once more, remembering the sizzle of flesh, the heat.

    John glowered and pointed to him. “He’s got… Dirk I think he’s got my soul.”

    “You think?” Hal said, gesturing to his necklace after blowing a smoke ring. “I squeeze the air from your lungs, and you think I have your soul? You’re lucky you’re attractive, John.”

    Dirk shuffled to get up from the ground, standing between John and Hal pointedly, looking for all intents and purposes ready to fist fight. “Let him go.”

    “No, but nice form with the asking. Nicely enunciated and everything,” Hal chuckled.

    “ Let him go, Hal, ” Dirk said pointedly again. “What do you want? A trade?”

    “I don’t do trades, human. Rarely do things I want end up on trades, which means I’d be doing you a favor. We don’t do favors unless there’s something spectacular in it for us,” Hal explained. “I have his soul fair and square in this case, even if he got here originally under different means. Nobody forced him to eat my food, and yet he ate and drank. He’s bonded here now, Dirk. ...Look at him closely. Don’t you already see some changes?” Hal asked, holding one elbow so he could smoke while Dirk panicked and looked towards John as he sat up and slowly stood.

    From the outside, John looked normal. Scared and stressed out, but normal. It took real hunting to notice the new tips to his ears, to notice the faint glow to the eyes. Dirk held John’s face in his hands, tracing the edges of his jaw with his thumbs to try soothing the growing terror he saw on John’s face once recognition set in that there were changes he couldn’t detect on his own but that Dirk himself saw.

    “He’ll stay here now,” Hal said simply. “I’ll take good care of him, my precious little hummingbird. I had plans to keep him here anyway, but once he broke a golden rule it was more of a self fulfilling prophecy in itself. I don’t make the golden rules, I merely abide by them when they align with what I’m after.”

    “...What about a bargain,” Dirk said. “Me for him.”

    “I can’t accept a trade, once he’s broken a golden rule. Bargains, mayhaps. But not a trade unless the boon suits me.”

    Dirk wet his lips, and racked his brain. Think. Think, think, think, think, what did spirits like? Winning, gambling, bargains, rule-

    “...How much did he eat and drink.”

    “Enough.”

    “I remember Persephone was kept in the Underworld for a translated amount of how many pomegranate seeds she’d eaten. A set number of months,” Dirk said, uncertainly at first then with more confidence when Hal fixed him with a poisonous glare. “ How many months worth did John eat and drink.”

    Hal gripped his pipe hard enough that the metal bent before dropping it to the side. Slowly but surely, he allowed his appearance to change, his wings emerging and the red markings reappearing on his face. He fluttered softly off the ground in order to get into Dirk’s face, all but growling at him.

    “Are you proud of yourself, boy? Proud for remembering stories? For picking apart minute details to find the needle in the hay stack?”

    “How many months, Hal,” Dirk said, unflinching.

    “Six, at least,” insisted Hal. “Perhaps more.”

    “Six months a year,” Dirk said, wetting his lips. “No less?”

    “He drank and ate, you’re lucky I don’t just keep him forever for eating anything at all. Those changes won’t disappear,” Hal said, continuing to stare Dirk down intently, waiting for him to flinch. “Your neck. How much does it ache? I bet it burns something awful. Pity, I fear such a thing would be permanent.”

    “Six months. ...John. This is a very serious question. Can you handle six months in and out, if it means getting out at all?” Dirk asked, unwavering.

    John could only stare. Was he serious? He laughed a few times before it quieted down in his throat, John realizing that nobody else was laughing. This wasn’t funny. This wasn’t a joke. This was dead serious.

    “...If it’s the only way, I can,” John said.

    “Let him go, Hal. Collect him in six months,” Dirk said.

    “Why should I?” he snapped, fluttering away to round on John, curling around his back and grasping his chin with one hand, his free hand picking up his necklace with the softly glowing marble inside. “He’s mine right now, why should I give him up a day sooner than six months? Why should I go second when he’s already here ?”

    “...Because it would make me like you more,” John piped up, going rigid in Hal’s grasp. “That’s what you want, right? For me to like you? I’d like you more if you gave me this chance to get my affairs in order instead of just letting people think I’m dead for half a year. I can’t do that to my father. If you actually care about me at all, you’ll do that for me. And in six months I’ll come back to you.”

    Hal frowned. John had a point, and he hated it. As wonderful as it would be to greedily keep him here the six months before returning him, gaining favor with his new human would be a boon.

    “Tempting. But I’m already at my limits from allowing you to leave at all. Make the pot a bit sweeter. Your liking me is good, but it’s not enough of a gain to take the bargain out of hand.”

    “He’ll be away from me for six months at a time, isn’t that a good enough bargain for you?” Dirk spat. “What better revenge than to hurt me at the same time as making him happy?”

    The pot was sweetened just enough to interest Hal in opening the other side of the portal.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    John’s reappearance had been a cause for celebration as much as it was then a cause for tears. Though still a bit confused, James was accepting of John’s explanation of why he’d be all but disappearing in a few months once more, on the grounds that he’d be okay upon returning. That he could handle what was happening. They had promises from Hal about visitations in dreams between father and son that would, hopefully, quell some of the heartache. Any dreams Dirk could have about John would be merely that: dreams of his own making. It was a heavy price, but it had gained John a bit of freedom in a position where he might have had none.

    On the day John was set to leave, butterflies awaited them at the mushroom circle, as well as their master dressed in casual human clothes that looked eerily like the outfit Dirk was wearing that day down to the pointy shades. John’s father hugged him so hard he was sure his ribs would pop, not wanting to let his baby boy go till the last possible moment. When he did, it was Dirk’s turn, holding John gently. They’d already said their goodbyes, had made the most of the six months while they could, but it was still a bittersweet parting.

    “I’ll be right here in six months, waiting for you,” Dirk said softly. “I’ll dream about you every night.”

    “I know,” John said quietly, nudging his chin onto Dirk’s shoulder.

    “I’m so sorry this happened, John… If I’d just listened to the stupid stories, then-”

    “Don’t. We’ve already been over this, you can’t kick yourself for things that aren’t your fault. I’ll kick your ass before I leave and kick it again in six months because I know you’ll have moped over it again,” he chuckled.

    “While we’re young?” Hal said. “Are you quite done? I’ve a castle worth of beings to introduce you to and we’re burning dreamlight.”

    John squeezed Dirk once more before leaning up to kiss him, pulling back with a grin. “Six months.”

    “Six months,” repeated Dirk. “And not a fucking day longer or I’ll come and drag you back myself.”

    Slowly they parted, and with his bag on his back, John headed towards Hal and the circle. Hal reached for John’s hand and clasped it tightly for no other reason than to piss off Dirk, pettily delighting in the frown it earned him. They entered the circle and waited… and then were gone.

    James breathed out softly and stared.

    “You know, you boys explained everything to me and I still half believed it was a prank til the last second. ...He’ll really be back in six months, right?”

    “Of course he will. And if not, I’ll get him myself, like I said.”

    The two stood there looking at the circle, already feeling their loss.

    It was going to be a long six months, and an even longer lifetime afterwards of adjusting to what lay in store for John.

[cupofteaguk]

the maze to you

summary: turns out you won’t be getting the storybook soulmate journey you were promised when you have a dream of a boy named Kim Taehyung at a frat party. 

pairing: taehyung x fem!reader

genre: soulmate au (the one where you dream about your soulmate) | angst

warnings: mentions of college parties, descriptions of an erection, i know it just says angst but it’s a happy ending :-) i would never hurt u guys :-)

word count: 9k

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Ever since you were young, you dreamt about the promise of sharing your life with the person the universe deemed as the best fit for you: your soulmate. Given the type of world you grew up in, the type of world your parents and grandparents and every other generation inhabited before you, this isn’t a difficult notion to comprehend—the universe created soulmates and a pretty foolproof way of showcasing when the connection between aforementioned soulmates was established as well as a way of helping the individuals figure out how to gather clues needed to find each other.

It used the minds. Or, more specifically, dreams. The dreams didn’t allow soulmates to speak to each other through means of communication, however, and instead used dreams as a way to allow soulmates more in-dept glances into the lives of their other half. The dreams simply showed the experiences underwent during the day, allowing the soulmates to disclose information on themselves or do anything to share who they were in a way that could bring them together. Soulmates could do anything from sharing their city or pieces from their past or a house, drawing pictures or sharing names across sheets of paper—when trying to share one’s life story within the time frame of a few REM cycles, the sky was the limit on what people would do.

You know all about the extent to which people would go for their soulmate. After all, you like to think of yourself as the byproduct of many happy and determined people who would do anything to reach their partner. Things like sharing cities or writing names across the skin of their arm? Yeah, your parents use to pull shit like that all the time when they first started getting the dreams. They were so set on finding each other, so determined to meet as soon as they realized what was happening that they wasted no time. They found one another with ease, just like your grandparents and every other story you’ve been told since you were capable of understanding the idea of soulmates and love and the desire to have that in your life as well.

Ever since then, you would spend an endless amount of hours hoping and praying and wondering when your time was coming, when you were going to get your dreams and your signs from the universe that your soulmate was actually out there. Waiting for you. Just as you were waiting for them.

“The dreams will appear seemingly at the most random time,” Your mother says one afternoon as you’re resting your chin on the edge of the table, gazing up at her with wide eyes that only a curious and naive eleven-year-old version of yourself could possess. “My dreams appeared when I was fifteen—and the first glimpse I ever got into your dad’s life were the NASA and Apollo mission posters that lined the walls of his bedroom. I hadn’t even seen his face, but I knew he was the one for me.”

You’re not even sure if eleven-years-old is the appropriate age to start fantasizing, but that’s when you start wondering about what your first dreams would look like. During the younger years of your life, you hoped your future soulmate would have a palace, a field of horses in the backyard, look like a Disney prince—you know, the normal desires for a normal child estranged by the concept of Disney movies and happily ever afters.

However, as you grew up, so did your desires and ambitions and expectations for your soulmate. You grew up realizing that you didn’t want to realize anything for your soulmate—you didn’t need someone perfect. You, too, also wanted to see posters of your partner’s interests and passions lining the walls. You want to see someone writing their name across the skin of their own arm for you to see from the depths of your subconscious, you want to feel their desperation to meet you plagued within their body until they got to meet you.

You relay this to a friend on the afternoon of your seventeenth birthday, and Karly laughs.

“Seems a little over-the-top, don’t you think?”

“Easy for you to say,” You grunt back, placing your chin in the palm of your hand and scratching the back of your head. “You got your first dream last year, and you have nothing to worry about.”

That is true. Jung Hoseok was practicing dance in his high school practice room, twisting and turning and moving his body to a beat no one can remember—and that had been Karly’s first memory of his. And she has been in love with him ever since, even if they haven’t officially met yet.

“Oh relax,” Karly says, smiling soothingly, yet only wears the expression of someone whose heart isn’t entirely into the idea of consoling given that they can no longer relate to the current problem at hand. “You’ll get your dreams when you least expect it. And they’ll be perfect.”

Yes. Perfect in its own sense. Perfect like all the other storybook tales you’ve heard. Given that those sort of tales seem to follow all those around you, it should make the most logical sense for your own experience to mirror your friends, peers, and family, right? Right?

You get your answer at nineteen-years-old. In the day proceeding, nothing of significance had happened to you in the sense that you didn’t feel different. You had just gone to school, gone to work, finished your assignments, and moved on. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing to give away that perhaps you would feel different or better the following morning.

Karly had been right in saying that it would hit you when you least expect it.

It seems to hit you as soon as you close your eyes and you are immediately hit with a sense that feels like the world around you is no longer what you thought it was.

When you open your eyes, you’re at a party. The lights overheard are blaring, flashing all sorts of different colors that dance across the ceiling. There’s music, at least, from what you can tell. The music is loud, if the vibrations that thrum through your body is anything to go by.

