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itneverendshere · 1 month ago

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INVISIBLE STRING - r.c series (five)

pairing: pogue!rafe x sweetheart!kook reader. chapter warnings: angst

part one; part two; part three; part four

Rafe could still feel the salt air on his skin, even if he was a thousand miles away from that damn island. It sticks to him, the way the Outer Banks does. Like he could never really shake it off, no matter how fast he ran or how far he got.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not for him, not for you.

The bus rattles down the highway, windows fogged up from the heat inside, condensation mixing with the dirt. It stinks—of sweat, of old clothes, of people trying to disappear. Like him. Rafe sank deeper into his seat, arms crossed over his chest, hat pulled low so no one got a good look at him.

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have to do this.

They were going to ship him off like a stray dog. Get him out of sight, out of mind.

And Rafe almost did it. For you. He was this close to turning back and going along with it, just to make sure you were safe, make sure your parents didn’t take it out on you. But he knew he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t let them win. Couldn’t let them pull him out of your life just like that.

The bus jerked as it hit a pothole, snapping him back to the present. There was an old guy sitting across from him, his head lolling to one side as he snored. People getting out, getting on, moving like ghosts through the aisles. No one looked twice at him, which was exactly how he needed it. He couldn’t take risks of someone recognizing him, not yet. Not while he’s deranged mother could still ship him back wherever she wanted.

You’d think he’d be scared. Rafe didn’t have a car, a plan, not even a place to sleep that night, or the next.. But scared? At this point, he was drained. Tired of running in circles, tired of people telling him who he was, and what he should be. Tired of feeling like he didn’t belong anywhere, except maybe with you.

But that was over now.

And fucking god, he hadn’t slept since. Not a minute. Not since he left. Every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was you. Lying there in his bed, so peaceful, so damn beautiful, tucked under his arm like you always did. You looked at him that night, just before you drifted off, and smiled like everything was fine. Like you had tomorrow. Like you had forever.

But Rafe knew. He knew it was the last night he’d hold you, the last night he’d wake up next to you. And he didn’t say a fucking word. Didn’t tell you he was leaving. Didn’t tell you that he had no choice but to go. He just watched you sleep, memorized every inch of you—how your hair fell across your face, the way your hand clutched his shirt in your sleep, the way you always stole the blankets.

He could’ve woken you up. Could’ve told you he was running, that he had to leave. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Rafe just couldn’t watch your heart break.

He glanced out the window, watching as the big trees blurred past, the town behind him fading as the distance grew. He didn’t know where he was headed. The only thing Rafe knew is that he couldn’t go back. Police would be looking for him, no doubt. Tony would get them on his case, only for the sake of keeping the money from your parents. Your dad would find another way to keep him as far away from you as possible. He’d probably already planned to shut down any chance of you hearing from Rafe, anyway.

And your dad? He’s probably already planning to shut down any chance of you hearing from him.

Rafe shifted in his seat, pulling his hoodie tighter around him as the bus slowed down at another random stop. Somewhere off the highway, another town that looked just like the last one. The bus groaned as the doors creaked open, and a few people shuffled on. His stomach growls. Haven’t eaten since… well, he can’t remember when. But food wasn’t the priority right now. Staying off the radar for a while was. That, and trying not to think ‘bout you.

But you were all he thought about. All he could think about was you, still wrapped up in those blankets, still asleep, still not knowing it was goodbye. It was driving him out of his mind.

The bus shuddered to a stop again, and he saw a sign out the window. Lincolnville. Some small-ass town that probably only got one diner, one bar, and a bunch of people who didn’t care about strangers. Perfect.

Rafe grabbed his bag from the floor, slinging it over his shoulder as he made his way to the front. The driver gave him a half-assed nod as he stepped off the bus, gravel crunching under his boots. The air was cooler there, crisp and clean, like a different world from the sticky humidity of Kildare.

It was also quiet. Too quiet. Just the sound of the bus pulling away, leaving him behind with nothing but the clothes on his back and a couple of crumpled bills he saved up from work, in his pocket. He glanced down the road and spotted the diner. Neon lights flickering, the kind of place that was open 24/7 but never full. His stomach growled again, and he figured he might as well get something in him.

The bell over the door jingled as Rafe stepped inside, and it was exactly what he had expected. Old-school booths, sticky linoleum floors, and a waitress who looked like she had been working here since before he was born. She eyed him as he slided into a booth by the window, but didn’t say nothin’. Just grabbed a menu from the counter and plopped it in front of him.

“Coffee?” she asked, barely looking at him.

“Yeah, sure,” Rafe muttered, running a hand through his hair, after taking the hat off. “Black.”

She shuffled off, and he stared down at the menu. It was all the same greasy food he’d seen a hundred times before, but it’d do. He ordered a burger, something cheap, and leaned back in the booth, staring out at the empty street.

He thought about you again. Wondered if you were okay, safe. If you’d figured it all out by now. Maybe you did. You were the smartest person he’d ever had the pleasure of loving. The only one really. He wondered if you were still thinking about him.

The waitress sat the coffee down in front of him, steam rising from the cup. He took a sip, the bitterness waking him up just a little. But it didn’t stop the thoughts from spiraling.

Rafe would figure it out. He always did. And maybe, one day, when the dust settled, he’d come back for you.

Time feels different out here, like it slips through his fingers faster than Rafe can keep up. But maybe that’s just how it goes when someone is trying to leave their past behind.

He ended up in a place called Huntsville. It’s about as far from the Outer Banks as he could get without leaving the South. Small town, but big enough where people mind their own business. There’s something peaceful about that—being able to disappear into the background, no one asking too many questions. Just another face in the crowd.

He got a job working at a garage off the highway. Nothing fancy, but it pays the bills. He was lucky enough to find the place when he did.

The owner, Jerry, took him in because he had experience working on engines back home, thanks to his old boss’s obsession with boats and making him learn how to fix them. Jerry didn’t ask much, just showed Rafe what needed fixing and let him do his thing. He’s got a gruff way about him, but he’s fair. Sometimes, Rafe thinks he knows he’s running from something.

Most days, it’s just him and the smell of oil, grease, and old tools. He doesn’t mind it. It’s simple. Clear. He fix what’s broken, and it works again. Not like life. Not like the mess he left behind.

He lives in a run-down apartment above the garage, just a one-room deal with a bed, kitchen, bathroom, and a busted TV. But it his, you know? He doesn’t owe it to anyone. No one can take it from him. He makes more than enough to keep the lights on, and keeps some food in the fridge, and that’s good enough. He never needed much to survive.

He's changed. The baby face he used to have? It’s gone now. Got a scruff of a beard that he can’t be bothered to shave most days. His hair’s longer, falls into his eyes when he’s working. Somedays he feels like shaving the whole thing off, but it doesn’t really matter. He likes it that way—keeps people from getting a good look at him. He’s leaner too, but stronger. Not the gym kind of strong, just the kind that comes from hauling parts and wrenching on cars all day. His hands are even rougher now, calloused from hours of work.

Sometimes, Rafe catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and hardly recognizes the guy staring back. It’s weird, though. He thought if he could change what he looked like, maybe he’d stop feeling like he was still stuck in the same old skin. But that shit doesn’t go away. No matter how much dirt you pile on top of it.

Every now and then, someone’ll ask where he’s from. He usually just says “down east,” keep it vague. The southern drawl gives him away, though. He can’t help it, still talks like he never left the island. He figured it didn’t really matter here—nobody was going to connect him back to Kildare. Back to you.

And that’s the part he still hasn’t shaken.

You. No matter how far he goes, no matter how many miles there are between you, you’re still there. In the back of his mind, in the dreams he has when he’s dead tired from a long day. He tried to let you go. He had to. But it’s like something inside him refuses to forget.

He tried to visit you once. Maybe a year and a half after he left.

You’d gone off to college like you always talked about, following your dreams, doing the things you said you would. He wanted to see you, just one last time, see if you were okay. He figured maybe he’d catch you on campus, just watch from a distance, y’know? See if you were still thinking about him, if you missed me like he missed you.

He didn’t tell a soul where he was going that day. He’d packed up early, threw on an old flannel and a baseball cap, and drove for hours. His heart felt like it was going to give out the whole time, like it was trying to talk him out of it, but he didn’t listen. He couldn’t. All he could think about was seeing you again.

He had to know.

He pulled up to your campus, parked the truck a few blocks away where nobody’d notice him. It was a hell of a lot bigger than he imagined, all these buildings, students walking around like they had somewhere important to be. He felt out of place the second he stepped foot there. His boots scuffed against the concrete, and all he could think about was how different your world was from his now.

He wandered around for a bit, keeping his head low, his cap pulled down over his eyes. He didn’t want anyone seeing him, didn’t want you seeing him. Not yet. He wasn’t ready for that.

Then he saw you.

You were sitting outside with some friends, books spread out on a table in front of you, the sun hitting your face just right. Your laugh carried over to him, soft and sweet, and jesus fucking christ, it was like a shot to his chest.

You looked... free. Like everything was finally falling into place for you. Like you didn’t have a single worry in the world.

He couldn’t move. Just stood there, hidden in the shadows of some tree, watching you. You were so beautiful it damn near took his breath away. You were smiling and it hit him then.

He’d been holding onto this idea of you—of who you were when you were together—but maybe that wasn’t you anymore. You’d moved on. You had a life now, one that didn’t have space for a guy like him.

You were really doing what you always said you’d do. Living your dreams. Being somebody.

He thought about what would happen if he stepped out from behind that tree, if you saw him. You’d probably cry, maybe even run up to him, throw your arms around him like old times. But then what?

He knew you. Knew how you were. You’d ask him where he’d been, what happened, and before he knew it, you’d be trying to figure out how to fix everything for him. That’s who you were. You’d sacrifice everything, drop all the shit you’d been working so hard for, just because you thought you could save him.

He couldn’t let you do that.

So he stood there, taking it all in—how happy you looked, how light you seemed without him. It hurt like hell, but a part of him was relieved too. You were okay. Better than okay.

You were doing fine without him. He could live with that.

He drove back to Huntsville that night, the road ahead of him hazy with tears he refused to let fall. By the time he got back, it was late, the town quiet, the lights in the garage flickering like they always did.

Rafe parked the truck, and just sat there.

He hadn’t seen you since. Never tried again. You were better off without him. Shit, maybe that’s what he needed to believe to keep going. Because if he didn’t, if he let himself think about how good it felt to see you again, even from a distance, he’d never be able to stay away.

And hell, maybe that’s why he’s been stuck here, never really able to shake it. Even now, when he closes his eyes at night, he thinks about what it would’ve been like if he’d stayed. If he’d found some way to fight instead of run. But he was too scared.

Scared that you’d grown to hate him for what he did.

He tried to move on. There’ve been other women. Just passing flings, nothing serious. They come and go, and none of them stick around long enough to really matter. Not that Rafe ever let them. It’s easier that way—keeping things light, keeping things simple. But every time he looks at one of them, he’s thinking about you. Every time they smile at him, he’s thinking about your pretty grin, about the way your eyes lit up when you two were alone, just you and him, like the world didn’t exist outside of those walls.

But he knows he can’t get that back. Fuck, maybe he doesn’t deserve to. He left. He ran. And that’s on him. He didn’t tell you, didn’t give you a chance to follow him.

The morning is already sweltering by the time Rafe gets to the garage. Another scorcher, sun beating down like it’s trying to fry him alive. Sweat clung to him before he even started working, so he decided to strip his shirt off, letting the heat hit his bare skin. His shoulders are broad now, tanned from long hours out in the sun, grease smeared across his chest and arms from a morning spent elbow-deep in some busted old engine. He runs a hand through his hair—it's shorter than the day before. He’d cut it himself last night and shaved the beard too.

First time in months he’d even thought about doing it. He grabs a rag, wiping the oil from his hands as he bends against the open hood of the car.

“Rafe!”

Jerry’s voice snaps him out of it, the old man waving him over from under the hood of another car. “Need a hand with this transmission. You gonna help me with this, or you gonna stand there daydreamin’?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m on it,” Rafe mutters, shaking his head and bending back over the engine, grabbing a wrench from the toolbox and heading over. The work is good for him. Keeps his mind off everything, keeps his hands busy and his head clear.

Jerry grunts, sliding further under the car on the creeper. “Pass me that ratchet, will ya?”

He grabs the tool from the bench and hands it over. “Here.”

The old man doesn’t even look up. Just keeps working as he rambles away.

“Transmission’s shot to hell, but we’ll get it runnin’ again. Always do.” He grunts again as he tightened something, then mutters to himself, “Damn thing’s been makin’ more noise than my wife at a family reunion.”

Rafe can’t help but chuckle. “Yeah, well, you tell her that, not me.”

Jerry’s laugh rumbles out from under the car, "Boy, if I told her that, I’d be sleeping in this garage for the rest of my life."

Rafe smirks as he watches him work. Sweat trickles down his back, and he wipes his forehead with his arm. The summer heat’s brutal, like there’s no air left to breathe.

“Speaking of wives,” Jerry starts, sliding out from under the car, cleaning his hands on a dirty rag. “You ever think about it? You know, settlin’ down? Gettin' yourself a girl, maybe even kids someday?”

The question catches him off guard. He huffs out a breath, avoiding Jerry’s eyes as he fiddles with a wrench, trying to act like it doesn’t mean much to him. “Nah, not really.”

The older man raises an eyebrow, giving him one of those looks like he’s not buying it.

“Don’t gimme that. Every time we go down to Smitty’s for a drink, you start lookin’ all mopey. Especially after a couple beers. Start talkin’ about this girl you left behind.”

He tenses. He doesn’t like where this is going, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to talk about you. Not here. Not now. He sets the wrench down with a clink and leans against the car, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “That was a long time ago.”

“Maybe.” Jerry shrugs, grabbing a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lighting it up. “But from the way you talk about her, she still rattlin’ around in that head of yours.”

Rafe stays quiet, staring at the oil-stained floor, the cigarette smoke swirling in the humid air. He can’t deny it. You’re always there, no matter how far he runs, no matter how hard he tries to forget.

Jerry takes a long drag from his cigarette, exhaling slow, like he’s thinking about something “Look, I ain’t tryin’ to pry, but you ever think about goin’ back? Maybe fixin' things with her?”

He snorts, shaking his head. “Nah, she’s better off without me. She’s got a whole life now. College, friends, probably some new guy too.” His voice sounds bitter, even to him, but he can’t help it. “No reason for me to go screwin’ that up.”

“Maybe. But from the way you talk, sounds like she was pretty important to you. And if she was, maybe you oughta stop runnin' and try to figure out if there’s still somethin’ there.”

It’s not that simple. It’s never that simple. He left for a reason.

“Besides,” Jerry continues, a little grin tugging at his lips. “I ain’t never heard you talk about another girl the way you talk about her.”

Rafe shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t talk about her.”

“Oh, you do,” Jerry chuckles, flicking his cigarette butt onto the ground. “You just don’t realize it. Especially when you’re a few beers deep. Start mumblin’ about ‘the girl.’ Always ‘the girl.’ Like there ain’t no other one that ever mattered.”

He’s never meant to say anything. Those nights at the bar, when the drinks start flowing and the memories start flooding back, he tries to keep a lid on it. But sometimes, it slips out. And it’s always you.

He pushes off the car, grabbing the ratchet again, trying to ignore the mess of feelings inside him. “That’s just the way it is.”

Jerry nods, but there’s a knowing look in his eyes. “Well, you do what you gotta do. Just don’t wait too long. Life’s funny like that—if you don’t grab what you want when you have the chance, sometimes it’s gone before you know it.”

He knows the old man’s right, but what the hell’s he supposed to do?

Show up at your door, after all this time, after all the silence, and what—ask you to throw it all away for him? For a guy who ran at the first sign of trouble?

They work in comfortable silence for a bit, the hum of the fans and the clang of tools filling the space. He likes it better this way. But then the sound of tires crunching on gravel gets his attention. A car pulls up outside, engine smooth as silk. Not the usual beat-up trucks or clunkers they got in this place.

Jerry’s voice is muffled, back under the car. “Go check that out. Might be my 4 o’clock appointment.”

He stands, stepping over some scattered tools as he makes his way toward the open garage door. “Yeah, I’m on it.”

As he gets outside, the sun hits him full force again, baking his skin. He squints against the glare, but his eyes are already on the car parked just outside.

“Damn,” he whistles, low under his breath.

It's nice. Real nice. Some high-end, foreign model he didn’t see around these parts. Glossy black paint, chrome accents. Clean, like it’d just rolled off the lot. Whoever owns it has money. More than anyone he has ever known in this town.

He steps closer, his eyes running over the curves of the car. He can almost feel the engine purrin’ from where he stands. He hasn’t worked on a car like this in a long time, not since—

But before he can finish the thought, he hears a voice.

“Uh, excuse me?”

It’s soft, hesitant.

Wait a fucking minute.

His body moves before he can think about it, and when he finally locks eyes with the person standing a few feet away, he nearly passes out on the spot.

He must be hallucinating.

It’s you.

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gyuswhore · 6 months ago

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Never Shall We Die (3; final)

«« Nothing is too outlandish when it’s a life of liberty on the line. »»

PAIRING: kwon soonyoung x reader

PLAYLIST: right here!

pirate lingo glossary (pls refer!)

SYNOPSIS: Deadliest pirate on the high seas or a damn fool? The stupid King and his men have snatched Hoshi's precious pirate ship with their too clean, too soft hands; grounds to question his own vices. Except, when he and his crew land in the quarters of a navy ship, revenge on their roster, they stumble across a princess in its gallows. Hoshi wonders if he's just struck gold, or if you'd become the final tread to his downfall.

GENRES: pirate!au, enemies to lovers, slowburn, angst, fluff, smut [minor dni], some pirates of the carribean vibes but ? idk

WORD COUNT [full fic]: 48.1k

Part 1: 17.07k | Part 2: 15.2k | Part 3 [final] : 15.8k

@highvern's out of context comment box: new fear unlocked: hoshi with explosives, victorian ankle moment, HATE HIM (need him carnally), hoshi covered in soapy water would distract me enough, strip for me pirate mingyu [hes litrally taking off his jacket], your honor hes a bitch, freaks!, mingyu crushes hoshi's head like a grape, WONWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, massive dick, the way i literally gasped like an old scandalized woman

masterlist

WARNINGS: slowburn, plot heavy, happy ending bc no angsty endings in this household, being taken hostage, knives, bombs, and guns, mentions of blood, mentions of SA (does not happen and it is not explicitly mentioned), alcohol, mentions of death (patricide), hoshi is ✨selectively moral✨but kind of moral nonetheless, side character death, [pls lmk if im missing something its alot] smut tags: hoshi loves thighs, corruption kink to the mAX, clit stimulation, oral (f. receiving), breast play, p in v sex (unprotected, 1800s contraception will make you prefer it but pls dont do this irl), making out

[AN]: final part oh my god if youve read the other parts up till now, THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU i hope you guys enjoyed reading this as much as i loved writing it, im really proud of this fic and im so happy so many of you have enjoyed it so far. @highvern betaing as always ty for not giving up on me. AS ALWAYS, PLS TELL ME YOUR THOTS IN THE RBS OR THE REPLIES OR SEND ME AN ASK LITERALLY WTV MUAH MUAH HAPPY READING <3

THIS IS THE NICEST PRISON Hoshi has ever been in, which was saying something, because he had been in quite a lot of prisons.

But it was uncomfortable nonetheless, six grown men tied up and shoved into a crouching space to be done with as the men that prowled above pleased.

Hoshi would be lying if he said he hadn’t had to restrain from pushing some of those sorry soldiers into the ice waters beyond the glaciers. He had resisted, the crew had resisted, but just enough to convince them of their unwillingness.

Hoshi had realised early on that there was no possible way of getting aboard Tigress without somehow climbing aboard the King’s boat first. The king wasn’t about to simply hand Hoshi’s ship over, and there was no indication that they'd wait till after nightfall to depart.

Hoshi also knew that the King would refuse to have him die so easily in the waters of the Green Islands, his pride depended on it. He imagines the man drawing up the specifics of the most gruesome execution the Kingdom would ever see. Hoshi was counting on it.

The bounds could’ve been broken out of and the locks somehow picked, but Hoshi also knew that he had to wait. Wait for you to find him first.

“What’s taking her so long?” Jun asks. He’d been the most anxious out of all, the shaking feet and restless moving making it clear.

“The bomb won’t…go off still strapped to her, will it?” Minghao asks and Hoshi isn’t quite sure he wants to know the answer.

“It shouldn’t. Not until she pulls the tab. But…”

“But?” Hoshi whips around. “Why is there a but? You were supposed to make sure there was no but!”

“Big bomb, more boom, less predictable!”

“Are you sure we can’t break out and look for her ourselves?” Mingyu grumbles, the most compromised with his longer limbs folded in uncomfortable positions.

“The minute they know we’re loose they’ll swarm her. There won’t be a way to get to her, not without fighting off every last bastard on this ship. They’ve taken our stuff too, we don’t stand a chance.”

They did, actually, stand a chance. But that was only if they were to break away and head straight for Tigress that was empty and standing right beside this very ship. But they couldn’t. Hoshi couldn’t. Not without taking you with him.

Nobody dares to suggest the easier route, and he doubts it’s just because of what he wants.

But panic was beginning to trickle into Hoshi’s veins anyway, the closed off brig refusing to give him any indication of the time of day.

The sun was only beginning to set when they were taken to the ship, and he knew they were near done for if they didn’t finish what they started before nightfall. He can’t tell how long it’s been, and it eats away at his insides.

Please be okay.

And then he hears it, the sound of a body hitting the floors with a loud thud, a chortle of air before it’s knocked out. He finds himself sitting up straighter, pressing his hands to bars of the prison, trying to peer out the narrow walkway that leads to the doors.

And then you appear in the lamplight, haphazard and ruffled up beyond measure.

The knife in your hand drips with blood, your shirt torn at the arms, your hands bloodied and bruised.

When Hoshi sees your face he almost doesn’t recognise you.

There’s angry blooming marks of red and purple all across your neck and collarbone, your eyes bloodshot and red, watering like you’d been swimming in salt water.

“Who did this?” he asks before anything else, watching you drop to your knees in front of the prison, unanswering as you fumbled with a giant ring of keys in your hand.

You jam each key into the lock, twisting it to no avail. Your hands are shaking.

The crew finally twist out of their loose bonds, Minghao lurching forward immediately, swatting your hands away. He picks out a few skinny pins from his boot, picking the rusty lock. Despite the strange angle, the bars creak open within seconds.

“There’s…There’s ropes hooked onto the ship on the main deck.”

Your voice sounds like you’re speaking through sandpaper, talking while struggling to emerge with the bomb you had.

Hoshi doesn’t know what to do when he crawls out of the space.

He’d had it all figured out in his head, what would happen in every possible outcome. You getting hurt wasn’t in any of his universal conclusions; especially not on this ship. They’d kill his crew, they might even kill the King with themselves, but you were meant to remain unscathed.

“Why–why do you look like that? What happened?” Nothing registers in his head, not even when Jun is pushing him out into the hall.

“Get up to the deck and get out across the lines!” Jun gruffs in his ears. “That bomb’s gonna go off with us still on here.”

He sees the canister that lies in the same prison they had just exited, he sees your mouth moving without sound. All he can think of are the distinct fingerprints around your throat and how it looked like somebody tried to kill you before they tried to kill him.

“Soonyoung,” he hears you say in a broken voice and that’s all it takes for him to snap out of it.

His crew is looking at him expectantly. He looks back at the door and sees the crumpled bodies of the prison guards.

So much for leaving quietly.

The minute Hoshi is out the door of the brig, he finds a chest next to the collapsed, bleeding soldiers. Kicking it open, he can only scoff as he finds the entire crew’s weapons in such close vicinity.

He feels better with his dagger at his hip, along with the rest of his knives that he slips into the loops. Even more so with the rest of his crew armed and ready.

