#t // medieval setting
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❝ the start of an age ❞ author: @parkitaco
link: archiveofourown.org/works/46119475
personal blog || submit a story || support me on ko-fi 🌈
#📚#byler#byler fanfiction#byler fic rec#will byers#mike wheeler#stranger things#r // general#r // one-shot#r // finished#r // 30k+#t // fantasy#t // royalty#t // au#t // medieval setting#t // arranged marriage#t // secret relationship#t // will has powers#t // plot driven#w // blood#w // abuse#w // period typical homophobia#w // period typical sexism
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started with it would be really cool and fun to give t-ohm a mace
#latest in the saga of what if the space horses were in a medieval-like setting#she's a barbarian now :)#t-ohm#described in alt
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…not to get back on my bullshit in the rbs but can someone please tell Sam that he’s Grendel. He has absolutely no idea what he even is, and as a medieval scholar I just,,,,
Jesus OP this panel jumpscared me so hard I almost cracked a molar
1000000/10 comic. I’m in pain
The Tomb of Galahad
*S8 trials Sam
#Spn#Sam Winchester#Sam meta#Sammy tag#SAMMY :D#SAMMY T-T#aaaaaaa#screaming crying throwing up rattling the bars of my enclosure biting people going feral#YOU GET IT OP#Grendel#Beowulf Studies#Beowulf#Medieval Studies#<extra good spnposts get the academia tags#aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa *explodes*#yes I’m aware that Arthuriana was recorded long after Beowulf but they’re both SET in the 500s ok
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vampire Rhaenyra this, vampire Rhaenyra that, WHAT ABOUT VAMPIRE ALICENT GUYS !?
[I.D The image depicts Vampire Alicent and human Rhaenyra in a sort of embrace. Alicent, behind Rhaenyra, is drinking blood from her shoulder, with blood dripping down to Rhaenyra's collarbone. Alicent's left hand, adorned with a red jewelled ring on her pinkie, rests on Rhaenyra's opposite shoulder. Both are dressed in medieval-style gowns. Rhaenyra's dress is red with silver embroidery details on her collar and sleeve. Whereas Alicents dress is blue with what we can see small golden embroidery on her sleeve. Rhaenyra leans forward slightly, her white hair flowing to the side as she rests one hand on a table, where a matching green jewelled ring is visible on her pinkie. Their right hands are intertwined on Rhaenyra's waist, showcasing matching gold bands on their ring finger, while Rhaenyra wears a silver ring on her index finger, engraved with the letter "T." The scene is set against a dark, moody background, with soft lighting illuminating the figures from the bottom left. END I.D.]
#my art#art#fanart#hotd#house of the dragon#rhaenyra targaryen#hotd fanart#asoiaf fanart#rhaenyra x alicent#alicent hightower#rhaenicent#vampire#vampire!alicent#medival au#i think?
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the great war
❝Because the greatest war Seungcheol had ever waged was against your heart.❞
historical! au | enemies to lovers! au | smut, fluff | 41k words
s u m m a r y : there was only one thing you hated more than your restricted life, and that was choi seungcheol—the greatest venetian general who has ever lived. when a marriage is arranged between the two of you, you were sure it would end in bloodshed. however, as you and seungcheol are forced to attend balls and share a few hard truths, you realise you have more in common with the mysterious general than you thought.
c o n t e n t : military commander! seungcheol, noblewoman! artist! mc, artist! minghao, artist! soonyoung who are both annoying (affectionate), cheol and mc absolutely hate each other because i need to see proper e2l, cheol has a scar on his lip (yes this needs a separate warning), this is set in renaissance venice so there will be many artist references, the doge = basically ruler of venice, themes of sexism, constant arguing between mc and cheol, there is fluff, also angst mature warnings -> tons of sexual tension, making out fuelled by hatred, cheol calls you carrissima (which personally i find very hot) fingering, oral sex (f. receiving), unprotected sex (only because medieval contraception is horrendous), petnames cheol says some vile things during the deed, slight corruption kink
p l a y l i s t : dangerous woman by ariana grande || war of the hearts by sade || love is stronger than pride by sade || i don’t understand but i luv u by seventeen
t a g l i s t : at the bottom of the fic!
a u t h o r ’ s n o t e : hi hello thank you everyone for waiting for this monster fic!! thank you alice and addy for being the reason i finished this fic, thank you chia for creating a beautiful picture of general! cheol, and greatest thanks to choi seungcheol the man you are </3 i hope you all enjoy this fic as much as i enjoyed writing it <33
WHEN THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC DEFEATED THE OTTOMANS ONCE AND FOR ALL, EVERY CITIZEN—BE IT PEASANT OR THE RICHEST ARISTOCRAT—KNEW WHO WAS BEHIND THAT VICTORY.
His name sparked life into the deathly, cramped streets. Whispers and cheers carried along the murky lakes, the rushed streams underneath the city, lapping up to the cobblestoned shore—entering the ears of marketeers, patricians, nuns, prostitutes, everyone. Wherever one went, the commander’s name rang like the dozen church bells, scattered throughout the lake-locked lands.
The buzz in the air was more frantic this afternoon, though, because the victors’ party was finally returning to the state.
Finally returning home.
You, despite your family’s excitement, despite your connections to the man behind the success of it all, could not have cared less.
“Oh, stop it!” you heard your friend exclaim, nearly toppling over his easel from sheer disbelief.
“What? You merely asked, brushing a small grey shade upon your canvas. You cast a quick glance at the model in front of you—bare save for red silk covering her thighs, cloth falling to the floor from the pedestal she sat upon. “So what if I care little for the general?”
“See, now you are lying to tease me!” the young man crowed, black hair flickered with paint you sprayed an hour ago. He set his wooden palette down, crossing his arms. “The greatest commander Venice has seen since her birth, and you say you care little?”
“You know I never lie to you, Hao,” you began, knowing that alone was a fib—your dear friend’s snort was confirmation enough. “I simply do not understand the excitement!”
“Of course you would say that, though,” another man chipped in, tugging on his dirtied leather trousers beside you. “His uncle and your father are childhood friends, no?”
You nodded, sighing as you continued painting. “I have seen this man all my life, and every conversation I have leads to fighting. Did you know he tattled on me every time I snuck out? Painted in the house?”
“Yes, we do, because you never shut up about it,” Minghao jeered, rolling his eyes as he dusted his hands. “To be quite frank, I would tell on you too if I was forced in your presence.”
Knifing the man with a glare, you said, “Perhaps I should inform your mother that her dear son is playing with oil paints rather than praying in the Basilica.”
“Oh, shit!” the other man snickered. “Does she think you are in church right now?”
“You talk as if you were not supposed to accompany me, Soonyoung,” Minghao muttered. “We both were caught with the prostitutes.”
“My God,” Soonyoung murmured as he finished tying his shoes. “Mama is going to kill us.”
“You both better hurry then,” you chanted, fixing another detail of the model’s face.
“As if your father has not hired guards to find you in every corner.” The elder of the two snatched your paintbrush, spraying a little oil paint on the picture.
“Oh my God!” you shouted, ready to start a brawl in the artists’ studio when he interrupted you.
“Go back to the Doge’s Palace before Minghao and I get our arses handed to us again,” he said, wiggling a finger at you. “I refuse to be blamed for your antics.”
“Fine,” you said, setting your palette down, looking over your progress. “But only because I am your dear, merciful, awe-inspiring friend.”
Minghao clicked his tongue. “Perhaps we should follow the general’s tendencies and tattle on you too.”
“You would not dare!”
The bastards only laughed, mocking a salute before stumbling out of the studio, arm in arm. Still drunk from the night before.
You supposed you should return to your manor, in case your father was truly on the hunt.
Thanking the model profusely, you stored your easel in your side of the studio, a place you had rightfully earned alongside your peers. The place was filled with unfinished paintings, bursts of colour in every corner of the workshop—the palettes, oil paint mixed upon its surface, models either nude or adorned in the finest garbs of the season. The studio was never quiet, bustling with orders in Venetian for more paint or the models to stand or sit or scream in a certain manner. You adored the chaos. The anarchy of the colours, the rivalry of the artists, the love-struck sighs of the sitters as they observed their image.
This was your home. This was your sanctuary, your domain.
This was your life.
A sharp exhale escaped you.
If only they would understand.
Grabbing your satchel, you brought out your nun’s gowns. Making sure that none watched, you quickly rid yourself of your painter’s garb, adorning the black and white dress. Catching sight of the mirror on the clothed walls, you fixed the veil upon your head, hiding your hair underneath the fabric. Picking off any specks of dried paint, you nodded at yourself.
Satisfied, you turned to your colleagues, who dipped their heads in adieu, always entertained by your costume. Shaking your head, you exited the huge studio, and out onto the streets.
The stench of Venice never failed to make you scoff, wiping your nose as you set on your path back. Thousands of men and women from every corner of the world were in the middle of your journey, hearing bargaining voices in Venetian, Florentine, Milanese—your ears picked up a little Greek gossiping, Turkish joking, Arabic storytelling, dialects you could not name. Even though it was a Sunday, the city was still bustling, the cramped streets unable to breathe with this many people journeying on the cobblestone.
You were relieved to wear the nunnery gowns when you saw some noblewomen being stared at cruelly by the majority patricians who roamed Saint Mark’s Square. You almost rolled your eyes—patricians, the important men of the state—always in women’s businesses.
Imagine if they caught you like this.
You did not want to ponder over it.
The stroll back to the palace was not far; the Doge’s Palace they called it, but it seemed like a residence for kings. Overlooking the waters, gondola boats were lined across its side as its white columns held up the great building, white and gold squares shining amongst the other grand sites of the Square. You walked to the back of the estate—looking around frantically, you made sure no one recognised you as you slipped in from the many entrances. The guards were there, but none would refuse entry to a woman of God.
The inside of the Palace was even grander than the outside—the halls were airy, spacious, ceilings reaching to the sky as they foretold stories of the Bible, painted by various art geniuses of Italian origin. You did not take time to admire the images, though, a little concerned that the sun was setting, and you promised your father that you would return by this time. Plus, you needed to free yourself from these robes.
Your private chambers were at the very top of the palace, so the dozens of stairs had robbed you of your strength, wheezing as you hurriedly made your way to the doge’s private residences.
There. Your door was not far. You could see it clearly, your feet picking up the pace, your hands reaching out for the ornate knob attached—
You glanced at the knob, further in the doorway.
The door was ajar. Open.
The most unladylike curse escaped you.
If your father went inside, you were undeniably done for.
You closed your eyes, stepping inside the room. Your mouth parted to spew the sweetest apologies, ready to bend knees to ask forgiveness.
A scoff entered your ears, then, and the hairs at the back of your neck perked up.
“Who let the she-devil wear the Lord’s robes?”
Your eyes flew open.
There, in the middle of your bedchamber, stood the most important man in the Venetian Republic.
General Choi Seungcheol quirked a brow at your appearance, and you thought the angels would extract your soul right there and then.
Unfortunately, his own appearance was never lacking—he was adorned in his signature midnight armour, matching his hair, a little longer than you last remembered, curling over his ears. A velvet cape, clipped at his right shoulder, flowed like wine upon his frame, tumbling to your carpet where it rested at the point of his longsword, glinting white from the descending sun. His hands settled on its grand pommel, swirls of red and gold spreading to its wide guard. His eyes, as dark as coals, regarded you like an enemy on the battlefield—assessing, sizing you up.
“His Excellency never informed me of you taking the vows. Perhaps it was as I suspected.”
His decision was made when a wry smile coiled his lips, a scar cutting through them. A full on offensive.
“Only God can fix you.”
That comment had you swooping down to reality. Instantly you stiffened. “It truly is a dire shame to see you alive. I was hoping the Turks would gut you on the battlefield.”
You set your satchel down, mocking a ponder. “No, sinking your ship would have suited you. No one to drag your rotting body out of the ocean.”
“Three years apart from you, and you still remain the most charming lady.” He cocked his head, a few curls falling across his forehead.
“Is this any manner to treat your oldest friend?”
You pursed your lips.
Oldest friend.
Damn him to Hell and beyond. This man was anything but your friend. He was very aware of that too.
He raised a hand, gesturing towards your outfit. “Allow me to guess…these poor, holy robes were used as mere disguise?”
You tried your best to hide your guilt. “Maybe I have joined the convent. It is not as if you have spent your time here to know of my business, despite your every effort of finding out.”
“Oh?” He then glanced at the door. “I should ask His Excellency then, and congratulate him for finally locking you up.”
He sheathed his sword, making a step towards the door but you were quick, barring him from exit. “You will do no such thing,” you hissed, and the victorious curl of his mouth had you wishing all Venetian men returned to the war and died.
“Why is that?” he leaned in, and you were certain you could smash your head against his—of course, he was likely to evade your clumsy effort—it would be meaningful to at least try. “But you defended yourself so perfectly! Your father deserves to know.”
“Ten years of military service failed to beat the gossip out of you.” You matched his shit-eating expression. “Go, then. Run to my father like you did as a child. You will always remain his little baby, even at your age.”
That must have stung, because his smirk faltered. His eyes did not leave yours, and you had a slight feeling he would take out his sword and cut you in half.
But of course, you were the daughter of his dear patron, too important a woman, despite being a woman. So he only exhaled sharply through his nose, colliding against your shoulder as he pushed past your figure, thundering to the door.
You were not letting him escape so easily. “Why were you in my room?” you demanded.