Suddenly, your body moves of its own accord without any nerves or commands from the brain. It shifts on weight. You see hands that don’t belong to you, holding a questionably-colored drink you would never hold on your own. In the dream, you feel taller and bolder and dizzy and drowsy all at once, a feeling you are familiar enough with to know that it’s being drunk. But unlike you, who usually gets sleepy or nauseous if caught with too much alcohol in your system, this body is holding it well. Very well. So well that it can actually hold a conversation with a (dare you say) relatively attractive girl standing in front of you, all wide eyes and curving smile. Even though you’re pretty sure that you aren’t sexually drawn toward girls in that sense, there is still a suspicious loud pounding in your chest and a stirring in your lower stomach that makes you confused. The voices around you sound like background noise, low murmurs that you cannot make out. You don’t know what the girl in front of you is saying. You don’t even know what you’re saying.

But then, she takes you by the hand. You follow along, despite your consciousness standing alert at the change of pace. You don’t know where she’s taking you as she leads you down a hallway, into a room, before pushing you against the wall and pressing her pillowy lips against yours.

The sensation in your stomach increases in pressure, increases in desire, and you have no idea where it’s coming from and why you’re acting like this. You don’t do parties, you don’t make out with strangers—is your subconscious showcasing this to you to display that you’ve always secretly wanted to make out with girls the entire time? What the hell?

Your body continues acting on its own accord with its own mind, as if the actions have already been decided and you are simply mirroring the movements. Even though you have no control, you can still feel everything. From the way your hands dance over her skin, the blood pounding in your ears, the blood pooling down to—!

Holy shit. What the actual fuck?

Before your mind can ponder too much, you feel yourself getting pushed from the wall, onto the bed and falling onto your back. The girl returns, her hands caressing down your skin, tugging off the clothing of your lower half (it feels like jeans and underwear)—!

Your head lifts up slightly to watch her, immediately feeling like a deer caught in the headlights when your eyes land upon a dick. Like, an actual dick. From in between your legs.

Did… did you eat something before you went to bed last night? A mushroom? A brownie, perhaps?

You don’t have time to ponder that, because the girl tucks some hair behind her ear and leans over the junction between your legs, wrapping her lips around the tip and—!

The next time you blink, you’re staring right into Karly’s eyes. The latter is wearing a worried, panicked expression, with the crease between her eyebrows becoming more and more prominent the longer she stares at you. For some reason, your throat feels a little sore.

Karly must sense something from the way your hand automatically find your neck, because her grip on your shoulder tightens just a little. “Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” You croak out, voice surprisingly hoarse. You cough. “What the fuck, did I catch a cold or something?”

Karly’s eyes are still searching your face. After a moment, she takes a step back, allowing you to straighten up on your bed and take in your surroundings. You look around, making a mental checklist of your current environment. Yes, same room. You look down at your hands. You’re relieved to find the same small, slender fingers, the way they bend to your will. You recognize the bruise on your arm from when you accidentally slammed a cabinet on it at work.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Karly inquires back, not entirely answering the question. “You were sort of screaming in your sleep.”

“Huh?” You turn to look at her. You flicker your gaze to the digital clock next to your bed. Seven in the morning.

“You were screaming in your sleep,” She repeats. “Had a bad dream or something? You look really out of it. Do you remember what you were dreaming of?”

“Um…” You trail off, closing your eyes and pressing your thumb against the bridge of your nose. Come to think of it, you do remember something. Bits and pieces. “There was a party of some kind and a girl—!” You cut yourself off, choking on your words because yes. You remember now. A little too clearly, if you’re being honest. “Oh my god!” You exclaim, turning on Karly wildly. “There was a dick!”

“What?” Karly inquires, furrowing her eyebrows and looking lost. “Like an idiot, you mean?”

“No, like an actual dick—oh my god, I had a dick.” You press your hands against your cheeks. “Oh my god, I remember now. I had a dream that I was a dude at a party, and I think I was about to hook up with some girl because she took my pants off and was about to—!”

“Okay, no, that’s fine,” Karly interrupts. “No need to go into detail.”

“Oh my god.” You repeat, moving to press the palm of your hands into your eyes. “Oh my god, what does this mean? I made out with a girl and had a dick—is my subconscious trying to tell me that they want me to be a dude? How does that work? I mean, the dick looked kind of weird, maybe that’s why I was screaming…”

“Y/N,” Karly cuts in again, reaching out to lightly grip at your forearm. This is probably both to calm you down but also stop you from going on another spiral from the confusion you’ve already experienced. And it’s not even eight o’clock in the morning yet. “I don’t think your mind is trying to tell you that specifically. I think that maybe…” She trails off, looking lost at her own words for a moment. “But that doesn’t make any sense…”

“What doesn’t make any sense?” You ask, tearing your mind away from your current frenzy of thoughts to hear Karly’s perspective of it.

Karly shakes her head. “The only explanation I can think of is that…” She presses her lips together. She angles her head to look up at you but she doesn’t look too confident or too comforting by what she’s about to say. “That guy… I think he’s your soulmate.”

“What?” You ask immediately, breaking out into a disbelieving smile. “N-No, that’s impossible. My soulmate wouldn’t… do that… to me…” You trail off, your heart pounding loudly in your chest. Yet, you have a feeling it has nothing to do the adrenaline from the dream anymore. Although you don’t want to admit it to yourself, the likelihood of that boy being your soulmate held a much higher probability than some hidden desire to actually be a boy yourself. It just makes more sense. It adds up. You have nineteen years worth of dreams under your belt, some abnormal sure but none of them ever came close to the one experienced the previous night.

And thinking about it, you remember the dream too vividly for it to be considered an actual dream. There are too many details you remember, too many sensations you can recall with the snap of a finger. It had felt more like a memory rather than a dream and you think that’s the biggest clue in giving away the fact that the universe had finally opened up the connection between you and your soulmate.

It takes you a second to realize that this was it. You’ve wondered about what kind of soulmate the world would gift you with, as you’ve wondered for the past eight years of your life. Despite the fact that you outgrew a large majority of your original expectations, you know that there is still a part of you deep down had hoped for a soulmate to meet some of the things you had been hoping for.

However, instead of posters of passion or the soft moments of a person’s life or anything really to give you that lightning strike instance of confidence in knowing that your soulmate existed and was living and was (to a certain extent) waiting for you—you get a boy who lets his dick get sucked by another girl, even though he should know about you. He must know. Maybe not about you specifically, but even just the world the pair of you lived in. He should know his soulmate is out there, waiting for him—that you’re waiting for him.

You are filled with a wide variety of different emotions in a short period of time. From anger to frustration to sadness to hopelessness. You close your eyes and clench your jaw, willing yourself to get over the brief pass of questions that wash over you.

You open your eyes, taking in Karly’s own concerned look. “You gonna be okay?” She inquires.

You sigh. “Not sure yet. I’ll just… give it time.” A weak argument, but you don’t know what else to do and you don’t know what else to say. And Karly knows that.

.

As it turns out, it’s hard to “give it time” when aforementioned it starts to make its presence more and more known in your life. You assumed that having to watch your soulmate (first-hand, literally) get his dick sucked by another girl had been a terrible enough sign from the universe that okay, maybe you weren’t going to be getting that fairy-tail happily-ever-after experience that everyone around you seemed to be getting. You try to be fine with that, you really do.

But when you have another dream of your soulmate hooking up with a completely different girl in a bathroom, it’s like salt rubbing in the wound. To make matters worse, it’s like your mind and body have already become accustomed to the nature of your dreams because you can now recall the voices and the whimpers and screams that echoed off that bathroom and if your brain wants to replay that girl’s moans or how she looked in the mirror one more time you might consider driving a fork through your head.

You consider this more and more as you sit in class, drumming your fingers impatiently on your desk, wanting nothing more than to pay attention to the lecture but knowing that the feat would be useless given the other much more pressing issue that take up much more of your attention.

You flicker your gaze up to the professor who is currently going on and on about supply and demand. The topic might be interesting, sure, and you probably need to know the minor details on the subject for the upcoming exam. But when you pull forward your floral covered notebook, it is done with the intention of documenting something other than Economics.

You flip open to a page in which only one line is covered with your script: soulmate.

Picking up your pencil, you start to write with only the occasional flickering your gaze up to the board to give off the illusion that you were paying attention. Instead, you write: hooks up at parties followed with two subpoints, first: ??? second: Irene, definitely Irene holy FUCKING shit, if his disgusting groans are anything to go by.

You continue on: likes drinking, cheap tequila is his favorite i think but also likes vodka.

You ponder for a moment, trying to recall the second dream. Definitely not to remember the name or face or moans of that girl, but to remember him. Him, being your soulmate. You write, long-ish kind of hair, maybe a mullet… has good eyebrows… a low sort of voice. You pause for a second, could be cute if he wasn’t a dick literally AND figuratively.

You think about it for one more second, name: tbd.

You sigh, unable to think about how it could get much worse than this.

But of course, the universe just loves to prove you wrong—and they do by making it worse. Much worse.

Your fourth dream starts just the same way. Lights, music, partying, drinking, bursting into a room with yet another unnamed girl who you know immediately will have moans that will ring through your mind for the next twenty-four hours.

You recognize the signs, you recognize falling right into the action of breathy groans and hushed gasps as your soulmate pushes his hookup against the door of yet another unmarked bedroom. “You’re so fucking hot,” He groans, hot and heavy, the sensation of her soft skin against the fingertips.

“W-Wait,” The girl protests, more like a high-pitched whine as teeth nip into the skin of her neck. “What about your soulmate? Don’t you have one? I-I haven’t had my dream yet but…”

You hear his laughter both in the open air and as a rumble through his chest. “Haven’t had the dreams princess. Even if I did, I wouldn’t care—guys like me don’t get a soulmate anyways so I don’t worry about it.”

You wake up with the air completely stolen from your lungs, your heart pounding loudly in your chest that you feel it thumping underneath your fingertips and underneath your skin. The words ring loudly in your ears, completely unlike a dream and more like a memory that plays over and over again behind your eyes like a movie. Even if he had a soulmate, he wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care about you. He wouldn’t, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t care about you.

You swallow thickly, biting your lip and letting out a sigh. First you get a soulmate who carelessly sleeps around at a party, but then you also get a soulmate who doesn’t care about the system and doesn’t care you. It’s a comforting thought.

Karly walks into your room, hair in a ponytail, sports bra to show she’s just gotten back from her morning run. “You okay?” She inquires.

You throw your arms atop the covers and glare at your roommate as if she is the reason for your unfortunate position. “My soulmate is an asshole.” And you mean it.

.

It takes you five dreams of parties, of hooking up, of seeing five different girls, and reporting to Karly that you would jump out of the window of your apartment five times, when you actually get something different. When you actually get something real.

You wake up in your soulmate’s body to find him, surprisingly, in a college classroom setting. This realization is a total relief, given that you were beginning to worry that your soulmate was a college dropout or something monumentally worst. Yet, here he is. In class. Scribbling down notes with the occasional glance at his phone to show that he isn’t doing a complete 180 transformation between straight-A-student-with-a-pencil-up-his-ass and hooking-up-with-four-girls-over-the-span-of-five-days.

Class lets out a few minutes later, where a boy with bright orange hair and eyes that curve into half crescent moons is waiting. “Tae!” The boy exclaims, pushing himself off the wall as the two exchange a handshake. “How was class?”

“Long,” Your soulmate replies. The pair of them eat fast food from a corner restaurant on the edge of the college campus, a location that you’ve never seen before with its fancy architecture mixed with modern technology. It’s a nice school, you conclude to yourself, filling you with a little more confidence that perhaps this Tae isn’t as big of an idiot as you had previously assumed.

It’s the first time you catch a longer glimpse of his life, one filled with a relatively long list of classes that seem to go by like a blur. The breaks in between those aforementioned classes are filled with company such as friends and food and everything almost seems normal. You notice that he seems to love french fries with a special passion. He loves meat and vegetables and doesn’t pick any food out of his meals, always seeming capable of trying new things. You also get your first glimpse at his reflection. A real glimpse, allowing you to take in the twinkle of his eyes and the softness of his hair—you hate to admit that he’s extremely cute and extremely attractive. His hookups make sense. You’re sure that there’s a line of girls constantly waiting to flirt with him, to be with him. If you didn’t know better, you might be one of those people.

