#seaside encounter

[dailyadventureprompts]

Plane: The Abyssal Unknown

Artsource

Deeper than deep, this sunken dimension exists beyond the bounds of all seas be they watery, hellish, or astral. A surreal and lightless landscape decorated with the remnants of sunken cities and vessels lost across time.

Known by some mariners and mystics simply as "The Below", this dimension was once simply an afterlife for those claimed by fathomless waters, whether they be stormtossed sailors or the inhabitants of civilizations washed away by floods. Where once it graciously accepted such lost souls, In the past century though the Unknown has become somehow covetous, reaching out to grasp at whatever prize strikes its fancy.

Adventure Hooks:

Those sailors that come too close to drowning may be marked by the Unknown, which will stop at nothing to claim their bodies and souls. Such is the case for the revenant the party is hired to deal with, an old sailor who dug her way out of her grave and walked several miles towards the sea before tying herself to the sign at the crossroads outside of town. She claims that no matter how she might want to rest in death, the "sea" will not give her peace. It will be up to the party to decide what to do with her, whether delivering her to a watery grave or seeking the aid of some other divinity.

After recovering a fortune from a wrecked treasure ship, a salvage crew is being picked off one by one, with a few of them hiring the party for protection against what they think is an attempt by their jealous coworkers to cut them out of the deal. Infact they are being haunted by a horrid half-real beast known as "the Scuttler", part crab part ghost haunted hulk, which guards the doors of the Abyssal Unkown (and objects it lays claim to) the way Cerberus guards Hades.

A series of storms washes up wreckage and strange valuables near a seaside town, bringing beachcombers and treasurehunters of all kinds. A dreaming compulsion settles over those that take things from the shore, driving them to gather driftwood and other materials from the brine, and begin the construction of a vessel there on the beach. When questioned in their half lucid state, they claim that the ship they build will "take them home, and further still", an odd claim made even by those who'd lived in the village all their lives.

Sink deep enough into the trenches of the Below and you will find the tombs of the first oceanic gods, bleached coral monuments and epitaphs carved around the vigil-fire of thermal vents. The Abyssal Unknown was once their mausoleum, a place where their descendants and adherents could pay their respect, preserved forever in the crushing embrace of the depths.

That was before the Collector came, a malign spirit of the depths not quite demon or outer god. Driven by an insatiable desire to know and possess, it usurped the Below's guardians and remade the realm in its own image, bending the Unkown's ancient magics to it's purpose of acquisition and scraping the dead gods' skulls for knowledge like the lowest of scavengers at whalefall.

So much knowledge has been lost to the sea over the course of history, and it is only a matter of time before the collector archives it's aim of ascending to true divine status. Already it's power grows, gathering agents and seeding the idea of its ascension into the minds of receptive followers.

[saturnniidae]

I think we should have more httyd or rotbtd horror

[attractthecrows]

entertaining myself by inflicting bastard children on my faves

[alttevee]

on humanity in dark times XXIX (R8256) by Rossoindia Via Flickr:

[untypicable]

How to Win an Argument with a Seagull

Seagulls. Winged menaces. Coastal tyrants. Nature’s answer to an aggressive debt collector. No other bird has perfected the art of intimidation quite like them. You don’t feed seagulls—they take. You don’t argue with seagulls—they win. And yet, every year, thousands of unsuspecting British holidaymakers attempt to engage in unwinnable battles with these feathery bandits. A chip is stolen. A…

[sophiamcdougall]

I am never going to complain about Greek Duolingo again

I mean, I am. But still.

So, as some of you know, my family has been coming to this tiny Greek seaside village for several years. Just over a week ago I came out here with my mum, under the impression that early September, after the height of the summer heat, would be a good time to have a holiday. ANYWAY Storm Daniel had other ideas about that. Locally things are improving (I'm actually really pissed off about the disaster-porn tone of most English-language media coverage, but that's another post). The power is back on, there's running water most of the time, and though the latter is not drinkable, a truck from the government came and handled out free bottled water yesterday. But we are currently kind of stuck. Can't do tourist things. Can't go home. There aren't any local flights out until Saturday and the road to Thessaloniki is still closed.

So this evening, feeling kind of aimless and depressed, I go down to the nearest beach with a couple of binbags and start cleaning up in an effort to at least do something positive. I always try to do this at least once out here and obviously, after the storm, there's a lot more plastic and rubbish than usual.

At some point I find this large, round bit of metal - some kind of machinery part, I think -- that's too big for the bag, so I take it to the bins on its own, leaving the rubbish bag on the beach. And when I come back for it, something among the stones beside it moves.

Specifically, it pulls its head sharply inside its shell

So, meanwhile I've been trying to learn some Greek with the help of Duolingo.

I currently have a 33-day streak and... I have questions. Shouldn't I be able to use the past or future tenses by now? Shouldn't I be able to say "x is like y"? I can't do those things. But one thing I absolutely can say all day long is έχω μια χελώνα : I have a turtle.

This is far from the limit of Duolingo Greek's turtle-related content. "An obsession with turtles" is my mother's characterisation. I can inform you that the turtle is not a bird, and, improbably, that the turtle is drinking milk. I can introduce you to a turtle in company with a horse and an elephant. As far as Duolingo is concerned, it really is turtles all the way down.

Now this, you may be able to see, is not a turtle. It has claws rather than flippers. It is a tortoise. I know there are wild tortoises in Greece: my aunt once rescued a pair of them shagging in the middle of the road -- but that was up in the mountains. I've even seen one myself, but it was also on a road and very dead.

I am 95% certain they don't belong on beaches. There's nothing for it to eat, except, unfortunately, a lot of plastic. Even if it gets off the beach it will immediately find itself on a road where it could get hit by a car. I'm pretty sure it must have been washed down by the floodwater and has been just sitting there, dazed, ever since.

Now obviously the first thing I want to do on encountering this unusual animal is to go and tell my mummy, so I do. The tortoise immediately brightens her day. She agrees that the tortoise is not happy on the beach and needs to be taken somewhere safe. it gets surprisingly wriggly when picked up so we put it in a carrier bag with some grapes and cucumber and go looking for somewhere to rehome it.

We find a path leading up between the houses towards a likely-looking field, but before we get very far a dog in a yard goes berserk and a man's head pops over a fence and demands to know what we're doing. He does this in English, as evidently we're just that obviously tourists.

"I found a tortoise on the beach!" I explain. "We want to find somewhere to put it."

"A what," he asks.

"It's like a, you know," I begin and then to my astonishment I find myself saying... "μια χελώνα"

"Oh! A turtle!" he says.

"But from the land. δεν είναι χελώνα", [it is not a turtle,] I say, as I am worried he will tell me to put it back near the sea where I found it. As it turns out it actually IS a χελώνα, Greek does not distinguish between turtles and tortoises, but I don't know that; I can't even name the days of the week or identify any colours other than pink yet, give me a break.

The man's entire demeanour changes and thaws. He does not worry about my turtle-that-is-not-a-turtle conundrum. He knows where οι χελώνες come from and where η χελώνα μας belongs. He leads us through a gate into a courtyard area.

"[somethingsomething] μια χελώνα," he explains to the assembled onlookers, of whom there are, suddenly, a surprising number.

"ΜΙΑ ΧΕΛΩΝΑ!!!" crows the throng of delighted small children, who are, suddenly, everywhere.

"μια χελώνα!" I agree, accepting that at least for current purposes, that is what it is.

"Μπορούμε να δούμε τη χελώνα σας; [can we see your turtle?]" asks an adorable little girl, shyly, and I understand??

The children fucking love looking at the χελώνα and showing it to them is kind of magical?

I finally put the tortoise down on the grass of this wild area off to the side of the courtyard, and marvel aloud that it is weird that I barely know any Greek except how to say μια χελώνα.

"I think she will soon run off," a kind lady called Aspasia assures me, seeing I remain slightly anxious about its fate. "I don't know why I'm saying 'she'. I suppose because χελώνα is feminine in Greek."

"Yes! I know that!" I exclaim, thrilled.

"Well done!" she says. And also she asks if we are OK for drinking water after the storm and if we need any help with anything and is just generally incredibly lovely and now we know more of the neighbours!

So "μια χελώνα" has just become, by a long way, my most-used and most understood and all-around most conversationally successful phrase in Greek. So I guess I have to admit I was wrong to doubt Duolingo's wisdom: it is correct to be obsessed with turtles. And I concede that prior to learning how to count to ten or to distinguish right from left, the simple ability to yell the word TURTLE over and over again is, it turns out, a crucial element of the responsible traveller's social skills.

(I am pretty fluent in Italian and turtles haven't come up in conversation even once?)

[hbystuff]

Seaside encounters - 64 colours

[rapturously]

“ 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐒, 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐃𝐒. ”

⠀ཾ༵ 𑁍┆ paul (the lost boys) x fem!reader.

┆ 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒: an encounter with a familiar face at the boardwalk’s video store leads to a night you’ll never forget.

˹ 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 9.0K.

˹ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: smut (mdni), porn with plot, loss of virginity (reader), vampire antics, hint of bloodplay, paul thinks about killing the reader (briefly), dirty talk, making out, pet names, breast play, hair-pulling kink, oral sex (fem!rec), cunnilingus, scent kink, groping, p in v sex, unprotected sex, cowgirl position, finger sucking (brief), catching feelings, cumplay, cliffhanger ending.

˹ 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: this was a really good way to come back! I am trying to improve my writing and I felt like this was a good warm-up for what’s to come! I hope you guys enjoy! thanks for your support!

SALTWATER KISSES PEPPER AGAINST YOUR CHEEKS WITH THE GENTLE ROLL OF THE TIDE, WHERE THE OCEAN BRUSHES WITH THE SANDY SHORES OF SANTA CARLA. BONFIRES FLICKER THROUGH A STARLIT DUSK, SURROUNDED BY THE SWAYING BODIES OF ROWDY BEACHGOERS.

Smoke stings your nostrils, the pungent haze of marijuana intermingled with scorched driftwood. A seaside breeze drifts across your shoulders, barely covered with a chiffon shawl as you search the growing crowds for your friends.

Santa Carla was unlike anything you’d experienced before, a nocturnal den crawling with so many unfamiliar faces. You had moved here during the peak of summertime, where school wasn’t in-session and each evening was an endless party.

The lukewarm bottle of Redhook swayed within your hand, half-consumed as you tossed it into the nearest bin. Your steps are sluggish as you wander along the beachfront, finding yourself drawn into the fray of a bustling crowd.

It was almost a different place altogether — day versus dusk, where the boardwalk transformed into a haven for the misbegotten. Wedging yourself into the crowd, you catch a glimpse of some local hair-band performing on the stage.

A hand grabs at your hip, causing you to yelp as you swivel, meeting the exuberant eyes of your friend, Chloe. “There you are!” She exclaimed, nose crinkling in amusement. “Jesus, you scare easily!”

With a nettled huff, you turn, noticing the glossy sheen within her gaze — too much to drink. “You grabbed me,” You insisted, barely able to hear her over the rancor of the crowd. “What’s going on?” Your inquiry nearly dissipated into the background.

“Devin wants to check out that stupid video store, do you want to come with? It shouldn’t be long!” Chloe chimed, catching the wandering eye of some sleaze through the crowd. She waved, but you seemed entirely disinterested.

“Yeah, it’s getting too loud over here,” Following her lead, she grasped ahold of your hand, polished nails snagging on your bracelet. There is a noticeable sashay in her steps. “How much have you had to drink?”

“God, you sound like my mother! I’ve had a few, but I’m fine! Devin is taking me home,” She mused, and you happened to roll your eyes. The position of matriarchal friend had involuntarily fallen to you, not that you minded. “Come on!”

Shuffling through the sand, you make your way up a flight of wooden steps, and you are thankful for the distraction. The rancor of rock music dissipates, devolving into the ambiance of fairgoers and stereos, instead.

Before you moved to California, you wouldn’t have dared to set foot in a place like this — but age and assurance bolstered your confidence. You enjoyed going out to these beachside promenades, even if it wasn’t always your scene.

The eclectic nightlife and view of the beach were satisfactory enough for you, with enough entertainment to last a lifetime. Neon lights from overhanging signs buzz with shades of pink and green, blanketing the boardwalk in an array of vibrant colors.

Video Max was a hotspot in Santa Carla — you’d been there more times than you could count since the move. The idle hum of Corey Hart filled the silence, trickling in over the store’s radio as Chloe hauled you inside.

Devin waved from across the shelves, clutching a copy of John Carpenter’s Halloween in his hand. “Thought you guys got lost!” He piped up, offering you a friendly smile. He was a good friend, and you’d been trying to nudge him toward Chloe since you joined the group.

“Almost,” You mused, feeling Chloe release you from her vice-like hold. It allowed you to peruse the shelves, absentmindedly scanning for any movie that happened to snag your attention. “Halloween isn’t for a few months.”

With a snort, Devin waved a hand in dismissal. “Never too early for scary movies,” For a moment, you watched his gaze shift elsewhere, past you and toward the door. “Jesus, have you ever seen anything like that before?”

Perplexed, you couldn’t help yourself, attempting to crane your head to peer over your shoulder. Much to your chagrin, your staring wasn’t entirely subtle, directed toward the group of guys filing into the video store.

Eccentric was certainly a term to describe the four, who moved in an eerie synchronization, like a pack of wolves prowling for prey. At the helm, the platinum-blonde bore a smug smirk, leading his flock into the fray, closely followed by the dark-haired one, whose expression was indiscernible.

The blonde pair reminded you of chortling hyenas, with the shorter one maintaining a curly mullet and a cheshire grin. It was the taller blonde with crazed tresses that ensnared your attention, his hair disheveled, reminding you of a lion’s mane. His overcoat and stressed, white jeans stuck out like a sore thumb.

The Boardwalk Boys — their infamy was something of a legend in Santa Carla, according to Chloe.

Through parted lips, you turned away, knowing you’d ogled for far too long. Instead, you made small talk with Devin and Chloe, tugging your shawl tighter around your shoulders. “Hey, how long are you guys planning on sticking around?”

“Not sure,” Devin rubbed the back of his neck, nearly catching Chloe from swaying into one of the shelves. “Might need to get this one home, as soon as possible.” He sighed, tone indicative of playfulness instead of exasperation.

“No,” Chloe whined, hanging upon Devin’s arm with an exaggerated pout. She glanced at you, eyes alight with bewilderment and intrigue before she leaned over, ushering you closer. “C’mere.” She whispered.

Concerned, you leaned over conspiratorially, palms planted against the top of the shelf. “You are painfully drunk,” You murmured, unable to mask your laughter as she patted your cheek, manicured nails tapping at your skin. “What, what’s wrong?”

“He’s staring at you,” She murmured, and before you could try to turn and look, she held you in-place. “The blonde one with the stupid overcoat, he keeps checking you out.” Chloe snickered, wiggling her eyebrows.

“What?” The bitter sting of disbelief rippled throughout your chest, a crippling denial that often permeated most of your interactions with boys. You found it hard to believe that one of them would have an inkling of interest.

Devin appeared mildly worried, throat bobbing as he dipped closer, brows furrowing together. “Twisted Sister motherfucker,” He uttered, confirming Chloe’s observations with one snarky remark alone. “He hasn’t stopped looking at you.”

Swallowing the growing lump within your throat, a bundle of nerves made residence within your stomach, gooseflesh raking across your spine. Your resolve splintered at the seams, perspiration breaking out upon your palms.

It was almost as if you could feel his gaze boring a hole through you, a heat so foreign and intense that your throat grew tight. In an attempt to relieve a sliver of anxiousness, you picked at your bracelet, gritting your teeth together.

“Should I say something?” There wasn’t anything inherently malicious about the stranger’s oppressive stare, but you could feel it. Chloe shook her head, prepared to encourage you to go and talk to him until the sound of voices grew closer.

Your streak of charisma seemed to wither then and there, shriveling away like dying leaves. Words turned to ash upon your tongue as the blonde happened to approach, lingering a shelf away as to appear inconspicuous.

“He’s cute,” Chloe slurred, a mischievous twinkle within her eye, a subtle hint for you to relax. Devin appeared less than enthused with her astute observation, but let it rest. “Definitely say something.”

“We need to get you home,” Devin murmured, a twinge of suspicion rippling through him. Anyone who frequented Santa Carla knew about the Boardwalk Boys, but one look alone, and something about them was unsettling. “You okay?”

Steeling yourself, you happened to nod, offering Devin a nervous smile. “Peachy.” With a steady exhale, you turned around, greeted by the wolfish grin of the lion’s mane blonde. He looked as if he had been ripped straight from a metal band, with some savage element to him.

Cerulean hues pierced through your own, stale cologne wafting from him. The cropped, mesh top he wore beneath the seemingly-archaic overcoat caught your eye, offering a teasing glimpse of his musculature.

He was unlike anyone you’d seen before, something peculiar — a wild card, whose charisma bled through from his grin alone. “Kept wonderin’ if you were gonna hide from me,” He crooned, head canting to one side. “I’m not mean and scary, promise.”

“Sorry,” Through a mumbled apology, you felt your features warm, as if you’d stepped into an open flame. Something about his very presence seemed to latch its talons into you. “I guess I got a little shy.” You confessed.

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” His attention shifted to Devin and Chloe. “You mind if I steal her from you?” There was an unusual sincerity within his tone, laced with amusement. “S’long as it’s good with you, ‘course.”

Unexpected chivalry was the last thing you envisioned from this stranger, but you weren’t about to protest, glancing at Devin and Chloe. “You should probably take Chloe home,” You prompted, chewing at the inside of your cheek. “Tell her to call me tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Devin nodded, partially carrying Chloe against his side. “Be careful, okay?” His pointed statement was primarily directed at your new companion, who playfully crossed his hand over his chest.

“Swear on my life, bro.” His lopsided smirk and chortling was borderline infectious, hues glittering with bemusement as Devin nodded, albeit begrudgingly. You watched as your friends departed Video Max, leaving you to your present company.

Flicking a nail across your bracelet, your attention resumed its full concentration on the man before you, whose wicked style intrigued you. “What’s your name?” Introductions were more awkward than not, but he seemed well-adept at navigating these things.

“Paul, but you can call me anything you want.” His flirtatious nature wasn’t lost upon you, precocious like a playful imp. He stepped closer, leaning against one of the shelves in a casanova manner, eyes beginning to crinkle.

He was endlessly charming, even if you found his pick-up lines to be somewhat outdated. A brief huff of laughter escaped you as you extended your hand, treating him to a sweet smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Paul.”

Your name was freshly emblazoned on his mind, with no intention of fading away. There was something inherently tender about you, a warmth rarely found in this pit of depravity. He liked that, your innocence — it was hard to control himself.

Piety brought out the predator in Paul, whose boisterous personality was something of a magnet to you. Admittedly, he hadn’t seen you before — put a face to a name, let it drive him insane. Your smell was tantalizing, a rich concoction that made him salivate.

Paul stepped closer, weaving around the shelf’s corner as he made residence within your space. Your brief inspection of his attire brought about a multitude of peculiarities, from the tarnished medals clipped to his jacket, to the tattered holes across his white jeans.

“Real nice to meet you, babe,” He crowed, hues shamelessly flickering over your frame. There was a softness to you, unspoiled and supple, akin to some gift that he longed to unwrap. “Wanna ditch this place, head outside?”

The innocuous pet name was merely an extension of his flirtation, something you reveled in. Molten heat swirled within the pit of your stomach, like a flock of butterflies, making you preen with excitement. “Yeah, why not?”

Lodging a toothpick between his teeth, Paul threw an arm around you, palm gently pressing against the small of your back as he guided you outside. The friends he’d come in with glowered as he passed, causing you to subconsciously move into Paul’s side.

As dusk furthered into the later hours, the hour of the bat, the crowds had started to thin. A cluster of scrappy motorcycles sat several feet away, along the wooden bannister. “Don’t mind my brothers, they’re just jealous.”

Brothers? The thought is perplexing — there isn’t much of a resemblance between the four of them, but you settle on the logical path of adoption.

“Jealous?” Incredulity ripples through your tone, as saccharine as sugar. Paul snickers, amused by your own obliviousness — it’s sweet, your humility, but he doesn’t seem surprised. “Why?”

“Why d’you think?” Paul steered you toward the bannister, making himself comfortable at your side. A feeble heat wafted from you, accompanied by the thick haze of your scent. It stung his nostrils, producing a dull burn within his throat.

“Oh,” He got the girl, you think, folding your arms to let them perch atop the railing. “I’ve heard about you guys — the Boardwalk Boys. I didn’t know I’d be speaking to a celebrity tonight.” You teased, tone jocular.

Through a guffaw and a wild grin, Paul nearly bumped his hip into you, twisting the toothpick between his teeth. “We got a bad reputation for bein’ troublesome,” He mused. “Hope you’re not thrown off by that.”

“I’m not,” You insisted, despite your initial hesitation. Casting judgment on someone you knew little about wasn’t fair — and Paul was the most intriguing person you’d spoken to thus far. “Where do you and your brothers live?”

