#just a musing barely even a theory

[tonydaddingham]

WAIT A SECOND-

DEMONS GUIDE TO ANGELIC BEINGS WHO WALK THE EARTH

[____] Angelic Embassy X also known as AZ Fell & Co., 105 (?) Whicker Street, London.

Known Earthly Occupations: Guard of Eden, Music [Tyooter?], White Knight, Garden Designer, Bishop, Bookseller.

TERRIBLE MAGICIAN

Weaponry: Flaming Sword

On Sighting: AVOID

A wily opponent, this demon [smiter?] must be warily approached. Report any [interactions?] to the demon Crowley.

CHANGED HIS NAME? YUCK!

CRAWLEY IS SUSPICIOUS! DON'T [TRUST HIM!] HIS HAIR IS BAD.

now when i think about it logically, im like 90% sure im just reading into this, and it might have been crowley's influence on hell to send any reports about aziraphale through him so he can basically squash them and protect aziraphale... but what if he was assigned to spy on aziraphale? idk where im going with this but for some reason it made my stomach sink and i usually trust when my stomach sinks

[tonydaddingham]

this is a half-finished thought ive had in my head since michael forgot who the metatron was. michael is very clever and seems to pay attention to detail (special example being the job scene where they recognised the childrens' names). then, the miracle on gabriel seemed to falter slightly with them, where they were on the cusp of realising it was in fact Gabriel ("do i know you?" - paraphrased). so why... would they not remember the metatron, but all the other archangels did? what did michael potentially do, that would mean they suddenly don't recognise him?

Something something the way that Crowley introduced himself to Aziraphale the first time they met in the garden and reacted as if they had never met before. Something about him later behaving as if he did actually have those memories of their time in Heaven together and trying to pass it off as being someone different now. Something about Heaven's way of punishing angels that go against the plan by erasing their memories. Something about Crowley seeing Gabriel without his memory and saying "ask him properly." Something about "remember it now" "it hurts, to remember. my head isn't built for that" "I know. Do it anyway"

Something about "I know. Looking at where the furniture isn't"

Something about I know

[kiss-inthekitchen]

bonus! i said i wasn't posting anything new til this weekend but i just got up to s5 e2 and spencer reid with that lollipop has made me insane, here's a drabble i just wrote in like 30 mins. barely edited, hot off the presses, hope u like

sucker

~500 words

Who the hell let this man have a lollipop in the workplace?

You could kill Garcia. 

You’re trying to act normal– trying so hard– but he looks so good. His hair is longer than it's ever been, so beautifully curly at the ends and you just know it’s soft. You need to test the theory but you can’t and it kills you on even a regular day. 

But today is a thousand times worse. There’s something about Spencer since he got shot, he just seems to give less of a shit. It definitely shouldn’t be as attractive as it is. 

It doesn’t help that you’d come in to tell him that you all had to be on the jet in thirty, and then he and Garcia had started asking questions, so Spencer’s been looking up at you from his chair for the past few minutes and something about it is getting to you. 

So yeah, you’re trying not to get so immediately caught for staring at Spencer as he wraps his lips around the lollipop again, but you’re also not about to miss a single second of it. You’re not about to do yourself that disservice. 

You clear your throat as the news broadcast about your unsub ends. “Right. So we’re going to Louisville.” 

Spencer moves to get up, finally. Popping the candy in his mouth, he waves one– large, long-fingered– hand at Garcia and reaches for his crutches. 

What is wrong with you?? You need to get it together before you’re stuck on the jet with pretty boy and all of the most astute people-readers in the Western hemisphere. 

God, you hate your life. If the universe was kind and loving it wouldn’t have had you meet Spencer in the behavioral analysis unit. If the universe was kind and loving, Spencer would be yours already. 

This was some kind of cosmic joke. 

“You good?” he asks. He took the lollipop out of his mouth to speak to you, his eyebrows raised in the most annoyingly attractive way. 

“Yeah?” you scoff, as if he’s the one being weird. 

“Okay. Cause you told me we have to leave and now somehow you can’t keep up with the guy on crutches,” he muses from the doorway, while you haven’t moved an inch. 

This man. If he wasn’t injured you would hurt him. You might just do it anyway. 

You shoot him a sarcastic smile. “I was being polite.” 

“How chivalrous of you,” he says, putting the candy back in his mouth and crutching his way down the hall without a second glance. 

You look at Garcia, and it’s a mistake. You can read her like a book. “Don’t,” you warn, pointing at her, and she presses her lips together but is clearly smiling behind them. “And I am so mad at you for that,” you add, gesturing after him. 

“Wh– he just took one, it’s not like I–” 

“Save it!” you call, already halfway out the room. You hear her laugh behind you, and shake your head. You love that girl, but she was not doing you any favors. 

Fuck it. 

You breeze past Spencer in the hallway. “Keep up, pretty boy.” 

You hear his indignant, playful scoff behind you, and you can’t help the smirk that creeps onto your face.

[galedekarios]

just musing about gale and his parents:

we only have a handful of conversations where he mentions his parents and when he does, it's usually only his mother, morena dekarios.

his mother is mentioned at several points in the game. during a custom protag playthrough, he mentions her in a datamined conversation that appears to be bugged/broken:

and he mentions her at the end of the game as well when he proposes to the player:

i was also able to find another mention in a banter with karlach that usually happens for me shortly after recruiting her:

from gale's origin, this aspect is explored even more deeply:

there's more, of course, and it very clearly shows that the bond he shares with his mother is a deep and loving one from both sides. it's also very interesting that he is called dekarios after his mother and not--even though naming conventions could certainly vary even in waterdeep--after his father.

who he doesn't mention at all.

the only time we do get a vague mention is during a conversation with the protag after saving mirkon from the harpies:

after that, i haven't been able to find any reference, indirect or direct, to gale's father in the game.

so, here we enter theory territory:

i feel that, from a narrative point of view, in keeping with what i think gale's themes are, gale's father may have abandoned gale and his mother when gale was still young.

gale's character is rife with what might be interpreted as abandonment issue and it makes sense to me at least that those weave through his life up until the point where the protag meets him in the game.

another theme with gale is that he appears to have a lot of female figures in this life, who all had a profound impact on him, whether that impact is positive or negative: morena, tara, and yes, mystra.

it feels like to me that he had no father figure--and i use that term a bit more loosely here--until later in his life with elminster. this is already hinted at in a game with a custom protag, but all the more solidified in a gale origin playthrough:

i think without directing telling you, the game does allow you to sort of guess at that part of his background in this way, and understand why gale is as he is as a consequence. you can also understand why he acts as he does with elminster. seeking his approval. yearning for it. being extremely hurt by elminster having to see him like this when mystra sends him to gale to deliver her... instructions. this almost pointed absence of a mention of his father in all his comments (and tara's too, now that i think about it) when it comes to family is glaring to me.

being left, being abandoned, makes it much more understandable to me why he doesn't speak of him at all: if gale's father had died, it would make more sense to me that he would remark on it or share it in some way or another. it might have come up in a banter with wyll, perhaps, who is struggling with the expectations his own father had placed on him.

"he died when i was still very young." perhaps, or something along the lines of, "i barely remember him; he died when i was only a child.", etc etc etc.

YET if gale's father indeed abandoned his mother--who he holds in such high regard, and not to mention his own hurt--i can easily see and understand why he wouldn't waste a word on him.

anyhow yes, this is long and ramble-y, and i 100% might be reading too much into what may be a simple oversight, but it was interesting to me and i still see it as tying in with the theme of abandonment, even though we don't know the reasons for it in this particular case.

was it not wishing to deal with a child with magical talents he couldn't control yet? was it for another reason entirely?

[alucarddear]

Position anon again, would you please write a NSFW alphabet for Alucard? Pretty please? 🥺

Alucard N S F W Alphabet*

I'm personally offended that I haven't done this for Lulu before. Anyway, rather than just spelling out his name, I'll give you the entire alphabet. Heh. This is LONG! Your thoughts and keyboard smashes are welcome. 🤭

P.S. I go explicit and specific; read at your own risk. I also tried my best to keep it as gender-neutral as possible, so this is [Alucard x You]. However, I did have a little self-indulgent fun with W: wild card, the only section with an obvious she/her indication. Just so you know!

A: Aftercare (what they're like after sex)

Aftercare is not optional to this dhampir. It's a must. It doesn't matter if you had a quick romp or a long night, he'd still take the time to treat you right, especially if he'd been rather rough with you.

Forehead kisses, soft caresses, helping clean you up—you name it and he's got it covered. It's all about making sure you feel loved, appreciated, and cared for.

Alucard is not one to just up and leave or make you feel used. In fact, it's noticeable how much more he dotes on you after actually using you up good and fucking you raw into next week. 😏

B: Body part (their favourite body part of theirs and their partner’s)

Your neck. Let's not even pretend that Alucard doesn't gravitate towards it. As you ride him, he buries his face in the crook of your neck and nips and pecks at your throat. There's a part of him that wants to sink his fangs into you then and there and another that wants nothing more than to whisper sweet nothings against your skin as you throw your head back in bliss.

Alucard likes his hands—the way they're so large against yours; how perfectly your hands feel in his own. He likes his hands gripping your thighs or hips, his hand coming down to slap your ass, his hands caressing every inch of you. The way his hand closes around your wrist, encircling it completely as if it was made to do nothing but. The way he pushes you down with his hand on the small of your back as he prepares to take you from behind. Most of all, all of the things his hands can do to make you cum.

C: Cum (anything to do with cum)

Alucard's desire to spill his seed inside you is next to nothing sometimes. If you'd let him, he'd bury himself balls-deep and cum inside you each and every time.

He loves to make you cum, loves the way you sound—the hitching of your breath, your begging, the way you can barely keep yourself from shaking as he coaxes yet another orgasm out of you. He loves to praise you for it. "God, you're fucking beautiful," is something you hear often. It just never gets old.

D: Dirty secret (a dirty secret of theirs)

Alucard loves when you allow him to bend you over whichever way he pleases. Loves how tiny and pliable you look underneath him, adjusting and propping your arms and legs as he sees fit. Just the sight of you like that, it's enough to push him over the edge.

So, you know he draws you—you are his muse after all. You've seen his sketches. But not the ones of your beautiful, naked body. Not even the tasteful pieces he draws as you sleep. Not the ones where, try as he might, he just can't replicate how utterly divine you look when he fucks you. He's a talented artist, but nothing tops the real thing.

E: Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Is he very experienced? No. Does he know what he's doing? Hell yes. His mother was a doctor and his father is a man of science. He lives in a castle full of resources. He has deep knowledge of biology—he's got the theory down pat. Sure, he fumbled a little the first few times, but he quickly learnt how you like to be pleased.

Besides, being a dhampir, Alucard is in tune with your body's responses to his ministrations. When you're intimate, he can practically feel your heart racing, dear. He knows when you're close, can tell when he's hitting it good, need I say more?

F: Favourite position (this goes without saying)

Mastery. He sits on the edge of the bed, feet flat on the floor to support you sitting on top of him with your legs bent on either side of him, your feet flat on the bed. This position allows you to wrap your arms around his neck and kiss. It lets you start off slow, very intimate—with you grinding against and riding him. Once you're a little tired (or he starts growing impatient), he simply grips your hips and pounds up into you until you're a screaming wreck. His grip on your hips and his feet securely planted on the floor allows him to rut into you fast. And the view? Fucking fantastic. He loves watching you come undone like this, seeing you throw your head back and expose your throat to him. Yes.

For a quick romp, you can't go wrong with doggy style. When you're in his study and you both get a little too distracted? He’ll bend you over his desk and have his way with you.

G: Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Oh, he's very serious about giving both of you a good time, alright. He might do something that makes you giggle, sure, but for the most part it's probably accidental and not his intention. Sex with Alucard can be intimate and sweet or downright animals humping in the undergrowth (👀), no in between. He's not here for the shits and giggles, darling.

H: Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

It does match. Maybe not all the time completely bare, but he keeps himself neat and tidy. Do you see his luxurious hair? He takes care of himself down there too.

I: Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Alucard loves to see you and hear you. He's considerate and goes out of his way to find what works for you. So much so he probably has ruined you for anyone else. You'll never find a more receptive lover; it’s time to accept that.

When you make sweet love, he whispers sweet nothings against your skin. He peppers kisses all over you and makes you feel like the most gorgeous being on the planet. He's not afraid to voice his thoughts out loud too, praising you and urging you on.

J: Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

You remember those naughty sketches of you? Yep. He has used them a couple times while you were away. You're in his thoughts whenever he touches himself.

K: Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Edging. He not-so-secretly loves it when you beg. How are you to know how much more you can take? He'll just have to show you.

When you moan his name as you grip the sheets and quake beneath him? Yeah. He loves it, especially when you can barely even make out the words for “Adrian, please, please, please.”

When you take control and ride him like your life depends on it, it does something to his brain. You on top, taking control and looking absolutely beautiful as you do so... he could cum just from the thought of it.

There is a part of him that likes the thought of cumming deep inside you and breeding you. Maybe it's that loneliness that sometimes nags at him, maybe he yearns for a family, but he can't lie this feels utterly divine.

L: Location (favourite places to do the do)

The bed is cliche, but it works and is comfortable. Your kitchen counter, desk, against the wall or a tree, table, or out at some secluded clearing by the lake... Alucard is truly not that picky, as long as you're not out in the public for other eyes to see and you’re both comfortable.

M: Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Your reactions and enthusiasm. Knowing you're into it just as much as he is.

When you sashay towards him, crooking your finger at him to beckon him closer? He's right there with you in a heartbeat.

When you wear his shirt and it swallows your smaller frame? It turns him on more than he lets on.

When you moan his name and gasp and writhe in pleasure. When you beg for him to take you harder, faster, and deeper. It just about short-circuits his brain.

N: No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Any form of bondage or restrictions to his movement. It brings up unnecessary trauma and makes him feel that he's not in control or safe. He is mostly a switch, sure, letting you take control and dominate too, but tying him up is just a no-go for him.

He won't transform into a wolf. It's practically bestiality, which he's not down for.

Somnophilia or any other act where consent can be dubious. He's just big on consent and trust, for obvious reasons.

O: Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

He loves having absolute control over your pleasure, knowing it's him coaxing the sighs and moans and screams out of you. He enjoys how easily he can make you cum and drive you mad.

That said, he also loves watching you pleasure him, taking as much of his hard length as you can, especially whenever you greedily swallow his load.

P: Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

It really depends. Sex can be whatever it needs to be in the moment. While he loves nothing more than to take his time and make sweet love to you, he also loves ravaging you and leaving you utterly spent. It's satisfying either way.

The usual case is he begins slowly and sensually, but by the end of it (and sometimes without warning), he's rutting into you like his life depends on it.

Q: Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He isn't above having a quickie if that is all time permits, but he would really much rather have his way with you properly!

R: Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Given that he's a dhampir, he knows exactly how to go unseen or unnoticed. It's likely his risk assessment is much more honed. You might think you're being risky, but he is well aware of the chances of you getting caught in the act.

As for experimenting—other than his hard reservations (the ones listed in N), he is game to experiment and try different things you may be curious about as long as you both feel safe and comfortable about them.

S: Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

He's a dhampir... need I say more? The chances of you exhausting him first is little. Sorry to burst your bubble. 😆 He's got stamina for days, honey.

T: Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Alucard is not above using toys to pleasure you. But what can a toy do that he can't do better? Hah. Chances are he will attempt to learn how it pleases you and try to replicate that with his own cock, mouth, and hands.

U: Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He can be such a little tease. You know the way he banters. That snark and sass can sometimes make their way inside the bedroom too.

"What was that, darling?" he'd ask, as if his amazing sense of hearing wasn't enough to register your begging as he edges you for the nth time. "Tsk. Patience, my love..." he would even dare chide you!

Alucard also loves to glide his fangs over your skin, just enough to leave a faint mark but not enough to draw blood.

V: Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

He’s not shy to let you know he’s having a good time, but he’s also not overly loud. He gasps, moans, and curses, a tight-lipped “Fuck!” slipping out once in a while.

W: Wild card (a random headcanon)

He loves to praise you. His way of talking dirty is to let you know how good you feel around him. How ethereal you are, how perfect for him, how you taste so sweet.

He encourages you as he pushes you over the limit. “Yes, yes, darling, you can take it. Cum for me,” he would say. He’d place a kiss on your open mouth as you convulse around him as he rips yet another orgasm out of you. “My sweet darling,” he would groan, wiping the sweat off your brow. “How perfect you are. Good girl.” And just like that, he’s about to do it all over again. RIP. 😫

X: X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

He’s active and it shows. He’s well built without being overly bulky. It suits him—muscular/toned yet elegant and lean.

He’s packing a just-about-above average penis, but nothing you cannot handle. The man’s over six foot, it just fits.

Y: Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Alucard is the type to yearn and pine, so set the volume level up cause he cannot get enough of you. Enough said.

Z: Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Sometimes you drift off to sleep together, but you usually fall asleep first.

He’s a night owl. He’d take you in his arms and stroke your hair as you sleep, admiring the way you glow under the moonlight, and wonder how he got so lucky to have found you. 🤍🌙

[dumbseee]

boyfriend!iwaizumi when you’re a famous idol.

iwaizumi hajime x fem!reader.

genre: fluff.

warnings: bad english/grammar :p /mention of the kpop industry (in here, dating someone is less taboo than it is in real life) / first work so it’s not that good.

_

after high school, you left japan for south korea, you always had this dream of becoming a kpop idol. during your time in seijoh, you were already known for being an amazing dancer but also for your angelic voice.

iwaizumi would always brag about you to the volleyball team, oikawa would tease him about you leaving him for a famous korean actor, after you became famous. to which, iwaizumi would respond with a kick in his friend’s back. truth be told, he was actually very scared of what the future had in store for you two after high school. he didn’t know if long distance would work for you, or if you even wanted it in the first place.

during your last school day, iwaizumi walked you back home, like he always did, but he seemed out of it and almost, sad? you asked him what was wrong and he told you that if you wanted to break up with him to focus on your dreams, he’d respect your decision and always support you. he couldn’t even look at you, tears starting to form in the corner of his eyes as he tried his best to keep a straight face. his words surprised you and broke your heart because you never knew that iwaizumi could be so dumb to think that you’d break up with him like that. "no matter the distance, it will never make me forget about how much i love you, hajime."

so you left for south korea and he left for america to study. you two called each other everyday, when you two were too busy, you’d try to call at least twice a week. iwaizumi was busy with school and finals took all his time while your trainee program took up yours. but somehow you two made it work. a few years later, you debuted as a soloist and sold millions with your first album whilst iwaizumi came back to japan after graduating, and became an athletic trainer for japan national volleyball team. you couldn’t be prouder of him, and you were his pride. he streamed all your songs, putting them on speaker while the boys would practice, he brought all your albums and watched the variety shows you were featured in. he was basically the president of your fanclub. and he wasn’t ashamed of it.

you two always made sure to go together on vacation in a foreign country, where kpop wasn’t really the thing. the distance actually strengthened your relationship since being apart of each other for so long, made the reunion better. you knew iwaizumi was it for you, and he was also your muse for your music. your fans often joked about how inspired and how deep your love songs were. it made you laugh to read all their theories about you being married to a farmer. if only they knew…

iwaizumi never minded being your secret boyfriend, he actually liked it that way. he didn’t know if he could bare being in the public eye every time. knowing that you were south korea’s sweetheart, being your public boyfriend would mean saying goodbye to his peaceful life, and iwaizumi wasn’t ready for that. well, he wasn’t ready yet. one day, he woke up to his phone being blown up by messages, actually tons of messages, from the groupchat he shared with the japan national team. he even had missed calls from oikawa, and all his close friends.

shoyo: IWAIZUMI-SENPAIIIIII

SID YOU SEE HHE NEWS???

kageyama: learn how to spell, idiot.

ushijima: blowing up his phone isn’t the best way to announce something like that.

bokuto: HAJI-SAN IT’S TERRIBLE ARE YOU OKAY??

atsumu: JUST SHUT UP

let the man wake up peacefully damn

shoyo: IT WAS TO BE A FAKE NEWS RIGHT??

bokuto: YEAH L/N-SAN WOULD NEVER DO THAT

iwaizumi: what the fuck?

ushijima: you should check twitter, hajime.

iwaizumi had frowned, but went on twitter, an app you forced him to subscribe to. apparently it was the genz’s newspaper. to his surprise, your face was all over his feed, it wasn’t surprising because he liked everything about you, followed dozens of fan account and basically became a fan account himself. but what surprised him was seeing those big account talking about your "relationship" with a famous korean actor.

"l/n y/n, the famous soloist who stole everyone’s heart with her heartfelt songs and beautiful looks, is dating a/l a/n!"

his eyes widened as he typed your name to call you immediately. his heart was beating so fast as he didn’t know how to feel about this. of course it was fake news, right? he knew you’d never cheat on him, you loved each other and iwaizumi couldn’t see his life without you in it. he quickly became aware of how much he loved you and how important you were in his life. without you, iwaizumi would be nothing but an empty shell. "hajime? thank god, i tried to call you!" your voice made him release a breath he didn’t know he was holding. "you saw, right?" your voice was small and for a second he thought that maybe you called him to announce your new relationship with this dumbass actor. "yeah, it’s not that fun to wakeup to your friends blowing up your phone and news outlets talking about your girlfriend’s relationship with that fucker." he rubbed his face with his free hand. "these idiots took pictures of us while we were in cabo and thought it was a/n. apparently you two look alike." he heard you chuckle which made him feel warm inside. he hated the fact that he doubted you for a second. suddenly, an idea popped up in his head, a crazy one but still. "you have an award show in a week right?" he asked you, a smile tugging at his lips. "yeah, why?"

well, iwaizumi’s idea was indeed crazy but you didn’t care, you were down for it. and as your name got called in the category, "best female artist", iwaizumi was next to you, he stood up before you could even understand what was going on, and he kissed you. showing to the world, that you were his as much as he was yours. it was a crazy way to launch your relationship to the world, but you didn’t care, because as long as you were together, nothing could happen.

[the-midnight-blooms]

from the artist's studio | cs

pairing: painter!choi san x painter!reader AU: historical au, joseon dynasty word count: 10.5k

masterlist

I reach out to my lover, he’s trapped within a painting. The muse of a Renaissance artist- he’s so divine he may have even started the movement.

Her feet pattered down the cold floorboards, pushing through the salmun doors-the fabric of her purple hanbok bunched up in her palms. The midnight bloomed in the depth of the spring, where the cherry blossom trees roared with the wind. A captivating beam from the candle paved the way to the front doors, her heart lurching in her chest as she felt an enchanted soul beckoning her name; her vessel bowed in his essence as if the rapping of the door knocker was to the beat of her name, echoing every syllable. With her hand outstretched for the doors, she hauled it open finding a man whose eyes were squinting as the the coarse rain battered against his supple skin; his teeth chattering with the cold. With a brown leather bag sloped over the shoulder of his light yellow hanbok; hands gripped steely over the handle of his heavy cases. He was tall, with broad shoulders, she quickly discerned but his face almost seemed obscured by the dark clouds and the night slowly filtering into the star studded sky.

"Please, Miss, I'm here to see Mr Yim. I'm a new apprentice at the local government office." His voice was almost mellowed by the crash of thunder against the sky, which had them both flinching at its mercilessness. A surge of relief rested upon him as a slender arm in purple outstretched towards him; the warmth easing the shattering goosebumps bestowed upon his delicate skin. With a contented sigh, the figure in front raised the candle to his face; the soft glow illuminated his crescent eyes which bored into another's burgeoning with curiosity.

"Your name, Sir?" Her honey like voice, slid into his ears; lashes gently fluttering as he breathed in the sight before him the beaming light from the candle forging a halo around this angel. Her tight jaw and deadpan expression was immediately dissolved between the influx of enigma that flooded into her eyes.

"Choi San." Nodding diligently, she gesticulated for him to follow her to her father's study. The hallways of the Yim estate were particularly large, a few candelabras were perched on top of the drawers plastered across the panelled walls-the smoke infiltrating into the empty space. They graced the floor with minimal sound, as if there were ghosts traipsing the corridors rather than real people.

Stood outside the large door, she dipped her head in politeness as he gently caressed the lumber; soft knocks restituting off the walls. With the candle perched within a hand of his own, yet another door opened; the esteemed artist tumbled through the doorway into another life.

Just over two decades ago, on a winter night, where the trees were bare of crisp leaves and the ground was brazen with purest of snow; a couple sat by the fire in their bedroom: a new-born cherub encapsulated within her mother's arms. Mr Yim, the father of the child, was a member of a group of scholars who advocated the need for the government to foster commerce, industry, and technology. He was a part of one of the four schools of thought in Joseon that shifted from speculative theory to attending to more taxing socio-political issues. Therefore, despite being renown for his hard work, and steadfast nature, he was also known for being quite reserved- to put it nicely. There were no 'good mornings' or 'good afternoons' from Mr Yim. Nor were there dirty looks and unwelcoming mannerisms bestowed upon his acquaintances. He liked to keep to himself, Mrs Yim being the only woman in the world capable of seeing that man smile.

"Would you like to hold her, dear?" His wife called, the gentle babbling of his child sending a jolt of fear rushing through him. Eagerly, he dismissed the opportunity, to which Mrs Yim had sighed staring down at her beautiful daughter. "She is your daughter, too. You're going to have to hold her at one point."

"I'll hold her when she is a little older than what she is now."

"Before you know it, she will become a woman and you will reminisce all the opportunities you had to cuddle her when you could." Truthfully, Mr Yim was afraid of fatherhood; he never really understood the notion of it but if having a child would make his darling, Mrs Yim, happy then Mr Yim would give her all the children in the world. How could he raise a child when he was left to raise himself? What could he even teach except say to his daughter after every stumble, every mistake, every stutter, every cry for help but: 'find your way'?

