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twst-campos13 · 4 years ago

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may i,,, request jack and deuce scenario with them studying in the library,,, they touch hands,,, and they all nervous and shy together,,, romantic-like- but they're not dating yet HAHAHAHA thank you plz take care of urself~

Hello!! This is my first shipping request to have received qvq! I’m very sorry that this took so long but I hope you enjoy it !! （=´∇｀=）/

Warnings: none! Tags: fluff, idiots pining, study date

“The braincell gets passed around here” GROUPCHAT

[Isekai Therapist: Hey guys! Sorry, I can’t come to our study group rn. Grim threw up a whole lunch and I have to take him to the infirmary.]

[“I’m gonna bench press a thousand truck”: Vil is being a pain in the fuckin ass as usual :) ] [“I’m gonna bench press a thousand truck”: Sorry]

[Cabbage boy: Lilia-sama called me for an important duty! My apologies!]

[The Responsible One: Oh. That’s understandable.] [The Responsible One: It’s okay.]

[🐣Chicc baby🐣: Yeah, that’s okay! I think I got here early anyway] [🐣Chicc baby🐣: And Ace?]

[♥️Bitchppola♥️: I forgot im on flamingo duty. Sorry babe]

[🐣Chicc baby🐣: Did you call me babe?]

[♥️Bitchppola♥️: Not like anyone is going to be jealous ;) ]

[Isekai Therapist: no flirting pls]

[Isekai Therapist: Jack, Deuce, we’re sorry for not coming!! I hope you two find some time to study]

Around fifteen minutes before their meeting time on a Thursday, the ones they anticipated to come did not come at all. Well, it is not that surprising, but still, the two of them were still surprised.

Jack knows that Epel will be particularly busy at this time of the month. Deuce knows that Ace does have a habit of canceling at the last minute, but he will not do that if he is the one organizing a study session. Both of them knows that Sebek and Yuu do have their own endeavors to attend to.

It is somehow underwhelming.

“Well…” Deuce sighs, tucking his phone back inside his pocket dejectedly. He and Jack had been standing in front of the library doors for quite some time now and waited for their friends to show up. They agreed to meet there at around 4 PM at least to study. Authentic assessments and written tests are starting to loom over them, and they did not want to fail, so Ace suggested they “combine all their braincells on Thursday 4 PM and teach each other.”

But there is no sign of the redhead nor any of their peers. “I guess we can try and meet up again tomorrow.” Deuce gives Jack an apologetic smile. He was looking forward to studying with the wolf. In their last study session, he had learned so much when Jack was leading. Deuce is also excited to show Jack his own set of organized notes. Unfortunately, your plans do not always go smoothly. That is why there is a next time. Hopefully always a next time.

“You’re leaving?” Jack asks when Deuce is about to take his leave. The Heartslabyul first year looks at him with mild surprise. “Uh…yeah? We can’t really do a “study group” when there’s no group to study with,” he tries to answer lightheartedly but hearing what he said somehow sounded a bit rude. Deuce grimaced. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Deuce is not sure what kind of reaction Jack’s natural scowl is suggesting. “It’s fine, you didn’t mean anything wrong,” Jack assures him. “Besides, you’re kinda right. Though, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t cancel our session.”

The suggestion catches his attention and Deuce feels his energy come back with renewed vigor. If Jack wants to continue with their study plan then that means Deuce will be able to learn more from him and he can show Jack what he had learned!

“Even if it’s just the two of us?” Deuce asks, nearly bouncing on his feet despite his cautiousness. Jack gives him a grin—a voice at the back of Deuce’s mind comments how cute it is—and shrugged. “Yeah, why not? It’s still a study session.”

“Then let’s do it!” Deuce pounds his fist into his open palm, a grin stretching across his face as relief washes over him.

Jack feels his ear suddenly tug down when he sees how excited Deuce is that their study session is not canceled. He has to admit, his eagerness is admirable. Deuce takes the chances of being a great honor student wholeheartedly. Sure, he cheated one time, but he was serious when he said he would not do it again. Jack can see what a hard-working person Deuce is. It is what made Jack suggest that they could study together instead. It is not for anything else, come on, he is just helping a friend out.

When Deuce is motivated to study because he is with a trusted friend, Jack is motivated to teach him because he is willing to learn.

They entered the library quietly and behaved, not letting their shoes squeak against the floor unlike a few second years at the end of the room. The two first years greeted the librarian right after Professor Crewel left. Deuce thought it would be rude to interrupt the two adults that were seemingly caught in their own moments.

When Professor Crewel passed by them, he gave them an approving glance at their studying materials. It is not too ambitious to hope for extra credit points because a teacher saw you studying, right?

After signing their names on the logbook, they took a seat on one of the long tables juxtaposing the bookshelves. Deuce still feels a tingle of déjà vu when he visits the library. It feels like long ago when he, Ace, Yuu, and Grim were discussing their plan of fighting Riddle during a magic duel. Now, here he is, sitting beside one of the people he admired to study for a test.

Does Deuce think that Jack does not notice his staring? Jack wants to ignore his friend and continues to lay out their study notes neatly on the table to avoid clutter. Yet, when he is finished, Deuce is still dazing out. Only then did Jack stares back at him did he blinked out of his starry state.

“Was there something on my face?” Jack asks with an arch of his eyebrow. Deuce shakes his head, chuckling awkwardly, and looks away with pink ears. “N-No no! I was just lost in my own thought. I’m sorry for staring,” he apologizes and lays out his own study materials to start. “Do you want to start with Potions first?”

He changed the subject to put behind that brief awkward moment. Jack has no complaints about that and opens his book. “Sure. Ace mentioned you have some notes about the uses of dragon blood?”

“Twelve—I mean yes!” Deuce reaches for his Potions notebook, immediately flipping over the pages where he wrote the information. From the blur of white pages, Jack notices how organized Deuce makes his notes are. When he truly wants to understand something, Deuce does his best to create his own little keywords and highlights that connect to the topic he took note of. Jack’s ears twitch at the arrows and underlines across the page. Deuce sounds to be rambling about the dragon blood, but Jack is more interested in what he wrote in his notebook that he leans forward in interest.

The proximity startles the Heartslabyul student that Jack straightens his posture when Deuce squeaked. They look at each other, equally surprised. “Do…do you want to look at my notes?” Deuce offers, assuming Jack wants to for he leaned his head so forward they nearly bumped temples. Deuce could not help but feel pride warm his chest. Wolves have good eyesight and Jack could have scanned over his notes without leaning over. But the fact that he did lean over just shows that Deuce’s notes had intrigued him!

In contrast to the happy taps of Deuce’s heart, Jack’s is hammering. He could not believe he appeared so entranced by the patterns on Deuce’s notebook. He is about to apologize for his rudeness when he sees the twinkle of happiness in his friend’s eyes. The peacock greens appear brighter and rounder that Jack might as well see imaginary stars pop up beside Deuce’s head.

His adorable expression makes his ear twitch and for some reason his cheeks warm. Deuce does not notice this. He is waiting for Jack’s answer who blinks and looks away. “Uh—yeah, sure.”

The cute smile Deuce wears on his face is very similar to a puppy who just got rewarded. Seeing him get happy over praise and recognition stirs something in Jack’s chest. He does not understand why his tail is idly wagging at seeing Deuce’s smile and eagerness as accepting praise over one’s hard work should be natural. He should not be this adorable.

Wait—adorable? Jack, this is not the time to be dumbstruck! They have a test to study for, Seven’s sake. Jack should get serious. He wants Deuce to pass his test as well, so he should not get distracted and help out his friend to the best of his abilities.

It is challenging when it should not be. Deuce is an easy student to teach. He listens and asks questions for clarification when he does not get it the first time. Jack could say this study session has been going smoothly so far…with a few minor bumps. Metaphorical and literal bumps.

The table is not occupied by anyone else but them. However, they still need to speak in hushed tones to avoid distracting the other visitors in the library. Because of this, their proximity progressively narrows, occasionally brushing elbows or shoulders with each other. Do they shy away from this? No, of course not. Jack and Deuce are buddies. Being close just means they are comfortable with each other. So where did the awkward atmosphere come from?

Deny it as much as he will, but Jack has a crush on Deuce. Their closeness would not have been a problem if the slightest brush would not send sparks up Jack’s nerves. It does not make him jumpy or snappy, but it does make him a little tense that he had to brush it off to Deuce as being cold. Which, to normal people, would be a far-fetched reason, but Deuce seems to take the excuse anyway.

Deuce is equally tensed as Jack is but only a little bit. He is used to the subtle kinship for he sees Jack as a close friend. This just means that they are comfortable with each other as bros. There is no hidden feelings or subtext with their simple study session. In fact, Deuce welcomes the warm feeling over his chest. He feels absolutely elated to be able to learn more with Jack. Perhaps their other friends being unable to come is meant for this moment to happen.

And it seems Jack shares the same thoughts as he does for the realization hit him harder than the level of intimacy they are sharing. The Savanaclaw student stops his teeth from gritting. Those guys…they can be smart when they want to. Jack does not want to assume but he can deliberate that they purposely did not attend so they can set up Deuce and him on an impromptu study date. Well, not really impromptu, but still.

Even without confessing it out loud it seems that they had caught on that he likes Deuce. Jack tries not to be transparent and keeps up a front, but Ace pointed out that his ears and tail had snitched on him. It takes anyone with eyes to know he is into his best friend, as Ace had said.

Had Deuce caught on like he did? Jack does not think so. His friend’s nose is buried deep in his Magic History book—the next subject they are studying on. Jack stops highlighting some important pointers on his own book and stares at how the peacock green color of his eyes seems to flutter as it absorbs the lesson. Jack notices that Deuce’s eyebrows crease slightly when concentrating and he even mutters the words to understand them better. His voice makes Jack’s ears twitch. He is so curious to watch and soon Jack feels the tense air thin out between them.

Deuce’s scent is comforting. When he is idle, like this, Jack could feel the coolness of his scent, almost like mint. It is not a bold scent but rather a soft one. Like timidness waiting to slowly burst.

Like his bubble when those peacock greens swiftly stare back at him.

His tail stops wagging—it was wagging?!!—and his eyes quickly dart back to his own textbook. That was a close one. He cannot let himself get distracted again. Infatuation is alright but Jack doubts it will develop into something like puppy love. Better to focus on the origins of Merlin than the origin of their love story.

Deuce feels himself flinch a little when Jack looked away. His guarded expression makes him feel distant. The library is already quiet yet the silence falling unto them makes it more awkward. Deuce, while hoping his friend does not mind, inches his seat closer to Jack. The proximity from before made him feel comfortable and he wishes to feel that comfort again.

However, Jack flinches from the sudden brush of their arms. Deuce internally panics and stuttered an apology. “S-Sorry—it’s just, well, it’s—” He is cut off from Jack holding onto his arm before he can even scoot away. The warmness of his chest creeps up to his cheeks. Jack’s ears fold briefly before it points up. “You can stay close…so—so we can hear each other.” Jack looks like he is pouting but it might be Deuce’s imagination.

Well, nonetheless, he softly smiles at his friend, thankful that Jack did not push him away.

Jack removes his hand from Deuce’s arm so that they may focus on their lesson thoroughly. There is a little part of them, however, that wishes they may able to hold each other closer during their study session.

Bonus:

“Operation: Jack of Spades” GROUPCHAT

[mamayuu: they're doing it!! they're hanging out!! wohooo!!]

[the sexy one: TOLD YOU IT WOULD WORK] [the sexy one: HAH] [the sexy one: YALL BITCHES OWE ME 10 MADOLS]

[Yeehaw, bitch: I'm already broke and this is the shit you do]

[the supportive one: A deal is a fair deal. Although, I almost doubted you, Ace]

[the sexy one: ya shouldn't have lmao]

[Yeehaw, bitch: okay but are they gonna start dating after this?]

[the sexy one: wanna bet on it?]

[mamayuu: again?? ace all of us are broke]

[the supportive one: I will choose to stay out of this]

[the sexy one: epel?]

[Yeehaw, bitch: unlikely. 20 madols]

[the sexy one: okay fair]

[mamayuu: 30 madols. they arent that dense. besides, Jack will confess after this if we give him more push]

[the sexy one: make it 50 and we’ll call it a night]

#fullcowling #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland fanfic #twisted wonderland scenario #twst #jack x deuce #what is their ship name #jack of spades?#its cuuuute #your honor they have a bromance #jack howl #deuce spades #deuce spade #i still dont know if the fandom uses spades or spade #this was relatively shorter than my previous scenarios but thats fine!!

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jamaiskookie · 4 years ago

Text

How To Ask Your Crush Out: A Guide For Dummies [knj x reader]

⚖ warnings: intense amount of crack and very very trashy writing

⚖ word count: 3.3k (very smol boi today, just wanted to get this little drabble out)

⚖ genre: crackity fluff; my specialty :-)

⚖ A/N: been preparing for halloween so forgive me for the short fic, i’ve been pUMPING out content for you guys recently.

masterlist asks

⚖ synopsis: Prof. Kim Namjoon is pleased and delighted to present his new class: How To Ask Your Crush Out For Dummies; A comprehensive, follow-along six step guide for the introverted and shy.

A triumphant Kim Namjoon jumps into frame in front of the huge chalkboard in a huge lecture hall, holding a piece of white chalk in one hand and a pointer in the other, with a slightly maniacal grin stretched on his face. His black thick rimmed glasses are crooked and skewed, sitting on the bridge of his nose, completely lopsided. He’s been awake for- oh he doesn’t keep count. Possibly 28 hours by now.

“Good afternoon, everyone!” (It’s 6 in the morning, and nobody is in the audience.) He stretches out the long, metal chalkboard pointer, who he has named Bertha, and smacks it against the chalkboard. It echoes through the empty hall. He secretly loves the sound the long pointer makes. It’s so satisfying, and the fact that he got it on Amazon Prime for only like 2 dollars makes the sound so much better.

“Welcome to today’s class!” He’s still talking to an empty room. It might be the desperation in him, or just his good ole’ friend sleep deprivation fueling his somewhat insane behaviour. “Today I am completely focused on solving the greatest mystery I have ever encountered in my lifetime. Arguably, this is the most scrutinised cold case ever seen in the world. Today we’ll be tackling: How To Ask Your Crush Out. Would anybody like to start off by introducing themselves, their crush, and how long you’ve been infatuated? Hm?” Crickets.

“Ah, there’s nobody here!” Namjoon exclaims cheerfully, as if he only just realised. He swings back, turning to the chalkboard and continues teaching. “My name is Kim Namjoon, or Professor Kim to you,” Again, completely empty room. “And I have had a crush on Y/N L/N for almost two years now.” His smile falters when he realises it really has been two whole years. Clearing his throat, he smacks an A3 sized picture of a pretty girl onto the chalkboard.

You are wearing a long cardigan sweater in the photo, candidly reading with headphones wrapped around your neck. Namjoon has written a barely visible small ‘Y/N, October 4th’ on the top corner of the picture. He’s always had a bit of a photography hobby, but his pictures always seem to turn out better when you are the subject.

It’s a bit odd how you look so much better when you don’t know he’s taking a photo. All the selfies and old pictures from university he has of you are just as beautiful, but there’s something ethereal about you in your natural state. Sitting down and reading a book in a library. That photo is miles better than any of the stupidly extensive photo-ops you plan out for your Instagram pictures. He stares at the photo before turning back to the (imaginary) class.

“Let me introduce the- as the kids say- lomél. I believe this is an abbreviation for Love Of My Life. L-O-M-L, if anybody wants to write the spelling down.” He swerves Bertha around to point at your picture. “This,” He says, seriously. “Is Y/N L/N, my… my friend since freshman year of university. I have never confessed my feelings to her, despite trying many, many times. Today, we’re going to trouble-shoot and hopefully solve this problem, while examining a shy person’s abilities to socialise and freely have a love life.” Namjoon ignores the small voice in his head that mentions how a successful Philosophy professor who speaks in front of hundreds of students every day such as himself should be able to say ‘I like you’ to the girl he’s had a painfully obvious crush on for the past two years.

“Step ONE:” Namjoon yells, writing a big ‘1’ on the chalkboard. “Do not start off a confession by mentioning a Confucius quote if your crush is not in the philosophy or ethics community! They will not understand no matter how obvious it is!” On the chalkboard, he draws an old man with droopy eyebrows and huge beard- Confucius. Then he draws a huge circle around it and crosses it out with a line using so much force he almost breaks the piece of chalk in his hand.

“In fact, just don’t mention anything about philosophers! And don’t try to confess to them through a math problem, they will not understand!” Namjoon winces. He learned that one the hard way. (He asked you to isolate ‘1’ in ⅓ < 3, which is a seventh-grade level inequality. You had pushed him away and yelled at him for making you do math. The answer to the inequality equation would have been 1 < 3u.) ((1 < 3u = I <3 you. He thought it was pretty obvious.))

He draws a subtraction and addition sign and draws another circle, crossing through it.

“Step TWO!” Namjoon shouts, cringing at the horrible scratchy noise the chalk makes against the board. “If you do get the chance to confess to them and manage to get through without substantially embarrassing yourself, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT laugh and agree if they ask if you are joking! They will! Laugh along with you! While you try! To hide your pain!”

“I cannot emphasise this enough!” Namjoon is basically screaming by now. He hopes nobody from campus comes in to complain. The picture of you on the board with the symbols that he’s drawn along with the big ‘FLIRTING AND DATING 101’ written on the top of the board could lead to some severe misunderstandings. “Do not laugh if that ever happens again- I mean, if it ever happens to you! It’s more likely than you would think if you are in love with a dumbass! It will happen! Misinterpretations and concerns will happen! Learn from them!” Namjoon writes a huge ‘laughing to hide the pain = bad ❌’ onto the board.

“Does anybody have any questions?” More crickets.

“Okay then, moving on!” Namjoon writes a ‘3’ below the notes for step 2. “Step THREE: Confessing via call, facetime, or handwritten letter would be optimal for the average introvert. I suggest a handwritten letter would be best for this kind of confession. Still not ideal, but it gets the job done. Can someone tell me why a handwritten letter would be better than a call, facetime, or anything on the internet?” Without waiting for his non-existent introvert class to respond, he snaps his fingers, a satisfied look on his face. “That’s right! Facetiming or hearing your crush’s voice would be too nerve wracking and inevitably, you’ll mess up and say something like ‘Did you know that Barbie’s real name is Barbara Millicent Roberts’ instead of ‘I’ve liked you for two years’... I do not speak from experience.”

Awkwardly, he clears his throat again, averting his eyes from literally nobody. “Texting would not be good! Texting is considered insensitive and is not a good way to confess your feelings. If the idea of a face to face confession is too intimidating or not ideal in your introverted situation, the aforementioned options would be your best choices. I strongly advise you to stick to those three. In order of a likelihood for a successful confession, it goes: Letter, facetime, then call.” He writes ‘letter > facetime > call > speaking in real life (?)’ on the board.

“hoWEVER,” He says, pointing at the large ‘3’ he wrote with Bertha. “If you do end up choosing to write a handwritten letter- write this down, this is an important note- do NOT forget to sign your name! Your crush will end up throwing it away thinking it’s a random admirer or a prank. MAKE SURE TO WRITE THIS DOWN!” On the board, he writes down ‘My name → Kim Namjoon.’ He nods thoughtfully. “Yes,” He says. “It’s important to write your name.” He mutters it over and over, staring glazed at the words written on the board.

Close to bursting into tears, he grabs a hold of his hair and cradles his head in his hands. “Why didn’t you write your fucking name, Namjoon?” He frustratingly mutters to himself. Sighing, he puts his hands on his waist, marvelling at what he’d written so far. The peaceful silence doesn’t last for very long.

“STEP NUMBER FOUR!” It’s not like him to be so loud. It’s probably a good, balanced combination of his lack of sleep and being alone with his inner thoughts. He’s pretty sure he has an alternate personality who thinks he’s Freud. Freud occasionally throws in some pretty deep psychoanalysis prompts for him to consider when he can’t sleep.

“If… And only if you build up the courage to ask her out in person-! Well, firstly, congratulations, we’re all very proud of you. Secondly, do it in public! You might be thinking, Professor Kim, why on earth would I want to do it in public? Getting rejected in public is so much more horrible!? Well, BELIEVE ME, UNBELIEVERS- Getting rejected in public is sO much better than getting rejected in private! Due to our tendency to not draw attention to ourselves and the way we like to shrink in public, it’s much more likely that we won’t break down in tears if we get rejected in public! Well, once you get back home, you might start breaking down, so maybe this is just a temporary solution, but it’s still better than sobbing in front of your crush when you devastatingly get rejected!”

Knitting his brows together, Namjoon corrects himself. “Not when you get devastatingly rejected, sorry. If. If. Yes, if. If you get devastatingly rejected. Come to think of it, in a purely logical way, you have a 50/50 chance of succeeding in your confession. ‘I like you, do you like me?’ That’s a yes or no question, isn’t it? A confession is exactly the same as flipping a coin! You have a 50% chance of getting heads, 50% chance of getting tails. Either way, you get on with your life despite getting heads or tails. So… the odds are kinda in your favour!”

“Except when you flip a coin, you wouldn’t get nervous to the point where you accidentally push the coin into a mud filled pond where the coin’s favourite shirt got ruined so then the coin proceeded to ignore you for the next two weeks, making it the most miserable two weeks of your entire life… But that probably won’t happen again.” Namjoon mutters underneath his breath. “Coins don’t wear shirts anyways.” Somehow, that seemed to comfort him. He writes down ‘coins can’t wear shirts’ on the chalkboard.

