#like you barely have to jump to conclusions here

[radicalfantasydwarfs]

so, how do you feel now?

I actually think it'd be rlly funny if Pomni focused on Gumigoo a lot during the adventures and just rlly wants her friend back and Ragatha thinks its Pomni being in love with Gumigoo and gets jealous, so Ragatha thinks she's in a love triangle, Pomni's sad about her friend not knowing who she is and Gumigoo doesn't know that any of this is even happening.

[luv4berry]

Can you pls make one abt miles and yn getting into a very heated argument and she slaps him for saying smth outrageous and then she leaves and he climbs into her window after a few hours and tries to work it out with her

anything for you.

earth 42!miles morales x fem!reader

SUMMARY: you go over to miles practically drenched in another man's cologne, and he jumps to conclusions all too quickly.

GENRE: fluff to angst to fluff.

WARNINGS: bickering/arguing, physical contact made by reader, jealous miles, cursing, kissing/making out, suggestive (?) miles calling women females (this needs a trigger warning in itself), CORNYYY

AUTHORS NOTE: yo why this tumblr shit lowkey fun? + this is my first request agagaa thank you!! omg and i hit 200?? and my eyes only is almost at 2k notes wtf r y’all onnnn?? anyways thank you for requesting! i didn’t make miles say anything too outrageous just so he could redeem himself later on, hope you like it!

“you look so good,” your boyfriend says for what seems like the 100th time today, his large hands immediately dropping to your bare waist, fidgeting with your waist beads as he leans in to mold your lips, a smile gracing his face when you return his affection.

“all mine.” he mutters as he intensifies the kiss, his hands approaching the waist band of his boxers that you’ve claimed as your own. when he lifts your feet off the ground, the heels of your feet lock around his back, a giggle escaping your lips when he lays you down on his bed. you pull away from him, laying the palms of your hands on his chest to keep him away when he pursues your lips once more.

“miles, we can’t make out all day.” you giggle, running your manicured fingers down his chest.

“says who?” he buries his head in the crevice between your neck and shoulder, leaving wet kisses along the space when he suddenly pauses.

he removes his head from the crevice, sitting up to which you follow.

“baby,” you hum in acknowledgement, “where’d you go today?” he questions you, a hint of an indistinguishable emotion in his voice.

“just here, why?” you question him, running your nails up and down his neck. a look of confusion immediately sweeps over your features when he calmly removes your hand from his body.

“cause you smell like somebody been rubbing all up on you.” he looks you up and down, leaning in to now smell your clothes, hair, neck, anything within the perimeter really.

he pulls back, “who were you with?” his expression solidified.

“nobody, i swear i don’t know why i smell.” you reason with him, genuinely confused as well.

“oh? so the smell just magically took over your hair and your clothes?”

he completely gets up from his position next to you, hovering over you. “y/n, i know im not tripping, who the hell was rubbing up on you and why’s the smell so strong? that’s what we doin’ now? and then you got the audacity to bring your ass over to my house, lay in my bed, and wear my clothes.”

“what are you implying?” you scowl at him, now rising to your own feet.

“im implying that you forreal out here fucking on other dudes when you got a whole ass boyfriend.”

the next few moments go by swiftly and mindlessly, but the scorching sensation left in the palm of your left hand enables you to process what just happened almost immediately; you slapped him. though, not an ounce of regret filled your tank of emotions, adrenaline being the only identifiable one.

“i don’t know who the hell you’re talking to but it can’t be me, how dare you?” you glare at him, the imprint of your palm already making its mark on his face, the surrounding skin blemishing. “when have i ever done something like that to you?”

“today, apparently.” he mumbles under his breath, caressing the skin of his cheek to soothe the discomfort.

you look at him like he’s just grown 3 heads before silently walking over to the corner of his room, pulling his graphic tee over your shoulders. you immediately lunge it at him, same with his boxers, bracelets, his necklace, anything of his that is currently making contact with you. you zip up your navy blue hoodie, slipping your sweatpants over your bare legs.

you bring your tote bag over your shoulder, making your way towards his window which he currently guards, glaring at you from where you stand.

“miles, get the hell out my way before i pop you in your mouth next.”

“i want his name and address, you not going anywhere till i get an answer.”

you flail your arms in his face, “are you deaf or just stupid? there is no “him” because the only person i been rubbing up on is you!”

“baby, i don’t smell like no cheap ass cologne.”

“don’t call me that, move!” you raise your voice, stepping up to him.

“what’s his name?”

“you’re crazy.” you scoff, instead bolting for the front door. you’re mindful of mama rio cooking in the kitchen, slipping past quietly as to not raise any suspicion. though, you do bid her a quiet farewell, yet even when you slip out the front door with a smile on your face she knows something isn’t right by the way miles isn’t trailing behind you.

“miles, qué pasó?” she calls out from the kitchen, wiping her hands down her apron and subtly knocking on her sons door before entering.

“it’s nothing.” he calls back, digging his cheek into his pillow to prevent his mother from spotting the blossoming blemish. he didn’t want to explain how he got you so worked up that you slapped him to his mother, or anyone for that matter.

“it’s nothing? invite her over for dinner tonight.” rio arches her brow, taking a seat next to her son on the bed.

“we aren’t on good terms right now.” he sighs out, rubbing his hands over his eyes.

“even more of a reason to invite her over, right?” rio says, making her way out of his bedroom before miles could come up with a rebuttal.

he lazily grabs his phone when it pings, though when he realizes the message is from you, he throws it on the floor until the phone pings with a second message. he groans loudly swiping open your messages.

one attachment

next time don’t make stupid assumptions you dick

the photo captioned was of a half empty cologne bottle you had probably found somewhere in your home, miles heart immediately dropping to his stomach.

okay, maybe he fucked up a teensy tiny bit.

when you got home, you racked your brain for a possible explanation as to why you smelled like anything other than your boyfriend. you were stumped till your brother had walked past you, the aroma that had gotten miles so worked up earlier clouding your senses immediately.

you lay on the pad of your tummy on your king sized bed, your irritable mood causing a burning sensation to spread throughout your body. though it may not be displayed through your face, you were absolutely livid. after all you’ve done for him, this is what you got in return, his unprecedented allegations.

sure it was reasonable to be suspicious, but to outright accuse you? you’ve never given him any reason not to trust you, reassuring him whenever he needed it. had your words not been enough? what about your gestures? what about the times you’d cuddle up with him in bed, sleepily muttering words like “im yours,” or “i belong to you, miles.” had that not been enough?

your jittering thoughts are interrupted by a newfound presence in the corner of your room, the peripherals of your eye capturing those twin braids that you adore so much.

“nuh uh, get the hell up outta here.” you sit up, pointing back towards the window.

“deadass?” he raises both brows, staring at you dead in the eyes.

“deadass.” you return the gesture.

“nah.” he climbs into bed with you, settling his arm over your waist.

“im being serious miles, get out. don’t touch me either.” you pick up his arm as if it’s diseased, laying it over his stomach.

“you don’t like it when i touch on you?” he says in a sultry voice, and you roll your eyes.

“ma, listen to me,” he grabs your chin meeting you at eye level, your brows still furrowed out of anger. when your eyes meet his, any foreign sense of anger evaporates from your system, turning to putty in his hands, no matter how much you tried to fight it.

“you’re so pretty baby,” he kisses your downturned lips once.

“why you look so mad?” he ignorantly questions you, kissing your lips once more.

“baby smile for me?” he squishes your cheeks, yet he’s still met with silence till you finally part your lips.

“this isn’t helping your case by the way.” you roll your eyes at his obvious attempts to bribe you.

“alright, what if i came to you smelling like some other female? you wouldn’t like that huh?” he attempts to reason with you.

“i came to you smelling like my brother? and even then if you came to me smelling like some girl i would conduct a thorough investigation first.” you side eye him.

“how was i supposed to know it was your brother? i didn’t even know he was back.”

“he got back this morning, i gave him a hug and he must’ve rubbed off on me.”

“you didn’t tell me all that. so what i gotta do for you to believe im sorry, hm?” he climbs on top of you, following your darting eyes with his own.

“buy me a pandora bracelet.” you joke.

he perks up, “on god? baby i buy you jordans every other day, the hell is a bracelet?”

“i mean i was joking but you serious?”

“you didn’t know that i’d do anything for you?”

“you’re corny boooo, leave me alone.” you push his head away from yours, your facade breaking when a smile plays at your lips.

“y/n?”

“hm?”

“why do you hit so hard?”

“what do you mean?” you ask him, your outburst from earlier had completely left your mind. he turns to the side, and your eyes widen as they lay upon the imprint of your hand slowly fading,

“oh shit,” you wince, inspecting the damage of your earlier actions.

you throw the blanket off your legs, sitting on your knees to inspect further. you silently grab his hand, heading towards your bathroom as you slowly feel guilt begin to stir inside you.

“stay here.” he watches as you disappear into the hallway, coming back with a frozen pack of peas. you hold it up to his cheek for him, fiddling with the ends of his braids as you repeatedly check for signs of the bruising going away.

“im sorry miles, i shouldn’t have hit you.”

he hums in acknowledgment of your apology, parting his lips to speak. “it’s okay, i like them aggressive.”

a smile threatens your lips, your hand going up to cover your mouth to keep your false facade up.

“nah why you keep smiling?” he grabs your wrist, pulling your hand down to stare at you intently.

“stop that.” you attempt to straighten out your face.

it’s silent for the next few moments as you adjust the frozen peas seeing that the bruise had almost completely faded.

“y/n, you know im being forreal when i say i’d do anything for you, right?”

“yeah, i know.”

love, berry.

[okwonyo]

（ 标题 ） STRAWBERRY HEAD.

PREC𝒾S ⠀⟡​⠀a guy with a fun costume flirts with you at a party.

( 엔하이픈 희승 ) ୨୧ f .. r 12OO fluff meet cute ── flirting skinship ⠀ ｡｡ ⠀ recue𝒾l

지아 ㅤ𓈒ㅤ𓈒ㅤ i am not leaving tumblr everrr don’t worry, luvdolls 💌

( ˊᗜˋreblogs&feedbacks · C𝑙𝑖CK )

it always ends up the same. no matter what the conversation is, no matter how it began or where; it always ends up with the same conclusion. why don’t you have a boyfriend, yet?

as always, you groan while tilting your face to the ceiling. like a tradition, it is like you are begging a superior being to end your misery now and just take you before they all start to recall all your failed dates and talking stage over the past few months. it is not like they are that many, anyway.

you can try to tell each one of the people surrounding you that you are not interested in a relationship, that you think boys are fun to mess with but truly useless and that you are fine on your own— they never listen.

you successfully disappear amongst the crowd of diverse book, movie and game characters— and even … fruits? — costumes to get a drink. suddenly feeling very thirsty. 

no one notices you, too hang on debating on your love life when you are not even there to begin with.

pouring something into your glass, you feel someone standing a bit too close to you. 

“hey,” a voice greets you loudly. making your heart jump all the way to your stomach. 

you almost giggle as you turn around; a tall, grown man in a bright red hoodie, the same color as his joggings and a strawberry sort of hat wrapped around his head. 

his voice is way too deep to go with his costume.  

a smile tugs your lips, “hi.”

he smiles back. this time with a much much softer, he tells you back, “hi,” he eyes lingers on your face. “you come here often?”

you actually giggle at that, with your face falling towards the ground, with his face following yours, with his gaze never leaving you as he smirks. 

you cross one arm under your chest and plant your free arm’s elbow in your wrist, holding your drink close to your mouth, “please, don’t tell me that line has ever worked for you,” he chuckles at that, “i wouldn’t stand it.” 

the strawberry head shrugs, “tried and tested true for a reason,” then he leans his shoulder against the wall next to you. 

“what’s your name, bambi?” he asks you, biting down his lip as he smiles. 

the nickname comes from your doe makeup and the little tail on your skirt. looks like you are not the only one who makes nicknames. 

you respond while turning to face him, “what is yours?” 

“heeseung,” you admit it, ‘strawberry head’ will be missed but you like this one better. 

“it’s cute,” you nod and he laughs. 

“and yours isn’t?” he immediately says back. he rolls your name on his tongue, dear god . “it suits you well, i like it.”

you huff humoredly, “i will tell my parents you are a fan,” you don’t forget to emphasis on his name and hold your drink up, “heeseung.” 

“i hope i will be able to tell them myself one day,” he teases when you drink, making your choke. 

well, that was quite risky— although, still very smooth, you will give him that. 

your eyes wide and your mouth falls open is a surprised smile. your face must be funny because heeseung lets out a genuine laugh, that goes beyond the sound of the loud music. 

“take me to dinner first!” you tell him, while watching his body vibrate because of his laughter. 

the tall man gets serious pretty quickly after the words leave your mouth, he looks at you like he had you exactly where he wanted. 

“well,” he starts and his smirk is back again. “what about tonight?”

you can only blink at him for a moment. as if it was written on it; you scan his entire face in a hope of an answer. oh. 

“diner?” you ask, he hums. “tonight?” he hums again and your knees weaken a bit. “but we barely know each other!”

“we can get to!” his smile is more than evident in his voice, on his pink lips. “over diner!” 

he got you pressing your lips together and fighting back a smile like a highschool girl. the debate doesn’t take very long in your head, you just need to bite your inner cheek to get yourself to say it. 

strawberry head’s face is full of apprehension and enthusiasm, so much that you wonder who looks the most idiotic between the two of you. 

you sigh, then giggle, “fine, you convinced me.” 

the guy smiles. and after you successfully say goodbye to your friends while avoiding all their questions, everything gets wrapped pretty well. 

soon you stand a few meters away from heeseung’s means of transport.

“you have a bike,” you sound half impressed, half incredulous. 

heeseung, with his strawberry costume, has the audacity to look at you with an utterly shocked and offended expression splashed on his face. he even puts his hand on his heart. 

“am i not cool enough to have one?” he asks as he leans on his motorcycle. 

you take one step closer to him, letting your fingertips run through the leather seat. it is cool, very much so. him, despise his bright red ensemble, too. 

you chuckle, “it just doesn’t match your costume,” you confess and he chuckles. “you are like my very own james dean,” you turn your gaze back to him, “very cool to me.”

his look softens, his hand offered to you and helping you when you get on the passenger sit. he speaks again : 

“i promise to take care of you.” he whispers before letting your hand go gently. “i know a good restaurant a couple of blocks away.” you want to ask him if he doesn’t feel a bit ridiculous wearing this. “are you comfortable?

you thank your past self for choosing a black short instead of a skirt to wear with your black top and boots, “yeah,” you nod. “thank you.”

the wind runs through his hair when he takes off his strawberry head. it takes your breath away instantly. he was already beautiful before but now, this is something beyond and different. 

of course, his hair is pink.

“wouldn’t like to see it flying, would we?” he jokes and you only blink, eyes following him as he gets behind the bike and puts the strawberry in the box. he takes a helmet and comes back to you. 

he gets on the bike, so close to you when he turns around. 

your world completely collapse when he puts the helmet on your head for you, “i only got one,” he speaks, eyes focused on his fingers adjusting the helmet. “didn’t know a pretty girl like you would let me carry her around, you know?” 

thankfully, the tinted visor can hide your blushing face. and your stupid smile. halas— it can’t hide your giggles.

“i saw it in a dream of mine,” you respond when he turns around. you embrace his waist, “i knew the trajectory of you life would be changed tonight.” 

heeseung laughs again.

as he starts the engine you whisper in his ear, “is it the part where you tell me to hold on tight?” 

“i think you are doing that already, doll,” he taps your hand. 

and man, what a ride it was.

ㅤㅤ𓈒ㅤㅤ𓈒 taglist open

[carbonfiction]

how do you think logan would feel about his girl who has a bigger chest

No bc Logan, to me at least, is a big time boob guy. Every single varient, He is a man that just LOVES good tits-big or small. So, heres a few thoughts- both slightly softer and smutty!

He will sleep like a goddamn baby if you let him rest his heavy head on your plush chest and play with his hair. Sometimes you'll even catch the faintest grumble of a satisfied purr if your extra lucky and hes extra exhausted.

If you are cuddling and happen to be little spoon, he's absolutly pulling you flush to his chest and holding you to him with his palm around atleast one- although his hands are huge enough for both..

Do not get this man started on soapy tits- He's following you to the bath/shower for a single glance. Will even retake a shower if it means joining you in there. Hes also a massive fan of pushing your front up against the glass shower door so he gets a peek of them through the steamed up mirror-

He sees your nipples poke through your shirt? (esp in winter from the chill?) He's dragging you to the bedroom; or if your out somewhere the bathroom, and getting them warmed up in his mouth STAT.

Speaking off his mouth he SO loves leaving love bites and little tooth indents- loves knowing that under your shirt you bare his marks.

Adding to the hands on you at all times point above- He's also got atleast one hand on your boobs during sex, no matter the position. Not necessarily playing with your nipples or anything but just, gripping the flesh. Sort of grounds him a little. Although that being said he is a big fan of when you ride him in particular, his eyes having trouble focusing between your blissed out expressions, your tits and where your bodies meet.

During more rougher sex I can see him HAPPILY grabbing handfuls of your tits, holding the bouncing flesh tight but steady; especially when fucking you from behind. He remembers how you'd once complained at the way they slapped heavy against your skin; the bounce of them from his thrusts sometimes offering more discomfort than pleasure, so hes more than jumping at the chance to make you comfortable.

Oh oh and he LOVES a titty fuck- (this is also like..feeling specifically worstie vibes in this thought) Almost gets him off more than being in your mouth. Has his cock fucking leaking all over your sternum at the sight of his thick girth pushed between your tits, the plush softness with each move feeling unbelievably good around him.

Not to mention the broken sound he makes when he paints them with his cum, mixed with your shiney spit, the white ropes messily splattered across your skin like the finest pearls.

But in long winded conclusion nonnie? He just fucking loves boobs. (Might extend this to a titty fuck fic at some point...)

[solaerina]

𓂃 ˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀𓂃𓈒 ꜰʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇᴅ ᴏꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴏ ᴍɪɴᴇ 𓈒𓂃⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖

𖥔 ͙ࣳ 𓂃ˑ ֗ ˖⋆⑅ ᴄʜʀɪꜱᴛᴍᴀꜱ ꜱᴘᴇᴄɪᴀʟ ⑅⋆˖ ֗ˑ𓂃 ͙ࣳ𖥔

✿ ⋆.ೃ࿔:･ ꜱʜᴀᴅᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇᴅɢᴇʜᴏɢ x [ꜰᴇᴍᴀʟᴇ] ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

: ̗̀➛ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ: ɪᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴍᴏɴᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʏᴇᴀʀ. ʏᴏᴜ ᴀɴᴅ ꜱʜᴀᴅᴏᴡ ᴡᴇɴᴛ ᴏᴜᴛ ꜰᴏʀ ᴀ ᴡɪɴᴛᴇʀʟʏ ᴅᴀᴛᴇ ᴜɴᴛɪʟ ᴛʜɪɴɢꜱ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴇꜱᴄᴀʟᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ A ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴍɪꜱᴜɴᴅᴇʀꜱᴛᴀɴᴅɪɴɢ.

: ̗̀➛ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ[ꜱ]: none ˖ . ݁ᡣ𐭩ྀིྀིྀི

: ̗̀➛ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 4.1𝚔

➹ ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀ’ꜱ ɴᴏᴛᴇ: ᴅɪᴠɪᴅᴇʀꜱ ᴄʀᴇᴅɪᴛꜱ: ᴍɪᴋᴇʏᴋᴜɴꜱ, ʙᴇʀɴᴀʀᴅʙᴇɴᴅʏꜱᴛʀᴀᴡꜱ | edited | AO3 Ver. | Mobian Reader

The bitter coldness of the evening bit at your furs. The warm lights shone through the delicate mist of the night. It was that time of the year where people rejoice on the eve of christmas. Folks passed, some of them had their hands intertwined chatting on with their lives. Romance floated strong and thick across the atmosphere, unfading. 

The touch of sadness roamed your heart in circles, loneliness greeting you like the autumn’s fall bequeathed by the winter’s chill. Here you sat on the bench alone, shivering in your boots. Shadow had gone and never came back. You supposed that this whole date set up took a toll on his patience and probably headed home. Shadow was not the one to engage in such activities but..a moment between you under the romantic occasion wouldn’t hurt to experience just for once. 

Maybe you shouldn’t have persuaded him with this. You might have forced him to go with you out of his will. The guilt jabbed at your heart like a needle. How could you have been so dense? Of course Shadow was not the one to blend into some pointless dates! Now you must have made him mad or ruined his mood. 

Your fingers screwed through the fabrics of your dress and bit your inner lip as your gaze lowered. Dozens of negative thoughts rammed through your head as you sunk into the depths of it. Too lost at detesting yourself, someone had approached you and called your name, unnoticed by you. Until they knelt before your level and tapped gently at your cheek. Surprised by the unwelcome gesture, you snapped away from your trance and was tugged back into reality. Your head lifted right up and your eyes met with familiar red ones you’ve been longing to gaze on the entire evening, donned in a brown coat with a red scarf wrapped around his neck to keep him warm. 

“Shadow?” His name fell onto your lips before you knew it. How you missed him. It took you great restraint from jumping to him and hugging him tight, never wanting him to disappear from your sight ever again. Yet, Shadow was not the one who is accustomed to physical contacts. If forcing him to engage with you unwillingly on this date was not bad enough, then you should start to refrain yourself from now on. 

“I’m sorry,” you breathed, your voice almost failing you as if you were about to break any second, casting your eyes downwards again. “This date was a bad idea and I shouldn’t have forced you to go with me,” you failed to see the crease of the dark hedgehog’s expression as you continued to ramble out. “I’m  sorry on making you go even though I knew that you’re not used on this kind of things I just..” you pause for a second, needing a moment of reprieve by the heavy weight on your chest, your ears flattening against your head as a look of pure sadness painted your complexion. “I just wanted to spend time with you..” your voice drops, barely above a whisper. 

And it was followed by silence, receiving no answer from the black hedgehog himself. This caused an anxiety to stir inside your chest, thinking you might have made his mood sour that it’s already been. He might think that you were being  too ‘clingy’ for his liking. Were you acting rather persistent than you  realised? What if he decided to leave you  after this?

You heard Shadow give out a sigh, light and soft. One of your ears flicks at the sound. 

“How did you come to that conclusion?” Shadow finally spoke, his voice calm and steady. “You didn’t force me into anything,” he stated and raised a hand to show a cup he’s been holding in his hand, “I bought a coffee in the nearby shop here. Didn’t I tell you that?” 

Coffee? 

You look back up again and see the cup in the black hedgehog’s gloved hand. “The temperature had gone way lower than it probably should. I figured a hot beverage would keep you warm for the time being.” 

The sadness that once enveloped you was now replaced by a delicate flow of confounded relief. Did he really.. “You’re not mad?” you ask him quietly. 

Shadow raised a brow, your question bemusing him. “Why would I be?” 

You meet his eyes, his red irises boring deep into yours. Pleasant warmth creeped up into your neck and climbed towards your face, spreading the heat throughout your furs. 

“I thought you were getting annoyed by all this. Spending your time with me and dragging you throughout this place. You were suddenly gone and I couldn’t find you anywhere,” you meekly explained to him as a tiny smog wisps out from your lips from the winter’s air. 

A faint gleam surfaces from Shadow’s red eyes, barely visible that you failed to catch it. “I wasn’t,” he says as he took a moment to look around the wintry place; people with friends, family, and even the lovers passing by. He studied them as if figuring out if this is how they bond with each other when seasons like this occur. “This is all new to me. It didn’t sit right with me at first to be in this place, to be associated with many people since I am accustomed to solitude for a long time. However,” Shadow returned his gaze to you and you swore that you saw a glimpse of underlying crumble of the pensive, stern demeanor that hardened him, to a frontage display of vulnerability that resided deep somewhere in his heart. 

“..If it’s with you, then I’m willing to try and allow myself to adapt in this conforming world of yours. If that would cost me to see the look of joy of contentment in your face.” he professes, straightforwardly, his deep voice wreathed in pure and distilled sincerity that even it could quell the flame’s scorching disaster. 

You stared at him wide-eyed, flabbergasted, lost at words. Your heart raced against your ribcage as it ached to burst out. There was a constant tingle in your nerves, a tickle to your bloodstream, and a strew of downy sensation mending through your furs. Did Shadow always sound this daring and upfront? Or does he have a way of picking his words?

Either way, with each time that passes by, the longer you know him, the more you discover a part of him that you never expected to see. He was a man who was shrouded in obscurity, hard to decipher what runs inside his thoughts. 

Flame burned the surface of your face and covered it  with your gloved hands, embarrassment taking over you. Yet, the wagging of your fluffy tail from behind betrayed your concealment. Shadow caught the motion and the corner of his lips quirks into a small smirk, amused. 

“I thought you’d left me,” you murmur behind your hand, unable to look Shadow in the eye. At this rate, you were surely convinced that there were steams coming out of your now reddened ears. Then, a hand came to your wrist and gently pulled it away from your face. “I would never leave you here alone. You were probably too focused on watching the performer a while ago that you were unable to hear what I told you.” 

Your cheeks burned in embarrassment as you recalled Shadow telling you something while you were watching the performer do his tricks to entertain people. What an oblivious girl you were. “I’m sorry..”

“None of that,” Shadow replies and gestured the cup towards you, offering for you to take it. “Here, drink it before it gets cold.”

You look at him bashfully for another seconds before you softly smile, touched by his genteel gesture and took the cup from him. 

Shadow then got up from his knee and sat on the bench beside you. You blew the airy steam of your caffeine before taking a small sip, a calming relief flooding your senses as the liquid flows through you. While you were sipping on your coffee, a warm sensation was felt around your neck and you turned your head to see Shadow wrapping his red scarf around you.

“It’s getting colder out here,” he says to you while he worked his hands on the red scarf until it was loosely secured enough to give room for you to breathe and ensured it wouldn’t come off.  

Tingles of bubbly sensation formed in your guts. The scent of him wafted from the soft cotton on your neck, your fingers coming to gingerly caress the fabric on her skin. “Thank you, Shadow.”

Under the tranquility of the winter eve, the chill of the breeze went on and blew through the atmosphere in its tender currents. In the midst of the stillness, a group of people appeared carrying various instruments. They worked on arranging and organizing their equipment until they were all prepared to play a ballad for the crowd. 

The song starts in a delicate strum of violin, resonating throughout the atmosphere. Then it was followed by a soft hum of brass, coupled along with the piano and trumpet, until it formed into a lovely continuous play of the ballad, adding more charm to the winter’s eve. People were starting to take interest at the song; gathering around in two or more as joyous chatters and laughs left them as a mirthful aura spreaded across the area. Some of them started to sway along, dancing leisurely to their heart’s content with their lovers or friends while the children played and ran around.

“How lovely,” you mutter in awe, watching as the scene unfolds through your eyes. Shadow was watching as well, observing the way people interact with each other, how they were in sync with the song as they laughed in merriment to the delightful hour. 

“Do you want to join them?” 

Your eyes flickered to him, astonishment written all over your face, lips parted. Shadow, the Ultimate Lifeform, asking you to join along the people who are dancing? The world must be healing itself. 

“Do you mean to ask me for a dance?” You question, wanting to make sure if Shadow’s invitation is purely honest. Your tail ruffles lightly behind as you anticipate his answer. 

The black hedgehog shifts on his seat and teared his eyes from you, adjusting his scarf around his neck. That was odd, his neck felt warmer than usual and tight for some reason. “Maybe, I am.” He answers without looking at you. 

You blinked as you gazed at him. If there were things you knew about Shadow, he is good in nature, selfless, someone who cares for people but doesn’t know how to express it. And by so, he puts an effort to understand those around him, noticing the little things that they like, seeing through them, and most importantly protecting them from harm in the only way he knows how. In the image of a tough exterior to cover his weakness, concealing his true self that still lingered within him since the day of the tragic fate that had befallen him and took away the girl he cherished the most. 

Somewhere in him, there was still that innocent boy trapped inside him, longing to find where he belonged, someone he can call home, someone to hold him and shield him away from all the perils that seek to pursue him.