He paused at the doorway. “His Excellency asked to bring you to him and his guests.” He looked over his shoulder. “He was not aware that his daughter was sneaking out, going God knows where.”
Before you could snap back, he left the room, hearing his boots thump in the distance.
You watched the empty doorway for about a minute.
And then, with all the rage you could muster, you kicked your satchel as hard as you could.
The poor bag went flying, spilling out your canvases that scattered across the floor.
It was as you said.
Despite the man’s success, his favour, his glory, you could not have cared less about him.
But you were wrong.
It was not a lack of care about his existence.
This was a full care of eradicating his existence.
Because one day, despite your own lack of resources, lack of power, lack of influence, you were going to kill the Victor of Venice.
WHEN YOU FINALLY ARRIVED DOWN TO THE DRAWING ROOM, IT WAS NOT JUST YOUR FATHER THAT AWAITED YOU.
Seated on the opposite chairs, across from him, was the damned man you had met minutes prior, ankle-on-knee as his eyes darkened at your presence. The other man was his uncle, Councillor Choi, whose sudden rise to power was duly noted in the aristocratic circles. He was by custom donned in red patrician robes, a matching cap settled on his head. He smiled seeing you arrive, which you returned cordially.
Your father turned to see you, and he furrowed his brows. “What took you so long, cara?”
Getting out of nuns’ gowns was harder than you thought. “My apologies, father,” you said, standing beside him.
He did not seem to like this gesture today. “No, _____,” he began, pointing towards an empty seat beside Seungcheol’s uncle. “Today, you must honour Choi by sitting beside him.”
A little confused, you nonetheless obeyed, settling yourself next to the councillor. Extremely pleased, he turned to the man at the front. “Your Excellency, I am sure you know why my dear nephew and I are here.”
The general dipped his head in respect. “I could not go anywhere else before seeing the Doge, of course.”
The Doge—the leader of Venice, and the head of her state. Your father earned this position about ten years ago, around the same time Seungcheol joined the military, and rose straight to the top. It was custom for the leader of Venice’s legions to pay respects to the doge before celebrating victories, but he was always pleased to see the young commander. Unfortunately, your father was extremely fond of the man you despised.
“Oh, there must be no formalities with me, general,” your father mused. He then sent a knowing glance at the other elder man. “Especially this time round.”
Seungcheol laughed lightly. “No, no, count this as any other battle I have won for you.”
Councillor Choi smiled knowingly. “No, dear nephew. This informality surpasses this.”
Now he was confused too. You and him turned to the doge, who was all smiles. “Well,” he started, focusing on you both, “You two know of my lifelong friendship with Choi here.”
A pair of heads nodded hesitantly. “You see, we wish to…how do I say this…Ah!” He locked his hands together. “We wish to strengthen our bond in another way. In an alliance that will never be broken.”
That only furthered your puzzlement. The Doge sensed it. “Children, what I mean to say is…”
Councillor Choi stepped in.
Dropped a declaration which had every particle of air disappearing from the room.
“What His Excellency means to say is that you two are to be married in a few weeks.”
You blinked.
Stilled.
Felt the floor slip from beneath your feet.
Seungcheol’s voice entered your ears.
“What did you just say?”
Councillor Choi turned to the young man, who peered at him as if he had seen a ghost. ���You heard me correctly, Cheol.” His hands touched the arms of your and the commander’s chairs. “It is the perfect union. The greatest Venetian general who ever lived, and the daughter of the greatest Doge who led you. The public will rejoice at the news!”
“And what about the people who are involved?”
Your father studied you, who had finally gotten something out. “Well, it is I and his uncle who chose—”
“No,” you interrupted, turning your head to him. “I do not mean the families. I meant the two people you have dragged into this?”
“Cara!” he exclaimed, taken aback by your inquiries. “We did not think we had to ask your opinion on whoever I chose for you.”
A shuddered, enraged gasp escaped you.
You knew this.
You were aware of your lack of choice when it came to your marriage. Always, in the back of your mind, you were prepared to hand yourself over to some insipid nobleman, have his heirs, and separate, throwing yourself in your artistic passions. It was plausible. Women in your circles have achieved separate lives from their disappointing husbands, so you thought this would be your fate.
You had accepted that fate.
“Out of everyone in Venice…”
Slowly, you straightened out of the chair.
“You chose him?!”
Your accusatory finger pointed at the culprit—he, too, looked as if he could burn the Palace down. “You know how Seungcheol and I feel about each other!”
“Your conversations are akin to children bickering.” the Doge crossed his arms. “Usually it is you starting the fights.”
“What?!” you exclaimed. “Oh, so now I am to be punished with this awful union?! I refuse, Papa!”
Councillor Choi rose from his chair, raising his hands as if to steady your temper. “My lady, I understand your distress, but this is for the betterment of our families! You will find no other suitor as good as—”
“Enough.”
Seungcheol stood up from his seat—the grave expression had the elders pausing. “I cannot listen to this any longer.” He dipped his head to the Doge. “Your Excellency.”
His uncle watched him incredulously. “Cheol,” he muttered. “We have not finished this discussion.”
The general did not bother to return his gaze. Instead, his glare was upon you. “You already know my opinion on this…this marriage.”
With that, he stalked out of the room, crimson cloak trailing after his midnight boots.
You had a mind to follow his actions—there was nothing else to say. “Even your Victor despises the idea,” you spat.
“The Victor will be persuaded,” the councillor reassured you, as if you needed the reassurance.
Facing your father, you fisted your hands. “I cannot do this. I will not do this.”
The Doge narrowed his eyes at you. “We shall see about that.” He pointed to the door. “Now go! I have heard enough from you.”
Gritting your teeth, you marched out of the halls, leaving the elders alone.
As you thundered back to your chambers, you seethed through your ears, hands still clasped in tight fists.
A marriage to Choi Seungcheol. Choi Seungcheol.
You would have died than surrender to your mortal enemy.
How dare they ever concoct such a union? Everyone in the patrician circles was aware of your mutual hostility—even your father had commented on it numerous times in the past, before Seungcheol had left for the Ottoman campaign. Just when you thought you were rid of him, he was to be tied to you for eternity. You were aware that people did not live for a long time, but you would be damned if you had to spend even a second with him.
You could not get married to him.
Never.
DESPITE YOUR HARDEST EFFORTS TO ESCAPE, YOUR FUTURE WAS TIED TO THE FATEFUL UNION.
You were even planning, on one occasion, to escape the Palace—run away in your nun’s robes, join some travelling artists and leave Venice altogether. Your father had probably caught onto your intentions, though, because you noticed an increase of guards around the giant manor, and your every movement was watched with scrutiny.
The nerves were kicking in at this point. The prospect of marriage was becoming all the more real. You prayed to the Lord at the Basilica, hoping for a solution, begging for divine aid.
The heavens helped in the worst possible manner.
They answered in the Choi household’s response.
An acceptance from Seungcheol. An acceptance to the marriage.
Your first reaction was denial—there was no possibility in the world that would have him accepting the proposal. He hated the prospect as much as you did. He hated you as much as you hated him
Then why in Hell had he accepted?
The shock, eventually, was replaced with pure rage.
But, even with the world’s anger burning in your veins, there was no hope now. If the man had accepted, then there was no escape for you.
The wedding would proceed, whether you wanted to or not.
You remembered nothing of the event.
Everyone rejoiced at the grand affair—the Doge’s beloved daughter, finally married, and to the greatest man in Venice. The entire city was decorated in your father and the Choi’s family banners, locals to foreigners celebrating by sharing food and drink, dancing in the streets, and playing lively music loud enough for all of Europe to hear.
The ceremony was a blur to you; you were completely dazed in the past few weeks, remembering solely the landscapes you had painted in between the minute breaks you could find. A small part of you thought you were experiencing a nightmare, and that you just had to wake up, and everything would fall into place. Everything that was happening around you—the decorations, the preparations for the fated day—it was an act, a live scene in a city-sized theatre, and you the unaware actress.
You believed in this excuse till the end. Even on the day of the wedding, adorned in the finest silk gowns, ruffled collars and soft-coloured veils half-covering your face, you assumed it was a change of costume. Even when your father, dressed in his custom doge dress, led you inside Saint Mark’s Basilica, hundreds of the most important people in Europe gathered to witness the union, you assumed this was your audience.
It was when your eyes found the groom’s you realised everything was real.
Then, you remembered nothing at all.
You forgot kneeling beside the Victor as you both prayed to the Cross, shielded by solid gold columns and arches of the church. Your memory erased the vows, the hesitant I do to every question the vicar asked the both of you. Your mind eradicated the slight tears that welled your eyes, or the lack of any emotion in the general’s.
Both of you were doomed once the vicar declared you husband and wife.
The after-parties were even worse than the legal event.
All your family and friends drank their weight in wine as the two of you were forced in the centre of everything, rigid as statues as your people stumbled and fell around you. You never shared a single similarity with Seungcheol, but today you shared common ground. Both of you wanted to be away from this anarchy. The celebrations were done in the Doge’s Palace, but you would go to the Choi’s family manor the very next day, and begin your new life.
What topped the entire day was the wedding night.
The seal of the deal. To ratify the union.
To consummate this marriage.
Your fears had caught up to you—the theatre had come crashing down, the costume was in tatters, and the act was cut short. This was cruel, cruel reality, and now you had to give yourself up to the one man who would make your life a living nightmare.
Cursing the giggles and whispers of the ladies as they brought you to your chambers, now completely filled with flowers and pretty ornaments, ugly in your eyes at that very moment. Sweet and spicy wine had been laid on the bedside tables, more roses scattered on your four-poster bed, curtains drawn. Your servants then tried to have you untie your wedding dress, but one glare towards them, and they shrank back.
“I think she wants her new husband to do the honours,” one of the ladies mused, and you honestly believed you could have snatched the wine bottle and smashed it over her head.
The ladies soon hurried out, and you ripped out your collar, the veil, every little piece of the dress which suffocated you. You wanted to get out, sneak away like you always did in the dead of night to your studio, but tonight you feared you were stuck.
A few minutes passed, and thoughts of escape were almost becoming intangible when you heard the door open.
Seungcheol entered the room, and you stilled.
He was also wearing his wedding attire, but his cravat had been loosened, revealing a sliver of his neck. His curls were wild, as if he had been raking his hands through them. Even as a groom his sword was strapped at his side, the weapon absent at the actual ritual. You could have laughed at him if you were not so nervous—even on an apparent intimate night, he had only thoughts of murdering you.
His expression, on the other hand, revealed no humour.
You heard him sigh sharply, locking the door. That instantly had your nerves heightening. “Unlock the door,” you commanded, getting up from the bed. “I need to run away if you try to do something.”
“I shall have no drunk cousin or lecherous relative spying on us,” he refuted, stepping closer into the room.
“Spying?” your senses perked up. “Seungcheol, we are not doing anything worth spying on, do you understand?”
“What the hell do you mean?” he demanded, propping his gloved hands on his hips. He made to step closer to you but you raised your hand to stop him.
“I know a man has expectations,” you started, backing away from him, “Everyone expects us to seal the marriage, and I know that is the tradition, but I do not care…” you paused, and even the thought of such an action frightened you.
“If you try to touch me, Seungcheol, I will not hesitate to take your sword and stab myself with it.”
He parted his mouth to sneer, but he caught the look in your gaze. He had never seen such a promise ready to be fulfilled should your worst fears occur.
The man could not help but step back.
“Did you really think I would do that, _____?”
You smiled, albeit without any humour. “Well, first you declare that you would rather die at the hands of a Turk before marrying me, and here you stand as my husband.” You shook your head. “I cannot trust you.”
The accusation on his honour stung. “I stand by what I said. I did not want—do not want to marry you.”
“Then why did you say yes?!” you screamed.
He stood silent for a time, gritting his teeth.
It was the truth. Choi Seungcheol was the last man on earth who wished for your hand.
He, too, wanted to escape as the ceremony progressed. Even as you came into the church, dolled up in the height of fashion, he wished nothing more than to run out of God’s holy building, jump upon a gondola and row away from the city.
Despite his prowess, his popularity, his apparent undeniable power, he was unable to escape this marriage. There were exterior forces, beyond his control.
He said it to you truthfully.
“I was given no choice. I had to say yes.”
You did not believe him. “King of the Venetian military, the Republic’s favourite man and you could not control your choice of wife?” You wanted to laugh at him.
He could tell. “You would not understand,” he muttered, turning away from you. “All you have ever done is be a spoiled Doge’s daughter.”
That really ticked you off. “You have no idea what I have done for myself. You will never know of the burdens I carry for being a woman alone.” You crossed your arms, daring him to face you like a man. “All you have done is go to some foreign land and kill a few poor souls.”
Now that really ticked him off. “You speak of burdens as if I have none.” His voice dropping an octave had you blinking back. “You are not the only person who has struggled.”
You watched him as he finally deigned you a glance. There was something incredibly bleak in his usual stormy eyes. Not that you had never not seen him in a sour countenance, but this was possibly the first time you had seen him so hopeless.
“You are not the only person who has felt alone.”
A great part inside of you wished to cackle the ceiling down.
He should feel alone! You raged inside your mind, looking down at the ends of your wedding gown. He should feel something akin to loneliness so he could understand a fraction of your despair. The general was constantly surrounded by his men, his followers, hundreds of thousands of admirers from all over Europe.
You, on the other hand, had only yourself and your paint.