“Step number FIVE!” Namjoon shakes his head, taking a sip of the espresso that’s been sitting on his desk for hours. “What was step number five agai- oh right. Step number five: look your best!” Namjoon catches sight of his reflection and winces. “Okay, maybe I don’t have a great example right now.” He reaches up and runs his fingers through his hair, almost puking when he feels the amount of grease and gunk buried in his scalp. He should probably shower. And get some sleep. His eye bags do not look very attractive right now. Maybe he should get a haircut too, it’s kinda getting wild up there. In his own defence, he’s been standing in this exact pair of sweatpants and glasses for the past couple hours, so he smells a tiny bit. Don’t girls like it when guys wear grey sweatpants? Frowning, Namjoon makes a mental note to do some research later on.

“Shower, change, put in contacts, cologne, flowers…” Namjoon starts writing a to-do list onto his small notebook. “Would she like flowers, actually? Is it misogynistic of a guy to bring flowers or is it just a cute, nice gesture? Am I overthinking this?” His phone vibrates in the middle of his feminism breakdown, and he pats his back pockets before realising his phone was across the table. He grunts as he leans over to pick it up, and thoughtlessly, he accepts the call and brings it up to his ear. “Hello?”

“Where are you?” Your voice is both a comfort and a shock to hear so early in the morning. He can already see you sighing aloud and scrunching up your nose cutely, a habit you picked up from him himself. He does it when he’s embarrassed, but you do it when you’re angry. It doesn’t really work because now whenever you get mad he just swoons and gushes over your cute nose and chubby cheeks.

“aH- Um… What time is it?” Namjoon fumbles around, jumping up.

“It’s like 7 in the morning? Hello, you promised to come workout with me today? Come open your door, I’ve been ringing your doorbell for forever, but I think it’s broken. I’ll call the repair guy for you later.” Namjoon lets out a nervous laugh, guiltily looking at his shoes even though he knows you can’t even see what he’s doing right now.

“It’s already seven? Wow, time flies really fast. I’m- ” He yawns, bringing the phone away from his ear for a moment. “- really tired.” A beat passes by. How is it possible that he can hear you get angry at him from here?

“Namjoon.” Another awkward laugh rings through the lecture hall.

“Ahahha. - Yes?”

“Are you at work right now?” You ask, voice suddenly turning stone cold.

“Um, well, that’s a debatable question. See, is it really, honestly my work if I love doing it? Sure, it makes me a living, but of course I don’t consider it to be my workplace, you know? Like, I get to come in and do what I love every single day, educating the next generation. It’s actually a really bad mindset because once you refer to your job as ‘work’ you don’t-”

“Namjoon.”

“Okay yes, I’m at work.” He relents, pushing his glasses up and sighing.

“Joon, it’s seven! Like, seven in the morning! Have you been in there since you clocked in yesterday morning?” You ask worriedly.

“Uhh, I think so?” To be honest, he’s been here for two nights already, crashing out on a beanbag and brushing his teeth in the staff bathroom when he needs to.

“Namjoon!” He mumbles out an apology. “What the hell could you have been doing in there? You don’t even have that many classes this week!” Namjoon lets his eyes trail over to the chalkboard, then back down to his notebook.

“Uh… it’s kinda complicated?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll come home now, don’t worry!” He says, even before you can demand he take care of himself. Sometimes, you’re just a teensy bit overbearing. It’s a messed up miracle he managed to fall in love with you in the first place.

“Be careful, okay? It’s flu season, too, so you really can’t be this reckless! You’re literally going to drive me into an early grave, for fuck’s sakes. You’re always fussing over how overworked I am, so how could you not take care of yourself? That’s so hippo- hypo- ugh, what’s the word?”

“Hypocritical.” Namjoon says into the phone while packing up his things.

“Hypocritical, yes. You better be here in ten minutes or less, Kim. Come home, take a shower and then sleep. I’m guessing you have done neither of those things since yesterday.” Namjoon doesn’t have the decency or humility to give you an honest answer, so he just stays silent. His eyes are still fixed on the chalkboard. Where was he at when your phone call interrupted? Ah, yes. Step number six: ‘I love you.’ Step number six was a piece of advice he had gotten from Min Yoongi, a music theory professor who taught just a couple minutes away from Namjoon’s office. He’s been dating Jung Hoseok, another mutual friend of Namjoon’s, for a few years now.

“What do you mean?” Yoongi just blinked when Namjoon asked him, stared blankly at him, lips threatening to pull up into a smirk.

“What do you mean, ‘What do you mean’?” Namjoon said, huffing. “How did you confess to Hobi?”

“Bro,” Yoongi said, now freely laughing at Namjoon. “If you can’t confess to her, just wait until you get around to thinking about proposing. Never been more nervous in my life, swear to god.” Namjoon had never been a violent type. Up until he met Yoongi.

“Just- tell me how you did it, would you?” Yoongi gave a rare, small smile and beckoned him closer. He leaned in, about to tell Namjoon a big secret.

“Just say it.” He whispered into Namjoon’s ear. Namjoon rolled his eyes, pulled away and rested his head on the sofa.

“That’s the most useless thing I’ve ever heard.”

“No it’s not!” Yoongi also leaned back into his seat. “Just say it. ‘I love you.’ It’s nothing difficult. Just say it!” Namjoon scoffed and left, but Yoongi called something out while he was walking away. “Hey, you’re going to lose her if you don’t do anything.” Namjoon froze, but continued to walk. Yoongi watched, two seconds later, amused as Namjoon came rushing back in, sat himself down on the sofa and demanded Yoongi tell him everything he needed to know.

Thus, his six steps were born.

If Min Yoongi, a person who is possibly even more shy and even more introverted than Namjoon, (Which is a big feat) can ‘just say it’, he should be able to do it easily. Namjoon nods to himself, rolling his head back and cracking a neck bone.

Taking a deep breath, he speaks into the phone.

“Hey, I have something to tell you.”

“It can wait,” You say. It’s so like you to ruin a love confession, Namjoon thinks, laughing. “Come home, go sleep for a couple hours, then we can talk. It’s not important, is it?” He stares at the chalkboard, letting out a satisfied exhale.

“Nope.” He says. “Not that important. I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay,” He hears you grunt from the other side of the phone, shuffling around. “Hey, I’m gonna hang up first, I’ll wait for you to get here. Where’s your spare key again?”

“Underneath the compartment in the hanging plant. Yeah- the one above the front door.” He hears the familiar jingle of his keys and your adorable ‘a-ha!’ from the phone, and his smile stretches wider.

“Ohh, okay, got it. Thanks! You don’t mind if I go in first, right?”

“Nah.”

“Okay, bye!” Before he says it back, you hang up, and he’s left with an annoying beeping sound that repeats in his ear. He misses you, Namjoon muses to himself. He hasn’t seen you for much too long. Happily, he skips to the back of the lecture hall. (which he then immediately regrets when he finds out his legs don’t work properly after staying in the exact same position for hours without end.) He doesn’t even mind that you’ll see him in this horrendous state if he gets to see you fuss over him again. Your soft side coming out is like spotting a rare bonsai tree on sale in a run-down store- extremely special and only happens once in a while.

Okay, that analogy was really bad, he just really wanted to mention his bonsai trees.

He spares one last glance to the filled chalkboard. With good luck, nobody will walk in and see that mess all over the board. He’d probably get fired.

“I love you.” He says to himself. Maybe Yoongi was right. It does sound pretty easy. Namjoon walks out of the lecture hall, switching off the lights and running off to see you.

Kim Namjoon’s Six Steps Towards Confessing Your Love: Introvert Edition

Do not refer to anything academic or clever in your confession.

Do not laugh when they ask if you are joking once you confess.

Letter > facetime > call

Confess in public.

Look your best!

Just say it.

⚖ wanna talk to professor!joon? or add yourself to the taglist?

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slippinmickeys · 5 years ago

Text

Of the Eight Winds, Part 6

This is part six in who knows how many from the prompt from @sunflowerseedsandscience : “Mulder is unhappily married when Scully is partnered with him, and while he doesn’t cheat (because sorry that’s not romantic), he falls for her so hard that he finally gets the courage to end the marriage and start fresh.”

Links to parts one, two, three, four and five.

Mulder’s mother-in-law was sick. Terminal cancer, from what Scully gathered from the little he talked about it. He was gone a lot, accompanying Lauren back and forth between her parent’s house in Newport News and the hospital and home.

Their basement office felt cold, empty without him in it. She felt like every small noise she made echoed off the walls. One Friday, she left early, unable to stand it any longer.

She went home, but felt alone there, too. She drifted out into her neighborhood, the warm sun of the afternoon laying long shadows through the streets.

There was a farmer’s market set up a few blocks from her apartment— an entire block’s worth of a street closed off, with tented stalls lining both sides of the road, selling everything from fresh eggs to flowers to jewelry.

She was looking through the selection of breads and baked goods on the edge of one of the stalls when she felt a light tug on bottom of the sundress she had changed into. She looked down to find a small black feline paw had reached through the bars of the cage in the next stall and had hooked a claw into her dress. Her laugh alerted one of the women working the rescue group’s stall, who rushed over to help release her from the kitten’s grasp, with an “oh honestly, Trouble.”

“His name is Trouble?” Scully asked, laughing.

“Her,” the woman said, smiling at the little black fluff affectionately, “she’s sweet but has an excess of personality.”

“How old is she?” Scully asked.

“Ten weeks,” the woman answered, then narrowed her eyes, seeing a prospective cat rescuer suddenly in her midst. “Here,” she went on, handing Scully a feather-on-a-stick cat toy, “play with her. She’s a hoot.”

Scully bobbed the toy about Trouble’s head, who took one swat at it and then jumped into the air and caught it, growling like a dog. Scully laughed, delighted.

“She plays fetch, too,” said the woman, who was still hovering nearby.

“You’re kidding,” Scully said, tugging on the feather, which Trouble refused to give up.

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” the woman said, “wadded up paper ball. And when she brings it back, she drops it better than my retriever ever does.”

Scully was thoroughly charmed.

“You in the market for a new friend?” the woman asked with a smile.

“Oh! No, not really.”

“Well, we’ll be here if you change your mind. Our rescue group has a stall at the Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays and Fridays.”

Scully smiled at the woman and turned away, thinking of buying a bag of apples and a bouquet of flowers.

“Miss?” the woman said, and Scully turned back to look at her, “Trouble won’t be here long. The cute ones get adopted quick.”

Scully smiled indulgently and walked on. On her return trip through the market to head home, carrying a bag of greens, two cartons of strawberries and a small bouquet of yellow calla lilies, she saw a small girl playing with Trouble and a slightly larger orange tabby kitten. The girl’s parents were standing a few feet away and the girl turned to them. “I want the orange one,” she told them.

Scully was insulted on Trouble’s behalf. It was no fun coming in second. She veered back toward the cage and stuck a finger through the bars. Trouble rubbed her face against her finger and sat down, purring.

“Can I get an adoption application please?” Scully said then, and found that the woman was already behind her with a clipboard and a pen. The woman winked.

Two hours later she tumbled into her apartment laden with her haul from the farmer’s market, twenty five pounds of kitty accoutrements and a cardboard cat carrier that had little black paws popping out of the holes in the top.

She opened it up and looked down at its lone occupant, who sat, looking back at her, as prim and proper as a posy. She looked like a ball of black puff with two green eyes, as round as the moon.

“We’re going to change your name, Trouble,” Scully said, “A friend of mine once told me about self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Scully didn’t go to Lauren’s mother’s funeral, but she did send flowers. She tried to strike the right tone with the arrangement, somewhere between work acquaintance and best friend, and leaned into one that was more on this side of ostentatious than not.

She got a thank you card from Lauren, but it was written in Mulder’s scrawling hand.

Scully had voiced a craving for a mid-afternoon latte, and the day was bright and clear, the first in almost a week. He volunteered to accompany her to a nearby coffee shop.

He waited in the back of the shop next to a stack of high chairs and a small creamer station dusted with spilled Sweet’N Low and cinnamon. He watched as she gave her order to the barista, laughing at something the girl had said as she handed over her money. Her face shone amongst the other patrons, brighter and clearer than anyone else’s. It was like she alone was in focus, everyone else in the world walking in an ill-defined blur.

Why had he waited so long, he wondered. Some misplaced sense of loyalty? Things with Lauren had always gone from bad to worse, waiting certainly hadn’t made them better. It wasn’t to spare Lauren’s feelings. It certainly wasn’t to spare his own.

Scully turned from where she stood in line and caught his eye. She smiled at him with a radiance that hit him square in the solar plexus.

How many years had he wasted? How many breaths had he taken, how many nights spent alone in a bed of two?

He smiled back at her, a delicious ache in his chest.

Their first meeting with Skinner after Mulder informed him of their relationship was a budgetary meeting. Kimberly smiled at them in a knowing way when they walked into the front part of Skinner’s office, at which Scully blushed. Mulder wondered vaguely how much Skinner and his assistant talked.

Just before Skinner adjourned the meeting of roughly ten people, he said “Please consider this a reminder to make sure your current address, emergency contact information, and any other pertinent personnel file data is updated and filed with Human Resources.”

Mulder shot a look to Scully, who shot a look back.

The skin at the base of his left ring finger was bare but indented with years long pressure.

One morning, Mulder woke up to find Blackwell sitting on his chest, the end of her fat, fluffy tail twitching slowly up, keeping time like a metronome. The cat regarded him coolly for minute, then yawned once and flopped down to lay atop him, purring gently.

Scully awoke about ten minutes later and cracked a sleepy eye to look at the domestic tableau before her.

She smiled.

“She likes you,” she said.

“I have a way with women,” he rumbled, scratching a nail under the cat’s chin.

“I’ll remember that the next time she needs her claws trimmed,” Scully said, stretching.

Mulder considered the animal.

“Why did you name your cat Blackwell?” he asked.

“Have you heard of Elizabeth Blackwell?” she asked back. He shook his head. “She was the first woman to graduate from Medical School in the United States,” she said.

He nodded, running his hand along the velvet coat of the black cat.

“Perfect,” he said. Blackwell purred. So did Scully.

He had dreams. Terrible dreams. He dreamt that he hadn’t made it in time to the top of Skyland Mountain. He dreamt that Melissa had been shot dead in Scully’s doorway. Dreams where he showed up at the hospital to visit Lauren’s mother and found Scully in her bed.

In the mornings, he woke to find Scully next to him and pulled her close. She generally woke when he did this, but never once complained.

Blackwell had stopped growling when playing with toys after a week or two of living with Scully, but would still occasionally play fetch. Mulder was so taken with the idea of a dog-like cat, he offered to open an X-File on her and swore he would teach her tricks.

True to his word, as the years passed, Mulder taught Blackwell several, including a high five, “speak” and a version of “play dead” in which he would pull an imaginary service weapon (complete with correct form and safety procedures) say “bang” and over she would keel. True her status as a feline, Blackwell would perform these tricks only five times out of ten, which Scully did have to admit, was pretty good.

On a lazy Sunday morning when Lily was nine months old, Mulder, Scully and their daughter were whiling away in their rumpled bed (Mulder with a book, Scully with a crossword, Lily with an orange teether) when Mulder set the book down on his bedside table and turned to Scully.

“Lily and I taught Blackwell a new trick,” he said.

Scully set down the newspaper and pencil where Lily couldn’t get to them and turned toward him.

“I’d like to see it,” she said, smiling.

“What do you think, Lil?” Mulder said to the baby who babbled a bit in response, a string of drool sliding down to soak into her already damp onesie.

Mulder nodded, pursed his lips and whistled.

A light tinkling sound came down the hallway, and Blackwell jumped up easily onto the bed and sauntered up to Mulder to give him a gentle headbutt.

Scully clapped softly.

“She comes when whistled for now? I’m impressed.”

Mulder pet the cat affectionately and then looped a finger underneath the cat’s collar to bring it up and over her fur.

“And check out the new accessory,” Mulder said.

Scully clicked her fingers and Blackwell walked over to her.

“A new collar, I see,” Scully, said, eyeing the new black collar with equal parts humor and distaste -- it had a repeating pattern of alien heads and ufos.

Mulder nodded as Blackwell sat in front of Scully and then he thrust his chin up and towards the cat.

“That’s not all,” he said, “check out the hardware.”

Lily made a grab for the cat, but was scooped up by her father who lifted her to his shoulder as Scully leaned down to take a closer look at Blackwell’s new collar. Where the bell usually was, hung a platinum ring with three diamonds and an aged patina. Scully sucked in a breath and fingered it, flicking her eyes to Mulder, who looked at her with affection.

“What do you think, Scully? Make an honest man out of me?”

Blackwell sat patiently as Scully unhooked her collar and slid the ring off of it. She held it in her palm, her eyes shining.

“Was this…?” she said, and Mulder knew what she was asking.

“It was the ring I gave to Lauren,” he said, “it was my grandmother’s. She returned it to me a few months ago. She thought you should have it.”

Scully smiled sadly.

Mulder rushed on.

“I understand if you would rather not wear it. I’d be happy to buy you a new one. But I wanted to give you the option. Mulder women have been wearing this ring for close to a hundred years. It maybe doesn’t have the best mojo, but…”

“I love it,” Scully said, as Lily reached up and patted at Mulder’s cheeks. Scully slid it over her finger and it seemed to fit perfectly.

“So is that a yes?” Mulder asked, nuzzling their daughter’s head.

“It’s a yes,” Scully smiled. “And Mulder?”

He looked at her.

“I don’t believe in mojo.”

They buried Blackwell under the dogwood tree in their backyard, eleven year old Lily crying into her mother’s shoulder. Eight year old William, who had inherited his mother’s stoicism and his grandmother’s stiff upper lip stood next to them, watching his father blankly as he patted the soil flat with the back of a shovel.

“She was good cat,” William said somberly, and Mulder reached out and pulled him into a hug. He could feel a wet spot start to soak into his shirt.

“She was, buddy,” he said, and swung his eyes to Scully, who was absently rubbing Lily’s back, her eyes still on the ground. “I think maybe we should celebrate her life with ice cream, what do you say?”

William snuffled loudly, wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

“Vanilla, dad?” he said on another sniffle, “chocolate is bad for cats.”

Scully finally cracked a smile.

“It’s what she would have wanted,” she said, and tucked a strand of bright red hair tenderly behind Lily’s ear.

A blossom detached from the tree and fell gently to the ground, landing softly on the freshly turned earth.

#the x-files #fanfic #fanfiction #my fic #of the eight winds #prompt #msr #au

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ryewi · 6 years ago

Text

v for victory - kth

Summary: For as long as you know for yourself, your mother and your first neighbor Mrs. Kim held a never ending prank war. They were just that petty to get back at each other for an accident that happened in high school. It didn’t help that you somehow fell in love with Taehyung, Mrs. Kim’s only son. Or did it?

Genre: Boyfriend!Tae, c r a c c / humor, fluff

Words: 7k

Warnings: language, but other than that none~

Early AN: Probably one of my favorite pieces I’ve written. I had so much fun writing this.

Moments in which your mother discussed her mischievous plans organized against Mrs. Kim weren’t frequent. She’d usually keep all of the ideas to herself, arranging them in silence and secrecy, only to surprise everyone when ready. The pranks your mother pulled were of all categories, ranging from bribing the neighborhood kids to egg her windows to calling her phone just to say “sike”.

Mrs. Kim, whose first name you didn’t know, wasn’t any less of a devil. That rotten bitch, as she was referred to in this household, pulled pranks quite often too. Whether it was delivering fake news or setting off the annoying alarm on your black Honda CR-V at 2am. Sometimes, you asked, did these women ever notice how obsessed they were with each other? Would really any type of enemies put this much effort into planning how to spite the other?

The reasons behind their escapades were something you thought you could only find in movies. The kind in which one woman steals another’s man, and she gets her back by spilling a drink on her dress or something. Just, in this case, Mrs. Kim stole your mother’s best friend, dating him for three weeks, during which she completely ruined their (reportedly) strong friendship. Your mother replied to that by sending Mrs. Kim’s nude to everyone in school. Ever since then, they got back at each other, back and forth – and it didn’t help that years later, with their respective families, they’ll purchase houses that were right next to each other.

You used not to care about their childish fights when you were young, probably because they weren’t on each other’s necks as much as they are now.

Or maybe because back then, firstly your best friend, now boyfriend, wasn’t Kim Taehyung, Mrs. Kim’s only son.

Your mother called a meeting in the kitchen, explaining that this is the greatest idea she has had in a while and that the whole family needs to hear it. Being a number one fan of these daily doses of entertainment, your father was the first one to take a seat on a big cushioned chair. She began what seemed like the most dramatic speech ever, introducing the main role, your dog Orwell, for a decent half of it.

Once the presentation was over, you made a beeline towards your room, trying to sustain the laughs that were threatening to spill. Your father on the other end, began coughing from the amount of air that suddenly left his lungs. The greatest idea was indeed the most hilarious one yet.

Finally reaching the safety of your bedroom, you grabbed your phone that was resting on the bedside table. Every once in a while, when a “revolutionary” (read foolish) idea has been revealed, your boyfriend would be the next person to hear about it. This time not being anyhow different, you were quick to write a short message, that’ll in a few words explain what was about to go down.

