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daemour · 1 year ago

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I Can See You

Pairing: single dad! Seonghwa x babysitter! f! yn

Word Count: 10,137

Warnings: cursing, alcohol consumption, a creepy old man in one scene, age gap (10 years but both are adults (and not just barely)), smut warnings under cut

Genre: Angst, fluff, smut, single parent au, M for mature audiences

Summary: When you took a job babysitting a young toddler, you didn't expect to be so drawn to the family. And more specifically, her frustratingly hot and single dad.

Smut Warnings: masturbation, sexual fantasies, riding, slight (if you squint) corruption kink, sliGHT breeding kink, unprotected sex (DONT DO THIS unless you discuss safely outside of sex!), breast play, overstimulation, undiscussed kinks (yn is fine with it. but discuss your fucking kinks guys *gun emoji*), slight cumplay

thank u to @pyeonghongrie and @mingsolo for beta'ing and for the title hehe <3 this is also a collab with @potatomountain who is also writing a dilf hwa (Bittersweet Neighbours), we're just on two sides of the spectrum lol...and this is so damn long

“Hello, I’m here for a babysitter interview with a Mr Park?”

“That would be me. Miss (Y/N)?”

When you answered the ad in the newspaper about babysitting, you were so ready to see an older man, around his fifties. But this man looked so young, around his late twenties although you’re sure he’s probably forty. And you’re not one to judge—nearing your mid-twenties one wouldn’t be expecting you to still babysit as a full-time job. But it pays the bills and helps you get some hands-on experience in your degree, child development.

“Ah, yes. That’s me,” your words spill out as you realise he is awaiting an answer. Mentally, you berate yourself for the immediate blunder while Mr Park’s eyes crinkle with amusement.

“Come on in and make yourself comfy on the couch. I’ll be right there. Would you like anything to drink?” Mr Park’s voice is smooth like butter and you have a hard time making sure you don’t get lost in it.

Again, you nod, actual wordy responses jumbled in your brain, walking to the couch and sitting down almost mechanically. If you were mentally present, you would have noticed the smile the older man sends your way.

He doesn’t take too long, returning with two glasses of water. “You didn’t say what you wanted to drink so I just got you water. Is that okay?”

Thankfully, you finally can respond coherently and smile, albeit a little shakily. “Yes, thank you so much.”

You take the glass with both hands, thanking him again quietly and taking a small sip before just holding it as you wait for him to be seated. You’ve felt awkward before, but this is a new extreme. Normally you pride yourself on keeping your cool in front of someone you think is hot, but Mr Park…he’s something else. You try your best to keep your eyes trained on the coffee table, only letting yourself glance at him occasionally so he doesn’t realise just how in awe you are.

“Jihee will be home from school soon, so you’ll see her soon. For now it’ll just be old me and my questions,” Mr Park starts his interview as soon as he sits on the couch across from you. “Now, I saw in your application that your major was in child development? Can I ask why that interested you?”

You blink at him for a moment, not expecting that question. Sure, bringing it up was expected, but the way he sounds like he’s interviewing you for a position in a company amuses you. “Uh…I just grew up with a lot of siblings and their kids. I’m the youngest of six, and the oldest is sixteen years older than me so I have a lot of nieces and nephews as well. Children have always been a part of my life, and my first job was babysitting so it’s something I’m very used to. Child development was just a way for me to learn even more and in a less… hands-on way. Poopy diapers are not my favourite.” You pause. “Not that I can’t change them! Or that Jihee uses them. Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

You’re so sure your face is bright red right now as you stumble over your words, and you’re ready to be kicked out, but all Mr Park does instead is laugh at your embarrassment. It’s a little mean but it’s better than your worst conclusion so you’ll take it. “It’s okay,” Mr Park smiles at you. “It’s okay to ramble, it was actually quite amusing. Now, I’d just like to warn you, Jihee has trouble with working on schoolwork. While that usually isn’t an issue, she may be asking you to help her with her homework and reading and I just thought I’d give you a heads up. Would that cause any trouble?”

“It wouldn’t bother me, and I’ll try my best. I took children’s education in college as well so it’d be a good time for me to exercise that,” you laugh quietly. Your first dream was to be a governess, no matter how few jobs there are for that type of work.

Mr Park nods thoughtfully. “Glad to give you some experience in that,” he hums after careful consideration, a smile on his face. “Her struggles lie in understanding the problems and in English. If she faces any difficulty then I can always help out.”

Before either of you continues speaking, his watch beeps and he glances down. Without another word, he stands and goes to open the front door. “Uh–” Your confusion escapes you before you can stop it.

“Oh, Jihee’s almost home and I always leave the door open for her,” he explains, eyes still trained on his watch. “You’ll get to meet her, and then we can discuss more details. And just to reiterate the ad, this is going to be a job that requires a lot of hours. I, of course, will be paying you for any sort of overtime if I need to stay at the office later. Does your schedule still allow for that?”

You hold back your smile. Your schedule mostly consists of scrolling the internet for job opportunities and eating lunch with your friends. “Yes, I can do that,” you affirm. “I’ll need holidays off, but I assume that’s a given as you’ll also be with Jihee?”

A smile pulls at the corner of Mr Park’s mouth. “Very astute,” he chuckles. “Now, here she comes.”

The door swings open without another word from either of you and a little girl dressed in pink and ribbons barrels into Mr Park’s knees. He lets out a quiet grunt, stabilising himself against the door as his hand strokes at her hair. “Hello, Jihee,” he hums fondly. "How was school today?"

The young girl beams up at her father. "So fun!" she grins, her words slightly slurred in her excitement. "Today, Mrs Lee had us do shapes and my favourite colour is blue now! I have so many blue crayons."

Mr Park's eyebrow raises at the mention of crayons. "Do you have them with you?" he asks, and Jihee nods vigorously. "Can I see them?"

Another nod comes from the child and she immediately plops on the floor, pulling out her pencil case and opening it to reveal at least ten crayons, all of varying sizes. What stands out to you the most is that half of them are green. "See! All blue. But this one's my favourite." She grabs at a particularly long and skinny one, a shade of emerald green.

"Ah. Lovey, remember, your colours are a little different, right?" Mr Park talks in a gentle voice, very different from the very adult voice he used with you. "That's a green crayon."

Jihee's face drops. "Oh." Her bottom lip juts out in a pout.

Mr Park holds out his hand and Jihee drops the crayon into his palm. "You can't take the crayons from school anyway, dear. Why don't we leave these in your bag and you can give them back and apologise to Mrs Lee tomorrow?"

Jihee's pout grows bigger but she nods. "Okay, daddy," she agrees and Mr Park nods proudly.

"Now, do you want to meet your new friend?" You flinch as Mr Park mentions you, sitting up straighter in your chair before ultimately deciding to stand instead.

"Hi, Jihee," you do your best to speak with the same quiet tone Mr Park used. "I'm (Y/N)! It's nice to meet you."

You offer your hand for her to shake and Jihee looks at you, her thinking face almost a spitting image of her father's before she walks over and takes your hand with gusto. "Hi, Mrs (Y/N).”

"Ah, I'm not a Mrs," you correct her. "You can call me (Y/N)."

"Miss (Y/N)," Mr Park quietly interrupts and you nod, not wanting to override his parenting although being called 'miss' will catch you off-guard for the time being. "Why don't you tell her one thing about yourself and then Miss (Y/N) has to go, okay?"

Jihee's mouth twists in sadness, her hand still gripping yours. "Okay," she sighs again. "I get to talk to her more later though, right?"

Mr Park nods. "Of course. Miss (Y/N) will be spending a lot of time with you, so I'm glad you like her."

Jihee nods solemnly. "I like pretty people and you're super pretty," she tells you earnestly and your heart swells at the compliment.

“Thank you, Jihee,” you thank her genuinely, although you’re amused at the fact that she considers her appreciation for physical looks a good introduction to herself. “It was nice to meet you.”

With another decisive nod, Jihee turns and marches right off down the hall, presumably to her room. Mr Park turns to you, finally shutting his front door with a sigh. “That was Jihee. Ball of energy extraordinaire. She comes home from school at one-thirty, and will put her own things away before coming to eat a snack. She has one worksheet to do a day but with your help she’ll get it fairy quickly. I’ll email you a list of house rules.”

You nod. “That sounds perfect. What would the schedule look like? What time would I be here, and when would I expect you to come home?”

Mr Park hums, running a hand through his perfect hair. “For her school days, I’d like to have you in here maybe ten minutes before she comes. I’ll always leave her snack in the fridge and you can just pop it in the microwave and make yourself comfortable before she comes barrelling in. Then I’ll be home at five-thirty sharp whenever possible. Every other Saturday I’m in the office for eight hours and you’ll be watching Jihee for those days. If you can’t do a Saturday, just let me know so I can get someone to watch her, but generally I’d like you here from eight to five.”

You nod. All your friends have atypical work schedules so your Saturdays are empty in general, and since the weekdays are shorter hours you don’t mind. “When it comes to after-school playdates, should I expect you to be home or would you like me to take care of them?”

Mr Park’s lips tighten almost imperceptibly. “That won’t be an issue. Jihee doesn’t do playdates.” Your curiosity spikes at his short answer but his tone leaves no room for discussion so you don’t press it. “I’ll give you a key now. Tomorrow is my off-Saturday but if you can come in just to adjust yourself that would be great. I have some work to get done anyway so I’ll be mostly out of your hair although you can still ask me questions.”

You nod again. “Yeah, that works,” you confirm after a quick check to your phone calendar. When you look up, Mr Park is already holding out a key and you take it after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Mr Park nods, moving to open the door when Jihee calls out with a whining tone to her voice. “Daddy, I need help!”

Mr Park sighs but it’s full of affection for his daughter. “I would walk you to your car but she calls for me,” his head dips into an apologetic bow but you shake your head.

“Don’t worry about it,” you smile at him. “There’s no need for that at all.” That is one of the main reasons, but another part of you doesn’t want him to know you have no car and you take the bus to his neighbourhood and then walk the rest of the way.

A twenty-four-year-old with no car? It’s a little embarrassing, especially in the area you both live in where it’s almost required to have a car to do anything. Generally, your babysitting jobs were close enough to your home, but the salary of this job enticed you to give up walking.

As you exit, you can hear Jihee starting off her complaints about her jacket and you smile to yourself subconsciously.

You’ve been working with the Parks for almost a month now and generally, it’s a good time. You only really see Mr Park when he comes home, but by then you have one foot out the door. There are days when he looks so beaten down that you want to offer him some encouragement, but you don’t want to step out of your boundaries. So, you just keep your head down and leave.

Jihee is sweet and easy-going, not hard for you to get along with. She always has some sort of fun idea for you to play along with and her schoolwork hasn’t been too terrible although you dread when she starts getting into more difficult maths.

But today, as soon as Jihee walks into the door, you suspect something is wrong. She doesn’t greet you as excitedly as she used to, just stalking straight into her bedroom and coming right now, settling herself down on the couch with a pout on her face.

“Jihee, don’t you want to eat?” you try to coax her to the dinner table, but she just shakes her head, immobile. You frown. It’s strange for the usually talkative child to be this closed off. “Did something happen at school?”

Jihee glares at the coffee table, shaking her head. “No,” she mutters but her cold-stone facade drops immediately as she suddenly bursts into tears. Your heart drops for the child crying on your couch and you immediately run to her and pull her into your arms. “Why don’t they like me?” she wails into your shirt and your heart drops.

You had suspected it when Mr Park shut down the playdate idea very quickly, but this just solidifies your thoughts. How could the kids at school not like such a sweet kid? As you’ve been working for the Parks for quite a bit now, you’ve grown to adore the young girl like she was one of your own nieces.

You don’t say anything just yet, just patting her hair and doing your best to calm her down. It takes almost an hour but now she just curls up in your arms, her hands gripping your shirt as she’s so close to falling asleep. You don’t have the heart to wake up so you resign yourself to letting her sleep on you for now.

Within ten minutes, you fall asleep as well. It’s not what you meant to do, but you couldn’t have stopped yourself. When your eyes open again, Jihee is no longer in your arms and there’s a large fluffy blanket laid on top of you. You blink yourself awake before panic sets in and you shoot up, looking around. “Jihee?” you call out and hear deep laughter behind you. When your head snaps back you see Mr Park chuckling at your face.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Miss (Y/N).”

It takes a minute for your words to register, blinking stupidly at your employer for a few moments before your face drops and you practically leap off the couch. “I’m so sorry!” you cry, bowing rapidly at a low angle. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep and it won’t happen again.”

You keep your eyes lowered and you look up at him through your lashes, scared of how he’ll react but to your surprise, Mr Park’s smile grows and he shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, you looked comfortable and the doors were locked. Jihee didn’t get into any trouble, just was a little bored since you were asleep.”

You shake your head. “Regardless, I shouldn’t sleep on the job but thank you for the kindness. Jihee is very responsible for her age and it certainly reflects on your parenting.” You smile back at him.

“Well, thank you for your kind words. It means a lot to me as well,” Mr Park hums. “Would you like to join us for dinner? I know you usually leave around the time I get back but let me at least feed you before you go.”

You frown. “I’d like to, but I should get going,” you say absentmindedly. “I have to make it in time to catch the bus.”

You’re looking around, trying to gather your belongings, when you realise how silent Mr Park is. And in turn, you realise what you just said. “You take the bus?” His voice lowers and you stare at the look of concern he has on his face. “It’s practically dark by the time you leave and you’re walking to the bus stop by yourself?”

“Ah– it’s okay! It’s not a far walk, just up the street.” You hurry to defend your choices, waving your hands. “I’ve gotten home safe so far, no?”

Mr Park shakes his head. “No, you can’t take chances. I’ll drive you home tonight after dinner. You must stay.”

You stare up at him with wide eyes, but his stance is unwavering. And as much as you would usually protest—being taken home by a much older man would usually ring alarms in your head—the idea of not having to wait in the cold and the dark by yourself is very appealing. And from how you’ve interacted with him before, Mr Park seems very sweet, and you trust him just a little more than you probably should.

“Well, I do thank you for your kindness,” you sigh, nodding your head in concession. “But this will be the only time.”

Mr Park chuckles, not taking you seriously. “We’ll see. Now come on. Tonight is beef stew and my younger brother will come for dinner as well.”

“Uncle Uyu is coming?” You can hear Jihee’s excited voice coming from the kitchen as well as her feet pittering on the floor as she launches herself into your lap. “Hi again, Miss (Y/N).”

“Hello again, Miss Jihee,” you tease, pressing the tip of your finger to her forehead and Jihee giggles.

“Are you staying for dinner?” You nod again and she screeches in happiness, not giving a second glance at how you wince at the sound. “I can’t wait! I have to make you pretty! Come with me.”

With as much seriousness as she can muster in her body, she pulls you by the hand into her room as Mr Park watches the two of you with a soft smile and follows the two of you into Jihee’s room. He takes a seat on the bed as Jihee fusses over your hair, styling it with her toddler's hands and putting an obscene amount of hair clips into it. But you’re whipped for the little girl and you let her do whatever she wants, ending up in two uneven pigtails and a plethora of Hello Kitty clips.

“Daddy, isn’t it pretty?” Jihee giggles, moving your head to tilt so her father can take a look at her work. “It’s better than your hair to practice!”

Mr Park, mock-affronted, holds his hand to his chest. “Betrayed by my own daughter? Alas, but I can let it slide as this may very well be your best work.”

Jihee giggles, pressing her face against your cheek when the doorbell rings. “Uncle Uyu!” As always, her focus is diverted by any new thing and she runs for the door, both you and Mr Park following shortly after. As she yanks the door open, a man around Seonghwa’s age greets her just as excitedly, bending down to pick her up and spin her around.

“Jiji,” he cheers, “Already so big?” His eyes find you and you offer a small wave. “And who’s this? Seonghwa, you found a girl?”

Mr Park’s jaw drops and your eyes widen as you rush to contradict. “Oh, no, no, I’m just the babysitter. Mr Park has kindly invited me for dinner.”

Wooyoung chuckles at the look on both your faces. “Don’t worry, I just like to pull on Seonghwa’s leg. You’re a little young for him too.”

You offer a smile. “Yeah, and the forties are a little out of my age range as well,” you try to joke, but to your surprise, Wooyoung breaks out cackling, startling Jihee who starts laughing with him confusedly. Mr Park’s shocked face has somehow become even more intense.

“You think I’m how old?” Wooyoung has reigned in his laughter although a smile still pulls at his lips. “I’m only thirty-four!”

A gasp made its way out of your mouth as you start bowing rapidly again in apology. “I’m so sorry! You look your age, I just assumed you had to be older.”

Mr Park sighs, although an amused smile now graces his face. “It’s okay, I can understand it. I’ll just be giving you a hard time from now on.” He punctuates with a wink and your eyes snap down to Jihee in embarrassment.

“Let’s get on with dinner so I can go home and just melt in embarrassment, okay?” you groan and the two older men laugh. Jihee seems to agree with your sentiment, declaring her hunger grumpily and you laugh and pick her up. “See, even Jihee’s on my side. Let’s eat now.”

Mr Park hums, stepping aside. “All right, I see I’m outnumbered now. I hope you don’t mind how casual this dinner is, but I promise the food is worth it. Wooyoung’s the better cook, but he’s taught me a few tricks.”

You shrug. “Any food is good food to me. At home, I have instant ramen and fried rice so it’s a nice change.”

Out of disapproval, Mr Park shakes his head although the smile does not leave his face. “I do not miss my college diet. Please, take a seat.” He motions to the dinner table, pulling out a chair for you to seat yourself, sitting beside you as Wooyoung and Jihee join the other side of the table.

“So, tell me about yourself (Y/N),” Wooyoung hums, leaning on the table by his elbows. “You’re in college?”

You shake your head. “I graduated a year and a half ago, I’m twenty-four now, but it feels like just yesterday I was taking my finals,” you chuckle. “What was your major, Mr Wooyoung?”

Wooyoung smiled, “Please, call me Wooyoung. Mr Wooyoung just sounds weird. But to answer your question, my major was culinary, of course. Before I taught Hwa how to cook, he was hopeless. I think I was feeding him and Jihee primarily other than his sandwiches and canned soup.” He sighs, leaning back and smirking at Mr Park whose ears are red.

“Hey, Youngah, I paid you for your work. Don’t make me seem incompetent,” Mr Park snorts, leaning over to smack the back of his neck. “Wooyoung may be eight years younger than me but he certainly acts like he’s five.”

You laugh at the banter. “Me and my siblings were the same way. We’d always fight but in the end, we care for each other. It’s sweet to see you guys act the same.” You smile, taking a bite of your stew. “Thank you for letting me sit in on your family dinner.”

Mr Park shakes his head. “Of course. Can’t let you walk on your own at night, you know. I’d be happy to give you a ride home from now on.”

“Ah, no, I can’t make you do that,” you try and decline again but Seonghwa is having none of that.

“It’s not a matter of making me, I offered. I can’t let my babysitter just stand around in the dark. Let me do this for you. Jihee cares for you, she wouldn’t want to make you get hurt.”

You frown, pursing your lips. “I suppose I can’t argue with that,” you concede. “Thank you once again.”

Mr Park shakes his head, his hand moving up to ruffle your hair. “Don’t worry about it.” His hand rests atop your head a moment longer before he remembers who he is in relation to you. “Ah, sorry. Habit from Jihee.”

The heartfelt moment is cut loose by everyone amused at Mr Park’s habit. Jihee immediately takes the initiative to start rambling about stickers, engrossing everyone in the conversation, Wooyoung being particularly vocal. The dinner is finished with no other events, and you offer to help clean up, ignoring Mr Park when he tries to protest.

“Thank you for helping out,” he tries to thank you but you wave your hand dismissively.

“You fed me and are driving me home. It’s the least I could do. Shall we head out though? I don’t want you to have to leave Jihee for too long.”

Mr Park nods, grabbing his keys and jangling them as he opens the door to the garage. You do your best to not show your surprise at the sight of his fancy car. Of course, you knew he was well off, but you never imagined you’d actually be sitting in his car. He even opens the door for you, letting you slide into the passenger seat.

You hold yourself stiffly, but Mr Park looks over and just laughs at you. “Relax, I’m not going to bite you. Just let me know where to go and we’ll be set. Want a piece of gum?”

He holds out a pack of gum and you gladly take the piece, happy for the distraction. Most of the car ride is silent, except for you telling him occasionally where to go. But as he pulls up to your street, he slows to a crawl.

“You know, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable around.me. Sure, I’m your employer, but I’m also a dad. I got the dad instinct, you know?” Your lips twitch at his attempt to be comforting. “Really, though. Don’t hold yourself so tight around me. I don’t mind doing this for you.”

You turn your eyes down. “Thank you. I’ll try, it’s just a little weird for me if you understand. But I do appreciate everything you’re doing for me.” As you unbuckle your seatbelt, you smile at Mr Park. “I hope you have a good night.”

As you go to your apartment building, Mr Park leans out of his car and calls after you. “You can call me Seonghwa, (Y/N). Mr Park makes me feel old.”

You laugh at his admission. “We’ll see, grandpa!” You can’t help but tease him before running into your home, leaving an amused Seonghwa outside.

These days you and Seonghwa have become a lot more friendly. He’s taken to driving you home despite your protests and during the car rides, some interesting conversations have happened. For example, you learnt that he built his company from the ground and yet is respected in many old money circles.

Okay, maybe you didn’t learn that from a conversation, and instead just searched on the internet. But what can you say? You’re curious about the man who happens to be your charge’s father and the man who happens to be very very handsome.

Maybe you have a bit of a crush on Seonghwa, but you couldn’t blame yourself. There was something about him. It is the aura he holds himself with, the kindness in his smile when he arrives home, and it helps that he is hot. Every so often, you can’t help but find yourself glancing at his pretty hands, or his well-toned arms, and you have to look away before heat spreads up to your ears.

