#questions I ask myself as I think about a new fic

[blightandfire]

May I inquire about Sladick, Jaymia, and Jaydick for the Ship I/Don't Ship It ask game?

YEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! puts on my sunglasses. I'll start with the Don't ship first, and then do the Ship.

Don't Ship

Sladick

Why don't you ship it?

Mostly the reason I don't ship it is because I don't ship anyone with Dick outside of with Jason. I Ship Sladickjay because Jason's also there, but if it's just those two... I'm gonna need Jason to step in XD Jason is good for Dick in a way no one else really can be, because no one else can get what it's like to be Bruce's charge. To have Bruce's expectations and purview colour your life, your childhood—and fuck Dick at the same time. Sorry this is supposed to be about Slade fuck. Uh. Orange pirate is compelling, and his greyness of character certainly is something that draws Dick to him I'm sure—so I can see it, just not in solitary on my own I won't seek it out.

What would have made you like it?

Fuck I just answered this. Whoops. Jason get in there. Then I like! xD I'll ship anyone with Dick as long as Jason's there, same with Jason. They are pair bonded okay? They're two cats. You separate them, I die. And they die. Three deaths. Is this the trolley problem you want?

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

Yes! Dick fuck more not-so-upstanding citizens. Especially ones who give you a break from the expectations placed on you, the moral high ground you like to take so often, step into the gutter for a mere moment and let yourself breathe and be a human. You deserve a break, you're burning yourself at both ends. Slade. Prepare to be bossed around you man whore. They would have great sex. But like. It would get really emotionally weird.

Ship

Jaymia, Jaydick

What made you ship it?

Jaymia I started shipping right after rejoining DC fandom last year around... June/August. I found the new Jason anti train and it really threw me for a loop, and then I saw Mia's name being dragged into things—and then I started finding the Jaymia defense posts by my now friends, and it all started to click. Out of some spite and out of recognition of how they really do play well together. From their backgrounds to their runs as sidekicks to their meeting in Seeing Red. They have a lot to say together, and do together. They have a lot of potential as romantic partners and as friends! Also it's one of the only ships I can see Jason in without Dick also being there.

Jaydick I've been shipping since 2015. I am a fucking veteran of this ship. I made a promise to myself in that year I'd always carry them with me and I have.. I have kept that promise xD despite my sabbatical for a couple years from DC. I think I found a random Jason/Dick fic while scrolling AO3 and it just snowballed from there. As of current day, the reason I ship it is here and I have things to elaborate on. like the neuroses. Jason wouldn't be attracted to dick without the neuroses. Jason cares about Dick because he desperately wants a connection with literally anyone and if the way hes getting that is by fucking Dick then. well. hes gonna fuck him xD

What are your favourite things about the ship?

Whistles. Let me try to be succinct. (Will Fail at this)

Jaymia

Mia gets a lot out of this relationship, she's challenged and is allowed to interface with compelling questions to develop her like her ethics or moral with Jason—while at the same time Jason is also allowed to be drawn into a different light, with someone who doesn't instantly write him off. He's her type. She's his type. They're really meant to converse with one another. Having each other in their respective corners would not only be an assurance but actively soothing I think. They understand each other in a way that other people cannot, they can well and properly interface with one another. And they have a meet-ugly. There's just so much to explore with their characters together! And not so much baggage.

Jaydick

Jason is someone Dick doesn't have to be perfect around and can fuck up with without thinking about it, and like, the thing is, this relationship formation is different than Dicks others. Jason comes into the relationship w Dick with a very subpar view of him, and Dick has to contend with that. That Jason thinks lowly of him but will still lie with him. And what that means about himself and what that means for Jason. Like, Dick has so many preconceived notions of what Jason is, or is supposed to be. I think Jason would help Dick become his best self, and that Dick could come to help Jason be his best self. It just takes... a lot of time. It's not an easy relationship. Their assumptions about each other getting dismantled/challenged is the prime draw to me.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on the ship?

Jaymia — I don't think I butt heads with my fellow shippers, I literally know each one of them. There's like. Ten of us. For this, I think the unpopular opinion I have butts heads with antis perceptions, for the obvious reasons. No Jason did not re-traumatize her, no he was not degrading her, no he is not unconscionably evil, no Mia is not put into a mothering role, no Mia is not fixing him, no she is not sidelined for his man-angst. Everyone shut up. I hit you with hammer now. Jaydick — so fucking many. I don't think Jason needs fixing, he doesn't need Dick's fucking saving of all things, nor does he need to be 'redeemed' by Dick, OR to be 'brought back into the family'. Everyone fuck off, this is operation GET DICK OUT OF THERE. Jason is good for Dick because he helps Dick away from Bruce ffs. Dick is good for Jason only after a lot of time. At the beginning, Dick is really... a negative for Jason. The positives do crop up but like, Jason's not in it for the 'right' reasons—he's there out of desperation and kind of hurting himself via Dick. It's really complicated a relationship. I do think their relationship does and can get good, and be something 'healthy' but like... It is hard work. It is a hard work relationship. That effort, that presence, the strive to be there for someone to try to learn them to try to understand, to challenge yourself for the betterment, that is the glorious part of them. Dick is fundamentally someone who loves and is compassionate and so is Jason. Them learning each others commonalities and learning to really get along and be there for each other. Yes. None of this "Jason needs to repent to Dick Jesus Christ Grayson" bs.

[jakekazansky]

Okay but like what if Carole and goose lived and got divorced? What if Jake had two naval aviator dads and a civilian dad? What if Carole and Charlie became a couple after her divorce from goose? What if goose and mav became a thing raising Bradley primarily with him spending summers in DC with Charlie and Carole? What if Jake’s civilian Dad and Carole were all friends? What if the compacflt enjoyed watching telenovelas and his shows have been boring lately? What if he told mav he’s hosting a cookout to honor the daggers for a good mission? What if mav forgets the compacflt has two gay partners and a son cause he and goose primarily flew for squadrons in the Atlantic fleet? What if Jake had his own admiral husband? What would go down in the compacflt’s backyard if all of this was true?

[bikananjarrus]

officially outlining what i've been calling the resurrection fic aka the post-rebels s4 sequel fic aka the ghost crew working through all their grief fic etc etc. and oh man. when i get this written.......

[non-un-topo]

I thought it was smart to choose Tuareg veiling as a research topic for an assignment because it's something I'm interested in and want to write about in fics, but now all I want to do is write and I have no time ;;

[thebibliosphere]

I’m ill and miserable so I’m tinkering with my Pennyworth universe fics and giving myself emotions about Patricia Wayne, of all people.

Non-Pennyworth fans can scroll on if you want, but do we think, just for a moment, that Bruce might adopt his party boy persona a little bit from his Aunt Pat?

I do. I think he looked at his bottle blonde auntie with her giant sunglasses, ditzy demeanor, cigarette always in hand, rumored to have a coke spoon up her sleeve, and a different lover ever week and saw someone sad and hurting but also someone smart enough to put up the exact kind of facade that lets her maneuver through their world, this high society minefield of gossip, judgement and scrutiny, and force people to look the other way out of sheer mortified scandal.

“Did you hear what Patricia Wayne got up to last week?”

“No, tell me.”

She’s all anyone can talk about. This ditzy socialite heiress with her too blonde hair and her too short dresses. Too loud, too bold, too much.

But none of them really know her.

The real her—the auntie with the sad eyes and the biggest smile who used to show up out of nowhere and take him for ice cream in the middle of the school day much to Martha’s annoyance.

The auntie who used to stand behind his father and mimic his serious facial expressions just to make Bruce laugh.

The auntie who showed up to the school run one time looking like a Christmas tree, hair still in foils from the salon because Alfred got detained and when Tommy called to ask she left before the hairdresser had a chance to take them out.

His Auntie Pat who lets him ask questions about the sister he never met and who everyone else is too sad to talk about.

Patricia Wayne who appears at Wayne Manor the moment she heard about Tommy and Martha’s deaths, looking pale and gaunt, aged about a hundred years in the time it took to drive from New York to Gotham because while flying might have been quicker, driving let her scream and howl her grief out because Bruce is a quiet child who needs quiet words and Patricia has never been very good at that but for him she’ll do it. She’ll rip her vocal cords out to give him the quiet solace he needs if that’s what it takes.

Patricia Wayne who signs over full custody to Alfred Pennyworth the moment she can because she loves Bruce but knows herself well enough to know that she’d be a terrible co-parent but also because it makes her want to jump into Gotham harbor with stones in her pockets seeing Tommy looking up at her from behind his eyes.

Auntie Pat who dips in and out of his adolescence like a lightning strike, teaches him how to act and move and glide through the world his parents tolerated and Alfred only knows how to interact with from the sidelines.

Teaches him how to flirt and charm and smile, how to be a darling of the press while never giving anything away.

Auntie Pat who catches him hiding in his parents old bedroom at a party, looking at himself in Martha’s old mirror and listens to the heartbreak in his voice when he admits he can see Martha’s features fading in his face as his jaw squares out. Pat pierces his ear for him, holding a needle over a flame, so he can wear one of Martha’s earrings, Thomas’s cufflinks on his wrists.

Patricia Wayne who watches him start to bulk out. Sees the bruises and cuts that definitely don’t come from polo practice or whatever the fuck Bruce claims they’re from.

Patricia Wayne who looks Alfred dead in the eye when a caped crusader begins stalking the streets of Gotham and remarks loudly at a party that she has no idea where Bruce has got to, but if she had to guess, he’s been detained by a pretty face. You know how Tommy was at his age, the apple never falls far from the tree…

She’ll never ask, and Alfred will never tell, but she’s always got an alibi ready.

Bruce was with her the whole time, officers. Batman? Don’t be absurd. He’s a Wayne. What kind of family do you think they are? Why, you might as well accuse her dearly departed brother of being a secret agent for the government. His wife too while you’re at it. Honestly, the nerve…

Patricia Wayne who coos sweetly at eight year old Dick but tells him quite seriously if he ever calls her “Great Aunt Patricia” ever again she’s taking the toaster for a bath.

She hasn’t had this much work and Botox done for nothing, thank you very much.

I dunno man. I just want him to have someone in his life that when the Brucie Wayne persona jumps out the whole of upper Gotham goes, “oh, he got those Wayne genes. Oh okay. Carry on.”

[ningvory]

SCREAM - jang wonyoung

1,740 words // yall i wanted to do kinktober sooo baddd but im so outta ideas and school and work has been draining😔 so instead i'll just write 2-3 more halloween themed fics

CW: noncon -> dubcon, ghostface!wonyoung, big dick wony, bully!reader, a little knife play, choking, backshots, doggy, missionary, a little tit play, mentions of reader getting impregnated, squirting, not proofread lolz

its about 11pm on a friday, 'means girls' is playing on your living room tv while you were in the kitchen searching for a pot to put your noodles in. your parents left for their business trip to wherever, you weren't really paying attention after they mentioned you'll be alone for two weeks and that you had a spending allowance of 5k, which is why you were wearing your new black lingerie set under your fuzzy pink robe.

you were humming a song as you head to the pantry to get a bottle of water to fill the pot with until you heard your phone ringtone go off. you went to mute the tv and grabbed your phone, tapping the answer button. you held the phone up to your ear but you're met with silence.

"hello?~" you questioned, dragging out the word. it was a habit of yours when you were annoyed,

"didn't think you'd pick up." the voice was cheerful, too cheerful to the point where it had you furrow your eyebrows trying figure out who's calling you at this time.

"well, i did. so.." you responded with a little bit of attitude. you were starving and here this stranger is playing on your phone. "listen, who the hell are you and what do you want?" you raise your voice a octave.

"your tits look good in that bra, wish i can see the way your ass looks in the panties." you furrow your eyebrows once more. every window was locked and your curtains blocked any prying eyes from seeing inside.

"um—you must've gotten the wrong number or something. i'm hanging up now." you smile half heartedly, trying to wrap things up, whoever this girl is can probably hear your labored breathing.

"hang up this fuckin' phone and i’m killing you myself!" she quickly responded, you froze immediately. especially after hearing some sort of bang coming from upstairs, “not so tought without your friends here, hm y/n?"

you were assuming this was a silly halloween prank call but she knows you personally! she knows your friends and even your name—you can admit that you were a bitch to most people but you didn't think that someone would break in and kill you for it!

"w-what kinda joke is this? this isn’t funny!" you let out a nervous laugh. no way this is fucking real, this is just a prank, right?

the person lets out a hysterical laugh—almost like she’s gone crazy. "you think this is a joke? was it a joke when you make every single day a living hell for me?" she asked but you remained silent, "now you wanna act like a scared little girl? don't you think its time to get what you deserve?" she asks.

the amount of people you’ve been a bitch too, its hard to guess who this person was. the fact that this persons voice was low and raspy to the point where you couldn’t even identify who’s voice this is didn’t help you either.

"i think we should play a game. i’d advice you listen, if you want to live that is." you can hear her smiling through the phone.

your heart is racing now, you have a gut feeling that this person is in the big ass house somewhere and that promise of her killing you is haunting you.

"fine. what's this game?" you try to put on that tough façade, still holding onto your pride.

"go upstairs. into your room." she commands you and you hate it but all you can do now is obey her words.

you grip your phone tighter and walk up the stairs—just like she said. you walk into your room. your pink led illuminated the room.

"good girl~ now, strip." her praise breaks the silence.

"what?" you whispered in disbelief.

"you heard me, don't make me do it for you."

you sigh, you really aren't sure why she wants you to strip for her. maybe to humiliate you on the internet on something but you comply to her demand, untying your robe and letting it drop to the floor. you stand, praying that’s all she meant when she said strip.

"do you not know what strip mean, bitch?" she questions, noticing that you're just standing there.

you stay silent, tears were beginning to form in your eyes and you let out a whimper, “why? are you some kinda sick pervert?” you demand, looking around the room.

it was silent for a while, it was like she hung up the phone on you. your heart was racing, you were getting anxious, “hello! where are you!? who are you!?” you cry out.

as soon as you asked that your closet door opened, revealing a figure dressed up like ghostface charging right at you. you let out a loud scream, backing up into the wall but the figure used that to her advantage, her long hands engulfed your neck, pushing your head into the wall and tightening the grip, forcing a strangled whine to fall from your mouth as you gasp for air desperately.

tears began to fall from your cheeks, your hands came up to hold her wrists before hitting them, desperately trying to pry them off your neck. she swiftly slapped you right across your face and manhandled your frail body on your bed, choked whines coming from you in the process.

“you look so cute like this, crying and at my mercy.” her tall body straddled yours, under her coat and her skirt, you can feel her bulge on your tummy. no way she’s hard from this.

if you were gonna die like this you might as well see who this sicko is, you removed your hands from the hands that were on your neck and you reached up to the ghost mask, removing it from their head. your eyes widen when you realized who it was. wonyoung.

her soulless eyes looked down at yours, a smile slowly found its way onto her face which made shivers run down your spine. she removed her grip on your neck, but still remained ontop of you.

you inhaled air almost immediately, trying to catch your breath before you can question the girl. but before you could even speak, she held a butcher knife right under your chin, “don’t scream or move.” she spoke menacingly.

“since you can’t seem to follow orders i’ll force you to,” she sighs. she starts to slowly move her knife down to your shaking body. the metal causing goosebumps to awake on your body. she trailed down until she got to your bra, she easily sliced it in half with her knife. “hey! i just bought this!” you spat, your first time wearing this set and it’s already ruined? this really isn’t your night.

“shut up, whore.” she’s quick to bring the knife back to your neck, pressing down on it but not enough to draw blood.

your bottom lips quivers which makes her coo before she gets off your tummy and flips your body over. you yelp in surprise with how easy she’s moving your body.

before you can complain she’s pushing your head into the sheets and placing the palm of her hand to your back, forcing you to arch your ass up in the air. to position muffled anything that you might’ve said and you felt your heart drop when you feel her bulge prodding against your ass.

wonyoung slices your panties as well before placing the knife in her mask. she pulls her boxers down along with her miniskirt. she giggles as she hovers over you of you, large hands pinning yours to the bed before she leans into your ear with a wicked grin.

“i’m going to make you scream.”

“w-wait!” you quickly retort squirming under her iron grip.

she wastes no time before she pushes her cock deep inside your virgin cunt.

it was like the wind got knocked out of you. you can't even make a sound, all you can concentrate on is the burn on your hole being stretched out. she had just pushed in and her cock is already kissing at your cervix, just how big is this girls cock?

wonyoung harshly gripped your hips and pulled out until her cock head was the only length left inside you before violently thrusting forward, letting out a long groan at the satisfaction. her hands left your back to grab your wrists to hold them behind your back, and forcefully yanking you back down onto her cock. she wasn't letting you get out of this anytime soon.

she was using your body like you were her human sized sex doll. drool was running down your chin and down to the valley of your tits and your eyes were crossed over, "for someone that hasn't taken a real dick before--you take it like a cock drunk whore." wonyoung muttered loud enough for you to hear. if you hadn't been too busy cryin' n moanin' on her dick, you would've made a snarky comeback.

she's never heard your voice become this high-pitched but she wasn't complaining, "s-so big! y-you're gonna break me!!" you whined through your tears.

"and you're gonna keep taking it all in your little cunt. even after i impregnate you." wonyoung quickly agreed to your statement, shooting three spurts of cum into your cunt.

you thought she'd be done but her hips never stopped smacking into yours, instead, she flipped you over into missionary. she swiftly picked up your left leg, placing it on her shoulder to reach a deep angle.

she continued to drill into your cum-stuffed pussy, her cock heavily throbbing inside you due to just seeing the lewd sight below her, "like being fucked by a killer, gonna cum all over me?"

"uh-huhh~" your eyes rolled back and your body began to shake. she took one of you tits that's bouncing with her thrust into your mouth, earning a loud moan from you. you suddenly felt a little funny, almost like you had to pee? your body soon went limp before you let out a whiny moan, squirting all over her dick and pelvis.

"at first i was just gonna fuck you and then kill her." she pulls out of your sloppy pussy and grabbed her knife. you flinch at these words, a bit terrified of what was gonna happen next, "but i think i'll make you my cute cock sleeve."

[pathologicalreid]

hiii I love ur fics <3 I am OBSESSED with the prompt “can you come get me?” bc h/c makes me 💥💥💥 so I was thinking:

reader has been kidnapped by the latest unsub and the team is trying their hardest to find her but all the leads keep coming up empty until one day Spencer gets a call from her and the first thing she says is “can you come get me?” she sounds extremely upset and afraid so Spencer and Hotch leave to go find her. when they get there, she looks like she’s been through hell so they rush her to the hospital to be checked out, all the while they can’t seem to get any info out of her about what happened.

Spencer & reader could be platonic or romantic, whichever you like. (also I was thinking maybe hotchner!reader ? if that wouldn’t be too many things to ask for lol)

I love how you do angst and h/c, so keep up the good work and have a wonderful day <3

can you come get me? | S.R.

who? spencer reid x fem!reader category: angst content warnings: kidnapping, hospitals, stitches, blood draws, catatonia, disassociation, brief mention of sa, ohio mentioned, general cm violence (let me know if i missed any) word count: 4.56k a/n: i have no idea how this got so long but i love the plot of it so much that i couldn't cut any of it! i'm such a slut for the "you came"/"you called" trope that i couldn't help myself! i wrote this with the idea that it would be in place of the m*eve storyline (which means our lord and savior blake is here)!! anyways anon i hope you enjoy this - i love you!

Any external sound was completely ignored as Spencer flipped through the same file for the eighteenth time that day. In his periphery, he saw JJ and Rossi nod at each other before Rossi split away, walking up the ramp to where Hotch’s office was.

It took him a moment to realize JJ had made herself comfortable by sitting on the edge of his desk. She had her jacket neatly folded in her arms as she eyed the file he had, grief filling her eyes as she registered what he was looking at. “What are you doing tonight?” She asked, trying to keep her voice as light as possible.

The question was entirely pointless, she knew exactly what he was doing tonight, but in an attempt to get her to leave him alone, Spencer humored her, “I’m working late tonight,” he answered simply.

JJ’s smile faltered ever so slightly before she shook her head, “You’ve been working late all week, what if you come over tonight? Will’s making dinner. Garcia’s coming after she finishes her system update,” the attempt to get him out of the office didn’t go over his head, but it wasn’t going to work. “Henry would love to see you – maybe you could teach him a new magic trick.”

Peeling his eyes off of the paperwork, he looked up at the blonde, “You know I can’t.” He felt so close to an answer, he couldn’t possibly leave.

“Look, Reid, I get it, but you’ve been working crazy hours for the past month. Maybe taking a night off would be good. You can start fresh in the morning,” she tried to coax him into leaving the case be.

It hadn’t been a full month; it had been twenty-seven days. Almost four full weeks since you were taken. It had been one week since Section Chief Cruz had told Hotch that the BAU needed to start taking new cases, as the trail to you had run cold.

Considering you were Hotch’s daughter, that discussion had gone rather poorly. Cruz had been able to give the team leeway. Both Spencer and Hotch had fully intended on taking advantage of that leeway, and the rest of the team helped when they had the capacity.

Turning back to your file, Spencer shook his head, “I’ll go if Hotch goes.” He knew there was no way Hotch would be leaving the office tonight, the only reason Hotch went home anymore was for Jack, and he was at a sleepover tonight.

JJ’s shoulders slumped in abject disappointment as her eyes followed Dave as he exited Hotch’s office, the slamming of the door enough to make the lingering BAU agents flinch. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, defeated.

Rossi wagged a finger at Spencer, “Go home at some point tonight, kid,” he instructed.

Waving a quick goodbye, Spencer resumed making notes in the margins of the papers that were making a permanent home on his desk. He looked up when Hotch exited his office, eyes following him as he brewed a pot of coffee in the kitchenette. The two of them acknowledged each other with a nod before continuing on with the hunt.

Both of them knew the odds, that you had been gone this long and there was a good chance that they’d never see you again. Despite that, Spencer would head up to Hotch’s office in about an hour, and the two of them would confer.

Eventually, the sun set, and a thunderstorm rolled in, the flashes of light coming in through the windows as he began to consider going for another cup of coffee.

Wiping a hand down his face, he inwardly groaned as his phone started to ring. Half expecting it to be JJ, he was surprised to find that it was an unknown caller. Clicking the answer button, he lifted the phone to his ear, “Hello, this is Dr. Reid.”

There was an eerie silence on the other end of the call, if he strained his ears, he could hear the pattering of rain. He tried to greet the other person again, but when there was no answer, he started to lower the phone to hang up.

“Can you come get me?” Your quiet voice came through the receiver, effectively knocking the wind out of Spencer’s lungs.

Fiddling with his belongings, Spencer gripped your file, “Where are you?” He asked urgently.

You sniffled, “I don’t know. A payphone off of twenty-eight.” If he strained his ears, he could listen to the rain. Spencer wondered if he could calculate how far away you were by the sound of the thunder where you were compared to where he was.

His chest ached at the exhaustion in your tone, imagining you had gotten approximately as much sleep as he had recently. That is to say, little to none. Pulling the phone slightly away from his face, he called out for Hotch, getting his attention and waving him over. “Y/N, can you see any mile markers or exit signs anywhere?” Spencer asked, bringing the phone back up to his ear.

“I can’t see much of anything,” you admitted. That made sense, your glasses had been recovered at your abduction scene. Spencer kept them in his bag with the rest of your belongings that had been released from evidence. “I feel lucky enough that I was able to find a pay phone,” you said, and for the first time, he noticed that you were whispering.

Glancing at the inside of his wrist, Spencer checked the time. JJ had mentioned something about Garcia staying in her office for a system update – what were the odds the tech analyst was still there? Stalking out of the bullpen, he made his way to her office, Hotch hot on his heels.

After knocking on the door, her voice rang out, “Enter, mere mortal.” Once she had recognized who it was, she greeted Spencer directly, “Ah, Dr. Reid, did you need a ride to JJ’s?”

“Can you locate a payphone based on the phone number?” He asked hurriedly, the longer you stood out there in the rain, the more danger you might be in.

A confused look was plastered on her face, but she turned back to her screens and started click-clacking away. “Most def, boy genius. Run me the digits,” she responded, pulling up some sort of database that Spencer didn’t recognize – probably for the best.

She typed the phone number just as quickly as he recited it, turning around and telling him that the pay phone in question was approximately thirty minutes away. You had only been thirty minutes away this entire time. “Send the coordinates to Hotch’s phone,” Spencer instructed, stepping toward the door. “Tell the rest of the team to come in,” he continued, “it’s Y/N.”

Each stage of grief flashed across Penelope’s face as she nodded assuredly, scrambling for her phone as she took care of notifications.

Impatiently, Hotch held the elevator door open as Spencer entered, keeping the phone up to his ear, “Stay on the phone,” he told you.

A desperate whimper came from your end of the call, “I don’t have any change. I found a few quarters on the ground, but I don’t have anything on me.”

“Stay on as long as you can, angel,” Spencer amended. “We’re on our way.”

The rain was worse than he had initially thought, but Mother Nature was no match for Aaron Hotchner. They were only about five minutes from the coordinates that Garcia had shared, and the phone call had dropped off before they were even on the main highway. The dropped call certainly didn’t help the rising tension in the SUV.

“Did she sound scared?” Hotch had asked for the nth time.

Not taking his eyes off of the map, Spencer nodded, “She sounded like she was stranded in the middle of the woods in Virginia, in a thunderstorm, and was using a pay phone as a lifeline.” His entire body was thrumming with nervous energy as they sped down the road, “but she’s alive.”

He didn’t miss the way Hotch’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel. You being alive would have to be enough of a comfort to the both of them for now, but Spencer knew what your life meant to your father.

“There it is,” Spencer said, interrupting his thoughts with the recognition of a phone booth on the side of the road, in front of a seemingly abandoned gas station. In a moment of uncharacteristic recklessness, Spencer clambered out of the vehicle before it came to a full stop, an umbrella and jacket in tow.

Hesitantly, he approached the crumpled heap of limbs underneath the pay phone. It wasn’t a full booth, it had just enough coverage to prevent the payphone from short-circuiting. You had jammed yourself underneath it, trying to keep yourself as dry as possible.

Kneeling in front of you, he swept his sopping-wet hair from his face, “Y/N.” His voice was no more than a breath, he didn’t dare reach out to touch you — lest you not want to be touched. A strike of lightning lit your surroundings enough for him to note the bruise that had bloomed on your cheek.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he watched as your lips parted in recognition, “You came,” you whispered.

He nodded, “You called.” His heart soared as you shuffled yourself closer to him, allowing him to wrap the FBI-issued jacket around your rain-soaked frame. “Let’s get you out of this rain, alright?”

Standing up on shaky legs, Spencer helped you walk to the SUV where your dad was waiting, shining a flashlight to help guide you to the vehicle. Based on how heavily you were leaning on him, he could tell that your left leg was injured. Despite your injury, you stepped away from Spencer to hug your father.

For a moment, Spencer felt like he was intruding on a family moment, but he recalled all of the times he had been invited to join in Hotchner festivities these last few years and allowed his eyes to meet Hotch’s.

The two of them shared an understanding look as Hotch pulled away, “We should get you to a hospital,” he said, cupping your face with parental gentleness.