“Don’t have a house,” Paul seemed nonchalant about this fact, placing a boot up upon one of the lower rungs. “We jus’ live in a cave on Hudson’s Bluff — party and slum it.” He noticed the look of astonishment on your face. “Totally legal, by the way.”

Through a furrowed brow and warm features, you canted your head to one side. “You live in a cave? Doesn’t that get —”

“Dangerous?” Paul interjected, grinning like the cat who’d caught the canary. He slithered closer, throwing an arm around your shoulders, ring-adorned fingers tracing over your arm. “Nothing about me is tame, baby.”

Biting back a hiccup, you felt yourself becoming unabashedly smitten, chewing at the inside of your cheek. There was nothing civilized and demure about Paul, who was as wild and unpredictable as they came. The juxtaposition to your pious demeanor clashed with his — in a good way.

Paul thoroughly enjoyed living on the edge, an amalgamation of all things untamed and dangerous. Recklessness was fun for him, like the thrill of the hunt. Sometimes, he let the human facade slip enough to rouse suspicion — David didn’t like that.

His touch was akin to a stab of ice, even through your chiffon shawl. A brief gasp rippled through you at the foreign sensation, but it wasn’t unwelcome. Swallowing your nervousness, you happened to stay put, gaze drifting to meet cerulean irises.

“I’m not afraid, if that’s what you’re worried about,” In a valiant attempt to show a sliver of boldness, you found yourself wanting to impress Paul. “I think I can handle it.” Your insistence was cute to Paul, whose nose wrinkled instead.

“I like that fire you got, but you’re shakin’ like a leaf,” Paul teased, reveling in the flustered look plastered onto your visage. Before you could avert your eyes, he reached to tilt your chin toward him, as playful as could be. “You’re real pretty.”

Jesus, he was smooth — a crazed charm that was akin to a siren’s song, dragging you into the depths of his ocean. Compliments accompanied by his suaveness and fleeting touches made your nerves blaze with exhilaration.

Having melted the barrier of strangeness between you both, Paul hovered above you, leaning inward to sniff at your tresses. It was an amalgamation of all things sweet — from something floral to a hint of honey and vanilla.

“You’re …” Ensnared within his incendiary gaze, you found yourself unable to find the words, as if they ceased to exist. A beat of silence gripped you as you considered what to say. “You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met.”

Most girls he sunk his teeth into weren’t so mesmerized — and if they were, they were often beneath his hypnotic spell. Your awe and bewilderment appeared to be genuine.

Paul laughed, the sound vibrating through him, ripping clean through his throat. He thoroughly enjoyed how smitten you were with him, and the innocuous attention was something he chased after. “You think so?”

Flicking the toothpick aside, Paul noticed the coy smile tugging at either corner of your mouth. It was easy to dip into the recesses of your mind, dig into each crevice for answers, but he chose not to. The unpredictability of it all enticed him.

“Yeah, you just … You’re very fearless, and bold. You don’t care what anybody else thinks of you.” If only you were confident enough to take a page out of his book, you might’ve been the same way. “It’s very attractive.” Your confession emerged as a soft-spoken utterance.

Unable to suppress his growing smirk, Paul’s lips neared the shell of your ear. “You hitting on me?” He purred, able to catch a whiff of your pheromones. It was a wave of something feminine, making his blood boil with anticipation.

The boardwalk became incredibly dismal, mere ambiance serving as a backdrop for your conversation with Paul. You cared little for curfew, little for going home. “I am,” With a steady exhale, you straightened your posture. “Is that okay?”

“Fuck, ‘course it’s okay,” Paul mumbled, lips brushing across the shell of your ear, causing gooseflesh to ice your spine. A clammy chill spread along the back of your neck, breath hitching within your throat. “Prettiest girl here.”

Whispered praise raked hot embers along your spine, causing your stomach to roll with waves of excitement. You were terrified to touch him, lips agape as he tilted your chin, forcing you to hold his stare.

“You’re sweet,” You murmured, tone wrought with disbelief as you mustered a smile, dazzled by Paul’s beguiling visage. His closeness was marked by the unusual chill of his flesh, the brush of his mesh-clad chest against yours. “Paul.”

“Should ditch this place, baby,” Paul’s breath fanned across your mouth, his scent a strange conglomerate of marijuana, sun-dried carrion, and stale cologne to mask it all. “Come and check out the cave.”

A sliver of your being sensed danger, as if your hackles bristled at the thought of going somewhere completely secluded with him. It was easy to dismiss your twinge of paranoia as nervousness, and you did just that.

“I’ll go with you.” With a brief exhale, you nodded in agreement, earning the delight of Paul, who seemed incredibly pleased. His bark of a laugh reverberated throughout his chest as he planted a sloppy kiss against your cheek.

“C’mon, I’ll give you a lift,” His outstretched hand invited you toward his scrappy motorcycle, which seemed similar to a dirt-bike instead of a true Harley or Indian. “I’m a safe driver.”

Despite his faux assurances and oozing charm, some sliver of you felt uneasy. It would just be the both of you, which seemed infinitely more comfortable than having his brothers around.

Paul’s grin never diminished, glinting through the encroaching dark as he settled onto the bike, ensuring that you were situated behind him. “I don’t know if I believe you.” You mused, relieving some of the tension.

His laugh made you smile, like the cackle of a coyote — nothing tame about him. Despite his carefree nature, you enjoyed his company, savored the sense of liberation you felt with him. There wasn’t a need to perform, only exist as you were.

“Believe it, baby, we’re goin’ for a ride,” He mused, revving his bike with a noisy howl. Before he could spin off of the boardwalk, you immediately lurched forward, arms hooking around his midsection. “Might wanna hold on tight.”

Seaborne wind whipped against your cheeks, the night chill seeping into your bones. The silver glow of the moon sparkled across the ocean, framing Paul’s tresses in an eerie light. He was frenzied, screaming into the twilight as he drove across the beach.

A shudder of ecstasy raked across your spine, exhilaration fueled by a stab of fear. You clung to him like a drowning woman, digits tangled into the mesh, feeling the icy plane of his abdomen beneath.

A sharp inhale fluttered within your lungs when Paul’s bike hopped over a log, causing you to tense with anticipation. There was something maddening about his driving — recklessness, excitement, the thrill of the night.

The boardwalk faded into the background, mere sparkling lights in the distance, now dissipated. Hudson’s Bluff was a sprawling forest before one made it to the cliffside, barren with dirt and a sparse tree. The rocky incline that led to the mouth of the cave was steep and jagged.

“Home sweet home,” Paul crowed, guiding his bike toward the mess of boards, caution tape, and flotsam. Driftwood had washed up onto shore, with tattered tarps partially strewn across the cave’s entrance. “Didn’t scare you, did I?”

As he dismounted, he noticed the startled look upon your face, akin to a baby deer lost in the thicket. It seemed to fade once your feet landed upon slick rocks, waves kissing the sediment-laden shores. “Only a little.” You confessed.

Paul snickered, offering you a ring-adorned hand as he wound closer to you, planting a sly kiss along the back of your ear. “Sorry, baby. Didn’t mean to,” He murmured, able to detect the spike of warmth in your blood, the hitch of your breath. “You’ll love it down here.”

The cavernous abyss of the cave’s mouth made you shiver, your grip on Paul’s hand becoming uncomfortably snug as he led you down. It was all uneven and perilous, the cave marked by overhanging foliage, moss, and rocky outcroppings.

Within the underbelly of their home, it became somewhat cozy, strewn in countless trappings of the present time, intermingled with that of the past. There were many huge posters of various bands, a portion of the cave carved off for their bikes and workshopping scrap.

“Did something fall underground here?” You asked, noticing the dilapidated fountain in the center of the cave, where slivers of moonlight crept through. Sweeping a digit over the old stone, you collected a century’s worth of dust.

“Used to be an old hotel back in the day, before it collapsed. Some sinkhole or somethin’, David knows the whole story,” Paul replied, tossing a torch into one of the barrels. “I didn’t listen to much of it.” He chortled, gaze fixated upon you.

Worn tapestries hung from the scaling ceilings, crimson velvet tarnished by the passage of time. Much of the decor was an amalgamation from the past and the present, worlds colliding in the depths of the cave.

“It doesn’t bother you, living here?” Perhaps your question might’ve passed as judgmental, but you were simply curious. Paul hopped up onto the ledge of the fountain, able to look down upon you.

“Nah. You get used to it,” Sauntering along the edge, he jerked his head toward another alcove of the cave. “Wanna see my place? Best part of the cave.” He mused, jumping down to land right in front of you.

You began to relax, allowing yourself to lower your guard with Paul. Vulnerability began to waft from you, a semblance of comfort that you couldn’t quite place. “Yeah, I’d love to.” Warmth crept along your spine when he took your hand again.

The cave was much bigger than you thought, with sprawling passageways, alcoves, and concealed grottos that didn’t make themselves known. Paul’s ‘room’ was nothing more than a dip in the rock, shrouded by gaudy velvet curtains.

It smelled of marijuana and a hint of cologne, accompanied by mildew and moisture. Disheveled sheets were strewn across a mattress, metal posters covering most of the rock. Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, Warrant, Scorpions, Judas Priest — Paul had an excellent taste in music.

“You’re really into music, aren’t you?” A brief bubble of laughter emerged from your lips as you gestured toward the posters. His stereo and cassette tapes sat atop a rickety vanity, mirror smashed and missing half of the glass.

“Yeah. I play guitar,” Paul was merely a novice, but he wasn’t the worst player in the world. “Metal not your speed?” He mused, gauging your response. Marko labeled him as a music snob, not that he could help it.

“No, I enjoy it. My parents are pretty strict on it, though,” You mumbled, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. Most of his belongings were scattered — strewn about the room or stacked into disorganized piles. “I like it here.”

Upon first glance, Paul saw you as a meal, a plaything, a means to an end. He intended on feeding from you, given how saccharine your scent happened to be. Blood was blood, but it did have a certain bouquet and viscosity, varying from person to person.

Now, he was beginning to have a change of heart.

Humans were disposable, nothing — piles of warm meat with a bloodstream, something to consume and discard once he had his fill. It was a callous way to think of it, but he wasn’t concerned with the livelihood of a stranger.

Despite the supernatural appeal he had, especially towards you, whatever unconscious effect you possessed was beginning to impact him. Paul lacked the desire to feast, to kill. Instead, it was simply that — the desire to be with you.

For a moment, he considered turning you himself — being like him, an eternal statue bound to his side. Then again, Paul obtained some sick thrill from toying with your humanity, seeing how far he could push his limits.

The fiery burning within his throat became nothing more than background noise, replaced with baser, carnal instincts. Paul’s jaw tensed, and he watched in rapturous silence as you picked up a Def Leppard cassette.

“Wanna listen?” Paul asked, noticing the flicker of excitement within your eyes. Coming from a religious background, rock music was demonized in your household — this was a much-needed break for you.

“If you don���t mind.” Beaming, you couldn’t help but warm as Paul plucked the tape from your hands, hovering beside you as he placed it into the stereo. Love Bites wasn’t exactly a clean song, and Paul snickered at the coincidental lyrics.

With a theatrical groan, he rocked back onto his mattress, listening to the squeak of the springs protest his weight. Paul let himself bask in the moment, tossing his overcoat somewhere toward the alcove’s entrance.

A pang of attraction rippled through you at the sight of him, spread wide with his arms planted behind him, mane of hair making him look like a rockstar. You stood with the shrewdness of a mouse, picking at the frayed stitching of your shawl.

Paul loved your innocence — it made you wildly gorgeous in ways that made his skin crawl. Cerulean hues shamelessly flickered across your form, lips quirked into a lopsided smirk.

“When are you gonna stop bein’ shy and come sit on my lap?” The sharp question was enough to make your knees wobble, heat beginning to pool within the pit of your stomach. Your doe-eyed stare flew to Paul, who seemed entirely unbothered.

Gawking as if he’d asked something offensive, you let your bewilderment show. “What?” It felt like some raunchy dream you’ve had before, but this was reality.

“You heard me,” Paul crooned, extending one hand in your direction. “C’mere.” Fuck, he could smell you — the familiar scent of feminine arousal struck his senses like a gut-punch, causing him to salivate. It was going to be a fight to control himself.

Nervousness dissipated into excitement as you abandoned your lingering insecurities, shuffling forward until you were in between his legs. Your hand found his own, calloused digits smoothing themselves across your palm, reveling in your softness.

Paul brought your palm to his lips, pressing a kiss against the silky skin there. The sharp cadence of your breath made him grin, a chuckle reverberating throughout his body.

“You are so pretty,” You sighed, unable to smother your compliment. There was no one quite as captivating as Paul, whose untamed appearance only appealed to your attraction. “So attractive.”

Amused, Paul appeared flattered by your sweet praise, and it turned him on to the point of no return. Jesus, he wanted you — wanted you for himself. Possessiveness wasn’t something he was familiar with, yet it began to fester inside of him nonetheless.

Coaxing you into his lap, you swallowed the growing lump within your throat, thighs squeezing at either side of his hips. You straddled him, feeling those ring-adorned hands clamor for your waist, caressing into your curves.

“Lookin’ good enough to eat, sweet thing,” Paul crowed, pinching the chiffon shawl between his fingers. “You want to fool around?” Blunt, straightforward — his intentions seemed crystalline.

Another hitch formed within the depths of your throat, gooseflesh prickling along your spine. “Yes,” With an excitable sigh, you attempted to seem subdued, but this was the first time you’d done something like this. “Please.”

Paul’s palms cupped your hips, groping at the pliant flesh through your dress as he moved to kiss you. Carnality bled through his lips, tasting of smoke and the twang of copper. A low groan stirred within his chest as you grasped at his hair.

Dusty-blonde tresses seemed stiff between your fingertips, layered in age-old product that hadn’t been washed out. You found yourself not questioning the strangeness of it, lost within the fervor of his mouth.

Def Leppard saturated the space around you, ambiance beginning to soothe whatever anxiousness you’d felt before. Paul was a fantastic kisser, tongue swiping across your lower lip on occasion, head canted to deepen the entanglement.

Prying your shawl aside, you let the chiffon garment taper off to the floor, a shiver rolling down your spine. Exposed to the cave’s mild air, your mouth eagerly clamored against his own, feeling one of his hands slither toward your backside.

You felt as if you’d been set ablaze, flesh burning with a carnal intensity, something you hadn’t experienced before. An amalgamation of new sensations began to overwhelm you, the thrill of desire settling into your bones.

Paul brazenly groped at your rump, feeling you up through your skirt with greedy caresses. Each kiss was voracious, stealing every wisp of air from your lungs until there was nothing left but a burning, a longing unlike anything you’d endured before.

“Wait,” Through a breathy sigh, Paul’s lips came to a crawl, piercing hues gauging you through blonde lashes. “I’ve never gone much further than this. Is that okay?” Your inquiry was a softspoken one, laced with innocence.

Fantasy ran rampant as Paul considered your confession, tongue darting to lap across his lower lip. Armed with this knowledge, he knew that he really needed to behave, or else he’d break you.

“Fuck yeah,” He huffed, tracing his palm along the pliant flesh of your thigh. “If you don’t wanna do something, you tell me, yeah? I got some ideas,” Paul crooned, pressing a string of kisses along your jaw. “Think you’ll like it.”

A tremor of ardor rippled through your stomach, evoking a sense of exhilaration. Curious digits found their way to his bare shoulders, exploring the broad muscle there as he kissed his way across your throat.

“Like what?” A sharp exhale tore past your parted lips as teeth nicked your jugular, testing the waters for what was to come. Paul’s smirk was palpable, like an icy brand etched into your flesh.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He purred, toying with your intrigue, enough to make you squirm within his lap. You very nearly froze at the incessant prodding of his erection against your thigh. “Fuck, you smell so good, baby.”

Whatever perfume you happened to spritz on today, you made a mental note to wear it again. Gooseflesh crawled across your spine, thighs involuntarily attempting to clench together as his palm drifted underneath your top.

With a silent insistence, Paul helped you squirm out of your blouse, catching an eyeful of your lace-laden chest. His lips twitched into a wolfish smirk, eyes gleaming with a fervent hunger.

You nearly shrank beneath his piercing gaze, finding that your blouse had made its way to the floor, lost to the moment. The lace of your brassiere was girlish and frilly, though you suspected it wouldn’t stay on for very long.

Paul pressed a string of needy kisses along your shoulder, ring-adorned hand skirting to knead at your breast. A soft moan tore past your mouth, a sound that he had been itching to elicit from you. He teased your nipple over the fabric, watching you squirm within his lap.

“Paul!” A low whine escaped you, one that reeked of neediness, a burning desire that had coalesced into a flame. His mouth found the dip between your neck and shoulder, sucking a hickey into the sensitive skin there.

“Like it when you say my name,” He purred, nose nuzzling along your throat. The sanguine pulse of your blood was tantalizing, like a savory treat being dangled before him, but he resisted. “Gonna take this off of you.” One digit plucked at the strap of your brassiere.

“Mm.” With a noise of approval, you felt Paul move to unhook the garment with swift expertise. The humid breeze that drifted through the cave caused you to bristle, letting him leave you bare. His pupils seemed to expand with excitement.

Fuck, you were gorgeous — Paul was having a difficult time focusing on what part of you he enjoyed the most. “You are so fuckin’ hot,” He growled, causing your breath to hitch within your throat. “What am I gonna do with you, babe?”

A shiver of exhilaration iced your spine, arousal pooling between your thighs, heavier than you expected. Molten heat swirled within your stomach, warmth permeating your features. “Whatever you want.” You uttered, and he happened to grin.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” Paul crooned, dexterous hands wandering toward your ass, pushing you forward until his face brushed against your sternum. His tongue traced a pattern around your breasts, savoring the sweet slick of your flesh.

Swallowing the lump within your throat, your fingers raked themselves through his wild tresses, finding their purchase as he kissed at your chest. A satisfied whine left you, followed by a gasp as he began to suck at your nipple.

Tits were his thing — it elicited some frenzied reaction from him, the softness of your chest; supple and unspoiled. Paul’s digits found your unattended breast, kneading into the flesh there, causing you to moan.

The rough pad of his thumb rolled across your nipple, evoking a squeak from you. His cheshire smirk was tangible against your skin, like a hot brand, etched for eternity.

His greedy suckling dwindled to kisses, planting a string of wet pecks to your chest. “You are somethin’ else,” Paul hummed, a glimmer of lust shimmering within his eyes. “Lay down for me, yeah?” He murmured, planting a kiss against your jugular.

The erratic beating of your heart was born of excitement, a thrill unlike any other. His allure had captivated you, and before Paul’s change of heart, it was the predator ensnaring prey. It was the supernatural attraction of being a vampire.

Without question, you adhered to his request, the obedient human, awkwardly shuffling to recline across the mattress. It groaned in protest, yet you paid it little mind as Paul crawled toward you.

It was animalistic, something that sent a shudder of fear through your stomach, a good fear. Cerulean hues glistened with unrestrained desire, lips splitting into a smirk as he made residence between your legs.

Hands grasped mesh as he tugged his top away, musculature exposed to you, godly in some inhuman way. Arousal sat heavy between your thighs, beginning to drive Paul to madness. He found your skirt, head canting to one side.

“You mind if I get rid of this? Just gettin’ in the way of what I want,” The amorous cadence of his voice made you press your legs together in an attempt to relieve the tension. “Gettin’ shy on me, babe?” Paul teased, prompting you to smile.

“You can take it off.” With a shrewd utterance, you watched as Paul sluggishly tugged at your skirt. The frilly garment disappeared, tossed somewhere behind him. Thin, cotton panties were all that kept you from exposure.

Slinking forward, Paul’s body blanketed yours, arms keeping himself propped up as he gazed down at you, lips quirked into a grin. “You’re gorgeous, you know that?” His mouth found your collarbone, leaving behind a string of hot, wet kisses.

A shaky sigh escaped your lips, laced with the tremor of anticipation as you reached for his tresses. Soft fingers raked through his stiff mane, eliciting a low, satisfied hum from him.

He kissed you wherever he pleased, finding plenty of enjoyment in your body. Your flesh was like silk, akin to velvet, an unblemished surface, all for his own pleasure. Paul kissed his way between your breasts, briefly nipping at your sternum.

The heady, dizzying scent of your arousal continued to scorch his nostrils, a burn of sheer ecstasy. Bloodlust had dwindled into lust — the want he felt for you far outweighed the desire to feed. A soft moan left you when he reached your stomach, hands finding your thighs.

“P—Paul, where …” Embarrassment flooded through you, warming your already-feverish flesh with bashfulness. A guffaw left your greedy paramour, who did not stop his trail of reverent kisses. “You don’t have to.” You squeaked.

Cute — Paul’s mouth twisted into a wolfish grin, cerulean hues reflecting the yearning of a man starved. “I want to,” His enthusiasm bewildered you, and the throbbing between your legs seemed incessant, now. “Fuck, I want it so bad, babe.”