But you know too much, and this shows in the way you begrudgingly wake up the following morning. Although his face is pretty much permanently plastered in your mind at this point, you refuse to let yourself think too deeply about him. He’s still an asshole.

This thought is further emphasized in the sixth dream, where the first thing you notice after waking up in Tae’s body is the fact that he is hunched over a toilet. You can feel the ear-splitting headache, but you don’t process the pain. Taehyung, however, is a different story. You know he can feel the pain of this hangover, if the way he throws up into the toilet is anything to go by. Normal soulmates would probably feel worried or sympathetic, but you watch the scene barely batting an eye to the problem at hand.

If he wasn’t going to care about you, why should you give him the same respect? If he wasn’t even going to consider your life, your presence, your thoughts, regardless of if he has been getting dreams about you or not—then it wasn’t fair to keep everything entirely one-sided.

You absolutely hate your soulmate. You hate his mind, his arrogance and selfish nature, his cocky attitude, but you hate the connection you are forced to have with him the most. You hate that the universe has paired you with someone of this nature. It feels like a terrible punishment for something you hadn’t even done, taking away the dream you’ve had since you were young and delivering a silver platter of disappointment and a bright red ribbon with the statement I’M SORRY to your doorstep. The frustration is so palpable you can feel it on the tip of your tongue, in the bile of your stomach that fills you up instead of actual food.

“My soulmate is an asshole,” You grumble for what seems like the tenth time that hour and Karly gives you another sympathetic smile. “These dreams are seriously bordering on annoying. I can barely get a good night sleep nowdays because I’m always getting dreams about his hookups which feel like nightmares at this point.”

Karly slides you a cup of coffee, which you so desperately need in order to survive your upcoming shift. “I hope he gets his dreams soon so he can realize what a dick he’s being to you.”

You appreciate Karly’s sentiment although you aren’t too confident.

You slide your floral notebook towards yourself, grabbing the pencil that rests in the spiral and flipping open to the appropriate page, staring down at the statement that seems to glare right back at you, name: tbh.

You cross it out, name: Tae, but I think that’s his nickname… not sure about the full name.

.

When you crawl into bed that night, you wonder what kind of dreams will follow you, you wonder what Tae will have in store for you today. Would it be another drinking episode? Another hooking-up episode that will make you actually want to scratch the eyes out of your sockets? Or would you spend the evening in front of the toilet as Tae had done, emptying out his guts while you watched him do so?

Instead, you open your eyes and find yourself in a bedroom. But unlike the previous dreams, there are no pounding lights or loud music or questionably-colored drinks in hand. Instead, you’re sitting upon a twin-sized bed with bright blue wallpaper all around you. Only a few posters line the walls, pictures of musicians and groups flashing their instruments. Action figures lay on the desks and nightstand, one or two shirts flung off onto the floor. It doesn’t look like a bedroom you are particularly familiar with, one that you’ve spent the past few dreams becoming extremely comfortable with the scape of Tae’s bedroom. Rather, this looks like the bedroom of a little boy.

On the other side of the wooden door, there is a knock. “Taehyung, wake up! Come have some breakfast before I take you to school.” It’s a woman’s voice, slightly older and filled with kindness.

Taehyung. You have a feeling that this is his full, given, complete name. Taehyung.

Taehyung groans, crawling out of bed anyways and making his way into the bathroom—staring at himself in the reflection as you catch your first glimpse at Taehyung at the tender age of eleven. The youth is ever-present in his face, in his messy bed-hair and baby fat that still clings lightly to his cheeks. His rubs at his eyes, brushing his teeth, looking so endearing and like a neighborhood crush you could have had in elementary school.

It only takes a few minutes for the boy to get ready before he is bounding down the stairs and into the kitchen, where a man is seated at the table and a woman is just setting down a plate of breakfast food. “Good morning sweetie,” The woman says with a smile.

“Morning mom,” Taehyung greets back, sliding into the vacant seat and forking down the meal. You watch the way he watches his parents exchange their early morning banter, the way they look at each other and it hits you.

Soulmates. Taehyung’s parents are soulmates. Of course, this should have been obvious given that most parents and couples in general are soulmates from the dreams. But you had thought that Taehyung’s heartless nature about this notion would have sprouted from not having parents who were soulmates. Or just not having parents at all. Or a heart.

As you watch what Taehyung watches, you feel what he feels. He watches his parents and feels excitement. And hope.

You wonder what happened.

Time seems to move forward after that, because the next time Taehyung looks into the mirror, you notice that he is taller, more defined, just a little closer to the Taehyung you currently know yet still with a touch of youth to let you know that perhaps he’s still in high school. Even though you don’t have context of experiencing what he has gone through in the days or weeks or months, you can hear the thoughts that run through his mind.

The high school version of Taehyung is a dreamer. He’s a believer. He is so deeply enamored by the concept of soulmates that he wants to get his dreams as soon as possible. Through his desperation to figure out his soulmate, his search takes him to blindly date with anyone and everyone he sees, hoping and hoping that this more-or-less random girl is his soulmate. And every single time, either she got her dreams and left or he just didn’t feel the spark of a connection with her. And so he would break it off. But the mess he would leave behind has created a reputation that he never would have wanted beforehand. A reputation that Taehyung has a terrible, reckless, single behavior. A reputation that Taehyung doesn’t have a soulmate to begin with.

You watch as Taehyung goes to school, the way he steps onto campus and how whispers seem to circulate around him quickly like people are constantly monitoring his movements. You feel the weight of stares like hot irons on your back as Taehyung walks into the building.

“See you’re still alone there, huh Kim?” A voice sounds from off the side as Taehyung turns his head to see a group of boys near the lockers. You’ve never seen them before, but Taehyung’s thoughts start fluttering in and lets you know that these are the boys that bully him, as they have done for months now. Bullying and isolation is a pretty common feat in Taehyung’s day-to-day life but popular jocks, as cliche as it sounds, make it worse.

Taehyung doesn’t say anything, and you watch as one of the boys detach himself from the locker and approach him.

“Or did you find more company to fill the void in your life? Who was it this time? A slut, maybe? A neighborhood chick? You think they’re your soulmate either way, so maybe the title won’t matter—!”

Taehyung shoves at the boy, cheeks flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and humiliation dusting every part of his skin and you feel it deep in his bones. You feel the hopelessness he feels, the frustration at the world for not giving him an inkling of the soulmate he was looking for. You understand the sensation completely, which is why you are not too surprised to find that you start to feel bad for him.

The boy steps back, but the smirk doesn’t leave his expression. “I’ll take that as a no then, Kim.”

A pause, before another boy shows up. “Listen, Kim, don’t you get it? Boys like you don’t get a soulmate, because you don’t deserve it.”

With a shove that drives Taehyung into the lockers on the other side, the boys depart with one last laughter that seems to ring through the air.

Taehyung falls onto his bottom, bringing his knees to his chest and clenching his jaw tightly. You hear the thoughts echoing in his mind. If the universe wouldn’t give him a soulmate, then fuck. The boys were probably right. Taehyung would never get a soulmate, because he didn’t deserve one.

He would become exactly what they expected him to be, everything they scorned him against. It’s not like he had anyone waiting for him anyways. You feel the despair that he feels, the longing he feels.

You wake up with tears in your eyes.

“Kim Taehyung…” You whisper softly, blinking once, twice, letting the tears fall down the side of our face. “Why am I crying? My soulmate is a jerk…”

.

.

Taehyung has been getting really weird dreams lately about a girl with flower patterns on her notebook, her head in the clouds, and a twinkle in her eyes. He doesn’t quite remember how long the dreams have been occurring, but it feels like months. He doesn’t remember the first dream he ever had of you, but he figures out that when he was able to process the fact that he was dreaming about someone other than himself, something in his heart tells you it’s the same person he’s been dreaming about for those long aforementioned months.

At first, however, he doesn’t believe it—in neither the dreams nor the tiny possibility of purpose that your appearance in his mind is meant to serve. He doesn’t believe it. No fucking way.

After years of torment for remaining convinced over and over again that his soulmate was really out there, it’s hard to go back to that previous mindset. It should be only natural that his first instinct to the dreams would be complete deniability.

And he does a good job of dissociating himself. The dreams about you, for all he knows, could just be figments created by his consciousness. He barely lets himself ponder too long or too hard about the dreams, meaning he has a tendency to forget what happens or just pushes it to the back of his mind.

Then, the dreams seem to be projected onto him in fuller detail.

He starts to hear things.

“I don’t know Karly, he was hooking up with another girl though. Probably different from the first one—her name was Irene.”

Irene was the name of the girl from that house party a few weeks ago.

“My soulmate is an asshole.”

He sees the floral notebook in your classroom, the way your fingers flip through the pages until coming across one with the words SOULMATE scribbled across the top, followed by a bullet point list of items that seem specifically catered to an individual person. It starts with: hooks up at parties, first: ??? second: Irene, definitely Irene holy FUCKING shit, if his disgusting groans are anything to go by, likes drinking… cheap tequila is his favorite i think but also likes vodka, long-ish kind of hair… maybe a mullet, has good eyebrows, a low sort of voice, could be cute if he wasn’t a dick literally AND figuratively.

And then finally, at the bottom of the page, name: Kim Taehyung.

Following that dream, it forces Taehyung into the conclusion that you are indeed a real person who is undergoing a life that he gets to witness, and that perhaps he had been wrong to assume that the universe would never present him with a soulmate. And that if he’s dreaming of your life, then it’s likely to assume that you’ve been dreaming of his life.

Seeing the visual depiction, seeing someone spell out the fact that he really does have a soulmate is one thing. But hearing the next words in your voice changes everything.

“Kim Taehyung… Why am I crying? My soulmate is a jerk.”

The realization hits him before he even opens his eyes the next morning.

His soulmate, you, were crying because he was a jerk. And he has no idea how to reach you. And he certainly has no idea how to make it better.

.

“C’mon Y/N, it’ll be fun.”

“I doubt it’ll be fun,” You retort back, rolling your eyes anyways as you continue to move about your bedroom. Laundry day has just fallen upon you and you’re currently trying to put away all your clothes into their proper place. This wouldn’t be as difficult if Jeon Jungkook wasn’t in your room and trying to do everything in his willpower to convince you about this upcoming party in an university not far from your own. “It’s just gonna be more drinking in a different place. What is over there that you can’t get over here?”

“Uh, a break from our peers?” Jungkook speaks as if the answer should be obvious. “I’m tired of seeing the same people at a party.”

“Fuck off,” You argue with a snort. “You just want to hook-up with a girl who doesn’t know your name.” After all, there are thousands of people enrolled at this particular university. But word travels as does reputation, which is why it has become increasingly more and more difficult for Jungkook to quote “have a good time” with someone who knew about him.

You suppose Jungkook should be thankful to have a soulmate who proposed the agreement to allow both parties to have sex with other people—at least, until they found each other.

“Suppose I do,” He agrees with a grin. “Are you gonna come with me or not?”

You glare at him. “No!” You exclaim, deciding to remain firm about your decision. You’ve been to parties and although you enjoyed yourself to a certain extent, it wasn’t enough where you felt the need to drive off to a different college to experience a different kind of fun. It was all the same to you—you drank, you got drunk, you potentially threw up off the side of the road with your poor friend watching you. It was the same no matter where you were deciding to get drunk, even if it was honestly only once in a blue moon.

Jungkook’s grin turns into a pout. “Please, Y/N? I need someone to go with! I don’t want to go alone!”

You whirl around to look at him just as you finish tucking a shirt away into your closet. “Then ask another friend to go with you! I’m sure your usual crowd of partying friends would love to get drunk with you at a different university.”

Jungkook starts off the bed and approaches you. “Please? You know I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate. Besides, it’s been so long since we went out together. All those times you turned me down—you owe me one!”

His last words make you stop slightly because it’s true in a way. You had been meaning to go out to various house parties with Jungkook, but your schedule and own personal discomfort about too many parties have kept you away from the scene Jungkook enjoys too much. And because he’s one of your best friends, it’s definitely time that you follow through on the promise made many months ago.