You’re down bad, and it’s not getting any better. Every time you see Seonghwa, you want to jump him but it would be inappropriate. Not only is he your employer, but he’s also a decade older than you. There’s no way he would be interested in you, he probably sees you just as some kid.

With a sigh, you look down at your sketchbook. Today was supposed to be a fun day. Both Jihee and Seonghwa were off today, so you were spending the day with her as Seonghwa was still called into the office to put in some extra hours. But then the toddler fell sick and you were tasked with taking care of her.

At least it was a fairly easy job—Jihee slept most of the day and you were free to work on some of your more personal projects. Although your passion lies in children, you do enjoy drawing and even took a couple of classes in college. As you lay on the couch sketching, you get so lost in your mind you don’t even register the door opening and the footsteps coming towards you.

“Is that me?”

A shriek rips its way out of your throat as you do your best to whirl around and hold your drawings to your chest, but your legs get caught in the blanket and you instead fall half off the couch to the ground. Your chin props your head up on the ground but your legs are still tangled on the couch, your arms twisted into the blanket, the sketchbook an arm’s reach away.

“Hi, Mr– Seonghwa. How was work today?” you mumble half into the carpet, too embarrassed to look up. “Jihee’s taking a nap in her room.”

After a moment of silence, Seonghwa laughs, although it’s a little pained. “Uh. Do you need help up?”

You groan, pulling one of your arms out from your cocoon prison. “That would be great, thanks. Sorry.”

One of his cool hands gently takes your elbow as another comes to rest on your back. It’s at the moment you realise your shirt has ridden up. You can’t help but tense at the touch, hoping the embarrassment doesn’t show on your face. “Jihee’s taking a nap?”

You’re grateful he chose to brush over the incident. “Yeah– yeah. She’s not much better, but she’s not much worse. It’s just a simple cold, so she needs to sleep it off.” You chose to ignore the hand lingering on the small of your back, instead scooching back on your butt to distance yourself just a little bit. He’s your employer, there’s no way you can give in to your feelings.

But the couch seems to be against your plans, as when you try to pull the blankets off your feet you tumble into Seonghwa’s legs, knocking him down as you land on his firm chest. Your face is mere centimetres away from his and you freeze. “I–” you stammer out, Seonghwa equally as awkward.

“Sorry–” He tries to sit up, but it just results in the blankets twisting tighter and pulling you two even closer together. You swear if you could hold your breath, you could feel and hear his heart beating. “Ah, shit.”

You can’t help but laugh a little at his profanity, not something you’ve ever expected to hear from him. “Welcome back, Seonghwa.”

Seognhwa’s eyes widen, his blush deepens, and his head snaps away from you. Your brows furrow at the change in his features and you can’t help but wonder if it’s from the proximity, or if it’s the proximity to you specifically. “Ah. Let’s get out of this, shall we?” he coughs. He carefully detangles himself from the pile and holds out a hand to you.

You grasp it, noting his firm grip and letting him pull you up. “Thanks.”

“I’ll drive you back to your apartment first since Jihee’s asleep right now. It won’t take long.” While Seonghwa’s voice remains warm, his eyes move away from you.

Suddenly a guilty feeling pools in your stomach and you turn away as well, bending to pick up your sketchbook silently. “Of course.” The disappointment fills your head as you internally admonish yourself for even trying to entertain your fantasies of the older man.

But, to your surprise, a warm hand pats you on your shoulder. “You are good at art, (Y/N). You should continue to pursue and practice it, even as just a hobby.” His words make you look up into his eyes and you see a sparkle behind them. “You’re a talented person, and you should take advantage of it.”

“Thank you, Seonghwa,” you smile at him again. “Once again, I appreciate the kindness you offer me.”

Seonghwa chuckles, spinning the car keys as you’ve quickly found out is his habit. “(Y/N), thank you for putting up with such an old man who can offer you nothing but kindness.”

You snort. “You’re not even that old, you geezer.” In retaliation, Seonghwa leans over and pokes you in the forehead.

“Oh, hush and let me take you home.”

It’s been almost six months since that day and your feelings have only intensified. But this time, you swear perhaps he may be returning your feelings too. Sometimes you catch him looking at you with a gentle smile, and his hand on your shoulder lingers a little longer than you think. But then he talks to an employee on the phone and you remember how accomplished he is. Even if he wasn’t much older than you, there’s no way you would fit into his lifestyle.

And, like any self-respecting person would do, you start to avoid him. What else are you going to do? Tell him? You’d be crazy to even entertain the thought. There’s no way he would even take you seriously.

These days you’ve just been going to work, and heading straight home. Seonghwa barely has time to catch you, and you’ve been plotting with Jihee to keep him away. She doesn’t quite understand why, but it’s fun to her so she’s happy to. You’re pretty sure half your wallet has gone to sticker sheets. But no matter how many stickers you’ve bought, it doesn’t help Seonghwa from figuring out something is amiss.

It’s your one day off and you’re spending it at home, lounging around and just watching movies while you sulk about your tangled feelings. Watching all these romantic movies doesn’t help at all and you groan. There’s no way you’re going to act like a lonely teenager, you declare to yourself. You’ll go to a club! Maybe meet someone closer to your age and you won’t feel like a wet sock anymore.

That’s it, you’ve convinced yourself. You’ll give yourself a night out. Suddenly inspired, you throw off the blankets covering you and start donning your nicest clothes. There’s a club you used to frequent in your college days, and you haven’t been back since you got the new job. It’d be nice to let loose again.

As the nighttime approaches, you’re almost all ready to go. You have your outfit and your makeup, and all you need is your shoes. Once you pick out your favourite pair of heels (comfy and not too high), you make your way down. You can feel the excitement pounding out of your chest and you can’t wait to get the night started.

As you enter the club, your body immediately relaxes as you take in the atmosphere. It’s been so long, you’re just excited to have fun. Get drunk, find a nice guy, and forget your problems. You down drink after drink, hyping yourself up, but as late night comes, nothing happens. With a sigh, you plunk down your last drink, feeling the buzz of the alcohol burn in your veins.

Nothing will happen tonight, and you just have to come to terms with it. You place down a couple of bills to pay off your tab, tip, and stumble out of the bar. You’re plastered. You can hardly walk in a straight line and you lean against the cool brick for a minute, letting the sensation sober you up a bit as you do your best to call up a taxi.

But before you can do so, a hand creeps onto your bare waist and your head snaps up to see a man, no younger than fifty, leering at you. “Uh, hi?” you slur out, your hands fiddling with your phone as you try and discreetly move to the phone app. You may be plastered, but you’re not a fool and you know what could happen in this situation.

Unfortunately, the old man seems to know what you’re trying and he grabs one of your wrists. “Now, pretty lady, take a break there. Why don’t you come hang out with me for a bit?” His words are greasy and slimy, and you almost gag at the idea of what he’s insinuating. At least Seonghwa isn’t triple your age…and he’s hot.

“Ah, no thanks,” you manage to push past him, pressing your most recent contact and holding the phone to your ear. “I’m a little uh…” You’re cut off when whoever you call starts speaking.

“(Y/N)? Why are you calling me? It’s nine.” Seonghwa’s voice crackles through the receiver. “Are you okay?”

“Ah, shit,” you groan, stumbling to your side and colliding with the wall. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you. I’m just out and–”

Once again, the old man approaches you and pulls you back by the waist. “Come on, pretty. Get off the phone and pay attention to me.”

You shake your head and pull away again, moving even more down the street. “No, no, I’m not– just leave me alone. I want to go home,” you say, shaking your head, still holding the phone to your face. “Just…I wanna go home.”

“(Y/N), are you okay? Where are you?” You can hear the worry in Seonghwa’s voice rise and a faint jingling of keys. “I’m going to get you. Wooyoung’s here so he can watch Jihee. Talk to me, (Y/N).”

“I’m at the club Desire. Or near it. I don’t know.” Your head is muddled and no matter where you look, the street signs are blurring and the old man is still trying to get your attention. “I just want to go home,” you repeat, tears springing to your eyes. “I thought I told you to leave me alone!”

The old man growls at your tone, grabbing at you again. “Don’t be stupid, child. You can come home with me and I’ll teach you how to be proper for a man like you.” His breath reeks of alcohol and bad breath and you instinctively slap him across the face. Surprised, he jerks back, and you take a couple of shaky steps back again.

“Leave me be! I don’t want you near me.”

The old man’s eyes narrow at you and he takes one menacing step forward, his hand raising to strike you but you bring up your arms to block the slap, whimpering in pain when the hit lands and your phone clatters out of your hand. “You insolent child!” Your eyes squeeze shut and you hope Seonghwa gets there soon.

Seonghwa has never driven so fast in his life. He’s racing through the lights and he counts his lucky stars that they’re all green and that the police aren’t around right now. He can hear arguing coming from his phone and he’s calm enough knowing you’re at least still on the phone. But then he hears a noise and what he assumes to be your phone falling on the ground. “Fuck,” he mutters to himself. “Please, please be okay, (Y/N).”

Stepping on the gas, he roars around the corner to the club you mentioned, praying you’re still there. As he gets out, he’s looking around but can’t seem to find you. “(Y/N)?” he calls out. “Where are you?”

He races down the street to find you pinned against the wall, your hands attempting to push an old geezer away and he sees red. He marches right up, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from your shaking figure. “Fuck off,” he growls in his face, delighting in the fear that moves across his face. “Don’t let me catch you near this place again. Now fuck off!”

He practically throws the old man to his knees before turning and cupping your face. “Seonghwa,” you practically sob. He can still see the drunken haze in your eyes but it’s almost completely cleared up now and his brow furrows even more.

“Come on, I’m taking you home.” He pulls you along and you do your best to keep up with him in your inebriated state. “I can’t believe you would do this! Have you no sense of security? Why didn’t you get anyone to come with you? Why would you call a taxi outside of the establishment?”

He still opens the car door for you and you slide immediately in, eyes staring wide at the pristine dashboard. He slides in and puts the car in the ignition before sitting back and groaning in frustration. “I hope you’re ready to talk as soon as we get inside,” he gripes. “I still am so shocked, (Y/N). You act so mature about Jihee, but what happened then? You could’ve been hurt…no, you were hurt!”

He continues his rant driving up to your street, ushering you into the elevator and into your place. “Do you know how my heart dropped when I saw you struggling? I don’t want to see you hurt. You need to take care of yourself.”

As he yells at you, his eyes rake over you to see if you’re injured any further, but something else stops him and the words die in his throat. You’re wearing a sheer shirt, your lacy bra underneath just showing off your chest. Your leather skirt has ridden up your thighs and your eyes fill with unshed tears. And something burns in his brain.

It’s been months since he hired you, and with each passing day, he finds himself more and more attracted to you. He berated himself every time these unwanted thoughts popped into his head. Sure, you’re sweet, good with kids, and are passionate about what you care about. But you’re also so young. You can do so much better than him, a single father with no prospects.

But seeing you like this, heat sparks in his gut and he leans in, his face mere inches away from yours. “When you wear things like that, it makes me want to rip them off you and do things even that creep couldn’t even imagine,” his low voice pierces through your thoughts and your mouth gapes open.

“I’m okay with that,” you whisper, hand reaching out to brush against his chest, but Seonghwa blinks as he realises what he just tried to do, and he jerks back. Your eyes flash with hurt and Seonghwa would like to hit himself for doing that to you but he can’t let you come onto him when you’re still drunk.

“I– I’m sorry,” you whisper, your hands reaching behind you to steady yourself on the wall. “I just felt so lonely. I wanted to be wanted.”

Seonghwa’s breath stutters as he stares down into your wavering eyes. “I–” He wants you so bad. But he can’t bring himself to say it. Not when you’re drunk. “Go to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

He turns away and hears your disappointed sigh alongside your footsteps trudging to your bedroom. With a groan, he sits on the couch with his head in his hands. He wants to reassure you, but he can’t help but feel guilty about it. But he’s still straining in his pants and after locating your bathroom, he sits on the shower bench, leaning against the cool tile and breathing in and out. With a groan, he unzips his pants and pulls out his half-hard cock. The feeling of regret rises but he pushes it down to his gut as he spits in his hand and presses his thumb against the head of his dick.

As he wraps his hand around his cock and pumps it, he can’t help but close his eyes and imagine you. You with your mouth wrapped around his cock, with your hands gripping his thighs. You seated on his throbbing member, grinding your hips against him as you lean down to kiss him. He can feel his dick jump and he wonders what it’ll feel like to fill you with his cum.

He lets out a broken moan as his grip turns tighter. His image of you would scratch your nails down his back. He can almost hear your little whines and breathy moans as your hips work over him. You’d lean in and whisper into his mouth, “Seonghwa, fuck me hard,” and—

Seonghwa sighs as he looks down at his cum-coated hand and the mix of shame and relief swirling around his brain. Maybe he should just go to sleep on the couch and hope he doesn’t dream of you. As he washes his hand and goes to lie down, he can already feel a stress headache coming on. He hopes you’ll at least fare better in the morning.

When you awaken, you have a throbbing pain in your head and you groan and roll out of bed. You’ve taken your club shirt off as well as your skirt, but your bra and underpants are still on. You’re sure your makeup is smudged too and you have no clue how you got home but all you want is some coffee and oatmeal.

You trudge to the kitchen, rubbing your eyes from sleep. There’s a blanket fallen on the floor so you toss it onto the couch and head straight into the kitchen to start your coffee maker. As you lean against the counter and yawn.

“(Y/N), are you feeling better?”

A voice calls out from behind you and you shriek, whirling around to see a sleepy Seonghwa, blanket wrapped around him and his hair a mess. You shriek again, realising how little you’re clothed and duck behind the counter, your cheeks flaming and your heart beating faster than you ever thought it could.

“What are you doing here?” you force out, your voice tight.

“Do…do you not remember last night at all?” You do remember most of what happened. He took you home, but that’s about as far as you remember. And you’re not sure you want to know the rest of it. But you’re far too embarrassed to admit, so you put your acting skills to use. You’re not sure you can handle the shame of a real conversation.

“What?” you ask, forcing your voice to pitch higher as you slowly stand back up, hands covering your chest. “I didn’t– Oh my God, I’m so sorry if I came onto you. I was drunk, I must’ve been out of my mind. Please accept my deepest apologies.”

You notice Seonghwa’s eyes trail down to your chest and then snap back up to your face as if he’s forcing himself to and he chokes out a breath. Despite the headache, your mouth twitches. Maybe you’re still a little out of it. “No, nothing like that. I fetched you from the club because you called me to save you from a creep. Then I took you home and we slept.”

You sigh. “I’m glad. I do apologise for whatever my behaviour was. It was out of line and it won’t happen again. I understand if you want to let me go–”

“No!” Seonghwa’s outburst surprises you and your eyes widen. The lack of clothes you’re wearing has been long forgotten and you move around the counter to stand in front of him. Seonghwa has the decency to look a little embarrassed at the volume of his voice. “Sorry. I just…it’s like you’re a part of our family already. I care for you just as much as I care for Jihee.”

Ah. He thinks of you like a child. Your suspicions were right. You turn slightly to face away from him, trying to keep the disappointment out of your voice. “I see. Well, I appreciate that. It’s nice to have a second family,” you chuckle, internally beating yourself up. How could you even entertain the thought of the two of you being together? “Let me change, and I’ll walk you out.”

As you return to your room, you finally let your heart sink as tears brim in your eyes. You hastily wipe them away as you rummage in the pile of clothes on your bed for something fairly appropriate to wear. First, you make a fool of yourself in front of Seonghwa, and then your crush is unfounded. You can’t seem to catch a break.

With a sigh, you pull on some shorts and a large shirt before heading back out. “Hey, (Y/N), could we talk first?” Seonghwa asks, still standing in between the kitchen and the living room as his eyes flit around nervously.

After some hesitation, you finally find your voice. “Sure? What’s up? You can sit on the couch if you want.”

Seonghwa takes a seat, hiking up his sweatpants and you move to the floor across the little coffee table. “Last night…you told me something.” Oh no. This is it. You bite your lower lip and look down, awaiting his next words. “Uh. So. You think you came onto me, right? Well. It was. Uh. It may have been me.”

You blink at him foolishly as your brain tries to wrap itself around your head. “You what?”

Seonghwa raises his hands and lowers his head ashamedly. “Let me explain, please. I saw you outside with that horrid excuse of a human and something in me snapped. I just wanted to protect you and I brought you home. But seeing you in that outfit? It just made me want you. And I told you. And you reciprocated. At least, you tried to.” He chuckles a little to himself, bringing up his hand to grip at his hair. “I told you we would talk in the morning. But one thing you said stuck with me. You wanted to be wanted. And all night I’ve been thinking about it. (Y/N), you were drunk. But you weren’t that drunk. Something you said had truth to it. Please. For my own sanity, tell me how you feel about me. Please.”

His voice cracks at the last syllable and something in your heart hurts at the sound. “Seonghwa I…I do care for you. More than I should. You’ve shown me unbendable compassion and you’ve never taken my words or myself for granted…or treated me like a child. Against my better judgment, I’ve fallen for you.” You sigh, tightening your fists. “I’ve been hating myself for the better part of six months because of it. You were so much better than me. In job, in maturity. What was I supposed to do? I went to the club to forget you, but it appears that didn’t work.”

Seonghwa stands quickly, shuffling over to kneel in front of you. “How could you think such a thing? Me better than you? Don’t make me laugh. I may be older than you, and yes, I have a better-paying job. But in the end, how could you compare? You’re amazing with Jihee. You’ve managed to teach her in ways I could hardly hope to imagine. And just because I have a higher wage doesn’t mean your job is less important. I wasn’t lying when I said it felt like you were already part of the family.”

“You told me you thought of me like Jihee,” you argue, and Seonghwa laughs, leaning forward to take your hands.

“I said I care for you as much as I care for Jihee. Not in the same way, (Y/N).” Seonghwa smiles kindly. “I know if this does happen we’ll need to put a lot of care into this, but if you’ll have me, I’d like to be with you.”

You’re not sure whether this is a dream or not, staring up at Seonghwa with wide eyes. You’d be a fool if you said no, but the worries in your head won’t seem to cease. Taking a deep breath, you push them aside and smile up at him. “I’ll have you, Seonghwa.”

As soon as the words fall out of your mouth you can see Seonghwa’s eyes crinkle as he smiles and leans in, his nose almost touching yours. “May I kiss you?” he murmurs in his deep voice, and instead of gracing him with a reply, you meet him in a soft kiss.

His large hands cup your face as he deepens the kiss, and his thumbs brush against your cheekbones. “You’re so pretty,” he hums, pressing a multitude of pecks to your lips. “Last night I was so conflicted. Seeing you like that made me almost go insane.”

An idea sparks in your brain, and a smile widens on your face. Your fingers crawl up his shoulders to rest your arms on them. “How insane?” you ask, and Seonghwa’s eyes darken.

“I’ll show you,” he grows before capturing your lips with his once again. This time his arms shift to wrap around your waist and he pulls you closer until you’re practically pressed against his body. You squeak at the sudden movement but it’s swallowed by the kiss.

He pulls you onto his lap and you can feel the growing hardness in his slacks. You wriggle your hips a little, grinding down, and the moan that Seonghwa lets out is heaven to your ears. “Fuck, (Y/N). You’re so pretty,” he repeats, burying his face in your neck and nipping at the sensitive skin.

You whine at the pain blooming into pleasure and your hands fist into his hair. Your precious sounds get to Seonghwa and he groans, moving your legs to wrap around his waist and he hoists you up and brings you over to the couch. “Your noises are so pretty, baby,” Seonghwa groans into your mouth. “Can’t wait to hear them when you’re wrapped around my cock.”

“Please–” is all you can muster out and your whines only serve to make Seonghwa’s cock harder in his pants.

With a groan, he pats your ass, motioning for you to move up. As soon as your hips lift, he grabs the waistband of your shorts and pulls them down to your knees, leaving your underwear and shirt on. In the same motion, he shoves his slacks and boxers down just far enough to let his cock spring free.

“Seonghwa–” you whine and something in Seonghwa’s stomach burns at the idea of you crying on his throbbing dick. He sits back, guiding you to sit right above his cock as he moves it to rub against your soaked underwear. Every time the angry-red tip of it brushes against your clit you let out breathy moans and it only serves to make Seonghwa impossibly harder.

“Fuck, I can’t wait any longer,” Seonghwa breathes, his free hand coming up to brush against your face. A smile blooms on your face as you bend to kiss him again.

“Then don’t.”

Something flips in Seonghwa’s brain and he lifts you, pushes your underwear to the side, and lets his cock press into you slowly. The both of you throw your head back and groan loudly at the feeling of him slowly filling you up. He’s not the biggest you’ve had but that doesn’t matter as the sting of the stretch is enough to make you drool. You can hardly speak as you whine nonsense into his ear and let your head drop to the crook of his neck.

“You fit around me so well,” Seonghwa praises, his head spinning at the feeling of finally fucking you the way he dreamed of. It was only yesterday he was fucking into his hand at the thought of you and here he is, only a few hours later, his painfully hard member inside of you. “Look at you, a mess for me. Bet you’ve never been with an older man before. Do I make you feel good, baby?”

You clench at his words. “Fuck, yes, the best I’ve had,” you babble, squirming at the already overwhelming feeling. “You’re so good to me.”

Seonghwa laughs delightedly at how gone you seem to be not five minutes in. “So precious, especially for me, (Y/N). Sitting on my dick so prettily.” He gives a little experimental thrust upwards and you gasp. The noises you make are so addictive, he can’t help but do it again. And again.