Thus, his aloof nature extended to his daughter, who having been pinned by her mother's side until her unfortunate death, became wholly estranged from her father. He was no longer her mother's husband, but rather just a kind stranger who fed her, clothed her, kept her under his roof and gave her almost anything she wanted.

Miss Yim was rather bizarre.

Or at least, that's what the townspeople thought through her poignant introvertedness; maintaining scant friendships, rejecting all marriage prospects almost immediately preferring the confines of her large quarters-which in themselves were situated in the segregated division of the family home. Her rooms were not bright, but panelled with a dark wood that foremost created a dull atmosphere, there was minimal light other than what streamed in through the open doors and windows that overlooked the vast lawn. A porch ran around the whole building, where Miss Yim frequented, all year round, as she drew.

Oh! The most compelling thing about Miss Yim was that in contrast to her academic father, she had particularly excelled in the arts, often taking on commissions from local noblemen requesting venerated portraits of their wives. As well as the opportunity to put her skills to practise, she saw it as a way of putting a few extra pennies in her pocket. In alignment with her reserved nature, Miss Yim found that she preferred to draw using defined, darker mediums such as charcoal, ink and graphite pencils. There was something so true about the loneliness that could be felt from the intricate brushstrokes as the ink spilled across the page. As if the figurines were her, simply founded to be a mere prop in a large frame.

Smoothing down the hairs on her head, she snapped away her gaze from the mirror to the window overlooking the side of the garden, the silhouette of the hanok roofs, carving elegantly into the sky. The trees rocked and the grass rippled with the pending ferocity of the wind. Indeed, the storm would not subside within the next few days. The door to her bedroom slid open, the older maid stumbled in settling the tray upon her bench.

"Will I not be eating with my father today?" Ina looked up from where she was kneeled on the floor, settling the bowls onto the bench.

"Mr Yim is currently accompanied with Mr Choi. Your father requested that you eat by yourself for the duration of his stay, you know how it is." Nodding, she took her seat opposite Ina patiently awaiting for the maid to stop assembling her dishes in a neat line in front of her. Whilst women typically dined by themselves, her father had allowed her to eat with him almost daily; except when there were guests. Despite his neglect towards his daughter, he still valued her feminine dignity and did not trust the vulturous eyes of men that rested their predatory gaze upon her.

"Who is this, Mr Choi, and how is it that I wasn't aware of his arrival until he was knocking on our door?" She questioned, Ina's careful gaze flickered to her before staring out into the open space in contemplation.

"A new apprentice. He’s appointed here, on request of his father." Leaning forward, Ina's voice dropped an octave. "Apparently his father says he's been 'engaging in sin' so he's been estranged from his parents until he gets his act together." Raising a questioning brow, she looked down at her bowl.

"Is he a homosexual?" Immediately, she was wacked on the back of her head by the older maid who didn't miss a single second in scolding her. Her hand sped to the back, rubbing the jolt of pain that seared through her, a temporary look of irritation glazed over her eyes.

"You insolent girl! How could you say such thing, you know how disgraced that is!"

"You said ‘engaging in sin'. I can't think of anything more sinful other than fraternising with men or women." Ina's dirty look penetrated through her bones, provoking a sense of humiliation that would rattle through her in the depth of the night. Scowling at her mistress, she rolled her eyes before getting up from the floorboard.

“Hurry up and eat your food. You need to go to Mrs Kang’s today." Following Ina's orders she gulfed down her food, drowning out the maid's muttering about her being crude and dishonourable.

The light chatter from the front room fell deaf at her ears as she sauntered to the entrance, which the two kitchen maids scuttled in through. Bowing at their mistress, they made a fowl attempt at suppressing a fit of giggles as they subtly snuck a glance into the room. Following their gazes, she warily traipsed in, catching her father converse with their new guest.

"Ah, speak of the devil! Mr Choi, this is my daughter." He teared his gaze away from his mentor to draw his eyes across the room and find the infamous Miss Yim perched by the doorway, gripping onto her onto the full skirts of her dark blue hanbok.

It was hard to deny that Mr Choi was amiable. He was tall, well-built with a toned torso that was still perceptible through his uncreased peach coloured hanbok, dimples adorned his perfectly structured cheeks. He nodded with such elegant eagerness, at her father's command harbouring the position of an obedient son, almost leaving her wondering what was so 'sinful' about that man in the first place? What could he have possibly done so wrong that he had practically been disowned by his family?

"Miss Yim, it's nice to formally meet you." She gave him a polite nod, choosing to stay silent than say something and be met with her father's harsh stare.

"Mr Kang told me you've been over at his home, a few times." Her father spoke breaking the awkward meeting. A breath became lodged in her throat as she anticipated some sort of wrath, after all Mr Yim was supposed to be oblivious to her going out and painting other women for a light commission. She didn't exactly know how he would react to that. "He appreciates your help with Mrs Kang's pregnancy." Mrs Kang is pregnant? That would explain the engorging belly, the mood swings and the other number of odd behaviours that she was listing off in the past few weeks she had been challenged with drawing the difficult woman. At times, Miss Yim thought she ought to have more empathy, it wasn't that she lacked it, it was that she tended to not gift her empathetic abilities to the prejudiced. It was women like Ina, and the cooks that worked in the kitchen that deserved her compassion. Women who strived to be breadwinners, even if it was due to poor socio-economic circumstances. Because women like Mrs Kang were hypocrites to be preaching the old values, pre-Confucianism, when they neglected their own sex.

"Yes, she's been enjoying my company. I intend to go again to deliver herbs she’s asked from Ina’s garden.” She recalled glancing down the extensively large page, as Mrs Kang moaned and groaned when the servants were too late to serve her namul and kimchi.

"Red raspberry leaf, dandelions, echinacea." Grimacing, she looked over her sheet to give the woman a look. "You can just get this from the market, why do you need this from Ina's garden?" Mrs Kang simply pouted rubbing her belly. Now that she thought about it, how did it not occur to her that she was pregnant? Perhaps it was because they begged to slim down her figure in the painting.

"Fresh herbs are good for babies." Were the herbs from the market not fresh enough for her? “I need them picked before they’re here.”

"Perhaps I should add lemon balm to burn that fat." A discourse of exasperated gasps rippled over the room, Mrs Kang waddled out of the room wailing for her husband. It was ruthless and unkind, keeping the unsympathetic Miss Yim awake at night before she travelled back to the Kang estate to see a very unhappy couple.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Kang. You’re beautiful just the way you are, even more with the little belly.” The pregnant woman’s tight grip around her neck, as they hugged, almost choked her to death.

Mr Yim's eyes outcasted through the doorway, there was a light patter of rain yet the howl of the wind had subsided significantly. He let out a small hum before returning back to the young pair staring, ardently, back at him.

"I say Mr Choi, should be your chaperone. It's a little unsafe to be going out by yourself." Before she could open her mouth and argue, her father held out a hand to silence her thoughts. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she nodded once more, before dashing from the room to have a flustered Mr Choi following her.

Hitching up her skirts, she trudged through the field, the sun had filtered into the sky radiating its essence onto the young souls as they surpassed the reams of houses. Had it not been for the joyous discord of infantile laughter, it would have been quiet; San mustering the courage to initiate a conversation. He cleared his throat, she merely blinked at his futile attempt at grabbing her attention.

"Miss Yim, you must slow down I can't keep up with your pace." He declared, striding faster towards her, the tall grass brushing against his knees.

"I think you can cope, Sir. Your legs are longer than mine." Walking through the grass wasn't difficult but when her hanbok was floor length, lifting up the heavy fabric proved tiresome and not to mention her shoes were sinking into the muddy fields, squelching miserably under her heavy steps. Eventually, San matched her pace as they made their way up the steps to the Kang estate.

A shrill voice eructed into the airs, the domestic staff worked at a proficient speed as they amended the damages inflicted from the storm. As a group of servants raised the logs from the path, San ran to their aid significantly lightening their work load. His charity had left her silent contemplating her initial thoughts on his persona. There must be something impure under all that. Surely? There had to be some reason why his father practically disowned him.

Kang Yeosang stood by his front doors, watching as his staff worked the lawn and through the large home. He sought the enigmatic painter launch up the steps, with an unreadable look painted on her face.

“Good Morning, Miss Yim.”

“Morning, Yeosang.” She greeted, he laughed a little at her dull tone.

“I take it, there’s nothing particularly good about this morning.” He jeered, she huffed at his characteristically exuberant manner.

“Not when my father’s spy is here to be my chaperone.” She turned around on the steps, the pair looking down at San moving the heavy logs from the path, dirtying his robes at that. “He’s the new apprentice at the local office, Choi San, I think he said his name was.”

"Oh, the country boy." Country boy? "He's from Yangdong, have you not heard? His family is amongst the richest, they're both scholars and farmers, now." Across the country, Joseon farming techniques had taken a turn within the last few decades, especially with the establishment of irrigation and rice transplantation methods- bringing Joseon to a state of flourishment. It was safe to say, which farmer wasn't rich now? The admirable farm boy was pushed away by the servants, making his way up the steps. Leaving him with Yeosang, she made her way in the direction of the couples' shared quarters, Mrs Kang draped over her bed, her wrist dramatically resting on her forehead.

"Hello, Mrs Kang." The woman jolted up from her seat, an obnoxious groan emitted from her as she propped her back up against the wall. "I brought you your herbs."

"Thank you, my love. You left your paints, they're just on my dressing table." The herbs were exchanged from her paints, digging into the pockets of her hanbok. The older woman began to natter, the discordant tonality rattling in her ears. Mrs Kang loved to talk. Even if it was about absolutely nothing, that woman talked for the whole of Joseon.

I'm leaving this place with a headache.

She often wondered how it was that Yeosang put up with his insufferable wife. Was it love, or a promise that he had made to Mrs Kang's parents that he would never leave her? The thought made her sigh in pity- to be permanently bound to someone in matrimony seemed like too much effort at times. Perhaps the effort itself is what subdued her mother to misery, the poor Mrs Yim eagerly handing her soul to the Angel of Death. Or maybe Miss Yim had possessed a stone-cold heart frozen over by the neglect of life's intimate essence; overpowered by a sense of maturity held over by her mother's early death. She took it upon herself to make it clear that by the time she was thirty, if there was no proposal that had come around she was going to wholly abandon the idea of marriage and work herself to death.

"That man is so pretty." She spoke, dreamily, Miss Yim's eyes lazily fled in the direction of Mrs Kang's. Her head poked through the doorway where both Yeosang and San were travelling down, engaging in intelligent discourse. "Not Yeo, the other one." The pregnant woman clarified.

"He's ok, I suppose. Not bewitching enough to tempt me."

"That has to be the biggest lie I have ever heard."

"What is Miss Yim lying about now?" Yeosang provoked as both men entered the room. Both women shared a look before the painter slumped onto the dressing table chair. "I suppose you're awaiting your payment."

"Well, my services aren't free." She declared, pompously. Yeosang rolled his eyes before he moved to the opposite end of the room, San had almost drawn his body out of the bedroom, a little embarrassed as the pregnant Mrs Kang ogled her eyes at him. Stretching her limbs, she got up taking the velvet bag. "Thank you, Mr Kang. I'll visit when the baby arrives."

His perfection had her repleted with such distaste for him. Simply put, Miss Yim hated Choi San because he was loved by all. Her father loved him, Ina adored him, the maids were constantly drooling over him it shot her with a sense of annoyance. He quickly became a household name, spoken of when he was at the office with her father and even when he was at home. Everywhere she went it was just him, him and him. The worst thing was, was that he was even trying to be nice to her prevailing through her grim looks and hard words.

“San this, San that. Honestly, he’s not even as esteemed as everyone claims, Ina. He’s just a man, like every other man. And all men are the same. So what if he's good looking, does that suddenly make him god’s greatest gift?” Burying her face into the pillow, an exasperated huff escaped her lips. Ina fell onto her bed, reaching her arms out to stroke her mistress’ back. With a contented sigh, she felt her eyes drooping a little as the maid's soft caresses were gently lulling her to sleep. Her touch felt like that of her mother's, soothing the aches of her heart whilst simultaneously provoking the nostalgia of a mother's love. To have her mother again, to have that woman encircle her into her arms. Rock her back and forth. She longed for her mother's scent again, often chasing the whiff of her familiar saccharine redolence as one chased butterflies in an open field.

“Yet you think of him often. He occupies your thoughts as much as he occupies ours.”

“Hardly, I-,” She stammered in a desperate attempt to recollect her thoughts into a single ambience. “I envy him. How is that he steps into this home for a second and I see my father smile?” Ina’s face dropped, a breath caught in her throat as her mistress spoke aloud the forbidden words she denied her staff to even breathe. The older maid had been rendered silent for too long, giving Miss Yim all of the answers she needed to press forward with her wistful assumptions.

"Perhaps if you grew to understand him, you would know why your father has inhabited such emotions for him. Think of him like a son-in-law. He will love him but not as much as he loves you." The maid reasoned.

"Then that makes him my husband." She grumbled, pulling the duvet over her shoulders.

"Now is that so bad?” Ina teased, before pulling her weight off the bed. With no strength to argue, her eyes fluttered to a close; her soul being dissolved by the night.

The following morning, it was too cold to be even sitting on her porch and with eyes tired of the same dreary scene, she ventured out of her quarters, delving into parts of the home she had missed. By the kitchens, the late Mrs Yim had reserved herself a small room decorated with the tools of all her hobbies in order to enact time alone for herself, away from motherhood and social responsibility. The room was consistently cleaned but usually left empty having it being full of painful memories of the beloved mistress of the household. For the first time in a long time, Miss Yim had felt the drive to find the room again and read her mother's poetry she had spent hours pouring over in the rooms.

Yet it had been almost shot stone-cold dead when the door opened to find San sat by the window hands raised towards the canvas. The anger within her refused to simmer or boil, it was rather the smooth swaying of the soft waves lapping the crust of sand. Her hands feebly reached for the poetry book on the table.

"I didn't know you were a painter, Mr Choi." She proclaimed, her breath hitched in her throat as her eyes sought the intricate details on the canvas. Her eyes glossed over the colours, the succinct shapes, drawing on the brushstrokes herself with the sharp movements of her eyes. It moved her. When was the last time she had been left this breathless?

"You never asked, Miss Yim." Immediately she felt intimidated by his artwork, her own revered drawings felt meek in comparison to his. A mere apprentice in an important official’s presence. To even be this close to him was considered a blessing. "You can sit next to me. I don't bite." Tentatively, she drew closer seating herself on the floorboards next to him; the brush of their fabrics sending a tidal wave of timidness over her. Where was the bold, steadfast Mrs Yim? Long gone, lost to the large expanse of the sea. Drowning under the ocean of his perfection. She didn't even want call for help, allowing herself to be enveloped by his allure. You draw so beautifully, she wanted to say. It's perfect, like something-someone even.

"You should have been a royal painter." The remark was swallowed into a melancholic void within his heart. Sparing a glance, he dipped the tip of the paintbrush into the crevice of the cerulean blue paint before raising to illustrate the canvas.

"Don't say that to my father." She sought the gloom glossed over his brown eyes. Was he, too, held down by social responsibility and expectations? She didn't think it was possible for a man's dreams to be mauled over by society; for she saw it with her father who had the whole world at his feet-picking dreams as if he was picking daisies from a meadow. Dropping her book onto the floor, she rested her head on her knee, solicitude fulfilled the serene atmosphere. Her eyes fell over the fancy metallic pots situated around the easel, which she knew to be various colours of paint pigments. Resting her head on her knee, she tenderly rocked her body from side to side as she watched his hands elegantly work through the canvases.

"Did you ever consider pottery? That's supposed to be quite popular now." Her question breaking through the quiet airs, the delicacy of her voice startling San. It was devoid of boredom, or disinterest like he had always perceived. No lace of judgement like he was silently praying to be diminished from her soul.

"It'll grow out of popularity soon." He stated, resting the paintbrush down to exercise the tense muscles in his hands. "I heard this was the late Mrs Yim's room, I hope you don't mind me being here." It, too, came as a shock to her when she shook her head-with no care in the world that he had colonised the room that she was once sure was hers.

It was sunny for once, which was odd for this time of year-she thought throwing open the door to the porch finding San surrounded by a large number of logs and an axe.

"What's he doing outside?" She pondered, Ina folding up the washed bedsheets before tucking them away into the drawers.

"They stopped properly chopping up the logs so we can use them for the fire, so Mr Choi offered to help." Wandering out through the doors, a smooth current of air tousled her hair, a book held tightly against her chest.

God, he really was toned. Rolling up the sleeves of his hanbok all the way to his bulging biceps, the maids all stopped in their path to rest their elbows on the low garden wall overseeing the vast expanse of grass. Effortlessly he picked up the axe, raising it over his head to slice down the log of wood. She rolled her eyes at her maids, as they watched him with dreamy faces. They nattered in hushed tones, giggling amongst themselves unbeknownst that their mistress was stood behind them. Leaning down to where they were sat on the garden wall, she poked her head in between the sea of charmed maidens.

“What are we looking at?” They squeaked, jumping up from their seats upon sight of their mistress- flapping their hands as some rushed back into the kitchen and others tended to garden duties. “Well? I would like to know too.”

“You wouldn’t understand Miss Yim.” Yes, yes she was the narcissistic Miss Yim who harboured no feelings for men and couldn’t deduce their charming airs. She was the Miss Yim who rejected countless marriage proposals, not based on looks but merely because she found that no man possessed the kind quality in a man that she was seeking. No patience, no loyalty. They were not even ruled by a sense of ambition. So how could she be hypnotised by the sacred beauty of a man, specifically, Choi San.

“Yes, I don’t understand why you’re not doing the job that we’re paying for you to do. All of you, out of the garden, it’s already been tended to!” She shouted, in an instant all of the maids dispersed back into the home. Huffing, she slumped onto the garden wall, glazing her ink pen over the defined lines on the page. Occasionally, she’d peer her eyes over the pages at San, tending to the curve of his body, and the horrific cinching of his waist. When he looked to his side, she hastily returned back to her sketchbook, feeling a blush decorate her cheeks as his steady gaze burned into her skin.

“Very accurate, Miss Yim.” Jumping up from her seat, she screeched the pot of ink spilling onto his face and neck. Whoops.

“Oh goodness, I am so sorry. Ah.” She let out a pained sound, battling with her internal conflict as she grabbed his hand rushing them into the direction of the porch that led to her quarters. Powerfully, she slid the door open darting inside and towards the washroom. Hauling him down to his knees in front of the washing basin, with a soaked rag in hand, she scraped away the ink splashed across his face. “Take this off.” She ordered, signalling to his hanbok.

“W-what?” He stammered, his face heating red.

“Well you’ve got ink and dirt all over it. I can get a new one for you.”

“I can’t just return back to my quarters and change?”

“Well no because then my father will see you and he’ll know I stole his ink again.” An annoyed huff escaped from his lips as she handed him the rag to clean himself. “Here, I’ll go get you a spare set of clothes.” Jumping up from where she was kneeled, her foot slipped over a puddle of water his arms snapped out towards her waist. Gripping his shoulders for stability, a faint blush trickled over her face, their noses barely an inches distance.

"Be careful." Quickly unravelling her hands from his shoulders, Miss Yim ran out of the room towards his quarters. Slipping past the double doors, she rummaged through the drawers for his clothes-picking up a light green set.

"Mr Choi?" A maid's voice called out from behind the closed door. Discerning their shadow moving closer, she made a beeline through the open doors leading into the garden. Scuttling into her washroom, she practically launched the hanbok at him before hiding in her room.

A breath of relief had finally escaped from her when he left from her room, both of their faces burning red in the midst of this shameful meeting. Yet San seemed persistent to know her, feeling that there was still something beneath the stone-cold façade she had constructed; something emotional and raw that he had felt he had to know. And Miss Yim was too becoming more curious, by the day, as to what Choi San’s secret was and why his father perpetually hated him.

Ina had forced them to go on a walk together, she groaned, silently, as they left the home behind making their way down to the meadow. At first an odd tranquillity permeated the air, eventually she grew tired of the jarring dissonance of absolutely nothing.

“A penny for your thoughts?” She inquired.

“I’ll keep the penny. I almost feel you’d judge me for having thoughts.” San bemused, she rolled her eyes, a faint of a smile on her lips. Just the tiniest, but it was practically gone within the same second.

“I don’t judge you, Mr Choi. I do, however, envy you. You’ve taken the place I wanted in my father’s heart.” She confessed, he looked towards her sympathetically, with knowingness that she was indeed right and the Mr Yim, famous for being just as aloof as his daughter, had somehow softened a little upon his arrival. Perhaps it was a son that he had always wanted, not a daughter but the scholar was reserved; San being too terrified to pry.

“Your place is best occupied elsewhere. Somebody else has it, I’m sure. He keeps it safe with love that is too potent that even dreamers can’t feign.” Of course was reading her mother's poetry, she didn't think many could understand the abstract nature of her words; of course it was him out of all who admired her poetry as it was his own.

"I am not pretty enough for that." Miss Yim argued, looking down at her feet. After all, the marriage proposals were not because of her vague good looks, but mainly because Mr Yim claimed an abundance of wealth.

"I disagree with you on that." Her face heated with his affirmation.

"Well, I am no Jang Ok-Jeong."

"There are many beautiful women in Joseon, not all of them have ever been recorded."

"She caught the eye of the King, a man who has a kingdom at his feet, he is supposed to be too superior to even look at his subjects. And he looks at her? Is that not a beautiful woman?" They were both fuelled by this argument, the debate igniting a set of powerful emotions that roared within them. This, was what they both deeply felt conversations were supposed to be. Potent discourse about society, literature and art. Not idle chatter on the weather, marriage and the social laws that subdued them.

"A man is supposed to be ruled by his head, not emotions. I say if any man bestowed more than a single glance, on a woman, and his breath was taken away, then she is more gorgeous than Venus herself."

"Not that wretched painting. It's so...vulgar." San snickered, squeezing his eyes as he let out a melodious laughter. "It says so much about the male gaze." She spat out as they trudged through the fields back in the direction of her home.

“I wonder if you like any art, at all? Other than your own?” He questioned.

“Owon is good. Apart from the vulgarity of Renaissance paintings-,”

“Which I must say is the majority of the whole movement, pray, continue.” He teased, his pestering smirk seemed to stitch wings on her heart, for it fluttered at his amiability, his devoutness to mankind and all of its endearing qualities and his perseverance. Despite her uncompromising attitudes and distasteful demeanour, he seemed compliant with listening to her, talking to her, truly trying to understand her and not just turning a blind eye. Choi San truly wanted to know her, for her; and not follow some false allegation that she was devoid of a heart or soul. He commended she had both and they were wrought with an existentialist quality that he wanted nothing but to huddle in the corner of a library and read away his life until it dissolved under the cover of her persona.

"What about you?" She questioned, tucking a strand of loose hair behind her own ear. At once, San was drawn into the world of virtuosity describing each of his favourite pieces as if it could be encapsulated into a single globe. The sweet dissonance of his voice lugging her into a dreamscape as they gently glissaded through the empty hallways of the Yim estate. They sought their eyes over the panelled wall, following the intricate lines of carved wood. They could almost be called mad people loose from the dreaded ward. For their eyes did not see the same way a normal persons did. He saw the shimmer in the air, the light poring through the crevices, the faint blemishes on a skin unseen with a naked eye-too vague to be called a taint, a mark, a scar. And she would see what he saw, whether it was not there she could reach to the depths of her sanity and pour out the image before her eyes to satisfy him.

It became a wonder to her how they spent several nights, the light patter of her feet as she rushed to his quarters with fulfilling arguments over art pieces, sharing techniques, rifling through each other's sketchbooks. His style was a stark contrast to her own: luminous watercolours, velvety acrylic paints, oily crayons. His muses were full of life and wonder, the strokes brimming with fruition. It was if a single segment of his painting held more hope than what could exist in her whole being.

There was something about him, too. She could see it now, his compassion, his adoration. As the weeks spun by, she became less repulsed by his sincerity and opened up to it more, almost finding herself craving his attention. His affection was much welcomed; she often wondered what it would be like to be so loved by him.

In her mother's old drawing room, she found him again, his large hands drifting over the pages again. Peering over his shoulder, she softly blew into his ear; the warmth tickling him.

"What are you drawing?" Her eyes scanned over the cartridge sheet, its intimacy striking her. It looked like her. Every sketch line, every shade, every little detail, every little blemish on her face.

"You." He answered, he didn't dare tear his eyes away from her for her hair was falling down her face in perfect waves that lured him into uncharted depths.

"You drew me so pretty."

"I only drew what I saw." Her heart wavered in piety, his devotion provoking an arrangement of madness. He was going to drive her insane and she was content with it.

"I wonder, what was it that you were excommunicated for?" Her silence broke through the passionate airs, culminating the objectivity that fulfilled among them as his sins held heavy on his tongue.

"I am not a scholar, a farmer or a devout son. I am an artist, a man who sees the world despite all of its maliciousness. I see the world so raw, it almost disgusts me but I am not terrified by its honesty. I find it so beautiful, it belongs on a page: drawn." Her body swayed towards him, hypnotised by his delicate words drawn his intoxicating tenacity, filling her with such immitigable rage that within that severe moment all she wanted was him. "I was 'excommunicated' because I am not the man my father wants me to be. I return as soon as I am devoid of all the emotions he renders vile." Tentatively, her fingers curled through his hair his eyes fluttering shut under her gentle touch.

"What about you Miss Yim? Why are you so solitary?" He murmured, their quiet voices serenaded the room.

"I am not solitary by choice. It's been enforced upon me and I know nothing and no one else but myself." Her whispers, though full of hurt and pain, were seldom dulcet. He thrived himself upon her words alone, it was enough to send him into delirium but her whole unmatched beauty with her words? He was sure to be sent to the wretched institute.