You sigh, closing your eyes in defeat as Jungkook’s smile widens. “Fine, fine!”

And with that, you are promptly taken into a car as Jungkook drives out of the lot and down the street for the hour-long drive into the next city over towards the university holding this famous party Jungkook cannot seem to stop talking about. And he doesn’t stop talking about it during the drive over; however the conversation is also filled with other playful banter that you and the boy have developed over the years that you have been friends.

At the red light, Jungkook pulls his phone out from the cupholder and starts to scroll, answering some messages here and there and you pull down the mirror overhead to check your lipstick. You look over at Jungkook who is still in the middle of answering another text. “Anyone important?” You inquire.

He turns his head towards you but keeps his eyes on the phone for a few more seconds. “O-Oh no, it’s just one of my friends from the university. He’s asking when we’re showing up so we can meet up at the party.”

Your eyes narrow into a glare. “Yah, I thought you didn’t have other friends to go with!”

“Well,” He stammers, giving you a side-eye and shrinking slightly when you have a warning flicker in your gaze. “No other friends at our school—ow!”

“Jeon Jungkook!” You crow. “Please don’t tell me I’m gonna have to third wheel you and your boyfriend. I didn’t force myself into this dress only to be ditched as soon as we arrive!”

“Not my boyfriend,” He grits back. “And I won’t ditch you, okay? Tae is super chill, I’m sure the two of you will get along super well.”

You freeze slightly, your heart leaping out of your chest at the mention of the name that feels so foggy, it’s only as if you’ve heard the name in a dream. Or something out of your childhood.

Immediately, you find your mind points you to a direction that makes your blood run cold. But, that shouldn’t be possible right? Surely the name should be extremely common—what are the odds of Jungkook’s friend being your soulmate, the boy from your dreams who you determined to have hated with your entire heart and soul? There’s no way it’s him. The likelihood of that is rare. Besides, Jungkook just addressed the boy as ‘Tae’. Nothing more, nothing less.

The reasonable accusation of your overthinking nature gets you to relax a little. Yes of course. Tae is just a nickname that could stand for many different things and there’s no way for you to know what the other half of his name is or what his last name was. You’re overthinking it just because of a few bad dreams and a terrible taste in the back of your mouth.

That gets you to relax a little as Jungkook keeps driving and you keep talking until the pair of you arrive in the parking lot of the university. Jungkook parks right in the visitor’s parking area before the both of you step out and immediately start making your way across campus towards the appropriate area. For a boy who claims to have only been here once or twice, he seems to know exactly where he’s going, and doesn’t take long to find his goal.  

His end goal is one of the houses on the fraternity road, one that is already blaring with the explosion of music that rocks the property. People are scattered both inside and around the house, balancing cups in their hands while conversing with their peers. Despite the unfamiliar atmosphere that plagues you—obviously, because you have never been to this campus before and hence have never been to this house before—there’s something different in this. You get a terrible sense of deja vu, like you’ve seen this place before either in real life or from a dream.

The uncomfortable sensation doesn’t go away, even as you and Jungkook step closer and closer to the house before emerging through the opened door. The music is even longer here as you see people left and right and at every turn. No one seems attracted to your presence, which is good. Jungkook had promised you the kind of evening where you could just let loose and have fun and that’s what you planned to do.

“Hey Jungkook, you made it!” A boy with a terribly, terribly familiar voice says from a few feet away. The voice makes your stomach drop suddenly as you turn your address from the view of the party to look around Jungkook and see who is now standing before him.

Your eyes widen, your heartbeat quickens, the time around you seems to slow down—all things that point to the conclusion that this evening would not turn out the way you had originally wanted.

That point is further emphasized when the boy catches a glimpse of you too and it’s like you’re seeing Kim Taehyung in the flesh. Actually, no, it’s not like you’re seeing him in the flesh. You are seeing him in the flesh. He stands before you, just as tall as you would have imagined, just as pretty and charming and reeking of sexual intentions. He’s continuing to act carelessly, pretending as if you don’t even exist.

It would be one thing to understand that perhaps he hadn’t gotten the dreams and was acting off his own accord—but the look he gives you as soon as the eye contact between the two of you is established and maintained leaves you little doubt that he thinks of you as nothing more than a mere stranger.

Surprisingly, he is the first one to find his voice. “I-It’s you,” He stammers, completely looking past Jungkook in order to further observe you.

You swallow thickly, unable to notice the way Jungkook flickers his gaze between his friend and you. “K-Kim Taehyung,” You return.

Jungkook shifts his gaze between the two of you, his index finger out and pointing from one to the other. “You guys know each other?”

Taehyung opens his mouth to say something, but you gather your wits back well enough so that the only thing you can muster is one last lingering glance on the boy in front of you, your soulmate, before you rip your gaze from his and walk in the opposite direction.

“H-Hey, Y/N!” Taehyung calls, ignoring poor and oblivious Jungkook, opting to brush past the latter in his attempt to reach you. “Y/N, please—would you just…” He trails off as soon as he reaches you, his fingers curled around your wrist. “This isn’t really how I pictured us meeting…”

“I’m surprised you even thought about us meeting at all,” You retort back gently, but harsh enough so the statement has some bite to it. “You know what you’ve been doing the past few months—I know what you’ve been doing the past few months. Why would you try to deny it?”

“I-I wasn’t,” Taehyung starts slowly, looking down to see the meeting point where his hand is wrapped around your wrist and a realization he has not felt with any other person seems to sink in. He tightens his hold around you, a gesture that forces you to lock eyes with him. “Look, I can’t control what I did in the past—up until a few days ago I didn’t even know you existed. Can you just, I don’t know, forget about it or something?”

Your eyes hardened as you pulled yourself from Taehyung. “That’s not fair of you to ask that from me. I’ll never be able to look at you the way you’ll want me to. I just… I can’t. Everytime I see you I’ll be thinking about those girls you were hooking up with, and it doesn’t matter if it was in the past and you can’t control it and you didn’t know about me or whatever—but it matters to me.”

He bites the corner of his mouth, knowing that perhaps simply asking you to disregard the dreams as if they were slips of paper one could merely throw away had not been the smartest thing for him as a soulmate to ask of.

“Okay, I’m sorry. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to phrase it,” He replies quietly. “But can’t you give me a chance instead of walking away from this?”

You only continue to stare at Taehyung, but something shifts in your expression. It’s such a gentle and subtle change that Taehyung almost doesn’t believe that it’s happening. But when he realizes that the glimmer in your eyes are from unshed tears and not a trick of the light, it feels like years of history crumpling down all around him. The feeling is weird, given that this is the first time the pair of you are meeting and conversing together. Although, he supposes, this is the touch of soulmates.

“You just… you aren’t the person I was expecting,” You whisper and Taehyung doesn’t try to stop you this time as you turn around and walk away towards the exit of the house.

Jungkook rushes next to Taehyung even though his presence has been more or less forgotten. “Wait, Y/N, are you leaving already? You just got here!” When you don’t say anything, Jungkook paces over to grab you by the wrist. “What the fuck are you doing? What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” You retort, pulling yourself from Jungkook’s grip. “I just can’t stay here.”

Jungkook gives you a hard look. “So you’re just gonna go back? How are you getting back?”

“I don’t know Jungkook,” You protest. “I’ll call an Uber or something. I just can’t stay here.”

Jungkook whips around to face Taehyung. “What did you say to her?”

You spare one last glance at Taehyung over your shoulder before you scoff at his lack of response, even though you don’t know what you want him to say, before you make your way out of the house.

.

Even though the last thing you want to think about, wonder about, or worry about is Kim Taehyung—the universe still grants you with him, as if to further prove that no matter how much you wish to reject him it would be impossible.

You never got to wonder what it would be to see you through the eyes of Kim Taehyung, but when you close your eyes you are immediately greeted with a sight that you only see through the reflection of a mirror. You see yourself, or as Taehyung had seen you. You see big doe eyes and a glimmer that you don’t normally see, you see a flush in your cheeks and a shock etched in your expression. You also feel the way Taehyung had felt when he realized who you were—you feel the quickening of his heartbeat and the increasing clamminess of his palms as you feel what he felt, that you were without a doubt his soulmate.

You feel the way his mind scrambles to come up with a reason to make you stay, anything to stop the look of disgust from creeping into your eyes. You feel the hopelessness and desperation he felt when you turned your back on him; but even more than that, you see what happens when you leave.

“What the fuck was that?” Jungkook inquires, whipping around to give Taehyung a suspicious look. “Oh god, please don’t tell me that you hooked up with Y/N and ditched her afterwards.”

“N-No, it’s not like that,” Taehyung returns back, even though Jungkook still looks doubtful. “We know each other though, and got into this huge fight—!”

“I can see that.”

Taehyung glares. “I need to make it up to her somehow.”

You see the way Jungkook is finally convinced to hand over the address to your apartment complex, the way Taehyung finds his own ride into the outer perimeter of your university with a bundle of something tucked under his arm. You recognize your complex, you recognize the stairs he takes and the floor he steps off of, the way he reads every single number on every single door and wait a minute—!

A knock startles you from your thoughts, your dreams, as you bolt up on the bed. Everything about your dream and the memories Taehyung had experienced felt so real it was hard to tell if the knock had been a figment of your imagination or something real…

The knock comes again from your front door. Despite the questionable hours (four in the morning to be exact), you have a feeling in your heart about who is standing behind the wooden frame.

Even though your mind is telling you not to do it, not to look through those doors and open a can of worms that could potentially complicate things even further, your heart is telling you something different entirely.

It is all your hearts fault, really, that you open the door and see Kim Taehyung standing on the other side of the door. He looks nervous, more nervous than you have ever seen him look or appear before—and you’ve been in his head as well as feeling his feelings for months now. You flicker your gaze down. He’s carrying a bundle of daisies, very pretty ones at that, and your own heart does the betrayal thrum of nerves in your chest.

You look back up at Taehyung.

“Um…” He starts when you don’t say anything. Yet you also don’t slam the door back on his face, so he assumes that you’re at least willing to hear what he has to say. “You’re probably surprised to see me here.”

“A little,” You admit. “But I also saw you coming in my dreams.”

“Oh—well, if you’ve seen my day, you must have also felt what I was feeling when I saw you for the first time.”

You avert your gaze. “Perhaps I did.”

“Then did you feel all the despair I felt when you turned your back on me? When you wouldn’t stay to give me a chance?”

You did, and your silence is all the confirmation Taehyung needs.

The corner of his lips quirk up into a shy smile, and he doesn’t look like the player or the fuckboy you had witnessed countless times in your dreams. He looks like Taehyung—the boy with soulmate parents, the boy who so desperately longed for his own half where he would give up anything and everything for the chance. He looks like the sixteen-year-old boy who was shoved into a locker because he believed too much. The universe has been hard on him.

Taehyung takes a tiny step forward. He offers forth the daisies, a flower you have briefly mentioned loving in his dreams. “Can you give me a chance to not be an asshole?”

You stare from the flowers to Taehyung’s pleading expression.

Why am I crying? My soulmate is a jerk…

“Y/N,” Taehyung speaks softly. “Give me the chance to not make you cry.”

Pretty big words coming from someone who has been making you cry since the beginning, even in the most subtle of ways.

Yet, this is what you’ve wanted since you were born. You and Taehyung would definitely not be like your peers or family or friends, but yet perhaps this would be different and better.

“Don’t be a jerk,” You whisper, taking the flowers from him.

Taehyung’s grin widens, breathless, and even though you are awake, it is almost like you can feel his heartbeat in your own chest. “And miss out on something I’ve wanted since I was ten? No way.”

[merlinthoughts]

Season 1 Episode 5 - Lancelot<3

- YES BBG’s IT'S MY BOY LANCE

- he’s one of my fav characters u guys don't even KNOW

- like yah okay, i've only seen hiM FOR ONE EPISODE

- but he’s the light of my life

- and he may not even come back but he looks like a character that would come back especially if the fucking ep is named after him

-  oh damn, i sure hope he does

- and goes into arthurs posse of knights or whatever, replacing val

- or what valerie was gonna be

- idek, lets get to it bc i could go on for days just picturing lance as a main character while continuously expressing my love for him

- BUT NOTHING ELSE OBVIOUSLY BC THIS IS NOW A CATHOLIC WEBSITE

- tumblrs trynna urge me to go with them nasty thoughts

- you wish tumblr

- you WISH you can ban me

- u can't live without sucking dick >:(

- wow slow down shev... wow okay sorry. christianism. i forgot

- it got the best of me

- back to the episode!