Spencer helped you into the SUV, unable to put any pressure on your leg, you depended on the handles to pull yourself up. As you maneuvered yourself, he tried to determine what your injuries were. His eyes scanned your body until he made his way back to your face, “Angel, keep your eyes open.” He felt as if he was asking a lot of you, but he didn’t know if you had taken a hit to the head. Falling asleep could do more damage. “Hey, Y/N?” He said, watching as your eyes fell shut and your head slumped forward. “Hotch,” Reid said urgently from the backseat.

Understanding perfectly, Hotch hit the lights on the SUV and turned on the siren. Flashes of red and blue signaled to other drivers that there was an emergency.

You were silent.

As soon as they had gotten you to the emergency room, your entire demeanor had changed. Spencer guessed that you had been in fight or flight when they had picked you up from the phone booth, and now that you were getting the help that you needed, all of the fight had vacated your being.

In the white fluorescence of the hospital, he could see how drained you looked. Once the doctors got their hands on you, you refused to let him or your dad near you.

Hotch was in the hallway, talking on the phone with your Aunt Jessica while he tried to arrange childcare for Jack so he could stay with you - the leader of your care team estimated you’d be in the hospital for at least a few days.

While you had been mobile when they came to get you, your energy had left along with your adrenaline, and eventually, the best course of action was to just let you sleep. That was how Spencer ended up sitting cross-legged in a stiff hospital chair, watching over you as you slept.

Respectful of your wishes, he kept a fair distance from you, but you’d be hard-pressed to convince him to let you out of his sight. There were tubes and wires going every which way from your body, oxygen, an IV, and electrodes monitored your life. Boiling you down to a collection of numbers that showed Spencer just how alive you were.

The doctors suspected you had bacterial pneumonia, but they were still waiting on the results of your chest X-ray to make a formal diagnosis. Your presumed leg injury had turned out to be a bruised hip bone – part of a sickening pattern that reflected that of someone who had been thrown down a flight of stairs.

A knock on the window to your hospital room caught his attention, causing him to turn his head and come face to face with Rossi and Blake. Opening the blinds so that he’d be able to keep an eye on you from the hallway, Spencer stood up and joined his colleagues in the corridor.

“What’s the report?” Rossi asked, nodding in the direction of your room, and placing his hands on his hips.

Spencer rubbed the back of his neck before responding, “The doctor said that all things considered, she’s in good shape, but…” Shaking his head to wake himself up, he crossed his arms in front of his chest, “She’s sick and was beaten. Right now, she’s sleeping. We have no idea she was running in the woods, so it’s not surprising that she’s exhausted.”

He continued on to list other maladies that the doctors had provided, dehydration, malnutrition, one cut on your arm that needed to be stitched, and that was just scratching the surface. Dave nodded understandingly, “but the sooner we get to ask her questions, the better.”

Shrugging, Spencer looked over at your father, and then back to you, “When she wakes up on her own,” he murmured, watching as a nurse checked on your IV. He didn’t want to risk waking you up or asking too much too soon of you. “Can I ask you a quick question?” He lifted a finger inquisitively to the nurse who was walking out of your room, scribbling something on your chart.

The nurse hummed in response, raising her eyebrows as she waited for him to ask.

“Do you think the infection has anything to do with her silence? She might be hurting so she isn’t talking?” He asked, it wasn’t unheard of, when people were in a lot of pain, sometimes they coped with silence.

While the nurse might have an excellent bedside manner, the three profilers took note of the concern in her eyes. “The silence might have more to do with her psychological well-being than her physical well-being,” she responded, it was a healthcare way of trying to appease them. Really, they didn’t know much better than the members of the BAU did.

Blake’s eyebrows shot up in curiosity, “Could it be catatonia?”

“In order to diagnose catatonia, she’d need to display three of twelve symptoms. Those are stupor, catalepsy, waxy flexibility, mutism, negativism, posturing, mannerism, stereotypy, agitation, grimacing, echolalia, and echopraxia. So far, she really only meets one of twelve,” Spencer answered.

Shrugging, the nurse pointed at Spencer with her pen, “What he said.” She looked down at the chart before continuing, “Her care team leader called for a psych consult, but we won’t really know one way or the other until she wakes up.”

Nodding, Rossi nodded in acknowledgment, “What else could it be?”

Pursing her lips, the nurse tilted her head to the side, “Peritraumatic disassociation is another possibility, but again, we won’t know until she wakes up.”

The waiting game began. As luck would have it, an FBI agent being abducted created a lot of paperwork, so Hotch was holed up in a conference room while Rossi and Blake worked on the profile. JJ and Morgan stayed back at Quantico with Garcia to look back at what information Hotch and Spencer had been gathering over the past twenty-seven – now twenty-eight – days.

Spencer stayed with you, tucking your blanket around you when he watched goosebumps sprout along your arms. He paid close attention to everything that the doctors and nurses said about your condition, relaying everything to Hotch via text message. They ran a kit on you, and the only solace was that there was a chance that they could DNA match whoever did this to you.

He left that last part out of his message to your father.

As soon as you started waking up, Spencer had to leave the room, watching from the hallway as medical personnel flurried around your bed. At first, he had assumed your aversion to himself and your dad was an overall aversion to men, but you didn’t flinch when it came to the male doctor who was checking your vitals manually.

A nurse peeked out from the door, “Are you Dave?”

Furrowing his eyebrows, Spencer cocked his head back in confusion, “No? I’m not – why?” He asked, gaze flickering back into your room as you scrawled something on the piece of paper that a nurse had handed you.

“She said she’d talk to Dave,” the inquiring nurse shrugged, turning back into your room, and adjusting your pillow beneath your head.

Still confused, Spencer slipped his phone out of his pocket, nimbly typing a message to Rossi before returning the phone to its home in his slacks. Trying to respect your peace, Spencer remained in the hallway, leaning back against the wall as he heard the familiar sound of Italian leather boots turning the corner. “Are you sure she didn’t mean Aaron?”

Spencer shook his head, mirroring the older man’s confusion, “She physically wrote your name out. She’ll only speak to you,” he answered, trying to hide his own pain for the sake of ridding you of yours. If you wouldn’t talk to your father or himself, it made the most sense that you’d talk to Rossi. You’ve known him the entire time your father worked in the BAU.

Shrugging, Rossi walked into your room and approached you with the care of a man approaching a deer. He remained this way until he made it to your bed, and Spencer watched as he smoothed your hair away from your face affectionately.

You leaned into his touch, and Spencer didn’t miss the cue. When was the last time anyone had touched you with love in their heart?

He had kissed you goodbye before you went on your run, just thirty minutes before your location turned off and your usual Thursday route turned into a hunting ground. With what you did for work, you switched paths frequently, but someone had been watching you, or at least, that was the conclusion the team had drawn.

Watching as Rossi spoke with you, Spencer noticed one anomaly – you weren’t speaking to him. Instead, all of his questions were answered with blinks or scribbling on paper.

The two of you went until a nurse came in, telling the both of you that they needed to run a few more tests. Taking his leave, Rossi told you something that Reid couldn’t quite make out and rejoined him in the hallway.

“What did you say to her? Just now?” Spencer asked, his need for any sort of contact with you becoming so desperate that he’d now accept it secondhand.

Frowning, Rossi placed both of his hands on his hips, “I called her piccolina, I used to call her that all the time when she was just a little thing running around the old BAU bunker.” Taking a moment, Rossi pulled out his little notebook and read through it. “White male, late twenties to early thirties, sometimes gone for days on end citing ‘work,’ but she never figured out what he did for work.”

Spencer’s eyes burned at the realization that you had been working your own case while being victimized, he peered in through the window as a nurse drew your blood.

“She said he drove a dark American sedan, making it either blue or black,” Rossi continued to list off, eyes following Blake as she approached the two of you. “Y/N said the car was filthy like he had been living out of it when he couldn’t get to her in the woods. The car had an Ohio party plate on it with expired tags.”

Blake arched a brow at the new information, “Party plate?” She said quizzically, looking at Spencer for clarification.

Nodding, Spencer looked over at his friend, “That’s the colloquial name for restricted license places. They’re given to people who are convicted of DUIs, which is actually called an OVI in Ohio. In Ohio, they’re yellow with red print, and the only state to have something similar is Minnesota where they call them whiskey plates because they all start with the letter W.”

“Well, he’s confident. Maybe too confident, driving around with expired tags and a license plate that already puts a spotlight on him,” Blake said thoughtfully, adding to the profile in her mind. “We should get this information to Garcia, maybe look for people who recently relocated from Ohio with those plates,” she suggested to Rossi.

Rossi nodded, skillfully flipping the cover back over his notepad and gesturing for Blake to follow him to the conference room, effectively leading Spencer to his own devices. When the nurse left to bring the vials of blood to the lab, he returned to your room, taking his seat on the edge of the room – as far away as he could get while keeping his eyes on you.

He looked up to your bed, catching you staring at him. As soon as you knew you had been caught, you turned your head to the other side, averting your gaze toward the window.

Every thirty minutes or so, Spencer moved the chair approximately five inches closer to you, by four in the morning, he had closed half of the space between you. He kept his eyes on you, watching as you stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. You had that crease between your eyebrows that told him you were thinking too hard, and he had to sit on his hands to stop himself from reaching out and touching it as if he could soothe all of your bad thoughts.

In the doorway, Rossi had appeared, garnering your attention as you propped yourself up on the flat hospital pillows. “We got him,” Rossi announced to the room, a reserved smile on his face.

Spencer watched as you visibly relaxed on the bed, your face softened as your eyebrows relaxed. Rossi explained some next steps, but he was only half listening, he could only focus on you.

Once Dave was gone, Spencer took a leap of faith and shuffled the chair to your bedside, “How are you feeling, angel?” He asked, taking up a muted tone.

You stared at him, blinking at him until, eventually, your face crumpled, and you leaned toward him.

Not missing a beat, Spencer stood up from his chair so that he could sit on the edge of your bed, meeting you in the middle, he gently wrapped his arms around you, rubbing small, soothing circles along your back with the flat of his hand.

In the past twenty-eight days, Spencer thought that being reunited with you could fix all of the hurt in his chest, but this, right here, was a different kind of pain. Tears sept through the fabric of his shirt just as soon as they fell from your eyes, and all of the hurt that he had felt before just morphed into a different kind of suffering.

His heart ached at the sight of you in this much pain, so much emotional turmoil that you had silenced yourself. What was he supposed to say in order to comfort you? ‘You’re okay,’ was wholly false, and ‘it’s alright’ felt like a cruel joke. You very clearly weren’t okay, and none of this was alright.

“I’m here,” he reassured you, his voice no more than a croak as he tried to swallow his own emotions. “I’m right here,” he repeated, continuing his ministrations on your back until you had cried yourself to sleep.

With your body in its weakened state, Spencer carefully adjusted you onto the bed, making sure none of your tubes or wires were kinked before settling back down in his chair and taking your hand in his.

Around the time the sun came up, your care team came through for morning rounds and woke you up to thoroughly inspect your status. Once they left you to your own devices – with the promise of food in half an hour – Spencer focused all of his attention on trying to coax you into speaking to him.

Tenderly, he dragged a finger across your forehead before continuing down the bridge of your nose, “I’d really like to hear your voice, sweetheart.” His voice was gentle, maintaining a subdued tone in the early hours of the morning.

He watched as you sighed, deflating all of the air in your lungs as you tipped your head to the side, interrupting his movements. “I asked him to do it,” you murmured, voice raspy from lack of use.

“To do what?” Spencer asked, heart beating a little faster at the sound of your voice. He watched how you nervously gripped a fistful of sheets and looked at him. Only you weren’t looking at him, it was more like you were looking through him.

You took a deep, shuddering breath before you answered, “To kill me.”

The confession weighed heavy on his shoulders, but it wasn’t regarding anything against you. It was in the realization that you had been in so much physical and emotional turmoil while in captivity that you had asked for your own death. That even for a moment, you sat in front of a killer and asked for him to end your life as an act of mercy.

Noting Spencer’s lack of response, you continued speaking, “That’s why he let me go. I begged him to just end it and that took away any appeal for him.”

Last night. You had pleaded on behalf of your own demise last night. Carefully considering his next words, Spencer met your eyes and replied, “That must’ve taken a lot of courage.”

You faltered for a moment, evidently not having expected those words from him, “What are you talking about?”

It made sense to him now, why you wouldn’t talk to him or your dad. He felt like such a fool. You had been ashamed because you felt like your abductor had diminished your worth by breaking you down. Spencer knew better, “You stood your ground. You faced your own death, and you chose that over further suffering. Dying isn’t an undignified act, no matter how it comes upon you,” he reminded you, smoothing your hair away from your face as he watched your lip quiver.

“Thank you for staying,” you croaked as emotion closed your throat.

Spencer hummed thoughtfully, swiping a rogue tear from your cheek, “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

[mixingandmelting]

Hey! So kinda new here but I LOVED your take on how they would react to their s/o thinking Damian's adorable. Everytime he comes up I get in full protective older sister mode and it is so hard to find fics like that (kinda thinking about writing it myself). But I would really love to see how do you think it would be for Damian to meet his brothers' partners and actually get along with them.

All his life he's been mostly surrounded by terribly traumatized people who seem to be allergic to express their feelings (most of the times at least), it's always been hard for him to actually be a kid. So I think that maybe meeting a person he can trust, is kind of mentally stable and just fun to talk to would actually allow him to let his guard down a bit. Not saying he would act fully like a child bc you know ✨️trauma✨️ but idk I guess it would be interesting to see him feeling safe and not needing to prove himself or put on the whole "I'm not a kid" act

Anyway, english is not my first language so I do apologize if that paragraph is just a big mess and hopefully you could actually understand my rambling, sorry about that too.

A/N: treating it as a prequel to the aforementioned post here!

w/ Dick:

He heard about you. From Oracle, Steph, Tim, even Jon. Yet despite what they told him, he held no expectations for you. Just with Starfire, he saw you as temporary, a flame soon to be put out like his brother’s other exes. 

And he made sure to let you, meeting you for the first time in the Manor when the two of you coincidentally are left alone to chill in the living room on your day visiting the place. 

“I hope you realize you’re not Richard’s first nor will you be his last.” The teen states. His eyes never leave the page he’s currently on regarding the etiology of cows as he sits on the couch across from you. 

“And?” 

…And? 

He continues to insult you, questioning if you were truly unable to comprehend what he’s trying to get at only to suddenly find himself debating with you about what Batcow’s breed could possibly be. 

“You can’t rule out all dairy cattle when certain breeds are also brought to the slaughter house.” 

“That’s true but considering her size, she would be leaning towards beef cattle. Also there are certain breeds that have the red and white coat like hers.” 

How it happens, he doesn’t know. Especially when his goal was to exert his superiority, doing everything he can to get under your skin to show he’s above you. But you don’t bat an eyelash to anything he says. Rather, you’re wanting to know more about him, responding to him how you would respond to anyone else who is similar age as you. 

And it seems like he isn’t the only one to have realized how quickly he��s gotten comfortable with you once you got dragged out for a “girls talk” by the girls. Whatever that is. 

“I thought you didn’t want to get along?” Dick asks, entering the room and plopping himself right next to the youngest Bat. 

“More like your s/o is either non-human or can manipulate the mind.” Damian scowls and swats at the offending hand that attempts to ruffle his hair. 

But even without the knowing smirk the eldest shoots at him, he knows that isn’t the case. 

So when you promise you’d bake sweets whenever the two of you meet, he takes you up for it. Now he uses it to his advantage to annoy his older sibling whenever he comes over to visit, enjoying how the eldest son of the family miserably sulks for having your attention taken away from him. 

w/ Jason:

It’s either you’re a saint or lacking a brain. That’s what he assumes when the eldest of the family yells to everyone in the Batcave that their second oldest brother, the trouble-maker and black sheep of the family, had finally found himself a significant other.

He most definitely didn’t expect you to be… collected and reserved when he casually breaks into Todd’s unit to demand for assistance (it’s not him needing help), only for his eyes to meet wide and surprise yours. 

“Who are you?”

“Uh, I should be the one to say that to you.  Not the other way around buddy.”

Shots are fired, both sides fully suspicious of each other with him trying to exert dominance while you manage to counter and land hits of your own in the battle of words. And to the bitter end, he will never admit how he’s thrown off guard and has his pride extremely hurt at the very start, your eyes’ glint and your voice vocalizing recognition as whom, what Todd apparently refers to him as, “the pain in the ass” before he was able to realize you’re the s/o Richard had been talking about (the argument he gives later on after gloating to family how he was the first to actually to meet you was how he didn’t think Todd would be dating someone normal considering all his history with others and hook-ups). 

As it should be known when putting two stubborn people in the same room, it’s either go big or go home. That’s why he sits down at the table and drinks the cup of tea you place in front of him. The one that you made in the midst of the verbal argument which “only” you refuse to back down despite there already being a winner. Not because you give him snacks and you’re decent with steeping tea with loose leaf tea. 

The argument shifts to gossiping, and soon, Jason arrives while the two of you spill the tea with each other regarding the latest Batfamily’s love-drama. 

“Oh, you’re back!” 

The way Damian nearly does a double take at the sight of the man genuinely smiling with joy, captivation, and enamor though it only lasts for a second at him noticing who else was sitting at the table with you. He’s glad to say the least he’s able to find someone he could gossip about his family’s dilemma with romance while gleefully able to get at the man for all the times his buttons were pushed. 

w/ Tim:

Trust Drake to keep you hidden for this long, successfully in completely masking your presence from the whole family. He didn’t even know you existed, nonetheless Drake having a significant other in general,  leaving him to quite literally not have an opinion on you. 

The only way he finds out is the person in question kissing who he now knows is you purely by accident where the two of you were in the middle of a date and he was subbing in for patrol. He had the biggest grin when witnessing all this as he realized he just got his hand on his nemesis’ biggest weakness (he does make a face at the public display of affection though). And what better way to cement it by finding out more about you. 

As per tradition, the first thing he does is follow you to where you live. Then proceed to break in and wait for you to come home the following week. 

“You’re Drake’s significant other?” 

“What the fuc-fudge, why is there a kid in my apartment?!” 

He gets fed up and presses harder with the interrogation as you won’t stop calling him kid, kiddo, bud, and worst of all: sport. He’ll give it to you how you don’t easily bend to peer-pressure, keeping the playing field even and leveled where you ask him back questions of your own. But he doesn’t fall for your tactics to sidetrack him when offering refreshments and beverages. 

What’s your relation with Timothy Jackson Drake, how long have you known him, where did you meet him. The strange part is how you answer them truthfully. Sure you keep to the barebones, which he would ask a follow up if he deems as “important” but now he’s questioning Drake’s tastes in people, wondering if the latter is into those without awareness. 

“You do realize you’re giving out information to someone you just met, right?” He crosses his arms, an eyebrow raised. It’s not out of concern for the two of you, he’s merely mocking how weak the relationship seems to be. He tilts his head when you suddenly look sheepish, almost bashful. 

“Well…about that…” 

It’s starting then things don’t go as planned. One, you had already known about him as the “demon spawn” who had taken the position of Robin.  And two, the two of you start bonding over knowing your BF’s most humiliating moments.

It gives Damian the greatest satisfaction to see how his sibling’s facial expression falls into horror as he slams the door open only to see him in the middle of writing notes on the one story of how he attempted to skate through the rain to impress you and fail.

[toomanystoriessolittletime]

With time

Summary: Owning a flower shop across the cemetery leaves you to meet a wide variety of people. Including Joel Miller.

Pairing: Joel Miller x fem. reader

Wordcount: 3.9k

Rating: T

Warnings: no outbreak AU, kind of a flower shop AU?, Sarah dies :( , strangers to friends to lovers, mentions of car accidents and injuries, angst, grief, mentions of attempted suicide, healing, fluff, a little bit of oblivious idiots, time jumps, mentions of pregnancy, just really fluffy at the end

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Full Masterlist // Joel Miller Masterlist

You had read about it in a newspaper. 

A terrible car accident. A drunk driver hit a car, a father and daughter driving home after a soccer game her team had won. The father had been in a coma for three days, having to learn that his daughter had sadly not survived the accident after he finally woke up. 

Sarah Miller. 

A thirteen year old girl. 

Dead because of a reckless drunk driver. 

You remembered her and her father, how could you not? 

Sarah used to ask you a million questions about every single flower and you always answered each and every one of them, loving the way her eye lit up every time she learned something new.

They visited your store occasionally, buying the brightest flowers for her Grandma who had passed away a couple years before. She had told you that her Grandma loved sunflowers before proceeding to beg her father to buy the biggest arrangement of sunflowers for her grandma’s birthday the last time they had been here. 

You remembered the way her father had sighed seemingly annoyed, yet fighting against a smile before he had looked at you and asked you how much all the sunflowers would be. 

You remembered thinking how handsome that man was. How happy, how… warm it felt when he looked at you, his brown eyes so full of life.

He somehow always seemed to be already looking at you before you could look at him and for a while you even thought maybe, maybe you should ask him out. 

The man sitting in front of you in a wheelchair now was a much different version of the happy man you had met back then. 

He looked broken. 

Dark circles under his eyes, almost healed scratches littering the left side of his head. The man next to him, his brother Tommy was talking. Looking equally as exhausted but the look he gave his brother, Joel you learned, every now and then was downright devastating. As if he was waiting for his brother to shatter into a million pieces right in front of his eyes. 

You knew they had waited as long as they could to arrange the funeral so Joel could be there. The funeral home had contacted you a week ago, explaining the situation and ordered flowers and arrangements. 

The funeral would be tomorrow and the amount of flowers that had been ordered for the sad occasion was overwhelming even for you. 

A sea of purple, pink and blue flowers had been delivered this morning and you and your employees would spend all day binding the flowers so they’d be ready tomorrow. 

For Sarah. 

A little girl taken way too soon from this world. 

„We just wanted to check…“ Tommy Miller said again, gazing down at his brother whose eyes were fixed on something behind you. 

„Everything will be ready for tomorrow. I’ll take care of everything myself,“ you said gently and saw him swallow, before he nodded. 

„Joel?“ He asked and the man blinked once before he looked up at him. 

„Anything you wanna add?“ He only shook his head, before he looked away again and Tommy closed his eyes as he took a deep breath. His eyes were watery when he opened them again. 

„Thank you,“ he whispered as he stepped behind the wheelchair and began to turn it. 

„I am so sorry for your loss,“ you said quietly and for the first time Joel looked at you. 

The amount of pain in his eyes made it hard for you to breathe as he looked at you, before his eyes glanced again at something behind your head before his brother led him out of the shop. 

When you turned around you noticed the big vase of sunflowers behind you. 

The shop was busy. Strangely busy. 

It was a normal Friday afternoon, at least you thought so. No special holidays were coming up, yet the people kept flooding into your little store. 

Sure, the location of your shop right across the cemetery guaranteed business for you. It was one of the reasons you had invested in it almost six years ago. But lately, with the start of your social media page (well, your niece Ellie started the page for you) people from all over town came to buy your flowers. You even had orders for a hand full of weddings later this year. 

Business was good. So good that you were thinking about expanding and maybe adding a greenhouse to start growing some of your own flowers instead of ordering everything from the various flower markets you were working with. 

You were in the back, working on your order for the next couple of weeks when Kat, one of the girls working in the front asked you if we had any purple flowers in the back. You nodded, knowing you saw some purple hyacinths earlier, telling her you’d look and bring them to the front when you found them. 

And there in one of the back corners they were, beautiful purple hyacinths you had ordered the week before. 

Ever since that rainy day that October you found yourself adding an order of purple flowers to your orders. 

Never in your life had you seen a sea of so much purple flowers at a funeral. Not only from your shop but delivered from all across town, paying respect to a little girl called Sarah, taken too soon from her life. 

You had lingered in the far back during the funeral, hiding under a big umbrella, finding yourself unable to just walk away. There was so much grief and sorrow in the air. The rain hadn’t stopped all day. As if some higher power was crying too. 

Yet in the moment where you saw the wheelchair that had a grieving father sitting in it being pushed towards the grave, stopping so he could say goodbye to his little girl for one last time the sun had come out, a rainbow forming within minutes. You heard the sob all the way to where you were standing, tears springing into your eyes before you decided it was time to leave. 

You found yourself drawn to her grave since that day. 

And one day, after noticing that Sarah Miller never had gotten new flowers after the ones of her funeral had withered, you started bringing her flowers. Every other week. 

Occasionally Tommy Miller, her uncle, came in to buy some daisies. You would clean them from the grave once they too had withered, replacing them with a fresh batch of seasonal purple flowers. 

It must have been her favourite colour form the amount of flowers at her funeral.

But months after the funeral Tommy had stopped coming too. You hadn’t seen him since. 

And you hadn’t seen her father Joel in the four years since he left your shop the day before the funeral, broken and grieving. 

You were sure he had his reasons, finding yourself responsible somehow to spend some time with the girl until her family was ready to visit her. 

You were quite surprised to find Joel lingering at the counter of your shop when you brought out the hyacinths. Telling Kat that you would take care of this she nodded, already walking towards a new customer who needed some help. 

„Mr. Miller,“ you said softly and he turned around, looking at you, surprised. 

„Joel, please,“ he said with a tight lipped smile. 

He looked…. Older. Deep lines around his eyes, his unkempt facial hair had some greys. 

He looked like the weight of the world rested on his shoulder. Which did not mean he wasn’t attractive anymore. The opposite really. 

„Joel,“ you said gently, „You wanted some purple flowers?“ you asked and he nodded. 

„Yeah. Uh…. I want a small bouquet of flowers. Purple, pink maybe blue?“ He asked, seeming nervous. 

You gave him a small smile. 

„Of course. You want to chose the flowers or should I? Apart from these of course. I do not have any other purples left i am afraid,“ you gestured to the hyacinths you had laid down on the counter. 

„You, please Ma’m,“ he said and you nodded. Taking deep breath when you turned away from him you drifted through your shop, reaching for some gerberas and snapdragons and some greens to fill out the bouquet before you made your way back to the counter. 

He was still leaning against the counter when you got back, looking at the hyacinths. Slowly you began to arrange the flowers, all under the watchful eyes of him. 

„I never thanked you for all the flowers. For the work you did with them at,“ he cleared his throat, „at the funeral,“ he said quietly. 

You finished binding the flowers before you looked up at him. 

„She deserved to have the best of the best that day. She was a special girl,“ you said as you looked at him and he nodded, closing his eyes as he took a deep breath. When his eyes opened you could see just how hard this was for him. 

His life had changed in a matter of seconds and he was still dealing with the aftermath. 

You had read about the trial. 

The driver had been the CEO of some big tech company, now in prison until he would die there. You also read about the settlement after he had been sued for wrongful death, rumoured to be in the tens of millions. 

„She was a special girl,“ Joel whispered and you found yourself reaching over, putting your hand on top of his. He looked at you then and for a moment you forgot that you were in the middle of your busy flower shop. 

„What do I owe you?“ He asked and you shook your head. 

„It’s a gift. A birthday gift for her,“ you added quietly and you could read the surprise in his eyes. You knew it would be her eighteenth birthday today. 

Joel Miller looked at you, really looked at you then. 

You have him a small smile and he released a shaky breath before ever so slowly the corners of his mouth lifted. 

„Thank you. She’ll love it,“ he said. 

You watched him as he took the bouquet from you, giving you one last glance before he walked out of the shop and across the street. 

„You know him?“ Lisa, one of your employees and one of your closest friends asked after he left. 

You shook your head. 

„Not really. His daughter died in a car crash some years ago and I did the flowers for the funeral. Never seen so many flowers in my life,“ you said. 