A shiver rolled along your spine, digits idly tensing within his hair as he kissed a trail along your pelvic bone, teeth snagging into the waistband of your panties. An audible gasp ripped through your throat, eyes widening into a doe-eyed stare.

Paul’s hues met yours, lips still quirked into a smirk even as he guided your panties down your legs. He had them clenched between his teeth like a vice, sluggishly dragging them down until they were hitched around your knees.

Your stomach did flips, a whine bubbling from your throat as he pressed kisses along your calf. No man had ever bothered to do something as sultry as this — and you became lost to his lascivious charm.

Involuntarily, you pressed your thighs together, visibly smitten as Paul clicked his tongue. “Wanna taste you so bad,” He groaned, chin perched against your knee. “You gonna make me beg or somethin’?” A bark of laughter reverberated through his chest.

“No, I just — It’s embarrassing,” It was silly, so silly to be flustered over your own anatomy. Paul appeared amused, but he seemed more than happy to placate you, trailing his fingers along your thigh. “What if you don’t like it?”

“I’ve eaten worse, sweet thing,” Paul chortled, like the snickering of a hyena as he kissed your knee, head cocked to one side. “Your pussy is ‘bout to be the best thing I’ve had in months, and that’s bein’ serious.” He assured.

A smile tugged at the corner of your mouth, and his crass humor seemed to melt away your apprehension entirely. “I don’t want to starve you.” Your own jest made him grin — a full, ear-splitting leer that brought back his wild gleam.

Slowly, you parted your legs, and Paul whistled triumphantly, gluing himself to you with an inhuman haste. His mouth pressed open, wet kisses to your inner thighs, greed consuming him as he chased after that smell.

Your scent had been tormenting him since the moment he strolled into Video Max, and now, he was inhaling it all with glee. “Fuck, you’re soakin’ wet,” Paul groaned, causing your breath to hitch as you reclined into the mattress. “Pretty.”

Without pause, his tongue dragged across your cunt, akin to the burn of hot embers over your slit, an ecstasy that made you writhe. A growl ripped through his chest, one that made you shudder as he lapped at your core.

His tresses became your anchor, something to tether you to him as you tugged, pulled, and fisted at his mane. Paul seemed to enjoy it, nose nuzzling along your mound as he vigorously explored your cunt.

Taut, sinewy hands circled beneath your thighs, coming to perch atop your hips, caging you in against his mouth. He was primal — sloppy and enthusiastic, with little tact to his ministrations. His tongue traveled anywhere and everywhere.

The taste of your cunt drives Paul into a frenzy, like that of a fine stout, ambrosial — he’s intoxicated, hit with a buzz that clouds his mind. Your thighs coil around his head, involuntarily flexing against his temples.

There is a euphoria that swells within you, a fire that demands to be extinguished. Paul’s tongue possesses a mind of its own, eagerly lapping from your entrance to clit. At the first lap along the pearl of your cunt, you cry out.

Unbeknownst to you, Paul could’ve stayed between your thighs for an eternity, with little desire to catch his breath. Control became difficult to grasp, with the feral urge to ruin you taking root, the fantasy spreading like a creeping mold.

Between dizzying, wanton moans and excitable gasps, clawing for each wisp of air, you tug at his tresses with an iron grasp. His lips plant hot, open-mouthed kisses along your cunt, tongue gathering your slick.

Greed was his cardinal sin, a gluttony for you, for every fiber of your being. Cerulean hues flickered toward you, head thrown back, caught within the throes of ecstasy. It only furthered his lust, furthered the festering obsession.

The incessant throbbing of his cock was becoming mildly distracting, enough for Paul to absentmindedly grind his hips into the mattress. The friction made his flesh burn with excitement, lips moving to purse around your clit.

“Taste so fuckin’ good.” Paul’s sultry husk momentarily broke your concentration, heart fluttering beneath your breast as you glanced down. It was as if he ensnared you through eyes alone, ensuring that you watched as he sucked at that bundle of nerves.

With a noisy, pleading moan, your back began to arch from the mattress, springs hissing in protest as you tugged at the base of his skull. You brought him into your cunt, not that he minded, and you were treated to a barrage of messy licks.

A sheen of arousal coats his chin, senses swarmed with your scent; a thick, feminine aroma. Pupils dilate with thinly-veiled excitement as one hand relocates, slithering from your hip to the warmth between your legs.

Time isn’t wasted with Paul as two digits begin to stroke along your entrance, mouth preoccupied with suckling on your clit. With a muted thrust of your hips, you can feel the huff of laughter from your crazed paramour, who pins your hips down with his other palm.

A demanding fire burns bright within the pit of your stomach, arousal coalescing between your thighs, a nectar that Paul consumes every drop of. Your flesh feels unbearably hot, like a fever you can’t sweat out as you approach your peak.

Throaty groans tear through Paul’s throat as he hungrily eats you out, drunk off of your taste. Two fingers ease themselves inside of you, initially sluggish until it turns into something erratic, feeling you clench around his digits.

“Paul,” It almost stole the wind from your lungs; the graze of teeth around your clit, causing you to shudder. With an incoherent string of moans, you continue to babble his name as if it were a prayer. “P—Paul, m’close!” You croon.

White-hot bliss floods your insides, and it only continues to spur Paul on as he pistons his fingers into your cunt. The sensation makes you writhe, an ecstasy unlike any other. He doesn’t slow down, alternating between broad laps of his tongue and sucking at your pearl.

Enraptured, Paul observed you like that of a patient predator, grinding himself into the mattress again. His fingers work against you, thrusting in once more before curling — and that seems to set you over the edge.

With a wave of overwhelming pleasure, you feel your climax hit you hard, like a rush of blood to the head. Uncoiling your thighs from around Paul’s head, you feel sticky, leaving behind the mess of your ardor for him to clean up.

A thin layer of perspiration clung to your skin, glistening through the low light of the cave. A burning sensation stung your lungs as you let yourself breathe, regaining your composure.

Paul lapped at his lips, emerging from between your legs with a cheshire grin. “You’re hot,” He sighed, peppering a string of kisses all along your thigh. “Need a break?” With a cajoling tone, he slithered closer, resting his head against your stomach.

Blonde tresses stuck out in all directions, wild and disheveled from your constant pulling. You pushed your fingertips across his scalp, and he happened to curl up closer to you. “That was perfect.”

“I’m good at pleasin’.” Paul snickered, pecking another myriad of kisses along your abdomen. He moved off of you, settling beside you on the mattress, stuffing a pillow beneath his head. The front of his jeans did little to conceal his erection.

In a simmering silence, you wordlessly moved to clamor into Paul’s lap, palms embracing the plane of his chest. You traced your fingers through the blonde hair there, noticing the way in which his visage illuminated with excitement.

Silky digits traced the line of his stubbled jaw, past his collarbone and toward the coarse line of his happy trail. “You’re so pretty.” A soft mumble escaped your lips as you touched him wherever you could, feeling his hands knead into your hips.

“Fuck,” Paul grumbled, becoming impatient as he writhed beneath you, erection grinding into your core with fervent intent. “Don’t make me wait, baby.” He sighed, giddy as could be when your fingers found his belt.

A pang of elation rippled through you, ardor seeping into your bones as you sluggishly rocked your hips against him. An agonized grunt rumbled throughout his chest, hands squeezing you tight as you unbuttoned his jeans.

Freeing his cock from the confines of strained, white fabric, Paul bristled, nearly steering you onto him out of sheer desperation. Your fingers coyly wrapped around his member, stroking from base to tip, flush within your palm.

Another hiss of impatience slipped through his teeth, festering with want as you pleasured him. He was flattered that you bothered to return the favor, but Paul was hyperfocused on fucking you until you sobbed.

“Minx,” He mused, catching your mesmerized stare as he flashed a wolfish grin in your direction. You ceased with your toying, sheepishly guiding him toward your aching cunt. “C’mon, just like that.” Paul coaxed, teeth scraping across his lower lip.

It was increasingly difficult to maintain any pious facade with him talking to you like that — resonance little more than a sultry purr, spurring you on. Sluggishly, you lowered yourself onto his cock, the intrusion causing you to moan.

Intermingled sighs of ecstasy drifted throughout the alcove, with Paul gripping your hips like a vice, hard enough to leave bruises. Your nails dug into his abdomen, eliciting a chortle from him as he bucked up into you.

His control was splintering at the seams, feeling your cunt clench around him as he bottomed out inside of you. Your visage contorted into a look of sheer bliss, lips agape and eyes half-lidded as you began to grind against him.

From beneath you, the view was divine — Paul’s hues carefully traced the pliant curves of your breasts, the way your body moved atop him with ease. Your jugular appeared inviting, and for a moment, he was reminded of the burn ripping at his throat.

As you began to move, allowing your pace to become spirited, his thoughts were torn from fractures of feeding to that of pleasure. He was strong enough to move you all on his own, taut digits skirting to your haunches.

“Paul,” You moaned, nails leaving crimson crescents against his chest. His hips happened to clash with yours, cock pounding into your cunt with the lewd clash of flesh. “S—Shit!” A stammered whine escaped you.

Def Leppard filled the void, resonant between the intermingled grunts of Paul and your wanton moans. Deft, needy hands caressed you wherever he could, one palm gripping at your haunch as the other wandered to squeeze your breast.

Pools of dull candlelight bathed you in its glow, ethereal in appearance — he was mesmerized. It wasn’t something that occurred often, being charmed by a human, and yet it happened anyway.

Paul continued to thrust into you, cock nearly kissing your cervix with vigor. Even through his erratic pace, you guided yourself in rhythmic motions along his cock, reduced to a mess of pathetic whimpers and eager cries.

A cacophony of crass noises emanated throughout the walls of his chambers — breathy sighs intermingled with wanton moans, the exchange of flesh for fantasy.

“Fuck, baby,” Paul groaned, the husk of his cadence causing you to shiver in delight. Molten heat churned within the pit of your stomach, arousal pooling between your thighs. “Feels so good.” He huffed.

As if acting upon selfish impulse, you reached for the choker around his neck, hooking two digits into the black fabric as you tugged him up. Pupils dilated with sudden exhilaration, cerulean hues boring into you, as incendiary as an open flame.

Lips clashed together, greedy and hungry — an unfamiliar hunger, one that seemed to sink its talons into you, refusing to let go. You kissed him as if each entanglement would be your last, feeling his teeth scrape across your lower lip.

Paul didn’t seem to mind doing most of the work, feeling your thighs twitch and tremble from exertion. His chest brushed against yours, evoking an animalistic growl from the depths of his throat.

The pace seemed to increase, turning to a wild fervor that filled you with excitement. Your cunt clenched around his cock, bodies sticky with perspiration and fluids, the clash of flesh becoming prominent.

That familiar coil of tenuous heat festered within the pit of your stomach, signaling the encroachment of your release. Without warning, Paul happened to bite down too hard on your lip, and if it weren’t for his restraint, he might’ve taken it further.

“Paul,” Between wanton sighs and needy moans, you grasped at his tresses again, hips grinding against his own. A delicious friction boiled between the both of you, flesh to flesh, driven by desire. “Don’t stop, please.”

One hand skirted to cup his stubbled jaw, able to glimpse a sliver of the untamed side to Paul, the side that captivated you so. He was relentless, stamina borderline inhuman as he continued to guide you atop his lap.

A coppery scent filled his nostrils as a bead of crimson formed upon your lip. Paul bent forward, still fucking you as if it would be his last rut, tongue darting out to lap across your lips.

Saccharine warmth filled his maw for the briefest of moments — your blood, like a fruity bouquet, rich and virile. He hadn’t tasted something so sweet before, and it only made him want more. He kissed you again, with enough passion to make your head spin.

With another lewd clash of his cock slapping away at your cunt, you nearly reeled, moan swallowed by his voracious tongue. It was a messy kiss, fueled by his desire to lap at any drop of blood that oozed from your mouth.

Through a tangle of teeth, tongue, and want, Paul came, bucking up into you as his cock spilled inside of you. An exhale of ecstasy escaped you, mouths parting just enough for you to caress his lower lip with your thumb.

A wicked gleam glistened within his heated stare as he took your thumb into his mouth, pearlescent teeth teasing the fragile skin. A shudder wracked your body, enough to reignite the smoldering desire that now gripped your body.

“Stop that,” You mumbled, albeit playfully as you sluggishly untethered yourself from his lap, thighs scorched by his jeans and the constant friction. It must’ve been late, you realized. “That was …”

“Best you’ve ever had?” Paul teased, a howl of laughter rippling through him. He seemed more than satisfied, something that made you feel better about the whole ordeal. “You’re not gonna run off on me, are you?” He asked.

Curfew was dead and gone — you would face the repercussions come morning. Instead, you happened to try and find your panties, only to notice Paul twirling them around on his hand.

“I’m not going anywhere,” With a huff, you immediately slithered back onto his lap, grabbing them with a flustered smile. Paul had you trapped, caging you in against his chest with a vice-like hold. “Paul.”

“Can’t hear you, sweet thing,” His eyes momentarily fluttered shut, lips curled into a wolfish grin as he squeezed at your rump. You were trying to put your panties back on even still, nose wrinkling with amusement. “Need somethin’ to wear?”

Despite your shrug, Paul moved to find you something adequate. He had a rather extensive collection of ripped band shirts that he accumulated from tourists — none of them possessed a pleasant smell.

He tossed a Judas Priest shirt at you, and while you were in the middle of pulling it on, he was glued to your side again. If you stayed until morning, he would have some explaining to do — or he could drop you at home while you were asleep.

“You’re real pretty,” Paul’s shameless admiration made your flesh warm, a pleasant sensation stirring within your stomach. “You tired? You’re welcome to crash here.” He offered.

“You don’t mind?” Your mother was going to kill you, but it didn’t matter anymore. “I’ll leave first thing in the morning, I don’t want to overstay my welcome.” Despite your reassurance, Paul tossed his head in a show of dismissal.

Admittedly, he could envision you here quite often, vampire or not. There was something about your smell, your blood, your presence — it sucked him right in, even if you were oblivious to it. Paul lounged beside you, watching as you reclined into the pillows.

A beat of silence drifted between the both of you, with Paul ogling you, countenance indiscernible. He seemed a touch surprised when you leaned over to kiss him — a sweet kiss, lacking the carnal intensity of previous entanglements.

“Sleep tight, babe.” Paul mused, watching intently as you fell asleep. Once dawn came, you would find yourself in your own bed, your house — with no knowledge or remembrance of how you got there.

[valkyri]

Lighthouse keeper Price struggling not to let the loneliness and isolation seep into his mind and bones, running on autopilot for several years after his wife got swept away to sea leaving no trace.

Price encountering novelist!reader who's just here for an inspirational vacation to the strange little seaside town with its even stranger inhabitants. So why does she bear a striking resemblance to his late wife? Is this a test? A reward for all his hard work and resilience, perhaps? He knows the sea takes and takes, but sometimes she gives back, right?

[demonic0angel]

I've been playing Dredge lately and had a thought:

Danny, a small seaside town's best fisherman, and his babies, Eldritch Dani and Dan, who prefer to live underwater and come up to see their dad, who goes out fishing every day.

His nets are always full, and his boat never encounters any problems. He always steers true, never goes off course, and keeps finding old sunken treasure in his haul.

Everyone in town knows Mr. Nightingale, and his boat sailing by becomes a sort of good omen for the folk of nearby towns. He always leaves on his own, comes back with his hold full, and two small children, which weren't in the boat in the morning, go running into town with their father at their heels. Then they all go to the beach at sunset, the children dive under the last big waves, just before the sun goes down, and twin masses of glowing lights swim into the distance, waiting for their father to go meet them again the next day.

It's good like that. The town prospers, the fish are good and plentiful for just having one or two fishermen go out every day, and the little family gets to live in a community that won't question their origins.

It's when one hero (whichever, Bat, Lantern, Martian or Super, whatever you prefer) in particular gets shot out of the air and washes into Mr. Nightingale's nets that questions start being asked, most importantly, where is the children's mother, and did Mr. Nightingale get intimate with the personification of the sea, like in Ponyo?

Extra: I know the favorite of the fandom is to ship Danny and a Bat, or a Super or Flash, or even Sam and/or Tucker.

But what if, in his late teens, Danny went off to learn from other Ghosts, met the ghostly embodiment of the ocean? They spent a few years being intimate, enough that they hosted Dani and Dan's unstable cores until proper maturity was reached, got two darling little ones out of the deal, and whenever Danny sails into the horizon, he goes to meet his partner in their own element, spends his time with them and comes back with gifts from his spouse, nets full of fresh fish, and gets the children for the rest of the day, so they can grow up in both worlds. They meet up at night at the beach so the little ones can play on the sand while their parents spend a few hours cuddling and watching the sunset.

Ooh, this sounds so interesting! Something about Danny being in love with an oceanic being sounds so ethereal? Like space and the deep sea, y’know? Two mysterious, deep places with hidden depths that humans cannot fully reach.

Not only does this remind me of Ponyo, but it also reminds me of the Pirates of the Caribbean (in a way), where two lovers are separated by sea and land. On that note, we could make Danny marry Davy Jones.

I have nothing to add, but I do think it would be funny if Danny was a hermit with a mysterious past and heroes start coming to his little sea port to ask for old, sage hero advice.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: Grasping for Answers

Throughout their early adventures the party come into conflict with the agents of the mysterious mage known only as "The Ravelling Hand", a villain of uncertain identity who seems to have lots of schemes and no qualms using violence, trickery, and unexpected magic to get what they want.

Adventure Hooks:

The party first become entangled with the hand's minions when they're asked by an innocuous travelling merchant to deliver a small wrapped parcel to the wizard living one town over. The wizard isn't open to receiving guests, and after sneaking or charming their way in, the party will find out why: her apprentice has been kidnapped, the parcel contains both of the boy's index fingers as well as a note explaining that she can have the rest of him back in exchange for several dangerous texts in her collection, delivered by the party to the same intermediary who hired them. A brawl is likely to ensue as the wizard suspects the party is in on the blackmail, but if they can talk her down maybe they can figure out a way to work together to get the boy back before any more harm comes to him.

Most thieves know better than to try and rob a magic item shop, but most thieves aren't armed with dispel magic infused salt grenades to neutralize the shop's ubiquitous defences. A rash of these attacks across the duchy has shopkeepers worried, and one hires the party to stake out their store for the night when they suspect someone is casing it. Do the party trail the robbers back to their hideout, or interrupt them mid heist only for combat to delay them long enough for those indiscriminate defences to start turning back on?

Spoiler Alert: The mage is in fact an arcanely gifted lesser kraken by the name of Dlexx who seeks to avail itself of all the magical knowledge amassed on land. Sure the deep has its own mysteries but there's a thriving trade in spellscrolls and arcane tomes that don't make it below the waves. Using an old lighthouse as a disguise for its massive form while on land, it uses telepathy and sendings to direct its minions without ever revealing its true nature. Imagine the party's surprise when they roll up to the villain's lair expecting to bully some crusty nerd with a ratty beard and instead the lair sprouts tentacles that drag them into the crashing surf.

Challenges & Consequences

Finding Dlexx is an adventure in and of itself. When questioned, most of the mage's minions admit to never having met their employer, and those high ranking enough to have been summoned to a place called "saltbite tower" in dreams only to later have their memories muddled. Careful interrogation and study of local maps will have the party realize that the tower is infact an abandoned lighthouse, which will narrow their search as they comb the costline for their enemy's lair.

Actually defeating the Ravelling Hand might prove too much for early level adventurers, as in addition to being a powerful mage the kraken is literally in its element, able to breathe and move while the heroes flounder. Dlexx will toy with them, throwing unconscious foes out of the water the way a fisherman throws back a catch that is too small. When the battle is over and it's proved it's point the kraken will collapse the tower and leave into the wide ocean, telepathically taunting them with their inability to follow.

Though the Ravelling Hand will not resurface for some time, the destruction of the tower and Dlexx's retreat into the deep is partially a bluff. The kraken chose that particular lighthouse because it was a short distance away from the coral reef into which it scribed its arcane learning the way a wizard records spells in a book, coiling arms etching formulae into hundreds of yards of living stone. Dlexx must periodically return to the reef to add spells to it, and sightings by locals (or the occasional fish manifesting with magical talent) might clue the party into the reef's existence.

A pair of merfolk siblings named Crashing-Tide and Arcing-Mirror serve the Ravelling Hand as apprentices and scribes, having promised seven years of utmost loyalty in exchange for the chance to bring the arcane knowledge of the surface back to their community. They tend to the reef, and allow the Kraken to borrow their eyes from afar so that it might study the spells scribed there. Several years into their pledge, Crash (the sister) has come to idolize Dlexx and the power it wields above and below the waves, wishing that the whole of their shoal to come into its service. Mirror (the brother) is skeptical, well aware of the kraken's manipulations and distantly suspicious of the conflict that it invokes. Perhaps if the party can intercede with these two they can learn more about their enemy's plans, though doing so will take some careful diplomacy.