To: SpillTheTae - 15:46

“My mom’s sending Orwell to shit on your lawn in ten”

From: SpillTheTae – 15:47

“Roger that”

Opened ✓

Usually, Taehyung would walk out on the balcony, effortlessly leaning on the marble edge and waiting for your clumsy being to stumble outside before drama began. At such angle, especially when looking from the ground, he appeared as an angel. Sometimes you’d stare at his beautiful irises, feeling as if you’re in space and witnessing a thousand stars before your own eyes. He was the whole universe gathered up in one person. It wasn’t possible to completely focus on whatever was leaving Taehyung’s mouth when a pair of puppy eyes captured every bit of attention.

So, when you finally situated yourself on the balcony, you expected to lock eyes with Taehyung, instead of the “devil” herself. It was Mrs. Kim.

Her cold eyes pierced right through yours, squinting as if she’d be able to somehow burn holes into your forehead. That action dragged on for over a minute and an uncomfortable laugh was threatening to escape your lips. In the end, a puff of air managed to break free and all dignity was sent flying out the window. Mrs. Kim frowned and shook her head in discomfort.

It wasn’t a secret that she hated you as much as she hated your mother. Just the sight of the female part of your family made “that rotten bitch” frown in disgust. For no reason, you heard through Taehyung that your name was “overly baked potato’s minion” in their household. At the beginning it infuriated you, mostly because that forty something year old woman had the audacity to insult you like that. Taehyung began using it while texting you, occasionally having to just use “minion” to awaken your bratty senses, but as time passed by, it stopped being relevant.

It took around five more minutes for your boyfriend to show up, silver hair disheveled and sticking out chaotically under the hood. Taehyung wore a black oversized puma hoodie that you’ve bought him for thanksgiving last year, fully aware of what kinds of things it did to you.

“Summarize the plan, captain” he laughed, deep voice fading out into equally as dark of a chuckle. While waiting for an answer, Taehyung leant on the marble fence of his balcony, watching your mother hurryingly carry a caramel corgi across the yard.

“She figured out that Orwell should do the deed somewhere where it won’t stink as much as it usually does” you nudged your head in the direction of Mrs. Kim famous roses. The whole plan made you laugh again, so much time was wasted arranging all of this, for only two minutes of entertainment.

“No way” Taehyung gasped loud, turning around to get a better view of what’s about to happen. He, as Mrs. Kim’s son, should probably feel bad, try to prevent such acts from happening, maybe say a few words to you about this issue - except he doesn’t. Taehyung literally couldn’t care less about his mother’s roses, or the drying eggs on the windshield of their car. Nothing else other than huge amounts of amusement mattered to him. Especially after he got to know “the overly baked potato” and her “minion” (soon-to-be-his-girlfriend) lived next door.

“I swear to God if she doesn’t let him down soon, he’s going to-” you began, somehow predicting what kind of tragedy will play out. The caramel corgi couldn’t prolong the urge to do the deed any longer, casually lifting his tail and clenching his muscles. All while in the arms of your mother.

An ugly laugh escaped your lips, hand coming up to cover your mouth quick before any sound reached others. Taehyung’s eyes were the size of ripe avocados, the sight before him clearly way too comical and interesting to look away from. You were sitting on the floor, eyes watering, missing a particularly special part of what’s happening. Taehyung’s eyes remained wide open, mouth agape, but his boxy smile only grew wider the longer he watched.

Mrs. Kim seemed to notice some kind of commotion outside, her long and quick strides taking her outside just in time. Your mother was holding Orwell arm length away, over the fence and the other’s flowers. Her wrist was coated with the most disgusting stroke of dark brown, while an equally as disgusted expression decorated her face. Orwell’s face was one of relief, his mouth widening in an accidental smile, finally being offered some kind of alleviation.

“Your mother, I swear to God, I love that woman” Taehyung whispered, loud enough for you to hear, and while in your half-high state, you could only nod in response, wiping a few stray tears away. Taehyung would get along perfectly well with your mother if it wasn’t for the whole drama surrounding you. Neither of the two women know that Taehyung and you were friends, let alone in a relationship, and for a very logical reason, neither of you ever brought that topic up with them.

“Are we still ok for today?” He asked, once your mother let Orwell down and ran back inside. Her fingers pinched her nose, preventing the horrible smell of poop from causing any more torture. It was easy to catch his eyes again, balance finally on your side, as you stood up and leaned against the metal bars of the balcony.

“2? That’s in like half an hour?” You asked, eyes darting towards an imaginary watch on your wrist. He nodded and tilted his head slightly to the left, bangs falling gracefully over his face. What an angel.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You don’t wanna go out, do you?” Taehyung asked, faint smile playing on his lips. It was a casual Saturday, that one day of the week no student really bothered doing schoolwork, rather dedicating the whole day to staying home and binge-watching whichever show they found suitable.

Suddenly, a yell of his name echoed throughout their house, faint sound making it to your own ears too. It startled him, look of confusion and surprise overtaking his facial expression. The voice belonged to his mother, tone harsh and hurried, familiar to the one yours used to call today’s senate. Then, as if on que, the two of you looked at each other, smiled and nodded. Apparently, Mrs. Kim has already made up a plan how to get back at your mother and it had to be set on the table as fast as possible.

“Your turn” You said.

“My turn” Taehyung replied.

“Well then, text me when it’s over, Taehyungie”

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

“Oh, dear lord”

Taehyung’s head rested comfortably on your lap, legs raised on to the bench. His hands flapped around the free space available, explaining whichever fiasco was going on in his house. If you heard and understood right, over the obnoxiously loud volume of your laughter, Mrs. Kim was going to hire a kid two blocks away to knock at your door and throw a cake into your mother’s face. Taehyung’s face was one of pure disbelief, left hand occasionally coming up to his mouth while his eyes rolled the perfect 360. Your parents were most definitely bigger kids than you were when you were 5.

Your hands threaded through Taehyung’s soft strands of hair, gently massaging his scalp and earning satisfied groans in return. Taehyung loved when you played with his hair, your fingers moving just right to completely relax him.

Looking into the distance, your eyes caught a relatively special sight. A boy and a girl sprinted across the park, hiding behind a set of ramified bushes, evidently running away from someone. Upon following the direction of their gaze, you saw a middle-aged woman with a stern face pacing through the same path they ran by just a minute ago.

In unison, as if annunciated, Taehyung and you spoke up.

“Remember when that happened to us?”

Two years ago, Taehyung asked you to come hang out with him at the nearby park. He planned on informing you about the newest plan that was in conception inside of the Kim house. Back then, your friendship was relatively new, the excitement of having such a special friend resulting in constant meetings with the other. After finding out that the women in “fight” were your mothers, you became extremely close, almost inseparable. Daily stories brought you out almost daily, smiles and laughs way too important to miss.

Just as he was setting his head down onto your shoulder, listening to whatever you had to say, Taehyung’s eyes caught a sight of a way too familiar woman. One of relatively small built, short brown hair and straight posture, walking with a slight jump in her steps. Taehyung’s hand immediately grabbed yours, dragging you away from the bench and behind thick bush just a few steps to the left. It took a moment for you to realize what was happening, especially after witnessing Taehyung’s brazen smile as he peeked over the branches.

It was Mrs. Kim, probably returning from her work earlier than expected. She didn’t seem to notice you, eyes staring far into the distance, looking but not seeing. Thankfully, your boyfriend managed to spot her and react, before your agreement burned to ashes.

The agreement? The two of you decided to not reveal the friendship (relationship) to your parents, or at least the female half until you’ve had your fair share of entertainment. There was a modest dose of irrational fear that if they somehow managed to gain the knowledge of you two, they wouldn’t continue their war; probably put off by the idea of their children being friends. So, until any kind of notice, Taehyung sealed the deal with a pinky promise that the friendship will only ever stay a secret inside of the two households.

Somehow, eventually, your father found out, probably upon noticing his daughter waiting for someone in front of their gate, every single workday. Upon further exploration, and interrogation, he got you to admit it was Taehyung you waited for, followed by the whole history of your friendship and your previously stated agreement. He promised to not voice out a word about it to your mother, very understanding of your reasons. Unfortunately, his knowledge only reached to the friendship barrier, the detail that Taehyung was your boyfriend now, still very well hidden from him.

“That was so long ago, why am I still putting up with you?” You sarcastically said, moving a few stray strands away from his forehead, smiling the moment your eyes met. Taehyung had beautiful, big brown eyes that always comforted you and brought a certain feeling of home. You often wondered how on heaven’s earth did you get so lucky to be blessed with the angel named Kim Taehyung? Have you mayhaps ended World War II to get such a chance in life?

“Have you ever thought about teaming up against them?” Taehyung asked, hope noticeable in his voice.

“To be honest, no, but now that you’ve mentioned it, it seems pretty interesting” You replied, already intrigued by his idea. Then, wouldn’t that make your relationship known, therefore interrupting the chain reaction of constant pranks?

Anyway, it didn’t matter, because the conversation didn’t grow from there. The suggestion didn’t have any positive nor negative outcome, question barely floating in the air before it disappeared. Truly, what would you do? The creativeness of your parents was way above yours, would you ever be able to compete with these masterminds?

Upon your walk home, you passed by an all too familiar household. The Charles. A two floored, obnoxiously white house with curtains that were always hiding the inside from the outside world. In there, lived an elderly couple that no one liked. Especially the younger part of the neighborhood. Of course, Taehyung and you fell into that group of people too.

Why so? It was simple – they were complete and utter cunts. Imagine two pre-pubescent 12 year olds that are going through their “quirky” phase, trying to mess with other teenagers and prove themselves as the shits? Exactly, pair that up with raging hormones of the previously mentioned teenagers – all trapped inside of two eighty something year old bodies. Science still can’t explain such a phenomenon.

Suddenly, Taehyung felt small ball of strange texture hitting the back of his head. Cringing and craning his neck back, Taehyung felt a sticky and wet patch on the place he has been hit on. Immediately looking down and noticing a tiny wet and scrunched up paper ball, Taehyung’s eyes moved up to witness the door closing.

“Fucking hell, don’t you have some decency? Wrinkly rag” Taehyung hissed at the direction of their door, hand rubbing the back of his neck. It wasn’t the (non-existent) physical pain that irritated him, it was mostly the mental pain that he had to endure each time such thing happened. And to know that it will happen again the next time he passed by, wasn’t offering him any kind of relief. Were all adults and elders in this part of the town more childish than the younger citizens of it?

“I’m getting sick of them, ever since I saw that old man’s tinky winky, I gag at even the slightest sight of their house” You added, hand coming up to hold at the bottom of your throat, choking sounds leaving your lips. Taehyung audibly gasped at your proclamation, eyes almost popping out of their sockets. When your head turned to look at him, his mouth that hung wide open greeted you.

“He showed you his what?!” He yelled, not believing the words that left your mouth just a few seconds ago.

“Taehyung you’re acting as if I asked him to show it to me! Didn’t you tell me the woman flashed you a few weeks ago too?!” Now it was your time to laugh, but your entertainment was soon cut short, as Taehyung decided to remind you of the terror he went through. Very vividly.

“Her tits were the saggiest shit ever when I tell you! I swear to God titties have been ruined for me ever since that happened!” Taehyung bit back, hand covering his big eyes quick, as if closing them will prevent the mental image from playing before them. If Taehyung had a chance to delete any memory from his mind, no matter how horrifying or embarrassing, he’d choose to forget those two sacks of fat reaching the other’s knees. Gosh that was such a terrifying sight.

“When we’re talking about unfortunate events regarding “family exhibition kink”, remember when Hoseok said he saw them-”

“I swear to god if you put one more mental image into my head- the poor guy couldn’t sleep with anyone for weeks because of that!” Taehyung whined, shaking his head extremely fast, flashbacks of Hoseok’s storytime replaying in his mind.

“How about we use them as a diversion for our counterattack on our mothers?” you asked, to which Taehyung only hummed along, mumbling something along the lines of “we’ll see”.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Usually, your father was home during this time of the day, but thankfully to his old discovery, Taehyung was able to freely visit and hang out at yours whenever suitable. To be quite honest, your father adored the tall, ashy haired boy. Taehyung’s appearance always bribed out the biggest smile from him. Somehow, they shared similar interests. Although the age gap was over 20 years, their conversations were always so intense and interesting to listen to. It didn’t help that both of them were so well spoken, many great ideas and points expressed and left hanging in the air, waiting for someone to catch, write down and forever remember.

Often, Taehyung would forget the time your mother came back from work (you’d too, of course), but thankfully, your father was there to alarm you. He’d either speak loudly when the entrance door opened, or he’d beat the woman to it and open the door before she did it herself, automatically drawing attention.

Then, Taehyung, with his recently discovered trait of having cat legs (always falling on to his feet), would open the back window and jump outside, firstly finding purchase on your hind plastic container, then the ground and over the high fence into his own garden. When he tried escaping for the first time, the container wasn’t there, therefore he had to think quick before the woman climbed up into the room. Having long legs, under the bed wasn’t a suiting spot and being way too tall, the inside of your small closet wasn’t available either.

Just two seconds after his jump, you heard a painful groan from beneath the window, but there was no time, you only had enough of it to close the window and draw the curtains.

Only later, did you find out that Taehyung sprained his ankle and had to lie about it to his parents.

From: SpillTheTae – 17:31

“I sprained my ankle and had to blame it on running after the bus”

To: SpillTheTae – 17:32

“Taehyung you never take the bus”

From: SpillTheTae – 17:34

“I fucking know! Now I’m grounded because mom thinks I left our area without telling her???”

To: SpillTheTae – 17:34

“Y-you’re an adult, y-you can move wherever you want Taehyung”

From: SpillTheTae – 17:35

“Mind coming over and explaining that to her? :)”

To: SpillTheTae – 17:36

“I’d rather not lol”

Seen ✓

This time however, Taehyung made sure to check outside for the position of the green container. Unsurprisingly, it was on its place, waiting for the impact that was yet to come. Taehyung sat on your bed, patting the empty spot beside him. Taking it as a que to join him, you crossed the small distance between your now closed door and the comfort of your bed. His big hands found purchase on your waist, swift movement bringing your frame down to comfortably rest on his strong lap. A barely audible sigh left your lips, already occupied by another pair on them.

Kissing Taehyung always felt magical, different factors upping the experience each time that it happened. His hands would often escape under your arms, wrapping around tender shoulder blades, as he tried to pull you the closest he ever could to himself. They’d often stray underneath the thin fabric of the shirt you wore, but only for a second, before finding their next purchase. Taehyung’s lips would sometimes graze the sensitive spots under your soft jawline, bribing out the most beautiful of sounds that served as a reward to his delicate work. You’d push him down so his back rested over the comfortable covers, never failing to notice whenever his exceptionally big palms moved south, cupping or squeezing your ass.

It was a surprise that your father never asked you about any deeper relation that you might have with Taehyung. Usually, he’d ask about your best friend, nothing more, referring to the boy you brought home way too often. Truthfully, he has had his fair share of doubts, but upon going years without any notice, they were dismissed, the image of perfect best friends replacing them. Maybe it was for the better.

After thirty minutes of a rather steamy make out session, you laid on Taehyung’s side, one leg propped over his, fingers trailing invisible patterns on his wide chest. The boy was humming a familiar melody, the one that he had reserved for special moments like these. Rarely he would sing, self-conscious about his singing voice, despite your repetitive attempts at convincing otherwise.

Abruptly, the door clicked. The alarm went off.

“Oh, you’re home early again!” Your father all but screamed at your mother, spit probably spraying all over her beautiful face. She greeted him with as much enthusiasm, first hugging and then kissing the other with much love, like always. She disposed her heavy handbag on to the living room table, hefty coat already draped over the coat hanger. Your mother was quick to ask if you’ve arrived home, already familiar with your usual Saturday whereabouts.

Usually, upon seeing the open door of your room, the other would reply yes, waiting for your happy frame to pop up and run towards them. This time, unlike all the others, it didn’t happen and your father began panicking. Have you not heard him? Did the two of you fall asleep?

“How did your day go?” The man tried again, voice rising in volume for at least two TV lines. The woman looked at him with confusion in her eyes, uncertain as for why did her husband begin screaming all of the sudden. She wanted to laugh, corners of those soft lips already tilting downwards, cheeks working in opposition and rising higher each passing moment.

“What’s up with you today?” Your mother asked, although the question was rhetorical. No answer was anticipated, feet already carrying her smaller form up the stairs and towards the closed door. The man downstairs prayed to all the outer forces that you heard him, as if this was the worst possible thing that could happen in your lives. The scene was pretty hilarious, if it were filmed and edited well enough, it would probably look like a cut from The Office.

“I think she may be sleeping!” This time you’ve heard him. Somehow, Taehyung’s humming and warm embrace managed to captivate you so well that your father’s attempts went by unnoticed. Third time’s a charm, right? Right?

Panic. That’s all you felt at that moment, pushing your boyfriend off the bed and ushering him towards the open window. Taehyung seemed to need a moment to regain his composure and thoughts, before he was moving the endless curtains, stepping over the edge and preparing for a quick jump. Even after meeting eyes with your panicked ones, he dared to steal another fast kiss, before he was off and gone.

Just in time. The door opened, presenting your mother, dressed in full black and with a huge smile spread on her lips. She walked over, enveloping you in her arms, a tight hug preventing any movement from your side. Suddenly, a faint “god damn” was heard from underneath your open window, the wind flowing through your room shutting the door quick with a loud pang. The woman let go of you, eyebrows scrunching in a confused and curious manner that overtook her features. Closing your eyes, you breathed out heavily, head moving left and right softly, disbelief filling your whole being.

“Who was that?” She asked, moving quick towards the open exit, head peeking out quick. As quick of a runner as Taehyung was, it just wasn’t enough. Exactly the moment his figure partly escaped behind the corner of your house, your mother looked out, catching the last sight of his right leg and hand that grabbed onto the edge to soften the turn. She noticed the unique pattern on their converse and shiny rings on each of their fingers – each one except the ring finger. How convenient.

“Who was that?” The woman tried again, watching as your pupils dilated and trembled. Yet, although your leg began to jump as a result of anxiety, you tried to gain some composure and regain your poker face. Somehow, it worked, hell, it was everything at stake here, and you managed to shrug and dismiss the topic with your hand in such manner that seemed perfectly convincing.

Instead of opting to stay in your room and stand a chance to continue with the investigation, you headed down the stairs, meeting a relieved looking man at the end of them. Seemingly he noticed that the procedure, apart from being a close call, went well, and after your nod of confirmation, he walked back to his usual spot on the couch.

God fucking damn you, Kim Taehyung.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Since then, your mother was more cautious and attentive, questions about a possible boyfriend floating around more often. To those suggestive brow rises and “touchy subjects” your father would act rather defensive, frequently dismissing the topic with a mention of your best friend. The woman didn’t know that boy either. So, over the course of a few days, she pushed on the idea of meeting this beautiful man that you apparently hung out daily with. A seemingly easy problem to fix – apart from Taehyung’s overdramatic response when you told him Hoseok will have to do the job.

Hoseok, a close friend of yours, was someone you’ve met a year ago in school, he was a year older than Taehyung, and also a lot different personality wise from your boyfriend. He lived a few streets away and rarely did you see him out of school, but when you did, it was probably a highlight of the week.

From: SpillTheTae – 11:19

“Wow is that another man I hear coming over”

To: SpillTheTae – 11:19

“You’re invited too if you want”

From: SpillTheTae – 11:20

“If you don’t want your boyfriend’s dick to serve as war loot, then no xxx”

To: SpillTheTae – 11:20

“What if you’re wrong there?”

From: SpillTheTae – 11:20

“Your kinks are becoming more and more weird, I don’t think I can keep up baby”

Seen ✓

Hoseok’s visit went by pretty well, considering this was his first time over and first time meeting your parents. His movements were forced, legs too stiff as he crossed them over. Left heel skipped up and down repeatedly as he listened to whatever your father was saying. Hoseok was someone who has never had any problems meeting new people and blending into the environment, but this encounter with people two generations (and more) older than him, just wasn’t a favorable cup of tea.

To be quite honest, the whole situation wasn’t the most comfortable for you either. If Taehyung were on the elder's place, it might’ve brought many negative reactions from the female part of your household, but at least the hand on your knee would’ve felt more comforting. Thankfully, the man seemed to sense your discomfort and eventual hesitation to showing much skinship, so the hand retreated back to his lap.

Your father sensed the tension pretty quick, at the beginning of the whole fiasco actually. The visit seemed like this young man (that he met today) came to an interrogation rather than a casual hang out. Yet really, who really came to hang out with someone’s parents?

Taehyung, being extremely curious about the whole situation, wouldn’t stop texting you. Constant buzzing soon forced you to silence the device, but that didn’t stop him from annoying you further. Eventually, after Hoseok was cut some slack by your mother (who was pleasantly surprised that you’ve brought someone so energetic and handsome home), he relaxed further, accepting to read and reply to your boyfriend’s messages with you. To anyone else - your parents too - this act seemed like two teenagers gaming and watching videos, when it was actually three people playing, three people in the room, listening, talking.

Eventually, you suggested moving up to your room with a quick hum and thumbs up in the direction of the stairs. Hoseok shook his hand in dismissal, moving his left sleeve up to check out his wrist, no clock or accessory currently on it. Thankfully, no one else other than you managed to catch a glimpse of the unoccupied patch of skin, a small laugh escaping through your pursued lips. Forcing out a sigh, Hoseok jumped up, a slight frown on his lips, before he was quick to pull down the sleeve and head towards the door.