Even with that bitterness, no laughter spluttered from your lips.
You could only match his cruel stare, and hope he took you seriously.
A few more minutes passed before he sighed, taking off his loosened cravat from his neck, putting his sheathed sword on the set of drawers behind him. “We should sleep,” he said, stepping before the opposite side of the bed.
Watching his every move, you then shifted your gaze to the bed. “Yes…we should…”
His famous brow quirked inquisitively. “What are you thinking now?” he asked, clearly exasperated. He then continued dryly, “If you are still hesitant about the whole consummation, then I can assure you that I, too, would slice my head off if you suggested it.”
“Well, I am not suggesting it,” you muttered. “I am more puzzled about why you are getting into bed.”
His tiredness did not stop his stare turning sharp with sarcasm. “Because that is what a person does if they wish to sleep.”
“I am aware of that, thank you.” You put a hand to your chest. “But I wish to sleep as well, and I will be damned before I let you sleep in the same bed as me.”
Now his gaze turned mocking. “My God, you have some nerve saying such a thing.” He set the cravat down on the bedside table. “If you have a problem with me sleeping here, you can sleep somewhere else.”
“Excuse me!” you exclaimed, reaching out to clutch the bedsheets. “This is my bedroom. I have slept here my entire life!” You huffed, sitting on the plush mattress. “Besides, are you soldiers not accustomed to sleeping anywhere? I am sure my bedroom floor is a lavish upgrade from whatever hellsite you rested abroad.”
“Oh, you—” he brought his knee upon the bed, hands further placed as he leaned closer to you. “I care very little whether you have been sleeping here all your life. Your father brought me here, so I have a right to this space.”
You matched his vigour instantly, leaning just as close, sparking a fire in your expression. “And I care none if Papa brought you here—hell, if the Pope carried you to this very room.” His growing rage had no effect on your own. “Sleep. On. The. Floor.”
Mere inches away from each other, the general stared you down. Had the receiver of such a cruel eye been his soldiers, they would have run for the lakes, abandoned the army altogether. Seungcheol’s cold, calculating glares have had enemies shiver in their masses.
It irked him so ardently that his infamous tactics ceased to work on you.
He looked over your features: the manic, determined glint in your pupils, the flared nose, the pursed lips. No one, a woman, no less, had stood up to him like this.
Of course, he should not have been surprised. You had always been a sharp pain in his backside.
God, I cannot let her win, his voice rang, over and over in his head. She cannot have this over me.
But then he saw a glimmer in your usual mischievous gaze, and he knew you were about to commit a crime.
He was not wrong.
Because you did have an idea, and you smirked, fingers rising to the thin bow on the top of your dress.
Slowly, you began to untie the lace.
Seungcheol watched with no small amount of horror as your rigid wedding gown began to loosen at the top, its flared arms drooping around your shoulders.
You made to untie the second lace when he raised his hands, twisting his lips into a scowl. “What the hell are you doing?!” he demanded, getting off the bed.
“What does it look like?” You untied the string, dress falling further down till you needed your hands to hold it steady.
A single drop, and everything would be revealed.
The greatest general in the peninsula nearly squirmed at the thought.
Your fingers toyed with the last lace.
His eyes darted to your movements. Then, to your face, and you noticed the change of expression—it was as if he was thinking of a military strategy, a last-minute decision on the battlefield.
Once again, you pulled at the string.
But before the knot was fully untied you heard a savage growl escape his mouth.
“Oh, for God’s sake!”
Before you even let the dress fall, he swerved around, grabbing hold of his sword from the drawers. “Fine! Have your room!” The muscles on his back flexed as he raked a hand in his hair. “You are truly ridiculous!”
You could only laugh at the scene of him thundering to the door, vigorously unlocking it and storming out.
The laughter did not stop as you changed into your nightgown, shaking your head.
You did not care if Choi Seungcheol had become your husband.
You were not going to let anything about your life change.
AS IF THE ACTUAL WEDDING CELEBRATIONS WERE NOT ENOUGH, THE PATRICIANS WISHED TO SEE YOU BOTH AS AN OFFICIAL COUPLE.
You and Seungcheol never received a moment’s rest. It had been a mere week since the two of you were bound forever, but everyone wished to catch a glimpse of the newlyweds, the two most popular people in the Republic.
It was hard enough having to attend—what made it quite worse was that you and the general barely spoke to each other.
Seungcheol found solace in the war council, Venice’s position still unstable since its victory over the Ottomans. You supposed him avoiding you was an unlikely advantage, as it meant you could go wherever you wished in the daytime without him knowing.
It was not like you discarded the nun’s gowns either—what a man does not know will not hurt him.
Your dear friends, who had attended the wedding, harassed you for details of any intimacy between your husband, and with great disgust you rebuked any wild fantasies you were sure they had conjured up. You simply released your frustrations on new paintings, hoping your newfound circumstances would inspire your creativity.
“You can always paint the general as the god of war,” Soonyoung offered, admiring his own art, inspired by the mythology. “And you as Venus, his oh so smitten goddess.”
He was not met with any amusement. “I shall paint him as an ugly troll,” you pondered, creating the blue skies upon your giant canvas. “And I can be Diana, hunt him down and pierce him with my arrow!”
“Congratulations on your marriage, happy bride,” Minghao jeered, earning a good shove into his table of paints from you. Soonyoung, fearing further violence, resorted to laughing at his poor friend, turning to the model he drew.
Your friends were utter shits, but at least they knew you could handle their incessant bullying—still, they were unaware that you and the general remained separate in the bedchamber.
The separation continued for the next week, and you thought that a marriage can be convenient in the end. Seungcheol, minding his own business, investing his energies in the Republic; you, investing your heart and soul into your art.
However, all good things tend not to last.
The parties were upon the both of you in an instant, and invitations being sent from every patrician family in the city had to be answered. You would have outright refused to come had the Doge and Councillor Choi not pestered for a positive answer.
With the esteemed general not present to discuss it with, you read up on the ideal Venetian wife, and what she would do when mentioning an important matter.
And then did the exact opposite.
You were well versed on married female etiquette, but completely ignored it as you walked through Saint Mark’s square. It was unusual without your disguise, feeling more exposed—there were eyes on you everywhere. Any normal woman would have been tormented off the streets.
You, however, were the Victor’s wife.
Scowling at the fact, you entered the Choi’s Manor on the banks of the Lagoon, a beauty of black and white and gold swirling on the stone walls, sleek windows speckled all over the buildings. The grand doors were open once they saw your figure nearing, whispers of excitement at your entrance.
The large courtyard was bustling with servants, the scent of a rich lunch looming in the warm air. A housekeeper hurried to you, greeting formalities to you, and asked you if you needed any assistance.
“Yes, I am looking for General Choi, please,” you said, looking around the four sides of the manor, keeping you in. Faint clashes of steel-on-steel entered your ears the more you focused on your surroundings. “I was wondering if he was here.”
The housekeeper first giggled heartedly. “General Choi! My goodness, ma’am, such formality with your husband!”
You only offered a huffed laugh. “Yes, I suppose so,” you mumbled, because you could not enlighten her that you saw him more as an old pain-in-the-arse and less as a life partner.
“He is outside in the next courtyard, sparring with a soldier. Come, dearest, let me take you to him.”
She led you into the red-decked halls of the Choi Manor, recognising the face of the Councillor on the paintings, a few of his deceased wife. Interesting how Seungcheol was not in any of them.
Stopping at the edge of the exit, she gestured outside, the sound of swords much louder. “They must be finishing up by now.”
You thanked her as she left, watching her settle in the first courtyard before taking a deep breath.
You stepped into the second. The white cobblestone beneath your shoes was more polished, hurt your feet much less. Barrels were stacked against the walls, a few horses tied loosely on fences, waiting patiently for their owners. You first thought why on earth someone had horses in Venice, but a harsh clash of steel had your head whirling.
Your mouth parted, ever so slightly.
There he was. The commander of Venice, on the opposite side, sending his longsword upon his subordinate’s. The younger of the two staggered, quickly regained his composure, but your groom was faster. Seungcheol’s loose white shirt clung to his muscled body as he collided his sword again, matted black curls whipping along each rapid move.
He was not far from being faster than lightning—you had heard of his military prowess, but people always had a tendency to inflate their favourites’ achievements. Watching the general bring down the soldier’s barriers, slashing his opponent’s sword to the ground, and then making him surrender within a minute, was something else entirely. It was as if he had consumed the soul of Mars, and had, if only for a second, become the god of war.
You just had to admit it. Choi Seungcheol was a born warrior.
It did not help either that his irritatingly thin shirt revealed too much evidence of his warriorship.
You can always paint the general as the god of war.
Instantly you scowled.
He grinned widely upon his defeated soldier—you could not hear him, but you were sure he was teasing the man of his victory. Soon after, though, he held out his hand, and the soldier was up, pulling him in a side-embrace.
Quickly you cleared your throat, alerting your presence to the two men.
Seungcheol’s shrewd gaze latched onto you.
His smirk remained. “Do you wish to be next, my lady?”
A roll of eyes was reflex as you walked closer to him. “Never. I won’t let you kill me this easily.”
The opponent listened with eyes wide. “Cheol! How can you offer a sparring match to your wife?”
The general did not steer his gaze from you. “Believe me, Chan,” he said, “This woman before you is capable of a massacre.”
This Chan could only watch in horror as you smiled at your husband, void of any warmth. He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly feeling extremely uncomfortable between his commander and his wife. “I will go inside,” he announced to no one in particular and retired, a little haste in his step.
Seungcheol glanced at his subordinate before focusing on you. “To what do I owe this displeasure?”
“I had no burning desire to see you, either, Cheol,” you chirped, smug to see him scowl at the nickname. You brought out paper envelopes, a fraction of the dozens waiting at the Doge’s Palace. “Invitations. Our friends and family wish to see us.”
He took one from your hand, studying the family name. “Since when did you want to visit these people? I thought you despised patricians.”
“I do.” You then recalled a recent memory. “Father insists I go with you. He thinks it rude to not attend parties celebrated for us.”
He then studied you. “Since when did you care for the opinions of others?”
You raised a brow. “I do not.”
“Excellent.” He returned the invitation. “Then there is no need to go.”
But you were not satisfied. “I would have agreed with you—”
“Agreed with me?” he mockingly gasped, and you had to stamp on the urge to grab his sword and slice the smirk off his face. “My, my, what caused you to support my opinion? Has the Lord finally struck some good sense into you?”
“Is there not another war for you to die in?” you snapped.
“You can be the first to send me to my death should the war arise,” he merely offered, a phantom smile touching his lips. “Now tell me, why do you want to go to these awful parties?”
Your hands locked behind your back. “I was sent word from Councillor Choi.” The mention had Seungcheol pausing. “He asked whether you were the one insisting I decline invitations.”
This information had the man losing amusement. You noticed instantly. “Is there something amiss between the two of you?”
“Nothing of importance,” he said, but he was lying through his teeth. Since your childhoods you could never decipher his dishonesty—the bastard was damn good at deception. This very moment, though, it was startling how easily you read him.
He noticed your scrutiny, and waved it off with his hand, grabbing hold of his canteen. “We will go to a few parties.” He took a quick swig, setting it upon the barrel. “We can always leave early.”
You nodded, watching him take his longsword. “I was expecting you to argue with me,” he taunted. “Have I finally tamed the beast?”
“You could not even argue me out of my bed,” you remarked, turning on your heel. “Boast of something you have actually achieved.”
There you left him seething, you snickering to yourself as you exited the courtyard.
Finally tamed the beast?
You scoffed.
I shall see about that.
ALL THE PARTIES YOU ATTENDED FOR THE PATRICIANS WERE EVERY BIT AS HORRENDOUS AS YOU EXPECTED.
You and Seungcheol decided to attend the most important out of the invitations, but that still meant showing your faces for the dozen nights.
The first was done at the Doge’s Palace, courtesy of your father, and the sheer boredom of the formalities had you falling asleep mid-conversation. Still, you held out, knowing that your husband was nearby, gathering the attention of the most important men within that vicinity.
The nights did not stop there, though. The next party would then lose the formalities, and the more celebrations you attended, the wilder they became. The talk of politics over a glass of Tuscan wine became almost drunken brawls in the supposed dignified ballrooms. Members of your family and friends, who always vocalised etiquette and honour above everything else, became the centres of embarrassment when too much alcohol was consumed.
You would have found all of this incredibly entertaining had you not been forced to witness these events. At least Seungcheol was uncomfortable with the drunken anarchy around him, so you resorted to laughing at him instead.
Five parties of the same mayhem, and then it became too boring.
There were only so many times you could see the same families fight each other in the cool night air. There was only a limit to how much wine you could drink before it would be taken from you, and then you would spend the rest of the night exasperated.
It was in the sixth party that you decided to sneak out.
The plan was perfect—you knew that you could not escape too early, so you encouraged the guests to drink as much as their guts could manage, and watched as the chaos you quickened consumed the manor. You smiled to yourself as, within the third hour, you began to slip away from the party. The Venetian people were truly as foolish as you expected.
You hoped, though, that Seungcheol had not seen you, as he, unfortunately, was not a part of the foolish class. You cared little the more distance you created from the party estate, turning to your familiar, artistic haven.
The escape from the celebrations brought you relief of the highest order; it was nice to have other artists around as you paint, but having the studio to yourself in the middle of the night was a greater fortune. Your friends’ words were an inspiration, so you began to explore the possibilities of a mythology painting.