Artist

[onlyhyunjin]

𝐉𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐂 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒!

(♡) - my personal favorites (🔞) - CONTAINS NSFW CONTENT

FALLEN STAR - @h5eavenly (A story of two hurt souls finding comfort within each other in the most unexpected ways.)(🔞)(♡)

OFF LIMITS - @yeonzzzn (your older brother has always told you “no boys” and his friends “sister is off limits”, which always worked…until everyone comes back home from college and you see how grown up his best friend has become…)

CHILLING AND KILLING - @yeonzzzn (ghostface Jake au) (♡)

SURPISE BABY - @alvojake (jake was deadset on making your birthday special even if that meant making you hang out with your friend until he was finished setting up his last birthday surprise.)

AFTER HOURS - @heesbaby (jake sim, bassist of AFTERHOURS and all round terrible guy, so deep in his self absorbed world where everything went his way and everyone fell at his feet. he hardly noticed you moving in next door until he caught a glimpse of you in the hallway. completely uninterested in your neighbour, you did you best to ignore his advances. that was until you found yourself humming along to the songs he practiced every night.) (♡)

WATERMELON SUGAR - @wonryllis (he’s the sweetest to you, one might confuse him for your boyfriend, but he’s not, he just your fuckboy of a roommate who treats you like a delicate candy, always looking out for you and never at you; or so you think.)

MEET ME AT OUR SPOT - @jjunieworld (with the news of your grandma’s depleting health, life has you moving to your mother’s seaside hometown for the summer to your aunt’s. while there, you meet the illustrious player—jake sim—that everyone can’t seem to stop talking about. what you never expected was to gain his attention and spend the three months you’re there falling for him.)

BREAK THE ICE - @jaylver (Punching a guy in the club then kissing him not long after at a hockey game wasn't exactly a fairytale, but for you, it was your reality. The worst part of all it wasn't even the incidents that happened, but the fact that you didn't know him or his name. That was until another stir of events that happened which caused you and him to actually meet, so what was the best way to break the ice after a disastrous punch and a shocking kiss together? A date. It could be love at first sight, or more accurately, it was love at first punch, or … kiss? )

NEW YOU - @sageryuri (all hell breaks loose when you, the heir to the throne, decides to run away to begin a new life. luckily, you experience a surprise encounter with jake sim, which brings upon freeing adventures and sprouts a taboo relationship between a princess, and a poor criminal.)

KIWI AND LAYLA - @asahicore (in which you mistake jake’s backpack for your own, making you each go home with the other’s bag. both of you are too curious for your own good, so you quickly find out that you excel in the subject the other is failing - a mutual tutoring agreement ensues, and it turns into much more than what you had expected.)

WEBS OF HURT - @jaylver (Falling for your best friend wasn't on your check list for high school. As if that wasn't enough to break your heart, his odd behaviour only added fuel to the fire along with a new crush of his. Who knew that odd behaviour would soon turn into a secret truth that you'd discover after his valiant effort of hiding.)

[gukcnt]

۶ৎ ENCLOSED IN PASSION —

“I notice everything about you,” he says, his voice firm, unwavering. “The way you tuck your hair behind your ear when you’re focused. The way your hands shake when you hand me a report. The way you light up when you solve a problem no one else can.” His thumb brushes your lips, and you shiver, your breath hitching. “You’re impossible to ignore.”

pairing: boss dom!jimin x employee sub!femreader

genre: forced proximity, professional relationship to lovers, workplace romance, mutual pining, passionate romance, corporate environment, contemporary romance, smut, fluff

warnings: 18+, explicit smut, possessive!jimin, power dynamics, claustrophobia, panic attacks, emotional vulnerability, comfort, emotional intimacy, passionate encounters, making out, hickies/marking, sweating, oral sex (f. receiving), fingering, clit stimulation, clothed sex, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, semipublic sex (they do it in an elevator), possessive language and behavior, dirty talk, multiple orgasms, breast play, nipple play and sucking, body worship, mild physical restraint, temperature contrast, teasing, begging, aftercare

wc: 7.61k

a/n: okay but the pining and how he secretly yearns for her is everything like the TENSIONN ahh anyways, i hope you jimin girlies love this one because i adore this couple so much ! <3

masterlist

۶ৎ

In Seoul’s glittering financial district, where towering skyscrapers reflect the ambition of a city that never sleeps, you work as a junior financial analyst at Kim Enterprises, a corporate juggernaut led by the enigmatic and formidable Park Jimin. At 24, you’re a reserved, meticulous woman whose life is a quiet tapestry woven from routine and introspection. Raised in a quaint seaside village on Jeju Island, you grew up as the only child of a pottery artist mother and a marine biologist father. Your childhood was serene, filled with the rhythmic crash of waves, the earthy scent of clay, and long walks along volcanic beaches, but it was also isolating, nurturing a shyness that lingers like a soft shadow. You excelled academically, your analytical mind earning you a scholarship to Seoul National University, where you studied finance with a quiet resolve to secure a stable future. Yet, your introversion renders you nearly invisible in professional settings, your voice a hesitant whisper in meetings, your brilliant insights often stifled by a fear of scrutiny. At Kim Enterprises, you’re a silent dynamo, your work flawless but your presence understated, fading into the sleek office with its glossy black marble floors, contemporary sculptures, and panoramic windows that frame Seoul’s neon-lit skyline.

Park Jimin, your 32-year-old CEO, is a force of nature, a man whose very presence reshapes the air around him. Born into the illustrious Park dynasty, founders of Kim Enterprises, Jimin grew up in a world of privilege—elite boarding schools, winters in Swiss chalets, and the unrelenting pressure of legacy. But he’s no pampered scion. With a Harvard MBA and a mind sharper than a blade, he’s elevated the company to unprecedented heights. His appearance is a study in precision: jet-black hair styled with effortless elegance, piercing brown eyes that seem to dissect souls, and a lean, muscular frame that fills his bespoke suits—often deep charcoal or midnight blue—with a tailored perfection. His full lips, often pressed into a hard line, rarely betray warmth, and his rare smiles are calculated, a blend of charm and menace. His voice, low and resonant, can command a boardroom or cut through excuses with surgical precision. Employees whisper of his marathon work sessions, his 3 a.m. emails, and the rare but chilling moments when his temper flares, delivered with a cold, controlled fury. Yet, there’s an undeniable allure to him—a magnetic pull that makes hearts race, even as they fear his judgment.

Jimin’s life is a fortress of discipline. He resides in a starkly elegant penthouse overlooking the Han River, its glass walls and minimalist decor—black leather, chrome, and polished wood—mirroring his controlled nature. His mornings begin at 5 a.m. with a grueling run through the city’s quiet streets, followed by an espresso, black and bitter, as he scans global markets. At the office, he’s relentless—leading strategy sessions with a hawk’s focus, dissecting financial models with an almost predatory instinct, and demanding perfection from his team. His personal life is a cipher; rumors of brief liaisons with actresses or heiresses circulate, but no one dares probe. To you, he’s a towering enigma, both terrifying and intoxicating. In your seven months at Kim Enterprises, his acknowledgment has been sparse—curt nods, sharp directives: “I need the risk assessment by 10 a.m.” His voice, smooth as silk but edged with steel, sends shivers down your spine, and you’ve mastered the art of keeping your eyes averted, your cheeks flushing at the mere thought of his gaze.

Your interactions with Jimin are a delicate interplay of dominance and deference. He’s the hurricane, and you’re the fragile petal caught in its gusts. In boardroom meetings, you sit at the far end of the sleek glass table, your leather-bound notebook filled with precise, almost calligraphic notes, while Jimin presides at the head, his voice slicing through the room as he critiques projections or unveils bold acquisitions. When he calls on you—infrequently—your heart lurches, and your voice trembles as you respond. “Y/N, your take on the Hong Kong portfolio. Now.” His tone is never cruel, but it carries a weight that demands perfection, and you feel his eyes, sharp and unyielding, pinning you in place. You’ve noticed how his gaze lingers, a fraction too long, a scrutiny that makes your pulse race and your palms sweat. Once, when you delivered a binder to his office, his fingers brushed yours, the fleeting contact sparking a heat that lingered for hours, leaving you flustered and replaying the moment in your mind.

Your behavior toward him is one of quiet devotion and concealed yearning. You arrive at 7 a.m. to ensure his morning reports are meticulously arranged on his mahogany desk, each page aligned with obsessive care. You’ve memorized his coffee order—black, no sugar, served in a sleek ceramic mug he favors—and when tasked with fetching it, you check the order thrice, your heart pounding at the thought of a mistake. You avoid his gaze, your head bowed as he passes your cubicle, the scent of his cologne—a sophisticated blend of cedarwood, bergamot, sandalwood, and a whisper of leather—making your stomach flutter. Yet, you steal glances when he’s engrossed, captivated by the way his jaw clenches when he’s deep in thought, or how his fingers, long and graceful, adjust his cufflinks with absentminded precision. You’re drawn to him, though you’d never confess it, your shy heart spinning fantasies in the solitude of your modest apartment, where you live alone with your collection of novels, potted plants, and vinyl records.

Jimin’s behavior toward you is a paradox of professional detachment and subtle intensity. He’s never unkind, but his expectations are merciless. He’s critiqued your work in front of the team, his voice cool and cutting: “This variance analysis is off by 1.4%. Redo it by tonight.” Yet, there are moments that unsettle you—times when he pauses by your desk, his shadow falling over your spreadsheets, and murmurs, “Are you managing, Y/N?” The question feels layered, his tone softer, almost intimate, but you nod hastily, stammering, “Yes, sir,” too nervous to meet his eyes. Colleagues tease that you’re “Jimin’s favorite,” citing how he assigns you critical projects, but you dismiss it, convinced he sees you as a mere cog in his machine. Still, you’ve caught him watching you—once, during a late-night work session, his eyes lingered as you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, a fleeting intensity that made your breath catch.

Your dynamic with Jimin is punctuated by moments that simmer with unspoken tension. One evening, working late on a merger analysis, you’re in his office, the city lights casting a golden glow through the windows. He’s pacing, his tie loosened, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, revealing a glimpse of his collarbone. You’re seated at his desk, reviewing data, when he leans over your shoulder, his breath warm against your ear as he points to a figure. “This projection is too conservative,” he says, his voice low, and you freeze, hyper-aware of his proximity, the heat of his body, the faint musk of his cologne. Your pen slips, leaving a streak of ink, and he chuckles, a rare, soft sound. “Nervous, Y/N?” he asks, his tone teasing, and you mumble, “No, sir,” your cheeks burning as you focus on the screen, your heart hammering.

Another moment comes during a team presentation. You’re explaining a risk model, your voice shaky under the weight of his gaze, when you stumble over a term. The room tenses, but Jimin interrupts, his voice calm but firm. “Y/N’s model is sound. Continue.” His defense stuns you, and when you glance at him, his eyes are on you, a flicker of something unreadable—pride, perhaps, or something deeper. Later, as you gather your notes, he approaches, his voice low. “You did well. Don’t doubt yourself.” The praise, rare and direct, sends a warmth through you, and you nod, whispering, “Thank you, sir,” your eyes meeting his for a fleeting moment before you look away, your pulse racing.

It’s a sultry Friday in April 2025, the office buzzing with the anticipation of the weekend. You’re dressed in a tailored charcoal pencil skirt that hugs your hips, a cream silk blouse tucked neatly, and low heels that click softly on the marble floors. Your hair is swept into a loose chignon, a few tendrils framing your face, and a delicate silver necklace rests at your collarbone. You’ve spent the day buried in financial models, your eyes aching from the glare of your dual monitors. Jimin has been in high-stakes meetings, his presence a distant hum until late afternoon, when he emerges from the boardroom, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up, a rare hint of fatigue softening his sharp edges. You’re packing your bag when his voice cuts through the quiet: “Y/N, I need the revised Q2 forecasts on my desk before you leave.” His tone is clipped, and you nod, your stomach sinking at the thought of staying late.

By 8 p.m., the office is a ghost town, the city’s neon lights painting the windows in hues of pink and blue. You finish the report, your hands trembling as you place it on Jimin’s desk, the polished mahogany gleaming under the soft glow of his desk lamp. He’s still there, typing furiously, his hair slightly mussed, his shirt clinging to his frame from the day’s heat. “Thank you,” he says without looking up, his voice distracted, and you murmur, “Goodnight, sir,” before hurrying to the elevator, desperate to escape the weight of his presence.

The elevator is a sleek, mirrored capsule, its walls reflecting your flushed cheeks, your wide eyes, and the nervous way you smooth your skirt. You press the lobby button, clutching your leather purse, when the doors slide open, and Jimin steps in. Your breath catches. He’s carrying his monogrammed briefcase, his suit jacket draped over one arm, and a faint shadow of stubble darkens his jaw, lending him a rugged, almost dangerous edge. His shirt is unbuttoned at the top, revealing a sliver of his chest, and his cologne—a heady mix of cedarwood, bergamot, sandalwood, and leather—fills the space, making your head swim. “Y/N,” he acknowledges, his voice low, almost intimate, as he presses the button again, the doors closing with a soft thud. The space feels suffocatingly small, his presence overwhelming, and you stand rigid, your eyes fixed on the polished floor, your heart pounding.

The elevator hums as it descends from the 42nd floor, the digital display ticking down with agonizing slowness. You’re hyper-aware of every detail—the faint creak of his leather shoes, the rustle of his jacket, the steady rhythm of his breathing, and the way his fingers flex around his phone as he scrolls. You feel his gaze flicker toward you, a fleeting weight that makes your skin prickle, and you shift, your heels clicking softly, the sound loud in the silence. You’re about to exhale as the elevator nears the 18th floor when it lurches violently, the lights flickering wildly before settling into a dim, amber glow. The cabin jerks to a halt, and a faint, ominous alarm buzzes, barely audible.

“Oh no,” you whisper, your voice trembling, the word slipping out before you can stop it. Jimin’s head snaps up, his eyes narrowing as he jabs the emergency button repeatedly. No response. He tries again, then pulls out his phone, his jaw tightening when he sees no signal. “We’re stuck,” he says, his tone calm but laced with irritation, his eyes flicking to you. For the first time, he seems to notice your distress—your hands trembling, your breaths shallow, your eyes wide with panic.

You’ve always dreaded small spaces. As a child, you once got locked in a shed during a storm, the darkness and confinement stealing your breath until your mother found you, curled up and sobbing, your nails bloodied from scratching the door. The elevator, with its mirrored walls and dim, flickering light, is a nightmare reborn. Your chest tightens, your lungs refusing to expand fully, and you press yourself against the wall, your purse slipping from your hands as you slide to the floor, your knees pulled to your chest. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” you whisper, but your voice cracks, and tears prick your eyes. The walls seem to pulse inward, the air growing thinner, and you clutch your knees, your nails digging into your palms as panic claws at your throat.

Jimin watches you, his posture still for a moment, his eyes assessing, almost clinical. Then, he sets his briefcase down with deliberate care, the soft thud grounding in its precision, and crouches in front of you, his suit creasing slightly at the knees. “Y/N,” he says, his voice softer than you’ve ever heard, a velvet caress that cuts through your spiraling thoughts. “Look at me.” You shake your head, your hands trembling, your breaths coming in short, ragged gasps. “Y/N,” he repeats, firmer now, his tone laced with an authority that demands obedience, and you lift your eyes, meeting his. His gaze is steady, a deep brown that anchors you like a lifeline. “You’re having a panic attack. Breathe with me. In for four, hold for four, out for four.”

You try to follow, your lips quivering as you inhale shakily, the air feeling sharp and insufficient. He counts aloud, his voice a low, soothing cadence, rich and deliberate. “One, two, three, four… hold… one, two, three, four… now out, one, two, three, four.” His hands hover near yours, not touching, but their warmth radiates, a silent promise. You focus on his voice, the rhythm of his counting, the way his chest rises and falls subtly with each breath, and slowly, your breathing steadies, though your heart still races. “Good girl,” he murmurs, his lips twitching into a faint, reassuring smile, his eyes softening with something like pride. “You’re doing so well.”

“I’m sorry,” you choke out, tears spilling down your cheeks, hot and unstoppable. “I’m so sorry, I just—I can’t handle small spaces, and I’m—” Your words tumble over each other, your voice breaking, raw with vulnerability.

“Stop apologizing,” he says, his tone firm but not unkind, a quiet command that silences your self-reproach. “You don’t need to explain. Just keep breathing.” He shifts to sit beside you, his shoulder brushing yours, a solid, grounding presence. The contact, however slight, sends a shiver through you, and you’re acutely aware of his warmth, the faint musk of his cologne, the way his tailored shirt clings to his frame. “I’m right here,” he says, his voice low, steady, a promise woven into the words.

You nod, wiping your tears with the back of your hand, your fingers trembling. The dim light casts soft shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp angle of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the faint crease between his brows as he watches you. “I feel so stupid,” you whisper, your voice small, barely audible. “You’re so… composed, and I’m falling apart.”

He tilts his head, his eyes narrowing slightly, not in anger but in contemplation. “You’re not stupid,” he says, his voice firm, almost fierce. “You’re human. And you’re stronger than you think. You face me every day—me, with my demands, my expectations—and you never flinch. That’s not weakness, Y/N.” His words, delivered with quiet conviction, pierce through your self-doubt, and you blink, stunned by the intensity in his gaze.

“You… you notice that?” you ask, your voice hesitant, a mix of disbelief and curiosity. “I thought I was just… invisible to you.”

He chuckles, a low, warm sound that ripples through you, easing the tension in your chest. “Invisible?” he repeats, his tone almost incredulous. “Y/N, you’re the one who catches every error in our reports, who stays late to perfect every detail. You think I don’t see you?” His voice drops, softer now, almost intimate. “I see you. Every day.”

Your breath catches, your heart stuttering at the admission. “I… I didn’t know,” you whisper, your cheeks flushing, your eyes dropping to your hands, twisted in your lap.

“Look at me,” he says, his voice gentle but commanding, and you obey, meeting his gaze. His eyes are warm, unguarded, a stark contrast to the cold precision you’re used to. “You don’t have to hide from me,” he says, his tone softer still. “Not here. Not now.”

The air between you shifts, charged with something unspoken, and you feel a pull, a magnetic force drawing you closer to him. Your fear, though still present, recedes, overshadowed by the warmth of his presence, the steadiness of his gaze.

Jimin shifts closer, his knee brushing yours, the contact sending a spark through you. He reaches out, his fingers grazing your cheek to wipe away a lingering tear, and the touch is so gentle, so unexpected, that you freeze, your breath hitching. His thumb lingers, tracing the curve of your cheekbone, and his eyes darken, a flicker of something raw and unguarded in their depths. “You’re still trembling,” he says, his voice low, husky, a velvet rumble that sends heat pooling in your core.

“I’m… trying to be okay,” you murmur, but your voice betrays you, trembling with a mix of fear and something else—desire, unspoken but undeniable. You’re hyper-aware of every detail—the warmth of his fingers, the faintly rough texture of his fingertips, the faint stubble on his jaw, the way his rolled-up sleeves reveal the veins in his forearms, the subtle rise and fall of his chest.

“Y/N,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper, heavy with intent. “Tell me to stop, and I will. But if you don’t…” His hand slides to the back of your neck, his fingers tangling in your hair, his touch firm, possessive. His eyes search yours, waiting, giving you the choice, and your heart pounds, your shy nature warring with the fire igniting inside you.

You’ve dreamed of him, of this, in the quiet of your apartment, your fingers tracing your own skin as you imagined his touch, his voice, his dominance. “Don’t stop,” you whisper, your voice barely audible but resolute, and it’s all he needs.

His lips crash against yours, the kiss fierce and consuming, a hungry edge to it that steals your breath. His mouth is warm, demanding, his tongue teasing yours, coaxing soft whimpers from your throat. You clutch his shirt, the fabric bunching under your fingers, and he deepens the kiss, his teeth grazing your lower lip, a gentle bite that makes you gasp. He tastes of mint and desire, a heady mix that makes your head spin, and you press closer, your body arching into his, seeking more.

“God, Y/N,” he murmurs against your lips, his voice rough with need. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.” His confession sends a thrill through you, and you pull back slightly, your eyes wide, searching his.

“Me?” you whisper, disbelief lacing your voice, your shyness creeping in despite the heat between you. “Why me?”

He pulls back just enough to meet your gaze, his hand still cradling your neck, his thumb brushing the pulse point at your throat. “Why you?” he repeats, his voice low, almost incredulous. “Because you’re… you. Your quiet strength, the way you blush when I look at you, the way you bite your lip when you’re nervous. It’s maddening.” His eyes darken, a possessive edge to them. “I’ve been watching you, Y/N. Every day, fighting the urge to pull Fellowship of the Ring into my office and kiss you senseless.”

Your cheeks burn, your heart racing at his words, and you lower your eyes, overwhelmed. “I thought… I thought you didn’t even notice me,” you admit, your voice small, vulnerable.