„She the girl you bring flowers to?“ She asked and you nodded. 

Lisa hummed. 

„He’s hot,“ she added and you rolled your eyes with an oh my god before you disappeared back into the back into your office, still hearing her cackling. 

You wondered, if you would see Joel Miller again. 

„The contractor is here,“ Lisa knocked on your door and you looked up from where you were cutting roses to arrange them for small bouquets later. You nodded with a smile, having heard that the architect you had hired for the remodelling of the shop and the two greenhouses had arrived already. 

Washing your hands you took a look at the small mirror over the sink, deciding that you looked okay enough to meet with them. 

The architect, Tess, had come highly recommended by a friend of yours who had remodelled his office space a year ago. The two of you had clicked immediately and you loved the plans she had worked out. 

With the loan worked out now all that was left were the permits. 

Tess had said that she worked with a small contractor business that was still pretty knew but did great work. And you decided to trust her. 

Hugging her when you saw her you were excited to start this new project. 

Since launching the online shop a couple months ago you had hired additional help. Business was running more than good and you were ready to expand it. 

„This is the contractor I told you about, Joel Miller,“ she said and your eyebrows raised in surprise when the man turned around. 

„Oh, Hi Joel,“ you said with a wide smile. He chuckled as he waved rather awkwardly.

„You know each other?“ Tess asked, also surprised. 

Oh yes, you knew each other. Since that day where Joel had picked up the flower bouquet for Sarah’s birthday he had been back regularly. Every two to four weeks. Buying fresh flowers for Sarah before he walked towards the cemetery. 

Once, he hadn’t been in for almost four weeks it was him who found you at her grave, having just put in fresh new flowers under the white marble stone that read Sarah’s name. 

You still couldn’t point your finger as to why you were so drawn to her, but you decided to not question it anymore. 

Joel had been surprised to see you there. And you had rather embarrassed confessed that you had brought her flowers ever since her funeral so she had something pretty with her. 

He had invited you for a coffee after and ever since that day you would call Joel Miller a friend.

„I literally told you yesterday I was meeting up with a contractor, you could have told me,“ you said with narrowed eyes. He just winked at you. 

„Now where would be the fun in that, Darlin’?“ He said and you rolled your eyes, shaking your head with a small smile. Tess had a strange expression on her face when you looked at her and you made a sorry face. 

„We know each other. We’re….“ You looked at him, not really knowing how to label it. You were friends. Kind of? You don’t really spend much time together. He comes into your shop to buy flowers for his daughter’s grave and sometimes you have coffee. And, though it could be your imagination, sometimes he even flirted with you. 

„We’re friends,“ Joel said looking at Tess and you felt like you were missing something between them before Tess turned to you, smile plastered on her face. 

„Let’s talk about your new flower shop?" She asked, a little forced and you nodded, before you followed her outside, Joel following behind you. 

The meeting was a little awkward.

There was a tension in the air which definitely did not have to do with you but with whatever was going on between Joel and Tess. It left you in your thoughts as you closed down the shop for the night, having pondered over it ever since both Tess and Joel had left. 

Construction plans were finished, now you were waiting for the permit before construction could start, hopefully within the next two months. 

Were they a couple?

They didn’t seem like a couple. Not that it was any of your business. You were his… friend. He said so. Not that you would mind being more, but you were way to shy and awkward to ask him out. You weren’t even sure if he would be interested. God, why was being an adult so fucking hard?

You jumped when you heard a knock on the door, looking up to see Joel stand there. He was still wearing the red flannel shirt he had on when he left and you frowned before you made your way over to the door, unlocking it to let him in. 

„Is everything okay?“ You asked. He walked further into the store, hand rubbing over his neck as you locked the door again. 

„I want to apologise,“ he said. You tilted your head. 

„For me and Tess earlier. We’re…. It’s complicated. And it made the whole thing awkward,“ he explained. You walked towards the counter, jumping up so you could sit. 

„You don’t owe me any explanation. But if you want to talk, I’m here,“ you said and he sighed, before he followed you, sitting down on the counter next to you. 

You were sitting for a while before he began to talk.

„I went into a deep hole when Sarah died,“ he began after a while. You looked up at him. 

„The day after her funeral, I wanted…. I didn’t see any point of living when my little girl wasn’t here anymore. I was ready. I really was but at the last moment I flinched,“ he said any you inhaled sharply as he brought his fingers up to rub over his temple. You had noticed the scar but would never have asked. 

„I went to a clinic in Wyoming for a year. Worked through the injuries from the accident and the grief. Tommy, my brother, he couldn’t take it and enlisted. He only got back last year.

Anyways, it’s where I met Tess. She was at the clinic too. Not my story to tell but she lost someone too and needed some help to get better. I think…. I think we bonded over what we lost and became… intimate?“ He looked at you from the corner of his eyes but you just nodded. 

„Thing is I told her from the beginning that this would never become more. She’s…. She’s a great woman but she also reminds me of the worst time of my life. We stopped seeing each other when I left the clinic, but she moved here when she got a new job and I think she still thought that there could be something more between me and her. So she’s been giving construction work to my new business and because I want this business to succeed I took it. I talked to her again today. I think she understands now but… fuck, I’m an asshole really,“ he sighed and you reached over, putting your hand on top of his. 

„Why are you telling me all this?“ You asked softly and he looked at you. He was so close to you.

„I wanted to ask you out,“ he whispered and you gulped. 

„I was talking to Sarah on.. on that day on our way back home, asking her if she would be okay with me asking you out. You don’t know this but she really really liked you. Always kept talking about how you explained each and every flower to her. And I… I haven’t been in a real relationship with any woman since Sarah’s mom left when she was two years old.“

He turned his hand, palm now facing upwards so he could take your hand in his as he took a shaky breath in. 

„She said she’d love it if you got to spend more time with us. She was so happy and then…“ he shook his head and you saw a tear roll down his cheek. Carefully you reached up, brushing it away. 

There were tears in your eyes too. 

All of this was brand-new information to you. He wanted to ask you out? All those years ago?

„It took a long time for me to heal. To get my shit together. And yet I still haven’t asked you out,“ he said, your hand still on his cheek as he looked at you.

„Then do it,“ you whispered, with a small smile.

„Yeah?“ He murmured and you nodded. 

„Do you want to have dinner with me?“ He asked and your smile widened.

„Anytime,“ you said, tilting your chin up, eyes dropping close when his lips softly found yours.

You found yourself sitting on a picnic blanket close to Sarah’s grave. It was a nice afternoon and you had decided to take your lunch break outside, munching on your apple until your real lunch would get here.

Tomorrow, after two years of construction, your life would change. The new flower shop would re-open and you would finally be able to grow your own flowers in the green houses behind it. 

But not only that, in three days you would move in with Joel. Earlier this year he had bought the old Smith property next to where your flower shop was build on. It was a big piece of land with a farm that he had been fixing up these last months. 

Miller brothers construction really became Tommy Miller construction in the last year with Joel putting all his focus on the building of your new flower shop. 

That and…. Him wanting time to spend with his girlfriend. 

Not that he needed to work. You learned that the settlement out of the lawsuit was over 16 million dollars. Money he hadn’t touched until he finally knew what he wanted to do with it.

He had started a girls soccer camp in Sarah’s name that was benefiting families with lower income. And he loved every single second of it. 

Loving Joel Miller was like the world finally clicked into place for you. He was the one piece that you had always searched for without even knowing. After you went on your first date there hasn’t been a day where you had not seen each other. 

You were so sickeningly in love with each other, even Tess, who had been angry at Joel for a while after he told her again that there was no future for the two of them, had to admit that. She was now one of your closest friends, something Joel still found a bit weird sometimes.

„Starting without me?“ You heard Joel behind you and you looked over your shoulder, seeing him carry a bag of take out with him before he sat down next to you. He kissed you, once, twice, three times before he let himself fall on his back with a groan, taking you with him, making you laugh. 

„You were taking too long and I was too hungry,“ you pouted, leaning with your arm on his chest, looking down at him. One of his hands came to rest on your lower stomach, the belly only barely visible by now. 

You had learned two months ago that you were pregnant.

He wrapped one arm around you and you laid down with your head on his chest as you looked up into the blue sky. 

„You think Sarah would like a brother or a sister?“ You asked, his hand still on your belly. 

„I think she would say she didn’t care but deep down she would want a sister,“ he said and you smiled. 

„She would have loved you being her mom“ he whispered and you looked up at him, with tears in your eyes.  

„I’d have loved that too,“ you said quietly and he kissed your forehead. 

You were about to doze off when you felt him move, too tired to open your eyes to check what he was doing. 

„Hey,“ he whispered, his fingers brushing over your cheek. You scrunched up your nose before you opened your eyes to look at him, finding him holding up a ring with his other hand.

„Marry me?“ He asked and sobbed a yes, before you let him kiss you. 

[drabbles-mc]

Lucky For You

Tyler Owens x F!Reader

Warnings: 18+, fluff, mentions of hospitals/injuries, no use of "y/n"

Word Count: 1.4k

A/N: earlier tonight i lied to myself and said i wouldn't work on any new oneshots until i finished a wip. but I've been marinating on this idea since last week and i just had to write it down. just a short cute little fluffy somethin'! my first twisters fic. hope you enjoy!

You were shaking your head as you walked back over to the side of the picnic table that Tyler was sitting at. You had a beer bottle in one hand, the other resting on Tyler’s shoulder as you stepped in so you could plop back down beside him at the table.

“I’m still trying to figure out what you guys told Lily to say,” you gestured to Lily then Kate with the bottom of your beer bottle before taking a quick sip, “to get Kate to cave so quickly.” You gave Lily a playful smile. “What’d you say to convince her? Hm? ‘Cause lord knows it wasn’t either of these two,” you said as you nodded to Tyler first, then Boone.

Both men looked at you with dramatic looks of offense. “What?” Tyler asked, grin starting to curl his lips as he spoke. “You don’t think we were charming or convincing enough on our own?”

You rolled your eyes as he draped his arm around you. “No, I don’t.”

It got another wave of laughter. Tyler took the momentary distraction as an opportunity to lean in and kiss your temple. “Seemed to work just fine on you.” He reached across and stole your beer bottle from you, taking a sip before allowing you to snatch it back. “And you said yes to a way more dangerous proposition.”

You shook your head even though you were smiling, even though you could feel your cheeks warming. It was no great secret, or even breaking news at this point after the last few years you’d spent married to the ridiculous man sitting on the picnic table bench next to you. Sometimes, though, you couldn’t help the cheesy grin that crossed your face when you became a little more aware than usual of the wedding band on your hand.

“That’s different,” you said, not that it mattered, not that it helped your case at all as Tyler continued to nettle you good-naturedly.

“How’d you two meet, anyway?” Kate asked.

It was a fair question. You didn’t chase with the rest of them, never had. You’d met and fallen in love with Tyler before he decided to make a career out of it. The journey wasn’t always a smooth or easy one, but you never doubted him, or your relationship, not even for a second. Even in the hard times. A lot can happen over the course of six years, but you still clearly remembered when you first met him.

Tyler had started watching you the second he realized where Kate’s question was going. He watched the little twitches and shifts of your hands and facial expressions as you went rapid-fire back down memory lane. When you ended up with a little smirk on your face, he knew that you were all too happy to tell the story.

You took another drink from your beer bottle before just handing it back to Tyler, rather than trying to make him steal it again. “When I met Tyler, I’d say about, oh, seventy percent? Yeah, seventy. About seventy percent of his face was covered in bruises and bumps. Fractured cheekbone, split lip.” You turned and looked at him even though you were talking to Kate. “He was lookin’ real cute.”

She laughed, but you could see the mild confusion in her eyes as she looked back and forth between the two of you. “You find him after a rough chase, or…?”

You smiled and shook your head. “We met back before he was the infamous Tornado Wrangler.” Leaning forward, you braced your arms flat on the picnic table, Tyler’s hand sliding from your shoulder down to the center of your back, his palm warming you through your tank top. “They brought him to the hospital that I work at after he got stomped out by a bull at the rodeo.” You felt his fingers drumming against your back and your smile stretched a little wider. “I wasn’t even supposed to be checkin’ in on anyone in the wing he was in, but the nurse who was supposed to help discharge him had to leave.”

Tyler had a cocky little smirk on his face. “Lucky for you though.”

You gave him a look that didn’t pack nearly as much of a punch as it should of since you were grinning. “Yeah, real lucky for me that Jay’s kid got in a fight at school so he had to leave and he left you to me.”

Tyler laughed. “He was cute but I gotta say, I think you’re a little cuter.”

You gave him a playful shove, which he responded to by looping his arm around your waist and pulling you closer again. You shook his head at him before looking back at Kate. “Anyway, as I was saying. I go into his room to talk through some of the paperwork with him, and with one eye practically swollen shut still this man right here is tryin’ to get my number.”

“Actually, if I remember right—”

“You were concussed into next Tuesday—I doubt you remember much of anything right.”

“If I remember,” he repeated with a laugh, “I was actually tellin’ you that you should just jot my number down from my patient forms so you could call me sometime.”

You looked at Kate with a feigned nonplussed look. “Told me somethin’ about making a ‘house call’. Real bold for a man who was about half an inch away from some serious brain damage.”

“Probably what gave him the confidence to ask in the first place,” Lily piped up with a laugh.

Everyone was laughing, and listening. Kate might’ve been the only one in present company who hadn’t heard the story before, but it wasn’t as though it was something that the two of you were constantly rehashing all the time. The two of you usually kept the retellings amusing enough anyway, allowing the rest of the crew to throw in their two cents even though they hadn’t been there when it all started. After all, Tyler might’ve been the one you met first, and under some pretty dire conditions, but you’d been around to help out the rest of the team plenty of times since then. Whether you were making sure they were all alright after a rough chase, or meeting up with them in the towns that had been blown through to see who you could help even if you weren’t off the clock. You might not have chased with the rest of them, but you were still part of the team.

“How long did it take for him to wear you down, then?” Kate asked.

 The shit-eating grin on Tyler’s face grew tenfold. He lightly bumped his shoulder against yours. “Go ahead. Tell her.”

You dropped your forehead so that it rested on top of your forearms for a moment before looking up and at Kate again. “I gave him my number after I pushed him to the lobby in his wheel chair.”

“Doctor’s orders, by the way,” he interjected with a shake of his head. “I didn’t need it.”

You rolled your eyes but kept going. “He was pretty persistent the whole way down, so I told him if he still remembered my name and number by the time his fractures all healed up, I’d meet him for a cup of coffee or somethin’.”

“Cup of coffee ended up bein’ a split six-pack and a failed bonfire at her cousin’s place, by the way,” he added on with a chuckle.

“Yeah, and your lip still wasn’t fully healed.”

He smirked. “Didn’t stop you though.” You lightly swatted his chest with the back of your hand but you didn’t say anything to refute his statement. “So really, what I’m hearin’, is that you shouldn’t be havin’ any doubts about our charms.”

“Sayin’ yes to a date is nothing like—”

“You also said yes to marryin’ him,” Lily added on, always happy to stir the pot just a little. “Y’know, with the ring that he almost lost in a chase.”

Tyler rolled his eyes. “If I left it at home I was sure she’d find it!”

“Yeah,” Lily laughed as she argued, “and if the chase went wrong somebody on the other end of the county would find it. Then what?”

Tyler laughed and shrugged. “Corner store sells Ring Pops.”

You had no shot at tamping down your smile. “Prob’ly still would’ve said yes, too.”

(divider by @saradika 💞)

Twisters Taglist (please let me know if you'd like to be added to any of my taglists): @garbinge

[lavenderspence]

Missing the happy hormone | S.R.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader

Content warning: emotional reader, period mention, fluff

Word Count: 1.8K

Summary: Apparently Spencer Reid could make anything better - even the emotional disaster of being on your period

A/N: First, huge thank you to the cutie that sent in this request, you literally caught me while on my period so this was born. Also, here’s to my inability to write short fics, this is your only warning that i can make and will make anything long, lol. Also, my titles suck omg. And shoutout to my crazy bestie for making me a Mamma Mia girly, she rocks.

But also, happy one month to this blog! When I carved out this little space for myself a month ago I wasn’t really sure how I’d feel being back here and writing again, but so far it’s been a treat. A huge thank you for all of your support and love and thank you to my mutuals and everyone that interacted with my blog. 💕 Here’s to many more months to come!

Request: spencer x fem!reader on her period/ovulating and shes in tears all the time?? Im ovulating and have been crying for hours and keep calling my mom lmaoo he’d been so lovely and sweet I know it I can feel it in my bones

masterlist

It was a slow day at the BAU. The most exciting thing in the 6 hours Spencer had spent at work was Rossi’s invitation to dinner the following weekend. 

Paperwork had piled high after their last 2 cases, so every team member was hunched over their desk, writing and revising reports. It was a never-ending cycle - finish a report, close the file, open a new one, and start all over again.

His eyes had started getting tired after four and a half hours, his hand had started cramping and he was down two pens so far, yet there was still a prominent pile on his desk.

He suspected Morgan and Emily might have pushed a file or two from theirs onto his load, seeing as he was getting done the fastest. Regardless, every few hours JJ was bringing even more to pile on top of everything that wasn’t finished, so buried in paperwork they stayed - no matter how fast he wrote or read, or how used to the load he was.

He was just thinking about getting up to prepare a fresh pot of coffee so he could function properly for a few more hours when his phone started ringing. He felt around the pockets of his suit jacket, where it sat draped on his chair, and then pulled it free. 

His display showed an incoming call, a picture of you as he hugged you, hands around your middle and face almost buried into your neck, a soft smile gracing both your faces. A scenery rich with reds, browns, and yellows stood behind you, the beauty of fall was nothing short of spectacular. 

The picture you’d taken last year when the team spent a weekend at Rossi’s cabin in the woods, surrounded by the beauty of landscapes and leaves, nature for miles. 

He accepted the call right away, a small smile on his face. 

“Hey sweetheart.” His voice was gentle, if a little raspy from misuse. He hadn’t talked much in the last few hours - just a distracted short answer here or a hum there. He was happy you were calling, though, welcoming the reprieve from the most recent report. 

It was silent for a few seconds, and he wondered absentmindedly if maybe you hadn’t called him on accident, and then there came a tiny little sniffle from your side. 

“Sweetheart?” He prompted, “Are you there? What’s going on?” Worry was starting to creep into the base of his spine, but he still remained calm and kept his voice gentle. 

“I’m here. Hi.” Another small sniffle, “All’s good. Just…I was just wondering how much longer you’d be gone.” Your voice was small,like you thought you might upset him by asking, and a little crackly, like you yourself were upset about something. 

His eyebrows furrowed, and he checked the time quickly - 3:57 pm. 

“Probably about two more hours, there’s a lot of paperwork we need to go through.” His eyes met Emily’s as she sent him a curious, questioning look. 

“Oh, okay.” The resignation was clear in your voice, “I’ll see you later then.” The call ended abruptly, and it took him a second to catch up.

He couldn’t help but feel like not everything was as good as you claimed it was. For one, you rarely called to ask when he’d be home - you knew his work could span into the late hours, or even stretch for days. You let him update you on any changes in his work schedule. 

In your interactions, your voice was usually upbeat and teasing - especially on the phone. Your kindness was always evident in your voice, as was your mood. You were a sunshine person, if he ever met one, that’s probably why you and Penelope formed such a close bond upon meeting. 

There was something that nagged him - a change in your mood he could pick up on just by your voice - too low, too small, and the cracks that he could now identify as he replayed your conversation in his head. You were keeping yourself from crying out, and yet there was nothing more apparent than the tears in your voice. And that made him worry. 

“Reid, are you okay?” Emily’s voice snapped him from the hard stare he’d been giving his phone in the last several minutes since the call ended. 

“I…I don’t know.” His eye twitched, and he cleared his throat before he tried and failed to articulate exactly what was happening - he himself had a hard time understanding. One thing he knew was that he needed to get home. “I..um, I need to go. Can you, please?” He asked, gusting at the remaining three files on his desk before he pulled his suit jacket on and grabbed his satchel. 

Morgan and Emily shared a mildly concerned look before they both nodded their heads, “Yeah, go. Text to let us know if everything is okay.” Morgan reminded him before he exited the bullpen with a fast step and tried to keep calm.

He was aware the situation wasn’t anything that he needed to be incredibly worried over - if something was really wrong, he knew you would have let him know. Yet, he couldn’t help the way his heart constricted by the sound of your voice, or the overwhelming desire to come home and gently hold you, see what could have caused this behavior. 

You were curled up on the couch, watching as Donna helped Sophie get ready for her wedding, the gentle melody of “Slipping through my fingers” filling the empty apartment. Your eyes were watering, to the point that everything was starting to get blurry. A shaky exhale left your lips.

Today has simply been a rollercoaster. Kissing Spencer goodbye this morning was the highlight of the day. What followed was nothing short of an emotional disaster. 

You’d teared up during breakfast, images of picking berries with Spencer flying through your mind. The desire to make it a reality was strong. 

Following that had come the overwhelming urge to bawl your eyes out, for no apparent reason whatsoever. Just cry and cry until you had it all emptied out and you could take a deep breath and continue with your day. So, cry you did, and then you’d finished with your chores for the day. 

Apparently letting it all out and emptying your tear supply hadn’t happened. Seeing as around 3:30 you’d started missing your boyfriend so much, the need to hear his voice had won out, so you’d called him. You felt the need to have him home to hold you because this month’s visit from mother flow was making you feel like a crybaby.

But then there was disappointment at the notion that you needed to wait close to 3 hours before that could happen. So you quickly ended the call before he could pick up on the tone of your voice, and then you shed a few tears. 

Now here you were, rewatching Mamma Mia because you really needed a pick me up, and once again, eyes shining as the tears started falling. At this point, it was a losing battle, so you let them fall, humming to the song with a broken voice. 

That’s exactly how Spencer found you, not a minute later. His keys were in his hand, the satchel on his shoulder, and he was just a little bit out of breath. 

The moment his eyes met you, they softened as he dropped everything and sat down next to you. His hand reached up and he cradled the side of your face, wiping your tears away. 

“Hey, sweetheart. What’s wrong?” He asked in a whisper.

“Look at Donna painting Sophie’s nails, it’s...” You hiccuped, another wave of tears washing over you. “And you’re home, why are you home?” Your question was met with a furrow in his brow, as his thumbs continued wiping underneath your eyes. 

“You called.” He answered simply. 

“But you said-” He stopped you before you could finish your sentence.

“I did, yes. But you sounded off and sad, so. Want to tell me what’s going on?” He prompted you gently as he pushed your hair back and pulled you into his lap after, feeling like you needed the physical contact. 

You weren’t ashamed to admit it, per se, but you were ashamed that your hormones had caused him to leave work and race home to be with you. 

“It’s my period,” you mumbled, hands wrapping around his neck as you hid your face in his chest, too tired to prevent your eyes from watering again. “It’s been going on all day. Randomly, I’d just get so emotional, and the tears would start. I was missing you so much too, and then hearing the song, bam, tears again. I’m so done with this Spence.” You sounded barely coherent, with your face pushed as close to him as possible. 

It all made sense now, you’d been cranky a few days ago, and then you’d told him last night your cramps were unbearable, so he knew you were on your period, but right now he felt like an idiot for not figuring it out himself. 

“It’s okay, everything is fine. The drop in estrogen and progesterone, following your ovulation triggered this. This in turn reduced the production of serotonin, your happy hormone. So, we just need to boost it a bit.” He whispered into your ear as you played with the hairs at the nape of his neck. 

“How?” You sighed into his chest, almost being able to pick up on the sound of his heartbeat.

He got deep in thought for a few seconds as you breathed in his scent, and a sense of calmness slowly overtook you now that he was home and holding you. One of his hands was running soothing circles on your back as the other held your hand, fingers interlocked. 

“How about we take a trip to the store and get you some snacks? We’ll pick up dinner on the way home and then I'll hold you some more and you'll pick a movie for us to watch.” He suggested, kissing the crown of your head once, twice, and many more times until you gave him an answer. 

“Yeah, yeah, I think that would help, but just having you here has done wonders.” You finally laid your head against his chest, looking up to meet his eyes. He smiled, and so did you. Having him here really had helped immensely, and when had it not? He was your other half, your rock, and even when your emotions ran rampant or you were feeling down, just his presence, his touch, and his understanding were enough to make it all okay. 

Later in the evening, Penelope sent you a photo of Sergio sleep-hugging a little plushy you’d gotten him, and the waterworks started all over again. Luckily, Spencer was there, wiping your tears and kissing your head, saying a thousand things without actually speaking a word.

Comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated!

Requests are open for both Spencer and Hotch if you want to send any!

[pinkyqily]

TWO HOOLIGANS INLOVE | JuJu watkins x teammate!reader

Summary: Just you and juju acting foolishly in front of the press

Warning: fluff, use of yn a few times

A/n: This isn't accurate to the actually games so don't bite me, fic is apart of my new series called hooligans inlove this isn't the first part so watch out for that, if you have any juju requests send em my way if you have any feedbacks feel free to leave them happy reading readers 🌹

Usc had just won the game against uconn. You, juju, and Ray had been called for media. After a phenomenal performance from the three of you.

coach knew it was going to be crazy having you and juju up there, but with Ray too, she could only hope y'all would be on your best behavior.

"Now, before you guys head up there, I need you to be on your best behaviors. She told all three of you, "Come on, coach me and yn are good, juju just the problem here." Ray told coach while sending diggers towards juju way

"There's no way I'm getting blamed right now." JuJu yelled, losing her so-called nonchalant chil.

"Can we get going already? No one has time for you two idoits arguing." You told the two girls as you make your way to the conference room." Bro, hold on." You didn't have to turn your head around hearing your annoying girlfriend and teammate calling you, bro.

"Who are you calling bro Judea?". You said out as you stopped in your tracks, staring at juju with your arms crossed around your chest. Ray voice Intervene swinging her arms around you and juju.

"Come on guys, let's not argue."

"If she calls me bro one more time, it gonna end up with more than an argument." You told them both. JuJu, who knew what was best for her, stopped calling you bro but couldn't wipe away the stupid smirk on her face as you guys sat down.

The press was going well Juju and Ray made a few jokes here and there when answering questions until it was your turn to answer some Juju had decided now was the perfect time to be distracting you.

Anytime you got a question she would turn her whole head and body towards you as she looked deep in your eyes not taking off contact.

"So what do you think about this win against uconn and how we're you guys able to come back from previous games?" A reporter asked directing the question to you.

"Um the win was definitely a hard fought and we definitely brought in our all I think we're able to learn from our previous game against,

them on what to do and not to do-.you stopped mid sentence to say, "ju can you stop staring at me like your life depends on it." You told the girl as you guys secretly held hands under the table.

"I'm doing no such thing." She said after looking away.

"Whatever." You told her, but this time yanking your hand away from hers under the table only for her to grab it back

"Can y'all stop wasting the people's time?" Ray spoke up with a slight teasing tone, she was stuck sitting in the middle of two drunk inlove players while it was entertaining she didn't want to be no 3rd wheel

"Um, sorry for that interruption." cough cough as you did that while side eying juju.

"One last question for juju, what did you think of yn performance today and how she contributed to the team performance wise".

"I think that her performance today was topnotch, probably one of her best, she contributed a lot by getting really involved with defense and offensive if I can say so myself she brings a lot to the team when she can".

You found yourself starring back into juju eyes as she spoke there was always something about her that made you feel all warm inside you couldn't tell if it was because you haven't let her hand go or something else.

