#something rotten is blooming

[doctorweebmd]

sick to my stomach about this empty expression

[merakiui]

thing.

yandere!skully j. graves x (gender neutral) reader cw: yandere, unhealthy behaviors/relationship, stalking, fear/paranoia, brief mention and description of dead animals note - "he is there—and there again, but you cannot see him plain, for the shadow lies so darkly on the hill."

There is a bundle of black roses propped against your door. Thirteen of them, devoid of thorns, but the threat is still there—nestled within the petals, a foreboding symbolism.

A stupid Halloween prank, you think, gathering the roses and tossing them out.

Come tomorrow, there is a new bouquet waiting for you. These are white, but they have their thorns. A small card accompanies the gift. There’s a message printed in an old typewriter font: No good?

Like before, you discard these flowers. You have no time for secret admirers or daft nonsense.

So the roses stop blooming at your door, tied up with pretty twine and ribbons. Instead, you receive bones and carcasses. A mouse skull. Deer teeth. A mangled bird, its wings snapped and bent at the joints. A rabbit’s foot, warm and still bleeding, the bone jutting out from severed flesh. The roses, you think, were a preview of what was to come—of what you’d soon be mourning.

These macabre presents are wrapped sincerely, shrouded daintily with frilly cloth. They come with their own set of cards, each one typed just like before. 

I can see you.

Good luck on your exam today. Carry this rabbit’s foot with you and you shall know fortune.

This naughty bird is always cawing outside of your window. It wakes you up, so I silenced it for you. It is most beautiful in death, is it not?

Are you going to bring that friend of yours around again? I don’t quite like the scent they leave on your sheets. :(

So you share these morbid anecdotes with your friends over dinner. They don’t believe you.

“You’ve one persistent dog after you,” one of them remarks, eyeing the pictures with a curious, doubtful eye. “A real rotten mutt.”

“But I don’t have a dog,” you reply.

“Well, something’s coming home to you every night.”

“It’s just me. I live alone.”

“Do you? You sure nothing’s following you? You don’t hear the jingle of a collar? The soft padding of paws on tile, loyally trailing after its owner?”

At the time, you thought these were foolish questions.

“The flowers? Definitely a person,” your logical friend suggests. “The dead stuff? Probably a wild animal. A hawk once dropped a mouse in my yard. It’s normal. Someone’s just making a nasty time out of it, leaving those notes to scare you.”

That sounds reasonable. You choose to believe it even when there are inconsistencies and clues that prove otherwise.

You check the locks on your doors and windows. You consider buying cameras, but maybe that’s misplaced paranoia. No one’s inside your house. No person or thing could possibly get in. You’re not sure what would be worse: a tangible human being with human hair, human eyes, and human teeth, or a thing. A thing with claws and a razored maw. A thing with inhuman strength and the eerie quietness of a phantom, plucked right from your nightmares and dropped in reality.

A human being is tangible. A thing could be anything. It could also be nothing.

“I’m not interesting enough to have a stalker,” you tell your logical friend. “Not special enough or rich enough. Not attractive enough.”

“You don’t have to be,” they tell you. “Sometimes all you need to be is alone and vulnerable. Sometimes all you need to do is exist so that they have something to latch onto—something they can covet no matter what.”

“Do you think they’ll kill me?” you ask next, hesitating around that word. Kill. It’s so final and exact. “If they can do such gruesome things to those animals…”

“Or it could be a dog. Dogs don’t kill their owners. They’re loyal.”

“But it’s not a dog. I don’t even think this thing is domesticated.”

“Then what is it?”

“Something.”

It is something malevolent. It is something malicious. It is something you can’t quite fathom—something you can’t picture in your mind because it is always swapping shapes. One minute it’s a nest of mice dwelling within your walls. The next it’s a shadow creature—a demon or a monster. The next it’s a human with strange proportions, too-long legs and too-long arms and a too-long torso. The next it’s a dog with a long, long snout and very human eyes, with human hands for paws, with a curling smile that reveals gaps in its pointed, bloody maw. It feasts on flesh and hunts little, defenseless songbirds, and it’s after you because it wants something you can’t give it.

What does it want? Is this thing even real? Perhaps the anxiety is making a monster out of nothing.

You twist and turn in the dark, wrapped up in sheets that feel more itchy than they do comforting. You’re cold all over, sweating an ocean in your bed. You think your heart might burst out of your chest at any minute. Every creak and groan of the house unsettles nerves that are already pulled impossibly taut. You gaze into the dark doorway, squinting through shadows that look like they’re waltzing in and out of focus.

Or…

Is the door breathing? Is someone there?

You rub your eyes and relief filters in. There’s nothing.

Or…

Your phone cuts a slice of light through your bedroom. You shine it towards the door from where you cower on your bed. There’s nothing.

Your friend—the unfunny one—texts you then, and the vibration scares you more than your imagination. A text is tangible, easily categorized, and yet it’s the scariest thing you’ve just received at this moment, however ghoulishly playful it may be.

u need a leash for ur dog?

You drop your phone. It illuminates the space beneath your bed for a second before the screen shuts off.

You think you hear someone breathing or a heart beating. It’s yours.

Or…

Swallowing thickly, you reach for your phone. You feel soft, fluffy hair. At first, you think it really is a dog when a warm, wet tongue laves over your palm. But you don’t have a dog, and it’s then when you feel the rest of this…thing. Human ears. Human nose. Human mouth. Human teeth. 

Another text brightens your phone. The screen flickers on.

You peek over the edge of your mattress to find a distinctly human face smiling back at you.

might as well get a collar too yeah?

[shaisuki]

it took you a long time to realize that you were your sukuna-sama's favorite.

how could you. there were a hundred of concubines that your master to choose from and you were one of them. different are chosen to lay with him every night sometimes more than three. you didn't complain about it. your master are entitled to do whatever it pleases him and you were fortunate enough if you are chosen to.

that it happens on repeat and you were blind to the scowl of the other concubines who watch you in jealousy of how much sukuna-sama favors you out all of them. your fellow concubines seething in their seat with gritting teeth of being called for the nth time of the moon.

sukuna would not say it aloud that you were his favorite concubine. sure he was that there are other concubines in his harem that shares your attributes but it is nothing to his favored concubine.

the one who could easily follow his orders with no qualms or hesitation. the mere shadow of him is where you already presents yourself. stripping yourself out of the kimono that he specifically chosen for you. fitting for a king like him to feast on a delicacy such as yourself. his cocks hardening at your scent. awaiting for your smooth palms to worship him and hold his cocks. your chunky fingers wrapped around them. pumping them simultaneously while your lips engulfed his two cock heads. sucking them eagerly while he degrades and sometimes praises you for being devoted to him.

this time you didn't miss how hungry his gaze are. his sight narrows at your plump figure below him. the mouth in his stomach salivating in contrast of the thin line in his face's lips. his arms moving in a manner that your brain tells you to run but your cunt is already drenched with your slick for this king you're about to serve. you await for whatever fate he has stored for you. will he kill you tonight out of boredom or he will grant you a another day to see the sun.

it was the latter and the full realization weighing on you were your sukuna-sama's prized possession when you're the only one to be bestowed by being laid in his throne of skulls. your legs separated by his upper arms while your cunt is being feasted by your master.

eyes the color of his enemies blood is staring at you with fascination while he hums in delight. his mouth pressed in your fat pussy while he laps the delectable juices dripping out of you. after ripping the bodies of his enemies and consuming their rotten flesh, he needs something sweet to wash the taste of it and your cunt is the only thing he can think of. sweet as the peaches in bloom and it goes down like honey in his throat.

he doesn't stop. he will only stop after he was satisfied. doesn't matter if you're silently pleading. begging him to stop cause it's too much. you only exist for his pleasure and deep inside you were happy that you have a purpose for your master. you lasted this long after all. one thing that is clear, you're his favorite.

[natalievoncatte]

Kara knows, and that’s the problem.

She knows.

How does she know?

To put it simply, she’s Kryptonian. More specifically: a Kryptonian under a yellow sun, whose wavelengths of light bring forth her genetic heritage when she basks in its rays. If long lost Rao was once her father, Sol is her mother, raising her up to be all that she can be. A creation of a lost super-science, a power to rival gods, a force that made the Guardians tremble in their emerald tower.

Kara can see everything.

The world is alive with light. It cascades and bounces and caroms off of everything. More than that, Kara’s world is bathed in a thousand thousand hues the human eye will never know. When she looks at a person she can see the electrical conductivity of their skin and the heat bloom of their flesh and a myriad of other details, some of which other humans can pick up on a subconscious level, others that humans haven’t even discovered yet.

Kara can hear everything.

She can hear dog whistles and butterfly wings beating and the secret language of cats. She can hear the crackle of radio waves beating the atmosphere and the music of the spheres. She can memorize human heartbeats and pick out the slightest variation, the tiniest wobble that the owner of the heart never feels.

Kara can smell everything. She can sift between the scents of ingredients in her honey bun, detect poisons in a friend’s wine or flowers in a park half a state away. Sharks would be jealous of her. She can scent people but also their moods; fear smells horrific, sickly sweet and rotten. Joy smells hot and bold. When someone walks in the room, she can tell what they had for breakfast, smell of they’re sick, pick out the fragrances of their emotions.

Kara can feel everything. A touch can betray or affirm. To hear a heartbeat is one thing, to feel it another. Her fingertips can read the surface of another’s skin like braille and she can detect the slightest changes in temperature or perspiration, feel the thrum of contentment or fear in an embrace. Her touch is not dulled by her invulnerability. It as sensitive as her other senses.

Kara can remember everything. The day she stepped from her pod into the brilliant golden sunlight beneath a blue sky was the last time she would every forget; her now empowered brain can recall events in the finest detail, down to the soft timbre of another’s voice or the way her hair fell over her shoulder or the softness in her gaze. And so Kara’s memory is hers to be kept forever, never to lose the sight of her.

That is how Kara knows, and knowing that Lena Luthor loves her is a pain so terrible that she almost wishes she could be spared that pain. When Lena sees Kara, her heart leaps and her breath softens and she comes alive with light, bathed in an auric glow more beautiful than a red sunrise. Kara wishes that Lena could see herself as Kara sees her. Radiant, angelic, a little holy.

Lena loves Kara Danvers, the bumbling awkward nerdy shy girl from Vaguely Canada who brings her burgers and donuts and OTPs.

She doesn’t love Supergirl and Kara doesn’t think she could.

That’s how the torture happens. Kara’s infinite perception becomes a self-imposed exile. She sees and smells the way James lusts after Lena, right in front of her. Baffled, she listens to the calm in her heart when they kiss and once she wakes frantically in the night, reaching about to sift through the city soundscape when she hears Lena’s voice cry out, then the sound of Lena’s heart racing and other sounds, and not for the first time, she pleads with a god she doesn’t know to make her human and free her from this curse.

She seeks feeling of her own. It’s pleasant enough but it lacks something undefinable, like a pleasant chocolate cake that becomes unbearable because she could have had something far sweeter and more filling instead. He tries in a fumbling way but it’s to please his own ego more than sate her desire. Then one day he is gone and in his absence all Kara can feel is a dull numbness, a ragged wound with all the nerves scraped out so that only a dull absence has been left behind, leaving her broken in a way that cannot be defined much less repaired.

Kara cannot help but snap her attention to the sound of Lena growing agitated, no matter how distant or minor. She hears harsh words and the heavy thud of a limo door closing and hears the sharp intake of breath as James realizes the mistake he’s made, and though he is her friend and he matters to him she feels a feral, possessive joy that borders on the cruel. It is a hard feeling, a red feeling, a sharp smelling mean feeling that tastes cold on her tongue, this resentment of the man for having a pale shadow of what she could have but wouldn’t.

Lena loves Kara Danvers and Kara Danvers loves her back, but she can never know because to know she must know all of her. Know the Other, the Super, the Alien.

Kara is two people and one of those people has been, well, a bitch.

Because Kara feels spending else. A green feeling, a sick feeling, the feeling of blades flensing flesh from bone while her veins turn to glass and her body burns to ash, the shocking pain of a little piece of home. A little piece that Lena made and didn’t tell her, and Kara makes the worst mistake.

She stops being Supergirl and is just Kara Danvers in a colorful suit, angrily refusing to ask Lena the question: I love you, how could you do this to me?

She does love her. She loves her laugh and her secret smiles and how soft she looks when she’s deep in thought. She loves the pain in her, the mirror of her own. She cherishes it as she wants hers to be cherished, held close by someone who knows what it’s like to watch your world explode or slip beneath still waters and be gone forever. She knows what it’s like to wonder what could have been and know the price you paid for what you have now.

She wants Lena so terribly that she’d almost choose the pain of Kryptonite instead of an eternity of this longing. She needs her, craves her, thirsts for her.

One night Kara realizes what she’s been doomed to. Another will succeed where James failed, and Kara will be spared none of it, and it will endure forever. She will carry memories of Lena in another’s arms into the sun dies.

No.

“I don’t know why I agreed to this,” Lena says.

Kara -Supergirl- says nothing at first.

“I have to fly you.”

Lena nods. She’s doing this for Kara, because Kara asked. When Supergirl extends a hand, Lena takes it and Kara gently lifts her from the ground into a bridal carry, and they fly.

The trip takes nearly an hour. Kara can’t fly too fast or too high. Lena accepts it without complaint.

They land far north of National City, where the warmer climate yields to deciduous rainforest. Kara brings them down on a bare hilltop, an island in a vast ocean of trees. Nearby on a folding table is a basket. It might be important later or it might not. She might have a life of joy or she might spend the rest of forever in a wasteland, waking each day to grief.

There’s only one way to find out. Part of her, the part that hopes, the part that makes her Supergirl, believes in this, in herself, in this moment. She has to, because the chain of events that led her here, flung across endless space to stand in starlight with the most beautiful woman in this world, it demands that it happen. This is fate. It has to be.

Supergirl stands beside Lena. She raises an arm and points.

“There. Second star on the left, and straight on till morning.”

Lena quirks an eyebrow and looks at her.

“You brought me out here for this?”

“Do you see that red light?” Kara asks. “It’s very faint. I don’t know if a human can see it or not.”

“I just see stars.”

“It’s Rao, my sun. I can see him. If I had a powerful enough telescope, I could see it. Krypton. The explosion won’t be visible to Earth for a thousand years.”

Lena looks up, her features bathed in moonlight- alive with a chaotic explosion of hues she’ll never see. She blazes in the night, her eyes a kaleidoscope from which Kara can never truly look away. She’s a rainbow.

Kara falters. Whatever she does tonight, this is it. This is forever.

“You said Kara would meet me here,” Lena says.

“Wait here, please.”

Kara turns quickly and walks into the dark, cape spreading behind her. Once she’s out of sight, she changes without restraining her speed, and walks back to Lena in a hoodie and leggings, hair in a loose ponytail and the back of her neck and hands in her pockets.

She walks back to Lena and stands beside her.

“Hello, Kara.”

“Hi, Lena.”

There is a tense silence between them. Kara devours the moment, consumes it so it will live forever, just in case this is the last time she sees Lena.

“We’re not far from the reservoir,” says Lena. “Why did you ask Supergirl to bring us here?”

Kara swallows hard. “I realized something really important near here.”

Lena turns to her. “What was that?”

“That there was someone who mattered to me a lot, and that I was willing to risk a lot to protect her. There was a moment where I thought I was going to have time make a choice, you or the chemicals. I didn’t have to but I would have. I would have picked you. I will always pick you. I can’t help it.”

Lena is not stunned. Her heart doesn’t miss a beat, but Kara can sense her apprehension, her fear, and something deeper than that.

“You’re Supergirl.”

Kara lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and her legs wobble. There it is. It’s done. She’s free.

“I should have told you sooner.”

“You should have. You should have told me when we fought about the Kryptonite. I thought you would, hoped you would. I wanted you to so desperately, wanted you to trust me.”

Kara’s heart sinks.

“Wait, you knew? How?”

Lena laughs softly.

“The way you touch me. When you pick me up and carry me somewhere, you have this way about you. When I’m in your arms I feel like I’m the most precious thing in the world.”

“You are,” Kara says.

“That and you told me you flew to my office on a bus.”

Kara makes a small, choked sound.

“Oh.”

Lena scuffs the heel of her boot against the ground.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I was scared. I thought if I did, you’d see it as a confrontation and feel threatened. What about you?”

“I’m Kara. Supergirl is something I do, not what I am. When I’m with you I’m just me. I lose that with everyone when they find out. Kara isn’t my secret identity. Supergirl is. I’m just me. I just want to be me, I need to be me, and when I’m with you I am most myself. It’s like laying down all my burdens.”

“Same,” Lena said, softly. “You’re the only one who doesn’t treat me like an extension of my brother.”

Kara sighed. “Should we talk about the Kryptonite?”

“No,” Lena says. “Fuck the Kryptonite. Why’d you bring me out here?”

“To tell you.”

“Great, you told me. What did you think would happen next?”

“I thought you’d be mad.”

Lena nods and seems to think about that for a moment. Her pulse has quickened and her jaw is tight.

“Let me ask you a different question. What did you want to happen?”

Kara swallowed hard. “What I wanted was… for us to make up. Be friends. Work it out. I don’t want to lose you.”

Lena turns and looks at her.

“Bullshit.”

Kara flinches.

“That’s bullshit, Kara, and we both know it. You’re a terrible liar. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the staff at CatCo know who you are. Don’t lie to me. Please. Give me the truth.”

Kara looks up briefly, past Lena. She sees that faint red glow and her heart swells in her chest.

“I love you. That’s the truth. I’ve been in love with you probably since our first lunch together and I want you so badly that I can’t breathe when I think about it. I know a dozen languages and half of them aren’t from Earth, and there aren’t enough words in all of them to tell you how kind and wonderful and beautiful you are. I love you so much that sometimes I think,” Kara fights the tightening of her throat, “I think I’m almost glad that I’m here and not back up there under that red glow. I don’t think I could choose a life without you.”

Lena lets out a long breath and Kara is bombarded with sensations. Lena’s pulse races and her shoulders relax and her skin blooms with an ethereal luminous riot of color.

“I’ll never lie to you again. I promise.”

Kara can taste everything.

Right now the only thing she can taste is Lena.

[loserlvrss]

꒰ 𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃 ꒱ 박성호

summary : your boyfriend was beginning to get distant, and you didn't know why

genre : angst, fluff at the end, sungho x afab!reader tws : language, angst, mentions of drinking and neglect author notes : for my requestor, this is our man don't play word count : 2.3k

at first it wasn’t anything big. really no big deal at all. and if you weren’t an overthinker by nature, you wouldn’t have believed anything was wrong.

it started out with simple no’s; denies of affection here and there, progressing into i’m tired’s, and ending with a text.

texts which stated that he would no longer be coming over after practice—that he’s sorry he missed your date because of work, he’s too tired to talk to you after doing promotions all day, he didn’t want to be a bother because he couldn’t give you what you wanted.

but you respected him. you respected him so much you didn’t think the flags were tinted at all. however, you also respected yourself too—knowing there’s only so many lies you’re able to believe—so, that’s where your dilemma lied: how much more could you take? how far were you willing to let it go?

you never would have imagined weighing the pro’s to the con’s, trying to decide if it was good enough to not debate a full-on breakup. you were sick to your stomach, a headache booming against your skull.

it was killing you slowly; as if you were going down in quicksand—which was all but quick.

you wanted a clear answer from him, but to get that you needed clear questions. you needed clear conversation, which would be easier if he didn’t reply to your text hours after you’d send them.

apologies were sounding more like i love you than the actual statement. but, you did love him. you loved him so much you could burst at the seams. you loved him so much you felt him flowing in your veins. he infiltrated your dreams, your heart, your every last thought; and maybe that’s why you hurt so damn much right now.

your eyes were puffy and red, you barely recognized the person you had let yourself become for him. someone complacent. someone so love-drunk you found yourself drinking just to feel something—anything at all.

another shot, and another shot to the heart.

you found yourself, in this state of blurriness, reminiscing the only memories that made you happy anymore: the old park sungho, the boyfriend you had fallen in love with some time ago. you felt a slurred-smile plaster your lips, leaning back against the couch cushion with the shot glass still in your hand. your head fell against the cushion, eyes drifting closed.

you debated the other night if staying in love with him would be harder than letting it wither out like a tulip; getting planted in the ground during fall, dormant all winter, just to bloom for a couple of weeks, then die.

you thought maybe heartbreak would be better than letting this relationship—that felt more like a situationship—cremate itself.

you've been in convenience relationships before; you've been with a man just because you didn't want to be alone, even if he only ever wanted to see you at night. its said loneliness is the most deadly drug. and now, your so-called boyfriend isn't making you feel any different than someone of superficial feelings; to look good on the outside, when you felt rotten on the inside.

you felt unwanted, and that's taken you weeks to admit. you thought you could lie to yourself better than that. you thought you could convince yourself that this is what love feels like, that this a give before the take.

it was a sacrifice you made, but it was never something you had mentally prepared for, simply because you never thought he'd become someone not quite like a stranger but not like an unconditional-lover either.

you honestly didn't know what to call it anymore.

you hated being so unsure, fighting to win love from someone who could say the word so easily. he had your heart in his hands, and you didn't know if him dropping it or putting it back in your chest would hurt more. you hated yourself for being the only reason you're still able to call him your boyfriend, because has he ever really felt like yours in the past couple weeks?

you've sat on his backburner for some time, just waiting for him to come around and stir the pot. you felt lucky, yet appalled to be in the situation you were in, because at least you got to love him—even if it was only once in a blue moon—shouldn't you feel grateful for that? the shooting stars you wished upon only worked so much in your favor before you thought that, maybe they couldn't hear you anymore.

if this was meant to die, why was it taking so long? after all, you were only getting older.

maybe you just loved him too much to stay in love, knowing that maybe it was time to throw up the white flags. he knew everything about you, but even strangers can find out fine-details about someone's life.

sometimes you just wished he'd put you first, only if just once. that would be enough, wouldn’t it?

however, you couldn't blame him. he was being the man he thought he needed to be, the one he thought he wanted to be. maybe if you hadn't opened up, loved him in a way you knew he couldn't love you back, you wouldn't have to argue with yourself. you wouldn't have stayed up all night waiting for the familiar chime on your keypad, you wouldn't be in the stage of denial, pretending that it was just a fluke and would pass. you wouldn't pretend that you could breathe when he was around.

you gave him the key to your heart, but you couldn't make him stay. you couldn't make him want you like you wanted to be wanted.

he was the man of your dreams, everything you've ever wanted... what an oh-so-lonely view.

maybe the picture you painted inside your head was enough. maybe the person who held you in your dreams was enough. maybe if you tried harder he would think you were enough. maybe if you smiled harder it would hold to your face like a sticker. maybe if you changed yourself to be who he wanted down to a T he wouldn't find excuses to tell you he didn't want to see you. maybe this whole thing was just embarrassing. maybe not being loved by him was just so fucking pathetic. maybe he didn't want to be with you because neither one of you had anything good to say to each other anymore.

you can't even remember the last time he gave you a compliment, but he isn't the compliment type, right?

how, in reality, were you supposed to take all of this? you looked in the mirror and told yourself it was dramatic to be upset about something so trivial as a couple words and missed calls, but he swore that he'd never hurt you.

you hadn't realized the tears that began slipping through your closed lids until you felt the soft touch of someone you couldn't decide which side of the fence to fall to because of.

your eyes shot open like it was a nightmare, and for a second he was just a stranger to you; wondering how he got into your apartment.

you could recognize the voice, but you couldn't decide if the sentiment was there, if he was even really standing in your living room looking as jaded as a ghost.

he stared at the bottle, and then your relaxed posture and tears stained cheeks. he wasn't dumb, and he obviously put two-and-two together.

maybe neither one of you could ask the question that kept circling your brain like the ceiling fan you relied on for sleep: should we end this?

"should we?" he asked, the statement sobering you to the core. "...if that's what you want."

you had to laugh before you started to cry harder. "w-what i want?" the empty glass found its way back to the coffee table with an audible thump. "what makes you think i want to end this, sungho? you'd have to see me to know anything about what i think."

"you never made the effort." he shrugged, but he didn't know why he said that. “you should’ve tried harder.”

but you knew his pride was bigger than his heart, and playing this game would only end with a losing screen.

"are you fucking kidding me?" you acted faster than your brain could keep up with, standing up and approaching him. you didn't know what you were going to do, but anything for him to understand how much he hurts you — anything at all. "will you come over? sorry, i'm tired. did you eat? yes. should i bring you guys the cookies i made today? sorry, we're not at the dorm. i'm here, let me know when you arrive. i'm so sorry, i completely forgot about my schedule today, can we do something when promotions are over? can we talk? i miss you. sorry, busy." you used the back of your hand to wipe the tears away. "do you — no, did you ever love me, sungho? do you even fucking care that i only hear you when its your voicemail telling me you're unavailable? do you even know how stupid i feel staying in a bed for two when it's just me every night? i call you my boyfriend but i don't know what that really means. what am i to you? what am i really? because i don't feel like you know either."

the looks on his face could be described as none other than horrified, confused, maybe even a little bit of anger and sadness. he was a mix of emotions, but you couldn't say you were exactly clear-headed either.

you just wished you could read his damn mind.

"tell me! t-tell me i'm wrong." and you couldn't decide if that was a desperate plea to hold on subconsciously making itself known. all it was missing was a broken please, a not-so-silent beg for all of this to just be wrong. incorrect. so far from the truth.

god, you hated him, but that's why you loved him so fucking much.

he made you so angry, so hurt sometimes. he challenged your peace of mind. he made it very known within your psyche that he was different. he was like nobody else you've ever loved. nobody you've ever had the pleasure to touch and be touched by. you were heading full speed for the edge of a cliff with broken brakes. you were so out of control, a one-in-a-million change that you'd survive, but if it meant you could rebuild the house you'd once converted into a home with him, you'd take those odds. those terrible odds that didn't ease your anxiety. but there was always something about him you were prepared to fight for—and maybe that's why you've held onto the edge for so long.

"do you even know how embarrassing it is to be stood up by your own boyfriend, having to cancel your reservation in front of everyone? to have to beg to hold your hand? to have to repeat yourself a million times because you were busy reading texts?" not when the road has ended and you've been exploring the wilderness alone; mapless, in the middle of a thunderstorm. you loved him, you really did, but did you only say that to hold onto any form of comfort you used to not have to fight to get? "i love you so, so much, sungho. i just want you to understand that everything we've built feels so fragile and uncertain. i don't want to end this, but i don't know how far i can go. i-its killing me."

and you could only dig the grave so deep before you hit rock-bottom.

is it too late? well, maybe that's what you feared the most. maybe you feared that he wasn't hearing a word that you've said. maybe every little thing you've overthought was just a regular thought. maybe you weren't being dramatic. maybe it was all okay now that you've finally gotten it off your chest.

so, why did you feel violently nauseous as he stood in silence? why did you regret stepping waist-deep in the mess you've made? if you were making the bed, you had no right complaining that it was too hard.

maybe you should stop blaming yourself...

if it was out of your hands, then why'd you feel the sand slipping through your fingers? why would you feel the shake from the chill that crisped the air? if this was how it was supposed to work out, then why'd you have to meet at all? did he really add that much to your life?

yes.

he brought too much to your life, you were scared to have to figure out how to live without them.

but, maybe you already had?

your mouth opened once again, maybe it was to prompt him into answering you, or maybe you didn't know what you were going to do. nonetheless it didn't matter, as you were shut up before a syllable dared leave your throat.

you had questions haunting you, but with the way his lips touched yours, it made you draw a blank. you wanted to know if he cared—even if only a little—however the beat of his heart, that you could feel through his thumbs against your cheeks, told you a different story. a story you hadn't thought of the ending to yet.

was this just a page you hadn't turned? was this just a dreadful chapter that had been dragged out? was this just a word you couldn't pronounce, much less describe that kept you stuck rereading the same paragraph?

was he finally turning off the burner? was he finally going to either, let you let him go, or tighten your grip?

he pulled back, tears pooling at the bottom of his eyes. "i'm sorry." and that was more than any stupid explanation or excuse could ever have offer you. "y/n, tell me how to fix it—i-i don't want to end this."

you wrapped your arms around his neck, caging him into a long awaited hug. “just love me.” and his stuck firmly around your waist, squeezing tighter every time he felt a minuscule movement.