“We know where the deck is.” He swallows, eyeing his crew’s weapons in their ready hands. He knew they’d agreed to ensure the clean sinking of the ship, but the fallen bodies on the floor were an ode to a different route they’d have to take. “Don’t hesitate if someone gets in your way.”

Taking cautious steps to the upper decks, he finds more bodies collapsed onto the floor, bleeding and unconscious. He opts to ask you the details later, wondering how you were able to take down all these guards by yourself.

It isn’t until they reach the stairs that lead to the main deck that he comes across a guard.

Before the witness can raise any alarm, Hoshi’s slamming the butt of his dagger into the side of his head, knocking him clean unconscious as he falls off the side of the short railing.

Clambering up the steps as quietly as possible, he raises a hand behind him to signal his crew to halt, peering into the main deck first.

The sun is still out, but low in the sky as it dips in the sky. There’s a few people on the deck, pacing and moving about in preparation for departure. Angling his gaze, he finds ropes suspended over the edge of the railing, parallel to the water.

He can’t see Tigress, but he knows that’s what the ropes are hooked on to.

“Jun,” he beckons. “How long till the bomb on the other ship goes off?”

The bomb Jun had planted in the first ship they had arrived in should be going off any time now, and Hoshi finds himself needing it to go off now.

Jun barely opened his mouth to reply when the ship shuddered.

For a moment, Hoshi thinks the bomb in the brigs had gone off, but when he finds the clambering of boots to one side of the ship, opposite to where the ropes tied to Tigress, he realises their surrogate ship had given its last gift to the crew.

The rest of the ship would be bounding to the main deck to inspect the noise soon, so he shoots a quick, “Hurry!” behind him before stepping onto the main deck.

The entire deck is occupied with the ship that lies a ways away across the expanse of sea, the beginnings that would soon lead the entire ship to be engulfed in flames. It’s tilting at a dangerous angle.

Hoshi stands as he uses the crew straight towards the ropes that lead to Tigress. Glancing, he finds Mingyu and Chan already hanging on the suspended ropes, making their way towards the empty deck of their ship.

Hoshi keeps his eyes on the occupied men on board, still staring at the lightshow that was their old ship. It isn’t until one of them turns, eyes towards the stairs that lead to the lower decks, that his eyes dart to the unfamiliar men on the deck.

“Fuck,” Hoshi curses, before lunging, grabbing the man by the shoulders and covering his mouth, dragging him wordlessly to the edge before throwing him off the ship and into the icy waters below.

“Go!” he hears you rasp brom behind him, ushering him to the ropes.

The crew is gone, Jun making the last jump to land on the deck. They’re running around, pulling ropes and fastening the sails to push the ship off into open waters as soon as possible.

There’s two ropes that tie the two ships together, and Hoshi ushers you onto one of them, pushing you to suspend yourself before he follows.

“There’s not enough time, go to the other one!” you tell him, pushing him to hold onto the other tattered rope.

Soonyoung eyes your state, “Are you sure you can—”

“Yes! I promise I can, please, before they cut both the ropes.”

So he trusts you, eyes straight ahead to the railing of his ship, gripping the rough, frayed rope to push himself towards the deck. His hands burn, but he finds himself moving ever closer to his final destination.

His hand grabs hold of the wooden railing of his Tigress at long last, pulling himself onto the deck of his beloved ship. Immediately whipping his head to his right, he tries to find you reaching the ship with him. The crew is preoccupied in attempting to get the ship ready for departure, he finds your form nowhere.

When he looks back, the rope he had climbed was gone, leaving gaping space in its absence. He trails the second rope, from the hook that had dug into the railing of Tigress’s wood, trailing it to the naval ship’s deck.

What he sees puts his heart in his throat.

You stand on the deck of your father’s ship, swarmed by now alert guards and soldiers who swarm you, yelling profanities and orders as they watch their prisoners get away right in front of them.

Hoshi watches as you lift your dagger, and cut the last rope that ties you together, free to fall and hit against the hull of his ship.

He calls out your name in what could only be described as a guttural scream.

His crew halts whatever it was they were doing, taking the steps to realise what had just happened.

Hoshi’s boot meets the top of the railing, ready to take the plunge into the water. He’d climb back up the ship and get you out. He doesn’t know what you were thinking, what he was thinking when he left you there, but he’d get you out.

Arms pulling him, he’s yanked back and positively thrown onto the deck.

“What is wrong with you?” Minghao yells, pushing his captain back as he springs up.

“She—”

Your father emerges from the crowd of guards and soldiers that run rampant on the deck, approaching you at the railing of the main deck.

Hoshi sees the hand that remains on his shoulder, the blood that covers the still bleeding wound, the effort it takes him to simply walk.

The bruises on your neck, the wound at his shoulder that looks like it was slashed through by a knife.

And then it clicks in Hoshi’s head, what had truly happened in the hours that you were out of his sight. And all he sees is red.

WITH THE WAY THE words on the pages seem to double, you would’ve thought you were going mad.

You’re a child, barely grown into your own body as you sit in the dimly lit library of the palace, utterly exhausted, wishing to be anywhere but sitting at the wooden desk with your name on it. The moon barely shone through the window, your only source of light the fireplace that burned in the corner and your lamplight.

It was a time where you felt like you could prove yourself, that perhaps, the reason your father refused you his approval was because you were simply not working hard enough. And now, at an hour where you should be fast asleep in your four poster bed, you attempt to understand diplomatic structures and everything that made your country what it was.

It was late, and there was nothing you would’ve liked more than to put your head on the table and rest your eyes for a few tantalising seconds, which you do, right over the book you were reading.

You awoke in the same place, shaken awake by a panicked looking servant, the sun shining through the great windows of the palace library.

It seems your disappearance from your bedchambers had put the entire palace in disarray, not realising the princess was fast asleep behind the giant pile of books other servants had already skimmed past thrice.

Not only were you unable to recite the rankings of the constitutions with the vigour your father required, but you were unable to give him a reason as to why you were absent for both breakfast and morning lessons.

He made the servants kneel in the throne room for hours, and did not fail to tell you that it was all your fault.

And now, in the ice cold of the Green Islands, old and wise enough to know that your father simply needed a reason to despise his heir, you accept the hands around your throat as his final act of terror.

Red faced and arms shaking, your father does not speak to you as he presses down on your windpipe with all his might. Your vision is going dark and splotchy, and you decide, for a moment, to let him have this moment.

He’s too preoccupied in applying his pressure to realise that you’ve raised your right foot enough for your hands to fish out your knife from its place, taking positivity in the handle of your knife that fits in your hand.

Before you can lose consciousness, you raise your arm high, and plunge it directly into his neck.

Howling, he releases you from his hold, both of you dropping to the floor of the ship with a resonating thud. You cough, sputter and hack, cold hands finding your now warm neck.

Your father lays clutching his shoulder as he remains in agony on the floor, and you realise you missed the crucial plunge in your own disarray.

It was good enough, rendering the old man incapable of finding his bearings.

You watch as he writhes on the floor of the quarters that almost became your figurative deathbed, the same hands that wrapped around his own daughter’s throat now clutching the shallow wound that renders him useless.

Standing over him, throwing your own shadow on his body, you feel a surge of power, a rush of adrenaline that shoots straight to your head. Perhaps this was your circulation returning from the deprivation, but you let the feeling imprint in your soul, let your father’s broken figure bring you satisfaction.

You leave him there, writhing in pain, digging your knife under the lock of the quarters, pulling back to break it away from the door. The guards stationed outside do nothing as you leave, and it isn’t until you’ve taken to lower decks that you hear the distinct yell of, “Your Majesty!”

Two more guards, who don’t expect an altercation from their princess, simply buffer as you send your knife plunging into them both. You do it deep this time.

Nobody was innocent, you knew these people as your father’s closest men, and knew that all of them were to remain silent as their King murdered his daughter. And when the remorse doesn’t do that thing where it trickles in after doing a bad thing, you decide you weren’t part of the innocents either.

It’s easier than you would’ve expected to get to the crew in the brig, letting out a sigh of relief as you appreciate the familiarity of people on your side.

And when Hoshi took his place to guide everyone out and into the open space of the main deck, you let your racing mind rest and decide to trust the man in whatever decision he made to lead you all out. And he did, he led himself and his crew right into the ship that was theirs, safe and where they would have the upper hand.

Hoshi didn’t know it when he climbed onto the ropes that lead to his boat that he wouldn’t have made it if you hadn’t stayed, hadn’t used your voice of authority to keep the soldiers from attempting to shoot at the escapees, cut the rope while Hoshi remained suspended from it, still only halfway there.

You didn’t look at him when you sliced both ropes before either party could pull back, didn’t register him screaming your name across the void, pretending it wasn’t taking everything out of your strength.

But you couldn’t jump into the water, not now when a dozen of the royal guards remained ready to take the plunge to save their princess as their duty. The same guards that would comply with their king when told the princess was dead for reasons they all knew but were to forget.

The bomb had to go off first, and you had to keep them away from hooking another line to the ship in the meantime. You were operating on a flawed plan and an overenthusiastic crowd of guards that were moments away from shooting a canon straight into the side of the disconnected pirate ship.

The distraction comes in the form of your father parting the crowd of soldiers like the red sea, swatting every soldier that attempts to help his bleeding form for anything it was worth. He approaches you at the railing, and for once, you don’t look at the ground in his presence.

“Bold,” he heaves, the effort in his voice apparent. “Bold of you to think you could slip away.”

“I haven’t tried to slip away, father,” you correct. “I’ve stayed right here, even after you failed to kill me. And I, you.”

“Nobody is going to listen to you, child. Give in. This is the easy way out,” he says.

As if on cue, Jun’s bomb goes off for the second time, but this time the ship shudders with more force. It has your father unbalance and fall, along with multiple other soldier’s stumbling. You grip the railing tight, counting on your father’s need to live.

Despite your horrid throat and the ache in your body, you announce as loud as you can. “The bomb is in the brig, this ship is sinking.”

The fallen king trembles in a rage you had never quite seen before. Any other time of your life, you would’ve wished for the ground to swallow you whole to be the subject of such anger.

Except, in the setting sun, a burning ship in the background, a pirate ship that awaits you, and the ground beneath your feet that was actively sinking into the freezing water; you smile at your doomed King.

“Get to the brig! Secure the lower decks, do not let this ship sink or so help me God!” His voice rings across the deck, spittle blowing from his mouth at the situation.

And just like that, your father gives you the final gift of clearing the main deck out for you, leaving but a few straggling soldiers that are too preoccupied with either the sinking ship or their bleeding sovereign.

Looking back, you find the crew of Tigress standing at the railing, you find Hoshi already half over the edge and send him a slow nod.

Turning back to your father that remains on the floor of the ship that would become his coffin, you utter your next words; for yourself, and the girl that was every second before this, all the way to her first ever memory of sad:

“You’ve taught me to be a ruler fit to be the best for our Kingdom. Consider your death my first act of service for the Crown.”

And then you jumped into the darkening void of the waters below.

THE COLD FEELS LIKE every nerve in your body ceased to work.

It was nothing at first, the temperature so intense it had your body numb in the face of shock. And then it grew, to a striking cold, and then a feeling that pricked every inch of your skin like a million needles plunging into your body. It was only getting worse with each passing second, before it was so painful it was hot, going from cold to searing and blistering like you’d plunged into the licks of flames.

Nowhere in your body did you find a rational sense of mind, something to tell you to kick, flail or float. The warped sky was an orange through the green, only more vibrant. Like there were two ships actively burning on the surface of this water.

Hoshi’s face appears behind your closing eyelids, like a mirage or a taunt. Like he was there with you when he wasn’t.

Would he come for you? Would he take the plunge for the girl he held in his arms, promising her something to fill the gap of a companion, right before she killed her own?

You’d given him what he wanted; your father, his worst enemy, dying as he sank slowly into the bottom of the ocean. You’d run your course of use, and if he was as smart as people claimed, he’d leave you to suffer the same fate as your father.

He could find his freedom elsewhere.

And you would find your freedom in the close of your eyes, and the sinking feeling of nothingness.

Except, you feel a hardness against your body, stronger even than the current of the waters. Moving impossibly upwards, you remember opening your eyes to find a leather cord suspended in the float of the water, before you remember nothing.

THE GREEN ISLANDS WERE on fire.

But as unnatural as it seemed, Hoshi had no inclination to register anything but the way the ship in front of him tilts so far out it's already half submerged in the waters. He’d assumed they might have to ready the cannons, but with the way debris and hollowed wood floats in the waters below, they would not need to.

The King was about to be introduced to Davy Jones’ Locker at the hands of his enemy and successor, but Hoshi could not care enough right now to relish in it.

Right now, he stares at the direct circumference of water your body had made contact with and disappeared into, like the world would explode if he lost his place.

“Should I jump as well?” Mingyu asks, already half taking his boots off. However, when the man turns to find his captain gone, he lurches over the railing to find his captain diving into the water through all the debris.

Hoshi lets the momentum of his dive take him as further down as possible, whipping his head around as soon as his eyes open into the abyss. The water ripples and erupts in showers of bubbles as broken pieces of ship come apart to fall into the water. It blurs his vision immensely, any ripple that could be you in the water coming out to be yet another piece of wasted wood.

The deeper he goes, the more the water presses into his ears. He was a good swimmer, good at holding his breath when needed, but even he had limits.

When he cannot see any sign of you, he begins to feel the churning of something skin to panic brew. Panic was never good, not this deep in the water.

Twisting and turning, flailing about in place, moving dangerously closer to the burning ship that continued to drop flaming bits of killing slabs, he finds no sign of you in the water.

Instead, he watches men in uniform sink deeper and deeper in their failed attempts to stay afloat.

All he can think about is if they were losing the battle for air, then so were you, somewhere deeper in the void than he was. He prays that he’s looking aimlessly, that you’ve already somehow made your way to the surface by yourself, and you were safe on the deck.

The beaded bracelet that remained on his wrist, but belonged to you.

“A reason for you to come out of this alive.”

Even without the encasing on his wrist, you had given him more than enough reason to want to come out of this alive, to want to live beyond just for himself and his duty to the crew he’d taken in.

He chose the life of a pirate because it was his only out, and every member of his crew that he recruited in succession, he acted as the hand he had needed so desperately in that awful brothel where his mother despised him and his father, a faceless man of Port Ash.

Amphitrite was not kind, it was a lesson he learned quickly in his first ventures out at sea. So he too, had to learn to be unkind, to survive in the horrid bellies of ships that weren’t his own. And when Tigress came into his life like a vessel of hope, he found a home in her merciful wood, in the ship that he could call his very own.

Hoshi lived as a free man on his ship, with his crew that had become his brothers in ways beyond what the thick of blood could offer. He did not care if he lived or died after that, as long as it was on his ship, in the waters that held no quarter for anyone, but gave him everything that nothing else could give him.

And so when you approached him with a proposal so bizarre yet so apt for a man like him, he could not refuse. It may have been the way he saw himself in you, terrified of the prospects but thirsting for an escape more than the fear that came with it.

Besides, the king was a nuisance that needed to go, and he found himself agreeing to play the hand too complicated for you.

What he did not expect was to end up here, in the depths of the ocean in the most uninhabitable part of the earth, trying to pull you out of the cold, unrelenting sea.

Hoshi realises in that moment that this might ruin him, the possibility of breaking the surface without you.

He decides that if the heavens do not let him find you, he would simply drown in the same waters that gave him purpose, and find peace with the idea that he would lay rest in the same waters as the person who might have given him something more.

Kwon Soonyoung, the deadliest pirate to cleave the seas, was in love with you. A princess, so undeserving of a man like him; a bastard, a rogue, a good for nothing criminal.

And when he spots the all too familiar build of your form, the linen shirt under the corset he had tied for you just hours ago, the dark brown trousers that signified the change he’d brought into your life, he swore to leave everything he’d ever known to thank the skies and seas for bringing him to you.

His burning lungs, screaming and searing for air, grabbing for your suspended arm that looked as defeated as your closed eyes. Tugging you towards him, he wraps his arm around you to press you to him as tight as he could.

Relief. And with the warm sting in his eyes that he doubted was from the salt in the water, he’s sure of everything he’s felt with the feeling of you in his arms.

With the bruising on your neck, the bleeding wound in your father’s shoulder, he finds it within his breaking body to begin kicking upwards.

Every limb, every cell, every hint of life in his body shrieked with its efforts to make him stop. There was no air in his lungs and he’d lost track of time in his search for you, he doesn’t know how long he has.

But if the blots of nothingness in his eyes were anything to go with, he doesn’t presume he has much. In a last ditch effort, he attempts to kick his boots off to weigh him down a little less, holding your dead weight tighter than anything.

He was so close, he could feel the warmth of the upper levels of the water change in its temperature on his skin. The glow was near blinding as the orange refracted on the disrupted surface of the ocean, so close yet so far.

Inch by inch, kick by kick, memory by memory, he does everything left in his drained power to touch the surface.

And he does, breaking out hand first into the burning air of the world above, taking the longest gasp of air he ever has in his life. Once he’s sure he knows where he is, he pushes you up further on his chest, your head resting against his collarbone, still unconscious.

“Stay with me, princess,” he pants into your ear, hoping you could hear. “I’ve got you.”

Chan and Mingyu are in the water beside him, pushing him towards the pulley that awaited them.

Mingyu makes an attempt to take your weight of his already struggling captain, but Hoshi finds himself holding on to you tighter, simply urging him to help him back on the deck.

The minute your head hits the wood of the deck, he’s checking your pulse. There’s no regard for the chaos that ensues around Tigress, both him and his crew too preoccupied with the way you were not breathing.

“I–I can’t feel anything,” he stutters his words as Seungkwan places a less panicked hand at your neck, under your nose.

“It’s weak, she’s taken in too much water.”

In an instant, he reaches for his knife at his hip, only to realise it was gone, lost somewhere in his rescue.

“Knife,” he rasps before repeating louder. “Someone give me a knife!”

The minute a hilt is in his hands, he’s pushing you over, to reach the back of your constricting corset, pushing his knife into the complicated sailing knot he’d tied it into before, breaking it free. With both hands, he takes hold of the top of the corset and rips it clean in half.

Turning you back over, he presses his hands over your clothed stomach, pushing into it with all his strength in an attempt to get the water out of your system. He keeps his eyes on your face, and when he sees no sign of you coming round, he feels another set of hands pushing him off.

Seungkwan takes over for his weakened captain, pushing into your stomach harder, attempting to get a break out of you.

“Why isn’t she coming around, what’s going on?” He throws the question aimlessly as he takes your unmoving face in his hands, trembling from everything.

Only a moment later, he hears the glorious sound of you sputtering like something was stuck in your throat, promptly spilling out an ungodly amount of water onto the deck as you retch loudly.

Sitting up from the force, your hands clamp onto the deck as you cough and heave, Hoshi’s hand coming behind you to thump your back hard, pushing you to throw up any remaining seawater from your body.

The sight of your back moving up and down, the audible sound of you taking in air; it was enough for Hoshi to simply lay on the deck and pass out.

You rear your head and look up at him, both of you still breathing heavily.

“You’re okay,” he assures, gulping. He takes your face in hands cupping it very gently as he speaks to you. “Go with Seungkwan, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

Nodding, you let yourself be helped up by the rest of the crew, watching as you’re led to the lower decks of the ship.

“Open your shirt, let me see the wound,” Mingyu says, and Hoshi doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Looking down, he sees his shirt soaked in red, sticking to a wound on the right side of his torso. He didn’t even know where he got it.

It looks like a shallow gash, but enough to leave a scar. He takes it better to have it tended to while he was still high on adrenaline and he couldn’t feel much of the pain.

By the time Mingyu and Minghao are done cleaning him up and Hoshi’s standing upright with wobbly legs, he finds the two burning ships beyond his own mere floating structures of wood that were in slow flame. There’s too much debris, too many bits of everything that bob in the large expanse of water to make out any bodies.

“There’s nobody,” Mingyu tells him. “Most of them were in lower decks when it all went down. Trapped themselves.”

“And…?” he asks in silence.

“He stayed on the deck until it sank,” Minghao informs. “Yelling about how he…about how he should’ve finished her when he had the chance.”

“Horrible king and somehow an even worse father,” Mingyu scoffs. “Made it better to watch him die.”

“He didn’t suffer enough,” Hoshi croaks as the marks on your throat dot his vision.

Just then, floating in the water, illuminated by the final streaks of setting light, Hoshi sees it. A darkened purple cloth right next to the hull.

“That,” he points out. “Get that out of the water.”

The late king’s purple cape laid on the deck of Tigress, darkened with water, but also with his blood.

To the Kingdom, this cape would be the last piece of their King that was gone too soon. But for every person on this ship, it would forever be their spoils of war.

Hoshi makes sure the cape will be dried and stored, ordering his crew to begin their slow journey out of the Green Islands, before he too crumples onto the deck unconscious.

IT WAS A SPECTACLE to see Hoshi in his element.

Something about how he seemed to beam, like this ship was charging him a different kind of energy. It was infectious, the rest of the ship decreasingly sour as they put on musical performances on the main deck while they cleaned the floors.

As relieved as you felt, the tight ball of anxiety refused to leave the pit of your stomach as you grew closer to the Kingdom. Nothing could prepare you for the shitstorm you’d have to deal with the moment you’d step onto the soil off a pirate ship of all things—let alone as Queen.

The first few days following the ship's exit from the Green Islands were difficult, if that was all you had to describe it. You took to your hammock for most of the day, curled up as you pretended to sleep, only waking up when one of the crew would come down to force feed you and to make sure you hadn’t died.

You knew they were doing all this to make you feel better, and somehow it was working. More than halfway through your journey, you began to feel more like yourself, emerging from your cave to visit the deck on times other than the nights.

Even now, as you sit on the floor of the deck with Seungkwan, who hands you an all too familiar stack of parchment, you feel nothing as you take them into your hands. As you read his handwriting scrawled in ink, you appreciate your past self for having the sense to keep them all.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better now,” he says to you. “Had us worried for a while there.”

“Sorry.” You smile weakly. “But thank you for…everything. I don’t think I could ever express how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. All of you.”

“I’d like to think we’ve gone past the status of mere business partners,” Seungkwan chuckles. “Lion befriends the bear? Whatever it is. But know we’d do it again.”

Blinking back the sting of tears and doing your very best to not let the warm feeling in your chest overwhelm you, you place the letters on the floor next to your folded legs. When you look up, Seungkwan's eyes are on your neck.

“They’re taking their time to fade, aren’t they?” you say.

Seungkwan has a hard look in his eye, “I guess you didn’t need your letters to remind you of anything after all.”

Your mind wanders, drifting past how easily this crew could have been forgotten in the unforgiving elements. Perhaps you would have let the man that wrapped his hands around your neck finish his job.

“Was getting captured part of your grand plan?” you ask Seungkwan.

“Hm?” It takes a moment to realise what you may be questioning him about, smiling slightly. “What makes you think we went in with a plan?”

“I thought I asked you to man the wheel?” Hoshi stands above the both of you.

“Not to batten down the hatches,” he side-eyed his captain. “Clear waters ahead, the wheel does not need manning.”

You zone out as they squabble over nothing, not finding the heart to be entertained by their back and forth. Seungkwan either loses or forfeits, because you feel him rise from next to you, only for his captain to take his place.

“What are you thinking about?” Hoshi asks.

“Everything,” you sigh.

“How come Seungkwan gets a thank you for your service and I don’t? Need I remind you who jumped for you and who didn’t?”

Rolling your eyes, you answer him, “Thank you, Captain Hoshi Kwon, I am forever indebted to your service.”

He chuckles in exaggeration, “Oh please, all in a day's work.”

“I mean it.”

“Hm?”

“I never did say thank you. But you did jump for me when you didn’t have to.”

“Who said I didn’t have to?”

“Our deal was done.”

“Of course not,” he scoffs. “Our deal was to get you out when you jumped. I merely honoured that promise!”