It felt like only you two were in the room, and that's until Ray voice brought you back to earth. "I think you both got staring problems at this point." She told you as the room erupt with laughter.

Anyone in there could sense the growing tension between you and juju. From the way you both spoke about each other to the not so subtle touches, anyone could tell you're both madly in love.

You guys got up heading back to the rest of them, team.

"Ugh, I can already see the edits coming about you two so nasty." Ray told y'all as she made a gaging sound.

"Oh please, they aren't that bad". You told her

"Not bad, juju was basically undressing you with her eyes, and you sat there eating it up."

"Not my fault that my girl a baddie." JuJu said as her hand brushed against yours. It was little things like this that got you worked up, and she knew it.

"At least I've been promoted from bro to my girl." You told both girls making them laugh.

Before you knew it, clips from the press were already going viral.

Some people called juju whipped sum saying, "You we're complaining even though you were down bad for juju too, people fighting about you guys being gf while others disagree and say you're a couple."

[houseofbabygirl]

We Hug Now

In 1984, Wally Clark lost his life and the girl of his dreams.

Wally Clark x Human!Fem!Reader

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: Talks of death, minor cursing, Just angst with minimal relief.

A/N: It's been 2 whole years and I've finally ressurected myself to roll out new content. Sorry if I'm a little rusty, I truly am trying my best. I am really excited to finish this story but I fear it will be at least 2 parts, so keep a look out for those. The song that inspired this fic is We hug now by Sydney Rose. The lyrics worked so well with Wally, I just couldn't resist. Hope y'all enjoy!

Part 2 : Mystery of Love

It had been 40 years since Wally had passed. Four decades of underwhelming undead life in the place he had wanted to leave the most. Yet here he was. Eternally 18, eternally thinking of the girl he was supposed to take to prom. Wally felt as though he conquered many of his internal battles after realizing he was gonna be stuck here. He had thought he moved on. But his undead heart always clenched in his chest when he thought of you. 

You were by far the prettiest girl he had ever laid eyes on. When Wally thought back to you, he always saw your warm smile, ruby cheeks, and soft eyes. He swore he could still feel your soft kisses and the sheer strength your body conjured up when you hugged him. Though it brought him peace in times of struggle, to know that you got out. Wally had yet to see you back in this school since you graduated. Admittedly he saw enough of you in the nine months you had together before you graduated. He followed you to every class, sat next to you during assemblies, screamed the loudest when they called your name at the graduation ceremony.

He felt at ease knowing that he was there for you even if you couldn't see or feel him. It was the hardest day of his (after)life when you left that school for the final time. 

But as Wally matured and grew, he realized it was for the best. He knew how much you struggled with his death. How you had lost your whole world, as did he, when he marched onto that field for the final time. He just wished he would’ve gotten to say goodbye before he was ripped from you. Wished he could explain, even though he himself did not know how to. Wished he could have given you solace before you set off into the real world.

Most of all, Wally just hoped that you found love again. He spent weeks up at night thinking of the promise he made you the week before your senior year.

You were laying on the bed of Wally’s truck, tucked under multiple blankets. Your head laid on Wally’s chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat as you settled in a comfortable silence.

“Would you marry me?” He asked out of nowhere.  You felt your heart jump at the question. A shocked chuckle fell from your lips.

“Wally, we just turned 18.We haven't even graduated highschool yet, I think you’re jumping ahead in the story.” You joked as you sat up to look at him. He smiled warmly despite your frantic demeanor.

“I don’t mean right now, silly. I meant just in general. Like when we get older and I get a decent job and you finish school. Do you think you’ll still want me by then?” He asks and you can’t help but tear up at the tone his voice took when he asked that.  You leaned forward and grabbed his cheeks gently. Looking him in the eye as you say,

‘Walter Clark, there wouldn’t be a universe in which I didn't want you.” Your tone held so much sincerity that Wally shivered at the look in your eye. He pulled you in for a warm kiss and smiled against your lips.

“Good, cause I want to give you the life you deserve. A nice house, big white fence, a big yard for our kids and the dog. I want to take you on dates and vacations, and buy you everything you talk about. I want you to never have to worry again. If I could, I’d give you the moon. And all of the stars if that’s what you wished.” He rambled on and you looked up at him in adoration as he spoke of the future. 

“Wally, it could be just me and you in a shack in the middle of nowhere and I’d still have everything I want.” You said, the earnestness of that statement piercing Wally right through the heart. He was so overtaken by emotion he pulled you in for a passionate kiss. When he pulled back he rested his forehead on yours and smiled. His mind wandered to the tiny diamond ring that was burning a hole in his letterman jacket. He wondered if this was the right time to give it to you, even though he planned on doing it after graduation. He never could contain himself around you. But the rational part of his brain knew you deserved better. He never knew how stupid he was for waiting to give that to you. His eyes focused back into yours and he pecked your lips softly, pulling back to whisper,

“Baby, I’d give you the world.”      

He never lived up to that promise, and it haunted him to this day. He never knew where you had ended up. Never knew if you had gotten the life you deserved to have or if you had even moved on at all. A small part of him selfishly hoped that you didn’t, but it wasn't honest. It was the 18 year old brain taking control for a moment. Wally truly didn’t care about the details as much as he just hoped you were happy. Happy with the places you’ve been, the people you’ve loved and the decisions you’d made. 

Even though Wally hadn’t seen you since you were 18, he liked to imagine what you looked like now. He spent years trying to find you on social media, trying to get even a glimpse of your matured face but he figured you must’ve changed your last name or swore off of it all together. He had to make an image of you in his head. It was a mix of your mother and yourself.  He pictured your eyes shining the way they used to when you looked at him, and your hair was a mix of your hair in highschool but a little grayer. He wondered if you still used as much hairspray as you did in High School. He swore he could still taste the chemicals that came out of that Farrah Fawcett bottle. It made him feel like coughing to this day. 

As much as Wally thought about you, he never got the courage to talk about you out loud. He never told Rhonda, nor Charlie. And he absolutely never told Maddie. He didn’t see a point, there was no way to make you come back. He wanted one nice thing for himself. Selfishly he didn’t want to hear your name fall from anyone else's lips. 

He found ways to keep you from them. He hid the engagement ring that he found in his letterman jacket on a chain under his sweatsuit. Any and all photos he found of you were in a scrapbook, hidden from everybody but himself. And he fought the urge to talk about you at every turn. He hadn’t even told Mr. Martin and he was sure that that was something he would’ve loved to know to help him move on. That was just it, Wally didn’t want to move on. He wanted to keep you as close to him as metaphorically possible.

Today was no different than any other. It was hard to add spice to your undead life when you only had 230,000 sq ft to make your own. The spirits had all moved to the gym, listening to Mr.Martin teach his new lesson. Something about willing yourself to forget the past. Something no one was actually listening to. It wasn’t till the end of the meeting Wally's interest even peaked.

“And don’t forget, the student Alumni from the class of 1984 just announced the location of their 40th year reunion and lucky for you, Wally Clark, they chose their home base. So you’ll get to see some familiar faces in just a few weeks.” Mr. Martin stated and Wally felt his heart fall to his ass. He nodded, his face unreadable as he quickly got up and fled the room. Charley quickly looked from Rhonda to Maddie, both girls shrugging their shoulders. Their eyes all held concern. 

The next few days, Wally had been weirdly avoidant of the group. His normal cheery demeanor was replaced with one of pure longing. Always staring into space, looking out windows caught in thought. It was unlike the former football star to not be the loudest in the room or at least talking to his friends. The last few days they were met with grunts in place of words. They knew it had to do with the reunion but they couldn’t place what it was. Now here they were trying to figure out what exactly the issue was.

“It’s not like this is the first reunion he has been an audience member of.” Rhonda said, her nail file loudly cutting through the thought of the other two spirits. 

“Yeah every reunion but 30 was here. And he was completely fine during the first two. Tearing up the dance floor if I remember correctly.” Charley stated, arms crossed over his chest.

Maddie chuckled and ran her hand through her hair.

“Maybe seeing all his friends get older is taking a toll on him. It can’t be easy to see them all look like his parents when he’s still a high schooler.” She pointed out and the other spirits nodded in contemplation.

“Maybe so, I do remember him being nervous before the first two. But nothing like this.” Rhonda said. “Wally is the most confident person I’veever met, dead or alive.”  

“Maybe it’s just been so long, this is bringing up some memories for him.” Charley suggested. Maddie shook her head, causing the other two to look in her direction.

“If it was just memories, he’d have no problem talking to us. This feels bigger than the reunion.” She said looking down at her hands. 

“Maybe we should just.. I don’t know. Try to talk to him? He obviously is dealing with something and I’d hate for him to think he can’t come to us.” Charley said.

“Finally, a good suggestion.” Rhonda said, and pushed herself off the table she rested on.  “Well, come on then. We got a jock to fix.”  Walking in the direction of the teachers lounge. 

Wally was sitting alone in the teachers lounge, no human or spirit there to bother him as he flipped through his photobook. Every page another collage of you. Tears spilled out his eyes, as he looked at your smiling face. The face that has been haunting his thoughts for the last 40 years. The face he was hoping to see next week. 

He hadn’t meant to cause a scene at the meeting but he had this feeling that this was the last time he was ever gonna see you. You were 58 this year, he doubted that even if you came this year, you’d want to return to the next reunion in 10 years. He was scared that he would never get any sort of closure. He needed to know you were okay, it would give him enough peace to withstand the pain of never seeing you again.

He flipped the page to see a photo of you and him from your Junior yearbook. It was a sweet photo. You and Wally were sharing a simple kiss, a pompom from your cheerleading uniform was hiding it from the camera. But it couldn't hide the childlike grins that were spreading across your faces. He was so caught up in the memory he didn’t hear the door open nor the three clumsy pairs of feet entering the room.

“Wally?” Maddie’s voice rang out. 

Wally jumped and shoved the book into the couch as he quickly wiped his tears. He cleared his throat as he tried to regain his normal cool composure.

“ Sup dudes.” He said, his voice coming out weaker than he would’ve liked.

“Whatcha got there, Wally?” Rhonda said, her voice having a teasing lilt to it. 

“Nothing, just reminiscing about the past, you know the bros, the games. All that good stuff.” He replied and Charley smiled softly as he sat down across from Wally. The girls followed suit.  

“You were crying over your bros?” Charley asked, his voice held no malice. It was a genuine question.

Maddie shook her head in disbelief and moved to sit next to Wally, she lightly pushed him out of the way and grabbed the book. Wally’s eyes widened and he reached to grab it from her but she stood up too quickly. Moving back to the couch with Charley and Rhonda. She carefully cracked the book open and her eyes fell on multiple old photos of the same girl. Wally’s head fell into his hands as they looked at the contents. The other spirits moved in to get a better look. Maddie curiously flipped to the next page and was intrigued to find the same girl staring back at her.

“Are these all of her, Wally?” Rhonda asked. Her eyes were soft as he met them, and he nodded. His eyes burning with the weight of reality as you were analyzed by the others.  

“Who is she?” Charley asked, taking in more photos as Maddie turned the pages.

“She is-” He paused, searching for the right words. “She was the love of my life. Prettiest girl I’ve ever met. She made me the happiest I’d ever been in my short pathetic life.”

He wiped the snot from under his nose and waited for them to speak.

“How come you never mentioned her?” Maddie asked, a frown lining her lips as she looked at Wally. 

He let out a heavy breath and looked up at the ceiling to block the flood of tears threatening to fall. He chuckled sadly,

“I think I was afraid that if I talked about her then I’d be admitting that she’s really gone.”

The other spirits all smiled sadly at the boy, their sympathy leaking through in waves.

“She’s gorgeous Wally.” Charley said softly and it made Wally’s lips curl upward.

“She really is, isn’t she?” He said and a tear rolled down his cheek. The others watched as he pulled a chain out from under his shirt. He twiddled it in his fingers as he geared up to speak.

“I was gonna marry her. I spent the summer before my senior year saving up to get this ring, I almost gave it to her the week before school but I knew she wouldn’t say yes until after we graduated so like a dumbass I kept it and now I don’t think she ever saw it. It is one of the only things I regret. Man, I don't know why I didn’t give it to her.” His voice choked on a sob as he finished his sentence. 

Maddie moved back to Wally’s side and pulled him in a hug, letting him cry on her shoulder. His hands twisted into her shirt, and although he was crying it made him feel better than he had in years. He had always thought that he was saving himself from the pain by keeping you a secret but now as he unleashed his secrets he felt better than he had in the 40 years he’d been tied to this school. 

“She’s never shown up here before, has she? I think I’d remember a girl as striking as her.” Rhonda says, urging her friend to keep talking.

Wally detached himself from Maddie and wiped the tears that pooled at his neck.

“No, everytime there's a reunion I wait by the entrance. Hoping she’ll walk through those doors. I don’t even know how she looks now but I have a feeling I’ll just know her when I see her. You know? But it never happens, no matter how hard I wish for it. There’s no way I can change the outcome of the living world.” His words echoed with disappointment and his shoulders sank. 

“Who knows? This could be the year.” Maddie said, squeezing his shoulder in reassurance. 

“I don’t even care that I can’t touch her or talk to her. I just need to know she’s okay. I need to know that I can let her go. That’s all I want.” The sincerity in his eyes was something the other spirits had never seen before. This was so different to all the other versions of Wally that they knew. They didn’t know how to fix it, They had no way of knowing if you would even show up. They just hoped for the sake of their friend and the sake of his sanity, you did.

[joaniscruzing]

reuniting with jinx <3

everyone... that was quite the rollercoaster. but, i choose to believe that jinx is alive. i'm not ready to let go of arcane for a good while, and I'll do my best to upload fics more often, especially with the holiday breaks coming up too, so reel in whatever arcane requests you have! i write for vi, caitlyn, and jinx. i do take smut requests for these characters too if you guys would like to request some...

obviously though, jinx wouldn't leave without finding her amazing gf though... right??

summary: jinx surprises you while you're grieving, and you both escape and go elsewhere.

warnings: angst at the beginning, season 2 act 3 spoilers, kissing, emotional, lots and lots of fluff, I PROMISED A HAPPY ENDING AND DELIVERED

you couldn't believe it. your whole body crumbled to the ground as vi told you the devastating news.

"I'll tell you one thing," vi tried to quip, a small smile on her face, "she went out with a bang."

vi explained that she heard an explosion sound when jinx fell down the vent, and how she guessed she had set off one more bomb. you take vi close to you, hugging her tightly.

"she really did love you, you know." vi admitted, "i think she's just had a lot come her way. and i can't say I'm the most innocent in that realm myself."

you left vi to continue staring at the fireplace, about to leave and go to jinx's workshop, hoping to take a few things to remember her by. you see caitlyn looking at the vent diagram, studying it closely. how could she possibly studying the place where your beloved girlfriend died? you knew that caitlyn had grown to not hate jinx anymore, so you decided to just leave it at that.

after leaving the kiramann mansion, you traversed back to zaun, thoughts racing through your head. had you not done enough? loved her enough? given her a reason to live? you wanted to scream as loudly as you could, and let whatever you were feeling out.

you finally made it to where jinx had her things, and you took a deep breath before entering. this was it.

the once lit-up place was darker and worn-out in her eyes. the once neon, bright-colored place seemed to be dark and empty now. like you without jinx. a tear rolled down your face as you picked up small tools and things, even parts of a flower she was making for you out of scraps. you sat on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, trying to make sense in your head of what you should do next.

"did you really think i was gone, hun?" jinx questions, right behind you. your entire body leaps at the sound of her voice. it can't be.

"jinx?" you ask, shooting your head up and turning around.

"did you really think i was gonna die that easily? now stop moping. we have to get on the hot air balloon."

shocked, you hug jinx quickly before shoving one thing you collected in your pocket. you both start running. hand in hand, you make a beeline in order to get on the next hot air balloon.

"you know what i realized? things aren't so great here, so why don't i just go somewhere else to do my thing? but, i knew i couldn't leave without you." jinx explains while running.

"how did you even get out?" is the only thing you manage to say.

"my shimmer, silly! i got the hell out and escaped through the air vents."

"and how did you get back to zaun?"

"simple hacking and tweaking of the hexgates. nothing special."

you both finally make it onto the airship, jinx holding your hand as you get on so you don't fall. she closes the door behind you.

"so. this is it. any last wishes before we leave forever?"

"my biggest one has been granted," you answer before pulling in jinx for a sweet kiss. you had missed her, as you hadn't seen her for a week or two with everything going on. jinx pulls away, explaining that you two had to go.

"you know, i've always wanted to drive one of these," jinx admits, steering the ship, "i have since i was very young." you notice a new sense of peace in her eyes as she drives the ship. she doesn't seem so... tortured anymore. in fact, she seems free of any past issues.

her newly cut hair blows in the wind, as you go up behind her and hug her waist, your head resting on her shoulder. no matter what the future held, you knew you were going to be happy. as long as jinx was there, you would be at peace.

"i love you," jinx says softly, taking one hand off the wheel to rest on top of yours.

"i love you too."

[captain-joongz]

Wonderful nothing

this is a part two to Deserve you <- read this part first!

Pairing: brother-in-law!Seonghwa x f!reader

Genre: smut, dark

Summary: Months later, still reeling from your experience on your wedding night, you try to go on about your life as best as possible, but Seonghwa seems to be a little too damn adamant on messing with your life. Between juggling your husband's inappropriate behaviour and suspicions, and dodging your family's over-bearing questioning, could the edge the two of you keep dancing on be getting a little blurry?

Word count: 26.3k words

Warnings: infidelity, mentions of drugging (not of MC), implied sexual harrasment and predatory behaviour towards employees (by the husband), obsessed seonghwa, so much breeding kink you guys, this whole fic is just hwa trying to impregnate the MC, deepthroating and face-fucking, fingering, degradation/humiliation kink, possibly strange physics around fucking on a table (please suspend your disbelief lmao), back-shots, a bit of manhandling?, yujun being an ominous prick, i hope that's all???

A/N: here it is, folks - finally! i've genuinely put my soul into this piece and agonised over it being as best as possible, so i hope it lives up to the expectations! i might go through it again tomorrow and edit a little more. title taken from Glass Animals' song Wonderful Nothing. thank you for reading and i hope you enjoy!! <3

“I’m just telling you to prepare you,” my mother’s grating voice carried around the sitting room, and I fought to keep my eyes from rolling where I sat collapsed in a fancy settee, “She will be asking. And it’s not like the rest of us aren’t curious too. You’ve already been married almost nine months, and still nothing.”

I shook my head, cradling my glass with vodka juice closer to my chest, and doing my best to ignore the line of questions I’ve been met with non-stop for the past few months.

Why am I still not carrying Yujun’s heir?

At first whenever the topic came up I just tried to play it off, smile and laugh and tell them we still had time, that it’s going to happen eventually. Now I just pretended not to hear mostly.

“After the… display… the morning after your wedding, we all thought you’d be pregnant by now,” my mother continued musing, tone seemingly light but carrying a pang of bitterness to it, just like it always did when she chastised me for not being good enough. It didn’t use to be as often as it was now, and I suspected she felt pressure from the Parks and desperately hoped I wouldn’t embarrass our family in front of them. I stayed quiet, though.

Of course I’d never say it, but discreetly to myself I often thought the same. I was also surprised that after the night with Seonghwa I didn’t get pregnant – but I didn’t. And I wasn’t about to mention anything, because I didn’t want to bring any more attention to that cursed day. I couldn’t forget it, but I sure could still pretend it never happened.

“Sometimes it takes a little time,” I voiced out loud instead, not turning around to face her. I kept my focus stubbornly glued onto the wall where a huge Park family portrait hung, an old oil painting with a single man in a uniform standing prickly by a fireplace, face all tight and stern. I knew that fireplace – it was in a room just down the hall, in Yujun’s father’s office. When we were introduced into this room for the first time, Mrs. Park excitedly chattered off about which ancestor of theirs it was, but I zoned out and didn’t listen to a single word. Since then I wondered many times whether it was Mr. Park’s grand-father or great grand-father, and I used it as a distraction every time I found myself in this salon. Just… staring at his unfriendly face, trying not to think about bringing disgrace onto his bloodline.

“Yes, but it’s been months,” my mother stressed, and I could perfectly imagine the displeased expression on her face she wore whenever I talked back to her, “Now would be the perfect time to announce news like that. If you’re not pregnant by the end of the first year of marriage, the Parks might start to worry about your ability to fulfil your duty to your husband and this family.”

I wanted to scoff at those words so bad. I hated that dated mindset, and I hated that my position in this family was hanging by a thread because of it. If I failed to deliver an heir, the Parks would push for a divorce, and my family wouldn’t be able to survive such an embarrassment, even though we no longer lived in Joseon. This was the 21st fucking century, and yet this whole situation was still being treated as if we lived in the 1760s.

I might have as well been shoved into a rice chest too.

Sometimes I almost wished I could tell her the truth. It would be worth it for the immediate satisfaction, that’s for sure, but it would fuck over my life spectacularly. And I knew I couldn’t count on any of these fuckers to have my back.

I often wondered about how she’d react to that, though. Well, mother, of course I’m not pregnant. The last sexual encounter I had was fucking my brother-in-law on my wedding night while my husband, his brother, puked his guts out in a bathroom on the ground floor.

Clutching her pearls wouldn’t even begin to cover it. She’d probably get carried out on a stretcher. And still no grandbabies – just shameful.

And in the months after the wedding it turned out that being married to the youngest Park was just as nightmarish as I thought it would be, if not more.

He drank often, and no matter what he did he couldn’t beat out the smell that carried everywhere with him, that he was steeped in. He wasn’t unattractive by any means, he definitely had a certain young chaebol charm, but he constantly smelled of sweat, stale vodka or whiskey, and cigarette smoke. The men he spent his time with were loud and obnoxious, and the exact kind of company that would strike a pang of fear in any woman. I certainly did my best to never be alone in a room with them, and I never left my drink out of sight either.

I didn’t know the full extent of his activities, and I didn’t want to.

And he didn’t care for me either, thankfully. The only time I even existed in his mind was when he returned home drunk and horned up, pressing up against me and mumbling drunkenly things that turned my stomach with his breath smelling like garlic and pussy. It was a miracle he didn’t make me throw up on a nightly basis.

Yujun, just like me, was very aware of the ‘duty’ to have children we faced, and always brought up the topic when he wanted a quick fuck.

So I had to take matters into my own hands.

Growing up in the higher echelon of society often left you with many very useful contacts in your phone. A lot of people of the same age all grew up together through our parents’ endless parties, galas and fishing trips, or whatever else they thought of to chase away the boredom, where we watched them drink and make fool of themselves like they weren’t the people running the world. That left us with a sort of quiet camaraderie – we shared many thoughts and opinions of them, but we still had some time left before we had to go and become them.

That means that when I contacted Jeong Yunho, a son of our family’s private visiting doctor, who went in his father’s footsteps and recently finished his degree to join his family’s practice, he was more than welcoming to my odd requests. All it took was a nice check, and he was writing me prescriptions for whatever I needed.

And what I needed were pills that quickly knocked someone out and lowered their sex drive.

So that whenever my husband dearest came home in the mood, I slipped him some in his water, took him to the bedroom and played up our interaction until he passed out, and then in the morning I pretended we fucked the whole night.

Yujun didn’t question his lack of memory, as he himself was aware he was most probably drunk and high on all kinds of stuff, and he was the kind of man whose ego far overshadowed his intelligence, so all I had to do was pander to his delusion of grandeur and sexual prowess and he left the house feeling like a god of sex while I was blissfully left alone.

But obviously that wasn’t something I’d boast about to my mother. Or anyone else for that matter, not even Seonghwa.

Seonghwa who’d be annoyingly smug about such information. Seonghwa who’d take it as an invitation to come over and fuck me all night instead of Yujun. Seonghwa who I didn’t see much in the past months because I did my damned best to avoid him.

Seonghwa who was stepping into the room right behind his mother just minutes later, as if I summoned him with my gloomy pondering.

I immediately swallowed down the last of my drink I had and prepared myself for the fucking show, because no way we’d have to spend hours here together. My mother was already standing, a fake wide smile plastered to her face as she greeted Mrs. Park loudly – who of course wore a very similar expression. I managed barely a smile as she half hugged me, keeping a few inches between us, while she pretended to kiss my cheeks (like I had fucking rabies). It was a hilarious charade, and I’d laugh at it too, if I was a little more drunk and cared a little less about my mother’s opinions.

Seonghwa greeted my mother similarly, but to me he slowly walked up and quickly grabbed my wrist to lay a single deceptively gentle kiss to the back of my hand. He did it quickly, not lingering or making a show of it, and I was at least a little thankful for that with both of our mother’s eyes boring into us. His gaze was dark though, and I saw the amusement and twisted excitement bubbling in it, reminiscent of how he looked that night. He knew he had me where I couldn’t avoid him.

And I knew I was in deep shit.

Because this was the look of a man determined to get what he wanted. And I knew what Seonghwa wanted maybe a little too well.

“Thank you for inviting us, Yeongja-ssi,” I heard my mother say just as Seonghwa stepped away and the rest of the world snapped back into place – now that the man wasn’t sucking all of my attention in like a black hole.

“Of course, you’re family now!” came a faux cheery reply, and I prepared myself for the most boring, awful afternoon in my life.

We were currently away from the city, sitting in the Parks’ family summer residence where they apparently spent a lot of their time when they weren’t needed around their businesses. It was march now, and Mr. Park invited my father, and the rest of us by default, to join him on his first hunting trip of the year, as the residence came with a hefty amount of land primed to be the best hunting grounds.

So now I was stuck in this fucking house, looking at all the pompous architecture and interior design, while the men ran around the forest for days and shot at everything.

“Aren’t you supposed to be hunting?” the question slipped out of my mouth before I knew what I was doing, and I realised it was the first proper thing I said probably all day. My tone wasn’t very friendly, but if the two women caught that, they said nothing – though they did turn to us curiously, watching our interaction.

The man in question grinned at me though, very amused by my somewhat hostile stance, and shifted where he sat on the dark blue sofa across from me.

“I will be joining them tomorrow,” Seonghwa answered easily, “I just got here an hour ago, and I’d like to rest for a bit.” It was a very diplomatic answer, very polite and bland. I hummed, looking at him very pointedly for a moment longer, before I turned to pour myself another glass.

“So, Y/N,” Mrs. Park eagerly took the opportunity to talk to me while I seemed more open to conversation, “do you have any happy news to share?”

Sighing, I settled back into my own settee with a fake smile, ignoring how Seonghwa’s eyes ignited with the mention of the topic.

This was going to be a long day.

I wouldn’t quite say I was snooping, but I found myself wandering around the house even through the spaces I definitely wasn’t allowed to, and I knew that. Like right now, where I stood in the middle of the aforementioned study, taking in the stupid fireplace in real life so I could compare it to the painting later when I was dissociating from yet another conversation about jewellery. I wasn’t interested in the paperwork laying on the desk of the office, but I knew Mr. Park would have a seizure if he knew I was so close to all his business bullshit.

That’s why the moment I heard a floor creak just a few steps away from me, I was jumping guiltily and spinning around to the door with my heart wildly beating out of my chest. The sudden movement caused me to spill some of my drink, and I felt the icy sticky fluid running down my fingers onto the floor.

When I saw who stood there though, I both relaxed and panicked further. A very different kind of nervosity took a hold of me as I breathlessly watched Seonghwa leisurely stroll into the room, dark eyes trained on me unblinkingly.