“i do.” he whispered back through quiet sniffles, right next to your ear, it gave you goosebumps. it was something you wanted to hear, needed to know. “i really, really love you.”

reblogs, likes and comments are greatly appreciated! thank u!

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[redcherrykook]

────𐙚 flower pot

────୨ৎ────

content: fluffy bf koo, sad reader that has a lot of big feelings

note from cherry: wrote this because i'm not feeling well and i really need a hug

────୨ৎ────

he's sewn you together, patched up the broken pieces of what once was a solid vase containing the blooming flowers of a hopefilled life- until one after the other, they wilked, died without a goodbye to spare. Even the water turned muddy from their ashes, tainting, clouding its crystal clear base with a brokenness so whole- it became all consuming. Until even its firmest content, the one stable pilar, that last, delusion of hope which you have learned to become, grown to accept its rotten contents of, yes, even that fell apart, imploded into its fragments of reality.

Grieving the death of yourself is something not every person walking will once feel, frankly, it is better this way. Perhaps only the ones who are capable of withstanding such demise are the ones who dare experience it, against their own, illusion of free will.

At the very least, that is what jungkook always told you when wrapping his light around you. He's an angel if the earth had ever seen one- made of love and stars, the ones you will see during the deepest, roughest thunderstorms an angry sky can offer.

Although shielded from your unbareable pains inside the hold of his loving arms, it was only a matter of time, a ticking of a clock away for the stitches he had threaded to burst at the seams, spilling your dirty, shameful contents over yourself and the boy, pieces of you swam away with its tide

Jungkook was glad he knew how to swim

He'd go after each one, a reach of an arm away, like a professional, he'd try to make you whole again. Whole, not as in back to your primary state, not to a beautiful vintage canvas that has survived the test of time and weather- whole, as in every broken shard that deserved its own, mosaik place

You told him on one of those days, "it's not your job to fix me"

he met your forehead with a kiss of pure tebderness, locking his stars of brown eyes to the tear stains on your cheeks,

"I'm not trying to, you're enough like this. You deserve to be loved like this"

up until now, the cruelity of your own world inside what you presumed to be a mudded pond, a long abandoned, dusty vase in pieces, remains of what people refer to as fulfillment, had been just that,

"I'm not ruined?" you ask, sensing a small glint of hope, the begining of a new stem inside your vase,

"No, baby, you're not. Somtimes we need help and time. I can get you that, i want to"

his light is what spures the little flower on, feeds it, nurtures it,

you had never been broken, he had not ever fixed you,

you had simply been planting the wrong seeds, by your own absence of light, by the product of something that should not have happened to you in the first place, something that had fuled a rotten wish inside all of your flowers, until even the vase believed it had been ruined when in reality, the vessle had just been brought back to life- it had lacked you, you through the fuel of his love, the purest form of light

[caesium-55]

—seven days. [ iv ]

pairing: max verstappen x manager! reader.

summary: as the third time world champion, max verstappen's manager, you function on the belief that whatever max verstappen wanted, max verstappen shall get. but this time, after four years of working as his manager, you can't give him what he wants anymore and that was to stay.

warning/s: sexual content but it's nothing too explicit. also angst angst angst.

author's note: NOT BETA READ. NOT EDITED. also, lemme know what u guys think!! would love to read it honestly. it was what had been keeping me inspired.

tags: @whatamidoingwithmylife-ramdom @eugene-emt-roe @bellezaycafe @barnestatic @theseerbetweenus @wcnorris @notyouraveragemochii @lpab @vildetry06 @a-beaverhausen @formula1mount @loloekie @alucardsdaddyissues @leclercdream

masterlist.

You have three philosophies in life.

Pussies do not get the good stuff. If you want the good stuff, don't be a pussy.

Hard work will pay off one day. In the meantime, work hard but don't work too hard. You work smart and make it seem like you're working hard so by the time your “hard” work pays off, you’re not too tired from working and still have energy to enjoy your reward, you know? Does that make sense?

Whatever Max Verstappen wanted, Max Verstappen would get.

Now let us focus on philosophy number three. It's a shitty philosophy to have, but when you're working as the manager of Red Bull’s golden boy—after Sebastian Vettel, of course—that philosophy sort of becomes the job description. It's your job to give whatever Max Verstappen wanted, whatever he needed.

When he asks you that question, sounding so innocent as if he hasn't just yanked your entire world off its axis by saying those words, your first reaction is to pull up the middle finger. Fuck you, Max. Max is an asshole for asking you that. Max is an absolute asshole for asking you for a kiss. For the five years you've worked for him, he should already be aware of the power he holds over your head. Should be aware that you'll give anything he'll ask. That's why he should be careful with what he's asking from you.

Said asshole has the audacity to pout. He resembled the pet duck who lived in your Abuelo's farm that you were very fond of in your childhood. Her name was Maria and she was a menace. Your Abuelo even tied a pink bow to the duck’s neck so it could be easily recognizable. A 181-cm tall, broad-shouldered, blond-brown-haired Dutch duck with a blue-eyed gaze that will never fail to make your bones tremble and your heart stutter once you let yourself stare at it. You can put a bow around his neck, too, like what your Abuelo did to that duck. Then, use the bow to choke him in a way that is definitely not sexy or kinky but in a way that screams murder, murder, murder.

“That's not nice.”

“‘M not a nice person.”

“You're a nice person, you just don't do nice things.”

You give him a weird look.

“If you weren't a nice person, you would not be here with me right now,” he continues, in a manner that made him seem like a hundred-old sage imparting wisdom. “But you're here and you're not leaving and you're not hurting me so you're nice.”

His words cause something rotten to bloom in your ribs, “How are you so certain that ‘m not gonna end up hurtin’ you? For all you know, I'm gonna use this billiard stick to make you a human skewer right now.”

He laughs. God. The sound is absolutely beautiful that it terrifies you.

“You're you, [Name]. You would never hurt me.”

In a sense, he's right. You will never hurt him. Not intentionally, at least. If you wanted him to hurt, you'll be leaving right now and flying to Texas the same way Kelly did in Abu Dhabi. Because, for someone like Max, nothing in this world is more painful than to be left alone when all you yearned for is someone to be there for you.

“So……will you?” he asks again. “Will you kiss me?”

He's drunk, your brain reasons. Your fingers gently reach for his jaw—very angular, you belatedly realize—and Max chases the warmth of your skin. He does not know what he's asking, your brain reasons again. You tug him towards you and your mouth meets his, immediately registering the taste of the beer on his tongue. He’s stupid, your brain added. I’m stupid, too, you argue mentally and pushes him against the side of the billiard table and toss your stick to the floor and let yourself take everything from Max Verstappen. Fuck you Max, you think with finality. Your brain replies: You’re also fucked.

He took what he wanted from you. Every day. Every single day. He will ask and you will give. Now, it is your turn to take. One last time before the inevitable goodbye that you know will break both of your hearts.

Anger. Frustration. That's what you feel right now. Anger because this is going to make things more complicated for you and goddammit, why are you making things hard for yourself? Frustrated because you’re not supposed to do this but you cannot fucking stop. Thank fuck you resigned before pulling this shit because this is soooooo unprofessional.

You read somewhere that said something like all people are driven to the point of eating their gods after a time. And is this situation not a perfect demonstration of this? Max is your god. Max was your god. And you are going to devour him—fueled by five years of frustration and anger and a series of why, why, why didn't you talk to Horner? Now it's too late because I'm leaving all because you didn't talk to fucking Horner.

You've forgiven 2021. 2022 made your grudge grow. And you're not stupid to continue staying after his 2023 victory when it's clearly not happening—the dream that will be given to you with Max's power. You will never forgive yourself if you stayed here and be continuously reminded of what you could become, what you failed to become.

Max is surprisingly pliant under your hands. A rare occasion. One would expect Max Verstappen to take the lead because that's what he did in the race tracks. A 20-second lead from everyone else. He's also the type to just do whatever he wanted, you know? And people would let him. Because he's Max Verstappen.

Dominance. Total dominance.

“Wait,” he squeezes your arms and you do not hear him clearly the first time because you're so concentrated on his lips and how it feels and tastes against yours. “Wait, wait. Slow down.”

You pull away and you hear him take a gasp of air, “Somethin’ wrong?”

He looks so beautiful like this. Beneath you. Lips swollen. Blue eyes wide with desire. Hair perfectly messy. Grip on your arm so tight that you're sure will definitely leave a hand-shaped bruise tomorrow.

“Can’t breathe,” he says with a light laugh and you resist the urge to violently bash your head against the billiard table because what the fuck? That's not good for your heart. It's too… too… adorable. Max is not supposed to be an adorable person.

You suck in a breath and lower your head until your forehead meets Max’s firm chest.

“Fuck you,” you mumble.

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”

You raise your head and meet Max’s eyes, the culprit behind your insanity right now.

(Your Abuela said that blue eyes were just blue eyes. Until you fall in love with someone with blue eyes and blue becomes a color that consumed your world whole. You appreciated the sky more because it reminded you of his eyes. You appreciated the color of the seas more because it reminded you of his eyes. Blue became the color of love.)

Now what? Do you continue or…?

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Do you even need to ask?” you deadpan. Max’s hands circle around your waist and he gently guides you away from him. He dusts his shirt once he has fully risen from the billiard table before his hand finds yours. Fingers intertwining together, he leads you out of the entertainment room.

Your heart drums with anticipation. Numerous questions circle around your head but it all disappears in a flash when Max brings you to the room where you found him that morning. You wince when you walk past the broken door.

Yeah…

Making a payment plan will be hell. You're unemployed at the current moment, too. The first thing you have to do when you land in Texas is find a job.

He makes you sit on his bed, the soft mattress dipping down on your weight. You can only stare at him, brows furrowing in confusion and a question sitting on the tip of your tongue that you are yet to voice out. Max makes a beeline to his closet, throwing it open and procuring a box.

A box.

He walks back to you, dropping on his knees and that action makes you panic. Then, Max opens the box, pulling out the most gorgeous pair of five-inch block heels you have ever laid eyes upon and gently slips them onto your feet. The straps have pearls and satin bows and it has tiny white diamonds, elegantly cut, as the centerpiece. Not even the YSL Opyum heels you own can compare to its elegance and beauty.

You almost kick him in the face because you do not expect that he’ll do that.

I bought shoes and they don't fit her. Max has told you. You feel bile rise up your throat.

The shoes. They fit you. Perfectly. As if it was made to be yours. As if it was bought to be yours. As if he was thinking of you, who is nothing but his manager and somewhat friend, when he bought the gorgeous heels instead of Kelly Piquet, his fucking girlfriend of three years whom he had been living with in this fucking penthouse, and parenting little P with.

“They're perfect,” Max whispers and he looks up with that smile playing on his lips. You feel tears sting your eyes and you press your lips into a thin line before moving your gaze away, blinking rapidly.

Max is doing this because he thought you were Kelly.

“They're custom, you know? They're the only pair in the world.”

His words make the taste of bile a hundred times worse. You stare at the shoes on your feet as if it's a sin to have the shoes fit you. No wonder Kelly is mad at Max. If Leo has commissioned custom heels with another woman in mind and got your shoe size wrong after three years of being together, you'll feel hurt, too.

You feel the need to apologize to Kelly. Maybe a quick message to her IG? You also follow each other’s private account.

“You’re thinking,” he says and his voice snaps you out of the rabbit hole known as your thoughts. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothin’,” you lie. The feeling of wanting to puke intensifies so you grab Max by his collar and plant your lips against his to push back the imaginary bile stuck on your throat and from there, the situation escalates to the point that clothes are removed. One by one. When you reach to unstrap the heels, Max grabbed your wrists, almost panicked.

“What are you doin’?” you ask.

“Don't take them off please.”

Whatever Max wanted, Max would get.

Your name built a home in Max’s mouth, the syllables rolling off his tongue with ease at every pleasure he felt, while your fingers explore every inch of Max’s skin. You're only allowed to watch back then. Now, you're allowed to touch.

Hearing his whimpers and little groans and shudders—all done by your hands—you feel nothing but satisfaction. He chants your name like it's a prayer and you're his god and if that is not love then you do not what is.

You wait for Max to utter Kelly’s name midway.

He never did.

“What are you doing?” his voice is groggy with sleep. After doing it, he immediately passes out. Weak ass bitch. You're still waiting for the horror once the realization of what you’ve done sinks into your system. The annoying headache, too. For now, none of them have arrived yet. Probably because you still have enough alcohol in your system to numb things out for you. While waiting, you're on your phone.

Ha, it's past 12 midnight now. You have three days to tell Max before you fly to Texas.

“Talkin' to someone,” you reply cryptically. His brows knit together.

“Who?”

“Just Logan.”

“The American in Williams?”

You roll your eyes, “Yes, the American in Williams.”

You notice how his arms on your waist tighten, pulling you a little closer to him, but you say nothing. This action causes flowers to bloom in your lungs and you hope he hasn't noticed how your breath hitched.

“Why?”

“He’s my friend. Friends talk,” you deadpan.

Logan Sargeant is an absolute sweetheart. He reminds you a lot of your little brother and you both share the same sentiments regarding the feeling of being unwelcomed in Formula One. You suppose he has it worse though. Nobody in the grid really makes an effort to befriend the young racer and you're fifty percent sure that the fact he's American made a contribution to that.

None of the other racers even follow him on Insta.

“Well, what are you two talking about?” Grumpy and bratty Max is back. Welcome back, asshole.

“He’s in Texas right now and he was askin’ if I was back home, too. Said we should grab a drink together. I promised to show him around Austin.”

“You never invited me to Austin.”

“Why would you even go to Austin?” your nose scrunch a little. “You visit your mother for Christmas.”

He rolls his eyes.

“You're befriending too much racers.”

“Excuse me? I only have Logan as a friend. Charles, too, by extension because he's your friend,” you point out. “Checo and Daniel and Yuki and Liam because they work with you.”

“And me.”

“You're not my friend.”

“What am I then? Your dog?”

“I work for you.”

“You work with me, not for me,” he corrects.

You do not know why your heart skipped a beat at that.

“I’m just trynna be a good friend here and you're bein’ unreasonably grumpy,” you try to shift the subject to save your own sanity. “None of you even tried to befriend Logan.”

Max abruptly reaches for his phone on the bedside table and unlocks it. You watch as he opens his Instagram, the public one, and added Logan's account. You gape. He switches to his private account and searches for Logan’s account in your profile's list of followers and adds him, too.

“What the fuck, Max?”

“I’m befriending him,” he says simply. “I’ll invite him over if he ever comes by in Monaco during the off-season.”

You blink.

“Now say goodbye to him and go back to sleep.”

He tosses his phone to the bedside table and turn his back on you in a manner that reminded you of a very petulant child.

You glance at your phone only to see Logan’s freaked out messages.

logan: HE FOLLOWED ME??!? ON BOTH ACCOUNTS???

logan: AM I SEEING THINGS? HAVE I ACCIDENTALLY SNORTED DRUGS??!

logan: maybe it's the texas heat??

logan: *sent a screenshot*

logan: MAX VERSTAPPEN INVITED ME TO HIS PENTHOUSE??

you: congrats child

logan: is this your doing??!?

logan: are you with him now?

logan: wait that's impossible, itd be 2 am in monaco now there's no way youd be together rn

If only he knows.

you: how bout we talk later once the sun rises here in monaco?

you: or maybe once i arrive in the us?

logan: sure sure

you: stay safe out there kid

logan: HE JUST FOLLOWED ME I CAN DIE HAPPY

You toss your phone aside and inch closer to Max, looping your arms around him and falling asleep in his warmth.

Your phone rings and it's not the Max Max Max Super Max Max ringtone. It's the default one.

Mama, the caller ID indicates. 4:31 AM is written on the upper right corner of your phone screen. You press the answer button.

“Your Papa…… It was a dangerous call. He needs to see you before he… He might not make it.”

That alone is enough for you to jump out of bed. You scramble to grab last night’s clothes and slip them on. Fuck, they still smell like alcohol.

“Hey, hey, what's wrong?” Max, who's rudely awakened when you abruptly jumped out of bed, looks so lost and when he sees you run your way out of his bedroom and to the stairs, he panics. The poor man panicked. He falls down the bed and runs after you, having the decency to only grab a towel to cover his lower half. He stops you, grabbing your wrist just as you're at the lowest step of the stairs.

“Wait, where are you going?” his voice is still rough with sleep and he's aggressively rubbing out his grogginess from his eyes. You stop, letting out a breath that you don't realize you're holding before turning around to face him. Then, the guilt rushes in. Max looks so…you don't have the words to describe it. His hair is a mess and he still looks sleepy but he also looks wide awake and kind of panicking and confused.

This is a face that's equally endearing and heartbreaking. You can't believe this will be the last time you'll be seeing him. You're still supposed to have three days left but now it's cut short and you—

You'll miss him.

“Sorry, baby,” you come up a few steps and cup his cheeks, bringing his face down so you can kiss his forehead. His hand comes up to lay on top of yours, eyes fluttering close.

“Where are you going?” he asks again.

“Texas,” you reply. “Dad… he… 'Twas a bad call and I need to see him. I need—I need to go home now.”

This is the reality of being family with a firefighter. You're always in danger of losing your father in one of the calls. And that is happening now.

Max understands because he knows your father's line of work.

“Do you need me to come with you?”

You shake your head.

“Then, I’ll drive you.”

“No,” you shoot him down quickly. “You drank last night. It’s dangerous.”

“I’m not drunk now.”

“Max,” you breathe through your nose to calm yourself down. “I’ll take the next flight available to the US. You stay here.”

“Take my jet.”

“No, Max,” you say. “Thank you for the offer but you’ll use the jet when you visit your mother.”

“I can fly commercial,” he squeezes your hands. “You don't want me to drive you. You don't want me to come with you. At least take the jet.”

You open your mouth to protest.

“Just take the jet, please, [Name].”

Whatever Max wanted, Max would get. So you nod your head slowly because it looks like he'll argue just to get you seated in his jet. And you'll argue with him if it was any other day but not today because you need to leave quickly. Time is becoming too precious. You can lose your Dad any second. You just wish you can see him and talk to him before he went.

“Okay.”

You pull away, whipping around to head to the door but Max doesn't let your wrist go. You turn back to him.

“What is it, Max?”

“Text me when you land in Texas?”

“Of course.”

“One last thing. Wait here.”

He runs back to his room and you tap your foot impatiently, eyes trained on the mismatched shoes that covered your feet. Max returns not even five minutes later and now, he's wearing clothes and he’s carrying the shoe box from last night.

You swallow the lump on your throat.

“Take this with you.”

With shaking hands, you take the box.

“See you around, [Name].”

“Goodbye, Max.”

It's a good thing that you spent the entire morning yesterday packing because this makes everything smoother for you. It is a little past 5 am now and the outside world is still enveloped in total darkness. You gaze at the apartment one last time, three suitcases in tow. The keys feel heavy in your hands as you lock the door behind you.

In the middle of your apartment living room sits a lone shoe box with a letter that says: Sorry, Max. I can't steal more from Kelly.

Beside the box is a folder.

An unfinished guide on becoming Max Verstappen’s manager. (I’ll have the final copy printed, binded, and sent before the 2024 pre-season. Haha, I’m channeling my inner Toto Wolff.)

The first paper you’ll see after you open the folder reads:

Max, I know you’d be the one who’d find this one day. By that time, I’ll be in Texas already. I don't know if I’d have told you that I resigned already. If I didn't, that's because I’m a pussy. Sorry.

Anyways, I will say this as straightforwardly as I can because I think I had been a pussy long enough.

I resigned, Max. I won't be your manager by 2024 and honestly, I am worried. Not for you, of course. You’d win WDC whether I am your manager or not. That's how good you are. I am worried for your future manager. I’m afraid it would take someone with guts like me to work for with someone like you. A powerhouse manager for a powerhouse athlete.

Inside, you can find the following things:

How to bake my abuela’s special cheesecake.

How to make Red Bull vodka

How to make Max’s favorite pasta for lunch

List of Max Verstappen’s favorite places in each city

How to iron Max Verstappen’s clothes

What to do when Max accidentally sets the kitchen on fire

What to do when Max has a bad race

How to protect Max Verstappen from angry Hamilton fans

How to deal with a drunk Max Verstappen

Etc…

I will still be watching your journey, not from the Red Bull garage but from another continent. We worked five amazing years together and now it is time for us to fly on different skies. As much as I liked working with you, you can't be the only one reaching your dreams. Don’t worry, I’ll always reach out.

Thank you, Max. For giving me a home. I’m not talking about the apartment. I don't believe that home are establishments. Home is the people you love and Max, you are someone I love.

In the last page of this folder, you’d see a handmade bracelet tucked inside. It's small and it's made of cheap beads and I do not care if you don't think it's worthy enough to be worn on your wrist. Not even going to be offended. It's dirt compared to the Cartier bracelets you wear everyday. I bought the beads while roaming in Brazil and I just thought I’d make you one.

I cannot give you any gift that you already cannot buy with your money so I went ahead and made this. Money cannot buy anything made by my own hands.

Thank you again, Max.

And I’m so fucking sorry.

Please don't be angry.

I love you.

You watch the sun rise inside Max's jet as you fly over Monaco to Texas.

[macfrog]

champagne problems sex on fire chapter ten

i'm not sorry!!!!! you'll never catch me!!!! (im, like, super sorry)

pairing: ceo!joel x fem!reader

summary: the secrecy between you and joel comes to a head. one huge, explosive, painful head.

warnings: age gap (reader is late 20s, joel late 40s), workplace relationship, imbalance of power dynamic, whew boy the angst is big in this one sorry, reader has a lot of internal struggle, daddy issues and commitment issues to the max (ha), memories of parental abandonment and adultery, sort of vague mention/description of reader having panic attacks, attempts to initiate sex (but alas, only one small mention of previous sex), Big Argument, alcohol consumption, cursing, sugardaddy!joel, soft!joel, fluff and angst. angst angst angst angst

word count: 11.1k

series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 💚

The lavender is the first to wilt.

It stares glumly at the kitchen counter. Posture hunched and drooping. You stand before it, clutching a jug of water like you’re starving the purple sprigs for information. Why did he lie to me why did he lie why would he lie to me tell me why.

The daisies look on, awkward and curious. Their petals streaked with green – still fresh and still at least trying to bloom. The news hasn’t reached their delicate stamens yet – they still have blind hope. But they’re drinking from the same rotten water their lilac neighbors are. They must know it’s futile.

You fill the vase up and fix the lace bow – the one you’d transferred from the brown paper wrap to the vase last night, after seeing Joel out. He stayed until nightfall, until the rest of your apartment faded into a pale gloom, forgotten about while the two of you watched TV and kept secrets from one another in your warm-lit bedroom.

When he leaned down and held his lips over yours, you pushed yourself onto your toes and kissed him goodbye. He ruffled your hair, clipped your bottom lip lovingly. Said, I’ll call you tomorrow. Get some sleep, pretty girl.

You lay staring at the ceiling the whole night.

He was out all day Saturday at a charity event. He called you as he arrived home – you heard the elevator’s ding through the receiver, announcing its arrival at his top-floor apartment. And you stayed on the phone, the thing discarded on your mattress, as sleep blurred the edges of the world in and out of focus all evening.

Three times you thought about just telling him to come back over, hold you until you forgot what he’d even done. Pretend that the man who, possessed by lies and jealousy or something much worse, had taken your wrist and swept you off out of Jean-Marc’s penthouse isn’t the same one who brought you tea and Chinese food yesterday. The one who held you, blood and broken wings safe in his arms, while you wept into his body.

Three times you stamped the flame out, remembering. As if you needed reminding. Your stomach still sinks anytime the reel jerks back to its beginning behind your eyes. The words unfortunately and unavailable. The rustling of the bag in the kitchen. The padding of his footsteps drawing nearer and nearer.

Your phone buzzes somewhere across the room. You set the jug down and shuffle over, tilting the screen in the morning light.

We’re outside baby. Take your time.

You haven’t mentioned it to him, yet. Haven’t breached the conversation. You’ve no fucking clue where to start. It hurts too much to look at it just yet – like scalding yourself with boiling water and clamping a wet towel to the burn until you can stomach the sight of your skin, all blistered and bubbling.

The towel is still covering the wound. You’re still frantically pacing around the kitchen clutching it, heavy and sopping. You’re not sure what it looks like, but from beneath the cold cloth, it doesn’t feel good.

It doesn’t feel good at all.

Joel’s leaning against the Rolls when you totter down your front steps. Fall plucks the leaves from the trees one by one; they swirl down to the smooth pavement, brown and amber and golden. You’re in a floral tea dress, which took you an obscene amount of time to decide on, given the cocktail of nerves and confusion and outright panic rolling around your stomach.

Your heel scuffs to a halt in front of him. He pushes off of the car and swings your door open, squints at you in the sunlight. You watch his eyes move down your frame, a misplaced desire to impress him dripping through your veins, and then he looks back up.

“Hi, pretty girl,” he says, and your veins sizzle. “You look…” he shakes his head simply, “…you’re beautiful.”

Your lips betray you. Your mind – that poor, dead lavender; your body – the poor, naïve daisies. Still has blind hope.

You can’t help but reflect his expression, attempting to mask it with a soft shrug. “Are the heels too much?” you ask, glancing down and lifting your foot.

Joel shakes his head instantly. “I like ‘em. And even if they were, we’re late. You ain’t got time to change.”

“You said you’d be here at twelve. It’s ten after.”

“I run a construction company, not a watchmakers. You okay?”

“Yeah,” you say. Unconvincingly.

“I mean,” he circles a hand over his stomach, lifts his eyebrows, “you feelin’ okay? We don’t have to go – Martha wouldn’t mind, you know that.”

“I’m fine,” you chirp, and your painted lips flatten against one another as you dip into the car. “Hi, Rand.”

The driver lowers his sunglasses and tips his head in the rear-view. “Hi, baby.”

Joel shimmies along the leather, shifting his jacket from between you to scoop your body against his. You glance down, eyeing his soft sweater, the light shade of it paired against that of your dress. The glint of his watch as his wrist slips happily between your legs, hooking under your thigh. The bloody crimson of the birthday card envelope, trembling in the door pocket.

The car pulls off, dragging you from your daydream. Stealing you back from the dystopia where you and Joel match, where you go together. A couple. Removing the notion of it from your makeup, each cell in your body slowly reverting back to yours again. Just yours. No CEO boss to stake his claim to any of them.

Martha’s place sits at the end of a cul-de-sac; neighbored on one side by a retired couple who spent their entire summer arguing in the backyard, according to Martha, and on the other by a row of quaint cypress.

The front door, bordered by polished mosaic squares of glass, sits inside one of four gable roofs. Dark green shutters either side of each stark-white window frame. A smooth path snaking between neatly-fringed grass, a hierarchy of tiny bushes growing greener and greener the closer they draw to the front steps.

Come in through the back, she’d said. Gate will be open. We’ll be in the yard.

Joel makes some quiet remark just to you about how perfect the house looks. The red brick and marengo tile. How much effort gone into polishing the front, only to tell you to use the back entry. ‘s only for looking, he decides, and then offers his hand to pull you from the Rolls.