He tilts your chin up, forcing you to meet his gaze. “I notice everything about you,” he says, his voice firm, unwavering. “The way you tuck your hair behind your ear when you’re focused. The way your hands shake when you hand me a report. The way you light up when you solve a problem no one else can.” His thumb brushes your lips, and you shiver, your breath hitching. “You’re impossible to ignore.”

His words unravel you, stripping away your defenses, and you kiss him, bolder now, your hands sliding up his chest, feeling the hard planes of muscle beneath his shirt. He groans, a low, primal sound that sends heat flooding through you, and pulls you onto his lap, your skirt riding up as you straddle him, your thighs pressed against his. His hands grip your hips, guiding you, and you feel the hardness of him beneath you, a delicious pressure that makes you gasp. “Jimin,” you breathe, your voice trembling with need, and he groans, his lips trailing down your neck, nipping at the sensitive skin below your ear, leaving a trail of heat in their wake.

“You’re so responsive,” he murmurs against your skin, his voice thick with desire. “Every sound you make… it’s driving me fucking insane.” His hands slide under your blouse, his fingers tracing the curve of your spine, and you arch into his touch, your head falling back as he unhooks your bra with a deft flick, his thumbs brushing your nipples through the lace. You cry out, the sensation shooting straight to your core, and he groans, his mouth finding your breast, his tongue swirling around your nipple, sucking gently, his teeth grazing just enough to make you shudder.

“Jimin, please,” you whimper, your voice high and desperate, your fingers tangling in his hair, soft and thick, urging him closer. He pulls back, his eyes dark with hunger, and kisses you again, slow and deep, savoring every moment.

“Tell me what you want, Y/N,” he says, his voice a low growl, his hands bracketing your hips as he holds you still, the pressure of his erection teasing you through his trousers. “I need to hear you say it.”

You swallow, your shyness warring with your need, but his gaze, intense and commanding, pulls the truth from you. “I want you,” you whisper, your voice raw, trembling with desire. “I want you inside me, Jimin. Please.”

His eyes flash with hunger, and he groans, a sound that reverberates through you. “Fuck, Y/N,” he says, his voice strained, his control fraying. “You’re going to ruin me.”

The elevator, your fear, the world outside—it all dissolves as Jimin consumes you. He shifts, laying you down on the elevator floor, the cool metal a stark contrast to the fire in your veins. Your blouse is open, your bra pushed aside, and he looms over you, his shirt half-unbuttoned, revealing the sculpted planes of his chest, the faint sheen of sweat glistening on his skin. His hair falls into his eyes, and he looks like a predator, hungry and unrestrained, his gaze raking over you, taking in every detail—your flushed cheeks, your parted lips, the way your chest rises and falls with each ragged breath.

He kisses you, slow and deliberate, his lips savoring yours as his hands work your skirt up to your hips, bunching the fabric around your waist. His fingers find the edge of your panties, teasing you through the damp lace, and you moan, your hips bucking against his hand, desperate for more. “So fucking wet,” he groans, his voice thick with desire, and you blush, your cheeks burning even as you grind against his fingers, your body begging for release. “All for me,” he murmurs, his tone possessive, and he slides your panties down, his fingers slipping inside you, curling against that perfect spot with slow, deliberate precision.

You cry out, your back arching, the pleasure overwhelming as he works you, his thumb circling your clit with maddening accuracy. “Jimin,” you gasp, your voice high and desperate, your hands clutching his shoulders, your nails digging into his skin through his shirt. “Oh god, please.”

“Look at you,” he murmurs, his voice dripping with approval, his eyes locked on yours, watching every reaction. “So beautiful, falling apart for me.” His words send a fresh wave of heat through you, and you whimper, your body trembling as he adds a second finger, stretching you, preparing you. The wet sounds of his fingers moving inside you fill the elevator, mingling with your moans, and you blush, embarrassed but too lost in pleasure to care.

“Jimin, I need—” Your words are incoherent, your voice a plea, and he kisses you, swallowing your moans as he withdraws his fingers, leaving you aching and empty. “Please,” you whimper, your hips lifting, seeking him, and he groans, his lips brushing your ear.

“I know, baby,” he says, his voice soft but commanding, a promise woven into the words. “I’ve got you.” He unbuckles his belt, the metallic clink loud in the quiet elevator, and you watch, mesmerized, as he unzips his trousers, freeing himself. His cock is thick, hard, the tip glistening with precum, and your breath catches, a mix of nerves and anticipation flooding you. He strokes himself once, his eyes locked on yours, and the sight—his long fingers wrapped around his length, the way his jaw clenches—sends a fresh wave of heat through you.

“Are you sure?” he asks, his voice softer now, a rare glimpse of vulnerability, and you nod, reaching for him, your hands trembling as you trace the lines of his abs, the heat of his skin grounding you.

“I’m sure,” you whisper, your voice trembling but certain, and he kisses you, his lips gentle, reassuring, as he positions himself between your thighs. His tip teases your entrance, sliding through your slick folds, and you whimper, your nails digging into his back, urging him closer. He enters you slowly, inch by inch, stretching you, and you moan, the sensation intense, a delicious burn that makes you arch against him. “Jimin,” you gasp, your voice trembling, and he pauses, his forehead resting against yours, his breath ragged.

“You okay?” he asks, his voice strained, his eyes searching yours, and you nod, your hands clutching him tighter, pulling him closer.

“Keep going,” you whisper, and he groans, pushing deeper, filling you completely. The stretch is exquisite, a perfect blend of pleasure and pressure, and you moan, your head falling back as he bottoms out, his hips pressed flush against yours. “Fuck,” you whimper, the word slipping out, and he chuckles, a low, husky sound that sends a shiver through you.

“Language, Y/N,” he teases, his voice thick with desire, but his eyes are warm, playful, a stark contrast to his usual intensity. “You feel so good,” he groans, his voice rough, and you cling to him, your body adjusting to his size, the fullness overwhelming.

He moves, slow at first, each thrust deliberate, his eyes locked on yours, watching every flicker of pleasure cross your face. The elevator floor is hard beneath you, but you don’t care, lost in the rhythm of his hips, the way he fills you, the friction building a pressure that makes you tremble. “Jimin,” you moan, your voice high and desperate, and he quickens his pace, his thrusts deeper, harder, driving you toward the edge.

“God, you’re perfect,” he groans, his hands gripping your hips, angling you to take him deeper, his fingers digging into your skin, leaving faint marks you’ll cherish later. “So tight, so fucking wet.” His words, raw and unfiltered, send you spiraling, and you cry out, your nails raking down his back, leaving red trails beneath his shirt.

“Jimin, I’m—” Your words cut off as his hand slides between you, his fingers finding your clit, rubbing in tight, precise circles that make your vision blur. The pleasure crashes over you, a tidal wave that leaves you gasping, your body shuddering as you come undone, your walls clenching around him, pulling him deeper. “Oh god, Jimin!” you cry, your voice echoing in the confined space, raw and unrestrained, and he groans, his thrusts erratic, his control fraying.

“Fuck, Y/N,” he growls, his voice rough, primal, and he follows you over the edge, his hips stuttering as he spills inside you, his release hot and thick, his body trembling with the force of it. His groans are low, guttural, a sound that sends aftershocks through you, and you cling to him, your bodies slick with sweat, your breaths ragged, mingling in the heavy air.

You lie there, panting, your bodies tangled, but the fire between you burns brighter, unquenched. Jimin kisses you, slow and languid, his lips tracing the curve of your jaw, your neck, your collarbone, leaving a trail of heat in their wake. “You’re incredible,” he murmurs, his voice soft, reverent, and you blush, your shyness creeping back even as you bask in his warmth, the afterglow wrapping you in a soft haze.

“Jimin,” you whisper, your voice hesitant, and he pulls back, his eyes searching yours, a mix of tenderness and hunger in their depths.

“Want more?” he asks, a teasing lilt to his voice, but his gaze is serious, checking in, ensuring you’re with him. You nod, your cheeks burning, and he grins, a rare, boyish smile that makes your heart skip, a glimpse of the man beneath the CEO.

He shifts, rolling you onto your side, his hands guiding your leg over his hip, the new angle intimate, exposing. “Let me take care of you,” he says, his voice low, a promise woven into the words, and you nod, your body already aching for him again, the memory of his touch fueling your desire. He enters you slowly, the sensation different, deeper, and you moan, your head falling back as he moves, his thrusts measured, savoring every moment.

“God, you feel so good,” he groans, his lips brushing your ear, his breath hot against your skin, sending shivers down your spine. “Every sound you make… it’s fucking addictive.” His words make you clench around him, and he groans, his thrusts growing harder, more insistent, each one hitting that perfect spot that makes you see stars. “You like that, don’t you?” he says, his voice teasing, a playful edge to it, and you nod, too overwhelmed to speak, your moans spilling freely now.

“Jimin, please,” you moan, your voice desperate, and he kisses you, his tongue exploring your mouth as he drives into you, the angle allowing him to go deeper, the friction exquisite. Your hands clutch his shoulders, your nails digging in, and he groans, his lips trailing down your neck, sucking a mark just below your collarbone, a possessive claim that makes you gasp. “Oh god,” you whimper, your body trembling, the pleasure building again, sharper, more intense.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” he murmurs, his voice thick with emotion, his eyes locked on yours, watching every reaction. “Falling apart for me, letting me see you.” His words unravel you, stripping away your shyness, and you pull him closer, your lips finding his, the kiss messy, desperate, a clash of teeth and tongues.

“Jimin, I’m close,” you gasp, your voice breaking, and he groans, his hand sliding between you, his fingers finding your clit again, rubbing in time with his thrusts, the dual sensation pushing you toward the edge. “Please, don’t stop,” you beg, your voice raw, and he kisses you, his lips fierce, possessive.

“Come for me, Y/N,” he says, his voice a command, a plea, and his fingers press harder, his thrusts relentless. The pleasure explodes, a white-hot wave that leaves you crying out, your body shuddering as you climax, your moans loud and unrestrained, echoing in the elevator. “That’s it, baby,” he groans, his voice thick, and he follows, his release spilling inside you, his groans deep and primal, his body trembling as he holds you close, riding out the waves of pleasure together.

You collapse against him, your bodies slick with sweat, the air heavy with the scent of sex and the faint musk of his cologne. Jimin pulls you into his arms, his embrace warm and protective, and you rest your head on his chest, listening to the rapid beat of his heart, a steady rhythm that grounds you. Your fear of the elevator is a distant memory, replaced by a warmth that fills every corner of your being, a sense of safety you’ve never known. “You okay?” he asks, his voice soft, tinged with concern, and you nod, your cheeks flushing, your shyness returning but softened by the intimacy between you.

“More than okay,” you whisper, your voice trembling with emotion, and he chuckles, kissing your forehead, his lips lingering, a tender gesture that makes your heart swell.

“You’re full of surprises, Y/N,” he says, his voice teasing, but his eyes are warm, a depth to them that speaks of something deeper. “I didn’t expect… this. Not tonight. Not ever.”

You tilt your head, meeting his gaze, your curiosity outweighing your shyness. “What did you expect?” you ask, your voice soft, hesitant, but genuine.

He sighs, his fingers tracing lazy circles on your back, a soothing motion that makes you melt into him. “I don’t know,” he admits, his voice quieter, almost vulnerable. “I’ve spent so long keeping people at arm’s length. It’s easier that way—cleaner. But you…” He pauses, his eyes searching yours, a flicker of uncertainty in their depths. “You make me want more. More than just… this.”

Your heart stutters, a mix of hope and fear swirling inside you. “More?” you whisper, your voice barely audible, afraid to hope, afraid to break the fragile moment.

He nods, his hand cupping your cheek, his thumb brushing your lips. “More,” he confirms, his voice steady now, resolute. “I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I know I don’t want to let you go. Not after this.”

Tears prick your eyes, not from fear but from the weight of his words, the sincerity in his gaze. “I… I don’t want to let you go either,” you admit, your voice trembling, raw with vulnerability. “But I’m scared. You’re… you’re Park Jimin. And I’m just—”

“Don’t,” he interrupts, his voice firm, almost fierce, his hand tightening on your cheek. “Don’t say ‘just.’ You’re not ‘just’ anything, Y/N. You’re brilliant, you’re strong, you’re… you’re mine.” The last word is a whisper, a possessive claim that sends a shiver through you, and you nod, tears spilling over, your heart laid bare.

“Yours,” you whisper, and he kisses you, soft and slow, a kiss that feels like a promise, sealing the bond forged in the heat of the moment.

You stay like that, tangled together, your bodies pressed close, your breaths mingling, until the elevator jolts suddenly, the lights brightening to their full, sterile glow as it hums back to life. You both scramble to your feet, laughing nervously, the sound light and freeing after the intensity of the moment. Your blouse is torn, buttons scattered across the floor, and you clutch it closed, your cheeks burning. Jimin’s shirt is wrinkled, his hair mussed, his trousers hastily zipped, and he grins, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, his touch gentle. “We look like we’ve been through a war,” he teases, his voice warm, and you laugh, the sound shaky but genuine.

“A beautiful war,” you say, your voice shy, and his eyes soften, a warmth in them that makes your heart skip.

The doors slide open on the lobby floor, the cool air a shock after the heat of the elevator, and you step out, the marble floor cold beneath your heels. Jimin takes your hand, his grip firm, possessive, his fingers intertwining with yours. “Come with me,” he says, his voice low, a quiet command, and you nod, following him to his car, a sleek black Mercedes that gleams under the streetlights, its curves reflecting the city’s neon glow.

In his penthouse, you spend the night in his bed, the city lights glittering through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting soft shadows across the room. His touch is gentler now, his kisses slower, and you explore each other with a tenderness that contrasts the earlier frenzy, each moment deepening the bond between you. You fall asleep in his arms, his heartbeat a steady rhythm beneath your cheek, the Han River shimmering in the distance.

The whispers in the office linger through Monday, a soft undercurrent of curiosity that follows you like a shadow as you navigate the sleek corridors of Kim Enterprises. Colleagues steal glances, their eyes flickering with questions they dare not voice, but you hold your head a fraction higher, your usual shyness tempered by the warmth of Jimin’s words echoing in your mind: “You’re mine, Y/N. And I’m yours. Let them talk.” The memory of his voice, steady and resolute, anchors you, a quiet strength blooming in your chest. Your charcoal pencil skirt and soft lavender blouse feel like armor, your steps more confident, though your cheeks still flush when you catch someone staring.

Jimin’s presence in the office is as commanding as ever, but there’s a subtle shift—a warmth in his gaze when it lands on you, a softness that no one else seems to notice. During the morning briefing, he stands at the head of the glass conference table, his tailored navy suit accentuating his lean frame, his voice slicing through the room as he outlines the quarter’s priorities. When a colleague hesitates over a projection, Jimin’s eyes flicker to you, a silent invitation. “Y/N, your thoughts,” he says, his tone professional but laced with a trust that makes your heart skip. You speak, your voice steadier than ever, and his lips twitch into the faintest smile, a private acknowledgment that sends a thrill through you.

By midday, he summons you to his office, the door closing with a soft click that feels like a barrier against the world. The room is a sanctuary of power—mahogany desk, leather chairs, floor-to-ceiling windows framing the glittering expanse of Seoul—but it’s the man before you who commands your attention. Jimin leans against his desk, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up to reveal the toned forearms that held you so fiercely in the elevator. “You handled that briefing well,” he says, his voice low, a velvet caress that sends a shiver down your spine. “You’re getting bolder.”

You blush, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, your fingers lingering nervously. “I… I’m trying,” you admit, your voice soft but honest. “It’s easier when I know you’re… you’re with me.”

His eyes soften, a warmth in their depths that unravels you. He steps closer, his hand reaching out to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing your skin with a tenderness that makes your breath catch. “I’m always with you, Y/N,” he says, his voice quiet but firm, a vow woven into the words. “Not just here, not just now. Always.”

Your heart stutters, a mix of hope and vulnerability swirling inside you. “Jimin,” you whisper, your voice trembling with emotion, “this… us… it’s so new. What if it’s too much? What if I’m not enough for you?”

He frowns, his hand tightening slightly on your cheek, his eyes blazing with intensity. “Don’t say that,” he says, his voice almost fierce, a raw edge to it that startles you. “You’re more than enough. You think I don’t feel the same fears? I’ve built walls my whole life, Y/N—kept people out, kept control. But with you…” He pauses, his gaze dropping to your lips, then returning to your eyes, a vulnerability in his expression you’ve never seen. “You make me want to tear those walls down. You make me want to be… better.”

Tears prick your eyes, not from fear but from the weight of his confession, the sincerity that strips away your doubts. “I want that too,” you whisper, your voice breaking, your hands reaching for him, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. “I want all of you, Jimin. The parts you show the world, and the parts you hide.”

He kisses you then, a slow, searing kiss that feels like a promise, his lips moving against yours with a deliberate tenderness that makes your knees weak. His hands slide to your waist, pulling you flush against him, and you feel the steady beat of his heart beneath your palms, a rhythm that grounds you. When he pulls back, his forehead rests against yours, his breath warm against your lips. “You have me,” he murmurs, his voice husky, tinged with emotion. “Every part. No holding back.”

You smile, your shyness melting under the heat of his gaze, and you nod, your fingers tracing the sharp line of his jaw, a gesture that feels intimate, possessive. “And you have me,” you say, your voice soft but certain, a quiet strength in your words that surprises even you.

He chuckles, a low, warm sound that ripples through you, and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, his touch lingering. “Good,” he says, his tone teasing now, a playful edge that eases the intensity of the moment. “Because I’m not letting you go, Y/N. You’re stuck with me now.”

You laugh, the sound light and freeing, a contrast to the quiet reserve you’ve always carried. “I think I can live with that,” you say, your voice shy but playful, and his grin widens, a rare, boyish smile that makes your heart skip.

The rest of the day passes in a blur of work, but the air between you is charged with stolen glances and subtle touches—a brush of his hand against yours as you pass him a report, a lingering look during a team meeting, a whispered “Stay late tonight” as he passes your cubicle. When the office empties, you find yourself back in his office, the city lights casting a golden glow through the windows, the room bathed in a soft, intimate warmth.

Jimin pulls you into his arms, his lips finding yours in a kiss that’s both tender and hungry, a balance of the passion from the elevator and the tenderness of your newfound bond. “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he murmurs against your lips, his hands sliding under your blouse, his fingers tracing the curve of your spine, igniting a familiar heat. “Couldn’t focus on a damn thing.”

You blush, your hands clutching his shirt, your voice a shy whisper. “Me too,” you admit, your cheeks burning. “Every time you looked at me, I… I forgot how to think.”

He groans, a low, primal sound that sends a shiver through you, and kisses you deeper, his tongue teasing yours, coaxing soft moans from your throat. “You’re dangerous, Y/N,” he says, his voice husky, a teasing edge to it. “Making me lose control like this.”

“Dangerous?” you repeat, your voice playful now, a newfound confidence blooming under his touch. “I think you’re the dangerous one, Mr. Park.”

He laughs, a rich, genuine sound that fills the room, and pulls you onto his desk, papers scattering as he settles you on the edge, his hands gripping your hips. “Maybe we’re both dangerous,” he says, his eyes dark with desire, and you nod, your fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer.

The night unfolds in a dance of passion and tenderness, your bodies moving together with a rhythm honed in the elevator, but now infused with a deeper connection. His touch is reverent, his kisses a mix of hunger and adoration, and you lose yourself in him, the office fading away until it’s just you and Jimin, two souls entwined in the quiet of the night.

Later, as you lie in his arms on the plush leather sofa in his office, the city lights glittering outside, you trace lazy patterns on his chest, his shirt unbuttoned, his skin warm beneath your fingers. “What happens now?” you ask, your voice soft, a mix of curiosity and vulnerability.

He tilts your chin up, his eyes meeting yours, a quiet intensity in their depths. “Now, we figure it out together,” he says, his voice steady, a promise in every word. “No rules, no expectations. Just us. I want you in my life, Y/N—not just here, not just in stolen moments. I want dinners, mornings, weekends. I want it all.”

Your heart swells, a warmth spreading through you that feels like home. “I want that too,” you whisper, your voice trembling with emotion, and he kisses you, soft and slow, sealing the promise.

“Stay with me tonight,” he says, his voice a gentle plea, and you nod, your smile shy but radiant.

“Always,” you whisper, and he pulls you closer, his arms a sanctuary, the city outside a silent witness to the bond you’ve forged.

The elevator incident remains your secret, a spark that ignited a love neither of you anticipated. You’re still his analyst, still meticulous and quiet, but now you’re also his partner, his equal, his confidante. And Jimin, once an untouchable titan, is now the man who holds you close, his dominance softened by a tenderness he shows only to you. The office, the city, the world—it all fades when you’re together, two hearts bound by a moment of fear that blossomed into an unbreakable love, a story written in stolen glances, whispered promises, and the quiet strength of being each other’s everything.