You’re panting, moaning as he fills you up so deliciously and your hands grip at his now-wrinkled dress shirt. His cool hands slide up your baggy shirt to shove up your bra and cup your boobs. The weight of them sitting in his hands makes him groan as he leans in to mouth at them through your shirt.

“Been dreaming about these tits since last night. Jerked off in the bathroom after seeing you, you know?” Your eyes widen at the admission and Seonghwa smirks at how embarrassed you look. “Wanted you so bad and you thought I wouldn’t like you in that way? You’re so cute, (Y/N).” He punctuates each word with one thrust after another.

The feeling of his dick pumping into you as well as Seonghwa’s teeth scraping against the soft flesh of your tits makes you so overwhelmed. It’s almost embarrassing how close you are already, and Seonghwa knows it, chucking up at you from between your chest. “Aw, baby, you’re so far gone. Am I that good?”

You cry out and sink your teeth into the junction of his shoulder and neck. You’re trying so hard to keep your noises down but Seonghwa isn’t having any of that. His hand finds its way to your hair, gently tugging on it until your head falls back, exposing the column of your neck.

As his warm breath ghosts over it, you stiffen, and when he moves up from your chest to lick a stripe up it and nip at your earlobe, you come with a groan. Your hips are shaking from the intensity of it but his thrusts don’t stop and soon you’re whining from the overstimulation.

And he still hasn’t come.

“Fuck, Seonghwa, it’s so much,” you groan, mouth hanging open. Seonghwa greedily swoops in to capture your lips once more, licking into your mouth as his thrusts become more and more erratic.

His dick twitches and he groans. “Where do you want me? I’m clean,” Seonghwa mumbles into your mouth.

You shift your hips a little. “I’m clean too and on the pill, so it’s on you. I don’t care, I just want you, Hwa.”

Your words spark something in Seonghwa and he thrusts upwards, once, and his cum starts filling you. It’s searingly hot, settling deep in your gut and you throw your head back and moan so goddamn loud. His throbbing cock is twitching like crazy and it’s still pumping cum into you. Seonghwa’s hand slides down your body to tweak at your nipples, thumb over your flesh, and finally come to rub little circles into your clit.

You gasp and it feels like you’re touching heaven from the extra stimulation. “Gonna fill you up so well,” Seonghwa groans. “Do you think Jihee would like a sibling?”

Your thoughts all blur together at his sentence and you come again with a groan. Your cunt squeezes around him so deliciously and a sob breaks its way out of your throat, one that Seonghwa eagerly swallows as he kisses you again.

His thrusts start to slow down and you slowly pull off his now-softening dick and settle back down on his lap. His hands push his leaking cum back into your pulsating pussy and you sigh at the feeling.

“Well, that was quite the escalation,” Seonghwa laughs quietly as he pulls both your and his pants back up and wraps his arms around you in a tight embrace. His hand pats your butt and you squirm and slap his chest softly.

“You’re lucky I’m on the pill.” You roll your eyes good-naturedly and Seonghwa hums, capturing your lips in his yet again. He can’t get enough of your plush lips and you’re not complaining at all.

“I’m lucky to have you, period,” he sighs happily. “Thank you for giving me a chance.”

You smile and sit up, ignoring the whines that come out of Seonghwa’s mouth at the lack of contact. “Well, I couldn’t let you be a lonely old man,” you tease and Seonghwa smacks your ass again.

“Can old man do what I just did?” You’re suddenly lying on your back with Seonghwa hovering over you, a crooked smile growing on his face. “Or do you need another demonstration?”

You smile and throw your arms around his shoulders and pull him closer. “I don’t know, sir, maybe you should show me once more.”

With a nip to your lips, Seonghwa leans in and your eyes crinkle at the promise of what’s to come.

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allurer23 · 21 days ago

Text

TURN THE PAGE TO US

YOU ANNOTATED MY SOUL

In Focus: Mark Lee × Reader

Synopsis: You and Mark Lee: two English Lit majors, one department, zero peace. You can quote The Waste Land by heart, and so can he—but your shared talent for verse usually ends in verbal warfare. Forced to co-lead a competitive research project, Mark’s infuriating intelligence and maddening focus drive you up the wall. Yet, rivalry softens into playful banter, and late study sessions stretch longer than expected. Turns out, the line between rivalry and something softer is written in pencil—easily erased, effortlessly rewritten.

Warnings: Rivals to lovers, Explicit sexual content / verbal kink, Mentions of sexual tension, arousal, and suggestive dialogue, Dom/sub implications (voice kink, praise/degradation mix), Consensual power play, Intense academic rivalry dynamic, Emotional repression / internalized longing, Some strong language (casual swearing), Alcohol (minor party scene), Academic stress / intellectual elitism, Brief reference to being interrupted post-kiss, Heavy use of literary references / sarcasm / metaphor, No actual smut scenes occur, but it’s very hot

Author’s Note:

This is the first footnote in TURN THE PAGE TO US—because nothing screams ‘healthy coping mechanism’ like falling for the one person who annotates your entire existence.”

I didn’t mean to write something this long, but apparently, Mark Lee + academic rivalry + literary thirst = me losing all control. This ended up way longer than planned, and I still haven’t finished it—so I’m posting it in two parts.

This is Part 1, guys

You can read Part 2 here

This is for the girls who annotate their fantasy smut and the guys who smell like books and think arguing about Kafka counts as foreplay. This fic is messy, wordy, and borderline unhinged in the best academic way. To everyone who's ever caught feelings during a debate—this one's for you. Engagement means the world: likes, reblogs, comments, screams in the tags.

Please be 18+ if you’re reading.

"You underlined metaphors. I read between the lines. Somewhere between ink and irritation, we annotated each other."

Third coffee of the day. And I hate coffee. It tastes like existential dread steeped in burnt hope. But like Gregor Samsa waking up as a bug, I didn’t choose this life—I just…adapted. Caffeine is my metamorphosis.

Sips, grimaces, and watches Mark Lee walk in, perfectly on time, of course.

And there he is. Mark Lee. Human punctuation mark. Probably thinks the sun rises because he quoted Woolf at it. He writes like he’s got a personal vendetta against mediocrity and walks like he’s never been told he’s wrong. Spoiler alert: I’ve told him. He didn’t listen.

The academic rival I never asked for but somehow ended up stuck with since freshman year. Ever since our first clash over whether The Waste Land is genius or just a fever dream with footnotes, it’s been intellectual warfare. I don’t know why, but every time I see him, I feel this irrational irritation—like my brain knows it’s about to be challenged, and my ego's already rolling up its sleeves.

And of course, can't forget to mention his group. The ever-infamous Dream boys. The campus golden group. Seven of them, like some mythological fellowship but with more hair gel and less emotional regulation. A cocktail of charisma, chaos, and misplaced confidence.

Professor Jung walked into the classroom with the kind of smile that only meant one thing: chaos was coming. Not the scream-and-run kind. The academic kind. The kind that ruined friendships, ignited crushes, and made someone cry in the hallway after overanalyzing Jane Eyre.

“Let’s start today with a wonderful question,” he said, practically rubbing his hands together like a Bond villain with tenure. “Fate versus free will in literature.”

Of course. Of course. The kind of question that turns polite English majors into caffeinated gladiators wielding highlighters and wounded pride.

“Think Kafka’s labyrinths of absurdity or Austen’s cages of etiquette,” he continued, eyes gleaming like this was the TED Talk he'd been preparing his whole life for. “Who really writes the story—the characters, or some invisible puppeteer called fate?”

Naturally—and I mean this with every ounce of disdain in my soul—Mark Lee’s hand shot up. Instantly. Like he had been waiting for this moment since the womb. Like fate had chosen him, which is ironic, considering he clearly sides with it.

He wore that insufferable smirk—the one that made girls sigh and me want to throw a Norton Anthology at his face. His glasses glinted like they were part of some book-boy cosplay, which, tragically, only made him hotter. Tragic for me, I mean. Not the population of people who thirst after tortured literature boys who quote Woolf on first dates. (Yes, he did that. I overheard. He used To the Lighthouse. Someone really should’ve drowned him there.)

I raised my hand too. Because if Mark Lee was jumping into the ring, I was showing up with verbal brass knuckles and annotated Kafka.

We both started speaking—of course—and Professor Jung smiled like his plan to cause chaos was going exactly as intended.

“Y/n, go ahead,” he said. And I did. With glee.

“Fate? Please. That’s just what authors use when they don’t want to admit they wrote themselves into a corner. The Trial isn’t an ode to inevitability—it’s a primal scream from a man being smothered by bureaucracy and desperately trying to claw meaning out of the absurd. Free will exists. It's just ugly and panicked and gets drowned in paperwork.”

Mark’s smirk—God, that smirk—deepened. Probably because he thought he was about to say something clever. Spoiler alert: he wasn’t.

“Delusional,” he said, all smooth confidence and unjustified cheekbones. “Austen’s characters are textbook fate victims. Emma? Lizzie? They ‘choose,’ sure but only within the bounds of societal programming. It's not free will, it’s conditioned responses. Fate, just wearing a petticoat.”

I rolled my eyes so hard I saw my ancestors. “You’re reducing character arcs to algorithms. Emma isn’t doomed—she’s flawed. And she changes. Growth is a choice, Mark Lee. Free will is messy, but that’s what makes it beautiful. Fate is a cop-out for people too afraid of consequences.”

He leaned back like he was lounging in a coffee shop, not verbally brawling in front of thirty people. “And yet the greatest tragedies rely on fate. Romeo and Juliet, Gatsby… Doomed from the start. Fate is the poetry of inevitability.”

I gave him a smile that could peel paint. “And maybe you just like sounding poetic while ignoring the fact that most tragedies are people screwing up, not the stars aligning. Gatsby wasn’t doomed. He just made garbage decisions and idealized a girl who liked shiny things.”

He adjusted his glasses like he was preparing to deliver an epiphany. “So you’re saying free will is just people being dumb?”

“Exactly,” I said, triumphantly. “Free will is people being dumb, brilliant, selfish, selfless, human. Orwell’s 1984? Winston tries. He chooses resistance. That’s the whole point. Even a doomed choice is still a choice.”

Mark tilted his head, all faux-curious. “And he’s crushed. Crushed by the inevitability of the system. Free will doesn’t win. Fate does.”

I could practically hear the air crackling. Our classmates were silent, hanging on every word like this was a courtroom drama and someone’s scholarship depended on it. Maybe mine did.

Professor Jung finally clapped his hands, grinning like a man watching two tigers fight over a Shakespearean soliloquy. “Exactly what I wanted. Good. Very, very good.”

I slumped back in my seat, heart thumping, and glared at Mark’s profile. He looked entirely too pleased with himself. His smirk. His glasses. His perfect posture, like he didn’t just ruin my blood pressure for the day.

After the verbal warzone had been declared over by Professor Jung, I packed up my notes with all the casual serenity of a boiling kettle. Mark was still smugly tucking his glasses into his collar like he hadn’t just played devil’s advocate for fate, of all things. Fate. I mean, who chooses to side with destiny in 2025?

“Y/N and Mark, please stay back,” Professor Jung said, just as I was plotting the most satisfying way to avoid him for the rest of my life.

I glanced sideways at Mark—or as I affectionately referred to him in my mind, the walking thesis footnote of my irritation. His brow arched, clearly intrigued, and I hated that it looked good on him. Could someone’s face be grammatically correct? I didn’t want to talk about it.

Once the last student dragged their bag out and the door clicked shut behind them, Professor Jung beamed like he’d been waiting to drop a literary bomb.

“I like the way you both think,” he began, steepling his fingers like some benevolent academic overlord. “You don’t just read literature—you wrestle it. Respect it. And occasionally stab each other with it.”

I said nothing, just nodded politely while standing as far from Mark as physically possible without flinging myself out the window.

“There’s an international literary conference hosted by the University at Veritas,” he continued. “It’s prestigious, competitive, and… paired.”

Mark straightened beside me like someone had just offered him a sonnet and a scholarship. I, on the other hand, was already sensing doom wrapped in MLA format.

“It’s on the notice board, but I’m telling you two specifically,” Professor Jung went on, smiling that same evil-genius smile he’d worn this morning. “Because I think—no, know—that if you teamed up, your chances of getting accepted are incredibly high.”

My brain short-circuited.

Team up?

With Mark fate-is-a-poem Lee?

We’d kill each other before we even chose a font.

“That’s… very kind of you, Professor,” I said, my voice politely strangled.

Beside me, Mark let out a soft, amused hum. Like a man already composing the opening paragraph of our academic obituary.

“I’m in,” he said. Instantly. No hesitation. Of course.

I looked at him like he’d just offered to co-author my nightmare.

“I mean,” he added, shooting me a sideways glance that felt like a challenge dressed as a compliment, “if Y/N can handle it.”

Handle what? His metaphors? His smugness? His perfectly organized notes that somehow always smell like cinnamon and ink?

“Oh, I can handle it,” I said sweetly, a dangerous smile curving on my lips. “Just don’t start talking about Austen like she’s a 19th-century NPC again and we’ll get along just fine.”

Professor Jung clapped once. “Perfect. Submit a proposal by next Friday. Surprise me.”

As we stepped into the corridor, I could already feel the words crawling up my throat like they were too irritated to stay inside.

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” I muttered. “This isn’t a prize. It’s community service.”

Mark had the audacity to laugh. “I don’t know, I think we might actually work well together.”

I stopped walking. He did too, turning slightly with that same irritating eyebrow tilt like he thought this was a scene from some academic rom-com. It wasn’t.

I crossed my arms. “Meet me at 4 p.m. in the book cafe outside campus. We need to figure out a topic before your ego writes a paper all by itself.”

He gave a mock salute. “Wouldn’t dream of being late.”

Then he walked off, all easy strides and unbearable confidence, like we hadn’t just declared a ceasefire for the sake of intellectual dominance.

I stared after him, jaw clenched.

This was going to be a disaster. A well-researched, peer-reviewed, highly-cited disaster.

I walk toward the field where my so-called friends are lounging like overfed cats under the sun. Chenle’s playing basketball, all fluid limbs and annoying laughter. The rest? Already grinning like they know something I don’t. Which is impossible. Unless…

“Hey, Mark Lee,” Haechan calls, eyes glinting like he’s logged into my brain. “You look like someone tore your ego again today. Was it our Lit Queen?”

I flop down onto the grass beside them with the dramatic energy of a tragic Greek hero. “Today’s topic was free will vs. fate in literature,” I mutter, tugging blades of grass like they personally offended me. “Obviously, I sided with fate—because hello, I’m not naive enough to believe I have control over anything in life—but now I don’t know if I won or if she did or if I just got verbally suplexed by a girl in winged eyeliner.”

Haechan snorts. “Verbal suplex. That’s a new low, even for you.”

“It’s like she thrives on chaos." I continue like a man possessed. "The moment the professor mentioned fate, her eyes lit up like she was summoning literary demons just to argue.”

“She probably lives in hell, Mark. Maybe she’s just giving you directions,” Renjun says without looking up from his notebook.

“The worst part isn’t the debate,” I mumble. “It’s the fact that I’m teamed up with her. For the inter-college conference.”

That gets them. A collective gasp like I just announced I’m marrying her tomorrow.

“Oh,” Jaemin says, eyes wide. “You mean her? The girl who corrected Professor Kim when he misquoted T.S. Eliot?”

“She’s the same one who once sent Sunwoo a list of grammar corrections when he asked her out,” Haechan adds, cackling. “Imagine trying to flirt and getting a red-inked Google Doc back.”

“She brought up Plato at that party last week,” Jeno says, shaking his head. “And they were literally talking about their dating lives. I think someone asked what her type was and she went ‘philosophically or emotionally?’”

Chenle jogs up just in time to drop the final blow. “Rumor says she turned a guy down by sending him a bibliography on why she’s emotionally unavailable.”

“A bibliography?” Jisung blinks. “Like… with citations?”

“I think there was APA and MLA formats involved,” Chenle grins.

I sigh, dragging my hands down my face. “You guys don’t understand. I notice… things now. Like—like the way she rolls her eyes every time I speak. Which is always. She does this dramatic slow blink and I swear, I hear ‘disappointment’ in 4K.”

“She probably keeps a thesaurus in her bag just to judge your vocabulary,” Renjun mutters.

“And the eyeliner,” I continue like I’ve lost control of my mouth. “You know? That perfect little wing at the corner of her eye? Like she’s ready to slice me with it.”

“Oh my god,” Jaemin groans. “He’s noticing eyeliner. This is terminal.”

“She bites her pen when she’s thinking,” I say, ignoring them all now. “Like the cap is a life-or-death decision. And when she drinks coffee, she winces. She hates it. I know she does. She drinks it like it’s a punishment, not a preference. That’s not someone who likes caffeine. That’s someone who’s forcing herself to function in a coffee-drunk world.”

“You’re in deep, man,” Jeno laughs, clapping my shoulder. “You’re starting to sound like her.”

“I am not—” I stop, because, okay. Maybe I am. Maybe the worst part isn’t even being teamed up with her. Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t stop thinking about how her voice sharpens when she’s passionate about a book. Or how her handwriting looks like it belongs in some old library archive. Or how her smirk makes me want to argue with her just to see it again.

“She’s going to destroy me,” I say aloud.

“She already has,” Haechan smirks. “And we’re just here for the literary funeral.”

I walk into the book cafe and spot Mark Lee instantly—half-slouched in a corner booth, dressed like a Pinterest board for "hot literature major energy" and scrolling through his phone like he hasn’t been waiting here early on purpose.

He looks up the moment I sit across from him and slides a caramel frappuccino toward me like it's a peace offering.

“I don’t drink frappuccinos,” I say, pulling out my laptop and notebook. “Especially not ones pretending to be desserts.”

“You should,” he says smoothly, “it’s better than wincing like you're in physical pain every time you drink coffee. Just spare the Americano your judgmental stare.”

He says it like he’s read the last ten pages of my life.

Which is the worst part.

Because he kinda has.

“I’ve already chosen our topic,” I announce, ignoring his smirk. “‘The Quiet Catastrophe: Literature as a Witness to Absurdity and Human Frailty.’ It’s in line with the conference theme and—”

“Of course you chose that,” he cuts in, leaning back like he’s bracing for impact. “Tell me, what’s your word count goal this year for Kafka-Dostoevsky Existential Crisis Essays? A hundred thousand?”

I glare. “It’s a strong theme.”

“It’s a recycled theme.” He raises an eyebrow. “I'm just saying… have you considered that Franz and Fyodor might want you to move on?”

I open my mouth, then close it. Because damn it, he’s not wrong.

“I was thinking,” he continues, voice casual but eyes very not, “what if we pitched ‘Ink as Ammunition: Literature as Resistance in Postcolonial and Feminist Texts’? It’s bold, fresh, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll meet authors who don’t end their novels in total despair.”

I hate that it’s a good idea.

I hate that my face reacts before my pride does—because he sees it.

His smirk deepens.

“I don’t want to waste time arguing,” I mutter, crossing my arms. “So fine. We’ll go with your idea.”

“Wow.” He places a hand over his heart dramatically. “Mark this day, for she has spoken the word: fine.”

We fall into a silence so deep it might as well have its own heartbeat—the kind of silence that says.

I catch his brown eyes catching the light every time he lands on a good point, like he’s just uncovered some secret cheat code for the paper. His eyebrows furrow into that “serious genius” crease, and of course, his damn glasses betray him by slipping down his nose as he leans in to sneak a peek at what I wrote. The way he pushes them back up with one lazy finger? Too casual, too precise—like he knows exactly how distracting he looks.

Focus, Y/N. Focus on the paper, not the guy who plays basketball to ease his tension and somehow looks like he just walked off a runway. And yes, he looks damn hot when he plays, but this is strictly an academic observation, no judging.

Mark’s voice cuts through my thoughts.

“Handmaid’s Tale?”

I nod, trying not to make it obvious that I’m really thinking about how his hair falls perfectly messy when he pushes it back, and how the sleeves of his shirt roll up just enough to make me wonder if he knows the effect he’s having.

“What’s running around in that head of yours?” he asks, eyebrow raised, suddenly silent like he’s waiting for some grand revelation.

Definitely not how good you look right now.

"Oh nothing"

“And seriously,” he adds, eyeing my pen like it’s a secret weapon, “you should stop chewing on that thing. I know you’re hunting for a sentence to obliterate me with.”

“I’m not,” I snap, yanking the pen away like it’s a live bomb.

We’re both silent for a while — a rare event, considering we usually argue over everything from font sizes to who gets top billing on the title page. But right now, it’s just the clack of keyboards and the soft hum of the café.

“I don’t like this,” he says suddenly.

I glance up. “What, being productive?”

“No. You being quiet. It’s weird. It’s like I’m watching a thriller with no plot twist. Where’s the snark? The dramatic sighs? The eye rolls?”

I shrug. “Maybe I’m saving all my energy for the bibliography.”

He grins. “Oh, I get it now. You’re lulling me into a false sense of security before you hit me with the footnote from hell.”

I sip the Frappuccino — the one I swore I wouldn’t drink. He notices, of course.

“It’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s tolerable.”

“You say that about everything you like. Just admit you love it.”

I raise an eyebrow. “That line working on anyone else?”

He leans back, smirking. “Only the ones who can spell ‘conscience’ without autocorrect.”

I can’t help the laugh that slips out. He notices that too.

“You laughed,” he says like he just won a bet.

“Congratulations. What do you want, a trophy?”

“No, just acknowledgment. It’s rare. Like finding a happy ending in an existential novel.”

I grin. “You’re really trying to make metaphors happen today, huh?”

He shrugs.

We fall back into silence.

Two weeks had passed since our abstract got the green light from Mr. Jung. Since then, it felt like we’d been living in a war zone—bickering over everything from fonts to spacing, to whose point held more weight. Every tiny detail turned into a battlefield.