With an envelope gripped in her hands, she made her way over to his quarters slipping into the warmth, his smile greeting her as she slumped onto the chair in front of him.

"Mrs Choi? Your mother?" She inquired, handing over the envelope. San snickered at her nosiness, rolling her eyes as he took the sheet from her grasp, ripping open the seal to reel his eyes down the page.

"Actually, it's my wife." He announced, sparing her a single glance as he continued to read the words sprawled across the page. A sharp pang penetrated through the barriers in her heart, she felt her feet slipping under the ground, the walls pulverising as they caved in on her. For some reason, the room felt much more smaller than it was. Her heart was beating faster than any poetic declaration he had bestowed upon her, any time he had made her feel as if she was truly a worthy soul of being loved. Her heart palpitated faster than when he made her feel she would not die from a cataclysmic loneliness.

"I didn't know you were married." She breathed out, gripping the sage green silk in hand; feeling almost disgusted with herself for fixating her whole being on a man who never belonged to her in the beginning.

"We'll be officially married when I return back home." With a teasing smile on his lips, he grabbed a clean sheet from his desk and began elegantly carving the characters onto the page. "I'll be sure to send you an invite, if you'll come?"

“Of course, I’ll come. You know, for the food.” She quipped, his dimpled smile shattering the months of pining she had set for this revered soul. “I’ll take your leave, San.”

She fled from the room her bare feet blessing the sweet earth, the velvety wisps of the wind taunting her as tears welled up in her eyes. With a breath hitched in her throat, she fell onto her bed; bottom lip quivering as pearl tears escaped from her eyes dribbling down her cheeks before splattering onto the bedsheets. Her painful howl terrorised the desolate quarters as she had done on several dispassionate nights, the skies mimicked her torment, the light patter of rain hit against the window as if it understood all her wretched emotions. As if it understood her anger, hatred and hurt. As if it understood how disgusting it felt be left vulnerable by a man who could never be hers.

Was it some false delusion that she had been seduced by? That he, who was carved from a sculpturers most wild emotions, by all of his tenacity and his violent rage that he wished to create a being made of light: could truly be hers? By his yearning and pent up sentiment, by his dying wish that this world was not at peace until some divine figure from a concealed land would touch her world? Her hands shook as she sought to remove the tears streaming endlessly down her face. After all it had now made sense to all of the sympathetic souls that had heard her be plunged through such pain, to read her tale and understand the reason for her aloof nature.

Up the walls went back up. Brick by brick.

Curse you, Choi San, for breaking them down in the first place.

San had not seen Miss Yim for the remainder of the week or the subsequent. Granted, he had been flooded with an overwhelming amount of work but such was to be expected with the incredible staff shortage and Mr Yim’s high expectations. Regardless, he missed the snarky comments and unrelenting stares from across the room. He missed her moodiness, how ever infuriating it was at times; he missed the sense of quietude she presented at his feet and its ability to render his mind numb. Overall, he missed her. Yet, she seemed to be nowhere in sight and in fact missing even under the cover of the night.

“Ina, do you know where I can find Miss Yim?” He questioned, the agony rupturing the sutures of his weak heart apart.

"In her room, Mr Choi. She's, specifically, requested not to see anyone." Oh. His mood deflated after that concession, wracking his mind for all the things he had said in their last engagement; anything potentially hurtful or offensive but he didn’t recall anything particularly endangering. His quest to venture into her quarters, despite her ruthless commands which had the servants petrified over her uncharacteristic (but not abnormal) behaviour, had been cut short by Mr Yim’s desire to keep a tightened hold on the apprentice. He thought about bringing it up as he ate dinner with his mentor.

“How is Miss Yim? I heard she’s isolated herself in her quarters?” He raised, tentatively, as Mr Yim’s eyes scoured down the reports. Her father was a little too quick to dismiss her actions.

“Never mind her, that’s not something new. I was surprised she was even roaming around the house when you arrived…” Mr Yim trailed off as a thought infiltrated his mind, shutting the book close, his furrowed brows silenced the questions in San’s mind.

The moonlight spilt in through the window, the luminous shadows dancing with the light breeze. With dried tear tracks staining her puffy cheeks, she circulated her finger around the cotton sheets pulling up the heavy duvet over her shoulders, a trail of heat comforted her. The door to her room, silently, slid open; oblivious to the soft bustling of footsteps she stretched her limbs sitting up in her bed.

“Miss Yim?” Her head snapped up at the deep voice, its familiarity sending an agonising wave of heartache through her being. There he was, the perpetrator himself, settling in front of her with a teacup in his palms as if nothing had happened in the first place. “Are you ok? I know you don’t like echinacea, so I got you lemon and ginger tea.” Placing the tea cup on her night stand, he rested his palm against her forehead.

“What are you doing here, San?” Huffing, she fisted up the hair in her palms before sticking a dry paint brush through it to create a tight knot.

“You’re burning u- were you crying?” His finger lightly smoothed her damp skin, shaking her head she pushed his hand away from her face. God, she felt awful for his wife who had to endure his infidelity. “What’s wrong, jagiya, speak to me?” Biting down on her lower lip, Miss Yim threw her gaze out of her window, she sought the light shimmering as her vision blurred.

“Just leave, please.” There was no more hostility left in her tone, a coarse throat lacerated with the phlegm that built up from endless nights of sobbing herself to sleep. Tiredness gnawed at her, she just wanted to dissolve back into the covers. Pleading, begging she’d do whatever she could to force him to leave because if he didn’t then she would tear down the path to the Angel of Death and beg him to take her dwindling heart. On her knees she would go, for the mere sight of her lover crumbled the steadfast walls she had tried so hard to rebuild.

“Are you upset because I’m going home next week? If that’s the case-,”

“San, are you dense?” She interrupted. He was subjugated to silence, a look of hurt flashing over his face. “Leave means leave.” Adjusting her body so she could slide under the covers, she stridently hauled the fabric over her head, gripping her lips tight shut, so no more pitiful sobs escaped her and she was no more a servant to his cruel love.

The Yim estate was left with a melancholic air as the venerated bachelor made his preparations to leave the home. The maids were forlorn as they’d no longer have the privilege of seeing his striking face to bless their monotone days. Miss Yim had finally mustered the courage to take a stroll through the garden, avoiding San's quarters at that. Lingering by the flowers, she wrapped her arms around herself to manifest a sense of warmth that failed to prevail with the awful weather. She didn't notice her lover tear down the garden to her, his heart leaping within his own chest.

"Miss Yim?" Her body whipped around upon his words, her hands balled up into fists the anger displaced by fear. "Do you know how painful it has been for me to go days without seeing you? I am leaving for Yangdong, today, and god knows if I didn't even so much as see your face I would have gone feral."

"I- why?" She stuttered, at a desperate attempt to collect together her words and form a sentence. How and when did he culminate such passionate feelings for her?

"Why? Isn't it obvious? I am in love with you." He declared, she shook her head, profusely, at him.

"How can you say that?" Her voice raised an octave, parrying against the harsh winds that blew at them.

“If being in love with you is a deadly sin, then I am the greatest sinner there is. I will walk up to the gates of hell and open them myself. Hand over my arms and ask them to bound me to its greatest depths.” His chest heaved up and down, tears brimming at the front of her eyes. “I cannot live without you. I would not even do so much as breathe unless you asked me to. If you asked me to stop breathing, I would!”

“You’re a married man, San. Do you know how god awful that sounds?”

“I’m barely married but engaged. When I go back home, I will once again beg to not be wed off to her. I don’t love her, how can my father expect me to marry her? How can you expect me to marry her?”

“I don’t think you understand, San. I can’t love you.” His arms outstretched for her waist, hauling her towards him, the rain beating down on them both. With the gentle flick of his finger, her head tipped up to peer into his eyes.

“Look into my eyes and tell me you don’t love me, or even feel as much as a small emotion for me. One word from you, would silence me forever.” She bit furiously down on her lip as his vehement fixation tore through the borders of her soul. When did she fall so vulnerable in his conquest for her being?

“I don’t love you the same way you love me. I am incapable of doing so.” His own brown eyes fulfilled with hot tears, pouring soundlessly down his cheeks. Her heart wavered with misery as he ripped away his grip, stumbling backwards upon her untruth.

“I understand. Thank you, Miss Yim. For the first time in my life, someone saw me for who I really am and not who I am meant to be.” Once again, the thunder cracked against the sky as San turned his back on her striding back into the home. The maids ran out to shut the doors, summoning their mistress back in but she sunk to the floor erupting into a fit of sobs; a wave of shock rattling through them. Her heart burned with such pain, even as Ina cooed lifting her up from the floor to guide her back into the home. Melting into the older woman's arms, her ears drowned out the distant sound of her lover ambling far, far away from her to a land in which even its notion would never grace the depths of her mind.

Her father's office was warm, but not the comforting kind as the biting airs of Joseon persisted. It was more suffocating as they sat across from each other in his office, discussing the state of her future now that he had managed to complete some of burdening tasks at work. He had several proposals lined in front of her, some prospects from his workplace, some from Mr Kang and even Ina had managed to find one or two seemingly agreeable men within their social class. A sigh fulfilled her, it would be a lie to say that she didn't look for the smallest hint of San within them all.

"I'm sorry Father, I don't like any of these men." He closed his eyes in indignation, rubbing his face before collecting the sheets from in front of her and throwing them into the fire. The embers cackled in a slow, seething ferocity as he leaned back in his chair.

"I honestly don't know what to do with you anymore. You won't marry, you won't leave your quarters. You've stopped helping around the house. All you want to do is sit in your room all day and stare into space." He scolded, she shook her head before raising from her seat. "You are becoming a burden to me."

"Well if I am such a burden to you, then just get rid of me." She taunted. An animosity truanted through him at her discourtesy.

“What do you think I have been trying to do since your mother left us? It should have not been your mother that had died! It should have been you! I would trade my soul to have your mother in place of you.” He blurted, before quickly slapping the palm of his hand to his mouth, cursing him for the spoiled words that left it.

“I would trade my soul too, to have my mother where you stand. You are a poor excuse of a man and to call you my father is an insult to me.” She hissed through gritted teeth, the shock reverberating at Mr Yim’s core; the severity of her words pulsating through his blood.

“You shouldn’t have been a father if all I was going to be to you was a pretty doll in a picture. The truth was she didn’t die because she was ill, it was the heartbreak of carrying a whole marriage on her back. It was the fact that you didn’t care about her wants, but your own.”

"You are in no position to say that to me. I loved your mother like it was breathing, I loved her as if she was the greatest blessing, as if God had granted me mercy for all the times I had done him wrong." His chest suspired, brittle hands shaking as a heavy tension remained suspended in the air between them; Ina loitering outside afraid to walk into the war zone.

"But you didn't love me! It was my mother who loved me, and I wasn't allowed to have her! I wasn't my mother's daughter, or my father's. I was a daughter of a servant with my name merely attached to you." At the end of the day, she was the figure in those paintings. Trapped within a frame, four equidistant lines on a piece of cartridge paper, bound by brushstrokes, sketch lines, constricted and held down by the artist. Subservient and stuck to a position in which she could not move.

Mr Yim deserved the brutal honesty of those words, no matter how harsh it was, and with a pounding headache, she ran out of his office ignoring her father’s calls for her to return to his side. This was it, there was nothing and no one by her side now and she was now the destitute figure that she had feared she would become.

“What’s wrong my dear? What’s hurt you so much?” Ina’s soft voice dilapidated at her mistress’ gloom, one she had seen prolong within her late madam too. Squeezing her eyes shut, she summoned the courage to spill her heart to her maid. She told her of how much she adored him, how deeply she wanted him and the ways in which he had made her fall in love with him. And how he had hurt her too.

“So call me heartless and apathetic all you want but I couldn’t take another woman’s man from her.”

“My love.” Ina’s weak fingers travelled through her hair. “You are far from heartless and apathetic. A man who you love is your whole life, you gave your life away to another woman.” She looked over to Ina, falling into her motherly embrace, breathing in her scent. There it was. The same scent that her mother had, the scent she was dreaming to come back to her in the midst of the night, and her a fool to dismiss that it was in front of her the whole time.

“What should I do now?” Her weak inquiry, breaking her heart, sinking deeper into the void than she already was.

“Go back to him and tell him you love him. He is a gentleman who accepts despondency like a soldier. So you, his general, must go back and tell him to return home to you.”

“Ina-,”

“Do not deny yourself of what you deserve. Your mother did, I won’t see you walk the same path.”

“I will let time run its cycle. Time will tell if he is meant to be mine.” She declared, to which the maid rested her palm on her cheek.

Mrs Kang’s baby boy, Kang Minho, was indeed a beauty. His bedazzling little eyes stared up at her in wonder, babbling as she lightly drew the tip of her finger over his chubby cheeks. It was astonishing for Mrs Kang to see that it was merely a little baby that would eruct a smile out of the secluded Miss Yim. It had been about four months since San had left the estate, and a while it took for her to leave the confines of her quarters. Once again, she took requests after requests painting and painting until her hands became stiff and sore. And so even more marriage prospects came, and her eyes lingered slightly over a potential husband. Both Ina and her father were pleased when she stayed a little longer at the doorway of their home talking to one of the young apprentice’s at the office. He was tall, handsome and kind; perhaps it was flickers of San she saw within him that had her thinking that spending the rest of her life with this man: wouldn’t be particularly gruesome. Regardless, she made no firm decision but still, for her father this was significant progress.

“He likes you.” Mrs Kang chimed, grinning down at her baby. She hummed carefully, softly tickling his smooth cheeks.

“Maybe I like him too.” Her gaze lightly flickered to the elated mother. “Where is Yeosang? I didn’t see him on my way in?”

“Oh he’s in his office with San.” Her head snapped up from the baby at the sound of his name. Goodness, how long had it been since she had heard that single syllable name, forever it seemed it would merely reverberate inside her head. “Did you not know he was in town? He came to see Minho.” Shaking her head, she got up from the bed consoling herself.

“I- I think I’ll leave now. I’ll come visit another time.” She announced, before awkwardly patting Mrs Kang’s head; a poor endeavour at affection but for Mrs Kang this affection was whole-heartedly appreciated. Her footsteps sped down the hallways, she came to an abrupt halt at the exist of the Kang estate.

There he was, stood there with Yeosang conversing if they were age-old best friends her heart palpitated with anxiety, knowing that she’d have to walk past him again. The sight of him almost triggered her, she gripped onto her deep purple skirts, his own yellow hanbok beaming like the sun.

“Miss Yim! I didn’t know you had arrived, leaving so soon?” Mr Kang chirped from the door. She shook at her head at him.

“I’ve been here for over an hour and a half. I’ll visit another time, especially since Minho is the only tolerable person in this household.”

“Just say you love him.” A grumble erupted from her lips, she rolled her eyes- with a delicate playfulness- before squeezing past the pair of men. A pounding of footsteps travelled after her as she trudged back through the fields in the direction of her home.

“Miss Yim, allow me to accompany you.” San professed, breathlessly. With a diligent nod, she transgressed forwards ignoring his burning gaze into her skin. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been fine. What about you?” He responded he was great all the same, reporting that the weather in Yangdong was a little warmer than in her hometown.

“When is your wedding date? I’m still awaiting on an invite.” It was a joke, nonetheless, but one that didn't hesitate to puncture holes in her heart.

“We broke off the engagement, it was mutual really. She was in love with someone else.” With a breath lodged in her throat, her stare tore away from the fields piercing straight into his eyes. It was then she had realised how burdened he truly was. Where was the San that always smiled and joked, and was so full of love it seemed inhumane to have so much of it? They didn't need to say anything to each other in that moment, they stopped walking subsided to a silent, paralysed position. "I think I'll just take your leave." His voice quivered, sending a jolt of agony through her.

Hadn't she made him suffer enough? After all he was the same man who loved her as if she was the vessel that kept the blood running through his veins, his heart beating and his feet walking.

Go back to him and tell him you love him.

Tell him to return back home to you.

His body almost disappeared behind the vast expanse of buildings, when she raced down the fields, as fast as her legs could carry her, ignoring the vicious ache gnawing at her muscles and the agitated pounding of her heart against her chest. Tearing down the path towards him, in the chance that if she didn't run any faster she was going to lose her lover to the wind.

"San!" Her shout echoed in the breeze, but reached to his ears anyway, a tug at the weak strings that had barely held down his soul. He turned, so desperate that she would come to him like she had done in the dead of the night. Feeling his lover crawl into his arms, pledging that she would never leave from his side.

"Miss Yim, what's wrong?"

“I lied to you, when I said I didn’t love you. I really, really do, I almost feel disgusted by it. I never thought, that someone as ruthless and as cold as me would be privileged enough to fall in love but when you entered my life I felt like my mother.” She sucked in a deep breath, her lover making gentle steps toward her as the wind whipped their hair. “I felt like her when she said: ‘If he was the muse in a painting, to be an object, a fleck of paint, or even dust on it would be my greatest honour.’” Warm tears forged in his eyes, biting down his bottom lip to prevent them from escaping. She wanted to outstretch her arms towards him but it was too soon.

“So, Choi San, it’s an honour to be loved by you. I came back, because I had to tell you that. I hurt you so much. I was scared that being vulnerable to love would only hurt me but the only person who gave me such torment was myself.” Her confession disturbed her, yet it was the unspoken truth that only he was entitled to. A tense silence suffused the air as she pended his response, but all he could do was try to convince himself that it was not a dream and she really had said all of the words he had spent countless nights praying that she would declare.

“I love you, Miss Yim. I loved you yesterday, I love you today and I will love you for eternity. There is simply nothing that one can do to tear my heart away from yours, not even you.”

"Do you mean that?" It was a stupid question, but she could not help the words be spilled from her mouth. He nodded violently.

"I do. With my whole entity." Choking back on her sobs, her arms reached out for him throwing them around his neck. Nuzzling her face in the crook of his neck, her grip tightened as he ensnared his hands around her waist; breathing in her scent as if it was oxygen. "Come home with me my dear, come home and be mine."

•••

All Right Reserved © the-midnight-blooms

DO NOT REPOST, TRANSLATE, REPURPOSE, OR PLAGISRISE ANY OF THE WORK HERE

'Yim' meaning light

A/N: the long awaited painter!san fic (with a twist 😏) that i've been waiting too long to put out. I hope you liked this one. :))

let me know if you’d like to be added to the tag list for any future fics I post!

tags: @n0v4t33z @potatos-on-clouds @jjongwho

[imagine-darksiders]

The Angel of Highway 49 - ch. 3

Road Block.

Summary: 'You balk violently at the sight of a cherry-red Aston gunning towards you.'

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

It’s often said that shock is superseded by anger.

You’ve read as much in dozens of books; Books on grief, on bettering yourself, dealing with remorse and the cyclical nature of loss. There was a time when you thought that if you just read the right words, something important might 'click,' and you'd find you could overcome the aching cold that gnawed at the lining of your stomach.

You're older now, sadder and wiser.

Grief aside, you find that the theory of anger following shock rings true in this instance, because as soon as the surprise of seeing ten thousand dollars in your otherwise barren account faded, you tumbled right over some invisible ledge and landed chest-first in an indignation so fierce, you barely slept a wink that night, tossing and turning and glaring hard into the pitch black room. 

As the inky darkness gradually shrank away from the grey light spilling in through the curtains, you stayed awake puzzling over who could have done such an altruistic but intrusive thing…

And how.

The details next to the figure on your phone’s screen are nothing more than a random jumble of numbers and letters, granting you no insight into the identity of your mysterious benefactor.

You had a suspicion… but the likelihood of him being the culprit is just so low as to be outlandish. How would he have even gotten your bank details anyway?

‘Perhaps,’ you mused, glowering at the ceiling of your new accommodations, ‘It could all be chalked up to an honest mistake…’

So, exhaling gruffly and tugging the too-scratchy blankets up to your chest, you resolved to do some digging before you leapt to any concrete conclusions.

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

The very next morning saw you all but dead on your feet.

It had taken a monumental effort to convince both your body and your boss that you were raring to go for your first day at a new job.

You don’t think either of them were very convinced.

Turns out, it would just be Terry and yourself working on the farm, on account of, ‘No other bastard’s managed to last a month. Probably spooked by the shit that goes on around here after dark.’

“That’s too bad,” you’d commiserated, recalling the rather vivid image of a wild-eyed farmer charging towards you last night with his shotgun raised.

“Bunch’a pussies,” Terry spat crudely, yanking open a metal gate and somehow ignoring the awful screech of its rusted hinges as he led you inside the first cattle barn.

You just hummed in response, bobbing your head and tilting it away from him lest he catch the bemused smile you were failing to repress.

You’d been polite when you asked him about the strange payment as he walked you through the barns, giving you a brief rundown of a typical day’s expectations.

“Just trying to suss out where it came from,” you’d said conversationally, keeping the corner of your eye on one of the heifers staring you down from a few yards away, likely wondering why you’re blocking her path to the broken water trough, “Thought maybe it was a… a generous advance from you or something.”

All Terry did was grunt as he gave the pipe jutting from the wall a rough kick. Seconds later, its service box gurgled and sputtered, and water finally started flowing back into the tank.

“Don’t believe in no ‘advances,” he scowled disdainfully, turning a beady eye onto you, “Show me you can work, then I’ll show you your paycheque.”

You figured as much, but you had to be sure.

“Sounds reasonable to me,” you acquiesced, diplomatic, and again bemused that the man who believes in extra-terrestrials doesn’t believe in something so outlandish as an advance.

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

The money remains untouched, of course.

You’re tempted by it, certainly, the way a hungry child might be tempted by a large, unattended slice of chocolate cake.

But you’re not a child. And ten thousand is no mere slice of cake.

It isn’t yours. You didn’t earn it, and you don’t want it.

You don’t.

You still have to remind yourself of that every other hour though, because it would certainly make retrieving your truck a whole hell of a lot easier.

Thankfully, the work Terry puts you to provides ample distraction from temptation.

Getting your head down, you shadow him around the dairy, listening in on his telephone conversations with the milk hauliers as he simultaneously shows you where the parlour is.

It’s a relatively small farm. Difficult to manage alone, but just fine enough for two people to handle.

After demonstrating how to fit the milking machine onto a rather unimpressed cow, Terry sends you off to do some of the simpler tasks to break you in for your first day.

‘Grunt work,’ he calls it.

You call it ‘jobs Terry doesn’t want to do.’

No matter. You willingly fall into the mundanity and repetition of simpler tasks, glad to be busying your hands, not your head.

Pliers in tow, you go about tightening the barbed wire around each paddock to stop the cows getting their heads under the fence if they feel like making break for the open desert. Following that, you take a can of oil to all the rusty gate hinges, scrub down each stall in the parlour, familiarise yourself with the layout of the dairy and even introduce yourself to the cantankerous rooster strutting circles around a flock of hens in the front yard.

“If he runs at’chya, don’t you dare kick ‘im,” Terry warns as he skulks past you with a bucket of rat poison under one arm, “He’s protectin’ his girls.”

You peer down at the rooster, who eyeballs you in return, his wings lowered and his feathery chest puffed out.

Wordlessly, you both agree to stay out of each other’s way.

-----

It isn’t until Terry calls you in for an early supper that you finally pluck up the courage to inquire about your truck.

“Just get it towed,” Terry tells you as he shovels a forkful of bacon into his mouth, “S’a couple of places in Jasper who’ll drop it off here.”

“I can’t afford a tow,” you sigh around your own mouthful.

Screwing an eye shut, the old farmer squints across the table at you with a sceptical hum. “Thought you said you got a lot of money on you…”

“Money that isn’t mine to spend,” you remind him, “It only dropped into my account last night. And whoever did it, I’m not convinced they meant to.”

You certainly hope they didn’t mean to.

“Besides,” you add, chasing a potato around your plate with a fork, “I have every intention of giving it back.”

Very gradually, Terry’s bushy, grey eyebrows creep closer and closer together, wrinkling a forehead that’s already been harshly creased by time and age. For several, awkward moments, he scowls at you with the exasperation of a man who’s never heard such tripe in all his life.

“Jeezus,” he scoffs at last, laying his cutlery down on the plate with a ‘clink’, “Well… Least I know I didn’t hire some fancy entrepreneur.”

He doesn’t stop staring at you though. If anything, he seems to be taking an even closer look. The deep, brooding frown on his face is set like dried cement as he roves his glare down to your hands, to the scrapes and nicks dug from skin not yet callused by a life of hard, physical labour.

Proof, in his eyes, that you’ve put in the work he asked you to do. And not a complaint out of you all day…

“Mmph…” Chewing on his mouthful for a moment longer, he at last swallows it down, smacking his lips and exhaling roughly through his nose as he tosses his soiled napkin onto the plate. “Fine.”

Lifting your head, you hesitantly echo, “Fine?”

“I got a tractor and a tow rope,” he elaborates, pushing his chair out and rising to his feet, “I’ll go get your truck.”

Shocked by his unexpected generosity, you scramble to follow him away from the table, feeling far too much like a broken record as you self-consciously raise your hands, palms tipped towards the ceiling “I… can’t pay you…” you admit, ashamed.

Gruffly, he retorts, “Don’t recall askin’ you to."

“Well, at least deduct the cost of the fuel from this month’s wages,” you offer as a compromise.

At that, as if you’d said something entirely ludicrous, Terry promptly stops in his tracks and whips his head around towards you so quickly, it’s a wonder his flat cap doesn’t come flying off.

Exuding the air of a man who’s wholly unimpressed, he glares you down until you physically wither beneath his scrutiny, shrinking in on yourself, head retreating backwards to try and hide between your rising shoulders.

“Goddamn, Kid. No wonder you ended up here,” he at last grumbles disparagingly, “You ain’t exactly goin’ places with that kind of credo.”

And to say that didn’t sting would be a bold-faced lie.