Every time a party occurred after that, you managed to escape the celebrations, finding solace in your workshop, the paints that covered your skirts, your hands as you bore your soul to the empty canvas. This act continued for a few more parties, you going unnoticed, and you were incredibly smug.
However, when Soonyoung invited you to his family manor, it was almost impossible to escape. Especially since you wanted to leave the moment you entered the estate, your husband right beside you, as eager to escape as you were.
The place was in chaos.
The lute players were in disarray, you suspecting they were half-drunk on wine, being handed out by servants in every corner. If you thought the previous parties were bad, the one the Kwon family held was another form of debauchery. There were courtesans, whispering to older patricians—widowed men, married men—seducing them for the latter part of the night.
When you and Seungcheol stepped further in, some of those feline eyes latched onto the man beside you. You glanced at him, but he was looking straight at Councillor Choi and the Doge of Venice, sitting at the very back of the hall.
Soonyoung was in the middle of the anarchy, cackling at some far-away anecdote of his cousin’s, downing a flute of wine before catching sight of you both. His smile lit up his entire face as he stumbled near you both, hands raised wide.
“Lord and Lady Choi!” he exclaimed to the crowd, his straight black locks matted with sweat—no doubt from the constant running around, acting the best, drunk host. “An honour to have you both here under my roof!”
He then hiccupped, leaning closer to you. “Well, my father’s more like, but what is his is bound to be mine!”
You straightened him with your free hand. “Soonyoung, you should be banned from ever drinking again.”
“God, what a spoilsport!” He rebuked, sliding his mischievous gaze to your husband. “General, you must silence your boring wife at once!”
The said man clicked his tongue. “The day I manage to shut her up is the day I truly deserve every medal ever awarded to me.”
You shot him a glare. “Hand those medals back to the people then,” you hissed. “I have yet to be silenced.”
The esteemed commander then turned to your friend. “See?”
Soonyoung spluttered into laughter, patting Seungcheol a bit too enthusiastically on the shoulder. “By God, you are not the vision dear _____ painted of you!”
That had the famous eyebrows raising. “Oh?” the man beside you got out, and you could feel the feline amusement radiating off his skin. “And what image has she created of me?”
You immediately glowered at the drunkard, but he only beamed at the two of you, holding you each by the opposite shoulder. “Now, dear general,” he began, slurring his words, “No matter how much I admire you, you cannot make me say the awful, dirty things my friend has said of you.” He winked at you, pulling away. “You may ask her yourself!”
He then sighed dreamily, as if he sat down beside a fireplace after an extremely long day. “Please do enjoy, friends,” he declared, gesturing to the servants with the wine.
His stare then lingered on Seungcheol as he finished, “And do not forget to dance!”
With a theatrical bow, he was swept away by a dazzling courtesan who was worth more his attention than the Victor of Venice and the Doge’s daughter.
You let out a sharp exhale. “I will poison Soonyoung’s wine next time.”
Seungcheol wasted no time. “So he would die before confessing the awful, dirty things you have said about me?”
“Oh, please,” you snarled, “Everything I have complained to them about I have said to your face.”
“Is that so?” His interrogating glint had you gripping tighter onto his arm. “Then why try to silence him when he was about to reveal the secret?”
“Because he is a liar,” you merely responded, as if you, too, were not exaggerating. In full honesty, Soonyoung was constantly lying, but he would have been irritatingly honest if he tattled on you.
The general was not letting you go that easy. He was ready to bombard you with more questions when the music began to change, and everyone was partnering up. Space was created in the middle of the ballroom, and the energy of the entire manor changed, excitement bouncing off every side of the massive hall.
Confused, you looked around, and saw Councillor Choi heading over to you, red robes glinting in the lamp lights. Instantly, you bowed your head. “Signor,” you greeted.
He smiled, returning your address. “Good evening, child.” His gaze turned to his nephew. “Seungcheol.”
“Uncle.”
The curt welcome had you shifting. You tried to make conversation. “I hope you have not tired of the celebration.”
“No, no, _____, especially now everyone is about to dance.” Again, he focused on his relation. “I hope you two will also join in.”
That was enough to make you perk up in surprise. “Oh?” You slipped out, but then realised he was fully serious.
The general, on the other hand, was much more direct. “I have no wish for dancing tonight, thank you,” he replied, looking ahead to the forming couples in the middle. “In fact, I think it is late enough—”
“Whatever do you mean?” Councillor Choi interrupted, raising a hand. “Cheol, you have been married for little over a month. Do your poor wife the honour of a dance this evening.”
You tried to intercept. “Signor, I am perfectly fine, I do not wish—”
“Nonsense!” He then gestured to the final round of formation, the musicians ready to begin the waltz. “A bride and groom should always dance in these celebrations. Especially if the celebration is done in their honour.”
He locked his hands behind his back. “Go, child,” he then directed to you. “At least do one waltz.”
Still hesitant, you turned to the general, whose iron stare was rooted to his uncle. You wondered whether he was going to refuse outright, amplify the awkward atmosphere permeating their group.
Then, his free hand was lifted.
It held on to yours which gripped his arm. He slid your hand onto his left one, interlocking his fingers. The silver ring on his pinky was achingly cold.
Your eyes widened at the contact, but Seungcheol did not return your shocked stare. “Let us dance,” he said, and led you to the middle.
On instinct, people parted to make way for the Victor, stunned at seeing him dance for the first time. Whispers of excitement spread throughout the ballroom, but you were fixated on the slender fingers, intertwined with yours.
The strange feeling did not leave as he led you, right in the centre of the partners, as expected of the most important man in the party. He raised your interlocked hands; his other hand slithered around your waist, and you almost let out a cry of surprise at the way he pulled you closer.
This time, his eyes finally focused on you.
“Put your arm around me, _____, or everyone will discover our fraudulent marriage.”
You would have argued against it, but there was something deeply unsettling in his gaze. This time, you let the order slide, bringing your hand to his shoulder, lined with fur.
With a single nod to the musicians, the general began the entertainment.
The loveliest, liveliest music filled the golden hall.
The lute players, despite their drunkard stupor, played most harmoniously as Seungcheol’s feet followed the tune, leading you slowly about the circle. Stunned, you quickly followed along, glancing down to make sure his boots did not stomp on your low-heeled shoes.
“Are you surprised that I can waltz?” he asked, finally sensing your catchup.
Once you were sure you would not stumble, you looked up at him. “I am, actually.” You then scoffed. “I suppose you were not always killing poor civilians while you were gone.”
“You do know I have never killed an innocent,” he remarked. “I only fight men I see on the battlefield.”
“You men and your wars,” you ranted, gripping harder onto his shoulder. “It is merely an excuse to kill without punishment.”
That had the man frowning as he circled you about. “What do you think I did every day while I was abroad?”
Mocking a ponder, you answered, “Wasting the Republic’s time and resources?”
His laugh was a mere huff of breath. “And what did you do while I was away?” he asked. “Complain about me, rant about my achievements as you painted your silly pictures?”
That had your mirth faltering. “How do you know that I paint?”
His lips twisted in a wry smile. “I could smell the oil pigment on your clothes whenever I had to talk to you.” He scrunched his nose. “God, even after all these years, I cannot forget the scent. It is almost like I can smell it now.”
Damn it! “So what if I partake in an interest, Seungcheol? Art is an excellent pastime to indulge in.” You raised your chin. “I would take a painting over a severed prisoner’s head as a prize anyday.”
The man shrugged. “And I, too.”
Your brows furrowed. “What?” He asked, admiring the finery of the Kwon Family ballroom. “Can I not enjoy painting?”
“Well,” you started, quite at a loss for words. “You have never mentioned that you like art.”
“That is because, dear _____,” he mused, twirling you around with one hand before bringing you back in his arms, “The only thing we talk about is how much we despise each other.”
Your hand was back on his shoulder—this time you held on tighter. “It will stay that way, Cheol.”
His fingers drummed on your back, along to the tune. “Of course.”
You let the conversation rest for a while, your and your husband’s steps working in perfect accord with each other as the music heightened, crossing over to its second half. The partners, all circling around you, were joyous, excited as they whispered sweetly to the other, amorous in their exchanges.
The great general and the Doge’s daughter, on the other hand, had other prospects in mind.
You, mainly, with a question that bothered you for a time. “Why did Councillor Choi insist we dance?”
Seungcheol exhaled sharply. “Because he is unconvinced that we are madly in love with each other.”
“An excellent intuition.”
He frowned, silent once more. That was not enough for you. “Has he done something to you?” you pressed.
The man regarded you for a moment. “I will tell you if you tell me what Soonyoung was going to say.”
“You are truly insufferable!” you huffed, turning your head away. “Stay curious! You will never know.”
“All right,” he said, the curiosity still present. “You can tell me where you sneak off to every time we attend a party.”
You froze.
An amateur move, when the man was still leading the dance. Stumbling into him, both your hands held onto his large frame, making him pause. With great efficiency, his hands stayed on your waist, sweeping you along in the circle before anyone noticed.
“Judging by your reaction, I assume it is somewhere shocking.” His eyes narrowed. “Somewhere you do not want anyone following after you.”
Your endeavoured to feign innocence. “I have no idea what you speak of.”
He laughed, and the vicious joy in it had you growing in rage. “Lying is a sin, carissima,” he stated, as if he himself was a leading angel of God. “Confess your wrongdoing, and maybe I will forgive you should you show me.”
“You are not a priest,” you snapped, “I will stick to confessing to God over an arrogant soldier.”
His amusement grew with your anger. “And you are not a nun, but you played the part so well, costume and all!” His fingers tapped against your back, sending a strange sensation down your spine. “Perhaps I should invest in church robes.”
“Let me add to my sins then.” You knifed him with a withering glare. “Rot in hell, Seungcheol.”
This time, his laughter was sudden.
Spluttering out of him without his usual restraint, it left the constraints of the dancing circle, many people smiling at the sound. You were a little taken aback, almost stepping on his boots at the lack of focus. You watched his eyes crinkle, laugh lines morphing on his skin, and you closed your mouth, simply taking in the image.
You had never seen the general laugh like that.
As he finished into soft chuckling, his one hand left your side, clutching onto your hand on his shoulder. “I am flattered to see you bear bad deeds for me.” He raised your hand out, fingers cradling your palm. “It makes me forget that you run off to some dark, decrepit place in the middle of the night.”
You halted his fingers with your own, tightening the grip. “It is nothing of what you suspect,” you muttered. “Not that it is any of your business.”
His eyes darted over your features—the furrow of your brows, the determined glare, the pursed lips. They stayed there a fleeting second. “It is my business that you are safe wherever you go.”
“Since when did you care for my safety?” you challenged. “You should be happy if I was away from you. Found dead even. Do you not want your freedom?”
The music grew louder, nearing the crescendo. The people around you were waltzing faster, but the general was a mile ahead, feet quickening, urging you to follow. “I would have been overjoyed once,” he jeered, spinning you once again, faster and faster.
He then caught you, never stopping his feet, always on par with the drama of the tune which did not wind down. “But things have changed. My father-in-law is the most important man in Venice.” Another twirl, another swift catch. “I am tied to a family that is constantly under scrutiny from other jealous lords. Most importantly—”
His hand on your back jerked against you, pushing you closer.
“You are my wife, now.” His whisper had goosebumps forming. “Your safety has become my greatest concern.”
You parted your mouth.
You wished you had a snide remark to throw back at him. Anything mean, even a shrivel of cruelty to shatter the bubble he had created this very minute. It was not as if you cared what he thought. You did not ask for his concern.
Then why was the thought of someone’s concern for you so comforting?
The crescendo of the music was upon the ballroom, but the couple in the centre had slowed. Seungcheol sensed your mind in disarray, as loud and dramatic as the instruments, but he did not want to let this go. Something about your particular secret bothered him.
The meagre distance between you two did not stop him. “Tell me where you slip away to, _____,” he urged, a strange look in his eyes.
God—you had to get away from him. Why could you not push him away? “I…” For the first time in your life, you had a hard time holding his stare. “I cannot.”
“Why?” His question sang in your ears. “What do you hide from me?”
This was all too much; his eyes were too honest, too concerning, and you wished for the man to terrorise you like old times. This kind of sweet torment was unbearable because you could not fight it.
Perhaps you would have told him. You could have exposed your deepest secret, and all would have been lost, and the man you despised the most would have learned your true passion.
Then the musicians ended their song, and the ballroom erupted into applause.
The thundering claps snapped you out of the bubble immediately. Once noticing the lack of distance between you two, you instantly recoiled from his presence, gaping at his stunned expression. You ripped your hands from his hold, and you saw his figure, breathing unevenly underneath the rich, fur robes.
What in God’s name had happened?
You did not ponder over the question.
The crowd dispersed, but the two of you remained in the same position.
It was after a long time when you composed yourself that you made to open your mouth. That you mustered a little cruelty.
“I may be your wife in God’s eyes,” you began, slowly backing away from him, “But I am free in my own.”
And as you stalked out of the ballroom, leaving the Victor of Venice on his own, you put a hand on your rapid heartbeat, breathing heavily.
I answer to no one but myself.
THE NEXT TIME, YOU WERE HESITANT IN SNEAKING OUT.
Another week had passed since that fateful night—the night where the general let a few heavy truths slip from his tongue, and trapped them within your mind.