“Merely?” you raise a brow. “Was it all merely a matter of conscience?”

His gaze locks with yours. “Don’t ask questions you know the answers for. I would’ve jumped even if you asked me to rope myself to the mast.”

“Please. I have enough blood on my hands and I haven’t even sat on my throne yet.”

“Blood is only on your hands if you tell a soul of what you’ve done,” Hoshi utters. “You’re the only living soul who knows.”

“And you are…?”

“Pirate. Our word means nothing.” Hoshi smiles.

The thought hangs in the air as you take in the man in front of you. He’s changed an era’s worth, yet all the same. His hair is longer, going from his initial shorter crop to curling around his ears, shielding his eyes. It makes him look younger, like a boy with much to live for.

That, and the multitude of notable scars he’s added to his collection, many of which have somehow been because of you. The wound at his torso is doing better, but far to go in its quest to heal.

Hoshi senses something amiss even after his sermon. Breaking his gaze, he turns to look straight ahead at the raised bow of the ship instead.

“Do you know how I got my splendid reputation for being the filthiest pirate on the seas?”

You can only stare, “I have a few guesses.”

He chortles, “Other than my criminal status.”

“Tell me.”

“Unnamed sailors have the odds of a peanut facing its inevitable fate of being crushed under a straggling boot. Pirates don’t see the government as their enemy when they’re own supposed brothers are more likely to jam a cannon in their mouths.”

He lets out a heavy sigh before continuing, “My mistake wasn’t that I was on the losing side in my early days, but more about how I was leaving nothing behind when I was done.”

“How humble,” you hum.

“Dead men tell no tales. When it’s worth it, it might be better to leave a straggler or two to live to tell the tale. A routine stab in the jugular can turn you into somewhat of a myth.”

“Am I a survivor?” you question.

“You may be sovereign on land, but you’re also an unnamed pirate,” he responds, turning back to lock eyes with you. “And you’ve left nobody to tell the tale.”

No one listens to a pirate, and everyone listens to a Queen.

“This isn’t to say there won’t be a legend that follows you.” He quirks a brow as he speaks. “Shows up and claims her father and his entire ship and crew sank at sea, only to befriend his sworn enemies in the aftermath. And then it evolves; she sent a cannon through her fathers ship, he died at the end of his own daughter's sword, she cursed him to captain a crew of the undead for eternity.”

“Have I planted the seeds for yet another ghost story?” It’s difficult to not giggle at the thought, despite how morbid.

“You’ve given yourself substance,” he says, a little stronger than before. His eyes too, wander to your neck and the bruises that refuse to budge. “Beyond just a royal or even a pirate. You did it for your honour as a human being, and that may be braver than anything I have ever conquered.”

In your anxiety ridden, feeble mind, your thoughts had convinced your conscience that everything would be over the minute your father’s heart stopped beating. That it would bring you peace at last.

And it did, especially when it felt like you’d gotten rid of this constant monster under the bed that had followed you far into adulthood. But from the bleeding heart of the creature emerged yet another one of its brethren, and then another and then another.

Smaller albeit, but monsters nonetheless. Problems nonetheless.

Weeks of this, and in one short interaction, Hoshi seemed to have given you the key to turn this monster into a pet.

On instinct, you feel your hand reach up, brushing against the skin of his cheek. It’s an all too familiar setting, seated on the deck of a ship too close for anybody but yours’ comfort. But without the rum and resentment, of course. And how you doubt he’d pull away this time.

Very lightly, you brush your lips against his. It was nothing but to simply feel him again, to feel a semblance of familiarity.

You feel him take your hand that rests on his cheek to place a kiss on your palm, nuzzling his nose into the concave of your hand.

Everything that was to come seemed a little more possible in that very moment.

Even more so when his fingers found the sensitive areas of your coloured throat, when his lips closed against your jaw, only to trail lower and to press into the marks his fingers continue to trail tucked into your neck.

That night, when slipping into your hammock felt like the most unbearable prospect in your near future, it couldn’t possibly be worse than uttering your next question to the man that seems to fix it all.

“Will you stay with me?”

With nothing but the light snores of the rest of the crew and the creaking of the ship, both you and Soonyoung laid in a hammock most definitely not meant for two. Head on his chest, ear pressed against where his heart beats under his scar, it’s bliss.

The feeling of his warm body against yours and the scent of him settling in your lungs, you decide that this was enough. At least for now.

IT WAS DIFFICULT TO give yourself the full list for obvious reasons, but it does seem to help when you tick off all the possible reasons why your patience has run as thin as it has.

Sitting at the decorated seat at the convened court of old men appointed by your father, you briefly wonder if you should finish them off too amidst your flash of anger. The men continue to squabble and babble about the next course of action, slamming their wrinkled hands on the pristine table and sending their own daggers of threats to the other inhabitants of the table.

“If you’d like to send a search party for the King’s body, be my guest,” you finally speak, having had quite enough when the throb in your temple worsens. “But remind me what troops you’ll be sending to the North if your best men will be gone for months attempting to find a body they never will.”

The dispute in the North side of the Kingdom was taking up most of the conversation anyway, and you doubt they’d put customary burial rites over their own glory of victory the North would bring.

“Your Majesty—”

“I would happily jump on the next search ship for my father,” you lie through your teeth. “But I watched him drown in front of my own two eyes, and as the next sovereign I cannot let you waste our resources for something that will both risk our soldier’s lives and have them come back home empty handed.”

Perhaps you had come off slightly more heartless than you intended, so you quickly add, “Please, let my father rest in peace.”

That seems to end the conversation easier than you had expected, but they’re quick to jump to the next issue not long after.

“The court would also like to bring light upon the palace guests.”

Tightening your jaw, you slump against your seat slightly. “What about them?”

They remain silent as their mouthpiece attempts to form the right words for the following question, mostly because you’ve addressed this multiple times beforehand but they continue to sit restless.

“Allow me to help you, Lord Bridge,” you sit up straighter, intending to put this matter to rest. “My guests will remain here for as long as they do, and if you have any more arising issues towards my guests I will only take it as your collective issues towards me.”

In the moment of silence, you continue, “The Kingdom is in a place of instability as we are all well aware. I find it most appalling that you remain fixated on trivial matters of the palace’s domestic code of conduct than you do for the wellbeing of this country!”

Silence yet again as you wait for their forcibly rehearsed chorus of apologies.

“Our greatest apologies, your Majesty.”

The pain in your temples becomes near unbearable as you dismiss the table after that, screeching your chair as you push it back as loud as you possibly can to do nothing but spite the men.

Turning the corner out of the room, you catch the open gates that lead to the paved gardens outside, the sun seeping into the marble floors indoors. Taking an instinctive step towards the gardens, you find most of the crew sprawled onto the grass as they soak in the sun.

Chan and Seungkwan look like they’re wrestling, their laughter ringing throughout the open court while their captain snaps at them to cut it out, only to get roped under one of their headlocks all the same.

There’s a call of your name and a giant wave from Mingyu, who spots you from beyond the flower beds. Still leaning against the gates, you smile and wave back.

Years the halls of the palace had gone, never hearing laughter in its walls. And something about watching them let themselves ruin the petunias and laugh so loud it echoes, heals you just a bit.

Even that night, when you find yourself in your giant four poster bed you’ve slept in since you were a child, this time dozing under the arm of another, you feel the itch of a healing wound somewhere in your heart.

Soonyoung laid with you for every night on the ship since that night, and stayed even here where the space was big enough to host the ghosts of your worries if not distracted.

He had found you on that first night in the palace still awake, haunting the library fireplace with another stack of papers to keep you company.

“Can’t sleep?” he’d asked as he picked up some of your documents.

“Clearly not,” you huff. The papers were mere decorations as you attempted to find an excuse to leave your rooms.

“You realise you won’t be much of an effective monarch if you exhaust yourself to death?”

There was no answer to that, especially when you were absorbing nothing of your new duties. You’d expected to fall asleep on the armrest of the uncomfortable settee whenever it was that you exhausted your brain of thoughts, even then refusing to sleep in that large bed.

He’s awfully persuasive, because as he tucks you into those very sheets, about to leave but not before placing a kiss on your forehead You stop him.

“Stay. Please.”

True as he has always been, he does.

THE CROWN IS HEAVIER than you had expected, even more so when it remains on your head for longer than your previously practised sessions walking around the throne room. The crew was exceptionally good at giving you things to train with, including fraudulent rodent scares to ensure the crown would not topple from your own head the minute you rise from your coronation.

And now, as you finally remove the decorative piece from your head after your actual coronation to replace it with something lighter for the following ball, you find relief in the fact that you’d only ever have to wear the actual thing only a few times in your life.

Everything moves as smoothly as it could, the decorated pirates that saved their Queen from a horrid shipwreck taking up most of the attendees attention as they either question inquisitively or send snarky remarks to the men who are well versed in how to rebut in true informal manner.

The past months had taken up more of your time than you had anticipated, and during the latter half of the still twinkling party, you attempted to spot the person you’ve been trying to corner all night.

Soonyoung stands at the edges of the gathering, empty handed as you watch him reject yet another offer for a drink from the trays that float about. His attire is the most formal you had ever seen, his face scrubbed and hair pushed back for the glorious occasion.

Approaching him from the sidelines, you take hold of his wrists and pull him towards one of the many doors in the ballroom and into a hallway you knew for a fact was rarely ever frequented.

“I feel I haven’t seen you ages,” you say once you’re sure you’re alone.

“Probably best for you to keep busy,” he replies with the smallest smile.

“Have the wrappings on your wound come off?”

Looking at his covered torso, he runs an instinctive hand over where the wound was. “Just a smaller patch now, but it’s nearly there. Disappointed it won’t scar too much.”

“Disappointed?”

“These are my spoils of war, miss princess,” he adds with a smirk, before correcting himself. “Ah, miss queen?”

“Doesn’t have the same ring,” you comment.

“The crown suits you.” His voice is soft and sincere.

Scoffing a little, you answer, “I would hope it did.”

“Although, I do prefer you in trousers and a knife.”

Laughing, you can only agree. Especially in your heavier than yourself dress and jewels. “I think I prefer them too.”

At the mention of your new status, he asks, “Shouldn’t you be milling between your new subjects?”

Keeping your eyes on his face, you wait until he meets your gaze. “I have more important things to attend to.”

He breaks eye contact first, and you can feel the distance grow further. One reach and you could take his hand in yours.

But you don’t.

“I know I’ve been quite busy, but…” you trail off as you attempt to find the words. “Is something the matter? What’s going on?”

With a long sigh, he runs a hand through his kept hair, effectively tousling it a little. “I was going to wait until after the ball to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

He makes no moves to look at you when he utters his next words. “The crew and I will be leaving at dawn tomorrow. We’ve taken up enough of your space and it’s best if we don’t intrude any further.”

It’s like you’ve taken a blow to the chest, the air knocked out of your lungs as you register what he’s just said. “You’re….you’re leaving?”

“I would think we’ve both gotten what we wanted. We had a deal.”

Deal? Why was he mentioning that now?

“Are you going to abandon me too?”

His head snaps up to finally meet your eye, mouth opening closing as words betray him.

“What happened to what you said about gaining you? All of you?” There’s a blatant accusation in your words.

“And you have! We’ll visit. Assuming the state doesn’t want my head on a pike anymore,” he chuckles uncomfortably.

In a moment of desperation, you take his hand in both of yours; his scarred, gnarled hands that tell you even in the dark who’s warmth it is that you feel every night next to you.

“Stay. Stay with me, please,” you plead. “I can’t live in this place alone, I despised it when I was young and I’ll only despise it even more now.”

Soonyoung brings his other hand to clasp over both of your own, eyes closing as you hear him take a somewhat shaky breath. “I’m doing this for the both of us.”

“So am I! I can’t possibly rule a kingdom by myself.”

“I’m sure you’ll find someone—”

“I don’t want someone! I want you!”

He begins to whisper your name, moving his face away to blink rapidly.

“How do you feel about becoming a pirate king? I can never forbid you from the waters, that’s your home, and you will have it.”

He does not look at you, but you know he’s listening more intently than ever before.

“But I ask you as someone who loves you more than I have ever anything else, will you stay and marry me?”

Soonyoung falters as he absorbs the fact that you’ve just proposed to him.

“I—” he stutters. “The court—”

“The court wouldn’t dare to deny me the man that saved my life.”

You squeeze his hand tighter, moving impossibly closer.

“And even if they do, I'm ready to fight for the man who fought for me. So answer me as a man and not a pirate, Kwon Soonyoung, will you marry me?”

Soonyoungs mouth enclosing over your own is all the answer you need as you feel him break free of your hands to let them find your waist instead. Amidst the pile of fabric he pushes himself into you as close as possible, letting your hands guide his head to move against your mouth.

It’s everything, as you grip onto the back of his shoulder, pressing unforgettably into his open mouth. He takes in your bottom lip between his own, sucking before letting go, only to engulf your mouth once again.

“We’ll figure it out,” you whisper against his lips, feeling the nuzzle of his nose against the apple of your cheek, hot tears spilling from your eyes. “I promise, we’ll figure everything out.”

He shushes you when he feels you shudder in his hold, pulling away to rest his forehead against yours. “No need to torment your pretty head. Not right now.”

For once, you listen to your pirate captain without a fight, simply feeling the stretch of your lips as he moves down to capture them once more.

The pressure of his hands isn’t nearly as strong as it would’ve felt without the layers upon layers of fabric that cover your form, but standing in this desolate hallway, you swear his fingers might as well be caressing your bare skin underneath.

The thought sends your mind into a dazzling spin, letting go of his mouth with a gasp, suddenly needing to take a step back.

“I have to—I have to go back inside,” you breathe into his slick mouth. “Meet me outside my quarters at midnight.”

As scandalous as it was, you could not deny how alive it made you feel to be like this, meeting in darker corners in the dead of night. But for now, you allow him to fix the bits of your ensemble you could not see. With the bad of his thumb, he blends in the smudges of your rouge, swiping at your lips ever so delicately to ensure he leaves no trace of himself. Tucking the loose strands of hair back behind your ears, and finally, fixing the encrusted crown on your head, a flash of one of the diamond’s gleams reflecting onto his perfect face.

“You’re beautiful.” There’s a dazed look that graces him. “Beyond beautiful.”

With one last innocent press of your smiling mouth onto his, you promise him your midnight.

BY THE TIME IT was finally an appropriate hour for you to excuse yourself for the evening, you were near to exploding entirely.

Whispers of “Are you alright, your Majesty?” plaguing you through your already racing mind. It was beyond difficult to keep the constant shaking of your foot unobvious, however you could not simply up and leave whenever you wanted—at least not yet. The monarch would remain in an unstable authoritative position for quite some time after ascension, and with the unorthodox situation at hand, you assume you’d really have to push yourself if you were to be of any use as sovereign.

But when the time finally came and you were escorted out of the grand ballroom, only mere ticks away from the resounding bells of midnight, you were holding back from breaking into a sprint. Outside your quarters it was empty, but you remain steadfast in your refusal for your ladies in waiting tonight, promising you could dress yourself for bed on your own.

Standing at the double doors of your rooms, still the princess’ quarters as you refuse to move into the Queen’s rooms, you stand waiting. The two guards remain staring straight ahead, and you wait for the clicking of your ladies to go muffled before you ask.

“Has the Captain approached?”

“No, your Majesty.”

You try not to feel disappointed, despite knowing the midnight bells were yet to sound. “If he does, allow him in, please.”

Opening the double doors, you half wish you had let your ladies help you out of the god awful dress, tight and loose in all the wrong places. The jewels are thrown haphazardly on your vanity, needing the heavyweight of them off of your body.

Perhaps months of little to no bedazzling had rendered you incapable of wearing anything mildly less comfortable than linen and leather, but you suppose you’d slip back into the habit just as easily as you slipped out of it. Your nightgown feels like heaven on your tired, tired body, and the dimly lit interior of your bedchamber is only encouraging you to slip under your covers and fall deep into sleep.

That was one thing about the ship you doubt you’d ever miss.

Three rapt knocks outside of the heavy double doors have you sitting rapt at attention, hastily making your way to the door from your vanity. Pressing the front of your nightgown down, you open the door slightly and poke your head out.

Soonyoung stands at the door, nervous of all things, still clad in his full suit. You smile as you let him in, closing the door to turn the lock.

“Your guards mortify me.”

“Oh? So they’re doing their job right?” You walk up to him and grasp onto his lapels, pulling him down to meet the lips you’ve missed so much despite only being hours apart. “Why? Has this big bad pirate found his match in the palace guards of all places?”

“Hmm,” he’s humming against your lips. “I could take them both.”

Giggling like you were in love, you wrap your arms around his neck and hold him close.

“I hope you weren’t bothered too much,” you say. “The aristocracy seem to have being a pain in the ass written in their birthrights.”

“I think they were too scared to approach, probably thought I’d start swearing and snatching the pearls right off their necks. Some of them were bearable, asked me how long my sword was.”

It’s difficult to not laugh at that, “Well?”

He raises his brows unceremoniously, “Won’t you like to know?”

Taking the opportunity while you giggled uncontrollably at the situation, he goes back placing never ending kisses to your mouth. Sighing involuntarily, you melt into him once again, infinitely more relaxed than in the hallway.

Soonyoung’s eyelashes brush against yours in a whisper of their own, only reminding you how close you were to him in the moment. His kisses go from soft and fleeting to something with a little more vigour. The warmth of his mouth goes back to overtaking the lower half of your face, sucking and licking into your mouth like his life depended on it.

If your mind was reeling when his hands were merely ghosts of pressure over your heavy dress, the feeling of his palms and fingers so distinct over your nightgown, the only thing separating you two, is enough to have your knees begin to buckle.

From your waist, they move to your back, before caressing back to the sides of your waist, thumb running in circles. Gentle handfuls of your flesh, bunching and letting go of the material of your nightgown. Very soon, his mouth leaves yours and instead moves to your jaw, the air in the room letting you feel the wetness that he leaves behind as a passionate trail.

He soon reaches the junction of your jaw and neck, leaving a particularly long suck in the area that has a gasp leaving your mouth. Remaining in that area, you feel the pleasant graze of his tongue on your skin, only making you tilt your head farther out to let him carry out his loving.

Your mind wanders back to the hands that grope you in ways that would defame you, the unseemly palms that have you needing to feel him all the same.

With grazing hands, you slip your fingers underneath his jacket, pushing it off one shoulder. He understands the message, flicking it off of his frame before loosening his cravat and throwing it somewhere behind him.

Unlatching from your neck, he comes round to face you to find your face the epitome of disconnected and dazed.

“Can you wait for me on the bed, my love?”

“But—” The thought of him being even an inch away was most aggravating, but he cuts you off before you can refute.

“I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” Soonyoung rests his forehead against your own, taking your hands in his. “I’m right here. I just need to take this awful suit off.”

Your face must have been peculiar because he’s immediately jumping, panicked. “Uh—do you not want me to, we don’t have to, I just thought—”

“No!” you yelp, wide eyed. “I, um, I’ll wait. On the bed, I mean.”

He lets you walk over to the giant four poster bed, pushing the flow of your gown down when you realise how high it had ridden, cheeks burning scarlet at the thought of exposing so much.

Hearing ruffles from behind you, you cannot bring yourself to look back at him, already extremely lightheaded and afraid that the sight might make you faint altogether.

Perhaps you were experiencing a delayed case of sea legs, because it’s more difficult than usual to make yourself comfortable on the soft beddings. You make a futile attempt at slowing your breathing.

By the time Soonyoung is done, meeting you in the middle, you keep your eyes on his face as he’s immediately climbing over to kiss you softly. Hand on the back of your head, he guides you to lay flat, adjacent to the headboard so you’re laying on the breadth of the bed.

He handles you like you were made of glass, and it only makes the strange ache between your legs increasingly present and uncomfortable.

Noting a cool feeling on the base of your throat, you open your eyes and catch the leather cord that dangles from his neck, the letter opener charm that’s attached to the end of it connecting you two as your lips part. Just beyond, through the dip of his collarbones and the valley to his chest, you catch the scar that curls above his heart. Even lower, you find the smaller wrappings of his scarring wound.

You trace over the edges of the new addition, shaking hands as you try your best to not brush over the wound.

On the other side, Soonyoung has his hands on shin as his body hovers over you between your legs. Curling around, he caresses the skin of your bare calf, drifting to the back of your knees. He takes the opportunity to lift your leg, urging you to wrap it around his waist.

The action has gravity doing what it does best, the hem of your nightgown dropping to bunch over the junction of your leg, your entire thigh exposed for the air.

Soonyoung takes no time to let his hands wander higher, taking light handfuls of the flesh of thighs, dragging his grip further and further up.

“Nearly tipped the ship over when I saw you in those fucking trousers,” he says, eyes closed as he drags his mouth over the inner part of your thigh.

The sound that leaves your mouth is breathy, mind preoccupied with how quickly he was making his way towards the apex of your thighs. He’s using his mouth like he used it on your own lips, nipping at the flesh before biting down hard.

“Soonyoung!”

Tongue running over the patch, he sucks on the area to sooth the bite. It’s taking everything out of you to not twitch uncontrollably in his hold, the heat in your core reaching temperatures you’ve never experienced.

Unlatching himself from your thigh, Soonyoung rears his head slightly. The sight has your head rolling back, mind drifting to the face of the man who’d visited you in your dreams, the same man that had now made home between your legs.

Before you realise it, the bunched hem of your nightgown is flown upwards entirely, fluttering as the fabric lands on your stomach.

Your heat is bare underneath, evident with the way Soonyoung keeps his eyes on the now fully exposed part of you. Your chest continues to rise and fall as you lift your head to look at him, eyes half closed and mind muddled.

“What…What’re you doing?”

Soonyoung looks like you’ve disturbed him from a trance, snapping up to look at you as you ask him your question.

It hardly registers in his mind. What was he doing? Was it not obvious—

Ah.

If the mere sight of your bare thighs weren’t enough for him to release his load onto the sheets untouched, your unawareness might just end up doing it for him.

Of course you didn’t know why he was at eye level with your cunt; women from this world were not supposed to know.

The buzz in his mind renders him useless for a few moments as his vision blurs, the pain in his lower region unbearable. The thought of him being the first person to do this to you, to pleasure you like this; he wasn’t sure if he’d make it till the end of the night alive.

Screwing his eyes shut, his palms full of your thighs, he drops his head and counts to ten.

“Will you let me show you how a Queen is meant to be worshipped?”

Wet mouthed and unhinged eyes, your arousal was doing nothing but multiplying at the sight of him.

“Do you trust me?” he asks. “I promise I’ll make you feel good.”

It takes you less than a moment to nod your head, eyes locked with his.

Bringing a hand closer, he dips one finger into the beginnings of your hole. Bringing some of the glisten onto his fingers. Your lips are parted and he brings a second finger to gather your arousal, rubbing over your entrance ever so slowly.

The motion makes you let out a heavy exhale, gripping onto the bunched fabric at your stomach till your knuckles turn white.

With little warning, you feel his fingertips push and drag upwards, right over the sensitive bundle of nerves. Immediately, he’s rubbing your arousal all over the area, rubbing your clit in rhythmic circles with both fingers.

You can’t stop it when you throw your head back and let out a slight whimper, relishing in the feeling that overtakes every last sense and capability, anticipating the next surge of pleasure that courses through your entire body like you've been struck by a bolt of something.

Vision obscured, you loll your head to the side when you feel his fingers retract, confused.

All you catch is the outstretched nature of his tongue, and how it lands directly where his fingers were.

You let out the loudest moan yet, back arching off the bed as he licks a forceful drag up your cunt before moving back down your clit, circling your hole with the tip of his tongue, right before repeating. He flicks your nub right where he’s found you twitch the most, back and forth as your hips begin to fail at your suppressed stutters, his hands needing to pin you down onto the sheets to continue.