You didn’t even consider the possibility that you were saying something foolish until Terry drew specific attention to it. Now you just feel ashamed because you know you ought to be.

“Sorry,” you concede, cupping your elbows and avoiding his stare, “...Look, will you at least let me come and help you fetch it?”

The truck is yours after all. Your responsibility. Your burden to retrieve, not his.

At the suggestion of assistance, however, Terry’s boots falter again on the threshold between the front door and the porch, and he cocks his head to one side in clear contemplation.

Trailing to a stop behind him, you wait, shifting on your feet and chewing a welt onto the inside of your cheek.

You’ve almost drawn blood by the time he shakes his head and announces, “Nah,” much to your dismay, though the disappointment is fleeting as he’s quick to start marching off again, beckoning over a shoulder for you to follow him out into the yard. “I been hitchin’ up to tractors since before you were born… Got somethin’ else you can help with though…”

Curiosity - always the more potent force - sweeps in to readily take the place of your discouragement. “Oh?” you ask, perking up and trotting obediently after the old farmer.

“Yup,” he says, “Got some stuff needs pickin’ up from the store in town. Hate goin’ in myself. Too noisy. Kids always runnin’ around, eyein’ up my wallet.”

Doubtless they’re just kids being kids and he’s seeing behaviour that isn’t there, but you don’t dispute his claim. You’re just glad to feel like you’re finally about to do something useful, nodding eagerly as you chirp, “Sure! I can go into town for you, no problem. Is there another car I can take or…?”

His retort comes as a sharp bark of laughter, which doesn’t bode well for you at all.

“Not a chance in Hell,” he guffaws, “Ain’t usin’ two tanks of gas…”

Gradually, your heart sinks down towards your shoes, but before you can start entertaining the gruelling prospect that he’s about to make you walk all the way into Jasper, Terry rounds the corner of his house and adds, “C’mon. Reckon it’s time I introduced you to Tom…”

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

Tom, you soon discover, is in fact not derived from the longer name ‘Thomas.’ At least not in this instance. Here, Terry seems only too gleeful as he tells you that it’s the short form of ‘Tom Thumb,’ something that brings him no end of amusement when he leads you to a paddock attached to the back of the farmhouse and you find yourself staring agog at an absolute titan grazing behind the little, wooden fence.

Now, you can appreciate the irony of a good misnomer as much as the next person, but the implications of what you’re looking at are not lost on you, considering what Terry has just asked you to do.

Standing beyond a little, wooden fence that hardly seems adequate to keep such an animal contained, is a colossal, ebony Shire horse, munching lazily at a pile of hay left out to grow dry and brittle under the afternoon sun.

Pursing his lips, the farmer whistles loud and shrill, calling out, “Tom! C’mon!”

With apparent effort, the horse raises its massive head and turns to blink down at you through long, sweeping lashes, still chewing idly on his mouthful of hay.

“Terry,” you deadpan, turning to send the man an incredulous look, brows arched high on your head.

Shrugging his shoulders brusquely, he retorts, “What?”

“Terry!”

“Oh, quitch’yer whinin’. Tom’s a damn-sight cheaper’n insuring a tractor for a year, I’ll tell you that right now. Saves a fortune on gas. Hay’s cheap around here.”

Floundering in the air with one hand as if you’re trying to fish through it for a lick of sense, you exclaim, “Terry, that is completely beside the point!” At last gesturing wildly at the apathetic gelding – who has already lost interest and turned back to his fodder – you add, “I can’t ride a horse into Jasper!”

Puffing out a dismissive grunt, Terry simply brushes past you and makes for a tumbledown tack room built flush against the rear of his house. “Oh, sure you can,” he tells you as he goes, “Tom’s as cold-blooded as they come. Means he don’t spook easily. Had him shipped over from England in the nineties – poor old boy was towin’ barges. So, I got my hands on him and made him tow a plough instead, hah!”

“Hah,” you wheeze half-heartedly, stumbling after him in a daze and casting a sympathetic glance at the Shire, “… Does he make a good work horse?”

Striking his shoulder against the door a few times to arduously inch it open, Terry lets out a scoff between two breaths before he replies, “Hell yeah, he did. Damn good draughter in his day. Course, that was before I stopped arable and started focusing on the dairy. Now, Tom’s retired.”

Heaving an aggrieved sigh, he finally manages to get the door open wide enough to step into the gloom, fumbling for a pull-string. It creaks when he yanks it, and a dusty lightbulb splutters to life, dangling from the ceiling and illuminating the cluttered space within. “He’s just gettin’ fat and lazy in his paddock. I can’t ride him no more, so I need you to start. It’ll do him some good to make the shopping trips again.”

The notion, apparently, is non-negotiable.

Terry wastes no time showing you how to tack the massive gelding, who endures both your inexperience and the man’s incessant rambling with a stoic sort of resignation that better befits a grizzled, old soldier than a nag.

Despite your constant flow of objections, Terry won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and when he points out, ‘You said you wanted to help,’ you can only hang your head dolefully and acquiesce, knowing you’re as good as beat.

You do, however, adamantly insist that you aren’t going anywhere without a riding hat, refusing to back down even as Terry seems to grow more and more vexed by your persistence until he finally caves and digs an old, black helmet from a barrel deep inside the tack room, muttering about ‘health and safety gone mad,’ under his breath.

Happy to let him be unimpressed, you shake a disgruntled spider out of the hat before sitting it on your head and pulling a face at how tight it is.

Still, you reason, too tight is better than a fractured skull.

And so, with the saddlebags slung across Tom’s hindquarters and your boots stuck awkwardly into too-large stirrups, you’re sent out through the gate with Terry’s paper shopping list stuffed into your shirt pocket, crumpled up beneath the weight of your (freshly-charged) phone.

“I’m givin’ you one-twenty,” Terry barks, reaching up and slapping a wad of notes into your outstretched palm, “I don’t wanna see a cent of it goin’ to anythin’ other than what’s on that list. You hear?”

“Loud and clear,” you quip, sliding the money into the pocket of your work trousers and giving Tom’s sides a nudge with your heels.

The horse’s barrel-stomach expands and contracts around a massive sigh as he begrudgingly picks up his hooves.

“Remember; Highway forty-nine,” you call back to the old farmer as you plod through the open gates, “A couple of miles North of Jasper. The truck’s right on the side of the road, you can’t miss it!”

Terry’s hand waves your words away dismissively as if he’s trying to swat away a fly, but you know he heard you.

Twisting forwards in the saddle, you squeeze Tom’s leathery reins between your palms and lift your eyes to the horizon, and the long, straight road that’ll take you right into town.

If you’re going to be travelling back out into the desert, you suppose it would be prudent to keep your eyes peeled for a certain Good Samaritan who purportedly patrols these parts. Because with Terry’s name cleared off your list of suspects, there’s only one other person you’ve met in recent days who might be guilty of dumping a suspicious lump-sum into your bank account.

And by God, do you have a bone to pick with him.

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

The ride into Jasper is about as dull as you expected it would be.

While the sun begins its steady decline towards the Western sky, Tom ambles along unhurriedly beneath you, his hooves clopping a rhythmic beat into the sand-dusted tarmac.

As a show of deference, you’ve given him all but the last few inches of his reins, allowing his bowed head to sway unimpeded from side to side with each step, ears flopped languidly against his skull, whereas in contrast, you sit rigid and unnatural upon his too-wide back.

The leather saddlebags squeak gently as the tack rubs together, mingling well with the buzz and hum of insects orchestrating this evening’s ambiance.

Breathing out a measured exhale, you try to sit back in the saddle and relax, counting your blessings that Terry hadn’t told you to go into town on foot.

“But what if I get lost!?” you’d argued as the farmer clambered up into his tractor, a towing strap coiled around one sinewy shoulder.

“Y’aint gonna get lost,” he admonished with a roll of his eyes, “If you do, just ask for directions, Christ! ‘Sides, Tom knows his way home. All you gotta do is mount up, and he’ll do the rest.”

When you took this job, you didn’t have any inkling that you’d be deferring to a horse, but then again, you’re not exactly in a position to complain.

“At least one of us knows what they’re doing,” you comment aloud, reaching forwards to scratch at his withers, half obscured under the saddle-horn. As your fingernails scrape back and forth across his hard-to-reach spot, the horse stretches his neck out and wiggles his upper lip in the air, a clear enough indication to you that he either appreciates the scratch or the praise, though you have a sneaking suspicion it’s the former.

Before long, the open desert skyline falls away behind you, replaced by rows of quaint little homes that perch on the outskirts of Jasper. At one point, you even pluck up the courage to click your tongue and ease Tom into a slow, loping trot along the roadside, daring to let yourself enjoy the wind against your face as you raise your hand to thank the occasional driver who slows down when they pass you by, eyes on stalks.

Tom seems more than content to follow the line of the main road at a heavy trot with all the confidence of a horse that’s travelled this path a hundred times before.

Houses and gardens tentatively give way to a park, several run-down shopfronts, and then a library. And even further up the road, Tom slows to a walk and takes you past what must be Jasper’s school, judging by the tumultuous throng of children and teenagers lounging around on the stone steps or waving down their parents’ cars.

“Must be home-time,” you murmur aloud, doing a convincing job of pretending not to notice the plentiful stares and giggles you’re drawing from various clusters of students.

Unnoticed by you, lost among the myriad of youthful faces, a girl sits slumped against the brick wall that runs along the outer perimeter of the school. Her back is arched, a wiry frame hunched possessively over the sketch book she has propped against her bent knees, a pen dancing furiously across the page. 

You don’t notice her at all – why would you when she’s just one of many lost in the crowd of whispering, tittering teens that you’re trying desperately to ignore?

Below you, Tom bobs his head and snorts loudly just as he draws parallel with the student, and all at once, her pale face shoots up from the book, a glittery pen clutched tightly between her fingers falling still against the page.

You very nearly jump out of your skin when a loud, strident voice all but explodes from the comparatively tiny girl on your left.

“WOAH! Hey, I love your horse!”

Even Tom seems mildly taken aback by the exclamation, turning his nose towards the source and flicking his ears up as the girl springs to her feet, pink-tipped bunches bobbing up and down on a head of otherwise black hair.

“Oh!” you bumble, glancing over at her before remembering yourself and flashing a sheepish smile, “Er, I – thanks. He’s, uh, not mine though.”

Apparently undeterred, the girl simply snaps her sketchbook closed, stuffs it under her arm and bounds towards you with the gumption of a crow discovering something shiny, her eyes sharp and sparkling. “Cool!” she announces, keeping pace with the horse’s gait and dropping her voice to a conspiratorial – and far less obtrusive – volume, “You rustle him, or what?”

At once, your face falls, and Tom’s hooves come to a stop on the side of the road as if he can sense that his rider isn’t paying attention and decides to use the opportunity to be idle, but before you can stammer out that ‘No, you did not, in fact, steal a horse,’ another voice pipes up from nearby, scolding and scandalised.

“Miko!”

Glancing sideways along the path, your gaze lands on a pair of boys approaching 'Miko' with varying expressions of concern. The oldest – though not yet old enough to grow a shadow under his chin – has his face pulled into a frown that doesn’t suit his adolescent features, dark brows furrowed over equally dark eyes. Bemused, you can tell he’s trying very hard to level the girl with a look that would give even the most disapproving parent a run for their money.

“You can’t just accuse someone of stealing a horse,” he admonishes, earning an exasperated groan from your newest acquaintance who meets your gaze and jerks her head at the boy as if to say, ‘Can you believe what I have to put up with?’

“Ugh, just ignore him,” she complains aloud, “Jack’s a total fun sponge.”

Noted. 

Sticking like a burr to the older student’s side is another boy – this one far younger than his companion, you deduce. Shorter too. He looks utterly tiny from your position up on Tom’s back, barely standing half as tall as the dark-haired boy, and even then, a lot of his height is lent to him by the wild, flyaway spikes of brown hair that sweep up from his skull. His clothes seem to hang off his frame, giving him bulk where you imagine there isn’t any. Jeans that are far too long have been rolled up several times at the cuffs and crammed into the tops of his trainers, likely to keep him from tripping over their hems every time he takes a step.

You can’t help but notice how nervous he looks, his round face tilted down towards the ground but his eyes wide and upturned behind a pair of thick, black spectacles, eyeing Tom and yourself with dubious curiosity, as if he’s reluctant to venture any closer, yet inquisitive enough to keep his feet shuffling along after his friend anyway.

Of its own accord, your mouth lifts into a friendly smile, aiming it at the youngster, who spots it, blinks in surprise for a moment, and finally offers you a shy, fleeting grin in return.

“Uh, hi! Sorry about her,” the aforementioned Jack pipes up, drawing your attention down to him as he stops beside Miko and gives her a companionable bump with his elbow, “She doesn’t actually think you stole a horse.”

He barely manages to finish his sentence before Miko butts in, her eyes still fixed eagerly on said horse, paying little mind now to the boys at her side. “Can I pet him?” she rushes out, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“Um…” Sparing a glance down at Tom’s floppy ears, you spend a brief moment mulling over the prospect of letting little fingers venture too close to the mouth of a horse you… really don’t know very well. He looks nonplussed though, and even apathetic to the whole situation, hardly paying more than a lazy glance at the girl inching closer and closer to his neck.

“I think that’s okay,” you give in, “I mean… he hasn’t bitten me yet, so…”

Evidently, even hesitant permission is good enough for her.

Bounding across the remaining distance, Miko wastes next to no time in reaching up and boldly thrusting her hand underneath Tom’s shaggy mane, running it down the length of his strong, muscled neck and gasping in unmitigated delight. 

“Easy, Kid,” you tell her gently as the Shire tosses his head back, snorting at the suddenness of her approach, “He might like a bit of warning next time.”

“Sorry!” she chirrups, her mouth stretched into a toothy grin, entirely preoccupied by the horse.

You get the sense she’s used to apologising on autopilot.

“Just wait’ll Bulk hears about this! He’s gonna freak!” Twisting her neck over a shoulder, she beams eagerly at the boys behind her and barks, “Jack! Raf! Get over here! He’s so soft!”

Jack’s thick eyebrows flinch apart and he quickly raises his hands, shaking them out in front of himself. “Uh, no thanks,” he chuckles awkwardly, trying to play off apprehension as cool indifference, “I’m good. He’s all yours.”

The girl scoffs something under her breath that she’d definitely take flack for if she was overheard by anybody other than yourself. Jack, however, seems nonplussed by the jab, offering you a small shrug when he briefly catches your eye before pulling a phone from his pocket and busying himself with the screen.

Meanwhile, the youngster – Raf, was it? – has taken a hesitant step forwards, leaving his taller friend’s shadow and sidling up to Miko’s flank, his bespectacled eyes flicking back and forth between your face and Tom’s.

“W-what’s his name?” he manages, clenching and unclenching his fists as he gazes at the giant of a horse towering over him.

Relaxing forwards against the saddle horn, you keep an eye on the Shire’s lips when he bends around to snuffle curiously at the hand Miko offers up to his velvety muzzle.

“Tom,” you supply, jerking your chin encouragingly towards the horse’s shoulder and flashing Raf a reassuring grin, “Short for Tom Thumb.”

The smile that’s been playing at the younger boy’s lips finally stretches into something material as he reaches up and brushes the very tips of his fingers over the Shire’s foreleg, quietly uttering, “Hi, Tom.”

Beside him, Miko’s face screws up comically and she scoffs, “Tom Thumb? That’s a dumb name. Should’a called him… er… Oh! Titan! Or – or Thunderhoof!”

Jack flashes her another exasperated glower whilst you nod ponderously at the suggestions, pursing your lips. “Mm. Those are pretty cool names….”

While she tosses a triumphant smirk over her shoulder, you pausing to scratch at the back of your neck, regarding the kids for a few more moments with one eye screwed shut in contemplation. “Say,” you pipe up at last, earning three curious looks, “You guys think you could help me with something?”

“You want us to help you think up a better name!?” Miko suggests hopefully, ducking beneath Tom’s head when he swings it around to nudge at Raf’s arm, doubtless aware of something edible in the boy’s backpack. At first, he lets out a tiny gasp of alarm, but quickly settles, even laughs quietly under his breath when the horse's soft, rubbery lips snuffle the sleeve of his shirt.

“Ah, no,” you huff, amused, “Nothing so exciting.”

Still standing at a respectable – and safe – distance from the Shire, Jack subconsciously mirrors you, lifting an arm to rub at the base of his neck as he says, “Sure, we can um… We can help. What’d you need?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find… Oh, hang on…” The three of them exchange glances as you delve into the pocket of your shirt and tug out Terry’s scrap of paper, unfolding it and holding it up in front of your face. “Uh…” Squinting at the unsteady scrawl, you read, “Ham’s Home and Hardware?”

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

There are very few things more endearing than teenagers who clearly want to prove they can be helpful.

Miko’s incorrect yet very enthusiastic directions were cautiously disputed by Raf, and then corrected by Jack, who was only too happy to point you towards the right street, even thanking you on behalf of his friends for allowing them to indulge in their curiosity of Tom.

“My pleasure,” you’d returned, throwing a wave over your shoulder as you nudged the horse into a walk, “And thanks again. You guys make sure to get home safely, okay?”

You didn’t understand why Miko snorted, nor why Raf told you rather emphatically not to worry, and why Jack’s soft chuckle and subsequent, ‘Oh, we will,’ seemed a little too knowing, but you didn’t give it much regard.

You were a teenager once too, cryptic and peculiar.

There’s still a very jovial grin perched across your lips by the time you stagger out of the hardware shop with your arms bogged down by plastic bags filled to the brim with Terry’s essentials. As promised, you used almost exactly what he gave you, plus a bit of spare change that jingles around in your pocket, and you made certain to nab the receipt too just in case he’s inclined to check you’ve been honest.

It’s a game to get two new hammers, a box of nails, batteries, and several foodstuffs into Tom’s saddlebags, but you manage somehow, even with an audience of amused shoppers who stop to snicker at your attempts to remount the Shire horse using nothing but a stray traffic cone and sheer force of will.

The sun has dipped considerably lower on the skyline as you ride out of Jasper at a brisk trot, leaving the houses, cul-de-sacs and all the traffic behind you.

After several minutes spent enjoying the barren stillness of the desert and passing by a scorpion that's pre-emptively ventured out into the dying light, your mind wanders to thoughts of your mysterious benefactor, and consequentially, the kind truck driver who picked you up last night…

It’s a coincidence that you can’t rightly ignore.

Optimus…. What was it Terry had called him? The Angel of Highway 49? Insinuating you’re likely to find him on the same stretch of road you came in on last night. And if what Optimus said was true about testing the truck's automated systems when there’s less traffic on the road, your best bet is to venture out after dark…

… Figures.

But, as of this moment, you’re far too tired and far too close to the end of a long, arduous day to go chasing after ‘angels.’

Leaning your weight back in the saddle, you resolve to track down the Peterbilt another time, when you’re not quite so exhausted.

It’s nearly silent on the road. Peaceful, even, and although you’d initially been reluctant to complete this task for your new employer, you have to admit, there’s something very restful about being out here alone…

And as if to rudely remind you that you are not, in fact, alone, the horse below you jerks to a sudden halt.

“Shit!” you yelp, startled, planting your hand on his saddle horn just to keep yourself from being launched out of the stirrups and onto his neck as Tom throws his head up, ears pinned back against his skull.

“What the Hell, Tom?” you gripe, “What’s got you so spooked?” 

Agitation in a horse his size in never subtle.

Nostrils flared towards the sky, Tom’s hooves shift and prance underneath you, and he hauls his sturdy bulk around to stand sideways, aiming a single, rolling eye down the road, back in the direction you’ve just ridden from.

Heart thumping a bruise against the inside of your ribcage, you whip your head about, following his line of sight and clenching the reins between white-knuckled fists. “What!?” you blurt aloud, wholly undeterred by the fact that the horse can’t respond in any comprehendible way, “What is it!?”

And that’s when you hear it.

It starts out faint like distant brontide, the mere threat of a storm approaching on an otherwise peaceful horizon.

Squinting against the dying light, you peer down the road, and at once, your eyes land on a bright, cherry red blob that wavers in the air above the sun-baked tarmac as if it’s nothing more than a mirage, growing bigger and more defined as it hurtles out of Jasper and charges towards you at a breakneck speed.

A sound like thunder given voice rolls across the desert, swelling louder and more obtrusive with every second that flits by, festering in your eardrums until you can almost feel the vibrations thrumming through your chest.

It’s the powerful bellow of a car’s engine.

And it’s coming on fast.

Too fast.

Already, the indiscernible blob has grown into the very vivid shape of a sports car. Part of you hopes the driver will see you in time, and with a sudden burst of urgency, you throw an arm out and swing it up and down as Tom tosses his mane and leans his weight back onto his haunches, forelegs dancing off the ground.

To your quickly mounting horror, the car doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. An impressive cloud of sand and dust flies along in its wake like contrails tailing a jumbo jet, and you realise with a sudden lurch of your gut that you’re miles too late to try and get Tom off the road.

The vehicle is upon you in a matter of seconds.

Before you can even cry out, a blur of angry, scarlet hellfire scorches past you and the horse at a blistering pace, not bothering to swerve around you to put even a modicum of space between itself and Tom.

You almost feel as if the air itself has been ripped out of your lungs at the speed of its passing. Suddenly, your hair is whipped up into a frenzy beneath the riding hat, and Tom’s mane and tail are simultaneously blasted to the side as the atmosphere around you both is sucked along in the wake of the car.

Poor Tom – whose life has only ever known a cavalcade of steady, slow-moving tractors, boats, and even slower humans – finally meets his match in the form of modern automation.

Rearing up onto his hind legs, the Shire belts out a deep, resonant whinny, striking furiously at the air with his hooves. It’s too sudden, too jarring of a movement for you to remember to clamp your knees around the saddle and throw your weight forwards.

With the roar of an engine still buzzing at the inside of your skull, you let out a garbled string of noises and tumble over the back the saddle, your feet slipping from the too-wide stirrups.

Gravity takes you by the throat and pulls. Hard.

You topple, hands outstretched and clasping madly for anything that might prevent the inevitable – reins, mane, saddle… But then the sky is suddenly all you can see, a blur of bleeding hues that flash by as fast as the car had.

It all spins above you, around you, a maelstrom of confusion and alarm until, just as abruptly as it had begun, everything comes to a painful halt.

The hard, sickening ‘thud!’ hits your ears before the pain does.

Your shoulders are the first to strike tarmac, bearing the brunt of a significant fall that knocks the air out of your lungs and leaves them empty and shrivelled, unable to swell enough to produce even a tiny wheeze of pain.

The riding hat bounces off the road next, absorbing the impact on behalf of your cranium, and for one moment, you simply lay there gasping on your back, eyes blown wide as saucers and your mouth hanging open in shock as you listen to the drum of hoofbeats galloping away across the sand, and the equally disheartening drone of a car’s engine receding into the distance.

You blink once…

And then you blink again.

Somehow - you determine with no small amount of trepidation - you’re still conscious.

Good!

You also realise that you can no longer hear Tom’s hoofbeats.

Less good.

Gritting your teeth to stop them from rattling, you screw your face up into a tight ball and push yourself up onto your elbows, squinting at the rear bumper of a car that’s swiftly disappearing down the road.

You suck down a breath, instantly relieved to find your lungs still work, and gasp out a hoarse, incredulous, “Oh-!”

Pausing, you have to swallow down another breath before you have enough air to finish, “My GOD!?”

They could have killed you! Actually, more to the point, they could have killed Tom!

Shock, then anger? Isn't that how it goes?

A pulse pounds aggressively at your eardrums, urging you to scrabble awkwardly but furiously to your feet, blind to the searing twinge in your right shoulder. Once you’re upright, you start to sway as the sudden movement jostles your skull and sends your brain swimming for a few, awful seconds before you clench your eyes shut and take in a steadying breath through your nose.

Shaking, you let it out again in a rush, eyes bursting open and zeroing in on the flash of red, not unlike a bull locking on to a matador’s muleta.

“HEY! SHIT-FOR-BRAINS!” you howl after the retreating car and reach up to fumble agitatedly with your chin strap, all the while snarling like some wild, uncivilised beast as you rip off the helmet and launch it at the ground in a fit of rage, “MAYBE IF YOU PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ARSE, YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO SEE WHERE YOU’RE GOING!”

And as if the desert wind had carried your words down that same road, as if somehow, inexplicably, the driver had heard you, that little dot of cherry red on the horizon suddenly screeches to a stop.

The abrupt switch from thunderous engine to the squeal of rubber tyres on tarmac is shocking enough to wipe the scowl right off your face.

Lungs chugging out breaths like a runaway train, you suddenly find each inhale and exhale far too loud, exacerbated by the jarring silence that’s descended over the desert, leaving you far more conscious of the incessant, high-pitched ringing in your ears.

Far in the distance, that shiny red car– once more warped by the sun’s heat rising from the tarmac – starts to slowly turn itself about.

The breath in your throat catches on spittle.

Swallowing, you straighten up, mildly surprised that the driver has bothered to turn back. You suppose they must have noticed the horseless rider in their rear-view mirror and grew a timely conscience.

Well! Planting your hands squarely on each hip, you give a decisive nod. At least they have the common decency to return and check that they hadn’t, in fact, killed you!

You’re still going to give them a piece of your mind, of course.

Heaving an almighty sigh, you card your hands through your flattened hair and grimace at the sweat that still sticks to your scalp, buried underneath the warm helmet for so many hours. What you wouldn’t give to be in a shower right now, instead of dealing with this catastrophe.

As the car comes pealing back up the road in your direction, its engine roaring like a sea at storm, you lift your hands and hook them behind your head, twisting sideways to grimace helplessly out at the open desert, and the tiny, black dot rapidly galloping off into the distance, running parallel with the road.