Not wanting to wait for long enough, you gave him an answer, “I would love to, Shadow,” a soft, tender smile bloomed across your youthful face, bearing that resemblance of a flower blossoming into a full bloom in its vibrant color. 

Shadow returned his gaze to you, his sanguine eyes boring into yours. His expression was unreadable, but not unreadable enough for you to perceive the faint spark that lingered in his sharp-red eyes before quickly vanishing. 

“That’s settled, then,” he states before standing up from his seat and offering you a hand. You took it and he gently pulled you up to his feet. He asks you if you already drank all of your coffee and you answer him with a ‘yes’ before he takes the empty cup and throws it away at the nearby trash can, not missing the target.

And so the two pairs went on their way to join the little crowd that continued to waltz the night away. Shadow was ahead of you, guiding your way where you both would situate yourselves among the people. His hand felt hot against yours. The hands that were used to destroy anything that imposes threat – a stark contrast of how he was holding your hand like a fragile glass, as if he was afraid to break it.

It didn’t take long for them to find their place. The engaging ballad stayed roaming free across the area in a beautiful trail of melody, whispering songs in the cold air. You faced one another. Your heart skipped a beat, nervousness claiming your being. 

To dance with a partner requires holding together as one. 

Your cheeks burned at the thought. Shadow, as if sensing your feelings, took the initiative action and grabbed one of your hands to hold it with his while he rested the other on his shoulder, leading them both to sway along with the people. A soft gasp escaped your lips, taken aback, your heart jumping inside your chest. The feeling intensified when the firm yet warm sensation of his hand held the side of your waist, then the mesmerizing image of his red eyes scribbled in restrained emotions, their rims glinting as if they told a million words yet remained unspoken. 

“Is this everything that you hoped for?” Shadow utters under his breath, staring deeply into your eyes. You hold his gaze, and find yourself being trapped in. There was always something in his voice that comforted you, though deep but strangely captivating. You softly smiled at him and nodded. 

“It is,” you answer, your voice barely above a whisper. 

Out of the corner of Shadow’s lips, it curled into a small smile. Something he rarely shows to people he’s fond of. “Let’s make this a little more livelier, shall we?” 

You look at him with curiosity. Before you can ask him what he meant by his words, Shadow suddenly lets go of your waist and uses the hand that was still locked in yours to twirl you around. A high-pitched startled noise left you, clearly not expecting for Shadow to do such a lively gesture yet he did. And since when did he learn the concept of dancing?

You weren’t able to grasp what his next move would be, because you were suddenly swept off the ground, high in the air with two strong hands holding your waist and spun you around in a quick circle. You let out another noise, higher this time and a little louder, then followed by an enthusiastic laughter. You felt the ground on your feet again as you were carefully placed down back to Shadow’s arms.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” you asked breathlessly as you panted, your hands coming to hold onto his shoulders and rested your head against it. Your heart was palpitating fast. 

“I have my ways,” Shadow simply answers, as he envelops his arms around you back to steady your wobbly figure. 

You gave out an airy chuckle, still breathless from your recent activity. After all this time, Shadow never ceases to surprise you, uncovering yet another newfound part of him that existed. You pull your head away from his shoulder to look at him, a soft satisfied smile gracing your features. You locked eyes again. 

You’ve never been this close to each other. 

Your noses almost touched, bodies wrapped into one another with no gap left to separate you and him. It took a few moments for them to realize the angle they were in before the awareness struck in. Both of the pair’s eyes widened and quickly adjusted themselves, resuming back to their previous stance. Shadow cleared his throat and looked to the side, while you were trying your best to recollect your  jumbled thoughts of what just occurred, trying to calm your beating heart down. 

“Are you enjoying yourself so far?” Shadow asked, cutting the awkwardness that passed over them a while ago. 

Your heart had already  simmered down and finally recollected yourself, beaming a smile at him. “Of course, I am. Very so!”

Shadow’s expression softened at your words, far from the usual stern face he shows at all times. He didn’t say anything after that. 

The winterly night went on. The number of people became fewer as they went on ahead in their lives, their enjoyment throughout the evening already spent. The musicians stayed as they continued to perform their song, seemingly lost in their own world, filling the area with a sea of ambience.  

The cold air grew more potent as time passed by. But that coldness didn’t seem to trouble the two pairs, the warmth of their bodies preventing the chill to seep into their furs. 

“Hey, Shadow,” You called quietly to the black hedgehog to which he responded with a hum. “Did I ever mention that your eyes are pretty?” 

Shadow’s ear twitched as his left brow arched, intrigued. “My eyes?” 

“Mm-hm,” you smiled gingerly, her lids creasing as your irises twinkled in fondness. “I always love looking at them. It reminds me of the times when I would look at the red sky and watch as the sun slowly lowers from the horizon while I admire it from afar. It’s truly beautiful to see, just like yours.” 

Shadow’s eyes expanded, a shift in his demeanor as his lips parted. There was a speck of vulnerability that danced in the rims of his irises. But then it soon disappears and a look of disdain loomed over him and darted his eyes away. 

“You shouldn’t think of such sentimental thoughts. You overvalue your perceptions towards me. You know where I came from don’t you? What I’m created of?” his voice lowers, the tone cold as ice and sharp as a knife.

Both of them ceased their movements as mild tension hung between them. Sadness fell into you as your chest tightened. How quickly his demeanor has changed; earlier he was warming up to you as he appeared to be in a lighter mood and now, it immediately faded. The delicate look on his red eyes, she wanted to see them again. 

Shadow’s expression was strained, as if he’s relieving a horrible memory, how the self-loathe rekindles in him, despising his existence. You felt his hand tensed against yours. Whatever he was feeling right now, it’s taking a dreadful turn on his mood. 

“Hey,” you softly implore him and ever so gently, you unlatch your hand that holded him and place it on his cheek and carefully tilt it to meet your gaze. “You told me that story before, right?” you utter to him, reminiscing the time where he hesitated to tell you of his origins, how he was created, and his previous life at the Ark. It’s as if he didn’t want you to know whose blood that runs in him, and how he almost destroyed the Earth once out of hatred and revenge against humanity.

It took a second for Shadow to answer before he nodded. Your thumb fondly stroked the fur under his lids as you spoke, “Then do you remember what I told you after telling me your story?” You were answered with a nod again. Shadow remains quiet but is clearly paying attention to you.

“Then my words are the same as before. It doesn’t matter how you were born or whose blood you are connected with. You are way more than what you think of yourself. You’re you, Shadow. It’s what you do that makes you who you are, what you choose to be. And that includes protecting this world, humanity, and us. So please..”  you breathed, a melancholic gaze dawning on your features as you sadly smiled at him, your glassy eyes imploring. 

“Don’t hate yourself any longer. Don’t turn blind to the true value that resides in your soul.”

If there was the least you can do to ease the deep scar in his heart, is to be there for him through his dark times.

Shadow didn’t say anything. The only evidence of acknowledgement you could grasp was the spark in his gaze. His eyes screamed in dozens of emotions more than he could show, words that were left unspoken that ached to be told. 

Then, a tiny pale white particle fell over Shadow's nose. Followed by the other as it landed on his black furs, the shade of its contrast visible. More and more of the ice particles fell down from the sky until it became a semblance of a drizzle of rain. 

Shadow looks up, witnessing the first snow of the month pouring down from the greyish sky. He breathes silently, casting a light, transparent smoke to waft from his lips. He remembers a certain girl telling him once, aboard in the Ark where it’s only just the two of them as they both studied the seasonal occasions on the Earth with a book. Winter was the one she greatly wished to experience, rambling how they would play in the pile of snow, build a snowman, make an angel pattern on the snowy ground, everything else the season has to offer. But one thing stuck to his mind. 

“It says here that snow symbolizes innocence and a fresh start to life. Can you imagine how lovely would that be, Shadow? When we’re finally on Earth, we can start over and witness the beautiful experience of winter’s embrace! I can’t wait for that moment to come!”

He closed his eyes as he relieved the fond memory of his past, feeling the droplets of snow falling to his face and quills as he lost himself in it. Are you watching over me, Maria?

“Shadow?” a soft voice calls out. Shadow breaks out from his moment of reprieve. He opened his eyes again and casted his head down, meeting your gaze once more.

He knew that wishful dream between them would never come true. 

But wishes don’t always have to be one sided for him. She wanted him to be happy after all.

People around them bustled with life and merriment, overjoyed by the sight of the snow pouring constantly on their figures. The song had stopped too, the performers seemingly distracted by the winter’s grace visit. 

You thought you might have said something wrong or exaggerated your words, because Shadow was being silent longer than he should. You open your mouth to express your apology but before you could, Shadow had leaned in and rested his forehead against yours. Gone were the scornful gleam in his red eyes as they now swam in sincerity and longing. You nearly gasped at the contact, your breath stolen from you. 

“Perhaps I should start making memories with you from now on.” Shadow declares, his voice quiet but soft. One that he never thought he’s capable of sounding like. 

Your eyes widened at his statement in shock. He took the words completely right out of you, rendering you unable to form any sentences. Somersaults came breaking in through your chest, a strong wave of adrenaline coursing through your nerves. Never in your life would you ever hear such declarations coming from him. It sounded like a vow he forged between you. It’s as if you’ve  reached the stars in the sky, for they have blessed her with their divine gift. 

“W-What is it with you and the way you talk? It’s..unfair.” The entirety of your face turned bleak red all the way down to your neck, the close proximity between sending wild races to your heart. You feared it wouldn’t calm down after this. 

Shadow only gave you a sided smirk and to your disappointment, he pulled away from you too soon. 

“We should head home,” he said while looking around the area, observing whether the snowfall would amplify its strength as it will be difficult to ride in the thick pile of snow down in the road later on. 

Meanwhile, you still haven’t recovered prior to your blissed out emotions, hot steams blowing out from your ears. How could he act so normally after what he just did?!

And then again, there are still more time for them to unravel your moments together. Or even so, maybe there will be a time where Shadow can fully accept himself. 

author’s notes: another fic of shadow yeyyy! I hope you like this fic I’ve written. I was actually planning to write for the Idol! Shadow but this concept really took an idea out of me since Christmas is nearing! So Merry Christmas to you all and more for our beloved ultimate lifeform fics shall be written! Comments and reblogs are highly appreciated! ♡ ꒰ˆ. . ˆ ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི꒱੭ﾞ

[tossawary]

Qijiu's reunion at the Immortal Alliance Conference could have so easily gone differently. If Yue Qi had had the time to express joy over Shen Jiu's survival, before Shen Jiu got angry at apparently being abandoned for a better life, and before Yue Qi then assumed that the failed rescue was the unforgivable harm rather than the apparent failure to return at all, they might have gotten somewhere.

But, you know, another way things could have gone differently is Yue Qi and Shen Jiu not coming face-to-face and recognizing each other at the same time. It could have been one or the other.

Wu Yanzi presumably can't slip into the conference because he's (not invited and also) a wanted criminal, but he might have been able to send his apprentice in to walk around, with Shen Jiu pretending to be just another random disciple among the crowd. If Shen Jiu had disguised himself to enter the conference early, he could have easily seen Head Disciple of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect Yue Qingyuan in a position of dutiful prominence during some opening speech, without Yue Qi noticing him in return.

The conclusions that Shen Jiu would jump to without any indication Yue Qi even remembers him? Bad. Obviously, the only thing to do there is take furious revenge and completely ruin this Yue Qingyuan's beautiful new life somehow.

Likewise, if Shen Jiu had been wandering around the conference to scope out the valuables, Yue Qi could have seen him through the crowd without being noticed in return. Maybe CQMS's head disciple is better situated making the mingling rounds rather than standing up somewhere with the talking heads. Before Shen Jiu knows what's happening here, he's being accosted in a quiet corner by some young master on the verge of crying on his stolen uniform. He just barely manages not to stab this guy about it.

"Xiao-Jiu, you're alive! I came back for you but I was too late and found that awful place burned to the ground! Nobody knew where you'd gone. You're a disciple of Huan Hua Palace now? I'm so happy for you!" this person says, beaming with ugly joy- wait, is this...? "I'm so sorry that Qi-Ge was so useless."

Shen Jiu barely manages to stumble out of this conversation without passing out. Yue Qi gets dragged away by some Cang Qiong master for some social responsibility, clinging to Shen Jiu's hands and swearing to find him later, and he thinks Shen Jiu is a Huan Hua Palace disciple. What was Shen Jiu supposed to say to that assumption? That he's actually lying scum?!

Shen Jiu now has to survive this conference without Yue Qi finding out the truth and without Wu Yanzi finding out about Yue Qi. Upping the tension of this fic idea: maybe Wu Yanzi does find out that Shen Jiu knows the head disciple of CQMS. (Maybe Wu Yanzi was lurking around the edges in disguise as well. Maybe Wu Yanzi witnesses some later conversation between Qijiu.) Wu Yanzi now wants to use Shen Jiu as an "in" to rob or otherwise harm CQMS.

If Shen Jiu is the one who saw Yue Qi first and jumped to angry conclusions and revenge plans about it, maybe the spiteful Shen Jiu likes the idea of reuniting with Yue Qi just to fuck him over like that. He's going to regret that pretty quickly, though.

[optimist-pine]

Bodyguard

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader

Warnings: people are naked, but it's barely even borderline suggestive

Summary: You need a bath, but there's no way you're going alone

Era: Season 1, the Quarry

Your skin practically crawls from the buildup of dirt, sweat, and who knows what else that's managed to accumulate over the past three days. You still haven't quite adjusted to the reality of not having on-demand access to a hot shower and your scalp is all oily, and itchy, and eugh - gross. A little shiver runs down your spine at the thought - well, maybe that's just more sweat...

The bold shades of the sunset are beginning to fade as you make your way to the Dixon brothers' camp. Currently they're the closest thing you have to neighbors, your tent being between theirs and the rest of the group. You're dying for a quick dip and rinse in the pond, but you don't actually want to die for a bath, and you know it's a dumb idea to go alone. Everyone else seems busy though and you've come to the conclusion that Daryl seems to be your only option.

Most of the others actively avoid the brothers, and you can't say you blame them. Merle's constantly stirring up trouble and being a general annoyance, and Daryl's quick to jump to his defense. But, on the rare occasion when Daryl isn't being held under Merle's thumb, you catch glimpses of a very different person than what he usually puts out.

He's sitting in an old lawn chair by the side of a fire when you approach, poking a stick around in the coals. Little sparks shoot off where the fresh evening air hits them, and the smell of woodsmoke fills your lungs.

"Hey." You greet. A spot of doubt begins to arise within you, but you quickly stamp it out. With recent events you were beginning to discover that there wasn't much room left for second guessing or overthinking anymore.

"Need somethin'?" He asks, eyes flicking up to you for a moment before returning to the flames.

You hang your thumbs in your belt loops, fingers tapping against your hips. "If you're not busy, I was hoping maybe you could go down to the water with me? I'd ask someone else but they all seem rather occupied at the moment... and I don't think Shane'd let me go alone." You say.

He looks up, jaw set awfully close to a scowl. "I ain't gonna be yer damn bodyguard." He huffs.

"No- I don't want you to watch me or anything like that- I guess I'm just asking for companionship?" You reply. "You could do whatever you're gonna do here, but just do it down there?" You hike your thumb over your shoulder in the direction of the pond.

He stays silent, but a sudden chorus of laughter flows out from the direction of the rest of the group. You study the way the firelight smooths out his rough edges, and you can't help but wonder if the look in his eyes is just boredom or if it's really loneliness.

"Unless you prefer Merle's company, then by all means I'll leave ya to it." You continue, trying your best to ignore Merle sawing logs in the tent, and erase the image of his hand too close to his crotch from your mind.

He jams the stick into the dirt hard enough that it remains standing when he lets go. "A'ight. Lemme get 'mah stuff."

"Awesome, I'll be over at my tent when you're ready." You smile, pleased and a little surprised that you'd managed to get him to say yes. Admittedly, Merle wasn't so bad when he was passed out, but it was reassuring to know that you were at least preferred company over an unconscious jerk.

---

Dirt and gravel crunch under your boots as the two of you walk, your knapsack bouncing steadily against your back with each step. "Thanks for coming with me. I'm not necessarily afraid of the dark or anything, but there's a lot worse things in the woods now than just coyotes." You explain. "And it's just nice not to be alone."

He simply grunts in response.

Good thing you didn't ask him along for his conversational skills.

When you reach the edge of the water you find a rock close to the shore to set out clean clothes and a towel. You see Daryl settle down, back propped against a boulder as he starts rummaging around in his own bag. "Whatcha gonna work on?" You ask.

He pulls out a whetstone and a couple large hunting knives. "Cleanin' mah tools." He replies.

You begin to undress, but a feeling of uncertainty causes you to pause. "Man, I wish I didn't feel like he's sitting up there right now with those binoculars..."

"Who? Shane?" He asks sounding surprised.

"Yeah." You shudder. "Guy gives me the creeps."

You hear scrape of the knife grinding against the sharpener. "Well, hurry up an'ere won' be anythin' ta see." He says.

"Yeah..." You keep your eye on Daryl while you finish, but he doesn't lift his gaze even once beyond sharpening his knife. "I won't be long." You assure him as the cool water rises around you.

As soon as you're far enough in you dive forward, the rush of water instantly reviving and refreshing your whole body as it flows past. You rise upwards as giddiness fills you and you break the surface with a laugh. "This is heavenly!" You gasp. You continue diving and twirling, every sore muscle and painful bruise easing away.

You pause to catch your breath and a small splash has you immediately alert. You left your knife up on the shore with Daryl, but you hadn't heard any sounds of alarm from him so surely it's not a walker. But when you look to the shore the sight has you almost equally as shocked. Daryl is chest deep in the water - bare chested that is - ripples being sent out across the still expanse as he sinks further in.

"Hey!" You yell. "I asked you out here because I thought you weren't some sorta pervert!" You hope it's dark enough that nothing in the water is visible because he's only getting closer.

The moon is full and bright, and the way it reflects off the water makes him look almost ethereal. "Can't protect ya if I'm up'ere an' yer alla'way out 'ere." He reasons.

"I don't need protecting." You roll your eyes. "And all the weapons are up there, Dixon!" You send a splash of water directly into his face.

He returns the splash. "Looked like I was missin' out on alla fun." He shrugs. "'Sides, ya never know when somethin' might jus'-" he disappears under the surface of the water and barely a second later something wraps around your ankle, tugging you under the surface.

When you're released you bob back up to the top wanting to be stern, but you're too busy giggling and swallowing mouthfuls of water to do so. When he surfaces behind you, you turn and splash him again sputtering, "Daryl you- that's not- I can't-" and end up full on belly laughing while trying to stay afloat.

You think you catch the shadow of a smile on his lips before he turns and floats away, like he's done nothing worthy of retaliation. 'Oho boy is he gonna get it.' As quietly as possible you lower yourself in the water, and using shadows from the moonlight, you swim under his head. Reaching up with both hands you use all your strength to grab his shoulders and pull yourself above the surface while pushing him down as hard as you can. Then you make a break for it.

You hear him gasp for air, coughing and sputtering as you swim as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

"Get back 'ere, woman!" He shouts, his tone highly amused. "Yer gonna hafta pay 'fer that!"

You don't realize how loudly you're laughing until the beam of a flashlight is suddenly shining directly in your face.

"Everything alright here?" Shane questions, standing on the shore not far from your and Daryl's discarded clothes. A few of the others are with him; Dale, Andrea, T-Dog, and Morales.

Even in the chilly water you can feel your skin begin to flush all the way down your neck. "Yes! All good!" You squeak out, squinting in the harsh brightness.

"We heard yelling." Andrea chimes in.

You're confident that in all your life you've never been more embarrassed. "That was laughing, guys. I wanted a bath and I asked Daryl to be my bodyguard. We were just, uh, blowing off some steam and I guess we got a little loud... Sorry if we worried anyone." You glance at Daryl who appears to be doing his best impression of the invisible man.

You can make out Dale's hat exceptionally well even in the darkness. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Their hesitation to leave sparks frustration within you - do they really think so lowly of Daryl? Is that what this is all about? Sure, nobody really knows him all that well, but you're all practically strangers and he's done alright by you. The desire to defend him takes over and you snap at the group, "Ah, what're y'all, the fun police? Go ruin somebody else's night and leave us be."

You don't take a good breath until they're all headed back to camp, and it's once again quiet and dark. You sigh, tilting your head back to watch the stars so high above as you float. "Dead people walking around eatin' living people - ya think they'd have bigger problems to deal with than a couple'a skinny dippers." You remark.

A quick exhale of a laugh, not quite a snort, echoes across the pond. "People're always jealous of'a good time if they ain't havin' one." He says quietly.

You pull your fingers through the water, feeling the tension push against them. "So... are ya feeling jealous, or did ya have a good time?" You ask.

"S'pose it wasn't too bad." He says. "But I ain't yer damn bodyguard."

And you grin.

---

Yeah, maybe it's a little awkward getting dried off, getting dressed, and walking back to camp but you sleep more soundly than you have since you arrived. And maybe you're a little annoyed with the way everyone seems to have nothing better to do than gossip, but that new gleam in Daryl's eye when he looks at you wipes it all from your mind. And maybe a lot of things suck, but at the end of the day there's someone who actually likes you, and maybe that's enough.

[sushiyuzu]

Please can you make a scenario of Sylus and MC when mc made a mistake of sylus. You can make your own a scenario. Please please

misunderstood

warning: fluff + tension — feeling guilty, you try to make amends after making a mistake that upsets sylus 🥹💕 [ x reader , x mc ]

note: tyvm anon, your wish is my command. *bows to you* ✨️

- second acc: @blushpawss

you stood in the doorway, heart heavy with guilt as you watched sylus sitting at his desk. he was deep in concentration, reviewing some important-looking documents. his silver hair caught the soft glow of the desk lamp, and you hesitated, unsure how to start.

sigh.

it had all been a misunderstanding—a big one. you’d thought sylus was hiding something from you because he had suddenly started being secretive, locking himself in his study for hours and not telling you what he was working on. it had made you anxious, and in a moment of panic, you’d accused him of not trusting you.

“hey, sylus,” you said softly, your voice barely above a whisper, hoping he wouldn’t be too upset with you. your fingers then began to fidget the end of your shirt nervously.

sylus looked up from his papers, his crimson eyes softening when they met yours, but you could tell he sensed something was wrong. “what is it, sweetie?” he asked, his voice calm and collected, but you could hear the slight concern in his tone.

you shifted from foot to foot, feeling a lump form in your throat. “i... i need to say i’m sorry,” you said, feeling your cheeks heat up in embarrassment. “about earlier. i shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

he frowned slightly, confusion flickering in his eyes. “you mean when you got upset with me earlier?” he asked, still not fully understanding why you were apologizing.

you nodded, stepping closer until you were standing right beside him. “yeah. i thought you were hiding something from me because you were spending so much time alone in here,” you admitted, wringing your hands together nervously. “i thought maybe... you didn’t trust me, and i got mad. i was wrong, and i’m really sorry.”

there was a moment of silence, and your stomach twisted, worrying that he might be angry with you. but instead of getting upset, sylus let out a long, gentle sigh and pushed his chair back from the desk. he stood up, closing the space between you in a few strides, and before you knew it, he was wrapping his arms around you, pulling you into a warm embrace.

“oh, sweetie,” he said softly, his voice full of understanding as he held you close. “you don’t have to apologize. you were worried, weren’t you?”

you nodded, burying your face in his chest, feeling the familiar warmth of his body calm your nerves. “i thought you were keeping secrets,” you mumbled against his shirt, feeling your embarrassment grow. “but i shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions like that.”

he pulled back slightly, just enough to tilt your chin up so you were looking into his eyes. his expression was gentle, not a trace of anger in his gaze. “you don’t have to apologize for feeling that way,” he said, brushing a strand of hair out of your face. “i should’ve told you what i was working on sooner. i didn’t realize it was making you feel uneasy.”

you blinked up at him, surprised by how understanding he was. “so... you’re not mad at me?” you asked hesitantly.

sylus smiled, the corners of his mouth tugging up in that soft, almost teasing way he always did when you worried too much. “mad? at you? never,” he said, his voice low and comforting. “you’re way too important to me for that.”

your heart fluttered at his words, and you felt a wave of relief wash over you. you wrapped your arms around his waist, holding him tighter. “i should’ve trusted you more,” you admitted, feeling a bit silly now for doubting him. “you’ve never given me a reason not to.”

“hey,” he said softly, his fingers brushing soothing circles on your back. “don’t be so hard on yourself. i could have been more open with you, too.”

you pulled back a bit, suddenly curious. “so... what were you working on in here, anyway?” you asked, your voice lighter now, feeling the tension between you both dissolve.

sylus’s eyes sparkled with a hint of mischief, and he let out a soft chuckle. “if you must know,” he said, reaching behind him to grab a small box off his desk, “i was planning a surprise for you.”

your eyes widened in surprise, and you felt a rush of warmth spread through your chest. “a surprise? for me?”

he nodded, his smile growing a little wider as he handed you the small, beautifully wrapped box. “open it,” he said softly, his voice carrying that familiar warmth that always made you feel safe.

you carefully took the box, feeling a mix of excitement and guilt all over again, and slowly peeled away the wrapping. inside was a delicate necklace with a small charm—a charm that held the initials of your name and his, intertwined together.

“sylus...” you breathed, your heart swelling with emotion. “you were working on this for me?”

“yes,” he said, his voice soft and sincere. “i wanted to make something special for you. that’s why i was spending so much time in here... i didn’t want you to find out too soon.”

tears pricked at the corners of your eyes, and you felt a wave of emotions crash over you. you wrapped your arms around him again, holding him as tightly as you could. “i’m sorry i doubted you,” you whispered, your voice thick with emotion.

“there’s nothing to be sorry about,” he said gently, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “i’m just glad we talked it out.”

you looked up at him, feeling the guilt finally melt away completely. “thank you for being so patient with me,” you said softly, your voice full of gratitude.

“always,” he replied with a tender smile, his fingers brushing lightly over your cheek. “besides, i like it when you’re honest with me... even if it means calling me out when you think i’m hiding something.”

you let out a soft laugh, feeling a warmth bloom in your chest. “i promise i’ll try not to jump to conclusions next time.”

“and i promise to be more open,” he said, pulling you even closer, his forehead resting gently against yours. “we’re in this together, okay?”

you nodded, a smile spreading across your face as you leaned into his warmth. “together,” you repeated, feeling a deep sense of comfort settle in your heart.

still holding you close, sylus slowly shifted his position, moving to stand behind you. his arms stayed wrapped around you for a moment longer, squeezing gently before he let go. you felt the warmth of him right behind you, so close you could feel his breath on your shoulder.

“turn around,” he said softly, and you did, your back now pressed against his chest. sylus stood behind you, holding the delicate necklace in his hands, his fingers brushing lightly against the back of your neck as he unclasped it. your breath hitched slightly at the gentle touch, feeling the warmth of his presence so close, his familiar scent filling the space between you. he carefully draped the chain around your neck, and you shivered when the cool metal touched your skin, sending a small shiver down your spine.

“hold still,” he murmured, his voice low and close to your ear as he fastened the clasp with a practiced ease. his fingers lingered at the nape of your neck, brushing against your skin longer than necessary, sending warmth radiating through you. you couldn’t help but lean back slightly into him, feeling the heat of his body through the thin fabric of your clothes.

“there,” he said softly, his breath warm against your ear as he let his hands slide down to your shoulders. “perfect.”

before you could respond, you felt his lips press gently against the curve of your neck, a soft, lingering kiss that made your breath catch. the sensation was light at first, almost teasing, but then he kissed you again, his mouth moving slowly, purposefully along your skin, each touch sending sparks of heat coursing through your veins.