He becomes more generous, laying his tongue flat now as he massages your nub so good. Your thighs are closing around his ears and he does nothing to stop you, nearly suffocating between them. Hips going from their stutters to a grind, you find your hands flying to his hair, grip tighter than you thought you’d come down with. It doesn’t help that he’s now taken a finger to circle your entrance while his lips suck on your clit.

“Soonyoung.” It’s all you can say, throat incapable of forcing anything but his name, the burn behind your eyes only making it harder to not say it louder.

When he pushes the finger in, it has you letting out a moan, the foreign feeling against your walls only forcing them to clamp onto his digit. Gradually, you feel his pace quicken as he slides his finger in and out of your hole, his mouth still doing beautiful things to your cunt.

It doesn’t take long for him to shove in another finger, stretching your hole as you let out a constant string of noises through the pleasure, ever-building as every passing moment only scrambles your brain further.

And then you feel him groan, a vibration throbbing through your system.

It’s suddenly all too much, and before you can tell him what’s going on, you’re rendered incapable. You don’t know where your limbs fly, but all you feel is white hot and overwhelming to an unbelievable degree.

“Oh–ungh—” Your body is telling Soonyoung all he needs to know as he only pushes into your pussy even further, letting you ride out your high as you claw at him in every way possible.

Inevitably, the feeling subsides and you realise you’ve been reduced to sobs, tears streaking the sides of your face. Laying flat with your head still on the sheets, you stare at the ceiling of your four poster, trying to remember where you were.

Barely noticing the man that now hover above you, you hear him whisper. “Are you alright?”

Nodding weakly, you don’t even try to lift a finger in the remaining aftermath.

“I need words, my love.”

Swallowing thickly, you give him a breathy, “Yes.”

The lower half of his face glistens in the light like unorthodox diamonds, and all you can think about is how you need him closer to you.

You make an attempt with your nightgown, your trembling arms, still coursing with the aftershocks of your orgasm.

Soonyoung decides to help, hands pushing your spine into an arch as he pulls the slip up and over your head, now entirely bare in front of him.

You watch as instead of throwing the fabric away, he brings it to his mouth to wipe the slick off, tainting the gown with your essence.

Mouth over yours in a salty kiss, you pull him into you as close as humanly possible, needing to feel his heat, his weight, his scent as close as possible. His mouth reaches your throat again, lips brushing over the expanse as he places open mouthed kisses over the nearly faded marks.

His hands are lingering once again as they ghost the sides of your breasts, thumbs coming close to your nipples before retracting in a caress. He takes them in handfuls as he goes back to busy your lips with his own, massaging the mounds with a pressure just enough to have you reeling.

Flicking your nipple lightly, he goes back to circle the bud with thumb again. Making himself further familiar, his fingers begin to pinch and pull at them, pressing down to get a noise out of you, one that you sound as you breathe into his mouth.

Trailing over your stomach, he pushes himself off of you. On his knees, he takes the distance as his chance to look at you in your entirety for the first time. Your fucked out expression and your lack of words is doing nothing but fueling him, your loud breaths somehow more sinful than anything he could ever do to you.

In one swift motion, he’s slipping his arms beneath you, pulling you up so he can lay you against the headboards and pillows. You barely register what’s happening, having given yourself up to him long before.

Grabbing one of the millions of cushions on the bed, he swings one over. Using no strength of your own, he lifts your hips and places it down beneath you, effectively propping you up.

And then he’s meeting you at eye level, hands cupping your face. “I need you to listen to me, darling.”

He waits for confirmation, of which you can only nod, still seeing mild stars. “Do you want to stop?”

It's a visceral reaction; the violent shaking of your head, the hand that flies to his bicep. “N–no!”

You pause as he grips onto your upper arms tight, right as you continue. “I just—a moment. Don’t stop, please.”

Leaning down, he places a long kiss on the corner of your mouth before moving his head to fit into the crook of your neck. He nuzzles his nose against the skin below your ear.

“I’m right here,” he whispers. “For as long as you want me.”

His kisses go from desperate to something with a little more intent, pressing his lips into your neck consistently. Oh so gently, it begins to feel like a draught. He turns into calm just as he could become chaos, bringing you down from the after effects of his own actions.

The hum that leaves you is unthinking, fingers remaining deep in the roots of his hair. Your own nose is pressed against his hair, his scent mixed with sweat infiltrating your nostrils. It fills your head with a pleasant buzz, one that you feel force a pull at the corners of your mouth.

“I meant it when I said it,” you murmur into his hair. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

Raising his head, he meets your eye, smiling slightly. “I believe you. Forgive me for making you believe I was trying to leave you.”

“You weren’t?”

He presses his lips into a line, exhaling as he drops his chin to his chest. “I’ve needed to be selfish my whole life just to survive. Leaving…I wasn’t sure how I would’ve gotten on that boat in the morning without taking you with me somehow.”

Moving back to look at you, you realise very quickly there’s more to the mere glassy look in his eye. “For once, I wished to be anything but a pirate, to be anywhere but near the sea. Not when you wouldn’t be there with me.”

Taking one of his beautifully decorated hands to your mouth, you kiss the soft of his palm. “You’ve done more than anyone ever has to protect me.”

You laugh against his hand, “This is my turf, captain. Let me protect you… protect us.”

Something injects you with a dose of bold, and you find yourself wrapping your arms around his raised shoulders. “But…I believe we were in the middle of something. I’d hate to ruin the mood.”

The smirk that graces his lips is immediate, pushing you back down onto the sheets as you let a laugh escape you.

And then you feel something warm graze your bottom lip, pointed in the way it pushes inwards. He’s brought the glinting letter opener charm up to your lips, the trinket pinched between his fingers as he continues to keep it on your mouth. He kisses you deep as the metal remains between you two, your hands run across the expanse of his back, feeling the muscles ripple as he props himself between you.

“I love you,” he cuts between the kiss to groan, the charm dropping from between your mouths to your chest.

“I love you, mmh—” His fingers have found your clit mid confession, rubbing quickly as he attempts to get you all hot and withered again.

Your legs raise on instinct, back arching as he rubs you mercilessly, the pressure building quicker than it had before.

“I–I think—” you start to tell him, and it seems it’s all he needs to remove his fingers entirely.

“Soonyoung!” you yelp, landing on the bed with a thud.

Looking down, you find his hands wrapped around the length between his own legs, and you realise this was your first time seeing it. Past the white-oozing slit, his tip is a painful looking red. If his hands weren’t already pumping and he hadn’t already lined himself up to your hole, you would’ve taken him into your own palms, done exactly with your mouth that he’d done with his own.

But you can’t find it within yourself to stop him when you feel the initial push of his bulbous tip against your hole, the stretch causing you to drop your mouth open.

“Fuck,” you hear him curse, and when you look up you find his own eyes screwed shut. His hands grip the plush of the pillow beside your head as tight as ever, face askew like he was holding himself back from combusting entirely.

Slowly, you feel the stretch turn into something akin to a burn, a sting in the back of your eyes. You let him push himself into you at his own pace, the never ending battle between your mind and your refrained hips ever present as you attempt to keep them at bay.

He keeps his pelvis flush against yours ince he’s sheathed himself inside you entirely. BOth of your pants fill the thick air of the room, the throb of your walls around his shaft leaving a tremble in his forearm despite your forsake.

Hand somewhere above your head, you feel Soonyoung pull out ever so slightly before pushing back in. Just like this, in shallow thrusts, he pumps himself in an out of your walls in a slow pattern.

It begins with a simmering tremble of pleasure that prolongs as he drags his cock in and out, and then in and out, and then—

Your eyes fly open when you feel his hips slam against yours with a resounding sound, fingers gripping his arm as he does it again, your moans penetrating the air. Before you know it, he’s hiked your legs up to wrap around his waist, ankles locking as he goes back to snapping his hips into you.

“Oh, Soonyoung.”

Your nails are digging into his bicep like it was the only thing tying you to this earth, the only thing keeping you from passing out entirely. He’s taken up a brutal pace, pistoning into your clamped walls with a vigour unmatched.

All Soonyoung can hear is the stretch of your moans and groans directly in his ear, the obscene squelch of both of your fluids mixing at your middles. Your hands have migrated to his back, clawing at the skin like you’ve been utterly possessed.

He can’t seem to mind, not when they’ll simply become reopening wounds every time he’ll have you like this, all to himself and no one else. He wonders vaguely if your guards outside can hear the way you’re losing yourself in him just as he is in you, wonders if it appalls them that a filthy pirate gets to have their Queen in his arms as her vindictive pleasure.

One hand rubbing over your slick clit, he pulls back to sit on his heels, the angle allowing him to keep ever part of you occupied, his spare hand coming up to toy with the pillow of your breast.

It’s all too much, for the both of you as your collective noises become increasingly frequent and high pitched.

And then he’s pushed you over the edge, the shake of your thighs electrifying as you nearly scream out in the bliss of your high. Hands moving every which way to find a grip as you let the feeling crash into you over and over again.

“Oh, that’s so good, so good, oh my goodness.”

You’re still in the middle of your climax when Soonyoung can’t take it anymore, letting himself release his load inside of you like a mark. It’s a mess of force and pleasure as the both of you lose sight of your strengths and weaknesses, the feeling of his hot cum shooting into your walls only prolonging your orgasm even further.

He continues to thrust, continues to play with your nub, continues to flick at your nipples despite the orgasm subsiding. It’s all suddenly too much all at once, the sharp jerk of your body and your voice asking him to stop.

“Soon—Soonyoung, it’s too much.”

Hands coming to a halt and his thrusts slowing, you feel him ease himself out of you.

It’s a sight Soonyoung doubts he could ever forget even if he tried, your still pulsating walls doing everything but keeping the milky white of his load inside you, globs of the liquid spilling out as you shudder near lifeless on the bed. His hands grope at the inside of your thighs, pulling your lips apart to take in the mess he’s made.

He can’t help himself when he pushes two fingers into your hole, feeding his cum back into your hole right where it belongs.

You’ve only barely started to come round when he meets you at eye level, plopping next to you on the bed.

“Hi,” he grins.

“Hi,” you breathe back, hands coming up to touch his face.

He lets you breathe for a few moments as he finds himself getting off the bed to find your tainted nightgown, moving back to you to spread your legs and wipe you clean as best as he could.

You find it within yourself to allow him to pull you into a sitting position, a cup of water from the nightstand pressing against your tired mouth.

“Come on, just one,” he urges as you slump against his chest.

You take a few sips as he coaxes you into drinking the full cup and half of the second helping.

He gives up as he holds you against his chest, brushing his fingers through your tangled hair to push past your face.

“Are you alright?” he asks you. Your eyes are closed when he leans down to place a peck on the apple of your cheek.

“Mhm,” you muffle. “Want to sleep.

“I’d let you, but…”

“Soonyoung, I can’t go again,” you whine.

He chuckles, “I meant to ask where we could find some sugar around here. You barely ate anything at the ball.”

“The kitchens?” you answer with a floating question mark.

Soonyoung can’t help it when he squeezes you so tight it has you complaining loudly, not being able to sustain the love just in the tiny expanse of his heart.

“Come on, let’s get you some cake before both our hearts give out.”

BUNDLED UP IN WARMER clothes, the only thing the palace walls hear is the tiny whispers and giggles of you and your lover as you make your way to the kitchens.

It’s empty at this time of night, the dying embers of the fireplace the only source of light. Soonyoung uses every last bit of his thievery to manage to find a basket of dough balls, the syrup more readily available at the table in the centre.

The tingling in your brain can’t seem to decipher the overwhelming happiness that floods you from the ends of your hair to the tips of your toes. Especially when you call out his name amidst his shuffling, your heart can’t take the grin on his face as he hurries to join on the floor in front of the fireplace.

Arm looped through his own and your head on his shoulder, you decide you’d be quite okay dying like this.

The dough balls are cold and the syrup is probably a little too sweet, but you can’t possibly complain when it warms you just the same.

“I’ve despised my name my entire life,” Soonyoung starts in the silence, picking at the insides of his treat. “Some old merchant sailor was giving his ship away in exchange that the taker would take care of it. He’d built his Tigress from the first board to the last sail, but the years had made their mark. It was practically falling apart when I took it off his hands.”

He pushes the remaining bit of the pastry into his mouth, muffled as he continues, “He had a strange name, said it was given to him by his crew when they realised he was born without a name. Hoshi. I liked it well enough so I kept it.”

“Soonyoung—”

“That one. I wanted to replace the name I loathed, the one my own mother gave me.” You watch as his throat bobs as he swallows. “Ash is my birthplace, my mother worked in the brothels where I was born only because she couldn’t get rid of me.”

Taking one of the hands that wrap around his arm, he brings your fingers to your mouth, kissing the tips of each one. “I despised that name, until I heard it from your lips.”

“Soonyoung.” It felt right on your tongue, like you were destined to say his name.

“Yes, my love?” He smiles softly.

“I love you.”

“I love you more,” he says as he kisses you again. “Thank you for keeping my name, thank you for giving it life.”

You take the opportunity to grab one of the syrup soaked dough balls from the basket and stuff them into his mouth. “Enough, don’t tell me all this luxury’s made you soft.”

It was a jab but a lighthearted one in any case, you loved to see this side of him and you doubt you would ever get enough of seeing him like this. Vulnerable with his softer smiles and squinted eyes.

Bringing one of your digits to your mouth, you suck the remaining syrup off your fingers.

Soonyoung is quick to take notice as he takes your hand and brings your fingers up to his mouth, running his tongue over the pads of your fingers to take in the remaining sugar left on your fingers.

He keeps his eyes locked onto yours as he sucks on the tips of your fingers, making sure every last hint of sweetness is gone.

And then he’s kissing you, tongue in your mouth as he moves against your lips slowly.

Breaking apart, you whisper, “As much as I’d love to, the bakers will be coming in any minute now.”

Soonyoung’s grin is dangerous, and you find out why the minute you feel his arms loop around your waist and under your thighs, lifting you clean off the floor of the kitchens.

You squeal before you can help it, his lips finding home in your neck as you laugh as loud as your chest would allow.

You could get used to this. And you will.

THE SERVANTS CARRYING THE giant stack of plates nearly topple over when you sprint past them, yelling a loud apology over your shoulder as you do nothing but hasten your pace.

The paper in your hands is clutched tight in your fists as you run to where your carriage awaits, near yelling at the driver to make it to the docks before the streets would be full of the early morning merchants and bakers, slowing the gallops of the decorated horses.

The town is waking as your carriage races past, the beginnings of the new day making itself known as the sun peers through the gaps of the houses. You’re incapable of sitting still, your heels tapping against the floors of your cabin incessantly as the docks grow nearer and nearer.

And then you see it, the rush of dock handlers that see the royal carriage slow to a stop in front of the boardwalk. You slam the door open before any of the tens could do it for you, breaking into a sprint as you find the distinct flag of the royal crest wave high on the other end of the docks.

You had already seen Soonyoung off in the dark of the night as he made his way to the ship that was near ready to depart as you slide to stop in front of the anchored ship.

There was nothing sane about what you were doing, the chortles and shocked noises of sailors and merchants deaf to ears as you finally spot him near the prow.

His eyes meet yours and he has to do a double take.

Panting and needing to hold onto your knees for support, you peer up as you watch him run towards the ramp that leads down to the docks to see you, to ask why you were here when he’d kissed you goodbye mere hours ago.

By the time he meets you at the wobbly boardwalk, you’ve somewhat recovered.

“Are you alright?” he asks you as soon as you’re within earshot, hands grasping onto your upper arms in evident concern.

“I had to tell you, this came in right after you left.” You brandish the paper clutched into your fist, smoothing it over as the light catches the red stamp at the bottom.

It takes him less than a minute to realise what it said, eyes blinking rapidly and mouth gaping like a fish. “They…They said yes?”

“They said yes,” you repeat, nodding furiously as you break into a smile. “We can get married, Soonyoung, they said yes.”

His arms are crushing you before you know it, wrapped around you so tight as he buries his face into your neck, repeating it like a mantra, “They said yes…”

By the time you part, he keeps his arms around you, still embracing you in front of the entire port. You take hold of his face bringing it closer to you.

“Three months, and then you come home,” you breathe. “And I get to marry you, in front of everyone.”

Soonyoung lets his lips meet your own in a chaste kiss as he corrects you, “I get to marry you in front of everyone.”

There’s a thud of something nearby, and you look up to find the crew of the Tigress hanging over the railings of the newly appointed naval ship that looked suspiciously like a pirate’s.

“He can’t come back home, if he doesn’t leave!” Seungkwan yells over cupped hands.

You’d like to send him an affectionate gesture involving your middle finger, but choose to save him in front of the crowded port.

“You’ll miss me, Seungkwan, just you wait,” you send him a pointed glare that he simply scoffs at.

He might miss you, but you’ll definitely miss the lot of them when you return to a significantly emptier palace.

“Don’t let the royal snobs walk over you, you’re a better sailor anyway,” you tell Soonyoung. “Not that I needed to tell you, anyway.”

“I promise on our future wedding to be a complete menace.” He grins at the declaration as you admire him in the morning light.

One last time, you memorise the dips and hills of his features, pressing your final kiss into his lips as the voices telling him to hurry it up grow louder.

He blows you a kiss from the railings as the anchor is hoisted, and you send him one right back.

As your carriage trudges its path back to the palace, at a pace more acceptable for both the stamina of the horses and the integrity of the structure, your eyes remain glued to the shrinking ship that fades into the distant horizon.

There’s a pang in your chest, one that brings a tear to your eyes. It’s all very dramatic, the way the melancholy makes a home in your heart. An inkling tells you how you’ll probably become quite used to the feeling, learn to greet it like a friend.

For now you enter the lighter palace, and take your place on the chair in your study and find solace in the ideas your mind brings.

That no matter how long Soonyoung will remain far from you, he will always come back home to you.

Always.

[AN]: ty for joining my babies on their journey, i cannot thank you all enough for reading all 48fuckingK words of this i love you guys truly!!! thank you for all the reblogs and comments on the other parts, it makes me genuinely so happy to see you guys enjoy this universe that i've built. I read every single comment and know i appreciate all of it so so much <3

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look-at-the-soul · 9 months ago

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Every little thing you do- Part 1

Tommy Shelby x reader

Series Master list

✨So first part is finally here!! Please be aware this part is set to happen in different days therefore you’ll see a little divider in the middle… and also! There’s violence. Please note I’m trying to follow the ideas/education from back in the day so it won’t necessary fit for today’s way of seeing things.

Word count: 2,977

Waving her sister goodbye, Y/N headed outside. But to her surprise she found Scott stopping his vehicle.

“Hello sweetheart.” He greeted her with a quick kiss on her lips, she stepped back immediately in case her mother was watching behind the curtains.

“Scott, I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

“We’ll I lied and said I felt sick to get out earlier.”

This wasn’t something he’d do, but she listened to his explanation.

“I wanted to see you.”

Y/N looked over her shoulder, her parents were strict.

“You know you’re only invited for lunch and tea on Sundays.”

“I know, I know.” He moved back retrieving something from the car. “Got you these.”

“I love them, thank you.” Y/N pressed the bouquet of flowers against her chest, the fresh aroma invading her, a smile growing in her lips.

“Why don’t you go back inside and put them in water? Then meet me at the bakery around the corner.”

“Where are we going?”

Scott gave her a wide smile that took her breath away. “It’s a surprise, you’ll like it.”

Butterflies got spread all over her stomach, the expectation building. She hurried to the unexpected date.

“Listen, I want to apologize for acting shitty the other day.” Scott announced. “Can you forgive me love?”

Y/N nodded eagerly, pleased by his change of heart.

“It’s alright, just be careful next time.” Y/N suggested as he drove.

“Careful?”

“You shouldn’t have talked Tommy that way.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “There you go again, defending him. This why we fight.”

“No, Scott I don’t want a war between you two all the time, he didn’t like the way you talked to me.”

“Why does he always sticks his bloody nose in our business?”

“It’s not like that.”

“He’s always standing in the middle, I’m sick of getting orders from him, he leaves me the worst jobs just to please himself, he’s got people to do those things. I thought they wanted me to do other things, not to clean horses shit.”

“Scott I can’t interfere in your role among the gang, he already has done more than enough.”

“There it is, you’re defending him instead of being on my side…”

Y/N realized how unintentionally she always put Tommy on a pedestal, her boyfriend was right, feeling like he was belittled. She knew Tommy didn’t like him, and there was a possibility that she wasn’t impartial.

“I’ll see what I can do.” She finally gave in, not wanting to spend their time together fighting.

“That’s my girl.” He stopped the car on the sideway and began to shower her face with soft kisses.

”Do you need anything else?” Lizzie walked around the desk, resting against the bookshelf.

“What happened with the contracts you couldn’t find?” Tommy asked leaning back on his chair.

“Arthur took them by mistake.”

“Keep those locked.” He pointed a finger at her.

“Are you going to Karl’s birthday party?” She tried batting her eyelashes at him, but Tommy wasn’t looking at her.

“Yes, in a minute.”

Lizzie looked down at him again, hoping he’d ask her to join him.

“Heard Ada bought a huge cake.”

Tommy took his briefcase and hummed nonchalantly.

“I wrapped you a present for Karl, take it before you leave.”

She didn’t get a response.

Giving up to her wishes to be invited with the Shelby family, Lizzie shook her head. Collecting the remains of her dignity from the floor.

Tommy followed her with his eyes as she stomped her foot on her way out but dismissed it a few seconds later, not understanding her attitude.

The office was quiet when he crossed it, everyone had headed home already and his family were already in Polly’s house.

This was the first time he left considerably early in a long time. The need to release some stress made him reach for a cigarette. He had a dozen of things to do, a trip to London in the upcoming days, visit one of the fabrics… before he realized, Tommy parked outside Polly’s property.

Karl’s celebration was a rare family gathering. For his brothers birthdays they’d usually went to camp close to the river and drink all night. He wasn’t used to paper decorations and chocolate cake.

A small figure crashed against his legs. “Oh oh.”

Looking down, he found one of John’s kids. Was this Kate? Or Barbara?

“Careful.”

“There you are.” John appeared with a sandwich in his hand. “Go with your siblings.” He instructed his daughter.

“John.” Tommy called him mysteriously, with his hand motioning his brother to step closer. “Wipe your fucking mouth, you’ve got chocolate all over it.”

Stepping into the living room, he joined his family.

“Uncle Tommy!” Karl ran towards him with his arms open.

Tommy rubbed the kid’s back and offered him his present. “Happy birthday Karl.”

“Thank you!”

“Looks like you owe me money Pol.” Ada chuckled as she helped her son open his present.

Tommy looked from his sister to his aunt, studying them.

“Damn it. I thought he wasn’t going to show up.”

“So you made a bet?” He asked in disbelief.

He usually wouldn’t. But when it came to his sister, he made an effort.

“Where’s Y/N?” Polly asked with a frown.

“I sent her the invitation, thought you’d arrive together.” Ada explained staring at her brother.

But Tommy shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen or heard from her.”

“Shit! Pol! Help me out here!” John shouted holding his son James in his arms, he was bleeding and crying. “Smashed his fucking head.”

As Ada rushed to get some clean towels, Polly tried to comfort the child.

Stepping away from the chaos, Tommy leaned against a column to think he actually hadn’t seen Y/N in almost a week. A million thoughts filling his mind, trying to find a reason for her to be distant.

He needed to know if she was alright because she had always been close to the family, she was always considered part of it to all their gatherings; she was there for them at Freddy’s funeral, at John’s wedding…

“Now that we’re here all together, I’ve something to say.” Arthur announced stepping on a chair, oblivious that Esme and Polly were taking care of a bleeding child.

As the room went quiet, Arthur announced he and Linda were expecting a baby.

“Congratulations.” Esme managed to blurr through gritted teeth. “Now help me hold James, because I need to rearrange his arm.”

As Arthur walked past Tommy, his brother patted his arm and mumbled a low congratulations.

But the thought of Y/N not being with them, stuck in his head.