“Cold-blooded’ my foot,” you scoff, though not too unkindly. You can’t imagine the old nag has had a lot of experience with flashy, irresponsible speedsters who have a horsepower that far exceeds his own.

… At least he looks to have turned his nose in the direction of Terry’s Dairy…

You’re busy praying to whatever god you think might listen that Tom will make it home in one piece when the particularly aggressive bellow of an engine rips your focus back towards the highway.

You balk violently at the sight of a cherry-red Aston gunning towards you. 

‘What the… Are they…?’

Just moments ago, there’d been a considerable distance standing between you and the car, but in the few short seconds where you took your eyes off it, that distance has been more than halved, and the gap is growing narrower and narrower with every beat of your quavering heart.

The driver must have their foot to the floor.

All the blood drains from your face in a blink. Your muscles go taut of their own accord, some long-buried instinct rears its sleepy head as every ounce of tension flows down to your legs.

A dark, steel grill of the car is aimed directly at you, glinting in the meagre sunlight like a mouthful of bared teeth, threatening and furious.

Twenty yards….

There’s no way they’d really…?

Ten yards…

Shit, it’s right on top of you-

Just as you think you’re about to become a smear across its blood-red bonnet, your body suddenly seizes control away from your brain and you all but launch yourself sideways in a graceless, desperate leap.

You hit the ground hard, landing harshly on your already-bruised shoulder with an ‘oof!’ right as the driver ploughs across the space you’d just been standing not a second earlier.

The wind buffets against you on his pass, and the force of it is strong enough to roll you over onto your side. Following the momentum, you allow yourself to twist all the way around onto your opposite side, gaping in astonishment at the taillights of your would-be murderer.

“What the HELL!?” you can’t help but shriek, heart striking the base of your throat with every, agitated thump.

A flood of crimson light sears your retinas as the car’s brakes engage and it fishtails to a halt nearly one hundred yards up the road, its engine revving so loudly, you can feel the vibrations humming through the palms of your hands when you shove yourself up onto your knees.

“HEY!” you shout, your voice shrill, yet lost and small in comparison to the growling car, “Are you completely insane!?”

You’ve heard it said that it’s never a good idea to call a crazy person crazy.

Once, you believed the notion was a nod to how unmannerly it is to comment on anyone’s state of mind. Now, however, you wonder if the notion exists because asking as much isn’t unlike poking at a sleeping bear.

Risky and altogether ill-advised.

And true to your theory, the driver’s rear wheels start to spin madly before they gather purchase on the tarmac, catching and whipping the vehicle’s nose around to face you.

The wintery bite of ice-water in your veins freezes you in place, stuck on your knees and staring through wide, incredulous eyes at the grill of a rampaging car.

Now, the distance between you and it is meagre. And you’ve already seen the speed at which it can eat up space.

Your palms start to burn where they’re braced against the hard, simmering road, but you keep them splayed there, sweat beading above your lips as you listen to the idle thrum of the engine.

You don’t rightly know what you did to warrant this hostility, but you suppose it hardly matters.

You really do meet all sorts out on the road.

The sun is dipping lower and lower behind the Aston, casting a long, dark shadow that creeps towards you over the tarmac, and almost – almost – ghosts the tips of your fingers. Swallowing thickly, you curl them inwards as if your body knows instinctively that even that intangible part of the car shouldn’t be touching you.

Eyes screwed halfway shut against the light, you set your jaw into a hard, rigid line, braced to react.

It’s a standoff. One you really didn’t see coming.

A hapless farmhand, and an irate driver hidden behind an illegally dark window tint…

The latter observation tugs at something in the back of your mind, and the word ‘shit’ flashes briefly through your skull, soon followed by the more emphatic, ‘Fuck!’

Just whose toes have you managed to step on?

The flashy car, the blacked-out windows, the reckless driving, and blatant disregard for human life....? 

When you were reading up on the state before moving here, didn't you learn that Nevada is a high-intensity drug trafficking area?

…

……. Oh no.

“Oh no,” you reiterate aloud, eyebrows creeping up towards your hairline as a heavy ball of lead drops straight into your gut.

The driver must have been waiting for some realisation to dawn on you because no sooner have you uttered the words than the Aston’s grumbling engine suddenly lets out another deafening roar.

Rubber tyres squeal on the tarmac, spinning in place for a second and kicking up sand like a mustang scraping its hooves before charging.

By the time you’ve flinched at the sound, the car has already lurched forwards, haring towards you once more.

Terror steals the strength from your limbs.

You’re still on your knees, disadvantaged and slow. Too slow to do anything other than throw your arms over your head and bleat out a wild, faltering cry.

“Wait! PLEASE-!”

The plea hasn’t even finished leaving your tongue when the world around you is rocked by an absolutely cacophonous din.

The blast of a horn - apoplectic with rage given its volume - drowns out the engine of your assailant, and before you can register the source of God’s Seventh trumpet, a monstrous titan of blue and contrasting red comes crashing across your field of view.

From out of nowhere, a familiar semi-truck barrels sideways into the path of the oncoming Aston, its massive wheels locking it into place and bringing it to a lurching halt right across the road like a blockade of shining metal and billowing smokestacks.

Mouth agape, you drop your arms and fling your eyes up to the driver’s side door, bowled over onto your back by the unexpected yet timely arrival of the very person you’ve been meaning to find.

“Optimus!?” you blurt squeakily.

Where the Hell did he come from!?

Suddenly, above the truck's rumbling growl, you hear a far less impressive set of tyres squeal sharply on the road as the rampaging driver slams on their brakes.

But they were already far too close to you, and travelling at such a speed, you know without seeing that there’s going to be a collision.

And sure enough….

‘C R U N C H!’

The body of Optimus’s truck doesn’t even budge an inch.

Unstoppable force, meet Immoveable object…

Metal screeches against metal, and the stomach-churning sound of something crumpling splits the air asunder.

Horrified, you watch on whilst the Peterbilt quakes on its struts, rocked by the sheer force of the crash, but here, in this battle of automobiles, size easily trumps speed, and the truck remains unmoved, a steadfast road block standing triumphant between you and the lunatic in the Aston Martin…

Another scream of metal, something pulling loose and clanging to the ground, and then…

“My… My bonnet! MY PAINT JOB!”

Male, you deduce, snobbish and categorically livid.

“Just who in the PIT do you think you-…? Ah…”

To your astonishment, his voice trails off, and there’s the distinct sound of a car peeling itself further out from the truck's side, its engine much more subdued.

“Prime?” the voice hisses to itself, all prior traces of rage gone. You wonder if he’s leaning out of the window to speak.

When he continues, you note the tone has shifted to something far more apprehensive. “Why! What a… a surprise to see you on this stretch of road!”

Optimus’s speakers remain ominously silent whilst his truck’s engine still hums like guard dog growling in its throat, prompting the other driver to sputter over his words.

“I-I was only messing around with the fleshy, you know that! Just a bit of sport!”

‘Fleshy?’ You pull a face. Good god, this guy must be using the drugs he’s smuggling. Every word that comes out of his mouth sounds like the ramblings of a maniac.

“Is it one of yours?”

'Case in point...' you muse. 

“If I’d known, I’d have never-! You know I wouldn’t really want that under my tyres! Far too messy!”

Cloying, saccharine despite the drivel, his tone smacks of a classic schmoozer, but why does it sound as though he and Optimus are acquainted?

Grunting at the pain in your shoulder, you start to bully yourself up off your backside, emboldened by Optimus’s ‘presence.’ Does the Aston driver know there’s little more than a voice behind the wheel of that imposing truck?

He’s saying something else now, his voice growing fainter as the tyres of his car carry him further away from the solid wall of a Peterbilt.

“I’m no fool. I know not to bite off more than I can chew. No need for this to go any further than it already has.”

As if he wasn’t the one who started it.

You nearly feel a pinch of guilt at the schadenfreude of hearing the nervousness on his tongue, but then you remind yourself of what he did to Tom, what he almost did to you, and the grim satisfaction curling in your gut is permitted a place to stay.

“You understand, I’m su-“

All of a sudden, he’s cut off by the low, chillingly dangerous pitch of Optimus’s voice, rumbling out of the hidden speakers. The sound is so clear and sharp, it’s as though the truck itself has been given a tongue.

One word is all he utters. One word that’s packed with the authority of a King. It isn’t shouted. It isn’t even loud. But it is strong. Deep and dark, so much so that it raises the hairs on the nape of your neck and sends a shiver lancing up your spine.

“L E A V E."

The breath catches in your throat, and at the same time, the Aston’s engine goes quiet as if it had just stalled. But soon enough, you hear the driver mutter a cold, “With pleasure,” followed quickly by another screech of rubber burning a hasty retreat down the highway, and at long last, that once intimidating engine fades away into the distance.

In an instant, your whole body sags and you let out a whooshing breath, one you hadn’t even realised you’ve been keeping hostage inside your lungs.

Ahead of you, even the Peterbilt appears to deflate, its hydraulics hissing noisily as it sinks on its tyres, though you’re too busy hobbling around it to pay any real attention.

Staggering unevenly, still reeling from the shock of it all, you venture to the nose of the truck, peeking around its grill to see the shiny, red bumper crest a gentle slope before vanishing below the horizon line.

“…Who-” you begin, gulping down a trembling breath, “-the Hell… was that?”

[cod-thoughts]

Day 23 of 31 days of COD

Words: 2.2k

Relationships: Team as family, NikPrice, PriceNik, Ghost & Price

Tags: Slice of life, comfort, soft Nik, soft Price.

Nikolai, still half-asleep, his voice a lazy slur, muttered, “Mishka…” The word slipped out, familiar and affectionate, and it lingered in the air like a gentle whisper. Soap blinked, sitting up straighter in his chair. Gaz’s mouth opened slightly, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. Even Ghost paused, the soft scrape of metal against stone coming to a halt. Keep reading under the cut or on AO3

The rec room was quiet, a rare stillness settling over the base after the long op. Most of the team sat around one of the larger tables, nursing cups of tea or coffee, relishing the peace after days in the field. The sound of boots scraping against concrete, the occasional clink of a mug, and the hum of the overhead lights were the only sounds filling the air.

Soap leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, eyes twinkling with mischief. He tapped his boot against the floor, clearly thinking up something, the cogs in his mind already turning. “Alright, boys,” he said, breaking the silence. “Got a question for you lot.”

Gaz, sitting across from him, looked up, raising an eyebrow. “What now, Soap?”

Soap smirked, tilting his head toward the far corner where Price stood, leaning against the counter, sipping a mug of tea. “Captain’s callsign. ‘The Bear.’ You ever wonder why?”

Gaz followed Soap’s gaze, looking at Price with mild curiosity. “You’re still on about that?”

“Aye, it’s a mystery!” Soap grinned. “Never got the story behind it. Big bloke like that, you’d think it’s got somethin’ to do with him tearing up an entire battalion single-handed.”

Price, ever the calm figure in their chaotic world, merely glanced over at them, unimpressed. He didn’t offer a comment, just raised an eyebrow before going back to his tea. Soap, not discouraged in the least, continued.

“Maybe he fought a bear once,” Soap mused, his grin widening. “Bare hands, too. Get it?”

Gaz snorted, shaking his head. “More likely he growls like one when you wake him up too early.”

Ghost, sitting slightly apart from the others, barely glanced up from the knife he was methodically sharpening. His mask obscured his expression, but his eyes flicked toward Price before returning to the blade. “Doesn’t matter what it’s for. Leave it alone.”

Soap, naturally, ignored that. “Come on, Ghost, you can’t tell me you’re not curious!”

“Not really,” Ghost replied in his usual flat tone, though there was a knowing edge to it that Soap completely missed.

Gaz, playing along with Soap’s game, leaned back in his chair. “Maybe it’s somethin’ simple. He’s gruff, keeps to himself. Like a bear in the winter—hibernating.”

“Or maybe,” Soap said, voice lowering as if he were about to unveil some great truth, “it’s somethin’ embarrassing.”

Before Soap could launch into another theory, the door to the mess hall creaked open. Nikolai stepped in, his movements slow and unhurried, like a man who had spent far too long awake and on his feet. His dark hair was slightly dishevelled, his eyes heavy with fatigue, but there was a comfort in the way he carried himself—as if he’d found his way back to the one place he could let his guard down.

Price, still standing by the counter, set his mug down and glanced over at Nikolai with that barely perceptible softening in his eyes. It was so quick, so subtle, that only someone paying close attention—like Ghost—might have noticed it.

Nikolai didn’t acknowledge the rest of the team as he walked over to Price. His steps were steady but had that unmistakable heaviness of a man half-asleep on his feet. Soap, Gaz, and Ghost watched in silence as Nikolai approached Price like it was second nature, his hands slipping around Price’s waist as he rested his forehead against the back of Price’s neck.

It wasn’t unusual for Nikolai to be close to Price; they’d been allies and friends for years, always sharing a mutual respect. But this… this was different. There was something deeply intimate in the gesture, something that didn’t belong in the usually guarded world of military protocol.

Nikolai murmured something in Russian, too soft for anyone but Price to hear. It didn’t seem to matter, though, as the meaning was clear in the way Price’s shoulders relaxed, the way he leaned back slightly into Nikolai’s hold. It was a rare moment of vulnerability, and the room, once filled with the low hum of conversation, went dead silent.

Price let out a soft chuckle—low, rumbling, completely out of character for the captain the team was used to seeing. Soap and Gaz exchanged glances, eyebrows raised, and Ghost, though still focused on his blade, was clearly aware of what was unfolding.

And then it happened.

Nikolai, still half-asleep, his voice a lazy slur, muttered, “Mishka…” The word slipped out, familiar and affectionate, and it lingered in the air like a gentle whisper.

Soap blinked, sitting up straighter in his chair. Gaz’s mouth opened slightly, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. Even Ghost paused, the soft scrape of metal against stone coming to a halt.

“Mishka?” Soap echoed, incredulous. His eyes flicked between Price and Nikolai, a wide grin spreading across his face. “Did he just—?”

Before Soap could finish, Ghost cut him off, his tone even. “Means ‘Little Bear’ in Russian.”

Gaz’s head snapped toward Ghost. “You knew?”

Ghost shrugged, sliding the knife back into its sheath. “Not hard to figure out.”

Soap looked between Ghost and Price, trying to process what had just happened. “So… ‘The Bear’—that’s why?”

Price, still standing there with Nikolai comfortably wrapped around him, sighed softly. “Aye, that’s why,” he muttered, his voice resigned but amused. “It’s just an old nickname.”

“Mishka…” Soap repeated, grinning wider by the second. “This whole time, your callsign was ‘cause Nik calls you Little Bear?”

Price’s lips twitched into a smile, one that was more affectionate than anything else. He glanced over his shoulder at Nikolai, who was still resting against him, seemingly oblivious to the conversation unfolding around them. “It’s from years ago,” Price explained, though his tone was softer now, less defensive. “Back when things were… different. We’ve been together longer than most of you have been soldiers.”

Nikolai, finally registering the fact that the room had gone quiet and all eyes were on him, lifted his head slightly. His half-lidded eyes took in the scene before him, his tired brain slowly catching up to what had happened. He blinked, realisation dawning.

“Ah…” he mumbled, clearly too tired to feel any real embarrassment. “I… did not mean to let that slip.”

Soap’s laughter was loud and immediate, the sound echoing through the mess hall. “Oh, mate, this is brilliant! You, the legendary Captain Price, our fearless leader—‘Mishka’.”

Gaz, though clearly amused, was more subtle about it, shaking his head with a grin. “Well, it certainly explains ‘The Bear,’ doesn’t it?”

Price rolled his eyes, though there was no hiding the fondness in his expression as he looked at Nikolai. “You lot better not make a big deal out of this.”

“Oh, it’s a huge deal,” Soap replied, grinning from ear to ear. “Mishka! You’re never gonna hear the end of this one, Captain.”

Ghost, sitting back in his chair, observed the scene silently, his eyes barely visible behind his mask. Unlike Soap and Gaz, there was no surprise in his posture, no sudden shock at the revelation. Instead, there was an air of quiet understanding, as if he’d known for a long time but had simply chosen not to say anything.

He continued to sharpen his knife with steady precision, his gaze lingering on Price and Nikolai for a moment longer than usual. It wasn’t curiosity or judgement in his eyes—just a quiet acceptance, the kind that came from years of knowing someone without needing to pry into their personal life.

Price caught Ghost’s gaze from across the room, and for a brief second, something passed between them. A silent conversation, wordless but understood. Ghost, always observant, had likely pieced it together long before this moment. And now that the secret was out, he wasn’t about to make a fuss over it.

Soap, still grinning like he’d uncovered the greatest joke of the century, opened his mouth for another jab, but Ghost cut him off with a simple, “That’s enough, Johnny.”

The way he said it left no room for argument, and Soap, though clearly disappointed to be cut short, just raised his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright,” he muttered, but the grin stayed plastered on his face.

Gaz chuckled softly, shaking his head at the entire scene as he leaned back in his chair, the initial surprise wearing off. There was a comfortable shift in the air now—no awkwardness, no lingering questions. Just the usual banter and camaraderie.

Ghost leaned back in his seat, his knife forgotten for the moment. “It’s none of our business,” he said in a low voice, though there was a strange warmth to his words. “You two do what you need to.”

Price’s mouth quirked into a half-smile, something grateful in the look he sent Ghost’s way. He knew Ghost wasn’t the type to pry, but the unspoken acknowledgment meant something. Ghost had always been a man of few words, but when he spoke, it held weight.

As the room settled back into a relaxed rhythm, Soap and Gaz quietly snickering to themselves, Price gave a final, resigned chuckle. “Well,” he muttered, his voice light with amusement as Nikolai shifted against him, “there’s no point hiding it now, is there?”

Soap, still unable to resist despite Ghost's warning, leaned back with an exaggerated sigh. “Can’t believe I never clocked it. Should’ve known it’d be somethin’ soft.”

Gaz chuckled, crossing his arms. “Soft? The man’s still a bear, mate. Little or not, he’ll tear you apart if you push it too far.”

Price raised an eyebrow at the two of them, though his eyes held more amusement than threat. “You’re walkin’ a fine line, Sergeant,” he said to Soap, his voice carrying that familiar commanding weight, but the corners of his mouth tugged upward into a rare smile.

Nikolai, still leaning into Price, let out a soft huff of laughter, the sound low and full of affection. “Johnathan has always been my Mishka,” he murmured, eyes still half-closed with exhaustion but comfortable, safe, like this was the only place in the world he needed to be. “I did not realise you were all so curious about that.”

“We weren’t,” Ghost said, his voice quiet but carrying that same air of authority. “Well, some of us weren’t.” His masked gaze flicked over to Soap, who wisely clamped his mouth shut, though his grin remained.

Nikolai chuckled again, finally pulling away from Price just enough to stretch, though he stayed close. The years of camaraderie, loyalty, and love between the two were unmistakable now that it was out in the open. There was a calmness in the air—almost like the unspoken secret had been a weight lifted from their shoulders.

Ghost stood up from his seat, slipping his knife into his belt. “You two get some rest. We’ve got a briefing in the morning.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but there was an unspoken understanding in his words, a gentle nudge to let them know the conversation was over, and life would carry on as it always had.

Price nodded, grateful for the easy return to normalcy. “Mmm. You’re right.”

Price shook his head, already knowing the teasing would continue for days, but he didn’t mind. This was his team, after all—his family. And they’d earned the right to their jokes. “Get out of here before I start assigning extra PT,” he grumbled, though there was no real bite behind the threat.

Soap and Gaz exchanged looks, clearly amused, but they both stood and started to head for the door, their playful banter continuing as they went.

As they left, Ghost lingered for just a moment longer, casting one last glance at Price and Nikolai. There was no judgment in his look, just quiet understanding. He gave the faintest of nods, a silent acknowledgment of what he knew but had never spoken of.

With that, Ghost turned and followed the others out, leaving Price and Nikolai alone in the now-quiet mess hall.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then, Nikolai leaned back into Price, his arms draped loosely around his shoulders, pressing a tired kiss to his cheek. Price, with a soft sigh, wrapped his arms around his waist, pulling him closer.

“It’s alright, you know,” Price murmured after a beat of silence. “Don’t have to hide anymore. At least not around them”

Nikolai smiled against his shoulder, his voice barely above a whisper. “According to your kostochka we did not hide as well as we thought.”

Price chuckled, a deep, warm sound, and squeezed his arms around Nikolai gently. “No, I s’pose not. Better not let him hear you call him that though, he’d have my head”

They stood like that for a long moment, the quiet of the base wrapping around them like a blanket. There was no rush to move, no need to explain anything. The world outside could wait, just for a little while longer.

Finally, Nikolai let out a soft breath, his voice laced with contentment. “Come on, Mishka. Let us get some rest. Long day tomorrow.”

Price gave a slow nod, pressing a soft kiss to the top of Nikolai’s head before pulling back. “Aye. You’re right, Nik.”

And with that, they turned, leaving the mess hall behind and heading towards their quarters, side by side, with the weight of secrecy finally lifted and the knowledge that, whatever came next, they’d face it together.

[nanakah]

hello hello, I took the alien stage pill. howdy fellow sufferers

Honestly, my first reaction to basically everything was "awww, they come in sets and are all without exception horribly doomed no matter their specs (loops cool music and vids)"

I'd seen some of VIVINOS' team works without realizing it was the same artist (my favorites being Beloved and Otomeroid) so it was rather shocking to learn of a "series" with a fandom as active/relatively large as Alien Stage without ever actually stumbling upon it before...

Anyways. I like the concept, and Hyuna+Luka in particular, a whole lot. In spite of all the jokes about only yuri and yaoi losing, my spider sense says they'll get their turn of crashing horribly soon and I wanna stay here to witness it burn beautifully, of course.

TL;DR OMG HYULUKA IS SO DELICIOUS

general yapping about all alien stage duos under the cut and some Hyuna/Luka considerations and theories

disclaimer: long, chaotic post ahead - i wrote most of it during revenge bedtime procrastination so I'm kinda just rambling/discussing my general impressions and vibes here instead of formatting it nicely or properly illustrating my points. good luck if you choose to stick around and make yourself comfy

alien stage impressions under read more - also SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

funny thing - I got into alien stage completely by chance after checking out some related vids to my Love and Deepspace twitter spree and avoiding my responsibilities. Ivan's Black Sorrow made a very strong impression and I loved his eyes, so I kept going deeper down the rabbit role and felt fascinated by the web of dynamics between the characters each time I took in a little more of the plot.

(His eyes are so cool and expressive.....I was already loving everything prior and was excited to continue, but Ivan was definitely the one to sell me on the concept more strongly and eat up the rest.)

It was interesting seeing "love" portrayed under such dire conditions and I kept wondering how come the aliens are so stupid they chose a 1vs1 PVP combat format with their beloved pets instead of the optimal formation of idol units and at least duos versus each other to utilize their feelings of love. Why would they do that?

That first innocent musing made me realize how clever the team behind ALNST is. The whole thing seems to be operating as a metaphor/commentary about how predatory the real idol industry is (the concept of anakt garden really sounds like the average idol trainee camp experience and the bonds they form with their group mates) and how heartless guardian (parental) figures can be in a society that is heavily utilitarian and barely gives agency to either their own children or sentient beings like animals that we keep as pets.

So in that world, the sacrifices of being an idol are literal and humans themselves are "pets" - with all the implications that come with "being dependent on a species that does not properly comprehend them". At times, the way they refer to the fandom of each character even seems to be tongue in cheek as to how "we" too are watching the story for entertainment and making fanbases for each character and reacting like some of the in-universe alien fans.

Therefore, it's no brainer that the answer to my initial question was: aliens/Segyein don't understand how to utilize human bonds and emotions to their maximum efficiency in the first place. They know interaction between humans seems to be important and produces more beautiful songs. However, they probably experience those feelings differently and most of them are likely unable to truly empathize with human pain, ethics or feelings. (And believe me, even some people have a hard time believing other species benifit from socialization, so aliens being that way is understandable). Perhaps the awful acts of the Segyein mutilating their pet human is no different from pulling a butterfly's wings to a human or injecting colored fluid into a flower. The glimpses of their buildings and tv show that they have the same sort of "do they have rights?" feelings and similar moral conflicts to what we have in the real world about species we don't understand fully.

I think it's really challenging to analyze a work attempting to guess future developments when you don't know the creator too well. In spite of looping OTOMEROID I wouldn't say I know VIVINOS and her team deeply as an admirer. But from the overall tone of the videos in her channel, I could pick up on a fascination with "extremes" of emotion and exploring the hypocrisy of society. Human/animal experimentation and materialism/religion/consumerism are topics that come up often. Love is also hardly ever portrayed as a simple or benevolent feeling alone - there's unrequited love, obsession, insanity, many facets of that feeling on the channel. Some works are more straightforward and focus on the visual presentation, others seem to have a deeper story behind it.

The technical quality of the Alien Stage MVs is extremely impressive, I had a blast looking at the patreon storyboards and feeling like "wow, a person actually made this". It seriously got me inspired to feel like drawing more to get out of my own artblock and to pick up on old OCs to show them some love. In the era of AI, this is a joy to get to feel. It all definitely feels like a well-put together labor of love. I'm super weak to things brimming with passion like this, it's contagious!!!!

Now that I've tried my best to make an eloquent opening and act like I'm not at all just a fangirl foaming at the mouth with this intense concept (I keep crying that I wanna see either Aka or Ohkawa try their hand at a death game scenario) and at the sight of a tragic toxic duo with a backstory of a deeply rooted mutual obsession/love and fall out (wiping drool out of the corner of my mouth as we speak), let's talk a little more about the story. In order to make sense out of my ramblings and projections, let me explain my thoughts on the other duos besides my bias first.