He bends over the car, hand flat on the roof, and calls back to Rand. “Do me a favor – don’t go far. Just –” he jerks his head in your direction, “– just in case.”

When he straightens up and the car purrs off, you shake your head. “I’m fine,” you whisper, and he hooks two fingers around the string of the giftbag, taking it from your grasp.

He replaces it with his hand, his huge palm against yours. “I know,” he mutters, glancing down the drive, “but it’s an excuse for when I get sick of Alan ‘n all his damn friends.”

“Henry,” you remind him.

He tosses you a half-second look, smirk scrawled on his lips. He knows.

She’s waiting for you by the French doors when you arrive – Martha. Glass of sparkling champagne in each hand. Your fingers slip free from Joel’s before you’ve even rounded the corner.

“Saw the car pull up,” she tells you, leaning to let Joel kiss her cheek. “Here,” she hands you a glass, then one to Joel, “and here.”

You sip at the bubbling drink, letting the sharp fizz assault your tongue. Letting the feeling wash down your throat, stinging and bitter. Joel seems to swallow his just fine.

He swings the bag in her direction, tongue swiping across his bottom lip. “Just a little somethin’ from the two of us.”

You frown, holding a hand up to shield your eyes from sunlight too faint to cause the stiffness of your face and the drawn string of your brows. Where is Deb? And her two sons? And their shared gift? Isn’t it totally platonic and professional after all, to sign something from you and Joel?

Martha’s hands clasp. She reaches gleefully for the bag, smiling at the striped pattern. “I got no idea where he is. Last I saw, they were all headin’ up to his room. Some zombie game on his PlayStation. He promises me they ain’t playin’ the R-rated version.”

“That’s alright,” Joel says, “I believe ‘im.” He leans closer, a weight apparent at the small of your back. It shocks like a surge of electricity up your spine, hurts like a sudden muscle spasm. And then it soothes the pain, his thumb rubbing delicately. “’s a nice place,” he tells Martha.

She feigns disbelief. “Well, thank you, Mr. Miller, C-E-O,” she sings, and then, cocking an eyebrow, “y’all want a tour?”

You both nod politely, following her towards the kitchen doors. Joel nods towards a table by the barbecue – an island amongst a sea of candy and pastries, chopped fruit and bowls of nuts: a two-tiered, sky-blue cake. The name Henry piped in red icing – the letters swirling much like a birthday card you once read in a house on Maple Street.

“Nice little cake for Alan,” Joel mutters, squeezing your waist.

A stolen laugh shudders from your lips; the two of you snicker together, and despite your best attempts to cover your grin with your champagne flute, Martha spots you.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, sidling back over.

“Martha,” you clear your throat, “would you do me a favor?”

“What’s that, sweetheart?”

“Would you please tell Joel your son’s name?”

She looks at you blankly. Blinks between you and the man at your side, both staring back expectantly. But her stone-set expression begins to crack, the lines deepening around her mouth.

“As in,” you clarify, “his real name. Not Alan.”

She makes to reply when the swish-thud of a window opening interrupts, the prepubescent bellow of an almost-teen from overhead.

“Mom!” Henry calls, his dark head of curls and long, boyish arms dangling over the sill.

Martha glares up at him. “What have I told you about hangin’ from there” she yells, fists propped on her hips. “What is it?”

“Mike brought Blood Cry III; can we play it?”

She shakes her head indignantly. “I have told you – how many times? No!” She holds her hands out in apology to you and Joel, and then scuttles off into the kitchen. “Go explore,” she waves, “I trust ya!”

Joel wordlessly takes your hand, leading you in Martha’s wake through the kitchen to the living room: its navy walls and white paneling, bookshelves spanning the entire length of one wall, and a pale-brick fireplace centering two leather couches. Very pristine, very perfect. Very Martha.

You amble around, slowing in front of the mantelpiece above which a gallery of framed photos hangs. Henry as a toddler on a green trike; Martha’s stepdaughter and her kid; Alan on a golfing trip. Your eyes jump from plump cheeks to missing teeth, sunhats and Thanksgiving meals, until they land on a photo of Martha and Alan on their wedding day – her veil pinned neatly into a permed updo, her puffy-sleeved dress and the lemon bouquet spilling from her hands.

Joel’s shoulder brushes against your own, his eye journeying across the photos, too. “Ha,” he tosses a finger towards the wedding photo, “nineties Martha. Nice hair, huh?”

You smile, lazily swatting his arm. “She looks beautiful. They seem happy.”

Joel agrees. “Wonder what their first dance song was.”

“I bet it was something classy. Sinatra or something. Martha wouldn’t be breaking the marriage in to anything cheesy, that’s for sure.”

He laughs, spinning off towards the dining room. “You ever thought about what you’d pick?”

You hesitate, rounding the table on the opposite side. “Uh…no. Not really.”

“Not your thing? Marriage.”

You chance a glance at him over a vase of lilies in the center of the mahogany table. The smell twists towards you, leering as it coats your skin and your clothes and the back of your throat in a sickly film that makes your head spin. “I guess not. I’ve never – Not since…”

He nods. He knows. “That’s fair,” he says, hands finding his pockets. The idea of Blake – his name, his shaking hands, the tiny box in his suit pocket – the thought of those images flitting through Joel’s brain pinches the air from your lungs.

You watch the silhouette of him as it crosses over the bay window, looking out onto the trimmed grass and smooth asphalt street. Something cracks deep in your chest. Something begins to unbind.

“What would yours be?” you ask him, and he turns.

“Depends,” he shrugs, “on when I’m gettin’ married or not. Makes no difference to me.”

You bypass the point he’s making. Turn away from it like you would a shadow in the night. “If you were,” you insist, “what would you pick?”

He nears you, never breaking your stare. His confident matches your nervous, his steady gaze on your shy. “Somethin’ special to me ‘n her. An our song kinda thing.” And then, as he brushes deliberately by your shoulder to head for the stairs, “AC/DC or som’.”

Your heels stick like they did that night in the dive bar. Ears hurt with a ringing loud enough to blur the edges of your vision. Your skin feels the same hot – only, not from the crowded room you’re in, or the mix of alcohol and sweat and something akin to lust seeping through your pores.

You stare fixedly at the view from the bay window, the perfect little cul-de-sac with its perfectly smooth roads; perfect for kids learning to ride their first bikes, perfect for couples wandering arm in arm, perfect for angry fathers taking off in cars packed with belongings.

When you were a kid, buckled into the back of your dad’s car, you used to fight sleep to watch the moon race you home. Her white glow surviving being split over and over again by the trees you’d whip past. Your eyes would flit from hers to the windscreen, watching the road up ahead as it threatened to twist and turn. No matter how fast you thought your dad must be driving, no matter which direction he turned – every time you looked for her, there she’d be.

It makes sense now. The notion of staying. Occupying somewhere in space or in time, and forgetting how to leave. Forgetting how to try. Forever fixed there, glowing in a brilliant melancholy, singing to nobody in the dark expanse of the sky. Waiting for the sun to make her return. Just waiting waiting waiting.

You – the moon, and your sky – that fucking driveway. The Toyota, the rust on its underside so bitter you could taste it like blood on your tongue. Searching all over for the scraps of yourself, the pieces he tore away as he fled: veins tangled around spokes, severed fingers tinged crimson and hooked around the steering wheel. Don’t go. Don’t leave me.

And then, the sun – some sharp-suited, quick-witted Texan; enough charm and ease to lift himself over the horizon, to give you something other than the glimmer in your own tears to reflect.

The moon stares down at you now as you sit, perched on your balcony. Your knees tucked under your chin, watching two cats wrestle down on the street below. It’s just gone two; Joel’s in bed fast asleep. You slipped from his grasp and crept out of your room, a blanket over your shoulders, and disappeared between the sheer curtains. Your chest tight, your breathing short.

It keeps happening, that thing from Paris. Your head begins to spin, your voice withers to nothing. Your legs push you to your feet and force you to flee, though you’ve still to figure out where to or what from. All you know is that blue-eyed stare of your ex-fiancé has been wiped, replaced by the dusted beard of your boss instead. The plastic ring between his fingers. The creaking leather of his office chair.

Those same four words keep circling your head, replaying on a loop between your ears: why did he lie why did he lie why did he lie. Like white noise droning around your skull, bubbling nausea in the pit of your stomach. No, darlin’. Why would I lie to you?

Why did you lie to me?

Why did he do any of it? Take you to Paris, let you meet his client. Why has he been sleeping with you, treating you like some kind of girlfriend? The word plucks goosepimples all over your body. His body around yours at Aspen Heights – what you wanted so badly to believe was endearment, was comfortability and generosity, now feels like territory-marking. Feels like the white-knuckled tightening of a leash in his wide fist.

The leaves of the trees across the street tremble, lit luminous green by the 7-Eleven sign they fringe. You watch as two men swagger out of the store; their chatter drowned by the buzzing of the fluorescent sign. They split off with a quick handshake at the curb, disappearing into two different cars, driving off in two different directions.

You sniff. Some skunky smell hangs low in the air. So thick that you can feel it coating your lungs from the inside out. You sink back into your chair, push your fingers into your eyes until you’re watching a mirage of stars pull across your vision. Blow a cracked, nervous breath into the sky. Slip your nose beneath the collar of your tee.

Joel’s tee, which pools in the dip between your stomach and thighs. You suck his scent in like one hit of some intoxicating drug, for every three hits of clean air. Just seeing you through. Pretending there’s no addiction there.

But fuck, if you’re not screwed. One half of you holding back on mentioning the email because – what the fuck do you even say? How do you begin to ask him about it? How do you approach the topic, without prefacing it with feelings you’re too afraid to admit even to yourself?

And the other half – for fear of what you might cause. What you might make him do. For the pure, cut-throat fear that he’ll become the third in a list of men to just – leave. To let you down, to let you go. Change between couch cushions. Wild flowers torn from the earth’s scalp.

Then, the fracturing realization that you don’t want him to go. That you’re used to him, now, in a way you never were with your dad or with Blake. Your dad – who would choose poker night over parents’ night. Who would choose a drink with his buddies over a movie with you and your mom.

Or Blake – who would schedule sex on the nights he figured he’d have enough energy to fuck you until at least he came, and would buy you chrysanthemums on your birthday even long after you’d told him you were pretty sure you were allergic.

And then there’s Joel. Joel fucking Miller. Who turned up at your door less than thirty minutes after Martha told him you were sick. Who said in the car ride to her house earlier, Tell me your favorite flower.

Why? you asked.

Just so I know.

Joel – who has never asked anything more than you’ve chosen to tell him about your father, but whose face still screws into an angry grimace anytime he’s forced to think of him. Who reaches out to adjust the broken heart around your neck, slip the clip back to your nape without you asking Who offers you the last slice of pizza, and when you refuse, compromises by splitting it. Giving you the bigger half.

Joel – with whom sex feels like a form of communication: Here are all the things I don’t know how to say, yet. Yet yet yet. A conversation, each movement deliberate; each nip and lick and bite weighted with purpose and meaning. It lives under your nails, behind your teeth. Here – I don’t know what else to do with all this longing.

Joel – who has not only set every foot right, but has carved his own path through your heart. Explored the caves himself, a lonely lamp hanging from his fist as he carefully, gently, politely weaved his way through a jungle of valves and tissue, monsters and darkness, slowly winding his way to the center.

Joel. Who has never let you down. Until that fucking email.

A 7-Eleven employee, some scrawny kid with a mop of black hair and a polo hanging from his skeleton, drags a cloth in wide circles on the inside of the windows. He swipes his forehead along his wrist, thick tresses disturbed, and stares out at the empty street.

You blink twice, and a figure materializes at your balcony door.

“Baby?”

“Jesus!”

“Woah, woah. Easy – ‘s just me.” The pale drapes surrender to his wide frame, letting him pass. “Sorry, pretty girl. You okay?”

“You scared the crap outta me.”

Joel bends before you, a sweet little chuckle in his throat, and presses a warm kiss to your forehead. You lift your chin, letting your eyes close over and your thoughts melt away on his lips. He pulls the blanket tighter around your shoulders.

“What are you doin’ out here at this time of night?”

You shrug as he settles into the wireframe chair opposite. Groans as he leans back. His wide chest constricted by a tight, gray hoodie splattered with paint.

“Just can’t sleep. Nice hoodie.”

His eyes dip to the mounds of your chest under plain cotton, the blanket slack around your breasts. “Someone stole my T-shirt. Stole somethin’ of hers back. Why can’t you sleep? You hurting?”

Yeah. “No. Just – not tired enough, I guess.”

“You want company?”

Not really. “Sure.”

He laces his fingers over his stomach as he settles back, studies you as your gaze skims the street below. He knows you’re lying. But it’s two a.m., and you’re weeks into an affair that you’re both pretty sure has gone past the point of no return, and so, voice plain, he asks, “What’s on your mind, angel?”

“How d’you know there’s something on my mind?”

“There’s always something on your mind. It’s you.” And then, readjusting in his seat, “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

You scrunch your nose with a sniff. Pull your arms inside the sleeves of his shirt and cross them under your breasts. “Your dad,” you say, locking eyes with him.

Joel lets it hang for all of three seconds. “My dad?” His face curls into a perplexed smirk, jaw tilting. He thinks you’re so fucking adorable, or maybe you think he is, and you’re not sure which one scares you more.

You laugh, chest lightening disobediently. It felt more comfortable when you couldn’t breathe. “What he did,” you explain.

“What he did,” Joel repeats, lifting his chin. Like a dog, sniffing out the truth. Something concealed in your fist.

So you unfold your fingers, holding it out in the palm of your hand: “Do you think he would’ve done it, still, if he knew what would happen?”

And then he really shakes off the humor. Sits forward, elbows leaning on his bare thighs. “What’re you talkin’ about, pretty girl?”

“Like,” you sigh, “if he knew he would split his entire family in two. You and your mom cut him off; Tommy moved halfway across the country. Was it worth it?”

“To me, or to him?”

You shrug again. He’ll choose the one he wants to answer. You’ll figure him out either way.

“Look,” Joel says, and hooks his fingers under the seat of your chair to pull you closer. He takes your ankles and you stretch your legs out, heels propped in the boxer-clad valley between his legs. A deep breath, hazel eyes pointed upwards like searching the skies for the words, and then: “People want what they want, right? They’ll do whatever they think is necessary to get it. He wanted to cheat, so he did. And he paid the price.”

“He wanted to cheat?”

It seems obvious to him. As though people seek out ways to hurt the ones they’re supposed to love all the damn time. The silver glint of a Labrador’s teeth as he sinks them into his owner’s skin.

Joel nods. “Wanted it badly enough that he did anything.”

“Lied?” you offer.

“Lied, cheated, left. Yeah.”

“And he risked everything.”

His head tips in agreement. “I guess he did. He was a damn idiot, you know? Had a wife who loved him, had two kids. He had the whole world in that house, and he threw it all away.”

“And,” the soles of your feet rest gently on the curve of his stomach, “would that – would it stop you? If you at least knew you were riskin’ something?”

“From cheating?”

“Anything. If you knew what you were risking was everything to you – would it stop you doing what you really wanted?”

His face tightens, brows knit with confusion and something else more difficult to place. “It depends. I wouldn’t risk something like you. I would n–”

“Somethin’ like me?” you interject.

Joel clears his throat. Looks up to the pitch-black sky again. “You…” He sighs. His answer is simple, black-and-white. There’s no way to hide it anymore. “I wouldn’t risk you, no. Not for the world.”

You fall silent. The moon stares down, seeming to melt around you. Her light like two steady arms holding you together, nudging you to ask the last question – the one spiraling around your mind like circling a drain.

Joel squeezes your ankle. “Where are you goin’ with this, baby? Are you asking me if I would cheat on you?”

Your heart jumps. The moon scatters.

Does he fall into the category of people who could cheat on you? Two months ago, he was just your boss. Two months ago, you hadn’t touched him more than a slap after a witty comment, the brushing of fingers as you handed him his morning coffee. But now…now, you’ve kissed his lips to shut him up. You’ve felt him come inside you. You’ve set foot inside his childhood fucking home, for Christ’s sake.

He makes you feel as though your heart is made of glass, delicate and laid bare but safe in his hands. He makes you feel as though a part of you exists outside of your own body – like there’s a piece of your soul wandering the earth by itself, touching base every time his hands are on your hips, his teeth in your neck.

Yeah. Fuck – yeah. He’s someone who could cheat on you. The way that email made you feel – he’s someone who could break your heart.

“I know you wouldn’t cheat on anyone,” you say, voice breaking. “No, I just – I don’t know what counts as a good enough reason to hurt someone you’re supposed to…supposed to love.”

Joel sits back in his chair again, the frame creaking under the weight of him. He reckons he gets it, now. You reckon he’s still wrong. “Come here,” he says, fingers flicking.

“What?”

He leans forward, takes your waist in his hands and pulls you from your chair into his lap, curling you up between his thighs. Safe. Protected by the shell of his body, protected by everything except from the thing scaring you most: the quickening of his heartbeat when you settle against it.

Your head slots under the curve of his chin, his voice a deep rumble over your skull.

“Your dad,” his chest swells, “he did what he did because he wanted to do it. Wanted it badly enough that he gave up you and your mom. And there wasn’t nothin’ you or her could’ve done to stop him, or convince him otherwise. You hear me?”

You turn into his neck, letting your tears fall hidden from view of streetlight or moonlight. You feel fucking tiny – a kid again, sat in a grownup’s lap, asking a never-ending series of why questions. Then, why did he do it? Why did he leave? Why are you staying? Why did you lie to me?

Joel presses his lips to your head, shushing you quietly, his body rocking back and forth like a boat on light waves. When he hears you sniffling, he holds you closer. Tighter. Your heart melds to your chest wall, desperate to seek his out. The hoodie he’s wearing smells like you, smells like him, smells like the chemicals of paint and the poison of love.

“It wasn’t your fault, darlin’, none of it.”

His arm hooked over your bare knees, the cotton keeping you warm. The other around your back, keeping you whole. You unstick yourself from his embrace, pulling your body straight until you’re straddling his lap, face to face with him in the light.

He looks up at you, almost afraid to blink. Afraid to lose sight of you at all. Your thighs lean heavily against his, your bodies locked together. You link your arms over his shoulders, anchor yourself to him as though the storm in your mind might sweep you away. And in the glimmer of light in his eye, the dazzling bulb of a lighthouse – you see the reflection of yourself.

Joel notices the shift in your expression. Holds you by the hips, follows the turn of your head. “You okay?” he asks, and you look down, avoiding his eye.

Glowing brilliant and lonely, blinking slowly. Your towering silhouette and caged-glass top. Drawing ships nearer just to ward them off when they pull too close. When they begin to notice the jagged shape of your shoreline, the ugly mess of your soul. Casting a blinding light on them, warning them to flee. And he didn’t fucking listen.

He docked anyways. Drew up on the beach, pulled himself into your body time and time again. You kept moving, kept warning him with each flicker of light, kept daring him to leave. And he never did. And there are pieces of you now living in him because of it, pieces you don’t understand how to take back. All you know, all you’ve ever known about Joel, is –

Your body sinks, hips lowering until you’re sure you’ve proven yourself right.

A stubborn weight between his legs. Not quite as hard as you’ve felt him before, not quite as heavy, but – a shape which sends a hot hiss between his teeth when you move over it, when the thin strip of your underwear courses over the thin cloth of his.

“P-retty girl,” Joel says, a groan seeping from the corners of his lips. A groan he holds onto with his molars, letting it snap like elastic when your hips circle again.

A weight as stubborn as the need slowly swirling in your chest. And pulled up into the cyclone are those same words: It wasn’t your fault. There wasn’t nothin’ you could’ve done to stop him. Why did you lie to me? It wasn’t your fault.

It hits you at once, the sudden realization that you’re lighter than you were before you first touched one another – really touched one another. Parts of you missing, passed over gladly the second his hand reached for them. The taste of you behind his lip, gums absorbing you like nicotine.

And you’re kissing him, your lips harsh against his, his stubble hurting your skin. Your tongue seeking out those parts of yourself. No. You don’t have me anymore. I’m taking me back.

“Hey,” Joel whispers into your mouth, steadying your hips. He pulls back and holds you still. “Why don’t we slow down? It’s late, you ain’t feeling too good –”

“I feel fine. I want to do it.” You lick again between his lips though he doesn’t budge; your attempts to move again, ineffective. “Joel.”

“It’s been a long day, you’re tired. Work in the mornin’, baby, I just don’t think we oughta –”

“You don’t wanna fuck me?”

He pauses, his tongue between his teeth. His brows pinch, almost painfully. “That is not what this is, ‘n you know it. I can see how tired you are – you ain’t even slept yet.”

“I don’t care. I want you to –”

His voice lifts to something you’ve only heard within the four walls of his office. Like chiding one of his guys, like snapping back at their red ties and crumpled collars. “I know what you want me to do. I just think we should go back to bed.”

“’n what if I don’t want to go back to bed?”

Joel sighs, looking out across the street. His tongue pokes at the inside of his cheek.

“I don’t get what the problem is,” you complain, still holding onto his shoulders. “You’ve fucked me in public before.”

“It ain’t that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Why don’t you go grab a sketchbook or something? Show me some of this artwork you been promisin’ since Paris?”

You blink back at him, watching the lighthouse swirl. The black waves begin to carry him off, sweep him from your view. “Maybe some other time,” you mumble, pushing yourself off of his lap.

Joel watches you, defeated. Keeps ahold of your hand when you stand between his knees. He swings your interlocked fingers gently. “Can you…can you tell me what’s wrong? Do you know?”

Your lungs pull in a deep breath, your shoulders rolling. “Same thing as always, I guess. Let’s just go back to bed.”

“Wait, pretty girl,” he tugs on your hand, reeling you back in, “waitwaitwait.” And then he’s standing, enclosing you in his arms again, asking, “What can I do to fix it?”

That same shrug. Tired. Deflated. Terrified. “If I only knew.”

You wait for Joel to move first, a sigh falling from his lips as he pulls the sheer curtains back, taking you by the hand and ushering you between. He follows your lead back into your apartment, sliding the door closed behind.

The living room is flattened by a gray silence, the liminal night swallowing up the air. Joel’s hand comes to rest at the nape of your neck, and when you turn to him, he says, “You wanna know if he thought it was worth it?”

You pause, fingers playing with the hem of his tee at your thighs.

He’s close enough that you can feel the heat near enough sizzling from his body. The right side of his face is shrouded in darkness; the chalky wash of streetlight painting the left. “My dad.”

You swallow hard, blinking in the shadow cast by his tall figure. The light clings wearily to his beard.

“She left him after two weeks. Went back to her husband. My dad died alone in an empty four-bed in Rosedale. You tell me.”

And then he pats the small of your back, takes you back through to bed – where you let him fall asleep on your chest, listening to make sure your fractured heart is still beating.

Joel Miller is in your shower. For the second time this weekend.

He’s not fucking you, not holding you against the rough tile wall as his cock draws come and blood and tears from your body. He’s not wrapping a towel around you, handing you a fresh tampon, kissing the parts of your skin still alight from your orgasm.

He’s just showering, before work. Using your peach-scented soap, pushing suds under his arms, over his stomach, between his legs. Lathering your shampoo like treacle between his palms, hair slick and foamy white between his fingers. Fixing the head so that his height fits under the stream of water, turning the knobs until it’s as hot as he likes it.

You’re lying across your bed, suffocating in the smell of his side and pretending none of it’s really happening. Face buried in his pillow, waiting for the intoxication to throw you under or wipe your mind clean or maybe just cut the air supply from your lungs completely. Whichever’s quickest.

The bathroom door opens; the sound of footsteps padding over to you. His weight sinks into the bed by your hip, then hovers over your back. His nose, still steamy and damp from the shower, nuzzles into the spot behind your ear. His lips leave a wet trail down your neck.

“You need another day?” Joel asks, kissing.

“I’m good,” the cotton absorbs the nervous edge of your voice, “just coming.”

“Stay home if you want, angel,” he says, hands roaming south to hold your waist. Like warning the pain, tempting it to show back up. See what he does about it. “I gotta go take this shareholders meeting, but I can come back as soon as it’s done.”

“Nah,” you groan, pushing your heavy frame up. Joel’s grip slackens. “I need the distraction, I think.”

He sits back, smiling dumbly when you straighten. His tongue runs along his teeth.

“You can use my toothbrush,” you mutter, heel of your palm wiping sleep from your eye.

“Hm?” He’s fixing the mess of your hair. Brushing one side flat, then the other; leaning back and forth with this dumb, half-there smile on his face. And your chest heaves, and you almost surrender to the impulse to throw yourself into his arms, almost lean into his cupped hands and burning caresses.

“I owe you. From Paris. You can use it, just this once.”

He scoffs. “I won’t use your toothbrush, darlin’. It’s alright.”

But you’re indignant. You already have every other part of me, don’t you? What’s one more? Just fucking –

“– use it. I swear I don’t mind.”

Joel’s head tilts, conceding. “Alright. Come get ready, then.”

Martha’s at her desk when the two of you wander back into the office. “Wait!” she calls, clicking around her desk as you pass by. She twirls a blue envelope between two glittery nails, holds it out to you.

Joel takes it, examining the childish scrawling of your names. “Nice, but – your calligraphy needs a little practice, Martha.”

“Hilarious,” she drones, sitting back against the desk.

You drift over to your own, dropping your back over the back of your chair, and shrug the coat from your shoulders.

Joel’s voice draws nearer as he speaks. “He have a good time?” he asks.

“Oh, yeah,” Martha replies, and Joel sits the card from Henry by your monitor, “barely saw ‘im the entire day. Thanks for comin’. For his gift, too – y’all really…You ain’t gotta do that.”

“Was all my idea, wasn’t it?” Joel asks, smirking to you.

An airy laugh pushes from your chest, loose with nerves. “Som’ like that. Glad he had a nice birthday.”

Joel saunters back toward his office, hands in his pockets. Fucking casual, like the world isn’t crumbling beneath your feet. Like the walls aren’t closing in, the sky lowering by the hour, the sun being steadily eclipsed minute by minute. He nudges the door closed with his foot, leaving you, Martha, and an awkward mist of realization between you.

“Your idea,” she muses, once you’ve plucked up enough courage to face her again.

You pick up Henry’s card, staring at the smudged handwriting to mask the horror peeling its way across your face. “Thought it was easier that way, y’know?” You gulp. “Don’t make it into anythin’.”

She grunts, something shaped like Ha. Her arms cross over her body, her eyes flitting between Joel’s office and you. “I sure as hell don’t remember me ‘n Alan ever doing something like that before it meant anythin’.”

“What are you saying it means?” you ask, rhetorically, dryly – a little meaner than you want it to sound. “What’s…?”

Her plucked eyebrows lift, forehead creasing. “Nothing, sweet. I’m just saying – you two are close, now. It’s nice.”

“We were always close.”

She holds her finger up. “Uh, no. Not turn up at my son’s birthday party together, leave together, then turn up at work the next day also together close.” Her eyes narrow, and you almost believe she might’ve been hidden between the trees last night – hell, for a second, you believe she might’ve been that scrawny kid wiping down the windows of 7-Eleven.

“I’m just saying,” she continues, when your throat closes around your nothing answer, “if something’s happening, I’m rooting for it.”

It shoots from your jaw like a bullet. “Nothing’s happening.”

Martha’s just as quick. “Okay,” she says, sweet and light. Breezy.

And then she shuffles back to her chair, resumes focus on some email. Twists the dial on her radio and fill the tense silence in the office with some smooth seventies song which lifts the hairs on the back of your neck the same way it did in that Parisian hotel. The dark suite, his eyes black and seeking. His hands on your body like he knew every curve and dip already.