I saw his gaze flicker to the floor briefly, lips quirking up at seeing the mess, before he whipped up a cloth handkerchief and kneeled down right by my feet to wipe it away. He did it all so quickly I found myself flinching back, stumbling away from the crouched man until my back hit the table behind me, much to his entertainment.

My mind very unhelpfully supplied a mental image of the last time I had Seonghwa kneeling for me, which had me cursing myself while I fought to unclench my thighs. The man no doubt saw me squirming though, judging from the amused smirk he had as he stood up again.

He was wearing his hunting attire – looser trousers with knee-high boots and a tweed jacket over a white shirt, all in black so that the red tie popped out with the sudden splash of colour. It complimented his figure, of course it did – just like everything the man wore, and he knew it.

“Didn’t you say you were going hunting today?” I tried to bite out with hostility now that we were alone. Our mothers decided to have a last-minute shopping spree, searching for new dresses to wear at the first feast of the season that would close out this trip in a few days. I respectfully declined, though the politeness took a lot out of me, so I dedicated the rest of the afternoon to sulkily wandering the halls not speaking to anyone.

“I was,” the man answered smoothly, gesturing to his clothes, “obviously.” He took a few more steps towards me, and I couldn’t help but fixate on the wide-open door of the study. Couldn’t he at least close it if he wanted to do this right now?

 “You’ve returned with your bounty, then?” I asked then, cold sweat pouring over me at that. If Seonghwa was back, that meant everyone else was likely too. More curious eyes to stumble upon this scene, which was just awesome.

“Only me,” came his swift answer, as if he saw right into my mind and read all my worries, “I told them I’m tired of the outdoors and I’m going back for a quick late lunch with mother.”

“Your mother isn’t here,” spilled out of my mouth quickly – like I was actually hoping for him to take that information and decide to leave again, “They went into the city.”

Seonghwa only grinned my way though, that beastly edge shining through his carefully constructed indifferent mask. His hands were lazily locked behind his back and it gave him an almost whimsical vibe. Like a fairy, here to fuck up my day.

“I know.”

Well, it seemed it was as easy as that.

At this point it would take Seonghwa only two more steps before he was all pressed against me, and I nervously gripped the edge of the desk I was leaning on. I fucking hoped he wouldn’t – there were always people running around here. You were never fully alone in this house, whether it was the maids, or the two servants, or the kitchen staff or even the three fucking chauffeurs killing time outside with a very bored gardener, the chances of no eyes being on you in a house like this were critically low.

Seonghwa seemed to be deliberating on that as well, because I did see him hesitate for a moment, almost turning as if to check the open door, before he ultimately threw all that out the window and swiftly moved towards me until I felt his firm sculpted chest and stomach pressed into my soft lines.

I found myself gasping, even though I saw it coming the whole time – I knew he was going to do it, and I still startled when I felt his hands grasp at my waist. His warm breath hit the crook of my neck, his cheek almost pressing to mine as he moulded himself over me just like that night in the hotel. I wasn’t sure if my heart beat so fast I could barely register it or if it stopped all-together, but I sure wasn’t breathing as my skin broke out into goosebumps at physically feeling Seonghwa release a breathy chuckle against my neck.

“I hope you haven’t forgotten what I promised you before, doll,” he whispered sensually, pressing his hips harder into mine like he was trying to remind me. As if he needed to remind me – as if I wasn’t thinking about it all the time anyway, even though I haven’t seen his face for weeks.

One of his hands smoothly glided over my stomach until it possessively rested on my lower belly, right over where my womb would be, and I finally stuttered out some breaths.

“This right here is mine,” Seonghwa’s lips brushed over the sensitive skin of my ear before he bit down gently, “and I intend on delivering.”

Just as quickly his hands suddenly slid down to the back of my thighs and before I knew it, he was pulling me up onto the table and slotting his hips between my legs hard. I floundered for a moment, hands shooting up to stabilise myself and grabbing onto his shoulders, which was probably something he was very happy about.

I wouldn’t know, I was too busy gasping at the feeling of his already hardening cock pressed tightly into my clothed sex. Not even my startled limbs stopped him from grinding against me slightly to drag out the sensation though. I felt the way he squeezed at my thigh before one of his hands flew up to tangle into my hair, tugging me to his sinful mouth.

I’d like to believe I gave in so easily because I was confused, or surprised. I’d like to say I received him so quickly because my mouth was already open on a gasp, but in my heart I worried whether those were true.

Seonghwa didn’t waste time (he never did, he was very efficient in everything he did) and immediately dipped his tongue deep into my mouth, hungry mouth kissing me all messy and wet. This time when I gasped, he swallowed it down with a quiet groan, hand tightening in my locks and pulling slightly to pry me more open for him.

Just as I fully registered what has happening, realised I was quickly overheating, a wave of staggering warmth spilling over into me from his heated form pressed so close, and I grew dizzy – and then he was suddenly gone, a few steps back and looking perfectly put together except for his wet swollen lips and wild dark eyes. He didn’t even breath hard, though his pants bulged out obscenely, betraying that he was affected by this little tryst too, just like I was.

I sat on the desk, confused and aroused, thighs splayed open wide and chest rising and falling rapidly with my laboured breaths. I felt the spit cooling in the corner of my mouth, the wet feeling bringing embarrassed flush to my face.

I felt my core throbbing too, my traitorous cunt calling out for him to come back (she remembered well) and make it all better, but the man was already walking out of the room with a pep in his step, a shit-eating grin on his face and a sparkle in his eyes – while I struggled to pull myself together.

The glass I brought my drink in was overturned on the desk, swaying back and forth on its side, and the cold liquid was seeping into my pants and the carpet underneath. I wondered how I didn’t even feel the wetness, but I did have bigger problems at the moment.

With a curse I jumped down and tried to salvage the mess, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Especially not when I finally walked out of the room to find someone more qualified to deal with the ruined carpet and ran right into a red-faced blushing maid who couldn’t even look into my eyes as she rushed in to deal with the aftermath.

My heart sank, and I hoped that the staff here was as tight-lipped as ours, because I sure as hell wasn’t ready for this all to fall down on my head yet.

I didn’t see Seonghwa for the rest of the day after that – the man didn’t even show up at dinner, claiming to be too tired and needing to retire early. When I retreated to my room that night I found myself creeping through that house like a scared little mouse, paranoid that that he was behind every corner just waiting to jump me.

It was very fitting that we were here for a hunting trip – because he did feel like a hunter, only his prey wasn’t out there in the woods. It was sleeping in the house with him.

Yujun managed to stumble into the room late into the night even here, though I had no idea what could have been keeping him while we were staying in a house in the middle of the woods (maybe it was better to not know, now that I thought about it). When he clambered into the bed, for a moment I froze and laid still, waiting for what he’d do next. As every evening, I had a preventative spiked glass of water standing on the nightstand – if he as much as bumped into me, I’d be turning around to offer it to him with a sweet wifely smile, pumping it straight into his throat if I had to.

Thankfully the man seemed to be exhausted and he just shuffled around for a moment before stilling and falling asleep almost immediately. I had a sinking feeling I knew what that meant, and I could only hope that whatever unfortunate woman he had come across was alright. Disgust coiled tightly around my stomach and suddenly the idea of sharing a bed with this man was making me so sick I almost threw up. Automatically I sat up, feet hitting the floor before I even fully thought of what I was going to do.

I was just about to sneak out and leave the room to go take a breather, when I remembered Seonghwa’s predatory smile as he leisurely walked out of the study earlier that afternoon. Better not leave the room actually, not while he was in the same house at least. I cringed at that and sank back into the soft bedding.

What a fucking life I was leading. I was getting pretty sick of tiptoeing around everyone like that.

So I just turned my back to the man I married and tried to pretend he wasn’t there as I forced myself back into sleep.

I wasn’t sure when exactly I was pulled under, but when I jerked awake in the morning I was already alone. All traces of Yujun ever being there the night before were gone, and the sun was sneaking in through the folds of the curtains. The hunt has already begun.

Both my mother and my mother-in-law acted normally, and even though the one unfortunate maid that was saddled with dealing with the aftermath of my indiscretion with Seonghwa yesterday couldn’t quite meet my eyes, I assumed no one else knew. The day dragged on, painfully slow and tense, as I laughed dutifully with the older women’s chatter and ignored their little probes trying to get me to talk about my married life.

By the time the evening rolled by, I was drunk, cranky and exhausted of all the social interactions. During dinner Seonghwa kept his dark gaze trained on me, making me squirm with unease under the suspicious eyes of my mother. As I walked to my bedroom, I stopped the maid as she walked by and pressed a couple bills in her hand, avoiding her confused face. When Yujun came, I gave him his water and waited until he passed out.

Same shit, another day.

The next few days went by both terrifyingly slow and shockingly fast, like the universe was pulling me into both directions. For most of the time, I just felt strangely suspended in some cosmic in-between. I was struggling to connect to the other two women even before, but now that Seonghwa routinely made his presence known I felt even more distant from their dreary bullshit. Our fathers and my husband spent their entire day gone or butchering their bounty, and even during the night Yujun rarely bothered me – either too tired or just not in the mood ‘for my bullshit’, as he lovingly put it.

That left Seonghwa – my loyal shadow, my curse following me around, the ghoul, the phantom. He made it a game for himself to mess with me. Since the incident in the study he never got quite as close, but I saw his amused smirks whenever he brushed against me while leaving a room, or whenever his hands lingered on my body just a touch too long while no one was looking.

The man used his unfavourable position well to get his way. The invisible wall between him and all the rest of the family was even more painfully obvious the longer we spent with them, felt in all those awkward glances and stuttered half sentences. Seonghwa was always sort of falling through the cracks of the Park family, stalking the halls and rooms like a ghost of mistakes past.

Mrs. Park could barely bear to look at him for too long, and Mr. Park hated that he deserved to be respected, especially when faced with his other son’s never-ending disappointments.

That allowed him to slip through their awareness, linger on the edges of everyone’s consciousness like a forgotten thought you can’t quite get rid of, and it haunts you with its elusiveness.

Seonghwa only made his presence known when he absolutely had to, he used their niggling unease at his presence to find easy excuses to leave – to just… fade away without a trace. No one missed him when he wasn’t there – only relief was left in his absence. Their reluctance to see him and perceive him gave him plenty of opportunities to do his wrongs in plain sight knowing everyone was wilfully not paying attention. Seonghwa had it down to science.

And very rarely, I’d see his eyes flash with hardened pain. The kind that never leaves your heart, coming from wounds that cut just a little too deep to heal. In those times I found it in myself to pity the man, and I hated him for it.

But slowly I found myself realising that the same glass wall that kept Seonghwa detached from others was keeping me detached from them as well. I was caught with him on the other side, and the way we both disappeared into the background, blended into the wallpapers, was a truly disturbing experience. Like we were existing outside of their time and space.

All the burning looks exchanged, the agonising brushes of skin against skin – it all went unnoticed. And I felt so alone, so alone and left with a beast hungry for my blood, hunting me in plain daylight – and yet no one saw.

I knew Seonghwa felt emboldened by this. It was all written clearly in his wicked grins.

He liked to tease it out, play with me sweetly, but I could see he was gearing up to pounce again. His eyes sparkled with terrible excitement whenever he caught my gaze across tables, rooms and corridors, lurking by corners with dark eyes watching my every move.

By the last day of the trip I was fidgeting with unease, unable to sit still and jerking at every rash movement. It had my mother strictly reprimanding me, sending me warning glares and constantly reminding me to act like a lady. She thought it was the alcohol, and it wasn’t lost on me how she watched me disapprovingly whenever I got up to get myself a fresh glass of something – even though all of us were doing nothing but drinking and gossiping.

The men for a change spent that whole day in the kitchens to prepare their bounty for dinner, and their boisterous laughs carried through the whole house. Their great spirits were no doubt also supported by a hefty amount of liquid courage, but I didn’t see my mother casting disgusted glances their way. Hypocrite.

Seonghwa came in with a platter of cheeses and fruits, passing by me with a hungry expression on his face before he schooled it into a polite smile for our mothers. I couldn’t believe I sincerely didn’t see it before, when I was planning the wedding. Now it was all I saw, and it made me want to run.

With the evening approaching it was like I could physically feel the anticipation rise. The tension felt thick enough to cut, thick enough to taste it on my tongue every time I opened my mouth. Thick enough it got me wondering whether the others could sense it too.

I’ve never been too great with polite small-talk, so I spent the dinner quietly chewing through my food listening to whatever the topic was discussed at the time distractedly. Seonghwa was surprisingly chatty that evening, and he seemed to be in a great mood – which stupefied everyone else present at the table, as they were used to the way the man usually kept himself at a distance.

Only I knew that it meant incredibly bad things were about to go down in this fucking house.

Unfortunately once the women got tired of keeping their attention on the very male oriented conversation of their husbands and sons, they shifted their focus back to our little corner. I lasted all of three not so very subtle remarks about how a nice little retreat like this was the perfect opportunity to get pregnant before I was shooting up on my feet and excusing myself to the bathroom with a tense smile.

My mother’s eyes firmly gestured towards Yujun, but I ignored her rapidly souring expression and left quickly. What did she want me to do? Get pregnant by him right here on this table? (fate has a funny was of unfolding)

The long-haired man who was the reason for my unease in the first place was also subtly watching me, though for the first time I found his face unreadable. That unsettled me, and I basically ran out.

I stalled for as long as I could, but it ended up only buying me twenty minutes of peace before someone sought me out.

When I heard slow unhurried footsteps aiming towards the bathroom I had hidden in, I was already steeling myself for it being my mother. It didn’t surprise me – I kind of suspected she’d end up blowing up at me one way or another. If it wasn’t about my lack of children or the lack of desire to rectify it, it would definitely be about the very impolite behaviour I exhibited as it threatened to give Mrs. Park the wrong impression. Personally, I didn’t give a fuck about Mrs. Park’s impression of me – it’s not like she could do anything worse to me than what I was already involved in.

Wanting to avoid that conversation for as long as possible, I bent over the sink and scooped up the running water to bury my face in it.

I realised I was wrong about my assumption the moment I felt two strong hands settle on my waist as a wiry body pressed up against me. I knew those hands. I knew that body.

Startled, I jerked up – already knowing whose eyes I was going to meet in the mirror. In my haste I ended up barrelling into his chest. The man took it all in his stride though, and his arms swiftly moved to wrap around my waist. Shamefully, it was a touch I was intimately familiar with, even if we haven’t interacted in that way for months.

Seonghwa was smirking back at me where I was gawking at him in the mirror – and I quickly got reminded just how shameless the man was. A little further behind his shoulder I saw the door wide open, again. The loud voices and laughs carried through the hallway easily; after all the terrace wasn’t that far from where we currently stood.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hissed out aggressively, but did nothing to shake him off. He stared at me for a few long seconds before I was suddenly being spun around. My back hit the counter, but it was hard to focus on anything but the demanding mouth that was abruptly descending on mine. Tongue swiftly swooped inside my lips, punching a little dazed gasp of surprise.

Just as quickly he was pulling away. His hand grasped onto my jaw, keeping my head angled in a way he liked. Gaze dark, it slid across my features in an appraising way, like he was looking at a painting.

“I’m fulfilling my promise,” came his answer finally. Seonghwa didn’t bother lowering his voice, he was as comfortable as ever where he started pushing me down towards the ground. And it took me about four seconds to realise what he was doing – and promptly I started blushing.

I allowed myself to hit the floor with my knees, but as soon as his hand came back to grasping me, I started resisting. I threw a stormy glare up back at him and jerked my head to the side. A spark of arousal flashed through his eyes and I saw his lips twitch in a smirk. Anger pulsed through me.

“Why the fuck are you doing this?” it came out a lot tenser, my voice low with all the frustration that has been building up in me since we got to this fucking house. That finally got a reaction out of him – for a split second it was like a shadow passed over his face, eyes darkening with something different than the anticipant arousal I usually saw painted there.

Then the man leant down, his long black hair sliding down shoulders and hanging in the space over me. His otherworldly beautiful face was twisted over me, sneering with all the emotion in the world.

“Because I want to,” he whispered, voice underlined with something beastly, “and because you’ll let me.” Then his hand was back, man-handling my face towards his crotch. I swallowed the shame that bubbled up at his words. I wish I could argue back, but even now I wasn’t pulling away as Seonghwa pushed me against himself, letting out a sigh of relief. He was right, and I didn’t want to bring more attention to it – though he felt the lack of resistance in me.

But as long as we didn’t talk about it, everything was normal, right?

With a bit of alarm I realised that Seonghwa was already hard, pants straining and tenting with his beautiful length. I remembered it well, I even remembered trying to suck it in my hazy state and Seonghwa stopping me, promising me a next time.

Well, here he was. A man of his word.

But even harder was the realisation that I could feel wetness sticking to my panties. I’d slicked up for him, and all it took was a bit of force and some mean words. Humiliation burned in me, and it was making my cunt throb even harder, already crying to be filled with something before he even started doing anything.

So instead of focusing on that, I casted another look towards the man, this one teary and resigned and aroused. Pleading. It was just as much me wanting to get it over with and as it was squirming with anticipation.

Seonghwa took one look at me and scoffed, lips curling into an arrogant grin – though the way arousal swirled in his pupils wasn’t lost on me. As always, he was a man of action. His hands made quick work of the pants fastenings, pulling the fabrics down. I was so close that the moment his cock sprang free it smacked lightly into my cheek. 

Just as I remembered it, it was pretty and long, not as quite thick, but nicely curved. Seonghwa watched me with amusement flicking behind all that lust, entertaining himself by circling his hips so that the head of his cock smeared against my face. I flashed him another irritated glare, if only to see him slowly get more riled up. He was enjoying my rebellion, and as excitement slowly settled into my stomach, I worried I might too.

The door was still wide open, and our families could still be clearly heard from where they sat and conversed while the atmosphere in the bathroom felt almost too quiet. Something silent pulsed between our gazes, something almost like a secret being shared.

Seonghwa caught onto my strategy quick. I wasn’t sure if it was all written in my eyes – I found it a little scary how easily he could read me sometimes, but I could sense the change in him. The moment he decided he wasn’t going to let me play him like he wanted to play me. His hand came back to my face, grasping my jaw tightly like before. But this time his touch swiftly moved. I had only a second of warning before he was stuffing his fingers in my mouth, firmly prying it open and keeping it that way.

There was no supressing the shudder that went through me, neither the tiny moan that clawed its way out of my throat at the roughness of his touch. The man didn’t bother telling me to be quiet, not with that self-satisfied smirk on his face. I bet he couldn’t care less about the kind of mess I made, he probably wouldn’t even give a shit if someone walked straight in and saw. That thought terrified me, but like always when this man was involved – I did nothing to stop him (truly a self-fulfilling prophecy).

He must have decided that there was enough waiting though, because suddenly there was a cock sliding into my mouth. Seonghwa’s hand kept my jaw open to fight against the flinch of surprise, but I still gasped, my eyes flying up just in time to see his beautiful face screwed in relieved pleasure.

Seonghwa gave me a few seconds of calm before he was pulling back and smoothly sliding back in, the cock filling my mouth up completely. A hum of contentment escaped me on instinct and I sank into the feeling, eyes falling shut. Two or three more thrusts came in easy and soft, and then his fingers slipped out of my mouth and gripped my hair instead.

Seonghwa was a relentless lover, all powerful thrusts and rough sighs of pleasure. When he fucked you he possessed you, owned you, held you in ways that moulded you to his satisfaction. And what was more – he wanted to see you know it. This encounter was no different.

He didn’t let me pretend for long. Before I knew it, his strong grip was forcing my head back, pulling until tears pearled up at the corners of my eyes. His hips were moving in languid smooth glides, contrary to the harsh thrusts he was delivering to my mouth. I only took it for a few more moments before I was blinking open to give him another stern glare – which was much harder to do with his cock sliding into my mouth until I felt it hitting the back.

He groaned out the second our eyes met and I choked on the head, pulling back only to thrust even further in with a provoking grin. Upon my gasp a flurry of saliva spilled out my lips, dribbling down my chin and throat. My mouth was so full my head was spinning with it; I was barely breathing, puffs of air escaping me in uneven bursts, and all I could hear were Seonghwa’s stuttering quiet groans. All I could feel was the way he throbbed on my tongue, the way he tasted of salt and musk. Then he was overriding all of my senses.

As he jerked forward to sink into me once more, his hand flexed in my hair and pulled. I felt my eyes roll back into my skull as my mouth stretched open on a moan. Seonghwa’s cock slid in deeper than before and I gagged on it, feeling my mouth and throat so full of him I couldn’t think about anything else. The tears that lined my eyes before were now freely falling down my cheeks. I could see it his gaze that it was exciting him even more, could hear it in the way his breath hitched in the middle of a muted groan. He was watching me with twisted awe, dark satisfaction creeping into the sharp edges of his sneer.

This time when he pulled out he gave me a few seconds to cough and wheeze and swallow, and I felt my knees throb now that I wasn’t getting distracted by everything else. The coldness of the floor was seeping into my bones, the hardness pressing into the soft skin there. The harsh line of the marble counter was digging into the back of my head, right underneath where his hand gripped me. Clinking of cutlery against porcelain carried through the air, the easy conversation just a few metres away still going uninterrupted and creating a steady hum beneath the cacophony of the quiet huffs and groans filling the little room we were in.

We were both breathing hard, but something very different reflected in Seonghwa’s face. Something that pushed my heart into overdrive with sharp notes of unease. Something that wasn’t there the last time I was with him – something that shifted from cruel to obsessive.

When he gripped my jaw again, eyes darkening with lust, I opened my mouth automatically, which pleased him. I didn’t want to like that, didn’t want to like pleasing him – but the way my stomach fluttered betrayed me. I knew, and he knew.

Seonghwa always just seemed to know, no matter how much I hid.

Taking a little step closer he pressed up against me fully, and when his cock slipped into my mouth this time, he barely had to move. With one hand he kept my hair in a tight grip, pushing the back of my head against the counter – and the other slowly migrated towards the porcelain sink above me, gripping it and leaning on it to keep the circling of his hips smooth. On every stroke he filled my mouth to the brim until I felt his sack press into my chin, all messy from the mix of my saliva and his salty bitter precum. I felt the sticky mixture sliding down my throat into my cleavage from where I choked and gagged.

The flavour of him exploded my senses, pushing me down, deeper into the pulsing pleasure.

“Asking me why,” the man suddenly muttered, breathless and wrecked, hands flexing and hips rough, “like you don’t watch me with those begging eyes.” His hand moved from my hair to wipe away the tears sliding down my cheeks. He abruptly kicked up the pace and the hands I’ve kept uselessly buried in the fabric of my dress subconsciously flew out to grab onto his thighs. I heard his voice break off into a tight moan and answered in my own, the flames of my own arousal pulsing through me with revenge out of nowhere – my own lust catching up to me so abruptly it knocked me off my axis.

“Acting like you don’t- don’t know… deep down- …that you’re mine,” he was getting tongue-tied with the exertion, and I knew just how close he was by how chatty he was getting. The truths always rolled off his tongue easier right on the cusp of painting me with his cum.

“B-because no one else- no one else sees you-” He was getting frantic with his pace, hitting the back of my throat with the head of his cock and stuffing it as far as my body could accept it. I was trying my best to breathe through my nose and keep my throat open, but my senses were getting so overwhelmed, my head spinning and dizzy, face all wet and body shaking. My juices dripped down my thighs, cunt pulsing and squeezing, but I didn’t have the capacity to do anything about it, not with how Seonghwa overruled my every thought. I whined, deep and long and needy, and felt his cock throb and jump while he moaned high in the back of his throat. “No one else sees you- like I do.”

Cum exploded into my throat, abruptly and without any warning, thick spurts quickly filling up the whole cavity. I choked on it, but my instinct kicked in and I started swallowing, though thick globs still slipped out of my mouth and joined the mess on my chin and neck, mixing in with the shiny cooling spit. I still felt him throbbing, his whole body tense and shaking over me, quiet whines escaping him as he tried to stifle himself.

Seonghwa held me in place for several long seconds before his body relaxed, and he slipped out of my mouth with a satisfied sigh. I got all of four seconds to take notice of my wheezing breaths and wet face and neck, mouth still knotted with the thick liquid that was now dribbling down all over me. Seonghwa cared for none of that.

His eyes flashed, and then I was pulled up to my feet and onto the counter. My head still spun, mind too gone to be fully coherent, but I knew I shouldn’t even bother closing my legs – not when the man was already prying himself in between them, pushing them roughly to the side.

When Seonghwa kissed me, all I could focus on was his pleased hum at the taste, the shudder that ran through him, the way his heavy breath hit me with wanton sighs while our tongues mingled. One of his hands sneaked down to grab my thigh and the other didn’t waste any more time, plunging right where it wanted to be.

His fingers skirted around the edge of my soaked underwear for a fleeting touch and then two of them were plunged deep inside me. Both of us groaned at that, a little too loudly for the circumstances – probably way louder than we could afford, but I couldn’t muster up the energy to care and I knew Seonghwa just didn’t. His eyes were eating me up, filing the interaction away, hungrily flitting over my face slackened in ecstasy. Our faces were so close our noses brushed each other, hot breaths mingling and sounds of pleasure almost harmonising. Like they were coming from the same source, from some hive-mind that distributed this depraved indulgence equally between us both, no matter who touched who and how. The intimacy of it all, that was what tore my heart up the most – and yet I still couldn’t force myself to look away from his beautiful sharp face coloured with bliss.

The patience from before has dissipated it seemed, because Seonghwa didn’t pause to let me adjust, didn’t even let himself think about. Instead he started up a quick rough pace, ramming into me with force that always left me breathless, pads of fingers a little too happy to find that magic little spot deep inside me and rub it endlessly.

I felt like I was losing my mind, the way the pleasure rushed my bloodstream and my brain, my body could barely process the sudden onslaught of sensations and it shook, shook against him like I was going to tremble apart. Seonghwa’s hand didn’t stop for a single moment, the wetness streaming around his fingers and splattering on my thighs. The squelching sound felt so loud in that little bathroom, especially with how enthusiastic his movements were.

I tried to strain my ears to see whether the others were still entertained by each other, but I couldn’t focus on them, not when Seonghwa’s fingers curled inside me, not when his thumb pushed on my already sensitive clit, not when he dived into the crook of my neck to kiss and nibble on the skin there. I felt my thighs shake, my knees lock, as the wave surmounted, as it grew and grew until I couldn’t take a single breath without risking crying out loud enough for the whole mountain to hear.

My cunt throbbed and pulsated around his digits, swallowing every inch. I was never more aware of how beautiful and strong his hands where than that moment, when they were bringing me to heaven and back in a bathroom barely a hallway away from our families.

Seonghwa chuckled at me as he watched me slowly, deliriously cum on his hand, while I fought to keep my head on straight enough to not moan out. The tension that was mercilessly rising, filling me to the brim and making my legs shake, released in a big boom, like a star exploding into a supernova. Like a star being born. I felt like I was on the cusp of a cosmic event.

My back arched violently and I threw my head back with the ecstasy, eyes screwed shut and mouth hanging wide open with a silent scream. One that I managed to swallow down with the last strands of sanity before it all drained out of me – and all that was left was just a wave after a wave of relief, all pumping out through my throbbing contracting hole.