Mizi and Sua set the tone to their universe as well as serve as an explanation as to why "idols" work well to represent their conflict and struggle - I'm fresh out of Oshi no Ko here, so this feels equal parts like a comfort zone and everything but comfortable and hellish to go over again. But, to put it briefly, the adoration of someone as an entertainer that you want to support also overlaps with the word reserved for adoring "an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship" - idol.

Humans, stripped of their power and autonomy after arrogantly believing they were superior to everyone else and were the only beings in the vast universe, have been subjugated by other species. Because of the bleak, unforgiving circumstances they were faced with afterwards, the surviving ones were turned into luxury pets and stripped of their freedom. Free will made them children of God before, so people have forgotten all about the "God" who couldn't answer their prayers/save them. But, as Mizi says, the belief in God is innate to human nature. You are more likely live in this world successfuly if you have someone to look up to or a reason to survive.

When God seems so far away and so cruel...what they can do is look to each other as their "Gods". Because a belief in God is ultimately, a cry for salvation and acceptance...."The Bible makes it clear that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He isn't just loving, but he is the very definition of love."Therefore, all characters are, in some way, looking for salvation and being constantly tested and brutally being forced to show off their humanity through the lens of how love affects them - and not at the privacy of their inner thoughts or anything. All of that in order to portray different aspects of "love", adoration and what it means to be human. To have a belief on the unseen - "what is essential is invisible to the eye".

IT'S ALIEN AMERICAN IDOL MEETS DANGANRONPA. WHOO.

(gOD I wish we could have gotten Luka vs Sua or vs Ivan in some way. That feels like it would be extremely close and entertaining to see. Am I losing my humanity? Why is my keyboard slimy? Am I becoming a Segyein ....?)

Of course, because I fell for all those deliciously doomed themes like the good CLAMP/Akasaka foolish nerd I am, I bought patreon access day one. Although some setting details were unexpected, I was pretty satisfied with my overall initial grasp on most of the characters. If you found me through the tags and didn't already follow me, my disclaimer here so you get to know me is that I easily gravitate to polarizing characters or doomed ships like a curse. There are also certain Themes that follow me like a plague and I could see some of my favorite characters' shadows on the doomed kids I liked right away. Like an itch to spot something more to what is being shown.

Therefore right away, Luka and Hyuna caught my eye big time. (literally, when I watched sweet dream I kept pausing and going - whOA WHO IS THE COOL GIRL WITH THE CIG. Wait wait wait show me more of the boy that looks dead inside overstimulated by the flashing lights!)

I don't really have any pretension to be quoted on anything here or say things verbatim (Patreon says it's fine to produce derivative content based on what's there, but as expected, it's enforced not to directly share it so I can't really go argument-evidence here by presenting it) and have only seen pictures of the artbook secondhand by a friend, so I'll have my fun here making commentary loosely based on extra content and sporadically showing off pretty MV captures.

Anyway.

We're introduced to this universe through the jarring cruelty of ROUND 1, contrasting a harmonic, beautiful, lullaby-like melody with a harsh outcome. Like Mizi, unless we got spoiled beforehand, we don't really know anything about what's about to horrifically transpire. And though she got education, it feels like the teachings about what death or the Alien Stage would be like were horribly sugar coated or distorted to her, as incentive to give their best performances - like sacrificing themselves was a good thing. The extra materials back this up with Mizi's first interview about "My Clematis" - it's like they're told they're simply going back to their "origins" entity (The Grand Ankt) and it's a pretty and peaceful thing. We're shown how bad humans have it in their society and simultaneously get a montage of a cute, healthy, heartwarming relationship between the two girls and a deep "pure" love, as well as feel the weight of Sua's sacrifice and how badly it hurts Mizi. You're told that Sua is her God, her Universe in a Godless world - only to have her ripped away and "God" basically slaughtered for cheap entertainment. Some of the extra materials put it as a certain "mutual love" between Sua and Mizi.

It's interesting how we're shown a stage and don't know what to expect at first - since the girls seem "calm" and happy to express their love, but there's an increasing sense of dread until the finality of Sua's death hits and the pretty, shining girl we see in the flashbacks becomes an empty husk. The MVs seem all to be roughly designed around creating a surprise at the end or recontextualizing something we have seen previously.

I won't discuss Till and Ivan at length at this time, because that would get too long and demands it's own post (I sure as hell rewatched Unknown, Black Sorrow and Cure many times though), but the key part for me here is - they similarly express "love", but through another facet - obsession of a one-sided love and the desire to reach salvation or a reason to endure the world because of that, too. To the point of choosing the chance of love over salvation, expressed by Till letting go of Ivan's hand when they had a chance to escape (not wanting to leave Mizi behind most likely) and Ivan's kiss and decision to strangle Till to give his own life in exchange for his/finally getting to express his "shallow emotions" he perceives as something that won't deeply scar Till (but it does, and it mattered, far more than he could ever have known). It's interesting that although Mizi calls Sua a God, they develop something closer to a balanced, mutual relationship, as much as their lack of understanding of "human relationship" allows - they connect deeply. Ivan, according to the comics, sees himself in Sua, but it's deeply frustrating how he couldn't build the same sort of connection with Till and felt like he could only maintain a bond through violence.

Mizi seems to be the only human who was raised in a "stable home" (her alien seems to actually love her closest to a mother), but that's not enough to protect her from pain - after all, the alien's reasoning was that if Mizi likes singing, she should join. Yolo! Your human baby's life is so short! Sounds like outdoor cat owners to me. Ugh. All other pet humans are going through some flavor of parental abuse, and it all reflects in how they express their emotions and what sort of decisions they tend to take.

Till, in contrast to all that, more closely resembles the definition of looking at Mizi like an oshi/idol as a comfort to run from the pains of his life - he always looks hurt or abused, but Mizi is like medicine that even watching from far away makes him feel "saved" due to nurturing that "first love" that is heavily idealized. It's interesting how his character that is first introduced as somewhat violent or wild because of the smashing guitar and "addict"/drug imagery turns out to be one of the most sensitive.

The cloaked figure of Mizi in Blink Gone seems to resemble a saint or Mary (mother) holding a child in her lap as he takes his last breaths. She rushed into the crowd in a desperate attempt to save or at least comfort him in his predicament. Till's final position even resembles that of being crucified.

All that, however, makes Till unable to see Ivan properly - who is constantly around him and yearning for his attention, protecting and loving him in desperate ways that he doesn't realize until the very last minute. He is also seemingly detaching himself from the "real" world as a very "pure" child (shown in the way he loves with full devotion and his artistic inclinations), which of course, makes Ivan painful to face - who is a grounding entity and a reminder of the real world. The one who touches his wounds, who is "there" and not unreachable like a flower at the top of a mountain. That love between Ivan and Till got expressed in a way that was painful to both, but a very human act of a clashing selfish and selfless-ness.

None of them are built for this. They're trying to survive.

So far, what I've got is...Mizi and Sua set a standard of what is closest to a mutual love that was growing together in a relatively equal and healthy way. Ivan and Till were reworked to avoid overlap with them and are chosen to portray the sense of an immature, obsessive love and clashing emotions. It's interesting to me how much the creators stress the "one-sided" and controlling nature of Ivan for behind the scenes, and I feel like this does not mean that Till couldn't possibly return his feelings - after all, the Actor AU does show great chemistry between them. It's more like, within their living conditions and because of the emotional immaturity of both of them, they literally could not see eye to eye - Till looking at an idol out of reach (Mizi), and Ivan choosing to seek out his attention through violent means that confused Till, thus he was unable to respond to the intensity of what he felt and grow into it.

NOW. TO THE MAIN COURSE THAT IS ROTTING MY BRAIN: HYULUKA.

If we've got all those bases covered so far...where does that leave Hyuna and Luka?

(This is the most Mello/Near-like I've ever seen another ship pull off. My inner 13 yo is screaming. They're both incredibly gorgeous. How is a hetero couple simultaneously so BL and yuri-like in DRAMA AND IMAGERY? CLAMP would be proud...)

You see, there's no official answer about the true nature of their bond yet.

But I have a lot of speculations. It clearly looks like a rotten, strangled-by-the-red-string-of-fate sort bond that is just up my alley. THE MOST FUN IS GETTING TO BABBLE BEFORE GETTING AN ASSERTIVE ANSWER. I'm all for making a fool of myself, so let's get down to it.

To put it simply - I believe Hyuna and Luka's role is expressing the extremes of the setting itself and what "to love" means within it, with a turn for the worse and the tragedy of "not understanding" even if there is love.

How do you conquer an oppressive world in which all odds are against you? Would you overtake it through rebellion or would you strike at it from within?

In a world in which God's teachings have become lost to time and difficult to believe, does love strengthen or weaken you? If it causes pain and destruction, can it still be called love?

I think Hyuna and Luka are standing at opposite sides of those beliefs, and cannot understand each other's mindset.

Seems simple enough to write Luka as a mere villain final boss since he seems to be enjoying himself at the evil death game and Hyuna as the nice rebel who wants to save everyone, right? But it's confirmed Hyuna wasn't really trying to rescue more people like she had an opportune moment to do for Mizi.

The artbook also says something incredibly interesting about what the "Luka Syndrome" mentioned in one of the MVs really means - Luka's prestige as a performer is raising the prestige of pet humans. He also believes "Hyuna would be safe with him" - Why is that?

I think they might actually have similar goals and a similar stubborness in which they believe themselves to be the correct one and the other to be pitiful and foolish. Hyuna is trying to overthrow a system that is well-established and has far more power or influence than them, therefore she needs to resort to drastic measures and flashy means to assert dominance over the alien society.

Luka on the other hand, feels like he is using the system against it and exercising his own humanity while at it. Rather than tackling the incredibly daunting task of being a rebel with guns blazing, Luka became a master of the stage in a way that makes humans gain influence and thus become more valuable.Even if I try to think of it as "he's just trying to survive", that doesn't feel enough - because whenever he is not on stage, Luka looks dead inside already.

Especially in the arts he looks like a younger child or teenager, except for the ones after he seems more consistently approached by Hyuna. It's hard for me to think what moves him is a survival instinct. He is also portrayed like the typical "golden kid" syndrome victim - someone so systematically beaten to satisfy their narcissist guardian figure and submitted to so much pain that they eventually absorb part of that mindset as a way to have agency and autonomy over themselves. It gives the illusion of being successful and thus that the abuse was "effective", but it's like a curse that is difficult to break from.

I think both of them are older for a thematic reason. It feels like it could represent what it feels like, as adults, to no longer be able to hold onto naive or idealistic things about the world or society due to ignorance and having to choose a path to express your ideas and reach your goals through your "work".

Hyuna is guns blazing and "adult pleasures" - singing to an underground stage, trying to scrub off the wounds of her past with alcohol, and it's interesting that her guardian alien is portrayed like an "absent" parent figure - they have an interest in humans, but doesn't care about watching Hyuna when she first was eligible for Alien Stage. I wonder if they even are the one looking for her at all - seems to me it's more of an alien police thing because of her "crimes". Under that seemingly "thick" skin though, it seems clear that Hyuna is deeply affected by Luka still, and the loss of her brother. She deals with her wounds by not really dealing with them at all and guess what - it's a weak point. Her song is uplifting and refreshing, but she clearly demonstrates that closing your eyes to trauma and purely moving forward doesn't make them go away. In that sense, Mizi is a way she is trying to "mentor" someone navigate through loss.

I love outcasts and mildly autistic-coded characters, so I gravitated to Sua, Ivan and Luka right away.

(Extroverted cutie and the doomest doomer of the bunch. As a side note, their character design alone and contrast is genius and gorgeous. I'd expect 90% of the time for Luka to be the designated BL character and hardly do I ever see his archetype paired with the sort of sharp, striking beauty that Hyuna has so I definitely got giddy with them right away. She reminds me a lot of Michiko Malando and Luka reminds me of Near, two characters I love a whole lot and funnily enough have the same mbti types the artbook describes them as - ESTP and INTJ. Ankt garden Luka looks somewhat closer to the AU versions of Luka, so gotta love both his origins and his twisted post-alnst/hyuun woo self)

I believe Hyuna bundles Luka with that trauma of grief and loss, and it's still unclear what their roles are in it and after the fact. While singing all in verses "We only get one life, so I'm living mine for me/'Cause I'm the one from your wildest dreams", Luka's face flashes through Hyuna's mind before even her brothers, like it's something that's always on the back of it and barely suppressed.

See...since VIVINOS loves the "more than meets the eye"/twist concept, something I'm expecting is for Hyuna's feelings not to be as black and white as blaming Luka and actually. It obviously was dysfunctional and isn't that....delicious???

I feel like a one-sided love or obsession wouldn't make sense to repeat as themes, and because of the heavy trauma associated in the backstory, it's not like a "healthy mutual love". To bridge the themes of MiziSua and IvanTill, I think Hyuna and Luka are being told in a way to express love as something that can also destroy instead of save, and their clashing ideologies come from a place of wanting to think "-I'M- right and want to be your god", instead of ever having been able to understand each other properly.

They have a similarly "corrupt" love that has a lot of guilt and regret built into it. Even with something awful as what happened to her brother, it's curious that Hyuna's mind first thinks of Luka in an "enamored" light - the scene looks pretty tender - but that's also attached to the weight of Hyun Woo's death.

I think It's likely that the twist is Hyuna having been the one who hurt her brother, even, considering the dynamic in these comics:

Luka and Hyun Woo compete for Hyuna's attention, and it's to be expected that none of them understand the boundaries and definitions of love too well. Hyuna and Hyun Woo seem to be naive and relatively raised in a decent way, submitted to superiority tests like the rest, but not directly abused. They seem to express their love for each other in a cheerful, healthy way, Hyuna probably because of her closeness to her brother (which is unusual for other pet humans to be able to do) is extremely physical in how she shows affection. She doesn't really reprimand Luka, and that creates an unhealthy dynamic in which Luka plays the victim - in spite of starting things - to enjoy Hyuna's attention. There is a cute comic that looks silly, but encapsulates it all:

Luka is a little shit that wants to be pampered. He knows he is physically weaker - if you come across a rabbit being hurt by a wolf, you wouldn't suspect the rabbit provoked it. So Hyuna constantly seems to take Luka's side regardless of what happened, wanting to have that protector role.

Luka on the other hand, has no reference of what it's like to be "loved". He is systematically abused and treated like an object - therefore, he perceives relationships in terms of "ownership". And I don't think Hyuna truly understands just what she is enabling when she encourages Luka to act the way he does or thinks his neediness is "cute".

Honestly, I think there's strong sexual abuse imagery in Luka's art and the presentation of his stage image as someone taking charge of their objectification. His clothing for stage always shows off his body one way or another and both Hyuna and him have this sensual imagery and approach to others, as if "reclaiming one's own body". The contrast of Luka's blank expression and the red collar indicating a mental breakdown in that artwork above featuring Heperu's shadow approaching him is truly chilling.

That boy has no reference of what a familial bond or love is like. And both his introspective nature and abuse seem to make it even worse for him to connect with his peers- in the artbook his only relationships listed are Hyuna and Mizi, in very negative ways. He is also said to have retreated deeper into his own world, because "no one can understand him". Again, checks out with the imagery of "gifted son" that is treated like a narcissistic parent's doll and that becomes desensitized to many things over time.

His alien guardian Heperu even looks vaguely phallic and Luka has body language of "trying to disappear" or soothing himself when not up the stage - hugging knees, looking smaller, sucking on sleeves, stimming with toys (rubik's cube). The scars on his chest seem related to the abuse of submitting him to pain to overcome fear and I theorize the scars on the side may have been for plastic surgery like abdominoplasty or even possibly removing ribs. Normally that would be done from the back, but hey - alien science, and he already had "tainted" scarred skin on the front, so it would make sense to try preserving his back. His waist is drawn really really thin. It's also mentioned that he had a strict diet even though he is a big eater - that is, Heperu is deeply violating his agency in accordance with Lookism.

Luka has all the makings of a really tragic character and reminds me of Kamiki Hikaru's construction in Oshi no Ko. A victim turned abuser in some ways, as a way to seek autonomy, self expression and living for their ideals and love, no matter how twisted it has become.

There's a comic that has a "flashback" of anakt garden and Hyuna being asked by Luka if she likes to sing. The POV of Hyuna's face looks as soft as Luka's does from hers. She tells him that they don't have freedom for anything else, but when she is up at the stage, it's like her life is "her own", so she likes it. The image of Luka singing as an adult suggests that even now, those are the words he pictures and that is the image of Hyuna that is alive in his mind.

In a way, both of them are deeply attached to the past, and while Hyuna wants to shut it down completely and regrets it having happened, Luka's feelings are twisted.

We don't know much about the kiss. Considering the "sucking on forehead" comics, I get the feeling Hyuna was startled by the sudden escalation from Luka acting as a passive, cute pet and jumping her with so much intensity, but may not necessarily have pushed him away. The following fight could either have happened because Hyuna became withdrawn as a result of suddenly becoming aware of the effect she was having on Luka and what their feelings for each other were (since previously, she might not have been able to tell the difference between being all over her brother and all over Luka) /or/ the scenario played out like the forehead sucking. She didn't dislike it, but Luka became insistent or they got caught in a way that Hyuun Woo had no context for, thus assuming Luka was forcing her.

And there is a third option too that now I think about it, seems the /most/ likely: the growing proximity to Hyuna made Luka's feelings of "wanting ownership and exclusivity" even deeper because of love and lust, as simply being assured he is "loved" doesn't seem to be enough for Luka. It could be that Hyuna in fact disliked his attempt of kissing her and became more distant to him. Thus, he orchestrated for Hyuna to take his side once again for validation in a reckless way - but the results were "better than he thought" when it resulted in Hyuun Woo's death. Because, that is a price so heavy that it feels like "wow, you actually chose me".

This scene is super interesting, I love Luka's expression. It's joyful in a "perverse" way. He was successful in trapping his beloved Hyuna. And it seems that the emotion is so intense, like he is finally free from the mask of pitiful wounded animal with no agency over himself that the sheer ecstasy might have caused a seizure or heart attack, hence his eyes looking glassy afterwards and his fingers finally turning the blue/purple hue we see on his older design.

Skimming through the patreon posts, I was pleasantly surprised to realize my gut feeling about Ivan and Luka having a similar core wasn't wrong. Sua in comparison is the scenario of someone who doesn't go off to the deep end as the two of them. It's often stressed that the team was worried about establishing Luka and Ivan as distinguishable - their personalities are similar, but their masks are different. Ivan presents himself as the "big bro", while actually being a boy struggling with properly expressing emotions that went as far as practicing smiles and expresions at the lake. Whereas Luka is like a porcelain doll and passive - austere, even...but what about his real self?

We're cleverly prevented from seeing an introductory MV for Luka, as round 4 doesn't happen. And for the subsequent videos, Luka shows himself partially by not disclosing his POV, but showing important sides of himself - the urge to control and the attempts to "become whatever is desired of him". A blank slate.

In a sense, that's implying to me Ivan and Luka's stage presence is an expression of their "inner selves", where their feelings and thoughts become bare. Ivan does so by casting aside his big bro warmth and stepping in as the image of a serious-faced, strongly devoted man that is coming apart at the seams with the weight of his immaturity, sadness, love and obsession.

Luka's stage presence is a distant cry from his image of passiveness and class behind the scenes. On stage, he is a seasoned performer and a calculating prince that enjoys pulling the strings to reach the ideal performance as seen in his inner world. He cunningly displays a different expression between the audience and his partners to achieve the ideal results. Luka acts like both a director and an actor while performing, in order to construct his vision - He's bold, confident and invades people's personal spaces.

(What a condescending little shit. I love him. His expression seems to be saying something like..."Done already? Hmph. I expected more of you. You need to do something for me to do my part and shine, too."

A point I theorize about Ruler of My Heart - Hyuna says in the artbook, I think, that Mizi reminds her of herself. Luka would be able to pick up on that also, especially since Mizi had just been broken by the loss of the one she loved most and formerly had that spark of "hope and dreaming high" in her eyes. Luka may have chosen the song specifically to have Mizi recreate the "role of Hyuna" envisioned for it - as in, he never expected her to be obedient at all. He was riling her up to feel what Hyuna might have responded like to this song. But the Hyuna in his idealization is probably "blazing, absolute and strong" - instead of shutting down and giving up singing. Mizi lets herself get intimidated by his provocation into silence, but when she loses it to punch him in the face with no regard for the consequences - like Hyuna surely would do - is when he finally smirks. It's also a mockery of letting emotions take her over, securing his win and further reinforcing he is "in the right". )

Another interesting tidbit is that Luka's personality isn't of the ethereal "pitiful-but-nice" character, but rather something that "fits VIVINOS taste". He is also compared frequently to Ivan in personality/mindset, who is described as a "bad boy" with a possessive/manipulative streak. If the sides of Ivan we get to see that related to Till are fairly tame and the team worries so much about contrast, that seems to imply that Luka embraces the more extreme parts left out of Ivan.

Even more interesting than that is the core of Luka's character inspiration - "the little prince", which I assume most people have read before. It's a children's book about an adult meeting a little prince from space and basically sharing life lessons.

If we look a little beyond the "cute blond kid"/moon motif...the most striking aspect about the Little Prince is probably the idea of the rose and the fox. The immature prince is taught the concept of love and responsibility by a wild fox - that to tame someone is to make them unique, and it's the time spent nurturing that love that makes it precious. The prince had been frustrated by a Rose he thought he loved, but grew annoyed by because he could not understand her. He also was confused upon realizing there were many roses in the universe, but his was too selfish and flawed. So is she not as unique as he thought? He starts missing the rose, and learns that there IS a difference - none of the roses are "his" or sound like "his" - because if they have tamed each other, going forward, he isn't just any little boy to his rose anymore - he is "the" boy, and she is "the" rose, unique in the universe.

This feels extremely relevant to a character presented as a "product" of gene editing and, basically, being created in a lab. The implication to me is that there may be many other "Luka"-like humans - the vast array of congenital diseases he manifests such as heart disease, Raynaud syndrome, asthma and chronic migraine all make him sound like their universe's equivalent of a white pug dog with dubious origins to boot.

What makes that test tube baby, raised by a ruthless alien that doesn't care about him as more than a way to vicariously live a life of success and luxury, unique in that case?

Love.

And my take is that, the fox and rose to his little prince are the siblings Hyun Woo and Hyuna.

(I'm suddenly reminded of the Vanitas no Carte Louis-Domi-Noé trio. Why do those never end well?)

IMO the rift created between Hyuna's brother and Luka wasn't necessarily there from the start. Before getting more strongly attached or opening up to Hyuna, Luka looks extremely detached. Hyuna's brother looked like the picture of excitement and youth, so it feels like he could have reached out to the quiet boy first and Hyuna tagged along. The settings mention something along the lines of Hyuna not quite being the origin of the "dreamer" outlook, but being inspired by her brother, and I can picture it.

Hyuna's MV All in and her relationship with Mizi painted to me the picture of a girl that is naturally attractive - her drive and sunny disposition are simply dazzling. But, underneath, there seems to be "something" doesn't it? I think Hyuna's charm comes from a mix of strength and vulnerability. She seems like the type of person to cope with humor and being flirty in order to lift people's moods and surprise them, but Hyuna herself can have quite heavy and serious feelings. The somber look suits her, and it's overall impressive that she didn't completely break because of her brother. It's like her innate talent for performing draws people to her, but at the same time she can sustain an illusion of "closeness", her true worries and wounds are kept deep inside and she doesn't let others truly see into her.

So.

What's shown in Blink Gone to me is that Luka's not merely surviving a death game, he is enjoying the show and trying to feel alive. To someone like him that probably already feels dead inside all the time and was "abandoned" by Hyuna, there is nothing much to look forward to. We don't know what happened between Hyuun Woo's death and their first alien stage run (quite a lot, since Hyuna even lost a leg) ot the timing of their relationship fall out. Given their memories and image of eachother, it does seem to be implied they were already going separate ways right after the incident.

It's likely that what connects Luka to Hyuna's memory the most is the feeling of performing itself - the one time he gets to be free. Luka acts like he is superior to the other pet humans for having "figured out" the system and feeding into it, and looks down on them for having no control over their emotions. But does he really have total control over his own?

In spite of all the abuse he embraced as his own will or believing he could truly get any power by playing the game according to its rules and "overcoming fear", someone as unpredictable and impulsive as Till is the natural enemy of someone like Luka. He had the upper hand as long as it stayed within his plan, but Till suddenly going as far as going back to the green light indicator was worrisome. Luka's Stamina is actually rather crappy, so if Till did decide to go all out, he might have been cooked.

I think, to Luka, it's probably about more than keeping himself alive. And Till flipping the game then would have made him waste his life on a performance that was supposed to be easy -and- it must be annoying that Till strayed off-script. My hypothesis is that he wants to reach out to Hyuna, still - either by increasing the influence of humans to shift the world closer to the one she envisioned, or by putting his life in the line at the stage as many times as possible to feel the "weight" of her presence as if she still were by his side or to grow so famous that she cannot ignore or escape him.

Deliciously hypocritical of him to look down on others so much, when Hyuna's unannounced presence shook him so badly he turned his back to the stage and stared at her with an expression we'd never seen before.

My take is that her walking in like this is seriously the worst scenario to him. Luka expresses in the artbook that he pities Hyuna and that her safety would have been guaranteed with him, so - because of his influence - I think he might actually have gone to the Alien Stage again to secure his power status AND request to keep Hyuna out of it. A condescending sort of domestication we know she would hate, but would keep her safe.

But see. Even if she wasn't under his care, being out there causing a ruckus is one thing - she's alive and kicking, not really in the slaughterhouse. He can live with that. So, he sings to his heart's content. And...

His sneering that people are suuuch rookies at controlling their emotions...

Sooo weak to let their emotions and regrets dominate them and make them lose sight of the stage, compared to his Super Competent self that can overcome fear and control his own heart rate...

All came back to bite him in the ass, like an idiot.