“You haven’t even stayed for lunch” The woman in front of you said, disappointment evident in her strong voice. “We expected you to stay a bit longer”.

“I’m sorry Mrs.,” He replied, cute pout currently situated on his lips buying him enough sympathy from the other already. “I have some errands to run, it’s a Thursday after all... I barely made some time for a visit today, although thank you from the depths of my heart for such a heartwarming welcome”. Before leaving, Hoseok made sure to bow quickly, a short ‘goodbye’ left hanging above the shoe rack as the door closed behind him.

“What a nice young man, I can only sense great energy from him” Your mother replied tone serious and determined, ready to voice out her conclusions from this meeting. “Have you ever thought about stepping your friendship up with him?” She turned to you, eyes expectant and full of optimism. Shaking your head and snorting at her direction as a sign of disbelief, you caught a sight of your father behind her, hands covering his mouth. He oh so desperately tried to sustain laughs from spilling out as the other pushed on the idea of you two being the cutest couple ever.

Oh god little did she know...

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Unfortunately, a secret as big as your relationship couldn’t stay undisclosed forever. Despite many attempts to stay hidden and carefully choosing your whereabouts when hanging out, it unveiled in a quite regretful and accidental matter. Now how did that exactly happen...

After whole two days of planning, Taehyung and you finally managed to wrap your minds around putting a rather easy plan into action. The whole preparation ran around faking a shocking or surprising event organized by the elderly couple a few blocks away (which, really wasn’t hard considering the Charles family), then snitch on “them” like toddlers would to their parents. Considering the overprotective nature of your mothers towards their two most precious angels, they were to get straight on to plotting a revenge. That way, both of you, the rest of the tortured teenagers and your mothers (although without an actual reason) would get some payback for all these years of torment.

The plan was seemingly flawless, the reason and time already settled, the only thing needed being realization of the said arrangement. Thankfully, even spring worked in your favor, letting you have a whole week of perfect weather for the said attainment. Only, had it not been for a rather huge detail that you seemed to completely miss.

It didn’t help that Mrs. Kim was plowing a small patch of land, for what you assumed were her future roses, at the same time. A hurried pair of young adults ran up the street and stuck to the entrance gate like bird shit instantly sticks to the windshield of a car. It didn’t take long for Mrs. Kim to notice these two exhausted creatures hurriedly catching breaths while leaning on to the wooden planks. For a quick moment, she felt a dose of empathy, even sympathy, as she straightened her back and walked towards them, ready to offer a refreshing drink. Yet, as expected, the reaction wasn’t so positive when the two heads moved up, facing the older.

“Taehyung?!” Mrs. Kim yelled her son’s name, but her eyes were boring holes into yours, intently watching each move of your muscles – waiting for a lunge. But you weren’t a predator, you weren’t an animal, a monster, whatever her crazy mind labeled you as. “What are you doing here?!” Her voice was dripping venom, but cautious steps indicated that the woman was indeed a harmless kind. All talk but no action.

“The Charles household have once again been cunts to us-” Taehyung began, voice harsh but uneven as a result of lack of breath. Despite having an admirable stamina, your boyfriend still had trouble breathing properly. Mrs. Kim still had her irises trained on to you, evidently not paying attention to whatever her son had to say. Catching every third word, she tried to understand the story, while also planning what her next words would be. Taehyung continued blabbering, letting your heartbeat and breaths steady, all while his increased in speed. You heard every word from his mouth, swearing that his acting proved to be so good that it had you believing it for a quick moment.

The woman in front of you just didn’t care, her next words being a solid proof of that. “The two of you were together?” She asked, for the first time, finally, turning to face Taehyung. Taehyung didn’t want to directly answer her question, opting to continue adding more details to the fake story, when she cut him off. “Taehyung.” A warning. “Why is she here?”

At that moment, as if called, your mother walked outside, apron still tied tightly around her waist. Her eyebrows furrowed upon seeing firstly Mrs. Kim and then Taehyung in your company. Through her mind flew a thousand possible scenarios, harmful and harmless, and she was quick to run towards your side.

“Well hello” Your mother chimed in, surprising everyone else present. A sly smile played on the corners of her lips, eyes glimmering like water under clear moonlight. Protectively, the older put an arm around your shoulders, watching as the other woman did so too to her son. Taehyung and you exchanged funny looks, cheeks rising to almost impossible heights. “What’s happening? Am I interrupting something important?”

“I’d gladly stuff your mouth with dirt to stop you from asking any more questions, but I guess Taehyung has something to tell you” Mrs. Kim said, widening her lips in a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Fake as her current tolerance for the other woman. After not receiving an answer, the older whacked the back of Taehyung’s neck, making him wince in pain.

Your boyfriend was quick to comply to the previous request, repeating his speech, word by word like the two of you revised not even an hour ago. Your mother slowly, but noticeably lifted her hand from your side, now stepping forwards to look at you in disbelief, all while the boy was still talking. It was obvious that the woman had same doubts and questions that the other put on the table not a while ago.

“Now explain to me why the two of you were toget- Wait" She began, but a moment of sudden realization seemed to interrupt a train of thought. Her eyes were trained on to Taehyung who was currently tying his shoelaces, crouching with one knee on the ground. His converse looked extremely familiar, but she would’ve dismissed it as a coincidence if it wasn’t for the matching, shiny rings. On each finger except the ring finger.

“You were the one that I saw running through my yard a few days ago!” Your mother screamed, hand coming up over her mouth quick, trying to stop any unwilling gasps of realization from spilling. It was him, that son of a literal bitch. “It was you!” She pointed at him with a tender finger, almost threatening to stab him with her long nails.

Mrs. Kim looked at her son in confusion, obviously demanding some kind of explanation. To this sudden knowledge of you two “accidentally” being in each other’s presence, experiencing the same terror from “The Charle’s”, Taehyung’s appearance in your yard just added fuel to the already expanding fire. Both women weren’t stupid, the puzzle was solving itself slowly, all pieces coming to place one by one.

Then they turned towards you, eyes wide and expectant, as if you were about to reveal the world’s top secret. Your eyes were trained on the ground, sometimes moving from a stray crack in concreate to the beautiful hands and long fingers of your significant other. He seemed to look up at just the perfect moment, catching the mischievous glint that your pupils offered. If we’re going down, let’s go down with style.

Suddenly, Taehyung was lunging forwards, his huge hand enveloping yours, pulling you away and giving you little time to catch up with his fast pace. It took a few trips and slips from your part, but thankfully, Taehyung would slow down and prevent you from falling. Surprisingly, neither of the two women were running behind, just looking down the street with dumbfounded expressions and open mouth.

Taehyung took that moment to stop you and cup your cheeks, delivering a hurried but passionate kiss to your lips. There was barely enough time to reach upwards and wrap your hands around his neck, as he squeezed your hips tighter and closer to him. He didn’t intend to dive in for a second kiss, but the plump red of your lips and lovestruck eyes were way too inviting. Now, his hands moved upwards, crossing and resting on your shoulder blades, trying to portray just how much love he held for you through one tight hug. Fuck both of you were so lucky to have each other.

Honestly, the purpose of Taehyung’s kiss wasn’t to hold a make out session in the middle of the street, but he didn’t mind that it had developed into it. Breaking apart, he grabbed your delicate hand once again and continued running, all while listening to your surprised and happy giggles behind him.

He turned around through, and sent a peace sign followed by a sincere grin in the direction of the two mothers that now presented the biggest smiles of their own.

“To say that I didn’t expect this to happen, would be a lie” Your mother said, leaning against the gate with one arm. She looked at the other, nodding her head in understanding upon witnessing her smile for the first time. “It has always been in the back of my mind, just sitting there, a what if...”

“It’s like a cliché rom-com, isn’t it?” Mrs. Kim asked, voice chirpy.

“It really is, we should write this and make it a proper movie, bet it would be popular” Both women laughed, sharing one of the greatest moments together. Mrs. Kim straightened her back, wiped a few stray tears that managed to spill from laughing so suddenly, and proceeded to ask a question she never thought she would.

“Wanna come over for a cup of coffee?”

Your mother was surprised at that, but accepted the offer nonetheless. In any other situation she would’ve answered no, a huge sceptic inside of her screaming that it was a bait for whatever “that rotten bitch” was to pull out next. But today, oh today, was a different page, chapter, story, calm after the storm. Excusing herself for a moment so she could dispose her apron, your mother yelled at the other to prepare papers and pens so they can begin writing their movie plot, to which Mrs. Kim once again laughed.

Unfortunately, you weren’t there to experience the reunion. Yet, the sudden disappearance of ugly nicknames and pranks were a good enough indicator of what happened while you two were away, kissing on your favorite spot in the park.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

AN: Oh god this took forever to proofread,,, anyway I had so much fun writing this, hopefully you had fun reading it! This is probably the longest one shot I’ve ever written tbh,,, thank you for reading, i love u sooooo much and i hope to see you again soon!

221 notes · View notes

seenashwrite · 5 years ago

Text

Some Dean

Word Count: 4K Category: One-shot, On-The-Hunt, Humor, Creature Feature, Behind-the-scenes Canon-Compliant, Teamwork, Friendship… and, to hell with it: Fluff Rating: Teen & Up Character(s): Dean, Sam, Cas Warnings: None Anti-Warning: There’s no images or links to anything creeptastic below the cut, those of you with squicks/phobias need not worry, I’m not that big of an a-hole Author’s Note(s): *This is a re-post minus tags & links in an effort to get it to show in searches*; if you’ve no knowledge of the children’s story “Charlotte’s Web”, this may not be for you; more post-story Overall Summary: Sometimes good things come in small, albeit eight-legged, packages.

Dean had always liked spiders.

Well, “like” may’ve been overstating; Dean had always held an appreciation for spiders. They weren’t nasty like rats or sneaky like snakes, with spiders you knew where you stood: in his experience, anything supernatural aside, you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone. Plus, they were badass - spiders packed a lot of intimidation into a small package, could be killing machines when they wanted to be, and mostly he appreciated that they were efficient and effective when it came to dealing with the annoying bugs that occasionally popped up. He did live in a basement, after all; the world’s tiniest were not deterred by any amount of warding or weaponry.

So when he’d notice small, barely-there wisps of webs in far corners or between the bottom of a bookshelf and the wall, stretching from the carved wood to the sticky bricks, he’d leave the homemade traps be for a week or two if they were empty, and sure enough, they’d have captured some crawlers next time he made a run-through with the vacuum. It was an amicable relationship - Dean never saw the spiders, just their handiwork, and the webs seldom popped up in the same space twice. Plus, they seemed to know the kitchen was a no-fly… spider… zone, so all was well.

And then came Charlotte.

Charlotte - as Dean had eventually started calling the garden spider, much to Sam’s dismay - did not have any regard for the out-of-sight, you-don’t-get-the-boot arrangement, nor did she have any regard for giving Dean his space. The day they met, he’d sauntered into the garage, popped the Impala’s trunk, tossed in a bag and a shotgun, yelled at Sam to hurry up, then went to reach for the driver’s side handle, caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and froze. And he wasn’t the only one.

The web was thick at the edges and delicate in the middle, stretching from the side mirror to the handle, upon which Charlotte perched, her crafting put on hold. She wasn’t terribly small, but not remotely large; she would’ve easily fit on the pad of his thumb. And she was clearly of the brave - or stupid, perhaps - sort, because she didn’t immediately scurry off. She took in the sight of the giant creature before her - technically, there was eight of him, what with her four pairs of eyes and all - and she opted to see what would happen.

What happened was that Dean turned, grabbed a shop rag, and began cursing under his breath as he whipped the web into nothingness; by the time he stopped, Charlotte had skittered to places unknown.

Dean tossed the rag away, gave the handle a good eyeballing before he grabbed it, opening the door and saying in a low voice through grit teeth, “Not. The. Car.”

“What not the car?” asked Sam, bounding up the garage steps.

“Nothing,” Dean replied.

This nothing continued for six weeks.

Charlotte was a determined artist, it seemed, not to mention a fast one. She spun webs of all sizes and shapes, covering the license plate in quilt-panel squares, weaving long, ropy trails around and between the wipers, and at one point obscured the back window in a lacy pattern that Castiel noted looked like a fine guipure. She liked to travel, too, as more than once the brothers would exit a given roadside motel room to find Charlotte had been busy during the night, Sam’s personal favorite being when she’d decorated a hubcap in a complex Fibonacci design, though he’d never have let on to Dean.

On the initial occasions following such a discovery, if Dean happened to spot her, he would scold her with a sharp “NO!”, walk in her direction briskly, and she’d retreat, slipping into the trunk or under the hood, but it wasn’t long before she’d stay put, even edge closer, cutting the distance between them, eventually so bold as to crawl onto the roof of the Impala, watching as he dismantled her webs.

“Really?” he asked one morning after the latest wipe-down, bending slightly so they were eye-to-eyes.

She calmly extended one leg to the side, held it out til he got the hint, turning his head, following what he’d presumed was a point, and sure enough, he’d missed some cottony puffs that were still stuck on a tail light.

Looking back at her, he said - begrudgingly - "Thanks.“

Dean had dealt with stranger things.

"One day I’m expecting to come out and see ‘terrific’ in a web,” Sam commented during a return trip from the latest hunt.

“What?” Dean asked.

“You know - the kid’s book. Charlotte’s Web. You read it to me when we were little. About the farm, and saving Wilbur the would-be bacon?”

“Charlotte’s anti-bacon?”

“No, I don’t think— it was— it— she was just pro-pig.”

It was after this conversation that Dean took to calling their frequent tag-a-long Charlotte. To be specific, it was after he’d brought a BLT with him into the garage while working on the car, and she’d happily investigated a bit of bacon that had escaped his plate. A point to the pro-bacon column, he thought.

Dean informed her that he was fine with her hanging around, he was even fine with her fancy webwork, but she needed to cool it when it came to the car, explaining with lots of gesturing to make sure the message got across, just in case. He’d looked it up. Spiders did not have ears.

He’d also looked up things on spider life spans, and arachnid health in general. Sam found him in the library one evening doing just that, frowning at his laptop screen as he scanned. Castiel was nearby, returning some books to their places on the shelves.

“What is he doing?” Sam asked in a hushed voice, and Castiel opened his mouth to respond, but Dean spoke, diverting their attention.

“Did Charlotte look pale to you earlier?”

Now Sam frowned. “Dean… what?”

“I mean, she’s light brown, but she looked a little yellow earlier,” Dean explained, scrolling further down a page, but then closing the window with a huff and turning in his seat to face Sam. “Can’t find anything.” A pause; a thought. “Hey, I should put out a devil’s trap drawing for her, maybe a new pattern’ll perk her up.”

Sam was, in a word, startled. “Do you think of her as a pet?”

“Why do you care?”

“Oh, I dunno - because a spider is stalking us, and you’ve named it, and you talk to it, and—-”

“What, you got a thing about spiders to go with your thing about clowns, even though your imaginary friend was a clown?” Another pause. “Come to think of it, that explains a lot.”

“Sully’s not a clown, and no, I do not have arachnophobia, what I do have is a worry that - if it is a female - it may lay a bunch of eggs, then we’ll have an infestation. Is that what you want? Bunch of spider babies in your Baby?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “She’s not gonna do that.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “Did she pinky swear?”

“Would you like me to have a look at her?” asked Castiel, and the concern in his voice was less for Charlotte and more for Dean, and less in the sympathetic way and more in the tiptoeing around someone who’s slipped into psychosis way.

Sam crossed his arms. “Taking it outside hasn’t worked, neither has trying to leave it wherever we’ve been hunting - this is getting ridiculous, will you just kill it, already?!”

Dean stood, walked over to him, defiant. “We not been doing enough killing for you lately?”

“It’s just a spider, Dean!”

“I know that! Maybe I just don’t wanna be scraping moist spider guts off my boot.”

“Does this spider communicate with you?” Castiel asked, the concern still floating under his words.

He was ignored.

“It’s not your pet, it’s a tiny insect - you don’t even know if it could be poisonous!” Sam exclaimed.

“Not an insect, genius, and Charlotte would never bite us—-”

“What is wrong with you?!”

“Have either of you considered the possibility that this is no ordinary spider?” Castiel suggested.

“Gee, thanks, Cas - no, hadn’t noticed that this is weird,” Dean shot back with a look.

“So you get that this is weird?” Sam checked.

“Our life is weird, what’s some more? And at least this is fun weird, is that so bad?” Dean replied, and the touch of melancholy in his voice caused both Sam and Castiel to stay quiet for a few moments.

The silence was broken by the ring of Dean’s phone - a case awaited them.

And, of course, Charlotte.

Dean looked up from the map as Sam came back into their motel room, six pack in one hand, phone in the other, kicking the door shut as he spoke.

“Jane called. She says a container ship from the UK was bringing in illegal cargo, for some rich people who wanted exotic animals for canned hunts—”

“Douche move.”

“—and apparently when they went to unload, the crates were all busted up. The hold was covered with what was left of the bodies of the animals. All except for one. Three guesses.”

“Big bad bacon?”

“Yup. And she thinks we’re looking at… ah….” Sam trailed off and chuckled.

“Yeah?”

“A cryptid. It’s called The Beast of Dean, a.k.a. the Moose Pig.”

“Why do I think that somewhere, somehow, whatever’s left of Crowley just got a chub.”

They were in a rural area of Virginia, not too far from Portsmouth, and had been for a week, tracking what sounded like a rabid boar, but there was enough of a bump-in-the-night bend to the word on the street that they’d been confident it fell in their wheelhouse. Now that they had confirmation, after a night of research and weapon prep, they were ready to knock out the most recent mission and get back home. The Dean-Moose was large, and it was anything but subtle. The hunt should be an easy one, wouldn’t take long, nothing to it.

Well. One thing. One sort-of big thing. Even though it was also a small thing. Sam’s pro-pig storybook spider and their companion, they’d come to find, had more in common than just a name.

STOP

There, stretched across the Impala’s grill the next morning, was an undeniable message, and given Dean’s jaw-dropped state, it prompted Sam to speak on his behalf.

“Um, Charlotte? Listen, I don’t know if you… you seem nice, and… really smart, but… look, this thing isn’t like that pig in the book.”

“Because she’s read the book,” Dean said sarcastically, breaking out of his stupor and stomping over to the car, sharp eyes looking for the sassy spider; no joy. “Hey, guess what?” he said loudly. “I’m gonna drive so fast that by the time I do stop, your web’s gonna get shredded, how do you like that? I told you my car was OFF LIMITS!”

With one last glare at the web, Dean got into the car, and Sam followed suit. They put on the radio and chatted about anything but spiders and pigs for the better part of an hour as they bumped along the winding back roads. And after parking at the edge of the woods where the most recent sighting of the beastly hog had occurred, they opened the trunk to find another message, one that unfurled neatly, springing open as the lid of the weapons compartment lifted.

REALLY! STOP, STUPID.

Punctuation, and all.

“You know…” Dean began, but trailed off with a shake of his head, snatching up the shotgun and pocketing a handful of the shells with the special filling he and Sam had cooked up the night prior.

Sam removed the freshly-etched-with-symbols machete. Dean slammed the trunk shut. Charlotte did not emerge.

As they walked deeper and deeper into the woods, Sam spoke in a quiet voice.

“When we get back, I’m calling Cas. This is out of control, Dean. The spider’s obviously somebody - or something - dicking around with us. Maybe that’s been the plan, keeping us from killing this thing.”

Dean didn’t look at him, rather kept scanning their surroundings as he responded. “Maybe. She… it… came around before that ship got here. But, yeah. Maybe something’s up.”

Sam reflexively sighed in relief, and at that moment Dean stopped, extended his arm to stop Sam’s progress, as well.

“Shhh. Listen.”

The growl was only audible for a moment before the foliage began to stir.

The hunt, it turned out, did not last long. The defeated brothers wearily tossed their dented weapons into the backseat and practically fell into the front. Dean immediately turned off the radio - the chanting of Duran Duran’s “Wild Boys” had come screaming through the speakers.

“It does kinda sound like they’re saying 'wild boars’,” Sam noted.

“Shut up.”

After they’d returned to the motel and showered, cleaned up their scratches and cuts, swapped torn clothing for intact, Sam went back to researching, while Dean went out to the Impala, damp washcloths in hand, and opened the trunk. It was barely even six o'clock, and there was still enough sunlight that he could see every trace of the webbing was gone. But he wanted to check that his little - former - friend hadn’t done anything else.

She had.

Sitting in the driver’s set, Dean’s eye was drawn to the thin, nearly opaque message across the radio, anchored by the knobs and an ejected tape.

BAD JOB

Dean swiped it away without a word, uttering a small groan and clutching his bruised ribs as he climbed out. He took a few steps, but then pivoted. He opened the door again and leaned in, voice tense as he spoke.

“Tell you what, how’s about I bring you some toothpicks and you join in tomorrow, help us out, get in a few stabs? Be useful, show us how it’s done?”

Dean fell asleep wondering if he’d completely lost his mind.

THIS IS DUMB .

Sam ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes - he’d been out the door first, so the newest message, covering the entirety of the hood, immediately made him brace himself for what was coming next.

But, surprisingly, Dean kept his temper in check; he merely set down his bag, returned to the room for a towel, and briskly wiped down the hood.

“Ready?” he asked Sam, forcing a smile that was likely more unsettling than intended.

Sam kept quiet, answering with a thumbs-up.