[dooberific]

Hello~! I love reading your work so much hehe, I'm not entirely sure if you are open for requests so please disregard if you aren't. Can I request Harumasa and reader that they first met in the hospital as kids due to having the same disease and once they were discharged they simply forgot about eachother. Then one day, they met again (pure coincidence) and had a happy reunion. Maybe throw a childhood friends to lovers, fluff hehe. Thank you!

Subjecting reader to Ether Aptitude Regression Syndrome is a more popular thought than I anticipated.

Still working on other requests as I have time, it took me way too long to do this but in my defense I’m back in the dregs of Uni.

❝ 𝘎𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘴 ❞

harumasa x afab!reader

genre: slice of life ig?? Reads pretty platonically imo, runs vaguely parallel to his agent story largely without reader interference (we keep it as canon as we can). Reader has ether aptitude regression syndrome.

summary: He didn't think ghosts from the past were so bright or so loud as the one that finds him at Port Elpis.

wc: 4.8k

Port Elpis was a lonely place. 

But that was just his opinion on the matter. 

Maybe in the eyes of the children that sat joyfully chattering next to their grandfather as they fished off the pier it would be a place full of happy memories, or the perfect backdrop for a romantic encounter for the lovers who walked wistfully along the seaside. 

But he had neither a family nor a lover to enjoy such memories with, and with his frail body perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing. “To live with no regrets” felt like an honorable way to go. There would be no one deeply hurt by his loss, no one to leave flowers at his grave, and just as briefly as his time was slated to be on the earth the memory of his existence would fade into nothingness. 

So he would quietly enjoy his solitude, savor the time like it was sweet on his tongue, and pretend for just a moment that life wasn’t as abbreviated as fate demanded it to be by capturing it through the immortal lens of his camera. 

The birds that floated in the sea breeze. Patterns of stone left in the sand by a previous visitor. The view from the top of the lighthouse. Colorful boats bobbing in the sea. The lights over the water at night. 

The scenery rarely changed but that didn’t matter, it was an excuse to feel the warm kiss of the sun on his skin and feel the whisper of the sea air tickle his weakened lungs, to pretend that once he returned to the quiet of his apartment that every image he took wouldn’t be doused in a deep greytone as if some secret melancholy bared its teeth and drained his day of its vitality. 

He still got the images developed but he stopped looking at them. They felt too much like having one foot in the grave, the hazy discoloration something he associated more with the burning dread that buzzed in his veins and prickled at his eyes when the ether became too overwhelming. He could save himself the money and the effort, stop taking photos he would never want to look at again, but it was never so peaceful for his troubled mind in any other place.

The sky was overcast, heavy clouds threatening to rain their contents down upon the world as the wind nipped viciously at his skin. The normal residents of the Port were nowhere to be seen, all the buildings neatly closed in the anticipation of inclement weather. 

He could have taken it as a sign to make himself scarce as well, return home and curl up on his couch while the weather passed and not risk catching a cold, but if his day was meant to be spent in dreary solitude he would rather take the moment to feel it against his skin than hide away with no company other than his own thoughts. 

Being soaked to the bone and riding the high of his careless actions would be a better fate than sitting with his thoughts that seemed more heavily laden with dread as the days passed. 

So he stayed. 

He stayed as his hair matted to his skin, heavy with rainwater that soaked through his clothes and stained his camera lens. His camera would be ruined for sure, it wasn’t waterproof after all, but he could buy a new one. He wasn’t good at saving money for a long time anyways.

The pictures would be terrible and blurry, all doused in their own dreary grey even as he continued to take photos. There was no warmth to be found in the once pleasant landscape, and he was prepared to give up all hope for salvaging his mood which was now as waterlogged as his sneakers before a vibrant color flashed to life across his streaked lens.

He lowered his camera, squinting into the onslaught of rain that rolled the waves viciously against the pier. It was an unfamiliar boat bobbing on the waves, outriggers neatly folded to attention. The vessel itself lacked any colorful ornamentation, the flash of color he had seen belonging instead to the figure that worked diligently on the deck. 

A bright orange pair of overalls.

He wasn’t expecting to see the boat again the next time he returned to the Port, but there sat the trawler at the end of the pier accompanied by orange overalls. He could put a face to the choice of colorful outerwear now, or the beginnings of one from where he stood. He had no reason to get closer, he wasn’t on particularly warm terms with anyone at the Port, so it took him by surprise when your face appeared so suddenly within the viewfinder one day. 

“Excuse me?” 

He startled, quickly dropping his camera from where he held it. 

Orange overalls.

“Have we met before?”

The question was innocent as it rolled from your lips, the rubbery exterior of your overalls squeaking as you shifted on your feet. Your gaze was intense but non threatening, more brimming with curiosity than anything as you studied his features closely.

“Sorry if it’s sudden,” your laugh was awkward. “I’ve just seen you around here a lot and couldn’t shake the feeling.” 

There was no need for you to apologize, he had also been struck with an uncanny sense of recognition the longer he looked at you as well.

“I get that a lot.”

 Your question was genuine but he couldn’t help the lie that pushed past his teeth. It was rare for him to be mistaken for someone else, especially when he was in the city. If you detected his deception you didn’t show it, clicking your tongue thoughtfully as you pointed at him.

“Middle school?”

Oh, so you were still convinced you had met before.

He shook his head. “No.”

“University?”

“Nope.”

“The grocery store?”

“You remember everyone you see at a grocery store?”

Your brow furrowed. “Guess not.” 

He was confounding you at every turn it seemed, but the nagging feeling of familiarity had yet to leave. You had grown quiet, gnawing your lip thoughtfully.

Your fingers snapped suddenly. “I’ve got it, were you… in the hospital for a while as a kid?”

“I was.”

Before you answered a distant call floated over the waves. He couldn’t make out the words but your head quickly whipped around, arm raising above your head with a dramatic wave.

“I’m coming!” You yelled back before shooting him an apologetic grin. “Sorry for bothering you, I guess I’ll see you around.”

He watched your figure recede down the pier, the thumping of your boots on the wood fading as you rapidly went out of earshot. 

Your next interactions were cyclic, short conversations with speedy exits as you would run back to your boat. He had some inclination to believe you had a homing beacon centered on him, as you managed to find him despite his frequent location changes, beaming at him with the same warm expression that nearly rivaled the brightness of your orange overalls.

You never mentioned your first conversation again nor asked his name, instead asking him random questions as they seemed to strike your fancy. About his favorite food, his favorite color, movie recommendations, if he had any pets, what he liked taking pictures of so much that he returned almost daily. It was largely nonsensical, and he found you harder to read with each passing day because your eyes seemed to sparkle as if the tiny bits of knowledge he divulged had painted some elaborate picture of him in your mind. 

Even with you sharing little tidbits of your own monotonous life you had tied his mind into intricate knots. Your father was a fisherman, more precisely a shrimper you had proudly proclaimed as you undid the straps of your overalls to show him the pink shrimp decal on the back of your sweatshirt. You never mentioned a mother or any siblings, nor any friends. You liked to swim but couldn’t do it often. Your favorite color was a very precise shade of pink, and you liked to read books about personality types and astrology when you weren’t busy. Mindless details that gushed from your mouth with absurd passion. 

Somedays he wasn’t sure if it was the sun or your vivacious personality that warmed him more, your happy-go-lucky mood infectious as you chattered away. You were quickly becoming part of his routine, strolling alongside him spewing silly facts about sea animals or begging him for little details on his day. 

Your characteristic orange overalls had been featured in some of his photography as well, cheerfully adding a splash of color to even the dreariest backdrops. You made shrimp nets look pleasant and the creatures even more so as you ran up to him, pulling one from your pocket as you waved it at him like a child with a centipede just to sneak it into his own pocket before he left. 

For once everything seemed dripping with color, the thrill of seeing your glowing visage as you waved at him from the deck of your father’s boat turning his stomach in a pleasantly warm manner. 

He broke his own rule. He got comfortable with someone else, comfortable in his limited time, in his own skin, and he missed the little signs until it was glaring in his face. 

The sun was warm enough that the sound of the waves was nearly sufficient to lull him to sleep as he sat dangling his legs off the pier, the water teasing his soles in a silent ploy to drench his socks. The day was quiet, almost uncomfortably so and he wasn’t sure why. Port Elpis was always lively when the weather was pleasant, but there was a nagging sense of unease that drew his lips into a firm line.

You weren’t around. 

He felt silly. The two of you weren’t close by any means, acquaintances more than friends. There was no reason to miss you, you were nothing but a loud disruption to his day. He didn’t even know your name. 

But if that was really all you were to him he shouldn’t have felt his gut twist unpleasantly when he realized your absence, nor when he finally saw you and realized you didn’t look well.

You looked haggard and pale, movements sluggish as if it demanded too much energy to fully pick up your feet. There was a constant grimace painted across your face, like each movement was laced with pain. You scarcely looked his way as you approached, eyes sunken. 

“Oh, hey,” you spoke through gritted teeth as your eyes wavered weakly. Even now you did your best to wave, hands trembling fiercely. “I can’t hang out today, sorry.”

“You’re sick.”

It was a matter-of-fact statement, no longer an observation. He would recognize that look anywhere, he had seen it a thousand times growing up. 

“Were you… in the hospital for a while as a kid?” 

He shouldn’t have been thoughtless. It was out of character for him to not pry into every tiny detail of the life of a stranger that had so unceremoniously pushed into his life, like a flower sprouting from a sidewalk crack. With a little effort he was sure he would have unearthed a medical history as extensive as his own, all starting from the same place with a name he tried desperately to forget. 

He rubbed the choker at his neck. He’d never seen your nape either, strategically covered by the hood of your jacket or a high necked top. He’d never questioned you on the days when you lied poorly to his face about why you had a limp, or why you looked so tired, always claiming it had been a long day and nothing more. 

Some highly trained intelligence officer he turned out to be.

“Let me help you.” The words came out faster than his body moved, swinging his legs back up onto the pier. 

“It’s okay.” You reassured, weakly attempting to wave him off. “It’s not that serious, I’m just tired.”

“Tired my ass, you’re sick.” He hissed. “This isn’t something you can play around with, now let me help you.”

You were lighter than he thought you were, but maybe he had anticipated more muscle to be hidden under the frumpy layers you wore daily. You smelled like a fishing boat but not in a way he found unpleasant, your arms wrapped around his neck as he carried you down the pier on his back. He could feel your body trembling. 

“I’m sorry.” You muttered regretfully, forehead pressed against his shoulder as he stepped off the pier and onto your boat, his step wavering for just a moment before he regained his balance. 

“Stop apologizing.” He chided as you directed him to where your room was under the deck. The space was awkward to navigate with you on his back, but if he experienced any difficulty he didn’t verbalize it, dutifully depositing you on your unmade bed. 

“I really am sorry though.” He wouldn’t be able to convince you it was fine, but he would be able to shoot you a disapproving look as he grabbed the heel of your boot and slid it off before giving the other the same treatment. 

You frowned, shifting as if you were uncomfortable in your own skin. “I’ve bothered you on your time off.”

“You’ve never bothered me.”

He tugged on the leg of your overalls, he would have to commend you on your dedication. As if interpreting his cue you unlatched the shoulder straps, allowing him to help you slide them off before he discarded them on top of your boots. At least you dressed comfortably beneath them, though he would let the ridiculous sparkly fish patches on your sweats go this time. 

He tossed your comforter over your head. “But you will bother me if you don’t rest.” 

You didn’t protest, flipping the fabric off your face with a huff. You knew he was right. 

“Hurry up and get better, I’m not going to wait forever.” He said curtly as he stepped into the hallway, pulling your door shut behind him.

“Wait!” 

He paused, the door hanging ajar. “What is it?”

You swallowed thickly, tongue fuzzy. “(Y/n). My name is (y/n).” 

His hand tightened on the doorknob. 

“Harumasa.”

The door shut, but Pandora’s theoretical box had already been opened.

He remembered you.

They called you the luckiest unlucky child in the world. It was a ridiculous name that you seethed at because you found nothing of your situation lucky. Your mother had claimed the record for longest lived patient with Ether Aptitude Regression Syndrome, but such distinction meant very little when your father stood over her grave cradling you in his arms. 

Within a few years you would look just like her, idle in a hospital bed with numerous lines running from your thin, veiny arms as they kept you so sedate the childish glow in your eyes had faded into a drug induced stupor. 

You were lucky to be born, and unlucky enough to survive.

Most days were good, you were strong and vital as if the ugly veins of your illness didn’t lurk just below the skin. You ran through the halls, constantly attempted to escape to the lush yard of the hospital, sat with the other kids after they got out of surgery to give them offerings of crude crayon drawings and wild stories of swimming in the ocean and the creatures within it. 

But your bad days were palpable, the halls silent without you there to fill the air with wild stories and laughter. No one visited you when you had a flare up, tears and snot streaking your face as you silently cried through the pain that ignited every nerve ending in your body in such a way that even the act of breathing hurt in a near unbearable manner. 

Your father would sit in your room for hours at a time in those moments, anxious over your worsening condition up until the moment they barred him from seeing you. Before the week was over he had a court order that relinquished you of their care and returned you to him. 

The day you left, Harumasa had resigned himself to the fact that he would never see you again. The likelihood of either of you surviving childhood was slim enough, but to dream of meeting in a place outside the walls of the hospital was an idea even he didn’t dare consider. 

Seeing you now, seeing you grown, was almost enough to make him believe some good deity watched over the world and deemed you too kind to die young.

He would have to find a new place to seek solace, Port Elpis was becoming something dangerously close to the memories he sought to repress, but his body acted on autopilot and brought him back every day without fail.

One week turned into two, and just as the third was cresting you reappeared with a smile on your face.

You were stupid to take your health so lightly.

He was stupid to let himself become invested.

“I remember you!” Were the first words you said after reuniting with him, swinging your legs off the pier as you sat so close beside him your shoulders pressed together.

“It’s just been a few weeks, I’d be concerned if you didn’t.” 

You pouted, elbowing his side. “You know that’s not what I mean. I remember you from before, from the hospital.”

“Looks like we both grew up well, huh? But I guess you did better than me. Is it creepy to admit that I searched your name on the InterKnot?” If you were truly embarrassed it failed to show, a low whistle passing your lips. “Section 6, you went and became a real bigshot.” 

“It’s not that big of a deal.”

You swung your head low, teetering dangerously on the edge of the pier as you jutted your face into his line of sight. Your eyes sparkled with the same mirth that curled the corners of your lips. “Says the guy that doesn’t work on a shrimp boat. Take the compliment, even I’m proud of how far you came.”

You kicked at his ankle. “Not many of us have the chance to say that.”

Ah. There you went again, reminding him of a twisted past he couldn’t shake. Sure, his therapist thought it would do him good to confront the ghosts of his childhood, but he liked to disagree (if him promptly claiming he was “done with therapy” and “thanks for your time, doc” before walking out and never returning their calls had anything to say about it). There were too many things he wasn’t ready to face head-on, even if they crawled from the pits of despair and grasped at his ankles so fiercely that the thought alone slowed him down. 

But it did stir back the embers that burned his gut with unease from an interaction he had not that far in the past.

“Has anyone from the hospital tried to contact you recently?”

“Well yeah, they are all worried about my condition after my flare up.”

“Not that hospital.” He clarified. “The old one.”

Your eyes danced across the scenery for a moment, lips pursed in thought before you shook your head. “Nope, not that I can remember. Why?”

He left out a relieved sigh, shoulders slouching momentarily. He still wasn’t sure what his Master’s assistant wanted, or why he suddenly appeared before him now trying to toy with his feelings using other sick children as emotional leverage, but at least he hadn’t found you yet. He fished his phone from his pocket, unlocking it as he handed it to you.

“Put your number in there. There’s no reason for us to be strangers.” 

He was blatantly evasive, and you could certainly tell but you didn’t raise any qualms as you typed in your phone number. “Signal is spotty when we go out of the Port, so if I don’t answer quickly don’t get all worried thinking I got kidnapped or died or something.” You warned as you passed his phone back before puffing out your chest proudly. “I like to think I’ve still got a few good years in me.”

His smile when he looked at you was so sincere you nearly toppled off the pier in shock, one hand quickly planting against his cheek as you forcefully turned his head away while the other gripped the fabric of your shirt over your heart.

“Those interknot forums weren’t kidding,” your tone was distressed as you looked away from him, “your smile really is a deadly weapon.”

He laughed. He laughed at you, at the absurd way you managed to turn a rapidly darkening conversation into something ridiculous and sugary sweet. It was as novel as a syrupy popsicle on a hot day, the aghast and shy way you—the natural enemy of public embarrassment—had now turned. 

It was bright, vital, blooming with a color he didn’t think he could find in the world anymore.

Then it all grew violently dull.

[ Shrimp Girl ] Someone from the old hospital came to see me today

[ Shrimp Girl ] I think he said his name was Kirishima?

His stomach plummeted as he read your message in the wee hours of the morning, and it didn’t abate until he laid eyes on you working diligently at the Port a few hours later. The morning sun had yet to crest the horizon, the air hanging thick and grey with morning dew. You stood out like a traffic cone, bundled in a few extra layers to fend off the cold as you worked. 

It was his hurried footsteps down the pier that alerted you to his presence, a smile on your face as you waved at him. “You’re here early. What’s with the serious face?”

The scent of the sea and the creatures you had skimmed out of the water was almost noxious to his sensitive nose. He was afraid he only tolerated the smell when it lingered on your clothes. His nose wrinkled as he nonchalantly lifted a hand to it as if it would help the smell abate.

“I just needed to make sure you were alright. What did Kirishima want?”

“Nothing.” You said with a shrug. “He didn’t ask for anything, just the usual small talk you get from doctors. You know, “can’t believe you made it this long” and “you look great”, stuff like that.” 

He was beginning to question your survival instincts, anxiety bubbling in his gut. Kirishima may not have shown his true colors yet, but it was suspicious that he showed up looking for you after years of radio silence. His own personal connection to Kirishima made it less surprising, but his link to you was still vague and incomplete.

“Now that I think about it, he did mention that he’s working on some new drug, said he might open a trial for it soon.”

His blood ran cold, a hand quickly wrapping around your wrist. The serious expression he wore was new for you, his features usually relaxed when you ran into him. 

“Please don’t take anything he gives you.” 

You nodded slowly, feeling his fingers firm against your pulse.

“I’m going to be busy for a few days, so don’t look for me.” His grip faltered, slipping from your wrist to hook around the crook of your fingers. They were cold, not unlike his own. 

He didn’t owe you an explanation or some promise of a timeline. He could walk away from the Port and never turn back, find out what Kirishima wanted and pretend seeing a ghost from his past never occurred, but seeing the concern that knitted your brows at his words was enough to make him regret the sharpened tone he had used. He toyed with your fingers.

“I’ll buy you a nice meal when I get back, so don’t get worked up thinking I’m never returning or something.” 

You hooked his pinky around your own. 

“I’ll hold you to it then.” 

He was grateful your boat wasn’t in the Port the day he separated the children from Kirishima, something about the idea of you being far away from that place coming as a welcome relief. The kids would have liked you, loved you even. While he could put on a brave face and lie through his teeth you were so charmingly real that he had little doubt you would have been an inspiration, but you were too soft and there were too many hands yet to be revealed. 

You would have been another worry to plague his mind, and with the Proxy breathing down his neck it would have been hard to focus on navigating the current mess he found himself in. 

It was a mess indeed, like watching a carefully crafted tower crumble as the top became unsteady, unraveling in a glorious display of dust and ruin. He knew it would be the case before he agreed to meet Kirishima at the Port to look for where his Master hid his research, but he wasn’t expecting to see you there.

Maybe he should have expected it, you had seemed anxious at his curt communication over the past weeks while he gathering what information he could before an inevitable confrontation with his Master’s assistant. Maybe he should have expected whatever ugly connection with Kirishima that was woven into your past to rear its head at some point. 

Your expression was harsh, the edges of a bandage showing around the sides of your neck. There was a vial in your hand, your knuckles white from how tightly you gripped it.

“I did what you asked, now back off.” You hissed between your teeth as you tossed the vial at Kirishima, the man laughing as he caught it with infuriating ease.

He flipped the vial up to the light filtering from the industrial fixtures that shined from the shipping containers, a clear and colorless fluid washing within. Spinal fluid.

“I knew you would come around to my way of thinking. Why don’t you join us for a moment, an extra pair of eyes might be useful.”

Your gaze wavered to the blackened edges of the hollow behind him, taking a half step back as you shook your head. 

“Come on now, don’t tell me you’re—,”

Harumasa’s hand was heavy on his shoulder, Kirishima pausing just to glance back at his guarded expression, eyes flickering back to you for a brief instance as a impish grin tugged at his lips.

“Fine, I guess it can’t be helped.” He fished in his labcoat pocket, producing a folded stack of papers before he tossed them at your feet, the papers soaking instantly as they hit the wet pavement. 