Just the memory had your heart racing, and it was not from the trek, from the new party location to your studio. You cursed yourself multiple times at letting yourself become so vulnerable in that moment, but what else could you have done? That was the first time Seungcheol had been so candid.
You are my wife now. Your safety is my biggest concern.
You shivered involuntarily.
To Hell with him! To think you were going to confess your sanctuary to him—you would have never forgiven yourself should that have happened.
As you approached the workshop door, you pushed it open—empty, just as you hoped. Amazing.
Your near-finished painting welcomed you as you relit the candles from last night, running to every candle where the wax was located. Snuffing out the burning wood, you walked back to your easel, assessing the image.
The figures were ready to be painted in detail, so that meant a dozen more layers, more nights of work. This did not worry you, though, when the parties to escape were endless. You had all the time in the world.
You were about to pick up your paint brushes, scattered on the side, when a voice resonated behind you.
A snarling voice which had your entire world pausing.
“So this is where you run off to.”
Silence.
Every single bone in your body stilled. Like the unfinished statues that surrounded the room, you were motionless, stunned by the familiar, husky baritone that was haunting you all week.
Somehow, you managed to turn around.
Your eyes then broke the statuesque spell, widening.
There he was, the devil cloaked in midnight, the very man you wished to avoid as he regarded you with the strangest expression on his face. The hairs on the back of your neck stood erect, your hands going numb under his scrutiny. It was so unusual—undoubtedly, there should have been anger, deep, red rage simmering under his features, but there was something else stirring.
His own eyes were dazed at the surroundings.
His fur robes shuffled as he took a step forward, observing the lush artwork on his every side, ancient costume and dried up ink palettes scattered on the floor. The wooden pedestal, where the models would stand, was empty of life, emptier now that all life had been snuffed out in the general’s presence. He had no words to offer you as he examined your haven, the one sweet secret no one could discover.
But the general had discovered it, and he was not quite sure what to do about it.
When he was about five feet away from you, you managed to speak. Managed to make out the words, “What…what are you doing here?”
Seungcheol, surprisingly, answered your question. He could not believe it either, for he scoffed. “I was searching for you…at the ball, just earlier, and…” he paused again, sucking his lower lip. “Of course…I should have known.”
He then looked at you, and there it was—the fire that you expected—brimming underneath that demeanour. “I should have known that you would not listen to me.”
By God—that was enough to snuff out your fear. “What?” you began, covering your canvas with your back. “Listen to you? Why would I listen to you?!”
“Because I am your husband!” he exclaimed right back, forcing another step. “Because I should know where the hell you slither off to!”
“Oh, you just love throwing that word around, don’t you? Husband, husband, husband!” You cackled like a she-devil. “Why hide it? Say that you wish to lord over me!”
“_____, you ran away in the middle of the night!” He flailed his arms about in exasperation. “Wandering in the most dangerous parts of the city! And alone at that!” His hands curled into fists. “Did you not realise how stupid that was?”
“So what do you do?” You pointed at him. “Follow me like a pervert?”
“I was watching to see whether you were safe.”
“Safe!” you snarled at his word, crossing your arms. “I do not feel safe anymore. Not around you.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do I make you feel unsafe?” he guttered, stepping another foot, and you knew you hit a nerve. “What have I done to make you so miserable?”
“You, you…!” you started breathing heavily. “You have ruined my life!” Your chest was heaving, up and down erratically. “Marrying me when none of us wanted this! Expecting me to play the dutiful wife while you do whatever you want!” Your hand that pointed at the accused began to shake. “Even taking this studio away from me!”
Seungcheol could not believe his ears. “I have told you, I was forced into this damned union as much as you were!” he countered, another step taken. “I never said I wanted you to play the dutiful wife, I just wanted you away from harm!” He then gestured to the artwork. “And how the hell did I take this studio away from you when I was unaware of its presence?!”
“You will, you will!” you screeched. “You will tell father, and he will tear my paintings, destroy this room, and you will watch and laugh at the destruction!”
“Laugh? Laugh at you? What do you take me for?!”
“A tyrant!” Now your hands fisted at your sides, almost trembling. “You are the devil, Seungcheol, even if you have fooled all of Venice!”
He gritted his teeth, a sharp tick appearing in his jaw. You were riling him up—the tick was reserved only for prisoners of war, or the city’s traitors. “Maybe I should destroy your paintings.”
Your eyes widened, but you dared not show a streak of fear. “You would not dare.”
“Would I not?” he snarled, raising his hands to the unfinished artwork. “You can say whatever you want to me, but I am not given the same privilege?”
“You do not deserve any benefits from me,” you snapped back. “You have enough from all these people, worshipping you day and night! Still you bother me!”
“Because you are aggravating!” he then roared, and you could have sworn his voice could have brought down the studio roof. “You have tested my patience far too many times to let it slide! I have had enough!”
You laughed at him, and that made his blood boil. “And what will you do, Cheol?” You mocked, cradling your chin with your finger. “God, maybe you should tell Papa about the studio! Then he can lock me up, and I would not have to see you again!”
“That will not work, because I am tied to you! We are married! Forever!” He emphasised the last word. “I cannot get rid of you!”
“And whose fault is that?!” you demanded. “Whose fault is that, tell me!”
“You just don’t listen!” His breathing became shallow, hardened. “How many times do I say it so it stays in your head?”
Your nostrils flared. “I do not have to listen to you!” you shrieked, head pounding from rage. “I listen only to those who mean something to me, and you are nothing to me!”
Another step, and he was a foot away from you. “By God,” he began, knifing you with a glare that could have had armies fleeing. “You need to shut your mouth.”
You matched his deathly scrutiny. “What did you just say to me?!”
“I said…” he raised his voice, looking down at you, skimming between your blazing eyes and your parted lips. “You need to shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth.”
That had your soul erupting into a frenzy.
You looked straight back up at him. The venom in your voice was unmatched.
“Or what?”
But the general did not answer you. No, he was still as the statues of your peers, save for his gaze, flickering between your lethal eyes, and your pursed mouth. Certain moments, they stayed a second longer on the latter.
His mouth parted at the sight. The sudden movement had your gaze darting to his lips, and suddenly your heart was pounding in your ears, and you could not decipher whether that was from the rage or the sheer bewilderment of the silence.
The quiet was deafening. The victor’s eyes were unbearable.
He could see right through you.
“That is what I thought.”
And then he turned on his heel, ready to depart.
You could have burst into flames.
“Fuck you!”
He paused.
You did not. The words were erupting from you, unable to stop yourself. “You are a coward, Seungcheol! You talk and talk and talk, but you do nothing!” your fingers pointed towards him, accusing in every sense. “You are just an insufferable, cowering bastard!”
Frenzied, you would have screamed and screamed till the sun stopped you with its new day, but another force beat it.
Another powerful, enraging force that whirled on his feet.
Like lightning, this unstoppable force thundered to you, and you did not even comprehend what he would do until he grabbed your face with both his hands and kissed you with the strength of a seastorm.
Nothing in the entire universe could have prepared you for this.
Your eyes enlarged, your breath extinguished, but he was moving upon your mouth—the sheer impact had you stumbling back, but he did not let go, cherishing the fervour that radiated off you. What riled you up further was your audacity, your nerve to slide your hands to his cloaked shoulders, fisting the rich, black fur.
His ring was cold on your cheek, but his lips were warm, soft despite the scar down its right, soft like the fire of a candle as it sparks to life. The second he felt you move against him, he angled your mouth, boosting your pleasure, and you could barely keep in the groan that tried to escape, gripping him tighter. What in God’s name were you doing, why were you not stopping this disaster before it truly spiralled—
But now he was opening your mouth with his own, and you were unable to stop the chaos as his tongue slid along your bottom lip. There must have been witchcraft at play, because you let him enter, whining as he pushed you back, empty easels falling to the floor, paintbrushes scattering, but Seungcheol did not care a bit, and to your shock you shared in his lack of care.
Damn him, damn him to hell and beyond, because his tongue swirled with yours, and he explored you, finding the origins for such bitterness, such hatred that lived in your body. You would never share your secret, but his search was so enticing that you let the chase continue. So ironic, how your tongues showed more harmony than you both had ever shared before.
He backed you against the wall of the studio, and the moment your shoulders hit the wooden panels you could not help breaking the kiss, gasping at the collision, the numbed pain that bloomed in your back. Seungcheol, the razor sharp general, bounced at the opportunity to pepper rushed, heated kisses along the corner of your mouth, down to the lines of your chin, trailing down and down your neck.
It was carnal—absolutely animalistic, the way he latched onto you with his searing lips, you near-ripping his clothes apart, completely unaware of what was happening, who you were letting devour you into a hysteria. The rush had sent you in a daze, and you would have let him uncover you before the dead eyes of the statues, and sparked life into them.
But then Seungcheol gasped out your name, and it all became too real.
“_____,” he whispered, voice rasping, but your eyes fluttered open.
Seungcheol.
Choi Seungcheol is upon you.
Choi fucking Seungcheol is untying your dress and you are letting him.
You almost lost your breathing, and not because of his kisses.
The same hands that held onto him like a lifeline turned flat upon the fur.
With all the strength you could muster, you pushed him off.
Pushed him with surprising power, because the man stumbled back, almost falling to the ground had he not quickly regained his footing. He was inhaling like a man deprived, and when his head whipped upwards his eyes were as wide as saucers.
You were the same—breathing in disarray, burning underneath your gowns, heartbeat thrumming in your ears.
He may have shown surprise, but you were positively horrified.
Instinctively, your fingers reached your lips. The sensation of his truly remained, singed upon the seams.
“_____?”
You were going to die.
You were going to disintegrate into the studio floor if you did not leave.
The general caught onto your intentions.
But he did not move.
Did not even raise a finger as he watched you burst into a sprint.
Sprint out of the studio, into the darkness of the Venetian street.
You did not know how you managed to run the distance between him and the Palace, but your legs were your saviours, picking up a faster pace through the closed markets, the dingy streets of the city till you reached your home.
Into the halls you raced, through the private chambers till you found your room, bursting through the door, slamming it shut as your back hit against its wooden structure.
In and out, in and out your wheezing went. Shuddered inhale, shuddered exhale, until you were sliding down on the door, hitting the floor.
An infinite thoughts came flooding in, nerves peaking at the discovery, heart racing at the consequences.
One question, however, remained the most prevalent.
What the fuck have you done?
YOU COULD NOT FORGET THE FATED NIGHT.
It was as if God had cast the bowels of Hells upon your life, scorching every thought and feeling in the form of Seungcheol.
Seungcheol. The very name had you shivering with rage, confusion, fear—new, strange sensations that had never been there before. You could not identify them, but they haunted you in the night, stopped you from your art, tormented your every waking second.
You could not figure out where that desire came from.
Desire. You despised the word, but you could not name it any other thing. You had always heard poems, reciting love and lust, but what of hatred? You did not love the general at all, but the way he had grabbed onto you, taken your lips prisoner and refused to set them free, caging you in his arms…that was not the work of love. That was not pure, innocent affection.
That was something incredibly dark and twisted that night.
Once again, despite your every effort, the general had bested you.
Not this time—never again!
These thoughts were an unwanted companion as you walked to the Doge’s private chambers, where your father and Councillor Choi were expecting you. The former had not seen you for a time, and invited you to lunch beside him after the end of his government session. He also mentioned wishing to speak to you about a certain matter, which sparked your curiosity. You would not have minded his presence had not other matters taken over your every thought.
The grand doors to the private residences opened, and you let your feet take you to the Doge’s quarters, ignoring the golden finery shining in every corner—from the painting frames, from sculptures of St. Mark and his winged lion, the Virgin Mary peppered in each scene.
Your knock on the grandest door of the vast hall was answered by its swift opening. Your father stood, smiling at your presence.
“Cara,” he greeted, bringing his hand on your head. “It is good to see you.”
You returned his beaming. “Likewise, Papa,” you said, entering his room.
Councillor Choi stood up at seeing you, dipping his head. “Good afternoon, _____.”
“Good afternoon, Councillor—” you stepped forward, about to greet him when the seat beside him was exposed.
There sat Seungcheol, and your voice was gone.
Disappeared entirely, when seeing him leaning back, folded leg over the other, blood-red velvet cloak covering his knees. He was clad in his military armour, but his medals were on display, stuck on his dark grey breast, jingling with every soft movement. Half of his hair was tied back, his locks still managing to brush his neck.
You finally dragged your eyes to his face, and all the memories threatened to return.
Unfortunately for you, the general caught onto your change of countenance immediately. His lips curled upwards.
“Afternoon, dear wife,” he mused.
Bastard.
You would have said it out loud, but your father and the uncle were there, and you would never live it down. “Afternoon,” you clipped instead.
He would have said more, but the Doge interrupted him. “My dear, such an icy greeting!” He looked to his commander. “Have you done something to her?”
“I do not think so.” He gestures his gloved hand to you. “Why not ask her, Your Excellency?”
He glanced at you—the glint in his eyes had your throat burning.
Your father now addressed you. “Cara?”
Today was not the day to humour him. “I am fine, Papa, just tired.” You locked your hands together. “Is something the matter?”
“There is a matter of great importance actually.” He pointed towards the empty seat alongside your husband. “Please, do sit.”
Souring, you obeyed, settling your gowns. The man observed your movements with a single glance, but you ignored him. “Do tell us the news,” you said.