Their Everything’s Fine! charade was short-lived.

As with the prior morning, Charlotte had chosen to reinforce her message, wrapping the steering wheel so thickly it was barely visible, and her stance on their mission came through loud and clear.

THIS IS ACTUALLY DUMB .

Sam thought the choice of having the final “dumb” in bold italic for emphasis was a nice touch. And he noted the copious amount of webbing wound around the gear shift with raised eyebrows. And he gulped when he spotted more strands of said webbing emerging from the ignition. He cut his eyes over to Dean and, upon seeing his expression, took a step back.

This time, Charlotte did not hide. She’d positioned herself on the dashboard, right near the puffed-up wheel, standing with what could be described as quite the petulant posture. And much like the day the spider and the hunter had met, Dean froze.

Charlotte held her ground.

Dean’s nostrils flared.

Charlotte crossed her front legs as if they were arms.

Dean’s jaw clenched.

Charlotte tapped a back leg, as if to say Well get on with it.

Dean was still unmoved, and so Sam said, “You know, when you freeze like that, it’s really not as intimidating as you might—-”

“CHARLOTTE!” Dean bellowed.

She turned and sashayed to the glove box, crawling inside without the first indication she felt in any danger whatsoever.

Thankfully, the motel was just shy of a mile from from a modest gas station-diner combo. Sam talked Dean into a breakfast - with extra bacon, a thumb of the nose to both the beast and its defender. After they easily convinced the owner to loan them his truck, explaining their car’s fuel gauge was apparently broken, buying a can of gas for show, they promised they’d have it returned to him by morning.

As they drove back to grab their gear, Dean asked, “You hear from Cas?”

Sam nodded. “Reception’s crap, though - I can only hear parts of his voicemail. He found something about Charlotte, at least, I think. But he didn’t sound upset, like she was dangerous.”

“Let’s just roast the pig and get the hell outta here.”

“I’m sorry she’s not… you know, fun-weird anymore,” Sam said.

Dean lowered his foot, gunning the engine. “Yeah, well. Story of my life,” he muttered.

The truck was returned way before morning, this encounter with their newest foe having gone as well as the first. Then they found that Charlotte had removed all the web from the Impala, though the door to the motel room held some snark:

NICE HEAD

Dean barely glanced at it - possibly a little hard to do with the near swollen-shut, a breath away from blackened eye - and didn’t even bother to clean it off. There was no message from Charlotte the next morning. Dean did bother to wonder if she was gone.

The sound of the tree cracking sent both of them diving behind a small knoll, gasping for breath, cringing as it crashed down just where they’d been not seconds earlier.

“I’m empty,” Dean said, returning his gun to his waistband. “You?”

“About ten minutes ago,” Sam answered.

The beast’s growls now turned into a piercing scream, a most furious howl, angry it couldn’t find them. They heard it turning up earth with its tusks, sending rocks flying, then ramming its head into yet another tree, the trunk buckling under the strain. Dean had managed to send a bullet into its snout, likely preventing it from sniffing them out, if the occasional gurgling snorts were any indication. Sam had earned himself a minor goring to his calf, but otherwise they were intact.

“Think you can run?” Dean asked, gesturing to the bandanna-wrapped wound.

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I think so. That the plan? Just make a run for it?”

“You got any better ideas?”

“On three?”

“One… two…. three!”

They dodged trees, though the beast didn’t bother, taking out the smaller ones along the way, picking up speed with every moment that passed, while the brothers were losing speed at the same time.

Dean noticed a large branch in their path up ahead and started to veer off from Sam, pointing to it and yelling, “Keep going! I’ll try to knock Porky out!”

“No!” Sam yelled back, grimacing each time his leg made contact with the ground. “It’ll kill—- HUUUURMMPPHH!”

Sam went down, Dean not far behind, something tripping both of them, causing them to fall with such force that whatever air they had left in their lungs got knocked out. Disoriented, they raised their heads only to immediately duck them, covering up with their arms, as the beast was still plowing ahead. Its hooves hit the ground in between them, tossing dirt everywhere, its speed too far gone for it to stop on a dime. They expected to soon hear it reversing course, so Sam opened his eyes, trying to spot a place to hide, Dean doing the same, trying to spot the branch.

Instead, the sound of the most meek squeal one could imagine reached their ears, prompting Dean and Sam to turn their gazes directly ahead.

They were at the bottom of a small incline, and they watched as the boar’s head rolled their way, their heads slowly turning as they observed it leisurely passing by. It came to a sudden stop against something near their feet. They shared a look, moving in sync onto their knees.

“Uh, Dean?” Sam said.

Dean looked up from inspecting the severed head to find Sam with his hand extended, pushing under something that Dean couldn’t make out, but a shift in position and a tilt of his head allowed him to see the bright moonlight glint off the surprisingly thick, iridescent rope running across Sam’s fingers.

Another look, another in sync movement as they stood, then tentatively walked forward til they reached the body. This time, Dean spotted it right away when he crouched, the finely-wound strands that were stretched between two trees, at just the perfect height to relieve a squatty hog monster of its head. He flicked it with a finger, as one would a string on a guitar, and it was just as taut.

“She clotheslined it,” Sam said, awestruck. “She tripped us so we wouldn’t… That could’ve clipped us at the knees. She… she…”

Dean looked up at Sam, and a slow smile spread across his face. "She’s awesome!”

Sam shifted his weight off of his bad leg, and grinned. “Think she’s any good with stitches?”

How Charlotte managed to spin their salvation in such little time, they’d never know, and they also had no idea how she beat them back to the car, but the evidence was there, across the driver’s side window. .

SOME PIG .

They laughed, Dean saying, “You ain’t lying.”

But before he could say anything else, Charlotte crawled out from under the handle. She scurried up her web, and as they watched, she whipped the “P” into a “D”; the “I” went “E” in a few short passes; the “G” was partially dismantled, then spun into an “A”; and in mere seconds, there appeared an “N”. .

SOME DEAN .

After a quick hop from its tip, a slide to the outside of one of the long connecting end pieces, and a drop of a new line of silk, their eyes followed her as she leapt, letting the momentum swing her clean up onto the roof. And then - Sam would swear to it, many times over the coming years - she curtsied.

“Thanks,” Dean said softly. “You, too.” With that, he opened the back door, gestured for her to climb inside.

Which, she did.

“Yes… yes… that’s very kind of you.”

Dean, Sam, and Castiel were standing outside the bunker, the former waiting patiently - and occasionally impatiently - as the latter had a conversation with Charlotte.

Castiel looked to them. “She says she likes my tie. The material meets her standards.”

Dean’s expression was completely flat, causing Sam to snicker.

“There any reason you didn’t tell us you could’ve been talking to her this whole time?” Dean demanded.

Castiel shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

It turned out that Castiel’s message had been to inform them that Charlotte was indeed a most special spider, more so than what they’d already divined. She was an emissary, an information-gatherer, a spy of sorts, though not a nefarious one. And because she herself was quite the accomplished hunter, she chose to spend time with other hunters whenever her journeys brought her to them.

And now, it was time for Charlotte to start her next journey.

Castiel was nodding his head as Charlotte, who was on his collar, near his ear, told him one last thing. “She’d like you to know that Sam was correct - she does need to prepare to lay her eggs, though she would not have done so in the car,” Castiel related.

Dean shot Sam a smug look.

“And she says she’ll name them Dean.”

Dean blinked. “All of them?”

“Yes.”

“How many we talking?”

A pause as Charlotte answered, and Castiel replied, “Anywhere from fifty to sixty.”

“That’s… a lot,” Dean said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“Not really,” Sam commented.

Another look from Dean - actually, he cycled through several.

“Fine. So maybe I did some research, too,” Sam admitted.

“It’s time for her to go,” Castiel announced. “She says she’s enjoyed your company immensely. And she apologizes for the web you’ve yet to find. It seems she was in a cranky mood that evening.”

“That’s okay. Tell her it’s okay,” Dean said, walking closer. “Tell her that, um… it’s been great knowing her. Don’t be a stranger. All that.”

Castiel smiled. “She knows.” He raised his hand to his shoulder, and Charlotte climbed onto it. “I’m going to give her a boost,” he explained, and then to Charlotte he said, “Please do give Mr. Anansi the Winchester brothers’ warmest regards.”

They watched as Charlotte prepped a silk balloon, and after a gentle wave of Castiel’s hand, off she flew.

“It would be… cheesy of me to comment it is angelic, their flight, wouldn’t it?” Castiel asked.

“Yes,” Dean and Sam answered in unison.

They began to walk back inside.

“What was that at the end? About Anansi?” asked Sam.

“Networking,” Castiel replied.

“I wouldn’t worry about us ever having to tangle with him,” Dean said. “I mean, not with Charlotte on our side. She’ll talk us up. She’s a talker.”

“Plus, there’ll be all the Deans,” Sam added.

“Yup. Exactly. We are cool with the spider kingdom,” said Dean, and with great confidence.

Dean was incorrect on this point, as he and Sam would later learn, during a case involving a young lady by the name of Muffet.

But that’s another story.

Want more stories? My Master Post is linked in my profile, and it tells you about getting on the Tag List, too! If for whatever reason it gives you trouble, don’t hesitate to send an Ask and I’ll link you.

Re-blogs and feedback are fuel for a writer’s soul - please do let me know if you enjoyed. 😘

Author’s Note #2 - The Jane mentioned is a character from my story Supernatural: Revelation, which you can find linked on the master post -or- just go straight to AO3, same author name SeeNashWrite 😁

Author’s Note #3 - This also included a prompt which had languished in drafts - albeit with the note “Anansi” from the get-go, thankyouverymuch! - which was from the cringeworthy submissions:

You can find all the #Nash300 Follower Celebration Master List of Madness stories (wherein I asked followers to send me prompts consisting of three words to make me cringe) via the Master Post.

Author’s Note #4: The beast of Dean mentioned is actually a thing, give it a google! And so is Anansi, check that out, too. If you don’t get the Muffet reference, well, I can’t help you with that. 😉

#Supernatural Fanfiction #SPN Fanfic #Supernatural Fanfic #fluff #Dean Winchester #Nash Writes

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hungline · 5 years ago

Text

on crowns they hung the dragon-fire

pairing: wonhuigyuhao genre: angst, fluff, dragon!hao au, fantasy au, rated m warnings: mild gore, minor violence, implied sexual content near the end words: 10340

summary: Minghao was born from fire and to the fire, he shall return. He has always known this to be true.

But when a prince, a warlock, and a knight enter his castle, Minghao finds that fire isn’t the only thing that will keep him warm.

Humans are stupid. One of the stupidest species Minghao has ever come across actually.

They have to be if they think slaying him is a good idea.

Which he can admit that he doesn't really understand in the long run, but he's been doing this long enough to know.

Still, humans truly are the dumbest species he's ever seen.

That's what he thought. What he always knew. At least until he met Junhui, Wonwoo, and Mingyu.

Most days for Minghao start out like this: He'll wake up, lick his scales clean as he stretches out, then he'll hunt for some mice for his breakfast, because contrary to what humans believe, only the most desperate of dragons actually eat humans.

Minghao prefers mice and his castle has an ample amount of them to last him for a very long while. He also enjoys the occasional bird and their eggs, but the number of birds in or around the castle is disappointedly low. Still, Minghao gets by well.

After he's had his breakfast, Minghao breathes into the largest fireplace near the entrance hallway and curls up before the warmth. He tucks in his tail and settles in for a long nap.

It is usually at this point in the day when a knight comes knocking on the castle door to slay Minghao and save the princess that Minghao is sure isn't living in his castle. Sometimes, they won't even knock and just stick their shiny needles into Minghao's leg in some delirious hope of harming him.

Rude doesn't begin to cover it.

There are different ways that Minghao likes to care of trespassers. None are pleasant, but at least none of these knights become his mealーthat would spoil Minghao's appetite and he's been trying hard not to do that.

Minghao personally enjoys burning them into a crisp. He loves watching the knight's armor meld into his skin, searing the first few skin layers until the metal begins to melt into a foul-smelling, bubbling mass and the knight with it. Afterward, Minghao will scrape the puddle off his castle's floor while it's still hot and fling it out of one of the many windows with his tail. Minghao curls up in front of the fireplace again and naps until lunch once his morning business is done.

For lunch, Minghao treats himself to more mice and the dragon fruit from the tree in his smallest courtyard. The juice from the fruit soothes his thirst and flames the embers in his lungs, keeping his inner fire alight. Most things aren't able to give him nutrition and make his flame brighter, the flame that keeps him alive, what he is at the core of his very being, so he's glad for the tree. It is one of his few joys in life and he pities the fool who'd ever try to chop it down.

This is, of course, another opportunity for the stupid humans to bother Minghao again. Obviously, Minghao doesn't generally receive two visits in one day, but his record so far is five and Minghao likes being prepared for the worst. And he still clearly remembers when one of those stupid humans sliced off a branch from his tree and Minghao blacked out for a few moments. He came back to a charred wall, blood splattered on his tree and the human's head in his claw. Minghao put that head on a spike and smugly set it up beside the front entranceway: a warning to all those who thought of bothering him and a promise to all those who dared enter.

Once the afternoon begins to drag on, Minghao stretches out and flaps his wings to rise into the air and roar as loud as he can. If the humans want to keep bothering Minghao, then he'll be sure to let them know that he won't just roll over and let them have their way.

Minghao was here first and he'll remain here long after the humans have gone. His kind kindled the fires that kept this world bright in the early ages and his kind will be the ones to destroy this world when it's all said and done. Humans can tear down their monuments, fight amongst themselves and kill and kill and kill, but in the end, they are nothing when compared to the dragons.

Humans are nothing.

Minghao lets the cold air glide across his wings and scales then checks if the red found in the base of his tail has expanded any further. It always does and Minghao would be worried about the fact that the beautiful green of his scales had faded away enough that his hide is pitch-black, but he likes acting like he doesn't know what's going on. When Minghao was newly born, his scales were greener than the forests that surround the castle, but over time as more humans began attacking him, hate bled the color away.

Hate is what's making the red found in the base of his tail grow with each passing day as well. Once Minghao's scales have taken on the same color as the blood that he spills too often, he will no longer be himself. His sense of awareness and his consciousness will dim as his inner flame consumes him. He'll be a living, walking pillar of fire and nothing will be able to stop the process. He'll rely on a millennium of evolutionary instincts and no longer be able to recognize himself.

Hate consumes all and Minghao wishes that there was some way to slow down or reverse the process.

For now, however, he is content to circle above his castle and enjoy the air. Content to enjoy the way that he can't smell the stench of his rotting mind with only fresh air around him. In the castle, he is surrounded by his scent, knows it well enough that when he first caught a whiff of the odor of hate clinging to him, he was shocked that his life had come to this. He doesn't know what to expect or what to do, but whenever he catches a whiff of himself, his own self-hatred only expands. Up in the clouds where there's only the rush of his wings and the strong wind currents, he can forget about all that. He can focus on this and enjoy it, can let the little feelings of happiness become logs that he adds to his inner flame, to the core of his being. He lets himself forget for the time being.

As he lands, Minghao usually has a few eagles and other large birds in his claws. They are his supper and after he's had his fill, he retreats back behind the castle walls and sleeps. Two times out of ten Minghao will wake in the middle of the night to yet another human sticking their pitiful needle into him.

It ends as well as it always does and even half-asleep, Minghao is still stronger, quicker, bigger, and smarter than these stupid knights.

This is how most of Minghao's days play out. He's annoyed by the humans and their constant presence in his castle and he loathes the hate he harbors for their kind and how it chips away at his very being. However, Minghao can admit that his days would be boring without them. The longest he's gone without having to fight a knight is two full moons and when one finally appeared, Minghao was excited to be of use againーto have a purpose.

As bizarre as it is, Minghao is the teeniest bit grateful to those annoying pests for keeping him fit and busy.

Minghao doesn't remember how he ended up in this specific castle or who his first kill was, but he does know that he came from fire. He knows, logically, he must have had biological parents, but he has no memory of them or their existence and he'd long ago given up on the hope of someone coming back for him, to claim him and give him a home. He was born from fire like the dragons before him and the fire will always welcome him into its midst, no matter the amount of blood he has shed nor however much he feels undeserving of its warmthーhe will always be welcomed. The hearth is his home and the flames are his one and only mother, keeping him safe and warm on those cold nights when the entire castle is beginning to frost over. Minghao remains warm.

And despite the repetition of his everyday routine, the constant sparring with knights and their demands for him to release some imaginary princess, Minghao's found that he actually likes his life.

For him, there is no other way of livingーof existing. He wakes, he kills, he eats and he flies, then sleeps only to do the same thing again the next day. His life is familiar and anything else surely wouldn't be able to accommodate him. He likes this life because he's never thought of having something different.

He's never had a reason to anyway. Not at least until a prince, a warlock, and a knight asked for a place at his hearth.

The day starts as any other.

Minghao has just finished breakfast and already has the fireplace crackling with fiery warmth when he smells the familiar musk of a human.

He huffs out a gruff sigh that leaves many candelabrum lit and stretches out his limbs as he uncurls from his spot before the fireplace. He'll just have to nap after he's done with the dumb knight approaching.

Except, as Minghao catches another whiff of the smell, he pauses.

The knight isn't alone.

There is the usual musk-and-sweat smell of a knight (although this one has a sourness to it that Minghao can't place), but there are two other scents accompanying it too. A sweet and calming waft that makes Minghao's stomach rumble with hunger which catches him so completely off guard that his throat burns with the desire to eat. Human meat has never appealed to Minghao before until now and he isn't sure that he likes this new development, but the next smell his nose registers makes Minghao stop in the middle of the entrance hallway as he tries to wrap his head around it.

It's spice and ash, the undeniable scent of another dragon.

Butーno. There's the dull scent of human blood mixed with it too.

The entrance hallway's doors burst open and Minghao stares down at the three tiny men standing before him.

No other dragon. Just three men.

Minghao watches them, nose twitching as spice and ash fill his nostrils. It's a dragon, it has to be. There is no faking that scent, but there are only three men here.

A knight, a snack, andーoh!

A halfling. Half-man and half-dragon. That has got to be it.

The humans say something to each other as they stare at him, their low voices barely audible and Minghao knows what they're saying, he just doesn't care. His attention is focused on figuring out which one of them is the halfling in question.

But before he can really start in on anything, the sweet and calming scent intensifies until it's eroding at Minghao's nostrils. The man on the very right with hair a dark black steps forward holding a staff up and begins chanting as the scent becomes even stronger. Minghao feels a pull low in his gut as something hotter than any flame begins crawling over his scales.

It's painful in a way that Minghao has never been accustomed to when it comes to touching fire. It's eating away his scales and leaving him naked to the cold, frigid air of his castle. His inner flame is dimming, growing calm and Minghao feels like something vital about him has been ripped away when he can no longer feel his inner flame at the back of his throat. He has no idea about what's going on, but the delicious-smelling human only holds his staff up higher and chants even louder as Minghao burns away. He has a fleeting thought over the irony of succumbing to the same fate he dooms all the knights that trespass into his castle, but it all cools down after that, his thoughts steadily slipping away.

He doesn't know what's going on, but Minghao's pretty sure he isn't going to like the outcome of thisーwhatever this is.

"Change me back."

The three men begin muttering amongst themselves again as his high and reedy voice fades out with a slight echo in the freezing entrance hallway.

Minghao really hopes that he won't grow used to this strange sensation because he preferred it better when he was huge, pitch-black, and could only roar. This tiny fragile body Minghao inhabits now will never do.

"Not until you tell us where the princess is," the knight says after taking off his helmet to reveal a man with a weak chin, hair as black as the delicious-smelling human, expressive eyes, and a curl to his mouth that Minghao finds very threatening.

He feels his teeth snap together in anger and tries for a growl, tries to appear brave. What comes out of his mouth is a squeak that sounds too familiar to that of the mice in his castle that Minghao feels a morbid rush of shame wash over him. The three men in front of him only stare at Minghao in varying levels of curiosity, but none of them are afraid of Minghao like he wants them to be. The knight steps forward, sheathing his sword and Minghao steps up as well before he crouches into his usual stance of attack.

Minghao's pretty sure he might have actually looked like he posed a threat if he wasn't completely and one hundred percent naked though.

The halfling steps in between them before Minghao can embarrass himself even further, his brown hair glistening in the sunlight while he pushing the knight back with a hand on his chest. He turns to smile at Minghao with an emotion that he doesn't recognize and Minghao hesitates. He stares awkwardly between the humans as they exchange glances.

Minghao still doesn't know how he turned into this weak and scrawny human, but he's pretty sure that the delicious-smelling one is to blame for this. The halfling takes another step forward, his scent muted but Minghao could never forget the fiery mix of spice and ashーnot even in this new form.

"I'm Prince Junhui. What is your name?" The halfling asks, leaving Minghao to do a double take because he had never in his life expected for a human's voice to sound so pleasant to him.

Minghao clicks his tongue, still not used to using this rough language lying heavy on his tongue. The other two men step up close behind the halfliーJunhui, behind Junhui, Minghao reminds himself. They step up behind Junhui and flank him, taking the defensiveーas if Minghao is honestly stupid enough to attack three armed men when he isn't even taller than any of them anymore. As if Minghao is actually that stupid. Really.

Junhui keeps looking at him though and Minghao forces himself to take a deep breath, stepping back and trying to appear as harmless as possible. He doesn't know what makes him do it, but if Junhui is a halfling, the least Minghao can do is find out more about him. So he sucks in a large breath, missing the way fire used to rest at the back of his throat and looks Junhui in the eye.