- omg it's buckbeak why he making a cameo in merlin??

- my inner potterhead(uwu) is coming out i hate this

- bet you can't guess which house i'm in ;)

- it's fucking slytherin, it's literally so obvious

- hissshiss motherfuckers

- ew guys

- this is so hard to type considering my fucking ‘-’ button (called a dash for u furries who only see a face) is broken and i have to literally smash it to make it work, so i'm just insanely typing up the next dash by screaming at my keyboard that i can't fucking fix

- and i have so many dasHES TO DO!

- that made no sense bc yall aren't living in my socks at the moment

- BUT I'M DYING IT'S SO HARD TO JUST GET IT TO PRESS

- fuck it copy paste, my best friend, you always come when the time is needed

- LANCELOT LOOKS SO BEAUTIFUL

- lowkey looked like that guy from the 100 though

- but better

- nothing against baloney of course

- lancelot literally just introduced himself, the camera panned in onto his chest, then he proceeded to faint or some shit with the camera still zoomed on his chest, and merlin reached up to grab his shirt, probably to yank it the fuck off and the opening credits rolled up. wtf was that scene.

- WAIT I REWINDED IT

- it's not supposed to be a zoom in of his chest lmao, my hoe ass thought we had a little fanservice for a second, but there's a big mushroom-looking blood stain on his shirt which i guess is supposed to mean he's fucking dead so it's not all that confusing anymore

- when was he stabbed tho?

- whatever. shit always goes down in BBC that's often unexplainable.

- “it had claws, wings…” arthur stops his sentence melodramatically while uther looks terrified. “and.. what?” WHAT UTHER?? WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?? YOU THINK ARTHURS  GONNA BE LIKE “FANGS, STEVE BUSCEMI'S EYEBALLS, DANNY DEVITO’S HAIRLINE, TALKS LIKE JOHN MULANEY?? I JUST TOLD YOU WHAT I SAW, NOT WHAT I IMAGINED. FATHER”

- but no… livestock apparently

- that’s what uthers shocked by

- not that theres a fucking griffin living in his world

- wait theres magic, means theres magic creatures doy

- but still, even if we all had magic here, i think it would be a little shocking seeing a griffin come for buckingham palace randomly

- or i guess if youre reading this and are in america, in the white house

- oh and it took only people apparently

- i guess that’s a little more severe but i stand uncorrected

- they be having a wild time in the hippogriff’s house ;)

- honestly sounds like a fucked up hogawart house

- here we have slytherin, hufflepuff, ravenclaw and... *looks at smudged writing on hand* hippogriff

- okay, who tf has a dream of coming to camelot when it's the most feared place, with banned magic and an asshole king with his hot bitchy son and a sorcerer who just brings chaos to the land

- well i mean, me 

- bc of the hot bitchy son but whatever

- camelot? more like cameNOT

- arthur calls himself the ultimate killing machine like the edge lord he is

- ARTHUR FUCKING KO’D THE BITCH

- knee to the nose and all wtf man

- this is probably foreshadowing smth with the “only noble blood can swoosh like a knight” thing, like somethings gonna happen and poor people are gonna revolt and uthers gonna be like “GEEZ fine, okay, no nobles can become a knight”

- merlins such a shit stirer, telling lance he can be a knight and telling him arthur would love him when we really know whats gonna happen bc of that rule

- and here’s gaius like uhh u liar wtf, crushing lance’s dreams while merlins just like wtf gaius, live in the moment, we can do anything, this is OUR show

- literally their such good friends and have known each other for a solid 10 minutes only

- i'm not that big into beards but id love to rub my face on lance’s

- HOMEWORK IS MERLIN’S EXCUSE, MERLIN UR LIKE 20 IN A WORLD PROB WITHOUT HOMEWORK

- haha little fault there, or like a minor inconvenience which isn’t important but i like to pretend to be smart: middle ages or well the show’s era was more in “AD” (476-ish is the start of middle ages, while the arthurian legend is supposed to happen in the 5/6th century so yeah, technically 400/500 AD), and homework supposedly only started up in 1095 so BOOM BBC GOTCHA

- no, merlin’s not gonna perform magic right in front of the librarian

- does he not know the wrath of librarians???

- our librarian at school literally kicked everyone out of the library once for the whole semester because there was an apple core on the bookshelf. this was during exam week. do u know how much i wanted to kill the person who didn't admit to their mistakes and let everyone suffer. WE COULDN'T ENTER TO EVEN STUDY

- OH GOD, HE'S DOING IT MERLIN IS A FUCKING MESS

- gwen and lancelot are my favourite thing, i literally want them to be together by the next episode

- or the next one with lance

- WAIT LANCELOT IS SUPPOSED TO BE A MAIN CHARACTER ISN'T HE BC I KNOW VAGUELY THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND AND LANCELOT WAS A KNIGHT WASN'T HE???? HE WAS A FUCKING KNIGHT AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT NEXT TO LIKE IDK BEDEVERE OR SMTH THIS IS AMAZING NEWS GUYS I LITERALLY COULD BE A DETECTIVE

- !!!! the only heto ship on this show i actually adore !!!!!!

- i mean i only love two things: merthur and glance

- idek what gwen and lance’s ship name is so its now glance

- merlin would be the best wingman for them by being gwens bestie

- “you can start by cleaning out the stables” *lance looks to merlin while merlin gives him the biggest smile and thumbs up* this fuckING DORK

- harry potter au where everything is the same but that grim reaper looking human creature in the prisoner of azkaban executing buckbeak is actually lancelot in the future 

- for symbolism purpose, not saying lance is like an animal killer but yknow

- same thing with the griffin yknow

- the two prettiest dudes in my world fighting against one another while sweat is glistening down their forheads is my new favourite aesthetic

- BUCKBEAK HAS COME

- oh wait no, people having been attacked by buckbeak have come

- netflix fucked up by subbing arthur as “orther” and i never laughed so hard

- don’t make me fucking laugh when there’s an ambush, netflix, this is not christian

- annd arthur’s pride is gone, and he goes up to chop lance’s fucking head off

- OH SHIT THAT TRANSITION THOUGH

- i'm so proud of my bb like genuinely so proud, lance deserves so much and here is is!! a knight!!

- MORGANA APPEARS THE LOML

- the three lomls in one room?? seriously bbc?? you really doing that to me?? for once im actually impressed and happy

- he's gonna get caught, i mean i KNOW that, but like it's still stressing out

- ewewewewewewewewewew

- arthur called morgana “isn't she so beautiful??” with a lovey dovey face pls don't lead this to that stepsibling porn bullshit i'm going to fucking puke

- i hated that shadowhunter bullshit like they seriously going to hit me with the indirect incest?? i was so done. i hated jace and clary, idc if theyre like the most popular couple, like wheres my raphael lovers at bc that's a boy i can enjoy

- “so if you could choose one... lance or arthur?” merlin subtly asks gwen like he doesn't have an answer himself

- it would have been so perfect geez, gwen and lance, merlin and arthur, myself and morgana

- i really wanna know what lance, merlin and arthur look like drunk bc that's a hell of a hangover they got the next morning and they probably cut out most of the soiree so like what did they do?? was there any drunk dancing and flirting??? bc i literally want to see that happen

- ik it's a bad thing but those drunk tropes where someone confesses their love to the person they like while under the influence is my favourite thing bc it's both hilarious, genuine and the other person often helps them to their feet and gets them to a safer place to rest and that's fricken adorable guys!

- not the drinking obviously, thats like a thing you can enjoy if you want but ya girl does not like drinking. or, well, she likes drinking with a limit. you can tell who likes to be the designated driver lmao. people here be drinking flat out whiskey and i tried it once and it burned by fucking throat

- merlin fucked up

- and this is technically his fault

- THEY GOT CAUGHT LMAO IT IS HIS FAULT

- hungover and caught this won't bode well

- “not worthy of a knighthood”

- hey so how do you retract a knighthood?

- do you like reverse the shoulder tapping

- like if you're christian, bc you know, we, as a christian group on this tumblr site, should already know about it... but when we do that cross thing on our shoulders, it means like a direct call with god or some shit. and if we do it the opposite direction it's considered the antichrist so is it the same for knighthood?

- OMG I JUST HAD AN EPIPHANy

- okay with christianity it's tapping the head the stomach, shoulder then shoulder, right? but the reverse is the anti cross like shoulder to shoulder, stomach and head. but… what if it were tapping the stomach, crotch, hip to hip? it would make sense right??? since the cross is upside down… it would lead to the dick and not the head. THAT'S WHY IT'S AN UPSIDE DOWN CROSS. BC YOU AINT SUPPOSED TO GRAB THEM BALLS UNTIL MARRIAGE!!! I SEE OMG I SEE YOU JESUS, TRYNNA HIDE UR FLOURISHING SEXUALITY

- omg guys, don't grab ur fucking balls in this blog post, it's considered the antichrist

- “you never will be” lmao he's gonna come back, he's lancelot, that's a main in the og legend

-  how pissed will lance be with merlin

- i hope big time bc like... angry lance *dries off sweat with hands*

- aw damn lance isn't mad he's like “this is my punishment. mine to bare, mine to bare alone. stop blaming urself. i put this on me” this fucking goof is making me swoon once fucking more

- NOW BUCKBEAKS BACK

- he's a real goat x3

- buckbeak can literally fuck shit up in the air, camelot has nothing on him

- ARTHURS FUCKING DEAD LMAO

- oh wait he aint, just a few of his knights

- imagine being an extra and playing as one of those knights. having to fight next to bradley james, and have him look at you when someones doing something stupid like you can mentally agree with him and then pretend to die on camera. that would be my dream. make-a-wish better do me some good when i get diseased that will prob be named after me

- hoephagus

- stupidolis

- nah thats stupid

- ;)

- i now understand mulans will to pretend to be a guy and join the army bc i would literally do that if i could stay with arthur fucking pendragon

-  aw it's called a griffin not a hippogriff

- i'm saddened

- harry potter has taught me WRONG

- this looks to be the climax where merlins like “fine guys, geez, i'll kill the griffin bc i'm magic!! wow!!! but arthur obviously knew, and i thought gwen was gonna know but she shocked me even more when she didn’t like fucking hell everyones oblivious. but since you can only kill buckbeak with magic, sigh, i'm exposing myself ig” even if it's like halfway through season 1 with 5 seasons altogether, this looks to be the right time

- this really sounds to be what we are waiting for, what kilgarah said about the destiny merlin will have

- WAIT WE HAVEN'T SEE THAT BITCH IN A WHILE

- wheres the dickwad gone lmao like was the actor busy the last few episodes or what?

- OMG ARHTURS BREAKING LANCE OUT OF PRISON SO HE CAN BE A KNIGHT

- how is the “arthurs pretty gay” theory not popped up more times on here

- like we all know merthurs pretty great and all

- but CANON wise arthur seems super gay to me

- like he just told lance to get up his ass because “i need… uhh... camelot needs” like he was just about to say he needs lance in his life

- have you not seen the glances??