“sylus...” you whispered his name, your voice shaky as you felt his hands move from your shoulders to your waist, pulling you back against him. the warmth of his breath against your neck made you shiver, and you felt your heart begin to race, a heat pooling low in your stomach as he nipped lightly at the sensitive spot just below your ear. you couldn’t suppress the soft gasp that escaped your lips, your fingers gripping the fabric of your clothes as his kisses became more intense.

his lips moved down, trailing soft, open-mouthed kisses along your neck, pausing every now and then to nip at your skin, leaving faint marks that made your pulse quicken. one of his hands slid up to the small of your back, holding you close as the other wandered lower, his fingers grazing your hip with a gentle yet firm touch that made your knees feel weak.

“you have no idea what you do to me,” he murmured against your skin, his voice rough with barely restrained emotion as he kissed the side of your neck, each touch of his lips both gentle and possessive. his hand moved over your body, sliding up your side before brushing lightly across your stomach, making your breath hitch and your skin tingle under his touch.

“sylus,” you breathed out again, your voice barely more than a whisper as his kisses moved to the hollow of your throat, his lips lingering there as if savoring the feeling of your racing pulse beneath his mouth. your body arched instinctively toward him, feeling the heat of his touch, the steady strength of his arms as they held you in place.

you felt his teeth graze your skin, a gentle yet firm nip that made you shudder, your fingers tightening around the edge of the countertop for support. his lips were back on your neck in an instant, soothing the faint mark he'd left behind, his breath warm against your flushed skin.

“you drive me crazy,” he whispered, his voice low and hoarse, his hands sliding up to cup your face gently, turning you just enough so that he could look into your eyes. there was a heat in his gaze, an intensity that made your heart skip a beat, and you could feel the tension crackling between you like electricity.

before you could say anything, his lips were on yours, kissing you deeply and with a sudden fierceness that left you breathless. you kissed him back just as eagerly, feeling the rush of emotions between you—the need, the want, the overwhelming sense of connection that made everything else fade away.

his hands moved again, roaming over your body with a sense of urgency that made your skin tingle. he pulled you closer, pressing you back against the counter as his kisses became more insistent, more demanding. you could feel his fingers digging gently into your hips, his touch both possessive and gentle at the same time, grounding you and sending your pulse racing.

when he finally pulled back, you were both breathing hard, your forehead resting against his, the air between you filled with a warmth that was almost tangible. he brushed a strand of hair away from your face, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw with a tenderness that made your heart swell.

“you’re mine,” he said softly, his eyes never leaving yours, his voice filled with a quiet intensity that left you feeling breathless and more connected to him than ever. “and i’m never letting you go.”

you couldn’t speak—could barely breathe—as you nodded, the weight of his words sinking into you, filling you with a warmth that spread through your entire body. he kissed you again, softer this time, his lips brushing yours with a gentleness that left you feeling weak in the knees, and you knew, without a doubt, that you were his—completely and utterly his.

[anonymityisfunwriter]

Once Upon A December

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader Summary: Of all the things your heart used to know, things it years to remember, Bucky Barnes is at the top of that list.

A.N. - I feel like you guys just haven't been made aware, but one thing about me, I love a good musical.

Bucky Barnes Masterlist | Anon's Birthday Celebration

Bucky softly swallows the air that seems to get more sparse as he thinks, truly thinks, about his latest conclusion. "I just - I think it's time."

His hands fold together, he hunches over, barely able to tear his eyes off the ground.

"I can't tell you what to do here, Buck."

"I know."

"Do what you think is best."

"Best?" He bitterly chuckles. "There is no best. I just - I'm hurtin' the both of us by holding on. And I don't want to hurt her anymore."

"You don't have to explain yourself to me."

"I feel so guilty every time I look at her." Bucky lightly gasps for air. "And God, I - Sometimes, I think that maybe that's the reason I'm the only one she doesn't remember."

Steve grips Bucky's shoulder, "Buck... it wasn't your fault."

"How do I let her go?" Bucky brokenly whispers. "How do I mourn the love of my life when I know she's right there, she's alive?"

Steve finds himself at a loss for words. There was no answer. Nothing he could say. It was a truly impossible situation. "I'm so sorry."

He shakes his head, clearing his throat, "I should go talk to her."

"I think she was in your - in her room."

Bucky winces at the correction. It wasn't their room anymore. Now, it was your room. He'd given you the space to try to regain that void in your memory.

And yet, it's all so painfully familiar. It's muscle memory. Walking to your room. Knocking on your door. The only difference is now, it doesn't feel like coming home, it feels more like the procession to his own funeral.

"James..." Your tone is flat, unsure as you open the door. He hates the guilt glistening in your eyes. He sees it every time you look at him. He hates that he's the one that made you feel that way.

When it first happened, when he first realized that he was nothing but a blurry figure dancing through your memory, he tried telling you.

He tried filling every detail of your epic love story in your mind. He tried forcing himself back into your memories. Nothing brought back the look of love and adoration in your eyes.

He offers a heavy smile, "Hi. Can I come in?"

You nod, stepping away from the door to allow him into his former home. The place looks the same, with the notable exception of the traces of him.

You settle on the couch. He sits on the small loveseat, perpendicular to you. "How are you?"

He licks his lips, offering a small shrug, "I start therapy in a few days again."

"Oh."

"What about you?"

Your voice is far more curt than you intend, "I didn't remember anything if that's what you're asking."

His heart stammers, "No. That's not what I meant."

"Sorry, I didn't sleep very well. Not that it's an excuse."

"Nightmares?"

"Just the same one." You're not sure how much detail he cares to hear, but the way he waits for you to continue is almost a comfort. Your eyes squeeze shut as the memory plays on a loop. "I - I don't remember the mission. Just bits and pieces. I was alone. On the rooftop. And then I see the HYDRA agent's face. When they push me. That's where the nightmare starts... I fall. It's dark. I can hear someone screaming my name. And it's over."

"You weren't alone on the roof."

"What?"

"I was on the roof with you. We were scoping out the area. They came out of nowhere."

Your eyes widen. It clicks. The sound of the voice screaming after you. It almost perfectly matches the timbre of his voice. Only now, his voice sounded strained, tried. "You were screaming my name."

Bucky nods, "I jumped after you. I didn't make it in time. I found you laying in your own blood."

"I'm sorry, James."

He hates the sound of his name so formal leaving your mouth. He can't help himself as he speaks, "You never used to call me that."

"Oh?"

A sad smile tugs at the corner of Bucky's mouth, "You only called me James when you were upset. Or when I was annoying you."

A light chuckle leaves your lips, "What did I call you when you weren't annoying me?"

"Bucky. Buck." He shrugs. He swallows the knot forming in his throat, his voice wavering, "A lot of pet names. I pretended to hate it, but I didn't."

You look up to see tears shining in his eyes. His voice breaks as he continues on, "You called me Sarge when you were joking or being flirty."

You reach forward, squeezing his hand. A tight knot forms in your throat, "I'm sorry I can't be the girl you remember."

He looks down at the warmth of your hand resting on his. He's acutely aware that this is the first time you've initiated contact with him since you forgot him.

He swallows back his tears, "You didn't take off your ring."

"It didn't feel right to." You start sliding the ring off, "I should probably give it back."

He immediately stops you, "Keep the ring."

"Steve said it was your mother's. I couldn't."

He shakes his head, his heart clenching with pain, "I won't need it."

You rest your hand on your chest. Your heart yearns to remember him, to remember his place in your life. It was right there. Like a word on the tip of your tongue. You could feel the memory of him glowing in the recesses of your memory, glowing as dim as an ember.

You were so close, and yet, it wasn't enough. "I want to remember. I so badly do."

He stroke a stray hair out of your face. Sitting this close to you, he takes a long moment to memorize every detail. The slope of your nose. Your eyes. Your lips. He knows he'll never be this close to you again.

He had to stop hurting you. He had to stop hurting himself.

"I know."

You rest your forehead against him. It feels both so foreign and so familiar all at once.

"Can I - Can I kiss you?" he asks. "Just one last time."

You nod, your heart shattering at the sound of the hurt in his wavering voice.

His flesh hand rests against your cheek. Your breath shudders, dancing across his lips. His nose brushes against yours. Once. Twice. You find yourself leaning forward, closing the distance. His lips brush against yours hesitantly at first. You can't help but notice the way they mold against yours perfectly.

The song that vaguely echoed in the back of your mind gets louder and louder, echoing with thoughts of him. The memory of him rattles against your skull, begging you to remember.

Your hand moves from its place on the cushion to his shoulder. Slowly, it creeps down to rest just above his racing heart. You hum against his lips, pulling yourself away from him.

You look up at him, your eyes shining up at him like they once used to. "Bucky?"

Bucky Barnes Masterlist Anon's Birthday Celebration

Taglist: @marianita195 @meli18gonzalez @ludicbouquetfromearth @matchat3a @famousbreadcherryblossomsstuff @valoraxx @blue786sworld @buckyandgeraltsupremacy @geminigengar @ansaturn @ecolle @lexhalstead3 @ybflkmj @mediocre-daydreams@shanye1112 @thegirlnextdoorssister @toomanyfanficsbruh @moonlightreader649 @breathtaking-cynthia @mirikusashes @beans-and-toast @niyahcoca @katiechikin @elxvrr @antiheroxsblog @infamouslyclumsy @krissydclayton93 @buckysbarne @deadheadwbedhead @qualitygiantshoepsychic @whitexwolfxx310 @getosprettyboy @matchat3a @weallhaveadestiny @mostlymarvelgirl @honeydew3064 @michealharrypotter @mrs-bucky-barnes-73 @withyoutilltheendoftheline @the-photo-hoe @rae-nna @sarachabeans1@double-shot-of-tequila @spookyparadisesheep @lunaalovesyouu @daisy-loves-bucky@roseproseposts @theoraekenslover@king814318 @maybesomedaytho @carlie-babes99 @sunshinechikin @as-white-as-snow-love @melala1030 @badasswlthafatass @armystay89 @multiversefanfics @cherrysscinema @breathlesspieceofdeath @ravenn-darkholme @bxckybxrnes24 @guiltyasreid @bellabarnes1378 @blithecapricorn @mrsnikstan

[spookyserenades]

Sanctity - Chapter Two

Pairing(s); BTS OT7 x Reader

Genre/Themes; Vampire!AU, yandere!AU, horror, themes of the supernatural and mythology, historical topics, vampiric powers, religious themes, violence, romance

Rated; 18+ for swearing, violence/gore, toxic behavior including stalking, torture, and manipulation, future sexual themes. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

Word Count; 20.3k

Sanctity Masterlist

Sanctity Playlist

TO JOIN THE TAGLIST PLEASE CLICK HERE!

Ko-fi 💜

WELCOME BACK! I love you all. I'd like to highlight some warnings here for this chapter straight off the bat: there are major dub-con moments in this chapter of sexual nature. Multiple character deaths, suicidal thoughts, abuse, and quite a bit of graphic gory scenes are included in this update. Please know this is a work of HORROR FICTION as well! This got especially macabre because it's like ice age in New England LMAO. I hope you all enjoy this update and kisses from yours truly, Dana <3

WARNING! There are instances of DEATH, gore and dubious consent. This work of fiction does not remotely reflect members of BTS in reality. The boys are written to be toxic in Sanctity (yandere). Please be warned if this is triggering to you.

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

How much time passed, Y/N did not, nor would she ever, know. Bit by bit, the first thing that returned to her was her sense of smell– something thick and smoky filling her nostrils, maybe an offertory incense blend from the chapel. The second sense was her hearing, and still expecting the Sanctuary’s bell tower to wake her up, her body went stiff when she heard old-timey music and several different male voices. Shit– the next thing she was aware of was her recent memories. 

Eyes flying open, she was laying down on some kind of upholstered settee, still wearing the velvet mini dress from dinner, which was almost hiked up around her hips. Horrified and woozy from both her blood being drained, multiple glasses of wine and liquor, and her state of exposure, she sat up abruptly. Staring down at her freshly polished toes, bare and lacking the fancy heels she was wearing earlier, Y/N froze at the sound of her name being called while she pulled her dress back down, her mind jumping to a conclusion that one of them actually touched her while she was unconscious. 

“Finally awake? You’d think after that meal, you’d at least be able to stand on your feet once Seokjin bit you. He hardly took anything,” Jeongguk approached her first, holding a cue stick and staring down at her with a smirk. He had ditched his sports jacket, the first few buttons on his white shirt pulled free and his tie hanging limply around his neck.

Scrambling to a fully seated position, Y/N saw that her shoes were nowhere to be seen, and she had been carried by someone into the billiard’s room adjoining the space where they had dinner. Perhaps one of the vampires removed her shoes so she couldn’t use the stilettos as a pointed weapon. Sick to the back teeth of being teased and manipulated, especially when she felt her neck and wrist throbbing and saw how perfectly healthy Jeongguk had become after drinking her blood, her eyes narrowed nearly shut. 

“I’m sure it was the fucking wine glass he slit my wrist into was what prevented me from having normal goddamn footing,” Y/N fumed as best she could with a completely dried-out throat, Jeongguk’s smirk widening and showing his teeth at the outburst. 

“What a filthy mouth you’ve got, ma chérie,” Hoseok teased through laughter, all while leaning over a massive pool table and aiming his cue at a white ball. The new nickname from the ex-pirate, whatever language it came from, had her feeling belittled and repulsed– even if Hoseok’s drawl was soulful and spellbinding. It was as if in her slumber, she had managed to grow an even stronger spine. 

“My name’s Y/N, not whatever you just called me. Not pet, not ‘little girl,’ not ‘dove’. If you’re all going to torture me, at least afford me the favor of not patronizing me,” Y/N stood, making sure to make pointed eye-contact with both Hoseok and Jimin; the latter of which was lazily draped on another settee across the room with a cordial glass and a lit cigar. 

“Ah, true colors. I hoped you were as meek as you pretended to be yesterday afternoon, but it seems my initial suspicions were correct. How tiring,” Seokjin was by the fireplace, not sparing her a glance as the flames illuminated his side profile. He appeared to be the only one with his suit still flawlessly intact, one of his hands buried in the pocket of his slacks while the other braced his weight on the marble mantle. 

“Who carried me in here?” Y/N ignored Seokjin, trying to find her shoes. For some reason, her bare feet on the marble had her feeling more vulnerable than her disheveled dress. 

“No one violated you, girl,” Seokjin snapped, all while ignoring her request to remove pet names from his vocabulary. The fog of Jeongguk entering her mind and offering up her secret thoughts to the eldest vampire made Y/N wince, spurring her foolish outburst to go beyond the reach of her control.

“That wasn’t my question,” Y/N’s hands balled into fists, so blind with rage and the instinct to battle for her life that she snapped. “Stay out of my head, you!” 

Y/N all but spat at Jeongguk while pointing at him, the young vampire still wearing that infuriating grin, Y/N storming past him with her feet slapping against the Italian marble to confront Seokjin. Again, a part of her was screaming that Jeongguk could be her kin as he watched, with his youthful appearance– the only thing that had her storming by was the demonic color of his irises. 

At first, she was blasting by the youngest vampire and barreling towards Seokjin, however, a palm covered in buttery leather wrapped around the base of her throat that stopped her in her tracks effectively, harshly. Met with cold, glowing red eyes, Y/N could hardly crane her neck up at Namjoon towering over her, Seokjin sighing from behind Namjoon. 

“If you must know, pest, I brought you in here. Watch your tongue and know your place,” Namjoon’s fingers flexed against the sides of her throat, dark hair in his eyes when Y/N felt the rush of blood in her arteries frantically trying to find a place to go. Paired with the sting of the leather rubbing against Seokjin’s earlier bite, Y/N heeded Namjoon’s warning and nodded as best she could just so he would let her go. 

“Did you not see what Namjoon-ah could do during dinner? If his power can affect Jimin that strongly, what do you think it can do to you?” Seokjin cut in softly, snapping his fingers once. With the sharp sound that contrasted the vampire’s dulcet tone, Namjoon released Y/N’s throat immediately, leaving her to double over and gasp for breath. “Let’s make one thing clear. You can curse at us as much as you please, but do not think you are above being punished for rash actions. I can promise you, I am not a merciful man– Namjoon-ah even less so.”

Y/N felt defeat again, the spark of rebellion in her extinguished thoroughly. The shiny black shoes and pressed pants in front of her seemed blurry, Namjoon towering over her like a steel wall. When she could straighten up again, Y/N flinched at the vampire’s expression: hateful, but the mean smile on his face created sweet little dimples on his cheeks, which contradicted just about everything else about the vampire. His expression, in the best translation Y/N could come up with, was someone contemplating just how to tear another piece by piece with relish.

“Will you drain me dry like your last acolyte?” ​​Y/N rasped, addressing Seokjin but still staring straight at Namjoon, as if one small movement from her would have him lunging. 

Hearing Jimin’s light snickering from across the room did nothing but heighten Y/N’s  humiliation about being put in her place once more. Glancing at him, she spotted Yoongi in the corner, a sketchbook in his lap and apparently not paying any attention to the spectacle. Also disinterested was Taehyung, leafing through a newspaper and puffing on a cigar he was sharing with Jimin. 

“Maybe,” Seokjin hummed, letting Namjoon fall back into the shadows beside an old phonograph still playing age-weathered music. “Maybe not. Behave, and there’s no reason to fear for your life.”

“She wants to shorten her sentence, Seokjin,” Yoongi finally interjected, fingertips covered in inky charcoal. Darkly, Y/N thought that perhaps Yoongi might be the one with the most sense, and that wasn’t saying much. 

“Ever play pool, Y/N?” Hoseok asked suddenly, injecting enough snark into the girl’s name rolling off of his tongue to have her grimacing. 

“Doubt she’s ever even played checkers, Hoseok,” Jeongguk replied, yanking his tie dangling over his shoulder and tossing it on the floor. While leaning over the table to take his own shot, Y/N’s vision focused on the lean, hard-muscled frame Jeongguk had: the thin button-down he had on strained against his toned arms and his sides as he lined up the pool cue between his index and middle fingers. Namjoon aside– there would be no way she could ever be a match to Jeongguk alone.  

“Is it permitted for me to retire now?” Y/N spoke through gritted teeth, muscles in her legs twitching when the petty side of her personality threatened to theatrically curtsy. Distantly, Jeongguk’s mouth corner curled up in amusement– catching the mental image she conjured.

“Say goodnight first, won’t you now?” Jimin trilled, voice curling seductively over the mosaic ceiling, and right when Y/N thought that she had recovered from Namjoon’s chokehold, Jimin was casting another deeply-rooted spell on her. “Taehyung has a question, don’t you?”

Taehyung. The one who so casually dared to impersonate someone close to her, to pretend to be Joseph. While she dreaded nothing more than even looking at the very vampire, Jimin’s roots were so quickly penetrating her bones she found with horror that she was no more than a puppet on a string for him. 

Not even seconds later, Y/N was stumbling over her own bare feet to get to the seating area where the two young vampires were– Yoongi still off to the side, Taehyung lowering his newspaper and passing the lit cigar to Jimin. While hyper aware of Jimin’s hold on her, Y/N’s attention was conquered by Taehyung’s intense, stony expression. Clearing his throat, the shiny gel that was previously taming his midnight waves during dinner was cracking, leaving piecey curls hanging in his face. 

“Tell me, now. Was my answer sufficient?” Taehyung began, tracing his pointer finger over his moistened lower lip, almost cherry red in color thanks to her blood affording him a complexion. 

Y/N’s eyebrows knit in confusion, every nerve in her body pulsing with a dim throb the longer Jimin kept her docile and hypnotized. 

“Huh?” Y/N’s eyelids were heavy, so she found herself batting her eyelashes more frequently than she normally did. “I didn’t ask you anything.”

“Master Taehyung was referring to his reply to you during dinner. Was his reply more or less something ‘Joseph’ would say? Was it enough, dove?”

 Jimin was staring at his nails, one of his trim shoulders slipping out from under his loose shirt collar, and Y/N– to her mortification– immediately thought that the garment had become quite useless, so why was Jimin even bothering to keep it on at all? To deepen her mortification, an amused snicker coming from Jeongguk had her wishing the stained glass lamp above him would come loose and sever his head from his shoulders. Jeongguk’s laughter only became louder when reading her murderous thoughts, the sound of it lively and boyish– not the laughter of a lethal creature. 

Y/N paused, rewinding her memory to dinner. At that time, she really believed that her friend Joseph had been permitted to visit her. Like a bucket of glacial water dumped over her head when realizing her own naivety, she also realized it wasn’t just Jeongguk who could reach into her mind– Jimin could do it, Seokjin could do it and share the way into her head with everyone else. Jeongguk wasn’t laughing anymore. 

“Joe– oh. You, I suppose. You said something about never forgetting me and writing frequently, no?” Y/N, under the puppet strings Jimin was using to keep her steady, was able to study Taehyung’s face with rapt interest; her rational self locked away in some dark corner of her mind. “I think that’s when the coherent part of me sensed something wrong. Joseph hates writing letters, and he’d never talk so sentimentally. Yeah, we were close, but like cat-and-mouse siblings.”

“Still, hyung. Jeongguk mentioned he could not accurately understand the girl’s thoughts at that moment. It seems… peculiar,” Namjoon’s voice, all velvet, filled the room, addressing the eldest vampire still watching the flames in the fireplace. 

“Peculiar? No. The most sound theory is that her thoughts were too animal and stupid for Jeongguk to hear, Namjoon-ah,” Seokjin wasn’t fond of entertaining mysteries or anything that required him to put time and energy into, particularly if the subject matter surrounded a human being. “Forget it. We always deal with issues promptly, and I’m not deeming the girl’s slow mind an issue yet.”

“I suppose I can’t blame myself for not knowing what your acquaintance would say word for word. Jeongguk only had time to go through a handful of memories.”

Y/N didn’t like Taehyung’s dry, holier-than-thou attitude. He had zero decency to look her in the eye, rather looking through her and down his nose. Y/N sensed he was the type of man who had never heard the word ‘no’ in regards to anything. 

“Things have to happen in a timely manner, Y/N, you see? Everything is about timing– that is something I’ve learned again and again– Jeongguk had about half a second to comb through your mind before you would dissolve into complete hysterics. Complete hysteria from you, you’d have a drunk pirate giving you something worse to cry about,” Taehyung continued, giving Hoseok a deliberate, uninterested look when mentioning the ‘drunk pirate’. Hoseok wasn’t paying attention, too busy chalking up his pool cue to bother participating in the conversation. 

For a moment, all that Y/N could hear was a whooshing in her ears as Jimin’s hypnosis began to withdraw, her body promptly trembling with exhaustion as she stood before Taehyung. His tan suit, perfectly pressed, complimented his skin tone now that it was darker, his complexion probably resembling the healthiest peak of his human life. The gray veins over his temples were gone, and there were moles here and there splattered across his face. 

“That’s all… hmm, Jimin. Why don’t you call up to the second floor to make sure the human’s chambers are prepared for the night,” Taehyung gave Y/N one last cursory glance before plucking up his newspaper again. 

Y/N didn’t even hear Jimin waltz his way to an old-fashioned intercom system, murmuring something seductive into the device while his shirt began to pool around his elbows and expose nearly his entire chest and back. She only tuned in when she felt bizarre about standing in front of Taehyung so clearly dismissing her, a spark of hope at the idea of the privacy of her bedroom making her abruptly turn on her bare heels. 

“Awww, Juliana. That won’t do. Make sure her sheets are heated, too,” Jimin purred, Y/N getting the feeling that he was purposefully trying to prolong her time spent in the billiard’s room. “There will be a frost, come morning…”

Y/N separated herself from Taehyung’s proximity, trying to edge her way to the closest door, but unfortunately it was the one that was being watched by Namjoon still cloaked in the shadows. As she tried to look for an escape while hoping Jeongguk was distracted to notice her plotting, Y/N silently began to shuffle sideways.

Not that she got very far– as soon as Y/N reached a leather ottoman halfway to an unguarded door, she yelped when she lost feeling in her legs and promptly crumpled onto the piece of furniture. Her arms tried to brace her fall, but those limbs, too, were limp and refusing her brain’s command to move herself. 

“Nngh, ow! W-what?! What’s happening to me?” Y/N panicked, voice shrill and bouncing around the lofty room. Her body was completely limp, unable to flinch away even when someone began to arrange her legs by parting them, her dress riding up the back of her thighs again. 

Ascertaining who was touching her sans-permission was impossible, due to the fact that her cheek was squished against the ottoman and her line of sight was limited to a glass case filled with cigars. Humiliation licked Y/N’s skin with white-hot heat, no doubt in her mind the scrap of lace covering her modesty was somewhat on display as she was shaped to be bent over the ottoman. 

“Stop, s-stop, please. I can’t move—”

“Silenzio,” a deep, gritty voice was mere inches from her ear, the foreign word close enough to silence for her to get the hint. The record that was playing on the gramophone began to crackle, the needle scratching the label and needing to be flipped. “Stay put.”

“Like she can help it. You’ve paralyzed her,” Hoseok scoffed, trying to hide the fact that he was getting off on beating Jeongguk at their game of pool. It was looking like Hoseok would be driving Jeongguk’s Mercedes around town come morning. 

Paralyzed. Y/N had not a semblance of an idea of what she had done to cause offense to Yoongi, who was carding her hair over her shoulders methodically, but all she could do was lay there helplessly. His fingertips were warm on her forearm when he draped tresses over her waist in a sensual position, even going as far as to adjust how her fingers were splayed over her hip. 

“Master… master Y-yoongi…?” Y/N’s breath came out choppy, her diaphragm somewhat crushed thanks to her awkward weight distribution against the ottoman. 

“Noisy,” Yoongi murmured to himself, detached. Rolling his eyes, Hoseok set his cue down, approaching Yoongi and his current model with his hands on his hips. 

“If she’s so noisy, paralyze her face. You’re a complainer who hates solutions,” Hoseok watched while Yoongi gingerly stretched one of the girl’s arms out so it was hanging off the furniture.

Yoongi would go on and on about how he was capturing ‘yearning’, but to a vampire (and former buccaneer) who stole art for value, the girl was being positioned to get fucked against the ottoman. Pushing a hand through his hair, Hoseok snorted to himself. Now that he had a sufficient, consistent nutrient source, he could visit the girls at the cabaret again. It had been far too long since a woman had been under him and his mercy. 

“To paralyze the face would make the subject unworthy of being painted,” Yoongi replied plainly, like it was a practiced response, and with emphasis on his words the artist ever so slightly turned the girl’s head with a loose grip on her jaw. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and pretty crystalline tears gathered in her eyelashes, eyeliner smudging perfectly. It was like Yoongi’s lucky day. 

“You’re an odd–”

“Hoseok. Let Yoongi be done with it so she can leave,” Seokjin cut Hoseok off before he could start a cock fight. Jimin was already shivering with excitement at the idea of a dramatic altercation, and Seokjin caught it before he’d have to discipline him again. 

“You’re an odd immortal,” Hoseok ignored Seokjin, though physically, he retreated. That was good enough for Seokjin, who kept one eye on the younger vampire returning to his rum and billiard’s game. 

All the while, Y/N locked herself away in her own head. Perhaps, if she could reach some kind of meditative state, she could compartmentalize. The best she could do was focus on keeping her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to look at the vampires for a second longer, and the sensation of tears dripping down her cheeks. 

“Are you resurrecting your proclivity for lewd portraiture, Yoongi?” Namjoon commented, straightening up at the sweet scent of hopeless tears, greedily soaking up the sight across the room. “That original collection of yours remains your finest work.” 

From where he was, he could see the arch of the girl’s back jutting her hips backwards, and in consequence, and the fleshy curves of her ass cheeks were just exposed enough to reveal lace between her legs. Namjoon, with amusement, knew that if he got just a little closer, he’d be able to smell her. 

“I wouldn’t coin that as lewd, Namjoon, just sloppy and lacking all of Yoongi’s former risk. It must have been some time since you have lain with a woman,” Jeongguk disagreed, aware that he was toeing a very thin line between a cold scoff from the elder vampire or experiencing his molten wrath. 