"Minghao." The name is still the same in this jarring tongue of the humans, and for that, Minghao feels a little piece of comfort wrap itself around his new body. "My name is Minghao."

Junhui smiles, the good nature behind it blinding Minghao. He unknowingly takes a step forward but flinches back when the knight draws his sword in the blink of an eye, pointing it towards Minghao. Minghao shiversーfrom the cold, nothing else. He isn't terrified of the sword point in his face. Not at all!

At least now Minghao understands why all knights carry them.

Now that Minghao isn't trailing wings behind him twenty-four-seven, he can clearly see the way light shifts across the already gleaming blade of the sword. The "needle" isn't so much a needle anymore.

Still, Minghao does his best to appear fearless when he's feeling anything but because he knows how expressive human's faces can be. The knight regards him, only stepping back again as Junhui puts a hand on his chest, murmuring something that Minghao's new, weaker ears barely manage to catch.

"Mingyu, it's fine. Put that away and let me handle this."

Mingyu frowns but does as Junhui tells him to (although it doesn't go pass Minghao that Mingyu keeps his sword out). Junhui frowns at him, pouting at the unsheathed sword, but steps forward confidently, not minding the fact that his two companions are still sticking close to his, flanking him. Minghao watches them, unsure of whether he should step forward to meet Junhui halfway or step back and scout out an escape.

"It's nice to meet you, Minghao," Junhui says with a bow that confuses Minghao. "Can you tell me something, please?"

Minghao watches him warily as he stands upright again. His companions step in even closer until the delicious-smelling one has a hand on the small of Junhui's back. He's muttering something under his breath that Minghao can't understand or make any sense of. There's a tingling in his throat that makes Minghao ache for his fire to return and even though Minghao shouldn't really be able to notice, he can make out the sweet and delicious smell intensifying again in the air around him, but it's different now somehow.

With the tingling in his throat and the rumbling in his stomach, Minghao nods his head and feels his heartbeat begin to change in his chest when Junhui smiles at him.

"Where is the princess, Minghao?" Junhui asks.

Minghao barely has to think about his answer, the tingling in his throat growing strong enough to make him uncomfortable. "Alone."

"Huh?"

"Alone... I'm alone," Minghao manages to say, the language jarring and blocky on his tongue.

Junhui nods and smiles, pressing a hand to Mingyu's chest to keep him back when he inches forward again. He takes another step closer until Minghao feels like he might be suffocated by his proximity alone, but does his best to pretend like he isn't bothered.

"Are you the prince?"

Minghao's answer is instant like before, leaving him no room to question why. "No."

Junhui smiles at him again. "You could've fooled me."

Minghao doesn't get why his face begins to feel warm or why the delicious-smelling one just snickered under his breath. He doesn't get the chance to really expand on the reasons behind all this though because Mingyu steps forward again, completely ignoring Junhui as he holds his sword out. He levels the point at Minghao's face again and glares at him, his mouth screwed up into a strange sort of pout.

"You're lying! Where is the princess that the villagers nearby speak of?" Mingyu spits out, eyes boring into Minghao's own.

The other human steps up beside Mingyu and pushes his arm aside, effectively knocking the sword away from Minghao's face. Mingyu starts to say something, but the delicious-smelling human who Minghao still does not have a name for speaks.

"I cast an honesty spell on him. He's telling the truth," the deep voice cuts off Mingyu's protests while also surprising Minghao as well.

"Oh yeah? How would you know that he doesn't have some secret dragon power that makes him immune to magic?" Mingyu shoots back, face pinched together in a sour expression. "Just because you're the best warlock in the kingdom, Wonwoo, doesn't mean that magic will work each and every time! You know this better than anyone."

The delicious-smelling oneーWonwoo Minghao makes a note ofーreadies himself to fire back and is then cut off by Junhui calmly stepping in between them.

"I think he's telling the truth," Junhui says quietly, his voice soft but leaving no room to argue.

"Prince Junhuiー" Mingyu begins to say.

"Answer me this, my dear knight," Junhui interrupts, his voice still soft. "Would you or would you not trust Wonwoo with your life?"

"Of course I would! What kind of question is that?" Mingyu sputters, face turning an interesting shade of red.

"Then I shall kindly tell you to sheath your sword and shut up. Wonwoo's the only reason this dragon isn't burning you to bits right now," Junhui replies, calmly, his voice so at odds with his words that Minghao can't help but feel a spark of pity for the poor, outranked knight.

Junhui then turns to face him again, smiling until his eyes travel down and he seems to realize that Minghao isn't wearing a stitch of clothing. "Oh. Clothes. Minghao needs clothes. Wonwoo, he looks about your size. Can you...?"

Minghao watches as Wonwoo immediately kneels down and sets his staff down on the floor before slinging a pack that Minghao didn't notice until now off his back. He rummages through it before pulling out a few pieces of cloth that he immediately hands to Junhui's waiting, outstretched hands. Junhui takes them and smiles kindly at Wonwoo before facing Minghao again and holding the pieces of cloth out to Minghao. Minghao takes them and holds them to his chest, having no idea what he's supposed to do now.

"Right," Junhui says as he claps his hands together once. "Let's get you into those clothes and then we'll talk about why the villagers seem to think a princess is being held captive here."

From the tone of his voice, Minghao can tell that Junhui won't accept any arguments and so he leads the way towards the fireplace he was previously curled in front of and hopes that what comes next won't hurt.

Junhui and Wonwoo help him into the clothes quickly, explaining which limbs go into which holes for certain articles of clothing and Minghao really wishes he wasn't in this new form.

He really wishes Mingyu would stop holding his sword up and lean into a defensive stance whenever Wonwoo or Junhui linger for a moment too long when they pull the shirt and breeches onto Minghao too. The clothes are itchy and Minghao thinks they might be a little too big on him, but when Junhui steps back to study him then smiles and proclaims him perfect, Minghao can feel his heartbeat accelerating again. Wonwoo stays by his side for a moment longer as he fixes the back of Minghao's shirt, but then he, too, steps back and Minghao is left standing with the fireplace to his back.

The flames are warm behind him and how Minghao wishes he could just curl up in them and sleep. But he's a human now and humans are very flammable, meaning that he'll burn if he were to come too close to the fire. So he sits down where he is and pulls his legs into his chest until he's able to rest his head on his knees.

The others remain standing and Minghao figures that they're giving him a moment to settle in before they start questioning him. Minghao studies his hands as he waits, watching the way tendons and muscles move with his fingers. He presses his palms together and marvels over the soft padding that his claws never had and then he looks down to study his new feet. His toes are like his fingers except much shorter and rounder. He wiggles them, smiling at them slightly when he finds them amusing.

Junhui clears his throat and Minghao looks up to meet his gaze, the smile falling off his face when he sees the serious expression on Junhui's own.

"Whatー" Minghao stops, clears his throat and tries again, doing his best to look small so that Mingyu will finally take pity on him and sheath his sword. "What would you like to know?"

"Are you absolutely sure there isn't a princess here?" Junhui asks, jumping right into it to get what he wants like Minghao expected him to.

"Yes, I'm sure," Minghao replies without a second thought, the tingling in his throat making another appearance. "No one else is here but me... and you three now."

Mingyu scoffs behind Junhui and Minghao looks over in his direction to find that the knight has taken a seat as well, legs crossed one over the other with his sword resting across his knees. Wonwoo pokes one of Mingyu's legs with his staff and shushes him, waving a hand in front of him to tell Junhui to continue.

"How long have you been here?" Junhui asks next.

Minghao takes a moment to think about that because even he isn't too sure. He doesn't remember if he once had parents, but the earliest memory Minghao can recall is one where the dragon fruit tree is bigger than him. His scales were still a glimmering jade green and his tail was speckled with white spots. The flame inside of him was small but strong and the taste of the fruit was something entirely brand new. The tree's branches had shadowed over him and offered him protection as he feasted on the few pieces of fallen, heavy fruit that the tree could no longer hold up anymore. He had eaten until he was full and curled himself around the trunk while he slept. Because there, he was comfortable and there where the tree's branches gave him shade from the hot summer sun, he was safe.

He doesn't know exactly how long ago that moment, in particular, may have been, but he is bigger than the tree now, big enough that their roles have changed. Minghao thinks that if he were to stand beside the tree now though, he wouldn't even be able to reach its lowest branch.

"I don't know," Minghao finally answers, biting his bottom lip when he thinks Junhui will lash him out at him for not giving him a clear answer.

But the prince only smiles and Minghao lets his lip go, focusing instead on Junhui's mouth. "Have you been here for a long time?"

Minghao nods because he doesn't have an exact timeframe, but he must have been living this life for long enough already if his scales had changed from green to black. "A long time."

"By yourself?"

Minghao nods again.

Before anything more can be said, however, there's a shift around him that sends a shiver down Minghao's spine. Minghao inches away from the others and sniffs at the air, amazed that he's still able to pick up scents even with his new weaker senses. There's another knight approaching, on horseback, and Minghao is going to die.

He isn't large enough to defend himself anymore. His limbs are too skinny and too frail to even hold off an attack from Wonwoo, the weakest looking one out of this trio in front of him. He's tinier than every knight that's come knocking on his castle's door and he knows that he's going to die if he isn't changed back in the next few seconds.

"Change me back," he demands again. "Please change me back."

It takes a moment for him to realize the reason it looks like everything is shaking is because he is the one who's trembling in fear like all the knights he's killed. He has become the prey now and he's going to die, he's sure of it.

Junhui tilts his head to the side and studies Minghao with eyes that are kind, but words that are anything but. "We haven't gotten the information we need yet. We can't change you back until we know why the villagers say there is a princess living here even though you say there isn't."

Minghao's shaking only gets worse. His heartbeat is becoming louder by the second and Minghao hates the fact that he's preparing to run. He's a human now, weaker and smaller and more prone to breaking. He misses the heat of his flames in the base of his throat and he aches to fly again, but Junhui isn't going to let him change back anytime soon.

"Please," Minghao tries again. "I'm going to die if you don't change me back. I have to defend myself, please."

"Defend yourself from who?" Mingyu pipes up, pushing himself onto his knees before he stands and lifts up his sword once more. "Is someone coming to kill you?"

Minghao nods his head frantically, his vision going blurry as his eyes become wet. "A knight. A knight is coming to kill me. They always come. They always want to kill me. Please, change me back or I'm going to die. The knight will kill me to save the princess that doesn't exist and I'm going to die."

"Minghao, calm down," Wonwoo kneels beside him, snaking an arm around his shoulders and usually Minghao wouldn't allow this, Minghao wouldn't usually curl into Wonwoo's body for protection and stability, but Minghao isn't his usual self right now and so he allows himself this for the time being. "You're not going to die."

But Minghao shakes his head, not believing Wonwoo's false promises. "I am going to die. Humans hate me and I hate them because they always try to kill me. They come into my castle, they destroy my things, and they always try to kill me."

Minghao can't breathe. He can't breathe and his face is wet and there's white noise in his ears as he continues to ramble, but Wonwoo only sets his staff down and throws his other arm around Minghao, pulling him into his chest. "They do all this for a princess that isn't here, for a princess that doesn't exist. And they keep coming back because I can't tell them there is no princess here. They wouldn't believe me anyway. Who would trust a dragon that has spilled enough blood to fill entire oceans? No one is that stupid or that kind. Please, change me back. I beg of you to change me back now!"

"But you're not," Junhui murmurs, cutting through the thoughts spiraling in Minghao's head. "You're not a dragon. Not anymore."

And Minghao stops. He stops shaking, stops hiccuping and stops thinking because Junhui is right. He isn't a dragon.

Minghao is human now.

"Iー Youー" Minghao tries for words but is unable to come up with anything coherent enough.

Minghao buries his face into Wonwoo's chest when the musk of a knight alerts his senses right before a horse's neighs are heard from the entrance hallway. It's only now that Minghao remembers the three men before him hadn't shut the door behind them before they changed Minghao into a human and he cowers in the face of his death.

"I'll handle this," Mingyu speaks, sheathing his sword as he walks off and Minghao stares after him in shock.

Mingyu had seemed to be the one least likely to come to Minghao's aid from his first impression of him. However, the line of his shoulders is sturdy and strong and Minghao doesn't know what makes him think itーmaybe instinct, perhapsーbut he knows in his gut that Mingyu will handle this. He's more than capable of handling it really. The clank of armor is so loud that Minghao flinches at the sound and hides his face behind his hands.

Minghao can barely hear Mingyu's voice as he greets the knight and Minghao tenses in Wonwoo's arms, unsure of what to do or how to hold himself with danger nearby. Wonwoo runs a hand down Minghao's back and stares at the arch that leads from the room they are currently in, to the entrance hallway. A voice deeper than Wonwoo's can be heard echoing across the walls and Junhui steps closer to the two men huddled on the floor when Mingyu's voice raises in that way it always does when he's arguing with someone.

His breath rattles in his lungs and Minghao hates how afraid he is.

He was born from fire. It poured itself into him and lit up his core, making him feel invincible. But, he is only a man nowーweak, frail, and unable to nurture the flames of his very being. He is nothing but a man now and he's afraid.

Minghao doesn't want to die.

Wonwoo takes up his staff when the voices grow louder and Junhui kneels on Minghao's other side, quickly wrapping his arms around him when Wonwoo's fall away. Wonwoo stands and begins to chant again and the smell that Minghao thought as delicious when he was a dragon makes his stomach churn in an entirely different way now that he is a man.

He knows what mating is, he knows what it looks like, but he's never felt the urge to mate before. At least not before Wonwoo's delicious scent invaded his sense of smell and made him want, sending another shiver down Minghao's spine.

Junhui shifts beside him so Minghao knows that he isn't the only one affected by it as well. Something hard brushes across the side of Minghao's thigh, but he has no idea what it may be and so he forces himself to focus on what Wonwoo is doing and not what Wonwoo's scent is doing to him.

The knight is yelling now, his deep voice sounding more shrill with each passing moment, but then he cuts off suddenly and there's a loud sound that leaves Minghao's ears ringing. Armor and metal clatter against the ground and Mingyu returns soon after, a frown marring his face as he walks straight towards Wonwoo who is clinging to his staff for dear life. Mingyu sheaths his sword and wraps an arm around the warlock's waist, holding him and supporting his weight.

Minghao freezes in Junhui's arms when Wonwoo turns in Mingyu's embrace so that they are face to face and then slowlyーvery slowlyーlets their lips meet gently.

Junhui doesn't say anything when Minghao buries his face into his neck and inhales his scent deeply, letting the familiar spice and ash wrap around him in comfort.

Minghao doesn't know what Wonwoo did to the knight exactly and he does his best not to think so much about it either because he truly does not wish to know.

What he does know is that when the three men finally coax him back into the entrance hallway, the knight is unconscious on the floor. Minghao watches them lift the limp knight and push him back onto his horse, wrapping a rope around his chest and tying it off before they let the horse wander off with its sleeping rider on it's back. They all watch the horse cross the bridge and disappear into the surrounding forest on the other side and then retreat back to the fireplace.

Junhui sends Mingyu to fetch firewood to tend to the slowly dying flames and Minghao tenses before he politely asks Mingyu to get wood from the forest instead of his courtyards. Mingyu glares at him for a long moment before Junhui tells him to hurry up and then he trudges out past the still open door and walks across the bridge. Minghao watches him, turns back to see that Junhui and Wonwoo are busy getting comfortable, then runs towards his tree.

He was right about being smaller than it again in this new form. He can't reach any of the branches and so he settles for picking the ripe pieces of fruit off the ground instead. He takes an experimental bite out of one and smiles to himself, relieved to know that the fruit still tastes as delicious as it did when he was a dragon. He's protective of his tree and he would never let anybody but him take fruit from it, but these three men protected him. They went up against that knight for him and, granted, they are also at fault for why Minghao needed protection in the first place, but it isn't like they had expected for a knight to come by the castle on the same day they would. He can't blame them for the unexpected and so he sighs as he bends down on one knee.

He picks a few more pieces and carries them in his arms back to the fireplace where he knows Junhui and Wonwoo would have noticed his absence by now. He finds the two crouched down before the fire, looking at what Minghao assumes is the runes carved into the opening of the fireplace. Minghao sets the fruits down beside the other food Wonwoo had been busy with before Minghao left and scoots over until he's close enough to the fireplace to feel the warmth of the flames against his back once more.

Now that his wings are gone along with the fire that had always been nestled at the back of his throat, this is the next best thing.

Mingyu returns as well soon after and Wonwoo immediately rises to help him with the firewood in his arms while Junhui settles himself down beside Minghao. Without thinking much of it, Minghao turns so that most of his body is facing Junhui now and holds his hand out for Junhui's. Junhui smiles at him as he places his hand in Minghao's and smiles even wider when Minghao presses a piece of the dragon fruit into his palm before letting go. Junhui takes a bite out of the fruit and Minghao carefully watches his reaction, hoping that Junhui will like it.

He doesn't know why it matters so much, but it does and so he waits, smiling when Junhui hums appreciatively and quickly takes another, bigger, bite out of the dragon fruit. Wonwoo and Mingyu soon join them and accept the food that Junhui hands them. Minghao tries bread, cheese and other types of fruit that he hadn't even known of their existence until now. The knight and warlock laugh at him when he refuses the water they try to make him drink, but Minghao gets his revenge soon enough. He snickers as Wonwoo and Mingyu take a bite out of the fruit and immediately spit it out, matching expressions of disgust on their faces.

(Minghao doesn't miss the way Junhui looks at them either and Minghao is new to this human business, but he isn't blind. He's smart enough to know what attraction is and the way they had smelled when they first showed up, Minghao can tell that they're mates.)

He eats quietly after that and only takes a sip of water when Junhui reassures him yet again that the water won't kill him.

The water is lukewarm and soothes his dry throat and before Minghao knows it, he's gone and drunken a few mouthfuls of it. Junhui takes it away from him soon after that and Minghao eats more fruit, taking another piece of cheese when Wonwoo offers him the rest of his. Something that Mingyu frowns at as well, but Minghao is too busy enjoying the new tastes and textures on his tongue to really care anymore.

They eat in relative silence and Minghao listens to the crackle of the fireplace behind him, crooning and calling for him to come back. To come home.

The sun has fallen behind the skyline when Junhui establishes he'll be taking the first watch and Minghao becomes confused about what exactly he'll be watching.

Wonwoo agrees immediately and starts to pull out sheets that he lies down on, curling into himself right then and there, quickly falling into deep slumber before the fireplace. Mingyu argues for a little bit about how he should be taking the first watch since he's the knight and all, but Junhui shuts him up with a look and Minghao watches as Mingyu curls himself around Wonwoo's back and holds him in his sleep, grumbling under his breath until Wonwoo turns so he can bury his face into the other man's neck.

It's only him and Junhui left awake by the time the air grows cold enough in the castle for their breaths to be visible. Junhui pulls out another, thicker sheet of cloth from the knapsack he'd been carrying and lays it over his mates, tucking it in around them so they are completely cocooned in their own warmth.

Minghao barely feels the cold though and he crawls on his knees over to where Junhui sits beside the sleeping men. Junhui smiles at him and pats his thigh, giving Minghao all the incentive he needs to lay down and use him as a resting place when he lies his head down on Junhui's thigh. They say nothing as Junhui watches his mates and Minghao stares into the fireplace directly behind them, letting the dull heat wrap itself around them slowly.

Crickets chirp out in the forest and Minghao can see the moon hanging in the sky from the highest window above them. Stars twinkle beside the moon, sharing its space and sharing its light, and Minghao aches to fly up to them, to fly away and never look back.

Junhui's hand tentatively rests on his head soon after and Minghao blinks in surprise. He lets Junhui continue though, too tired and worn out to deny himself this. Junhui's fingers run through his hair slowly, pushing Minghao away from the anxious feeling fluttering around in his chest.

"What are you thinking about?" Junhui asks, his voice so quiet that Minghao has to strain to hear the gentle tones.

Minghao doesn't know if Wonwoo's honesty spell is still affecting him or not, but there's no tingling in his throat when he asks, "Will Wonwoo be okay?"

Junhui's hand stills in his hair for a short moment before Minghao feels his fingers lace through his hair again. "Wonwoo? Yeah, he'll be fine. He's just not used to performing spells on such a grand scale because youーwell, don't mind me saying this, but you were huge. He looked fine after he'd done it, so I didn't focus on tending to him, but then he had to do the honesty spell on you and that other spell to knock out the knight. It's only a little bit of magic, but so soon after performing such a big spell, and back-to-back as well, really wore him down. He ate a lot at lunch and supper, now he just needs to rest and he'll be fine. He should be able to change you back after breakfast, so don't worry, Minghao."

Minghao's surprised that the topic of Wonwoo being able to change him back wasn't his first or primary concern when he asked the question. He asked because he truly cared about the warlock's state of being and health. That was all.

Minghao stares at the crescent moon, wondering if he should ask the next question that's on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows it down and settles for something easier. "They're your mates."

He doesn't phrase it as a question, but Junhui answers him as if it were one anyway. "Ah, I wouldn't call them my mates, humans don't really use that term, but yes? I call them my lovers as they call me their prince."