“I’m taking you to the party,” Giselle declared, even though I was standing right next to her.

“I’m not coming,” I replied, flipping through Onyx Storm. Honestly, can you blame me? The ending was right around the corner.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m taking you. That’s not a request, Ms. Litlady. And please, don’t start in on Plato or whoever. People are still talking about that.”

“They asked me a question,” I shrugged, marking my page before closing the book. “I just answered.”

“It’s a party, not a philosophy lecture. Dress up and come with me. Jungwoo’s picking us up.”

“It’s not like I hate parties.”

She grinned. “Exactly. You like parties—you’re not one of those typical bookworms who lock themselves away all weekend.”

“Yeah, well, I like finishing Onyx Storm more.”

“Whatever. You can finish it later. You’ve been working on that paper with your academic rival nonstop. You need a break from that hot nerd.”

“He’s not hot. More like a mosquito buzzing in my ear and I'm just tolerating him.”

“Speaking of that hot nerd, only you can hold a conversation with him. I heard Jia finally snagged a date with him last month, and he went on about the Renaissance and its impact on literature, the printing press, the first Bible—all that jazz.”

A small smile spread across my face. “That sounds exactly like him,” I said, walking to my closet.

“The red one or the black one?” Giselle asked.

“I like the red one. It looks good on you.”

“Done and done.”

The music was loud, the air smelled like cheap cologne and spilled cider, and the lights were dim enough to make everyone look ten percent more attractive than usual—which meant nothing to me, obviously. I was here for a drink and maybe a reason to leave early.

Then she walked in.

Giselle first—grinning, glossy-lipped and glitter-eyed. Jungwoo next, bouncing like the Labrador he was. And then her, in black. Not the mournful academic black we lived in, no. This was dangerous black. Skin, collarbone, the glint of a necklace that caught the light every time she tilted her head and laughed.

And she laughed.

At him.

Jaehyun.

The golden boy. Soccer star. Her brother’s best friend. The type of guy who didn’t have to work for charm—he just breathed and people adored him. She was leaning in, brushing his arm, and throwing her head back like he’d just told the best joke in the world.

I hated it.

I didn’t even know what he said, and I hated it.

Haechan appeared next to me with a red cup and a knowing look. “You’re staring.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re glaring.”

“Same thing.”

“She looks good tonight,” he said. “Not that I noticed. I mean, Jaehyun noticed. And half the team. But not me. Just saying.”

I rolled my eyes, took a swig of something that burned, and tried not to look back. Failed.

“She laugh like that with you during group projects?” Haechan smirked, the devil in a hoodie.

“She doesn’t laugh with me. We argue.”

“And yet,” he drawled, “here you are. Third drink. Sixth stare. First stage of denial. Classic.”

I turned away. “Shut up.”

“She’s just talking to Jaehyun, man. Your crush is allowed to talk to people.”

“She’s not my—”

I paused.

He grinned.

I hated him.

____

I walked into the room after attending a call from Renjun. She was laughing again. That sharp, carefree kind of laugh that somehow always managed to echo over the music. And of course, it was Jaehyun standing next to her. She tilted her head slightly when she laughed, like whatever he said was the cleverest thing she’d heard all night. Whatever.

I made my way to the bar. Not toward her — just the bar. The fact that she was already there? Unfortunate timing.

I stepped into the space beside her, nodding at the bartender. “You do remember our submission’s due next week, right? Or is your strategy just charming Jaehyun into doing it for us?”

She turned toward me, a slow, amused look crawling up her face. “Mark Lee at a party and talking about work? I’m shocked. Blink twice if you’re being held hostage.”

I grabbed my drink. “I just figured your attention span might need the reminder.”

Her smirk widened. “Worried I’ll outshine you again?”

“Again implies it happened once.”

“You’re right. But let’s not forget all those other times I accidentally outdid you — it’s kind of a pattern by now.”

I took a slow sip. “Delusions are getting bold these days.”

She laughed under her breath. Not the same kind of laugh she gave Jaehyun. This one had teeth. “The cafe’s closed tomorrow,” she said, casually, like it was no big deal. “So if you want to get this done before the deadline, you’ll have to come to my place. I’ll text you the address.”

I raised an eyebrow, letting a beat of silence stretch before answering. “You sure your Wi-Fi can handle all that ego in one apartment?”

She looked at me over her glass. “Guess we’ll find out.”

And just like that, she turned back to her conversation — not sparing me a second glance.

Fine by me. I got what I came for. A drink. And a reminder that this partnership was going to be the end of one of us.

Probably her.

___

She said her place. Her place. I didn’t ask questions—just said yes like a man trying to win a debate by proximity.

But now I’m standing in front of her door with a backpack full of citations and a mouth that can’t stop thinking about hers. This isn’t about the paper anymore. Not really.

She’s let me in—literally. And I don’t know what I’ll do when she forgets I’m the enemy and starts looking at me like I’m something else entirely.

He stepped into my apartment like he owned the place, tossed his bag onto the floor beside the low table in the hall, and sank onto the opposite side without a word. We didn’t need pleasantries—not in our world of rivalry laced with disdain.

I shouldn’t have said my place. I could’ve picked the library. A cafe, The quad. Literally anywhere that didn’t have soft lighting and shelves full of books that double as secrets and i didn't realise it tho.

But the way he looked at me—like he knew something I didn’t—made my mouth move faster than my brain. And now we were meeting in a space where my defenses didn’t work.

My apartment wasn’t neutral territory. It had favorite pens and worn notebooks and a bookshelf I’d never let anyone touch. Not even the friends who knew what I read when I wasn’t trying to impress professors.

He pulled out his laptop and the familiar clack of keys filled the silence as we settled into rhythm, working through the final citations. I was focused, eyes scanning a paragraph on postmodern consumption—but I felt it the moment his attention drifted.

Not to me. Not yet.

His gaze had shifted—toward the corner.

Bookshelf.

I followed it too late. He was already rising, curiosity pulling him like a magnet to the shelf I usually guarded with selective disclosure. His fingers grazed the spines, pausing over a particular set of titles that didn’t exactly scream Kafka.

Twisted Love. Fourth Wing. Iron Flame. A Court of Thorns and Roses.

I didn’t have to look up to know the smirk forming on his lips.

“Interesting collection,” he murmured, voice laced with something that wasn’t entirely mockery.

I turned my face toward him slowly, schooling my expression into bored defiance. “It’s called research,” I said coolly, though I could feel the heat creeping up the back of my neck.

He pulled a book halfway out. “For our project?” he asked, taking a step closer.

“For the sake of literature as a whole,” I countered, folding my arms across my chest.

Another step. “Didn’t know you were into… dragons, morally grey men, and explicit tension.”

I didn’t move. “Didn’t know you had time to read spines while pretending to be better than me.”

That earned a short laugh, rough and low. He closed the distance until he was standing right beside me, the book still in his hand, his fingers brushing the edge of the cover like it was a dare.

“I guess I underestimated the kind of stories that get your attention,” he said, his voice quieter now, deeper.

I tilted my head. “And I overestimated your sense of boundaries.”

His gaze flicked to my lips for a fraction of a second too long before settling back on my eyes. “So… which one’s your favorite?”

I reached out, plucked the book from his hand with deliberate slowness, and placed it back on the shelf.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I said, and turned back toward the table and settled into the chair.

I could still feel his stare on my back. Heavy. Unspoken.

The citations could wait a few seconds more.

He didn’t come back right away.

I could feel him still standing there. The air around the bookshelf was thick—static, electric. His presence dragged across my skin like a storm waiting to break.

And then he came back after grabbing another book from my collections. Not quietly. Not carelessly.

He sank into the chair like he owned it. Like he owned the moment. Like he’d found a secret and was now deciding just how deep he wanted to bury it in me.

No glance at the screen.

Only me.

His eyes were darker than before. Focused. Sure.

“Research purposes, huh?”

Low. Laced with something that tasted like trouble.

I didn’t flinch. “You know—methodology, citations, critical discourse—”

“You mean your collection over there?”

He jerked his chin toward the shelf. “Looks a hell of a lot more like late-night escapism than anything academic.”

My throat tightened. “You’re making assumptions.”

He smirked. “Am I?”

Then he leaned in. Slow. Measured. His voice dipped into something filthy and deliberate.

“You’re the girl who quotes Barthes in class, who sighs at Kafka like he ruined you—but you’ve got a whole row of books with titles like Thorns and Temptation, Credence and Twisted series.”

I blinked.

He didn’t stop.

“Let me guess. The main guy’s always a tortured immortal. Says he’s a monster. Calls her little mortal, my mouse, my princess or butterfly, before bending her over a throne.”

“That’s not—”

He cut in, brutal and soft. “You like that shit.”

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

“And I bet you read it one hand on the page, the other under the covers, acting like you’re too good for it. Telling yourself it’s just fiction. Just tension. Just... literary curiosity.”

He grinned. Dark. Triumphant.

“But you keep going back to the same scenes, don’t you?”

I crossed my arms. “So what if I do?”

“So nothing.” He shrugged. “Except you walk around like your head’s above it all. As if you wouldn’t come apart if someone actually pressed you up against a wall and whispered the things you pretend you hate.”

He was too close. I could smell his cologne—woodsy, dark, intoxicating.

“You think that’s all it takes?” I tried to say it steady, but my voice betrayed me. Too tight. Too breathless.

He tilted his head, eyes on me like a predator amused by how long his prey thought it could pretend.

“No,” he said. “I think you want someone who gets it. Someone who won’t judge you for reading smut dressed in metaphors.”

His hand reached forward. Not touching. Just close. Suggestive.

“I think you want someone who’d highlight those lines with you. The ones where she begs. Where he growls. Where the line between danger and desire blurs and she likes it.”

I felt heat rush to my face. My stomach twisted. My legs didn’t move.

“And I think,” he continued, “you’ve spent so long playing the good girl with her annotated classics and tragic quotes... you’ve forgotten how much you crave someone seeing you. Really seeing you.”

“You don’t know me,” I whispered.

“I do now.”

His voice was a promise. A threat. A challenge.

“And you know what’s wild?”

He leaned in just enough to ghost his lips near my jaw. “I’m not judging you. I’d read them with you. Out loud. Every filthy line. Make you admit which parts made your thighs press together. Make you say it—this one, this is the line that made me want to be ruined.”

My breath shuddered.

His knee slid against mine again. Pressed there. Solid. Heavy.

“You still gonna act like you’re above it?” he whispered. “Or are you gonna let me peel that good girl persona off you page by page?”

I didn’t answer.

Because if I did—I wasn’t sure if I’d stop.

Because the thesis wasn’t the only thing unraveling.

I was.

And God, maybe I wanted him to keep pulling.

He didn’t pull away.

He leaned closer.

Still no contact—just his presence, thick and heavy and humming with a kind of heat that felt almost unfair.

“You’re really going to sit there and act like your thighs haven’t been pressed together for the last five minutes?” he murmured, voice low, velvet over something razor-sharp. “Like you’re not wet under that skirt and trying not to squirm in your seat?”

I raised a brow, careful. Steady. “You always talk like this during research sessions? No wonder your GPA’s hanging by a thread.”

He smirked. “Cute. Deflecting.”

He dragged his chair an inch closer, the scrape of wood jarring in the silence. His knee bumped mine. Intentional. Firm. And then his fingers tapped the table, slow and steady, inches from where mine rested.

“You know the parts you reread the most?” he said, gaze dropping to my mouth. “The ones where he doesn’t even touch her yet. Just tells her what he’s going to do. How he’s going to make her lose control.”

“Sounds like someone’s projecting,” I said coolly, even though my pulse was sprinting and I could feel the heat crawling up my throat.

He leaned in further, his breath brushing my cheek like a secret I wasn’t allowed to hear.

“I bet you love the build-up. His mouth at her ear. The words he says when no one else is listening. You’re already soaked for me, aren’t you? Look how easy it is to make you squirm.”

I didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Because if I did, he’d know.

“You act like you’re above it,” he said, voice going lower. “Like none of it gets to you. But I see the way you shift in your chair. How you stopped breathing when I said ‘wet.’”

I scoffed, leaned back just a little. “You’re giving yourself too much credit.”

“Oh, I haven’t even started,” he murmured, eyes locked on mine. “Want me to read aloud your favorite passage? The one where she’s told to shut up and take it? Where he pins her wrists and tells her, You’re not going anywhere until I’ve ruined every part of you?”

I stood abruptly.

His eyes tracked every inch of the movement like a dare.

I didn’t speak. Just reached for the book near his elbow—my copy, spine cracked, pages dog-eared and traitorous—and walked to the nearest bookshelf to shelve it. A small act. Simple.

But it was enough.

He was behind me in seconds. Catching my wrist to turn me towards him.

His hand landed on the shelf above mine, boxing me in. His body close. Too close. Heat radiating from his chest to my neck, not touching, but god, it felt like he was.

“You’re not fooling me,” he said, voice dark against the shell of my ear. “You can act cold all you want. Witty. Detached. But you’re the kind of girl who reads the dirtiest pages twice, then closes the book just to sit there and feel it.”

I gripped the spine of the book tighter.

“You want someone to make it real,” he said. “To tilt your chin up, press their mouth to yours, and say, Don’t run. Take it.”

My chest rose too fast.

“You’d hate how much you’d love it,” he whispered. “How fast you’d fall apart. How easily you’d beg when I tell you, Keep your eyes on me while I make you mine right here.”

I should’ve told him to back off.

Should’ve moved. Should’ve breathed.

Instead, I froze.

And that’s when he kissed me.

Hard. Fierce. Like he’d waited too damn long and couldn’t hold it in any longer.

His hand slid to my waist, dragging me closer. His mouth crushed mine, no hesitation, no apology. Just fire and hunger and everything we’d been pretending not to want.

I gasped against him, hands fisting in his shirt as his body pressed against mine, pinning me lightly to the shelf.

He groaned low in his throat, the sound vibrating between us, his mouth moving over mine with brutal precision. Tongue teasing. Teeth grazing. Every second pulling me deeper, tighter, unraveling something I hadn’t even realized was wound that tight.

The book fell from my hands, hit the floor with a thud I barely heard.

“You feel that?” he breathed against my lips. “That spark when I touch you? That ache? You think I can’t tell how wrecked you are right now?”

He kissed me again, slower this time, more purposeful. Like he wanted me to remember it later—alone, frustrated, aching.

“I could fuck you with just my voice,” he whispered, mouth trailing to my jaw. “And baby—don’t lie—you’d let me.”

The bell rang.

Sharp. Final. Echoing down the hallway.

“Y/n?” My brother’s voice, too close.

I jerked back, panting.

His eyes were wild. Lips swollen. Still breathing hard.

I wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand, heart pounding out of rhythm. He didn’t say anything. Just watched me.

“Y/n?” Louder now.

“I’m—coming!” I shouted, hating how wrecked my voice sounded.

I didn’t look at him as I turned.

But I felt his stare all the way to the door.

And long after I left, his kiss still burned like it hadn’t finished yet.

“The problem wasn’t that he kissed me. It was that I kissed him back.”

“We were supposed to write a paper. Not rewrite every boundary I ever built.”

___

Author's note:

Well, if you’ve made it this far, congratulations—you survived Part One of You Annotated My Soul without throwing your device across the room. This story is basically my caffeine-fueled brainchild, packed with all the awkward academic tension, chaotic vibes, and just enough cursed chemistry to keep you hooked. If you liked the drama (or even just the mess), drop a comment or reblog—it’s like digital high-fives that keep me writing.

Part Two is brewing, and spoiler alert: that kiss? Just the appetizer. Stay tuned for the main course.

Thanks for sticking around—and try not to ship them too hard.

Now, I see this fic is not that long.

183 notes · View notes

1800titz · 1 year ago

Text

HI FRIENDS. WOOOOOOOOOOO. Camprry. Aimed for 5K or less and managed to get wordy again. Reader insert and basically pure smut. This one was supposed to be vanilla with some praise kink (and exhibitionism if you SQUINT since it’s in a tent) but….. hahahahaha….. WEEEELLLLLLL.

CONTENT WARNINGS: oral sex, face fucking, exhibitionism-ish if you squint, choking-ish if you squint, light dom/sub, praise kink, daddy kink, intercourse

WC: 7.5K (whoops)

There is nothing remotely sexy about a camping trip.

In fact, Y/N thinks that if she were to deduce a list of words upon first thought when it came to camping, sexy would be the furthest one from qualifying.

There’s nothing sexy about reverting to caveman-ism, sleeping on the ground, sheathed by some paper-thin layer of nylon and polyester and plastic support beams. There’s nothing sexy about pit stains from the lack of air conditioning or its antithetical twin sister, the bumps that rise over chilly skin and trembling bones without the luxury of an electric heater. There’s nothing innately erotic about kindling fire like electricity doesn’t exist, and cooking hot dogs on skewers over the flame, and perpetually swatting at insects that incessantly stick to shins and calves like the flesh there is coated in sugar.

There is something sexy, though, when it comes to the way Harry’s arms work as he pitches a tent, bi’s and tri’s intermingling in an alluring duet, pumping and settling with each motion. The sleeves of his tee ride up when he raises the limbs, and sunlight catches shadow in ridge and sinew of muscle. There’s something sexy in the way his back ripples, in the way that thin fabric does nothing to cover what she imagines — no, what she’s well aware lies underneath. The same traps and lats she’s scraped her nails over and dug into. The same shoulders she’s sunk her teeth into to bridle cries of bliss.

There’s something hot about the cinch in his brow when he works, something alluring in the curl at the plush of his mouth when he turns his head and beams lopsidedly at something that their friend has said, too low for Y/N to catch. There’s something sexy in the way that his eyes skim her frame when she’s sitting in a fold-out chair with sunglasses. When his eyes glide over his shoulder. It’s in the most subtle way. There’s something sexy in the way he tears that gaze away.

There’s something sexy in the way that no one around them knows she spends nights bouncing on his cock.

This lustrous affair — this sneaky fling. This filthy, dirty secret that only the two of them share, slinking and sidling through the shadows.

Really, it’s nothing more than a raunchy circumstance of friends-with-benefits, only kept on the down-low to evade prying questions from friends and the sickly confrontation of …feelings. Because it’d be easy to admit they’re fucking, that they’ve been hooking up for months after an impromptu, late night of drinking. But then it’s sort of cementing, right? At least, in a way.

There’s a status that floats about when you confess you’re sleeping with somebody — when you admit that you’ve entangled them into your routine beyond one mishap of sex. In the eyes of your friends, admitting that you’ve upkept a sex buddy through the roll of the seasons is, like. Well, it’s basically admitting some form of something sentimental.

They’re just fucking. They’re just friends that fuck. And the way that nobody around them has any sort of suspicion that he’ll most likely be slipping into her tent in the midst of the night for that...

That’s sexy, the young woman thinks.

They’re coiled around the campfire once the sun has ducked out and simmered off behind the trees, and Y/N thinks about it. She watches the shape of his features glow beyond the crackle of the flame, and she thinks about the way his nose bumps over her clit when he licks into her. She watches his mouth move when he talks, a muted strawberry that’s dimmed in the night, and she thinks about the cushion of it pressing open-mouthed kisses to her flesh. She’s in his sweatshirt, because she had to borrow one, and it smells like him. She’s coated in it — his scent. Warm, pleasant musk and remnants of tantalizing cologne. It reminds her of the way the same sweatshirt had been discarded and draped over the foot of her bed haphazardly one night, as he kneed his way onto the mattress and clambered over her, fingertips exploring and tongue trailing. It reminds her of the way he smells when he brushes past her in the company of others, just solid weight and warmth. He does it nonchalantly, but the green of his eyes is knowing and flirtatious. That’s when the same scent teases her senses. It reminds her of the way he smells when he’s up close and personal, when he’s rocking against her and groaning softly into the nook between her shoulder and her neck.

She stares at his hands — the way they lay over the armrests of his fold-out, the way lengthy digits adorned with chunky rings cradle a can of beer. She imagines the same fingers wrapped over her throat, squeezing lightly, in that way that he does.

Y/N isn’t panting into the chill of the air. The white of her exhales just surface …quicker. His hands, and his smell, and his mouth are entirely irrelevant to the matter.

By the time they all retire to their respective tents, the young woman is pleased to get a breather from his hands and his …ludicrously plush, smiley mouth. At least in a public circumstance, so she can’t be caught fawning over his mannerisms from a distance. The smell …she can’t escape that. In all honesty, it should be shameful, basking in the scent of a sweatshirt. Instead, she coils up in it under the covers.

She’s turned on her side with gritty rock coursing through wire, chords of guitar and drums rippling out from the little speakers in her ears, entirely engrossed as she scrolls through what little apps can manage access without a durable station of wifi.

Y/N nearly squeals when an arm slinks over her chest, when a palm nudges over her mouth. And then another hand is plucking at one of the earbuds, giving her leeway into the crinkle of the sleeping bag, crickets, and the sound of bated breaths behind her.

A low baritone, hushed and teasing against the same ear where the earbud’s been removed, “Easy, baby.”

The gentle murmur that his lips shape does, frankly, little to soothe the hammer of her heart. In fact, if anything, the muscle soars in pace behind bone with the way cushiony pink grazes her jaw, the way his warm weight presses up behind her.

“Easy.”

She’d sit up and turn over her shoulder if she had the opportunity, but the same inky, muscly arm she’d admired hours earlier cradles over, preventing the motion. Harry can tell too, evidently, based on his soft snicker. He’s pleased from the way her head juts to steal a peer back. He’s pleased when she doesn’t succeed.

Instead of letting up, he takes the same earbud he’d pulled out and presses it into his own ear so that they’re sharing the set, crooning, “What are you listening to? Hm?”