Namjoon, in a rare moment of mercy, hardened his expression, tearing his gaze from the apex of the acolyte’s thighs. The leverage that Jeongguk caught a perverted thought coming from Namjoon was enough, apparently. On the other hand, the youngest vampire was enjoying a morsel of information he pried out of the girl’s mind seconds prior all to himself, just for that moment: the acolyte did not mirror dirty thoughts that the coven was having. In fact, the more Jeongguk sifted through her memories, he realized with delight that she didn’t know the feeling of her own arousal– yet. Maybe Yoongi had observed that, keenly taking it upon himself to milk her confused, humiliated response. 

“Give Yoongi a month. He’ll have that acolyte stripped down completely and posing face down, ass up by then.”

Electric, enticing fear zapped through Y/N at the blithe, unflinching prediction that came from Seokjin out of the blue, and the scent of it triggered a heavy spill of lust to settle over the room. Jeongguk could feel it, and he knew his elders did too– though Seokjin was the picture of nonchalance. Jeongguk couldn’t think of a time when Seokjin preoccupied himself with pursuits of the flesh over the last century, therefore hearing him speak with plain vulgarity was jarring. 

“I’ll have to sit in on that session,” Jimin purred, hanging up the intercom with a grin. By then, he was aggravated with his infernal top, letting it fall from his elbows and pool to the floor in a heap.

In a flash, he was behind Yoongi, eyes sweeping over the charcoal sketch the elder vampire was working on. Yoongi’s hand moved so quickly across the paper, it was almost impossible to track. In fact, Yoongi had already sketched four different versions of the scene in front of him and used up an entire box of charcoal. Yoongi, with aggravated sigh, set his sketchbook down and tossed the empty box of charcoal across the room and into the roaring fire. Jimin, slyly, leafed through the sketches, comparing each to the actual model, a flirtatious impressed hum leaving his chest. 

“You should see these, dove. If you had wings, they’d be broken…” Jimin caught her eye, his posture stiffening at the tear her teeth made into her lower lip. He knew she was incredibly frightened, though he couldn’t help it, he wanted to up the intensity; the reward was far too tempting. Turning on the charm again, Jimin started to stalk towards her with one hand on his belt. 

“N-no!” Y/N whimpered pathetically, immediately thinking the worst when Jimin began to get closer. No matter how hard she tried to squeeze her thighs together, she couldn’t curl in on herself like she wanted to. “Oh, please–”

“‘If you had wings, they’d be broken’. God, is that how you made your fortune in theater and movies?”

“Hoseok, you still haven’t read Jimin’s plays? Or seen one of his films at the cinema?” Jeongguk spoke through chortles, really starting to feel the nourishment of the acolyte’s blood in his body. He felt alive again. 

“Usually sleep through ‘em, or I’m getting blow–”

“Yoongi, release her from Paralysis if you’re finished. Hoseok, head to the cabaret if you wish to keep drinking and whoring,” Seokjin finally moved away from the fire, his expensive loafers clicking against the floors. 

Jimin was only a few feet from Y/N, the vampire half-clothed and eager to rile her up a bit more before Seokjin could spoil the fun. To Jimin’s surprise, however, Y/N’s fear spiked acutely when Seokjin appeared, the eldest vampire kneeling beside her and blocking her view of him. With Seokjin so close, so suddenly, and fearing his status, Y/N’s tears came faster. 

“Please, just please! I just want to go upstairs! I d-don’t– I don’t want to…” Y/N broke down, and with Seokjin’s request to lift Paralysis, Yoongi watched as his power left her and the girl began to shake like a newborn fawn. Seokjin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Master S-seokjin, please, I want mmph–!”

Seokjin pressed his palm over the young acolyte’s mouth, half to shut her up, half to somewhat cover up the scent of her bloody lip. It was a charged situation– one he had complete control over, of course– but keeping the peace was important to Seokjin. 

It was abhorrent to him that he needed that nuisance of a little girl, one causing so much unrest, as he scanned the ruined makeup running down her cheeks. Though, the vitality thrumming through him and the rest of the coven was undeniable, thanks to her. Seokjin was about to call for the acolyte’s maids, lips dropping open, when she made things infinitely more dangerous. 

Since she had never been paralyzed by Yoongi, her body didn’t know how to come down from his influence. With her desperate pent up energy, unable to engage in fight or flight, once her shivering dissolved, Y/N’s limbs began jerking. With Seokjin’s hand still over her mouth, her back arched in order to get air to her crushed diaphragm, and instinctively, her thighs snapped shut. 

However, something unexpected struck through her when her legs pressed together, something she could only describe as warm and aching, and it caught her so off-guard that a strangled, confused moan left her lips and was muffled against Seokjin’s palm. A primal and unfamiliar urge had her wanting to chase that feeling, Seokjin’s surprised, wide eyes in front of her had the throb return, if not for a second– her hips squirming against the ottoman eagerly.

Studying him through watery eyes, Y/N felt like she needed to light a candle to Seokjin’s beauty, the jitteriness that came with Yoongi releasing her from paralysis causing her to seek out stability. Her index finger curled around Seokjin’s blazer cuff as if to anchor herself. It felt like minutes, but it was likely seconds, where every vampire in the room froze completely, not a whisper of sound following her muffled mew.

“Astonishing,” Taehyung broke the silence, setting his newspaper down and getting to his feet. Things took an interesting turn, for once. 

“Do not,” Seokjin commanded, but a breath though still firm. Y/N fidgeted, attempting to moisten her dry lips but only managing to give Seokjin’s palm an embarrassing kitten lick– which had him recoiling and pressing his hand more harshly against her face. “Control yourself, acolyte.”

Y/N didn’t know what that meant. Sure, the raw fear was still there, vehement hate flooding her body when Taehyung entered her line of sight, but the seductive drag of his fingertip tracing over her fragile shoulder blade elicited another unsure whimper.

“P-puh-mm,” Y/N switched to pleading again, wanting to jump off the great cliff where the mansion was settled beside more than ever. Seokjin’s gaze hardened, his throat bobbing. 

“Seokjin, come on. Look at her!” Hoseok was positively delighted, spotting arousal pulsing between her legs from miles away– not to mention smelling it. “Moaning and crying like a bitch in heat.”

“Enough,” Seokjin barked, though the demand was strangled.

Do not speak a word.

The eldest vampire’s voice cut through the fog in Y/N’s head urgently, and at once, he removed his hand from her face. With absence, he wiped the blood from her torn lip on his pristine pant leg, Y/N breathing heavily from her mouth now that it was free.

One word from you and I’ll leave you here with the young ones.

That was a dark enough threat from Y/N, though with mortification, she thinly whined at the thought of Seokjin making good on his promise– mistake. Bonelessly, she started to lift her torso from the ottoman, her skin hot and tacky, all while each vampire in the room tracked her every movement.

“Is she going to get sick?” Yoongi remarked with disgust, tucking his sketchbook away. He was decidedly ready to paint; and yes, it would be something to toy with the flustered acolyte, but capturing her misery would end up being more erotic to him.

“She doesn’t know what she’s feeling,” Jeongguk revealed blandly, smugly, leaning one of his trim hips against the billiards table. “She wants– probably you, Seokjin, to touch her, but she’s too dim to know that.”

“So all of that ‘purity’ propaganda about Sanctuary acolytes is true? They’re clueless virgins?” Hoseok had to swallow a great laugh, almost pitying the mortals.

“Just like the old days… Most girls had not the slightest idea what happened in the bedroom,” Jimin contributed to the conversation, an unsettling edge to his voice that had Y/N sniffling. 

Jeongguk began to fish around in her head more intensely, but Y/N felt her cheeks grow hot while her thighs squeezed together in pulses. Reading the acolyte’s thoughts, he hummed wickedly at the girl wondering what was so bad about being compared to the Virgin– the revered mother the Sanctuary worshipped. 

“She’s untouched,” Jeongguk revealed, Hoseok’s interest piquing sevenfold. Eyes glowing, Hoseok was standing beside Taehyung in a flash, a forearm resting on the younger vampire’s shoulder. Venom was flooding Hoseok’s mouth as soon as he caught a whiff of the wetness beginning to seep into the acolyte’s underwear, and Taehyung was thinking about all of the ways he could break her. 

Again, Y/N had no idea what the vampires were talking about. Nor did she know what was happening to her body, her skin sweaty and hyper-sensitive, and she couldn’t bear to look away from Seokjin. He looked like he was thinking very hard, red eyes sweeping over her body struggling to release what was building up inside of her. It took every ounce of strength she had left, but Y/N managed to struggle off of the ottoman, rocking backwards on her bare heels to a kneeling position. All the while, the finger curled around Seokjin’s jacket turned into a fistful of desperate fabric, the eldest vampire’s breath catching in shock over her sheer audacity.

“Help, it h-hurts,” Y/N whispered, throat dry. Beginning to come to the conclusion that coming down from Yoongi’s paralysis was what was making her feel so raw with nerves, she tried to plead with Seokjin despite his threat to leave her with the young vampires– the ones looking at her like she was dessert. “Master Seokj-jin, please, I want to–”

“Fuck?” Hoseok cut the acolyte off helpfully, filling in the blank that she was unaware existed. Things were spiraling out of control, and Hoseok was so entertained by Seokjin’s patience hanging by a thread that he decided to take things up a notch– perhaps finding out if he could elicit more of her slick to ruin her underwear. “A virgin begging for cock like a slut. Soaked pussy just from a few simple touches and words.”

The foreign, husky words from Hoseok had Y/N’s pulse quickening, humiliation licking her skin. To add to her mortification, she felt something wet rolling down one of her thighs, and when she looked down between her legs, she squeaked in alarm. With her free hand, shakily, her fingers swiped through the slick thinking it was sweat, but when she brought her hand up to take a closer look at filmy strings coating her digits, all hell broke loose. Seokjin cursed, sending out seven different mental commands– with additional forceful suggestions for staff that was still working– but even that wasn’t enough, so with a borderline bone-crushing embrace, Y/N was caged in his arms and as far away from the youngest vampires as possible. Jeongguk, Taehyung, and Jimin stared hungrily at the girl, trembling like a lamb, edible. 

“Hoseok, I told you if you wanted to fuck like a rutting animal, go see your whores,” Seokjin’s voice was loud, furious, and Y/N couldn’t breathe in his arms. Despite her acute fear and dislike for Seokjin, Y/N’s body reacted on its own, pressing backwards against his strong chest for protection. “Leave, Hoseok. Yoongi, this is your doing and there will be consequences. Remove the fledglings from the room. Go.”

There was no space to argue with Seokjin. His covenmates hadn’t seen Seokjin so enraged, not for decades, and before Jimin could pout and add fuel to the flames (or sink his teeth into the delicious acolyte), he was torn from the room with Yoongi’s grip around his wrist. One by one, in a split second, Yoongi collected the youngest vampires, and Hoseok was long out the door with the cabaret set as his destination. 

Once the immediate threats were gone, Seokjin all but shoved Y/N out of his reach, the girl caught by someone else before she could hit the floor. Nearly collapsing into his weight completely, leather gloves slipping over her dewy shoulders, Y/N at least knew who was touching her this time. That time, too, she realized she didn’t mind Namjoon touching her. After a prolonged period of time absorbed with Seokjin’s presence, Y/N was ashamed to admit that Namjoon could steal it effortlessly. Namjoon, like Seokjin, was infuriated; Y/N could tell by the way his jaw clenched dangerously. 

“Get her out of my sight before I do something I’ll regret,” Seokjin spoke through his teeth, but the volume of his demand was deadly quiet. The sound of it had a tingle rolling down Y/N’s spine, her skull still throbbing from Jeongguk sifting through her past, and Y/N thought that she might faint again. “Exercise restraint, Namjoon-ah.”

Surprise flickered in Namjoon’s eyes. Seokjin, normally, would have had him using Pain Illusion on the acolyte for her little stunt– even if she couldn’t help it. 

“Hyung?”

“I have calls to make. Take her upstairs,” Seokjin pushed a hand through his short choppy bangs, and he disappeared like he never was there in the first place.

Y/N winced when Namjoon tightened his hold on her with purpose, his expression turning rock-solid. The throb between her legs didn’t grow any weaker. Namjoon’s nostrils flaring, Y/N’s fear returned when a cold grin spread across the vampire’s face, his sharp fangs on display. However, if it weren’t for the fangs, Namjoon had one of the loveliest smiles in the world, and that broke Y/N’s heart, distantly. The vampire cocked his head and misread her train of thought.

“You’re absolutely terrified of me, aren’t you?”

Y/N’s head snapped up to make eye contact when Namjoon spoke, realizing her attention was lingering on the shape of his lips. Going rigid when the vampire stooped low, he got a firm hold of her naked calves. With one swift movement, Y/N was hoisted into the air and slung over Namjoon’s bulky shoulder. The immortal speed made her nauseous, a strangled sound coming from the back of her throat, one gloved hand squeezing the arm slung over his opposite shoulder, and the other cupped over the sensitive backs of her knees. Not allowing her to recover at all, Namjoon had the girl inside of her bedroom before she could take a breath. 

“Do not make me ask again, woman,” Namjoon cruelly dropped the girl from his hold only to pin her to a nearby wall by her hip. She groaned, Namjoon noting that if he applied just the slightest additional force, he could shatter her hip bone. 

“I need to s-sit down… where is N-nadia?” Y/N managed to get out, at war with how to answer him and praying furiously for someone to save her. She was having a primordial reaction to everything that had happened, and it was sapping the energy out of her. Namjoon snatched up one of her forearms in annoyance, the limb like a twig under his leather gloves. “No! Ow, no, I mean y-yes!”

Y/N could not take it anymore. She was hot, cold, contorting in pain and shivering with something else. She offered the truth. Sure, she was scared, but there was something else that was nameless to her. Was it… curiosity she felt?

“No? Let me offer you some advice,” Namjoon tsked, briefly wishing he could look into her mind like Jeongguk. “Don’t lie like that to Seokjin. Next time, he’ll have me skewer you.”

Y/N flinched, remembering the sword Namjoon had strapped to his back, and the fact that he was once commissioned to cut people down. His smile returned, scenting the dread pressing down on her. 

“See? Though, didn’t the butler tell you not to reveal your fear?” Namjoon ignored the venom that was pooling on his tongue, swallowing it quickly so he could keep up the taunts. Seokjin didn’t want to punish the human, but Namjoon wanted to. “Now we know what fear does to you.”

The girl was blinking at him, which had the immortal pausing. She was fixated on his mouth again, which caused a snarl to rip from behind his teeth. 

“What are you looking at? Are you so consumed by lust that your brain has melted?” Namjoon paired his words with a vicious yank of her arm, the hand on her hip moving to pinch her jaw. The back of her head hit the wall, Y/N crying out and completely powerless to self-preserve. “Tell me what you were staring at.”

“I don’t want to.”

Namjoon, in all his years of dealing with acolytes, had never encountered such a stubborn one. It had something dark possessing him, the thrum of her frightened pulse a stark contrast to the song her body was singing. Then, when he realized how close he had brought her wrist to his face, Namjoon caught the acolyte’s arousal still clinging to her fingers and acted on a baser desire that he hadn’t experienced in centuries. With one last pull, the acolyte’s fingers were in Namjoon’s mouth, the girl squealing in surprise.

“What are you doing?! That’s d-dirty,” Y/N cried, Namjoon’s wet tongue curling around her digits, his gaze still menacing and unfeeling. She dissolved on his palate, and with a quiet groan, Namjoon realized that her arousal tasted just as good as her blood. “I, hngh–”

Y/N focused back on Namjoon’s lips, which is what got her in that situation in the first place. Pursed around her soaked digits, she felt one of his fangs scrape against her index finger, and she pictured his smile in her mind again; the polar opposite to the demonic expression he was wearing at that moment. Perhaps, if she told him what she was looking at, he’d finally leave her alone. 

“Please! I was just admiring your smile!”

Whatever Namjoon was expecting the acolyte to say with her fingers nearly down his throat, it wasn’t that. Almost as if she dumped water over him, Namjoon’s eyes glazed over, his grip growing just weak enough for Y/N to pull her hand away from his mouth and fangs. Catching her breath, Y/N used his distraction to slip away, ducking under his arm. She knew that she wouldn’t get very far; indeed, Namjoon was quick to grab her by the back of her dress, the material tearing slightly with the force. 

“What did you just say to me?” Namjoon, for the first time to Y/N’s ears, spoke softly. The vampire, appearing to be unseeing, scanned her face, and Y/N almost got the feeling that he was seeing someone else in front of him. 

“I-I mean, you scare me, but when you, um. Your smile? It’s–” Y/N gulped, relieved that whatever was making her body produce what Namjoon had sucked off of her fingers was beginning to subside, pure exhaustion and defeat gripping her instead. “Beautiful. It’s beautiful, makes you less s-scary. I’m sorry if that offends you! Master Namjoon, but please, can you let me go?”

Y/N’s pleas barely had effort behind them. Bone-deep fatigue and confusion had her bedroom fading in and out of view, and all she desired was the down quilt on her bed to sink into. Soaking in her response, Namjoon released the girl, ancient memories coming back to him and making him promptly turn on his heel. He needed to come to his senses– the dim acolyte was not the woman in those memories, no matter that those precise words had only been spoken to him only once before, under very different circumstances. He was at the door before the human could collapse onto her bed, still aroused and uncertain. 

“One more piece of advice, acolyte,” Namjoon, still in the same, low tone, spoke. “Rather, a warning.”

A muffled, sad little moan came from Y/N, who was turned away on her side. She hadn’t even bothered to clean herself up, ignoring the uncomfortable sensation of the air hitting the damper areas of her body and the dull agony of her fresh wounds. 

“Innocence is a dangerous thing to possess around a vampire. Wise up, or you’ll be swallowed whole.”

Y/N was sick of hearing things she didn’t understand paired with threats, so she offered no verbal acknowledgement to his stupid advice. Not that Namjoon stuck around, the door shutting and leaving Y/N finally, finally alone. 

Her elation over that fact was temporary. A metal tinkling sound coming from where Namjoon was just standing had her eyebrows furrowing, something heavy sliding into place resolutely. That was when Y/N bolted upright with horror, the movement opening the punctures created by Seokjin’s earlier bite. 

Namjoon had locked her into the bedroom from the outside. 

“You reek of cum,” Taehyung, irritated that the elder strolling into the office was late, unbathed, and had a lace bralette hanging out of his suit pants. Taehyung, bitter venom filling his mouth, stuffed his pocket watch back into the pocket of his suit vest. “Abhorrent.”

“No showers at the cabaret. Let’s get this over with,” Hoseok shrugged, not as eager to prolong a dramatic meeting of the minds after he had fucked his way through the showgirls all night. 

“Sit down. I’ll make this brief,” Seokjin was all business. He spent the better part of his morning jumping down Yoongi’s throat, the artist still literally licking his wounds– tongue swiping over a bloodied– thanks to the acolyte– and torn lip. 

“Where’s Namjoon?” Hoseok interrupted Seokjin, realizing the immortal that filled any room with negative energy was absent. “You’re agonizing over my lateness, Taehyung, but not his?”

“Namjoon-ah and I will talk after,” Seokjin’s temple throbbed, using a handkerchief to clean the blood from one of his rings that cut into Yoongi’s lip. 

It was a gloomy, dark morning. The sun had barely even risen, so the low sources of lighting in the already moody office came from lit sconces and the fireplace. Jeongguk, by the window, tracked droplets of water coasting down the glass plane. With immortal eyes, he could detect the warps and imperfections in the hundred year old glass. It was far more entertaining than getting chewed up by Seokjin. Absently, the youngest vampire rolled up the sleeves of his cream colored sweater, caught off guard by the healthy caramel glow to his skin in contrast. He must have been walking around like a specter for too long, without a good donor. 

“Yoongi has been told to keep his work to his bedroom. From now on, if he wishes to have the acolyte model, it will be contained to that space,” Seokjin began, giving Yoongi a scathing glare. Yoongi’s mind was elsewhere, the front of his button down stained with blood and muted pigments of paint. 

“Well, that doesn’t seem so bad, hm? You aren’t going soft, are you, Seokjin?” Jimin, a touch tipsy from the night before and dressed in nothing but a patterned silk robe, was leafing through a first-edition copy of one of his early plays– something Hoseok collected years ago, apparently. “Hoseok! Where did you get this? You don’t even have the decency to read my tragedies, but you are comfortable stealing valuable copies?”

“Ah. That was from some gout-ridden aristocrat’s collection when we docked in Jamaica–”

“Last night will not be repeated,” Seokjin cut through the idle, infuriating chit-chat, Taehyung appearing just as relieved that the eldest was moving things along in a timely manner. “I will not allow this coven to be reduced to a pack of animals simply because of a human. I do not care if she is a tempting muse to you, an entertaining plaything, or a virgin to defile. No one is to touch the girl unless to feed.”

The silence would be considered unsettling by anybody, mortal or otherwise. Yoongi was the only one who wasn’t absolutely bewildered by the strictness of Seokjin’s order, considering he had already been briefed during his beat down. Normally, the head of the coven would let the six younger vampires toy with their acolytes as they pleased, indifferent– but not that time around.

“How are we to feed without touching her, Seokjin? Are we koi in your royal garden, waiting for you to decide when our next meal is? You had the first bite. Before now, you didn’t take issue with us having our share of fun with the acolytes,” Taehyung frowned, hands in the pockets of his suit curling into fists. “Perhaps Seokjin has decided to return to how we fed when I first joined the coven,” Jeongguk offered softly, Seokjin nodding in the slightest. A dismayed harrumph came from Jimin, who was rolling his eyes and pulling a mother-of-pearl comb through his raven hair. 

 Jeongguk began to remember his early days as an immortal, head tilted, and tried to flick through Seokjin’s head in curiosity. He was met with the usual iron wall that surrounded it. Seokjin raised a manicured brow, Jeongguk’s gaze returning to the window. 

“So… That’s all well and good. But why are there layers to this? Yoongi can arrange her into Kama Sutra positions but we aren’t to touch her point blank?” Hoseok wasn’t exactly broken up over the fact that he wasn’t to touch the acolyte, just annoyed with the special exceptions. 

“You are being dull on purpose,” Seokjin sang blandly, leaning back in his leather chair. “I meant none of you are to engage in anything sexual with her. Fledglings– and immortals with no self control, such as yourself, Hoseok– do not do well entangling themselves with acolytes such as… Y/N.”

“Such as ‘Y/N’? Elaborate?” Taehyung politely requested, leaning against the door of the office. His office, really, the one he built for his summer holidays a century ago, he noted with mild bitterness, smoothing out his tweed suit with precise pats. At wit’s end, Seokjin put his head in his hands, so exasperated he cursed in his ancient native tongue. 

“Her innocence and purity draws you in like a moth to a flame, I realize that, but I’m tired of applying for new acolytes. Two things are of greater importance that deserve my attention. First, I refuse to let you all revert yourselves into baser creatures thus tarnishing our reputation, which directly affects the second pressing matter. This week, the gala we are hosting with Berwind. Everything has to go smoothly.”

“... So, we can touch her. Just not–”

“Spare me, Hoseok,” Seokjin’s voice was hoarse, strained, and he had dealt with more tumor-inducing conversations in the past 24 hours than he had in decades. “Push her around if you want, I don’t give a shit. Do not try to seduce her.”

“But she thinks we’re all so handsome,” Jeongguk murmured, half amused, half kicking the hornet’s nest. “That’s like asking us to walk around with satchels over our heads.”

“All humans think we’re handsome,” Jimin countered, bored. He’d find it an insult worthy of death if the girl didn’t revere his beauty. 

“Stop whining and do as I say. You all have work to do before the gala. Taehyung, have Edmund fetch Namjoon-ah,” Seokjin snapped, the scent of mortals filling the room and making him cover his nose and mouth with a delicate palm to block it. 

“Alright, ‘boss’. Let’s see how long these new rules last,” Hoseok let his fangs drip with venom. He despised being ordered around, but the benefits of remaining in the coven and under Seokjin’s protection outweighed the cons. Seokjin usually came around, especially once the human would begin to get on Seokjin’s bad side. “I’m taking a bath until dinner.”

“That means he’ll be piss drunk again,” Jeongguk pointed out, once Hoseok had ditched the room, and Yoongi slowly rose from his seat. 

Yoongi had been fiddling with a filbert paint brush during the entire conversation, mind solely focused on the painting he had spent the whole night working on. As he began to excuse himself from the room, Jimin caught a hold of the tail of Yoongi’s untucked button down. Often, he’d let Jimin watch him paint; Jimin wrote screenplays while Yoongi would stretch canvases in peaceful silence. Yoongi, paying no mind to his younger covenmate, used the filbert brush to pin up his shoulder-length paint-caked locks with a fledgling anchored to the back of his shirt.

The artist was rather grateful Seokjin hadn’t torn into him as much as he could have– Yoongi chalked it up to good behavior and keeping to himself for the better half of the last century. Sure, he was agitated that Seokjin warned him to keep the Paralysis to a minimum, which was a nuisance, but perhaps it would be an artistic challenge for him. With a melodic hum, Yoongi licked the last of the blood off of his lips, eyes glowing when he and Jimin both left the office quietly. 

Though, Jimin was quiet for other reasons. Like Hoseok, Jimin was a spiteful vampire. The young acolyte already proved to be the brightest spark of entertainment he had seen from humanity since Old Hollywood, the excessive comparison floating around in Jimin’s lofty mind making Jeongguk dread the upcoming few days. With that, Taehyung and Jeongguk considered themselves dismissed, Seokjin only getting a moment to recover from the theatrics before launching into somewhat of a show himself. 

“Namjoon-ah, come in, please,” Seokjin, hand still dragging over his face, hadn’t the slightest explanation for Namjoon’s lapse in judgement the previous night. The sting of betrayal from somebody who quite literally died for loyalty, sacrificing his very soul, was so strong it had even Seokjin’s chest tightening. 

The doors swung open, Namjoon’s powerful strides bringing him into the office in less than three steps. Unfortunately, the human girl that was ushered into the room behind her had Namjoon freezing, carmine eyes narrowing. 

Y/N, who had been scrubbed utterly raw by her maids that morning as per Seokjin’s request, was currently entirely under Seokjin’s influence. From the moment her eyes opened at dawn, Seokjin could sense her panic from the bedroom above her– and to prevent any further nonsense, he mentally Compelled her to be nothing but his temporary puppet. Namjoon, as if he sensed he’d be in some hot water that morning, had his sword strapped to his broad back, his large gloved hands settling over the leather belt strapped around his hips. 

“Hyung. I felt you were too lenient on her,” Namjoon began, the picture of confidence. It elicited a low chuckle from Seokjin, torn between being too fond of Namjoon and ready to exact his punishment without mercy. 

“Okay, little acolyte. You can sit now,” Seokjin released Y/N from his spell only after she absently perched on a seat on the opposite side of the mahogany desk. Sucking in a deep breath, he waited for the girl to start babbling stupidly. 

“OH! You,” Y/N’s fingernails cut into the upholstered chair she sagged into, one hand shooting up to the back of her neck urgently, her outrage focused on her former mental captor. If Jeongguk’s power crushed her skull, and Jimin’s bruised her marrow; Seokjin melted her very spinal cord. 

“You too, Namjoon-ah, sit.”

Namjoon’s jaw worked, Seokjin staring at him through his dark curtain of eyelashes and waiting for him to ultimately obey. He always did. 

“I did what I thought had to be done. She’s completely unharmed,” Namjoon impulsively came up with a half-baked excuse, Seokjin pausing with a cocked head in his palms to remember that not so long ago, Namjoon was one of the fledglings too. 

“What!? Not true! Y-you! He! He locked me into the room!” Y/N exploded, pointing angrily at Namjoon like an unruly child. 

“I know.”

“You’re angry I locked her in? We do that to all of the acolytes,” Namjoon scoffed, suddenly wishing he had just shown the human to her early grave when she cursed at him under her breath. 

“I’m angry that you went over my head. This is unlike you, Namjoon-ah,” Seokjin projected the scene of Namjoon taking the acolyte’s soaked fingers into his mouth into his mind, from Namjoon’s very own perspective. Namjoon swore, thinking Jeongguk deserved his neck wrung for daring to use his maddening mind-reading on him. 