Minghao looks away from the moon to study Junhui instead because he doesn't understand why he sounds so uncertain. Junhui's skin resembles a golden amber in the firelight, the reds and oranges bringing out the lighter tones in his skin, and his honey brown eyes sparkle with flames. The scent of ash and spice rises to greet Minghao like an old friend and he shouldn't be so comfortable with this halfling so soon, but Minghao has no memory of ever being held or touched in a way that wasn't violent. These soft and gentle caresses of Junhui's are more than welcomed by Minghao.

"They smell of you," Minghao tells him, wanting to assure him, wanting to make the prince smile again. "They are your mates."

Junhui looks down to meet his gaze, his head tilted ever so slightly to the side. "They smell of me? You can smell their scents even in this form?"

Minghao doesn't falter, merely keeps the halfling's gaze and asks. "Don't you?"

"Why would I be able to smell Wonwoo and Mingyu like you can?"

"No one's told you," Minghao observes.

Junhui frowns and pokes Minghao's nose. "Told me what exactly?"

"Hm. It's probably why you weren't forced to be locked away in a castle with a dragon actually. I don't think your parents would have taken kindly to a dragon trying to mate you," Minghao says simply, brow furrowed together in thought. "I'm surprised that you don't know. Or, I guess I should say, I'm surprised that no one has told you yet."

"Told me what?" Junhui demands, poking Minghao's cheeks this time. "Minghao. What haven't I been informed about?"

Minghao huffs, a little annoyed with Junhui's too-casual touches. "You tell me something first and then I'll tell you what you don't know."

"Fine, but you better keep your word," Junhui immediately agrees, tangling his fingers in Minghao's hair again to prompt the dragon to speak.

Minghao finds himself smiling at the prince's antics and asks something else that he has been thinking about. "Why did you come looking for a princess when you already have two mates?"

Junhui stills above him, hands freezing in his hair, but Minghao doesn't let him look away. He wants to be able to see the emotions flickering in Junhui's eyes so that when he finally answers, Minghao will hopefully be able to understand him better. The prince sighs and closes his eyes when Minghao still hasn't looked away. Junhui's hands fall away from Minghao's hair to grip at his legs instead and Minghao watches as Junhui tries to think of what to say, eyes flickering behind his closed lids.

"My step-mother wishes for me to wed. She nor anybody in the kingdom knows that my heart belongs to them, and being with more than one person isn't very... accepted. But I love these two men, and they love me. I could never choose between the two of them, so I accepted my step-mother's terms on the grounds that she would allow me to bring them along with me so that I could explain to the princess that I would marry her, but I could never love her like I love them," Junhui explains, his eyes still closed while Minghao studies him carefully.

Minghao raises his hand and cups Junhui cheek, relying on instinct because he doesn't know what he should do and so he does what he wants to do instead. And right now, he wants to touch Junhui's beautiful, vulnerable face and comfort him. "It's normal for dragons to take on more than one mate. We are creatures born from fire and thinking that only one other creature such as ourselves may be able to tame us is ridiculous. We were born from fire and no one man is able to control the flames of life after all."

"It's normal for dragons?" Junhui's eyes are open now, the fireplace's flames dancing in their depths, following a tune that Minghao might be able to hear if he strained his ears enough.

"It's always been our way. Since the beginning. We are older and larger, our hearts are big enough to love more than one," Minghao replies, voice nothing but a hoarse whisper now as Junhui stares at him.

Minghao pauses, breath hitching in his throat when Junhui leans his face into Minghao's palm, closing his eyes again. He takes a moment for himself to etch this into his memory, the look on Junhui's face as he lets Minghao comfort him, the relief evident in the line of his shoulders. He was worried about nothing really. Minghao is new to this whole human business and he doesn't know for how much longer he'll have to endure it, but even after they leave him, he'll keep this memory and cherish it until his dying breath.

"Junhui," Minghao says, his tongue feeling oddly heavy in his mouth. "What were you going to do after marrying the princess?"

Junhui doesn't open his eyes, just shrugs his shoulders and wraps his hand around Minghao's wrist to keep his hand where it is now. "Pretend for those at court that we are happy in our marriage, but continue to see Wonwoo and Mingyu whenever I could. Maybe even attend their wedding when it came time for it. But, after I become king, I intend to change the laws of marriage so that I can wed them as well."

Minghao shifts in his lap and takes in a deep breath. "What if you were to fall in love with the princess after marrying her?"

"Then I would love my wife and my lovers. My heart is big enough," Junhui's eyes flicker open to meet Minghao's gaze again as he murmurs into the quiet of the room, the firewood crackling where the flames engulf it.

"It is. Your heart is more than big enough," Minghao says back, a smile spread across his lips that makes Junhui smile back.

"Will you tell me what I don't know? I answered your questions," Junhui reminds him, his grip on Minghao's wrist tightening and Minghao doesn't know if he did that on purpose or accidentally, but it's comforting to him a strange way that he can't explain.

So he nods and inhales deeply, closing his own eyes so that he won't have to look at Junhui's face in case he reacts badlyーeven though he really, really wants to look Junhui in the eyes when he says this. Junhui taps his cheek and Minghao opens his eyes to look at him, smiling when Junhui does, silently urging him to speak without fear. Minghao exhales and lets his body go limp in Junhui's lap, keeping his gaze and accepting whatever outcome he may receive.

"You've got dragon blood running through your veins. You smell like I did when I was a child."

Junhui blinks at him, hand locked around Minghao's wrist in shock. "What?"

"You're a halfling. Half-dragon, half-human," Minghao says, deciding to go the simpler route. "I didn't know if you knew, but I think you deserve to know."

"A-Are you sure?" Junhui asks, eyelashes fluttering as he blinks rapidly, sitting up straight and releasing Minghao's wrist. "Are you positive that Iーthat I'm...?"

He trails off and Minghao knows it's because he isn't ready to say it yet. Saying it would make it all that more real and Minghao can understand that he might need a moment to wrap his head around this. Junhui can take all the time he needs, Minghao just wants to make sure that he isn't in the dark anymore.

Because Junhui is only half, but he, too, is a creature of flames and fire and light and warmth and he deserves to know.

"I know the smell. Spice and ash are much too hard to fake, Junhui. You are of the dragons," Minghao murmurs, not missing the way Junhui's breath catches in his throat when he does. "You have no wings and you breathe no flames. You are soft and you don't hate, but you are like me. You have warmth and a core of fire in you and you love. You love like a dragon and so you are one."

Junhui's eyes sparkle and before Minghao can say anything more, something wet falls on his cheek and Junhui's chest heaves before Junhui wails, a noise so heart wrenching and ugly that it claws at Minghao's chest and rips his heart out, leaving him to bleed dry while Junhui continues to sob. Junhui's face is all scrunched up and twisted to look ugly and he is loud as he cries so it doesn't surprise Minghao when Wonwoo and Mingyu wake up soon after and crowd around the prince, asking him what's wrong, touching him and wiping his face again and again while Junhui ignores them.

Minghao slides off Junhui's lap and tears his hand away, not allowing himself to touch the prince now that he's hurt him by telling him the truth. He's caused this and maybe he should just let Mingyu run him through with his sword, but he says nothing as he closes his eyes, curls up into himself, and turns his back on the trio and the fire alike, opting to brave the bitter cold of his castle instead.

It's a long time before Junhui's cries stop and an even longer period before Minghao manages to sleep.

The next morning, no one mentions the fact that Junhui's eyes are red-rimmed and puffy.

Nor the morning after that or the morning after that.

When Wonwoo reveals that he still doesn't have enough power to cast another large spell so soon, Minghao reassures the warlock that it's more than okay and that he can take all the time he needs until he's okay again. Junhui, Wonwoo, and Mingyu end up staying in Minghao's castle while Wonwoo builds up his strength so he can change Minghao back to his original form.

But as the days go past, Minghao realizes that he may not want to be changed back.

As a dragon, he was filled with pure hate. He killed and took the lives of all those who dared enter his castle and he let the hate he had for knights and humans alike consume him enough that the hate began to corrupt his weak heart. Let it control him as his scales darkened and the goodness from him fled.

Because for all the strength Minghao had as a dragon, his heart was weak and so he was weak as well.

Now that he's a human, he thinks he might actually be able to learn how to let that hate go and let love strengthen his heart instead.

Love, or something akin to it, is already affecting him as the days go past. He's falling so steadily and so quickly that he doesn't really understand what's going on in the first few days, but then they're there to catch him. Some are slower to get there than him, but they are all still there in the end.

Junhui slowly begins talking to him again, asking random questions about dragons, asking if certain things are normal for creatures of flight and flames. Minghao answers each and every one to the best of his abilities, not in the least surprised that Junhui's mates already know.

Minghao cries when Junhui asks him how it feels to know that fire made you and fire will be the one to reclaim you once it's all said and done because it feels lonely. It's lonely and comforting to know that when it's all over, what made you will welcome you with open arms in the end. Junhui wraps him up in his arms and lets Minghao cry himself dry, smiling when Wonwoo and even Mingyu kneel beside them to comfort the dragon-turned-human.

The moon is still a crescent when Mingyu pulls him close during his watch at night and grabs his chin, much more gently than Minghao expected from the knight that usually can't look him in the eye unless he's glaring at him. Mingyu's eyelids flutter closed and Minghao is left to look at his eyebrow while their breaths intermingle between them. Minghao exhales and sighs in relief when Mingyu's lips press to his, similar to how he kissed Wonwoo on that first day, but still different somehow. Musk and sweat are all that Minghao can smell right now and usually that scent alone would have him ready to defend himself, but he's helpless when it comes to Mingyu. Minghao doesn't know what he should do with his body, so he opts to wrap his arms around the knight's neck and lets him lead.

The morning after, Mingyu is much more nicer to Minghao than he was before which makes Wonwoo and Junhui snicker at them when Minghao presses two dragon fruits into Mingyu's hand at breakfast. Mingyu thanks him and bites into the fruit before handing it back to Minghao with a sour look on his face. Minghao laughs along with the others until Mingyu shuts him up by kissing him again.

No one is laughing when Mingyu and Minghao pull apart and Minghao can't explain why his face feels so hot, but then Junhui's smiling at them like he's radiating pure happiness so Minghao focuses back on his food and finishes breakfast in silence.

Mingyu and he sneak in a lot more kisses afterward though.

There's a half-moon in the sky when Wonwoo kisses him.

It's wetter than it was with Mingyu, but it's still just as nice and just as warm as well. Wonwoo moves his mouth in ways different than Mingyu and Minghao's eyes flutter open when Wonwoo's tongue traces his bottom lip. Minghao's lips part in surprise and then Wonwoo's sucking on his tongue and tugging his hair, hard. Minghao grips his waist and presses his thumbs into the warlock's hips, feeling that same urge to mate again when Wonwoo's scent wraps itself around him. He beats it into the back of his mind and groans when Wonwoo climbs into his lap and presses up against him, pushing his hips into Minghao's until he's able to feel something very hard skim across his stomach.

Wonwoo leaves him breathless and raging with want, but Minghao doesn't do more than kiss the warlock that night.

Mingyu tackles them to the floor at lunch the next day after Minghao hands Wonwoo a piece of dragon fruit and Wonwoo hands it right back without even taking a bite then presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth in apology. Wonwoo laughs between them and kisses Mingyu before he kisses Minghao full on the mouth and Minghao almost forgets that Junhui is there too until the prince starts laughing at them for being sprawled across the floor. Mingyu drags him down on top of them and Minghao can't stop laughing at the scandalized look on the prince's face when he gets squished between his mates. Wonwoo kisses his nose and Mingyu presses his face into the back of his neck while Minghao watches them from right underneath, his heart fluttering in his chest when Junhui's expression morphs into something else, something soft. Something more.

When Junhui kisses him, it's on the night of a full moon.

The fireplace is crackling with light and warmth, but Junhui feels even warmer pressed against Minghao. Wonwoo and Mingyu aren't sleeping like they were that first night and it's much too easy to lean into Junhui's embrace and wrap his arms around him. Minghao doesn't care that Wonwoo's predicted he'll be ready to perform the spell again by tomorrow because right now, he's kissing Junhui and that's more important than anything else. Junhui moves them until Minghao is straddling his thighs and then he lies back slowly, Minghao moving with him without even having to think about it. Ash and spice explode on his tongue when Junhui's mouth opens for him and Minghao dives right in without another thought. Junhui's hands toy at the back of Minghao's shirt before they clamber up his back, fingertips fluttering across the ridges of his spine. Minghao groans against Junhui's mouth, his hips bucking up of their own accord and Minghao hums appreciatively when Junhui lets a sound so pretty slip past his lips that he's determined to hear it again.

New hands join Junhui's on his back and Minghao knows without looking that its Wonwoo and Mingyu. Minghao leans even further into Junhui and sighs as the other two men follow him, quickly getting rid of Minghao's shirt soon after.

Minghao doesn't know how mating works for humans, but he's certain that these three are going to show him tonight so he follows their lead and works Junhui's shirt off him, pressing his mouth back to his once he's done. All three of their scents mesh together around Minghao until he isn't sure where one begins and the other ends, but for the time being, for tonight, he pushes his thoughts away and focuses on being here with them in this moment.

By morning, Minghao is tired and worn out and his limbs feel like jelly, but he's happy and he's content. He's warm where he lies in the middle of a nest made from blankets and the bodies of his new mates.

He's really, truly happy for the very first time in his life and that's the only reason he needs to tell Wonwoo he's changed his mind.

Minghao will remain human and he will go back with them to their kingdom. Junhui will marry him as the prince they slew a dragon to rescue and when Junhui becomes king, he'll be able to change the law. Mingyu and Wonwoo will marry as well in the meantime and they will spend any moments they can together until the time for Junhui's coronation is upon them.

He won't live his life as a dragon destroyed and consumed with hate anymore. Minghao has a chance at a real life filled with not only warmth but with love and the gentle touches of his mates that will keep him warm at night like his inner core of fire once did.

They wrap themselves around him and Minghao lets them because he has no plans to let these men go anytime soon.

Minghao's sure that if he were to ever take his dragon form again, his scales would be green like they were when he was youngーwhen he was fresh and new and still had hope in his heart. He's okay with remaining human though.

As long as he has Junhui, Wonwoo, and Mingyu, Minghao knows he'll be alright.

#wonhuigyuhao #meaniejunhao #kwritersworldnet #kwordsmiths #prettyboysnetwork #betareadernet #svt #angst #fluff #p:ot4 #p:junhui/wonwoo/mingyu/minghao #f:octhtdf #m: fic

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nekokoaa · 6 years ago

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Wolves Among Us - Bakugo x Reader (IV)

Wolves Among Us – Bakugo x Reader

Series Warnings: Fantasy AU, Fluff,

(Chapter IV/XX) New Mini Series!

(Chapter I) (Chapter II) (Chapter III) (Chapter IV) ((((click the tag wau bnha to find all the chapters since Tumblr killed link!!!!!)))

FREEDOM! FINALS ARE DONE, FINISHED. I’M FREE! SO HERE ANOTHER CHAPTER OF WAU!

Inspired by The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter

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IV.

The air that evening was crisp, and the pearly clouds were cluttered together to give way for the flurries that daintily fell upon the dense forest. The evergreen trees were already bursting with snow on its branches from the cloud’s earlier gifts and they became heavy to the point where they were being weighed down by the ice. Gravity worked its magic and clumps of snow slipped off the tree and fell on the ground next to the log you were sitting on. You weren’t startled by the sudden wet slap of ice hitting the ground but was busy watching an auburn fox toddling through the snow. Katsuki was well aware of the pile of snow that could’ve possibly landed on you, his senses were something that could be awe at. Since the moment it slipped off its branch, he heard it hurtling towards the ground. He also heard the fox eons before you even had a clue it was in the vicinity. He watched your face lit up when you spotted it, your eyes were to the ground, eyelashes catching the snow before they flickered up and widened at the animal. Your face was already flushed from the chill of the breeze, but Katsuki could swear it deepened from your discovery. The usual smile on your face whenever you were with him grew large with excitement and Katsuki wanted to know what the hell was making you so happy while gazing at a weak fox.

You then turned to look at him, wanting to say something about it and when your eyes met with his, he tore his sharp gaze away, a scowl made his way onto his features—not like it made any major difference in his usual expression, but you did notice the smallest dust of blush tinting his pale skin. He started to pick through his nails, finding whatever he can to convince you he wasn’t looking at you.

“Can I take a closer look at you, Katsuki?”

“What?”

You saw the confusion in his crimson eyes when he looked up from his nails, he was picking the imaginary dirt out from under them. You weren’t foreign to his sharp eyes in your direction. Lately, Katsuki has been eying you a lot more and you would always catch him staring when you’re playing with the snow to past time or gazing upon the rabbits that innocently hopped through. And when your eyes would meet with his, he would look away almost immediately, his cheeks a flaming red and his tail shaking with the speed of lightning. Every time you asked him about his strange behavior, he would tell you to shut up and wouldn’t say a word about it.

But now, his tail was still with an occasional shiver and his cheeks were his regular cream-like skin tone. He shifted lightly on the log you two shared and he didn’t like the smile you had on your face because he felt like you were up to no good.

“I never really seen a wolf up close, you know?” His eyebrows knitted at your words.

“You see me every damn day.”

“I know, but…” Katsuki’s eyes started frantically moving across your face when you leaned closer to him. You lifted your hands and moved them above his head, and you felt his ears lightly twitch when you touched them. “Just a closer look.” They were rounded at the tips, ash blonde like his hair, and they felt soft to the touch. You had a million questions about them, but knowing Katsuki, he probably wouldn’t answer them.

You then moved your hands to his face, stopping at his cheeks. Katsuki’s face twisted into something that you couldn’t quite explain, but you knew he didn’t like having his face between your hands, so you removed one hand and kept the other one on his cheek. You noticed his skin was still a little pink while you were gazing at him and you didn’t think much of it. You continued to trace your thumb down his face until it stopped at the corner of his mouth.

“You have huge teeth.” You commented, catching sight of his dagger like fangs when he opened his mouth to speak.

“And I’ll bite you if you don’t get your finger away from my mouth.” You laughed at his threatening words, his voice louder than before. You moved along to examine his nails which were curved, dark, and sharp. They would probably cut you with just a slight graze. You couldn’t imagine taking the full force of all five nails slashing through your flesh. It was quite frightening, but it only increased your curiosity of Katsuki. You finally pulled away from him and you heard Katsuki sigh like he was holding in all of his breath.

“You know, if you want, you can look at me closely!” You started unraveling your scarf and you folded it neatly and placed it in the space between you and Katsuki. “It’s only fair.” You scooted a bit closer and waited patiently for him with a wide smile on your face.

“Who would want to look at you.” He said immediately and yet you found his hand reaching for you until it touched your cheek. It was such a fragile touch, something that you didn’t expect from him. Maybe he thought you would shatter at his very touch, like you were something to be handle with care. You wished that was the case.

Katsuki’s stare was unwavering like always, but something about it this time brought shivers up your spine. You started to blush profusely, especially with his face that just moved a few inches closer from your own. You could even feel his soft breathing through the nose on his face. You expected him to comment about your face, but all he did was suck his teeth and quickly traced his hand down to your neck, stopping just above your collarbones.

“Humans. They’re so fucking weak. Fragile in everything.” His insults were bullets whizzing through the air, nonstop and tasted of bitter salt. It wasn’t what he meant to say but the trigger was already pulled, and your soft face distorted into one that made him regret his words in an instant.

“Hey! We find greatness in other ways!” Katsuki’s hand was still holding on to your neck. He felt the small vibrations through your skin from your voice.

“How do you find greatness with paper thin skin?” He pressed his thumb into your skin but was careful not to press too hard to where his curved nail will scratch you. “I can break your neck in a fucking second if I wanted to. That’s how much power I have over you.”

“Well, aren’t you a little cocky?” Katsuki couldn’t tell whether or not you were angry but the smallest rise in your temperature was prickling against his fingertips.

You were trying your best to be angry, but you were rather distracted by Katsuki’s touch. It was strange, he made an empty threat against your life and yet you felt like you wanted to melt under his gaze.

“We have a reason to be cocky.” You heard him say. “You humans are just a pile of meat, offering nothing to this world but being annoying as fuck to nature. Seriously, if you guys didn’t exist, you’ll be doing every living being a huge ass favor.” He didn’t know why he kept talking, he should’ve shut up ever since he saw that frown on your face sapping the joy out of you for every passing second it remained.

“Katsuki…?” You grabbed an edge of your crimson scarf and began to twist and curl it around your fingers. You couldn’t look him in the eyes, so you settled on your scarf that matched them. “Do you hate—"

“Ah.” The hiss that sounded through your teeth stopped you from continuing. The searing pain of your skin splitting swept around your neck, you even felt the bright red liquid, warm to the touch, spilling from the open cut. It decorated your skin and stained it with a string of blood burrowing down to your collarbones and then chest before it hid behind the soft fabric of your tunic. It soon revealed itself with a burgundy stain to your clothing. “My bad.” Katsuki said. It happened so suddenly but you were aware that Katsuki had accidentally scratched you when he pulled his hand back from your neck.

The sweet scent lingered deliciously in the air. Katsuki could smell it. He smelled it the second that saccharine liquid seeped through your cut like honey. Instinctually, he felt himself licking his lips.

“Do we really taste that good to you guys?” You quietly asked, watching him lather his dry lips with his own saliva.

Katsuki swallowed hard, his voice suddenly low. “You’re just another one of our preys. We don’t have to eat you guys but when food is scarce...”

“Then we’re kind of the only ones left. I get it.”