He sponges another kiss to the side of her throat, a stray tendril flopping over his forehead. Y/N knows that he’s listening to it, too, then. She knows from the playful, little nudge of his head with the rhythm, from the way the cord of the earbuds grows taut, from the sound of mirth he muzzles to her skin when he drives his mouth over the side of her neck. The young woman wriggles her arm, just enough for his grip to loosen, and then uses the opportunity to raise her head to take her own earbud out. The motion jostles Harry from the nook he’s seemingly made homage in, and he nips at her earlobe in protest. Anyways, the whole thing sends a chill wracking down her shoulders.

When he lets up, Y/N twists in his grasp to her back. The earbuds splay over her chest, his own discarded, too. There’s still music seeping softly. She blinks, gaze tracing over his features, basked in shadow and soft amusement.

“Hey,” she croaks, her voice catching on a crack with the effort to keep quiet.

And Harry drags a thumb down her stomach, fingers meddling where the fabric of her (no, his) hoodie has rucked up. The ticklish sensation makes her shift a little. His mouth quirks, and he smooths over the same spot again.

“Hey, you.”

Her lips part and her tummy jolts when he slips the chilly pad of his thumb back over the line he’d run for a third time. She wants to bring her own hand up and trace the contours of his cocky mouth with her fingertips. It shapes the words, like baritone bathed in honey, “Ticklish?”

When he brushes over a fourth time, her arm twitches, and her hand shoots for his wrist, squeezing lightly. Corners of muted pink spring up, dimples scoring softly.

“Yes,” she gripes in a whisper, but the gripe doesn’t come out very gripey at all. Instead, it’s sort of small — that’s on account of his warm weight shifting onto her. Which is a new development, and it’s one that stirs something familiar and warm below the sleeping bag she’s nestled into, half-zipped and mostly just thrown over.

His sturdy thigh slips in the empty gap between her own, and Harry ducks his head, the dimples deepening and the glint of white teeth escaping through the part of his lips. And then he dips lower until his face is nearly tucked into her hair.

“I missed you,” his admission is soft-spoken. It’d be sort of tender if it didn’t come out so …hungry.

Y/N takes in a little, shuddery breath. The same hand that's settled over her hipbone comes up to brush hair away from her throat, and a mouth stipples kisses over her pulse. His voice is a raspy, desirous tease, “Did you miss me?”

Christ. She thinks that maybe if he were telepathic and had even a brief glimpse into the filthy things that’d cycled behind her skull for the duration of the day, then he’d only be more smug.

That’s dangerous.

She’s glad he isn’t.

The young woman hums — an apathetic sound that feigns contemplation, like his touch doesn’t light every nerve ending in her system on fire, like she hasn’t spent hours staring at his arms, his mouth, his hands. Like she hasn’t been picturing expanses of muscle and skin hidden under his tee, imagining her tongue tracing through the vales of his v-line and her fingertips following the trail of hair below his belly button, slipping lower and lower…

“No?” Harry murmurs, lips bumping wetly over her flesh. What follows is a gentle exhale, and then his mouth is sponging another open-mouthed kiss, and his tongue brushes warmth against her, like he’s petting with it over her pulse. He caresses all the way back to her ear. Something dirty and thrilling slinks down the knobs of her spine when he mumbles, unconvinced, “I think you’re lying to me, little miss.”

Her breath stutters.

“I think,” Harry muses, fingers dipping beneath the shroud of the sleeping bag and smoothing back over her waist testingly, “that if I had a look right now, you’d be a drippy mess.”

Her throat bobs on a swallow. Petulantly, and so obviously feigning, Y/N tips her chin back and tells him, “…Not at all.”

Instead of smoothing tips of digits back over the naked, little expanse of skin again, they venture lower, teasing at the waistband of her sleep shorts. “I think your sweet, little pussy would tell me otherwise, wouldn’t it, pet?”

Another deep breath rolls her chest under the cushioned sheet of fabric when fingertips dwell in. Just centimeters, practically. They retreat. Harry presses another kiss just below her ear.

“Hm? It’s been so empty all day long. Achy, I bet.” Chills rise awake all over when he murmurs, purely condescending pity painting every syllable, “Poor baby.”

He’s always had it — this gift of filthy, dirty gab. This ability to render her craving and wanting with his words like it’s innate, practically. She shouldn’t be surprised when he shifts over her, just enough for her to feel how hard he is, tips of his curls tickling at her cheek, “Could stuff it full. Make it all better.”

Y/N sighs. Finally. Like it’s a release of the whole act, and the seams of it come apart to bliss when he nips with his teeth. She cranes her neck to give him more room to work.

“Would you like that?”

And she would, she thinks. Very, very much, and his lingering fingers — when they pull out and he hooks a thumb in and just tugs down a smidge — remind her of how hot she suddenly is. How hot everything is, despite the chill in the air. Instead of answering, the young woman nudges with her chin — a nod. An unsatisfactory one, evidently.

“Words,” Harry mutters. It’s gentle, and quiet, and she hopes the polar opposite of the way he’s going to fuck her.

She cranes her neck more and splays her thighs what little she can under his weight. It’s kind of a plea. It’s also sort of pathetic. “Yes.”

But it makes his mouth crook. His palm draws away. No. That wasn’t the intended effect. She curbs her sound of protest, but he can tell that it’s bridled in the chamber — she knows because the curl of mirth grows wider. He sits up a bit, bracing on his arms until he hovers over her, and then he sighs, jade sliding to the sector of the bag that’s zipped. Slowly, like he’s teasing, he grips over the notch and tugs.

“What d’you do if you want me to stop?” Harry beckons, nearly a whisper but not quite, fingers skimming up under his hoodie. The same hoodie clings to her flesh, and every nerve sparks alive at the touch, striking her lungs to expand heavier. The air catches when the pads of his fingers graze up the vale of her sides and siphon a flinch.

“Teacup,” Y/N breathes the safeword in response, and the fingertips climb her ribs like a staircase, pleased.

“Good girl,” He tells her, and the pads sink back over, bumping over the ridges, and he tugs the fabric up over her chest.

Her bra is red. It’s a nice detail, all lacy cupped over her chest. He draws the tip of an index over the edge and says, “Cheeky,” like his comment isn’t, “…Did you wear this to get fucked?”

The young woman gnaws at her lip. Innately, it’s not an accurate statement. She didn’t wear it to get fucked — not when she knew he’d be slipping into her tent in the midst of the night and fucking into her regardless of the state of her underthings. But it’s a nice touch when he ducks, palm squeezing over one of her tits, and tacks on all low against her ear, like it’s praise, “Because you know I love you in red, pet.”

The satisfaction of pleasing him buds in her chest, right at the core of her ribcage, warmth pitted deep, and it slinks out like beams of gooey sunshine, winding and seeping through the cavity until her veins practically thrum yellow. She’s buzzing beneath him, pulse thumping and fibers of muscle twitching. It makes his mouth curve — the way he feels her trembling under him like she’s a taut string, and he traces a thumb over her mouth.

Then jade flits to her chest, and Harry takes the thumb away to hook fingers under the cups and tug. They settle under her tits, perking them, and the way the wire settles over her ribcage isn’t particularly comfortable, but it doesn’t really matter. Not when he shimmies down her body and draws a stripe down with his tongue, all the way from the hollow of her throat to the edge of the bra, settling in between. He kisses down her stomach, green salacious and twinkling up through shadow at her, and his tongue draws a circle around her belly button. His mouth quirks there, too, because it makes her flinch. Because he knew it would. Harry brushes with wet taste buds lower, settles on a side, low on her tummy, and sucks a pressing kiss. Her whole spine wrings and writhes, arching when he pairs the sensation with a dull graze of his hand over a nipple. It’s barely anything, but it’s a touch she longs for. And she doesn’t know why, but it always lights her on fire when the pleasure entwines with something that makes her want to squirm out of her own skin.

Because when he turns the graze into a pinch and a roll, when he hones on the drag of his tongue and the suckling of his mouth, when he skirts featherlight fingertips up her side like he’s plucking invisible strings, the yellow thrums red, and hot, and hungry. When his mouth lets up and he drags wet lips to curl over the opposite nipple and the featherlight turns more purposeful, squeezing at sensitive flesh, this knocked-out unph escapes her, like a bridled grunt he’s punched from her. Like a half-laugh, like a moan, like a mottled gasp, like discomfort and please-don’t-stop enmeshed, curbed out of desperation. It makes the red fucking neon.

Harry withdraws with a pop from the bud, and the air bites onto the wet to replace his mouth. The ambiance of rickets and cold reminds her that they’re kind of, sort of, definitely in public, only really shielded from said public (and the intrusive presence of their friend group) by thin sheets of nylon erected with plastic poles. Her eyes say it all then — this hesitation sparking, lashes bouncing and bounding from the nervous shift of her pupils, working from his eyes to his plush mouth and back as he rises to settle over her more.

“They’re asleep,” he promises, a hushed murmur he seals to her own mouth in a sloppy half-kiss. His top lip ghosts over her cupid's bow, and he smooths a hand back over the vale of her waist where he’d squeezed a second ago. Her chest rolls under him, and her mouth parts, just a little to let a mottled little sound escape, like a wheezing gasp she’s muffled.

And he muffles it more with his own lips, pressing against her. The sleeping bag rustles, and it’s quiet beyond the stilted sheets barring the wilderness. Harry’s hand skims down.

“Where do you want me to touch you?” Harry murmurs into her mouth, palm trailing until it stills at the waistband of her shorts, fingertip lingering over an expanse of skin below her belly button that he’s well aware will have her squirming. Y/N jerks. “Here? Or… maybe…”

The young woman practically does a squished, weighted version of a body roll beneath him when he moves his hand to her inner thigh, dragging the pad of his index over the sensitive skin higher up. “Maybe …here? …No, I don’t think so…”

His tongue licks into her mouth when she opens wider for him, desperate for the taste of him on her tongue, and she nearly gasps over that same tongue — loudly — when his palm cups unceremoniously between her legs. “…I think you want me here. That’s about right, isn’t it?”

Y/N makes a little noise — it’s something between desperation and wordless agreement, and it quirks the corners of Harry’s mouth, carving dimples in beside his smug beam. The hand withdraws so suddenly she wants to melt into the hungry soil.

“Yeah, that’s it, sweet thing,” he declares, voice hushed, a bass-deep admission soft-spoken and colored with teasing.

Instead, he presses up until he’s hovering over her and then knees his way back, and then his fingers tuck up under the waistband of her shorts. When he discards them into the beginnings of a pile of clothing beside them, coaxing her hips to rise up enough with a soft word, blood teems into her cheekbones, like it’s all new and foreign.

It’s not.

It’s the most comforting and familiar when he traces a fingertip over the cleft at the crotch of her panties, the most familiar when he shimmies his fingertips under the sides of the fabric at her hips and tugs those off, too. It’s familiar when he holds a leg up, fingers gentle at her calf, and sponges kisses up her leg from her ankle to her inner thigh. It’s familiar when his tongue dances over hot, slick, flesh in craving, when it rolls around her clit and circles back. When he’s amused by the proof that he was right, that she is soaked, and his ego inflates like a hot air balloon. It’s familiar in the draw of his tongue, in the brush of his lips, in the way his fingers brush over her thighs, over her hole, over the sensitive areas in between. It’s familiar in the way that she watches stars speckle in the darkness behind her clenched eyelids, in the way that Harry doesn’t let up even as she pants and wrings her own fingers into his curls. In the way that he only responds with a moan against her at the rough treatment of his scalp.

It’s somewhere between heaven and hell, teetering on the wire, when he laps over her pulsing cunt. His irises flicker up when she shudders, when Y/N makes a futile attempt to clasp her thighs over his head and prevent the light drag of his tongue over her oversensitive button. Instead, he tucks a palm against one of her legs and holds it down, plush lips curling around an ‘o’ and sucking. Every muscle seizes, her fingers twitching and struggling to curl into the thinly stuffed fabric of the sleeping bag. She bridles a whole-body thrash, neck straining as her breath stutters.

“Please— plea— it’s too much—“ Y/N swallows midway her begging to avoid choking on her own spit, and that’s cute, Harry thinks.

Aw, Y/N thinks he’d coo up at her from between her thighs, if his mouth wasn’t occupied at her core, those are pretty words. They don’t sound like a safeword, though.

He doesn’t say that, though. He doesn’t say anything, humming quietly over her clit (honestly, she can’t tell if it’s in protest or agreement) and rolling a slow circle over nerves that are spent and nearly raw post his caress.

Her chest is still rolling when he clambers his way up onto her, kneeing around her sides and then coaxing her arms up into a stretch. Harry cages those with firm thighs at the roots of the limbs, kneeing his way higher until he’s hovering over her chest and admiring her, all pliant and worn out and obedient beneath him. He sniffs, head cocked and eyes glimmering, and then sighs when he tucks fingers into the waistband of his shorts. Her fingers twitch, outstretched above her. And he’s weightless, and steady, and careful over her, but despite that, filth from his tongue punches her breath out like he’s sat directly over her lungs.

“Gonna suck my cock, baby.”

It’s not really a question — not in tone. It’s a coo, a declaration, insight before Harry digs his fingers further past elastic and discards two layers of fabric with one tug, and his cock bobs free, glistening with a bead of precum at the head.

Y/N swipes out over her lips with her tongue, and the sheen of spit over pink nearly matches the glimmer on the pink of his tip. The man cradles his free hand over his base and tucks the waistband lower on his hips, just until it rests under his balls and a glimpse of inked laurels and milky expanses of a bare tan line are on show. Bracing himself with a hand planted on the ground, Harry leans over her and aims his shaft, daubing over the plush of her mouth. When her tongue peeks out to swipe over the silky skin, she thinks he’s going to chastise her for her lack of patience. He doesn’t. Instead, he ogles down at the motion like she’s a goddess, cracks in otherwise apathy morphing; a light crease between his brows, a twitch in his lips. The same lips part for a shuddery breath like he’s trying to reign in his composure. And with every drag of his head over her slippery, hungry taste buds, a slow, side-to-side swipe that seems to lose precision with each motion, those cracks in his control give more. His jaw sets and he takes a long breath in through flared nostrils, and then shifts the palm that’d settled on the ground to rest over her wrists.

“M’gonna fuck your mouth,” Harry tells her, pupils scoping carefully from her lips to her own eyes in finality. “What do you do if you want me to stop?”

Y/N blinks. Her fingers twitch. She bends the digits over his grip and squeezes, flexing and unflexing over his own fingers like code in a tempo of frenzy. His gaze doesn’t even flicker from the aim of his tip, and he draws it over her mouth like he’s in awe of the sight.

“Good girl.”

The young woman takes in a breath, mouth parting over his head slightly, all doe-eyed. He smushes his cockhead to the open seam.

“Open up for me,” the soft croon is accompanied by the tilt of his head, and a stray curl dangles over his forehead when he swipes the tip over her lips, “Nice and wide. Show me that pretty tongue.”

And it slinks from her mouth as if on mindless command. Harry smears his tip over it like a filthy greeting, and then he feeds his fat cock in, guiding it up until the point to where he’s able to shift his weight onto the hand that doesn’t coat her wrists, careful not to cause the confined joints any discomfort.

“That’s it,” his praise seeps out all breathy, barely over an awed whisper as he sinks in and her tongue flexes to encompass the drag towards her gag reflex, “That’s a good girl.”

The pointed little end grazes over his balls.

“Eyes up here, pretty thing,” Harry encourages, ducking his own chin. There’s something pretty in the dance of her lash line, in the way her pupils flit up to his shadowy face, the way her lips tuck over her teeth to cushion his shaft. The way her tongue stays stuck out, flexing under the welcomed intrusion, “…Wanna watch them get all teary.”

It’s like she tries to appease him. It’s as if on instinct to his words, that her lashes flutter as she tries to peer up, the beginnings of a ready sheen glazing the pretty color there as her tongue twitches and her throat bobs in an attempted swallow.

And Christ, does it feel good when she does that.

Harry’s own neck cranes, the muscles there flexing and veins swelling there like little ropes pulled taut under his skin. He groans, and it makes her do it again. His brows are furrowed when he risks a glance down at the picture-perfect view, and his hips nudge forward a smidge, only for him to bask in the sight of her irises lolling back and her lashes batting. A hiss lips through gritted teeth like rain through a gutter, and his head cocks further as he smooths an index to rest over her palm. She doesn’t have her digits balled — not all the way — not until his forefinger rests in her reach. She squeezes over that, almost like it’s an anchor. Something grounding to tether her.

“Shit,” he manages out, barely over a whisper to bite back a throaty groan, hips rolling and brows furrowed in pleasure, “Shit — you’re good. You’re so good—“

And it makes the twitch of her lashes melt into a flitting bat, the color there rolling back and hiding behind the flutter. She can’t exactly hum in acknowledgment, but Y/N makes this garbled sound around him — this desperate kind she’d only make with his shaft stuffed down her throat, and it’s loud. Too loud. He squeezes over her wrists with his thumb, hips slowing until he’s wedged in to the hilt, stilled with the tip of her nose pressed to the light dusting of his pubic hair.

And Y/N thinks she’s going to implode. She’s going to implode if she doesn’t suffocate over his cock first.

“Shh, shh,” Harry wriggles the index she’s gripping until her touch loosens enough, and he’s able to stroke the tip over her palm, “Shh.”

Her pupils flit up to him in this deliciously delirious way for air. Harry tips his head down, the shadow of another curl flopping over his forehead. His cock twitches. Y/N makes another sound over him, this one lower. More pleading. More distressed. Her lashes flutter, cheeks puffing. Just when she’s about to clench and unclench over his fingers, he pulls out. It’s nearly all the way, but not quite, and she wheezes oxygen into her deprived lungs, muffling a fit of coughing. When she turns her head to take in more air, his tip slips out and draws a wet streak of saliva from the corner of her mouth across her cheek.

“So pretty,” Harry murmurs. His tone sounds distant, and absentminded, and awed, like her mouth is divine and his voice is sort of full of worship, “You take me so well.”

Y/N blinks up at him, lips swollen post his ministrations and parted, slick with spit. Harry adjusts his grip, balancing his weight, and curls his lengthy digits over the base of his cock, aiming it back to that pretty, pretty mouth.

Her jaw practically unhinges at the implication, tongue sticking out to daub at his cockhead when he croons, “And you’ll take a little more for me, sweetheart. Won’t you?”

The sultry plush of his mouth curls up, all smug like when the tip of her tongue prods at his head, and then he feeds himself back into the warmth of her mouth.

“Yeah,” Harry grunts, hips rolling slow and cautious as he guides himself in, “Yeah, you will.”

He settles back into a pace of shallow, jutting thrusts, slow, and calculated, and testing. But then those melt and meld into something smoother, something deeper that brushes the back of her throat. Her fingers stretch wide and open and curl helplessly, never quite squeezing over his own digits, and Harry basks in the wet, pornographic sounds that envelop his shaft. Even as she tries to dim their volume, the sound of her sputtering around his cock isn’t something she can exactly mask when he brushes her gag reflex, again, and again. With every prod forward, every second she spends with her jaw wide open for him, that flame in her core kindles higher and higher. When he pulls out, jaw clenched and tummy flexing, ridges of his abs caught in the shadows, it’s like he pours kerosene.

“Suck,” her friend tells her, soft-spoken as he nudges with his hips. His palm cradles his cock, fingers curled under the base. But her range of motion is limited, and Harry tips it up from her wanton, slick lips. Almost like it’s purposeful, because it definitely is.

A tentative tongue slips out to draw over his balls, and the way his front teeth lodge against the plush of his bottom lip, head cocked to indulge in the innocuous peer of her eyes beneath him — that’s a pretty sight she can make out even through the lack of light. She takes a million mental snapshots with her pupils, all of him in his all, curls dangling from the angle and the sharp line of his nose, his panting mouth as her tastebuds drag, sinew of muscle at his abdomen flexing, a rise and fall. The barest shape of the dark anchor etched into his wrist, his long, ring-clad fingers, the way they curl over his cock. The shape of it hovering over her face.

A low groan squeezes past the door he’s made with his teeth, and then he says, “Yeah. There. Go on.”

Her tongue morphs to her mouth, lips latching over lightly and sucking, just as he’d directed, and parting teases paste to him like doting kisses. Her lashline bounces as her eyes attempt to make his responses out through the rough angle and the dark that coats them. His head craned back there, his tummy rising and falling in pants there, his face tipped down over her to watch. The most insightful — and frankly, the most satisfying — are the sounds.

The hisses of air he sucks in through his teeth, the way huffs fall out from between his open lips. They’re slow, and they come out like he’s trying to control them for the sake of the decibel, but they shake as they escape, and that’s a telltale. And then there’s the moans.

There aren’t many of those to indulge in, but there’s a couple, one that Harry can’t seem to curb, despite his seemingly best efforts, when Y/N rolls her tongue over him all slow-like and comes off with a pop. And then another, later, that has him hanging his head when she stipples kisses to the sensitive skin there.

“Christ, you’re gonna kill me.”

The young woman hums, maybe in agreement or maybe goading, lashes batting innocently beneath him as she draws her lips over his sac aimlessly.

“Fuck,” Harry mutters, and then he stifles and clams up like he’s contemplating. When her tongue drags over him again he seems to make a decision, tearing himself away and kneeing his way back until he’s hovering over her thighs, his cock bobbing and wet with spit, “Sit up. Take this off.”

Do this, do that. A shudder climbs up the knobs of her spine, slithering its way up the bone as she basks in the dominating note plucking at his tone. The sweatshirt catches on her hair and tugs strands, but it’s frenzied, somehow fond, the way his hands rove up her sides and slip up her back, roaming over hot skin to toggle at the back of her bra.