He waved the vial at you tauntingly before he pocketed it. “Thank you again for your service, the children will be so appreciative.”

Your guilt ridden expression was the last thing Harumasa recalled seeing as he stepped through the barrier of the Hollow, the Proxy hot on his trail.

He didn't see you for weeks, his condition too fragile in the wake of the high ether levels he subjected himself to in the hollow. Whether it be Section 6, the proxy, or even the kids from the sanatorium it was hard to find a moment of quiet, though he couldn’t deny that it was a welcome change from his normal solitude. 

Everything had quietly pieced itself together. His master’s ultimate purpose with his research, Kirishima being prosecuted for his crimes, the children being given another chance at having a childhood instead of existing as human experiments. 

It felt…nice for once, the sun comforting on his skin as the sea breeze toyed with the tails of his headband. Everyone had long gone home, leaving him in silence once again. His eyes fluttered shut under the intensity of the setting sun, his lungs filling with salt-laden air as the inside of his eyelids stained a brilliant orange.

Orange.

Like the color of your ridiculous overalls, or of the novelty candy you insisted he try with you. Orange like the canned drinks you were fond of when you decided to treat him and yourself to a greasy snack from the stand back at the parking lot. The color of your nails when you decided to paint them on your day off, proudly waving them in front of his face. The same orange of your swimsuit the day you shucked off your normal wear and dove off the pier into the frigid water. You actually were a strong swimmer when your body wasn’t trying to destroy itself thanks to your shared disease.

Orange like the stripe painted on the side of the shrimp trawler that drifted by in the distance when he reopened his eyes, a hand raising to shield them from the harsh rays of the setting sun. 

“Ahoy there!” You shouted through cupped hands. He couldn’t see your face from where he stood squinting into the light, but he knew you were smiling, framed in a halo of vibrant orange.

"I'm ready to cash in on that meal you owe me!"

Port Elpis was a lonely place.

Was is the real curiosity if you asked him.

Rey 2025

[kaeyas-beloved]

turn the clock back

Character: Zhongli

— he should know by now that no one is exactly the same after death

CWs: ANGST, hurt/no comfort, gn!reader (no pronouns), reincarnation au, death (reader), mentions of war and corpses

don't care that this is late again (i do), school kicked my rump its just the norm now || val's no sympathy novemeber masterlist

"Tea?"

That was the first thing you ever said to him. Mundane, such was the way of humans, but Morax still remembers thinking it was an odd way to start a conversation regardless, especially when he’s the lord of the land and a stranger to you. Were you not fearful? You should’ve been. The world wasn't the kindest at the moment, yet he watched you don the calmest expression amidst the war-torn chaos around you.

Even as the sky was clouded grey, and all he could see was the fallen in his mind’s eye, Morax thought that perhaps one cup couldn’t hurt. He did love a good tea. And you were merely mortal, what harm could you do?

He recalls many other things that fateful day, every last detail committed to memory, never to be dulled or forgotten: the sweet smell of tea mixed with harsh smoke; the colour of the teapot placed in the center of the table; how uncomfortable the seat was when he first sat down, only to slowly find the right position to sit in; the freshness of the fruit you had laid out for yourself. It brought a sense of normalcy he'd been lacking for some time now.

Despite this pleasant encounter with you, and the one other chance passing as you foraged from berries one evening, he didn’t feel strongly when you died - a wrong place wrong time situation that caused you to get caught in the crossfire of this war between gods. He did not shed tears, seeing a corpse wasn’t anything new given the trying times, but he did feel a small pang in his chest. A life was still a life.

It took many years before the Archon thought about you again, though unwillingly. The mind does wonders in connecting memories and sights, sounds or tastes to one another in a heartbeat, a phenomenal thing that led his feet to walk through the streets of a village by the seaside. There, he found it, and you.

He heard you mutter his title as he approached, watching with cool, sharp eyes as you righted your form and subtly smoothed out your attire. "My Lord, what brings you to my stand today?" inadequate stand you wanted to say, but kept it to yourself. Surely, among the many other establishments that sold tea, there would be one of a finer quality than yours? One that was fit for his palate and status, at least.

It didn’t help that along with his aura of power, he was quite attractive too. The term ‘sculpted by the gods’ being incarnated right before your eyes - it was intimidating. It didn't help that his eyes seemed to pierce your very soul, foretelling that he was thinking long and hard about something, perhaps appraising your display.

But, just as you threatened to crumble from having a god - the god of your home - stand before you, his timbre voice inquires, "which blend would you recommend?"

- - -

From that day on, Morax made it part of his routine to stop in front of your stand. Sometimes he'd buy some tea, other times he'd simply chat with you, usually about tea, but as time moved on, other topics arose - the weather, Liyue's current peace, the economy, things about yourself, things about him… then finally, the question "would you join me for dinner?". That last one had caught you off guard, but you'd never forget how the light of the golden sunset painted his skin and reflected in his eyes. It seemed almost perfect, a storybook level of too good to be true. There had to be a catch, some fine print in this agreement.

Yet when you asked about it, as if you were in some sort of trouble, the male had merely chuckled, elusively replying that you intrigued him. So, with no reason to deny him, you accepted.

This kickstarted the beginning of a real relationship between you two. A lot more was learnt about one another during that first dinner, and your interactions in front of your stand didn't cease either. The God of Geo was no fool, he knew he was slowly falling in love with you, and in many ways that excited and terrified him. However, when he did finally work up the courage to confess (this was after many more dinners and assuring himself there was no way you didn't feel the same) he was hit with the reality that everything isn't so simple.

You spoke of an opportunity to travel to Inazuma, one that you couldn't pass up for many reasons. You'd be able to learn new, foreign techniques, expand your business while also getting the chance to sample the teas the nation had to offer. Who was Morax to hinder you? He may be your God, but he’s now your partner first and foremost, and he’d support you through it all. So, he saw you off with a kiss and embrace on the day of your departure, murmurs of sending one another letters over the course of your trip being exchanged between you both. You weren't due to be gone for very long anyway, two months would be nothing to you both.

If only he’d known you’d never make it to the nation of eternity.

Three nights after you left, Morax had gotten word that the boat you were stationed on hit turbulent weather, and all that was aboard perished. Not a single crewmember, cargo or, most importantly, you had made it. All was lost.

Looking back on it now, it could have been Celestia itself telling him to refrain from getting involved with you. A harsh reminder that Gods and humans shouldn't mingle and intertwine like you both had. From the start, tragedy was destined, you've died twice now younger than you should've. Perhaps Celestia was trying to rip the bandaid off before it hurt too much, at the point of no return.

And yet, this cycle of finding you, falling in love, spending time together and then losing you goes on for years. The image of you popping up in the universe every couple of centuries, somehow always different than the last. A medic, a farmer, a simple commoner, a hundred years later, four hundred years after, again and again, Zhongli meets you. Somewhere along the way though, “you” becomes this skewed idea, a blurred image like a drawing in the sand that’s been washed away by the tide. The things he adored about you weren’t always present in your next life, your personality would vary, and you didn't always talk the same either. You even rejected his advances in one lifetime.

It's like he was being teased - tormented - with the image of his love. A shell or vessel parading around using your face, a ghost meant to haunt him.

Finally, the year comes when he steps down as Archon, and it just so happens to be the same year he’s both blessed and cursed to cross paths with you again. He notes that you’re a travelling merchant, the dream to visit each nation at least once at the forefront of your mind.

And Zhongli still hasn't learned his lesson, sticking close to your side. He offered to show you around Liuye, tell you trade secrets about goods, how the locals work - just anything to keep you close.

When the pieces fell into place for him though, it had him pause and reevaluate everything. Everything he's thought and done and chased over the years, it all came to a crashing halt.

He sees you smiling with Childe one evening. You mentioned meeting someone from the nation of cryo for dinner, someone who was all too happy to talk about his homeland. You even joked that he'd be the new Zhongli when you get to Snehznaya, a sentence you didn't know caused the ex-archon's heart to ache just a little.

It was clear you were happy, laughing joyously at some joke the other man said. Oh, how beautiful the sound was, one he could listen to endlessly, but it's not him making you laugh this time.

He watches for some time, the tea on the table and storyteller long forgotten. Maybe this was the world telling him yet again to let you go, that you are no longer the one he fell in love with a millennia ago. A dream so hazed it might as well be a fabrication of his mind. If only he could go back to when you were his...

Perhaps he can still thank the stars for letting you befriend the eleventh harbinger; you may not be his in this life, but at least he could still watch over you from afar with the little time you had together.

So as you laugh yet again with the young ginger at the neighbouring teahouse, Zhongli forced himself to turn his gaze back to his own tea, a blend you had shown him so many moons ago, a quiet musing sighed under his breath for only him to hear, the final vow to separate you from him in the way he's only known you as, "out of every speak of gold this land holds, you will be the one that shines brightest in my eyes. In this life, and for those that have yet to come my dear, but it would be far too cruel to cage something that shines so brightly."

Tag list (both regular and event exclusive): @spoopy-fish-writes // @that-enby-alien // @xenuuu // @kaeyaloml // @x-zho // @mariposa666haruka // @quackquackmfs // @kunikuzushiii // @genshin-impact-writings // @ventisweetheart // @lordbugs // @leena-shi // @ari-the-wr1ter // @xiaos-wife // @milkwithspiceyicecubes // @stygianoir // @francisnyx

+

@kaiserkisser // @multipleshadesofblue // @moloteco-real // @kithewanderingme // @scaramood // @kochothehoe // @ii-lily2 // @esuz // @cindywasneverhere // @kaeyastittysucker // @dilucsleftshoelace

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

A Curse [Chapter 7: Exposition Park]

A/N: Hi besties! Thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy Chapter 7. Big reveals are on the horizon. The a n t i c i p a t i o n is killing me 🥰😉

Series summary: You are an aspiring actress. Aegon is a washed-up and disenchanted agent…at least until he sees something special in you. But within paradisical seaside Los Angeles you find terrible dangers and temptations, secrets and lies. Maybe Aegon’s right; maybe the City of Angels really is a curse.

Chapter warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), age-gap situationship, fake dating but Jace doesn't know, drama, angst, a Targ family reunion, more metaphorical fish, Charli XCX.

Word count: 6.6k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Tagging: @lauraneedstochill @mrs-starkgaryen @chattylurker @neithriddle @ecstaticactus, more in comments! 🥰

🏝️ Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🏝️

You begin reading and it hits you, and you dissolve until all of your molecules are the black typeface of the audition script, just one scene that wipes you clean like steam from a window until there is no more California or Minnesota or Aegon or Becca or Mason or your family awaiting your inevitable return to them like a meteorite crashing down to earth.

Here is your new life: Gilded Age, Daddy gambled and died and now the money’s gone, Mama and your sisters need shelter from the storm amidst the Panic of 1893. Fortunately you have a suitor, a good man, a young handsome doctor with a small practice, and he would provide for you and your family, he would be an innocuous and obliging lifeboat. He asks you to marry him, and you almost say yes; but there is another fellow who comes courting, chance encounters at nightscape balls, evening walks under stars and streetlights. This lover of darkness, rippling in and out of your life only when the sun is on the opposite side of the planet, implores you to reject the doctor’s advances, and so you do…only to discover that this nocturnal bewitcher is not a man but a monster, a murderer, a vampire who can offer you nothing more than love that is bloodstained and fleeting and cursed.

Aegon has scrawled the date, time, and location of the audition on the inside of the manila folder. You Google the directions, use Maps to scope out the parking situation. You’ll take the 110 north, then the 91 east out of the city limits of Los Angeles, then the 710 to the 105 to Paramount Boulevard. The Rives Mansion, built in 1911, has been trapped in time as a century grew up around it like grasping threads of ivy; across the street is a Mexican restaurant and the Downey Brewing Company, a sports bar known for their mediocre wings and pizza, currently sitting at an illustrious 2.5/5 stars on Yelp. But the interior of the house will transport you back to the Gilded Age, and this must be why the casting director has chosen it.

You remember what Aegon said about getting you the audition: I didn’t do anything. They reached out to me. But where would they have heard about you? From the people at the Grey’s Anatomy shoot? From Dan or somebody else involved in the Maroon 5 music video?

You need a gown for the charity gala, so you tell your parents you want to buy a dress for Clara’s rehearsal dinner and they enthusiastically approve and give you the green light to charge whatever it costs to your credit card. In the fitting room at Elie Saab, you are torn between two options: sensuous bold red with cutouts and a plunging neckline (all the better for someone to sink their fangs into), timeless beaded gold that feels more like you. You send photos of yourself wearing both to Baela via WhatsApp. She is presently in Paris, nibbling on croissants and downing shots of espresso and filming the new Yorgos Lanthimos movie in which she has third billing.

She replies: Are you lowkey tryna fuck your agent again or nah?

You are scandalized. You type: Definitely not. His future wife will be there.

There is a pause as Baela considers this. By the time you are back in your street clothes—denim shorts, white Sketchers, and a Pacific Palisades t-shirt—she has reached a decision: Still get the red one. It’s brave. It’s memorable.

But you cannot bring yourself to buy it, even if that means the gold is comparatively modest and forgettable. You choose the gold gown and swipe your Chase Sapphire, but not before you make one last discovery: a black lace dress with a high frilly neckline that circles the throat like a noose, out of season and damaged with a rip in the back by the zipper, sold as-is and at a much reduced price. It reminds you of the style of dresses women wore in the Edwardian era, and it fits with the script, and the Rives Mansion, and the person who you will be at the audition on Saturday, July 19th.

You take your shopping bags and step out of the Elie Saab boutique of Beverly Hills into the sunlight, over one hundred degrees, over a century past the glittering deceit of the Gilded Age.

~~~~~~~~~~

“You lied to me.”

The actor’s name is Santiago, but he introduced himself as Santi. He’s been cast already. There’s a chemistry between you, not romantic but corporeal, following each other’s footsteps and inflections, the unspoken potential of improvisation. Across the otherwise empty room are four people seated at a table, two men and two women. Aegon lurks in the corner in his I-give-a-fuck suit, chomping on Juicy Fruit and holding an iced coffee that drips condensation. Morning light cascades in through the vast Palladian window and over the hardwood floor. “I omitted,” the vampire counters.

“You lied by silence. You lied like a coward,” you hiss at him, hair pulled back from your face, black lace at your throat, black shimmering on your eyelids, Renegade by Huda Beauty, Poison by Urban Decay.

He reaches for you. “I could not surrender you to any other man—”

“And now I’m all yours!” you scream, flinging his hands away. “My other prospects are squandered and my family will lose our home and our heirlooms, and I will lose the future that I dreamed of sharing with you, and if your love had been true for even for a moment you would have spared me this.”

“My love was sincere, and it endures.”

“It is selfish,” you seethe, lips quivering and tears slithering down your cheeks. The vampire stalks you, and you flee one blind step at a time until your back hits the wall. “It cannot give or preserve, only consume.”

He reaches out to touch you again, and this time you let him—you cannot resist him—and his fingertips ghost from your hairline to your jaw, tracing the borderlands of your face like the arc of a crescent moon. Then his hand settles lightly on your throat. And you are drawn to him, bound to him, invisible threads weaving his bones to your own, drowning in the opaque pools of his irises. “We can still be together.”

“Yes, in darkness. In destitution. In transient minutes between the murders that sustain you.”

“I never asked to be a monster. I was made this way by another.”

“And now you have proven yourself to be without humanity.”

He turns away and storms out of the room, and you are supposed to wait for him to return. But instead—because you feel that this must be what happens next—you bolt after him, and as you pass through the doorway you hear the puzzled clamoring of the casting director, producer, and two assistants: What is she doing? Where is she going? Then when Aegon follows you they hurry to do the same, their metal folding chairs squealing against the floor, their footsteps pounding like thunder or a racing pulse.

You chase the vampire onto the landing and down the staircase. “I rejected the doctor for you, I endangered my reputation and disregarded my family’s counsel for you, and what have you given me in return? Lies and horror and bloodstains on my conscience that I’ll never wash out. How can you claim to care for someone you’ve destroyed? What do you have to offer anybody except suffering and death—?!”

Three steps from the bottom, he whirls and pins you to the wall, his hands careful (as they are required to be) but his eyes hard, glass or stone or pavement, intractable, inhuman. “Stop fighting the horror. Join me in it. It calls to you, and you yearn for it, and to only me can you confess this.”

“You ruined my life,” you choke out, a loathsome lethal desire, a death rattle.

He touches his forehead to yours, his heat radiating through your skull. “I cannot be without you.”

“Let it end now,” you whisper, you plead. “Let the next artery you drain wash away the taste of me.”

And you both lean in, your lips a second from meeting, and farther up the staircase your audience of five watch in rivetted silence, as far from you as the stars from Earth, Betelgeuse or Rigel or Proxima Centauri. And then you are you again, and Santi is Santi, and you laugh together and each take a step back, the tension of your muscles unraveling and your memories already beginning to degrade.

The casting director, producer, and assistants all shake your hand and thank you again for taking the time to audition. You thank them for their consideration. They seem pleased, but when you turn to Aegon, he doesn’t give you his usual signal that you’ve done a good job. He doesn’t slip his aviator sunglasses out of the pocket of his suit jacket, put them on, and smile: You are so bright, sunshine. He just steals glimpses of you as he’s deep in conversation with the casting director, discussing the timeline for callbacks and when a final decision is expected to be made.

“See you tonight,” you tell Aegon when it’s over and you are both walking out to where your cars are parked on the curb, your Honda, his Chrysler. His white convertible has a sizeable dent in the front passenger’s side and the headlight busted out. “What happened there?”

“Someone cut me off,” he says, and passes you the iced coffee he hasn’t taken a sip of, a venti-sized vanilla latte.

~~~~~~~~~~

When you are dressed, you send a photo of yourself in the gold gown to your parents and Clara. Rehearsal dinner outfit! you type.

Mom replies: Very flattering, honey! and then sends back a picture of her snuggling one of the Akitas on the couch. Dad responds with a thumbs-up emoji. Clara leaves you on read.

Jace is wearing a floral tuxedo and has already pre-gamed. He’s buzzed when you climb together into the Uber he called; parking will be murder, and you’ll probably have a few drinks yourself at the gala. He pays with the account linked to Baela’s credit card. The charity gala is being held at the California Science Center in Exposition Park, which is on your side of the city: southeast of Tarzana and Beverly Hills, southwest of Downtown, Chinatown, and Aegon’s office in Elysian Park, just a twenty-minute drive dead north on the 110. When you arrive, men in black suits and women in shimmering floor-length gowns are posing for professional photographers on the front steps, and black limousines and SUVs are honking at each other as they battle for inches of space in the drop-off lane.

On your way to the glass doors at the building entrance, you and Jace pass beneath a vast hanging structure of spiraling red beams like arteries. When you look up, you see a myriad of gold dots like the infinitesimal glimmers of stars.

“This is the Aerial!” a museum employee is proudly telling a group of ogling guests. “It has precisely 1,578 spheres, each plated with gold leaf. And the sculpture right here underneath is the DNA Bench, engraved with images of all sorts of organisms…a bat, an octopus, a snake, a tree…”

Inside, the ground floor of the California Science Center is illuminated with soft pink light, and everywhere there are glamorous people chatting and nursing drinks and eating hors d’oeuvres on tiny plates, and you don’t recognize anyone, and you are very grateful that Jace is here. You cling to his arm so you don’t lose him in the crowd. There is an open bar beside a set of escalators heading skyward, and a DJ with his table set up against one wall. From the ceiling hang fighter jets and disco balls. Confetti litters the floor. As you open your gold clutch to get your phone and text Aegon that you’re here, the DJ puts on Pink Pony Club.

“Ah, I love this song!” you shout to Jace over the noise of the room, and then you sing together:

“I know you wanted me to stay,

But I can’t ignore the crazy visions of me in L.A.,

And I heard that there’s a special place,

Where boys and girls can all be queens every single day…”

“Hey,” Aegon says from behind you, and you lose your footing when you spin towards him—you are much better in wedges than heels—and Jace grabs your hands to steady you, and he’s laughing too loudly in that I’m-kind-of-drunk sort of way, and Aegon is glaring at him. He’s wearing a powder blue suit, and it actually fits him, and strands of his sandy blonde hair are escaping from his sheen of gel to fall down over his forehead, and for a few seconds you’re a little stunned by how beautiful he is, here in the dim distorted light and looking like he wants to hit someone. That’s never been why you felt drawn to Aegon, what he looks like. But here he is, engaged to another woman and a decade older than you and kind of horrible, surely, and you are in disbelief that you can’t reach out and touch him.

“Hi, hello, sorry,” you say, prying your hands out of Jace’s grasp. “I thought I’d just be able to walk in and find you, but it’s really crowded! But I’m here. I’m fine. I’m ready to work.”

Aegon’s turbulent blue gaze sweeps over you. “You look like an Oscar.”

You are puzzled. “The fish?”

He smiles. “No. The award.”

“I’m going to get a drink!” Jace tells you, and saunters off towards the bar.