“I won’t eat you. So, you don’t have to worry about it.” Katsuki quickly reassured you. It wasn’t like you needed it. You knew Katsuki wouldn’t eat you but…

You shimmied closer to him until your knee bumped his. Katsuki felt his breath shudder at the touch.

“Do you... want to clean me?” All while Katsuki was talking to you, his eyes never left your cut. He was fidgeting on the log as he kept his hands clasped on his knees. He finally looked at your face at your mention before his eyes quickly returned to your wound. There was a short silence between you two with only the whistle of the wind that pulled the soft flurries in a northern direction. Katsuki watched every individual snowflake hit the soft skin of your neck with his piercing eyes and they melted at the slightest caress from the heat that delved deep within you and pressed onto the surface of your flesh.

“Do you want me to?” Eyes the color of rubies met with yours briefly. They were getting closer. Your red scarf next to you became smothered between hips.

“…You can.” A ghostly breath left with your whisper and it was all Katsuki needed to hear. An arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you towards him until you were squeezed against his body. You felt his sharp nails driving into your side and a small squeak left you when his hot tongue dragged across your skin. He started at your chest from the start of your breast, stretching your collar off your shoulder to make it easier for him to devour the addicting taste. You thought you would mind the cold, but you didn’t feel it at all. Summer was burning within you with all its humid glory.

The moment Katsuki touched you with his tongue, he groaned heavily to the sweet taste. His very breath was steam, brushing your chest periodically as his wet muscle powered through the surface of your body. It scooped up the blood that rolled down, wiping it clean without a trace left. You sighed softly and shut your eyes as you felt your body start to shiver yet again like the first night his tongue laid upon you. It was stirring deep within your core.

And when he finally made it to your neck, he wrapped his other arm around you and kept you locked against his chest, squeezing you until your shoulders became erect. If you wanted him to stop, you knew it would be too late. He trapped you within arms with no escape and the sense of urgency—like he was desperate, told you he had no plans of stopping early. A soft moan shuddered out from your sigh and you leaned your head to the side to maybe encourage him. You grabbed onto the cloth of his top, that you noticed was a little too thin for winter. You needed something to hold on to because you felt that if you didn’t, you would’ve been reduced to a puddle by Katsuki’s sensual grunts in your ears.

He licked and sucked, all while he held you in his strong large arms, and not a trace of pain was felt from your cut. You knew he should’ve been done by now. There wasn’t a lot of blood from such a small cut, but neither one of you had the urge to depart. You loved the feeling building within you, like something foreign was born from Katsuki’s rough tongue. You started to rub your thighs together, a flare of desire, a sprinkle of ecstasy, hidden behind your heavy skirt and between your legs. You didn’t want him to stop, not while you were starting to explore these strange feelings. You wanted to journey in them with Katsuki showing you every inch of the way, so you wouldn’t have to miss what he had to offer.

“I’m done.” Your eyes shot open when you felt Katsuki suddenly pulling away from your neck. You watched as summer retired and winter made a brutal appearance. You suddenly felt the bitter cold rush around your body and it woke you up from your trance. Eyes that were red like wine and steady like the glowing moon, watched your face as you recovered from your spell. You were slightly out of breath and flushed, and looked mostly confused.

“Th-Thank you.” You brought a hand to touch where his tongue was. Your cut was mostly healed, a faint line was evidence of its remains. You almost forgot why Katsuki was doing this. You were so lost in the sea of your desires and you craved to never find your way out.

“I gotta go. It’s not that dark, you can walk back on your own.” Katsuki then stood up and he was already staring and leaning in the direction he was going to leave in.

“Okay… I’ll-um see you tomorrow?” You grabbed your scarf off the log, twisting it until it resembled rope. You were starting to feel a little nervous.

“Yeah.” He didn’t look back when he left, and you wondered why he was acting standoffish as he disappeared from your sight. You were left by yourself with the whistling of the wind and the soft snow greeting you on their way to the surface. You suddenly started to feel the numbness of winter’s touch and you wrapped your scarf around your neck and tucked the ends within your heavy tunic. It was getting dark soon, minutes away before the sun’s slumber. You decided to bury this uneasiness you felt from Katsuki’s behavior and retire for the day. As you were retreating in the direction of your village, you hadn’t noticed a pair of wrinkly eyes lurking in the distance.

Ending comments: I’m going to start a taglist for this series so let me know if you want to be on it! Thanks for reading<3

Chapter V – ((((click the tag wau bnha to find all the chapters since Tumblr killed links.)))

#bnha #bnha x reader #boku no hero academia #bakugo katsuki #bakugo x reader #Bakugo Katsuki x reader #nekokoafanfictions #wau bnha

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inkabelledesigns · 5 years ago

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When we were younger roleplayers

So a friend of mine recently uploaded an older comic she did detailing an experience from her youth involving her first time roleplaying. This story really speaks to me, so I’ll link it here for you to see.

https://twitter.com/WolfenWingsShop/status/1135553476526821377

You know, this makes me wanna tell some of my own roleplaying stories, because boy do I have a few. ^^’’’ My nutcracker friends Freckle and Pepper hear be joke about ‘The Night of Angst Mountain’ far too much, but that’s only been within the past year. The story I’d like to tell you today come from when I first came online, back when my only account was on YouTube and we roleplayed in the comments sections of our channels.

Let me tell you the story of dreamerofchaos1 and her first time working as one of the Freedom Fighters.

Let’s set the stage. I was 14 years old, the year was 2011, and I had finally been deemed old enough to get a YouTube account. I’d asked my folks if I could have it for my birthday that year, which is March 29th. On April 2nd, my dad made a YouTube account for himself and then helped me to make mine, just so he could keep an eye on me should I ever need his help, but for the most part he wasn’t watching what I was doing. I had made this account intending to post tribute videos, you know, those fan art slideshows set to a popular song, and that is what I started out doing, but during that summer, I ended up hanging out with a bunch of roleplayers, and sometimes it was hard to distinguish fiction from reality. I’m still not sure how that started or how I ended up meeting these people, but we were an interesting bunch. A lot of this is really fuzzy for me

To start, even though we called ourselves the Freedom Fighters, it wasn’t at all the Freedom Fighters from the Sonic SatAM or Archie comics. We had a Sally, Tails, and Sonic who were barely present, otherwise, it was a lot of fan characters (most of which were recolors of Sonic, Tails, and Amy), along with an emo version of Kirby, Stitch and Angel from the Lilo and Stitch TV series, and a few others that referenced other franchises. We had a lot of fun on fictitious scenarios together, having picnics, fighting the Suppression Squad, it was a good time.

I didn’t stand out a ton among the good guys, but I definitely had my stuff together a little better. I didn’t have a character when I started interacting with everyone, but I developed one around the theme of my username named Dreamer. They were a tanooki that was an imaginary friend abandoned by their creator, a little girl named Ruth, that needed belief from other people in order to exist. Note that I refer to them as a ‘they.’ At that point in time, nobody online knew what my gender was, they all just kind of assumed I was a guy, and I didn’t say anything about it. I specified that my character was genderless, since why would an imaginary friend need to have a gender? But because you basically WERE your character unless you were in YouTube’s Inbox system, everyone thought I was a dude. To be honest...at the point in time, all of my friends outside of the web were dudes with the occasional girl that was super tomboyish. I was the girly one, I could never be “one of the guys,” and more than anything, that’s what I wanted. I’ve grown out of that now as an adult, I’m much happier just being me and not worrying what other people think about my body parts. I never directly lied about my gender, it was more that nobody ever asked, but eventually I did come clean about it. Unfortunately, the minute people found out I was a girl, my PMs (private messages, which are the same as DMs, but there was some amount of respect in actually keeping it private back then) got flooded with boys that wanted cybersex out of me, which was disgusting and utterly embarrassing, but that’s a story for another day.

The Suppression Squad was the main group of enemies, hell, the character you saw causing trouble the most was Miles, aka the Anti-Tails from Moebius/Anti-Mobius. That’s where I found two of my closer friends, Venice and Violet. Venice was the Anti-Silver, a fanmade concept as Silver never officially had an Anti version in the comics, using the concept art of Silver from Sonic 06 back when he was Venice the Mink. Violet was a fan character who was his girlfriend. Venice played a lot of different characters though, including a villain named No-Heart that had some Kingdom Hearts inspired elements. Sadly Venice, or rather Wyatt, dropped off the face of the earth, I never saw him again after YouTube changed its channel layout and everyone gave up our games there, but I do hope he’s doing well wherever he is. Same with Violet, or rather Whitney, I saw her a few times on deviantART, but not much.

There are a few roleplays that stick out to me from that time. No Heart stealing Dreamer’s heart and having them fight for the villains temporarily is one of the finer memories, hell, when I had her betray everyone and join the bad guys for real later on was quite fun. Duking it out with an evil clown and Anti-Guy from Paper Mario was kind of cool too. But the one that really sticks out to me is the one with Albert Wesker. Now, Albert Wesker is a Resident Evil character to my understanding, but I have no idea what his story is, and I wasn’t smart enough to look it up as a kid when this was going down. This guy came out of hecking nowhere, I never did learn who played him in the end. I remember he was going after everyone with needles, and once pricked, they’d be under his control. Dreamer of course had ended up kidnapped and trapped in wherever his domain was. Being the rebellious and narrow-minded child that I was, I had Dreamer go off on a long speech about how Wesker would never win, and good would always prevail over evil, blah blah blah, it had to have sounded so stupid and naive to him.

And then he killed my character. That had never happened before. Another player ended up godmodding them back to life with a “revival seed,” but like? It was so garbage. I felt so bad about it after the fact, like yeah, we beat the bad guy, but I felt like a dirty cheater, and I was! But it dawned on me why it happened later on in time. There was no formal system to how any of this worked, just a set of unspoken boundaries that were never crossed, and therefore a lot of godmodding happened, where people would be defeated who shouldn’t have been, powers were unfair, etc. But the thing is, I was one of the few who ever bothered to get creative with my attacks and have some sort of strategy, which in turn meant that I was often the one doing most of the fighting. During the Wesker stuff, I was the only one online that actually had any of that going on, the rest were content to play damsels in distress, that’s why my character got revived. I think Wesker showed up one more time after that and there was a fair fight before they disappeared, but dang. It was an interesting experience. I think it was the fact that I was the only one doing anything in battle that I opted to join the bad guys for a while, not to mention the good guys weren’t all that great to me. There was a lot of hugging and saying “you’re one of my best friends” all the time, but no one meant it, it was just fluff.

I wasn’t there for fluff, I was there for action, to do something, to challenge myself. Yeah, I wanted to make friends, friends with respectable people who were interested in actual plotlines. But I didn’t find that there, I didn’t find that anywhere in an RP community up until recently. Things have changed with my style over the past eight years. I’m a lot slower to jump to combat nowadays, in fact fighting hardly ever comes up, which is nice, even though I do have times where I miss it. I think I’ve realized that I’m happier being in a smaller group, about three people, where we ask each other about the plot and figure out where its going with a mix of improv and planning. One day though, I’d love to run an RP blog where I invite a bunch of people to participate in the chaos, one where I get to run the story and challenge them to survive. That was the idea behind OATS, maybe one day I’ll be able to run it. For now though, I’ve got some bigger fish to fry than roleplays. ^^’’’ Still, it was fun to reminisce on this, I hadn’t thought about this for a while.

#rambling #roleplay history #life when I was 14

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bumblebee--art · 7 years ago

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Predator and Prey | Takeda Shingen x Reader (MC)

Nothing much to say here - mostly fluff ^^ Hope you enjoy it! The moment Lord Takeda Shingen saw his new poison taster 'Yahiko' he knew he wasn't what 'he' said 'he' was... The moment his eyes laid on the trembling little thing bowing before him, looking like a rabbit before a tiger, he knew he was looking at a girl in boys outfit. A damn shame too, with her huge sparkling eyes and the silky looking hair that he just wanted to run his hands through. But we all have our reasons for hiding things, don't we? He knew that the best. That's why he let it go. He didn't expose that little, scared thing in front of everyone and he didn't tell her he knew either. She seemed happy after actually spending time there, with his people. With him. Oh, but he longed to know her name. He longed to see her in a woman's kimono, clad in the best silk Japan...No. The world had to offer. So he did something any reasonable man would do. He sent Kansuke to Kyoto to find out who in the world is she. Who's the girl in boy's clothing who proved to be such an amazing cook, capturing his retainers hearts, that has him thinking of her delicate hands serving him his dishes day after day, meal after meal, coming so close that he can smell her feminine scent of a flower he couldn't quite put his finger on, and just a tad of sugar from all the desserts she makes, throwing his thoughts in a disarray, watching her every move, preying on her and justifying his nickname. So when Kansuke came back to Kai he most certainly didn't expect his most trusted retainer, his right hand to say:" Don't you want her to tell you?" "What do you mean?" "I mean, why don't you ask her? Don't you think a love relationship should be built on trust and honesty first?" Love? Is that it? She has been here for quite some time now, but...Love? "I don't think.." "No, you don't, if I may say so myself, Milord", taken aback by Kansuke's unusual, sharp response, Shingen actually took a step back. "Forgive my forwardness,but if you see happiness, chase after it. You deserve it, Harunobu. And she may actually be able to give it to you", Kansuke turned around to walk out of Shingen's room. "Kansuke... What's her name?" with a sigh Kansuke stopped in front of the sliding doors. "Didn't I just-" "Yes, you did, just tell me the name, she'll tell me the rest of the story." So with another long sigh, Kansuke told him. *** With a small mischievous grin, Shingen crept over to the open kitchen door. It was past lunch, but she was already there, already preparing everything she needs for the dinner. He stuck only his head to sneak a glance at what she was doing. He could barely hear the humming coming from her throat, it was so quiet. Her sleeves were being held back with a cord, her hair styled in a man's fashion, with one particular piece falling over her forehead, which she would occasionally either push with her forearm or stop her humming to blow it up. Flour was all over her pale, delicate hands, and she even had a bit on her cheek, probably when she subconsciously moved that cute tuft bothering her. He fully appeared in the kitchen and leaned against door, crossing his hands over his chest. She still didn't notice him. He considered his options so he didn't scare her, so he raised his hand and knocked on the wood on the door. While she raised her eyes towards him, he already spoke. "Hey, [name]. What are you making for us tonight?" "Oh, Milord Shingen!", she exclaimed, still trying to maintain quiet voice so that it sounds a bit more manly, despite her surprise to find him standing there. "Well, Lord Saizo was saying how I haven't made dango for eternity, and it's actually just been since yesterday so..I...", trailing of she stood quiet for a second then loudly gasped. "You..I...Wh-", she stammered, getting paler and paler. "Hey, hey, it's okay, it's alright!" he put his hands in front of himself as if taming a wild mare. "Come on. Let's get away, dango can wait", he went for the door glancing behind his shoulder to see her exhale then taking a deep breath and slowly stepping outside after him. He went straight to his room. She was so quiet all the time, and when she closed the doors behind him and lowered herself on her knees before him, in a bow, he, once again, saw that girl that came to him as a poison taster. Scared, trembling and on the verge of tears. But she spoke before he could. "Please, Milord, forgive me for deceiving you. I planed on telling you, I swear I just... I couldn't.. And I will accept any punishment, whether it be going back to Kyoto or losing my head, I will accept it. Just... My family...Please spare my family, if I-" "Stop it", maybe he was a bit harsh, his voice certainly sounded harsh, but it was the only way to stop her from having silly thoughts. "You won't get punished. I knew it from the start. From the second I laid my eyes on you I knew you were a woman", the surprise on her pale face was so cute, but he didn't give her a chance to speak. "I didn't approach you with the intention of having you punished. I approached to you in hopes that you would open up to me. You are very valuable to Takeda Clan. To me. I wouldn't have you taken away. The only way I want to have you is in my castle, in womans clothing", and in his bed...But that is entirely different subject. This is way to serious to be bringing that up now. "Milord..." and after wiping the tears that sneaked out of her eyes she told him the story of how she came to be the poison taster for Takeda in her brother's stead. *** "[Name]~! Are those donuts?!", Shingen chuckled. Yukimura seemed to forget all about his shyness the moment he saw her donuts. He is just like a puppy. He could hear a commotion, probably Sasuke fighting for one of his own, maybe even Saizo sneaking in to grab one or two. Yukimura would usually just grab the whole basket and tell him how he always gets all the dango. Turning around the corridor, it was exactly as he thought. Yukimura had one donut in his mouth, four of them in both hands and a raised leg, bent in the knee, in a attempt of a defensive position turned towards Saizo. Sasuke was next to her getting an extra donut she sneaked for him, and running away. And she stood in the middle of the training field, totally out of place...And exactly where she should be. She laughed at Yukimura's and Saizo's banter, in her pink kimono, looking like an angel she was. "Well, Yukimura,that's an interesting new move. Maybe we should introduce it to our other retainers", he leaned against a pillar with arms crossed on his chest. Poor little Yukimura got beat red and shook his head, unable to speak with the donut in his mouth, but when he looked down in his hands in shame, he realized he was two donuts short. "MNGH!SNHZOOOO!!!" but before he could run off after the donut thief, she pulled out two more hidden donut's and presented them to him. He could almost see Yukimura's imaginary waggling tail, while he took off running to hide and eat the donuts in peace. With a chuckle Shingen watched her as she walked to him. "I don't think you have any left, do you?", he felt a pang of disappointment, but when she looked at him with secret glint in her eyes and removed the cloth covering the 'bottom' of the basket to reveal more donuts he laughed loudly and grabbed one. "Thank you for your hard work.", he said biting into the mildly sweet donut and sitting on the porch, followed by her. "I am the one who should thank you, Milord. My mother wrote to me, she said that the magistrate has been replaced. He even came to our restaurant to beg for forgiveness!Mother of course took it all graciously, but Yahiko tried to sneak in a punch or two, and while I shouldn't be laughing I can't help my-", and on and on and on she went. Shingen munched on his donuts all the while looking at her, sun bathing her in it's setting hues, in Takeda colors. He has sure taken his sweet time with her, but all these small pleasures that he had without actually claiming her were so precious to him. All this little things were what made him feel alive. Abruptly stopping with her monologue she looked at him, blush creeping in her cheeks. "Forgive me, Milord. I got carried away", she looked at the empty basket. "I hope you enjo-", before she could get up to get herself back to the kitchen he grabbed her wrist gently. "Milord..?", her sparkling eyes called to him. The slight blush in her cheeks and the aura of sun setting behind her begging him to get closer, to soak her in. So when she nervously licked her lower lip, wetting it he knew he had to give in. He kissed her. He took all she would offer to him. But in time, he knew, he'd take all that was hers to be his, and he'd give all that was his to be hers. She was so shocked at the beginning of their kiss, but when he coaxed her tongue with his own, she gave in finally, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders. With a sound similar to a growl, he grabbed her by the both sides of the face, tilting her head for better access, her own hands sinking into his hair, letting it loose so that she can grab more of it. She let out a gasping sound that sounded way more erotic to his ears than it should be. Nibbling her lower lip he reluctantly let her go. "If I don't stop right this instant I won't stop at all." Still framing her face in his big hands, she looked so small, so soft compared to his hardness. She exhaled hard and long, just a 'whoosh' of air getting out of her lungs, as if she forgot to breathe. With a chuckle, he swept her smooth cheeks with his calloused thumbs, kissing both of her eyes. He had some weird feeling in his stomach the whole time, like fluttering of the wings.Did he eat something bad..? "Breathe. Although, next time, I won't let you off so easily." And at that moment, although she blushed the hardest he ever saw her 'till then, she also gave him the brightest smile of all. *** He laid in his bed remembering how it all began. Gods, but so many things happened since then, it felt like a eternity and at the same time, like it was yesterday. Time flies much too fast for his pleasure, he thought while the smallest of coughs rattled in his lungs. He thought of all the times she showed him that smile of hers, all the blushes and when he first realized she was on her period (she had an enormous fit of crying, although no one except for him saw it), the first time she gave herself to him, their first trip to onsen. Oh, what an adventurous trip it was! Well, for the two of them at least. His little Rabbit turned out to be a Tigress in hiding. A real Lady Takeda. He always thought he was the one who hunted her down, but in fact he fell into her innocent, unintentional trap. And so the Predator became the Prey. He chuckled lightly. His chuckle seemed to stir the Tigress from her sleep. She stretched like a cat from her place on his chest, her naked body teasing his own. Yep... Tigress... "Are you laughing in your sleep?", she asked groggily with that sexy morning voice of hers. "I should hope not, because if this turns out to be a dream, I'll be very mad", he said kissing the top of her head. She raised her face towards him, eyes half opened and a half smile on her lips. He planted a quick kiss on them, still swollen, whether from sleep or their passionate night before...It didn't even matter, they looked juicy and he couldn't resist them. "And who exactly is to take on your wraith?" Mischievously smiling she slid her hand down his body to the certain, throbbing place. "Why, Milady Takeda," he growled and flipped her on her back:" Won't you sacrifice for the good of your people, we don't want them facing the wrath of the Tiger of Kai." He latched his lips to her neck sucking harshly. "And your wrath sure is big, Milord", she said with the giggle that turned in a gasp when his hands started roaming. Oh yes. Small things were what made Shingen feel alive. And though she still looked oh so small in his hands, to him, she was larger then life.

#slbp #slbp shingen #Takeda Shingen #tiger of kai #fanfic #fluff #samurai love ballad party

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