Seonghwa’s fingers still moved gently, sliding in leisurely to prolong the sensations and to keep me full. I wasn’t ready to be empty, it would take me a while before I came back to myself and realised who I was fooling around with and where, but until then I desperately clenched on them, begging them to stay firmly lodged in.

And Seonghwa indulged me with soft croons, mouth now travelling down my throat to the crook of my neck, smiling and humming into the skin in a manner that was supposed to be calming, but I in my mind couldn’t interpret it as anything but mockery. Soft, sweet mockery that seeped into me, equal parts soothing and maddening.

When I came back to myself I was slumped into his embrace, head aimlessly lolling around on his shoulder while he entertained himself by kissing all the skin he could reach without dislodging us. My brain came back online with a few grumbles before I started slowly pulling away. This wasn’t the time or the place for gentle sweet nothings.

Seonghwa clocked in my change and moved accordingly, but as the bastard he was he took his damn sweet time pulling out, savouring each inch his fingers caressed on the way. Making me feel him till the last second. I ignored him and attempted to stand back on my feet, only to find them weak and shaking

I ostentatiously ignored him as I turned around to check myself in the mirror, but I couldn’t escape his gaze through the reflection. His eyes were like black holes, gravitational pull dragging me into them, devouring me raw. The strange glint returned to them as they roamed freely over my form, taking in my messy make-up and glossy eyes. My face wasn’t wet anymore, but I felt the grime of the dried saliva and cum still sticking to my skin.

When his eyes flitted over the carnage left behind, they sparkled with pride. My stomach swooped, falling through the floor all the way down to hell. I could barely breath under such appraising gaze.

Then they jumped to my eyes, watching me for a second before the intensity of his expression melted off into a little smirk, and he turned and left. Again. Walking through those open doors like nothing happened, like nothing was wrong.

He threw one last dark greedy glance over his shoulder and then he was gone.

I did all I could to not collapse under the strain of all that, shaky hands curling into fists by my hips while I stared at the empty space the man occupied up until a few seconds ago. I could still feel the endorphins rushing through my blood from the orgasm, but now that all was said and done all I could do was continue moving forward.

So instead of breaking down, instead of charging out of that stupid fucking room and punching Seonghwa right in the face in front of everyone still covered in his cum (which is what I kind of wanted to do) I turned my eyes to myself and did my best to salvage what I could while my heart raged in my chest.

Any thought that sneaked into my head I snuffed it out, quieting all discord before it could worm itself under my skin. Almost a terrifying clarity took over me, the silence of my mind making the aftermath of what happening feel even worse. No matter what I did, I couldn’t escape it.

I did it again. I did it. Again. With Seonghwa.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Breathed slow through my nose. Tightened my grip over the cold porcelain, trying to ground myself into the density of the material. Into the solidity of the floor under my feet (solidity of the floor under my knees) where I stood (as I kneeled). I squeezed harder. It wasn’t helping.

My body felt strangely light with the absence of Seonghwa’s possessive hands grabbing onto me, and I almost swayed when I pushed away from the sink to walk back onto the terrace to finish the meal. I was stuck with the image of his dark hungry gaze tattooed onto the back of my eyelids, and any time I pushed my fingers through my hair to straighten it I wanted to tug on it as he did, to remind myself. To relive it. I was sick.

When I sat back down into my seat, it was like stepping into a parallel universe. Even my mother seemed to forget I was gone for such a long time and nobody spared me a single glance. The feast has moved on and most of them were now nibbling on a dessert, but I wanted to eat myself away from this so I reached for the leftover meat and potatoes.

God knows what the conversation was about – I certainly wasn’t listening. I clocked in the buzz and hum of it happening, I heard the sounds of plates and dishes and cutlery, of chewing, laughing, teeth clanking. But I didn’t hear.

Everything just felt so normal. I felt like melting. I wanted to melt. My mother threw me a disapproving glance when I reached for more food (so she did see me) and I ignored her as usual. No one else turned, not even Seonghwa – who was now back to quietly enjoying watching everyone else exist from a safe distance.

His eyes didn’t stray to me a single time. I huffed quietly and ate with maddening anger burning me from inside out.

He didn’t look at me again, not that evening and not the day after when we left. I burned.

It was a week and a half later when I started realising something was wrong.

Yujun begun spending a smidge more time at home, the reasons for which were a complete mystery to me at that time – and not like I cared much, since he kept out of my way for the bigger part (which itself was strange). I did notice how he seemed to watch me with a touch of suspicion though. Nothing specific, just… mistrust. At whatever I did. However I moved.

Each day a catalogue of all the things he could feel suspicious about ran through my mind. Did Seonghwa say something? Did he notice anything during the hunting trip? Did he find out about the pills? Was this about the wedding night?

There were too many things I had kept from him, too many things I did that were wrong, and the possibility of him finding out about any of them was frankly terrifying. Yujun was unpredictable and violent, and that was scarier than Seonghwa’s uncertain threats.

And when he came into the bedroom to sleep, even smelling of alcohol, he barely ever bothered me – not even once did he ask for sex, and that was completely unprecedented for my husband. The little pills I’ve grown so reliant on when dealing with him sat untouched hidden in my closet and somehow that made me feel more worried than when I used them on him almost nightly. It felt like the calm right before the storm.

I kept going on with my days, of course I did. What other choice did I have? Yujun’s eyes followed me everywhere, as soon as he got home, and shadows passed over them, darkened them (they were nothing like Seonghwa’s, nothing like his hungry dark orbs). I saw in his gaze how he was trying to figure something out. Like I was a puzzle.

Honestly, it was the most brain activity I’ve ever seen him do, and we’ve been married for almost ten months at that point.

But not knowing what it was that set him off put me on edge. I had no idea what to hide from him, what not to do. Not that there was anything to do about anything concerning Seonghwa. The man went back to his games and hasn’t spoken to me since we left their summer mansion. Not even a glance on the way out, like his fingers weren’t still wrinkled from my pussy. Not even one of his infamous smirks.

It made me strangely upset. Made my heart feel strangely heavy.

Mrs. Park has recently taken up the hobby of making very ugly jewellery, and of course, had to turn that into a ‘small home-run business’, acting as if her husband wasn’t one of the richest men in all of Korea and didn’t finance the whole thing. My own mother in her infinite wisdom thought that having to spend my days with my mother-in-law would finally pressure me into pregnancy – since there was no way she wouldn’t be asking every day, at this point I was surprised she wasn’t full on asking about her son’s dick performance and cum consistency (actually, maybe that was a good thing, because I had that kind of information about the wrong son) – but she took it on herself to rope me into helping her.

God damn me for ever telling my mother I found arts and crafts relaxing.

So now I spent my afternoons sitting in her dust pink saloon toying with pearls and pulling them on strings while listening to her complain about every person that’s ever crossed her path, and desperately ignoring all her attempts to probe into my marriage.

And even then I haven’t seen Seonghwa once.

I made the mistake of asking her about him one time and her expression as she told me he was just ‘busy’ was enough to make me not ask again. Not that I really wanted to know about him (I told myself), but just like before – his sudden disappearance after all the shit he said during our last time together was unnerving me.

What was his plan here? What the fuck did I get myself into?

With dodging Yujun, silently trying to cut out my mother’s bullshit out of my life, having to wait hand and foot on my mother-in-law and fearing what Seonghwa was going to do, I felt like losing my fucking mind. Within ten months my life spiralled completely out of control.

I was nothing but a pawn to them, nothing but a vessel with purpose. Get the family money, birth a child. Take revenge.

I lived in a house with a man I didn’t trust and feared what he could be capable of. I kept putting these misplaced feelings of sympathy on Seonghwa, when he didn’t give a shit about me any more than all the other people in my life.

He was not my friend. He wasn’t even on my side – Seonghwa was always on his own side, and no one else was allowed there. No one sees you like I do, my ass.

No, we were both alone together. That’s all that was. I was handy to him. A useful toy. And just as he said – I’d always let him. Because – just like he said – no one else saw me. So I just kept going, stewing in it all, each day almost physically feeling a bit of my sanity escape me.

And then one day I realised what was going on with Yujun.

All it took was coming home earlier from his mother’s house and going up the stairs too quietly. I knew the second I saw him staggering out of a guest room with his pants half undone – I knew. He started coming home more often because I was rarely there. And some poor maid most likely ended up paying for that.

History does repeat itself, as Kendrick Lamar once said. Sometimes it doesn’t need a reason. He hated his brother for being a bastard, and here he was – tempting the same fate.

He didn’t notice me – because of course he didn’t, he wasn’t the most aware person on his best days, and lately it’s been weird between us. I was half-hidden behind our very decorative banister too, which was just pompous and pretentious enough to hide me out of the clear line of sight while still giving me ample opportunity to peek.

Yujun disappeared into his office. I got up from the stairs and sprinted into the guest room.

I hated being right. Well, at least that day in that instance I did. She was a pretty young thing, with big fearful eyes and long straight hair, so thin I was worried she was going to faint on me when she noticed my form looming in the door like a cryptid. She looked weary though, holding onto her loosened uniform with something heavy settled in her limbs.

For her, it was a day of realisations too, it seemed. And a wife coming home just seconds after her husband fucked you, that’s a bad one. Not many great outcomes out of that one.

She looked to me with tears, the panic taking over her features as she jumped to conclusions about what I’d no doubt do to her for this. I guess that rich ladies weren’t the best clients when their husbands turned out to be cheating bastards unable to keep their hands to themselves. If I was anyone else, she’d be right to be terrified.

But I wasn’t like Mrs. Park that even after years of getting rid of her husband’s unscrupulous affairs and intimidating away poor women that found themselves in the crosshairs of their broken marriage, still ended up with a bastard child always mocking her failure.

And I wasn’t like my mother either – that didn’t speak about it, but even after all the talk she did about me having to sleep with my husband still sighed with relief when my father chose to enter someone else’s bedroom. I guess that she found paying his affair partners away easier than fucking him herself – not that I’d wish that kind of fate on anybody.

“Did he hurt you?” were the first words out of my mouth, and I saw her form tremble. She shook her head once, unsurely, and then twice more with conviction. Tears spilled down her cheeks and her mouth was glued shut with terror. I hoped my own disgust over my husband wasn’t overshadowing my judgement, but I worried for her.

“Are you sure?” This time she didn’t move, just stood there and stared at me with devastated resignation creeping into her eyes. When her lips finally unsealed, all that came out was a sob.

“Am I getting fired for this?” Her cries were getting loud enough to draw unwanted attention, so I quickly turned to slam the door shut. Yujun would now either be drinking or having his post-nut nap anyway, but I didn’t want to risk him hearing us have this conversation. It would be for the best if he didn’t even know I was home yet.

I shushed as gently as I could with the urgency that now ran through my veins, and she immediately shut up, still waiting for the big blow out. Walking closer I took her in – she really couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. She was a new face too, I haven’t registered her around the house much yet, way too used to the older Mrs. Kim that worked for us for all those long, long months.

“What’s your name?” I wanted to get the most important thing out of the way first, and slowly build up to this conversation to ease her mind a bit, but I wasn’t sure how much I could actually get through to her.

“Ha-eun,” she sniffled as she said it, hand going to wipe away the mess on her face, and I handed her a handkerchief. Ha-eun still eyed me with suspicion, but she seemed to have calmed down significantly. Her uniform was still a little messed up from where my husband presumably got his hands on her, and it made for a miserable picture.

“Ha-eun, are you alright?” The girl just kept staring at me, like she expected this all to be a trap, but eventually she nodded. It didn’t seem very convincing, but I didn’t want to push her too much until she fully calmed down. Which didn’t seem to be something she was capable of in that moment.

“I can’t lose this job,” she suddenly sobbed out again, shaking hands grabbing onto me like a follower onto a messiah, praying hands begging and tugging, “my mother-“

“Ha-eun!” I raised my voice lightly and the girl stopped her crying for a moment to look at me, big wet eyes expectantly watching my face for clues. I tried to smile at her, just to be reassuring. Based on her trembling form, I wasn’t sure how successful I was. “You’re not losing your job.”

Once again she nodded and then as if the words caught up to her, she did once more, lips shaking to hold in her distress. She was a bit taller than me, so when I grabbed her shoulders to look properly into her eyes I lost a bit of the effect having to look up, but she honestly looked like a drowned kitten, so it didn’t matter much at all.

“I’m going to ask for the last time,” I didn’t try to sound threatening, but it was surprisingly difficult to word things well when we both were running on very different but definitely very intense emotions, and I didn’t want to push if it turned out she really did like him, “Did he… push you? Or pressure you?” After all, just because I’d rather set myself on fire than touch him didn’t mean everyone else thought that too.

For a few tense silent seconds I felt like the asshole in the situation. Maybe it said more about me than it did about Yujun the way my mind immediately jumped there. I guess he did have a certain charm to him (if you didn’t inspect him much closer) – I could see how he could mess with a young girl’s heart, promising her riches and comfort and a few sweet words, even though he constantly smelled like booze and cigarettes. The Park genes and bank accounts definitely did a lot of heavy lifting, but still. For a split second a certain young handsome face framed by long dark hair flitted into my mind (his fingers in my hair, his hands on my hips) and I shook my head to dislodge the claws he sunk into me, blinking the unbidden memories away.

But then the girl in front of me started crying again, and my heart broke for her.

“I- I can’t lose this job…” That was answer enough. I shook with the sudden uproar of rage taking over me. In my own home. I was sharing a bed with this man. Lived in the same house. He was supposed to be getting me pregnant (I was so glad he wasn’t – I never wanted to carry his spawn). I could scratch myself out of my own skin with the crawling feeling of being married to someone like him.

I had to put my own disgust on pause though, because witnessing my meltdown was the last thing Ha-eun needed right now.

Still I couldn’t stop a very worrying thought from fighting its way to the forefront of my mind.

Yujun fucking someone else in our house and coming to our bed already sated, not asking me to fuck him – that meant he knew to a certain extent that I had been lying to him about our sex life – since he stopped trying to get anything out of me. He probably didn’t know about the pills (otherwise he’d already make a scene) but he must have known I was somehow manipulating him. He most likely also assumed I was getting it elsewhere.

That’s why the suspicious glances. I was right – this was all going to crash down and burn around me faster than I was ready for. I had to do something – but what? That was the golden question.

I wasn’t fucking built for this.

“You’re not losing your job,” I managed to push out through the turmoil, mind half gone, and the girl latched onto that, latched onto me, like it was a saving grace. She thanked me, she thanked me for what she thought was me letting her get assaulted two bedrooms over from my own bed.

“I’ll get you a new job,” I promised, grasping onto her hands so she couldn’t pull away in shock, “a better one, away from all this.” More mistrust, two steps back after the progress we just made. Fear. But I didn’t have time to deal with that right now.

I had to figure out how to help us both.

The next few days were tense in the house, tenser than ever before. I called Mrs. Park and let her know I wasn’t feeling well and not wanting to make her sick I’d stay home for some time until I was sure I wasn’t contagious anymore. She hardly seemed to care, offering me barely a half of a sentence of reassurance before hanging up to go do her own thing. I kind of wanted to cuss her out, but her not caring was the better option of the two. She could have been showing up on my doorstep with chicken broth or some shit. Even though it stung a little, I still had to count my blessings that she wasn’t some helicopter parent.

Yujun was the bigger problem currently. Sometimes during the first two days of us awkwardly hanging around the house he figured out I found out about the affair and now was getting pissy about me cock-blocking him. He stomped around the house throwing hateful glances around like a toddler, embarrassing both himself and me. When he knew I was home, he was locked in his office. He didn’t sleep in the bedroom anymore (I had no idea how to let him know that wasn’t a punishment).

I had no idea what he thought he was going to accomplish with this, but to a man who probably always got what he wanted was throwing tantrums most likely the only way to show his displeasure about not getting his way.

The thing I really struggled with was delivering on my promise though. As I grew up, I cut contact with a lot of people I used to hang around when younger, so there weren’t many ‘friends’ I could ask for a favour and know that I’d be handing Ha-eun over into good hands. My parents were out of the question, because my mother wouldn’t let me deal with it this way. She’d make Ha-eun’s life living hell until she herself wanted nothing to do with any of us. I could never tell her why I wanted our maid to go work for them, and she’d never accept a new person without an explanation.

I messaged Yunho, as at the time he was the only person I was sure about having some manners around the circles in which I ran. He texted back within hours that their house was full, but he’d ask around. A polite version of ‘no, and don’t bother me with it anymore’.

I stubbornly ignored the fact that there was a person I knew that I was decently close to (if you could call us that) who owned a literal hotel, but where I stood right now – I’d rather chew off my own hand than to contact him. It didn’t take very long for me to get desperate though.

Yunho did actually end up asking around, which pleasantly surprised me, but most of the people around us couldn’t care less or didn’t want to get involved in a drama like this. Because a woman getting rid of a maid from her house could only mean one thing, and the fact that I was so vocal about it was seen as very embarrassing and humiliating. They’d for sure laugh about me in private, but wouldn’t do shit outside the bounds of their very comfortable lives.

I knew I couldn’t push it any further just a short few days later though, when while walking down a hallway I heard Ha-eun protesting to someone. With my hackles immediately raised, I stomped over to the room it was coming from.

Our living room was spacy, full of air and light, with minimal décor. I actually kind of hated it, but it wasn’t my house, not really – not in all the ways that mattered, and I didn’t exactly care for re-decorating, so I just let it be. Ha-eun was clearly just in the process of dusting one of the decorative bookshelves when Yujun approached her. He was standing firm and not swaying at all, which honestly surprised me to see. I couldn’t off the top of my head remember when I last saw him closer to sober than tipsy.

The maid saw me first, cause my husband was angled more to have his back to me, and she immediately fell silent, sizing me up with a guilty look on her face and reflected in her teary eyes. It took Yujun all of three seconds of the awkward silence to realise what was happening, and when he turned around he was already scowling with anger.

My gaze slid down his form. He was gripping her wrist, not very gently. As he stood there, stewing in his anger, I shot one pointed glare at his hand, and he dropped it. The room was so quiet I could hear all of us breathe, as we just stood there and glared at each other. Then Yujun just stalked off, breezing past me with a stormy expression on his face, not saying a single word.

I waited until I heard the door to his office slam shut, the boom reverberating through the whole house, before I redirected my attention to the young woman. She was shaking, holding her wrist. There were red imprints on it. I wanted to storm upstairs right after Yujun and beat him to a pulp.

“Go home for today,” I told her, as calmly as possible, and she nodded, “Don’t come in tomorrow. I’ll text you the details of your new job during the afternoon.” She nodded again, this time more fearful, but didn’t argue with me over it, something very resigned settling in her features. I figured that at this point risking losing this job without having a fall-back was the better option to dealing with the man.

The house was eerily silent while I got myself ready to leave, and I casted a few curious glances towards the closed locked door my husband disappeared behind. I was getting really fucking tired of policing everything that happened in these halls, and the prospect of this being the rest of my life made me want to burn it all down. For now though, I’d keep that in the arsenal of options.

As I was walking out of the house knowing full well where I was going, to who, and what was going to happen, I really couldn’t fucking believe I ended up having to resort to that. I kind of hated it, actually – because it felt like this was truly unescapable, like Seonghwa was right when he looked at me like he was inevitable. I hated proving him right. But if he could use me to his means, I could definitely use him for mine. At the end of the day, he did want something from me, and I could do something with that.

I haven’t been to Seonghwa’s hotel since that fateful night, but still as I walked inside the restaurant seemed almost uncannily familiar. I really didn’t want to think about that day though, so I pushed those thoughts aside and steam-rolled towards the reception.

I was worried whether Seonghwa would even be here, and what would I even tell the poor guy sitting behind the counter. How do you storm into a hotel and demand to see and speak to the owner? I kind of wished I’d exchanged numbers with him back before everything happened (though during these months I found myself grateful for not having that connection to him, I couldn’t imagine what he’d be sending me), but now suddenly asking Mrs. Park for his contact info wouldn’t go unnoticed. It’d be weird, and she’d be asking why I wanted to speak to him. No one ever wanted to speak to Seonghwa. No one ever asked for him. He just was everywhere, ready.

And it must have been some sort of black magic, some sort of a cursed sixth sense – because as I was walking up to the reception counter, preparing myself to demand to speak to him – there he was. Casually standing around talking to one of the employees. As I said – just there, ready. Like he sensed I’d be searching for him. Like he knew my life devolved into spinning in his orbit.

It was strange how quickly things could descend into madness – and I haven’t even interacted with the man for weeks at a time.

He had a small soft smile on his face, the polite kind you put on when speaking to people you didn’t know well. No matter what I thought of the man, I had to give that to him – he knew how to wear that mask. How to pretend he was human, just like everyone around him. When he looked at you with that pretty face wearing a gentle smile and spoke softly, you’d trust him with anything.

Seonghwa was what people imagined the devil to be. And I felt crazy for being the only one aware of it, like he was a blind spot. Nobody wanted to see, but I had to – I had no other choice. He showed me, he chose me to know.

The moment his eyes caught mine he was immediately tuned to me, face open and curious, painted with shock. At least I could say I surprised him once.

I walked up, and not bothering with any pleasantries just said: “I need to speak to you.”

All of the employees standing around eyed us with curiosity and interest, probably not used to their boss being spoken to in such manner. I bet most of them didn’t even know who I was, that I was technically his family. Seonghwa’s only answer was his smile shifting a little into the vaguely savage grin I was more used to, and he simply gestured for me to follow him. I did, still not saying anything further.

Seonghwa’s office was sleek and elegant, decorated minimally in mostly black and white with some warm accents to offset the emptiness. It fit him well – pretty but hollow. We both walked in confidently, acting like we were nothing more than simple acquaintances. I hoped my face didn’t betray anything, but I knew the man could probably see the anger swirling somewhere deep within me.

He knew very well what he did and what were the circumstances we parted on, it was all written into his amused smirk as he lead me down the hall.

The lock on the door clicked quietly, but I clocked it immediately, already accustomed to how he did things. This was his turf. He’d close and lock the door. No one interesting to catch the show here – quite the opposite actually. Just a bunch of people trying to make it through their shifts.

Seonghwa was already grinning as he sat down behind his dark desk, a knowing expression settled on his face. I wondered how he knew it’d end up this way. But I guess that when you have no one else you inevitably end up going to the one person you know will indulge you, no matter what.

“What can I help you with?” the cheer in his voice kind of undermined the way he tried to sound professional and business-like, and I fought off a sneer at the blatant display of giddiness. Seeing him, what I wanted to do next required to swallow down my pride, but I could do it.

It definitely wasn’t the worst thing he’s ever made me swallow.

“I need a favour,” I told him point-blank, finding no reason for beating around the bush, “No questions asked.” The man hummed, folding his hands on top of the sleek surface. He gestured for me to go on.

“What kind of favour?” I realised this might have been the only time we actually had a conversation without any sexual undertones, and the normalcy of his tone was almost weirding me out.

“You’ll employ a maid here,” I laid it out for him, giving him no space to protest (not that I thought he would, this was prime opportunity for him), “with proper rates. A good stable job.” That had Seonghwa snorting sardonically, eyes twinkling with condescension. I wasn’t sure whether it was aimed at me or Yujun, but it still made the fire within me roar with barely contained rage.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” he drawled out in that awful mocking voice, “How pregnant is she?”

“Hopefully not at all,” I glared back at him and he smirked right back.

“I see, so just preventative?” he asked jovially, white teeth flashing me with that beastly smile he so often wore.

“I couldn’t care less about what he does and with who,” I fired back immediately, feeling myself get all worked up over this again, “I’m worried about her safety.” He just hummed again, watching me for a few tense seconds, before he opened his arms wide as if stretching them.

“You know what I want in return,” he spoke it so smoothly, like it was the easiest thing in the universe. I supposed to him it might have been, because he demanded. He wouldn’t be hit with the consequences nearly as bad. I frowned at him.

“Is there ever anything else that you think about?”

“Not with you in my sight.” His expression was playful, with a small grin pulling at his lips. Was he fucking flirting right now? Under the intensity of his gaze I couldn’t help but blush slightly at the words, but immediately cursed myself for even listening to such bullshit.

“Do I though? Know what you want?” I shot back, walking a little away from the table to look at the shelves with displayed trinkets. It was mostly photos of Seonghwa with influential people and certificates and awards the hotel won, but there was the stray flower or a piece of art. “It doesn’t feel that way to me.”

To my side the man hummed thoughtfully, leaning comfortably in his chair. “I always thought I was rather clear about that,” he rumbled back, voice taking on a little more seductive tone. But I willed myself not to buckle, not today.

“There’s a lot of people to fuck and entertain you, I’m sure they’d indulge you,” I tried and failed to keep the bitterness out of my tone, and saw Seonghwa frown slightly.

“None of them are you,” he said plainly, like it was the most obvious thing in the universe.

And now it was my turn to scoff and laugh at him with scorn, lips curled in a way that betrayed just how he affected me, just how mad I was going. “Please,” I sneered at him, sharp teeth on display, “don’t make me laugh.”

Seonghwa looked at me wordlessly for a few silent moments, processing the rawness of my emotion in the face of his desire, and then he patted the table in front of him, leaning back into his chair and spreading his legs wide. I watched him for a moment.

“Come on, come here,” Seonghwa said finally when I didn’t move towards him. Seconds ticked by as we were locked in a stalemate, just watching each other – but I never saw his resolve waiver. He’d already become so confident I wouldn’t refuse he didn’t even seem to be worried about whether I’d come to him or not. I tried not to think about that as I finally moved towards the empty space with a sigh.

His hands were on my hips before my ass even hit the wood of the desk, where I leant on it in between his open legs. They reverently caressed my sides, sliding up and down gently and with devotion that put me off, knocked me slightly off kilter. I felt his warmth seep into me, the weight of his hands comforting in a way that unnerved me. I knew then, that I missed it. I felt too loose without him holding me, untethered to the ground.

I’d come to the realisation that I liked the dizziness stemming from his scorching touch.

I watched him as he lost himself to the feel of me under his hands, eyes glued to where he touched, half-lidded and wanting, shrouded in a mist of something almost adoring. My heart sped up under his attention, as it always did – and I was getting tired of the never-ending cycle of shame and guilt that would be no doubt hitting later.

He was either a damned good actor, or this was spinning out of control way too fast (like everything else in my life).

“What are you doing?” I asked the man, and the exhaustion came through in my voice, “What is all of this really about?” At first it seemed like he didn’t hear me at all. He sat still, hands in motion and gaze trained to them, like he didn’t register anything that happened outside of that. Then his hand slowly slid over to my lower abdomen, in a gesture that was by now awfully familiar and made my heart quiver with some sort of macabre suspense.

“Family,” he answered simply, eyes rising to meet mine slowly (so open and wide and telling), “Revenge.” He kept the eye contact, to a point it made me uncomfortable – and yet I couldn’t pull myself away from him, couldn’t break the connection that was struck up between us. “But you already knew that.”

“Revenge…” I tried out how the word tasted on my tongue. Like ash. Like heartbreak. Loneliness. I looked at the man and he was still watching me, steadily returning my gaze. His eyes almost felt hollow in a sense, and I felt that terrible surge of pity again.

“You want a family?” I didn’t even know what I was saying, didn’t know where I was steering this conversation – just that it was all dangerous territory. I should have already known by then. Give him an inch, and he takes a mile (and gets you pregnant). Seonghwa didn’t answer my question though, not really. He just leant in into my stomach, putting his weight on me. I fought off the instinct to bury my hands into his long locks, but I couldn’t stop them from gently settling down on his shoulders. He kept looking at me with those huge eyes, clouded with something I couldn’t quite name, and stayed stubbornly silent. I sighed.