Y/N felt like sleeping on the couch. Her feet were swollen, Lady Winchester lost one of her precious earrings and decided to put everyone in the search until they found it under her vanity hours later.

Oddly her family decided to stay up late apparently as she could see the candles still on. But just as she set one foot inside, her mother pushed her abruptly.

“You’re a dishonorable daughter! We gave you everything!” One of her hands intended to land on her cheek but hit her on her ear instead.

“What happened?”

“Y-your aunt says you’re with a child, she saw you this morning and came to ask me.” Y/N’s mother was furious.

A woman came into view, her sister poking her head from the kitchen as her mother pushed her into the room next to it and closed the door. She demanded Y/N to undress and started touching her breasts.

“She’s with a child.” The elder woman confirmed, her hands still on her breasts.

Y/N’s face got paler by the second. Her mother gave the woman money and asked discretion.

A heavy silence filled the room, Y/N could hear a pin drop if someone threw one. Dizziness swept over her as her palms started to sweat.

“Your father will be so disappointed by you.” Her mother sentenced firmly. “You’re a whore, this sin will follow you from now on.”

Blood went to Y/N’s feet and she had to grab the vanity for support.

“You’ll tell Scott tomorrow and get him to ask your father’s permission to marry you before you start showing.” Y/N could hear her mother’s words as if she was underwater.

“I’ll save him the embarrassment, perhaps you can go to your grandmother’s house and hide there…” she was pacing the room as a maniac, Y/N was starting to process everything, she could hardly breathe.

“I didn’t know I could get pregnant without being married.”

Y/N’s mother laughed sarcastically. “It’s too late for that now, you should’ve waited until you got married!”

“You never told me this could happen.” Y/N felt on the edge of tears.

“I educated you with values, God only knows what you learned from that friend of yours.” Her mother mumbled something else Y/N couldn’t understand. Slowly she sat on the carpet, her skirt pooled around her hips and she finally sobbed. When one day Scott touched her breasts and it felt nice, electricity ran through her body. But he stopped right there. Then after taking her to the river, one of his hands sneaked under her skirt and moved her intimate clothes to the side and her body trembled. A week after that, he was about to start a fight with Tommy, for the night when they arrived after visiting Tommy’s new house. So in an attempt to make up for that fight, he took her to the river again and after kissing her, he told her he wanted to do something else. It had been over a month since she stepped in the middle of Tommy and Scott.

Y/N didn’t know she could feel such pleasure until he introduced himself into her body and she exploded of ecstasy. It felt right, he said he loved her and they went back a few days later.

Scott had said this should be between just the two of them, just as their love. But he never told her she could get pregnant.

Worry kept her up all night. She felt sorry for her poor father.

Covering her face with her hands, Y/N felt the tears rolling down her cheeks uncontrollably.

“Scott,” Y/N breathed with relief, all the worry from the past days when she hadn’t been able to reach out soon, forgotten. “I need to talk to you.”

“Y/N… I’ve to rest, haven’t had a decent sleep yet. Can we talk about this another day?” He had been out of the city, busy with God knows what, but this was important for her, for them, for their future.

Y/N studied their surroundings carefully, trying to keep her voice from shaking she placed her hands on his shoulders.

“We’re going to have a child, Scott I’m carrying your baby.” She whispered.

Scott blinked unamused by the news, his nostrils expanding profusely. Y/N wanted to reach out, to throw herself in his arms but as they were outside his house, she had to control herself. Keep her distance with him and behave accordingly.

But when he took a step back, she felt confused.

“I-I’m… this must be a mistake.”

“No, no. There’s a baby growing inside me.” She repeated, keeping her voice down. “We’ll need to figure out about the wedding, it’ll have to be something intimate and soon before it starts showing…”

“I’m not going to marry you.” Scott scoffed. “How can I be sure this child is mine? You could’ve slept with someone else just as you did with me.” He mocked her.

Before she could stop herself, Y/N found her hand flying to his cheek. Her palm tingled after the slap she gave him.

“How could you say something like that?”

“Don’t you ever dare to fucking touch me again!” He snapped. “And as for this little inconvenient… I’m not taking responsibility, you’re on your own.”

He gave her a disgusted look and walked inside his house. Leaving Y/N turned into a crying mess, she was hurt and disappointed by his reaction and terrified of the outcome.

Her mother sent her to talk to Scott to arrange the terms of the wedding and now she just realized he didn’t have her back. But what was worse, he thought she would sleep around like a whore.

Folding her arms, she walked with her head down. Guilt and embarrassment written all over her face. How would she deal with this? How would she tell her mother what Scott just said? She had been so sure she’d be able to hide it from her father by marrying Scott but now she was left in the worst possible way.

She cried uncontrollably feeling defeated, it was now too late to do something, but at the same time she didn’t know how she’d take care and raise a baby by herself.

“Where’s Scott?” Her mother hissed when her daughter appeared in her eyesight.

Y/N couldn’t speak, something heavy made her walk slowly. Her whole world was crashing down and now she’d have to face the consequences.

“He told me he wouldn’t take responsibility for a child who might not be his.” As the words left her mouth, she started crying again.

“Of course he would say that! What did you think Y/N?!” Her mother exploded. “He must think the worst of you now, how easily you have yourself away to him!”

“He told me he loved me!” Managed to shout through her tears and sobs.

Her mother’s hand flew rapidly and hit her hard.

A heavy silence surrounded them. Her cheek was burning from her mother’s slap.

“Leave Y/N!” Her grandmother intervened.

“She deserved that.” Her mother explained, she was beyond angry.

Y/N’s grandmother wrapped an arm around her granddaughter protectively.

“What happened?”

“Tell her, go on… tell your grandmother what you did.”

Y/N kept her head down, she felt like she couldn’t look her grandmother in the eyes. She had failed them terribly, the values and principles they had showed her were thrown through the window.

“No? Well, I’ll tell her myself.” Her mother warned. “Y/N didn’t wait until marriage, she gave herself away like a whore and is now with a child. Couldn’t keep her legs closed.”

“Well we’ll think of something, she won’t start showing right away.”

“There’s nothing to think mother, Scott is out of the picture he didn't accept the responsibility.”

“But he’s as responsible as Y/N.” Her grandmother pointed out thinking this wasn’t fair on Y/N.

“Your granddaughter’s honor is right on the floor, he even suggested the baby isn’t his.”

Y/N saw her mother pacing around the small room, it was making her feel sick.

“And your father arrives tomorrow… should we send her with your sister to Durham?” She pondered the possibilities thinking of her mother’s sibling.

“Absolutely not.” Her grandmother defended.

“Then what? What are we going to do?”

Y/N felt sick and rushed away from them. Her head was pounding, her stomach in a tight knot and her heart shattered into million pieces.

“Ma’am you can’t go in there.” Tommy heard from outside his office, then saw the door swing open.

“Mr. Shelby you’re the only one who can help me.”

Tommy rose to his feet in a second, the worry he found in Y/N’s grandmother raised all the alarms.

“What happened?”

“My son in law is hitting Y/N badly.” Her voice cracked, her hands reached for the sleeve of his suit. “You’ve to help her.”

Tommy took his coat from the rack and rushed to see what was happening.

“John, get Polly and meet me in Y/N’s house.” He demanded.

“I’ll go with them Mr. Shelby.” Y/N’s grandmother expressed, not wanting to make him wait.

Tommy doubted for a second, but with her hand, the elder woman ushered him, so it must be serious. Stepping in Y/N’s house without knocking because he heard her cries and pained screams from outside, but Tommy wasn’t prepared to find what he’d see.

Y/N was in the middle of the living room half her clothes shattered, kneeling on the floor and her upper body leaned over a chair, her back covered by the belt marks and blood.

He felt a rush of anger and disgust through his body. Tommy could practically taste his bile in his mouth, but as Y/N’s father was about to hit her again, he stepped in his way, holding the man’s hand firmly in the air.

“You touch her again, and I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Stay out of this Shelby, I’m dealing with this whore.”

“Don’t make me repeat myself or you’ll regret it.” Tommy muttered through gritted teeth.

John joined him with a couple of some of their men, they went straight to hold Y/N’s father away from her.

Y/N winced in pain when Tommy tried to help her up.

“This is a family matter!” Y/N’s mother shouted disturbed for the interruption. “You should respect that.”

“Yeah? Just like you’re respecting your daughter?” Tommy snapped, he lost all self control over this injustice.

“She has to deal with the consequences of her acts! Behaved like a whore, gets punished like one.”

Y/N felt her mother’s words like daggers to her heart. She wasn’t sure what felt more hurtful; her father’s hitting her with his belt or her mother’s words.

Tommy felt like throwing up, he apologized when he got Y/N in his arms and she complained from the pain.

“You can’t take her away!” Her mother warned, trying to stop Tommy.

He gave her a warning stare and mumbled; “watch me.”

Part 2

Divider

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starkidmunson · 10 months ago

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glitter & crimson

Realistically, Steve knows the band won’t hang around Chicago forever. He knows they’re out promoting a new album; knows they’ll have to move on and that Eddie has to go with them. It doesn’t stop him from wanting Eddie to stay; to live in the quick familiarity he’s built within Steve’s little found family.

Eddie and Robin seem to have already created their own secret language, all gestures and movement and eye contact Steve picks up on but can’t quite read. He’s already picking on the Party like he’s known them their whole lives; ruffling Dustin’s hair, elbowing Mike, throwing his arm around Will’s shoulders, and giving Lucas little shoves.

It’s easy; so easy to get caught up in how charismatic Eddie is. Steve has a hard time keeping his eyes off him, and Eddie knows. He keeps making comments, throwing winks in Steve’s direction, seeing right through every wall he’s ever built around himself and Steve is caught between being obsessed with it and terrified.

He stops drinking after the one beer, worried he’ll make things weird if he gets anywhere near tipsy, opting to stay as far away from the possibility as he can. If anyone notices, they don’t comment.

Lucas is chatting animatedly with Jeff, Max sitting close by, twisting braids into El’s hair. Dustin, Mike and Will appear to be grilling Gareth and Freak about dungeon and dragon campaigns Eddie used to run. Nancy has her arm looped through Robin’s, but her attention is on the phone in her hands, as Eddie and Robin talk about what touring is like.

“Where else are you going on this tour?” She asks as Steve tunes back into the conversation.

“This isn’t really a tour, we just haven’t been on the road in a while and we just stopped the album, so we lined up a few shows to get our feet wet before we hit the road for real this summer. One more show out in LA on Tuesday, then we’re done until May, for now.” Eddie explains.

“We’re in LA on Thursday!” Robin exclaims, and Steve’s stomach drops because, yeah. LA on Thursday. He trains his eyes on the glass in front of him, not willing to actually look at anyone they’re around.

“We could totally meet up again if you guys are able to swing it?” Freak offers, and Steve forces a little smile onto his face and nods.

“We can figure it out later,” Eddie says after a few beats, and Steve is grateful for how the conversation rolls onto the next topic. When he finally looks back up, though, Eddie’s still looking his way. Steve hits him with what he hopes comes off as a reassuring smile, but it doesn’t seem to pay off the way he hopes.

Once the tab is closed and the staff is tipped well, Steve catches Eddie’s elbow on their way out the door. “I would like to meet up in LA, if you’re interested. I didn’t mean to get weird about it, it’s… I’ve been in my head a bit about that game since it was announced.”

“Oh, hey, no worries. We’re in LA the whole week, then we’re heading home. So no pressure, honest.” Eddie hooks his hand over Steve’s softly.

“Well, we should get in Wednesday, but we could totally do something after the game or even Friday?”

Eddie smiles and nods, patting over Steve’s hand. “Text me about it.”

“I can do that. How much longer are you guys in town for, anyway?” Steve asks.

“Ah, the dreaded question comes,” Eddie’s playful, and it makes Steve’s face heat up. “We’ve got just under another 24 hours in the Windy City before hitting the road again.”

“Oh,” It pulls his chest in a way he wasn’t expecting, in a way that shouldn’t be happening for a rockstar he was adjacently aware of in high school. “Are you busy tomorrow?”

“Harrington,” Eddie’s teasing again, and it does nothing to help the blush on Steve’s face. “You can’t possibly miss me this much when I haven’t even left yet.”

“Shut up,” Steve shoves him away then, crossing his arms over his chest with a pout, only for Eddie to pull him in with an arm around the shoulder.

“We can grab brunch or something? We leave around 8 to avoid rush hour, so I’ll have to be in the bus by 6, or I’d say dinner.”

“Brunch works for me.”

~~~~

The trip back to the hotel doesn’t go as Eddie expects; everyone is silently chatting amongst themselves, nodding and tapping along to the music and not causing a scene. He almost points it out, but elects not to bring unwarranted bullying upon himself instead. The guys had been giving him shit about Steve near constantly, so this was a nice change of pace after the last few days.

There was actually quiet as he made his way back to his room. A hot shower finally restored warmth to his bones the hockey arena had stolen, and he was drying his hair when he heard his phone vibrate with a text notification.

Steve: anything you're craving for brunch tomorrow so I can pick a place?

It’s practically too easy to flirt with Steve; he sets up lines without even seeming to realize. But Eddie still can’t get a real gauge on how Steve feels about the flirting, so he sidesteps the easy pass he could have made about Steve being enough of a meal, in favor of actually answering.

Eddie: French toast?

The next series of texts come before Eddie even moves his hands back to the towel over his hair.

Steve: sick, I’ll pick you up around 10:45

Steve: you mentioned going home, did you mean like, back to Hawkins?

Eddie twists his hair up in the towel, and lays down on the side of the bed he doesn’t sleep on before firing off an answer.

Eddie: nah, I’ve got a place in Nashville and no reason to go back to Hawkins anymore. My uncle moved to Indy, so that’s usually as close as I get.

Steve: any reason you moved to Nashville?

Eddie: are we playing 20 questions?

Steve: sorry.

Eddie bites his lip, and only hesitates for a moment before flipping over onto his belly and hitting the FaceTime button. Steve answers on the second ring, looking embarrassed, but Eddie doesn’t let him get a word in.

“My mom was born and raised in Memphis, but she always told me her favorite city was Nashville. I was there with her a few times when I was little and she’d just, like, light up. And music is so heavily engraved into every inch of the city, it’s hard to not find inspiration everywhere you turn. So. I bought a place in Nashville the minute I had enough saved up, and it’s kind of my home base now.” Eddie explains, watching as Steve’s face softens and he relaxes into his chair listening to Eddie’s answer. “Do I get to ask a question now?”

“I really wasn’t trying to be annoying, “ Steve looks ready to keep going with an apology, but Eddie cuts him off.

“Why do you play hockey?” It stops Steve dead in his tracks, and he genuinely looks confused for a moment. Eddie almost offers to drop the topic, but Steve fumbles his way into an answer.

“My, uh. My dad wanted me to play before I was even born. Because he played. Professionally for a few years when I was growing up, then he went on to coach.” Steve explains, and it sounds a little rehearsed. Eddie’s sure it’s something that comes up often if his father played and coached. “Gotta keep the Harrington legacy alive, I guess.”

There was a bite to Steve’s words that wasn’t lost on Eddie. “You don’t sound too thrilled about it.”

Eddie can see Steve working over how he wants to answer before he shrugs and sighs. “Because it’s all a show for him. The part we don’t talk about is how I got hurt and benched most of my senior season and he cut me off when I didn’t get full rides. Convinced me it was better to not go to college at all, despite the other scholarship offers, than to not get promised a spot on the ice. Convinced me to self-sabotage so I had to fight tooth and fucking nail to get into the league at all.” Steve pauses, then, and lets out a quiet laugh. “Sorry, that’s so unbelievably whiny of me. I love getting to play professionally, and I don’t take the opportunity for granted.”

“Not whiny. Dads can be the fucking worst.” Eddie offers, gently, and is grateful when Steve doesn't press on that particular bruise.

Instead, he takes his turn to ask a different question. “Why music?”

“This is lame, but the answer is once again my mom.” Eddie rolls his eyes at himself, but he smiles. “She was a musician. There were always instruments around and music was always playing and we traveled for her to perform. I knew my whole life I wanted to be a musician like her, but it wasn’t until after she died that I figured out that songwriting… telling stories and painting pictures with words and melodies and making people feel something…” Eddie trails off, lost in the thought.

“I’m sorry you lost her. It sounds like you enjoyed your childhood with her.” Steve offers, hopes it doesn’t sound like a forced nicety, but Eddie smiles and his nerves ease.

“She was a force to be reckoned with. Firing on all cylinders at once, chaos and home bundled into one.” Eddie’s soft a quiet for a moment, and Steve appreciates the silence by taking in how relaxed the other is to be talking about his feelings; it’s a refreshing break from many of his experiences with teammates or opponents who don’t know how to get emotional in a healthy way. Eventually, though, Eddie clears his throat. “Anyway. Back to 20 questions,”

“I wasn’t trying to start a game, really, I just… like talking to you,” Steve admits around a blush, tucking his chin into the collar of his shirt in an effort to hide the shade of his cheeks, but Eddie’s smile says his cover is blown.

“ANYWAY!” He announces louder, then taps at his chin. “Favorite and least favorite teams to play and why, go.”

“I’m not a dog.” Steve laughs but thinks about his answer anyway. “Favorite is probably the Flyers in Philly. Their fans are absolutely brutal, and their mascot is hilariously terrifying.”

“I have seen many a Gritty TikTok, so I completely understand,” Eddie gives him a few beats before he prompts. “Least favorite?”

“The Kings. LA. Billy Hargrove.”

“The…, what the fuck? How many guys from Hawkins are professional hockey players?” Eddie asks, because honestly, how had he not known there was more than Steve?

“He’s technically from LA, which is why he went back, thank God.” Steve mumbles, before dropping his head back against the wall behind him. “But, for whatever it’s worth, there’s me, Billy, and Tommy Hagan in the league.”

“Well isn’t that a fun bunch to surround yourself with,” Eddie muses out loud. Tommy and Billy were two of the biggest assholes Eddie had ever met, and it sounded like Steve wasn’t too fond of the other pair either.

“I actually…” Steve trails off, before trying again. “I was going to invite you guys to come to the LA game, but I’m really not sure it would be a good idea, so I’m… I’m actually going to ask you guys not to come, if that’s not too much of a dick move? I can get you tickets to literally any game you want for the rest of the season, just. I don’t think it’s worth it to get Billy started, and if he’s heard any of the press about us, I’m already going to hear it even if you’re not there.”

“Homophobe extraordinaire still, then?” Eddie guesses, and Steve chokes out a laugh, before covering his mouth and holding up a finger to ask for a moment to compose himself.

“He's… a lot of things.” Is the response Steve opts for, but Eddie can tell there’s more there. Whatever the two of them are doing, it doesn’t feel like Steve is ready to elaborate, so Eddie moves on.

“I think it’s your turn.”

~~~~

Nothing changes after Corroded Coffin leave Chicago, though. Not in the ways Eddie had expected, at least.

Steve still texts him throughout the day, answers his Facetimes whenever he’s available. Eddie makes him the playlist he promised, and Steve gives feedback on which songs he likes and which ones he really doesn’t, after Eddie promises to not take Steve’s opinions personally. Which, to be fair, he tries really hard not to.

The concert in LA comes and goes, and Steve seems to send him every TikTok he comes across from the show. It’s a refreshing break, as every few videos in Eddie’s feed are of him cheering for Steve at the game, or Steve watching from sidestage in Chicago.

A text from Robin eventually confirms their arrival in LA, and Steve and Eddie make plans to meet up after the game. Since Steve had expressed concern about Eddie going, he decides to just watch from the bar they agree to meet at. Televised games make it easier to track the puck, but Eddie decides he likes being there in person better.

Eddie’s sipping absently on his beer and in the time it takes him to look down at a text from Chrissy, several of the people around him react to something. Eddie looks around to make sure someone in the bar hadn’t passed out. When he looks back at the screen, absolute mayhem has broken out on the ice. The refs are trying to separate players from one another, and Eddie’s scanning through the numbers on each Blackhawks jerseys before he finally spots Steve, slightly off to the side from everyone else. The camera pans away from him, zeroing in on the fight, now between a Blackhawks defenseman and none other than Billy Hargrove.

Billy’s helmet and gloves are off, teeth shining with blood as he grins like a psycho and starts to skate in Steve’s direction. One of the refs pulls him back, though, escorting him into the penalty box while another Kings player gathers his helmet, stick and gloves and clears them to the bench.

The camera finally pans back to Steve, who is now sitting with his back against the boards. He’s got a gloved covering the lower half of his face, but his white jersey is covered in blood. A ref and the Blackhawks goalie are kneeling on either side of him as someone else speaks with him. The camera zooms in as the TV crews work to make out what is happening, just in time for Steve to lower his hand and shows off a gnarly gash along the side of his face. He leans forward a little and spits out blood onto the ice, and the TV jumps to the announcers in the booth.

The volume is off, but they show a slow-motion replay of the few moments Eddie’d missed; Steve passes the puck off to another player on his team, just before Billy slams into his side. The impact sends both of them into the boards and down onto the ice. Billy swings his stick around and cracks Steve in the face with the blade heel. Steve reacts, throwing his whole arm into Billy’s face, before a sea of white Blackhawks jerseys sweep in and suddenly Billy’s a few feet away, with players from both teams piled up.

Eddie’s hand hovers over his phone; has no idea what to do in this situation. Texting Steve is useless; it would likely be hours, if not days, before he even thinks about looking at his phone. He doesn’t want to bother anyone, but he’s… well, he’s stressed. Even if Steve isn’t interested in him the way Eddie’s interested in Steve, they’ve still built a weird little friendship and that was an awful lot of blood.

So, Eddie ends up firing off a text to Robin. It’s just a simple 'let me know if there’s anything I can do,' but his phone lights up with a call immediately.

“How bad is it?”

“I’m not back with him yet, but just… meet us at the hospital, if you can?” She asks. While her voice waivers a bit, she’s calmer than Eddie expected her to be.

“I’ll be right there.” He agrees, hangs up and exits the bar before the game even returns from commercial break.

#hockeyplayer!steve harrington #steddie #rockstar!eddie munson #stranger things hockey au #glitter & crimson #sorry this took like 2 weeks #we're going to try to keep the momentum going here #steve harrington #eddie munson #robin buckley #platonic stobin #corroded coffin #steddie fanfic #starkidmunson writes #oh i almost forgot #one of the most important tags for this one #anti billy hargrove

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writeonwhiskey · 4 months ago

Text

the skz house: ch 23 (chan pov)

a/n: thank you @bahablastplz for editing! i really loved writing from chan's pov. i hope you all enjoy this one!!

[ read chapter 22 here ]

Chapter Twenty-Three: Of You

You haven’t spoken to me in days.

A few months ago, this wouldn’t have bothered me at all. I would have been fine with it. I would have preferred it. Here I am now, silently pleading with you at the table to look at me. But you don’t. And it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have said those things to you the other night. I shouldn’t have fucked you like that.

Seeing you hurt as a direct result of my actions has never been easy to accept. In the beginning I brushed it off as being necessary. After you bulldozed through the walls I had up, though, it felt impossible to reassemble them. I’m Humpty fucking Dumpty over here.

Should I have sent you away when you showed up at our house? Lee Know was in charge of the applicants, so I was floored seeing you walk in behind Seungmin that day. If I’d seen you amongst the candidates beforehand, I would have rejected it...maybe. I would have at least been able to spare you of the bullshit I put you through then, and again now. It’s unfair to you. I know it is.

But once you were here, I didn’t want you to leave. I pushed you away because I needed you to make the choice to go—I’m too selfish when it comes to you, I learned that quickly. I’ve never felt this way about anything before and I honestly don’t know how to cope with it. I feel whole when I’m with you in general, I feel invincible when I’m fucking you…how can this possibly be wrong?

Now I’m left hanging on to the tiniest of threads that connect us and I’m trying not to cling too hard for fear that it will snap from all the weight I bear in this. The thought of losing you terrifies me. And I know it’s inevitable.