“Excuse me. Did you just say you lock in all of the acolytes?” Y/N spluttered, body sagging into the chair even further when she realized Seokjin didn’t care she was imprisoned overnight. She was ignored by both vampires coldly.

“You’re going to punish me.”

“No.”

“No?” Namjoon leaned back in his seat, settling an ankle over the opposite knee, again drilling holes into the side of the human woman’s face with a glare. None of the arousal that clung to her the night before was evident, just a cocktail of edginess and despair. “Then what, Seokjin? I’ve proved my loyalty. Perhaps I had too much to drink.”

“You’ve proved your loyalty,” Seokjin repeated in agreement, rising from his seat with his hands clasped behind his back. “Which is why I’m giving you a new task. Around the clock.”

“Okay,” Namjoon drew out the syllables of his response, Y/N wiggling in her seat like she wanted to bolt. Why was she even there? When Namjoon thought he knew Seokjin’s every move, he was proven otherwise time and time again. It must have been instinctual for an eternal crown prince to keep his subjects on their toes.

“The gala we’re hosting for Edmund Berwind is just the first of many this winter,” Seokjin began to slowly pace around the intimidatingly masculine office, Y/N comparing him to a lethal black snake circling its next meal. “Last night aside. Besides myself, Namjoon-ah, you hold the most power in the coven. This winter I have to play politics and I will not have time to make sure this acolyte stays alive in order to sustain us.”

Y/N shuddered, not needing to be a vampire to feel the electric tension steadily climbing to a fever pitch. Namjoon, pearly dust coating his tongue from grinding his teeth so intensely, fiddled with the hilt of his sword, eyes liquid red. 

“What do you need from me, hyung?” Namjoon stared at Seokjin’s back, turned to him and the acolyte by a large bay window. Namjoon wondered if Seokjin was taking any pleasure in drawing things out. 

“Namjoon-ah. Since you seem to take a particular interest in the little girl, I imagine that to a vampire with weaker restraint, she’s a duck sitting in a pot of potatoes and leeks,” Seokjin began, head turning slightly so Y/N could gape at his flawless side profile– his lips, nose, and long lashes were highlighted by early morning light. 

“Particular interest–?”

“You’re to be her bodyguard.”

Again, there was a ghostly silence, one that Seokjin relished in. The girl was still somewhat loopy from him controlling her all morning, but Namjoon’s outright shock had Seokjin humming. 

“Bodyguard? Seokjin hyung, you know I respect you. Jeongguk was a former bodyguard. He is more suited for the job. I do not want to be near this woman,” Namjoon protested sharply, unaware that that was the precise reason Seokjin selected playing bodyguard as punishment for Namjoon. Y/N, in similar fashion, recoiled and clutched her roiling gut. 

“Jeongguk is the youngest fledgling,” Seokjin quickly replied, as if Namjoon was daft to even suggest such a thing. “Jeongguk also has the mind of a stunted teenager. He has tenderness that lingers. He cannot be tasked with something like this, not yet. You are to watch the acolyte and make sure she is not only protected from our guests, but the rest of the coven as well.”

“This is a test.”

“This is a warning, Namjoon!” Seokjin hissed, spinning around. “Remember yourself. Wake up, and do your job. Give me her bedroom key.”

Seokjin, in a blur, was standing above Namjoon, a palm dangling in front of the younger’s face. Namjoon’s fangs flashed, digging around in the pocket of his slacks, and offered up a gilded skeleton key with grave reluctance– almost like it was his death sentence. Smart enough to realize that she had absolutely no irons in the fire to protest, Y/N numbly watched Seokjin fashion a necklace for Namjoon out of a fine spool of wire produced from the desk, one with the key to her bedroom dangling as its grand pendant. Namjoon, still as ever, held his breath when Seokjin dropped the necklace over his head. 

“Take her to the Sanctuary to pick out acolytes for Saturday evening. Bring Jeongguk to weed out the weak of mind,” Seokjin upped the ante by sending Namjoon on an errand with the acolyte, the addition of Jeongguk monitoring his thoughts no doubt sending Namjoon into murderous rage. “Keep your hands to yourself and your mouth shut, acolyte. Go.”

Dismissing the two, Namjoon’s power crackling like electricity over his knuckles, Seokjin leaned a hip on the desk, plucking up the landline receiver. Y/N’s mouth was agape at the mention of the Sanctuary– the run-down Gothic cathedral a place she never knew she could miss, but did, desperately. 

While processing the possibility that she might get to see her friends once more, even if it was just to give them a proper goodbye, Y/N was yanked upwards by the back of her sweater. Namjoon had a fistful of her wool collar in his glove-clad fist, the vampire so enraged by his newly appointed ‘job’ that he didn’t even have words of malice in his vocabulary to spit back at Seokjin that could encapsulate it. 

“I can walk,” Y/N righted herself with a scoff, shockingly cognizant despite everything that had already happened the first hour she was awake. Namjoon let go of her sweater, his striking face twisted up in disgust, tearing from the office like his heels were on fire. 

Y/N adjusted the fit of her sweater, swallowing down her trepidation. Many things became clear to her, as she eyed Seokjin speaking to someone on the phone in a lilting foreign language. First and foremost, she had just become the most well-protected acolyte in the nation with Namjoon as her bodyguard. Second, Seokjin had not only inadvertently confirmed how necessary her well-being and survival was to not only the entire coven, but to himself as well. Y/N accepted that fear would always be there, and she’d endure moments of humiliation like she had the night prior. She’d experience pain and psychological torment. But she’d survive. 

“아니, 창덕궁은 아니고–” Seokjin’s eyes flashed, angry that the acolyte was gawking at him like a dolt and not following her newly appointed bodyguard. He lowered the phone from his lips slightly, snarling a threat. “Get going, little girl, before I bite you again.”

Scowling, Y/N cupped a palm over the punctures he left in her neck, barely covered by the cut of her sweater’s collar. The vampire was still barking into the phone when one of the staff members began to shut the office doors behind Y/N, his voice carrying into the hall.

“내 생각에는 경복궁이 우리의 필요에 더 잘 맞을 것 같아요–”

The grand wooden doors cut off Seokjin’s dulcet tones effectively with a hollow clang, and paired with it, three maids surrounded her in a flurry of winter hats and coats to bundle her up. 

“Oh, Nadia–” Y/N gasped, a friendly face appearing before her at long last. Her maid fastened a pair of fur earmuffs over Y/N’s head securely. “Please tell me you’ll be coming along on this errand!”

“Afraid not, Miss. Typically, I would join you, but with the gala preparations this week, I must send you with a list to take to the market. The masters will accompany you on the way to the Sanctuary,” Nadia gestured to the large ballroom overlooking the sea, dozens of staff members on their hands and knees scrubbing the marble floors. “You’ll have a merry time at the market this time of year, Miss. I’m sure the masters will treat you to a hot drink.”

Y/N thought diamonds raining from the sky seemed more likely than Namjoon or Jeongguk willingly purchasing her a treat, the latter of the two vampires unfortunately coming into her view when Nadia led her to the mansion’s front door. Y/N hadn’t seen the youngest immortal since Yoongi escorted him from the billiard’s room the night prior. Y/N’s heart was doing something funny in her chest at the sight of him, like it was taking dips and tumbles in the cavity, Jeongguk’s cream-colored sweater giving the vampire an almost innocent appearance. 

“Nadia, don’t you have a scarf for the acolyte?” Jeongguk ignored the desperate desire to use Telepathy on Y/N, who was reluctantly waddling over to him with a pout on her small mouth. “It’s important for human women to keep their thyroid warm in the winter.”

Y/N coughed back an incredulous laugh, not believing for a single second that Jeongguk truly gave a rat’s ass about her thyroid. If anything, the comment gave her the creeps, shattering the angelic image he was falsely projecting. 

“Yes Master Jeongguk, I have this cashmere–”

“Give it to me, Nadia,” Jeongguk cut the maid off, crooking a finger at Y/N and beckoning her forward. He snatched an oversized scarf from Nadia with graceful finesse, wrapping the material around his palms.

Y/N was at the point, so early in the morning and already tired of games, that she simply slouched her way to the captor summoning her without putting up a fight. Besides, Namjoon was probably around the corner, and Y/N knew she was pretty much invincible with him as her ‘bodyguard’. She could endure some teasing from Jeongguk, she told herself, as she anxiously focused on the faint scar on one of his cheeks. 

“Here you go,” Jeongguk was murmuring pleasantly, beginning to wind the scarf around Y/N’s neck. While stiff, she maintained her composure, not wanting Jeongguk to get the best of her when he started tucking the ends of the scarf into her coat’s collar. “All bundled up, there you go.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

Y/N’s cheeks burned, sincere words coming from Jeongguk tainted by a condescending cadence. Without thinking, she brushed his knuckles away from her jawline, Jeongguk snickering and limply dropping his hand to his side. 

“Developing an attitude problem now that you’ve become Seokjin’s princess?” Jeongguk stooped, his large doe eyes sparkling with youthful mischief. It made Y/N’s heart act up again. “Even Namjoon’s to be waiting on your hand and foot. Pretty nice setup, huh?”

“Isn’t it too early for this?” Y/N squinted, backing up several paces so Jeongguk’s sweet breath wasn’t wafting over her face anymore. “Sure, I have an attitude. Wouldn’t you?”

“You know, you’d make a fairly interesting immortal,” Jeongguk crossed his arms over his chest, broad back resting against a solid pillar by the front door. Y/N couldn’t hear it, but Namjoon was tearing up a training room in the basement just below their feet, picturing the martial arts foam dummy down there was the acolyte he was eviscerating with his sword. 

“That… sounds like a threat. Or a death sentence,” Y/N squeaked, never considering the possibility that she herself could be turned. Jeongguk’s face split into a grin, picturing the girl frozen in time forever, pure and skittish, her eyes like rubies. 

“It’s two sides of the same coin, Y/N. It’s a threat, and it would be a death sentence,” Jeongguk, all but purring, watched the wheels turn in her head. She was confused once more, her weight shifting from foot to foot. While the fledgling enjoyed her nervous response to his presence, he realized, with a frown, that the acolyte seemed to find him the most approachable amongst the coven members. He’d have to change that, swiftly. “Don’t you know how vampires are made?”

“I don’t wish to know,” Y/N quickly shook her head, striding to the grand front door in order to get a move on with the dreaded errands. Besides, Jeongguk looked far too eager to describe something unpleasant.

“Well, to start. We’d have to drain you of almost all of your blood,” Jeongguk disregarded her, not that Y/N was surprised, her fingernails scraping against the front door when thunderous footsteps pounded up a stairwell just beyond Jeongguk’s shoulder. “You’d be dying. Before you’d take your last breath, however…”

“We’re going,” Namjoon stormed by Y/N and the taunting fledgling, Y/N gulping audibly when she saw the sweat rolling down his temples and the unsheathed sword in his grasp. 

Finding it the perfect opportunity to leave Jeongguk and his gory stories in the dust, Y/N made haste after Namjoon, the length of her coat’s skirt collecting dust and moisture from the previous night’s storm. 

“Get in the back,” Namjoon jutted his chin towards the cushy black sedan she remembered seeing the day she met the vampires, the car already running and filling the air with silky looking exhaust.

Clamming herself up, Y/N obediently slid into the back seat of the sedan when Namjoon yanked the door open for her, a mew of awe leaving her when she landed on the soft leather booth. Taking in the cabin, Y/N traced over the vents closest to her, the glossy wood buffed to a bright shine. 

“Oof–” Y/N grunted, a heavy object tossed over her lap. With a shriek, she shoved Namjoon’s sword off of her and onto the floor, relieved that it was sheathed but horrified that she was anywhere near it. Namjoon slammed the door shut, cutting the chill that was coming from outside, the sheer force of the action jolting the car around.

“Put that on the seat next to you. If you had any idea how much that was worth, you’d be kneeling on a chapel floor until you bled,” Namjoon was suddenly in the seat directly in front of her, not even turning to make eye contact when he addressed her. 

With trembling hands, she lifted the sword, the scabbard made of a black lacquered wood, urgently placing it as far away as she could. There was a blood red tassel hanging off it, the strings somewhat frayed with time, and engraved inscriptions along the sides of the scabbard that Y/N could not read. 

“Hoseok fucked with my seat again,” Jeongguk dropped into the driver’s seat, his fast movements a blur as he adjusted his mirrors. “You never let me finish, either, Y/N.”

Y/N wished she could go back in time and smack herself for insisting on the vampires calling her by her actual name. Something about a deadly creature knowing and using that particular intimacy felt wrong, Y/N nervously biting her lip as Jeongguk turned to pull out of the carport. Flashing his fangs at her, Jeongguk paid no attention to Namjoon burying himself in some boring book about martial arts to distract himself, the girl shrinking into her scarf for feeble protection.

“When you’re drained, taking your last breath… one of us could either kill you or wait for you to die,” Jeongguk switched the radio on, quiet hip-hop pulsing through the expensive speakers in the cabin. “Then you have to be fed.”

“What are you even talking about? How can you feed me if I’ve been murdered?” Y/N narrowed her eyes, wondering if Jeongguk thought she was slow. 

“One of us would feed you immortal blood, and it would revive you as an immortal yourself. A fledgling,” Jeongguk went on as if she hadn’t poked holes in his tale, the iron gates at the front of the property swinging open to a wintery, meticulously paved street. 

“Why on earth would we ever turn that pest?” Namjoon murmured blandly, the sound of his leather gloves rustling against the pages of a book again sparking Y/N’s interest. It appeared that Namjoon never actually took those gloves off, for some elusive reason. “Can’t we carry out this task in silence?”

Jeongguk chuckled, but knew not to push his luck. Namjoon was one toe out of line from taking his frustrations out on bystanders at the market, which would be a pain to clean up. He settled into his seat and rolled down the windows, his skin sensitive to the elements with the acolyte’s blood nourishing it. As cool rain ran over his forearm, Jeongguk smirked to himself– it was only a matter of time until Jimin would be requesting pints of the acolyte’s blood to dump in his nightly bath. He was ripped from his thoughts of Jimin bathing in a marble pool of crimson when the girl actually dared to speak, almost mocking Namjoon’s final comment.

“Why on earth would I ever want to be turned? I’m already chained to you for the rest of my human life. To be trapped with you in immortality would be an eternal hell that I would have no escape from. Not even death would be kind to me.”

“Hosting parties here in the winter is something I never envisioned during construction,” Taehyung wound the silver chain to his pocket watch around his wrist, a line of maids brushing by with armfuls of holiday decorations. “It was intentionally designed for summer parties, keeping outsiders out.”

“You’ve mentioned that before, Master Taehyung. Especially during the winter holidays. You must detest them,” Edmund managed to keep up with his immortal employer by breaking into a near jog, scratching down a list of to-do’s as he went. The old butler had a weight lifted off his shoulder that morning, the acolyte off-property and out of the lion’s den, at least for a while. 

“The loggias open to the lawn and gardens. They’re useless in the winter. We should be hosting in the New York townhouses,” Taehyung continued to complain, using the butler as a sounding board. 

“Shall I order the evergreens today?”

Taehyung sighed, his delicate nose wrinkling up as he imagined the sappy, pungent smell of Christmas trees permeating through his estate. From where he was in the great hall, he could simply tilt his head just so, and with vampiric vision he could make out every brushstroke painted onto the ceiling fifty feet into the sky. Similarly, his hearing picked up every whisper from the servants in the hall, their heartbeats, and the continuous ticking of his pocket watch. Passing a hand over his gelled curls, Taehyung resumed his lap around the first floor. 

“I suppose. I cannot believe Seokjin put me on decorating duty. He can be such a… prince,” Taehyung frowned deeply, mulling over how he had managed to get himself in that spot. 

Sure, Taehyung was still a ‘fledgling’, but he was older than Jeongguk, who was actually permitted to take the acolyte on a trip to town with Namjoon. Classic Seokjin, showing favoritism for both the youngest vampire and the second-in-command. It made Taehyung want to spit venom onto the floor, but he always considered himself a gentleman, so he swallowed it down with a wince. 

“Like the holidays, Master, you seem to detest town, too,” Edmund, with mild amusement, made sure to prioritize Taehyung’s preferences for the decor– if he didn’t follow the businessman's directions to the letter, there would be cruel and unusual punishments. “Perhaps he was sparing you from the throngs of people asking for your audience.”

“Do not kiss my ass, Edmund,” Taehyung peered down through his thick lashes, hands stuffed in his pockets. There was no bite to his words, Taehyung actually appreciating Edmund’s discreet and meticulous work over the years, but he still had to maintain his immortal authority. “Seokjin picks punishments that create a slow torture, ones that unravel a person. I didn’t do too much to offend this time, but I still have to handle ‘festivities’ when I’d rather focus on the business.”

“I heard…” Edmund’s cerulean eyes darted around the hall before he and the fledgling reached the secluded grotto beneath the marble staircase. “Namjoon has been appointed as a sort of bodyguard to the acolyte.”

“Wherever did you hear that, old friend?” Taehyung grinned maliciously, stooping to get a good look at the elderly human. After years of being worn down without losing his mind, Taehyung didn’t mind that Edmund possessed an agenda, as long as it wasn’t conflicting with his own. “Eavesdropping again?”

“Simply trying to get up to speed on how things will be working from now on,” Edmund, even with his years of service, always preferred to deal with the vampires when they had recently fed, their appearances closer to humans than the ghoulish, starving versions of themselves. Presently, Taehyung appeared like a healthy young man that stepped forward in time from the Gilded Age. “You don’t mind filling me in, do you?”

“Namjoon cannot tolerate humans, especially ones that lack the intelligence of the world. Being a bodyguard to one is the ultimate punishment for him, so he must have royally fucked up somehow. Jeongguk is the only one who knows how Namjoon fucked up other than Seokjin, which is why he’s driving Namjoon around. Insult to injury. That, and Seokjin is testing Jeongguk’s self-control, which will wear thin quickly.”

 Taehyung knelt on one knee, dipping his hand into the chest pocket of his vest. Using a Prussian blue handkerchief, the silk slippery when he used it to polish a spot of marble making up the basin of the grotto beneath the main staircase.

“Forcing Yoongi to paint without Paralysis is torture for him. Being barred from playing his little games is no doubt leading up to a spell of hysteria from Jimin,” Taehyung folded the handkerchief with care, then tested the febrile water bubbling in the grotto with a satisfied hum. “As for Hoseok… Well, he escalated things with his vulgarities last night. Seokjin’s response was to send him to local churches to keep up on our donations.”

“Which leaves dealing with the cabaret to you,” Edmund, though considered to be ‘old’ for a human, was quite sharp. Taehyung hated many things: tardiness, interacting with extroverts, dealing with party planning, but most of all, Taehyung despised lowly human perversions. 

“Come sundown I’ll be at a cattle auction hosted in a brothel,” Taehyung grunted, straightening up and trying to hide his surprise that his limbs moved so fluidly. “No use in fighting it. Seokjin is manipulative, but it is how we have stayed powerful for so long.”

“Manipulative? That is one of the kindest ways you have described me in decades, Taehyung,” Seokjin, melting into the crooks and nannies of the vast estate, made his presence known, the head chef cowering behind the eldest vampire. “You’ve hardly finished coordinating decorations. You wouldn’t have to traipse around the red-light district after sundown if you lit a fire under your ass.”

“Are you implying that I’m lazy?” Taehyung scoffed incredulously, Edmund excusing himself to ‘order the evergreens’. “The greatest businessman in history. Lazy?”

“The greatest businessman in American history. You still brag about your achievements like a petulant child of nepotism,” Seokjin glanced at the clipboard the head chef was holding with trembling hands, pointing at something and clicking his tongue. Taehyung felt his skin rippling, like Glamor was trying to turn him into a demon with leathery skin. “Leave the rest to Edmund and just go to the cabaret now.”

“Hoseok usually handles the cabaret. What am I even supposed to be negotiating in that cesspool?” 

“You’re supposed to be picking out entertainment for the lecherous variety of guests that will be here this week. Must I spell it out for you?” Seokjin was out of sight as soon as he was in it, ordering the chef around again. “Has anyone unpacked the crates of liquor yet–”

Taehyung’s face split into a disbelieving grin, a rough chuckle tearing through his chest. There were days Taehyung longed for Seokjin’s power and influence, and moments where reality struck him. With his skin still threatening to take on the appearance of something otherworldly– beyond his control– could Taehyung even wield the power it took to head a vampiric coven properly? 

Glancing around the grand summer home he painstakingly designed for himself a lifetime ago, Taehyung sighed as he began to transform himself into a man who no one would recognize in the streets. Not only a widely known vampire in town, but the businessman who put Newport, Rhode Island on the map many years ago, Taehyung morphed into the perfect replica of the young man handing him his car keys– who stumbled sideways in shock when he saw a clone of himself staring back. 

Gentle, fuzzy orchestral music played loudly enough to have bottles of turpentine rattling against each other, Yoongi groaning from behind the wet canvas he was agonizing over. A pile of discarded palettes sat at his feet, unsatisfactory swatches of colors smeared all over the plastic heightening his aggravation. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get the shade of the acolyte’s hair just right. 

“On the average day, I admire your process. Judging by appearances, you’ve deviated from that process. Where am I to sit, your lap?” Jimin returned from his ‘break’ from writing in Yoongi’s bedroom to take a leisurely two-hour long bath, dressed in his typical satin attire. 

Yoongi, out of pure frustration, launched a palette knife across the room and out of the half-cracked bay window. It was true: at least fifteen canvases in various sizes were tossed about the room, paint still tacky and smudged, the fabric tarp protecting the Oriental carpets caked was in pigments, and not even Yoongi’s bed– where Jimin typically lounged to pen down his screenplays– had a free spot where a box of supplies didn’t occupy. Yoongi himself looked like a trainwreck, long glossy hair gathered into a ragged knot at the back of his head, reeking of paint thinner, and clothes basically destroyed by the mediums he was using. 

Jimin, slightly mournful that his silk pajamas were going to be ruined, dropped himself onto one of Yoongi’s thighs, raising an eyebrow at Yoongi’s agitated expression. Usually, he would have pushed Jimin off by then, too wrapped up in what he was painting to endure Jimin’s flirting. Blinking, Jimin turned his head, leaning forward on Yoongi’s thigh to get a look at the painting causing the older vampire so much grief. 

His work was as fine as ever. In fact, Jimin had half a mind to smack Yoongi across the face. Of course, the painting was of the acolyte, but it portrayed her taking a sip from a champagne flute during the previous night’s dinner. The colors were vibrant and lifelike, and the acolyte was so well depicted that Jimin could imagine the girl stepping out of the canvas. Yoongi even managed to capture how beautiful the ruby necklace Jimin picked out for the acolyte was, which made Jimin spring up from his perch and place his hands on his hips. 

“You’re being ridiculous. How could you possibly be unhappy with that portrait?” Jimin accused, the cloud over Yoongi’s head darkening. “The hair isn’t right,” Yoongi murmured, plucking up another tube of paint to lighten the tones on the top of the acolyte’s head, where the chandelier picked up on her natural highlights. “I can’t get it right without her here.”

“Well, she’s playing with others right now. It’s not your turn,” Jimin snarked, finding the notebook he was using for his latest screenplay under an old smock Yoongi only used to wipe paint from his hands. “Besides, is she Botticelli’s Venus? How complicated can her hair color possibly be?”

“You were too preoccupied with how her tits spilled out of the top of her dress to notice her hair,” Yoongi went for a petty low blow, which was unlike him. Jimin paused, clutching his notebook to his chest and studying his elder for a moment. 

Jimin always thought Yoongi was beautiful, but when Yoongi found a new muse, he glowed and took on something angelic. However, that particular time his glow was dimmed, thanks to Seokjin’s restrictions on Yoongi’s access to his newfound muse, and stress brought on by perfectionism was extinguishing the light almost completely. 

“You haven’t been this neurotic about details since the portraits you worked on for Marilyn Monroe, and that acolyte is nowhere near that level of femme fatale,” Jimin cocked his head, perturbed that Yoongi wasn’t giving him the time of day. He couldn’t have that. “Yoongi, put the blasted paint down.”

With practiced ease, Jimin used a stronger dose of Hypnosis on Yoongi than he did the acolyte. Yoongi, promptly, felt his filbert brush clatter to the ground, a gritty purr coming from the artist. He didn’t have the patience to entertain Jimin that day, but it seemed Jimin had other ideas, pushing the palette out of Yoongi’s grasp and using a crooked finger to tilt his chip up. 

“Release me, Jimin,” Yoongi narrowed his eyes, his ancient bones aching from Hypnosis wrapping around them. “You do not need to Hypnotize me to gain my attention.”

“Clearly that’s not the case,” Jimin snapped, letting go of his elder covenmate and withdrawing his power slowly. “You’re completely consumed. She’s your latest muse.”

Jimin watched, with an almost human interest, blood pool in Yoongi’s cheeks. When a vampire has fed, within moments the mortal blood revives the stagnant vampiric blood– black in color– and the immortal’s body is restored to its height of health. Essentially, the mortal and vampiric blood become one; the blush across Yoongi’s cheeks was something Jimin had not seen in at least fifteen years. It was worse than he thought. 

“I would not go that far… muse…” Yoongi looked away, out the window and towards the sea. “No. Just a new subject to paint.”

“Sure,” Jimin scoffed, bored suddenly. With a huff, he meanly pushed a stack of sketchbooks off of Yoongi’s bed with a bare foot, collapsing on his side and cracking open his leather bound manuscripts-in-progress. “I have no issues admitting the acolyte has inspired my work. You know I’ve suffered from a block lately. Your stubbornness vexes me.”

“If it ‘vexes’ you so much, go entertain yourself with the girl’s maids. Pick out her wardrobe for the week and leave me in peace,” Yoongi retrieved his paint brush from the floor, using featherlight pressure to diffuse the harsh lines making up a lock of hair on the acolyte’s head. “Turn down the music while you’re at it.”

“Cold,” Jimin grinned, one of his fangs piercing through the cap of his pen once he brought it to his mouth. “Turn the music down yourself. I’m comfortable now.”

It was diverting to bicker with Yoongi, who usually behaved like a mute hermit living in the mountains– the artist could stoop to a level of sarcasm that Jimin perfected before he even became immortal. Yoongi grunted noncommittally, only breaking away from his canvas for a moment in order to slam the radio off, built-up strength in his limbs due to Paralysis begging to be used. 

Yoongi couldn’t remember what it was like to work without Paralysis. In the beginning, when Yoongi was a young, human man, he took any menial job he could to keep him off the streets of Tuscany. Not once, prior to meeting his mentor, did Yoongi allow himself the luxury of dream of being a fine artist. He was too busy exterminating vermin that often holed up in his ramshackle one-room thatched-roof mud hut while he was selling fruits in an open air market to have dreams. Yoongi shook out his arms and legs, the sounds of Jimin scrawling his loopy cursive over parchment grating on his delicate ears.

“Are you writing a play or a movie script?” Yoongi mumbled, jealous that Jimin’s creativity seemed to be flowing like a babbling brook. The jealousy spiked when Jimin flipped through his notebook, revealing that he had written what seemed to be two different productions already– Paralysis started to stiffen Yoongi’s own body spitefully.

“Actually, I wrote a ballet and a short horror film. Working on something more classical now, a novel… think Mary Shelley…”

“You wrote a ballet,” Yoongi confirmed flatly, Jimin giggling and setting his pen down to tease an obviously envious Yoongi. “When was the last time you even danced ballet, let alone create a show?”

“Just because you’ve stopped dropping by during my practice times, doesn’t mean I’ve quit, Yoongi,” Jimin, in a singsong voice, rolled over on his stomach to kick his legs in the air, already envisioning complicated choreography and elaborate, decadent costumes gracing worldwide stages. “Enough of this. Take a walk, you’re distracting me.”

Jimin, with glee, returned to his manuscript, loving that he could gloat. Sure, a part of him– a part the size of perhaps a grain of rice– that felt bad for Yoongi, but it was so overshadowed by centuries of immortal narcissism that Jimin didn’t even realize that part of him still existed.