Then it’s, “Roll over,” with the last of her clothing discarded into the darkness, somewhere beside them in the same, sloppy pile with her shorts and her underwear. “Gonna—“ she thinks he sheds his t-shirt then, imagines his muscles rippling and flexing as he pulls it off, over his head from the back, “—fuck you like I want your snug cunt wrapped around me forever.”

And then go his shorts, judging by the way his weight dips and balances, the shuffling from behind as he kicks them off and they’re flung somewhere by his ankle. He presses up onto her, grappling her by the hip, all warm weight and everything brushing together.

“You wanna bounce on my cock, baby?” Harry murmurs, pink lips grazing her temple. A curl tickles at her cheekbones when he ducks to skim his teeth over her earlobe, to ghost a breath of promise — of foreshadowing against her neck when he tells her, sultry low and smooth like honey, “Be a good girl and ask Daddy nicely. Maybe then I’ll let you.”

Shit. Fucking Shit. That little word teems down her ears and hikes all the way down her nervous system and back up, lighting everything in her alive.

Quietly, barely over a whisper, Y/N beckons, “Please.” And when Harry doesn’t immediately move, she licks out at her slips, swallows, and pleads, “Daddy. I need you. Need you inside.”

In response, her friend cups a hand over a love handle and guides his cock to press against her. But he doesn’t breach.

“Better, but not quite,” he sighs. There’s leaves rustling outside in the gentle breeze, but Y/N doesn’t hear anything besides the rush of blood in her ears when she begs more, and it doesn’t get any quieter when Harry rewards her by tucking himself inside and pumping forward, just about halfway.

It’s a crying shame when he doesn’t make any motion to keep going. And then it’s quiet besides their panting breaths intermingling. Eventually, though, he does talk.

“Fuck yourself on it,” Harry instructs, cadence ludicrously controlled given that half of his cock is tucked into her. Y/N peers over her shoulder to catch glimpses of his furrowed brows — the rip in the stitch of semblance. She can only manage to see so much. He ducks his head and nips at the shell of her ear, coaxing tingles down her neck, her shoulders, all the way from her nape. “Go on. Don’t pretend to be shy about it.”

Fucking fuck. How can she not be, she thinks, when he talks like that?

There’s a heat that seeps over her the crest of her cheekbones where he can’t see, and she squeezes over him in response to the filth. Harry settles back up. From the corner of her eye, Y/N notes lines of muscle shaping his arms as he hovers over her. Slowly, almost hesitantly, she arches her hips up a tad and nudges back. It’s not enough — it’s maybe an inch, and she rocks forward by pressing her hips down and then repeats the motion. Just as there was a lack of control over her shame when he spewed dirty, brazen, filth, there’s also a lack of motion when she’s rolled forward with her tummy pressed to the ground. There’s only so much — so many inches she can ride back on when she’s rendered immobile.

He knows it, too — it’s obvious by the poorly muffled note of mirth in his tone from behind, “Good girl. But you can do better than that, can’t you?”

Helplessly, Y/N grits her teeth, fingers tangling into the fabric of her sleeping bag as she rolls her hips back in another attempt. It’s stuttery, and awkward, and not really a seamless, Shakira-esque roll at all. It’s a poor shuffle, hips raising more than traveling back.

“Come on,” Harry goads, tutting like her tries are half-assed and she’s not currently exerting her body into creating motions that are simply unrealistic, “Take it proper. You want it? Then take it. Show me.”

Camping is supposed to be wholesome. Camping is supposed to be laughter, and deep, pure breaths of air that scrub out the tainted glaze of city life from the walls of your lungs, sticky like cigarette smoke residue on the walls of a house. It’s hiking boots stuffed with the thickest socks. It’s marshmallows on twigs over curdling flames that lick up, it’s flashlights, and spooky myths and legends verbalized, and more laughter.

Instead, Y/N is camping, and she’s currently barely grinding over inches of Harry’s cock.

“I can’t,” she grits out, frustrated, but it sounds more like a whine than anything with bite.

“You can’t? Sure you can, pet,” Harry grapples over her hip, bracing on one arm in, honestly, an impressive showcase of athleticism, and manually rakes her hips back over him. It allows for more — more of him, more of his cock, more of his touch. More of him splitting her open and spreading her apart over him. “Just like this, right?”

She’s sure he must be meeting her at least a quarter, if not halfway, though. It all feels like a devious ploy. Y/N whines. He makes this amused sound then, one of those puffs expelled through his nostrils like a half-laugh, accompanied by a hum. And then he pulls out and pumps his hips forward, until he’s flush to her backside, and then reverses and repeats. Three times. He gives her three, good, long, full thrusts, smoothing out to the tip and in to the root until she’s stuffed, just like he’d promised. Then, he presses in all the way and just basks in her heat.

“Better?” Harry asks, but his tone catches on a quiet grunt and wavers in its prior composure. She squeezes over him, really squeezes, and he muffles a groan with the seal of his mouth. For a second, he doesn’t say anything at all, and then the filth spills again. It’s odd how patronizing he can sound, despite the way her cunt so obviously affects him, “Need Daddy to do all the work, is that it?”

Y/N hums. There isn’t much she can say to disagree because it’s good. At some point, his slow rolls morph into sharp juts, and the brace of his arms bends and gives until his chest is flush to her back.

“Please, please, please, please,” Y/N croaks out the mantra, muzzled by the smush of her cheek to the ground with the pressure of his hand palming at the side of her skull.

“Shh,” Harry rocks forward, fingertips twitching into her roots like a meld of petting and admonishment. He rocks into her until he’s flush against her backside, splitting her over him to the hilt, “Shh …don’t need to beg, sweetheart. You can have it. Have it all.”

He’s warm weight over her, hard muscle like hot, sticky stone as he works into her from behind. He’s a welcome stretch, a pleasant burn, inches of bliss that her spongy walls cling to in a warm hug. He’s tips of curls brushing over her cheeks, filthy words in a murmur flush to the shell of her ear, little, repressed grunts and shuddery exhales as his hips rock. He’s a headlock that squeezes over her throat deliciously and keeps her neck craned back. It’s in this perfect way that almost has her gasping for breath.

The young woman practically bites into her tongue to curb a nearly animalistic groan that climbs from the depths of her chest and squeezes out past her detained windpipe. She doesn’t need to try as hard when his opposite arm shimmies up over the poorly-cushioned sleeping bag, when his hand clamps against her mouth, palm smushing over her lips. Instead, her high whimper catches on his skin and muffles out. Her nostrils flare over his digits when Harry shushes and chastises through grunts.

“I know, baby. I know. Need you to be — shit — a good, quiet girl for me, though.”

Her irises nearly loll back into her skull, fluttery for the ceiling of fabric in their sockets at the dominating tone of his cadence.

“Gonna be good for me? Make me—“ his words taper off when he muzzles a groan with the seal of his own lips, and what comes out is hushed, and masculine, and obviously bridled. But it doesn’t make her as hungry as when he beckons, “—Make me pleased with you?”

Because she wants to please him, wants to be good, wants his digits to press harder over her tongue when he slinks them into her mouth. It’s not her fault when the motion siphons a whimper. So Harry does — press harder that is, an inclination for her lips to wrap over his fingers, his chin tucked over her shoulder. His mouth presses to her temple, gracing her with puffs of air through his nose as he rocks into her.

“There we go,” Harry coos, soft and barely over a whisper when her mouth seals over the intrusive digits, “There’s a good girl. Let’s keep those pretty sounds to ourselves.”

He rocks into her until she’s whining into his hand, until they’re really slick with sweat, and he’s grazing at his own peak, working until it unravels him from the inside out. She’s still making hushed sounds against his palm when he groans all low into her hair and his motions melt into something stuttery, when he empties ribbon after ribbon as she clenches over him and milks him through it.

He’s probably going to rifle through the dark for some discarded fragment of fabric to clean the mess. It’ll be haphazard on account of the night, and she’ll still feel the sticky remnants, dried up at the peaks of her inner thighs in the morning. But it won’t really be gross. Sort of a sordid, morning-after keepsake, sort of a dirty thrill as they pack their stuff among the others in their cohort. Sort of, probably, an excuse to fuck later in the day when they have a moment alone to themselves, reminiscing on the night before.

But before that, he’ll probably clean his mess and run a hand down the vale of her side in a praising caress, like he normally does. Probably lay next to her for a bit before sneaking off to his own tent because, even though they’re just friends that fuck, he’s never been weird about cuddling — aftercare is sort of a must. He’ll probably say goodnight with another searing kiss, the kind that burns deep inside, because every time he leaves is kerosene actively poured into the pit of a bonfire. Because every time he leaves, she wants him more.

Tomorrow they’ll still be friends.

Just friends that fuck.

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles one shot #harry styles smut #harry styles dirty one shot #harry styles writing #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfiction #dom!harry x sub!reader #harry styles imagine #harry styles au #fwb!harry #fwb au #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x you #harry styles one shots #dom!harry

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beargregor · 5 months ago

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wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

#beargregor's property #limbus company #project moon #lcb gregor #something to bear in mind #beargregor's analysis #beargregor's theories #do i bother tagging both of those i feel like i do #oh also.#long post #sorry guys i promised i would try and stay brief when i set out to respond to this ask and before i knew it seven hours passed #my bad #does this give me normal gregor fan cred #i'm fully preparing myself to be screenshotted and posted to twitter or reddit with people making fun of my reading of him but idrc honestl #also i'm really hoping that LCB regular check up has donqui actually like #confront gregor about the fact that he was playing her in sansón's plays #i've seen people insinuate that any deeper reading to the roles they got in them is doing too much #and while i really don't agree with that just due to how much sansón fit the roles to be as cruel as possible to their sinners #i do think at the very bare minimum that the comparisons drawn between gregor and sancho are Very Intentional #despite gregor's supposed lack of proper Deep character moments people love to claim i really do think that we know a lot about him #significantly more than people think we do #just because so much of it has been told to us indirectly or has this aspect of plausible deniability to it #just due to gregor being the way he is #a lot of these smaller subtler details in his proper main writing get highlighted more in his IDs and EGO #like gregor's pettiness and grudge holding in AEDD or the aforementioned self-fulfilling prophecy-ness of priest and garden of thorns #anyway. that's it. gregor is fat by the way did i mention that. also very hairy. refer to my url for more details.#ignore how i just can't shut up about him i promise i'm normal. i promise it's over i can rant about him more another day. i swear.

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misc-obeyme · 1 year ago

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cc. your tags on the boudoir post. MAMMON recieving an album of those photos. i'd love to hear your thoughts on his reaction (and everyone else's, if you're feeling particularly inspired?)

Ah, Daisy, my dear, thank you for asking!

I apologize for this late response, but I knew I was gonna be getting wordy with this one. Because I looove the boudoir photos idea in general and OH MAN just thinking about all their reactions is making me crazy lol. I was going to just do my regular sort of response, but this turned into full on headcanons oops.

So just in case anyone missed it, here is the original post!

My thoughts change a little bit depending on whether MC is present when the characters receive the pictures, so I included both! I only did the bros but I might be willing to do the rest upon request!

the brothers react to MC giving them an album of boudoir photos

NSFW MDNI

Warnings: suggestive but that's about it, nothing explicit

Lucifer

When you're with him, Lucifer is calm and courteous, but with a flare of arrogance. Of course you would give him such a special gift. It's only natural that you would trust such intimacies to him.

He asks you if you're trying to tell him something. Has he perhaps been neglecting you, MC? Did you give him this so that he wouldn't be able to help himself? He's onto you.

No matter your reason, he can't look through too many of the pictures before wanting the real thing that's sitting right next to him. Tell him you still have some of that lingerie in your possession. Especially if you happen to have some in his colors.

If you aren't with him, he's going to be a lot less arrogant in general. He will find you later, make no mistake. But he's honestly so touched by your gift that he spends a lot of time looking through the album, simply admiring you.

Mammon

Mammon is freaking out no matter where you are the time. If you're with him, it's definitely a lot worse. Blushing profusely. Opens the album then slams it shut because he can't handle looking at it for very long.

You can't help but giggle at his reaction and then it's all stop laughin' at him MC!! You'll need to take his hands or maybe kiss his cheek, let him know that you genuinely just wanted to give him a nice gift, you aren't trying to tease him or anything.

Ask him if he likes it. You'll get a serious response. Calms down enough to say 'course he likes it. Likes it so much, he suddenly can't keep his hands off you.

If you aren't with him at the time, he buries it under his pillow or otherwise hides it because this is now one of his treasures and nobody gets to see it but him!

Leviathan

Levi is another one who'd be a blushing mess no matter what, but if you're there at the time, he might retreat to his room and not let you in. He needs that barrier between you because if he sees you right now, his heart will explode.

He'll let you back in eventually, but it might be a minute. He needs to calm down. Are you trying to kill him, MC?! Even when he does let you in, he can't look at you directly. He's probably covering his face with his hands.

Reassure him that you gave these photos to him because you trust him with them. They're personal, intimate, and you want him to be close to you. He's going to calm down the more you talk to him. Pull his hands away from his face and when he sees the sincerity in your eyes, it flips a switch. Might even slip into demon form just to wrap his tail around you possessively.

If you're not with him at the time, he's going to need to take care of that raging boner of his right away. He won't be able to focus on anything else until he does. He's so embarrassed, he has to watch several episodes of Ruri Hana to recalibrate.

Satan

He will try to keep his expression unreadable. He's not having any over the top reactions, but as he flips through the photos, he keeps getting redder and redder. You're sitting right next to him, how can he not react? At some point, he has to close the album because he feels like he's looking at something he shouldn't.

Satan is quiet about how flustered he is, but he's having a hard time looking at you. He tries to say something and incomprehensible lines about how beautiful you are fall from his lips. He sounds like a broken record of spoken word poetry or perhaps a very drunk beat poet.

Recovers himself after a minute. As soon as he's composed, you're in his arms. You knew what this would do to him, didn't you, MC? You'll find yourself pressed up against the nearest wall in moments.

If you're not with him, Satan will tuck your album into a stack of his other books. He thinks it's well hidden there - in plain sight. But he's hyper aware of it. Keeps coming back to look at it. Ends up having to put it on the bottom of a stack behind a different stack to make it more difficult to get to.

Asmodeus

Thrilled. Absolutely thrilled in every way. Oh, wow, MC, you look amazing. He's breathless. He's entranced. He's even blushing because he knows what it means that you've given these to him. He's so in love with you, he can't stand it.

Asks you about everything you may be wearing. Comments on the skill of the photographer. Tells you that next time, you should do one together. He has so many ideas. He wants to do one where all you're wearing is jewelry - bright and sparkling, just like your soul.

Covers you in kisses. He's not shy about how this is making him feel, how much he wants you. He just wants to see your beautiful figure here and now in real life, MC! Won't you let him worship you?

If you're not with him, he will find you immediately so he can say all of the things he needs to say in that moment. You can't leave him alone with all these feelings, both physical and emotional. He brings them all to you without hesitating.

Beelzebub

It might take him a minute to understand exactly what he's looking at, mostly because he's never even heard of this. He doesn't know what a boudoir photo shoot is, so you might have to explain it to him. Once he understands, he starts lightly blushing as he looks through them. His expression is serious because he's beginning to see just how special this is.

Honestly surprised that you would give him something so intimate. He's touched. He's going to hug it to himself and look at you with tears in his eyes because he can't believe how lucky he is.

Give him another couple minutes to look through them and then he's having different feelings. He's not sure if he can hold back, MC. Tell him it's okay, that you don't want him to, and you'll find yourself on your back on his bed in zero seconds flat. You're quickly reminded why he's the Avatar of Gluttony.

If you're not with him at the time, he will figure things out on his own, though he'll have a plethora of questions for you later. He keeps it close to him at all times until you answer them because he knows one thing for sure - he doesn't want anyone else seeing these.

Belphegor

Oh, he sees what you're playing at. Trying to fluster him, are you, MC? Trying to rile him up? Are you sure you can handle him when you do that? He's so wound up by the gift he can't act normal about it. He's actually very touched by it, but he's not sure how to deal with the feelings, so he comes on too strong.

You laugh because to you, this is expected. You understand that this is Belphie's way of dealing with his own shyness. You respond by meeting him with just as much intensity. It's all kisses and touching and fumbling in the dark.

It's only later, when both of you are calm, when you're nestled in his arms, that he admits to you how much it means to him. That he tells you how he'll cherish the album you gave him. That he says he's stunned by how gorgeous you are, even more brilliant that the stars in the sky.

If you aren't with him at the time, you'll be dealing with a petulant but horny demon later on. He's going to be annoyed at you for leaving it for him and then not being there when it inevitably turns him on. Just as possessive as his brothers, he hides it in the attic where no one is likely to find it.

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

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em1i2a3 · 7 months ago

Text

Twin Size Mattress (Bjorn One Shot)

Bjorn x fem!reader

Authors note: Hello! I am definitely new to this. I haven’t written in quite a few years, and just like many hobbies, when you haven’t done it for a while the skill dwindles. So I was hoping I could write something to share on here for the first time, to start dipping my toes back into the pool as most people would say. Like everyone else who is probably lurking these tags, I was pretty enamoured by Bjorn in Alien Romulus (I also went to watch it multiple times in theatres but that was not for Bjorn, I just have a hyper fixation on horror movies.), so I hope everyone enjoys!

Warnings: 18+ NSFW, DNI if you’re underage please, Smut, mentions of loss and grief, unprotected P in V sex (please be safe…you know the drill), swearing, some very light choking, some foreplay, and a hint of angst? I am hoping I didn’t miss anything because I rarely go back to read over my work due to being extremely picky with wording.

A p.s. from the author: I was listening to a lot of The Front Bottoms when I named this piece, and I thought this song would be fitting for the title.

Word count: 6,390 (yes. I know. I am wordy okay? lol)

On the ship, you never expected such limited space. You never expected to share a bed, and you certainly never expected to share a bed with Bjorn of all people. You hadn’t been on a trip with the team at all, you stayed on base most of the time, but when Tyler proposed the escapade, you thought a change of scenery would benefit you. The mines were beyond torture to you, and being able to leave that behind for an unknown amount of time was extremely tempting.

Now, somehow, you found yourself back to back with one of the people you despised most. He was not a fan of you either, but you were focused more on your distaste for him, you couldn’t care less what he thought of you, definitely not after you overheard him talking about you several times with the rest of the crew. He didn’t like your guts, or how you tried to fit in with the group without having any inkling of what they had gone through together. The crew was his found family and he saw you as an intrusion to that harmony. Not only that but Bjorn didn’t even care to give you a chance, so you had given up on trying to be friendly, and everyone was aware of the mutual hatred. Yet you still managed to get the least desirable spot in the ship.

You laid awake, staring at the wall of the room, listening to the low hum that the ship emitted, the vibrations gently shaking your face. Bjorn shuffled behind you, pulling the blanket that the two of you shared. They couldn’t even give us separate blankets, you thought as you gripped your side, protecting the surface area you had.

“Do you fucking mind?” He said through gritted teeth, “I’m cold.” He added, yanking on the blanket again.

“You can freeze for all I care.” You replied back, mirroring his actions by pulling the end that you were gripping.

“M’ Sure you’re used to the cold since your ‘art is the same temperature.” He said, trying his hardest to pull the knitted blanket over his exposed legs.

”Well if you didn’t dress like you were going into cryosleep you would be warmer. Now shut up and go to sleep before I kick you off the bed and make you sleep on the metal floor.” You spat back.

Before Bjorn climbed into bed he had stripped off his work clothes, leaving him in nothing but a white tank top that hung loosely on him, and a pair of sleep shorts that were a few sizes too big, you had noticed that he had to put on a belt to wear them when you had caught an unwanted glimpse of him taking off the clothing articles. For you though, you were smarter, you brought long sleeved shirts, woven sleep pants, and sweaters, to ensure that you were going to be comfortable throughout the night, knowing that some ships got cold when you were not constantly moving on them.

”Unlike you I want to be comfortable when I sleep.” He replied, pulling the blanket once more. Snapping the tension that was building in you.

”I swear to god Bjorn, stop fucking pulling the blanket!” You exclaimed loud enough for the crew next door to hear. A sharp bang on the wall indicated that everyone was fed up with the argument, telling the both of you to shut up without words. A pang of silence rang through the both of you, as a defeated sigh escaped your mouth, slowly letting some of the blanket out of your grip, allowing him to cover the rest of his body. No more words were exchanged that night, not even a thank you.

————

You were sitting at your mother’s bedside, watching her lay with her eyes closed, she looked like the colour of ash, her lips were blue, and chapped. Her lively appearance had been drained from her, and she was a shell of who you had known her to be. You hadn’t left her side since the medic announced the time of death. They had unhooked her from the machines as you sat there, crying, holding her hand, but you refused to go, it had been hours. She was all you had, and she was now just a vessel of bones. You were never going to hear her voice, or see her smile, or feel her arms around you ever again, and of all times you wished you could take back everything you had said to her, but it was too late.

You were so focused on memorizing your mothers face, you didn’t hear the sliding doors of the medical room open. You only realized another set of people were in there once they pulled you up by your work shirt. Your hand let go of your mothers, as they began to pull you towards the exit, mumbling something that was incoherent to you at that point, as you were now blinded by fiery rage. You screamed and begged at the top of your lungs to have them let you go, to let you be with your mother for a few more minutes, but they were having none of it. You had resorted to pushing back against them, pulling the opposite direction as the securities grip tightened on your wrist. You kept screaming and screaming until it all went black.

————

“Wake the fuck up!” Bjorn exclaimed, shaking you roughly. The scent of cigarettes wafting from his mouth as his hot breath hit your face with his words. You sat up quickly, almost out of a distinct reflex, luckily he had moved back in time before you forehead hit his face. Your chest was burning, and a familiar taste of salty tears coated your lips, as a bead of sweat dripped down your temple. You placed a hand on your chest, feeling the hard thumping of your heart against it. You tried to catch your breath slowly, not even acknowledging the feeling of Bjorn’s eyes watching you.