I attempt to talk to you after dinner when I see you in the hallway. I want to apologize for my actions, but you cut me off.

“Don’t be. You’re right. We should want to do this and I’m going to give it a try.”

I feel consumed with rage at your words. I want to lash out and scream or punch a hole through the goddamn wall. But I don’t. I let you go.

I have to let you go.

On Sunday when you come to my room to grab your sheets, you don’t say anything. I deserve it though, don’t I? If I hadn’t taken that trip with you my father wouldn’t have grown suspicious. I wouldn’t have to give you up for the next two weeks when I already have so little time left with you. If I hadn’t opened up to you, this wouldn’t be so hard on both of us. And on top of all that, I’m the one who told you we should be open to this first. I’m reaping what I’ve sown.

Allie comes in a little while later to put her sheets on your bed. The sight of them there doesn’t look right. Neither does she.

I watch as she moves around my room, oblivious to my mood and making small talk. I’m responsive…I think. I will myself to feel some kind of emotion while looking at her—even if it’s just lust. She’s pretty, I could be attracted to her. If I call her over to my bed right now, she’d come. I could fuck her…but I don’t want to.

My ears perk up when she says she wants to spend the first night with me. As much as I want to object, I don’t. I can’t, really.

After dinner, I quickly shower and get into my own bed with the lights off before she returns. I can’t fall asleep, though. I’m thinking about you. Who are you staying with tonight? Are you sleeping in their bed?

I’m still wide awake when she comes back in, wearing just a towel. I can’t even be bothered to take a gander.

It disturbs me.

She shouldn’t be here.

“Chan? Are you asleep?” she calls out into the darkness.

I remain silent and still. I hear her change into her pajamas and climb in her—your—bed, and finally feel relaxed enough to actually try falling asleep.

She stays with Hyunjin for the next three days and it feels like a relief. I’d rather be alone. But…being alone, with my thoughts does little to help me. I can’t stop thinking about you. What are you doing? Is Seungmin being good to you?

As fucked up as my mental and emotional state are, on Jeongin’s birthday I can’t keep being a recluse. He’ll be offended if I don’t show up for a little while, at least. So, I join the others in the basement for drinks and karaoke. Drinking to drown my sorrows is not something I enjoy, but tonight I want to. Especially since Allie will be in my room. I don’t want to do anything I might regret—but have you?

I’m one drink deep by the time you come in with Changbin. You seem happy. He offers to get you a drink, which I don’t mind. Then he calls you his girl. Which I do mind.

At that, I finish what’s left in my cup and give myself another heavy-handed pour of whiskey to replenish it. Have you fucked him? I wonder. The thought makes me feel sick to my stomach. I can’t help but feel selfish. In this fucked up situation, I know none of these guys would do anything to intentionally harm you. I know you’re in good hands, but…fuck. I don’t want anyone else on this entire planet to have you.

As the night carries on, everyone’s having a good time and I’m sulking in the corner like a toddler that’s been forced to share his favorite toy. I don’t know how else to feel right now. I am used to seeing you be flirtatious with Hyunjin. Seeing you cuddled up to Changbin on the couch, though, makes me want to snatch you away from him and claim you in front of everyone. But I can’t.

I can’t even be mad at him. He means well. And when he gets up to perform, I’m left smiling at his antics. I couldn’t seriously hate any of them, even if you are involved. I’ve known them for too long. These are my brothers. At the end of everything, they’re the ones who will be with me the rest of my life. Not you.

“Chan-hyung!”

I’m ripped form my confuddled thoughts when Jeongin says my name. I immediately shake my head—I’m not in the mood.

“For my birthday,” he adds. “Stop being boring and old.”

I frown at that.

Then Lee Know is marching towards me, grabbing me by the arm, and pulling me to the other room. I don’t put up too much of a fight—I’m old and boring, after all.

“For your birthday,” I look pointedly at Jeongin to which he beams back at me. “What do you wanna hear?”

“That new song you were finishing up last week,” he says.

“No, not that,” I shake my head.

For my music production minor, I’ve been spending more time in the studio than usual. There’s no better way to get my feelings and frustrations out than through music. Tortured artist and all that.

“Yes, that. It’s my birthday.”

He’s really milking this birthday thing. He connects his phone to the speaker, and I silently curse myself for having sent him the song. Everything I’ve done lately has come back to slap me in the face.

The melody starts to play, and I let out a sigh, trying to shake my troublesome thoughts and get into performance mode. I turn to face the TV; I can’t look at you while I sing this.

“Got so many questions, you seek information. No need to be desperate, we’re just getting started.”

I started writing this song before we even took our trip, but only just booked the studio time to record it. The lyrics cut deeper now than when I originally wrote them. They reveal the way I’ve felt about you. The way I still feel about you.

This is bad, isn’t it?

Do you hate it?

Are you repulsed after the way I treated you?

As I continue singing, I turn around to face everyone. My eyes find you first. You seem taken aback—it’s understandable.

“Locked in sight, we’re in trouble. A lock and a key making rumbles. I know you want me, don’t crumble.”

I avert my gaze before the next lyrics. Looking at you and singing them will make me crumble. But I mean every single word. I never thought I’d meet someone that feels so perfect for me. Why did it have to be like this?

When the song is over, I pass the mic to Rhiannon and retreat back to the bar. You’re performing now. You’re smiling and happy…all the things I wish I could make you. But I can’t. I’m not allowed to. Not for real anyways.

My eyes are so focused on you that I don’t notice Allie until she’s snapping her fingers in front of my face.

“Earth to Chan—you okay?” she places a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m good,” I say, sitting up straight and drinking from my cup.

She’s standing between my legs. Again, I will myself to feel something…anything. Maybe not unbridled attraction, but at least a desire to fuck her. It doesn’t happen. I raise a hand to her waist to test it out, but it doesn’t feel right. I could kiss her right now, get it over with.

“I have class at 8 so I’m gonna head up. You coming?”

I shrug, dropping my hand from her waist.

“Come on,” she says, sliding her hand down my arm to my wrist.

I let her pull me off the chair and up the stairs with her. I guess I could go to my room with her. I probably should.

So, I do. I follow her up the steps, her hand still holding my wrist. We get to my room, and she shuts the door behind us.

“I’m gonna shower first,” I say, in hopes the steam will clear my mind up.

She releases my wrist and I retreat to my bathroom.

I should fuck her. I really should. Even though I don’t feel physically attracted to her, I can think of you to make my dick hard. Then I can fuck her and get you out of my head. I can end this turmoil.

The shower does little to make me feel better. Nothing can make me feel better.

Except you.

I spend far longer than necessary in there and when I get out, I’ve lost all conviction to sleep with her. As I re-enter my room, I’m hoping and praying that she has fallen asleep.

She hasn’t.

“Get some rest…I’m gonna go make a snack.”

“I can make you something,” she offers, pushing the sheets back.

“No, it’s okay—thank you, though. Go to sleep.”

She nods and pulls the blankets back over her.

Downstairs, I sit down on the couch and turn the TV on. I’m not even hungry. I just didn’t want to be in my room with her. I’ve never felt so hung up on someone before, it leaves me at a loss of what to do. If I fuck her, it would only be to help myself move on from you. I’m just not convinced it would work. And I’d hate myself after for it. But have you already moved on? The thought keeps plaguing me.

I remain in place, rooted to the couch, as the others start to file out of the basement. First Han and Charlotte, then Lee Know, then comes Changbin…and you.

He’s drunk. He has one arm slung over your shoulder, and both of yours are wrapped around his waist to support him. You help him up the stairs without so much as a glance in my direction. What are you going to do up there? I want to go up there after you, but I can’t.

The sounds coming from the TV start to annoy me. I mute it and stare blankly at the moving images. I don’t know how much time passes in silence. My attention is drawn to the stairs at the sound of footsteps coming down.

It’s you.

You immediately look away from me and proceed into the kitchen. I shouldn’t follow you. But I’m up and off the couch before I can stop myself. I’m drawn to wherever you are. I’m a magnet and you’re my true north.

With every step I take towards you the voice in my head—my father’s voice—is telling me to stop and turn around and I hate it. I hate that voice. I hate that it wants to steal the one piece of unadulterated happiness I’ve felt in years. You feel like bliss. You feel like hope.

He threatened to make you leave. I swear to God I nearly fucking broke right then and there. He can yell and berate me all he wants, but to threaten to take you away before our time is up? Out of the question. I put up a front, acted nonchalant about you.

‘She doesn’t mean anything, Appa.’

Lie.

You mean everything.

When I enter the kitchen, you’re grabbing water bottles from the pantry. I don’t have a plan, but I know I need to be near you, so I walk over to the pantry and wait for you to turn around.

The second your eyes land on me, all traces of feeling confused and lost leave my body. I’m found. My body is filled with the purest warmth, and I have to touch you to get more of it. I have to have you. You avert your eyes to the water bottles in your hand and I feel a pain in my chest.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I ask, placing a hand on your waist and pulling you towards me.

It’s an unfair question. You don’t know this inward battle I’ve been fighting since you showed up here. But I don’t know what else to say. It’s less of a question and more of a plea, really.

“I’m not doing anything,” you say softly. “I’m just…existing.”

“That’s all it takes, honestly,” I reply.

“Chan,” you whisper, shaking your head, eyes still on the water bottles.

You won’t look up at me. Why won’t you look at me? I need you to look at me.

I take a few steps back from the pantry and bring you with me. This is the most I’ve touched you in a week. I’m not letting you go. I hold your waist with one hand and use the other to grab the water bottles, two by two, from your hand and set them on the counter before returning my attention to you.

“I feel like I’m in shambles when I’m away from you,” I admit, hooking a finger under your chin, forcing you to look up at me.

“You’re drunk,” you say, trying to push me away.

I hold on to you tighter, standing my ground.

“I miss you.”

You close your eyes and sigh, shaking your head again. You don’t believe me?

“You can’t.”

“But I do.” I say, bending down to nuzzle my face into your neck.

If you push me away again, I’ll take that as a sign. If you’ve made up your mind, I’ll have to live with it.

I wait for it, but it doesn’t happen.

Instead, you wrap your arms around my neck and pull me closer to you. I take in a deep breath and feel the stars align as the familiar smell of your skin ensnares my senses.

My hand leaves your waist and trails up your back, into your hair. I grab a handful of it and tug back on it. You look up at me with those soft fucking doe eyes that make my insides melt. The complete and utter trust you have in me. I can see it.

I smash my lips against yours, maybe too hard, but I don’t care. I want you. I fucking miss you.

You don’t hesitate to kiss me back, just as passionately. Do you miss me too?

I grab you by the waist and hoist you up on the counter as we kiss. My hands fumble at the waistband of your pajama bottoms. I want you so bad. Why am I nervous? And then, you’re helping me, leaning back and lifting your hips to push them down. I pull them off and toss them on the floor beside us. I scoot you to the edge of the counter and lower myself to my knees.

You tangle your hands in my hair as I rub my nose along your slit, inhaling my favorite scent. You smell so good, baby girl. I use my tongue on you next, needing to have you with all my senses. You throw your head back and let out a quiet whimper as I continue to fill myself with what I’ve been deprived of. What I don’t want to go without.

You.

My hands grip your thighs and as I’m licking, lapping, fucking you with my tongue, the emotions I so desperately willed myself to experience earlier surface. And I know then. I know I’m done for. How can I willingly give this up?

I stand from my knees and pull you off the counter, covering your mouth with mine again.

Do you like the way you taste on me? Your moan says yes.

“My cock throbs every time I see you, y/n,” I tell you, breaking the kiss as I turn you around, groping your breasts over your t-shirt. Your head falls back against my shoulder and litter the side of your neck with kisses. I pull you against me and press my hips against yours. I want you to feel how hard I am. How hard you make me. I could come in my pants right now, without even fucking you.

I’m helpless when it comes to you. Can’t you see that?

“Tell me to stop,” I plead, resting my cheek on yours and thrusting my hips against you again.

You shake your head and lean over on the counter, poking your ass out at me. You’re such a good fucking girl. I slap your ass with the palm of my hand, watching as it jiggles in the dimly lit kitchen. I grab a hand full of it, squeezing tightly.

I push my shorts and boxers down and grab my cock with one hand, holding your hips steady with the other. I rub my cock up and down your slit, groaning at how wet you are. Your pussy is always so wet and ready for me. Do you need me just as much as I need you?

“Every time before I fuck you,” I say, teasing your opening as you moan, “I tell myself I can live without it.”

I ease myself inside of you and we both let out the biggest sigh of relief at the same time.

“But I can’t,” I continue, slowly withdrawing. “I fucking can’t.”

I thrust myself back inside of you with as much force as I can and all hell breaks loose.

I realize the precarious situation we’re in. In the kitchen. But I could not care any less. My cock is home inside of you. This is where I’m supposed to be. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I keep thrusting into you and you fuck me back. You want me just as much as I want you, don’t you? But do you need me like I need you? I can’t ask you that, so I just fuck you harder instead. It’s not healthy to communicate this way, but I can’t bring myself to say these desperate words to you. You take each thrust of my hips without running away and I love it. I fucking love—

No. No. I can’t.

The sound of your hushed moans, combined with the knowledge that we could be caught at any second, have all of my nerves standing at attention. You grip the edges of the counter as I grip your waist, pulling you back against me as hard as I can.

Mine.

Right now, I don’t care if you’ve fucked Seungmin or Changbin or both. They can’t hold a candle to what we have when we’re together like this. That much I’m certain of.

You’re mine, y/n.

You stand on your tiptoes and arch your back. I grit my teeth, and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to shake off my release. I need more. But even with my eyes closed, I can picture how you look in front of me. I have every curve of your body memorized; do you know that? The dimples on your back that I love pressing my thumbs into when I grip your hips. The thought makes me growl as I pummel into you harder and faster.

You’re perfect. I need you to know that. With every thrust, every grunt, every moan. I need you to know.

“Chan,” I hear you say and my eyes snap open.

I see your hand buried between your legs, rubbing your clit and working yourself to an orgasm.

Yes. Please, baby girl. Come on my cock.

I feel your pussy, my pussy, clench around my cock as your legs start to shake and I let myself go too; thrusting into you with reckless abandon as I come.

I’m convinced there’s no better feeling in the world.

I’m glad you stayed.

I’m glad I didn’t see your name on the list before you showed up.

Your legs continue to quiver as I lay myself across your back, leaving my cock inside of you.

I don’t want to move.

I don’t want you to leave me.

[ read chapter 24 here ]

a/n: HOW ARE WE FEELING, MY LOVES? poor baby chan is stuck between a rock and a (constantly) hard place. i am so so so excited to hear your thoughts.

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syluslnd · 2 months ago

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Hello it is me again !! Again love your writing so bad ♥️♥️♥️♥️ can I have the reader thinking sylus is cute and stare at him and he is weirded out by how she thinks he is cute and try to prove otherwise by teasing her , or another prompt that sylus so soft when she worries about him that she can’t sleep and wait at his house and try to search for him in N 109 - zone and she pumps at him and he scold her lightly that she shouldn’t get herself out of trouble

Thank u again LOVE U ♥️♥️♥️

Sylus reaction to you calling him “cute”

You're lying down in bed, feeling relaxed, eyes lazily following Sylus as he changes into his pajamas. The way he moves, with that effortless confidence, catches your attention more than usual. There's something about the contrast between his usual intimidating presence and the simple act of getting ready for bed that makes him... cute. You can't help but stare, completely absorbed in the sight of him.

Sylus, always keenly aware, notices your gaze lingering on him. He pauses mid-motion slipping off his shirt, and turns to face you an eyebrow raised in that teasing, dangerous way he does. "What are you staring at, kitten?" His voice is light, playful, as if he already knows the answer.

Without thinking, the words slip from your mouth. "Nothing... you're just so cute."

The moment the words are out, you realize your mistake.

Sylus's expression shifts in an instant. His teasing smile fades, replaced by a darker, more calculated look. His eyes narrow and there's a dangerous gleam in them, as though you've just thrown down a challenge you didn't mean to. "Cute?" he repeats, his voice lower now, like he's tasting the word, finding it absurd.

You sit up slightly, realizing the shift in the air. "I didn't mean-"

But Sylus is already moving toward the bed, his expression serious yet laced with mischief. "You think I'm cute, huh? Sweetie, you're going to regret saying that." His tone is dripping with mock offense, like he's ready to prove you wrong in the most teasing, torturous way possible.

Before you can react, Sylus pulls you onto his lap with one swift, effortless motion.

You're straddling him now, your body pressed against his and his grip is firm, leaving no room for escape. His eyes darken and his lips hover near your ear, his breath warm against your skin as he whispers,

"Let's see how 'cute' you think I am by the time I'm done with you." One of his hands slides down, slipping inside your shorts with a practiced ease, his fingers immediately finding its way inside your panties.

A gasp escapes you, your body already reacting to his touch but he doesn't stop there. His other hand moves to your chest, cupping your breast through the thin fabric of your tank top, his thumb brushing over your nipple with maddening precision.

The dual sensations make you shudder and Sylus's lips curl into a smirk against your ear.

"Still think I'm cute, kitten?" he murmurs, his voice low and teasing. His fingers move with deliberate slowness, applying just enough pressure to make you squirm but not enough to give you what you need.

You try to suppress a whimper but it's no use. Every part of you is hypersensitive, his touch overwhelming as both hands work you over at the same time. His fingers inside your panties tease and explore, sending waves of pleasure through you, while his other hand kneads your breast, his thumb flicking over your nipple in time with the rhythm he's setting below.

"You're so responsive" he whispers, his voice dark and velvety, filled with satisfaction as he watches you struggle to keep control.

"Is this what cute feels like to you?" His lips brush your earlobe and he bites down gently, the added sensation making you jolt in his lap.

You try to respond but the words die on your lips as his fingers dip deeper inside of you, his pace quickening just enough to push you closer to the edge. Your hips instinctively move against his hand but Sylus holds you still, his lips grazing your neck now, planting soft, taunting kisses.

"Answer me" he whispers, his voice a mix of command and teasing. "Still think I'm cute?"

Your breathing is ragged, your body trembling against his and all you can do is shake your head, barely able to form a coherent thought. But Sylus isn't satisfied with that. He slows his movements, drawing out the sensation, keeping you on the edge just long enough to make you whimper in frustration.

"Say it" he commands softly, his voice full of wicked amusement. "Tell me l'm not cute."

You can barely manage a breathy response, your voice shaking from the pleasure he's drawing out of you. "Y-you're not cute..."

Sylus chuckles, his lips finding your throat as he rewards you with a harder, more purposeful touch, his fingers working you with expert precision. "Good girl” he purrs, the teasing tone back in his voice as he pushes you closer and closer to the brink.

#love and deepspace #lnds sylus #love and deepspace sylus #l&ds sylus #lads sylus #sylus x reader #sylus #sylus x you

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syrupfog · 2 months ago

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Zoro wakes up to the scratchy feeling of a note beneath his haramaki.

“Cook’s name is Sanji.

You fight every day. He hates you. He knows your favorite foods. You loved him.

Hanahaki got bad again. You took the pill.

No. of times this has happened: [a number of scribbles] 11”

The note looks like it’s been through the ringer, crumpled and bloodied. Zoro reads it, folds it up, and sticks it back in his haramaki. He assumes he’ll need it again.

The cook— Sanji— is hard to get along with. He yells at Zoro, fights with Zoro, complains about Zoro. He’s terrible.

Living alongside him is like breathing.

It feels so natural, slotting into place next to him. Zoro knows instantly why the disease keeps coming back. It’s hell.

Robin knows. Nami knows. Chopper doesn’t seem to, and if Usopp did then Sanji would. And Sanji doesn’t seem to know.

Thank god Sanji doesn’t seem to know.

It’s only a few weeks before Zoro’s coughing up petals again. Small and blue and fragile.

They’re on an island and it’s autumn and the town’s harvest festival is happening. There’s a cult or possibly just a really zealous group of farmers. Zoro doesn’t know; he got lost and ended up at an old woman’s cottage on the outskirts of town.

His theory circles back around to *cult* when he ends up prone on her floor after some apparently drugged mulled wine. She stands over him and rants about something or other— he doesn’t care what she has to say, he’s preoccupied with the way the drugs coursing through his system are making it hard to cough, and the flowers in his throat are sticking to his insides.

It’s gross. He doesn’t cough them up so much as pukes them out.

The old woman also thinks it’s gross. She kicks him, but she’s old. He doesn’t really feel it.

Anyway, it’s a whole thing. The problem is that the woman wants to drag him somewhere to be a sacrifice to the great pumpkin or something, but Zoro’s too heavy and she can’t move him. But when she opens the door to find a neighbour to help—

Sanji’s there.

(Or, as Zoro has taken to calling him recently, Curly).

(Nami told him after he started that he often ends up at that name).

Sanji lays on the simpering to the old woman for all of about two minutes, asking if she’s seen some lost moss and then going on about her hair care. But eventually he does notice Zoro there on the floor behind her.

Slipping around the woman, who seems to be somewhat at a loss, Sanji starts ranting to Zoro about how he shouldn’t drink so much if he’s going to puke it all up, and how he stinks now— and to be fair, Zoro’s shirt is covered in puke and wilted flower petals. But then Sanji starts pulling his shirt off of him while Zoro’s still struggling to get up, and as he does so, the note— The note slips out of his haramaki.

And Zoro can’t grab it.

(He still can’t REALLY move, although he suspects that puking the flower petals did get some of the poison out).

But he cant stop Sanji. His weak “fuck off, give that back” falls on deaf ears as Sanji unfolds it. Frowns at the state of it. Reads it.

Fuck.

Then, fast as anything, Sanji stands up and punts Zoro hard enough that he flies across the room, hitting the far wall and sliding down to the floor with a grown.

Awesome. Great. Good to know how Sanji feels.

He hears the click click of his dress shoes as Sanji hurries out. And then he’s alone with the old lady, who seems truly at a loss for what to do, but that’s okay. Zoro’s too busy coughing up whole branches to notice.

Zoro is retrieved by Robin and Usopp not too long after that. By the time they’re back at the ship he’s regained a fair amount of his mobility. Whatever was going on in town, Luffy took care of it. Or Usopp did, depending on who Zoro asked.

It doesn’t matter.

Zoro coughs up petals and licks his wounds and starts searching for those pills. And probably it’s too early this time, but he just—

He wants to forget this.

He can’t find the pills, though, and he remembers too late that Sanji kept the note. He needs that.

But he’s a coward. He waits until everyone should be asleep before sneaking into the galley to see if he can find the note in the trash or something.

He miscalculates, though, and runs straight into Sanji, smoking in the dark.

“Eleven times?” Sanji asks him, staring resolutely at the wall next to Zoro.

“Apparently,” says Zoro.

Sanji laughs. Humourlessly. “Can’t wait to make it a twelfth, can you?”

“Listen,”growls Zoro. “It’s not my fault you read the fucking note. Just pretend you never found it.”

Sanji grits his teeth around his cigarette. “Is it that fucking horrible?” He asks. “The idea of having feelings for me is so fucking repulsive you’d rather rip me out of your life entirely?”

Zoro goes to say something, but there are petals squirming their way up his throat.

He coughs, hacks, spits them into his palm. Delicate blue petals splattered with blood. “You asshole,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “What, would you prefer I wallow in rejection and suffocate on a fucking plant? I don’t plan on dying here.”

Sanji goes still and quiet.

“You hid the pills, right?” Zoro continues. “Give them back. I’m done here.”

“No,” says Sanji. Quietly. “I— Moss, you can’t believe that.”

“Who else would it have been?”

“No, I mean— yeah okay, I threw your pills overboard. But that’s not—“ He swallows. “Zoro. You can’t possibly think I would reject you..?”

Zoro scrunches up his face in confusion. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “You flirted with that old woman who drugged me. You’ll flirt with our literal enemy before even looking at me.” He blinks. “And then you threw me into a wall!”

“I was caught off guard!” Sanji shrieks, jumping up. “Anyone would have done that after reading that note!”