All other characters were pitted against their worst case nightmare scenario, and I doubt the Prince will be an exception. I really don't think his type of obsessive is wanting to be superior to or beat Hyuna at performing either, even if it's his guardian's mindset (it seems Heperu feels inferior to Hyuna's guardian and adopted Luka simply as a means of beating him - so seems very possible he will push for having the two face off and prove Luka's "superiority").

No matter what he does now, it's either Hyuna against Mizi at the risk of death or Hyuna against him. Hyuna's a wanted criminal - there is absolutely no talking a way out of that one. Not only that, Hyuna's bleeding from her wound already. Luka facing against Hyuna as the second time champion would mean being forced to choose - keep rulling the stage, or chose the one who was his guiding light in the first place?

The imagery from the sweet dream opening (as well as Luka having covered that song) is "release" - Luka dying at Hyuna's hand even if it's not something she can truly do with pleasure, no matter how much she copes with her past wounds by hating him. I wonder if it's a red herring or if it will play out, I particularly want whatever will allow to explore their character, feelings and motivation the deepest.

I don't think Hyuna wandered onto the stage for his sake - it seems like it's for Mizi, who is completely frozen. Hyuna probably has up until now coped with hating Luka because he represented everything she was rebelling against - the "system" itself. A nasty cog in the engine of the aliens who, even if not directly, ultimately were the cause of the entire context that stripped her away of her freedom and lead to her precious brother's death.

However...

My guess to what's happening here isn't "wow your outfit is so slutty" or "you've grown". It's more like...Luka suddenly looks too human.

He wasn't supposed to.

...Phew. That's all for now. The ADHD gets strong when I'm talking about something that tickles my brain, so I hope that wasn't too messy/unintelligible to follow with the back and forth jumping timelines or repeating points of interest I did.

Well! I really, really wish there was more for me to keep going, but for now I'll live with overthinking with what we have. I might do separate analysis/speculation for the MVs if I have a deadline I'm procrastinating on come up the time.

Bottom line is, I think all those characters are very interesting, but Hyuluka are the ones I'm rotating like a rotisserie chicken in my mind. Plz hurt me more VIVINOS team and thanks for the good fucking food

[tonydaddingham]

IDK how I feel about the Crowley having amnesia theory but his line after Gabriel explained that it felt like he was in an empty house but knew it used to be his. The "looking at where the furniture isn't" is getting to me

oooooh, very good point!!!✨ (you can tell i don't have s2 memorised yet like i do s1)

at the moment i still think im on the fence; this could very well be just him acknowledging and echoing goob's metaphor, or equally could be - as the theory goes - that crowley is empathising that he too rattles around in an empty house that used to be full.

however, for me, looking at his choices in both s1 and 2, the way that he reacts to being restored to heaven, his criticism of heaven in general, and some of the other lines he says throughout the whole show, im not wholly convinced that he isn't just a bit of a dick that was so high above everyone else when he was an angel - or at least considered himself so - that he just simply didn't take in anything that was ultimately of no import to him.

it may well be that he's repressed his memory of the fall, or had snippets taken away from him, but i think he'd be a very different character if he didn't remember heaven at all✨

[starryhyuck]

twilight. (m)

pairing: vampire!jaehyun + afab!reader

words: 3.3k+

summary: you’re 100% sure your boyfriend is a werewolf. surprise kicks in when you discover he’s a different kind of monster.

genre: smut

warnings: dubcon, squirting, choking, anal, reader gets thrown around like a ragdoll, crying, public sex, blood drinking, creampies

You’re a passionate fan of the Twilight series. Most of your friends know this, so your declaration that your new boyfriend is a werewolf comes at no surprise.

“Is it just because Jaehyun has a six pack?” Seulgi muses, chewing at the end of her fork thoughtfully.

You roll your eyes. “No. Although, that is a nice bonus.”

Johnny sighs at the other end of the table. “Is this just like last year? You know, when Taeyong dressed as Edward Cullen for Halloween and you were convinced he was hiding in plain sight?”

Your gaze drifts to the boy mentioned as he sits across the local diner, where most of your university frequents. Taeyong is laughing at something Jaehyun said, and guessing by the blooming red of Doyoung’s ears, you assume they’re teasing him again.

“No! Listen, my Taeyong theory was very good even though none of you entertained it, but this is different. Trust me, I know Jaehyun is a werewolf. I sleep right next to him,” you try to say convincingly.

Your friends offer you dead gazes. They’ve heard it all before from you, and were thoroughly pleased at how dumb you looked when you shoved Taeyong in the sun to prove diamonds would glitter off his skin. It merely resulted in your bashful apology to Taeyong, who was more than happy to laugh and forgive you.

“Maybe we shouldn’t try to mess this relationship up when it’s just started,” Minjeong says carefully, eyeing your reaction.

It’s true — you had only started dating Jaehyun two weeks ago after months of senseless flirting. Johnny was about to lock the both of you in a room just to get you to realize how much you like each other, but luckily you confessed before it got that far.

A pair of arms encircle your waist, and a kiss is pressed to the shell of your ear. “What are you scaring them with today?” A throaty chuckle sends shivers down your spine.

“Someone has another supernatural theory,” Seulgi responds to Jaehyun’s question, one eyebrow raised. You glare at her and give her a warning look not to spill your suspicion.

“Oh really?” You can hear the smile in Jaehyun’s voice. He knows all about your Taeyong debacle from last year. “Who are we targeting this time?”

“No one!” You quickly respond, spinning in his hold and plastering a smile on your face. You kiss his cheek and grab his hand, tugging him away from the table and out the diner. “They’re just being silly. Why don’t we go back to your place?”

Jaehyun laughs, lips ghosting the back of your neck.

“Yeah? Baby wants to go back to my place?”

You whimper at the tone of his voice, knowing exactly what he plans to do to you.

“Yes, please, daddy.”

—

It feels like you’re on Cloud 9. Jaehyun’s hand is tangled in the back of your hair, your face is shoved in one of his comfiest pillows, and his cock is brutally fucking your pussy. Before Jaehyun, no other guy really knew how to ruin you like this. Jaehyun was the first one who turned you into a dumb, drooling, cockwhore mess.

“Pillow princess,” he sinisterly laughs above you, watching your mouth fall open in ecstasy. “Never wants to do any work. Always wants daddy to take care of her.”

You feel his fingers brush the strands of hair away from your face, and his mouth grazes your cheek. His balls slap against your clit lewdly, his bedroom filled with the sounds of your squelching pussy.

“Now, tell me about this supernatural theory you have, baby.”

“Ungh,” you cry, barely able to remember your own name. You can feel every ridge and vein of his cock hug your walls, preventing you from thinking about anything else.

“Is it about Doyoung?” He murmurs in your ear, ignoring your cries when he picks up his pace. You know for a fact that you’ll be sore tomorrow.

“How about Mark?”

You swear you feel him in the back of your throat.

“Yuta?”

He applies pressure to your clit, rolling the nub between his thumb and forefinger. You see stars.

“Ten?”

The pressure is building, building, building, and-

“Is it about me?”

You hopelessly crash, crying loudly as you reach your orgasm. Your nails dig into Jaehyun’s arm, holding him close while he helps you ride your high.

You’re offered no time to recover, Jaehyun manhandling you onto your side while he presses up behind you. His fingers grip your thigh roughly, hoisting it in the air and allowing him to slide back in your dripping cunt.

“S-Sensitive, daddy-“

“I don’t give a fuck,” he growls, hips snapping into yours. It almost sounds like he’s mad at you. “Tell me about the theory you have on me.”

You feel wetness falling down your cheeks and faintly register that you started crying. You’re a blubbering mess, begging for Jaehyun to slow down.

“What do you think I am, hm? Gonna shove me in the sun like you did with Taeyong?”

All you can manage is a string of moans, your second orgasm approaching quickly. “M-More, daddy,” you beg, desperately looking back to try and get him to kiss you.

“You’ll get more when you answer my question, baby,” he hisses, prodding his fingers against your lips. You take the hint, opening your mouth wide and allowing him to slide his fingers in. You suck at his digits lewdly, trying your best to please him.

He groans at the sight of you. “Fucking hell. So what is it, baby? Wizard? Elf? Bigfoot?”

“W-Werewolf,” you choke against him, finally admitting it. You grow warm and prepare yourself for the upcoming embarrassment.

There’s a pause in Jaehyun’s thrusts before you hear him laughing maniacally. His fingers leave your mouth in favor of digging into your hips, finding leverage so he can pound into you harder.

“Werewolf? Seriously, baby? You’re dumber than I thought.”

You struggle to defend yourself when your climax suddenly hits you, your cunt squirting all over Jaehyun’s sheets. You think you’re screaming, trying desperately to push him away as he shows no mercy on you. You nearly topple over when he harshly grabs your hair, pushing you forward until half of your body is dangling off the side of the bed.

Jaehyun slides in even deeper than before, if it was humanly possible. “Listen to how wet you get for me,” he hums, enjoying the loud squelch of your wetness. “Remember when I first fucked you? Could barely take an inch before you were begging to stop.”

You remember it very clearly. You and Jaehyun hadn’t made anything official at the time, yet you couldn’t keep your hands off one another. He had taken you in the back of the university library, your fingers holding onto the bookcases for dear life while he tried his best to fit his cock into your tiny pussy.

“I couldn’t believe how lucky I got to find an obedient whore like you. You’ll let me take you anywhere I like, won’t you, baby?” He chuckles when your only response is an outcry of his name. “Too bad you’re so nosy. Sticking your face into things that aren’t your business to begin with.”

He leans over you until your palms hit the floor. His cock pushes deeper and deeper when his teeth hovers over your neck.

“Daddy-“ you whimper, feeling restless. “I c-can’t.”

“You can and you will,” he says, and his tone indicates that there’s no room for argument. “After you tell me why you think I’m a werewolf.”

You make your best attempt at pushing forward an explanation as to why you think your boyfriend can secretly transform into a four-legged animal, but it comes out in stutters and half-sentences.

“Sick and I-I thought- you didn’t w-want to t-talk to me- just l-like Jacob did w-with Bella-“

Jaehyun, somehow, is able to piece your explanation together. “When I was sick last week and ignored you, you thought I was going through my transformation like Jacob did with Bella in Twilight?”

You nod shyly, afraid to look back and see the mocking emotion on his face. You squeak when you’re manhandled again, this time being pushed on your back and forced to look up at your boyfriend.

“You have to stop reading those silly books, baby,” he says, his voice gentle even though his hands work their way to your throat. He squeezes it and you choke. “They make you so dumb.”

“Y-You like me d-dumb, daddy,” you whisper, voice hoarse from the screaming and the weight crushing your windpipe.

“I do, baby. You know me so well,” he smiles. You’re about to smile back when you suddenly feel the tip of his cock prod against your other entrance, causing you to gasp. Jaehyun has only tried anal with you one other time, and that was after hours of preparation and lots of lube. He’s never done it dry before. “Don’t worry, baby. Just trust me.”

The pain is overwhelming and you cry, ignoring the scratch of your throat. “Daddy, it hurts!”

“It’s your punishment,” he says meanly, venom laced in his voice. You’re starting to get whiplash at how fast he changes his emotions. “For thinking I’m a fucking werewolf. How stupid are you?”

“S-Sorry! I’m sorry!” You whimper, kicking your feet to try and get away from him.

You sob louder when his cock continues to stretch you open, and you feel like you’re going to be split in half. The feeling, however, is overshadowed when you abruptly feel a pair of sharp teeth pierce the flesh of your neck. You scream, trying to make sense of what’s actually happening, but Jaehyun is fast to pin you down and ensure you can’t move.

The pain quickly shifts into pleasure, and your body is overtaken by a tingling sensation that spreads from the bottom of your toes to the edge of your fingertips.

“What-“ you mumble blearily, eyes shifting out of focus.

You find yourself struggling to stay conscious, mind blanking while you tumble into darkness.

—

“Johnny!”

The tall man looks behind him, trying to find the source of the voice calling his name. He squints when he sees you behind a pillar, dressed in a hoodie and sunglasses. He jogs over to you, eyeing your choice of outfit.

“Dude, what are you wearing? It’s literally a hundred degrees.”

You shush him, looking around frantically while pulling him behind a nearby building so no one can see you.

“Have you seen Jaehyun?”

Johnny scoffs. “No. Shouldn’t you know where your own boyfriend is?”

You lower your sunglasses so you can look him dead in the eye.

“Johnny, listen to me. Stay away from Jaehyun. I was wrong about him being a werewolf, okay? He’s a vampire. A fucking vampire.”

You receive four rapid blinks. “Haven’t we already gone through this before? I’ll burn your copies of Twilight, I’m dead serious.”

“Johnny!” You scold, frustrated that he isn’t taking you seriously. You quickly unzip your hoodie and show him the markings on your neck, two bright red indents that show where Jaehyun bit you.

“Woah, what the fuck? Did Jaehyun hurt you? I’ll beat his ass, just give me the go ahead.”

“No, no, he didn’t hurt me,” you insist, feeling embarrassed. “I actually kind of liked it.”

Johnny gags. “I didn’t need to know that. Look, you know I love you, but this is clearly you and Jaehyun exploring some nasty kinks that the rest of us don’t need to know about.”

“I’m being serious, Johnny! Jaehyun bit me and it was a vampire bite. He had fangs!”

“You saw his fangs?”

“Well, no. I passed out because his cock was in my ass and-“

“Fuck!” Johnny yells, fingers at his temples in an attempt to erase what you just told him. “What is wrong with you? I don’t want to know that Jaehyun’s dick was in your asshole!”

Students start to stop and stare at the sight of you and Johnny bickering, briefly catching onto the tail end of Johnny’s despair.

“Shut up!” You hiss, clapping your hand over his mouth. “I’m telling you this because it’s important! Jaehyun is a vampire and he got really pissed at me when I told him I thought he was a werewolf. When I woke up, he was gone and I haven’t seen him for days! He’s going to eat me, Johnny!”

He slaps you away and rolls his eyes. “You need to seek counseling, I’m not playing around. Just go tell your boyfriend you don’t like it when he bites you. Problem solved.”

You try to protest again but Johnny finds a way to escape from you, running until you can no longer see him on the other side of campus.

You huff, getting ready to trek back to your apartment and hide from the rest of the possible supernatural world. You freeze when you suddenly feel a presence behind you, and a hand dances around your waist.

“My pretty girl, are you telling the whole world about me?”

The voice sends chills down your spine, and Jaehyun’s lips suck at the lobe of your ear.

“J-Jae-“

He shushes you, pressing you against the wall of the building and out of view from prying eyes. Your heart beats loudly in your chest, and you know that this is it. This is how you die — in the hands of your extremely hot vampire boyfriend.

“I had to spend a few days away from you,” he confesses, fingers wandering up your shirt. “Almost lost myself when I finally got a taste. Your pussy is magnificent, my love, the best pussy I’ve ever tasted in my life but your blood — mmm, it doesn’t even compare.”

“Please don’t kill me,” you beg, crying in distress.

“I would never kill you,” he says with conviction, angry that you would think such a thing. “I would never let anything harm you. You know why?”

You tremble, feeling his fingers push down the band of your sweatpants. “W-Why?”

“Because then I would never get to feel this pussy again. Feel how good she is wrapped around me. Trust me, baby, I’ve lived for a very long time and I waited just to find you.”

Your sweatpants drop down to your ankles, leaving you in nothing but one of Jaehyun’s favorite thongs. You’re far from humiliated, being caught in more compromising positions with Jaehyun before. Your only concern is the fact that you’ve learned your boyfriend is a real-life Edward Cullen, and you have entrusted him with your mortality.

“Are you going to turn me into a vampire?”

“Only if you want to,” he replies, pushing the fabric of your underwear aside and lining himself up to your entrance. “If you want to feel this good for eternity, just say the word, baby.”

You groan when he pushes into you. The stretch is almost like a welcome home. If you’re being fully honest, you wouldn’t last a day if you and Jaehyun broke up. You crave his cock almost every hour of every day, no matter how desperate that makes you sound.

“Tell me you want me, baby. Even if I’m a vampire,” he whispers into the crook of your neck, and you jolt at the thought of him biting you again.

“I want you, daddy,” you sniffle. “Please don’t leave me, daddy.”

“Would never leave you, baby.”

You hear the faint sound of skin slapping against skin, and you moan as you brush your hair back, fully exposing your neck. Jaehyun discards your hoodie to the floor and kisses you gently.

“Want to be marked again, baby?” He asks you and you nod, mewling at the thought. You feel him grin against your skin. “Taeyong thought I was an idiot, you know.”

“Hm?” You hum softly, longing to have him kiss you again.

“You were right about him from the get-go, he’s the leader of our coven in fact,” he says, balls brutally hitting your clit with every thrust. “Everyone mocked you for getting your resources from that shitty book of yours, but I was so proud of my girl. So smart even when everyone else doubts her.”

“Y-You said I was d-dumb!”

He chuckles. “I was just teasing you, baby. But you know I love you dumb. Now show that pretty neck for daddy.”

You tilt your head to give him full access, and his thumb rolls against your clit as a reward. Your eyes dart down in time to see his fangs pop out, and he licks his lips before descending on your neck. Just like last time, there’s no discomfort or pain. Your body almost sings when Jaehyun bites you, and you feel complete in an odd way.

The intimacy helps the coil inside you snap, and Jaehyun groans when he feels your pussy tighten around his cock at the strength of your orgasm.

His teeth sink deeper into your neck, eagerly chasing his own high. You don’t even care at this point if he drains you completely, only focused on his cum filling you to the brim.

“M-More, d-daddy,” you cry, hips meeting the force of his thrusts halfway. “Fill me up. Want to feel your cum spilling out of my tiny pussy.”

He retracts his fangs from your neck and you moan at the sight of your blood spilling from his lips.

“Tastes so fucking good,” he groans. “Want to fuck you forever, baby.”

The sound of footsteps approaching makes you whimper, nails digging into Jaehyun’s wrist. “Faster, daddy, hurry. Someone’s going to see.”

It only takes a few more snaps before ropes of white fill you, Jaehyun groaning loudly into the back of your neck. If you didn’t just fuck him a few days ago, you would have guessed he hadn’t cum for over a year with the amount of his seed he empties into you.

Luckily, whoever was approaching heard your sounds of pleasure and decided it was better to leave you alone. You giggle and turn your head to kiss him, and Jaehyun smiles softly.

“Missed you,” you whisper. “Why did you disappear? I thought you had plans to eat me.”

“Maybe I still do,” he teases, fingers brushing your folds as he pulls out. “I was worried about your reaction. And honestly, baby, you thought I was a werewolf. It was insulting.”

You laugh and kiss him again. “Sorry. I just didn’t want another Taeyong debacle even though now I know I was always right!”

“That you were,” he hums, helping you pull your sweatpants back on. He tucks himself back into his pants and presses a kiss to your neck, licking at his bite and cleaning you up. “I would appreciate it, however, if you didn’t go around and tell everyone.”

“I promise I won’t,” you swear, making yourself presentable. “As long as the only blood you take is mine.”

He laughs. “Someone wants to be a little blood bag, hm? Jealous of me drinking from someone else?”

You frown. “Of course I am. I thought you said my blood tastes divine?”

“It does,” he growls, still licking at remnants of your blood on his lips. “That week I told you I was sick — it was because I needed to feed. If I spent one more night with you, I would have drained you dry, I’m sure of it.”

“You can drink from me everyday, I don’t care,” you say, wrapping your arms around his neck. “As long as you let me have my Bella moment in the forest.”

His grin is blinding. “Whatever my baby wants. How about we have round two in the woods as well?”

Your eyes sparkle. “Deal!”

[starryeyedjanai]

catch the embers on my tongue

kinktober prompt: frottage; @eddiemonth prompt: crush explicit | 5.2k

read on ao3

Steve's leaning into Eddie's side and they are high, high, high.

It's about time they got high together. After everything they've been through, and after he spent months recovering from wounds so deep they didn't know if he was going to make it, Eddie thinks they deserve this.

He hasn't smoked in months, the longest he's gone since the first time he tentatively took the joint from some kid he was hanging out with back in like middle school.

He hasn't been able to - the damage to his entire body was rough, his lungs were just one of many things that will probably never be the same. But it's been long enough, he figures. It doesn't ache when he breathes anymore, his body on the up and up.

So he invites Steve over to smoke with him because he remembers selling to him a handful of times when he was in high school, Steve showing up at his locker or waiting by his van after school sometimes. He remembers always wondering back then what Steve would be like when he was high. If he's the talkative type, the paranoid type, the quiet and contemplative type, the horny type.

Even he can admit he's thought about Steve enough to have thoughts on all of those situations and musings about how he'd handle each of them.

But he's not exactly prepared for Steve to be handsy, to be giggly and leaning into him and joking and touching him casually. Because sober Steve keeps his hands to himself, Eddie's noticed.

He's had a theory for years now that Steve is probably touch starved, from not having his parents around much, from the only form of intimacy other than sex being clapping his friends or teammates on the shoulder.

And knowing him now, actually knowing him, he knows he was right. Because Steve is somehow so touch starved that he's touch averse with most people, like he can't handle it, the lightest brush of someone's hand oh his skin has him dodging out of the way to avoid it.

The only person he isn't like that with is Robin. And Dustin has speculated enough times why that might be that Robin eventually came out to the group just to get them all to stop talking about it - well, that and she trusts them. It felt like Eddie's heart was going to burst in his chest at being part of that trusted group.

So Steve doesn't really touch people, doesn't reach out for any of the group for hugs, doesn't really cuddle with anyone during movie nights.

But high Steve, he touches.

They don't even finish the joint they're sharing, because it's been a while for both of them. Eddie's feeling the pleasant buzz under his skin, his lips feeling cold and tingling a little when they're barely halfway done with it. He stubs it out when Steve bows out of taking it from him.

Without the joint to pass between them, they talk. One of his hands somehow ends up in Steve's grasp. He touches Eddie's fingers, plays with his rings, as he talks.

It's mostly chatter that Eddie mostly can't keep up with as he acclimates to the way his brain feels less fuzzy than it has in months, the background noises fading away until all he can hear is Steve, all he can feel is Steve's fingers spinning one of his rings around.

He feels grounded, kind of, focusing in on Steve's voice, watching his mouth move as he talks. He's calmer than he's felt in months, feels less out of control, sitting on his bed next to Steve, letting him touch his hand.

It's only a handful of minutes later when they're laughing about something or another, when out of nowhere Steve puts his hands on Eddie's chest and pushes him down on his bed in what has to be a moment straight out of Eddie's wet dreams before he realizes that Steve is pressing him into the bed because he wants to cuddle with him.

It still has his heart racketing in his chest even after realizing, because he's so close to Steve. Their faces are pressed close together and he can feel the several points of contact between them like a brand on his skin.

It's one of those weirdly hot September days, so they're both in shorts. Steve's wearing a sweater even though Eddie knows he has to be hot in it. Even with the sweater on, this is more skin contact than Eddie is used to with anyone.

He realizes now, in this moment, that he too has become a little touch starved since everything happened.

He couldn't handle a lot of touch in the beginning, his body healing, his skin scarring over in a lot of areas. The scar tissue was sensitive for a long while even after it was safe to touch, so the party and his friends stopped touching him - he'd flinch or brace himself when people got near, ready for the ache or pain or sensitivity that comes with touch nowadays, so they stopped touching him as much to spare him of that.

And now, laying here, pressed up against Steve Harrington, of all people, he's realizing how much he craves touch, how much he's missed having someone's skin against his like this, even platonically - not that he has much experience with things being not platonic.

But his friends stopped touching him because any touch hurt him for a while and then they just kind of haven't started again.

They're probably waiting on a cue from him, he guesses. It's what he'd do, if touch suddenly hurt one of his friends. He'd wait for them to say it was okay, or to initiate touch, before he started cuddling up to them again.

So even though he knows cognitively that's likely the reason, there's a thread of a darker thought that passes through his head, that maybe his friends don't touch him anymore because he's somehow even more of a freak than before. That his scars make him untouchable, undesired, that even the freaks of Hawkins don't want to touch him.

He shakes himself free of those thoughts. He knows that's just his brain being dumb. His friends don't care what he looks like, they never have. If they did, they wouldn't be his friends anyway - that's not the kind of company he keeps.

He tries to get back to the feeling of finally having someone's warmth against his skin after a long, touch-starved drought, calming his thoughts again so all he feels is Steve.

He likes it, he finds - the warmth. Steve's skin is hot to the touch, the air around them warm from having the air conditioning off.

He likes this, probably too much, hasn't had enough touch in months, and Steve is the one here giving it to him.

He likes this and he's been unknowingly craving this. That's a dangerous combination.

He wants to burrow deep, to pull their clothes off so he can get even more skin contact. He wants to feel the whorls of his fingertips dragging on Steve's own scars, because he's maybe the only one who can appreciate it. He's maybe the only one who can understand this - what it's like to want to be touched but not be able to be, to feel like maybe the scars are the reason why he's not getting the touch he needs.

He feels the heat seeping from Steve's skin against his and he wants to wrap himself up in that warmth. After a moment of contemplating whether it would be a good idea or not, he does it anyway.

He's spent months not being able to do the things he wants to do, is the thing.

He's spent months not getting high, not really being able to have his friends touch him without it hurting, not being able to get out of bed, not being able to stand for too long without it hurting. He's spent months bored out of his fucking mind while his body healed from something more traumatic than he ever thought he'd go through.

He thinks he's allowed to have this. He thinks he's allowed to enjoy this, even.

So he pulls Steve closer to him, impossibly close, pressed together all the way from their chests to their shins, legs tangling together. He tucks his head in close, rubs his face against the soft fabric of Steve's sweater.

"I've missed this," he finds himself saying, sighing into Steve's shoulder.

Steve pulls back a little to be able to look at Eddie's face when he asks, "Getting high?"