“You’re the eldest fledgling, but you behave like the youngest. Disgraceful. Messy,” Yoongi changed the subject, kneeling to the floor by the bed. Face level with Jimin, Yoongi tilted his head. “Hedonistic.”

“I’m a vampire, Yoongi,” Jimin didn’t spare his elder a glance, and even though he was writing at a nearly impossible to see speed, no ink stained his sturdy fingertips. “Maybe you should lean into your nature like you used to, and you’ll paint something actually worth viewing.”

“You’re suggesting I ignore Seokjin’s orders.”

“Since when have you obeyed them? Seokjin gives you a rather long leash because you’re boring. He gave you an out. He doesn’t care if you Paralyze the acolyte, he just wants it contained to this bedroom. If anything, that should excite you,” Jimin put down his pen, fangs on display when his mischievous smile returned. With a manicured nail, he scraped umber pigment off of Yoongi’s cheek, directly below one of his eyes. 

Yoongi considered this, letting the fledgling remove paint from his face and hair, something dark and twisted steeping into his system. Jimin was absolutely right, and it pained Yoongi to admit that to himself. Since when had he been so idle?

“Jeongguk accused me of lacking risk…”

“Normally, I’d tell you not to listen to that cretin. But the point remains,” Jimin curled his lip up in disgust, picturing the brute youngest fledgling, who had none of the artistic proclivities he and Yoongi shared. 

Yoongi seemed to be processing things, his eyes almost wine-colored as he stared at Jimin. At one point, there was a time Yoongi couldn’t stop painting him; the round false innocence of his cheeks and lips, his graceful dancer’s figure. It then dawned on him, his entire expression brightening, which had Jimin halting his task of removing Yoongi’s turpentine-soaked oxford shirt. 

“Sit in next time. Model with her,” Yoongi grasped onto one of Jimin’s wrists, his sharp nails cutting into the fledgling’s creamy skin. A trickle of blood, a shade of pinot noir, slid down his wrist bone: the shade of Jimin and the acolyte entwined. 

“Oh?” Jimin’s grin only widened seductively. “There’s the risk that made your fortune.”

Reinvigorated, Yoongi let Jimin shrug off his grip, the playwright dragging his tongue over the crescent-shaped cuts marring his perfect skin. As Yoongi stood, his shirt dropped to the floor, his chest the only part of his body spared from paint splatters. 

“After the gala, when Seokjin is less concerned with appearances to the outside world, we’ll see how a session goes,” Yoongi turned, raking a hand through his filthy hair. Under his nose, Jimin was slyly using the callbox to fetch a staff member to run another hot bath. “Just the three of us.”

Yoongi frowned at the idea of Jimin inviting Hoseok– who enjoyed partaking in some of Jimin’s twisted, sometimes perverted, games. Sniffing indignantly, Jimin got the message loud and clear. 

“Well, Hoseok can–”

Jimin was swiftly shut down when Yoongi was hovering over him again, his wrist recaptured. Body loosening deliciously when Paralysis washed over him, Jimin watched Yoongi plant a large palm beside him on the bed, trapping the fledgling in place. 

“Just the three of us.”

Yoongi repeated himself firmly, squeezing Jimin’s wrist enough to have his breath catch, and without a smart retort, Yoongi smirked at the blood flowing from his cuts. Almost like he was consummating a grave, corrupted promise, Yoongi wrapped his lips around the wounds he created, sampling both the fledgling and the human girl as if it was the fountain of youth. Outside, thunder cracked down over the glacial sea, disguising blissful, selfish sighs. 

“Miss? You seem distracted this afternoon,” Juliana’s voice is what cut through the fog, Y/N absently gazing into the polished silver mirror. 

Her cheeks had filled out with the consistent rich foods she was being fed around the clock. There was no attention paid by her to the butterfly needle sticking out of her arm, drawings now a daily– sometimes twice daily– occurrence. Y/N suspected that the blood bags were delivered bedroom to bedroom like room service, and though she hated needles, her maids drawing her blood was much better than teeth in her neck.  

It had been a couple of days since her outing with the two vampires, and Y/N felt herself moving through her life like a mechanical part of something much larger. It was the afternoon of the great ‘gala’ that the coven was throwing, which meant Y/N was roused from her bed prior to sunrise for a hasty breakfast before being manicured to perfection. 

It was a miracle, but the vampires had mostly left her alone after she had returned from the Sanctuary with Namjoon and Jeongguk. With convenient bags of her blood for them to feed on, it really wasn’t necessary for the coven to interact with her. In fact, other than Namjoon’s constant presence lurking in her shadow, the only other vampire she had to speak with was Seokjin, who gave her a detailed list of how to behave at the gala. 

Y/N didn’t know why she even had to be present during the event. She would have much preferred holing up in her bedroom with perhaps a book all night. Wincing when Juliana pulled the needle from her arm, Y/N cleared her throat, eagerly spreading a soothing ointment over the injection site. 

“Miss?”

“Hm?” Y/N shivered, fingers twisting into the fur blanket draped over her lap. Y/N had become intimately familiar with the vanity she was sitting in front of; sometimes, she swore she saw spirits in the silver mirror. “Sorry?”

“I mentioned that you seem distracted. Perhaps anticipation for the gala? The decorations look glorious,” Juliana was merry, all of the staff was, but it hardly rubbed off on Y/N. She had never been to any kind of party, and not knowing what to expect had her stomach turning. 

“Oh… yes. Anticipation,” Y/N lied, drawing the corner of her mouth up into a half-smile. Dressed in only a silk nightgown, Y/N too consumed by her anxiety to bother covering up her nipples peeking through the fabric, she was spun around on her stool. Her bed was littered with gowns, all shades of cream or off-white. “What am I wearing?”

Another thing Y/N got used to, much like Namjoon keeping close tabs on her even if he wasn’t physically present, was Jimin picking out her clothes. Not just outfits for dinner, but her daily attire as well, down to the jewelry and shoes. Y/N no longer had much agency at all, and that was revealed to her when she was taken to the Sanctuary. 

Two Days Prior to the Gala

Y/N had a lump forming in her throat when Jeongguk pulled his car into the Sanctuary’s gravel drive, the stone cathedral exactly how she remembered it just a week ago. Her legs were still cold from walking around the market, where she was treated like a ball-and-chain by the two vampires in the front seat. She was correct, earlier: there were several stands serving hot chocolate to the wealthy citizens of Newport, but neither Namjoon or Jeongguk offered to purchase one for her, even if it was to stop the chattering of her teeth. 

Jeongguk was sent into various shops by Namjoon, who remained by Y/N’s side on the cobblestone sidewalks. At one point, while Jeongguk was inside a flower shop ordering centerpieces, Y/N strayed all but three feet away from Namjoon to take a look at a stall selling roasted chestnuts. It had been a mistake: Y/N was yanked backwards promptly, and the rest of the time spent at the market involved her being led around like a dog on a leash– Namjoon dragging her by the scarf around her neck. 

In a blur she could hardly understand, Y/N was toted from the backseat and began to chase after Namjoon before he could choke her with her own scarf. The Sanctuary was unchanged, and though it had been just shy of a week, Y/N took in the sights of the front drive like it was brand new to her. Instinctively, when she spotted Mrs. Sloane at the entrance, Y/N flinched sharply into a solid body beside her– Jeongguk– and at that moment, she didn’t know who she’d rather be left alone with. 

“I–I thought vampires could not come onto Sanctuary grounds,” Y/N breathed, thinking of Meredith and how horrified she’d be to know that two wolves were amongst the lambs. 

“Quiet, AB-. I see you continue to flap your gums despite the honor you were bestowed,” Mrs. Sloane greeted Y/N in the only way the old woman probably knew how: nastily. While Namjoon simply copied the stone gargoyles beside the entrance, still, Jeongguk snickered at Y/N’s scolding. “Good day, Masters. It has been some time since we have had the pleasure.”

Y/N wanted to bust a gut like a rabid hyena. Jeongguk appeared increasingly smug, puffing out his chest importantly, while Namjoon simply adjusted the fit of his leather gloves. 

“We’ve gathered a group of acolytes for you to choose from for your gala.”

Y/N’s friends and acquaintances. With a wobbly lower lip, she and the two vampires were led to a detached office building beside the Sanctuary, where only wardens were permitted to enter. 

“You believe that moronic propaganda? Did you think we’d burst into flames stepping foot on sacred ground?” Jeongguk leaned forward, his voice floating over Y/N’s shoulder, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Promptly ignoring him, Y/N edged closer to Mrs. Sloane of all people. Though Mrs. Sloane had treated her like livestock, she still had her humanity. 

The room the three of them were led to was quite large, perhaps the size of a gymnasium, and it was apparently treated like a storage room. There were boxes of incense and votive candles stacked everywhere, as well as phlebotomy equipment. Jeongguk, with amusement, rifled through a box of tourniquets. 

“Bring them in,” Mrs. Sloane barked towards an open door, the acid in Y/N’s stomach steadily climbing up her throat when she heard shuffling. 

A handful of acolytes, mostly from the AB+ group, were pushed into the room hastily in a rush of white linens. The sight of the bleached and starched clothing Y/N used to wear day in and day out had her feeling dizzy, and if things couldn’t get any worse, an acolyte no older than seven was part of the group as well. 

“The acolyte beside you is the only one in the area with AB- blood. We’ve brought in all of our AB+ and B- typed acolytes, for your choosing. The head of your coven requested how many–?”

“Fifteen.”

Just one word was the first thing Namjoon uttered since they arrived, and the sharpness of his tone had even Mrs. Sloane stiffening. Y/N, helpless, squirmed in place as the acolytes she had lived with for years stared at her like a Hollywood star. She must have been something to behold; dressed in a fine designer coat, matching cashmere mittens and scarf, and well groomed and fed. Y/N didn’t realize how starved for nutrients she truly was, as she noticed the lack of color in the other acolyte’s complexions, the thinness of their cheeks. 

“Remove the children from the room,” Namjoon crossed his arms over his chest, his sword tucked into the crook of his elbow. “Feeding on children is a waste of time and energy.”

“Yes, Master,” Mrs. Sloane snapped her fingers, and Y/N sagged in relief when four acolytes under the age of eighteen were escorted back to safety. “Now… how will you select the group of fifteen?”

Namjoon’s jaw clenched, lips pursing, as he scanned the line of humans cowering in fear and awe. None of them had the same perfume-scented blood Y/N had, but Namjoon was expecting that. He really didn’t care either way which acolytes were picked, it wasn’t like Namjoon himself was going to be feeding from them. 

“I have an idea,” Jeongguk, who Y/N temporarily forgot was even present, dropped a pack of blood tubes onto the concrete floor and stepped forward. Trying not to budge, Y/N’s breath caught when Jeongguk hummed and looked her way. “Y/N, you go ahead and pick them out of us.”

Y/N’s mouth fell open. Jeongguk wanted her to select people she grew up with for hordes of vampires to feed on at a party? Once aware that the coven she was placed with held little humanity, it was revealed that they had none. Jeongguk’s expression was positively delighted, taking in Y/N’s abject horror. 

“Go ahead, AB-,” Mrs. Sloane encouraged, her tone dripping with either jealousy or spite. Y/N thought if Mrs. Sloane wanted to serve vampires so badly, perhaps she should have taken her career to the cabaret. “Make haste. These acolytes have work to do, unlike yourself.”

“I cannot choose,” Y/N breathed, the twinkle in Jeongguk’s eyes brightening when she shrunk backwards. The acolytes in front of her began to murmur, as disobeying orders from a vampire was a serious offense. “Please, don’t make me…”

“Very well,” Jeongguk grabbed her by the shoulder, making her look directly into his soulless eyes. Y/N knew what was coming before Jeongguk even entered her mind, her skull starting to pound as he sorted through memories. “Warden. We’ll take the thirteen healthiest in this room.”

Y/N’s lower lip was wobbling again, noises all around of people being shuffled to and fro. 

“That’s two short–”

“Find me the acolyte Joseph. Y/N will be pleased to see him at the gala, no? And…” Jeongguk held up his hand to cut Mrs. Sloane off, eyes narrowing playfully when he found what he was looking for. Y/N frantically began to shake her head and chant ‘no’, but it was far too late. “The pretty blonde girl with the princess curls. Meredith.”

The memory had Y/N’s anxiety spiking acutely. Agonizing for days over the fact that her inability to fulfill Jeongguk’s request resulted in putting her friends in danger, she hardly got much sleep. Juliana meticulously hid her dark circles behind a skin tone matched concealer, and despite the inner wars she was fighting, Y/N’s appearance was sparkly and flawless. 

Skimming a hand over one of the gossamer dresses laying on the bed, nausea reared its ugly head. The cream color of the garment had her thinking about the uniforms of the acolytes. While Juliana was busy comparing the gowns to one another, Y/N began to pace slowly, trying to come up with some elaborate scheme to save her friends. When contemplating escape routes and disguises, Y/N got a whiff of sea salt and cedarwood. A pleasant smell, yes, but one Y/N had just begun to associate with a particular immortal. 

“Are you trying to pace your way through the floor, ma chérie?” Hoseok was in her doorframe once more, and apparently Seokjin had managed to convince him to wear a suit. It was the most dressed up Y/N had ever seen him, and she hated to admit to herself that he looked good in pressed black pants. “Why aren’t you dressed?”

Y/N looked down, her silk nightgown skimming her thighs and hugging parts of her body too closely. Swiftly, she wrapped her arms around herself to shield from Hoseok’s greedy roaming eyes. Hoseok loved to act falsely concerned about Y/N and her well being, but Y/N quickly found out that all Hoseok was was a drunken lech. In fact, once Y/N got over the size of the watch on his slim wrist, she saw the bottle of rum he was taking swigs from. 

“Do you not like the dresses Jimin picked out for you? How rude,” Hoseok tore his gaze from the swell of the girl’s hips to get a look at the gaudy gowns littered around the room. Turning up his nose, he scoffed at the selection. “It’s like he’s trying to turn you into Dracula’s bride.”

“I hate the color white,” Y/N blurted out, her maids all stopping what they were doing to gape at her. During the handful of incidents when Y/N dared to complain to the vampires, staff was not around. “The acolytes. We always had to wear white linens. I never wish to wear the color again.”

“Do you?” Hoseok purred, setting his rum onto one of her nightstands. Running his tongue over his fangs, Hoseok found the human girl’s terrible filter entertaining. “Then don’t wear white. Simple as that.”

“What?” Y/N stopped pacing, gawking at Hoseok like he grew a second head. He couldn’t be serious, Y/N’s brief astonishment washing away into suspicion at a hat’s drop. 

“Don’t wear white, chérie. There’s a storage room in the basement stuffed with gowns flown in from every fashion capital in the world, all tailored to your size. What color do you want to wear?” Hoseok liked to play with his food, and the sickly-sweet tablespoon of hope directed towards him from the human girl was enough to keep up the ‘nice guy’ act. 

“Are you toying with me?” Y/N saw through the act, drinking in his sharp jawline and alcohol reddened cheeks. “Won’t… Master Jimin be upset?”

“Jimin will survive. He’ll pout, but he can’t help his melodramatic tendencies. So pick a color, Y/N,” Hoseok grew impatient, the friendly act starting to become forced.

Y/N, still processing the unnatural consideration from Hoseok, studied the vampire. He was just as handsome as all the others, in an almost elvish way, his features angular. Truly, he was a vision– even down to his sun-weathered hands. Her mind then went to colors, but all the vibrant hues dancing through her mind made her frown. 

“Black.”

“Fitting,” Hoseok shook his head, snapping his fingers. “Juliana, fetch the girl her black dresses. The rest of you, get rid of anything remotely off-white in her closet. Happy, chérie?”

“Why do you talk like that?” Y/N spoke through the flurry of her maids tripping over their feet to fulfill Hoseok’s request, the vampire’s drawl odd to Y/N’s ears. 

“Are you referring to my accent?” Hoseok raised a brow, plucking up his bottle of rum again. “I’ve spent centuries in New Orleans, pet. I believe humans call it a Southern drawl.”

Y/N nodded without understanding. The furthest south Y/N ever went was Little Compton, which was still in the state of Rhode Island. Taking a swig of his rum, Hoseok smirked as the beginnings of trust in him began to form in the acolyte’s head. Before she could go completely schoolgirl on him, Hoseok began to take his leave with a threat filling the air. 

“By the way, chérie. I believe you’ve forgotten I can predict your every move. You will not successfully take yourself and your friends away from here tonight. I can Track you to the ends of the Earth.”

Despite the fact that it was November, Y/N ended up selecting a sleeveless, short floaty dress made of chiffon. The garment was unlike anything she had ever seen, rippled fabric attachments slipping over her elbows, and it displayed some of the parts of her body she was growing fond of: her legs and chest. After Hoseok’s reminder that she was trapped, instead of cowering in fear, Y/N decided to play the game. 

It was futile to try and escape. It was dangerous to try and help her friends. What Y/N could do was exploit some of the weaknesses of the coven– hence the sultry dress– and keep one eye on her friends during the gala, if possible. Wrapping her hand around the banister she was guided to by Juliana, Y/N took a moment to look down at the bustling, decked-out great hall. 

Pine trees studded with multicolored lights outlined the hall, and the empty room was transformed into a festive holiday party. Cocktail tables were placed, candles and trays of libations placed on top, and there was an orchestra clumped in one corner of the room playing lively music. The fires roaring had the room feeling quite toasty, but the sight of dozens of vampires milling around in finery has a shiver rolling down her spine. With the cursory glance, Y/N did not spot Sanctuary whites, which had her heart sinking. Clearing her throat, Y/N rolled her shoulders back and began her descent down the red carpeted staircase. 

Mingle, but do not say anything moronic. Eat, drink, dance. Do not cause any kind of scene. Do not let vampires touch you outside of the coven. You are here as an accessory. Do not embarrass us. 

Seokjin’s voice entered her mind, Y/N miraculously not tripping down the stairs in her stilettos, turning her chin to the side. Near the center of the room, Seokjin was speaking to a vampire that physically appeared to be in his late forties. His short hair was swept off his forehead, and he was in a fine tuxedo that Y/N had no doubt cost a small fortune. A strong hand pinching a champagne glass, Y/N watched him actually smile at the vampire he was talking to, but the grin never quite reached his carmine eyes. 

“Oh! Thank you,” Y/N was approached by a staff member almost as soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, handing her a glass of bubbly. In one go, Y/N drained the flute, and it was replaced with a fresh one straight away. Glossed lips wrapping around the glass, her eyes narrowed when Jimin started slinking towards her. “Here we fucking go…”

“Dove, that’s not what I chose for you,” Jimin cocked his head, the buttons on his shirt loose and revealing his jutting collar bones. “Though… this is quite the choice, too.”

Jimin dragged his eyes up and down the girl’s figure, which was softer and curvier than it was just a week ago. Mouth filled with venom, Jimin giggled and threaded an arm through the girl’s, reveling in her stiffness when he started to pull her through the crowd. 

“That there is Sarah Berwind. She’s the guest of honor’s wife,” Jimin pointed to an elegant female vampire, dressed in a midnight blue gown. Her silvery blonde hair reminded her of Meredith, though when the vampire turned her head, there were kohl-lined red eyes giving her a reality check. “Over there, a few artists Yoongi invited. Yuki, the lovely woman in gold, she made her fortune in jewelry…”

Y/N didn’t particularly care about any of the vampires Jimin was pointing out. Her focus was solely on finding her friends, to somehow protect them from excessive harm. She knew Meredith was probably beside herself. Her attention was stolen when Jimin came to a stop, near the edge of the room. Jimin had led her straight to Yoongi at the edge of the cleared dancefloor. Y/N blamed Yoongi entirely for Seokjin assigning Namjoon to her as a bodyguard. The artist was listening to a gangly looking vampire, Yoongi’s long hair glossy under all of the lights. 

“So this is your newest source of inspiration. Bellissima,” the gangly vampire drank her in, Y/N’s skin crawling as his eyes lingered over her breasts. “I hear you are to begin modeling with Mr. Park here.”

Y/N was lucky she had been practicing her poker face all night. She had not a semblance of an idea of what the vampire was talking about, but the thought of sitting with Jimin for hours in various poses made her want to vomit into a passing by champagne bucket. Yoongi’s expression was stormy when she didn’t reply right away, Y/N translating the look into a warning. 

“Yes, sir. I can hardly wait,” Y/N lied, her voice high and sweet. Yoongi, stone faced, thought the girl was laying it on too thickly, but the dolt of an immortal beside him bought the lie instantly. Fledglings. “When are we to start modeling, again, Master Yoongi?”

“Wow. Your coven still has acolytes using titles?”

“Our coven is old-school, and that’s the way it should be. That’s all, Damien,” Yoongi waved a hand, the vampire Damien sucking his teeth but getting the hint. He disappeared into the crowd. “You do not have to be a sarcastic little bitch, acolyte.”

“Excuse me?” Y/N squeaked like she was slapped, Jimin laughing and stroking the back of her head. 

“Your behavior tonight is being watched. I suggest you hold your honeyed tongue,” Yoongi’s voice was gruff and low, and Y/N could feel it in her chest. Before she could respond, the music cut off, and someone was clinking a knife against a glass. 

“Welcome to The Breakers. The orchestra has composed a waltz for tonight, and I’d like to invite you all to the dance floor,” Seokjin, the perfect picture of geniality, addressed the partygoers. “As the designer of this estate, Taehyung Kim will be leading the dance, accompanied by our coven’s acolyte.”

Y/N’s head swiveled like a barn owl’s, dozens of pairs of vampiric eyes were on her. Seokjin’s wicked smile finally reached his eyes, knowing Y/N would be mortified by the spectacle. The silence deafening, Jimin’s arm was replaced, that time by an arm clad in familiar tweed. Taehyung, with his shiny gelled waves, peered down at her impassively. 

“I do not know how to dance the waltz,” Y/N panicked, knowing that every immortal in the room could hear her strained whisper into Taehyung’s ear. 

“You will,” Taehyung murmured darkly, and Y/N’s spine went rigid when a new skill was downloaded into her head from Seokjin. If Seokjin could simply Compell knowledge into her head on a moment’s notice, what else could he make her believe?

In the center of the dance floor, Y/N knew exactly how to stand, effortlessly collecting Taehyung’s broad palm, her free hand sliding up the lapel of his grey jacket and resting over his sluggishly beating heart. Like he had done thousands of times before, Taehyung slung his forearm around the small of Y/N’s back. Without further ado, the orchestra struck up a swelling, vibrant tune, and they were off. Y/N didn’t even have to think as her feet moved in time with her partner, maintaining eye-contact as they danced across the floor. In mere seconds, couples of vampires joined the two of them, so at the very least, Y/N wasn’t the complete center of attention. 

Taehyung was one of the most elusive vampires, aside from Yoongi. In fact, she had spoken to Taehyung the least during the week she had spent at The Breakers, mostly because he was often away on business or walking the grounds of the estate by himself. Though undead, his palm was warm against hers, and Y/N slotted her fingers between his just to feel how her blood brought him back to life. He moved gracefully, leading them around the dance floor, all while drinking in every inch of her face. 

“Where are my friends?” Y/N asked after a few moments, on edge that she hadn’t seen a single human aside from staff since the evening began. For all she knew, Meredith or Joseph could have four vampires latched onto them while she danced with the devil. 

“What’s the point in telling you? Nothing you do can change their fate,” Taehyung’s baritone voice was flat, punctuating his point by dipping Y/N low to the ground. He was so close to her face, Y/N could see that his eyelids were different from one another. 

“Then there’s no harm in telling me where they are. I simply want to say goodbye,” Y/N argued, slightly breathless when Taehyung pulled her back up. One of her long, pointed nails traced along the handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. 

“I thought you were told not to weave fallacies. You continue to believe you can outsmart us,” Taehyung spat back quietly, the fact that they were quite close to the wind section of the orchestra disguising his words from other guests. The set of the human girl’s mouth was firm and unbudging, Taehyung somewhat respecting her for digging her heels in. She might look meek and mild, but the acolyte had a strong moral compass– a death sentence. He decided to throw her a bone. “The acolytes are in the library, the cabaret girls were placed in the music room. Seokjin doesn’t want you near either of those rooms tonight.”

“He seems preoccupied schmoozing with the ‘guest of honor’,” Y/N couldn’t even see Seokjin, but the last time she did, he was still chatting away with the graying vampire named ‘Berwind’. “If there’s nothing I can do to protect them, afford me the decency to apologize to them.”

“Apologize? Isn’t it a great honor for you holy rollers to even be in the presence of vampires? With that logic, they should be kissing your feet for the opportunity to be here.”

“Obviously, that’s not the case. While I might still hold onto the hope that I can outsmart one of you, you hold onto the belief that acolytes end up at Sanctuaries on their own volition.”

There was a count of eight where Taehyung and Y/N stared each other down, flawlessly in sync as they waltzed. She spoke no more, nor did Taehyung, for the remainder of the song, dewy sweat coating her skin from both the undivided attention and exertion from dancing. When a final note of a viola rang out into the air, Y/N held her breath as they bowed to each other, Taehyung brushing his lips over the back of the girl’s hand reluctantly. 

“Do what you want, but reap what you sow.”

Taehyung evaporated like smoke. His duties were carried out, he played the game. Decorated, played nice, and danced with the human girl. Whatever happened after that, Taehyung couldn’t find it in him to care. 

Meanwhile, arms still extended and molded to Taehyung’s shape, Y/N was left entirely by herself, by the grace of God. It was comical, really, how she was able to scamper from the dance floor, clinging to the walls and feeling her way to the library. Another song was already beginning, mortal vital fluid and liquor intoxicated vampires elegantly swaying in throngs. Peripheral vision caught Jeongguk pouring his champagne flute over the décolletage of a short, dark skinned vampire woman, his fingers tangled in her silken braids and his tongue dragging down the skin of her throat. 

Jittery, Y/N was halfway to the library when she heard something quite queer. A muffled, high-pitched sound coming from the front entrance of the mansion had her freezing. The foyer had twin doors on the right and left: the ladies’ reception room, and the male counterpart directly across. Ice crystals formed in her gut, the sounds growing more agonized. It was a chorus of voices wailing, Y/N ducking into a hallway that connected to the foyer in order to find the source of the sounds. Not a soul was in the foyer, not even the human boys that handled valet, Y/N’s knees knocking together when a particularly horrendous female scream pierced her ears. 

“HELP, PLEASE! OH GOD, PLEASE! DON’T KILL ME!” 

Y/N’s skin flashed ice cold. Of course, she stupidly sprung into action, her stilettos falling off in the process, darting towards the gentleman’s reception room. She was human, after all. A desperate cry for help could not be ignored. 

“N-NO! NO, NO, YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED T-TO, YOU! YOU, YOU–”

Y/N pushed the heavy door open, bewildered, not understanding the sight in front of her at all. It was like the most horrific nightmare her brain could conjure, but it was real, it had to be. Her subconscious never considered something so evil. 

There was a young woman dressed in a fringed flapper dress, crouched and cornered on the floor and trembling so hard Y/N thought she was seizing. That, and she was nearly doused in crimson blood, shielding herself from the vampire standing over her, his foot crushing her ankle bone with a sickening crunch. The woman shrieked horribly, the whole floor covered in streaks of crimson. That wasn’t even the worst of it. Not even three paces away was a messy heap of limbs, limp and useless. 

Delicate, white-blonde curls matted with blood. A dimpled smile ironed out into a slack-jawed scream of desperation. White linens now permanently stained with clots of gore, motionless and skin nearly blue. Tossed in a pile, mangled and drained, were Meredith and Joseph, open-eyed and dead. 

The scream that came from Y/N was molten core in origin. It pierced through the merriment of the holiday party like banshee’s wail, the last piece of Y/N’s heart exploding into pieces. Joseph’s beautiful amber eyes were glassy and unseeing. Meredith’s hand was weakly curled around Joseph’s stained shirt sleeve. Nothing but the sound of her own screams registered to Y/N. 