“Why me?” That was the million-dollar question. Why me? This felt beyond what happened between us that first night. That was revenge. Whatever was happening now was a whole different beast.

“You see me.” Something scalding hot poured into my veins, like molten gold – and I couldn’t tell whether it was dread or delight.

Before I could process his words, come to terms with my whole world tilting starboard, Seonghwa was standing up. His body moulded over mine, nose bumping into my stomach and my breasts as he went up, momentarily burying into my neck before his face was suddenly all up in mine.

From this up close I could fully take in his striking features. The blemishless honey-toned skin, dark chocolate eyes, sharply cut cheekbones. The intensity of him burned from here, and I loved getting scorched. I loved the heat.

His hand came up to slowly, gently caress my face, and I let him. I held still for him, lulled in by my treacherous heart. This was all doomed, all of it and both of us. I didn’t even know if he was telling the truth. I never knew if he was telling the truth – that was the trade he was in. A double agent, always working towards some deeper harsher goal.

Nice words were weapons. Seonghwa knew how to wield them.

His thumb passed underneath my eye, pressed lightly into the soft, thin skin. His lips parted, tongue darting out to wet them. He watched the path of his fingers, hypnotised.

“Your eyes,” Seonghwa whispered to me sweetly, “they don’t look through me.” I sighed again.

“Seonghwa-“ But he didn’t let me speak – didn’t let me finish that thought. He was pressing in closer (I wasn’t even aware that was still possible), and our eyes met again.

“Just let me have this,” he said simply and then he was leaning in, lips sliding across my cheek until they found the corner of my lips and settled there gently. I had a split second to make my decision – and I did. My heart trembled and for a brief flash I thought – what about the things I want to have?

But still it wasn’t all that hard to turn my face slightly until our mouth slotted into each other, fitted like they were always meant to end up there. I was used to unyielding ferocity when it came to kissing Seonghwa, but this time he slowly dipped his tongue in my mouth as if tasting me. I matched his energy, I always did (or I tried to), and savoured him.

He kissed me like you’d enjoy fancy wines – sipping leisurely, experiencing, dipping yourself in slowly, submerging your senses in one at a time. Digging for sweetness, appreciating the sourness. I sighed and hummed into his mouth, and he swallowed that down too, like appetisers.

When his hands came up to my thighs to push me onto his table fully, I was already going myself without even needing his direction. He trained me well (history did repeat itself) – I found myself in the same position as on his father’s table all those weeks ago. But this time it was Seonghwa’s office, with his door locked and determination to see this through at an all-time high.

I also didn’t waste a second and threaded my hands into his silken shirt, pulling him with me as I used the momentum to lay down on the table. Seonghwa followed loyally, gracefully bending down to loom over me without breaking the kiss. The only evidence of the movement was the deep breath he released into my mouth as his tongue suddenly dipped deeper, and I moaned quietly into him. I felt his lips stretch into a satisfied smile, fingers digging deeper into my flesh where he clutched at me.

Feeling generous, I went with the flow without waiting for his cues, keeping him glued to me as the kiss devolved more and more into something messy and wet and loud. He shifted closer and our bodies aligned well enough for his hardening bulge to press into my core – so I did what any rational person would do in that situation. Let go of all thought and went to wrap my legs around his hips to pull him closer, feel him drag against me.

The man only chuckled in response, a light sound that carried a hint of arrogance to it (a sound I was beginning to crave), and pushed my legs away. Before I could react he was dislodging from me, pushing me into the table as he straightened and looked down at me. Excitement fizzled through me and I found his eyes easily – they read as much lust as mine must have, dripping with intent.

In a sense, it was liberating. To let go of everything, leave the world behind a door and just feel. I turned off all the things in me that related to anything in the outside world, and let him dip me into debauchery once more.

“You’re such a lazy girl,” Seonghwa whispered, teasing, “You have it too easy with me, don’t you know? I spoil you too much…” His hands slowly moved up my sides to my breasts, each grabbing one roughly, just feeling their weight. I gasped at the touch and my back arched up on instinct, pushing myself more into him. He chuckled again, this time much darker.

“Always just get on your back or your knees,” each word was underlined with a squeeze until I twisted underneath him, desperate, “Always let me do all the work. Do you think you deserve to have it so easy again?” I was barely paying attention to his words, instead focused on how his lips moved – their tantalising drawl, the way they curled so deviously, sensuously. Everything about him was so indecent, so seductive – it was enough to drive a saint mad.

And I was the farthest thing from a saint.

When I failed to respond to him, Seonghwa smirked – like that was the excuse he was waiting for – and stepped back, completely disentangling our limbs and bodies. I put all of my will into not whining for him pathetically. That would inflate his ego, and I wasn’t about to contribute to that. I already did too much for this man’s confidence.

“Get up, darling,” Seonghwa ordered, strict and no-nonsense, like a man expecting to be obeyed no matter what. And I was nothing if not eager to please. I was on my feet quickly, so quickly that my head spun for a few brief seconds and I had to clutch the table for support.

Seonghwa either didn’t notice or he didn’t care, because he was more occupied with pushing me out of the way and situating himself to sit and lay down on the table himself. With his height it was a bit of an awkward position – his feet brushed the floor in an arch that didn’t look very comfortable and his head hung over the edge on the other side, but he looked perfectly comfortable if the shit-eating grin on his face was anything to go by.

One of his hands swiftly patted his lap and he winked at me. “Come, climb on top, doll.” He wanted me to ride him on his office desk. I felt my cheeks heat up, but I still wordlessly undid my skirt and let it drop to the ground. Seonghwa’s sparkling eyes glided over the exposed skin of my legs, but I didn’t give him much chance to ogle before I was propping myself up on the table and settling down in his lap. His hands automatically shot out to grab onto my hips, and in this position I was directly on top of his now hard-rock cock.

Before I could stop myself I was gyrating on him, chasing the faint sparks of pleasure it provided. I was too tired that day to pretend I wasn’t enjoying myself, or to fight this out of some misplaced loyalty and shame. I spent months escaping this and here I was anyway, back in his grasp – so why should I care for propriety at this point?  

I set up a nice rhythm and just let myself go, let myself drown in that tidal wave of looseness of muscles and limbs that pleasure always brought on, with my head empty of all except his hands on me.

“W-what are you even talking about?” I stuttered out, eyes closed and head thrown back, living through the feeling of Seonghwa’s hands on my hips dragging me onto his cock again and again, “See you? I ca-can barely stand to look at you.” That drew a deep rumbly chuckle out of the man, so low I felt the vibrations reverberate through me where I sat on top of him.

I didn’t know why I felt the need to return to this now, but the unfinished conversation niggled at my insides – we were so close to some monumental revelation, right on the doorstep of a revolution. I couldn’t let him kiss it away.

“That’s a lie, darling, and you know it,” he purred back at me, draping me in sweet velvet as his hands moulded me to his liking, “Your eyes can’t ever stop following me when you’re with me. It’s exhilarating, knowing how much you need to see me.”

And the thing was – he was right. I never did not look at him. As soon as he entered a room, I was aware of him from beginning till end, of every little thing he did or said, even of how he breathed. How he looked when happy, when sad, when angry, when mischievous. He was like a lure – your eyes just couldn’t pull away.

A fly in a spider’s web, spun round and round and round, dazed with poison and consumed, slowly, deliciously. That’s how it felt to look into his eyes.

And yet he was right – I did it every single time.

“Then what was all the shit during the hunting trip about?” I asked breathlessly, hips stuttering as I was getting distracted again, “All the talk you did then, about owning me, huh? You always humiliate me. Scorch me and then walk away, make me feel like a piece of shit, make me feel angry. Make me hate you.”

“Welcome to my family, doll,” he sneered at me sardonically, hurt pulling at his features. So much pain and anger in one person, it almost seemed impossible – and yet here I was, face to face with it.

He beckoned me with two fingers, and like a puppet on a string I leant in towards him, settling down on him chest to chest. The scowl disappeared as quickly as it came, melted into a teasing grin while both of his hands slowly crept up my outer thigh until he was playing with the seat of my panties with his arms wrapped around the back of my thighs.

All incentive to finish the conversation left me, burying those uneasy feelings away under the wave of desire that consumed me.

I felt my core throb and squeeze at his touch, anticipatory and already slick where his fingers met with bare sensitive skin. I shuddered on him at the feather-light teasing touch, the way he skimmed around the wet pink flesh without really committing to a place to touch to drive me insane, and I throbbed even harder as another wave of slick rushed out of me.

Seonghwa took his sweet time coating his fingers in my wetness, playing around, occasionally pressing on my clit to hear me keen into his neck. The wave of want was rising in me, nothing in me but the mindless desire to feel full of him, for him to quench that need to feel pleasure from any touch he’d bestow on me.

My hips moved almost on their own, shuffling and straining to lead his fingers where I wanted them, but they stayed ever so elusive. I heard the man chuckle into my hair and rose my head to look at him.

The look in his eyes was much darker than the playful grin stretched on his lips, and that’s how I knew he’d cave in soon. Because no matter how much Seonghwa tried to keep his cool and stay in control, I saw how easily he slipped into the haze, how he lost himself in lust when a wet pussy was presented to him.

He couldn’t ever resist the pull.

And just as I thought – the moment our eyes met and the arousal flared between our gazes, his fingers were very decidedly sliding through my folds and slipping inside. He started off with two right away, and even though I’ve been getting wetter by the second, it took a bit of work to stuff them both inside – but then he took up a slow, intense pace, stroking inside with firm motions that left me feeling how the waking fire begun licking up at my tummy.

I sighed and moaned, eyes falling shut with the surge of sensations. I let my head fall back down onto his chest, burrowing into his crisp clean shirt and drowning in his spicy woodsy perfume that overwhelmed my senses.

Relief. All I could feel was immense relief, wrapped nicely in a touch of building ecstasy as Seonghwa gradually sped up his hands, fucking into me with more and more force. My pussy squeezed around the digits, felt every inch, ridge, knob. I loved the way they reached so deep inside, and I let him know by moaning out louder every time they bumped into the bundle of nerves deep inside of me, while the palm of his hand pressed down on my clit with every thrust.

I wasn’t sure if it was by the position, where I was all spread for him with my legs splayed wide over his hips with my back arched and ass on display, or by the situation itself (or because it’s been so long since I last had him), but I could feel the orgasm building in me faster than I was used to. It was honestly kind of humiliating how easily he could break me down in the most primal and primitive way the moment he got his paws on me, with nothing but a couple of well-aimed strokes.

Seonghwa didn’t seem to plan to let me have this without him though, because as soon as he felt me tightening around him as my moans carried higher and higher, he pulled his fingers out. I raised my head immediately with a disgruntled moan and it was enough to just catch a glimpse of his self-satisfied smirk before his arm sneaked around my waist and pulled me closer to his neck.

I was confused for a moment, head buried in his hair and taking in the scent of him, when I felt his hand messing around somewhere on his lap and I realised – he was trying to open his pants without pushing me away. The dress pants perfectly hugged his waist (a man like him wouldn’t wear anything that wasn’t hand-tailored to him) so I didn’t even have the sounds of a belt buckle to go off of. I only knew he succeeded when he moved both his hands down and started shuffling around to pull the pants down.

It was actually quite funny, and I released a few amused chuckles at his struggle. Which did not go unnoticed.

Before I registered him moving, I was being pulled roughly to sit on his very naked and very hard cock, the length throbbing underneath my wet core. The moment I could get any kind of stimulation again, the amusement was long forgotten and I didn’t waste a second and started writhing on top of him, jerking my hips unevenly back and forth and drenching us both in my wetness.

A half of a strangled moan escaped Seonghwa before he caught himself, hands shooting out to grab onto the meat of my hips to stop the movement. His nails dug into the skin there with the strength of his grasp, the sting heightening the pleasure and making everything richer. For a brief moment our eyes met, his darkened with so much potent lust I shuddered, and then he was pulling me up to get me on his cock.

It took a few tries and both of us were already half mindless at this point, but when I felt him slip inside it was like finally getting a sip of cold water after wandering through the desert for days, weeks. Months. Almost nine months.

It was like coming home, and I could cry with the relief.

I went to grab onto his shoulders but was met with heated fabric instead – and suddenly came to the realisation that he hasn’t undressed again. Agitated, I started tearing into his buttons, probably taking some out with the force I used to open his shirt and slide it off his shoulders and arms until the sleeves hung over the side of the table.

Seonghwa’s beautiful sculpted chest came into view, and I remembered back to that night – when we were in a similar position and he buried himself in me, in kissing me, marking me, biting me. My hands reverently glided over the darkly flushed skin, worshipping all that deadly strength hidden under the softness and grace, and the man let me. He watched me, hands pulling me firmly onto his lap, as I was swallowed into that haze.

And when I leant down to lick at the skin, he didn’t stop me. With every tentative flicker of my tongue, every shy kiss or a shallow bite I distributed, he sighed gently and stayed still, taking my worship with impatient grace.

The room was quiet except for our pronounced breathing, nothing seeping in from outside – not through the door, not through the walls. Our eyes met, my hips jumped, he groaned. There goes the silence, I thought as I swirled my hips on him, savouring the feeling of his cock lodged as deep inside me as it could go.

The table creaked and for a split second I worried if it could take us, but then Seonghwa was using his hands to help me move in little circles, subtly pulling me faster, faster, until my brain felt scrambled at how his tip grazed and pressed on the delicious little spot all the way inside me. Neither of us said anything, but neither of us broke the eye contact either. We just moved, instinct overriding all else.

His scalding hot skin underneath my body was beginning to burn into me in such a familiar way I sighed at the sensation. I closed my eyes and let the press of our bodies speak for itself, my face subconsciously finding the crook of his neck to bury myself there and cover myself in him.

My hand slid down his side, feeling each rib on its journey. Seonghwa, for someone so bitter, was always so full of life – and only here, like this with him, I could feel all that life spill into me through our touch. I never felt quite so alive as when I felt his chest expand with pleasured breaths underneath the pads of my fingers. I heard him sigh out, and something on the table cluttered. It was a soft sound. I wondered what he saw, what he looked at.

His hands on my hips tightened before they slid up and slowly tugged off my own shirt, which I completely forgot I still had on. Instead of raising my arms (which would mean not touching Seonghwa), I squirmed and wormed until it fell down my arms onto his stomach before I quickly threw it off to the side. I was expecting him to for my bra next, but he didn’t. When his hands caressed their way back down, he grabbed onto my hips with such a force I felt his fingers dig into the meat of my ass.

His hips pressed up, and where I still held onto his waist I felt his back arch off of the table lightly with such a quiet groan I would have missed it if it wasn’t for the silence in the room. And just like that fire roared in me again, arousal pouring over me like hot summer air – pushing its way into my lungs and stealing my breath, covering me whole.

I gradually sped up, kept going with every little moan it punched out of me, every sigh of pleasure it earned from him, until I was riding him in earnest to the symphony of the table shifting on the floor and the wood of it creaking softly. Until I felt his cock slide out and then hammer back in with every new maddening swirl, especially when Seonghwa started working his hips in earnest too.

That’s when I finally opened my eyes again – when his first thrust knocked the breath out of me on a surprised moan, and I scrambled to find purchase on the smooth planes of his torso. His gaze was trained on me, right where I left it, dark pupils blown wide as he took me in while I moved on top of him.

Maybe someone would call this nothing more than cheap thrills – but there wasn’t anything that felt cheap about this. It felt like more than it should have been. On the contrary, these were very expensive thrills – expensive with consequences among other things.

We fell into a rhythm very quickly, bodies moving in tandem, thrust for thrust and groan for groan. The terrible sound of wet skin clapping against wet skin thundered through the office, but I didn’t have it in me to feel embarrassed about anyone outside hearing. Not when I heard that desperate edge in Seonghwa’s moans, not when I felt myself squeeze again and again around his throbbing length, when it filled me so good, when the pleasure was making it hard to think of anything at all.

I was blanking, mind wiped of anything other than his dark eyes boring into me. Seonghwa rearranged his grip on my hips and then he was railing into me from bellow, punching desperate moans out of my throat. I let gravity help me, pull me down onto his cock, and his hands to pull me back up, only to drop me down once more. The force of it all turned everything very loud, the quiet atmosphere now broken with how close we were to ruining each other.

Though Seonghwa would no doubt argue that he’s already ruined me a long time ago, the silly egotistic man he was.

The dark-haired man groaned very loudly, completely unabashed in his pleasure. I felt his fingers slip around with sweat, I even felt it trickling down my back, felt it where my ass met his thighs, felt it clinging to my pubes, to my arousal. I could smell it on us, in the air. Saw it wetting his hair when I finally brought myself to focus back on him.

Seonghwa glistened, and the desk shook, and our eyes rolled back, and the pleasure built. It was all so overwhelming. So close to bursting. I always felt close to bursting at the seams around Seonghwa. 

One of his hands slipped down between us to bump around my pussy and press onto my clit, but it was so hard to do with the pace and the wild thrashing of our bodies, so it only served to tease me more than offer relief. I still took it, happily, needily.

“You know, though-“ Seonghwa gasped out – and here it was again. His never tired mouth, so eager to spill all those truths the moment he got his cock in me, always needing to share, to be heard. And I listened. “You know…hhhng- that you’re mine.”

The way we breathed so hard prevented me from reacting in any way except for my eyes snapping to his blown-out ones. They were wide and honest, a mockery with almost a touch of desperation. But so, so open in a way only sex could bring out.

“I don’t- belong to anyone,” I struggled to speak through the rising fire consuming me from the inside out, I could feel my climax building with every thrust, every stroke, every time his cock hit me just right. Seonghwa’s expression betrayed just how close he was getting too – not even the cocky smirk he tried to send me could hide how his lips curved into moans, or the way his hazy eyes slipped closed ever so often.

My thighs were killing me, burning and screaming with every movement, but the peak was just there, right around the corner. I gritted my teeth and ground down with determination. Seonghwa’s grip tightened and the man groaned desperately, eyes almost gone, but soon his mouth was running again.

“Y-you don’t have to wear my mark- to- to- know it’s there,” as he pushed the sentence out through the strain, his chin jerked to where my hand laid on his frantically jumping chest. The one where I wore my rings, which glittered under the light and shone with beautiful contrast to his honey skin.

I wanted silver. I liked it more. It was the only thing that went my way this marriage. The only thing in which someone cared for my opinion. I watched the diamond sparkle as my hand slipped on his sweaty chest. I could see his wild eyes trained on me obsessively from the corner of my eye, taking in my reaction.

I willed my hips to slow down, to take their time and leisurely bounce in his lap, but the intensity of the encounter still continued rising, and at this point there wasn’t anything any of us could have done to stop our oncoming orgasms. Seonghwa’s brows furrowed together and his breath hitched, but he quickly matched my tempo. The force of his thrusts were still enough to knock groans out of me on every stroke, and now with us going slower it’s like I felt his cock even more viscerally.

It was so hard to think about anything else, my mind was overheating under Seonghwa’s skilful hands. The man was too good at reducing me into a mindless animal, swaying and writhing on him with only goal in my mind – and the singular consolation prize was that he was just as gone, face flushed and eyes dazed.

“You- you k-know,” I stuttered out, pushing my brain to work so I could push this weight back onto him, to get back at him as always – cause that’s what we did, we provoked the other until we hit a truth that then couldn’t be hidden anymore, and everything became much too real. And I was about to do it again – unleash something that deep down we both must have realised long ago, but haven’t spoken into existence yet.

“You know, that even if- you get me preg-nant,” my tongue and lips were not cooperating with me, so heavy and useless with the bliss coursing through my veins I could barely stammer the sentence out, “it won’t- it won’t be your child.” It was a whole mouthful, but so was Seonghwa.

The man’s eyes ignited with something that made me shiver, that put a little bit of fear back in my heart when it started growing so comfortable with the pity he elicited. It’s like he kept tricking me into forgetting what he did, what kind of person he was. And I kept falling for it, until the wolf under his skin showed his teeth again and I knew, that I fell deeper each time.

Seonghwa’s hands came back to grip my hips, harder this time, until his fingers dug deep into the soft skin and flesh there, like he was clawing at me. I released a whimper at that, and my hips stuttered, almost distracting me from what I was trying to do with my words – and he knew that, that arrogant fucker.

He pulled me onto himself harder, slamming me onto his cock as he thrusted up, his tip ramming into the sweet spot. The room was overcome with the squelching sound of my wet pussy as he pounded away, the slapping of damp skin and my moans hitting crescendo.

This orgasm felt like a freight train, rushing towards me where I laid tied up on the tracks. I knew it would hit me with a force that would tear me apart, I knew it was inevitable and so close. My stomach tightened and cramped, pussy pulsated. I felt his cock throb too, almost bursting. Everything around me sped up, twisted around, melted and deformed. I could feel my world getting crushed under the pull of Seonghwa’s specific brand of ecstasy.

“But I’ll know,” the man under me rushed out, eyes blown wide and so, so wild. Our gazes met and it was like everything snapped into place, I couldn’t pull away from him even if I wanted to. Our bodies collided, again and again, and again. I couldn’t hold back my moans, feeling the pleasure rush through me, faster and harder, making my blood boil in my veins.

One of my hands slipped down between our bodies, desperate to give me the last push I needed, to continue where Seonghwa left off. He didn’t care for it, didn’t smirk or grin, didn’t chastise me, no smart remark or anything. His whole body shook beneath me, just as desperate as mine to finally hit that high.

“We’ll know,” he gasped out just as I felt myself slam into it, bliss pouring over me and burning me to crisp, like a lightning hitting me. My thighs shook and my toes curled, as I cried out loud enough to have the whole building hear. I didn’t care, not when Seonghwa’s gaze was still on me, still drinking everything in, hungrily scarfing down all my expressions and sounds, or the way my pussy squeezed around him in a way I knew drove him absolutely crazy.

“We’ll know,” he groaned again and finally his eyes rolled back in bliss, mouth open on his beautiful high-pitched moans. His cock twitched and spurted inside me, filling me with warmth, with life. But I still didn’t stop my hips, like I ran on residual energy and the inertia pushed me forward until I milked him of everything he had. His hips strained too, instinctually driving deeper as he spilled himself, pushing me onto him to prevent me from bucking off his cock.

The table absolutely shook under us, creaking for its damn life, before we both hit stop and fell down, tired and sweaty and breathy, a tangle of wet limbs and hair. The room smelt kind of horrendous, but I hardly cared with my faced plastered to Seonghwa’s chest that jumped up and down jerkily with every desperate breath he drew in.

I was almost surprised there wasn’t steam rising from our bodies, because the heat was encompassing, settling over us alongside the calm and stillness that overtook everything; now that all the energy was released.

As soon as I started being more aware, I realised that Seonghwa’s hands were now mindlessly caressing over my hips and back, fingertips lazily pressing patterns into my heated flushed skin. We both still tried to catch our breaths, and I found myself guiltily liking the way we rose and fell in tandem with each other, making me think back to that expensive bathroom – to the way Seonghwa’s eyes reflected so much pleasure, like I was the one touching him and not the other way around. A hive mind of bliss.

And thinking back to that time, today I couldn’t quite bring myself to pull away like I did then, full of anger and frustration. I liked the way Seonghwa coddled me after, how he held me close. Like this mattered, like we mattered. Like we weren’t two absolute fuck-ups playing with something way beyond our powers. Well, maybe not beyond his powers, but I surely felt like a fish out of water here.

Neither of us said anything, the silence stretching to a point that we both knew it was a conscious decision instead of a by-product of our little tryst. I could feel the way the dark-haired man’s fingers stilled here and there, as if waiting for me to tear myself away and march out of this room, like I would have in the past. Like I should have, really.

The position couldn’t have been comfortable for him at all, with this head and legs hanging off awkwardly off the desk, but he didn’t seem to be too perturbed by that. Quite on the contrary – there was something almost content about the way he messed with my hair and hummed under his breath more to himself, almost as if forgetting I could hear him.

Once again I got the all-consuming premonition that this was about more than just envy and revenge. Something changed. Something. During the first night, his eyes spewed hate, and his tongue spat pure poison all nicely wrapped up in sweetness. He aimed to hurt, to humiliate, to let me know just what he thought of us both and what this was about for him.

Today his hands gripped at me with air of possessiveness and pride.

That thought was what finally propelled me to get up from him, even though the way our skin peeled away from each other where it matted together by dried sweat actually made me sad to be losing that contact, and the movement only ended up pushing me further into his lap and onto his soft cock.

There was a sigh from the man, one that wordlessly spoke of the same regret I was beginning to feel over tearing the comfort away, but otherwise Seonghwa continued to hold his tongue, not losing a single sentence. He watched me though, as he so often did and as I so often tried to ignore (even though I already knew that was an impossible task).

Somewhere in the room a phone started vibrating, generating a loud and distracting hum as it skittered off over the floor. None of us looked towards it, we just sat there and pretended we weren’t casting curious glances towards each other, asking what now.

Seonghwa’s hands settled over my hips again, gripping and pushing again, and then I could feel it – his cock slowly twitching back to life, valiantly fighting to harden again. I rolled my eyes at him and scoffed, and he only grinned. It felt too light of an interaction, and that was wrong.

The last words he said slammed into me like a brick wall, suddenly and overwhelmingly, and my heart stopped for a moment when I finally found the brain power to dissect them. My pussy longingly throbbed over his length, and Seonghwa groaned lightly, but I still forced myself to move up and start climbing off.

I caught a glimpse of Seonghwa’s confused eyes before he scrambled to follow after me.

“What-“ his words got interrupted by the phone setting off again, loudly demanding attention with an incoming call. With a bit of start I realised it must have been my phone, since the noise was coming from the direction of my discarded handbag. That couldn’t mean anything good.

No one ever called me for anything good.

I ignored whatever it was Seonghwa was about to try and bend me to his will with and moved to go get it, only for him to swiftly plaster himself completely to my back, naked skin to naked skin. He must have lost the pants somewhere along the way, and his fingers were already sneaking up to undo my bra while his other arm snaked around my waist to steer me back to the table. Only now he was pushing me to bend over it, just like I was expecting him to do back when he first beckoned me to come closer.

Maybe that’s why I went so easy.

So easy, it was so easy to let myself be pushed into the wood, so easy to wordlessly spread my legs wider before he even pressed closer, so easy to clench around his thickness when he effortlessly slid back in without an ounce of resistance.

So easy to cry out softly with the first thrust and sigh under the gentle patterns his hands drew into my back and hips. Any rational thought I managed to cling onto in those precious moments between the all-consuming inferno that our interactions always devolved into, those where all gone now, pouring out through my ears while the lust and arousal flared up so intensely it choked me up. Or it might have been the way Seonghwa wasn’t pulling any punches now that he was back in power.

The phone started vibrating and humming for the third time before it fell silent for good, but all I could see behind my eyelids was Seonghwa’s face as he was cumming under me with a smart retort still hanging onto his lips. I had a feeling the way his hips rammed into me now was the new smart retort, this one very pointedly telling me it’s no use trying to run away from the pleasure.

And even now he wasn’t holding back on those sounds, letting it all flow out his mouth freely and unabashedly, like he craved the whole hotel to know just how much he was enjoying fucking me behind everybody’s back. The way he was holding onto me, pushed me into the wood, pinned me under his weight, and I just stood there with quivering trembling legs and let him ravage me, unsure whether the wetness sliding down my thighs was a new wave of arousal or his previous load. I thought to myself that he probably liked having me that way, but then all thoughts melted away and all that was left was pure bliss.