Didn’t you believe that he might? That his hands were sculpted to fit the space below your ribcage? The plush cushion of flesh above your hips. The hinge of your jaw between his fingers.

Didn’t you think, for one fleeting moment, that maybe he was made just for you? As if you were so fucking lucky. As if anyone might stick around long enough to earn that label. Yours.

You settle back into your chair. The bubble writing on the front of the card stares menacingly back at you, the shapes seeming to swell and shrink in size the longer you stare at them. A bad trip, you think, this whole thing is just a bad trip. I’m gonna sober up any second, and I’m gonna be in bed, still dizzy after that night at the bar.

And none of it’s gonna be real. It’s not fucking real.

But then – lying on the opposite side of your computer, delicate and tiny, sparkling in the sunlight from over your shoulder: your ring. Your ruby ring, two euros in a gumball machine by the Seine. Like it’s winking at you, the accent rhinestones a taunting smirk. And the sight of it slings a thin wire around your heart, tight tight tightens until you’re sure you feel the tissue slice in half.

You take the ring in two shaking fingers, eyes bleary with sleep and salt. Blinking the dispersed light away, red rays bleeding all over your vision as you tilt the plastic. Joel’s voice muffles against his office door, like fists echoing against the flimsy walls of your little daydream. Time’s up. Hand him back over. It’s not fucking real anymore.

You roll the prize back onto your desk, letting it scatter shards of ruby until it hits the keyboard, the rattle echoing around your ears as you pace over to his office door. Your knuckles drum once, twice, three times against the wood before he opens it, and then he’s –

Staring down at you, breath shallow between slack lips. And he reads it all over your face, the panic and the words swimming around the tears in your eyes, and he steps back, and you step forward, and then the door’s closing again, and you’re settling against the arm of his couch.

“Ken? Hey, Ken?” Joel strides back over to his desk, hastily reaching for the phone. The voice from the receiver doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow. “Ken. Can I –? Jesus Christ.” He lifts the handset and drops it less than a second later, cutting Ken’s fucking droning, cutting the only sound in the room, cutting your blood short in your veins.

And then – “Alright. Talk to me.”

You don’t reply. He seems to tense up. Moves almost robotically over to you, lifts his hands to hold your shoulders. And when you lift yours to push him away, he almost flinches.

“Baby.”

Your jaw shakes once. You wrap your arms around yourself, squeezing the breath from your lungs.

“You’ve been actin’ off since yesterday,” he mutters, giving you some space. He’s moving slow, like he’s afraid you might lunge for him. “You gotta tell me. You’re scaring me, now.”

You haul your gaze from his open arms, his broad chest, the idea of letting him pull you in and calm you down. Your eyes land on his monitor. The text of that email flashes before you again. And your shell hardens.

“Is there anything you wanna tell me?” you ask, staring at the Apple logo. Your voice sounds timid, sounds so little that you swear you see Joel catch the words as though they’re made of glass.

His head tilts. His eyes narrow. It’s genuine confusion, you think. The penny hasn’t dropped yet. “…What?”

It pisses you off. Seems to shatter that glass into fifty angry shapes, brittle and sharp. The shards cut like a knife through the air between you. “Nothing you think I oughta know?”

He shakes his head slowly. “No, baby, I don’t…”

Your glare finally lands directly on him. Piercing straight into his eyes. But your jaw locks shut around the words.

“What the hell are you about to accuse me of?” Joel asks, mirroring your stance. Pulling his arms over his chest, jaw tight. “Cheating on you?”

Your chest jumps with a tiny laugh. “Why would I accuse you of cheating on me?”

“Sure sounded like that’s what you were thinkin’ last night.”

“No. I don’t think you’re cheating on me.”

“Then what is it?”

The gun fires. Gates open. Thunder rumbles. A fire lights in your stomach, blazing through your entire body.

“When were you planning on telling me about Jean-Marc?”

He goes quiet. Still. Realizes exactly what you mean in almost an instant. “How did you…? Where did you –?”

“I saw the email. On Friday. Gave me your phone to look for Alan’s Twelfth fucking Birthday, didn’t you?”

His face drops; a broken sigh falls from his lips. He looks up to the ceiling, something of a disbelieving, disappointed, fucking dismayed laugh loose between his jaw. “I wasn’t,” he eventually concedes.

“You weren’t?”

“No.”

You can’t believe him. You actually can’t believe him. Fists balling to hold your nerve, to hold the tremble in your voice steady, you ask, “Why?”

Joel’s body twists, rolls like some awkward wave as he readjusts, searches the surrounding room for an explanation. “There’s – there are a number of reasons why.”

“Start with the first one.”

“Alright.” He grips the wooden desk either side of his hips. Meets your stare, and it’s almost fucking admirable, the bravery with which he’s walking into this. You don’t scare him at all, not yet, anyway. Not even in the midst of a standoff in his office – guns loaded, eyes never blinking.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and then lifts his arm, waving his palm like he’s swatting the image of the Frenchman away. “He’s…He freaks me the hell out.”

“He freaks you out,” you repeat, voice flat. “Really, Joel? Big guy like you?”

You can’t help yourself. This is so fucking insane, it’s laughable. You’re like a snake shooting sharp shots at the ankles of a bear – and it’s too easy to take jabs when you’re still in disbelief at what’s fast turning out to be the truth.

“He’s sleazy, and inappropriate, and he doesn’t respect boundaries.” He counts them with three steady fingers. “Not mine, certainly not yours. I don’t like him, darlin’.”

“You like him enough to go have two meals with him in one weekend. Fly all the way to fuckin’ France for ‘im.”

“That was business. At least, the lunch was. The breakfast was a mistake.”

“What’s the second reason, Joel?”

He licks his lips. You can’t tell if it’s anxiety or anger. “You’re too good at your job. I didn’t wanna lose you.”

It’s simple enough. It’s more believable than six-foot-two Joel being afraid of five-foot-two Jean-Marc. You accept it a lot quicker.

“Any more?”

His expression drops. Yeah. There’s one more. And he doesn’t know how to say it.

“Joel.”

“I didn’t want to lose you.”

“Got that one.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. Expression unmoving. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

You suck in a deep breath, chest wobbling as your lungs fill. The snake retreats from the bear, jaw slackening. Your eyes sting, Joel’s figure blurs a little, and then you rein it back in.

“I didn’t want you to go. That’s all,” he offers, plainly. “Just…wanted you to stay here. With me.”

“’n what if I wanted to leave?”

“Then…” Joel’s arms lift again, gesturing to nothing, “…then we’ll work something out.”

You lift your chin, some sick expression pushing your eyebrows up. “We’ll work something out?”

He nods.

“Who’s we?”

And it’s the first time you see him falter. The first time he has to catch himself. “You said it yourself,” he says, “you ‘n me. This.”

You shake your head. No no no no. Not this. Not now. The snake coils up, preparing to strike again. “What, us sleeping together?”

“That’s…What?”

“You don’t think there are plenty other women you could be sleeping with here, ‘n plenty other men I could be sleeping with over there? You really want me to stay here just so you got someone to fuck?”

Joel’s lips fall apart. His grip loosens on the desk. “That’s all this is to you?”

“Uh, yeah. Last time I checked.”

You don’t believe yourself. You know you don’t. You don’t believe a fucking word being tossed out of your mouth. You’re being an asshole, deliberately being a dick to him, and you can’t stop. There’s a wall being built at rapid pace, shutting him out. Shutting you in. Bricks made of angry words, each one separating you a little more, hiding you from his view.

And then his mouth closes. Lips form a thin line. Brows lower, blocking any of the light you’re so used to seeing from his eyes. Dark, cloudy, angry. “Got it,” he snaps. “Anything else?”

“Huh?”

“Do you need anything else? Or are you just in here to piss me off?”

You lift from the couch, arms loose, hitting your hips with a slap. “Fuck off, Joel.”

“Oh,” he nods, “right. Fuck off, yeah. Keep goin’, baby. Tire yourself out. ‘s all you’ve been doin’, ain’t it? All this time? All you’ve been using me for?”

Good. It’s good. You want him to argue back. You want him to hate you as much as you hate yourself right now. You want to see the bear’s claws; make all the hurt you’re dragging up through yourself, just to dish at him, worthwhile.

“You know what?”

“What?” he spits.

“I knew you were gonna do something like this, eventually. I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

Joel follows suit, pushing himself off the desk in one motion, and then the pair of you are chest to chest, squaring up to one another atop his five-thousand-dollar rug. “You knew what?”

“Knew there was something about him. Knew you couldn’t stand him. And this is why, right? All ‘cause he wanted to hire me?”

He turns away and laughs, almost recognizable as the same laugh you could draw from him with a silly look on your face – except sharper, colder. “Not even close,” he says, reeling back in. “You didn’t see the way he looked at you? The way he talked to you? About you?”

“Of course I saw it, Joel, I’m not fucking stupid.”

“Then use your good sense ‘n catch up, baby. You’re right: you’re not fuckin’ stupid. You were like fresh meat to him, and what? You reckon I should’ve let him just – sink his teeth deeper? Really?”

It lights something in the back of your mind; a memory flickers to life. Loops like a static radio message through your ears. “Right,” you nod, “right. Because you don’t like other people’s hands on things that belong to you, do you?”

His head jerks back, face warped with confusion and…disgust. “The hell are you talkin’ about?” he demands, voice muscled with anger.

“Martha said it once. You don’t like people playing with your toys, or whatever.”

And that seems to hit him low in the stomach. Seems to knock the wind from him.

“Are you kidding me?” he asks, and you swear his breath cuts in his throat. “That’s what you think?”

No, you think, it’s not. You know him better than that. But admitting that you know him better than to use you as some little plaything – something he had any control over, some accessory to wear on his arm – would mean admitting that the problem lies elsewhere. Lies with you.

And that’s not something you’re prepared to do right now, either.

Maybe before you found that email. Before you found out he’d been keeping you on some invisible leash. Maybe when he had you in his arms, kissing you so soft you thought you might die right then and not even notice.

Maybe when he looked at you, twirling chopsticks clumsily in his fingers, face lighting in a grin when you giggled at him – and three words floated through your head. Dared to dance over the tip of your tongue before you caught them and hissed, What the fuck are you doing here?

But – no. It’s all fucked up now. And you can’t break the tightness in your jaw to admit any different.

“You don’t think there’s a chance I actually care about you? That I – Jesus, that I respect you? Are you this goddamn hellbent on convincing yourself that everyone’s out to hurt you?”

“Joel,” your voice says, and it’s not you controlling it. Some gravely, pained thing. A shriveled part of yourself, cowering from the light. You’re recoiling, physically backing up from him.

“Darlin’, I can’t –” He reaches for your wrist.

You whip it away. “Stop.”

“I am trying to understand you,” he pleads. “I’m tryin’ to figure you out. Why won’t you let me –?”

“I don’t want you to.”

A laugh ejects from his throat and plummets straight to the floor. “Yes, you do,” he says. “You don’t do everything we’ve done unless you’re in it.”

“In it?” you seethe. “In what? What are we in?” You pinch your fingers: air quotations around the words, or possible claws digging four more wounds into the same chest you wept into last night.

Your head shakes rapidly as you speak. “We were just sleeping together. We were just having sex. That’s all. We were just having sex,” you repeat under your breath.

“I wasn’t,” Joel says. Matter-of-fact. Like reading from a contract. He takes a deep breath, and then repeats, “I wasn’t.”

The words splinter painfully from your tongue. “Well, I was.”

And though your eyes are pinned to the buttons of his shirt, though his expression sits just too north for you to see the way his face pulls – you notice his head lift. Know that there are creases digging between his brows at the same rate cracks appear across his heart. You feel the warmth of his gaze slowly cooling. Freezing over.

“I’m sorry,” he says, holding a shaky palm out. The fear begins to sink in, plunging through ice water. He’s beginning to bargain. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should’ve, I should’ve told you ev–”

Your body moves as the words ricochet, refusing to let him finish his plea. “Glad we got that cleared up, Joel,” you say, near-leaping for the door.

But he’s faster. He steps in front of you, blocking your exit path. “Please hear me out. Please listen to me.”

Your body writhes under his gaze, twists like some little creature under a microscope. He waits for your go ahead before he continues. You toss your head, acquiescing.

“I just – I couldn’t stomach it. I couldn’t sleep at night thinkin’, what if you went for it? What if he managed to swindle you into taking him on? I wanted to get you the hell outta that penthouse the second he laid eyes on you.”

“So why take me in the first place?”

Joel scoffs. “I ain’t in control of you, baby! You had to figure him out on your own – and I thought you had. Christ, one minute you want me to step back ‘n let you make up your own mind, next you’re askin’ me why I took you somewhere? The hell am I supposed to do here?”

Read my mind. Don’t let him near me. Don’t let me go.

And at the same time –

Mind your fucking business. Let me make my own decisions. Keep your hands off me.

The truth is: you want him to go back in time. Take you back with him. Never touch you, never look at you any more than to ask for a coffee, or thank you for fixing up his office. Never make your heart skip that first beat, never set your skin on fire with that look in his eyes.

You want him to go back in time, and undo every knot he ever tied in your body. Let go of every string of your heart he has his fist around, every nerve which undoubtedly belongs to him, now.

Undo it all, so you might have a half-decent reason to hate him.

In the deepest, darkest parts of yourself, echoing around the caves you were always too frightened to explore yourself – you want him to tell you why he kept it from you. The real reason. And you want him to grab your wrist and pull you back into the room, back into his arms, when you inevitably flee at the sound of his reasoning.

Because you fucking know why he didn’t tell you. It’s scrawled on his face right now. And even though Jean-Marc is all of those things – sleazy, inappropriate, a scumbag in thousand-euro moccasins – that only makes up for part of the reason.

There’s a bigger piece to the puzzle, and you both know what it is, only neither of you will turn to face it. You’re simply cast in its shadow, playing blind chess under the silhouette of something you both refuse to acknowledge.

“You’re supposed to be my boss, and nothing else.”

He just stares at you. As if he’s waiting for you to say, Kidding! and laugh. As if he’s waiting for what you really mean to shove what you just said out of the way and tell the truth. It hurts all the more.

After a few seconds of awful silence, his breath falls from his lips in the form of a sigh, staggered with a laugh of disbelief. “I don’t…I don’t get it.”

But you’re tired now. You feel drained. You’ve less fight, energy gone to waste before you could make it to the real contest. Kicking his door down and yelling at him over Jean-Marc was the pregame show.

“What don’t you get?” you whisper, slumping back against the arm of the couch.

His answer terrifies you more than anything.

“You.”

You sigh, eyes falling closed in time with the drop of your head. Your breathing labored, your heart pounding. Fear. Adrenaline. Anger. Fear. Fear. Fear.

“You never let me in, did you? All that stuff you told me – your dad, your ex – like you want me to know. Like you’re lookin’ for me to do somethin’ about it. And then when I try, you slam the door closed again.”

“I don’t…I don’t want you to do anything about any of it,” you cry, tears pooling at the corners of your eyes.

Lie number one.

“Then what do you want? Tell me, pretty girl, ‘cause I’m – I’m at a loss here.”

“I want you to – fuck, Joel, why can’t you just –? I want you to back off.”

Two.

“I can’t,” he whispers, leaning closer. “’s the thing. I care ab– I lo– I…”

He rubs his eyes with his palms. Maybe his head hurts as bad as yours does. Maybe the office is becoming too bright for him to look, too.

“You think you’re broken,” he mumbles, “you think all that stuff makes you – I don’t know, what is it? Unlovable?”

There’s a spotlight creeping over you – bright white and burning. Lighting every inch of you up, every dark shadow uncovered. The monsters and the phantoms and the six, eight, twelve-legged beasts scuttling off in search of refuge.

Jeers and cackles from an audience behind him as he cranes the neck of the lamp and positions it right on you.

“Don’t –”

“…Worth nothin’? I don’t know, angel, but I can’t do anything about it if you won’t let me, and –”

“Joel –”

He’s not listening. He never fucking listens. He’s still going on, but your ears are ringing, and your vision is whitening, and your chest is constricting, and your throat is dry and your lungs are closing and your skin is hurting and your –

“What the fuck did you even expect?” you hiss, before your brain catches the words.

Joel halts. He finally stops talking. The room finally dims again. You can hear cars on the street. Your phone is ringing at your desk.

You repeat your question, quieter. Heavier. “What did you want from me?”

He’s frozen. Looks concerned. Looks…afraid of you. “I never wanted anything from you,” he says.

“No? Sure sounds like you wanted something.”

He doesn’t say a word. It gives you time, you think – time you know you should put into backing up, thinking it through, not saying it. But you don’t do any of those things. You fucking say it anyway, don’t you? You are your father’s daughter. The anger is woven into your skin, ivy around your bones. The fire behind your eyes isn’t love, or passion, or determination.

It’s rage.

“Is this what you did to Avery? This why you didn’t wanna marry her?” And then, steeling yourself, gritting your teeth: “What secrets were you keeping from her, Joel?”

He still doesn’t bite. Avery’s not the sore spot, and you know it. There’s a different weakness to him, now. Newer. She’s stood right in front of him.

“I mean,” you scoff, incredulous, “what did you think – that we were gonna end up married or something? AC/DC first dance? Big wedding in Italy, three kids and a fucking prenup to save your ass ‘n your millions?”

You swear you hear the crash from here. The bear hitting the ground, or the door of the Toyota slamming shut, or Joel’s heart falling apart, maybe. He gathers it up, sweeping it into his hands with what little dignity you’ve left him with, straightens, and –

He’s angry. Looks it, sounds it. Feels it. A way you’ve never seen him before – not directed at you, anyway. Accounting, when they fuck up the budget for the year. Jean-Marc, when he flirts with you too much. Never you. He’s never this mad at you.

Like kids in a playground, coming up with the worst, most poisonous insults to throw at one another – your words swing fast, and he only just manages to swerve them, hitting straight back with a punch made up of his own.

“Naw, you’d probably say yes to my face ‘n then break it off two days later, wouldn’t you?”

It’s low. It stings. Shocks the life back into you, once it’s looped twice around your ears.

Joel knows it. Sees the glint in your eye before you have the chance to clear away the tears. Hears the tiny gasp that escapes your lips. The bear just stepped right on top of the snake.

“Fuck,” he says instantly. As soon as the sentence leaves his mouth, he’s undoing it. “That wasn’t – I didn’t mean…” He’s stepping forward, trying to wrap his hand around your arm. “Baby, I’m so sorry –”

Your wrist slips from his grasp. “Don’t – don’t touch me. Don’t.”

“Hey,” he says, almost cooing, almost trying to fan the burn with light breaths, “look at me. Please look at me. I did not mean that, alright? I was just –”

You shake your head, staring off past him. “It’s fine, Joel. No, I knew exactly what you meant.”

He staggers backwards, running his hands through his hair; almost growling into his palms when he drags them down his cheeks. “Darlin’,” he says, and leans in again. He speaks slow and seriously. “I would give you anything. There is not a thing in this world that I wouldn’t do for you. I would do anything. In the whole damn world. This is – It’s not –”

“Anything?” you ask, your stone-set gaze refusing to meet his.

He mirrors your curious expression, his own brows lifting. He can’t believe you’re even asking him. “Yes. Anything. I care about you more than anyone in the fucking world.”

He probably says more to convince you. Probably promises a load of stuff, apologizes a couple more times. Probably says sentences that would lodge themselves between your vertebrae and paralyze you with fear, if your hearing weren’t muffled and your mind elsewhere.

Your shoulders tighten. Jaw ticks. When you pull your eyes to finally meet his, you nod. “Alright,” you interrupt, pursing your lips, “okay.”

“Okay?”

Another nod. Yeah. You’re about to do this. Father’s daughter aren’t you just your father’s daughter always running out always running off –

“This is over. It’s done. You don’t look at me, you don’t touch me, you don’t talk to me unless it’s somethin’ in your job description or mine. Hell, even then – see if Martha can do it before you ask me. We’re done.”

It wipes him clean. Every thought, every desire, every motivation – gone. Dissolved, by the venom seeping from your fangs. No more bear. He stares back at you, eyes glossy, lips trembling. He flattens them against one another, steadies himself. Angry, upset, fucking – heartbroken.

“Is that what you want?” he asks. His voice breaks. It sends a blade through your chest.

You hesitate. Your eyes are searing. Between your tears and the nauseating tilt of the room, you can barely see him.

The third lie rolls from your tongue like a marble.

“Yeah. It’s what I want.”

And you know it, better than anyone: you’re lying through your fucking teeth. The way you have been this entire conversation. Pasting over wounds and scars, bricks laid over sodden sand foundations. But you’re petrified – stood on your own, fighting your own corner. The only person who ever managed to make you feel safe, calm you down, lower your gloves for you – now stood opposite with his fists up, too.

Joel nods. Anything in the whole damn world.

“Fine,” he says, eventually. “Fine. We’re done.”

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

Fury for the Living (1) | Yandere Ghost Detective

Cypher is a prodigy detective 

Officially on the police force now he’s been a raging force for unraveling piles of cold cases across the country

He was truly a talented man

Alas aspiring detectives and veterans in the field can only speculate what gives him such amazing insight in every case

They’d never guess what the ace up his sleeve is 

One of the sole factors other than his prodigious charm that made him the amazing detective he was

He could see ghosts

Apparitions, yokais, curses—you name it

Thanks to their undead input Cypher’s been able to piece together a case with nothing but a single clue

It’s his thing

It didn’t matter if he wasn’t exactly moved by justice

Or that he often hated that he had to speak with ghosts often

There was nowhere he could really go that didn’t have ghosts and the undead chatting and whining in his ear

Except for one place

An abandoned and rotted mansion in a restricted area in the forest

Or it was 

Until he found you

“Hm, I didn’t know anyone was still coming here.”

He outwardly groaned, facepalming as he prepared for your desperate plea to be help with their ‘unfinished business’

But you didn’t 

You smiled at him before skipping back up the stairs and through the wall

For a while, he’s just glad you didn’t bother him longer going back to reading his book

But then he’s pulling at his hair as the feeling he’s been ignoring hits him full force

“So what happened to you?”

“Huh?”

“Tch, look I’ve been comin’ here every day and you never say a word. I’m tired of you being polite. Just tell me already.”

“I…actually don’t know…”

“What.” 

“I just remember waking up and being….free. I don’t remember much else.”

It isn’t odd that the undead don’t remember

But not caring about it is another

For once he’s intrigued, so after a while he pries a first name out of you 

Then he begins his search 

Finding all the records about your life or death is completely scrubbed

“I don’t know that’s awfully weird ain't it?”

Similar to him, the prodigy police chief has no idea as well

Thus a weird bud of excitement blooms 

“I’m going to solve your case!”

“Uh okay, if that makes you happy.”

So he visits so much more often 

Having to talk to you about your past 

A past you don’t remember

So he elects to bring whatever he thinks might interest you

Along with taking note of what’s in the dilapidated manor

Rotten books, old gaming systems, some form of music, paints and pens

He gets to know you pretty well

“I think Cypher if I were alive again, I’d love to spend time with you.”

“...Really?”

“Yeah, you’re a real good friend.”

You have no idea what you do to him

He thought this newfound investigation would consume his mind like all good detectives had

But instead, he was thinking of you

Standing and walking beside him like you weren’t a ghost

Cutely tilting your head when he makes a joke you don’t understand

It sends blood rushing in places it hadn’t when he found out you could touch him

Casually tapping on his exposed shoulder to reveal a secret passageway

He used to complain to himself about how far he’d have to walk to get to his little place of paradise

But now he was complaining when the station was calling him in

“Hey (Y/n)...have you ever tried leaving the manor?”

“Mmm no.”

“Why not?”

“Never a reason to.”

“Then let’s try something new.”

He’s ecstatic when you can follow him into his car and eventually his apartment

But then he’s reminded of all the annoying nuisances that he was trying to avoid

“Hey everyone! Cypher’s all pooped out maybe we can give him a break?”

As if you were an exorcist all those ghosts seemed to understand 

Letting you organize them in the room over while Cypher locks himself into the bedroom

“You’re….amazing.”

“Oh thank you? I think you’re amazing too Cypher.”

“I don’t think you understand (Y/n)...I desperately want to marry you.”

“But Cypher you know I’m dead, right?”

“I can easily change that to be with you.”

“Cypher don’t!” 

Now he’s got to fight himself about solving this case

If he gets to the bottom of your death, he’d lose you

So he might stall a bit 

At least until he finds a small bit of evidence pointing to your death from a murder

“You were…murdered?!”

“Was I? That sucks.”

You’re right it sucks

And now Cypher’s motivated with one thing

Revenge

How dare some dirtbag kill you before he got to meet you?!

Put you in any amount of pain when you so easily are the light of his?! 

He vows that whosever is the cause of your death will pay greatly 

And he’s willing to put everything on the line to solve your case

I think I smell a series coming out of this 🖤🖤🖤🖤

[wynnyfryd]

Trailer park Steve AU part 59

part 1 | part 58 | ao3

cw: canon-typical horror/gore (like for real this time), emetophobia, reference to minor character death. ty to @thisapplepielife for indulging my weirdly specific research about headstones

Steve tries to follow her — gets shot down before he even gets within speaking range, Max shouting at him to give her a minute the second she spots him coming over the hill. He backs off, hands raised in surrender, and then…

Well, then he’s already out of the car.

Well then his feet know where to take him.

His dad’s grave isn’t far. Maybe a football field away, close enough that he’ll be able to hear it if Max calls for help. He moves toward it without thought, his legs carrying him past simple overgrown markers in the oldest part of the park — crumbling remnants of civil war soldiers, farmers and shopkeepers and factory workers, people who worked the mines, people who died before his grandfather was born. People who might have been loved once, before time and moss and water stripped their names off of the stones.

Up the next slope, the markers get more elaborate, shift from bronze to granite to marble, to monuments and mausoleums and a fucking obelisk; ostentatious displays of the town’s oldest money. The coal barons, the oil tycoons. Rotten bastards, Wayne might say.

The Harringtons aren't that rich. They're further down the hill in a neatly manicured row of Indiana limestone; fresh flowers on each grave, the weeds plucked, the grass trimmed.

Dad's buried right next to Grandpa Otis.

It almost looks nice.

Crisp, clean, dry. Nothing to suggest the messy wet red of his father's demise. Steve shoves his hands in his front pockets and steps up to his dad's plot, toes the edge of it, the rounded lump of earth, sparse grass and loose soil where his father's bones are laid. The ground gives a little under his weight, the dirt compacting. Could he dig this up with just his hands? Could he claw through until he reached the bottom, pry open the box and peer inside? Unbidden, the image forms in his mind: worm food and rot, half a man left inside, somehow still frowning in disappointment with his jaw bone shining clean.

Steve's stomach turns. A sick shiver runs through him, saliva flooding his mouth, sweat beading at his hair line.

This isn't right.

Something's not right.

There's a sudden chill in the air, frigid wind carrying a smell like roadkill in the summer — heat wafting from the pavement, death clogging up his throat. Steve covers his nose and wills his shoulders down from his ears; tries to mutter words of comfort to himself under his breath. “Just a graveyard, Steve. Just a totally… normal…”

Ice on the back of his neck. Steve tenses every muscle, turns his good ear toward the sound of whatever's creeping up on him; something taller than him, something slithering and wet, its rasping rattles of frozen breath sending goosebumps down Steve's arms. His hands twitch inside his pockets.

Then, a voice — a voice that isn’t his, that can’t be anyone’s, because the man it belonged to is dead. “That Munson boy was right about you."

Steve can't fucking breathe. Dark clouds roll in around him, violent as a blooming bruise, and that voice behind him echoes — distorted, vicious; hungry.