Aegon watches him leave, then says: “I didn’t know you were bringing a guest.”

“Well, you have one. And I was worried I’d be lonely.”

“Sure,” Aegon says, irritated. Then he holds up two glasses. “I have a lemon drop and a Long Island iced tea. Which do you want?”

“The lemon drop.”

“Great.” He hands it to you, takes a gulp of the Long Island iced tea, and leads you off to be introduced to the elites of the city, here to raise money for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

There is a series of people whose names you can’t remember but you beam radiantly for: producers, directors, actors, cinematographers, screenwriters, assistants, models, journalists. Aegon lies to them about your experience and says you’re better than you are. He says you’ll have your own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame someday. You take delicate sips of your lemon drop, determined not to get tipsy, but Aegon drains his Long Island iced tea and swings by the bar for another one. Now Jace is talking to the DJ like he’s trying to convince him of something.

Aegon hurries past where Becca is mingling with a flock of women, tall and small-boned like flamingoes; Becca casts you a glower that is sharp and swift and belittling. She is wearing a white ballgown, very bridal, with powder blue palm leaves overlaying the skirt to match Aegon’s suit. No one can forget they’re about to get married, and you assume this is intentional.

“Becca, you have such gorgeous hair,” one of her friends, noticeably drunk, fawns as she pets Becca’s long sleek tresses, artfully styled into miraculously frizzless waves.

“Aww, thanks!” Becca says. “According to family legend, we’re part Native American. The Karankawa tribe.”

Another friend, not so easily impressed, rolls her eyes. “Becca, everybody claims their family is part Native American.”

“No, seriously! My mom’s maiden name was Broadwater, that has to be Native American!”

“Becca, it’s literally English.”

“Do a test,” Becca’s drunk friend says, poking at her bare shoulder. “One of those DNA thingies you send through the mail.”

Becca seems inspired, her eyes bright, her thoughts racing. “Maybe I should! Like 23AndMe?”

“There’s a new one,” the not-drunk friend says, slurping what appears to be a mojito. “It’s called Legacea, I think. It’s supposed to be super fast and super thorough.”

The drunk friend is stymied. “Legawhata?”

“Legacea,” the not-drunk friend repeats. “I know, it’s pretentious, it’s legacy and panacea smashed together. But Becca should totally do it and if she is so much as one percent Native American, I will personally redress historic wrongs by gifting her my Brentwood apartment…”

Now Jace is moshing with a group of newfound friends. He has at last convinced the DJ to put on a Charli XCX song. The bass reverberates through the rose-colored twilight of the room; some sophisticated guests appear baffled, others alarmed.

“When I go to the club, I wanna hear those club classics,

Club classics, club, club classics,

When I go to the club, I wanna hear those club classics,

Club classics, club, club classics…”

A woman, mid-fifties and auburn-haired, appears out of the multitude with large, nervous eyes. “We should have gotten an orchestra,” she tells Aegon fretfully, twisting the rings on her fingers. She is wearing a gold wedding band, although if she is who you assume her to be—the resemblance is striking—she hasn’t had a husband in over fifteen years. “Shouldn’t we have gotten an orchestra?”

A man who looks very much like a younger version of Aegon, late-twenties instead of mid-thirties, laughs as he materializes beside her. “Mom, no one wants to listen to an orchestra.”

“No one under eighty years old,” Aegon says.

“Aemond thought we should get an orchestra,” she replies.

Aegon says sarcastically: “And of course, Aemond is an expert on all things cool and timely.” Then he introduces you to them both: his mother Alicent, his brother Daeron, an up-and-coming actor who has been in a successful Netflix series and has innumerable Tumblr blogs devoted to him. He’s been called the blonde Timothee Chalamet.

“Oh, aren’t you lovely,” Alicent tells you, although she seems perpetually a little distracted, a little sad. She tugs at a thin gold chain she wears around her neck with a cross suspended from it. “And we’ll be seeing you again at the wedding, won’t we? I know Aegon has invited all his clients.”

You hesitate. You doubt Becca wants you there. You have no interest whatsoever in watching Aegon marry her. “Um…well…actually, I might have a prior commitment that weekend, so—”

“She’ll be there,” Aegon says.

“Wonderful.” Alicent smiles at you. You smile back, a reflex. Then yet another Targaryen arrives, a woman with dreamy blue eyes and a butter yellow gown covered in ruffles. They are so massive she seems to be drowning in them. “Helaena, have you met Aegon’s newest client?”

“I don’t believe I have.” Helaena, a fashion designer whose work is a staple on red carpets and runways, exchanges pleasantries with you. Her eyes never quite meet yours; instead they bounce around weightlessly to your gown, your gold heels, your hair, your hand clasping your lemon drop, and then to where Aegon is standing next to you probably too closely for someone who is supposed to be your agent and nothing more.

“I absolutely love your dress!” you tell Helaena. “It’s so fun. And yellow is my favorite color.”

“Thank you,” Helaena says, soft and placid. You can barely hear her over the horrible Charli XCX music. “I love your eyeshadow. Is that Alchemist?”

You are startled; you touch your fingertips to your orbital socket before you can stop yourself, hopefully not smudging the glittering gold powder. “It is, yeah. By Natasha Denona.”

“Is Aemond nearby?” Aegon asks his family, and you are aware that he seems to want to get away from them, like he’s rushing towards the end of the conversation.

Alicent peers around. “Um, I don’t think so…maybe he’s up on the second floor?”

“Okay. I’ll bump into him eventually.” But as Aegon turns away, his mother places a palm on his arm, and he stops even if he hasn’t been seized or commanded, yielding to her forcelessness. When Alicent speaks, her voice is gentle and her dark eyes wounded, like there’s a knife in her somewhere that no one has ever pulled out.

“Aegon, I’m very happy to see you here tonight.”

“No problem,” he says briskly, and ushers you away to the bar where he orders another Long Island iced tea.

“Why would I go to your wedding?” you ask as you wait with him. You still have half of your lemon drop left, but Aegon’s cheeks are flushed and he’s beginning to sway, and when he gazes at you from under the sandy strands of hair that have fallen over his eyes, the blue of his irises is murky and slow and far-away, miles away, years away.

“Because you promised you’d do whatever I say, and I want you there.”

“Maybe I don’t want to fly to Turks and Caicos to watch you marry someone else.”

“There will be industry people in attendance. You can network. Consider it good for your career.”

“But—”

“Steve! Hey!” Aegon calls out, then waves some people over to the bar. These are his other clients, the last of a dying breed: a young Scottish guy, a middle-aged man who spent his twenties and thirties in the Navy, a disorientingly beautiful woman who came to the United States as a refugee from Somalia when she was eight years old. They are all kind and welcoming and real, amazingly real, and they adore Aegon, they speak about him with a gratitude that is bone-deep and eternal, and you marvel at this quiet magic he has to him, this way of finding people who’ve fallen through cracks like continental divides and dragging them back up into the daylight.

“Aegon?” the woman, Fatima, says a bit regretfully. “I’m so sorry to steal you away, but I remember you mentioned a certain director last week, the one who worked on Only Murders in the Building. Do you know if he’s here tonight?”

“Oh yeah, totally!” Aegon says, picking up his fresh Long Island iced tea off the bar. “Come on, I’ll help you find him and get the ball rolling.” Then he looks at you, conflicted, as if he isn’t quite comfortable leaving you alone.

You are nonchalant, like you don’t care what he does. “I’m fine. I’ll be with Jace.”

Aegon glances at your aforementioned date, who is presently shoveling his mouth full of crab-stuffed mushrooms and shrimp cocktail by the DJ. “Fantastic,” he mutters, and vanishes into the crowd with Fatima.

You weave through guests as you make your way towards Jace, then someone runs up and throws their arms around you before you can process who it is. Fortunately, you are not one to turn down hugs. When he pulls back, he is grinning. It’s Brandon, doubtlessly cashing in on one of the few benefits of being Aegon’s receptionist. “Hey, girl! Oh my God, I didn’t realize you had a drink. I didn’t make you spill your lemon drop, did I?”

“Oh no, it’s fine! Hi, Brandon!”

“How’d the audition go this morning?”

“Good! We’ll see. It was intense, and I can never really remember what I did afterwards. But I think they liked me.”

He smiles warmly. “Great. I’m so glad it went well. Aegon was really obsessed with it. He must have spent two hours on the phone with those people.”

You are confounded; you have no idea what he means. “On the phone…?”

“Convincing them to give you an audition,” Brandon says, as if surely you already know this and he’s just jogging your memory. Before you can respond, he is rejoined by his date Dylan and dashes off to dance with him. Evidently, Brandon and his date appreciate Charlie XCX.

The indie movie people didn’t know about me, you think, your skull hazy with organ-pink light and gala guests brushing by you and the bass beat thudding from the speakers. They didn’t call Aegon. He called them. And then he lied to me about it.

You look around, wondering where Aegon is, needing to find him; and then you spot someone up on the second floor, not Aegon but another man you have to talk to, a phantom you only know from television and the internet and a rarely-utilized contact in Aegon’s iPhone. You take the escalator up to him, ascending slowly, and he doesn’t even notice you until you speak. He’s standing amidst suits and gowns but he’s in solitude somehow, thoughtful, somber, fidgeting with a gold rush rather than drinking it, gazing vacantly over the crowd down on the ground floor. He wears a navy blue pinstripe tuxedo and a scar down the left half of his face, some sort of childhood accident that cost him an eye. He wears a prosthesis in its place, and you wouldn’t know the difference if this wasn’t common knowledge in Hollywood.

“I think I have to thank you,” you say.

Aemond Targaryen turns to you, startled and then amused. “Thank me?”

“Aegon forged my resume and listed you as a reference. That’s how I got my first job out here, a Grey’s Anatomy episode. So…thank you for the fraud.”

He chuckles to himself and sips his gold rush, ice clinking in the glass. Artificial pink light shifts across his scarred face. A film he wrote the screenplay for won Best Picture at the Oscars last year. “I can’t condone the deception, but I’m comforted that it was for a good cause. I assume you’re the new client.”

“And the last.”

Aemond furrows his brow at you. “The last?”

“Before Aegon retires,” you say. “And I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. Probably end up living under a bridge somewhere.” Probably return to Minnesota to spend the rest of my life impersonating someone my parents want me to be.

But Aemond still isn’t following. “Aegon is retiring?”

“Yeah,” you say, a little tentatively now. “After the wedding. He didn’t tell you?”

Aemond’s eye—the right one, the real one—shifts down towards the ground floor like he’s looking for somebody and then back to you. “Did he say why?”

“He said he was sick of how shallow this place is.” How dangerous. How cursed.

Aemond’s voice is flat. “But it’s always been this way.”

“I mean…I guess? I don’t know. I love it here in Los Angeles!” But you don’t think you mean that as much as you did two months ago.

“Where is Aegon right now?”

“He’s downstairs with Fatima, one of his other clients.”

“I have to go,” Aemond says abruptly, and leaves you alone by the railing. You watch him descend on the escalator, too impatient to wait, walking instead of riding and taking two steps at the time.

Was I not supposed to say anything? Does Aegon’s family not know he’s leaving?

You finish your lemon drop and then frown with your free hand resting on the railing, looking down into the throng of people on the ground floor: freckled with the light scattered by the disco balls, slipping drunkenly on strips of confetti, tolerating yet another Charli XCX song, this one not so offensive and with a plucky tempo that’s easy to dance to:

“I think the apple’s rotten right to the core,

From all the things passed down from all the apples coming before,

I split the apple down symmetrical lines and what I find is kinda scary,

Makes me just wanna drive…”

You are suddenly aware that a woman is standing beside you. White ballgown, blue palm leaves, a long dark shock of hair. “You can’t act if your leg is broken,” Becca says.

You are so alarmed to see her that you physically recoil. “Sorry, what?”

She nods to the escalator. “Be careful. If you trip and fall on that—or on a staircase, or on a curb, or, you know, anywhere—you could break your leg and then you wouldn’t be able to take any acting jobs for months, and I suppose that would derail your plans quite a bit.”

You blink at her, half-terrified, half-disbelieving, gripping your empty lemon drop glass so tightly your hand aches. “Are you…threatening me…?”

Becca gasps, theatrical, mocking. “I would never do that. I’m just looking out for you.” Then she leans in close so no one else can listen. She smells like flowers, like summer, like all the golden days she and Aegon will share together. “You will not be at my wedding. You have somewhere else to be. You can’t make it, how sad. We’ll spare you a thought. You’ll send a gift. Maybe a waffle maker, Aegon loves waffles.”

“Okay,” you squeak. And she swishes away in her bridal gown without saying anything else, but even if she did you wouldn’t be able to hear her. Your heartbeat is thunderous in your ears; your face is scalding with blood, panicked and ashamed and confused.

Breaking legs? Impending wedding?? Waffles???

You give your empty glass to a museum employee and take the escalator back down to the ground floor—after ensuring that Becca isn’t standing nearby—and then hunt through the mob for Jace. But you can’t find him. The only people you bump into are tall booming men in suits or women with tight lineless faces and bony arms and full breasts that stay exactly where they’re supposed to be even without a bra, and you want to go home but you can’t leave without making sure Jace is alright, and he doesn’t answer the texts you frantically type to him. You try to hide in the bathroom but the first one you seek refuge in is lit with pink tubes of neon and full of women fixing their hair and makeup, and you can’t risk someone important seeing you freak out and making a bad impression. Instead, you follow a dark hallway that leads to some of the museum exhibits, and then a benign bluish glow appears and beckons you to a sanctuary: the kelp forest, a tunnel surrounded by a microcosm ocean.

You place your palms on the cool curved glass and breathe, slow and deep, your heartrate going quiet again. On the other side of the transparent divide, angelfish and blue tangs dart between thick ropes of kelp. Above you, a leopard shark sails by over the crest of the tunnel. From far away, you can hear echoes of Alicent addressing the crowd and thanking them for being in attendance tonight, and how much it would have meant to her late husband Viserys.

I don’t want to go to the wedding anyway, you tell yourself, but that’s not helping.

You check your phone again. Jace still hasn’t answered your texts.

And here’s the truth: I don’t want Aegon to marry anyone else. Not even if she was a saint, not even if she was perfect for him.

There are footsteps here in the ocean and the glass and the blue, and you turn to see Aegon stepping into the tunnel, looking around with great confusion as if he’s trying to figure out how you ended up here.

“Are you lost?” he says.

“Yes. But it’s intentional.”

He comes to stand beside you, watching the fish flit through the kelp forest, his hands in the pockets of his powder blue suit, the one Becca picked out for him. And because at last you are alone and the world is hushed, after a while Aegon says: “That was insane, what you did this morning. That was some of the best work I’ve ever seen.”

“So you think I’ll get the job.”

“I think you deserve it. But sometimes that doesn’t have a lot to do with who ends up being cast. We tried, that’s all we can do. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”

You look over at him. “You lied to me.”

He seems afraid. “About what?”

“You got me the audition. And you had to convince them.”

Aegon smiles to himself. Is he relieved? “Yeah, alright. I did.”

“Why are you working so hard to help me?”

“Because you’re my girl. And I have to make sure you’re taken care of. And I don’t have much time left.”

“Don’t leave me,” you say, pathetic like a child. Don’t marry her. Don’t move across the country with her. “You’re the only person who thinks I belong here.”

“Other people will believe in you soon. You’re too good for them not to.”

“But I don’t want another agent.”

And Aegon gazes at you, rippling blue light on his face, and when he kisses you he tastes like the Long Island ice teas he’s been drinking since you got here: vodka, tequila, light rum, triple sec, gin, Coke, lemon, poison cut with sweetness, a cold swig that burns all the way down.

You stop him, one hand on his chest, too frail to mean it. “Your fiancée is out there doing a victory lap.”

“But you don’t care,” Aegon says. “And I’m right here with you.”

And now you surrender, you fall into him like a pool, like an ocean, and like a riptide he pulls you to the nearest bathroom—this one small and abandoned—and you drag each other to the frigid tile floor beneath cobalt neon light, and you unravel yourself from him just long enough to lunge for the door and throw the bolt so no one else can open it, and then Aegon is on top of you again, tearing off his suit jacket and unbuttoning the white shirt beneath, and you yank up the hem of your sparking beaded gown until it’s at your hips; but this isn’t enough for him.

“No,” Aegon murmurs against your throat like he has fangs, like he can’t stop until every blood drop of you has hemorrhaged out to satiate him. “I want to see you.”

And so you sit up so he can unzip the top of your dress and help you slip your arms out of the straps, and then you fall back again and let the cold blue chemical light flood over you as he nuzzles you, warm lips, teasing teeth, and it’s perfect, and now he’s rummaging around in his wallet until he finds a condom and you need him now, now, now, and he’s kissing you like he feels the same desperation in this dwindling eleventh hour. But when you reach down to touch him, he’s barely hard.

You are bewildered. This has never happened to you before. Undeterred, you straddle Aegon, kissing him deeply as your hips grind against his, and he seems like he wants to…he really does…but it’s not working. Now he’s completely soft.

Aegon sighs heavily. “Just stop,” he says, rubbing his face with his hands, and you crawl off of him and sit beside him on the floor, draped in uneasy blue, the room silent except for your own rapid breathing and distant rumblings from the gala.

You have no idea what to say. You don’t even look at him. You stare at the wall instead, feeling like you’ve made some horrific mistake, like you’ve shattered something that could have been beautiful.

After a moment, Aegon grabs your thighs roughly and tugs you closer to him. “Come here. I’ll get you off.”

“But I’m not going to be into it if I feel like you’re not into it.”

“I am into it,” Aegon insists, frustrated.

“What did you want me to do that I wasn’t doing?” What does Becca do for you?

“It’s not you. You’re not the problem.”

“But I want to know what I should have done differently—”

“It’s not about you,” Aegon snaps. “I’m just…I’m not in my twenties anymore, you know?”

You stare at him. “You’re thirty-five, Aegon. You’re not old.”

“Please, please, just shut up and let me take care of you, and we can move on.”

But you draw away when he tries to reach between your legs, and you lay an open palm against his flushed cheek, and you are suddenly struck by a lightning bolt of a theory. Why is he really leaving Los Angeles? What did Viserys Targaryen die of? “Aegon…is there something wrong with you?”

“I’ll take you home,” he says, and starts putting his clothes back on.

“Because if you weren’t okay, I would want to know, and I could help you—”

“I’ll take you home,” Aegon says again, so severely and with such finality you can’t argue, because you can’t speak at all. If you try to, you’ll burst into tears. You feel completely rejected by him. You feel like you ruined your very last chance to touch him, and soon he’ll be getting married on Turks and Caicos, and soon you’ll never see him again except in Becca’s blissful Instagram stories.

Aegon walks with you quickly through the museum, past the guests he ignores, and outside where a long line of black SUVs and limousines are waiting. He puts you in an Escalade and then jogs around to the other side, sitting so the skinny middle seat is between you. Then he tells you to give the driver your address. He must not remember it.

Once you have relayed your address, you say miserably to Aegon: “I can ride home by myself, thanks.”

He’s gazing blankly out the window and running his fingers through his hair. “I’ll feel better if I make sure you get there safely.” It feels patronizing, humiliating, like a weak wordless goodbye. You wonder if tomorrow you’ll get a text that he’s officially offloaded you onto some other agent.

The Escalade driver begins to pull away from the curb, and you realize you’ve forgotten something…or, rather, someone. “Wait!” you shout, and the Escalade lurches to a halt.

“What’s your problem?” Aegon says irritably. His powder blue suit is wrinkled; his face is exhausted.

“I can’t leave without Jace.”

“Are you fucking serious?”

Right on time, you look through the tinted window to see Jace wandering around the entranceway. He must have seen you hurry out of the museum. You open the Escalade door and call to him. Jace runs to the vehicle, scrambles over your lap, and flops into the middle seat between you and Aegon.

“You can’t get your own ride?” Aegon flares at him.

Jace is incredulous. He looks at you. “We’re going to the same place, right?”

“Right,” you agree casually, and Aegon shakes his head and resumes staring out the window, although there is nothing there but darkness and blooms of artificial light.

“That was so cool,” Jace says as he types energetically on his iPhone. He spends the entirety of the twenty-minute drive posting photos and videos of himself with minor celebrities on his Instagram stories: Frankie Muniz, Cole Sprouse, Meghan Trainor, Katy Perry. He asks you for suggestions as he chooses filters and adds music. Aegon doesn’t say a word; he aggressively chews several sticks of Juicy Fruit instead.

When the Escalade stops in front of your building, you and Jace depart beneath omnipresent light pollution that blots out the stars.

“Hey,” Aegon says just before you shut the car door, and you are powerless to walk away until you’ve heard what he has to tell you—an apology? an explanation?—and you stand frozen on the sidewalk under a streetlight as Jace goes inside. “You know, I, uh…I had a lot to drink, right?”

“You tried to think of an excuse the whole way here and that’s the best one you came up with?”

Before Aegon can reply, you slam the door and follow Jace into your apartment building.