The Doge, sitting in his own golden seat, waved a hand to the general. “As you know, your esteemed husband had won us a major battle against the Ottomans,” he explained, as if you had not heard of this story a hundred times already. “As the most important commander in our arsenal, it is only right to bestow him with a cultural gift to celebrate his victory.”
The councillor chimed in, seated bedside his nephew. “I heard from your father that you have a great interest in the arts. We were wondering if you could recommend us a few artists in demand as of late, so we can commission a portrait.”
“A portrait?” You thought for a moment, locking your hands on your lap. “Well, Titian is the classic portraitist. I have heard of his high-priced commissions, but he never disappoints. Lotto is all right, but I prefer Veronese’s work.”
The two elders were humming to your suggestions, but the young man cleared his throat.
“You do not need to think over who will make the portrait. I have already decided on the artist.”
Councillor Choi was intrigued. “Is that so? And who is the esteemed man?”
Seungcheol ghosted a smile. “The esteemed woman is right beside us.”
He then brought a hand upon yours, and locked his decided stare with yours.
“_____ will paint me.”
Three pairs of eyes whirled to the man who let the declaration pass.
Yours exposed the greatest shock amongst them all.
“Whatever do you mean, Seungcheol?” Your father got out, confused beyond question.
The councillor looked as if he was going to laugh. “Perhaps it is the budding affection between the two that compelled him to say this.”
You immediately shut that down. “I have no idea what he meant by that,” you remarked, now turning to your father. “I think you should choose Titian.”
But the general’s hand tightened on yours, his gaze never leaving yours. “Well, why not?” he asked, cocking his head. “His Excellency did tell me that you delved into a bit of painting before.”
“Yes, but it was long ago,” you hissed, retaining a smile to ward off the elders’ suspicions. “I have abandoned the practice altogether.”
He huffed out a gasp, squinting his eyes, and you knew the horrid man was up to something truly horrendous. “Oh, that is not good at all. I shan’t have my wife missing out on her interests.”
Focusing on the Doge, he continued. “I know the two of you are wary, but I want my portrait done by her. If she does not exceed the Council’s expectations, then her plan can be sent to Titian, and he can recreate her vision.”
He paused, staring at the powerful man in the room with utmost charm, and that was it—he had won another victory. “This is a wish from your dearest commander, and son-in-law. I hope you will humour me this once.”
You watched with horror as the Doge of Venice smiled, waving the two of you off. “Oh, I suppose we can try this out.” A glance towards the councillor. “How do you feel about this?”
The said-man observed his nephew, a strange expression staining his aged features. “I mean, this portrait is supposed to be an important piece for the Palace mantle…it is for establishing your importance in our military, after all…” he shrugged, bringing his long, red sleeves together, hiding his hands. “But it is Seungcheol’s painting.”
“Exactly.” He patted your hands, the smugness reaching his feline gaze. “And I want my wife to make my first portrait.”
Oh, you were going to kill him.
Retracting his touch, you crossed your arms. “I have not touched a paintbrush for years, and you expect me to make a victory portrait? You all should have less faith in me.”
“Nonsense! I have the utmost faith in your skills.” The twinkle in his eye had you gritting your teeth. “It was only yesterday, do you not remember, when we were discussing how you wished to paint more often.”
“I do not recall such a conversation,” you muttered.
“How easily you forget!” ” your husband mused. “This is why we must begin the process at once.”
He shifted to the elders. “You both rest easy. I will arrange everything. All you need to do is let _____ take the reins.”
“Father, do not listen to him!” you exclaimed. “I do not want to do this project!”
Well…it was not as if you did not wish to do this project—in reality, being able to paint without having to hide yourself was a dream come true, but you could not fight for that right now. Not when you had Seungcheol using your secret for his own entertainment, not when you could not take on such a task when looking at him was so painful���
“Cara,” the Doge scolded. “If your husband wishes for you to paint him, then you should not refuse him.”
Sighing sharply, expecting this response, you leaned back against the plush chairs, nails digging into your clothes. “Right. Of course. Listen to the husband. Obey his every command.”
You felt a nearby voice invade your mind. “Do not forget to worship the ground he walks on.”
You did not bother to deign Seungcheol a glare.
“Then it is settled!” your father looked at you. “Good luck, _____! Let us see how a woman will complete this difficult task.”
Smiling weakly, you stared ahead at the paintings before you in the chambers. As the two politicians discussed the prospects, you observed the image—the depictions of war, the angels and roman gods, in love and in hate and all involved in chaos.
There was no way you were sneaking out of this project.
THE PAINTING PROCESS WAS SET UP IMMEDIATELY.
The Doge first suggested setting up an entire studio for your needs, but Seungcheol insisted on a place ‘he was already familiar with’. Of course, he meant your studio.
You would have died before exposing your studio to the elders, but the general was smart. He assured your father and Councillor Choi of finding a safe, artistic space for you to begin your work, where the two of you would not be disturbed. They were satisfied, understanding that you would be under his care, and left the project in his hands.
It was disastrous.
You had foolishly thought once he had caught sight of your secret, he would have been content with the outcome, and left you alone. The bastard, however, had not left your side. Even when you left the Doge’s Palace with the sun just setting, enough light to guide you on your way to your haven, you thought you would be rid of him. He was not at the workshop door, slightly ajar against its harsh, stone walls.
Once you went inside though, it was a completely different picture. Candles had lit up the studio, unfinished statues set aside and half-charcoaled sketches plastered on the walls. Your friends were standing in a scattered circle, easels before them, sketching away.
What they sketched had your mouth dropping open.
The all-too familiar model sat on a wooden chair upon the pedestal, gazing at the distance as he posed for your friends. Tonight, he was adorned in something different—his usual Venetian general-armour had been glorified in Roman centurion-robes, golden plated torso armour, blood-red cloak covering his shoulders and falling to his feet. The tunic beneath the armour stopped just below his thighs, and so gave a perfect view of his legs, sculpted from years of military service. The sandal-boots were tied up to his calves, golden gauntlets on both arms. A spear was held in his right hand, and a red-tousled helmet laid on his lap, his midnight curls remaining half tied, half wildly loosened at his neck. The scar on his lip was more prominent as he posed, exposing a war-like seriousness only a god could muster.
Which was perfect, really, considering who he was posing as.
Minghao heard your footsteps, and smiled. “Ah, _____!”
Seungcheol, hearing your name, broke out of his stance. He greeted your surprise by pointing at you with his spear. “I have been expecting you for the past three hours.”
“What are you talking about?” You immediately snapped, setting your satchel down. “Actually, what the hell are you doing here?”
“_____, is this how you talk to your general?” Soonyoung chimed in, who was right next to Minghao. “Your husband?”
You rolled your eyes. “You better not start, of all people!”
“I was waiting for you to come here so we could begin my portrait.” The general sighed, shaking his head. “It seems you do not take such precious opportunities as seriously as I thought.”
“I have been meaning to talk about that,” you began, walking up to him, stepping up to the pedestal, glaring at him.
He looked up at you, faking innocence. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You know what I mean!” you tried to keep your voice to a seething whisper so the others could not hear. “Why are you forcing me to make your painting?”
“I am not forcing you to do anything.”
“Yes you are!” You put your hands to your hips. “Especially after you made it clear to Papa and Councillor Choi that only I can do it and no one else. You know I cannot refuse their approval!”
“I think they would jump on this chance,” he countered. “Last time I remembered, they did not approve of a noblewoman painting whatever she wishes, whenever she wishes.”
“Why are you getting me in trouble then?” You let out a scornful noise. “God, it is so typical of you.”
Breathing sharply through his nose, Seungcheol brought his spear and helmet down, slowly standing up. You blinked back as you took in his height, retaining your exasperation.
“Do you know why, _____…do you understand why I requested your name for the official portrait?”
You refused to back down from his stare. “Enlighten me.”
He looked at you for a few moments longer. Then, his gaze strayed beyond you, focusing on the artists who spent hours sketching him.
“My dear friends,” he addressed, “I am honoured at you all drawing me as Mars, but I must make a request.” His hand travelled around your waist, and the feeling had your stomach somersaulting. “My wife is tasked to paint me, and I hope you will allow us the use of this workshop.”
Everyone was in agreement, especially your two friends, who were waving off the general’s request.
“Who are we to refuse the Victor of Venice?” Soonyoung declared, dusting off his navy-blue tunic. “As for _____, I am overjoyed that you were selected for the portrait.”
“Does this mean the Doge finally knows of your secret studio?” Minghao inquired, sliding his easel away. “It is about time all of us ceased sneaking around.”
“Not quite…” You glanced at your husband, souring your voice. “Seungcheol here found out, but he will behave and not tattle on us.”
“I hope not, dear general,” Soonyoung agreed, nodding his head towards you. “We have heard about your history of betrayals from _____ many times.”
“Is that so?” You felt his interrogating stare on you. “Worry not, Soonyoung, Minghao. I shan’t tell a soul.”
“Good.” Minghao dusted his hands, standing beside the elder. “If this place is exposed, then all of us cannot meet again. It is bad enough hiding the Doge’s daughter from doing what she wishes. It would be a scandal if the public found her painting with artists outside of the nobility.”
Seungcheol furrowed his brows. “But are you both not nobility?”
Soonyoung exposed a wry smirk. “Yes, but we are men, thank the Lord!” He wrapped his arm around his friend. “Hao and I can escape should we are ever caught, but dear old _____…well…”
You clicked your tongue, addressing the people beyond the party. “Thank you, dear artists! You may go now.”
While the rest began to take their leave, your friends exchanged a glance, indicating their departure. “We should head out too,” Minghao said, turning on his heel. “I hope she does your reputation justice, general.”
The elder of the two put a hand on the commander. “If she paints you as a troll like she promised us, Lord Choi, then you can always ignore the consequences and expose her secret!” He laughed at your sneering gasp. “What? You would deserve it for ruining his beautiful face!”
“Get out,” you ordered, pushing him in Minghao’s direction. “Or I will bring you both down with me.”
“But I did nothing!” the younger complained, taking his belongings from the entrance. “God, you both are going to get me in so much shit!”
Your two friends kept on grumbling, waving hastily at you before leaving the workshop. The rest of the artists followed suit, every single one dipping their heads in respect for the man beside you. With the last one out, the heavy wooden door fell shut.
Silence fell on the dimly-lit studio.
You swivelled around. He was looking straight at you.
The heartbeat, settled before, beat a little louder.
Seungcheol broke the deafening quiet with his voice. “You have your space now.” He gestured towards the empty easel. “We can begin.”
You stayed rooted. “You have not answered my question yet.” A pause. “Why are you making me paint your portrait?”
“Tell me what to do first.” He raised his hands wide. “I will explain once we commence.”
A sharp sigh escaping you, you turned your back on him as you reached for Minghao’s easel, sliding out his rough sketch and setting it to the side. The stretched canvases were already prepared for your use, so you grabbed the larger of the few, settling it on the easel. Seungcheol watched your quick movements—the grabbing of the red and black charcoals, bringing them upon a stool beside the easel.
With the red charcoal in hand, you set your eyes on the subject. “Sit back on the chair,” you said, pointing at the pedestal. “Under the lamplight. I need to sketch out your figure.”
As he followed your order, he rested on the wooden chair, legs spreading apart, tunic stretching. You fought the urge to admire his physique, staring at his face. “What about my clothes?” he asked, picking up the helmet. “I suppose you would eat your canvas before painting me as a god?”
“I can easily paint over your ridiculous costume,” you assured him, earning a snort from him. “Hold up the spear, though. I can use that as a template for your sword.”
As he obliged you, holding up the weapon, you took a deep breath, focusing your gaze over him.
It was time to start your biggest project to date.
This was not indulgent-mythological scenes, or rough landscapes, or even an accurate-Soonyoung-as-a-garden-troll painting. This was an official task, selected by the Senate.
You could not mess this up.
“Ready?” you asked him.
He did not answer your question.
“Are you?”
You nodded.
With your red charcoal upon the canvas, you began.
The process of sketching, for you, was as hard as the painting itself.
The dimensions, the perspectives—everything had to be taken into account. The way Seungcheol sat, the length of his arm as the hand gripped the spear, the space between his legs, and the positioning of his sandalled feet. The composition had to be orderly—you focused on his figure, forgetting the features of his face.
Fortunately for you—or a misfortune, considering your recent situation—his body was perfect. His muscular limbs, glowing in the candle lights, were ideal for your drawing. Seeing as you had only painted gods before, you never bestowed upon them human flaws. It was almost irritating to sketch out the swell of the general’s upper arms, the taut, burly thighs, a golden cuff wrapped around one leg. Sketching his slender fingers which settled on that leg, the silver ring on his pinky shone with each flicker of a movement. Your charcoal captured the hazy details, you not wanting to be too specific.
But then you focused on his face, and your countenance soured completely.
A sly remark came from the model. “Why the horrid face, _____?”
You glanced at him.
You had refused to ever acknowledge such terrifying information. You tried to avoid the age-old truth, but as you began to sketch his face, you could not escape it.
He was so utterly, disgustingly beautiful.
His mane of half-tied black locks, framing the face which had you capturing every stray curl, every strand which hugged his neck. The sharp arch of his brows, the dark, mysterious eyes that sheltered underneath them—the lashes that curled, the slight upward curve of his nose as it descended till his mouth stole the show, their cherry colour staining the plains of his lips. The scar he gained in some long-ago battle cut through on the left side of his mouth, but that only added to his character, accentuated his military prowess. This scar widened as he smirked at you, his laugh lines dimpling his otherwise flawless skin.