He had gotten out of bed just a few minutes before this whole thing, craving a cigarette. He didn’t leave the cramped room, he just sat off to the side, with his arms hanging over his knees, taking long drags and staring at your body rising and falling with increasing intensity. He thought that you were just an odd sleeper, but when you started screaming it sent him into immediate action, knowing that the rest of the crew would’ve automatically assumed it was his fault if he didn’t stop the gut-wrenching sounds. He hadn’t heard anyone scream the way that you were screaming, and he hoped that he would never have to experience it ever again, cause even through all the unfiltered hatred he had for you, he knew something bad must’ve triggered this sort of reaction from you.

He sat in silence, watching you as more tears streamed down your face, your hands reaching up to rub the dampness off your cheeks. He looked over at the mini fridge in the corner of the room, and got off the bed, retrieving his water bottle from the inside of it, returning to you and bumping your arm with the cold metal, grabbing your attention. Your eyes were bloodshot and puffy, but there was anger behind them, until it softened once you noticed what he was holding out to you. He moved it in front of you, a silent offer. A glint of distrust appeared behind your stare.

”Don’t worry. Just water.” His voice was soft, almost like he was hurt that you thought he was going to give you something other than that, especially in this moment of all times. You reached out for the bottle, taking it gently out of his hands, avoiding his eyes once again, as you unscrewed the cap and drank, the cold metal touching your lips, and the refreshing water moisturizing your dry mouth. You pulled the bottle away, screwing the cap back on before attempting to hand it back to him.

”Thank you.” Your voice was hoarse, and the words stung your throat, raw from the screaming you had done moments before. Bjorn gave you a small nod, slowly sitting down on the bed in front of you. He didn’t take his bottle back though. The silence overtook you again, as you sniffed, trying to breathe through your nose. Bjorn rubbed his hands on his sleep shorts, watching the goosebumps start to rise on his pale skin which was now in your field of vision.

“Are you alright?” He broke the silence, clearing his throat. You didn’t respond. You felt like your body was reliving the trauma, even though it had been two years by this point, “Do you want to talk about it?” He added, trying not to push you, but curious as to what caused the screaming spell. You never heard Bjorn’s voice be so gentle before, it was uncanny in a way, the complete opposite of his cursing and loud demeanor he tended to display throughout the normal crew interactions. You found yourself somehow feeling warm towards the tone.

”I-I’m fine.” You responded, coughing from the mucus that was built up in your throat from the crying spell.

”Doesn’t look like it. And it certainly doesn’t sound like it.” He shivered slightly, not wanting to get into another fight about the blanket, knowing it was a bad time to ask for you to share when you were in this highly emotional state. He rubbed his rough hands over his biceps, generating some heat from the friction, as he kept his eyes on you, watching as you fumbled with the lid of his water bottle, rocking slowly, almost in a way to soothe yourself.

“Listen…I know we may not get along…But I’m genuinely concerned.” He admitted, now moving a bit closer to you, reaching his hands out to hold your shoulders, almost as if he was grounding you to reality. “Can you talk or are you going into shock?” You blinked slowly, shaking your head, now grasping his wrist into your hand, removing his cold touch from your body.

”I don’t need your pity Bjorn, just drop it.” His eyebrows knitted together, scoffing at the sentence that just dropped from your lips, his hands hitting his knees in frustration as he stood up from the bed, going towards his pile of clothes.

”Y’know what? You don’t deserve my pity. You don’t deserve anything actually. I-I try to help and you have to always make it seem like you’re the toughest person in the crew, when you’re just a scared little girl. You’re a fucking baby, and deep down behind that fake front you’re putting on you’re just a lost fucking person, just begging to be accepted.” He rambled, as he grabbed his sweater, putting it on over his head, fixing his red bandana in the process.

”If you even went through an inch of what I’ve had to go through Bjorn you wouldn’t be wanting someone else’s pity either. Who the fuck do you think you are, trying to fucking act like you suddenly are concerned about me. You’ve hated me this entire time, you couldn’t care less, you just fucking switch on a dime and act like a knight in shining armour, as if we weren’t just fighting over a blanket a few hours ago. Don’t you fucking dare talk to me about fake fronts. You know NOTHING about me, and you wouldn’t understand what losing someone is like, so go fuck yourself.” You shot back, venom filling every word that left your mouth. The last part in particular made him go rigid, his hands gripping the table in front of him. His knuckles turning white from the steel grip he had around the wood. It immediately registered with you that you struck a nerve, your breath hitching in your throat as his head bowed down. In a matter of seconds Bjorn spun around on his heel and threw something at you, clinking against the water bottle before falling onto your lap. Dog tags? You thought.

”Those were my moms spare ones. She always had backups in case she lost her usual ones in the mines. She died last year. Buried beneath the rubble. Never coming back. You think you know what loss is? You think you know grief? Imagine not havin a chance to say goodbye, then come on out and accuse me of not fucking understanding what losing someone is like.” The words hit you like a pound of bricks, as your brain took a few moments to process what he was saying. You put the water bottle down beside you, now holding the dog tags in your hands, feeling the engraving of his mother's name on it, with her standard issued number right below it. You looked up at him, watching him clench his jaw under your stare. A pang of regret echoed through your body, as your eyes softened.

”Bjorn…I…”

”Save it, I don’t want your pity.” He interrupted, twisting your words back to you, crossing his arms over his chest, as his crystal blue irises watched your delicate, scarred-up hands hold the dog tags, almost as if they would break under her touch, “Maybe It’ll teach you to think before you speak next time.” He muttered, your eyes flashing up to him, as his gaze broke away to look at the floor now. You slumped down into the blanket that surrounded you, the silence encompassing the room once again. You looked back down at the dog tags, releasing a small sigh while sliding off the mattress, your bare feet meeting the cold metal floor. Bjorn couldn’t help but peek through his lashes as he watched you stop in front of him, leaving a bit of space between the two of you. He could feel your warm breath fan his face, the sweet minty smell of your mouthwash tickling his nose. Suddenly he felt your arms wrap around his neck, and the cold metal chain touching his skin, the contact made him tense up, but he stayed still for you until a small click was heard. You adjusted the dog tags gently, feeling the heat rise to your cheeks under his gaze.

“I’m sorry. I should have never said what I said…I know how you feel Bjorn. I understand how it feels to lose a mom, and I should’ve been aware that I am not the only one who has experienced something like that.” You avoided looking up, knowing he was already looking at you. Even though you hated him you knew when the heat of his ice-blue eyes were on you, and you avoided looking back every time.

”Does the grief get easier?” He whispered as if he was asking you for top-secret information. You held the dog tags between your fingers still, licking your dried lips, and shaking your head.

”It doesn’t…But it becomes your normal. My mother passed away two years ago, and as you can tell I haven’t gotten over it.” You let go of the tags, letting them drop against the sweater he was wearing, taking the courage to meet his eyes, “The nightmares don’t come often, and hopefully one day, I won’t be haunted by that night anymore.” You closed your eyes, taking your bottom lip between your teeth, giving it a small bite, taking some of the dry skin off, drawing a droplet of blood from it, letting the metallic taste settle on your tongue.

Bjorn stared at you, almost enamoured by the way you worded your thoughts, feeling his heart tighten slightly at the sight of you biting your bottom lip. His hand instinctively came up to cup your cheek, his thumb running along the skin just below your eye. You tensed up under his cold palm, flinching back slightly, as your gaze fixated on his. Maybe it was the moment that preceded it, the genuine heart to heart you both were having, but you caught yourself melting into the touch, pushing your cheek more into his hand, holding the stare. Your eyes glistened under the dim lighting, beckoning him to come closer, to close the gap between the two of you, like a siren trying to entrap men at sea, and he was one of your victims.

Slowly he leaned in, trying to gauge your body language as he approached. You didn’t move a muscle, and you could’ve sworn you felt the air from your lungs hitch in your throat, his hot breath now fanning over your lips, pausing to test if you were going to make the final move. As you threw your common sense out the window you closed the gap, allowing the moment to take over, pressing your lips against his, a soft sigh escaping from both of you, like this kiss was somehow a long time coming.

Bjorn's hand left your cheek to hold the side of your neck, your pulse beating against his palm, while the other one was placed firmly on your waist, his fingertips digging into the clothed flesh of your hips. The kiss was sloppy, a feverish craving developing slowly as you adapted to one another’s movements. You wrapped your arms around his neck, pressing yourself into him, a small moan being exchanged, both of you pulling away for a moment to look at each other. To give each other a final chance to realize what you were doing and who you were doing it with.

Red heat crept onto both of your faces, your hands now tangling themselves into his hair, pulling him in again to avoid thinking about the meaning of what you guys were doing, not wanting to put your actions into question. You pulled gently at the hair within your grip, a muted moan vibrating against your lips as Bjorn now had both hands placed on your hips, sneaking under your long-sleeved shirt to touch the soft skin beneath. Goosebumps slowly climbed up your skin, a shiver creeping up your spine, as he switched positions so you were pressed against the small table, entrapping you with his body. His hands slid down the backs of your thighs as he lifted you gently and placed your bottom onto the wooden surface. Your legs opened up for him, letting him settle between them.

You pulled back this time, opening your eyes to look at his face. His lips were already red and swollen from the intensity of the kiss, and you couldn’t help but reach out and touch the tender flesh, watching his icy blue irises observe you, as you dragged your thumb down the middle of his lip, to his chin. A soft moan escaped into the air as his hands desperately searched for the hem of your shirt, pulling it over your head and throwing it to the side.

“Oh my god.” He whispered, looking at your bare chest, your skin flushing beneath his gaze, holding back the instinct to cover yourself up. Your breathing escalated, and you felt the nerves begin to bundle and coil in your stomach. You did not know if this was a good situation, but you reassured yourself that you would take care of it in the morning. The cold air of the enclosed room hardened your nipples as Bjorn leaned towards you, his soft lips slowly kissing down your neck, with his rough, calloused hands running down your bareback. You could feel his teeth gently graze the skin of your collarbone, a small bite being felt, making you flinch in his hands at the sensation that crowded your consciousness, you could feel his lips form a small smirk against your skin, his eyes glancing at up at you briefly to witness the blush slowly invade your cheeks.

“You okay?” He asked, his hot breath sticking to the skin just above the mound of your breast, his eyes watching you closely for your reaction, trying to see if there was hesitance. His lips parted slightly, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the sensitive flesh, earning a soft sigh out of you.

“I’m okay.” You replied, “Are you okay?” Returning the same level of concern he had, as his lips took your pebbled nipple into his mouth, hollowing out his cheeks to create a tense suction while the tip of his tongue collaborated with the pressure, a gasp emitting into the air. He pulled back for a moment, with a small pop.

“I’m on fire.” His voice was husky, his mouth returning to the same spot again, adding more saliva to the sensitive skin on your nipples, as your thighs enclosed around Bjorn’s hips, feeling the tenting in his shorts brush up against your core. Butterflies fluttered in your stomach, as your brain focused on the sensations of his tongue, whilst also trying to find the bottom of his sweater with your hands. You tugged at the hem of the clothing, watching him pull off your nipple again to aid you in removing the top, throwing it to the side, and leaving him in his undershirt. Your eyes roamed over his exposed skin, now paying attention to the details you never noticed before, tracing the outline of the healed scars that glistened in the light, you assumed it was from the mines, knowing that the ricocheting rocks could give some pretty nasty scrapes. There was a pause, as the two of you exchanged momentary glances, before touching foreheads. He snaked his arms around you, pulling you up and off the desk, your legs wrapped around him out of instinct while he was making his way over to the small mattress. Your lips found his again, desire burning behind every action you took, feeling your back hit the bed, the mattress pillowing around you. His weight pressed down onto your body, his hands sliding down your bare torso, right to the tie of your pyjama pants, the two of you continuing to kiss hungrily, your teeth nibbling his bottom lip. He pulled away, holding himself up with one arm.

“Can I take them off?” He breathed, motioning to his hand on the tie. You nodded, lifting your hips off the bed so he could pull the pants down off your long legs, bunching them up and throwing them to the side, taking in the sight before him. His eyes roamed over the skin of your legs, smooth and unmarked, leading up to the green lacy underwear you wore, the last thing you had on. You felt his calloused fingers trace up your thigh, as you sat up taking his face into your hands, watching him close his eyes.

“Lay down.” You instructed, his eyelids fluttering open to meet your gaze, “But let’s take this off first.” You added, slipping the undershirt off his form, exposing more of his milky white skin, your hands running down his chest, feeling the thumping of his heart against your palm, your eyes glued to him as he listened to your instructions, laying on his back as you climbed on top of him, your legs straddling his waist, placing pressure on the tent that was formed in his shorts. He pushed his head back on the mattress, as his mouth slowly opened, his hands resting on your hips to press you down harder against the fabric adding friction to the area.

You could feel your arousal pool in your panties, as he dragged your hips forward and back against the outline of his cock. You can tell that he was well-endowed, which made you nervous. It wasn’t your first time having sex, but you had run into a dry spell, it had been a year and a half by this point - not that you were counting the days - and you feared that you possibly lost your touch. Now being aware of his size you had this innate desire to impress him, paying attention to the grip he had on your hips, feeling his fingers dig into your flesh with each movement. He looked up at you, lust filling behind the blue irises as he removed one hand from your waist, bringing his fingers up to his mouth, coating them in saliva, before sitting up, not wanting to stay on his back. His touch left a wet trail down your stomach, brimming the waistband of your underwear, silently asking to continue further. In desperation, your lips met his, wanting to be closer to him, hoping that this was a good enough answer for him to go on with what he was planning.

His hand slid under the waistband, feeling the wetness that was soaked into the cloth of your underwear, a light moan escaping his mouth. You pulled him closer to you, your hands roaming over his shoulder blades. He smiled against your lips, as his fingertips grazed over your clit, earning a sharp intake of breath from you that was a little louder than expected. He pulled back quickly, using his spare hand to cover your mouth.

“You need to be quiet.” He whispered, smirking at the way your face turned bright red, continuing to circle your clit in a slow and rhythmic motion. The wetness from his saliva allows for a smooth glide across the bundle of nerves, causing your hips to buckle slightly. Bjorn removed his hand from your mouth, placing it onto your breast, and giving it a rough squeeze. You closed your eyes tightly as his fingers continued working on both erogenous zones, synching them together so that when your hips ground against his hand his fingers squeezed your nipple. He leaned down, his mouth latching onto your free breast, sucking hard on the sensitive flesh, leaving a dark red mark, and moving to the other side to do the same.

Your brain was clouded, not knowing what to focus on, completely intoxicated by the attention Bjorn was giving you. You were surprised by how gentle he was when usually he carried himself like an unattentive jerk most of the time. His fingers suddenly stopped rubbing your clit, as his hand moved further into the slick wetness of your panties, dipping two fingers inside of you. Your mouth dropped open at the delicious stretch his thick digits provided, mentally reminding yourself not to make excessive noise. A small smile drew up on his swollen lips.

“God you’re so tight.” His words brushed against your lips, “I can’t wait to feel you around my cock.” He added, smirking at the way your eyes closed at the words he said, curling his fingers inside you, moving them slowly to build up the tension that electrified all your senses. Through your short gasps for air one of your hands made its way down his chest, undoing his belt and throwing it to the side, ghosting your lips against his before slipping your hand beneath the waistband, finding his hard cock in an instant. You couldn’t see it, but the outline didn’t prepare you for the thickness and length that you were palming at the moment. Precum was already dripping from the head of his penis as you started stroking, spreading the warm stickiness along the shaft. Now, just like you, he was taking in short breaths, the rhythm of his fingers being thrown off at the touch of your hand.

“Do I need a c-condom?” He asked, already thinking ahead so there was no delay once all the layers were off.

“I…Implant.” You shuddered, trying to speak without your words getting caught in your throat, “Got it r-replaced a month ago.” His lips met the marked flesh of your breast, giving light kisses on the area.

“You want me to fill you with my cum? You wanna be leaking me all day long? Hm?” His voice vibrated against your skin, his mouth leaving another purpled bruise over your breast. The sheer thought caused your walls to flutter around his fingers, which encouraged him to continue his quickened pace. You could feel yourself getting to the point where your legs were beginning to twitch from the sensation he was causing you, your orgasm building inside your velvety walls. Bjorn took the opportunity and added another finger into you, stretching you out as much as possible, the sudden intrusion making your back arch into him. He took advantage of the moment of weakness and flipped you over, so now you were at his mercy, a yelp escaping your throat at the newfound pressure of his body on yours.

“Tell me what you want….” He said, his breath hitting the shell of your ear, his full puffy lips ghosting the skin so delicately. His body shuddered as you began to stroke him with a little more roughness

“I want…You.” Your voice was hoarse, almost cracking at the desperation, as your free hand took his bandana off his head, throwing it to the side so his hair could fall in front of his face. He hummed, pumping his fingers in and out a few more times before removing them, bringing his glistening digits up to his lips, sucking the juices off them like it was honey.

“You taste so sweet…S-so delicious.” He murmured, getting every last drop before moving off of you, your grip leaving his hardened member. He grabbed the blanket placing it at his waist before beckoning you to come join him under the covers. You removed your underwear, watching him shuffle beneath the blanket, assuming that he was removing his shorts, the last thing that was hindering the finality of what the both of you were going to do. You knew things were going to change after this, there was no denying that, and it was slowly dawning on you that you didn’t know how you were going to handle this in the morning. Are you and Bjorn going to suddenly become friendly, and allow the people around you to catch wind of what happened? Or are you going to keep it your little secret? You had no clue, and it currently wasn’t the right time to ask, so once again, you pushed the thoughts away, settling in under the covers with him, his skin touching yours, setting the area ablaze, as the electric heat rushed up your body.

You turned onto your side, mirroring the position he was in, allowing yourself to look at him, allowing the silence to come between the two of you. A small smile appeared on his lips, his hand reaching out to push a piece of hair out of your face. The two of you took a moment to breathe, almost like you were trying to emotionally sync together. He could sense you were thinking too hard, the cogs in your brain turning about what was going to happen after this, but he didn’t want to ruin the moment to have a long conversation about the future, it wasn’t the right time.

His hand caressed your cheek, as you brought your leg over his hip to close the small space you mindfully left between the two of you.

“Are you sure you want this?” Bjorn blurted out, he could see your eyes widen slightly, “I mean…I just don’t want you to wake up tomorrow morning hating me even more because we did this. I also don’t want to take advantage of our heart to heart…I just want to make sure…” He trailed off, looking at your lips turning up into a soft smile, your head shaking.

“I want this.” You replied, “And you’re not taking advantage of me, and I won’t hate you even more when we wake up.” You added, hoping that those confirmations were enough to give him the go ahead. He nodded, before his arm slid around your waist to pull you closer to him, planting a gentle kiss onto your lips, placing his weight forward so he can have you laying on your back.

He settled between your legs, holding your neck with his hand, giving it a taunting squeeze, as he adjusted to the position on top of you, feeling the wetness between your legs against him. He pulled back, letting his free hand grab his cock, giving it a few strokes to spread the precum over the length. You watched him do this with your lip caught between your teeth in anticipation, his body leaning closer to you to let the tip drag down your folds to find your entrance. His eyes met yours, wanting to look into them as he slowly thrusted into you. Your mouth dropped open, as his lips met yours to swallow the gasp that almost made its escape.

The warmth surrounded him, your walls taking him in willingly, the stretch making you breathless, and leaving you feeling full, even though he wasn’t close to bottoming out. His breath was heavy as he continued to push, feeling his hips buckle slightly from the pure heat that was running through him, that held him. He squeezed your neck gently, pulling back from your mouth, a small whimper leaving your throat, desperately wanting his lips to be back on yours.

”Y-You feel so good Bjorn.” You managed to say quietly, your voice sounding like you were on the brink of tears, your hands sliding up from his chest, all the way up his neck, to now lace through his hair, as you continued to feel him push into you gasping when he bottomed out right against your cervix, his hips meeting yours. The hand that was on your neck slid to your cheek.

”You need to try to be quiet.” He said, knowing that it might be no use, even he was struggling to hold back at this point. You nodded, pulling him back down so your lips can crash against his again, the sloppy wetness distracting you for a moment, as he pulled out, so just the tip remained in you, before burying himself into you again, your moans vibrating between the two of you, trying to keep the volume down as much as possible. Slowly Bjorn found his rhythm, allowing you to adjust fully to his size before he picked up the movements. His lips pulled away from yours, as he moved to the side of your neck, peppering wet kissing against the sensitive flesh, before blowing on the damp spots, the cooling sensation sending shivers up your spine.

”B-Bjorn…I-I…” You couldn’t get any words out, the way his hips continued to meet yours in an agonizing roughness was too much for you to even think. The pleasure coiled inside you with each movement, and it left you breathless, as Bjorn pulled back to look into your dazed eyes. He felt pride knowing how speechless you were, watching you gasp as he teasingly pulled out to the tip only for him to push harder back into you, letting himself graze your cervix to add to the pressure that was building inside you. Your walls fluttered around him, as your nails dragged down his back, causing him to shudder.

”You feel so good…So fucking good.” He breathed, moving back a little so he was sitting up slightly, to watch himself go in and out of you, his mouth forming an ‘o’ as his head tilted back, eyes closing. “If only you could see how good your pussy looks when it’s taking my cock. It’s like a fucking dream…You’re a fucking dream.” His hands dug into the skin of your hips, as he pushed himself in harder, the sound of skin slapping on skin now echoing through the small room. The back of your head pressed into the pillow, your back arching up, breasts perking, as your body began to grind into his thrusts, adding additional pressure against your g-spot. The slight shift in position allows you to feel the veins of his cock drag against your walls, leaving you breathless.