What happened next, Y/N would never be able to get out of her mind. By the time her howling brought the orchestra rooms over to a startling halt, the vampire tormenting the young cabaret worker had Y/N pinned to the wall by her throat. It was Edmund Berwind, the moustached ‘guest of honor’ who had drained her two closest friends dry, stinking of liquor and death. Crushing her vocal chords, Y/N’s screams turned into choked barks, her nails scraping fabric wallpaper from behind her. 

“Aren’t you sweet, honey? I’ve heard–”

Y/N didn’t get the chance to hear what else Berwind was about to taunt her with. While the cabaret girl sobbed in agony, cradling her flattened ankle, Berwin was torn from her and Y/N could only collapse beside the corpses of her friends. 

He entered the room like the Grim Reaper. Whooshing through the air with precision was a metallic sound followed by wet, repulsive squelching. Namjoon, in one fell swoop, unsheathed his sword and slashed forward, severing Berwind’s top half from the bottom. Arterial spurts of blackened immortal blood sprayed the entire reception room, as well as dowsing Y/N completely, the viscous hot fluid running down her face. 

The body fell directly next to Y/N. Desiccated intestines spilled from both cavities of the bodies, followed by other equally ancient organs, Y/N’s skin coated with the blood of her former friends and the gore of a slain vampire. Berwind’s body was still twitching, the severed lower half contorting grotesquely while the top gushed liters of blood, gore, and tissue. Y/N was still screaming, soaking in gore, waiting for the angel of death. She hadn’t been able to spare her friends in time, and she was sure to meet her end considering how furious her ‘bodyguard’ seemed. It was all over. 

Namjoon found a spare pillow set on a cushy chair, using it to mop the filthy mess Berwind made on his sword. With disgust, he used the wallpaper to clean his gloves, large streaky prints staining the walls. Weeping hollowly, Y/N stroked Meredith’s lifeless curls from her face, anticipating her momentary death. One hand slipping over one of Berwind’s eviscerated kidneys spilling onto the floor, Y/N glanced at Namjoon one last time. 

“I Compelled her to avoid being touched.”

Namjoon didn’t answer Seokjin, who promptly locked the door to the reception room. Namjoon kicked the top half of Berwind’s hemorrhaging corpse, fat with too much blood, off to the corner of the room. Using his jacket sleeve to remove eviscerated organs from his face, Namjoon sheathed his sword and laughed at his elder. 

“I’ll leave you to clean up the mess this time, hyung.”

Please do not repost or translate my work. Thank you!

[yoonjae20]

Ric(hard) Fenton; Part 1

(Once again slightly inspired by @saltymarshmall0w 's prompt.)

Read on ao3.

Masterpost. Next.

“B, didn’t you promise us as you’d tell if there was a possibility of another secret child?” Tim asks as he stares at the black haired boy, who looks like he had been to hell and back to get here, with blue eyes — because of course, they are blue —  in front of the Manor’s door. 

He can’t help but feel unnerved by the way the boy evaded their security measures and how he hasn’t said a single word since Tim opened the door even when he can see the boy’s hands tremble.

“Yes?” Bruce's voice floats from further in the Manor, his barely audible gaunt drawing near.

“Then who the hell is this?” he asks just as the man turns the corner. He freezes at the sight of the kid, literally blue screening as he takes him in. 

“Actually he’s mine,” a too chipper voice announces and Tim nearly jumps out of skin as he turns to Dick.

The young man must see both Tim and Bruce doing the mental calculations in their heads because he interrupts before they can draw the wrong conclusions.

“If Bruce can go around adopting children, I can do the same.” Then he turns to the boy. “You can come in, Danny.” 

Tim is eerily reminded of a wary, frightened cat as the boy — Danny moves inside. His steps are too silent for a mere civilian. 

Bruce and Tim share a look and Tim knows that they are both asking themselves when Dick met the boy and why he never mentioned him with how familiar he acts around him as he easily tucks him into his side. 

Although neither of them wants to accept it, Dick has changed since the one year where he disappeared without a trace. He’d told them that he was shot leading to him to lose his memories and that he only retained his memories a few days before he came back, but Tim always had a feeling the older man was not telling the whole truth, hiding it behind an easy-going smile. He didn’t speak a single word about what happened during that year, claiming he didn’t remember much of it ever since his memories returned.

Not only that, but it had become even rarer than before that any of them would meet Dick at the manor (even Jason was at the Manor more often) — and when he was present he was always studying them with an intense stare as if he was searching for something in their expressions.

“Dick,” Bruce starts but the man waves him off.

“Later,” he says. “I need to see if I have any fresh clothes for Danny.”

Dick pulls the boy away and they head up the stairs. Tim gives it a minute before he follows, nodding at Bruce, who does the same. He hears them stop in the hallway and he pauses in his steps.

“What’s going on?” Tim hears the man's question and he sneaks closer when he can’t hear the boy’s response. He subtly uses his phone’s camera to peek around the corner. 

“What about Mom and Dad?” Dick asks in a hushed whisper and Tim knits his eyebrows together — confused about who his brother is talking about.

Danny winces with a pained expression.

“The GIW got them in custody for affiliating with and aiding an ectoplasmic entity,” he explains. “You are my only chance.”

“Jazz, Sam, Tucker?” Dick almost seems desperate and when the boy just shakes his head after each name, he runs a hand through his hair and curses. 

“And you are sure we can’t go to them?”

Tim can’t help but ask himself who they are talking about that Dick’s voice is so full of disdain. Danny vehemently shakes his head, eyes squeezed together like he is remembering something painful and when he speaks his voice is shaky.

“I don’t know what to do, Ric,” he says, clutching the top of his shirt like his heart is hurting and Tim’s eyebrows climb to the top of his hairline at the unusual nickname. “I can’t- I can’t do this alone…” 

“Fuck.” Dick takes a deep breath as he hugs Danny. “Okay. Yes, of course I’m coming with you, baby ghost. Just let me grab my things and then we’ll go on our way.” 

“You will not go anywhere.” 

Bruce steps in Dick’s path before Tim can stop him and he narrows his eyes at the pair. Danny flinches away from the man and Dick steps protectively in front of the boy.

Tim knows Bruce and Dick had their rough patches in the past but never like this. Never had Dick looked at Bruce like he was a threat. 

“I’m not in the mood, B,” Dick warns sharply. 

“And I’m not about to let you go off with someone that I haven’t vetted.”

Dick lets out a bitter huff of a laugh.

“Of course that’s the only thing you would focus on.” His voice is cold. “You’ll bulldoze your way through, and prod and condemn, not caring if you hurt someone innocent in the process as long as you can justify your actions. I don’t even know why I’m surprised at this point. It’s what happened to Jason after all.”

Bruce reels back like he’s been punched. 

“Now if that is all, I have to go save the people who actually treat me like family.”

This time nobody stops Dick as he leaves the house, Danny in tow. 

“Master Bruce, Master Tim,” Alfred’s voice tears Tim out of his trance and startles Bruce who froze in his spot. “Where is Master Dick?”

Dick trembles with barely suppressed fury as he leads Danny to his car.

He wanted to believe that Bruce was better — that he wouldn’t have led the Justice League on a hunt after a child, but the longer he is back in Gotham as Richard Grayson — the longer he is around who were supposed to be his “actual” family, the more he grows unsure about that fact. There is no easy trust between them — not the steadfast determination that no matter what happens, they’ll take his side. Not like the Fentons have. (It’s been barely 2 months and he misses being Ric Fenton — misses being Jack and Maddie’s son and Jazz and Danny’s older brother.)

Bruce has contingency plans about them for fuck’s sake. And while he understands that there might be situations where they would be on other sides — the time where he and the Teen Titans had to fight their mind controlled mentors comes to mind — it’s a scary thought. For the first time since ages — since Bruce had taken Robin away from him — he feels like he is on his own. 

Back then he had turned to Clark — to Superman. He was the one who gave him the name Nightwing but Dick is plagued by the nightmares he witnessed Danny having. He doesn’t think he can look at his uncle ever the same again. 

At the same time, he doesn’t know if Danny and him can do this alone. He glances at the boy as he drives out the gates to the manor — he looks incredibly drained. He’s even paler than usual and there’s a sheen of sweat over his whole body as he leans back in his seat, breaths shallow. 

As he drives through the streets of the Bowery a sudden thought comes to his mind. He tears the steering wheel around, tearing Danny out of his doze. He blinks at Dick, eyebrows knitted together when he sees that they are still in Gotham.

“Where are we going?” he asks and Dick gives him a smile that is all teeth.

“Just a little pit stop.”

Jason and Dick don’t talk much — or to be more precise they don’t talk about the important stuff. Not about the — ‘I broke down when I heard about your death and I blame myself for not being there’ or ‘I was sure you hated me and you were glad I was gone’. They barge into each other's apartments, spar or get drunk together and cling to each other when they are sure the other isn’t awake to witness it. It’s not quite healthy — but it’s something better than when Jason was still Robin.

So when the door to one of his safe houses gets slammed open, Jason isn’t concerned. He knows Dick had been off the past few weeks and had been expecting his visit for quite a while now. 

The look in Dick’s eyes is different this time around though. It’s not quite the mix of depression coupled with anger he normally expects — it’s something stronger — righteous fury.

“I need your help,” Dick demands before Jason can question what’s going on.

Jason knits his eyebrows together. 

“What about Bruce?”

There’s a dark look in the man’s eyes for a moment before it passes and that’s the moment Jason realizes that this something more serious than the usual spats he normally has with B. 

“You are the only one I can trust with this.”

He spins around on his heels and is out of the safe house before Jason can blink. Getting a bit impatient and angry about Dick not getting straight to the point and still expecting him to follow — Jason storms out. What he doesn’t expect is the passed out half-dead kid in the passenger seat. A tinge of green enters his vision as he glares at Dick.

“What the hell is going on?”

The story Dick tells as they speed on the highway leaves Jason reeling. If the man’s tone wasn’t carefully monotone as he spoke about Ghosts and an entire town being shifted to a different dimension, Jason would have already declared that Dick finally snapped. He wants to question why he lied to the rest about losing his memories about the year he went missing, but the desperate look he sends him and the way his hands shake on the steering wheel hold him back. It’s only the boy’s quiet snores that have Jason’s volume not climbing above a hiss.

“Are you sure this all happened? That this is real?”

“I was there, Jay,” Dick’s tone leaves no arguments. “I almost watched Danny die, again — fighting Pariah Dark. I would have never forgiven myself if another of my brothers…” He gulps and shakes his head. “I was there this time. I should have made a difference and once again I was helpless”. He slams a fist against the radio, cursing when it turns on, blaring loud music. 

He quickly turns the volume down and both of them wait with bated breath as Danny stirs in his seat, before he goes limp again. Dick lets out a deep sigh.

“How do you think I felt once I realized the situation?” Dick questions. “I was in the middle of nowhere with no recollection of who I was. If the Fentons hadn’t found me-” He shakes his head. “Next I know I’m watching a kid fight fucking Ghosts twice his side and getting thrown around like a ragdoll like it’s a normal Tuesday. That shouldn’t happen Jay, it just shouldn’t.”

Jason stays silent.

“And worst of all, I still knew how to fight,” Dick barrels on. “But no matter how much I tried to help Danny and teach him, it was useless because it wasn’t humans or even metas he was up against. How could my moves counter beings that can fly and go intangible and invisible at will?”

Jason still can’t fathom why Dick hid this from them all — but he knows enough to understand why he needs his help. 

“So what’s the plan?”

Dick shoots him a relieved smile.

“We still have 12 hours of driving ahead of us,” Dick glances at Danny. “I’m reckoning he’s gonna be out cold for at least half of it if not more. I need you to switch with me after half of the drive so I can get a power nap in, then I’ll take over again.”

“Not trusting me with the car?” Jason teases.

“Show me your drivers license and maybe I’ll reconsider.”

They start bickering, and for a moment Jason can convince himself that this is a normal road trip.

Jason’s at the wheel when the boy wakes up. Dick is out cold and despite the man’s protests Jason can drive normally if he wants to. There’s no reason the man has to over exhaust himself.

They had tossed their phones once they crossed the border to Illinois and Dick had withdrawn a couple of thousand bucks. Jason had questioned why they hadn’t done sooner if they wanted to keep Bruce off their trail, but the man told him he’s not the one he is worried about. Considering what Dick told him about the elusive GIW, Jason can harbor a guess on who he is talking about. It’s after that, that Jason wrangled him into another nap — Dick was in no condition to drive any further. 

“Ric?” Danny questions sleepily as he sits up and Jason keeps an eye on him out of the corner of his eyes.

“He’s asleep,” Jason answers and it’s only because he’s used to Damian that he blocks the instinctual kick as the boy realizes he’s not alone. 

“I can see that Dick kept you sharp” Jason huffs out a laugh. “I’m Jason, in case he didn’t mention me.”

Danny blinks at him and shifts so he is sitting cross legged. He knits his eyebrows together, clearly thinking.

“You were the pit stop?” he questions.

“Apparently.” Jason shrugs. “Great work, by the way. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Dick this pissed.”

The boy frowns, gnawing at his lips as he stares out the window.

“You’ve died too, haven't you?”

Jason suppresses his initial reaction to snap at the boy. Instead he grits his teeth as he stares straight ahead, the road blurring together. 

“And?”

“Ric shouldn’t have let you come.”

He grips the steering wheel until his knuckles are deadly white, green hazing his vision. 

“They’ll cut you open too.”

It takes the wind out of his anger and he lets out a curse. The brakes screech as he stops at the side of the road, nearly catapulting them forward with the force of it. Jason finally turns to look at Danny properly. The boy peels down his t-shirt to reveal a gnarly, ugly red Y-shaped scar as he gulps.

“Ric doesn’t know,” he says as he releases the hem of his shirt, covering the scar once more. “I haven’t told him.”

“Then why me?” Jason’s voice rises without his consent.

“Because you’ll get it,” the boy murmurs. “How it feels to die.”

The boy leans back, turning away from Jason to look at the corn field.

“How it haunts you.”

Jason wants to puke and he lets his forehead fall onto the steering wheel.

“Fuck,” he says emotionally and the boy laughs — broken and hysterical. Jason doesn’t comment on the tears streaming down Danny’s face.

Jason starts up the car again, leading the car back on the road.

“Next time Dick asks for my help, I’ll send him to hell.”

Jason hides a smile when the boy snorts at that. 

Dick comes to himself as they are about to cross the border into Amity Park. Jason and Danny are quietly talking and he wipes away a little bit of drool as he sits up. It’s dark outside and Danny directs Jason as they enter the city. He leans forward as he enters the conversation.

“You’ll think the GIW’s detectors will sense us?”

Danny glances at Jason, before he turns his attention to Dick.

“We should be fine for a few hours at least as long as I don’t have to turn ghost,” he says. “Half of the town is liminal at this point so you and Jason shouldn’t raise any alarms either. They had too many false alarms in the months since you left.”

Jason looks at Dick strangely once they park where they can hide for the night.

“Since when did you have contact with Lazarus Pits?”

“Never,” Dick retorts. “But living above a portal to the Infinite Realms for a year will do the trick.”

Jason's face scrunches up.

“Who the hell builds a portal in their own basement?” 

Both Dick and Danny snort. 

“Gotta love Mom and Dad,” the boy says as Dick nods in agreement. “Only they are insane enough.”

Dick makes a face.

“I could do without reanimated meatloaf for the rest of my life though.”

“Don’t remind me,” Danny shudders.

Jason stares at them in bafflement. 

“You do know how crazy that sounds?”

“Crazier than Ghosts?” Danny questions with a smirk and Jason pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head

“To give it to Mom and Dad they did stop storing samples in the fridge after we lectured them about it,” Dick adds. At Jason's aghast face he just shrugs. “They are passionate about their work.” 

“Insane, absolutely insane,” the man mutters and Dick suppresses a smile.

It had taken him a bit to get used to the Fenton's and their flavor of insanity and chaos. At first he had been worried about them being neglectful at best, but it turns out that they just needed someone to remind them when they got into “hyperfixation” mode. He and Jazz had to stage an intervention and both Maddie and Jack were embarrassed once they realized they took it too far. Dick doesn’t know who is worse — them or Tim when he’s awake for more than three days. 

He was very relieved when his initial hunch didn’t turn out to be true after Danny revealed himself as Phantom to his parents. They did a whole 180 on their research, focusing on learning about the intricacies of the Infinite Realms, their culture and even politics instead — resigning from their high positions in the GIW. That’s when the trouble really started. 

Dick hadn’t lied about getting amnesia after he was shot and it was also true that his memories had only returned — thanks to Frostbite — two months ago. But the only reason he went back to Gotham had been to get Danny help (the longer they waited the worse the situation with the GIW became) — to find out if the Justice League could be trusted. Once he heard what happened with Freakshow and the Reality Gauntlet (and had the memories to properly realize what that meant) he had been horrified. He had given himself a deadline to — if need be, confront the Justice League by the time Danny’s birthday came around and find out the truth. (He had desperately hoped that this was all a misunderstanding, but Bruce’s words still taste bitter on his tongue.)

Dick knows bringing Jason along was a risk — considering Danny’s theory that the Lazarus Pit were corrupted ectoplasm, but they need the manpower to get through the GIW’s defenses. Even if he’s scared shitless about what they’ll do to Jason when they find out just how liminal he is. He knows this is a death mission. But it doesn’t have to be for Jason.

“We need to establish some ground rules,” Dick says reluctantly and Jason narrows his eyes at the wording.

“If we get captured, I want you to save yourself, Jason.” Jason scoffs and Dick raises a hand, silencing his retort before it can come. “I’m the sole reason you got involved in the first place. Me and Danny may be willing to die for them, but I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself for something that isn’t even your problem to deal with.”

“If you think I’m gonna agree to those, you are more than stupid than I thought Dick,” Jason’s voice is scathing. “It started being my problem when you came to me for help and we drove for 12 straight hours to get there. If you say those people are your family — then they are mine as well.”

His lips perk into a smirk.

“Besides, I want to meet the people that might be even more batshit insane than B and got you to call them Mom and Dad.”

Dick flushes slightly — the Fenton’s had always insisted on him calling them Mom and Dad and he doesn’t know when the titles became genuine. Even with his memories restored, Ric Fenton feels more alive  — more loved — than Richard Grayson ever did. 

Danny just shrugs as he leans back, arms crossed behind his neck and feet rested on top of the glove box. 

“I guess I have not only two sisters but two older brothers now,” he adds cheekily. 

“Brat.” 

Jason playfully shoves Danny and Dick gapes at the fond tone in his voice. 

“How?” he stammers — they should barely know each other. “When?”

Jason tucks Danny into his side, angle a bit awkward, but grinning as he ruffles his hair.

“You missed a lot, sleeping beauty,” Jason jests and Dick groans.

“I was only asleep for 1 hour!” he bemoans. 

“Two,” Danny corrects and Dick glares at him, raising a finger.

“Don’t you two dare gang up on me!”

“This is sweet revenge for when you and Jazz teamed up against me,” Danny grins.

“We were literally trying to help you!” Dick complains, shoving Danny’s face away as the boy cackles, Jason watching on with amusement.

Dick might have to leave Ric Fenton behind for good now that his two worlds have collided, but maybe he can still be Richard “Dick” Grayson-Fenton instead.  

[m-neuvillette]

Capitano scenario

This scenario came out of me while I was crying over people only really writing angst fics since the 5.3 archon quest. So please I BEG NO MORE ANGST CAPITANO FICS I CAN’T KEEP RELIVING THE TRAUMA

Anyways it’s a royalty au, fem reader. Idk if I should make this a fic so you guys can decide. Idk when it’d be out if you guys wanted it, I go back to school on Monday

* Capitano is a young promising prince that is very skilled in combat

* When he’s was younger after his training sessions he would ride his horse around the forest behind his castle until he would have to go back for dinner

* That is how Capitano met you

* You were sitting next to the river throwing rocks trying to reach the other side

* He observed you for awhile watching you throw a couple rocks across the shallow river then bunch up your dress trying to find the rocks you just threw

* He came to the conclusion you weren’t very good at rock skipping but it looked like you were having fun

* Capitano got off his horse and made his way over to you, he clears his throat to get your attention

* You jump at the sudden noise and turn to face him, once you release who he is you instantly bow and apologize

* He is quick to tell you “no need to be so formal. I am the one disturbing you”

* You instantly say he’s not disturbing you and ask what he’s doing so far from the castle

* He tells you he always rides his horse after training until he has to be back for dinner, he then asks what you are doing out here

* You explain to him that you wanted a break from your village so you came out to the river to rock skip and be out in nature

* He asks why you want to be away from your village

* You tell him it’s because all they do is pity you because your mom cheated on your dad and she left the village leaving your dad heartbroken, then he became a neglectful drunk and eventually died to alcohol poisoning

* You emphasize you’re grateful for the village helping you especially since you were still young and barely double digits but sometimes it’s too much and stresses you out

* Capitano just nods and asks if he can skip rocks with you

* You had him a rock from your collection while smiling saying “of course”

* He skips the rock across his he river first try barely putting effort into it and you stand there shocked

* You immediately turn to him and ask him to teach you

* He tells you the stance to take and how to flick your wrist but you’re still not doing it right so he comes to correct your stance and helps you throw a couple rocks across the lake

* You turn and beam a big smile at him thanking him profusely

* Capitano decides there he needs to be around you more because your smile makes him smile

* You notice the sun is going down which means you have to get back to he village

* Capitano offers you a ride on his horse, your hesitant at first insisting you’re fine because he should get back to the castle

* He shakes his head saying it won’t take long, so he grabs your hand and walks you to where his horse is and helps you get on

* You guide him to your village but he stops on the outskirts so he won’t be seen

* Capitano helps you off the horse and he can tell you want to ask something, he then tells you to ask whatever you want

* You then say “My Prince, will you go back to the river again?”

* He looks at you and gives you a small smile, “Yeah, I’ll be back. I normally end training around midday so I can be back there at the same time we were there today.”

* You get excited and tell him you’ll meet him tomorrow

* He hops back on his horse and turns to you and asks for your name, and you say your name

* Capitano starts to lead his horse away but not without saying “see you tomorrow” while saying your name at the end

* That starts yours and Capitano’s routine, you two go to the river nearly every day for years

* You always tell each other in advanced when you cannot meet so they other one isn’t waiting alone

* As you two get older the meetings start becoming later in the day due to him with his prince duties and your job caring for the animals in your village

* Stargazing becomes the next thing you guys always do, laying on a blanket while looking up at the stars talking about your days

* As you’ve grown up you’ve fallen more and more for the young prince but you know it can never happen due to the differences in your social standings

* Little did you know Capitano is in the same boat as you and is trying to figure out how to convince his father to let him marry you

* You two ironically also had your first kiss under the stars

* It was your 18th birthday so the village threw you a party and one of the older grandmas in your village made you a silk dress

* It was nothing like the ones princesses wore but you didn’t care it was beautiful and you love the thought and effort behind it

* You ended up wearing it to the meeting you planned with Capitano

* You got there first like you always do waiting for him while sitting on a big rock that was in the open field a little further up the river

* You hear his horse come up right to the rock and hear him dismount

* You go to stand up and greet him but he freezes in spot

* You ask him if he’s okay and he immediately nods and tells you, “you look incredibly beautiful. You and that dress is stunning.”

* You blush furiously and thank him

* Capitano then goes to a little pouch that his horse had one and pull out a jewelry box handing it to you saying “happy birthday”

* You go to open it and realize what it is

* It’s a silver heart locket necklace that opens up and has the date you two met engraved on one side and a picture you two took at one of your meet ups

* You start tearing up and pick your head up to look at him

* “Capitano, I have no idea what to say. Thank you so much, this is the best gift ever”

* He smiles and says “I remember you talking about how you’ve always wanted one but your village never had one so the next day I went to the jeweler and asked them to make it. It’s been sitting in my room since the conversation.”

* You realize you’ve fallen in love again with him, you don’t hesitate to throw yourself at him and give him a tight hug

* He returns it quickly holding you tight to him

* You two then carry on with the night talking about the party you had at the village and then out of nowhere he’s silent

* You ask him if he’s okay and he says “I wish I could have been there to celebrate you. By the way have you ever thought about marriage?”

* The King has been pushing Capitano to marry young and marry one of the stuck up princesses he has picked out

* Capitano doesn’t want to marry someone out of convenience, he wants to marry someone he loves and that person is you

* You think how that’s such a change in conversation but decide to roll with it and respond, “Yeah I have.”

* He asks you to describe it

* You take a deep breath and look away not ready to see the rejection on his face once you confess

* “In all honestly it’s always been you Capitano. I’ve been in love with you since we were kids and it’s only grown more as we have gotten older. I’ve always imagined wearing a big white gown and walking down the aisle to you. But I know it’s not possible due to our social class difference.”

* It’s silent after you finish talking and you start to cry, once Capitano realizes he lightly grabs your face to have you look at him

* He wipes the tears and says “It’s not impossible. I have been in love with you since the day we have met as well. I asked that because my father is pushing me to marry a princess but all I want to do is marry you.”

* Capitano stands up and reaches for your hand and helps you stand up, “Have you danced before?”

* You shook your head and he just lightly says “follow my lead”

* He leads you in a dance around the field, he’ll spin you and lead you in different dances but once you two are almost done he dips you holding onto you tight

* You tighten your hold around his neck making your faces so close to each other

* One he brings you back up he asks “can I kiss you?”

* You nod and he leans down to kiss you, it was like sparks were going off around you

* It was soft and slow kiss that had so much love behind it

* It wasn’t long but once you two separated Capitano places his forehead on yours and makes you a promise, “I will marry you. I will make it happen, I promise.”

* From that meeting on you two become official and share secret kisses and cuddles

* As you guys near your twenties the King only pushes Capitano harder to marry a princess

* One day Capitano just snaps and tells his father he will not marry the princesses because he already picked someone else out himself

* The King looks shocked and asks him who it is

* Capitano goes on to describe you with the most loving tone but is cut off quickly one the King realizes you’re a peasant

* He is quick to turn that idea down and forbidding Capitano to see you again

* Capitano says “no, that i will do what I want and will marry her. I decide who I marry and I am stronger than you so if you choose to duel so be it father. But know I will win.” and quickly turns to walk out of the throne room to his horse to go to you

* but before he leaves his father calls out to him, “a duel it will be then son.”

* Capitano just nods and leaves

* Capitano is furious the entire ride thinking about all the awful things his father said about you

* He is early to the meeting spot and once he hears you walking to him he turns around and makes a beeline to you

* You try to call out to him seeing he looks upset and frustrated but he’s not responding just walking straight towards you

* Once his close enough he pulls you into a bruising hug

* You ask him what’s wrong and he takes a deep sigh and holds you tighter

* “My father is forcing me to marry and he didn’t like how I brought you up on how I want to marry you.”

* He feels you stiffen in arms and continues, “we are going to duel over it. Don’t worry my love, I will win and as soon as that is happening I will propose to you.”

* “Capitano are you sure you want to do this? I don’t want you to get hurt or backlash from marrying someone like me.”

* “I am very confident in my choice. I hate the stupid ideals royalty have and should live by, I am going to change that once I am king.”

* All you can do is accept this because you know nothing will change his mind

* Then comes the day of the duel

* Many spectators have come to watch hearing what the duel is about

* Capitano actually brought you to the stadium to watch, he claimed too that it’s easier to propose quicker if you’re there

* Once the duel begins it’s quick to everyone that Capitano is stronger than his father and holds the fate of the battle in his hands

* You never realized how skilled of a fighter Capitano is, he is very strong landing powerful blows while also being very fast and flexible

* The duel doesn’t last long due to what Capitano had on the line

* He knocks his fathers sword out of his hand points the tip of the sword at his fathers neck

* The King is breathing heavily while Capitano barely broke a sweat

* “I win father.”

* The King lowers his head and replies with a small, “it seems so. Do whatever you want, once you realize it’s a mistake don’t come crying to me. You’re not going to be a good king and she’s going to be an even worse queen.”