- fucking hell

- arthur slowly comes closer to lance pretending to talk about what he knows about the creature

- lance also coming closer to ask if he truly believes that, with a raised eyebrow

- thought this shit was only in books and fanfics

- but no guys, we got a gay eyebrow raise

- bc we all know only the gays are capable of eyebrow raises

- fucking hell this is gay i cant even explain it

- like its subtly gay, but out of context youd think this is something out of a fansite

- and merlins not even in this scene

- “take the horse and never return to this place” OKAY NO FIRST OF ALL SECOND OF ALL FUCK OFF LMAO THIS ISNT GAY ANYMORE

- i mean he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart, saving him from prison and all but lance wants to like…  be a good man and you aint letting him do that

- OMG LANCE IS SAYING GOODBYE TO GWEN

- LANCE BETTER FUCKING KISS HER

- I LOVE GWEN AND LANCE TOGETHER #STAN

- fucking kiss you fucking bafoon

- THEY DIDN'T FUCKING KISS WTFUCKINGFUCK

- merlin looks so dumb holding his dagger as if he doesn’t know what to do with it but i love that for me

- WAIT I THOUGHT LANCELOT WAS LITERALLY GONNA GO YEET OUT OF CAMELOT NOT TO FUCKING SACRIFICE HIMSELF AND FIGHT THE GRIFFIN

- bafoons, all of them

- big bouncing bucking bafoons

- arthur looks so scared i've never been so in love and want to PROTECT

- omg for all merlin and lance know, that scream was arthur fucking dying- OMG IT WAS ARTHUR

- HE'S FUCKAN DEAD

- nvm he's alive but like yall not think to check for some arterial wounds bc he could be alive now, but in 5 mins he could legit not make it

- slow music means death

- lancelot you were the best husband i've ever had, rip

- i would be crying more if i didn’t know what happened, but since i already spoiled myself on the first season by watching this about a year ago, i'm not that sad but its still getting to me slightly

- hahahaha so happy everyones okayyy

- ARTHUR AND LANCE TiME!

- arthur looks so happy for lance literally crack ship right there

- why does nobody talk about this wyd

- and here’s arthur defending lance’s honour

- but uthers being a bitch

- omg that transition from lance being told to wait outside, the camera following him out of the room and the doors slamming behind him just in time to hear uther yell at arthur from next door is what gives me chills

- uther better fucking accept lance

- “the law is the law” yeah but the law also says to stop being a stuck-up bitch, uther

- literally lance is the only fucking person to not see through merlins blatant magic tricks

- like he saw that shit, called it out and was not like “oh what its a trick of the wind, surely”

- and he's not fazed at all, u see merlin it aint that bad to tell some people

- the only thing he is worrying about is the credit he says he doesn’t deserve bc merlin killed the griffin and not him

- see how fucking great my husband is, guys

- he better not be like “sucks to suck, i lied again! it aint me, chief” to uther and arthur

- NAH OKAY HE’S JUST BIDDING HIS FAREWELL IM GONNA FUCKING CRY IN THE CLUB

- he better fucking come back soon >:(

- seasonal guest star at least

- main characters, big bonus

- we barely saw morgana this episode and i'm not okay with that, but at the same time it was more lance-centric so i'm aight actually. we got all the time in the world for my baby girl, but lance :’( good luck man

- literally everyone is so gay for lance

- gwens into him for sure, and i love that the most (guess thats not gay but whatever, beggars can't be choosers)

- arthur has a little crush ngl

- and merlins full out in love with him

- not to mention MY FUCKING SELF

- i mean, i won't deny that he’s literally perfect in every way and i've only known him for one episode, but i agree whole heatedly with these crushes

- “till next time, sir lancelot” merlin whispers with a smile

- yeah that's me right there

- BC I'LL BE SEEING HIM IN THE FINAL EPISODE OF THIS SEASON!

- greeting us all with the news on being cast full-time for the show, being the best guard around and a lover boy to all

- guys i feel like i'm on aphrodisiacs but instead of desire for sex, it's love for lancelot

- send help

[snufflesmajor]

🔥

[Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.]

    I’ve talked about this at length with @mestoselenophobia, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here? So:

LYALL LUPIN IS A GOOD MAN AND A GOOD DAD AND HE DID HIS BEST

    I see so many fanfics where Lyall is made out to be really distant, or really just… uninterested in Remus? Like, Remus gets bitten and s u d d e n l y, Lyall is a terrible father? And canon just does not support it.

    Listen. 

    Come closer.

    Lyall Lupin was a good father, and Hope Lupin was a good mother.

    Take a seat and listen:

    Hope is a muggle, and had absolutely no experience with magical ailments like lycanthropy. Lyall had more experience, though not with that, and the only reason he said what he did was because he was frustrated. He knew Fenrir was a werewolf, but the Ministry is full of idiots who are more interested in… not doing their job? Acting up themselves? Being jerks? 

    So, basically it’s a government job lmao.

    Anyway, so we have Lyall wishing death to all werewolves out of frustration, and Fenrir is a bit of a dick (understatement of the year–calling it now) and decided to take a bite out of Lyall’s son, Remus. 

    So that means that Remus is a werewolf now, so therefore Lyall and Hope are disgusted, right? NooooooooooooooooOOOOPPPPEEEE.

    If you take a look around Pottermore (which I highly recommend to everyone!), you actually see that it’s the opposite! If you go here, it’s as clear as anything.

    Here are some quotes to let you know what sort of a person Lyall is:

    Lyall Lupin was a very clever, rather shy young man who, by the time he was thirty, had become a world-renowned authority on Non-Human Spiritous Apparitions.

    He’s basically Remus 1.0.

    Boggarts and poltergeists may be sensed by Muggles, and Hope, a particularly imaginative and sensitive person, had become convinced that something was watching her from between the dark trees. Eventually, her imagination became so overactive that the Boggart assumed a form: that of a large, evil-looking man, bearing down on her with a snarl and outstretched hands in the gloom. Hearing her scream, young Lyall came sprinting through the trees, causing the apparition to shrink into a field mushroom with one wave of his wand. The terrified Hope thought, in her confusion, that he had driven her would-be attacker away, and his first words to her – ‘it’s all right, it was only a Boggart’ – made no impression on her. Noticing how very beautiful she was, Lyall made the wise decision not to talk about Boggarts any more, but instead agreed that the man had been very big and scary, and that the only sensible thing to do was for him to accompany Hope home to protect her.

    So here we have adventurer Lyall saving damsels in distress. I just really love this okay, but it’s important because it shows you what sort of a person Lyall is. Not in this bit, but in the bit following it:

    The young couple fell in love, and not even Lyall’s shamefaced admission, some months later, that Hope had never really been in danger, dented her enthusiasm for him. To Lyall’s delight, Hope accepted his proposal of marriage and threw herself enthusiastically into preparations for the wedding, complete with a Boggart-topped cake.

    Lyall actually admitted to Hope that it had just been a Boggart, because he couldn’t lie to her about it. Hope apparently was very much okay with this and they wed shortly after. Honestly, is this not the cutest couple you have ever seen?

    So, so far, we have Lyall being a person who specialises in otherwordly things, who is clever, a bit sly, and can’t keep a secret to save his life (so, again, basically Remus haha).

    Lyall Lupin never forgave himself for the words he had spoken in front of Greyback at the inquiry: ‘soulless, evil, deserving nothing but death’. He had parroted what was the common view of werewolves in his community, but his son was what he had always been – loveable and clever – except for that terrible period at the full moon when he suffered an excruciating transformation and became a danger to everyone around him. For many years, Lyall kept the truth about the attack, including the identity of the attacker, from his son, fearing Remus’s recriminations.

    Lyall is ashamed of what he said. He’s terrified of Remus hating him for it, for blaming him for the attack, and he adores Remus. He doesn’t see Remus as being any different for being a werewolf, and blames himself for it. “…except for that terrible period at the full moon–” Lyall still sees Remus as being his son, first and foremost.

    He doesn’t hate him for being a werewolf, he hates himself for saying such things.

    Lyall did all he could to find a cure, but neither potions nor spells could help his son. From this time onwards, the family’s lives were dominated by the need to hide Remus’s condition. They uprooted themselves from village to town, leaving the instant that rumours of the boy’s odd behaviour started. Fellow witches and wizards noticed how peaky Remus became as new moon approached, not to mention his monthly disappearances. Remus was not allowed to play with other children, in case he let slip the truth of his condition. In consequence, and in spite of his loving parents, he was a very lonely boy.

    Everything–absolutely everything–that Lyall and Hope did was to protect Remus. He was lonely, yes, but they loved him and wanted to protect him. He tried to find cures, he tried to find things to ease the pain. They tried, as hard as they could, to give Remus a normal life. The fact they moved whenever rumours started instead of just shipping him off to the Ministry once a month speaks volumes for them. They adore Remus.

    While Remus was small, his containment during his transformation was not difficult; a locked room and plenty of silencing spells usually sufficed. However, as he grew, so did his wolfish self, and by the time he was ten years old, he was capable of pounding down doors and smashing windows. Ever more powerful spells were needed to contain him and both Hope and Lyall grew thin with worry and fear. They adored their son, but they knew that their community – already beset with fears at the mounting Dark activity around them – would not be lenient on an uncontrolled werewolf. The hopes that they had once had for their son seemed in ruins, and Lyall educated Remus at home, certain that he would never be able to set foot in school.

    They became so stressed about Remus never living a normal life, or being shunned, they actually became ill. Despite this, Lyall still taught Remus. He knew Remus wouldn’t have a normal life, but he still tried and wanted to do what was best for him regardless.

    On top of this, the text clearly states they adore Remus. So, I mean, come on.

    Shortly before Remus’s eleventh birthday, no less a person than Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, arrived uninvited on the Lupins’ doorstep. Flustered and frightened, Lyall and Hope tried to block his entrance, but somehow, five minutes later, Dumbledore was sitting at the fireside, eating crumpets and playing Gobstones with Remus.

    The most powerful wizard of their time turns up, and Lyall and Hope don’t give a single fuck. They want to protect Remus. They’re willing to stop–or at least try to stop–Dumbledore. They don’t know why he’s there, and Hope–a muggle–is still willing to try and stop him.

    They literally see Dumbledore and immediately want to protect Remus. 

    Who does that remind you of? (coughJamesandLilyPottercough)

    The downfall of Voldemort, such a source of jubilation to the rest of the wizarding community, marked the beginning of a long stretch of loneliness and unhappiness for Remus. He had lost his three close friends and, with the Order disbanded, his previous comrades returned to busy lives with families. His mother was now dead, and while Lyall, his father, was always delighted to see his son, Remus refused to endanger his father’s peaceful existence by returning to live with him.

    After Remus left school and was being assisted by James, Lyall was free.

    He didn’t have to move anymore and could live in one place. He could stay in the house where his wife died, and live a relatively peaceful life.

    But do you see that? 

    “Remus refused to endanger his father’s peaceful existence by returning to live with him.”

    Lyall was willing to give all of that up for his son. His adult son, who no longer lived with him.

    His son who he could wash his hands of and live a peaceful life without.

    He was willing to go back to constantly moving, to living a secret life, for Remus. But Remus refused it.

    One last thing:

    His own parents, Lyall and Hope, had sacrificed their peace and security to keep the family together

    Can anyone ever say that Lyall and Hope don’t care for Remus? Or treated him poorly?

    Lyall and Hope did the very best they could and they love Remus more than anyone, and I’m so tired of seeing people say otherwise. )8

    THEY WERE GOOD PARENTS OKAY.

[stillellensibley]

The Noise In-Between: An Interview With Ivan Seal

Declan Tan talks memory, meaning, and material with Berlin-based artist and Caretaker collaborator, Ivan Seal

Ivan Seal, adultery bi prenontspliver, 2015

Memory. It’s a funny old thing. And for Berlin-based artist Ivan Seal, memory isn’t only funny – you can throw in beguiling, banal, totally enthralling and infinitely alluring while you’re at it. That’s because it’s this central subject of memory that underlines Seal’s ‘endless alphabet’, a series of paintings – imagined scenes and remembered objects made using no reference materials except for his own grey matter, and the canvases themselves – in a project spanning over six years, with no signs of fading like the neurons that imagined them.

With this style and method, Seal has struck deep into a vein of psychological, nigh on neuro-exploratory art, an intersection where figurative and abstract combine and bloom out like a billowing mushroom cloud of possibility and meaning. But to attempt to explain or classify his work would kind of miss the point.

I first came to Seal through his collaboration with fellow Stockport export, the experimental electronic producer and underground darts maestro Leyland James Kirby (a.k.a. V/Vm), creating the artwork for the latter’s Caretaker project – itself a study of memory and the effects of dementia.