"You are a black hole."

Steve grabs two fistfuls of his own hair and tugs; wills the pain to dispel the nightmare, his eyes swimming from the sting.

The thing behind him laughs. "Look how you ruined your mother," it snarls. "Look how you tore her apart.”

"Shut up!" Steve barks with his hands over his ears.

“Steve…” The voice deepens, beckons, thick with malice and rot. Steve slowly turns to face it, trembling all over, pulse thudding in his ears, and his shoes squelch in the dirt, and when he looks down he sees that the dirt has turned to mud that now turns to oozing red, a viscous river beneath his feet, flowing up over his ankles, pouring from his father's grave. And there, in front of him, a mangled remnant stands. The ruined corpse of Richard Harrington, his skin shriveled and gray, the torn parts of him held together by his clothes. There’s a hole in his torso where the exposed ribs glint like knives.

Steve throws up on himself.

The ground gives way beneath him, goes spongy like rotting meat, and the thing wearing his dad's face cackles as Steve sinks into the earth, the grave swallowing him whole, up to his calves, his knees, his thighs. "Join me," it offers, lipless smile full of teeth.

The glamor peels back to reveal a monster underneath, its scarred skin crawling in mucus-coated vines; naked, long-limbed, stitched together with burnt flesh.

Steve screams as he scrambles for purchase, up to his hips now in the muck, his feet on the lid of his dad's casket. He claws blindly at the loose ground but it’s all thick and wet with red, and the air itself is red; blood in the sky, in his eyes, in his lungs. He's going to die here. The voice tells him so. It's in his head now, a bellowing echo as the monster draws near, one hideous hand outstretched, an all-consuming join me, join me, JOIN ME—

“HEY!!!”

Max shouts directly in his face, shaking him hard by both shoulders where they're crouched on the cool ground, Kate Bush leaking from the headphones slung around her neck. Steve gives a startled shout and jerks back out of her grip, falling hard on his ass, landing harder on his elbows.

The world shifts back to blue. To dry, clean grass. To breathable air.

Steve pants up at the sky. His shirt clings to him where he's soaked it through with sweat. When Max offers him a hand, he stands on shaky legs, looks at the ground beneath his feet and screams again, scurrying back until his ass hits a stranger's headstone.

There’s a dent in the earth where he was standing. A smudge of packed dirt where he really did sink in. Steve stares at it; feels it reaching out for him, the dark patch thudding like a heart beat, spreading out like snaking vines.

He clutches at his heaving chest. Max’s eyes are huge on him.

"Okay, what the fuck?" she begs.

"What the fuck yourself!"

No heat behind the words, but they burn him, anyway, pushed out on a weak gasp. Is this what she was talking about? Is this what she calls nothing?

This doesn't feel like fucking nothing.

“Shit," she says, and her eyes go even wider. Steve can see the veins in them. "Shit, Steve, your nose…”

He swipes his arm across his face.

It comes back red.

—

part 60

tag list in separate reblogs under '#trailer park steve au taglist' if you'd like to filter that content. if you want to be added please comment and let me know (must be over 21; please either verify in the comment or have your age visible on your blog)

[yeyinde]

BARKING DOG | Jealousy + Price x GN!Reader

Jealousy comes easy for Price, but it's rare he ever acts on it. Until, of course, he does.

》 WORD COUNT: 4,9k 》 WARNINGS: None (don't look at me, i'm just as surprised as you are). 》 TAGS: Fluff. Angst. Coarse language. 》 NOTES: I've gotten a few asks (read: two) about my take on Jealous!Price, so this is that. —Jealousy would be rare in an established relationship. He sees jealousy as distrust, and since trust itself is the foremost foundation he'd want before even pursuing a relationship, it would be extremely out of character for him to give into it. —That being said, before you get together? When feelings are not yet Actualised? Ooof. 

The heavy bass pulses through the unusually packed pub. The rhythm of it seems to reverberate through your body, harsh enough to rattle your bones like a second heartbeat in your marrow. 

You can feel the re-echo of it through the worn herringbone floorboards, bleached in some parts by the repeated spills of ethanol, and the scuff of countless soles dragging across the wood. It pulses beneath you, alive with the leaden stomps of the pub-goers matching the rhythm of the band on stage—the very thing that drew the dense crowd into the ramshackle pub off the corner of Pilgrim and Rice Street. 

It's nestled between Knowledge and Georgian Quarter, a place he'd said was quiet, but good. 

Quiet, you think as cheers erupt when the band trails off their latest rock version of a Sea Shanty from somewhere in Atlantic Canada. If only. 

It was clear when you arrived that Price hadn't anticipated the crowd. The placid look on his face crumbled into something sour, and surly, and you'd taken to jabbing your elbow into his side when he tried to turn around and flee. 

"Who cares," you yelled, shrugging. "We're already here." 

Who cares, indeed. You'd come to regret those words within a half hour of sitting in a booth in the farthest corner away from the makeshift stage you could find. The writhing mass of bodies heated the balmy room until the windows fogged over with a layer of thick condensation, and the air became humid, permeating the scent of people—sweat, the heavy admixing of perfume and cologne, rotten, waterlogged cigarettes and the lingering staleness of tobacco-saturated smoke, and rich ethanol from the abundance of alcohol sloshing against the raw floorboards. 

It clots in your lungs until you're dizzy with its potency. 

This was meant to be a way to unwind and relax. The mission had been a disaster—weeks of stress that you could only grieve about from your safe perch behind a desk—and you could tell when you met Price at the base in Hereford, the duffle bag, that was more his home than the flat he owned by the docks in Liverpool, slung loosely over his broad shoulder, that it was bad. 

Terrible, even. 

No lives were lost, but he carries the near-misses in the deep canyon between his brows and drapes each failure over his shoulder as if he was Atlas, cursed to carry it all. 

There was a moment when he seemed to stagger, knees folding in under the neverending pressure that loomed over him, and it hardened something inside of you. The filaments of your tender joints were fitted with concrete, and as you hurried to his side, fingers looping around the strap of the duffle bag to try and alleviate some of his stress, it slipped out. 

"Lemme buy you a drink."

Relax, you silently implored him. Let me help. 

(Let me in.)

The unvoiced words lingered in the tense atmosphere that always seemed to bloom like a dense thundercloud around the two of you. It's one that starts when his eyes lift, meeting yours. It feels like a spark—like a rubber band being pulled tighter and tighter until the middle burned hot from the crystallising polymer molecules. Heat, white hot, settled in the thick space between your bodies, in the uncrossable impasse of your matched stare. 

Sometimes, you almost convince yourself that he might shatter the opaque haze that clouds in the distance, that he might say something that will disperse the looming plume of separation. The uncrossable, crossed. 

You're not oblivious to how he looks at you—listing across your flesh with nothing short of raw want in the pelagic gaze that brands you from afar. It's an aching sense of want that is so palpable you can feel the weight of his greed on your skin like a physical touch, like the steady hand he keeps notched into the space of your back, leading you steadily through the pandemonium of the battleground that is downtown Liverpool, or a crowded bar filled with rowdy adults. 

An anchor. A guide. The solid ground beneath your feet amid the ever-changing plates that threaten to compromise your balance, sending you off the edge of a precipice. 

Almost unconsciously, you lean forward, as if trying to meet him in the middle, to carve a perfect equilibrium between the asymmetrical chasm that sits, oppressive and unchartable, between the two of you. 

It's then, always, when he seems to shake the reverie that overtakes him. 

But he always takes a step forward before he steps back. 

You consider that single moment of weakness more of a victory than anything else—pyrrhic as it might be, because when he notices he's now closer to you by his own design, carried by the slippage of his staunch control, the distance he pitches between you lasts longer than the winter months in the apex of a polar vortex. 

He clears his throat, but his voice is still thick when he speaks. A rasping noise sticks, reluctantly, to the side of his throat. 

"Right, mmm."

And then he'll say something that isn't quite goodbye but sounds like it all the same. 

In a world of defensive pessimists, you've always tried to be an offensive optimist. Pushing, pushing, pushing until the bricks wobble and the walls crumble. Until you can see through the gaps to the other side. 

But, in spite of it all, you get it. 

If he wanted to, he would have. Simple. You know this. Echo is sharply like a mantra whenever he takes that single step closer, and the air in your lungs catches fire as you wait for the second—the one that never comes. 

You push because you know you'll be good for him. It isn't the egotist in you refusing rejection, the optimist who refuses to yield, but before there was measured distance, purposeful silence, and accidental steps, there was friendship. 

You were his friend first. 

His confidant. The one he called after missions just to talk to someone who was firmly fixed on the ground of reality, but still tangled up in the world he spent most of his time in. You knew, then, that you'd be good for him. 

And then Al Mazrah. Banter over the airwaves. An explosion. Radio silence for three days. 

Everyone thought his group to be beyond saving—pieces scattered amongst the dunes, being picked at by the vultures and vermin; nothing to bring home, not even partially melted dog tags. 

It was something greater than fear in those excruciating hours of nothing but the static in the airwaves. Nothing. Nothing—

And then—

"Lost my last fuckin' cigar—"

You had a job to do first. A role. You radioed in and pretended as if your lungs were collapsing in on themselves as if your heart hadn't torn out of your chest, and led to Al Mazrah to rot beside him in the scorching sun. 

You managed (somehow, somehow) to forge some facsimile of normalcy into your voice even your fingers spasmed from being compressed into tight balls by your side, aching now as you tried to unfurl them. If your inflection gave anything away as you barked out coordinates to the rescue team, demanding a safe—and swift—extraction, it was only Price could ever pick it up.

Later, when the darkness around the edges of your splintering world started to recede, he called you. Nine hours on a jet to get to where you were. Two days in the scorching desert. And he still called. 

It was the moment of fiction when the hero reached out to the sidelined love interest, that picturesque moment in film when the music rose to a deafening crescendo, and words of curated adoration slipped from the lips of the leading man. When the audience cheered with a sense of relief—fucking finally. 

But it isn't fiction. 

"Need a goddamn bottle of scotch after this one, love. Fuckin' hell, what a shitshow—"

It's reality. And Price. 

It was in the aching nothingness when it clicked. 

You might have been good for him, but that was in another life—when he wasn't already entangled in a sordid affair with his work, when even a brush with death and all its glory wasn't enough to change his mind. When the shakiness in your voice couldn't sway him. 

And—

Sure. Okay. 

You forced another wan smile that he couldn't see and offered to buy him a whole distillery as long as he came home. 

"Might take you up on that." 

And so, it was with the crushing absolution of rejection, and the firm friends-only label you slapped across the gaping hole in your chest to stem the bleeding, that you invited Atlas, with his sagging shoulders and trembling knees, out for a drink. 

Eventually, of course, because he'd spent two days in the wilderness, in the unrepentant grip of the elements, and then another nine hours on a jet being fussed over by the medical team and getting only a blink of rest, and—

"Alrigh', but you're buying."

Eventually, of course, because he needed his rest. 

But you've yet to meet another man nearly as stubborn as he is, and it didn't surprise you as much as you thought it would when he simply nodded, let you take his duffle bag, and followed you to his parked car. He drove, too, despite the fatigue around his eyes because you told him how much you despised the idiots on the Motorway near Heathrow, and he listened, of course, and said nothing at all when he pushed into the driver's seat, offering nothing more than a glance that said well? What are you waitin' for?

You didn't mean right now but maybe the brush with death softened him to your presence. Maybe, just maybe, he needs your company now just as much as you need his.

(Maybe, maybe—everything with Price has always been filled with maybes—)

Exhaustion clots in the corner of his eyes, deepening when he saw how crowded the pub was, but he still followed. Still went along with nothing more than a soft grunt. 

So, here you are. Toasting to yourself about the quiet rejection he gave, and weaving through the throng of bodies, two glasses clenched in your sweat-slicked palms, as you try to get his promised drink back to him. 

It doesn't hurt as much as you thought it would. 

(And other lies you tell yourself—)

That might have more to do with the absence of anything living inside the rotting hole where your heart once beat. A gap, now, as that pesky little nuisance has fled the confines of its fleshy prison for the scorching heat in the desert to remain, forever, beside whatever it was that Price left behind when they found him. 

(—at least they're together—)

The amber in the glass sloshes when someone backs up, clipping your shoulder. Droplets spill over the rim, running down your fingers clutching the drink. It's cold despite the heat that permeates the crowded pub. A sharp contrast that makes you shiver. 

The nameless, faceless entity whirls around when you stop, stabilising the drinks in your hand, and you catch wide eyes in your periphery, a mouth moving but the words are swallowed by the vacuum of noise booming from the patrons, the speakers. 

"...shit," you vaguely make out. "I'm so—shit—I'm so sorry, did I spill your—ah, fuck, let me get you a napkin—" 

He's cute, you note. Boyishly handsome with his thick, dark curls and soft almond eyes. The warm glow of the strung lanterns overhead cast a halo of pale orange and muted yellows on his flushed skin, making him look like a bronze-dusted cherub in hazy, ethereal gold. 

Handsome, like the men on the covers of Vogue. 

His eyes are dark—bewitching—and when they crease with shame, and contrition, you find yourself conjuring the image of a guilty golden retriever, head bowed in consternation but tail still sweeping low. 

The comparison makes you huff. 

"I'm alright," you say, more for his benefit than your own. 

He turns at the sound—startling as if you, too, were a nameless, faceless stranger in the middle of everything— and you catch the sharpness in his features when he looks back at you. Beneath the boyish veneer are chiselled cheekbones, full lips, and a divot in his chin. Perfectly symmetrical in his beauty. His eyebrows are groomed, but thick. Black against raw topaz. 

(You've always loved uncut gems.)

"Hi," he murmurs, eyes darkening as he takes you in. "I, uh—sorry, I wasn't paying attention."

But he's paying attention now. There's a cut of appreciation, intrigue, in his eyes when they trail over the features of your face. Differentiating you as an individual person amid a sea of so many. 

"You, uh—" he blinks, and then his mouth peels open in a grin that's just as charming as his boyish features. It's soft, if a little windswept. "Hey."

It isn't the smoothest transition from nervous fretting to something that seems like it's meant to be suave, but it's endearing in an inelegant way. it feels unpolished. Authentic. Like the word slipped out of its own accord. 

Stunned. You stunned him.

"Hey," you echo, offering a small smile of your own. 

And it's a bad idea. One that dips in an almost tangible glimmer of hindsight, like some portent proclaiming an inevitable regret when your senses clear, and the ache in your stomach fades into a sore knot that you can ignore on a good day. 

But he's cute. Charming in his clumsy attempts to make sure you're okay. He isn't something that can fix the ache in your chest, but he's certainly a balm to it. A temporal crutch. One you think you can live with. 

"Are you from around here?" He has a soft voice—low, dulcet. Plummy, but not gratingly so. Refined, you think. There's a soft elegance to him, and in the way he moves, speaks. 

The balm spreads as his head tips to the side when you tell him where you're from, curls bouncing freely against his cheek. 

"Oh," he notes, his lips falling together to make a pretty, pink circle. Adorable. "That's far. Come to see the show? My mates and I came out to see them. They're kind of a big deal where we're from, and—"

Someone pushes through the gap behind him, pushing him forward. You reach out, but the glass in your hands stops you from doing much when he stumbles, losing his footing from the sudden shove, soles of his oxfords (of course, of course, he's wearing oxfords) catching on the spilled drink from earlier. 

Blearily, you have a moment to admire witnessing the sequence of events come full circle before his hands reach out, scrambling for purchase, and fit across your shoulders like he's searching for a climbing hold to catch himself from the fall. You tetter back from the brunt force of him stumbling into you, before catching yourself on the pillar cutting through the room. 

He's muttering apologies as he straightens himself out, but your eyes are drawn to the rivulets of scotch dripping down the back of your hand. Three fingers dwindling quickly down to one. 

"I'm—shit—I'm so sorry—!"

He looks cute frazzled like this. His coiffed curls tangle across his sweat-slicked forehead, dangling over his dark eyes. There's a flush growing across the bridge of his nose, colouring him in a distinct palette of rose, bronze, and gold.

You've always been partial to blues and browns, but this wedges inside of you—different, but not overly so. 

"What a jerk—" you lift your chin, glaring over the top of his tousled curls. 

"Yeah," he breathes, the word nearly eclipsed by the pounding in the background. 

His hands are still on you. When you turn back to him, you're almost a little surprised by how close he is. A short step, and suddenly you realise that it wouldn't take much for you to lean up, and kiss him. 

It's an odd, aching contrast to the one step forward, nine steps back with Price. 

You think about it. About kissing him. About going back to the booth in the back where Price is waiting, and demanding he rejects you already so you can pull yourself out of the limbo you've fallen into, run your fingers through this man's hair, and feel nothing at all except satisfaction. 

(Instead of guilt. The stifling sense of betrayal.)

You tilt forward as if trying to meet him somewhere in the middle. As if a kiss would break this skein web where you can still, somehow somehow, feel Price's presence around you like a nebulous cloud. A magnetic pull that keeps some facet of your attention on him, always. 

Still. Still.

The tether is short. You stop before you close the minuscule gap, and let your body fall back on your heels. 

"You know—" You start, but the words—one with no real objective outside of salvaging something from this mess—are swallowed by a call. 

He startles a little at the noise, craning his chin over his neck to see what is vying for his attention. You follow the breadcrumbs of his gaze, locking onto a man waving his hand over his head. 

"Ah," he says. He knows him. Obviously. He turns back to you, something sheepish flickering across his keen expression. Reluctance settles in the crease of his eyes. He huffs. "I, uh, guess I should get back to them."

You nod. "Sure. Enjoying the riveting show, right?"

"What can I say?" He grins, wide and bright. "I'm a sea shanty kinda guy, and they've been gearing up toward Stan Rogers all night." 

"Wouldn't want to miss that." 

"No," he shakes his head. "You really wouldn't. But, uh—"

You know what he's going to ask for before the words are out, and you give it to him. 

Your name. Your number. His hands fly to his pocket, hastily pulling out his phone, and tapping the numbers into his contact screen. 

"I do owe you a drink," he jokes, eyes skirting to the lonely swallow in a glass meant for another man. "So, uh, if you ever want to cash in on it tonight, um. Text me?"

It tapers off into a question, and the vulnerability, the softness of him, blooms something warm in your chest. He won't just be a balm, you think, but a bandage. 

Your smile is loose, even. It's the first one in weeks since the radio was cut and your world was thrown into a staticky silence. A communications blackout. 

"I could buy it for you now if you'd like…"

It's sweet. He's sweet. Different from the men you're surrounded by—ones with hard edges, and brittle trauma. 

"I think you should get back to your friends," you say instead. "But I'm sure I'll see you around."

You want to feel selfish, but you don't. There is nothing between you and Price but a tenuous thread he tries to pull as taut as he can, and the chiaroscuro that paints him and this man are like night and day; normalcy and—

Well. Price. 

He gives you a slow nod and then slips his phone back in his pocket. He doesn't even try to call the number you gave him, so trusting that everything you said was the truth. Your phone is back on the table where you left it, but you're sure it buzzed with his text. 

"I'll see you around." 

He waves you off with a two-fingered salute against his temple and turns back to his friends when the moment passes. Without soft brown pinning you against the pillar, and spilling comfort into the aether, the world around you snaps like a rubber band to your skin. 

Something shakes loose inside of you, and you turn on your heel, balancing unequal glasses of scotch in your hand. When you lift your head, seeking out the booth, you meet noctilucent eyes boring into yours. 

The tether wobbles. The noise fades into a whisper drifting through the pews in an empty church. 

Right. 

You forgot what it felt like to truly be pinned in place by blue. 

The noise floods in a strange, distorted echo the closer you get to the table. 

"New friend of yours?" He asks, expression clouded with impassivity honed before you even knew what the threads of apathy felt like beneath your fingers. 

His eyes drop to the glasses, curving along the knob of your wrist when you push the fuller glass toward him. Derision blooms, splicing through cerulean-tinged disinterest. 

You wonder how much he saw, and—with a bitter touch of trepidation—if he kept watching. 

It's answered when he scoffs. "Couldn't even buy you a new one, eh?"

"It's only a little off the top."

"A little, hmm?" Bruised knuckles, split and cracked at the crease of his bone, curl around the glass leaving a smear of tobacco stains behind. "Your phone rang earlier."

It sounds testy. Cross. It makes you bristle like a cornered cat.

"I know. He texted me his number so I can find him later."

"That so?"

Your nod is short. Clipped. 

Price leans back in his seat as you slide into the bench across from him. His gaze never wavers. It never does. You feel it like a warm hand against your throat, and the thought alone makes you swallow hard, and breathe harder. 

"If that's what you want—a clumsy fuck next in an alley with a man who doesn't know how to really please you, then by all means, love. Go for it." 

His words are scraped out of his throat by the fine edge of a scalpel; grizzled and raw, and drenched in the heavy ethanol of his scotch. 

He normally sounds like this after a mission, after he stood in the middle of a bloodsoaked battlefield, and bellowed out harsh commands until his vocal cords swelled up, and split apart at the seams. 

When he speaks, you scent the coagulated blood of the pulsing wound, ripped open by the scotch and irritated by the cigar clenched tight between his thumb and forefinger.

"But when you get tired of quick fumbles with an idiot who only cares about himself, I'll be waiting. Just don't keep me too long, love. Ain't gettin' any younger."

His words are meant to cut. To slice through flesh, and saw into bone.

"Neither am I—" Those icy eyes meet yours. You shiver. "You—I mean, honestly, Price; I've been putting out pretty clear signals since the beginning, and—"

"I know."

And—

Oh. 

"Great." You say. "Good." But it isn't. It hurts like a knife to the gut, serrated edge tearing through soft tissue. A blunt pressure against your sternum until it bruises, and then cracks. 

(You always knew he'd be brutal in his rejection.)

You're a distraction, is the underlying accusation to everything. Unneeded. Unwanted. 

But something splinters in his glacial gaze; a frisson that splits into a crevasse, a chasm. Darker than midnight, and endlessly wanting. Harsh winds billow from the moonlit depths, howling against the icy walls. 

"Good?" He echoes, tone gritty and unrefined. A jagged gem with sides sharp enough to cut. "Don't think you understand what you're startin', love." 

It's not anger that clots between his teeth, that colours the divots in his brow harshly turbid, but you feel the blistering heat leaking from his skin all the time. 

"And what am I starting, Price?" 

There's picking at wounds sealed over with a scab, and then there's reaching into the pyre with both hands just to cauterise a paper cut. 

This, you think, when he shifts in his seat, eyes narrowing at you, is that. The latter.

You smell burning flesh and feel the heat scorching your palms when he moves forward. There is nowhere for him to go, but he wouldn't be Price—indomitable Captain John Price who still threatens his superiors after almost dying in the desert because they want him to take a mandatory leave—if he didn't make room, didn't force his way through. 

He leans over the small, three-plank table that divides you, and roughly grounds your name out between nicotine-stained teeth. It's a warning, of course. A rotting barbed wire fence that says keep out, no trespassing. But beneath it, you hear a plea. 

Please don't come any closer. 

It occurs to you, then, when his eyes grow lidded and heavy, weary. When they clove with uncertainty, and a brittle vulnerability that seems out of place across the staunch, hardened veneer of a man who finds screaming through a fusillade easier than taking a step forward. 

You get it. It isn't mocking scorn or brutal, vindictive words. It isn't him mercilessly picking apart the soft, gentle exchange of a man you'd willingly given your number to. It's—

"Too much," he says, and the tether sways.

—basal. Naked jealousy. 

He seems to gaze inward for a moment after his confessional fades, and the sounds of pulsing bass, jaunty music, and rhythm thuds against the floorboards flood the space eked out with his voice. It's a brief flicker. And then the mask is pulled back on. 

One step forward. One done almost unconsciously. 

But it tugs on the line connecting you both, and so: 

You take that step instead. 

Meet him in the middle. Connected by one end of a short line. It drops loose against the table, tangling in the spilled drinks that have come before you. Top sticky, scoured raw with ethanol, but still attached. A tether, a red string of fate. You're locked, somehow, in his pull. An orbital eccentricity: forever circling a sun that threatens to burn you whole when your alignment gets too close. 

There's hesitancy in the angles of his face, casting shadows of uncertainty in the murk. Always pulling back. Always only one step in. 

You might have, too, if you didn't see the brief flicker of midnight blue dropping to your mouth. The flash of greed—dark want; covetous florentine—as he gazed at you. 

You know John. A man who gives, gives, gives, but seldom ever takes. Content, you think, with just this unignorable strand arching between the chasm of your hearts. 

(But you've always taken more than your hands can carry.)

So, you chisel a space in that glorious want, shape in until it fits you perfectly, and press your lips to kiss in a truculent kiss, braced for the recoil. 

But he doesn't. 

It feels natural when he rasps your name out between lax teeth. 

Feels, you find, even better when you slot your mouth against his, gently this time. Peppering a litany of devotion across bristly lips that feel more comfortable spitting vitriol than sweet nothings. 

"Been waiting a long time, John."

Against your lips, he groans. "Guess I better start makin' it up to you."

"Guess so."

His eyes flash, then, aposematic; burning bright in a pretty circle. The rich colour reminds you of a blue-ringed octopus.

Captivating, vibrant, electric.

His chin tilts toward the stage, hypnotic, iridescent blue pulling away from you to follow the list of his head. You know when his brows furrow, a deep canyon of displeasure and sullen irritation, that he's staring at the man who gave you his number. His lids fall, eyes narrowing into a tight slit.

Deadly, dangerous.

Tetrodotoxin taints pretty cerulean in a shade of inky black.

You reach out, eyes never straying from Price, and curl your fingers around the thick bulk of his tensed wrist.

"Wanna get out of here?"

He doesn't look away from the man. You don't look away from him.

"Yeah," he grumbles, but the gloss in his gaze reeks of victory. "Let's go."

"Thought you'd make me wait forever."

He hums, considering your words. The streets are lively despite the late hour, reeking of ozone and malt. A kaleidoscope of colours spills out from the cluster of shops, drenching the gunmetal cobblestone in a varicoloured smear. 

"Might'a," he agrees, tone light and cooler than the breeze. 

"I guess it's a good thing I got bumped into. Without your jealousy, this might've gone nowhere."

He stills suddenly, body tensing like a coiled cobra. 

"John—?"

You get a glimpse of prowess when his hand snakes out, snagging your shoulder, and before you can even pry apart your teeth, he moves you in three quick steps, pushing your back against the dewy wall. 

His hands are hot on your collar, your waist, and he holds you firm to the brick. But the heat of his palm is a mere ember compared to the blaze in his eyes—lavascapes in midnight blue. 

It leaks down, molten puddles, before it congeals around the soles of your feet, keeping against brick, and under the weight of his stare. 

His gaze sharpens when you settle in his hold. "And that guy?"

You smile in a facsimile of placating condescension as his hands tighten around you. "Which one?" 

He lifts his hand from your shoulder, dragging his bare knuckles over your dewy skin, letting himself feel the flutter of your pulse under burning flesh. They're rough, split and scared, and you want to take them into your mouth. To taste the ichor rushing through his veins. 

They're dragged up, away from your parting lips, and you nearly pout from the loss before his fingers brush over your nape, where they curl around your neck, holding you close as he growls out your name, breath ghosting over your lips. 

"None, love. Won't want any by the time I'm done with you."

"And when are you gonna be done with me?"

"Never," he murmurs, fingers tightening over your nape. "Kept thinkin' 'bout you the whole time I was in the desert. Dyin', and my only thought was fuckin' hell. I've been a goddamn idiot."

Price takes a step closer to you, and your blood burns. One forward, and—

He takes another. Another. 