This time things were escalating even faster, spiralling into another mind-numbing climax before I even really had time to process the situation we found ourselves in. It was like I was three times as sensitive, especially to the way he clung onto me desperately, like he couldn’t handle the thought of me walking away before giving him a full chance to take me as many times as our bodies could take.

This time around Seonghwa fucked me like he wanted to prove himself to me, and I found I might have been a little too receptive to that from how fast I was ready to come around his cock again.

Then, the landline on the table started ringing, and ice filled my veins. This was no coincidence.

Seonghwa didn’t even stutter in his pace as he leant over me to reach it, and for a few seconds I fell into the wishful thinking that he was just going to decline the call. But then the click of the phone being picked up rung through my ears and I damn near held my breath.

Suddenly I was hyper aware of all the sound in the room – the still creaking desk, though it was much quieter than when we laid on it, the absolutely debauched wet squelch as Seonghwa happily pounded away into me, the way our breathing couldn’t quite hide the exertion. There was no way the person on the other side wouldn’t be able to pick up on these, but I still prayed.

“Yeah?” Seonghwa already sounded so incriminatingly breathy with that one word, and I squeezed my eyes shut while I willed myself to keep completely silent. Then he was chuckling. The phone hit the table next to me, and I was suddenly able to faintly hear the man on the other side.

“Was Y/N there today?” Yujun growled into the receiver in his usual irritable tone. My heart dropped. What the fuck was Seonghwa doing?

I flailed under him as quietly as I could without actually audibly panicking, but he only leant on me harder, keeping me still and pushed into the table as his hips took on a much harder pace, taking the time to pull out almost all the way before slamming in hard enough to have me knocking into the wooden edge in a way that elicited both a tang of pain and boundless pleasure. Stars danced in front of my eyes and my hands shot out to grab onto the opposite edge to ground myself against the onslaught of sensations, internally cursing Seonghwa to high heaven and back.

“She was,” the man in question answered, and I imagined he’d be giving me a cheeky look, lips turned into a satisfied smirk, if we were facing each other. Instead I focused on pushing my face harder into the unyielding wood, hoping to at least muffle myself a little bit. Somehow, it felt like that only made it worse though.

I was surprised Yujun didn’t notice the huskiness of Seonghwa’s voice, didn’t hear how winded he was getting, how he was fighting to not trip over his tongue, didn’t hear the panting in-between his words. Or maybe it was just me who was always so tuned in to him, who couldn’t not notice every single thing he did.

I wondered how he looked right now. What was the expression on his face. Did his lips curl in a manner that was much crueller than when he spoke to me? Did his eyes look at me like we were both in on the secret and not like I was the tool?

(How did he truly feel about me?)

“She left right after she asked her favour,” Seonghwa said next, tone as level as he could hold with his hips still wildly pistoning into me, and I swallowed down the gasp of surprise at him lying for me. I didn’t think he’d sell me out, but straight up lying that I had already left? I wasn’t expecting him to go the extra mile.

On the other hand, if he wanted me to carry his child and pass it off as Yujun’s, he couldn’t exactly have the man know this was going on.

There was a beat of silence on the line before a bit of a technical buzz carried through, along with the man’s angry inhale.

“And did you grant her the favour?”

I wished so bad I could have seen Seonghwa and not be buried head first into his desk. I tried to turn around, just enough to catch a glimpse, but he was still pinning me to the wood, now almost mindlessly that he was focused elsewhere. His hips slowed down too, shallowly fucking into me and using just enough force to tease the current of pleasure underneath the surface. For the first time I didn’t think he was doing it on purpose, not when I felt his fingers twitch with annoyance where he held me.

“Of course I did,” Seonghwa’s tone was stone-cold, cold enough to almost instinctively make me shiver. I’ve never heard him like that, he always put on his ass-kissing tone whenever he spoke in front of his family. He sounded sleazy, maybe, but never this hostile.

It reminded me of our first night, when he’d get angry with me for mentioning his brother. I guess that was just a bit of his true self he didn’t mind showing. Though, through today I’ve probably seen a couple of other parts too – oh, the privilege.

Yujun on the other side growled, frustration dripping off of him even through a phone. “Stay the fuck out of my family’s business,” he gritted through his teeth, and I imagined his handsome face all screwed up in a grimace. When he acted like a petulant child, he just had this look about him, and I couldn’t unsee it. Somehow he even looked like a five-year-old throwing a fit, it was crazy. And hilarious. When it wasn’t happening to me.

Seonghwa wasn’t as amused as me though, that much was clear from the shaky inhale I heard behind me. His hips even jerked forward with that sudden rush of anger, and I bit my lip until I swore I could feel it tear to stop myself from moaning out loud.

I fucking couldn’t understand how he kept his composure.

“Your family’s business? I’m family too, Yujun, be so kind to remember it,” Seonghwa spit out with vitriol I haven’t witnessed from him yet – I was slowly beginning to realise that what I thought was his worst behaviour might have been him being nice, actually, “And it’s good that I took care of it, before it became a problem. Who do you think would end up having to deal with it anyway once your mother caught wind of what was going on?”

But those words were fighting words, and they had the stick in Yujun’s ass on fire real quick. With the sound of violent movement on the other side of the line, I was pretty sure that had this been a face-to-face conversation, he’d be throwing a punch right about now. My husband just was that way, always hitting first and thinking later. And Seonghwa just seemed really good at pushing the wrong buttons.

“You? Family? A fucking half-blooded mutt off the streets?” now this was real anger in Yujun’s voice, coming from a deep dark ugly place inside him, a place that grew from being coddled too much while being hated at the same time. “You’ll always be beneath me, Seonghwa, you better remember that.”

All the tension and air I’ve been holding back released in a barely audible gasp at the turn of the conversation. Seonghwa behind be grinded to a halt, like the meaning of the words took a second to truly catch up to him. Silence took over, deep uncomfortable tense quiet that settled over us like a blanket made of sharp rocks, and for a moment nothing moved. I didn’t even dare to breathe.

“I would have dealt with it myself.” My husband’s grating voice cut through the atmosphere, completely oblivious to the bomb he set off on my side of things. A conceited arrogant little tiger, pissing into a dragon’s river.

“I know what it looks like when you ‘deal’ with things,” the dark-haired man’s response was scathing in tone, condescending and full of scorn, but it did set him back into motion. I didn’t realise the intent behind his hips in that second, but I knew exactly what he was trying to do a moment later when suddenly they barrelled into me with such force I felt my entire core squeeze down and ignite through the torrent of painful pleasure.

Even the best trained soldier wouldn’t be able to keep that moan from clawing its way out of their throat. It rang through the room, loud and clear and desperate, as my head spun with barely contained delirium, followed by a quieter drawn out whine when the man took the opportunity to grind his hips into me and torture that sweet receptive spot even more.

He himself released a little pleased sigh, like he was also finally more attuned to the burning need for stimulation after teasing it out for the both of us to fight with his fucking brother over the phone.

Mortification set in, rapidly growing into anger like I haven’t felt in a while. That fucking dick did that on purpose. He wanted to get back, and he fucking played with both of our lives – I could even almost remember the exact moment he decided what he’ll do out of pettiness – when he took a breath right before speaking.

I wanted to turn around and hit him, to push him away and scream at him, to pull his beautiful fucking hair and spit on him, but Seonghwa did no longer care for the phone call and pounded away, chasing that rush and unabashedly groaning at every squeeze my cunt gave him. And all that came out of my mouth instead of screams were angered moans.

“You fucking pig,” I heard Yujun spit out in disgust, his voice buried under the hum in my ears, the crackling of pleasure overriding my brain, head stuffed full of cotton and no thoughts beyond finally getting that second orgasm.

I didn’t even notice when the line started beeping, signalling the call had been ended, not when Seonghwa was suddenly pressed into my back, cackling like a fucking maniac – like he didn’t just gamble with everything for the cheap satisfaction of pissing off his brother. My lips pulled into a grimace, teeth snapping through the groans as I was so mad, so mad I could cry, burst out, but I just couldn’t stop chasing that high.

I would have fucking died for the bliss he offered.

“What kind of a husband,” Seonghwa gasped into my ear gleefully, “doesn’t recognise his wife’s moans?” There was a murmur of something more, but I couldn’t make it out through my insides melting under him.

“Yujun- Yujun’s never fucked me,” I gritted through my teeth, words moulded around moans and sighs. I felt the table move and shake under us, especially since Seonghwa’s been just gaining speed and power, pounding away until I was so overwhelmed with all my senses I fought to just get those words out. “O-only you, only- you-“

I had no idea why I felt the need to emphasise that – out of all of the things I wanted Seonghwa to hear, the ones that would make him even bolder definitely weren’t the ones that should have been falling from my lips. But then he gasped behind me, growling so low in his throat it sounded like a prattling purr, and I was lost to my spinning head once more.

I felt his hands tighten around my hips, felt his burning body, sweaty chest melted into my back, muscles on his thighs jumping with every thrust that sent them hitting into mine. His winded breath in the crook of my neck, slick lips sliding over the skin in a messy half-kiss.

“O-only me,” the words sounded like they were punched out of him, and he pressed closer, desperate to merge into me, make us two parts of a whole – something no one else in our lives ever gave us before, something no amount of discount affection could buy – something only him promised with the fire behind his eyes.

I arched under him, presenting to him and pushing back into his thrusts, eyes rolled back and a continuous ringing sounding through my ears.

“Only me!” he might have been shouting, but it felt like a whisper against my overloaded senses, I felt it more than heard it, before the orgasm was slamming into me violently and robbing me of the last breath I had left. I registered my mouth opening on a wheezing scream, I felt my toes curl where they dug into the floor, hands clasped into the wood of the desk where I had to be leaving imprints and scratches at this rate.

My whole body seized as ecstasy exploded over me and everything went white for a few seconds. I distantly registered Seonghwa’s hips jerking as he pumped me full of his cum for the second time, his damp breaths hitting my back where he laid his sweaty face onto my shoulder blades.

I felt melted. When the waves of the climax finally started mellowing, leaving me standing on shaky legs with my fingers hurting and red from how hard I gripped the table. I was sliding on the smooth surface, feeling an immense heat coming from inside, while my skin started feeling the coldness of the air in the room.

Where Seonghwa touched, everything felt even more amplified, but I was relieved to hear he was just as wrecked by this experience. It was easy to tell – the man that was all about composure and staying in control was crumpled behind me, panting heavily and mumbling something I was too fried to comprehend.

It took us a long time before either of us felt composed enough to talk – at some point Seonghwa gathered enough wit and energy to move us into his chair, and I found myself in his lap, back to stomach, heart to ribs, mouth to ear. And we just sat silently, soaking in the atmosphere.

I knew something heavy was about to be said. Or done. A world was about to crash down, and we sat there, naked and blissed out, careless and cruel and stupid. His fingers curled in my hair, pushing the strands around gently. I didn’t know Seonghwa was capable of gentleness, not true gentleness at least.

I didn’t want to look at him, I didn’t want to see the expression he wore on his face. I wasn’t sure what it would be, but I knew seeing it would change something in me, and I didn’t want that. I was quite comfortable in my well, but what laid beyond the walls – that was all wilderness, all Seonghwa. He prowled those parts, like a hungry desperate wolf.

But maybe I had more dog in me than I thought.

Maybe he was right, and maybe he saw the same beastliness flash in my own eyes when he looked at me. Maybe that’s why he never looked away. Even now, I could feel his eyes burning into the side of my face, always so starved of attention.

“That was more than reckless,” I whispered finally, breaking the pattern of soft breathing that was filling the room with at least some presence, “that was dangerous, Seonghwa. Stupid.” I felt something clawing at my throat, some emotion I wanted to swallow. Desperation and disappointment – that for every revealed truth, there was an act of madness, for every inch given a mile was taken.

The man rumbled beneath me, but otherwise showed no indication that my words even reached his ears. My heart sank. If my life became the equivalent of being stuck on a deserted island, why was this the man that had to sink with me?

“He’s never fucked you?” he asked only, something almost proud shining through in his voice and I sighed.

“No.” Petulantly I didn’t want to give him more if he didn’t even work for it a little bit. I only got a chuckle in response.

“He’s been bragging about it, you know? About fucking you almost every night,” Seonghwa stated, hand now idly tapping small rhythms into the meat of my thigh. Something bitter crept into his voice. I rolled my eyes.

“Of course, that’s what he does,” I spat out, not giving a shit about censoring myself about the kind of feelings I had when it came to my husband. After all, if there was anyone who’d understand, it would regrettably be Seonghwa. “He’s never even come close.”

I stilled a little in his arms, deliberating. The words sat at the tip of my tongue, the admission of what I’ve been doing ready to slip out, but I hesitated. Seonghwa sat beneath me, patiently waiting. But really, what was one more leap of faith?

“I give him pills,” I confessed, for the first time putting my actions into words and speaking them out into the universe, “they knock him out. Then I just lie in the morning.”

A beat of silence, and then he was laughing – slow and disbelieving at first, but gradually gaining in volume and mirth as the words set in. I felt him shake whole, vibrating with joy. I did feel a bit of shame, but mostly at admitting something so embarrassing to him. His hand came up to caress at my cheek, and I let him.

“My my, you’re definitely very resourceful,” something to genuine happiness shined through his tone, and the warmth it spilled into my chest legitimately surprised me. This wasn’t that kind of affair, never would be. Still, even those feelings opened a pool of acid in my stomach, I couldn’t make myself move, to pull out of his willing arms.

Everything felt so different from our two other encounters, and I was so confused. I couldn’t even tell if this was real, or if I was just dumb and desperate enough to fall for anything.

I didn’t try to chastise him again, I knew there was no point. He’d only hear what he wanted to hear, so I just let it go and swallowed my feelings down. Like I always ended up doing.

Seonghwa chuckled, purred, and I spiralled.

When I got home that evening, it was with an achy back and an armful of shopping bags just in case. I doubted Yujun really cared about where I was, but since I was ignoring his phone calls the whole afternoon, I wanted at least a bit of reassurance I’d have an alibi to fall back on.

Coming back to a silent house knowing it wasn’t empty was quite depressing. The tension was thick in the air, the unsaid words painted all over the walls, soaked into the carpets and carved into the wooden furniture. They’d most likely find their way into my ears, if not today, then definitely later – throughout my very long, very unhappy life and marriage.

Shockingly I found Yujun sitting in his office. All I saw was a glimpse of his angry face through the open doors as I passed on the way to the bedroom, and I already knew tonight wasn’t going to go very well. I took my time changing into comfortable home clothes, ignoring streaks of dried cum coating my thighs, or the way I could still almost smell and taste Seonghwa on my skin.

I needed a shower. I needed to not feel him anymore.

When I walked out, Yujun was already waiting for me leaning on the doorframe of his office, watching me darkly. It wasn’t a suspicious gaze, I had no reason to suspect he knew, but I still felt my heart stutter and my palms grow clammy.

It was impossible to hate Seonghwa when he was with me, but it was impossible to not when I was faced with the consequences of his rashness. His eyes haunted me, flashing through my mind that last tender look as I was walking out of his office, the one that almost sold it to me. The one that almost felt like…

Yujun cleared his throat, and I pulled my attention to him, willing my eyes to look and see him, and not his brother.

“So this is how it’s gonna be now?” I turned my head to him fully, cocked to the side like I was trying to figure him out, like his anger was puzzling to me.

“What exactly are you talking about?”  I tried to respond as neutrally as possible, giving the man an unimpressed look. He didn’t like that very much, it turned out.

“You have no right to stick your nose into my business,” he seethed, taking a few threatening steps towards me, finger in the air pointing my way. His words sounded suspiciously close to what he told Seonghwa, but I buried the memory away as soon as it appeared. I stumbled a couple steps back, heart palpitating in fear, but I doubted he’d actually do anything. “If I knew you were gonna be a fucking cockblocker, I’d be having way less fun where you could see. Funny, I didn’t take you for the jealous type.”

That had my hackles rising too, real quick, and I barrelled the few steps I took back towards him, my own face screwed up in a grimace.

“I don’t give a shit who you fuck, Yujun,” I spat at him, pointing right back, “I don’t give a shit where or when or how you do it. But I’m not going to stand by when you harass our staff. Our staff! If you want to be a fucking pig, do it outside!”

To this, he said nothing. He just stared at me, his red angry face twitching as I refused to back down. Seconds ticked by tensely, like sand trickling through an hourglass, so palpable and concrete I could feel it physically. We were closer to each other than we’ve probably ever been, and I was not enjoying myself. But thankfully, neither seemed to be Yujun, cause only a couple moments later he scoffed and walked away without a single word. It was only when he reached the door to his office that he turned around with a scathing look and said: “The only thing I’m curious about, my dear wife, is who you’re fucking.”

Then he was gone with a slam of the door, swallowed by the room in a blink of an eye. I could feel my heart beating out of my chest, beating so hard I was having trouble catching my breath where I felt it pounding against the bones. I was dizzy, barely able to tell up from down when I stumbled back into my bedroom.

I thought that Yujun must have had his suspicions, but this felt like a warning. And my husband felt reckless in a way that Seonghwa couldn’t rival either – it always felt more chaotic, like he could take out anybody without a single care. There was at least a semblance of order in what Seonghwa did, even if it made sense only to him. With Yujun though, once he got that look in his eyes, anything could happen.

And I didn’t know if he was warning me because he wanted to scare me, or because he had found out. My only consolation was that if he did know, he’d probably blow up all our lives for it. Petulantly angry Yujun, silent treatment Yujun, those were positive signs.

The following weeks didn’t treat me very kindly. The constant stress of the tense atmosphere in our house was taking its toll on me, even though my husband went back to spending most of his time elsewhere and only returning home to sleep off hungovers or to be a cloud of misery and scare off our personnel.

I constantly felt sick, shaky and tired. I barely slept, I was paler than usual and found myself frequently lost in thoughts. My mother kept getting upset with me over it, so at least something in my life hasn’t changed.

Seonghwa disappeared again.

Yujun hasn’t entered the bedroom since I first found out about the maid, and while I viewed that as something positive, it turned out – fate and life aren’t as easy as that. You should always remember. Whenever you least expected, even the best of things can turn around and fuck you over.

A little over a month after this encounter, after a month of a silent home, tense angry glares, hate and spite, my nausea kept escalating until I was forced to visit a doctor by my mother, who was worried that if I was seriously ill, my chances of pregnancy would decrease even more drastically. Always so lovely to know your family cared for your health.

That’s why she was there though, that fateful day.

Not wanting to die just yet, I did go to my doctor at her insistence and asked for complete bloodwork tests to be done. I had no idea I was about to step into the biggest trap of my life, when I walked in a week later, mother in tow, mumbling something under her breath – something no doubt very not nice or polite, knowing her – and so I ignored her.

When it came time to enter the office, I reluctantly let her tag along as my doctor gathered the needed documents. In those few last moments of quiet and calm, we both shuffled around the room looking at the displayed posters and models, trying our best to not converse with each other.

Then the doctor walked back in, and something in her wide blinding smile already put me on the edge. Bad premonition settled into my stomach, further aggravating the sensitive organ until I almost felt I might need to go throw up right there and then. I took that feeling of sickness and clung onto it, keeping it rolling through me to remind myself why I was here – because I was tired of feeling ill all the time.

Still, in that moment, irrationally I couldn’t help but think of Seonghwa and his fascinated eyes when he watched me get bred by him, and I felt my heart squeeze with anxiety. I shook it off and took the offered chair, my mother still leisurely walking around the room for a moment longer before she found the appropriate amount of attention was on her and sat down.

The doctor just watched us happily for a moment, happily shuffling the papers around, before she energetically clapped her hands together, making me jump slightly in my seat.

“Congratulations, Miss Jang,” she exclaimed cheerily, and I felt like I got sprayed with a bucket full of ice cold water, all at once freezing in my chair completely. My mother still hasn’t caught on, thinking she might be congratulating me for being healthy, but I knew. I walked in with a bad feeling, I walked in thinking of the man who talked about nothing else but getting me pregnant – I knew already what she was going to finish her sentence with.

“It must be very happy news for you, since I see here that you got recently married!” the doctor continued full of joy, completely oblivious to the two very different reactions going on in front of her.

“Oh!” my mother blurted out, finally catching on to what the doctor was trying to say in the most elaborate way ever, “Oh, Y/N!” For the first time in months true joy spread through her expression, and it made me feel sicker than I already was. I guess two people were getting what they wanted, then.

“Yes, congratulations,” the doctor repeated, again, and finally said the quiet part out loud, “You’re pregnant! It might be a recent development, I’ll make you an appointment with our clinic’s gynaecologist, he’s the very best in the game.”

At this point my mother was excitedly prattling off something, looking at me with relief as she took the news in. She started asking something about that doctor, but I could barely comprehend what was going on.

All I saw in front of my eyes was Seonghwa. What would he say? How would he react? Christ, what about Yujun – he knew we hadn’t slept together in weeks, maybe he even started suspecting it’s been months. He alluded to me having an affair. He’ll fucking kill me once he finds out.

This was the moment I realised I was sitting in a car just about to drive off a bridge. Time stopped, and I just stared over the edge, to the abyss below. In my mind I was there, tasting the damp air on my tongue. Everything was caving in. I felt my chest squeeze tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe.

My mother tugged at my arm and said something, but I didn’t hear a single word, so I just nodded. She smiled and pulled out her phone, almost instantly excitedly running her fingers over the keyboard. Great. God.

What was I supposed to do now?

As I sat there and watched her shoot a message after message, press call and boast to everyone, only one thought dominated my mind.

I had to speak to Seonghwa. As soon as possible.

thank you for reading, darlings! let me know in the comments/reblogs or through asks if you liked the story! i love reading your opinions and general screaming into the void haha!

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[inkedinshadows]

Never Hold Back

Day 31: Squirting — Lucien x f!reader

Warnings: oral (f receiving), fingering, insecure reader

Word count: 1.099

A/N: we've finally got to the end of Kinktober! This was so much fun, but it was also exhausting ngl. I'm working on new fics and I'm so glad it's not smut bc I seriously need a break from it. I didn't think I'd be able to write a fic for each day when I decided to do this and I have to say I'm quite of myself for making it. Thank you so much to everyone who read/commented/reblogged my silly smutty blurbs and if you've stuck around to read them all, I love you pls let's get married.

based on this suggestion

You didn’t have much experience with sex. Or rather, you did, but the people you had been with could be counted on one hand. And if there was one thing you learned after your first time, it was how to fake an orgasm just before the real one hit you. That way, your partner would relent, sparing you the embarrassment.

But Lucien wasn’t like your previous lovers. He was your mate.

When you arched off the bed and moaned louder than before, he pulled his mouth away from you and watched you with a furrowed brow.

“Why do you do that?”

At first, you didn’t understand what he was talking about, and your insecurities took over. What had you done? Did you have an actual orgasm? No, you would have felt that, and Lucien would have looked more grossed out than concerned.

“Do what?” you asked, trying to keep the tremor from your voice.

Lucien sat up straight and you immediately felt the absence of his head between your thighs. His eyes found yours and the uneasiness etched on his face made you brace yourself for what might be coming.

He was silent for a moment before he said quietly, “If you don’t enjoy what I’m doing, please just tell me.”

Eyes wide, you sat up too. “Why would you think that? Of course I enjoy it, Lu!”

“Then why did you just fake an orgasm?”

“I didn’t—”

“You did it last time too.”

Your breath caught, heat rising to your cheeks until you were sure you looked like a tomato. Unsure how to respond, you looked down at your fidgeting hands.

You always thought you were good at faking, that it looked real enough to not raise suspicions. None of the males you’d been with before had ever noticed. And now that your mate had realized it, you wished the ground would open and swallow you whole.

“Sunshine,” he called softly.

A slender finger hooked under your chin, and then you were looking into his eyes. He didn’t seem upset, which spurred you to finally say something.

“I’m sorry,” you stuttered, and words began pouring out in an incoherent stream. “It’s just… my body. When I come, it does— it’s really gross, so I just… I thought you—”

You stopped abruptly when his thumb moved to cover your lips. He searched your face, his brows still furrowed, before he asked, “What do you mean ‘gross’?”

You shook your head, resisting the urge to look away again, but his gaze was piercing, and his golden eye seemed to see right through you, so eventually you answered, voice just above a whisper.

“I… I tend to squirt.”

You expected disgust, judgment, maybe even rejection—the same reactions you had gotten the few times it happened, the reasons you had started faking.

Instead, Lucien smiled broadly. “You do?”

He sounded so excited that you frowned as you gave him a single nod. His hands traveled down your body, caressing your sides until they rested on your waist. You were still waiting for a rejection, and he probably read it on your face because he gently squeezed you.

“Y/N… did someone tell you it’s gross?” he questioned. “Is that why you say that?”

You blinked. “You don’t think it is?”

As soon as the words left your mouth, Lucien’s posture changed. His back went a bit rigid, and his jaw clenched as he let you go. “Lay back down,” he said, or rather ordered. No soft tone was left in his voice, in his expression.

“Lucien…” you tried, but he cut you off.

“Lay down. I’m going to make you come.”

You did as he asked, though with a touch of hesitation. Lucien was quick to settle between your legs again. When you opened your mouth to try and talk him out of it one last time, he beat you to it.

“I am going to make you come,” he repeated, even more firmly than the first time. And then he was licking a stripe up your folds, his hands holding you open for him to feast on.

You decided to just enjoy it, then. What else were you supposed to do when he flicked his tongue over your clit and gently rolled it between his lips? Your hand shot out to tangle in his fiery hair, and you sucked in a breath, feeling his low chuckle reverberate against your cunt.

He probed your entrance with a finger, and when you squirmed, he pushed it in and curled it, hitting that sweet spot that drew a groan from deep in your throat. And then you lost all sense of time and space as the fingers became two and his mouth latched onto your clit.

The pleasure was rising fast—faster than ever, now that you weren’t worrying about waiting for the perfect moment to fake your orgasm. Yet as you felt it approaching, the thought that maybe you should stop before it was too late lingered at the back of your mind.

“Lucien, I’m… I’m close,” you warned, your voice a breathless murmur.

“Then come for me, sunshine.” He looked up at you through his lashes, and his next words were a low, commanding growl. “Don’t you dare hold it back.”

When he thrust his fingers in deeper and curled them once more, you didn’t hold it back, and after so long without such an intense feeling, you were utterly overwhelmed by it. A loud cry broke free from you as your whole body shook while you squirted all over Lucien’s fingers and chin. He held you firm, still working you until you went limp, spent and panting. Only then did he pull back, and you blushed at the sight of his face covered in your release.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

Lucien only smiled. “Don’t be. Don’t ever apologize for it.”

He climbed up your body, and you wrapped your arms around his neck out of instinct. As he kissed you, you could taste yourself on his lips and tongue. You weren’t sure how you felt about it.

“It was amazing, sunshine,” he murmured against your lips. “Hot, even.”

His words warmed your heart and a bit of the shame you had grown accustomed to began to melt away. If Lucien, your mate, found it hot… then maybe it wasn’t actually that bad after all.

“And to think that you've denied yourself so many orgasms because of it…” he went on. A smirk blossomed on his lips and a mischievous glint sparked in his russet eye. “Let me remedy that.”

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