The mysterious hunk of clay, with its single baffling matchstick, sat on the sleeve of An Empty Bliss Beyond This World compelled me to seek him out. And discovering that he’s down the road from me on this now foreign continent (a long-ish road, given), we ducked into a café to discuss where this all grew from.

Over a cortado he settles into the weighty Chesterfield, a kind of fizzing energy coming off him – not just from the coffee. We’re only 1pm and he says he’s already completed a painting today, and worked on several others.

The conversation soon branches out, like one of his paintings, taking in everything from D&D to teaching at the Royal College of Art – in fact, I feel like I get so much material that I completely forget my laptop on the café table, only realising what I’ve done three U-Bahn stops away in a total panic. By the time I’ve switched platforms and sprinted back, cursing (almost crying, if I’m honest) into my elbow bends that it’s happened again, £1,000 dropped, I find the table occupied only by a young German family sharing creamy cakes. The staff haven’t seen it either. It’s gone. Very quickly one of my dream interviews becomes a nightmare.

I think back through the interview. I remember pointing out early that, in terms of subject matter, we’ve had some overlapping interests. I mention that I caught one of his online video interviews, in which he begins proceedings by discussing LSD and ecstasy, apropos of very little. It seems a good a place as any to kick us off. It occurs to me that the mystifying aspect of Seal’s work might stem from that percolation of substances into his often-surreal painted dramas. I dig right in with a favourite Kubrick quote to see where he stands: “Drugs are basically of more use to the audience than to the artist.”

“When you get into your own thing,” he says “then you realise that that can give you a deeper, longer and more frustrating hit. Imagine taking something which has a highly addictive property in it – which for me is making art. It’s something which is not maybe the wisest of life choices – but you keep coming back to it. I didn’t paint for years and then I started painting again when I was 31 or something, and in that found the addiction again. I had that before but gave up painting – for the wrong reasons, I think.”

It was his Sheffield art college tutor Steve Dutton who suggested artists can tackle the problems within painting with any medium. “It doesn’t actually have to be paint. And I still believe in that.” Venturing into installation and then sound, it took Seal ten years to return to the canvas. “I see it as a journey to get back to a moment where you ask yourself, what do you actually want to do? But I think that moment needs working towards and it took a long time, to ask what action has the promise of satisfaction somewhere in it? And I thought the last time that happened was when I used to paint. So I started painting again.”

But he found that painting re-uptake somewhat inhibited. For about four years, he found himself painting over paintings, again and again. “I had about ten paintings, and they’d all be ten not-so-great paintings. But it was more about opening that doorway and slowly getting in – because I didn’t know what to paint.

“Over-painting and over-painting and over-painting – it all felt very academic in a way. Then I was advised to just get a lot of canvases or paper, and just do a lot, rather than try to make some bloody masterpiece. That’s advice you give students when you notice they’re constantly polishing a turd, and it happened to me.” Arriving at this moment himself, Seal had an epiphany. “That’s when I first kind of came to this idea of the disaster, the catastrophe which is inherent in a blank canvas, blank page, or a blank file in front of you. You’re only going to ruin it, but for some reason you have this urge to ruin and you start with that.”

Ivan Seal, allchav tart, 2016

For Seal, the whole activity of painting is entangled with a notion of failure – “a notion of struggle. And struggling with your own failings until something works. I don’t paint from photographs or objects. I constantly return to that moment of blank canvas and ruining it, and coping with it.”

For the first piece of this series, he wanted to paint something: not somewhere, not someone, “because I wanted the somewhere and the someone to be in something. Then I thought, then I’ll paint something that’s kind of nothing, in a way.”

He had been reading a story called The Golem. “It’s this idea that comes from Jewish fables. You have this lump and you form it into a little person and it does things for you. But if it doesn’t have this sticker on its forehead – which I think translated is ‘truth’ – then it just does its own will. And for me, this notion you have something, you create something, but it’ll in turn to attack you and destroy you, seemed very apt to painting.”

It must have been hard to predict how that base material, painted on canvas, would transform into an unending project. “Clay is where a lot of art comes from, a very basic form. I knew I wanted to paint a lump of black clay, but I didn’t want it to be somewhere that was ‘located’. In art, you put things on plinths, like a stage – so I put literally a lump of clay on a plinth in paint. Then I painted a match in it. Suddenly I had drama. And I’ve been working on that series since. In some senses, the action is utterly banal, and the intent is absolutely banal, but there’s the same point which holds, I feel, countless opportunities for somebody to look at it, and for somebody to interpret.”

Now Seal produces this work at an astonishing rate. “Some of them are very small,” he says, now upstairs in the studio, “then other ones I could be working on for like a year. Constantly going back to them.”

This approach means he has twenty or more canvases on the go at any one time, spread across two rooms in what used to be his apartment. They’re stacked up by the dozen in a storage room. The only noticeable piece not by his own hand is a painting of a bridge and town by his grandfather, a source of inspiration for many of his colours, Seal says.

“Rather than having one singular moment, painting like this works more like a brain,” he says as we stroll across the bare floorboards. “It works more like how you think. The studio somehow becomes an active way of thinking, a big head which I’m stepping into every day and basically poking around, like your own head works when you’re thinking about stuff.” He pauses.

“You can’t trust any memories at all, can you? Because it’s all glitched. It’s all nonsense in a way.”

Ivan Seal, the pot complains, 2016

Painting in this way is a meandering thought process, “but whilst moving your hand – and it’s somehow about making this distance between your hand and the head as short as possible.

“That’s what I’ve always loved about improvised music, the immediacy. It’s not people dicking about, it’s just thinking on a really hyper-fast level. Each move is very quick, it’s not like I’m executing tiny bits, and it’s very laboured.” He crouches down and picks roughly at the paint as if to illustrate his point.

“But I’m shifting paint around as well, taking paint off, putting it on, taking it off again. Then you often look at the paintings – and you don’t get this if you look at them online – if you see them physically, the paintings have a lot of scars on them, all over. You can see bits where something else was there, and I’ve just worked through. Instead of trying to illustrate something, I wanted the actual action of painting to be ‘it’.”

“It’s like you concentrate on one thing and you’ve got all this other information coming in,” he continues, “and that stains it. That alters the taste of it, recreates it – like that notion of glitch. They create errors in it. These painted objects are like a sum of these errors and glitches and that’s why there’s a hell of a lot of thick overpainting of things. A lot of the time I’ll start with something and then start layering paint on to cover up my tracks, or to cover up something too personal. Because that’s what we do.”

Ivan Seal, auxch noise reduced, 2016

For the last half a decade or more, he’s been evolving this idea that the action of painting becomes very close to the errors of how we think, or how you remember something – a kind of psychology of painting. “I always have to be careful,” he says. “When you talk about memory, people always think of the romantic idea. But memory is also the memory of meeting you now, or the memory of the Apotheke front window I saw this morning, with these horrible straw faces in. But each time the memory is glitched.”

“If you put the original event next to the memory, they’d be totally different. And I love this noise in-between, what you’ve gone through, your life. And trying to put it down somehow, or trick time somehow by activating it, and I find this noise, this glitch, has countless potentials and paintings in it.”

“Art is always working from memory,” he says. “It’s all questions of – even if you’re painting from something directly in front of you – it’s about that distance to inside you and then out. Like a loop. It’s about what you can do with that and how you pervert it.”

The son of a butcher and a ballroom dancer, Seal finds there are subjects and figures he naturally returns to, as a way of understanding them. His dramas are now more likely to be populated with gesturing porcelain figurines and mysterious, metamorphosing clays transforming like waking dreams from one form into another, as if consuming themselves.

“I don’t want to paint them but I do,” he says of the porcelain pieces – like dusty abandoned objects on some wooden-veneered, fat-back cathode ray TV from the 80s. “And they’re personal things. I can understand them, but they’re more like starting points. The dancers in my paintings are often like that, something I’m familiar with and just somehow know or have a warming to – and that’s the vehicle to get to other things.”

Ivan Seal, syntaksipolontian klapis, 2015

At several points in the conversation, like this, Seal drops a register and explains candidly his suspicion of painting, and of painters. It’s clear he takes his work seriously, but not this romantic ideal of ‘the artist’.

“Images are constantly telling us how to think. If you create, you’re involved in something which rather than saying ‘think this’, you can say ‘think with’. Then the process of looking at the work, I hope, is close to the process of making it. Because it’s just something to use and then to make your own sense of, in the context of your own life and your own memories, and everything which went from being born to being stood right in front of it. All that comes into it, so why not use it.

“As soon as you look at a painting, you’re decoding. But the actual decoding becomes something which becomes immersive. But I don’t want it to be ambient. I have a problem with that ‘drugginess’ of ambience and this ‘letting go’. I want the paintings still to be active. Like this thing that this collaborative outfit Farmers Manual said once: you’re building something to a certain point until you cease to be the makers and you become the audience. That’s how I see the painting, as soon as I get to that point when I’m pushed out as the artist, the maker, that romantic idea, and suddenly I’m just back into being, looking, thinking: ‘Who the hell are you?’ That’s when I know it’s hit on something that it shouldn’t have, and it’s good to go out the door.”

I ask him about his rough handling of the canvas as he crouches down and peels something off a corner. “I don’t think you can ruin a painting,” he laughs, looking up. “There’s always opportunity for them. Even if you’ve terrorised it, or you think you’ve destroyed it, it’s just another opportunity. It’s just another thing to improvise with.”

You’ve never destroyed a canvas? “No, I don’t destroy canvases. I often get to a point where it’s terrible, and then something very quick can happen and you finish it within a couple of hours.” He stands: “Someone asked Philip Gusten, how do you know when a painting’s finished? He said, ‘It stops staring at me.’ And there’s something in that. Work is something you just know.

“Often one talks about truth of material in arts. They say if you make a sculpture out of clay then you have a truth to material, it has all these thumb prints and how the material actually works. But with painting, the truth of the material is its lies. It’s a lying thing. It says ‘I’m this’, but it isn’t.”

He segues quickly into ‘making art’ versus ‘showing art’. “Those are two very different things,” according to Seal. “You can have your reasons to make art, but you’ve got to have your reasons to show art. For me, that was about creating an opportunity where people can all leap, with just this thing on the wall. I like its economy of means. I like that it’s minimal in a way.”

Economy of means. The words ring in my ears. Back to that laptop, now three stops from the café and counting. I think to call up Ivan and ask if he saw the Macbook. I think no, actually, that’s not a good way to end an interview. Now I see my wife’s face in my mind’s eye. She will fully murder me, I’m convinced (I left another one on a bus in Leipzig only six months ago).

It takes a further thirty minutes of cursing into my elbows and at my shoes stood on the now-rush hour U-Bahn to get back to the flat, as the hope of the silver flaps still charging somewhere at home quickens my crepe soles across the dusk snow-slush. I try to grasp firmly onto the memory of it in the café but each time the laptop slips away, the train carriage glitches. Was it ever there? How did I just walk off, leaving it behind? How did I get so swept up in the discussion. Easily, I think. It’s a price to pay for the interview. It’s fine.

I charge into the living room, and there it is. Full battery.

Memory. It’s a fucked, banal, funny old thing.