He kisses you, then, like he's trying to devour you whole; trying to carve a place inside of you just for him. A space inside each other where nothing else can fit. 

A rogue planet, a stellar collision.

Every atom inside of you burns bright blue, and you find purchase on his broad shoulders—Atlas carrying the world, and you. 

[eldrith]

ғʀᴏᴍ ᴇᴅᴇɴ ; ᴘᴀʀᴛ ғᴏᴜʀ.

ɪɴɴᴏᴄᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴅɪᴇᴅ sᴄʀᴇᴀᴍɪɴɢ ;

jacaerys velaryon x fem!reader words: 9k synopsis: jacaerys falls for a woman in aegon's garden. notes: sorry abt the delay but here is part four! def an introspective chapter but things are ramping up for the last part chapter warnings: freaky ass dreams — death. allusions to smut, finger sucking, making out. lore. religious imagery/symbolism, slight suicidal themes surrounding death as a concept (message me if u have questions), manipulation, tarrgaryen slander(my fav), arguments, creepy imagery, blood & gore. food as allegory. basically everything as allegory atp.

THE VOICE FINDS HIM IN THE SHADOWS OF SIGHT. 

“Jacaerys?” 

It lurks; not unlike those looming memories which throb in the back of his mind with each passing day, eyes sullenly cast out the casement of his window upon the breathing garden below – it lurks within some hidden recess of his mind, waiting for him to stumble so unwillingly into its notched crosshairs. 

“Jacaerys,” the voice calls. It is a voice he knows well. 

Blanketed by a sky of bruises, Jacaerys looks up to those thundering blemishes which impede low into the air; He is here for something. 

Returning his gaze to the earth, he stalks with burning muscles, lungs cinched by the brutal kiss of iced wind. 

There is a sharp snap to his left; a twig, some withered old limb of a growth long past felled – it echoes sharply along the field, into the empty bones of those which litter upon the wildgrass. The gasp falls from his lips and plumes out, trickling into the cold night air.

With a spin of his gaze, the garden lurches – no – the battlefield; no, indeed some apprised paralyzation of both. 

Jace stares incredulously at the scorched earth, smoldering shards of burnt stakes and wrought iron – and the smell, some decaying rejection of earth, some burnt and putrid soil which still squelches when he drags his boots over mangled fallen vines. 

Crimson leaks from wounds within the thickened tendrils of vined earth; bloody gashes which ooze with some putrid ichor, thick with the unmoving wind as they glaze over the sharpened blades of fallen soldiers, bearing black or verdant sigils. 

Bodies lie, mummified in overturned black – matted with rotten leaves, blooms kiss the corpses which twitch with the final rattle of esse. 

A yelp from a skeletal mass below the curving hedges, and Jace lurches in fear: Hair of silver, a gown of gold, a third eye between her brow; the familiar shadow of his youth is petrified under the curling grasp of blackthorne before his very eyes, a malicious whisper in the unmoving gloom as her eyes glaze with some ancient kismet. And with a sickening turn of her head, paled lips move, beetles crawling and scuttling into the shadows. “The fruit is poisoned from the tree of kings,” his aunt whispers to him from lifeless lips; her third eye blinking, bloodshot, pained. 

He staggers back, though quickly schools himself, ignoring the sharp pain in his head and the clench of fear twisting his gut. He is here for something. 

A thick dread curls in his stomach when he eyes the smaller shapes of three boys – two pure of hair, and one with the very same mopped curls which sprout tangled with the vines of earth; and a young woman, slumped and scorched, her hands outstretched in protection of them. He does not allow himself to glance any longer at the bodies. 

Jacaerys’s heart thunders, his shoulder catching on a sharp thorne as he bursts through a corner, gasping for breath as it chokes him. You await him, somewhere in the depths of this battlefield, and Jacaerys fights his own mind from conjuring visions of you, slumped and decaying just as the rest of them – just like each of the spoilt veins which spill and fertilize the soil below. 

Your voice comes to him as clear as a whisper in the corner of his mind. Boots sink into the soft black soil – vines, dark and sharp things, wrap around the weary leather of his boots; crimson armor disappears beneath the decay, swallowed in the yawning gluttony of fate, whispers whistling through the hedges which tower around him. “… And what you made, what we’ve made… look at it all. It is art. A stroke of brush upon my kind, used soul.” 

The hair upon his nape stands once more; the voice, curling around each bend of his mind, leaking hunger, enticement. An unnatural rhythm in the shadows; serpents, scales emerald and venomous, within in the depths – they blink with a single eye, gaze mocking in a glint of cobalt sapphire; and he runs.

The garden stirs with his dreading heart; littered bodies scalded and ashed, billowing in irrecoverable bursts below his footfall when he staggers past. Daisies sprout, jagged and thorned, from scorched wildgrass; peeking their shy petals through slats of disintegrated armor, singed by death. 

The voice follows him, though when his gaze snaps to the statue, The Thorned Dragon looms larger than he’d recalled. A ragged gasp escapes his throat. 

There, its spiny throngs are curved rather unnatural – bent into a labored revolve, the dragon swallows its own tail; horns jagged and unforgiving, piercing into its own soft underbelly with a silent, deafening roar. “Your blood – come in fire, leave in ash.”

The words scrape within the pounding agitation within his mind – and, unable to cast out such unpropitious omens, Jacaerys staggers towards the iron casting, eyes widening in a thickened breath. 

And it is then that he discovers a lump of darkness curled upon the base of the Thorned Dragon; with a jagged lurch towards the fineries which litter the vines below, a crawling horror builds within his throat. 

Pale skin, finer than his own – a necklace of Valyrian steel, a gown fine and black with scorched marks of death – and that very crown, swallowed and corroded below a stiffened grasp, stilled marks of clawing fingers through the earth. 

Ravens black as the night peck at the flesh of the very body he once came from.

It is sickening – bone splinters beneath such scrutiny, a terrifying crack which leaves Jacaerys with a drop of dread spreading through his body. “You breathed life into my breast…”  

The Thorned Dragon watches the Prince stumble away; the end of the garden nears, its fallen horses singed with banners of the very beast which brought about their end. Jacaerys retches, but is met with a river of red, blue, green; pouring in a sickening slip from his lips unto such a pale palm – with a panicked gasp, he sputters. 

Slithers of white flicker in the shadow; a cleansed breath, as his heart leaps – some safety from the poisoned earth, from the poisoned resolution of the very blood running in his veins. 

 “And I bleed because you feel the pulse within my veins, within the roots below.” 

And then, after a moment of frozen muscle, a familiar laugh from the depths behind him – he knows better than to turn, instead leaping with a gasping panic, lurching towards the gates which slink away from his fingers with a sickening leer. 

“They await your lead. Go to them, choose them…” Dread tugs his gut, shaking as he chances a glance behind his shoulder – but it is no longer Aegon’s Garden. 

Flashes of mountains, of sprawling moors, of valleys and seas and Keeps of red and hearths dying out; of stony cliffs, of the frigid, withered talons of death from afar – “Jacaerys Targaryen. The King Who Will Be.”  

It is not a name he has been called before you – and it is a name which now splinters into shards of glass within his lungs, piercing his heart and seizing him with some lick of doom. 

Sick, Jacaerys stumbles away – the circle turns, some ominous and self-abhorrent whisper within his mind reminds him; The circle turns, yes – 

 Limbs above him, bowing low in a weep; and those very fine fruits, glistening and blushing in the moonlight. Their scent, heavenly even in such a fuzzy state – and a memory of lips, salaciously pressed to the flesh, tongue darting out… 

His hand shakes as he reaches towards it, heart thundering as he hears footsteps approaching; a panic within him, knowing he has not enough time. 

Not enough time. 

But he stops short: 

From the blossoms come something thick – blood, no, ink – no, something which stains the earth with sin. Emerald and crimson, staining upon the blooms which wilt and curl away as if struck by a bout of chilling breath. 

The footsteps arrive behind him. 

JACAERYS JOLTS WITH A SHARP, DRIED GASP. 

Tallowed wax has weeped hours in wait of his silenced patience; a slumber rather calm in exterior, though when he awakes he drives a kneecap into the bottom of the table, gasping in a sharp, drowned way.

Syrupy, gasped blinks – Jacaerys inhales the breath of a man submerged in some iced seas, alone and choked of any respite from the final wink of existence.

“Taking a catnap, are we?” 

He jolts once more; and a laugh, hearty and trickling, echoes in the stone drum – it is not a haunting sound, nor is it in any notion a fetching one – but rather one as familiar as his own kin. It is his own kin. 

Baela rounds the stone table, regarding Jacaerys’ stirred frame; he, with tired and rather disturbed eyes, glances with a fainting stare of vexed provocation. “Gods,” He finally breathes, the whispers of dreams far too present in his sharply pained mind. “I can’t even recall falling asleep.” 

She wears her dragonriding gown – an invitation to accompany her of which he’d turned down earlier this morn. 

The days grow on and so does, it seems, Jacaerys’ blistering headaches; indeed, Vermax has taken ill as of recent, and it would be a poor choice to try and take him flying under such circumstances. Scale rot, they’d said – a quite rare instance, recorded only one other time by a maester many, many years before and ruled farce by account of him turning mad and taking the black not a moon after. 

Jacaerys fights quite hard to avoid her stare. 

There is a worry in Baela’s gaze that has long since befallen the faces of many who walk such halls; but Jacaerys knows well, it is a superficial concern; it is the worry of a soldier falling ranks, of a lady retaining her favor as a knight mounts for jest, of a stableman watching a horse with a limp. 

And still, she says nothing of it. 

“Well,” She mutters instead with a light smirk; Jacaerys meets her stare with a blink. “You act as though you saw a spectre.” 

It is only with her words of innocent jest which he recalls the depths of his dreaming torment; Perhaps I have, he reminds himself – in a flash of Lucerys, curls shining against hedges of bursting green and pink, of slithering vines. Or, perhaps, he sees it each day – in gowns snagged around branches, in the glinting hunger of a gaze, in a sharp smile curling around the juices of a ripe fig. 

He clears his throat, eyes returning to the parchment softened with age– tracing over the mark indented where his cheek had rested in a fitful slumber moments ago. His mind has grown numb in the battle against the aching pains; he has rendered himself, in the days since that fateful night under the fig tree, rather recluse and solitary. And with time came confusion, then acceptance, then bewitchment, and now… some paranoid, brewing anger. 

“I suppose I grew weary with Maester Layn’s prose,” Jacaerys attempts for a joke; yet when his gaze reclaims the handscript scrawled in increasingly maddened flutters, droning on and on for pages until the final third of the journal is left blank, there is a deep unsettling stir within his stomach. 

“-Layn?” Baela repeats – she truly is a well-studied girl, Lady Laena made sure of such a thing with both her daughters – and her brow furrows. “The Mad Maester?” 

Jacaerys nods absently, closing the leather rather abruptly in a flash of wariness, thumbing the page he’d earmarked in haste. “Apparently so.” He affirms rather distractedly. There is a paranoia which rises from its dirt grave within his chest – grasping with hands unseen, his stomach and throat begin to tighten. 

With a gentle nod, Jacaerys stands once more; bones tired and weary, he grasps the Old Maester’s journal with a jolt and excuses himself from Lady Baela. “I should retire. Such reading has rendered me spent.” 

It is clear that she is unused to his curt discussions as of late – though never quite close, the cousins have spent considerable time together in the days of their siblings’ absence, and Jacaerys has never been one for much recluse. Times change, perhaps. 

Jacaerys minds to not brush her as he walks past, though her words stop him. 

“– And?”

He slows to a halt, blood churning and words of confession dancing on his tongue; the journal is heavy underarm – it pulls him towards the sinking stone floor, below it, down to where the beasts, ancient and warm, stir underfoot. 

Half-turn of head when he glances her way – Baela needs not elaborate; He has known her a good part of this life to understand the words which lie unsaid within her throat. 

The words burn through the parchment within his arms; Truth, they whisper – but he merely clenches the journal closer to his chest. “And… It was as they say.” He lies through his teeth, and is surprised to find no remorse within his heart. 

Jacaerys can only think of one thing; one laugh, one smile, one voice which tells him of love and devotion – of the voice which lives in the very garden Maester Layne studied and then lost his mind over those many years ago – and so Jacaerys nods towards the wall of stone, unable to face his cousin behind him: 

“He went mad.” 

THERE WAS ONCE A TIME JACAERYS WALKED THE HALLS OF HIS HOME. 

Halls of warmth, where any such whispers of doubt or dishonor would slide off the backs of boys much younger than Jacaerys is today; where he and his brothers, dark of hair and high of chin, would spar in yards, would laugh at feasts, would bow to their grandsire, would toss small bits of venison to their maturing mounts. 

And it is not necessarily the shift of land beneath feet – of bay harbors of blackened water shifting to sliding dark sand and island-whipped wind; for no matter where he rests his head to slumber, the scent of ancient smoldering smoke lies intrinsically tied to his bloodline – eternally. 

No matter the name he bears, nor the blood pulsing in his veins, nor the castle he walks; Jacaerys cannot any longer find that home. 

Halls long and empty; cold, unbearingly so in those moments he sees a flash of his brother – the face carved from his own –  in the mirror, in passing hedges, in the shut of eyelids. 

And long past are days where glory was within reach – what gods so austere would allow for a bastard to follow her place, now that any with a drop of Valyrian blood might stake a claim? These days, it has grown quite clear: unreal are the dreams once so very tangible – when the throne was occupied by a rather lively grandsire, when Jacaerys was placed upon his knee, was told whispers of glory and fate; when he watched dragons dance over the horizon of King’s Landing no larger than the nail of his last finger, patiently awaiting the day Vermax might grow fierce enough to carry him into those very clouds. 

Dragonstone is his birthright, just as much as King’s Landing is; and he has long watched over this small dominion, long wondered how it could be that such a place of blood and ash could yield any other result than just that. The circle turns, after all; The dragon eats its tail. 

And just as such, Jacaerys sits with Aegon’s Garden in the periphery of his vision. 

A stray breeze blows curls to tangle in the curve of his lashes – a sweep of shaking fingers, and the words of Maester Layn seem to dance upon the parchment below. 

In some desperate fear a few nights past, Jacaerys had ripped and scoured Dragonstone’s histories for any mention of the Garden; and such search has yielded merely the ramblings of a maester to the second of Targaryen kings, a maester who went mad and took the Black not a year into his time upon the Island. 

And yet remains his personal accounts in the library – easily left out of such gilded Valyrian histories – a dusted old tome, one which likely has not seen the light of day since Aenys I was a young boy. Some old crone’s ramblings; though Jacaerys feels his skin crawl as the words worm their way into his mind and whisper into his memory. 

The Dragonlords settled these lands when the bailey was merely a plot of saplings; and Aegon’s Garden not yet a Thing but a overturned burial plot of the old gods, volcanic ash and sprouts of wildgrass. 

And their own gods, heavy with the weight of wings which crumble towers and burn ships – things meant to remain untouched by hands so human and tainted with sin. 

It matters not what I might try to guide in the ears of men who believe themselves more than such; From the first, they have been marked for suffering. 

And what greater curse is there than to eternally live and yet still to die? They leave the lands to take more; and yet with each victory, their souls wither. 

This garden watches; it sows, reaps, sows. 

Their fate, I fear, is that of slow decay. 

Philosophies of men long before his own time is something Jacaerys has studied twice over in his preparations for the crown – and yet a most unsure settling feeling, the offense which simmers in his Valyrian veins cools only with the uneasy sense of verity through words so sharp. 

The handscript, from moons after the last entry in the journal; scribbled, uneven – written in maladies and interspersed with recipes for tinctures, and cures for maddening headaches. 

An inkling of fear worries down his spine at the observation; and though the words instill some ominous cognizance in the back of his mind, his hungry eyes continue on. Ravens call shrilly from above; a short breeze gusts the scent of fruit from beyond the wall to the east. 

…And as the star reminds us, it was through the Stranger's envy which death and decay entered the realms of the Andals; still, perhaps, that hatred lingers in the soil foreign and familial, growing within veins of those who dare believe themselves any step above others.

That is to say, those who pulled themselves unto the backs of ancient beings, who deem themselves of the very same molten flesh – and who will, in circle’s turn, eat the flesh of their very own to stay upon the helm. 

The fruit of their seed, oh that cursed fruit – it falls, and will always fall, from that tree of kings; will always bloom rot across the lands. 

Yes, each drop of spilled blood from the wombs of dragonlords bear the mark of fate. A curse, yes — yet what is a curse but the gods’ way of shaping fate into flesh? 

Jacaerys startles as a raven lands upon the stone bench beside him, watching with beady eyes of black; when he glances back to the parchment, the words seem to tremble and pulse with his own heartbeat. Unease drips through his mind, the iced shock of the mad words written before him dousing him entirely. 

Targaryens. Gods among men, they say to themselves – but gods do not bleed. 

Gods do not rot.

The words swirl, their tendrils dragging down the parchment and staining Jacaerys’s fingers; they spin, they bloom, they whittle, they die and are reborn in his mind; a circle forever turning as he looks up towards the open casement of his chambers high, swallowed in half by the storming of clouds which gather above. 

Is he going mad? 

There are naught but a plethora more questions he must ask now; but to whom, he wonders – the raven beside him wails, fluttering before taking flight, towards the garden to the east. Dread welcomes him, a sharp friend. 

Jacaerys watches the bird’s dark shadow become swallowed by the mass of overgrowth which curls and climbs atop the gate ahead; it is clear, now, where he must go. 

There are no more people left here to answer his questions; his mother, too locked upon in her own horizon – Baela, measuring her own squared shoulders to fit into the mould of their Queen; Daemon, far away in the riverlands doing whatever he may please; Maester Gerardys, too enraptured by the foolish beliefs of an aged past. You are no more affected by this than the blooms are affected by a blink of clouds over the sun; you, in your slinking shadows and wild words, your beckoning laughter and spinstry dreams. 

Jacaerys knows in a corner of his mind; as a sower knows when it is to snow, Jacaerys knows it is you who has sent him mad, who spins your web of death and life and whatever monstrous thing lies between. You understand, this taunting limbo which suspends him between a life long-dead and a life unreachable. 

The journal is abandoned upon the bench. 

Crows screech; the gates to Aegon’s garden creak. 

THE ANCIENT ROT SEEPS IN.

It curls in a way he’s never quite taken note of; dirt paths which twist and gnarl, vines which ooze with a sweet scent once so enticing – Jacaerys stalks warily through the strangely thick air, ignoring the prickle on the nape of his neck as he walks. 

A familiar waltz, this has become – though he is not, as it seems, in the mood for a dance. 

It is not long before the garden settles with him. A slow breath, an exhale as he passes the entrance and comes across the Thorned Dragon; a beautiful thing – as beautiful perhaps as you are, in that odd way. 

Your name upon his lips, he wonders if you hear the way his voice trembles, how the fear and worry and resentment leak through his tone. 

He sees first a snag of your hem; slinking around a corner, a snap in the twigs that sends his heart thundering. 

A faint memory of hunting in the woods with his grandsire when he was just old enough to hold a bow; the final look within the gaze of a stag before it was taken from the realm. Its heart, faster and faster until it slowed and, finally, stopped. 

He follows the sound of swishing fabric, of footprints long lost in the rotted earth; blinks within his mind, words written in a panic unto parchment a hundred year’s past. What greater curse is there than to eternally live and yet still to die?

He calls your name. Once, twice – on and on, but still you evade him, disappearing just as he catches a glimpse of you, snapping twigs and slithering past vines as he stumbles blindly, seeking answers to questions not yet formed upon his tongue. 

Anger pulses in such a pathetic chase; though still he gives in, desperate to hear it from your lips, just if only to confirm the truth: That he has no one. That you are no one. 

The rot finds itself within his bones – and, when he brushes his hand against the leaves of a passing vine clung around a woman half-devoured by the sun, a soft giggle floats through the shrubbery. 

A delicate, almost musical rot – a giggle he knows so well by now, one which sends a pang of anticipation and some deep horror through him. He remembers that stag, the way its eyes watched, unmoving down the point of the arrow; and the fluid snap on its neck when it crashed into the wood with an arrow through its throat. 

His grandsire’s laugh, delighted, amused. A life, once more rotted away by that tree of kings. 

Joints within his neck pop once more when he whirls to the sound, unease drifting into his bones when the laugh finds his ears again – but brighter, much more familiar; his stomach drops. 

Luke. A laugh once more, as if they were once more lost in that youthful catch-and-seek game, a rustle from a hedge, the drowning cough of lungs long since failed. But Jacaerys is no longer a young boy – and neither is Lucerys. 

Rage, that long-hidden beast, stirs. It is a cruel, cruel twist for you to play such tricks upon him. It is one thing to plague his mind with silly visions, to haunt his lips or his fist or his heart; though it is not the same to taunt such grief over his head. 

Enough of it; just ahead, the wisp of a shadow moves, and he sees you dart into the brush. 

Rage – that sharp, sudden, ancient rot; it pulses through him, just as harsh and true as his own heartbeat. He’s upon your trail in a moment; though the twists and turns grow confounding, and Jacaerys feels an ache of worry grow within his chest. 

Another glimpse of shadow; you, arm-in-arm with a boy; Lucerys is before him. 

Lucerys walks with you – he is tangible, as fleshed, as smiling as you. 

It is then that he stumbles into the clearing. 

The olive tree, once more; and there, looming above his heaving chest, are the watchful eyes of the woman in the statue, her lover torn and dying within her arms – an arrow through the shoulder, one splintered and rotting from his throat. 

And yet there, at the roots of that very tree, you alone repose – eyes closed as if in a dream, bathed by the light of day broken through the looming branches twisted and gnarled. 

Anger surges at the sight of you, calm with a near smile upon your lips; yet still you have it, he thinks. You still carry the resentment, sorrow, that loneliness which seeps through your visage, which plagues even a face as brilliantly haunting as your own. 

“This is how low you might go, then?” He calls out into the garden, fuming. “You lure me here with memories of the dead? Playing your little tricks, to bring me here?” 

You stir at his sharp voice, a whip in the calm of the day; the crows have long since flown, and only you remain. 

You sigh into the tree above you, eyes opening in that pearled absence before returning to your lovely hues; he is struck with your raw beauty, how you seem to coax his footsteps towards you even in his ire. “Life, death…” 

Your voice is faraway once more, as though pulling the petals from a flower and watching them flutter to the earth. “Sometimes I wonder if they’re truly so different.” 

“You’re cruel,” He spits; pain, grief, anger swirling raw in his heart - you’ve heard the tales - of course you have. Everyone on the island knows of his brother’s fate at the hands of the Kinslayer. It is a cruel thing, to play tricks on him in the way you do. 

You do not flinch at his outburst; a shifting shadow, you stir somewhere beneath the tree. “Jace,” you nearly purr, the pity in your tone stoking the fire within him further. He shakes his head. 

“I did not come to be led through this wretched maze like a fool.” He snaps, and his voice nearly echoes in the eerie calm of greenery. 

Your eyes snap to him, nearly shocked; as if you were not the figure leading him through the hedges and rows of wilting anemones. “Jace-” you begin once more, as if retrying for your first attempt to console him, rising upon your bared feet; a memory past of nights ago, that poisoned sweet of your lips, the kind stutter of breath as he’d pulled you closer to him, felt that heart beat – however falsely – against his palm. 

“–Enough.” He snaps, taking a step back as you float to him, blinking your doe-like eyes at him, tilting your head. A predatory thing, he realizes with an ache of his gut – your mimicked, shy pose so perfected from hours of standing alone in such a garden – a perfect view of his casement from here, perhaps lying in wait for his company, just as he does yours. “What cruel jest is this?” He spits, eyes searching the pits of your own, watching your face slide from disoriented to distressed. 

“What do you mean, Jacaerys?” You wonder – that sweet, worried way you bite your lip, sickly hands outstretched towards him; it broils the anger which festers sharp within him. It is incredulous that he stares at you, rage knotting in his chest at your soft, unassuming tilt of head – a practiced innocence gleaming in the daylight. 

The stuttering heart, the barely-present touch; all which once sent his heart thundering, which now sets his jaw rigid and tense. 

“No,” He hisses, stepping back from your outstretched palm, “I am not some foolish boy, fresh and untested, to be swayed by the honey-sweet looks of some– some serpent.” He spits, voice breaking as the wound beneath his anger slips. 

There is such pressure; that sharp ache which has festered in his inconsolable worries of the Dragonseeds and word of their claimed dragons; the dooming presence of fate which grasps at his collar, which threatens to drag his mother and their line into the depths with it. In circle's turn, they will eat the flesh of their very own to stay upon the wheel. 

The voice jolts him from his thoughts to find you, wide-eyes, and parted lips. A falter, some falling from that delicate mask to something raw, something glinting between a dark hunger and a maliciously deceiving kindness. 

“You should not dare call me such vile things.” You utter, face downturned, dark. And your hand drops; a murmur from you, cold and sweet as winter’s breath. “You’re being cruel. Serpents should be the least of your worries, my Prince.” You whisper. 

It is ominous, the words you mutter; as though you know some ancient thing, some thing which breathes with the pulse of life below soil. A flare of disbelief, his mind numbing and muddling by the moment as he stands, staggered under the olive tree, sweet blooms lulling through the afternoon air. 

"I, the cruel one?” he trembles; words spilling, half-strangled in his throat. “Do you think me blind? That I don’t see what you do — how you laugh in the shadows, whisper in my dreams? That I don’t feel your hands, each night, when I-” He shakes his head, “I…” He trails off, watching as you sway before him, defeated, head low as a chastised child. 

And that faint voice he does not yet seem to have known – yet fervent, insistent: it was through the Stranger's envy which death and decay entered the realms of the Andals. 

In his grief torn mind, he wonders. Is it his name? Is it the legacy of his House, so tall it scrapes the heavens; the stories of old, of Valyrian magic which pulses somewhere faintly in his muddied veins? Do you bewitch him simply for the chance at the riches piling upon the throne, of his future seat – of the fine fabrics, the reach beyond even the kingdoms? Do you, after all he’s told you of his mother, of his father – of the realms; do you truly wish for anything other than to take what he has, all that he has? And that name – that blood, that lineage so cursed; Is that truly all he is? 

“What is it you want from me?” 

What do you want, he pleads – though his mind whispers, soft and sullen, do you want me? 

“I care not for any such things you carry to offer,” Your voice, melodic and haunting as you bite away at beading tears that slide down your smooth cheeks; a faint inkling of alarm in the back of his mind, straining to recall if he’d even spoken any of it aloud – but as you wipe a heavy tear from your lashline, the thought dissipates.

“I want to…I wish to have you.” Your voice warbles, lip wavered; it is a glassy thing, such a gaze, and his heart begins to soften wearily with the small sniff you allow yourself in your wilting figure. 

And gods above strike him, Jacaerys’ heart skips; a warmth of want, of love – the thing he’s yearned after for the better of his young life.  It is with effort that he swallows down the anger which has bubbled up with fear and foreboding; Because you are still a slight, sweet thing – a kind being, a sprouted blossom in a field of ashes. There is no fear here, he understands. There is just loneliness. 

And, always so willing; your lips press together in wait as he gathers his thoughts with a shaky sigh, knowing such anger misplaced will be a burden to all. It’s only a fig, Jace.

But it can’t be; in his heart, a twisting truth – you could not love such a broken man; nameless, unwanted by his own kin, untrusted to fight the war being waged for his own birthright. Forgotten and lonely. He inhales shakily, nodding in some dreadful acceptance. 

“I am not yours to torment.” His heart still thunders with the agony of glimpsing Luke just moments ago; some heavy acceptance lifts from his chest, a burst free from unknowing. An acceptance warm and chilling alike. He sniffs, clenching his fists so they do not begin to tremble.