* Capitano is quick to smash his fathers face into the ground while kneeling down to his fathers ear, “if you ever talk bad about my future wife and queen, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

* He lets go of his father and makes his way to you in the stadium

* The fans clear out of his way while Capitano makes his way to you

* He then gets to where you are sitting and you stand up to greet him

* Capitano pulls you into a strong hug but it doesn’t last long because he separates from you and pulls something out of his back pocket and kneels on the ground

* Capitano says your name then begins his speech, “I have been captivated by you since the day I saw you skipping rocks poorly against the lake. Every time we met I felt like I didn’t have to live up to high expectations and act like a princess. You have created such a loving, safe, caring, nurturing, fun and happy place where I could be me. The memories we have created will always hold a special place in my heart. But now I want to make more memories with you where I can publicly show our relationship and my love for you. So what do you say, will you do me the honor of marrying me and becoming my queen?”

* You were crying through the whole confession once he is done you shake your head letting out a watery “yes” while he puts the ring on

* Capitano then stands up and pulls you into a bruising kiss while everyone in the stadium is cheering

* The wedding wasn’t too long after, it did have to wait until he was crowned king but after the duel with his father the people of the kingdom wanted Capitano to become king

* Capitano and you planned the perfect wedding

* You both got your dreams of having you wear the white dress walking down the isle to become his wife

* You two shared another beautiful dance

* During the dance you smiled up at him and said “I love you my beautiful, strong, caring, and loving husband. You are perfect my king.”

* Capitano pushed some hair out of your face and says, I love you my beautiful, strong, caring, and loving wife. You will become an incredible queen. I can’t wait for our future my queen.”

* You two then share another of many loving kisses you two had your wedding night

* Then starts your journey as husband and wife as well as king and queen

[uravitypng]

okay okay but imagine crying in todoroki's arm's and he barely knows you.

you've known todoroki for years and you were even in the same class together but you never associated, you knew midoriya since middle school and were on friendly terms, especially after both deciding to become heroes, those friendly terms became even friendlier and he became one of your best friends.

during ua you both made other friends, midoriya had his own circle and so did you, he had people like iida and todoroki and tsuyu, while you became close with mina and katsuki and ejirou.

after ua you joined fatgum's agency and because of that you met tamaki. you never interacted before while you both were at ua. the more time you spent together you became an item of sorts, neither of you wanted to put a label on it because you were both to nervous to have that conversation. you thought it was a mutual silent understanding that it wasn't just sexual or a small crush, you assumed that he loved you like you loved him, you regret that very much. you were very naive in that aspect.

you were excited to see tamaki, even though you only saw him yesterday you still missed him but that excitement changed to a sinking feeling in the bottom of your stomach. you saw him with mirio, that in it's self isn't anything noteworthy but the way he was reacting...

all the warmth left your body. your 'boyfriend' is in love and it's not with you. you thought he was in love and he is but just not the way you thought.

you can't help crying.

later on that night you go to talk to tamaki trying not to jump to any conclusions but there isn't anything that he can say that convinces you otherwise, he says he likes you but he doesn't look at you, he says he doesn't like mirio but it's the least convincing thing you've ever heard.

you leave immediately after and you want to be comforted you want to feel safe. you know there are people you could go to but you don't want anyone else, you want izuku, you want him to tell you it's okay and you calm your breathing.

you knock of midoriya's door rather loudly and instead of izuku opening it it's todoroki instead, "oh if you're looking for midoriya he's still at the agency i'm just here to get my-" he finally takes you in properly and sees you, your eyes are puffy and your nose is stuffy, he can tell you're trying to breathe properly, "are you okay?"

you don't think of much when todoroki opens the door, you can't wait for midoriya or try and find someone else, sure you don't really know todoroki but a body is body. you throw yourself at him, sobbing violently and falling to the ground dragging him with you.

he's shocked, he doesn't know much about you just that you're close to midoriya and bakugou and he didn't expect you to randomly just hug him. yes, todoroki is a kind man but he is also reserved and quiet, you're not friends, so he finds it odd to seek such comfort like hugging someone who you barely know. feeling awkward of this gesture but mostly surprised he pats your back a couple times, he doesn't know how to comfort you, he doesn't know you and luckily you start filling in any silence as you start spewing words between shallow breathes and shaky voice.

it doesn't matter to you that this is todoroki, right now you just need to hold onto something, right now you just need to cry and to have someone tell you it's alright. "i've been dat-dating this guy for the last t-three months and it's been going well b-but it's not l-l-like it's official and-and-and he loves his best friend and-" you just keep going, it's barely understandable but he can just about make it all out.

the longer you tell your story the more comfortable he gets in the position he's in, now instead of patting your back he's got his arms wrapped loosely around your lower back, he doubts you could even feel the gesture but he does it anyway, he thinks that if you do it's more comforting and the more you talk he has a feeling that you are comfortable with someone touching you, he really should have worked that one out earlier straight after he opened the door though...

you're crying so much his shirt is getting wet and he hopes midoriya is back soon.

i don't even know if i should post this with tags lmao . i wrote this the last ten minutes before i fell asleep because i thought the idea of it was funny. todoroki is probably realllyyyyy ooc in this but shhhhhh let tired lana giggle at silly things

[fushiguruuzzzz]

xiv  ⊹ ࣪ ˖  Love and (Internal) War 

Series mlist 

Tags — possibly offensive humour, Megumi’s self hatred peeking through, oblivious idiot yn 

Words — 1.2k 

The soft knock echoed throughout your otherwise lifeless room, a reminder that the boy on your mind was more than just text bubbles on a screen. You let out a low sound of acknowledgment, sliding off of your plush bed. The floor felt cold beneath you, the wood pressing firmly against the soles of your feet. 

You opened the door, the hinges creaking ever so quietly in the midst of the nights peace. It was late, very much so, but you were sure many of your neighbours were awake. That’s what students did, cramming everything into one short span of hours, usually at the most inconvenient times of night. By now, though, Megumi was usually asleep. It was something you often teased him for, referred to him as an old man. Truth be told, he just loved sleeping. There wasn’t much more to say. So why was he standing in your hallway looking like a lost dog? 

“Hey,” you said, shuffling to the side as an indirect invitation for him to come in. He took it, though hesitantly, as if he hadn’t been the one to show up here in the first place. “What’s up? Are you okay?” you asked. 

You gently pressed the door closed behind you, lingering in front of it, trying to gauge his mood. Your first instinct was to assume something had happened, something bad. Showing up at your dorm at 2 in the morning was a bold move for any average, semi-social person, let alone for Megumi. He shook his head, as if to shoot down any conclusions you’d jumped to. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. He shoved his hands into the pocket of the hoodie he’d haphazardly thrown on as he left his room, a snoring Yuji in the background. He spoke again, a mumble so quiet you’d think it hurt him to say. “…and I wanted to see you.” 

At this, the tension in your shoulders faded, the harsh lines taking up your face smoothing out. Instead it was replaced by a grin, and the hidden bashfulness that came with the way your heart sped up at his confession. 

“What was that?” you smirked, tilting your head in feigned confusion. 

“Don’t be an asshole,” he deadpanned. You let out a laugh, probably too high in volume for the hour. 

“Yeah, sorry. I missed you too.” 

Your shoulder gently brushed against his as you passed him, and the small touch sent too many sparks flying over his skin. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like that he so desperately tried to avoid that longing, that feeling he only felt upon seeing your face, but somehow always found himself here. Well, not exactly here, but with you. No matter the place, he always found himself chasing you like you were all he needed. Like you were home. Maybe you were. 

You plopped down on the bed, the covers rustling beneath you. You gave a discreet nod to the place beside you, noticing the way he stood near the door, barely moving. Did he have to be so mysterious all of the time? So guarded? 

He sat by your side, looking ahead. Anyone could very easily tell something was bothering him, anyone that knew him well enough, at least. He was more tense than he usually was, his walls seeming higher than ever. Though with added height came the crushing weight on the body of them, leaving cracks and holes for hints of vulnerability to seep from. 

“Megumi,” you whispered, a careful hand finding its home on his shoulder. “Is something wrong?” 

He was silent for a moment, avoiding your eyes as he contemplated whether he would be honest or not. His fingers twitched in his pockets, itching to move. They didn’t. 

“How was your date?” he asked, though a bitter feeling resided in his mouth once he spoke. Was that too forward? Too obvious? Were you about to kick him out and push him away? In his mind, those four simple words were as close to any sort of confession he was ready to give. In the few months since the two of you were reunited, he’d felt his walls be slowly chipped away, no matter how hard he fought it. With you, he just couldn’t. It was inevitable, and he was beginning to feel like that same stupid boy he was all those years ago. Stupid stupid boy, falling for you. In his mind, you were the sun and he was simple one of billions of stars yearning for your light. He could never amount to who he wanted to be, to be what you deserved. Wait.. falling for you? Had he just admitted that to himself? 

You paused. Was that what was wrong? Your date? You didn’t understand why such a thing would bother him, let alone enough for him to lose sleep and show up at your dorm in the earliest hours of the morning. “It was nice… he’s nice. Why? Do you not like him?” 

He stole a quick glance at you, softly shaking his head. “I’m not exactly fond of him, no.” 

“Oh?” you said, tilting your head softly to the side. “I didn’t know.” 

“I didn’t expect you to,” he said, shrugging. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to talk about him.” He let out a soft sigh, mindlessly grabbing a book off of your nightstand. He was all too aware of your hand on his shoulder, how close you were sitting to him, and it felt wrong. He shouldn’t be feeling this way. He didn’t deserve it. 

“Mm,” he said, examining the cover. He felt an odd need to make conversation, which made him sure he was losing it. When was he ever one to speak when not necessary? Who even was he? You took notice of this, knowing that he must’ve just been distracting himself from whatever deeper level of the situation was nagging at him. “You have good taste in books,” he said. 

For some reason, the compliment sounded much better coming from him than it did from Noritoshi. You summed it up to the fact that Megumi was more familiar, which wasn’t completely a lie, but… you knew better than that. 

You spent the next couple of hours talking about everything and nothing in between comfortable silences and shared looks. Whether it was literature, your classes, your friends, hell, you even talked about politics, it was all so comfortable with him. Things felt as if they were meant to be that way. And then, before you knew it, the two of you were slumped against eachother, halfway lying down as you slept in each others arms. He’d mindlessly held you in his sleep, something that came to him subconsciously, as if embracing you was muscle memory. You hadn’t protested, even as you stirred and occasionally gained some of your consciousness. It was just one night, wasn’t it? At least he was sleeping at all. You were just comforting him, that was all. 

Neither of you would voice it, but it was the best you’d slept in a long time. 

Taglist !¡ —

@1l-ynn @meowymeowbreow @missunrise @kiss-my-asscheeks @starrysho @good-mourning0 @gumims @beaniesayshi @mrowwww @luvvmae @megumislovedoll @azharyy @starsryi @tibibibi123 @idkidk32 @dazaisfavgf @tlissablr @vi0let-writes @walllflowerrrsss @sh0ot1ngst4r @blubearxy @tvnamayo @san-it-is-i-guess @harryzcherry

sighhh I love them lwk been distracted from bttoh tho been nurturing the farmhand yuji fic a lil too much… nb gonna read ts are they cries anyway ermmmm can you guys not kill me or yourselves after the coming chapters release pretty please… with a cherry on top…

[hunnysahara]

˗ˏˋ 𝒲𝒽𝓎’𝒹 𝒴𝑜𝓊 𝒪𝓃𝓁𝓎 𝒞𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝑀𝑒 𝒲𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝒴𝑜𝓊’𝓇𝑒 𝐻𝒾𝑔𝒽? ˎˊ˗

Hamzah x fem!reader

It's harder and harder to get you to listen, more I get through the gears. Incapable of making alright decisions and having bad ideas.

Premise: Your ex friends with benefits calls you in the middle of the night and you know before you answer why he’s ringing you.

CW: cannabis usage / suggestive / crude + sexual language

WC: 2.6k

The soft glow of your phone screen fractures the darkness like a sliver of unwelcome light, casting long shadows across the room. It's the dead of night when the world holds its breath in a hush, yet here you are, wide-eyed, heart knocking gently against your ribs. You had been unpleasantly woken from your sleep by the sound of your phone vibrating itself off your bedside table.

Hamzah's name lingers on your screen. The messages spill one after another, frantic and garbled, like a stream you can't dam—misspelled words, scattered thoughts like he had thrown scrabble tiles together to form texts.

You aren't even able to fully read one message before it's replaced with another. You throw your phone down beside you on your bed, running your hands down your face and grumbling. It had been months since you heard from Hamzah.

The two of you had a very casual friend-with-benefits relationship though you took the initiative to end it when there was a landslide shift and the unceremonious hookups turned into mumbled confessions against your neck. It was too intimate, it breached the contract the two of you initially agreed on.

Though here he was, blowing up your phone like he would die without another word from you.

The phone buzzes again, his caller ID taking over the screen of your phone. You groan, your thumb hovering over the screen, debating whether to answer just to tell him to stop, to leave you alone. Maybe then, maybe if you hear the slur in his voice, the edge of something broken and far away, he'll finally understand that you're not his to call anymore.

The phone lights up again, and this time, you answer.

"Hamzah, stop."

"I knew you'd pick up," His words are thick like velvet, his voice groggy and coarse.

"Why are you calling me?" You ask, voice sharp like a bullet through skin.

"I just wanna hear your voice," On the other end, you can practically hear the smile in his voice. The way the words drowsily fall from his lips brings you to one conclusion.

"You're high?"

"Perchance," He takes a sharp inhale. After a moment of virtual silence, he giggles and coughs eventually settling down "Fine, you caught me. I'm very high."

"What do you want?"

"Why are you being so mean? I just wanted to say hi," There's a hint of playfulness in his voice and you can imagine him sprawled out in bed, hair a mess and glassy eyes half drawn.

Your head throbs as he jumps from one half-finished thought to another, rambling through memories like they're fresh scabs he needs to pick at, unravelling every thread you've tried so hard to tie up neatly. "Maybe I'm being mean because you called me at three AM."

"Yeah, that's kinda annoying," He laughs to himself. His voice filters through the phone, slick with an edge of playfulness that sends a ripple of irritation through you. "It's been too long since I've seen you," Hamzah says, drawing out the word in a lazy, teasing way that always used to make you laugh. But tonight, it feels grating like sand paper against your skull.

"Not long enough." You press the phone tighter to your ear, walking barefoot across the cold floor to the kitchen. The hardwood creaks under your steps, and the cool air feels sharp against your skin.

"Oh, how you hurt me," He adds a tinge of melodrama to his sarcasm.

"Hamzah," you sigh, but he barely gives you a second to speak.

"Did I wake you up?" He pauses to take a breath and you can hear the blunt crackling, and paper shuffling in the background.

"Yeah, you did."

"My bad, my bad-" He coughs again "What are you wearing? Is it that Grateful Dead shirt that hangs off your shoulder?"

You look down at your pyjamas, you were in fact wearing the Grateful Dead that hung off your shoulder and draped past your hips. "No." You lie through your teeth.

"Damn," He mutters before his brain hooks on another ramble "Remember that time—God, you were wearing that little white sundress, you remember?—and we went to that park with the swings? You kept pretending you were too good to be on a swing, but you ended up laughing like a kid when I pushed you too high."

You roll your eyes, frustration simmering beneath the surface. His tone is light, and flirtatious, like he's trying to conjure up a nostalgia that never quite sat right with you. The kitchen light flickers to life as you reach for a glass, the soft hum of the fridge barely audible over his rambling.

"Hamzah," you cut in, more firmly this time, holding the phone between your ear and shoulder as you twist the tap open. The sound of water hitting the glass is oddly soothing, something real and grounded amidst the chaos of his voice. "You're not making any sense."

"No, I think I'm making sense. You just don't wanna admit it." There's a slurred chuckle on the other end. "Come on, don't be like that. I know you're smiling right now. You miss this."

You can practically hear the smirk in his voice, and it makes your skin crawl. You take a sip of water, trying to quench the heat building in your chest. He always does this—twisting every conversation into something flirtatious, something playful.

"I'm not smiling, I’m frowning if anything," you reply flatly, setting the glass down with a little more force than necessary. "And you really need to stop calling me in the middle of the night. This isn't funny."

"But it's not the same during the day," he says with a laugh that feels too close, too familiar. "Night's that thing in that one song- made for saying things you can't say another day," He paraphrases poorly. His voice lowers, taking on that soft, honeyed tone he used to use when he wanted to get his way. 

Your jaw tightens as you lean against the counter, fingers tapping impatiently against the cold surface. He's pushing, and it's infuriating how easily he slips back into this—this game of his, like he can flirt his way out of the chaos he's caused.

"Hamzah, I don't have time for this. You're high. Again."

"And you're still talking to me, aren't you?" he teases, his voice laced with a kind of smug satisfaction. "You didn't have to answer. Y'know there's this magical button on your phone that makes it so I can't message you? I think that you want to talk to me."

The audacity in his tone sends a spark of anger through you, your fingers curling around the edge of the counter. He always knows how to toe the line, to keep you teetering between frustration and the pull of something that's sweet on your tongue but now feels like quicksand.

You take a deep breath, forcing yourself to stay calm. "Hamzah, I'm not doing this. You need to hang up and sleep this off."

There's a pause, and for a second, you think he's going to listen. But then he chuckles softly, voice dripping with mischief.

"You're so hot when you're mad at me."

You nearly groan aloud, the exhaustion catching up with you in waves. This is pointless. You've been here before, hearing the same lines, feeling the same tired tug of emotions you've long since buried. But there's a part of you—a small, quiet part—that almost misses this, misses the ease with which he used to reel you in. And that's what makes it worse.

"Hamzah," you start, your voice sharper now, "go to sleep. Seriously."

"What if I told you that I really missed you?" He adds like it sweetens the deal. 

"I would tell you that I don't care."

"When did you turn so cold on me?" 

You pause, the phone still pressed against your ear. "Hamzah," you mutter, exasperation thick in your voice. The glass of water in your hand feels heavy, like a tether pulling you back into his orbit, even as you stand there in the dim kitchen, staring out at the quiet darkness outside the window.

"Just hear me out," he says, voice too smooth for someone who's supposed to be slurring. "I think me and you should do something together."

You don't answer, your hand moving on autopilot as you rinse the glass and set it down in the sink. There was always a certain ease between you and Hamzah, but that was before it got complicated, before the lines blurred. You clench your jaw, stepping away from the kitchen and into the hall, eyes scanning the house for some chore to distract you, to keep your mind from wandering back to those nights.

"Come on," he continues, undeterred. "I know you heard me."

You sigh, frustration buzzing beneath your skin, but your feet carry you to the living room where a few stray magazines and an old blanket still sit crumpled on the couch. Might as well tidy up while he babbles. Maybe if you let him talk himself out, he'll fall asleep or something. You grab the blanket, folding it with quick, jerky movements as he keeps talking.

"Can I come over?" He asks abruptly.

"No?" You furrow your eyebrows "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Damn, I really thought that would work."

As you sit down at the kitchen table, leaning your head into your hand, you notice the faint hum of traffic coming through the phone—tires on wet pavement, the distant growl of an engine passing by. Your brow furrows and a flicker of concern sparks through your irritation.

"Where are you, Hamzah?" you ask, voice sharper than you intended. It's late, and the sound of traffic at this hour doesn't fit into the picture of him sprawled out in bed, half-asleep and rambling, like you'd assumed.

"Why do you want to know?"

"So you don't show up at my house."

He chuckles to himself "Why on earth would I do that?"

"Maybe because you're obsessed with me?"

"I'm not- no, yeah. I am obsessed with you." There it was, the confidence that he so lacked when he was sober. With the help of cannabis, his tongue was as loose as his morals.

You press your lips together, gaze flicking toward the window, though the night outside your house is still and quiet, completely unlike the soundscape on the other end of the line. You disregard his admission "So, where are you?"

"I'm... walking. Clearing my head or whatever."

Your chest tightens, frustration mixing with a flicker of something you wish wasn't there—worry. "Walking where?" you press, though part of you already knows he's not going to give you a straight answer.

"Just around. Nowhere dangerous, alright? You don't have to freak out." He tries to sound nonchalant, but there's an edge to his voice that betrays him. 

"Hamzah, you shouldn't be out right now. It's late, and you're—" You pause, choosing your words carefully. "You're not in the best headspace to be wandering around." You're caught between the urge to scream at him or call Martin to pick him up and haul him home.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine," he cuts in, that cocky smile returning to his voice. "I'm always fine, babe. You worry too much."

You want to hang up, to cut the thread between you and the mess that is Hamzah, but the thought of him alone, on some random street at this hour, makes it hard to press the button. "Go home," you say softly, barely above a whisper.

"Stay on the phone with me a little longer, alright? I'm almost home anyway," Hamzah pleads, voice taking on that boyish, playful tone you've heard too many times.

You rub your temples, eyes drifting toward the clock on the wall. It's well into the night, and here you are, listening to him stumble through whatever story he's trying to spin. "You always say that," you mutter. "But somehow, you're always ten minutes from home."

"Hey, it's not my fault time slows down when I'm talking to you," he says with a sly grin you can practically hear. "Like, relativity or something. I saw that in the Spider-Verse movie."

You roll your eyes, walking back toward the kitchen to grab another glass of water, your mouth feeling particularly dry. "You would know."

"Didn't we see that together when it came out?" He asks to no answer. "We should watch it again."

"I don't think so," You lean against the counter, cradling your glass as his words wash over you.

"I want to see you, I like the way you laugh," He humbles "That's why I was such a goof around you. I didn't mind embarrassing myself because it made you smile and god- that smile..."

 "I don't really care what you want."

Hamzah lets out a low whistle "And yet, here you are," he shoots back quickly. "Still on the phone. Ah- I got you there."

You lean back against the counter, the weight of his words sinking in. He's right, of course. You're still here, still wrapped up in this bizarre late-night conversation, still listening as he spirals through his endless stream of nonsense. There's an odd comfort in the banter, as much as you hate yourself for it, there's safety in the familiarity.

"Yeah, yeah," you say finally, shaking your head. "You know how to run your mouth. That's about the only thing you're good at."

"Hey, don't forget I'm a man of many talents," Hamzah quips, the humour softening just a little. "And one of them is keeping you on the line way longer than you should be."

"Trust me, I'm very aware," you mutter, though there's a strange warmth behind your words now.

"Yeah, but you still picked up," he says, almost gently this time, his voice losing some of that playful edge. "That's gotta mean something, right?"

"I wouldn't bet on it."

"Do you miss me? Like at all?" He asks, the words falling from his lips with ease "You can be honest." 

You roll your eyes, though there's a slight warmth blooming in your chest despite your irritation. "Please, Hamzah," you deadpan, pacing slowly across the kitchen. "Do you ever stop?"

A knock sounds from your front door, sharp and unexpected. You freeze, turning toward the noise, the sound cutting through the warmth of your late-night banter like a cold breeze. Your heart skips a beat, the suddenness of the interruption making your stomach twist with an uneasy kind of tension. "Hang on," you mutter into the phone, already moving toward the door. "Someone's at my-"

You trail off, eyes narrowing as another knock echoes through the quiet house. Your pulse quickens, a strange feeling creeping up the back of your neck as you grip the phone a little tighter.

As you open the door, the cold air hits you first, followed by the sight of someone standing on your doorstep. Your breath catches for a moment when you see him. There, leaning casually against the doorframe with that signature lazy grin, is Hamzah.

"What the fuck," You draw out. 

"C'mon, don't be like that," Hamzah says, giving you a crooked grin. His phone is still pressed to his ear—well, it is until he lowers it slowly, that playful glint in his eyes growing even more mischievous as he hangs up, ending the call without a word. “So- are you gonna let me in?”

[artdcnaldson]

Cat i may be going crazy but f2f by sza is so reader who dated Art and they broke up so she fucks Patrick to feel closer to him are you seeing my vision here

🪞

I’m literally seeing the vision so clearly…. You know it’s serious when I add a gif or a picture…. So….

Sighhhh… thinking….. maybe you were just an affair for Art. Kind of prodigy AU in the sense that you’re a tennis player who clearly idolizes him and starts an affair with him, but you get a little too obvious in interviews. You talk about how great and wonderful Art is and how he’s improved your game so much and you’re so grateful for his mentorship and all this gushy shit. It would be sweet if you could shut your mouth. It would be sweet if you weren’t clearly in love with a married man.

Like oh it’s so obvious. You look at him with these wide fuck-me eyes and cling to his side at events… so it’s not a surprise that he has to brush you off. Tashi’s going to figure it out (as if she hasn’t figured it out already), so you need to split so his marriage isn’t ruined. The marriage that he complained to you about every single time you got together and fucked. That marriage that he apparently cares so much about now.

You’re at a 250 in Florida when you meet Patrick. Well, you actively seek him out, really. You swipe left on every man on tinder until you find him. You look at his profile, littered with some bullshit about not wanting anything serious and having a huge dick. Whatever. You swipe. You instantly match.

You know Patrick. Know of Patrick. Not just from his remarkably atrocious reputation, but from Art too. He might have just been using you as his own personal fuck toy, but you were good listener too. You retained all of that angst and longing and hatred for his former doubles partner, you remembered.

Patrick knows you. Knows of you. He knows that pathetic little voice as you coo into a microphone about how lovely Art Donaldson is, how he’s a legend, how you’re his biggest fan and you’re oh, so lucky to experience his skill in person. And he also knows how just last week, when someone brought Art up in an interview, you shut it down fast, you pivoted in this beautiful, media trained way that he had to admire.

He knows why you’re across from him at a low lit bar. It smells like cigarettes and the floor is sticky. Your shoes are too expensive to wear in a place like this, but he’s glad you wore them. They’ll look really nice dangling over his shoulders. He doesn’t feel bad for jumping to that conclusion, not when your conversation had been so blunt.

Patrick: Do you want drinks first or do you want to come straight to my hotel?

You: Drinks. We’ll see if we make it to your hotel.

“Your boyfriend broke up with you, huh?” He says as you sit at the bar beside him, looking far too pretty with your manicured nails picking at a bar that’s been carved into by pocketknives and broken glass.

You make a face, annoyed, hurt— big puppy dog eyes that make Patrick think that make he should fuck you on all fours so he doesn’t have to see that pining expression. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You order a cosmo, and you talk about tennis… for a little while.

But it’s not long before his hands start wandering, and when he touches you, you think about the videos of them celebrating big tournament wins as teenagers— jumping and grabbing at each other, so close they could have kissed. It’s like Art’s touching you when he touches you, in a way.

And you don’t make it back to his hotel. You barely make it to the car before he’s pinning you to the scratched paint job, slipping his big, warm hand between your thighs so he can cup your cunt. You melt into it, relish in it. His hands are calloused, a bit like Art’s were, only Art’s were softer, better cared for.

Maybe Art will find out. He wouldn’t Like it. He’d call you a crazy fucking bitch for fucking someone like Patrick, just to get back at him. Well, it’s not revenge if he’ll never know.

It’s just Patrick, with his big hands groping your ass, and his hot mouth on your tits. It’s the feeling of crumbs digging into your skin when he gets you on your back, and you have to throw a half-drunk Gatorade bottle onto the floor to get comfortable. He peels off your panties with his teeth but doesn’t bother to go down on you.

The first time you fucked Art had been in the big backseat of his Jeep. God, he’d even planned for it, because he had a blanket for you to lay on top of. Parked in the corner of the tennis club where you were practicing. Cramped into the backseat, and he still made a point to eat your pussy until you were slick with spit and cum and begging for him to fuck you properly.

You do end up with your legs on Patrick’s shoulders, with your heels dangling precariously from your toes as he rocks your body (and the axels of his car) with rough, punishing thrusts. Folded in half in the backseat, he fucks you like he knows that you’re using him. Might as well return the favor. There’s no kissing, no sweet nothings whispered. He doesn’t even rub your clit to get you there. That’s your job.

He does take the time to be a grade-A asshole, though. “You’re so tight,” mumbled into your ear. “Can’t believe Art fucked you. You feel like a virgin.”

And, well, if the mention of Art gets you off, if you cum with nothing more that the feel of Patrick’s cock bullying into your cunt and the whisper of your ex-lovers name in your ear. Well, that’s not leaving the dirty backseat of Patrick’s CR-V.