“THAT’S AN INSANE THING TO THINK!”

“WELL MAYBE I’M A LITTLE INSANE RIGHT NOW.“

They’re suddenly at each others’ throats. Zoro grabs Sanji’s collar as Sanji grips his shoulders. He’s grimacing, face inches from Zoro’s, cigarette smashed on the floor.

“You don’t get to DECIDE WHAT I THINK and then HURT YOURSELF OVER AND OVER AGAIN,” Sanji yells.

“I’m FINE, COOK,” Zoro yells back. “I was HANDLING IT.”

And then Sanji smashes their faces together.

It’s a terrible kiss. Someone’s nose is bleeding and Zoro thinks it’s his. He thinks Sanji’s broken it.

Pulling back, Sanji says, “You didn’t have to handle it.” He pushes his forehead against Zoro’s. “That’s the fucking problem.”

Zoro purses his lips because his eyes are damp. “Shut up,” he says. “How was I supposed to know?”

Sanji’s hands are still on his collar and he pulls Zoro impossibly closer. “Just. Don’t forget me again.”

Zoro closes his eyes. “Fine,” he says. “Eleven was enough.”

#zosan #my writing #sorry i know i put this in at least some format on here already #but i wanted to put it all together #and under my tag #so IF YOUVE SEEN IT BEFORE MY BAD

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physalian · 3 months ago

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7 Misused Tropes (And How to Improve Them)

Tropes in isolation aren’t inherently bad, but a lot of them are prone to poor execution. Each one of these probably could have a whole post by themselves. A few of these used to be good but have since fallen by the wayside as their original meaning has been lost.

7. Dramatic Miscommunication

You know the ones. I think it’s worse when the story is otherwise good, the writers just could not come up with a better way to get X alone or send Y off on the necessary side quest than the lowest of low hanging fruit.

Two essential ingredients for fixing this trope: Precedent and consequences

Precedent–have the character doing the missassuming already be prone to jumping to conclusions, already suspicious or insecure, or misled by a third party so this looks inevitable, instead of pulled out of your ass.

Consequences–usually these are big blow up fights that fizzle out without any impact on the plot once they fulfill their purpose, but if it’s a nasty enough fight, characters shouldn’t just forgive and forget. While they might not completely ruin relationships, it should have characters taking a step back and either second guessing where they stand, or using this blowup to fix an underlying issue in said relationship.

6. Love Triangles

Good Love Triangle for the first 3 seasons: Elena/Stefan/Damon (TVD).

Bad Love Triangle for the entire series: Bella/Edward/Jacob (Twilight).

The difference between them (besides time to flesh out both candidates) is that both brothers brought valid pros and cons to Elena’s life, both got the chance to be with her, and Elena’s whole arc wasn’t solely focused on the agonizing choice of which brother she should pick. Regardless of which camp you’re in, Stefan brought stability, that classic cliché high school romance, mostly all good vibes. He never challenged her or talked down to her or got aggressive with her. Damon did the opposite, for better or for worse, and we know which direction the show went.

On the other hand, Jacob never for one second stood a chance with Bella and the narrative wasn’t kidding anyone. They never so much as went on one date (unless you count the motorcycle ride) and it seemed like Bella was only letting him hang on for pity’s sake. Theoretically he brought pros to the table that Edward couldn’t (like, idk, being alive), but the narrative never explored what could be done with him. He just ended up being the Nice Guy friend who then decided it’d be hot to lust after an infant.

5. Agency-less Chosen Ones

These tend to be wish fulfillment characters that bring nothing to the story and have no discernible skills, yet are constantly in the middle of the action, have all the love interests fawning over them, and are Important and Critical to saving the world… because the narrative said so. They don’t make a single choice the entire plot except to move forward or stagnate, chosen by the gods or a prophecy or fate and destiny.

The problem: These characters walk with the crutch of “I’m the chosen one thus I don’t need a reason to exist in the story” and that’s just not a satisfying narrative shortcut. So? Give them agency. Even if they’re chosen by some ancient prophecy, you still have to convince the reader why the Universe wasn’t just talking out of its ass.

Good example: Emmet from Lego Movie literally says he’s useless and has no skills and cannot think outside the Lego box. He’s supposed to be as generic as painfully possible and when he does have creative ideas, they’re supposed to be asinine and stupid. And yet. He might be physically dragged around by the other characters, but he has plenty of choices, plenty of opposition to what’s happening, plenty to say about the state of his world, and his ideas do matter and his intimate knowledge of the instructions and playing by the rules is how they win.

4. Bad Boy Love Interests

These guys were supposed to be counter-culture icons, standing up to The Man for the little guy because he knows the system is broken and rigged. He’s an affront to the stereotypical nuclear lifestyle, he resents a robotic and soulless office job and wants to create art or music or in some way benefit his world and isn’t going to play nice just to get his way. He exists in contrast to the nuclear female protagonist: Conservative, demure, rule-following caged bird who falls in love with him because he shows her that life isn’t meant to be lived in The Man’s cage. He respects the authority that deserves respect, the teachers who actually give a shit, the janitors, the librarians, but probably not the principal or the police or the local politicians, because he knows they don’t respect him and respect is a two-way street. He’s probably a mama’s boy or at the very least loves his parents (if they’re alive) and while he might engage in a little property damage like graffiti, it’s for a good cause.

This dude is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE: Abusive, controlling, aggressive, or condescending to his love interest. He’s not supposed to be an overprotective stalker or plagued by insecure jealousy over any other man in his love interest’s life. He’s not rude to his friends or arrogant about his own smarts and doesn’t think he knows best about every little thing in the world. He’s not sexist or racist just to make himself feel better and he doesn’t pressure his love interest into sex because she owes him or whatever.

Ahem.

Please bring back classic bad boys. That is all.

3. Major Character Death (for shock value)

I remember the implosion of the Walking Dead fandom after they killed Carl, one of the very few characters who was supposed to make it to the end, for… various sketchy reasons and I could never figure out what was true. Some theorized that his actor was aging out of the ‘child actor’ payscale and they didn’t want to pay him as an adult and while I have no proof, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Carl died after getting bit in just one of those hectic moments where he got unlucky, while doing something noble and stupid. In isolation, it fits the nature of the “anyone can die” show but man did it just come across in poor taste.

Obviously “for shock value” shouldn’t be the reason you do anything in your story but there is still a way to pull it off without it causing a riot: Make sure they get killed in a non-contrived way. If you plan on killing off one of your heroes suddenly, either make it bitterly ironic, or make it a situation that this character would absolutely get themselves into. The more it “fits” the less likely audiences will see the hand of the author coming in just to break the character’s fictional contract.

2. The Power Inside You All Along

This trope is usually disappointing because it tends to melt a character’s whole arc down into something pointless—this whole adventure was apparently useless if they didn’t actually need to grow or change or challenge their conceptions of the world. They could have got up off the couch as joe shmoe and beat the villain day one.

While that’s probably not what their creator intends, ‘it was inside you all along *wink*’ tends to feel that way, as it discourages internal conflict. Usually, their creator is likely trying to convey the message that one need not change, that it’s what’s inside them already that makes them special.

I present to you once again Kung Fu Panda’s “there is no secret ingredient” i.e. “the power inside you”. The difference is. Po still has plenty of internal conflict: his own self-confidence. He begins the movie eager but inexperienced and a bit oblivious, fanboying it up around his heroes. He and Shifu both insult his weight and his lacking kung fu skills, and his arc is learning self-confidence, learning how to use his weight and the body he has to fight in a way that the villain isn’t prepared for, to where Po can shit-talk him to his face during the final fight.

Most failures of this trope don’t bother exercising their protagonist. They’re pissy and resistant for the entire story and only win when the narrative agrees they were right all along. Therefore, no change, no conflict, no resolution.

1. Strong Female Characters

So many of these read like "slapped boops on a male character". They don’t work for many reasons (usually being very preachy with their agendas), but they especially don’t work when by trying to be pro-feminist, they’re still reinforcing masculine standards. A lot of people, when Captain Marvel came out, said “you didn’t have any issues with Tony Stark being an asshole but now you do when he’s a woman” which. No.

Tony was an asshole, but being an asshole was the whole point of his character, and he got humbled right quick by getting blown up and held hostage. “Proof that Tony Stark Has a Heart” and all that.

Carol was an asshole with nothing to substantiate it, and never got a reality check. She had amnesia so we didn’t get insight into who she was before to understand this transition into dickishness and was so OP, she wasn’t ever physically or emotionally challenged like Tony was.

But the other thing is this: Slapping boobs on a male character with a slew of toxic masculine traits also says that to be a successful woman, you must behave like a man. It swings so far from the femme fatale sexy leg lamp that it comes around and eats its own tail. These characters are just mean and insecure and build themselves up by tearing down the men around them.

So. Calhoun from Wreck it Ralph is this exact trope done extremely well. She’s aggressive, arrogant, loud, rude, and cynical. For about 10% of her arc. The movie immediately throws her into a situation where her strengths are basically useless—she’s stuck in Candy Land and has to rely on someone who is the antithesis of her game and character to make it out. The movie also shows you why she’s cynical via her tragic backstory.

Not only that, she’s more than just a heap of toxic masculinity in a pixie cut. She laughs, she cries, she admits when she’s wrong, she has a soft side, a gentle side, a caring side, and remains a badass through and through.

Or, once again rolling out Tigress from Kung Fu Panda: Proud, aggressive, the snubbed chosen one, cynical, mean, and overconfident in her abilities. Tigress nearly gets her entire team killed in her arrogance. She’s allowed to be wrong, very wrong. She also has her soft moments and, like Calhoun, has a very valid reason for being jaded, and is still shown to be capable of softness and nurturing during the evacuation.

Third example to hammer home that I don’t hate badass women: Andromache. Jaded, overconfident, short-tempered, aggressive, and a little mean-spirited. Tragic explanatory backstory? Check. She is also caring and loyal to her team, allowed to get emotional, allowed to be wrong and fail and lose, and kind of the surrogate mom of the team, who can also laugh and joke around and have light-hearted moments.

Whether the character is a man or a woman, being an arrogant asshole who takes zero accountability and refuses to admit when they’re wrong and never loses, audiences aren’t going to like them.

#writing #writeblr #writing a book #writing advice #writing resources #writing tools #writing tips #character development #character design #love triangle #bad boys #chosen one #strong female character #killing characters #long post

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jaylaxies · 1 year ago

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THE PATH TO A NERD’S HEART

PAIRING: nerd!jay × fem!reader

GENRE/CW: sub!jay, dom!reader, smut, fluff, unprotected sex, public sex, slight biting and marking, mentions of bullying, room sharing, kissing, handjob, mentions of sunghoon

WC: 8.1k (8169) words

SYNOPSIS: the annual debate competition was just around the corner and you were thrilled to meet your partner, who turned out to be park jongseong. from you studying together to him asking you how it feels to kiss someone, how would your relationship progress? especially when you offer to give him a demonstration, even more so when he asks if he could get a bit more.

WARNING: 18+ content, minors dni

A/N: hihi, angels! I'm back with another fic! i've re-edited this fic and i’m reposting as per the request of my anonnie! i hope y'all will enjoy this! :3 all likes, comments, reblogs and feedbacks are highly appreciated! it keeps me motivated! iloveyou all <3

“What have you done to her?” The principal sighed in distress, slightly turning his head, glancing at the girl who sat next to you with an expression filled with misery, a girl with a broken nose to be more precise.

“With all due respect, sir, she was bullying a student, which clearly goes against our school policies, and further, she tried to punch me when I asked her to stop. She had it coming,” you calmly explained the whole situation, fake politeness dripping off your tone.

The girl next to you screamed like a maniac after hearing your statement, flailing her arms and legs, claiming that you were the one who attacked her first. She never failed to show her spoiled-child behaviour in public.

“I request you to please check the surveillance camera of the corridor, it'll make it more clear to you, sir,” you faked your smile as Hana Lee, the bully, started crying, knowing that nothing could save her from the upcoming punishment now.

She was soon dismissed to go to the medical room, her wound bleeding, yet she didn’t show a sign to stop protesting.

“Miss Y/N, I understand that what Miss Lee did was wrong, but that does not give you any right to punch her.” He looked at you with an expression that clearly displayed disappointment.

“It was just self defense from my side, sir,” you said with wide eyes, plastering your most innocent face in front of him, wanting to leave his office as soon as possible.

He sighed, “you’re one of our top students, miss Y/N, and I appreciate you caring for the other students, but please refrain from using punches next time. You can leave now.”

You finally smiled in victory, muttering a ‘thank you’ before grabbing your bag and rushing out of the office.

As you got out of the office, a hand immediately grabbed your wrist, causing you to widen your eyes at the sudden gesture, your own hand curling its fingers to punch until you saw who it was.

He softly pulled you to the empty staircase area.

“I’m sorry,” he slowly whispered, he had a busted lip and red eyes, the sight made your heart hurt, a frown settling on your face.

“Jay! Oh my god! Does it hurt?” You asked, hand extending towards his face.

You barely knew the boy, in fact, your first ever proper interaction with him took place this morning.

“You shouldn’t have stepped up for me,” he sighed, eyes not meeting yours as he looked at his shoes, confused as to why you would help him.

“I don’t care what you say, I cannot stand bullying, Jay,” you simply told him, getting closer to see his wound, the wound caused by Hana.

Now, the question is: How did you reach here in the first place?

Let’s start by replaying the morning events.

The yearly Inter-school English debate was two months away from now. Meaning, that you’ll soon know who your assigned partner is for this year’s competition would be.

Your English teacher had asked you to meet her, so you made your way towards the staff room. You greeted her as soon as you saw her, eyes soon moving to observe a guy with specs standing next to her.

“Y/N, c’mere! Meet Park Jay, he’ll be your partner for this year’s debate competition,” your teacher explained.

You smiled, extending your hand which he shyly took into his bigger ones, “nice to meet you, Jay.”

Your radiant smile caused Jay to crack a small smile of his own, “it’s really nice to meet you too,” he said.

Further, the teacher explained how your school won’t be the host for the debate this year, instead, the Busan branch will be the one to do so.

Conclusively, she informed you that all your expenses will be paid by the school, except for the extra souvenirs you would purchase there for yourself.

You listened to it all, giving small nods at the end of her sentences, your eyes also shifting to look at the guy standing next to you, his gaze focused on what your teacher was telling.

A hotel will be arranged and she will accompany you both for your two day trip to the competition.

“The topic will be provided to you both soon, I hope both of you will get along well, please don’t hesitate to ask for any sort of help from me,”Ms. Hwang smiled at you both and ensured that you were okay with this setting.

Park Jay. You knew him, of course you did. He’s always been exceptionally smart in studies, him being the only one in school who matched your own pace.

The only difference between you was his shy nature. Your nature screamed enthusiasm and boldness, hence, making friends came easily to you. You were one of the popular students, not to mention how you were good at academics too, which was also paired with your kind nature.

However, you didn’t know much about Jay, except for the fact that he was good at studies and closed off, with little to no friends at your school.

This piqued your curiosity.

After Ms. Hwang left, you turned to look at the shy boy, asking him if he’d be up to eat lunch with you, to get to know each other better.

His eyes slightly widened at your suggestion and you theorized it must be because he never eats with anyone else, which worried you as you thought you had crossed a line.

His small smile just after, ensured that it was not the case, “I’d love to,” he said, and you noted how sharp yet cute his smile was.

The whole student body was shocked to see Jay interacting with the popular girl herself, their eyes fixated on your table.

It wasn’t your concern though, you were enjoying having a simple conversation with him, asking him about his hobbies. He got excited that you were willing to talk to him, not forcing yourself like the other students did. And he tried his best not to show how excited he was.

He told you about his love for fashion, his smile growing at each word he spoke, you found his deep voice pretty as you paid attention to everything he had to tell and offer.

He stopped his sentence midway, looking at you as you stared at him with shiny eyes.

“I talk a lot, don’t I?” His shyness came back to him all of a sudden.

“No! I think that it’s really beautiful that you’re so passionate about something, I could hear you speak about it for hours,” you reassured him, reaching forward to hold his hand which was kept on the table.

He breathed out softly, gulping at the sight of your joined hands and your reassuring smile, his cheeks heating up and a sudden warmth spreading through his chest.

Just one conversation and he already wanted to trust you, to spend more time with you, to get to know you better.

He looked forward to it all.

You wanted the same, to get to know him better. Jay was cute effortlessly, and you were quick to notice that even slight proximity made him nervous to the point his ears got red.

You found it adorable, promising yourself to keep a check on him to make sure he doesn’t feel lonely at school anymore.

So, when you saw Hana cornering and punching him for not completing her homework, you knew you had to step in.

He watched how you pushed her away from him, standing as a barrier between them both. He noticed how you raised your voice at her, the demeanour completely changed from the sweet one which you had in the morning.

He noticed how you didn’t hesitate to block her punch, your own hand swiming to counter punch her instead with no regrets whatsoever.

He stood there in awe, he knew was thankful to you, however, he was too shocked to even form words.

You turned back to look at him, his lip bleeding and his bloodshot eyes made you worried and angry at the same time.

Before you could say anything to him, you were dragged to the principal's office.

Which brings you back here.

Jay silently cried in front of you, “you don’t deserve this,” you softly said with a sad frown before hugging him

His hands grabbed your waist as he softly weeped into your shoulder, your hand rubbing soothing circles on his back.

You weren’t sure how long Hana had been bullying him into doing his homework, but now, you had this sudden urge of wanting to protect him, your hands tightening around him.

He calmed down after a few minutes, body still holding on to you.

“Thank you,” he softly whispered, taking a step back, his eyes meeting yours for a second before he turned away, rushing to leave.

He did not stop when you called out his name, thrice.

You sighed, stuffing your hands in the jacket pocket before leaving for the next class.

The boy never left your mind no matter how hard you tried to concentrate on the lecture.

The news had spread all around the school as the newest gossip. Some said that Jay was your new boyfriend, while some assumed you to be his bully. Nevertheless, no one bullied him after Hana got suspended for using violence in school.

Soon after, the theme for the debate was announced and Ms. Hwang had called you both to inform you about the same.

You observed his face, seeing him for the first time after that incident and you were glad to see that all his wounds were healed and didn’t leave any scars.

When he felt you looking at him, he turned to look at you, smiling softly to say hello.

After some minutes of general discussion with your teacher, she left you both alone as she had to grade other test papers.

You never brought up the topic of Hana again, only paying attention to the debate. Jay kept on glancing at you from time to time.

“Thank you,” he whispered shyly, passing you a bottle of your favourite drink, which made you tilt your head to look up at him, “I wasn’t sure what you liked so I asked Sora,” he rushed to speak, mentioning how he asked your best friend about it.

“You didn’t have to.” A smile graced your face at his sweet gesture.

He felt more confident talking to you now, and he even attempted to make silly jokes just to see you laugh, which you did, heartily at that.

Your hand grabbed his arm as you tried to support yourself while laughing. He found it beautiful and he wished to hear your laugh more often. Your hand felt soft on his arm, sending tingles to his stomach.

You hugged him softly before leaving, your sweet scent sending Jay into a state of frenzy, his ears turning red while his heartbeat felt faster than usual.

Being teased was like a routine for you now, your friends did everything in their will to constantly remind you how 'soft' you have gone for that nerd kid.

“Your jealousy is showing,” you smirked at Sunghoon, who repeatedly mentioned Jay in each of your conversations.

“Of fucking course! You haven’t kissed me in weeks,” he retorted.

It had been a while since you ended your friends with benefits relationship with him, you just couldn’t do it anymore, it felt wrong to you, seeing how attached he was getting with your setting.

Yet still, you decided to humor him this time.

Laughing at his pouty face, you grabbed his chin as you kissed him, trapping him against the lockers and he eagerly kissed back, not caring if anyone saw you both.

The makeout session was short lived as the bell was quick to indicate the time for your next class, a groan leaving his mouth as he punched the locker, muttering how nothing works in his favour.

You left him there, a boyish smirk spreading on his face when you winked at him.

You were breathless, but then you realized why you had left this in the first place, the guilt seeping deep inside you, knowing that it would lead him on if your suspicions were right.

You’ll say no the next time, that’s what you decided, not paying attention to the lesson the entire class.

You didn’t like him, you just needed a distraction from a certain someone who invaded your mind at the most random times.

You weren’t going to use Sunghoon as a distraction anymore.

You couldn't.

Jay met you at the library after school, for research purposes and collecting further information on your topic to be prepared as much as possible.

“Hey,” you smiled, hugging him, which had now become a usual thing for you two.

You noticed how he was a bit hesitant somehow, his arms not pulling you closer like they always used to.

Not paying much attention to it, you both got inside and searched for your respective books and topics, noting down all the information you needed. No words were exchanged for a long time, your focus solely on the text in front of you.

“How does it feel?” A whisper was heard from beside you.

“Excuse me?” You asked, looking up at Jay, confused at his unusual antics and sudden silence. “H–how does it feel to kiss someone?” He completed his sentence, not looking up at you while he kept fiddling with the hem of his uniform sleeve.

“Wait, you saw?” You asked him, eyes widening as you thought that he might have gotten the wrong impression.

You realized that he might have seen you kiss hoon earlier today, hence his question.

“Have you ever kissed anyone before, Jay?” You enquired slowly, not missing the way his eyes turned big for a second.

“N—no,” he whispered.

“Have you ever wanted to try it?” You softly asked.

Jay was probably the purest person you had ever met, the thought of corrupting him kept on swimming in your mind, the fact that he might want to try something with you made you smile.

“Will it be fine?” he hesitated again, “isn’t he your boyfriend?” He asked, referring to Sunghoon.

“What?” you almost shouted, apologizing once you got looks from the nearby students.

Maybe the library isn’t the best place for such conversations.

“He’s not my boyfriend, Jay. We’ve had something but it was not a relationship,” you revealed.

He listened to you with all his attention, a small smile on his face when you told him that you were single, which you didn’t fail to notice.

And he nodded, saying that he wants to try. His ears were red, which you found adorable.

“Of course, we’ll stop the moment you feel uncomfortable, yeah?” You assured him.

“But, here?” he kept on asking like a kid, his heartbeat beyond control as he tried not to seem too flustered.

You laughed, “we’re meeting at my place tomorrow, right? We can try it out then, if you’d be comfortable with that,” you suggested and he agreed shyly, nodding and looking down at his fingers.

You only looked at the pretty boy next to you, wondering how far he would want to go with you.

Jay was overwhelmed by the fact that you agreed to kiss him, he had been staring at your lips ever since he saw you kiss sunghoon in the morning, deeply wishing that it was him instead.

It was pretty strange of him to think this way, but he couldn’t stop, especially when he saw how you took control of the kiss, tilting Sunghoon’s head to the side and kissed him deeply.

You saw him looking dazed as you were about to leave, his actions being so cute, which left you wanting to fluster him more.

A cute yelp left his mouth as you softly pecked his cheek, tiptoeing to do so, before bidding him goodbye.

He blushed a lot in general, but you being around him took it to another level, you found it adorable to say the least, excited to see how he would behave tomorrow.

The next day, Jay woke up early. He wanted to look perfect, to smell perfect, to be perfect for you. Not that he needed to do anything, yet he did some extra research for the debate and printed them out for you, to make up for the time you’d invest to kiss him today.

He paid more attention to his clothes, for this would be the first time you would see him without his usual uniform. He even devoted his time to do his hair, finally reaching your place at the exact time you had given him.

Releasing his breath and cussing once, he rang the doorbell.

You were quick to rush down to open the door, not wanting him to wait for long, chuckling when you saw how he rang the bell at the exact time you had given him.

His breathing hitched as he laid his eyes on you.

It was the first time he saw you looking this comfortable as you wore a soft and loose top along with sweatpants.

“Jay! Come in,” your enthusiastic voice dragged him out of his daydream as he nodded.

He followed you like a lost puppy, “are you home alone?” He couldn’t help but ask.