 “If you’ve lured me here to bury me in specters and shadows, then… you may do as you please.” He levels you with his own watery gaze; in which you swim, haunted and despairing. Perhaps his words are a final leap, some grasp of hope that perhaps you will confirm what he knows in his very heart to be true: that you have love, and that you hold it only for him. 

“-But do not come to me with lies dressed as love.” He whispers.

And your face falls; softness in your eyes growing fragile as the petals upon the flowers which wither near your feet. Your shoulders, slumped as you let out a shaky breath, some dejected misery which sprouts from your frame and blossoms into a pitiful shutter. 

A moment until you straighten, eyes meeting his wetly and trickled with a spark of disbelief. 

“You truly believe such lies spun by men long since in the past?” Your voice shakes – each word, a draw of blood that seems to spill from your raw, tender heart. “That I would bring you pain, that I– that I would wish such suffering upon you? All you’ve done, I-” you lip trembles in that awfully disheartening way; Jacaerys represses such urge to gather you in his arms under the midday sun, to press his lips to the soft glint of your hair. 

You shake your head, leaning upon tipped toes as if to tell him a secret, your hands clenched by your side until they rise to wipe the tears from your wettened eyes. “I do nothing by means of envy or greed – I just – I wish to be with you.” 

Pain, that icy sting; it cowers him, breaks him until a tear slips from his lidded gaze and skids over his cheekbones, fertilizing the rotted earth below his feet.

 And though he believes your very truthful words, there is a sapling which was planted those many years ago when he stepped foot unto the island; that very warning whisper that has tried to break free from the recess of denial and ignorance, that has danced on the tip of Maester’s tongues and perhaps anybody else who dare open their eyes enough to see. 

The truth is that there is something unnatural about Aegon’s Garden; there is something unnatural about you. 

“This place… it’s rotten.” He finally speaks it, and it is as if the word goes silent; away are the crashing of waves, merely the rattling of your bones when you inhale sharply, blinking at Jacaerys with wide, piercing eyes. 

And in that fear, that germinating sapling which turns upon itself under the watchful glare of the outside world, Jacaerys continues. The words fall from his tongue; leaves of a felled oak. 

“The garden, the tree – even you, hiding, lurking in the shadows – It’s…” He shakes his head, unwilling to continue such cursed words; but still it lingers in the back of his mind, pressing at his tongue and stirring the dread in his gut. 

 And that journal, so hastily concealed for generations of Dragonlords rising from the earth and leaving to the capital; years upon years of upturned earth, of that circle which eats its own tail – that hatred lingers in the soil, growing within veins of those who dare believe themselves any step above others. 

Jacaerys faintly begins to wonder when he started having thoughts which were not his own; and, indeed, when these vines began to slither overtop his boots, piercing their thorns into the leather worn with time. Have I gone mad? he wonders – not for the first time. 

“Say it.” You snap. “If you mistrust me so, then say it.” 

He is brought back to the garden by your icy, venomous glare – bristled, perhaps, by his such accusations in the disturbation of your day; and he, in a strike of defiance, in the last grasp of honor towards his duty, his life, his destiny – says it. 

“You are rotten.” He finishes, chest light at the heavy drop of his words. 

Whatever snarl you’d worn drops immediately in a sickening slate of blank visage. 

The world stills once again; he is sharply aware of your stare, eyes gleaming – and the air so stagnant, so earthy, of the fact that you’ve not drawn a single breath since; and a dread slowly creeps into his gut as you level your own gaze upon him.  

“Am I?” You whisper, the faintest twitch of fury within your sharp gaze. “Does the decay not spread from its roots, Jacaerys?” 

You take a step forward, and Jacaerys finds himself suddenly pressed against the statue behind him; a glance and a sharp, startled fear that pierces him as two pairs of lovers’ eyes meet him, stony and cruel. 

You press on towards him, stalking with a viciousness that begins to cloud his rationality. “Tell me, where is your mother? Where is your father? Where is that Kinslayer uncle of yours? Where is the Queen Who Never Was?” 

His throat is thick with a lodged breath; dread stirs within him, that sickening truth as you continue, slinking towards him with the practiced pace of a huntsman with a bow. “You spread like disease – all of you. Children burn, homes crumble – the world a crushed flea under your boot, a decaying whisper of power they all quarrel to grasp.” Your words are a whip in the wind that has gathered – and the stormy roll of sky has plagued the shoreline, boasting of a disastrous storm upon nightfall. “And all for what? For some fate that was written long before even this garden had a name?” 

Jacaerys stares at you; the way your fingers twist – gnarled and as thorned as the vines themselves – around his forearm; when, exactly, had you grasped him? 

“And Jacaerys… you, sweet Jace. You will be a fine king. The finest of them all, perhaps.” You promise and the words are golden and gilded in glory; your eyes shine with the reflection of a throne leagues away, of a life after this island, forgotten under layers of rotting overturned earth. 

He lurches, fighting the bile within his throat at the thought of the word – the word he’s known to one day inherit for his whole life: King. 

He shifts, pulling away from the trancelike gaze that spills from your visage and begins to infect his mind. Fuzzy, he swears he sees figs growing fat and juicy from the olive tree behind you; that he spots a shadow lingering high above the hill in the distance, watching from a windowscape. 

A conscious return of that very hunger, that salacious, depraved craving for the sharp pain of the words you leverage; that same desire which curls and licks its maw at the thought of the figs, of you.  

“They see you for what whispers have rumored behind your shadow all your life, don’t they?” Your words are treasonous; Jacaerys’ jaw clenches. “And is it true – you do not let the words taint and disrobe you, do not let the truth unravel you until all that is left is your kind, used soul?” 

His throat is thick with fear, with dejection; what inkling of truth, what window into his mind have you struck that lets his own thoughts spill from your beautiful lips? “You do not know of what you speak,” He fights meagerly; though he is weak, and your words are as harsh as they are soothing to his lonely heart. 

“Dragonlords,” You spit ruefully, and Jacaerys is struck in a hazy trance of fear and hunger. “Rotting this world from the inside out – and the people are left to wither in the ruins.” 

An image in his mind’s eye – Sharp Pointe, smoldering and dusted in ruins. A garden, a battlefield; all, desecrated. And that hissing sharp from your lips, that aching pulse which triples when you level him with a stare so very hateful. “I am free from all of that here. Here, it is sacred – names matter not. It is only peace, and sweet blooms of eternal summer. Here, the earth feeds itself, the circle turns, the blood comes in fire but leaves in ash-” 

Stopped dead-cold, Jacaerys starts. “-What did you just say?” 

You blink up at him, as if gone from some odd trance – and plush lips flounder, some flickering amusement dying in your gaze under his stare. 

“Repeat it,” He urges, mind swimming in fear. 

And in a horrifying moment, you smile – too wide, too sweet, too hungry. 

You smile, and a burst of crows scream through the sky; you smile, a sinister lurking glint within; you smile, and the roses surrounding you begin to wilt away. You smile and his heart stops cold. 

But just as it came, it drops – and with a blink, that filmy haze that had overtaken your rigid muscles melts, and you’re left; the delicate petals of a flowered girl, shaking your head slightly up to him as the sun beams down a chilly breath of light unto your face. 

 “I don’t… I can’t recall.” 

With a blink, your eyes meet his and they are pure, free from any such emotion, nor turmoil; instead, you float before him in your sweet sway. 

Jacaerys feels the shift within the air, watches as you slip on some masque that you hope he does not detect – but his hair stands on end. 

You smile ever so kindly, eternally; his hands tremble, though still, after it all: Still, he wishes to remain there with you, in that smile. 

“Forgive me, my Prince, I- I seemed to have lost myself. I’m so terribly sorry.” 

The sun has clambered its way out from the sheets of clouds above; in a ray upon you, your hair glows – and despite the dread, the dubiety which swarms his mind, Jacaerys cannot help the small smile which crawls upon his lips, weary and hesitant as it is. 

A cursed girl, you are – this, he cannot deny; but, a voice whispers in his mind, what is a curse but the gods’ way of shaping fate into flesh? 

And gods, your flesh, so alive and shivering under his touch; you, your cursed smile and that flickering laughter that follows through the garden. That tantalizing fear, the unease which grips him and makes him feel alive – which makes him bloom. 

With that slip, fades the memory of why indeed he was so upset in the first place; scared, perhaps, of some small spook? Your eyelashes flutter atop your cheeks, you breathe the fresh air as a painter does to canvas, your fingers playing with his own – and he dares chastise you for it? Guilt swirls in his chest, and he knows that he must gather himself lest he do something unbecoming. 

The thought of such strikes him. He must return to the castle, it is much past the hour. The council waits. 

“I must go,” He murmurs, jaw tensing as your eyes flash in that possessive jump; though you meekly nod, eyes casting towards the earth, where vines have retreated to the statue behind him. “I’ve to go to council.” 

The breeze carries the floral scent of your hair. “Come back later.” You ask – though it is more of a command, one which sends a chill down his spine. And perhaps it is simply that; being wanted, to be loved or cared for simply because he is himself – it causes him to nod gently, caressing your icy cheek with the back of his fingers. 

Jacaerys shivers at the devotion in your eyes, that swimming, searching gaze of eager affection. His palms find your own, and that distinct hunger – for the fruits which linger throughout the garden’s smells – reclaims him. 

“I wish not to frighten you, Jacaerys.” You whisper – and it is in this sentence that he finds some kind of understanding – for you, nor he, wish to speak aloud what harrowing things he knows to be true; this garden rots, and somewhere within it, so do you. 

“I only wish for some company.” 

A pang of regret echoes within his chest – what sharp tone and tongue he’d taken with you today, when all you wished for was a hand to hold and a voice to speak with. When all you wished for was him, as he wishes for you. 

“You do not frighten me,” He lies through his teeth, and perhaps he looks away intentionally when he sees that sinister grin flash over you in a shadow of a moment; though when he returns to your visage, it is clear and sweet as the day is bright. “If I could…” A swallow, biting his lip in knowledge of what he is about to admit. “If I could, my love, I’d stay with you.” 

You shake your head with a slight desperation. “You can,” You whisper, a sudden, light pressure of something held up towards his chest – and Jacaerys needs not look into your palm to see the handful of fruits within your grasp, held out in offering. 

Still a hunger, a desire courses through him – here, it is only peace – but he instead shakes his head once more. “My mother needs me,” He whispers, chest burning with a decision; though gods ruin him if he dares leave you alone again. A clench in his heart at your rejected nod, though you smile smally.

Your palm, cool as winter’s kiss, cups his jaw; with a sweet kiss to the corner of his lips, you whisper to him. “You are quite wonderfully made, Jacaerys. Your mother is lucky to have such a son.” You whisper dreamily; a faint memory tugging in his mind as some daze settles the ache of his mind. “I am truly quite fond of you.” 

His eyes flicker, and when you press up to kiss him upon the lips, he feels a torn longing to remain with you, just a moment longer. 

There is a war to be fought, he reminds himself – and he chooses his family; he chooses his mother, as she would choose him. 

And he leaves you in the garden. 

IT IS UNNATURAL, JACAERYS THINKS, TO LEAVE HIS MOTHER’S CHAMBERS SO OFTEN WITH TEARS IN HIS EYES. 

Perhaps, any other night, he’d have remained to continue his plea; though now, his hands tremble and his throat burns with unshed emotion, legs carrying him quick through the suffocating walls of the Queen’s apartment. 

There is no true beauty to the end of the day – not now, not after he’d left each bruised, battered word within his mind upon the cold stone floor before her. There is nothing left for him now. 

Perhaps on a sunnier eve, Jacaerys would think with a smile wry and amused, how he seems to find the garden when there is nowhere else to go; yet tonight, he knows. 

You are the place to go – and the garden, with its whispers and watching eyes, with its churning familiarity; that is what he so seeks as he stumbles once more through the gates, too beside himself to brother with pretense. 

The sharp gathering of his mother’s visage after his watery plea; a choice, one which twists a rusty dagger and pulls the final thread of sanity which he’d so foolishly clung to. 

He calls your name for only a few moments before you appear.

Just as the day he met you, at the end of the hedgeway, lingering in that odd, half-standing lilt you oft regain when you suspect nobody is looking; and your hair wild and loose, covering your visage as you hide. 

A relief it is to see such a face, even as you slither from the shadows with a breath of his name. 

A relief it is to finally be where he wants to be. Where he is wanted. 

His knees crumble to the earth before you, and you go down once more with him. 

Your hands fall to his arms, pulling you to him; and in that motion, in the lack of breath he takes in pressing himself into you, he wonders if you know. Somehow, you know what he is feeling – for you wipe his tears with an anguished expression, as if you’d been within those walls when he’d begged his mother not to pursue it. 

A beg, delivered as some grasp for what once was, what may now never be - a gaping anxiety, one which has festered and built his entire existence - and has just spilled over and bled onto the thin tapestry of life stitched and remaining between him and his mother. 

And his mother - the Queen - staring back at him, face hardening with each breath he took, trying to repress the sting of choice. She’s made her choice, he thinks - she has chosen herself.

He has chosen her time and time again, forsaken everything for her; and she has made her decision. 

It is with barely a few words Jacaerys chokes out, whimpered and anguished, any semblance of explanation; though you sit with him through it, brushing his curls back and letting him gather his thoughts in the quiet dying light of the peaceful garden. 

The fiery death of the sun lingers even as night sky begins its flirting tease; streaks of fading plum which kiss into the ocean far away. 

Time passes with quiet peace. 

Jacaerys’ breathing is calm. A numbing tranquility seeps through him, his breaths falling from his lips with your own, humming a gentle lull under the statue. The vines have fallen to their sleepy, weeping ways; the night comes, and after some time, you rise in your white gown and offer a hand for him. 

The sun sinks its bloody bite into the coastline when you lead Jacaerys into the winding path; a mournful glow, with leaning flowers and wilting willows of vines which weep with his own sullen emptiness. 

His hand shakes within yours – but your grasp is strong and sure, squeezing just once as he lingers past the maiden statue, the serpent coiling up her leg. 

She is so very tragic in the waking moon’s light. His voice is raw when it comes, wistful, absent. “It always seemed as though she was made in your eyes.” 

Your gaze slides from the statue – a serene visage with a lilt of envy – and your grip tightens upon his own. 

“Men see what they wish to see.” 

Your words, a distant echo of a long-forgotten conversation – you pull him along the path with a small glance back at the statue, as if wary it follows behind him. “If I may speak truthfully,” Your tone wilts with the betrayal of envy, “I would find it rather lonely, lying there moon after moon.” 

Jacaerys is rather accustomed by this time to your odd words; and though he registers the odd resentment with which you spit the sentiment, he only watches you – perhaps concerned that, in a way, you might be fading to the clutch of time as well. 

And so he leaves your words in the floral air of the garden; a stronger smell than most at this hour; and the blaring ache within his mind eases when you finally lead him to the clearing he’s dreamt of ceaselessly since his first visit. 

The fig tree blossoms as if it is the first spry wink of spring.

Flowers blooming, dripping leaves of ambrosial scent which yield to plump fruits, even in the mooned night; divine, he thinks with a slow churn of pleasure within his veins. This place is divine. 

 A cloak of warmth over his shoulders – the weeping branches as he ducks below, staggering fuzzily under the alluring hunger which churns within his gut. 

And in some miserable way, perhaps Jacaerys clings to the promise you’d laid: He comes here, you’d said, to the fig tree. Lucerys. Though his brother does not appear before his eyes, nor does the pain of fate – instead, a pleasant calm which placates his edged nerves. 

A place rather tucked away from the harshness of fate, the fig tree seems to keen into his frame; and though his grief has spilled over, in your gaze he finds a warmth, a patience.

Your hand, slow as if approaching a wounded stag, brushes away a strand of hair which tangles within his lashes – a pang in his chest at such unknowing kindness, at such genuine, aloof acceptance. The proof is there for all to see – and yet, you, seeing; you do not mind. You never have. 

Whatever composure he’d managed to hold is shattered within the raw affection he now feels; and with a shaky breath, he slumps against the trunk. 

“What troubles you, my love?” Your voice a melody, the vision behind his closed eyes of a sickeningly hungry smile unmatched by the sweet tone of voice. It clutches him; to be wanted. 

And what if one of your baseborn, silver-haired dragonriders decide that he wants to rule the Seven Kingdoms? 

“My mother,” he confesses in a whisper, voice tight; wounded flesh of heart bleeding raw from his lips. “She willingly strips my claim to legitimacy in search of her own war.” 

Your brows furrow in that way he has etched to memory – and with a shaky lift, he soothes away the furrow with his thumb, swiping his fingers gently across your visage. 

It is with the blossom of nightshade with which you keen into his touch; a bloom of affection, desperate as you sigh. Just as so, your fingers press gently into his scalp, carding through his curls; the ache in his mind is eased, a fuzzy hunger, some euphoria washing through him. 

“Jace,” you murmur, voice incredibly distant, “She is blinded by the fate of… distant songs, of distant omens. But I see you. I’ve always seen you.” 

There is something odd about your tone; some revel, an ancient knowledge that brings hairs to end upon his nape – but he closes his eyes, leaning into your touch for some comfort. 

A shaky breath as his lips press to your palm, fighting the sting of emotion. “Vermax has fallen ill inexplicably. Joff is gone. Luke…” His voice fractures at his brother’s name, the memory so sharp; some laden innocence he’d clung on to in his grief. A life, slipping thinner than sand through his fingers. 

A familiar urge, one he cannot tamp as tears fall unbidden from his eyes; and you, with a soft gasp as he presses his forehead to your own cold one. 

There is an itch low in his mind; a humming, a distant hunger which leaks through the cracks splintered in the remnants of his headache. The fig tree branches sway – above your head grows a beautiful purple fruit, heavy and bursting with rich life, with the churning cycle of soil, with earth, gods, fruit. Your skin freezes his own. 

“I’ll do it.” 

An unsettling urge within him – one not entirely his own, perhaps. Your eyes widen larger than the narrow sea.

A slow wettening of your lips as you shake your head, plush lips glistening and pinkened; Jacaerys yearns to see such pure sweetness dripping with the juices of those fruits once more, to feel your body writhe with his own, pleasure and hunger and you, you, you. You and him. 

“Jacaerys,” your voice, gentle, wary; though your eyes scream otherwise, a sickening smile crawling across your faint features under the moon. 

Your fingers, icicles upon his feverish skin, a balm over the hatred which coils dejected in his gut. Your lips part again, and he must resist the urge to bite upon such soft flesh, some monstrous hunger growing and spurting and whispering to eat, eat. Eat. 

“You should not act so brash. Not when–” 

“Just a taste, my love.” He interrupts, trembling yet unconvicted – desperate in his plea, as though a drop of the fruit’s nectar might heal the gaping misery that has spread at the harsh of the world’s truths. 

Trembling palms slither around his shoulders, grasping him as you gather an untainted inhale, unspoiled. 

And his eyes, glued upon your worried lips, your eyes blown wide in hunger, in that stirring way he felt last time he reposed under this very fig tree. 

A sin, perhaps – but the most delicious, the most innocent of sin in a world so rotted and decaying. 

There is a moment long suspended in air, in which your gaze burns into Jacaerys’ own. His heart races, growing more hungry by the moment, fingertips aching as he lets his hands explore your pliant flesh – over each soft fold of fabric, over each frigid expanse of skin. A divine touch; otherworldly. 

Otherworldly. 

He does not see you reach above you for the fruit – he does, though, see the flickering gleam in your eyes as you split apart the dusting blush of flesh; and he, forever enraptured with his desire for you, with your beauty, blinks as you hold up half the fruit. 

Earthy, rich, forbidden – a sweet scent that lulls him forward, binding him with you as his eyes trace the glisten of the fruit’s nectar down your soft, sweet hand. 

In a blink, he sees that horrid vision once more; shrouded silver in the moonlight, dark streaks blossom and spread upon your pristine dress with each breath you take; from your breast and stomach, it leaks out and begins to tremble your fingers. Blood, his mind whispers – no, dirt. 

But your hand is held out, and in a blink the vision is gone; you’re before him with hopeful, hungry eyes and a bitten lip, unbreathing, unblinking. 

Coiled, lying in wait. 

He takes the fruit into his own grasp, marveling at the soft sensation, how hungry your eyes cling to his grasp. 

Fingers milky pale in the moonlight glisten with the blood of the fruit; and he raises it, slowly until he can feel the chill of your breath kiss along his knuckles, see your tongue dart out in salacious hunger as you gaze moltenly between the fruit’s flesh and his own. 

That hunger, that longing devours him whole as he stares. It is all he can do to swallow a thick rise of arousal as he desperately presses the flesh of the fig to your mouth, fingers lingering; firm. 

You part your lips easily – so easy – and taste the sweetness; a cold sensation shivers down his spine, mind fuzzier with each moment as the juice drips and runs over his knuckles, chasing the tributaries of veins which split and run down his forearm. 

Your hand catches upon his wrist, chilling as you moan at the taste. 

His lips part, a burst of desire spiraling as his mind clouds, a ravenous hunger as you slowly slide into his lap with slithering skirts. 

 Jacaerys groans into the silence of the garden, unable to maintain his composure as you lean forward, pressing his fingers further into your mouth. Upon your tongue is the kiss of winter; and he watches, helplessly entranced as your tongue catches the last traces from his fingers – a simmering invitation when your eyes meet his own hungering gaze. 

The rind of the fruit falls forgotten into the soil.

Your lips glisten so dark, he almost believes it is blood. 

Your lips find his own. 

A burst of pleasure, unbidden within his groin when your tongue presses to his – familiar, yes, euphoric; but satiating that hunger, yet multiplying it. 

Jacaerys pulls you closer by your hips, fingers sticky with the remnants of the fig, his mind reeling with ecstasy at the taste of you, the taste of the fruit; the taste of the Garden. 

In the heartbeat of silence when you pull away, his chest rises sharply – your breath kisses his own and he makes one final decision; with a glance back towards the castle, Jacaerys leans towards you once more. 

His breath fans in a plume of fog – it is cold in the garden, with you so precariously in his lap, yet Jacaerys burns. 

You wait for him with bated breath, the fruit hovering just before his parted, covetous lips. 

Jace’s gaze does not leave yours when he leans forward and slowly takes the fruit against his lips, bursts of heat flickering with stabs of ice as you gasp, watching with eyes maliciously ravenous, glistened lips parted. 

He breathes you in, gaze half-lidded as his tongue presses gently against the fruit within your grasp. 

Your whimper is soft and yet it sets him ablaze; an ambrosial taste, one which leaves his mind spinning, any anguish previously thought melts away – it is difficult, he realizes, to determine where you end and the fig begins. 

Softly, at first; grazing his teeth along your skin, shivering through his very spine when you shift your hips, sucking in an inhale of pleasure yourself – and the juices which slip down your own hand, which flood his mouth unlike anything he’s before felt. 

Though it is not enough to break the skin of the fruit, and you grow impatient; if his eyes were any less lidded, perhaps he’d have seen the malicious hunger swimming in your sweet gaze. 

You press the fruit into his mouth. 

He bites. 

taglist: @useralba @dipperscavern @softspiderling @lukehughes43 @rhea-ripley @writtenapoiogy @fyrewept @oldtowrs @bryscorner @chloe-petrichors @jottositto @earth4angels @divinesolas @hxtd @astrxq @housetargaryenloyalist @house-celtigar @v3lary0ns @vee-mage @princessvelaryon @princessbellecerise @still-jon-snow @elaena-aerrin @mckennah123 @smurfelle @alyssa-dayne @uhnanix @ficlovegirlie @cregan-starks @manhandlememando @inkandarsenic @cuntlips42 @franzelt @chimmysoftpaws

[berryhobii]

✩ 🎀 𝒦𝐸𝒴 🎀 ✩

SMUT-♢ FLUFF-❀ ANGST-☂

𝗞𝗜𝗠 𝗡𝗔𝗠𝗝𝗢𝗢𝗡

🎀🎀🎀

【ＯＮＥ　ＳＨＯＴＳ】

[ᴍʏ ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴ] ❀♢

♡Namjoon was your person, as you were his♡

【ＦＩＣＳ】

Nothing yet....

【ＡＳＫＳ／ＤＲＡＢＢＬＥＳ】

[ꜰɪʀꜱᴛ ᴛɪᴍᴇ] ᴍʏ ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ♢

♡My Person's couple first time♡

[ᴘᴜʀᴇ]♢

♡You were pure. Ha, he could change that♡

[ʜᴀᴘᴘʏ ᴡᴇɪɢʜᴛ]❀♢

♡Namjoon's noticed something different about you♡

[ꜰɪʀᴇ ʙᴜʀɴɪɴɢ]❀♢

♡Life with your firefighter husband♡

[ᴊᴇᴀʟᴏᴜꜱ]❀♢

♡A stranger gets a little too close to your husband. He shows you exactly who he belongs to♡

[ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ᴍɪɴᴇ]♢

♡You're his. No one else's♡

[ɴᴀᴍᴊᴏᴏɴ ᴀꜱ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴡᴇʀᴇᴡᴏʟꜰ ʙꜰ]

𝗞𝗜𝗠 𝗦𝗘𝗢𝗞𝗝𝗜𝗡

🎀🎀🎀

【ＯＮＥ　ＳＨＯＴＳ】

[ʙᴀʙʏ ɢɪʀʟ]❀♢

♡Seokjin spoiled you rotten but how could he not when you were his baby girl?♡

[ʙᴀʙʏ ɢɪʀʟ:ꜱʜᴏᴡ ᴏᴜᴛ]♢

♡You parade through your sugar daddy's building like you own it and his employees hate it. Time to show out♡

[ɢᴀᴍᴇꜱ]❀♢

♡Your boyfriend isn’t giving you attention, too focused on his stupid computer game so you take matters into your own hands♡

【ＦＩＣＳ】

Nothing yet....

【ＡＳＫＳ／ＤＲＡＢＢＬＥＳ】

Nothing yet....

𝗝𝗨𝗡𝗚 𝗛𝗢𝗦𝗘𝗢𝗞

🎀🎀🎀

【ＯＮＥ　ＳＨＯＴＳ】

[ᴄʟᴀꜱꜱ ɪɴ ꜱᴇꜱꜱɪᴏɴ]❀♢

♡Hoseok was excited to hear about a new teacher at the community center. He wondered what kind of person you’d be, what kind of class you’d teach. He also wondered what the hell you were doing on stage at a strip club♡

[ᴄʟᴀꜱꜱ ɪɴ ꜱᴇꜱꜱɪᴏɴ ᴘᴀʀᴛ 2]♢

♡Hoseok visits your place for the first time and finds something he never expected♡

[ᴄʟᴏᴜᴅꜱ]ꜱᴏᴜʟᴍᴀᴛᴇ ᴀᴜ❀☂

♡Clouds drifted overhead, rain pouring over the monochrome colors of your life. Then the sun parted those clouds, showing you a rainbow♡

[ᴅᴇꜱꜱᴇʀᴛ]♢

♡You and Hoseok try something new♡

【ＦＩＣＳ】

[ᴋᴀʀᴍᴀ]ᴍᴀꜰɪᴀ ᴀᴜ❀♢☂

♡When a looming danger threatens the people you love, you have to come out of hiding and step back into your place as The Whisper; the deadliest assassin known to man. Taking people’s lives were easy, loving Hoseok was even easier, and having to face him once again after leaving would prove to be the toughest challenge of your life♡

ᴘʀᴏʟᴏɢᴜᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 1 ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 2

【ＡＳＫＳ／ＤＲＡＢＢＬＥＳ】

[ʜɪᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʙʀᴀᴋᴇꜱ]ꜱᴛʀᴇᴇᴛ ʀᴀᴄᴇʀ ᴀᴜ

♡Hoseok's pride as a racer depended on this race but his true pride and joy would always be there on their knees to release the tension♡

[ɪ'ᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ᴅᴏɴᴇ]♢

♡Hoseok's not done with you. Far from it♡

𝗠𝗜𝗡 𝗬𝗢𝗢𝗡𝗚𝗜

🎀🎀🎀

【ＯＮＥ　ＳＨＯＴＳ】

[ʀᴇᴄᴏɴɴᴇᴄᴛ]❀♢

♡Yoongi’s been so busy lately and you two haven’t been spending much time together. You bring him some dinner and reconnect on a deeper level. Verrryyyyyy deep♡

[ꜱɪʟᴇɴᴛ ᴛʀᴇᴀᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ]❀♢

♡You give Yoongi the silent treatment. That doesn't bode over well♡

【ＦＩＣＳ】

Nothing yet....