[hardcoremollywobbles]

Momma Molly’s Smut-bunny Saviour #1

Here is where I will tell the kiddies to look away, and lock us in this room, so my own children never hear this conversation.  I think Percy would faint.  This lesson, if you couldn’t tell by the title, is not for kids. I have been noticing a set of rising trends in role-play and fan fiction.  Trends that relate to the writing of smut.  Certain words have come creeping into common use, that really do work against the writer, in achieving their desired response from the reader.  I have decided, as an experienced mother of seven, a woman who knows her way around ‘the deed,’ to save you from yourselves.  Here are some tips, to help you on your way. (Examples are drawn from things I have actually seen, so don’t judge me too harshly for them.  Oh, and expect an obnoxious number of et ceteras.) 1) Pay attention to such things as where the chosen word is placed.   There are different rules for where a word might sit in dialog and where one might fall in the narrative (the story being told outside of speech).  If your chosen word is in the narrative, there are far stricter rules on what sounds good. Example: there’s a difference between one bloke telling his mate, “she’s got tits out to here,” and the narrative saying, ‘her tits were very big and bouncy.’   Coarse words, like ass, or any abbreviated word (nips, clit, etc.) have no place in the narrative.  Their only place is in the dialog, if anywhere. 2) Avoid being too clinical.  No one cares if you went to medical school, when you’re writing sex scenes. And no one wants to be reminded of a text book or a corpse, when they’re getting in the mood.  Well, some people do, but necrophiliacs aren’t the majority of your audience.  Avoid directly literal names that you would lift from a text book.  These words sound rough, crass, indelicate, and also very medical (A.K.A. boring). Examples: Vulva, vagina, penis, blood engorged anything (just avoid blood, altogether, unless it’s external- blood drinking is fine), phallus, uterus, anus, colon, cervix, semen, sperm, fluid, arousal, lubrication, clitoris, labia/labial, fold, wrinkle, testicles/testes, appendage, prostate (as in prostate-stabber), muscle/love muscle/life muscle, perineum, organ, limb, etc.  Even member can sound clinical, sometimes. 3) Avoid most short U sounds.  That dreaded uh hangs there, like a mouth about to vomit.  Some of these tend to sound or feel aggressive, as well.  Unwelcoming and sandy.  It turns off a good 60+ percent of your readers, even if they’re too polite to say so.  I’ve developed this theory about the uh sound, and it seems to hold true.   Examples in the flesh: front bum, love tunnel/fun tunnel/cream tunnel, pleasure nub, nub/nubbin (this makes me think of trying to make a vestigial tail or extra nipple erotic), butt, nut(s), fur, fur burger, cunt, smut (funny word, not sexy word), chubby, fuck stem, spunk/spunk trumpet and love trumpet, purple helmet yogurt chucker, vulva (and any of the above that fit the bill), pussy, mushroom/Mr. Mushroom, muff, muffin, humps/lumps (I don’t care if they’re your lovely lady lumps, nothing will make your cases of scoliosis and the mumps sexy, Honey), bulge/bulging, stump, slug (whether in Shell-shedding slug of affection, or When he went down on me, it felt like a slug in a slip-n-slide, there’s no sexiness here), rump, bud (only if you’re desperate for a second clitoris word), button/fuck button (”), junk, jugs, bumper, dumper, cum dumpster, buns, truncheon, rug/rug-muncher, chunky, turgid, etc. Examples in the deed: cum/cummies, nut, bust a nut, hump, pump (less bad than hump), fuck (situationally dependent, not great for narrative), punch, spunk, munch, lunch, bump/bump uglies, nurse and suckle (you’re not a baby), dutch love and titty fuck, chug, tug, rub and tug, slurp, guzzle, gulp, sputter, splutter, fudge packing (don’t draw attention to the feces, unless that’s what your fic is all about, Friend), etc. And never say your dick up-chucked its load.  Please. 4) Not all alliterations are attractive.  I know, it sounds like it can’t be true!  Listen, though.  There is many an alliteration that just falls flat.  Or even if they don’t, they tend to be more funny than sexy. Examples: Pocket rocket (that sounds both small and fast), panty poking, hanky panky, womb groom, tonsil tickler, thrill drill, bologna pony/baloney pony, throb knob, flail nail, gasm chasm, etc. 5) Avoid certain short, flat A sounds. They often sound harsh and unsexy. Examples: Twat (also the American pronunciation of twot is unpleasant), snatch, ass, grab, fat, vag, mack, fanny (either way you mean it), jack, rack, slap (as in slap a tit/slap the sausage), clam/bearded clam (you can refer to the clitoris as the pearl, but don’t call the vagina a clam), yank, wank, crank, gap, gland, spooge cannon, tallywhacker, sack, mams, gag/gagging, stab, etc. 6) Avoid these uncomfortable words: Moist, damp, dank, musky (if it’s his scent, fine, I guess. If it’s a lady’s particular intimate region, die in some fiendfyre), musty, fishy, hairy anything (hairy sounds wild, unkempt, vulgar- there are sexier ways of wording it), weeping, seeping, leaking, dribbling, drip stink, stank, odor (scent or aroma is much better. Trust me.  Even perfume), girth/girthed/girthy, slime/slimy, soggy, spongy, slobbering, liquefied, oozing, fleshy, meaty, turgescent, etc.   7) Genitalia are not interchangeable with animals, unless you’re a bestiac. Words like pussy, beaver, squirrel, and kitty are juvenile. And that’s before you get to camel toe and moose knuckle, dog/hound-dog/crotch dog, dolphin, porpoise, crotch-daschund, snake (and any kind of snake), weasel, worm, flobberworm, the giraffe neck, lizard, trunk, etc. 8) These words may not have been placed in the above categories, but they are just not sexy.  Essentially, if you’d hear it out of a 14 year old boy’s favourite joke, don’t use it.  Those are better for jest than lust.  Here are some examples. -Male anatomy- Non-descript: Dong, ding dong, dingaling, thingy, thing (the thing that rose, the thing that grows, the thing that looks like an exclamation point, and more. Outta call that one an interrobang! But seriously, they are all terrible), pecker, the south pole, wiener, schlong, hard-on, prick (sounds so tiny and portable!), anything with masculine in it (It’s a penis. It doesn’t need to be a camo painted penis for us to get that it belongs to a bloke), wood, peen, manliness/man-ness, package (stimulus, or otherwise), Johnson/John-Thomas (not unless you buy it a monocle), etc. Visuals: man root, stem (so slender!), sausage, lightning rod, silly string shooter, tree trunk, baby’s arm, man meat, baby-maker, meat train, meat tampon, carrot (man or otherwise), boner (that’s a term for mistake for a reason), beef slinky, Mr. Floppy (as in, Mr. Floppy stood at attention), stiffy, lollipop (skinny, with a wonky, fat head?), batter blaster, You-know-what (I don’t need to hear about Voltemort’s erection), fishing pole, pickle/puking pickle, porker, pork or beef anything, leaking crown, knob, noodle/man-noodle, throat spackler, log/leaking log, monster, one-eyed anything, throbbing mass, man-cannon, etc. Basically, it will rarely, if ever, sound good to have man in front of anything.   Twig and berries, meat and two veg... Meat pipe, meat whistle or meat flute. Basically, if it starts with meat, or any kind of meat, just don’t use it.  Really. Balls, coin purse, funbags, punching bags, eggs, danglers, nuggets, spuds/love spuds, kiwis, etc. Many people feel like stalk, dick and cock sound terrible or gross, according to research, so branch out.  Try some new words. Some people feel that weaponry euphemisms are too aggressive, or that they advocate unwanted sexual violence.  Maybe try writing without words like sword and sheath, cannon, missile (and meat missile or heat seeking moisture missile), spear, blade, gun/love gun/rifle/DNA rifle/egg sniper/beef bazooka, ram rod, projectile anything, weapon/pleasure weapon, hammer of anything/warhammer, drill/fucktool, pike, spike and spire (so pointy!), helmeted warrior, mauve avenger, axe and axe wound, reamer, cherry assassin, battering ram, etc. We’re generally not trying to draw blood, here.

-Female anatomy-  Jumbos, titties/tits, boobs/boobies, knockers, funbags, peaches, hooters, tatas, pillows, hood, headlights, melons, sweater puppies, milk sacks, chest balls, etc. Triangular area (way to take the sexuality right out of it), baby-maker, fun factory, snack shack, carpet, cavity (holy, unholy and otherwise), honey-pot, lady town, minge (ginger minge?), gay man’s nemisis (because vaginas are all at war with men that don’t want them? Ridiculous), location, love wallet, hairy checkbook/wallet, mound, flesh mitten, driveway/garage/oven, box, taco, pleasure casino (adding pleasure to something doesn’t make it sexy, ffs), lady garden, letter O, love pocket/cock pocket, hole, sideways smile, downstairs mouth/down south mouth, valve, etc. And, again, I really must mention the ultra violent imagery that calls bleeding to mind, such as  gash, slash, axe wound, love wound, slice, slit/slit of ecstasy, pin cushion, arena/combat arena, missile silo, etc.

Gender-neutral anatomy: poopshoot/poop cavern, rusty bullet hole, Hershey Highway, strata chocolata, chocolate starfish, chocolate hotdog hallway, brown eye, fudge factory, fart factory, etc. Don’t draw attention to the feces, if you want to keep the reader comfortable or into the writing. Back door, rear, hiney, hind quarters, fleshy globes, balloon knot, button, boy pussy/boi pussi, wrinkled or puckered kiss, anal fortress, booty, etc. Narrow alleyway, cock cave, pool of sex/pool of ecstasy, taint, etc. Business, region, vicinity, down there, etc.  Pubes/bed of pubes.  Also, sex/the sex/his sex/her sex.  This one is so vague and so overused.  It’s probably the worst skill-based thing about the writing of Anne Rice. “He put his sex in her sex, and it was sex. Preternatural sex.”  Yeah, I said it. 

Fluids and related terms: toothpaste (even if it’s ‘the toothpaste of love’), juice, spooge (frothy or otherwise), pearl necklace and money shot, jizz, pre-cum, mayonnaise, baby batter/baby gravy (no one should want to think about babies when someone is in the act of release. Seriously), man-milk (remember about just jamming man in there?), protein shake, tadpole yogurt, etc.  And don’t use vanilla for semen, just because of the colour.  I assure you, it doesn’t taste like it.

Other words or terms: she took it like a man (devalues a gender strong enough to deal with periods AND pushing out babies. I’d like to see you try that), popping, grope, pork/porking (funny, not sexy), bone, eating out, handjob/blowjob, gobble, getting your rocks off, getting off, etc. And don’t ever use the words ‘his dick erupted like a zit, spraying its white hot load.’  Ever.  Not least of all because load isn’t a sexy word, and the rest of it is stomach turning.  It was the worst thing I read in a fic for a year. 9) This is how we do it.  Here are some good starter tips, to avoid these clichéd traps and unpleasant expressions: - Stretch your vocabulary.  Explore new words and phrases. Create something original. - Try to think of the story you’re telling, and the characters in it.  Would they think in a direction that aligns with your narrative?   - Try to think of how the words you chose will inform your reader(s) about your feelings or your character’s feelings.  Are your words devaluing the other character(s)?  Are your words treating said character(s) as one would an object?  Is that your intent, as the story teller? - Remember foreplay. - Try to consider what responses feel real or true. - Think about the actual physics involved.  What things would cause stresses on the body, and where?  How would this impact the movements that your character(s) enact?  Sex isn’t a clean and harmless activity, if it’s rough, for example. So, here goes busting some myths, for the purposes of delivering helpful information.          If you’re holding someone up against a wall, there’s going to be limited ranges of certain movements.  You will probably bang your knees.  If you’re holding someone up, you probably won’t be able to get a hand between the two of you, to fiddle with anyone’s bits, or up, to pull anyone’s hair.  You would need an extra hand for that.  Also, it’s important to note that your character will probably only have two hands.          If you’re penetrating, that singular entry will probably not be a seamless thrust to your hilt.  You’ve got to push or slide that thing in.  Thrusting tends to come later, Sport.              And speaking of ‘come later,’ simultaneous orgasms are rare, and usually involve some tantric discipline.  You’re not going to nail that, each time.  And I’d be surprised if it happened on anyone’s first time.  Gents who slip it in that first time will probably shoot off too soon, and that’s normal and okay.            Homosexual males don’t tend to use melted butter for intercourse, and no, blood does NOT make a good lubricant.  Also, gay fics have way too much anal penetration.  Yes, you heard me.  In most cases, a homosexual couple will tend towards more oral sex and foreplay, because if they were all only doing anal it would a) get boring fast, and b) cause a lot of unnecessary soreness.  You need to balance those things, in a meaningful relationship fic.  I get that not every character interaction involves care, but where it does, learn a little balance.           Speaking of balance, when writing BDSM fics, remember the importance of aftercare. Read about it. Learn about it.  It’s a big part of a BDSM relationship. I know that this is a bit rushed and disorganized, but I really hope that you find it helpful.