“Oh, yeah! My parents come home late,” you explained with a wink, “don’t worry, baby,” you said and he almost passed out with the nickname you had used.

You smirked at his state, making him sit on your bed.

“You look good,” you complimented seeing his attire and he muttered a small thank you, a shy smile spreading on his face.

He likes to be praised, you noticed.

Without much delay, you started scripting your research papers. Jay noted how you were always serious when it came to studies and the competition, he paid attention to the way you bit your lower lip while concentrating.

Some part of him wanted you to do the same to his lips, he waited patiently for you to remember your promise to kiss him but you never once brought it up, his mood turning sad.

Taking the matter into his own hands, he spoke up.

“Can we—” he took a deep breath as you stared at him with big doe eyes, urging him to continue.

“I—it’s nothing actually.” He backed away.

You laughed, “I didn’t peg you to be the impatient type,” you smirked, well knowing what he wanted.

Closing your laptop, you urged him to come near you, patting the space next to you.

“We’ll start off with a simple peck, yeah? Pinch me if you feel uncomfortable and I'll stop,” you told him and he shivered as you got closer to his face, gulping his anxiety down.

“May I?” You finally asked, searching his eyes.

“Y—yes,” he whispered, nodding.

Softly placing your hand on his cheek, your lips touched his lips in a short peck. They merely touched, yet it was enough for Jay to get butterflies, heart beating out of his chest at the sensation.

You leaned back to observe his reaction, he still had his eyes closed, a soft rosy glow spread on his cheeks.

Getting closer again, you grabbed his chin, tilting his head as you dived in to kiss him, longer this time, your lips moving in sync once he got the hang of it, low whine leaving his mouth, making you smile.

You wanted to play with him even more.

So, you gently bit on his lower lip, causing him to gasp, giving you enough opportunity to taste him.

It felt so right yet, forbidden somehow.

You had invaded all his senses, you pushed him down on the bed, his eyes looking at your every move as you made him lean against the head frame, you sat down on his lap and he cussed.

“Does it feel good?” You asked with a small, teasing smile.

“Fuck, y—yes it feels so good,” he whispered out.

“Yeah? So good that my good boy is using bad words now?” You teased.

“Please,” he whined, “sorry, I’ve never done this before and it just, it felt so good I couldn’t help it,” he rambled and you shut him up with a peck.

“Lord, you’re so adorable. It makes me want to ruin you,” you breathed out, brushing his hair away from his forehead, gripping his chin and running your thumb on his swollen lower lip.

His heartbeat sped up at your words again, head dizzy as he said, “please,” and you pulled him into a deep kiss for the second time.

Your fingers softly tugged on his hair, finally causing him to moan out loud, his pretty voice resounding all over the room.

You both pulled back from the kiss after a few minutes, breathing hard and deep to come back to your senses.

“How was it?” you asked him in a gentle voice, sitting down next to him, slightly worried if you had gone too far for his first time.

His stare on your face and silence only made it worse.

“Can we do that again?” He asked after a few seconds, trying not to sound too shameless, but he couldn’t help it, not when you had offered to kiss him so nicely.

He slowly pulled the hem of your top, and you understood, coming back to kiss him, your hand on his jaw, as he shifted his position for you to take full control.

He laid underneath you as his heart pounded harder than ever, he could only focus on how soft your lips felt against his mildly chapped ones, his eyes closed as he took in everything you were willing to offer.

The said practice of your debate ended with you making out with Jay, he didn’t wish to stop, not even after his lips were swollen, his eyes shining as he looked at you as if you were a goddess.

He had to excuse himself when his cock felt painfully hard, he was beyond embarrassed and you looked at him with hooded eyes, holding yourself back before it gets too much for him.

“Here’s the washroom,” you guided him, “let me know if you need help,” you said with a smirk.

“I—thank you,” he rushed to go inside.

You knew what he was going to do, and you wished it was you who’d be the one to please him instead, his voice wasn’t silent when he took your name, as he reached his orgasm inside the washroom.

You chuckled, wondering how he’d look while doing so into your hand. He left soon after, face red and hot.

It left him wanting more.

The debate was a week away from now, and you both were well prepared for it yet, you kept on studying from your notes. That wasn’t your concern right now though, a certain nerd had occupied your mind from the past few days.

You found it adorable how he would request you to kiss him in the empty classroom, his room, or any place where you both were alone, he wanted you guys to be alone together.

You were corrupting him, and truth being told, you wanted to corrupt him even more.

Jay had always been attractive, his knowledge was a plus point to it all. You absolutely loved his shy demeanor, no matter how comfortable you both got with each other, he could not help but blush around you.

Meanwhile, Jay was confused. He had never had girl problems before, so why did it feel so different when it came to you? Even more so when you were so good to him.

He loved how you took care of him in the most minimum way possible, you made him feel like he mattered, giving him motivational speeches (and your kisses were a cherry on top).

He knew it really well that the other students wanted to date you, or they wanted to be closer to you. Why wouldn’t they? You were perfect in their eyes, but this did not stop Jay from wanting more. He wanted you to claim him yours. You were beyond perfect in his eyes.

But he wondered if you’d ever be willing to like him back, to be with someone like him. Kissing was one thing, maybe you did it just to make him happy, but more?

He could only wish.

“All participants from the same school will be given one room to share, will it be okay for you both?” Ms. Hwang informed you both, also asking for your comfort.

Jay stiffened, he was sure to lose control if left alone with you at night.

“It’s alright for me ma’am,” you smiled.

“Yeah, for me too,” Jay shakily let out.

He wanted this, he finally decided, he’d even go as far as confessing his feelings for you.

“Alright then, I’ll see you tomorrow morning, right?” Ms. Hwang confirmed as you both nodded, you had to leave early tomorrow for the competition.

As you walked back home with Jay, saying that you’d drop him off, you spoke, “are you sure that you’ll be comfortable?” you asked as your fingers were interlocked with his, giving him butterflies.

“You’ll take care of me right?” He asked in a low whisper, suddenly stopping and looking at you.

He definitely meant more than the normal care but you were willing to give him anything.

“I will,” you promised with a smile, “I’ll take care of my pretty boy,” you said before pecking his lips and leaving him blushing on the sidewalk.

The next morning, he didn’t have to wake up, for, he didn’t get to sleep. That’s how excited he had been, the fact that you were going to be in the same room as him at night made him blush.

His excitement only grew when he saw you at the station wearing a skirt, it was short lived as Sunghoon came into view, holding your hand, holding your luggage with his other hand.

Jay frowned at the sight.

Sunghoon looked like your boyfriend with this setting, he did not like it a bit.

You spotted Jay in a second, smiling and hugging him without thinking much, it was not returned though.

You bit down your smile, making him jealous seemed like a great idea to you, knowing well how adorable and needy he is.

Naturally, Hoon got a cheek kiss as a goodbye while Jay had a frown plastered on his face, almost like a pout.

Your teacher came to the station soon, informing you that her seat is not near you both and telling you her seat number so you can approach her for anything you’d need.

You nodded and thanked her before getting into the train, which arrived right on time.

You sat down next to him on the express train, which gave you two hours to spend with him.

“What’s wrong?” You innocently asked him, your hand resting on his thick thigh.

“N—nothing.” His breath hitched as your hand neared his upper thighs.

You softly massaged that region, “you’ll be a good boy and tell me, won’t you?”

He shivered with the tone you had used, your hands making him feel weak in the knees.

He rushed to keep his backpack on his lap to hide his private area in case something went wrong.

He whined your name as quietly as possible, “tell me what's wrong, baby?” you asked again.

He grabbed your hand, staring at you with doe eyes as he placed it high up on his thigh, near to his hardening cock.

“Not so fast,” you said as you moved your hand away, “you’re not getting anything until you tell me what’s bothering you,” you urged him.

“I was jealous,” he whispered, red adorning his face.

“Yeah? Go on,” you hummed, softly brushing your fingers in his hardened and clothed member.

The thrill of you touching him in public only made his cock hard.

“You kissed Sunghoon,” he whined, placing his head on your shoulder, trying to calm himself from the pleasure he was receiving.

“Yes I did, and what about it?” You sped up, placing your hand on his cock, thankful that he had covered himself using the bag, so that others won’t be able to see you both.

It caused him to squirm in his seat.

“I—I wanted it too,” he struggled to form words.

“Being needy, are we now?” you chuckled as he softly moaned into your neck.

“What more do you want, pretty boy?” You asked, pleasuring him.

“Your kisses, y—your touch and—ah! You,” he barely spoke.

“That’s my good boy.”

You continued your actions for a few minutes, allowing him to release his mess without you having to touch him directly.

You looked at him in awe, you wanted him to be yours. Your baby boy.

“You did so well, baby,” you cooed at his teary face, kissing him swiftly.

“Go and clean up in the washroom, yeah?” You said and he nodded, somehow making his way towards the room.

He was clingy the entire ride, and it made you smile as you gave him all your attention.

“Did you like it?” you questioned.

He bit his lip, “yes, I did,” his answer was short as he was shying away again.

“How cute,” you said, “get me a list of things you like, yeah?” you requested him just before getting off at your destination.

The whole ride to the hotel was silent as your teacher was with you both, Jay still couldn’t think straight, his mind going back to when you touched him and how devastatingly good it felt.

“Here’s your room key, you are both free till tomorrow, so you can roam around a bit but be careful! Don’t forget to meet me at the same place at 11 am sharp with your proper attire on tomorrow,” Ms. Hwang commanded and you both nodded, leaving her to settle in her room.

After washing up and changing into comfortable clothes, you both sat down side by side at 9 pm. You noticed him writing something, but didn’t ask what it was, only looking at his face which had a cute pout, an expression he held whenever he was focused.

You settled down and scrolled through your messages on the phone to pass your time, even though deep inside, you wanted to spend time with Jay.

He soon came up to you, calling your name softly as you looked up at him.

He gently placed a note in your palm.

“I made the list,” he said, referring to the time you asked him to make a list of the things he liked back on the train.

You raised your brows, “come here,” you patted the place next to you before you grabbed his chin, making his heartbeat rise again.

“Let’s see now.” Holding the note in your other hand, you started reading, “degradation and praise kink? Oh, so you want to be called a dumb slut now?” you saw him nod and shiver, enjoying the way you called him a slut.

You wanted to ruin him.

“Choking? Who would have thought that our president ‘good boy’ would be into such filthy stuff,” your hand traveled from his chin to his neck, putting in a bit of pressure just enough for it to feel pleasurable.

Jay whined at the constricted feeling yet his eyes never left your face.

“You wanna be tied up? Cuffed even? And used as I wish?” Your eyes widened after reading his fantasies, the list amusing you beyond words.

You knew that Jay was willing to try stuff but you never expected it to be this wild, you loved it and you bit your lips as you looked his way.

“Please?” He requested you, eyes innocent.

“What do you want me to do, baby boy?” you finally asked as he gulped, coming closer to whisper something in your ear.

“Want you to touch me, please.”

“Like this?” You pulled him closer by the neck, your hand traveling down from his torso to his lower abdomen, and you noticed how he shivered with your touch.

“I—yes,” he let out desperately.

Switching to a better position, you got close to him, almost sitting on his lap as your fingers further trailed up to his mouth.

He was quick to part his lips, taking them in and sucking on your two digits, your head tilting as you noticed how devoted his look was, tongue swirling around your fingers.

“How cute,” you commented, amused with the boy, the same boy who you thought was innocent, however, that wasn’t the case.

All he wanted to do was to please you, and he wanted you to call him yours.

Your other hand rested on his thigh, soon going up and resting on his hard on, causing him to moan around your fingers.

“My needy pup, do you want me to take care of you?” You asked, loving how he reacted to your touch.

As you softly touched him through his sweatpants, he unconsciously jerked his hips forward, suppressing a moan.

“Let me hear it, I need your answer,” you slowed down your actions, causing him to whine.

“Yes! I w—want that so much,” he said out loud, as you took your fingers out of his mouth, wrapping them around his throat.

“Good, now, don’t move, and don’t you dare suppress your pretty noises, am I clear?” you asked for confirmation.

He nodded swiftly as you removed his pants.

His hard member came into view, thick and veiny, begging to be touched. Jay bit back his moans as you teased his tip with your thumb, your fingers wrapping around his length before you bent down to softly swirl your tongue on it, your eyes never leaving his.

“Fuck,” he cursed out loud as you took him in your mouth.

“Good boys don’t use bad language, do they?” You said slapping his dick. Your slender fingers gripped his neck again, this time capturing him in a passionate kiss.

“Y—yes,” he whispered against your lips.

“Open your mouth,” you ordered and he complied, you spat in his mouth, observing how it traveled down his tongue, “swallow it.”

And he did, opening his mouth again to show you the same, causing you to smirk.

“Such a good slut for me.” You kissed him as he whimpered at the degradation coming out of your sweet mouth.

He also whined at the lack of your attention to his cock.

He was needy, and you loved it. You had wanted to take care of him from the very start, seeing the boy in front of you, all naked, you wondered how he’d look full of your lipstick marks, which you’ll leave on his sweet hickeys.

You slowly started stroking his cock again, taking him in your mouth whilst massaging his balls. His breathing got heavier by each second, face red and voice shaky as he took your name sweetly.

Tears stained his rosy cheeks due to the immense pleasure he received, it was unlike ever before, his hands never felt this good, this perfect.

What made it better was the fact that it was you who was touching him, who was making him go crazy.

He liked you so much.

You felt him twitching and you got down to take him in your mouth before saying, “cum in my mouth baby boy,” and he did, moaning your name in the process as you hungrily gulped everything he had to offer.

You got up with a small smile on your face, seeing how he had closed his eyes, lip bitten and his chest heaving up and down.

You softly cupped his face, his eyes opening with your gentle touch.

“How are you feeling?” You asked him with a small smile, thumb caressing his cheek.

“Euphoric,” your laughter bloomed at his answer, a shy smile on his face, “can we do more?” He asked.

Your eyes softened at how vulnerable he looked at the given moment, and you knew if you’d do more, then you’ll probably won’t ever let go of him.

You kissed his forehead, “win that debate with me tomorrow and I’ll give you your victory gift, alright?”

He whined, not wanting to wait till tomorrow, but agreed nevertheless.

“C’mere, let’s get you cleaned up.” You took him to the bathroom, asking him to stay still as you cleaned him up, ensuring that he felt okay and you laughed whenever he felt ticklish at your touch.

“Can we cuddle at least?” He asked before sleeping, he loved being close to you. He had given you most of his firsts without any hesitation, and he was willing to give you even more. You grinned and took him in your arms, you both drifting off to dreamland soon.

Jay’s heartbeat clearly out of control as he only got closer to you, taking in your scent and watching you sleep, softly saying.

“I wanna be yours.”

The next morning was in a frenzy as you both tried to cramp up last minute information before your awaited debate.

Jay kept shying around after last night, and you had to pull him back and ask him to look into your eyes, making him laugh.

You couldn't help but notice how hot Jay looked in a black blazer, wondering if it was the same guy who begged you to touch him last night.

More importantly, you were also aware of that one girl who kept staring at Jay as you waited for your turn at the big auditorium where the competition was being held.

She was just behind you in the line, meaning, she might be your rival team for the final round, where you had reached with ease, courtesy of Jay.

Not being able to handle her constant stares and shy whispering about Jay, you rolled your eyes as you turned to him, calling out his name.

He turned to look at you, his face looked so innocent it made you want to smile, that’s the exact second you decided to peck him, tips of his ears turning red instantly

“W—what was that for?” He asked wide eyed, checking if someone saw you both.

“Just a good luck kiss for my baby,” you spoke loud enough for the girl to hear. A satisfactory smirk rested on your face as you saw her frown from the corner of your eyes.

Your turn came by soon, you listed out all the cons about the given subtopic with Jay smoothly.

However, you got stuck at the doubt round where the judges had to ask you questions, it was smooth until that one last question came up, which you had no idea how to answer.

You looked at Jay with worried eyes, but he kept his composure, remembering that particular piece of information from that one morning he made extra notes before going to your place, which he answered with full confidence, earning applause from the seated judges, and also you, a proud smile adorned your face.

You were sent back to the waiting area where you gushed about how cool Jay looked while answering with such confidence.

“It’s nothing,” he said, trying to act as if his ears weren’t turning red at your compliment.

“You’ll always be my shy baby,” you gently laughed.

He adorably rested his head on your shoulder as you praised him for being so intelligent while waiting for the result declaration.

“Now, for the most awaited first position, congratulations to ms. L/N and Mr. Park, from the Decelis Academy, Seoul!” The announcer declared.

You hugged him with joy, taking his hands in yours as you went on stage to accept the trophy, your teacher cheering and clicking pictures of you both from the audience seat.

Jay was overjoyed, somewhat because of winning the competition, but mostly for the reward that awaited him tonight. You both hugged again and got your trophy, Ms. Hwang treated you to dinner afterwards, being proud of you both and informing your principal at once.

Now that you were alone in your hotel room, without any distractions, you could easily see through Jay and how he was trying his best not to mention the reward you had promised you’d give him.

You smirked.

“My baby is so smart, shouldn’t he be rewarded now?” You asked, getting closer to him as he gulped down his nervousness.

“Please,” he breathed out.

“Please what, baby? Use your big words to tell me how you wish to be rewarded?” you encouraged him.

“Please, I want you,” he whimpered.

Your hands wandered around his torso, unbuttoning him one by one just to test his patience. He started helping you unbutton him, but you stopped him grabbing his cheeks.

“Did I give you permission to do anything?” You asked sharply while he shook his head, saying no.

“Be a good boy for me, yeah?” He nodded as your lips captured him into a deep kiss, your fingers gripped his hair while he held on to your waist, low hums and grunts were heard as you started grinding on him.

“Fuck me, please!” He cried out loud,

“Undress me,” you ordered.

He shakily took off your white blouse, leaving you in your lace bra, his eyes fixated on your body, and how pretty you looked in lace.

“Can I touch you?” He asked for your permission, you nodded.

He removed the remaining of your clothes and softly trailed his fingers down your body, as if trying to memorize you. Holding his hand, you guided him towards your wet pussy.

“Prep me, baby,” you instructed him as he hesitantly touched your core, spreading your juices in a circular motion.

He observed how you bit down on your lips and closed your eyes. Getting further validation from you, he pushed in a finger, slowly pumping it, he soon added another digit, his fingers curling inside of you sending you into bliss.

You felt your high nearing, “fuck, Jay I want to cum on your cock,” you said switching your positions so that you were straddling him, he cried out loud as your wet cunt came in contact with his throbbing dick.

“Moan louder, babyboy, tell everyone who the winner is tonight,” you said against his lips.

That let him loose, lewd sounds filled up the room.

“Louder,” you encouraged him, finally letting him enter inside you.

Your walls clenched around his thick member, adjusting to his size. You looked at him for permission.

“Please, you can move,” he allowed you.

Without wasting much of a second, you started riding him, your tits bouncing up and down in the process.

Jay couldn’t think straight anymore, his mind was corrupted by you, small dumb mumbles leaving his mouth and he loved how you were being equally soft and rough with him, considering it was his first time.

“Moan louder before I stop,” you threatened him, finally causing him extra stimulation when you clenched around him.

The pleasure was enough for his tears to run free, his cheeks blotchy with red speckles all over, and he moaned, just like you had wanted him to.

“Good boy,” you kept muttering, loving his sweet and needy voice.

“Let me cum, please?” He asked for your permission.

That is when you got off him.

“Not so fast, baby,” you replied with a peck on his lips.

Harsh whimpers left his mouth as you slowly stroked his leaking dick for the next few minutes.

“Please,” he begged after he couldn’t take it anymore, his dick twitching with how close he was.

“Impatient slut,” you slid into him again, your walls contracting around him, it was too much for him to take in.

You fastened your pace, “I’m about to—” he cried.

“Hold it in,” you warned, loved how he closed his eyes shut.

It was so fun teasing him.

You decided to be a bit gentle with him now that he was close, just like you.

“Cum inside me, love,” you encouraged

With a few more bounces, and his thrusts from below, he muttered a string of curses, emptying inside of you as you reached your high just a moment later.

You cupped his cheeks, not getting up but looking deep into his eyes.

“You did so well, I’ll arrange a nice hot bath for you to relax, yeah?” you softly caressed his cheeks.

He weakly nodded, still high from the activities done minutes back. Soon, you helped him into the tub, sitting on his lap as you softly washed his hair for him while he stared at you with stars in his eyes.

“What’s it?” you quietly asked, a small smile on your face.

“Thank you,” he pecked you, this time with adoration, catching you off guard as your heartbeat rose.

“I did nothing,” you smiled at him as he returned it.

You traced his red bruises, applying lotion to them and giving him a massage as well. Jay was thankful to say the least, eyes on your face.

“You’re staring,” you noted.

“You’re pretty,” he said, lowering his eyes as he did so.

“God, you’re so cute.” You kissed him softly, a shy smile gracing his face as you wrapped him in a towel.

“Come on, let’s sleep,” you patted the space near you.

“Can we cuddle?” he excitedly asked and you brightly nodded, taking him into your arms.

The room was silent, however, it felt comfortable, especially when you could feel Jay’s warmth in your arms.

“Y/N?” He called out your name.

You hummed, “yeah?”

“What are we?” he asked as he sat up to look at you.

“What do you mean?” you asked, also sitting up.

“I—what’s our relationship?” he gulped as he asked that, not sounding too confident, wondering if he’d be rejected.

“What do you want us to be?” you questioned, raising your brows.

Being with Jay was like a rollercoaster, you had grown a liking to him, more than you would like to admit.

His demure ways made you adore him, but he never hesitated to put a brave front for you and those cute efforts of his made you fall for him even more.

“I want us to be more than just friends,” he admitted.

You had bewitched Jay since the day you first talked to him, and the feeling only grew. He looked forward to spending time with you and soon it turned into yearning. He wanted to hold you in his arms and call you his, not wanting to share you with anyone else (ahem, Sunghoon), the phase might have been of only two months, but that was enough for him to fall for you.

“What’s more than friends?” you teased.

He pouted without even trying to, wondering if you were trying to ignore the topic because you didn’t want him, but seeing his expression, you frowned.

“Be my boyfriend,” you suddenly blurted out, not regretting it after.

Jay’s eyes widened comically, “w—what?”

You took a deep breath and laughed lightly, “Jay, baby, you’re so precious to me. Fuck! I like you so much, please be mine?” you expectantly stared at him.

His lips turned upwards and into the biggest smile you had ever seen on his face as he leaned forward and kissed you wordlessly, conveying his answer through it.

The kiss was deep and meaningful, “yes! yes, yes!” he squealed as you kissed him again.

“Hey, boyfriend,” you smiled.

“Hey, girlfriend,” he spoke with confidence, melting your heart as you pulled him down and into a hug which soon turned into a cuddling session.

Both of you fell asleep with smiles on your faces, your arms holding him tight.

Even after the competition, he couldn’t help but miss you every second of his day, texting you constantly, calling you at night just to stare at you during the two day holidays you had gotten.

The next time you met was after the competition was three days later at the school.

Jay saw Sunghoon approaching you, but he was faster as he stood in front of you, causing your eyes to widen at his sudden entry.

“Hi, baby,” he cooly said before placing a kiss on your lips.

You laughed at his childish behaviour as you see Sunghoon fuming from a distance.

“Getting protective, are we now?” you raised your eyebrow.

“You’re mine,” he tried to sound authoritative, but his voice came out in a whine.

“I’m yours,” you laughed, kissing him softly.

Safe to say, Sunghoon left after the little show Jay had put up and soon, the whole school knew about you two dating, half of them crying about how wrong the pairing is, you couldn’t care less though.

Jay was everything you needed and more, and you were going to cherish him for the rest of your life.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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#fic : the path to a nerd’s heart #enhypen hard hours #enhypen smut #jay smut #enha smut #jay x reader #kpop smut #enhypen imagines #park jay smut #sub!jay

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