Your charcoal darkened as it stayed on the sketched lips.
You tried your best to shut him up. “I am struggling to draw your ugly face.”
The laugh lines deepened. “Your arm was moving quite fast, dear wife. I say you have captured me perfectly.”
Your laugh lines were nowhere to be seen. “You are supposed to stay quiet.”
“Not really.” His hand drummed against his thigh. “I was having lovely conversations with your friends as they sketched me. They seemed to have no problems.”
“Well I work differently,” you spat, trying to chalk out his eyelashes. It was awful how you could capture the mischief of his eyes on the canvas. “If you were having such lovely conversations with my friends then you should have had them make your portrait.”
“I did not want your friends. I wanted you.”
You paused.
Looked at him, that mischief snuffing out.
“I want…you.”
The blood rush was creeping back.
You were almost unable to say anything to him. How could you, though, when he was looking at you like that again, the same stare which caused such anarchy in this very workshop. Second-long memories flashed into your mind, and you had to shake your head hurriedly to wave off the sounds of hitched breaths, burning touches, aching lips.
A voice managed to get out. “Why…why did you want me?”
As the artist, you reminded yourself. As his portraitist. Nothing else.
It seemed like he was bound to ignore your question again, and you swore your anger was never going to leave with this man.
Then, his voice broke all silences.
“I did not want you to paint secretly anymore.”
You gawked at him.
He brought his spear into his lap. “Do you know what my first thought was, when I entered this studio for the first time?” He jerked his head at the surroundings. “Saw your artwork?”
His small smile was stained with sadness. “I thought you were one of the finest artists in the Italian peninsula.”
The charcoal in your hands dropped to the floor.
But you did not care that moment, that specific second when you heard the last of Seungcheol’s words, when they entered your ears, settled in your heart.
No one had ever said such a thing to you in your entire life.
Of course, your artistic colleagues had always provided positive feedback. Hell, even your friends sang praises of every painting you gifted them. But that was different—they were people you liked, people akin to your interests.
This was a man you had despised as long as your memory served you.
It was strange, how something inside your chest expanded the longer his words hung in the air. It was not as if you cared for his opinion. You enjoyed doing the opposite of what he demanded, thrived off his anger, his rage by your hands.
The general watched your expression change, and he did not understand why that made his own chest lighter. “I…” He tried to carry on. “I…I could not have you hide your art, _____…I could not be at peace knowing…knowing I was suppressing your talents. No one deserves that.”
He gestured to the canvas. “It is why I made you do this.” His hands locked together on the spear’s shaft. “I do not know how the art world works, but at least it will expose you to the public. People can see the portrait. They can realise how good you really are.”
A pause. “You would not have to sneak away anymore.”
Sneak away from him.
With that, he quietened, waiting for your response.
You could have collapsed to the ground.
This was not Seungcheol—this was not the stone-cold, rude, sword-up-his-arse general that you clashed with in every interaction. This was not the man who had ruined many memories of your childhood. This was another man entirely, a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
You scoured his gaze for any element of ridicule. Anything, even a speck of mockery to tear his confession down. To your utmost shock, you did not find a trace of anything.
Only raw sincerity.
Your hairs stood on the back of your neck, unaware of what exactly to say to him. It did not help either that his gaze was so unnerving—it was like he knew what his words were doing to you. You hated that.
Breaking his stare, you knelt down, grabbing onto your red charcoal. You hated that he was watching your every move, the slight shake in your hands as you observed your progress—the face. Yes, the face was done, but his lips needed reworking.
A sigh left you.
You hated that you could not hate him for his words.
The charcoal grazed the paper, your eyes travelling to the feature that needed redoing.
You hated how he watched you pause. You, pushing the charcoal deeper in the canvas, did not realise it as you observed his mouth parting, ever so slightly.
His tongue poked out— it slid along his lower lip. Foolishly, like the greatest simpleton, you parted your own mouth, blinking at his movements. You watched his tongue slip back in, scarred lip now glistening.
His lips then curled upwards, and you blinked again, realising your mistake.
He had just seen you staring at him like a woman starved.
God, you hated Choi Seungcheol.
“Stop doing that to your lips!” you hissed, almost breaking your charcoal from the sheer push inside the canvas.
The general cocked his head. “Stop looking at my lips, then,” he merely said.
You were going to murder him—gut him alive, and paint his bloodied corpse. “I have to look at them, I am drawing you!”
“You have been looking at them far too often,” he insisted, and you realised he was toying with you. “God, the canvas must have been shredded by now!”
“It is fine, just stop talking!”
“I must have a look,” he declared, getting up from his position.
That had you panicking. “Choi Seungcheol, if you do not sit down I swear I will quit this portrait!”
But he was never one to listen to orders when he had spent his entire life giving them out.
Down the pedestal he went, walking to you, and you had to turn away as he grabbed onto the easel, standing in front of it.
One of his perfect eyebrows shot upwards.
The progress was excellent—there was little doubt that you exceeded in portraiture. His seated figure was sketched accurately, despite it only being the rough drawing, his raised hand holding the spear, sketched as a sword on the canvas.
What caught him off guard was the face.
Every detail of his features was sketched lightly but the crimson shade of his mouth, layered and layered to perfection. He could instantly tell that you had been going over and over the feature like a madman, forgetting everything else as soon as you focused on it. His scar was cut through beautifully, and the red charcoal almost enlivened his mouth.
He could not contain the complacent smirk.
You, on the other hand, could feel it on your back.
“Do not,” you gritted out, “Say a word.”
Seungcheol could not help himself. “What?” he began, and you could hear the pomposity of his voice. “You obsess over my mouth, but cannot hear what comes out of it?” A step towards you. His presence was near, too near. “Now you know that is not fair.”
“Oh my God—”
Swivelling around, you almost yelped to see him so close. Tilting your head up, you looked at him, taking a step back. “That is…normal when making a portrait,” you countered. “You would not know because you do not make art.”
“That is true.” He snuffed the distance again with another step forward. “But what I do know is your nature.” His gaze darted down. “You are obsessive, dear wife. You focus on one thing, and delve fully into it.”
His eyes stayed on your mouth. “Your art speaks your truth. And that truth is that you have not forgotten that night.”
That night.
The night where you and Seungcheol collided like two opposing warships, crashing into the sea in harmony.
You tried to remain stubborn. “You talk nonsense.”
“Do I?” he asked you, and you could not answer him, not when he was so close. “Tell me you have forgotten. Say you have not thought about it once, and I will not speak of it again.”
“I have not thought about anything,” you snarled, but you averted your gaze, sliding to the canvas—to the crimson mouth.
He was not having it. “Look at me and say it.”
“I do not want to look at you.”
But he raised a finger to your chin, and the sheer force of his pointer had you turning your head. You were met with his fierce stare, and widened yours a little.
“You choose not to listen to me…every single time, huh?”
His finger moved ever so slightly on your chin. “How do I get this…this stubbornness out of you?”
You drank in his every detail as if you were sketching him. “You cannot. I will always do the opposite of your wishes.”
“Fine.”
He moved in, and his nose brushed against yours. You could feel his breath on your skin.
“I wish you to walk away.”
You paused—felt the satisfactory smile ghost his lips, only for a second.
“Will you do as I bid you and be free of me?” His question was a mere whisper. “Or will you do as you please, and stay beside me?”
Your eyes fluttered, heavy-lidded as you weighed your options.
It was either obedience and safety from his clutches, or rebellion with your imminent downfall. The greatest double-edged sword of choice—you were quite at a standstill.
His order fanned your mouth. “I wish you to leave.”
The decision was made.
You would die before you obeyed Seungcheol.
“I was here the entire time. You came to me.” A momentary glance at the stage before you focused on his stare. “You leave.”
You watched him take in your order. You could not determine his response, and the anticipation gnawed at your insides. What was he thinking? Would he demand your exit? Why was he looking at your mouth instead of answering your question?
It felt like a million years had passed before he finally spoke.
“Fine.”
His finger left your chin.
“As you wish.”
He stepped away from you.
But you were blinking back, breathing a little too loud, because why did he follow through, why was he walking away when he was about to do something, something you were anticipating, something you dared not anticipate?
You turned to see him walking back, his steps echoing in the workshop.
Something extraordinary overcame you.
It was undoubtedly the forces that struck the general many nights ago that now plagued your nerves, your bones. Without realising what in Hell you were doing, your feet were moving, picking up a frightening pace that followed the leading footsteps. Your hands, with newfound strength, reached out, and with sheer tenacity grabbed onto Seungcheol’s arm.
He whirled back, surprised.
He did not have a single moment to demand explanation as your hands reached for his face, pulling him in a searing kiss.
Your lips latched onto his, and it was like a leash had been snapped in his soul. As hungrily as you had come onto him, he matched it, hand on the back of your neck as he tilted your head, delving deeper.
God save his soul—he could never admit it to you, but the night he pounced on you had been a memory he had not shaken off. He could not help it, but your mouth, shouting and sneering, haunted him. That night, a boundary had been crossed, but he wanted to face the unknown—the unknown that was you, your cruel words, and your hypnotic taste.
His mouth was relentless, offering no mercy as he preyed on your lips. He opened you wider, catching the moans that slipped out of you, moans you hated that escaped because it meant he was good, he knew exactly what he was doing.
His tongue slipped through, finding yours and humming at the way he played with it—he closed his mouth over your tongue, sucking slightly, and you could have burst into flames. You slid your arms around his neck, pushing him into you, needing him to engulf you entirely. Your blood simmered beneath your skin, your body hotter than a bonfire, but you refused to cool down. You refused a break when the general caught your lower lip, slowly sinking his teeth into the flesh.
There was so much of him. He was all over you, and you could not have wanted it more, savouring his fingers on your back, your neck, a sliver of skin should your awful dress let you. He was pushing you, your feet stumbling back and back and back, and the easel fell over, his canvas scattering to the floor.
You broke away from his heated kisses, gasping as you peered at the fallen artwork. “Th-the canvas!” You got out, then glaring daggers at the perpetrator. “Do you…!” A shuddered breath. “Do you not have eyes?!”
But then the look he returned had your heart pumping in your ears.
“I don’t give a fuck about the canvas right now.”
Despite your heart, you had the nerve to be irritated. “Of course you don’t,” you spat out, digging your nails into his shoulders. “Treat it however you want it, not like it is worth my entire—“
You did not finish your rant as Seungcheol, gritting his teeth, swooped in, shutting you up with his mouth. It was as if the little spat had never happened, with how quickly he settled on your lower lip, biting it enticingly enough to have you whining onto his teeth.
This time, rather than risk running into any more obstacles, the general swooped you up in his arms, never letting you expose your surprise as his mouth still worked upon yours, drowning out your gasp with his tongue. He led you to the stage, going up the steps until he laid you on the edge of the platform, he going down a step.
Sensing your lips receiving enough attention, he trailed his kisses to your chin, down your neck. Your breaths hitched with every touch, closing your eyes and feeling your heart burst from your chest.
He paused on the column of your throat, feeling his lips part, but then his teeth grazed your skin, and you hitched out an uneasy breath at the soft ache that blossomed. His tongue instantly ran over the tender mark, and the touch had you grabbing onto his hair, relishing the soft, velvety feel of his locks.
“God,” he whispered on your skin. “This…you’re driving me crazy.”
You would have let him talk had his hand not fallen to your skirts. With great urgency he hiked up the fabric, the hem rising from your boots, exposing your legs. Unfortunately, with one layer of your gown there were a thousand more underskirts. The general hissed out a curse. “You ladies and your fucking dresses,” he guttered, voice so husky you almost forgot your counter-quip.
Then, you realised what he was actually doing, and you had him pause. “Wh-why are you lifting my gown?”
He sighed sharply—all these questions, when he was too delirious to answer properly. “Why else would I lift your gown?”
Through your mind-haze, you felt a little confused. “You tell me, All-Knowing General.”
He was ready to snap at you when the realisation struck him properly.
You were a noblewoman—of course you would not know what happened between two people when they hungered for each other.
Something about that piece of knowledge had Seungcheol’s stomach curling in desire.
He was the first to show you just why certain men lifted certain ladies’ gowns—just why certain, lust-struck generals wished to uncover certain, ravenous Doge’s daughters, and relish in their undoing.
Dear Lord of the heavens.
“Seungcheol?”
The said-man perked up. “You have not answered my question,” you said, uncertainty lacing your voice.
But he was never the one to answer your questions properly, a notion that irritated you beyond reason.
However, when he leaned in, his lips brushing your ear, you could have excused him.
Especially when he whispered, “How about I show you why, carrissima?”
Shivers ran down your spine, he recognising it instantly. He could not help lacing his smile with pride. “I promise it will be wonderful,” he purred, his words blowing softly in your hair. He kissed you just under your ear, and your eyes fluttered.
You were going to absolutely hate yourself when this was over.
“Go on,” you breathed out. “I will be the judge of that.”
“Good,” he added in before capturing your lips again, hands more urgent as he brought the last of the skirts up, the tufts of fabric bunching at your waist. Soon, he began his descent, mouth dragging down your neck, along your clothed abdomen till he broke away, uncovering the last of your underthings as he swiped them off your legs. Slowly, enjoying every second, he brought his hands to your legs, spreading them enough to settle between them.
A soft hiss escaped you as the cold air of the workshop kissed your core. Leaning against your elbows, you caught sight of his face.