Eddie snorts. "Yeah, that. But also, this," he says, trapping one of Steve's legs between his and squeezing it between his. "I feel like no one touches me anymore."

There's more he could say, the introspective thoughts about how he gets it - the self-deprecating jokes about his scars bitter on his tongue. But he doesn't say it because Steve already gets it. He has similar scars. Scars that run along his back and his torso and his neck. His neck scar is still visible in most shirts. Eddie knows he gets it.

"Yeah," Steve says quietly. "I think I missed this too."

They've never touched like this before, never spent an afternoon curled up together, and he wishes he could go back in time to tell himself to befriend Steve, so they'd get more moments like this. So they'd get thousands of moments like this before all the bad stuff happened.

His brain conjures up the image of high school Steve in his bed in his old trailer. He thinks of Steve's coiffed hair and his polos and barely contains the laugh bubbling up in his chest. He'd look so out of place there.

But Eddie doesn't think he would have been, not really. Not after he lost his crown, after his downfall from King of Hawkins High. He thinks Steve would have fit right in with the rest of Eddie's things - his sweetheart, his posters, his rack of cassette tapes, his Steve. Eddie thinks he would have liked Steve in that room, surrounded by all of Eddie's favorite things.

But he knows his past self wouldn't have allowed it. Even though Steve had changed by his senior year, Eddie was still very much subscribed to a nerds versus jocks dichotomy.

He doesn't think he would have allowed Steve to get close enough to him to be someone he invited over, someone he invited into his room, his space, the only place in Hawkins that was really Eddie's. He would have been too paranoid that Steve would have been trying to pull something over on him.

He's pulled from his thoughts by Steve putting his hand on Eddie's side. He's not touching his skin, but Eddie still flinches. The skin has long since healed over into scars that sometimes pull weird with sudden movement, making it feel like the skin is going to crack open.

"I'm sorry," Steve whispers. "Do your scars still hurt? I should have probably asked that before tackling you to the bed."

"No," Eddie says. "They don't hurt. The skin's just weirdly sensitive sometimes. You can keep touching me. It's fine." The second the words are out of his mouth, his face is on fire.

You can keep touching me. That's a loaded sentence if he ever heard one.

Steve either doesn't notice or doesn't care that his face is beet red. He just returns his hand to Eddie's side, where his shirt has ridden up a little. This time, instead of letting his hand rest over Eddie's side on top of his shirt, he pushes his shirt up more, spreading his big hand over the expanse of Eddie's largest scar.

God, his hands are so big. And this is so not the time to be thinking about that.

The feeling of Steve's hand on him makes Eddie shiver. He tries to suppress it, but it wracks its way through his body regardless.

He knows Steve feels it. He has to, with the way his body is pressed so close to Eddie's. There's no way he misses it, the full body shudder, the way his breath hitches a little because of it.

Steve doesn't say anything, but he thumbs at the scars on Eddie's side, right where the scar meets his unmarred skin.

He's being so gentle with him that it makes Eddie want to whine. It makes him want to whine and rock his hips against Steve's, the delicate way he's touching him, just the slightest pressure of his thumb on his skin. It's like a tease, almost. It's like Steve wants Eddie to feel like this, like he knows exactly what touching him like this is doing to him.

Eddie tries to get his bearings right again, tries to be normal about this, but he's high, and it's been so long since he felt good like this. Part of him wants to give in completely, right away, wants to, to knock Steve onto his back and climb on top of him. Wants to press his entire body weight onto him, feel every inch of his skin against his own.

But he knows that's crazy. Even if Steve were receptive to the things that Eddie wants, he doesn't think Steve would want to jump right in. He seems to be the type that would want it to go a little slower, to want to be wooed in bed. He's the type to hold hands during sex and look deeply into his lover's eyes for the connection. At least, that's what Eddie assumes about him, anyway, from the way he talks about relationships and love and what he wants his future to look like.

So even as high as he is, he knows Steve probably wouldn't want to be pushed around like that, at least not at first.

The longer Eddie thinks about it, the longer he has Steve so close to him, the longer he has his hands on him, the more Eddie craves it. He's never wanted like this before, he doesn't think.

He's not super experienced beyond quick and dirty hand jobs or blow jobs. He's never had someone touch him like this before. Touching just to touch. Any touching during his previous encounters were just the quick preliminary touches to get the other guy out of his jeans. The touches didn't linger. They certainly didn't feel like this.

He tucks his head close to Steve's neck again, lets his lips just barely brush against the skin there, tries to keep his breath even. It could be written off as an accident, that he just got too close, because they're already so close. Steve could ignore it.

He doesn't.

He slides his hand down Eddie's side, past his hip to grip his thigh and hitch it up near Steve's hip. Eddie can't keep the gasp from escaping his mouth.

He's already half-hard, just from thinking thoughts about Steve. How the hell is he going to survive this?

Steve's hand travels back up the back of his thigh, stops right before it reaches his ass.

Eddie's heart is beating so fucking fast in his chest.

He pulls back to look at Steve. His eyes are dark, and his lips are red like he's been biting them. Eddie wants to bite them, too.

"Steve," Eddie says, unsure exactly what to say, what he could say to get Steve to want this. Does he have to convince him? Does he have to tell him it doesn't have to mean anything? It would be a lie - it would mean something to him. But if Steve only wants this now, when he's high, Eddie thinks he can handle that. He thinks he can be okay with it, if it means he gets to have this right now.

Steve shushes him though, doesn't seem to need any convincing before he leans in and kisses Eddie.

Eddie lets out a shuddering breath against his mouth.

He hadn't realized how much he's been wanting this because he never really let himself think about it. It's not just touch, not just anybody's touch, not just anybody's kiss, that he craves. It's Steve's touch, Steve's kiss. It's Steve's lips against his, Steve's body against his.

He obviously knows Steve is attractive, but they've grown close over the past few months.

He thinks Steve is probably one of the best friends he's ever had. And of course, with that comes other feelings because how could it not? How could anyone look at Steve and not want? How could anyone know Steve and not want him?

Eddie hasn't been thinking about it, about how he looks at Steve sometimes, about how he watches him. He hasn't thought about it because he knows what it means when his heart beats faster because of it. He knows what it means when his heart feels like it could burst out of his chest when he makes Steve laugh. He knows what it all means, so he hasn't let himself think about it.

But with Steve pressing sweet, gentle kisses against his mouth, the feelings slam into him. He's wanted this so bad.

This impossible crush, these impossible feelings that he has tried so hard to ignore, tried to get to lay dormant when he became friends with Steve, come rushing to the surface with him so close like this, with his mouth on Eddie's like it belongs there.

He pulls Steve's bottom lip into his mouth and bites it. He can't not. Steve gasps against his mouth.

He sucks on his lip gently, tongues at it to soothe the sting away, and hears Steve let out a sigh.

Steve's hand is still on his thigh, trapping his thigh against Steve's hip. He wants his hands on him, wants Steve to touch him everywhere.

He licks into Steve's mouth, slow and deep, their tongue sliding against each other like they've got all the time in the world.

Eddie's hand has been idle against Steve's chest, but he needs to touch, needs to feel him. So he slides his hand up to cup Steve's neck, to tilt his head to better lick into his mouth. He keeps his hand there, fingertips brushing the scar on his neck, his thumb digging into the hinge of his jaw.

He kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, until all the air in his lungs is gone, until he's hard in his shorts, until his lips feel swollen.

Steve's hand stays stubbornly on his thigh, not moving an inch up towards his ass. Eddie might be a little offended by it if he couldn't feel the way Steve is also hard in his shorts, if he hadn't just spent ten minutes getting to know the inside of his mouth.

He likes this so much, he realizes. He's never been the type to savor it - he hasn't ever really had the opportunity to. The few times he's had anything like this, it had to be quick, it had an expiration date, it had to be over as soon as possible. He's never just sat around and kissed someone until his jaw hurt, until his lips were aching.

He didn't expect it to be this easy, to just put a tiny little thread in the loop and have it spin so easily for him. He didn't think that maybe Steve had been wanting this too, craving this for just as long as he had.

He couldn't even imagine it - Steve, looking at him and wanting, Steve watching him when he's not looking the way that he watches Steve. He can't wrap his mind around it, Steve looking over at him being a dumbass in so many situations and still being like, yep, I want his tongue in my mouth.

But it feels like that's what this is. Because Steve's kissing him with just as much hunger. Steve's kissing him and has his hand on his thigh, gripping him like he owns him. Eddie wants him to push him on his back, to spread his thighs open and show him just how much of him he owns. He wants him.

He pushes his hips forward experimentally, a slow grind. It makes Steve groan against his mouth. The sound is addictive - Eddie wants to chase that sound, to make Steve groan over and over and over as he chases his pleasure between Eddie's thighs.

Steve bites his lip, harder than Eddie had bitten his, and it stings. They've been at it for so long that Eddie's lips were already getting swollen and sensitive, so Steve biting one of them like that pulls a moan out of him.

He pulls back, breathing heavy, to kiss his way down Steve's neck, to bite at his neck. He wants to cover him in marks - deep, purpling bruises. He wants to see his neck and his chest covered, a molten mess of love bites.

His heart stupidly stutters in his chest at the thought of biting a bruise the shape of a heart into his skin. God, he's so gone for him. He has a heart boner for him in addition to a regular one.

He pulls the neck of Steve's sweater down and sucks a bruise into the smooth, tan skin of his collarbone, and when he pulls back, the skin is a deep red. He smiles at his work, knows it's going to deepen in color with time. He's never felt possessive like this before, like he wants to cover him in bruises so everyone knows he's someone's, so everyone knows he's Eddie's.

Is he Eddie's?

The look in his eyes when Eddie looks back up at his face says yes.

Steve pulls Eddie on top of him, their bodies flush together again, and gets a hand in his hair. He tugs his head to the side so he can bite at Eddie's neck the way that Eddie was just gnawing on his. It startles a moan out of him. He didn't know his neck was so sensitive.

He lets Steve suck a bruise into his skin and tries not to accidentally come because of it. All the kissing, their bodies pressed together, their cocks hard and grinding together through layers of fabric - it all feels like so much, too much almost.

He's on top of him, but he doesn't feel in control right now at all.

He can barely stop himself from grinding down and coming in his underwear like a teenager. He wants it, wants to come with Steve's mouth on his skin.

Steve kisses his neck, where his skin is likely bruised now, before he pulls back, thumbing at the mark like he's satisfied he left his mark on Eddie as well.

Steve releases his hair from his grip and slides his hand down between them. Eddie can't stop the groan that leaves his mouth at feeling Steve palm at him.

"Is this okay?" he asks, and Eddie isn't sure what he's talking about - his hand touching Eddie's dick? Hell yeah, that's okay. This entire thing? Again, hell fucking yeah.

He nods, because any way you spin it, everything they've been doing is a-okay with Eddie.

Steve grins up at him and Eddie can't help but grin back at him, still in awe that this is happening.

Steve undoes the buttons on Eddie's shorts and unties the tie at the waistband of his own shorts.

Eddie sits up to shove his shorts down and off, watching Steve do the same, leaving his shorts around his thighs.

He looks at Steve's bulge, his cock hard and straining in his underwear. He wants to lean in and put his mouth on it. Get the fabric nice and wet with a mix of his spit and Steve's precome. He wants to suck it through the fabric, tongue at the soft fabric and pull noises from Steve the entire time.

He wants to put his mouth on Steve's thighs. They're paler than the rest of his tan skin, milky and smooth. He wants to see that skin mottled and bruised too.

He can wait for those things, though. He thinks he has time. The thought makes him damn near giddy - the thought of more, of doing this again and in different ways, in every way possible. They haven't even made each other come yet and he's thinking about all the other ways he wants him. He's so far gone on him.

When Eddie lowers himself back down, he tries to keep his reaction to their cocks rubbing up against each other through their underwear to a minimum, but he feels a shiver run through him. It feels overwhelming, and they aren't even naked, aren't even touching cocks with nothing separating them.

He thinks that would probably be enough to make him come immediately, feeling the velvety skin of Steve's cock against his own as they grind together, if how overwhelming this feels is any indication. He feels like he's just a few breaths away from shoving his hips down and humping Steve with abandon until he's making a mess of both of them.

He grinds down against him slowly, trying not to overwhelm himself. He presses his mouth to Steve's again, tangling his tongue with his as his hips move. He rolls his hips against Steve's, their dicks pressed together tightly.

He pulls back to look down at the way they're pressed together and he groans. There's a wet spot on Steve's underwear where he's leaking precome into the fabric. He's losing his goddamn mind.

He sits up and pulls his shirt off so he has a moment to take a breath.

He leans back in and grinds down on Steve again, pushing Steve's sweater up, not sure how he's even still wearing it. Eddie's sweating and he was only in a short sleeved shirt.

Steve enthusiastically pulls his sweater up and in the excitement, it gets a little tangled getting over his head, so they have to stop grinding against each other to figure it out. Steve's head pops out of the head hole of his sweater and Eddie can't help but sit up and laugh. Steve arms are caught up in his sweater, awkwardly making his arms box his head in.

He looks flushed and aroused and out of breath from struggling with his sweater and his hair is a mess, but he's still so unfairly pretty.

Steve pouts at him and says, "Don't laugh at me. Help me out of this?"

"Hmm, I don't know," Eddie says with a grin, sliding his hands up to push the sweater up a little, exposing more of Steve's biceps. Eddie wants to bite them. "I kind of like having you at my disposal here."

He says it as a joke, mostly, ready to help Steve get his arms untangled from his sweater. But he sees the way Steve's eyes darken, sees the way he licks his lips like he likes that thought, the thought of being at Eddie's mercy.

He asks, "You like that?" because he has to be sure he isn't reading this wrong. Steve nods his head, slow and sure.

So Eddie grinds his hips down slowly, pushes Steve's sweater up more, to free up more of his arms. He pushes his hands into the arm holes of the sweater and tangles his fingers with Steve's hands where they lay draped above his head. He knows their hands are going to get sweaty underneath the fabric of Steve's sweater, but he doesn't care right now.

He presses his weight more fully onto Steve, uses his hands to press Steve's into the mattress as leverage. He spreads his legs, knees digging into the bed so he can roll his hips against Steve's harder, still keeping the pace slow and steady.

"Fuck," Steve says on a breath out, keening at the rough way Eddie's cock is sliding against his.

They're breathing the same air, not really kissing, mouths barely an inch apart.

"Yeah?" Eddie asks, and Steve nods desperately. He closes the gap between their mouths and licks at Steve's open mouth, his tongue brushing past Steve's lips, tasting him.

His brain is only a little hazy, but Steve's tongue feels hot against his, hot like the embers at the end of the joint they just shared.

He rocks down against Steve faster, picking up the pace, feels the vibration of his moans against his mouth more than he hears them.

He feels the familiar coiling in his stomach, the tightening of his core muscles that tells him he's going to come soon.

He gives into it, huddling impossibly closer, hips moving faster, less controlled than before. He's sweating, his hands on Steve's are damp, beads of sweat rolling down his neck. But he keeps going, he's so fucking close.

"Stevie," he whispers against his mouth.

Steve nods, says back, "I'm gonna come."

Yeah, yeah.

So Eddie releases one of Steve's hands and gets it between them, squeezes Steve through his underwear. He lets Steve jerk his hips up against his hand, chasing his orgasm. He curls his hand around Steve more firmly, hears the curse that falls from his lips.

He bites at Steve's bottom lip, the feeling of his cock riding up against the back of his hand as he gets Steve off overwhelming, Steve's gasping breaths and groans the only thing he can focus on.

Steve lets out a sharp cry and Eddie feels the wet heat of his come seeping through Steve's briefs. He strokes Steve's cock through his briefs, feeling him tremble a little when it gets to be overstimulating.

Steve, having finally weaseled his hands out of his sweater, rubs his hands up and down Eddie's back gently as he comes down.

It's the tenderness, this moment of connection, that has Eddie leaning down and pressing his teeth into the soft skin of Steve's neck.

He's still riding close to the edge and now feeling the satisfaction of making Steve come. He turns his hand over and barely has to put any pressure on his dick before he's coming too, his open mouth pressed against Steve's throat.

He pants through the waves of it, feeling his briefs get stickier and wetter with each pulse.

He's shivering when it's over, the sweat on his skin drying, the come in his underwear cooling.

His hand feels sticky when he pulls it away and he wonders if he'd taste a combination of their come if he licked his palm right now. His cock jerks painfully at the thought.

He rolls off Steve, sated and sweaty, breath still shaky.

Steve reaches between them and laces their fingers together.

"Are we- what are we doing?" he asks, a little nervous, looking over at him.

Steve brings their entwined hands up to his mouth and kisses the back of Eddie's hand.

"Whatever you want," Steve says easily, letting their hands fall between them again.

Eddie steels himself and bites the bullet. "And if I want everything?" he asks, heart in his throat.

Steve smiles shyly at him and squeezes his hand. "I can work with that."

[delta-orionis]

I made an updated ref for my iterator OC Three Stars Above Clouds! Not much has changed since I designed them earlier this year, but I figured it was useful to make a more detailed ref sheet (primarily for my own convenience).

I’ve included some extra biographical info as well as my region map for TSAC’s internals, as well as what their can looks like from the outside, and the inside of their puppet chamber.

I have an in-character ask blog for TSAC over here. Give it a look! I love exploring their character and I'm having a lot of fun.

Some additional links:

TSAC's original ref (contains an extended backstory as well)

TSAC's region map (contains descriptions of the subregions and connections)

TSAC's facility grounds map (details their surrounding area and explains the purposes of each section)

TSAC's general tag on my main blog (misc. info and musings)

A transcription for the text in the images plus some additional notes can be found under the cut.

[ First image - a standard character reference sheet ]

Three Stars Above Clouds

Experimental mountaintop iterator created to catalogue and study celestial objects. Iterator of the Institute-Metropolis of Zenith*. Director of the Zenith Stellar Observatory Consortium and Lead Archivist of the Zenith Data Archives. they/them

Three Stars Above Clouds is an iterator- a massive biomechanical superstructure and supercomputer designed by the "Ancient" civilization to search for a true Solution for Global Ascension.

Three Stars Above Clouds ('TSAC' for short, occasionally 'Three Stars' or rarely just 'Stars') was created by a Firmamentalist** splinter group of Ancients who believed that the Solution could only be found in the sky. TSAC was created to be an advanced stellar observatory, meticulously cataloguing and analyzing all manner of night sky phenomena, as well as a home and institute of learning for the researchers, scholars, and priests of the Firmamentalist sect.

[ Second image - A drawing of TSAC facing away from the viewer, next to an extended description ]

TSAC might not share all of their creators' beliefs, but believes their assigned task of recording and studying the sky to be of upmost importance. They take this responsibility very seriously and value it above all else.

As a result, they are quite reclusive, always too busy with work to talk to anyone. Before the Global Ascension Event, the majority of their social contact was with high-ranking researchers and priests from Zenith, as well as brief, professional conversations with other iterators in their field to discuss theories and compare data. Because all of their social development was in a formal academic setting, they have a polite, professional, almost robotic tone (even by iterator standards).

Despite this, TSAC is not actively antisocial. They enjoy talking to others, and enjoy education in particular. However their intense focus on their work and sheltered upbringing meant they very rarely initiated social contact, only responding if spoken to first. After the Global Ascension Event, TSAC became even more reclusive, choosing only to listen to broadcasts and rarely speaking publicly, if ever.

In the absence of their creators, TSAC was no longer in charge of managing everyday life in the city of Zenith and found themself with free time for the first time in ages. Their self reflections during this time, combined with the worsening decay of the global iterator communications network, made TSAC realize that they barely knew their fellow iterators, and they decided to try and get to know them before they lost the chance.

---

*Zenith is the name of the city atop TSAC's can. It is home to several colleges, research institutes, and observatories.

**The Firmamentalists are the name I came up with for the group that created TSAC. They share much of the same religious beliefs as the rest of Ancient society, but believe that the Solution can only be found by searching the sky (aka the firmament). I'll assume that Firmamentalists or other like-minded splinter groups created other similar astronomy-focused iterators.

The Firmamentalist society of Zenith places a focus on education and the acquisition of knowledge, and considers anything related to learning holy. To learn is to better understand the nature of the carnal plane, as well as how to ascend beyond it. Three Stars Above Clouds was created to aid them in this task.

[nikethestatue]

Maybe it's the wait for the next book or the peculiarities of this fandom, but it's baffling how people analyze these books and then say things like 'SJM changed her mind' and 'we don't have this person's POV!' and 'she is an unreliable narrator' and 'SJM changed the ships' and....well, it's endless.

As if...SJM is not in control of these books????

But what do you mean 'unreliable narrator' or 'we haven't had his / her POV'???

That's what the author herself wanted you to read. There is a reason for the 1st person narrative. That's ALL you are going to get. That's the POV that SJM chose for all of us and we aren't going to get everyone's POVs just because someone doesn't like Feyre, or whoever. We aren't getting deep thoughts by Tamlin. We aren't getting Lucein's musings. We haven't even gotten Rhysand's POV beyond the flashbacks and some of it in ACOFAS.

Everything that SJM wants us to know is IN THE BOOKS.

We do not need a PhD in Slavic fairy tales. Neither do we need a deep dive into Norse mythology. We don't need to have gone to Harvard or Oxford to understand the intricate complexities of SJM's books.

Everything that she wants us to know--all the hints and all the backgrounds are IN the books. And whatever isn't, means she hasn't written it yet, chose not to include it, or it's just OUR imagination at work. Yes, she puts Easter eggs into the narrative, but no one needs to re-read the books 15 times to catch them. The 2nd re-read should really give you all the information.

Furthermore, there is no 'interpretation'. This is the info, and we are meant to understand this info as it's presented--as in, no, Elain was not overcome with an orgasmic need for Lucien, and then sought out.......Azriel. She didn't care, knowing that her mate was sleeping upstairs. That's the text. That's what SJM wanted us to gather from the bonus. Elain doesn't care about Lucien. She cares about Azriel. It's not open for interpretation.

A bonus is an addition to the main material--it expands on the general narrative. The general narrative, for example, never implied that there is a romantic entanglement between Azriel and Gwyn. Therefore, SJM will not show something as important and detrimental as a mate bond snapping between two random characters in a BONUS!

Elain, who is barely present in Nesta's book, would not, for example, break her bond or discuss her bond with Lucien in Nesta's book. It's not because she is dragging her feet or she is in love with Lucien. It's because just like Nesta didn't consummate her relationship with Cassian in Feyre's books, Elain won't make the most important decisions of the story in Nesta's book.

I feel like everyone's lives would be so much easier if they just recognized the intent of what SJM was writing. Theories are fun and often interesting to read. But they should be based on some semblance of reality.

[teecupangel]

Jarlskona’s Mate

An au where Desmond Miles is married off to Eivor Varinsdottir by his father William Miles after he discovered she and her clan were alive again in the modern day. Many do not like the arrangement but see Eivor’s wisdom in agreeing to the arrangement to save an innocent life.

So I was curious to see how you would go about this idea. I know where I want to go but the muse ain't singing right now. The settlement occupants have all their memories from their original lifetime. And they refer to Basim as HIM.

Desmond would have just turned 16 and has that fresh scar.

I mean, you can totally do this in Eivor’s time and make this a flatout political marriage between Eivor under Sigurd’s orders and Desmond, the son of the mentor of what remains of England’s Hidden Ones.

In a modern day setting though, maybe Eivor was living in an isolated community until the Great Purge reached their home. Only a few of them managed to survived and those people are the ones who used to lived in Ravensthrope and that’s the day they start remembering their past lives.

Hytham is the one who suggested they try and find the Hidden Ones because there’s no way the Hidden Ones wouldn’t exist in this time, especially with his theory that Abstergo might be connected to the Order of the Ancient.

They realized that it may be a bit more complicated (or simpler, depending on who they ask) after the attack because they managed to take one alive who spilled the beans that they were attacked because they were connected to the Assassin Brotherhood and that they were Templars. He didn’t even know what the hell the Order of the Ancients is.

Eivor ends up traveling to try and figure more stuff because, if they are connected to the Brotherhood, then there’s a high possibility they would be allies.

This leads her to William Miles who is barely holding it together because the Great Purge is in full swing. Eivor decided to help them because they were better off as allies and Hytham confirmed that there were too many similarities between the Hidden Ones and the Brotherhood for them to be dismissed as a coincidence.

Bill didn’t trust them though since he doesn’t buy into all this Hidden Ones nonsense but an ally was greatly appreciated.

This leads to Eivor teaming up with Bill’s wife and they did not get along at all.

She thinks Eivor is too violent.

Eivor thinks she’s too cold.

Hytham was there to keep the two of them from actually trying to kill one another after every mission.

In the end, they were able to save more than they would have been able to had Eivor and her clan not helped.

An alliance was formed during those darkest of times and the Great Purge died down 3 years after the initial attack.

Everything was still in shambles and, really, the Brotherhood wasn’t in any real position to do anything more than poke at Abstergo.

Eivor’s clan, on the other hand, could turn into a good spec ops team if they were given proper gear and training.

And that’s where a kind of ‘exchange’ happened.

As a promise to help Eivor’s clan with supplies that they could use to fuck Abstergo up, Eivor would be taking on his son as her husband.

Everyone knows that it wasn’t exactly a political marriage or anything.

Desmond Miles was being given as a hostage to show that the Brotherhood wasn’t going to go against their promise.

But the thing is…

Eivor received a letter from Desmond’s mother a day before she was to meet her child groom.

She had been the one to suggest Desmond be given to Eivor because she learned her son was planning to try and escape the Brotherhood.

So he was sent to Ravensthrope to be a hostage…

But Eivor had a feeling this was a compromise his mother made to get him out of the Farm without endangering him.

Well…

She wasn’t exactly thrilled to have a child husband.

She’d talk to him and try to befriend him then go from there.