【ＡＳＫＳ／ＤＲＡＢＢＬＥＳ】

[ᴅʀᴇꜱꜱɪɴɢ ʀᴏᴏᴍ]♢

♡Shenanigans in the dressing room♡

[ᴍᴏᴏɴʙᴇᴀᴍꜱ]ᴍᴇʀᴍᴀɪᴅ ᴀᴜ☂

♡Every night you return to the water and every night you remember why you left. But you could never forget the sparkle of his eyes reflected in the beams of the moon♡

[ᴏᴠᴇʀᴡʜᴇʟᴍᴇᴅ]❀☂

♡Your day has been going horribly. Your fiancé helps you come down to earth♡

[ɪ ꜱᴡᴇᴀʀ]❀♢

♡Yoongi swore he’d finish before lunch time♡

[ɢᴇᴛ ʙᴀᴄᴋ]ꜱɪʟᴇɴᴛ ᴛʀᴇᴀᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ♢

♡Yoongi gets his get back♡

[ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴅɪꜱᴛᴜʀʙ]♢

♡You really need to remember to keep your phone on silent♡

𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗝𝗜𝗠𝗜𝗡

🎀🎀🎀

【ＯＮＥ　ＳＨＯＴＳ】

[ᴅᴏᴡɴ ʙᴀᴅ]❀♢☂

♡ Rule 1: Never go over the woman’s house Rule 2: Never sleep over Rule 3: Never sleep with the same person twice These 3 rules are what Jimin lived by but then you came along and he was ready to break all of them♡

ᴘᴀʀᴛ 1 ᴘᴀʀᴛ 2 ᴘᴀʀᴛ 3

[ʜᴜʀʀʏ ʜᴏᴍᴇ]❀♢

♡You send Jimin some naughty videos during his night with the boys♡

[ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴀʀɢᴀʀɪᴛᴀ]❀♢

♡Give me one margarita, Imma open my legs♡

【ＦＩＣＳ】

[ᴛʜʀᴇᴀᴅ]ɢʀᴇᴇᴋ ᴍʏᴛʜᴏʟᴏɢʏ ᴀᴜ❀♢☂

♡You were his oasis where the water never ran dry. He was the garden where blooms shone like diamonds. His lips were of the sweetest ambrosia that made you forget your sour past, your embrace a blanket that shielded him from the nightmare that was his life. Your souls were safe in the hands of one another. Nothing could ever separate you, the daisy chain you’ve woven entwining your fate and destinies until the end of time♡

ᴘʀᴏʟᴏᴜɢᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 1 ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 2 ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 3

【ＡＳＫＳ／ＤＲＡＢＢＬＥＳ】

[ᴘᴏᴏʟ ᴘᴀʀᴛʏ]❀♢

♡After a pool party at your friend’s house, you and Jimin go home for some private time♡

[ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢ]❀♢

♡Jimin has a few favorite things about you♡

𝗞𝗜𝗠 𝗧𝗔𝗘𝗛𝗬𝗨𝗡𝗚

🎀🎀🎀

【ＯＮＥ　ＳＨＯＴＳ】

Nothing yet...

【ＦＩＣＳ】

Nothing yet...

【ＡＳＫＳ／ＤＲＡＢＢＬＥＳ】

[ᴅɪꜱᴛʀᴀᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴅʀɪᴠᴇʀ]♢

♡Taehyung needs to keep his eyes on the road♡

[ᴍᴏʀᴇ]ᴅɪꜱᴛʀᴀᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴅʀɪᴠᴇʀ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ♢

♡It's never enough. You want more♡

𝗝𝗘𝗢𝗡 𝗝𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗞𝗢𝗢𝗞

🎀🎀🎀

【ＯＮＥ　ＳＨＯＴＳ】

[ʟᴀᴛᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴡᴏʀᴋ]❀♢

♡Jungkook wakes you up and sends you off to work all hot bothered. Just wait until you get home!♡

[ʟᴀᴛᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴡᴏʀᴋ:ᴄʟᴏᴄᴋᴇᴅ ᴏᴜᴛ]❀♢

♡You’ve clocked out. It’s time to go home♡

【ＦＩＣＳ】

Nothing yet...

【ＡＳＫＳ／ＤＲＡＢＢＬＥＳ】

[ᴄᴀɴᴅʏ ᴄʀᴜꜱʜ]ʟꜰᴡ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ❀

♡How the LFW couple met♡

[ɴᴏ ɴᴜᴛ ɴᴏᴠᴇᴍʙᴇʀ]ʟꜰᴡ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ❀♢

♡The LFW couple attempt No Nut November. Game on♡

[ᴜɴᴀᴡᴀʀᴇ]ʟꜰᴡ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ❀♢

♡You hardly pay much attention whenever you’re with Jungkook. He does though♡

[ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛɪᴍᴇ]ʟꜰᴡ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ❀♢☂

♡Jungkook would be there whenever insecurity came to haunt you. Every time♡

[ɢʏᴍ ꜰɪᴛ]ʟꜰᴡ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ❀♢

♡Working out with your husband is great motivation♡

[ᴍᴏᴏᴅ ꜱᴡɪɴɢꜱ]❀

♡Jungkook’s grown used to your mood swings♡

[ʙɪᴋɪɴɪ ʙᴏᴅʏ]❀♢

♡You show off some of your new bikini's to Jungkook♡

𝗢𝗧𝟳

🎀🎀🎀

【ＯＮＥ　ＳＨＯＴＳ】

[7 ᴅɪꜰꜰᴇʀᴇɴᴛ ꜱʜᴇᴇᴛꜱ]♢

♡You had 7 fuck buddies. Just how did you fit them all into your schedule?♡

【ＦＩＣＳ】

Nothing yet...

【ＡＳＫＳ／ＤＲＡＢＢＬＥＳ】

Nothing yet...

Ⓒ— My works are copyrighted and belong to me! No translations please!

[jadeylovesmarvelxo]

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

part five.

Mdni. This is a tiny bit angsty but mostly complete fluff because I think we need that after the last four parts. 💞

This is the final part.

If you have any requests then let me know 💞

💌💞

You approach Eddie during lunch. He immediately stops chatting to his friends and gives you his full attention. Fuck what were you doing? Did you really want to give Eddie the chance to hurt you again?

He must have left the flowers for a reason though and you're determined to find out why. Was it his way of an apology? An olive branch? Did it mean he missed you?

Fuck. The constant loop of anxiety and questions were making you stressed. His eyes light up when he sees you and you're sure you're experiencing whiplash. One minute he was an asshole then the next he was excited to see you?

Be strong. Don't be fooled by those pretty eyes again, you steel yourself and ignore the way your heart skips a beat. You can do this.

"I got your flowers. They were beautiful, thank you. It's not going to fix you being an asshole though" Eddie smiles softly and nods.

"I know that princess. I just wanted to make you smile", ooh he could be a charmer when he wanted to be.

"Wait, what the hell is going on?" Mike asks confused and Dustin rolls his eyes along with Lucas and Gareth.

"Dude, wake up. There's obviously something going on there. Do I have to tell you everything?" Dustin sighs exasperated and Mike looks between you and Eddie.

"She's from the dark side" he yelps and Eddie fixes Mike with a warning look. "Yeah, no shit Wheeler, I don't want to hear one word against her. You got it?"

Mike nods and you can't help but be amused and slightly touched by Eddie's protectiveness. Still could he not have been more like this earlier?

"Could you not have had that attitude earlier Eddie?" His cheeks darken and he holds your gaze.

"I'm sorry sweetheart. I've been a dick but I'll make it up to you. However long it takes for you to forgive me. I'll wait"

...

💌

Eddie is endlessly patient, he picks you up from school every day and takes you home. He kisses your hand before you head into your house and says, "Until next time sweetheart"

It's lovely but there's still the fact the two of you really need to talk and the next time that he drives you home you turn to him and ask to talk.

"Eddie, so much has happened and I need to know what we are, I'm confused. One minute you're blowing hot and cold and now you...

Eddie intertwines his fingers with yours "I miss you" he murmurs and you're confused.

"But you said this was just sex. Nothing has changed" he swallows and his brown eyes soften when they look at you.

"That's what I thought, but not anymore, I miss being with you" you've dared to hope before and got your heart broken. You can't keep doing this to yourself.

"You miss the sex" you murmur and he shakes his head looking frustrated.

"Yeah I do because it's fucking mind-blowing princess but I miss you. Being with you, your giggles and your sweetness and just you. I miss you" oh. Well fuck.

Could he not have realised this any sooner, you wipe away your tears and hesitantly step forward and slip your hand through Eddie's. He tightens the hold and brings your hand up to his lips, kisses over your knuckles softly.

"Munson. You have shitty timing" you joke but there is a tiny bloom in your chest of elation.

"I know, I could have figured my shit out way sooner princess but I want this to work. I'm serious" you can tell and squeeze his hand.

"No more fuck ups. I mean it Eddie" you warn him and he gives you a sweet smile.

"Milady, you will be spoiled rotten and treated like the princess you are" his eyes are full of reverence and you can tell he means it.

"Well my brave knight, take me to your castle" he obliges and you head off to his.

💞

Six months later.

"Eddie be serious" you giggle as he trails off from where he was reading you The Hobbit and kisses you, peppers kisses over your forehead and cheeks then your lips.

"Can I help it that my girl is so beautiful and I want to kiss her all the time?" Charmer. You snuggle closer to him and he strokes your hair,

"Love you princess" he says as he holds your gaze and he makes your heart soar and gives you that pesky butterflies, giddy feeling.

"I love you too Eds" he's still smiling, all cute dimples and sweetness. There's a storm outside and it adds to the cozy atmosphere as you snuggle closer to him and he continues to read to you.

Six months since the day you gave Eddie a second chance and every day feels like heaven.

💞💞

[mrsokkotsu]

ಣ ˖ ࣪࿐ྂ 𝓰𝓾𝓪𝓻𝓭𝓲𝓪𝓷 𝓪𝓷𝓰𝓮𝓵 𓈒 ˖ ࣪

yūta okkotsu x f!reader . sfw — hurt comfort. established relationship ﾉ heavy, heavy tw ; for self harm slash self destruction slash self mutilation :c ﾉ flower imagery is used tew portray da inflicted wounds ﾉ reader has a meltdown ﾉ slight religious imagery in da way yūta is compared tew dat of an angel here 'n there ﾉ non — sexual nudity i.e. yūta gives reader a warm bath tew soothe her ﾉ yuta tends tew reader's wounds ﾉ da ending is a happi one, not tew fret ! ! ﾉ note : dis piece is extremely self — indulgent . . pwease do b kind tew mi, i wrote dis for m' own comfort . . (⸝⸝o̴̶̷᷄ ·̭ o̴̶̷̥᷅⸝⸝) ❤︎ - reupload frm an old blog of mine . .

you pick at your skin, gnaw at the flesh and peel it back in thin strips. blots of crimson well and burst forth from the wounds, drip down your arm in fat globs, splatter messily onto the pristine sheets of your bed and bloom across the fabric like wild flowers. a garden is sewn onto your arm, and your hands are the bloodied thorns that prick at the skin, that dig deep and pull at the fibres to make way for more pretty buds of red to spring forth. the sight is grotesque, and yet— you're enthralled. it's a morbid form of self expression, you think. the pain is a sweet burn and the sight is a masterpiece.

bared before the world like a raw nerve, your is soul stripped to the bone, the hideous parts of you spilling out and splashing the earth, staining the soil a muddy marron. the petals of the flower that is you are pulled apart one by one by a cruel hand, the stamen ripped free and left to rot, until there's nothing left but the naked bulb. the core of you, a hollow chamber with a heartbeat, pulsating, beating. it's a heart that's been crushed and mangled and beaten, and yet, somehow, it still thumps.

you can't stand the sight of the ugliness of your insides, the revulsion that curdles deep in the pit of your stomach, the sickening feeling of your heart's remains leaking and smearing all over your organs, and so you decide to take matters into your own hands.

with a sharpened piece of glass, you begin the work of slicing away the parts of you that are rotten. you're careful not to cut too deep, just enough for the blood to bubble and dribble out, the flesh beneath thinly sliced and weeping a steady stream of red. the material is cold against your skin and the blade is a welcome caress. its serrated edge kisses your wrist and nips at the sensitive skin, a lover's touch. each incision is a cathartic release, the ache a purifying baptism.

there is something so wonderfully therapeutic about the act of self mutilation, a sense of liberation that comes from taking the knife in hand and hacking away at the pieces of you that are diseased.

but your euphoria is short lived, and soon enough the adrenaline wanes and the high melts away, leaving behind a mess of broken, bleeding skin and the crushing reality of what you've done. the shame sets in and the fear begins to fester. a pitiful sound of anguish slips past your lips, and you find yourself falling to pieces. your tears fall freely, a torrential rainfall that batters your cheeks and floods the crevices of your mouth.

salty and bitter, they taste of regret. you're disgusted with yourself, and the urge to cut, to maim, to mar is strong, the craving a beast that gnaws hungrily at your gut. the glass sings sickeningly, and the sharp glint of the edges beckon you, seductively whispering your name. you want to scream, to claw and rend the skin from your bones, to rip yourself apart until you're a mangled heap of sticky nectar, stems, and roots. but you're tired, and so, instead, you fall to your knees, a supplicant before the altar of your despair.

your body shakes with the force of your sobs, and your throat feels like it's been scraped raw, your vocal cords bruised and battered. you're a wailing mess, your sounds so loud they crescendo into a high pitched shriek that would put a banshee to shame. the noise is a discordant cacophony, and it grates harshly against your ears, the shrillness causing the hair on the back of your neck to stand on end.

the cries could split the earth apart and rain hellfire upon the world.

and, perhaps, if you had a modicum of self-awareness, you would realise the magnitude of your sorrow, the enormity of the pain that has consumed you and call out for him yourself.

but, alas, the fog in your mind is too thick, the haze clouding your judgement and rendering you blind. so, when you hear the frantic footfalls and the familiar voice calling out your name, you can only assume that it's a figment of your imagination. it's nothing but a delusion conjured up by your shattered psyche, a cruel trick played on you by the remnants of your sanity, a final farewell from the ghost of your better self— a parting gift before your descent into madness.

however, when strong arms wrap around you and the smell of sandalwood and cinnamon fills your nose, you know that it's not a mirage.

a halo of light surrounds him, and he's the picture of ethereal grace, the embodiment of celestial beauty. his skin is a radiant canvas, his hair a crown of stardust, his eyes two pools of liquid boleite. you wonder what you must look like to him, a wilted flower with crumpled petals and torn leaves— a pitiful sight, indeed.

a part of you is mortified at the thought of him seeing you in such a state, but a larger part is glad, for your saviour has arrived. and you need him, desperately.

a quiet sob escapes his lips when he sees the carnage that has been wrought upon your skin. yuuta's own eyes well up with salty brine, and he cradles your battered form in his arms, gently stroking the unmarred parts of your body in a bid to comfort you. rainfall pitter-patters against your face— his tears, warm and heavy and laden with the weight of a concern so great it could rival the ocean's depths. they slide down your cheeks and mix with the remnants of your own, a river of shared sorrow, a bridge made of mutual empathy.

you are his heart's greatest treasure, and the sight of you broken and bleeding is enough to cleave him in two. his heart aches, and his soul cries out for yours. how he longs to take away the hurt, to absorb your pain into his own body and carry the burden of your suffering for you. but he knows he cannot.

alternatively, he does the next best thing. he vows to help you mend, to piece together the fractured shards of your soul and glue them back together with his love, the adhesive a potent concoction of soft spoken words, tender caresses, and warm embraces. he promises to be there for you, to walk alongside you on your path to recovery, to hold your hand and guide you through the darkness.

and, above all else, he pledges to love you— to cherish and treasure you, to show you the depth of his devotion, the unfaltering strength of his adoration, the infinite reaches of his regard for you. this, he will do until the end of time, and beyond that. even after his mortal coil has dissolved into dust, and his spirit has faded from existence, his love for you will remain, a phantom echo of a bygone era, a memory kept safe in the annals of history.

in a low voice, the young man calls out your name, a plea for you to look at him. though it takes a herculean effort, you do. you're met with the sight of his face, pale as a sheet, his expression tinged with grief. he's shaken to the core, the sight of your mutilated flesh a knife to his heart. your lips tremble and his own curl downwards into a frown. how cruel it is, to be faced with the grim reminder of the fragility of life, the vulnerability of the human condition, the impermanence of all things.

his hands shake as they clasp your own, his grip soft, yet firm, the contact grounding. a shaky breath leaves his lips, and he presses them to your knuckles, a prayer of thanks to the god above for allowing you to survive the ordeal.

your fingers twitch beneath his, and he brings them to his face, a silent invitation for you to touch him. his skin is smooth, and the planes of his features are sharp, chiselled to perfection, his visage comparable to a statue carved from marble. his eyes are wide and filled with trepidation, and his eyebrows are furrowed, creased with worry.

the tears still flow freely, and they dampen your fingertips, the pads of them smearing salty trails across his cheeks. you brush away the droplets and cup his face, a gesture meant to soothe him, to reassure him that you're here, alive, despite the physical (and mental) wounds.

it seems to work, somewhat, and his body sags in relief, the tension in his muscles dissipating. however, he's not entirely at ease. his heart still hammers in his chest, and his breathing is shallow, his chest rising and falling rapidly. it's a struggle to remain calm, but he does his best, for your sake. his voice is a tremulous whisper, and his words come out in a stuttering rush, his tone tinged with the panic.

he speaks of his fear, the dread that had settled like lead in his stomach when he'd first seen the state you were in. his voice breaks as he recounts his terror, the sheer terror at the thought of losing you. a shudder runs through him, and his digits clench around yours, a desperate plea for you to stay, to never leave him.

the prospect of living in a world without you is an unfathomable one, an idea so absurd it causes a bitter laugh to tumble from his lips. for without you, the world would lose its luster, its vibrancy, its life. the colours would fade, and the air would be suffocating, the grief a heavy shroud that would drape itself over the land.

yuuta is certain that, were such a fate to befall him, he would follow suit, his spirit crumbling into ash and dust. his very essence would disintegrate, the threads that bind him to this world coming undone, and his soul would be adrift, aimlessly wandering the realms of the beyond.

your voice is hoarse and strained as you reply, the syllables heavy, your mouth feeling as if it were filled with cotton.

you apologise profusely, the words spilling forth, a deluge of regret and remorse. the shame threatens to swallow you whole, and your vision blurs with fresh tears, the guilt a vice around your throat. but before you can descend further into self loathing, yuuta cuts you off.

his tone is stern, yet his touch remains gentle, his fingers brushing away the wetness that stains your skin. he admonishes you lightly, reminding you of the importance of your life, the preciousness of your being, the irreplaceability of your existence.

you're a miracle, he says, a blessing sent from the heavens above. you see much irony in the statement, as a halo could not be far off from encircling his head. a divine aura emanates from him, and he radiates light, the warmth of the sun itself. you're not sure if it's his natural disposition or the result of the proximity between you two, but yuuta glows.

if it weren't for your rosey liquid tainting his unblemished flesh, you'd almost say he was a seraph.

a soft, wet sound comes from him, and your focus is pulled from his visage and down to where he's holding your wrists. you watch as the young man licks his lips and presses them to the tyrannised flesh, a balm for the hurt.

sticky droplets of nectar cling to the corners of his mouth, but he pays no mind to the metallic tang. rather, he continues his ministrations, peppering feather light kisses over every inch of skin he can reach, his touch a whisper against the abused area. he's careful not to agitate the wounds, and he's delicate in his handling of you, his movements deliberate and slow.

when he pulls away, he looks at you, and his eyes are full of love, a compassion that could melt the coldest of hearts. it's a look that speaks volumes, and it's more eloquent than any words could ever hope to be. his gaze conveys the depth of his feelings, the true nature of his devotion, the unparalleled ardency of his emotions. he loves you, completely and wholly, and he's willing to show it, in every way he can.

his fingers ghost over the marks, tracing the lines, the gashes, the incisions, his digits dancing across the planes of your body, before he finally rises and scoops you up into his arms, careful not to jostle your injuries. ponderous drips of crimson fall from your open wounds and splatter onto the floor, a gruesome trail marking the path he takes as he carries you out of the room.

a single glance is all it takes for him to discern the severity of your condition, and, without missing a beat, yuuta sets his sights on the bathroom, his steps purposeful and sure. you're trembling in his arms, the adrenaline having worn off completely, leaving you a weak and shivering mess. the pain is intense, a pulsing sting that throbs and radiates outward, the agony spreading throughout your body. you can feel the blood oozing out of the lacerations, the sensation nauseating, the coppery scent invading your nostrils and causing bile to rise in your throat.

yuuta's movements are prudent as he places you on the rim of the bathtub, the ceramic cold beneath your thighs. you watch as he fiddles with the faucet, the water rushing out and filling the basin with a dull roar, the sound echoing off the tiled walls and reverberating in your ears. the young man tests the temperature, adjusting it until it's just right, before shutting off the flow. steam rises from the surface, and the mirror fogs over, a milky haze obscuring your reflection.

yuuta helps you strip off your soiled garments, his fingers working deftly as he removes the offending items, tossing them aside without a second thought. he guides you into the tub, the warm water lapping at your skin and turning a shade of pink as it mingles with your inside honey.

you whine at the initial contact, the ache a searing sensation that has you screwing your eyes shut. but it soon abates, and you relax into the embrace of hot curls and bubbles, your body going limp as the heat seeps into your bones. your muscles unclench and the knots loosen, the tension easing out of your system. the stress melts away, and the weight of the day's events is lifted from your shoulders.

you sigh in relief, and yuuta takes that as a sign to proceed.

he's methodical as he cleans you, his hands working efficiently, washing away the grime and the filth, the residue of your misery. your vital fluid mixes and swirls together with the adam's ail, forming intricate patterns prior to being whisked down the drain. the pigment slowly disappears, and the water returns to its transparent state, the only remnants of the incident the scars that have been left behind.

yuuta's touch is a gentle caress, and his strokes are soothing, the pressure just right. the suds slide down your skin, the foam a tickle, bubbles bursting into tiny clouds as a silken cloth wipes the last part of your pain away.

you can feel the love behind each pass, the fondness and attention that goes into each motion, the affection that percolates from his fingertips. the intimacy is overwhelming. so overwhelming in fact, that you can't help but bleat, the tears beginning anew.

unlike before, though, these are tears of joy. the euphoria that comes with being cared for, with being cherished and appreciated, is a bliss unlike any other.

you're grateful, immensely so, for the privilege of being in his presence. maybe, just maybe, you've been too blinded by the smother of your purgatory to truly comprehend the immensity of your partner's proclivity towards you, his unflagging loyalty and commitment to you, his unfaltering faith in you. it's a sobering realisation, and the epiphany strikes you hard.

you're reminded of the fact that he's your paramour, not in name, but in heart and soul. the affirmation is a salve for the punctures that have been imposed upon you, an unction for the fissures that have ruptured your heart. and you thank him copiously, a string of garbled words that leave your lips, a jumbled mess of indebtedness and appreciation. your speech is nonsensical, the sounds melding together and blending into one, the syllables running into each other and forming a singular unit, an amalgamation of vowels and consonants.

but he understands, and he smiles, a smile so beautiful it makes the sun seem so bleak in comparisson. the brilliance is blinding, and it has you blinking back stars, the radiance burning your retinas. but you don't look away.

how could you? how could you, when it's a smile that makes the world stop spinning, the planets halt in their orbits, the constellations freeze in place, the galaxy hold its breath.

the climbing, prickly plant that squeezed your insides, coiled around your intestines, and strangled the life from you has finally blossomed into something sweet. it's an explosion of colour, a profusion of aromatic petals, a display of vibrant hues. the nectar that flows from your core is honeyed, a sap of saccharine ambrosia. and it tastes like hope, like happiness.

your heart flutters, a hummingbird's wings flapping erratically against your ribcage, the palpitations causing your pulse to race. it's a pleasant feeling, a warmth that spreads through your veins and permeates every fibre of your being, the euphoria a tingle in your extremities.

who knew that the remedy for all ills could be found in the shape of a gorgeous boy with a big heart?

who knew that the cure for all wounds could be found in the form of a loving, caring soul who just so happened to be yours?

and who knew that the key to feeling whole again could be found in the hands of someone who looked at you as if you were worth more than the world itself? you, certainly not, before today. yet, the evidence is irrefutable.

as you sit there, bathed in his love, the wounds on yourself forgotten (regardless of the buzz that lingers), you can't help but think that, perhaps, you've found a reason to stay. a reason to live. a reason to continue walking this path, hand in hand with him.

the journey of existence, though long and arduous, seems less daunting now. for, as you gaze into the depths of his eyes, you can see a future. a future full of possibilities, a life rich in meaning, a chance at joy. it's a prospect that excites you, and the thought of exploring it together with him, by his side, swells within you a feeling of elation.

you can't express it properly, the enormity of the emotion too big, so you lean up and capture his lips with yours, water splashing and drenching his attire as you throw your arms around him. the kiss is an explosion of colours, the palette merging into one another and forming a rainbow of shades. it's a kaleidoscope of emotions, a prism of sensations, a mosaic of sentiments and an ode to your love. it's everything you've ever wanted to say and more.

and, by the way yuuta returns the gesture with a passion and vigour, you know he understands.

after all, they say actions speak louder than words. and what could be a more succinct, yet expressive, form of communication than a kiss? for, in that single act, you convey all the things you can't seem to find the words for, all the emotions you struggle to verbalise. it's a language all its own, and it's one he can speak fluently. a language you two have mastered together, a dialect of love.

[miseryenglishrose]

Do you know what it means to not believe in God? Everything is pointless, no great beyond to thank or pray to. You lose hope and you got nothing but your shaky legs to pull you up. Do you know what it means to lose everything you ever cared for? For most of your life it was just rusty metal parts and people who spoke of peace as if it was a dirty word. A caress that echoed like a slap, the sting of leather on your back.

And then there she is. On the other side of the Atlantic, saving you again and again and again as if you're worth it. You, who denounced her like Peter did to Christ not because you don't love her but because you always thought that a rotten thing like you was doomed to never hold something blooming like her.

You found something in France. Yes, you did; like a castaway on a deserted island. You thought you were born to follow and for the first time you got to lead; not pretending to be something. That you're not; a weapon and an open wound at the same time. You saw a boy who never knew of pain and thought that if you kept him pure then maybe a part of you would heal.

And still, you didn't believe in God.

It only took her again to raise your eyes and thank the invisible. You forget about the blood in your hands, the next battle, the ghosts in your head. She is the miracle, you would fall to your knees for. And she is there, not in a dream but in front of you. A body to hug, a hand to hold, a shirt to grab on to. Real. She is bones and blood and a pumping heart.

No, you never believed in God and you don't think you'll ever will; but if this life has taught you something, if you believe in one thing, then it's her. It's always going to be her.

Carol.