“Jesus Christ Bjorn, please…Harder.” You begged quietly, feeling the coil in your core begin to burn, the tension building with each movement he made. His eyes roamed over your body, as his hands brought your legs up onto his shoulders, a loud gasp escaping your throat.

“I want you to come on me. I want to feel your sweet little cunt tighten around my cock.” He stated, kissing your calf, as his fingers intertwined with yours, pushing your hands down to pin them on either side of your head. You writhed under him as his thrusts became sloppier, his hips grinding against yours as the both of you chased the release you craved. His right hand released yours as he wrapped it around your neck, digging gently into your pulse points adding just enough pressure to make you lightheaded, your hand coming up to hold his wrist. The tension finally snapped inside you as you cried out, your walls clenching around him, your body shuddering at the ecstacy that flowed through you. Your hooded eyes looked up at him, pleading, feeling him slide your legs off his shoulders so he can press his body against yours craving the intimacy of the position.

“Please Bjorn. Please cum in me.” You begged, his lips ghosting yours, his head nodding, as his hard thrusts began to falter, slowing slightly until he pushed deeper into you, the tip of his cock pressing right up against your cervix as he filled you up with his hot seed, a soft ‘ahh’ escaping his throat, his hips bucking against yours as he rode out his high. His cock twitched against your overly stimulated walls, making sure every last drop of his cum had settled into you before pulling out, and letting go of your neck with a sigh. He pressed a soft, satisfying kiss against your lips, rolling off of you soon after, landing on his back. You pulled the blanket up over your chest, looking down at the marks that he had left on the tops of your breasts, then looking at him, seeing the spent look on his face, a small smile painted on his reddened lips.

”That…That was fucking amazing.” He said, his hand reaching over to interlace your fingers together, head tilting to meet your eyes.

“We should get into fights more often.” You commented, causing the both of you to laugh.

“Maybe we could arrange that.”

#bjorn alien romulus #bjorn alien romulus x reader #alien romulus fanfic #bjorn smut #bjorn x fem reader #spike fearn #alien franchise #alien: romulus

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cressidagrey · 11 months ago

Text

Dust off your Highest Hopes - Part 1

Summary:

Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, goes the idiom.

When Solana hears an admission from the High Lord of Day, she’s ill-prepared for it. She doesn’t believe in fairytales any longer, but maybe there was a happily ever after for Solana and Helion somewhere.

Warnings:

Mention of Rape, Mention of Domestic Violence. It's all in the past, it's none graphic, but Solana is still dealing with it.

Notes:

This was supposed to be a one shot. One day I will find a way to be less wordy.

(thanks to @tsunami-of-tears for the super pretty dividers!)

When Solana grew up, she believed in fairytales.

Why shouldn’t she?

She had been raised as a daughter after two boys…raised to be the perfect lady, the perfect wife…and expected to climb society‘s ranks and find herself a proper husband.

And Solana had done that.

She had excelled at it, in fact.

Solana hadn’t just married any High Fae Male. She had married a High Lord’s son. Her mate.

And for just one moment…her fairytale had become reality. She had believed that she had found her happily ever after.

Not much later, she realised that she had been a lamb led to her slaughter.

Just that…a lamb…a lamb led to its slaughter…it was killed quickly. She wasn’t. It was death by a thousand cuts.

Solana may was Castor‘s mate, but she was not the female he loved.

And the mating bond snapping and the arranged marriage that had followed, pleasing both their families but neither of them…well, for the rest of Castor‘s life, that marriage was at fault for everything. Solana was at fault for everything else.

Solana could divide her life into three parts: before her marriage, during her marriage and after her marriage...

Before she had been a child.

During…during it she had been a prisoner.

Caged into her marriage…into her husband's whims.

Castor had stripped her of everything she held dear, of every bit of dignity she had possessed…he had done unspeakable acts to her, things that she couldn’t and wouldn’t ever talk about to anybody. Solana had been a spectacle for the court to watch, something to gawk at, watching as the years passed and her womb refused to swell with a child.

Some people had known what went on behind the closed doors of their marital chambers…others hadn’t. Nobody had put a stop to it…to what Castor had done to her in private and in public.

Nobody.

Not the servants. Though she didn’t give them the fault for that, because they couldn’t have done anything. They didn’t have the power.

Not the High Lord or the Lady of the Court. They had known too. And they hadn’t cared. Castor was their son. Solana was just his wife. She was supposed to adapt.

But how did one adapt to the daily torture he liked to dish out? Solana had tried. Solana had done her best. It had never been enough.

Regardless of what she had done, Castor had never stopped his torture of hers. Not in their marriage bed… nor out of it.

And then he had died.

And the After had started.

After two centuries of living in the hell that was her mating bond and marriage…Her tormenter was dead. Slain.

The one thing that bitch Amarantha had ever done well in her fucking life was to kill her husband, as far as Solana was concerned.

Being Castor’s widow was…the third part of her life. And the best.

She wore widow’s black and pearls for the better part of two decades. She shrouded herself in her grief so that nobody could ever doubt that she had loved him. (He owed her that. Even when hadn’t loved him anymore. Not at the end. Not after what he had done to her for centuries.)

Castor’s death had pleasant consequences for Solana. It left her as the only female in the High Lord’s immediate family.

It left her under Helion Spell-Cleaver‘s personal protection. It made Helion the only male that held any power over her. As long as Solana didn’t remarry, she was part of his family. Any suitor who wanted Solana’s hand in marriage needed to get through him.

(Good Luck with that.) Helion had promised her that as long as he drew breath, nobody would lay a hand on her again. And he had kept that promise.

In return, her unwavering loyalty laid firmly with him and his court.

50 years of Under The Mountain…but somehow she had kept that Court running in his absences. She had done that. For him.

And then Amarantha herself had died…bested by a human girl of all things.

Another monster slain.

They had spent 5 years rebuilding. Half a decade. Just a blink in the eyes of a fae.

It wasn’t enough. They weren’t done. They were so far from done. But they had a start. They had made a start.

Solana had loved every second of it.

Castor was dead. Her monster had been slain. And Solana…Solana finally had her freedom.

She could deal with everything else. It didn’t matter what else happened.

It didn’t matter if Helion admitted to a bastard-born son who ended up being his heir.

She would deal with it all. Because she was free.

Lucien turned out to be lovely and his mate Elain grew to be one of Solana’s favourite people.

It didn’t matter what Solana’s mother thought about her lack of interest in suitors… She was never going to put herself at another male's mercy ever again. Her mother’s opinion didn’t matter, because Helion turned down every request of her company without discussion.

She didn’t need to entertain anybody.

Unless she wanted to. And unless she went to Helion and told him that this was the male she wanted…everybody else got turned away in no uncertain terms.

It didn’t matter what anybody else in the Day Court thought of her. Thought of her taking on most of the duties of the Lady of the Court. It didn’t matter what kind of gossip they came up with now. She would do her duty to her High Lord.

And if it made his life even just a little bit easier to have her be the one who selected what courses to serve at the meals…who picked out the porcelain and the cutlery and the drapes…who redecorated, who checked the accounts on every ledger and ran the palace with diligently and carefully…she would do so gladly.

Until a time when she was no longer needed. (Elain was shaping up to be a worthy replacement soon enough, after all.)

It had taken her centuries, but Solana had finally found a place where she could be…content. No more worries of what horrid thing the next day would bring.

In a way…she could simply exist.

Solana could simply open her eyes when she woke up alone in her four-poster bed…the white sheets pristine and clean…and she could pull on a silk dressing gown over a nightgown that was never ripped apart nowadays, never sprinkled with her own blood.

There were no bruises on her body as she took a bath…No ripped-out hair or contusions…nothing.

She no longer needed to shroud herself in widow’s black…she could pick a buttercup yellow dress that bared her shoulders to the sun, not worrying about whatever anybody would see if she didn’t bother with a glamour.

She could pick long, hanging hearrings, without worrying about having them ripped out of her lobes…with fat pearls from the Summer Court. An indulging solstice gift from Helion himself.

Solana was content.

Sometimes it startled her how much. How she had somehow carved out that little corner of peace for herself.

Nia, her handmaiden, fussed with Solana’s curls that morning…pinning them up in her usual style and scattering a handful of pearl-headed pins throughout it to decorate the updo. It was pretty. Beautiful in fact. Solana thanked her with a smile, grabbing her usual lace-trimmed shawl to wrap around her shoulders before she made her way downstairs for breakfast.

These days, Solana no longer lived in the marital quarters that had been the place of much of her plight and agony…and instead she had her rooms in the main wing, above Helion’s.

He was her last line of defense, he had told her with a charming smile and she remembered how she had laughed at the pure ridiculousness of that statement. If somebody murdered their way through all the sentries they kept stationed…even a High Lord would have trouble stopping that invasion single-handedly, she imagined.

Her new rooms did put her up high in the Sunray Palace…named for its many, many spiky towers and the fact that the sun rose right behind it, falling through the many painted glass windows. It had been built into the luscious mountains and hills of the Day Court, with every level seemingly worked right out of the stone. The only beings that had rooms even higher than Solana were the Pegasi.

(And they had wings, so Solana supposed it was just fair that they had gotten the uppermost tower and the luscious planes of grass that covered the top of that mountain.)

Solana nodded a greeting to the few servants that she saw that morning, and then reached the door to the private dining room, where she was supposed to have dinner with Helion, Lucien and Elain.

Her hand was already on the doorknob as the voice from within made her hesitate for just a moment.

“Are you aware that you are in love with her?” Lucien asked, his voice bone dry.

What? That who was in love with whom?

Solana’s mind was immediately sent spinning, mentally sorting through the different possibilities.

If there was one thing that Solana was well versed in, then it would be the Day Court’s gossip.

She knew every bit of it.

She knew who hated who, who loved who, and who would give her whatever she wanted if she just twirled a strand of hair around her finger.

She knew who to ask for what. She knew what each noble family strived for, what they were ambitious about.

She knew about marriage alliances, and who was related to what family and how. She knew who would gladly stab their siblings in the back if that meant that they got a bigger slice of cake in the end.

Solana knew all of that.

She had played this game for centuries at this point.

Still…the last thing she had expected…the last thing she had expected to hear…that was Helion’s voice responding: “What?”

His voice was hoarse, thick with something that she couldn’t place.

Helion…Helion was in love with somebody? With whom? Her stomach lurched.

The late Lady of Autumn had been before her time…Lucien and Solana were just a few years apart in age, not enough for her to have been old enough to be privy to any gossip of that particular affair…

“Are you still stuck in denial?” Lucien continued, his voice lifting at the end. “Or are you in the *She’s my best friend and she’s the one thing that is keeping this court running and the servants adore her and we attend symphony performances together and we walk in the garden and my Pegasus loves her but it’s all totally platonic* phase?”

…what?

Solana’s heart jumped in her throat, thumping so harshly that it felt like it was going to shatter her ribcage from within.

No. Lucien couldn’t…Lucien couldn’t mean her. Right?

That was ridiculous.

She wasn’t the only Female on Helion’s small council after all!

But Solana was the only one that Helion attended symphony performances together with…with who he walked through the garden…the only one that Meallan liked. Liked well enough to let her brush his silky black coat and braid little golden rings in his mane if it struck her fancy…

This was ridiculous.

Helion didn’t love her. Helion didn’t…Helion had his myriad of different lovers and the less Solana knew about that, the better. That was the kind of gossip she didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

(And even if she did…if she did look at the males and females Helion took to his bed…one thing was obvious: They were all extraordinary in one way or another. And Solana…she didn’t fit that bill. Not at all.)

“Be nice, Lucien,” came the sweet voice of Elain. “We talked about this.” She said it pointedly like Lucien would know exactly what she was talking about.

“You talked about this,” Helion repeated flatly.

“Of course, we did,” Elain responded, sounding amused. “I spent nearly a month thinking Solana was your mistress until Lucien told me otherwise.”

Solana swallowed. Elain wasn’t the first person who had had that particular thought. Granted, that particular rumour had never gained legs because there was nothing to gossip about.

There had never happened anything between Helion and her that could be constructed as…romantic. Or as him being interested in her.

Why should he be?

Solana was…Solana was used goods in a sense. And before Lucien had taken care of Helion’s lack of an heir… it had been more than clear that she hadn’t been blessed with a particularly fruitful fertility either. Solana he was pretty much useful for that purpose.

She hadn’t given Castor a child in 300 years.

The one blessing of that marriage: no children had come out of it.

She hardly thought that that would change even if she would ever marry again.

Which wouldn’t happen, because alone the thought of what had happened in her marriage bed made a shiver work its way over her back. She couldn’t live through that again. Not even for Helion.

“I would never do that to her,” Helion said quietly, her ears just so managing to pick up the words. “This whole Court has failed her once already. I have failed her once. I will not be part of a second time.”

He thought he had failed her? Why?

He hadn’t failed her. He had been seemingly the one person who hadn’t failed her…throughout much of her marriage, he had been off in the Day Court’s military…He had never been there to see the day-to-day of what Castor had done to her. He hadn’t borne witness to much of it.

And she hadn’t expected him to protect her either. She had been her husband’s property, her mate’s… Castor had been supposed to be the one taking care of her…and instead, he had seemingly gotten a sick sense of satisfaction out of hurting her.

Solana had thought that that should have gone against every instinct of that Mating Bond…she had been wrong.

A Mating Bond didn’t promise a happily ever after.

Not for everybody. Some fae…Some fae met the love of their lives and they turned out to be happy…and some…like Solana…they had met…their undoing.

“Is that why the servants are that protective?” Lucien asked at that moment, thoughtfully.

“They couldn’t protect her against my brother. But they will protect her against any perceived threat on my part,” Helion answered, something akin to amusement in his voice. “They’ll choose her over me in a heartbeat. The Day Court needs Solana. I can be replaced. She can’t be.”

No. No, that wasn’t true. Any halfway intelligent fae could do what she did. She only tried to make herself useful. Nothing more. She wasn’t a High Lord, not even his right hand, not truly… She was just his…She was just…

She was just Solana.

“You haven’t answered the question,” Lucien pointed out quietly at that moment and Solana froze in place.

The question?

That question?

She couldn’t help but brace for an impact. She wasn’t sure what kind…She wasn’t even sure what answer would hurt less.

“Of course, I am in love with Solana,” Helion said. He said something else, but the blood was rushing in her ears and she couldn’t…she couldn’t listen to more.

Couldn’t stay here…couldn’t…

Not when seemingly every bit of safe, constant ground under her feet had just been ripped away, her breathing coming in sharp gaps as she turned and ran.

She needed…she needed…

She didn’t know what she needed.

Solana didn’t know what she was doing as she somehow managed to open one of the doors leading outside into one of the gardens…crossing the patio and leaning both of her hands onto the grey stone railing, her fingernails painfully biting into the stone, as she tried…tried.

Her breathing came in short, painful gasps, her knees buckling as she fought with her own…

She wasn’t sure what she was fighting with.

Solana didn’t know what to think, her mind swirling nearly painfully with a barrage of thoughts.

He was in love with her. Helion fancied himself in love with her.

She couldn’t understand why. She couldn’t for the life of her understood what he wanted with her. For every other male who wanted to court her…she was nothing but an…ego boost. Or a choice made out of arrogance or out of a desire to climb the ranks.

A desire to enforce their own influence onto the Day Court.

But Helion…none of that…none of that could possibly be the reason.

He was the High Lord. His word was law.

He could have anybody in his bed if he wanted to. And he took advantage of that and she had never faulted him for that either.

Solana had never…

Why? Why her? Why did he…

And if he did…if he truly did…then why had he never said anything to her? Why had he kept it a secret…a secret he admitted to before Elain and Lucien but not to her?

What was…

The loud neighing that was suddenly in front of her, startled her out of her thoughts and she couldn’t help but flinch as Meallan kicked the grass just feet in front of her, staring at her with dark eyes.

Half wild, half-tamed…still as much a creature of myth as actually in front of her. (Though right now he was demanding her attention and she knew that he was not going to stop destroying the landscaping until she gave in.)

She lifted her hands from the stone and stumbled her way down the stone steps to the middle of one of their many, many gardens. Meallan came trotting forward, lowering his proud head so that she could scratch him behind his ears with shaking hands.

“Good Morning to you,” Solana whispered, her voice shaking just as much as her hands.

Meallan gently snuffled over her hand in response and then stomped one of his front hooves down onto the grass, making a massive dent, the size of a dinner plate. She gave him a pointed look, but he was utterly unapologetic, stomping once more before he started to lay down.

The only way she could actually get on that bloody massive pegasus if she didn’t have a High Lord throwing her up there.

“You want to fly?” she asked him, surprised. He didn’t often come to her. It was much more likely he showed up on the balcony of Helion’s study and demanded his High Lord’s attention.

To Solana he only came when Helion wasn’t available for one reason or another.

It always had been like that.

If any Pegasus came to visit Solana, it was his mate, Clodagh. That sweet-natured mare that wasn’t so sweet-natured if anybody ever tried to ride her.

Clodagh came to visit Solana in the gardens and Solana offered her apples and brushed her perfectly white mane and tail and generally spoiled her rotten. In return, Clodagh followed along with her like a dog that turned out to be just a little bit too big.

Meallan turned his head towards his wings and then stared at her with dark eyes, waiting.

He was wearing neither a saddle nor a bridle, though Solana had long since thought that the bridle was absolutely useless anyway. Meallan did what Meallan wanted. Anything else was simply a suggestion to him anyway.

“Don’t let me fall,” she warned him, her voice weak as she carefully clambered up between these massive black-feathered wings, making sure that her dress covered her. She patted his neck before she wound that beautiful mane around her hands.

Meallan huffed in response like even that warning was preposterous from her, before he clambered up, shaking himself and then launched into the sky with one flap of these majestic wings.

All Solana needed to do, was to cling onto his back.

She had half expected him to fly the looping circles around the Day Court’s capital of Odeira like he usually did, but nothing of that sort happened. Instead, he turned towards the east side of the Palace, towards the highest tower…towards the Pegasi Stables.

That was unexpected.

Solana didn’t try to change his mind, letting him take the course and then land easily just inside that wide gaping door that the Pegasi used to let themselves in and out at all hours of the day.

Helion allowed them to roam free in Odeira, and while they mostly kept to the green plains of the Sunrise Palace, sometimes some of them went off flying on their own and then came back later.

Meallan stopped and she slid off his back, only for him to grip the fabric of her dress between his teeth…surprisingly gentle and then pull her with him.

“I am coming! I am coming!” she said with a laugh, letting him lead her to the pen that housed him and Clodagh.

It was right there in the back and everybody knew better than to try and walk into, unless it was Helion or Solana herself.

Only a moment later, she suddenly smelled the scent of blood, a gasp leaving her mouth as Meallan pushed her forward with his massive head…right in front of…

Clodagh.

Clodagh that was standing up, gently nuzzling a pitch-black newborn foal that was greedily nursing from their mother. So fresh, that it was still wet, long legs still shaking.

It had surprised them all when last year Clodagh had suddenly started to round with a foal and had started to bite at every poor long-suffering stablehand. The only ones allowed to feed her and Meallan were Solana and Helion. Meallan himself had spent months stomping and standing his ground if anybody even looked at his mate wrong.

After 3000 years…they had decided to have another baby.

And now it had arrived.

“Oh sweetheart, you had your baby?” she breathed and Clodagh whinnied softly like she was in agreement. “It’s so beautiful,” Solana said softly, not daring to approach.

Meallan’s massive head pushed her forward again and she stumbled right next to Clodagh’s head, which turned to nuzzle Solana for a moment. She immediately reached out to rub the mare’s forehead and press a kiss between her ears. “You did such a good job!” she praised her. “You did so well,” Solana cooed, just as the foal seemingly had enough milk and the long legs gave in so it could lay back down again.

She couldn’t help but stare at it in wonder, even as it mustered her in interest and she crouched down, shooting a hesitant look to Clodagh and Meallan, who seemed content to watch her. “I am Solana,” she introduced herself to the foal softly. “When you are old enough, I’ll bring you all the apples you want…and I’ll probably sneak you some sugar lumps,” she promised the foal, feeling the tears prickling in her eyes as she held out a hand…

Solana held her breath for just a moment, and then Clodagh’s baby pushed his or her head against her hand, nuzzling her softly. So soft. So sweet.

She gently traced her fingertips over the white mark on their forehead, a near-perfect sun…the emblem of the Day Court.

Somehow that was the thing that sent her over the edge.

She wasn’t sure why. Wasn’t sure why that was the thing that was suddenly making her start crying.

She didn’t cry. Not anymore.

Solan had shed so many tears in her life that she didn’t think she had any left. And now, there she was, collapsing into the ground right next to the foal and clinging to the straw as she cried her eyes out.

Clodagh whinnied, sounding worried but Solana didn’t even have it in herself to reassure her… the white mare leant her head down, and nuzzled her hair, nearly maternal…nearly…

Solana couldn’t remember her own mother ever doing anything like that. And she just cried harder.

Cried because she didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Didn’t know what she was supposed to even think. What she was supposed to feel?

It was churning deep in her gut.

What was she supposed to feel?

Castor had taken a lot from her. Including her ability to love.

She didn’t love anybody anymore.

Her brother? Would sell her for a handful of silver coins if that meant that he could climb the ranks.

Her mother? Would do the same, or throw her at another male if that made her look good.

She couldn’t love anymore. Castor had burned that out of her. He had twisted and strangled her with her love for him until nothing was left anymore.

Nothing good at least.

Helion deserved better than that. Helion deserved better than her.

#acotar fanfiction #helion x reader #helion x oc #Helion Fanfic #Helion fanfiction #Dust of your highest hopes

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