It was as if he had found every treasure hidden under the earth.
His mouth had parted, blinking slowly, and you could have squirmed at the pure, unadulterated desire that radiated from his gaze. You had heard of lust before, of course you did, but to witness it in someone’s eyes—the general’s cold, unfeeling ones at that—was an achievement. It was a thrill.
“What…” you could not even manage to form sentences properly. “What are you…gawking for?”
The general did not respond.
He only dipped his head, pressing an ironically chaste kiss along your inner thigh. Instantly you quietened, and the silence had him chuckling upon your skin.
Looking over to witness your sheer embarrassment, his soft laughter twisted dark. “Don’t go all silent on me now,” he taunted, fingers drumming under your knees. “Not when I want you to be loud this time.”
The audacity of his claim had you pursing your mouth, ignoring the way his smirk had you slacking. There was absolutely no way on this earth that you would say a word, even if the sky would fall on your head.
Seungcheol then kissed a path closer to the final destination—his hair tickled your thighs, and it took everything in you not to sigh out, break your vow. The moment he went past the boundaries, though, there was no controlling it.
The moment his lips touched your slit, you felt yourself slip away.
His tongue slipped out, tasting your arousal, and he had to stop himself from going ballistic. Every insult, mockery and torment from you would be void to him. They would fall on deaf ears now that he savoured you—savoured you dripping for him. For him.
He explored the edges of your cunt, collecting your arousal like a man parched. Tingling sensations curled up your spine, gritting your teeth to stop yourself—not a word.
But then his tongue travelled further up, and when he trailed upon a certain spot you could not help yourself. A small gasp flew out of you, and you just knew the general had found the way to undo you.
The unfortunate situation for you—most fortunate, really, considering the pleasure you were feeling at the moment—was that Seungcheol knew exactly what he was doing.
He knew the bud that peaked—he was well aware that when he circled his tongue, slow, languid, as if he had all the time in the world, you would not be able to silence yourself. You would lose the war of reticence, the battle of calm—before you were his enemy, you were a woman.
A woman who could not even fathom what she felt.
Your core had its own heartbeat, and the bundle of nerves which received attention had it racing. The general was so awfully, terribly, terrifyingly good, his tongue patterning a loop around your clit. The vow of silence had been long broken, but the soft sighs were threatening to go louder, and it scared you that you did not care if you lost.
Perhaps you still could have held out—one last, hopeful shot at besting him.
Then he retracted from your cunt and you could have turned into a monster.
“What the fuck—!”
The blood was pumping slower, the absence upon your clit already aching to be filled.
With frantic eyes you glared at him; if looks could kill, Seungcheol would have been a brutal mess of bones and flesh.
The said-man, even with mere inches from your cunt, returned your stare. Despite the uneven breathing, his slick lips twisted upwards.
“I thought you said you were going to be silent.”
You could have killed him—truly. “I thought,” you rasped, backing up your gown further up, “You were going to show me…why I lifted my skirts.”
His hands roamed underneath your legs. “Have I not already?” With little effort he lifted your left leg, settling it on his right shoulder. “I just think you do not deserve it.”
Bastard. “Whatever you think you are doing…I have not felt a thing,” You lied, as if your cunt was not pumping along to your heartbeat.
His scoff was enough—unfortunately, he saw right through you. “Maybe your moaning was from something else, then.”
Your cheeks heated. “I did not moan.”
“Yes you did.”
“I did not!”
But then his finger ran along your slit, and he saw your eyes widen, mouth slacken. His manic grin, scar stretching, had your stomach fluttering. “Yes…” the finger slid in, just a little deeper, and your breathing hitched. “Yes, you did, carrissima.”
Oh, dear Lord.
You had to be in Hell—your skin was on fire, your senses were hazing, and the devil lay between your legs.
But if this was Hell, then why did you not despise it? Why were you promised misery, when all you were given was pleasure?
Why was Choi Seungcheol capable of giving you pleasure?
“If it pleases you,” you heard him say, lifting your other leg, “I am not finished.”
That had your body singing. “Is that so?” You whispered.
His chuckling fanned your cunt—you almost shivered. “Already so eager for me to continue?”
Bastard, bastard, bastard. “Eager for this to finish,” you taunted. “So you can stop wasting my time.”
His eyes blazed with your challenge.
When did the fire in his gaze become so enticing?
“You are going to eat your words, _____,” he warned.
“We will see about that—”
You did not get to finish your sentence as the general dove back in. His tongue found familiar solace upon your clit, and the pace which he encircled it with had you losing all sense. It did not help either that your legs were slung over him, so your balance depended on his wide shoulders, one hand holding onto your left.
His other hand had other plans.
While his tongue worked so perfectly upon the bud, his fingers roamed on the edges of your slit, teasing, tormenting, daring you to be shamelessly loud—you would not give in.
When he slithered a finger inside you, though, your mouth broke open.
A soft gasp escaped, feeling its slow journey, and your hand grabbed onto his hair, taking tufts of his velvet locks in a trembling hold. Your walls clenched around him, a mere finger doing this much damage.
But then he began to pull out, and the action alone had your voice stumbling louder.
His tongue was growing relentless—gone was the slow fluidity, vanishing with each minute, a bizarre hunger clawing at the general’s mouth. The attention on your clit, tied with the growing pace of his finger, sliding in and out, was driving you insane.
It was as if the vow never existed.
Your whispers, sighs and gasps gained a solid voice. The groans, so suppressed down your throat from your pride, climbed to the surface of your tongue. They were all you could express, the whimpers that freed from your mouth, when all your thoughts focused on one man.
This man fastened his pace even further, and you could not take it—your core was constricting, pressure settling in your hips, tendrils of tension curling up your spine. Your legs were shaking on his shoulders, and your arms had given up, your head laid on the pedestal stone. Your eyes were closed, images of his cold eyes upon you as he devoured you encircling your mind, and suddenly it was all too much.
Because this state had brought you a loss of coherent sentences, you called out the one name that you could not forget.
“Ch-Cheol—!”
Of course, the commander of Venice knew what to do.
He could feel you trembling upon him, under him. As his mouth worked overtime, his finger sliding in and out, he knew that you were close, so unbelievably close to absolution when you had no idea of how it felt.
Tonight, on the steps of the workshop stage, he would show you. With the dozen pairs of stone eyes watching the two of you, Seungcheol would give the statues a show.
He will spark their dead stone gazes to life.
He will spark your dead, stone soul to life.
The general sucked on your clit one last time.
That was enough for ruination.
You cried out, loud and shameless as you came, hips jerking without your control into him. As constricted as you were before, the balm of peace washed over you, as if you had weathered a storm and were now on the safety of the shore. You went limp as you rode through the new, euphoric feelings, finger inside you finally sliding out. You felt a small kiss on the bud before the absence was noted.
Breathing raggedly, chest heaving up and down, you had to take a minute before you had the strength to sit up. Excruciating as it was, when your eyes fluttered open, the sight that welcomed you had your core tightening all over again.
Seungcheol settled in between your legs as he slowly removed them from his shoulder, gaze upon you. His one slick middle finger glistened in the lamp light, and your focus strayed to its shine, courtesy of your lust.
Noticing, he ghosted a smile.
Your gaze followed the slick finger rise, up to the even slicker mouth. With painful, drowsy slowness, he wrapped his lips on the finger, sucking your remnants clean. Taking in the last of your arousal.
You blinked back—gulped.
With a pop! he released his finger. Hands holding onto your thighs, his heavy-lidded eyes held you prisoner.
His voice had you wanting to repeat the endeavours all over again.
“Tell me again that you did not feel anything.”
Your own voice failed to comply.
Deep inside, you knew—you could not lie anymore.
Not when you were completely undone by his hands, his tongue.
It was a great loss on your part.
Why did it feel more like a win?
“My my,” he mused, leaning upwards, eye-level with you. “Have I fingered you stupid?”
Seungcheol’s husky chuckling entered your ears. “Had I known this was the way to shut you up, I would have done it a long time ago.”
That had you perking up. “Of course you had to ruin it.” you got out, some sense finally returning your mind. “You could not have shut yourself up.”
“Oh?” He cocked his head. “Was there something to ruin between us?”
Damn, damn, damn! “That is not what I meant,” you seethed.
“How else did you mean it, then?”
You opened your mouth, but seeing his god-awful, victorious grin was too much. Your face burned as hot as the summer sun, and you had to suffer as the general laughed at your lack of response.
The absolute bastard. You knew that you had lost this battle, but your greatest consequence was that you did not feel it as a loss. What Seungcheol gave you just now…
You would die before admitting it to him, but you had never felt that wonderful as you did with his face between your thighs.
So you let him bask in his victory.
You tolerated his smug stares, dancing eyes, and rather soft laughter as your hand went to your chest, heart beating a mile a minute.
You could not answer him that night, but you asked yourself another question that only made it all the more difficult.
How have you let him win? As someone who would have rather been sent to the convent than see the general satisfied, how were you fine with his victory?
Why did you let him win?
That question you will keep unanswered forever.
Or as long as possible before you could not avoid it anymore.
A STRANGE ROUTINE HAD BEEN ESTABLISHED SINCE THAT NIGHT.
Almost every day you would find Seungcheol standing outside the studio, and without fail, he would comment on how he had been waiting oh so very long! You would only shake your head, and threaten to keep him out unless he shut his mouth. Of course, because he was insufferable, he would never keep quiet, so you would resort to sharp glares and melodramatic sighs.
The portrait was making great progress too, now that you had begun to paint the first layers. Thankfully, he had removed himself from his Roman-god garb, and now posed in his own military attire. Sometimes, he would come in everyday nobleman’s clothing if he was hurrying back from a Senate meeting. His outfit changes did not deter your painting, considering you had already planned out his armour onto the canvas.
It was shocking how much you preferred him in his midnight armour—you hated yourself for it, but you would catch yourself almost smiling whenever you were greeted with his crimson cloak, its ends moving in the summer breeze, or his medals tingling with his every move. The more you painted him in his soldierly might, the more you found yourself at awe with his image.
It was truly horrendous.
What was worse was that you were beginning to look forward to these sessions. It was unfortunate enough that you loved to paint, but to create a beautiful man on paper was something else entirely—it made you want to work harder on the painting, capture his every little detail to perfection. Furthermore, it was not just the general you had to please either—the entire Senate waited on your creation, expecting a portrait akin to the Venetian masters.
You had your concerns when it came to the patricians’ reactions. Already your father and Councillor Choi were displeased at you being chosen, and there was little doubt that they would be your harshest critics. One small mistake, one wrong choice, and your entire career would be over before it ever began.
You commented on this to Seungcheol the other evening as you finished the background of the painting. Truthfully, you were specifically planning to never speak to him about such concerns. Yes, you enjoyed drawing him, but that was where it ended. However, the general was painfully good at reading your countenance, and sensed your growing anxiety at every mention of the Doge.
He first thought to avoid the inquiry—the probable outcome was you replying to him with disdain, and then urging him to mind his business. That was what occurred in the past, and before he would have been damned to ask about your welfare.
That day, though, something in him urged the question out of him. He asked you, expecting nothing.
You were surprised to find yourself answering him.
“I just…I was thinking of my father and Councillor Choi.” You added the finishing touches on the ships floating in the lagoon, exposed from the imaginary window of the background. “You know, whether they would like the portrait.”
“Why would they not?” He fisted his hand which held his head. “There is a reason they accepted you.”
“That was because you persisted,” you countered. “They do not even know I have painted to this extent.”
“Come, now.” He straightened in his seat—you really wished he would stop fidgeting so much. “They were not going to follow through with my wishes simply because I demanded for you.”
“But they would,” you insisted. “You have influence over every politician in the Senate. Hell, you even influence my father! If you were to recommend an escort off the streets they would have obliged you.”
He almost sighed.
All the power in the Republic, but he could not attain the good opinion of one person whose influence mattered.
“You should remember, _____, that I would not have recommended you had you not been an excellent artist. The Senate will approve the portrait without opposition.”
You glanced up from the canvas—saw the sincerity in his stare. “I mean that,” he said.
It was strange how you did not doubt his words.
“Besides…” He relaxed back into the pose, tilting his head into his fist.
He broke the official expression by grinning. “The only opinion you should be anxious over is mine.”
You could not help the surprised burst of laughter. “Hmm…of course,” you got out, continuing on with your painting.
Seungcheol watched you chuckling every now and then, and his smirk softened.
It would have killed him to admit it to anyone, but a feeling of relief washed over him when you confessed your concerns.
The past few weeks had not been as horrendous as he had thought—as he had hoped. Granted, he was responsible for creating this arrangement, but he had doubts about how smoothly the process would go.
Mostly, he had doubts on how you would react with him when the two of you were alone.
Especially after that night.
The general exhaled sharply.
He was losing his mind. He did not understand how his entire identity was slowly crumbling. He prided himself on his restraint, his patience. It was why he won every battle he waged, obtained every request, demand and order from anyone he wished. He was powerful—unbeatable.
But then you get pulled into a room alone with him, and a decade of military training completely vanishes.
It was so…ridiculous. He was the first to curse your antics, your never-closing mouth, but now all he could think of was your mouth, and how he should close it. He was observing you then, the focused expression, when you would bite your lower lip, brows furrowed. It was strangely endearing, the effort you exerted in the painting.
What was even stranger were the arguments.
There were bound to be clashes, especially when you both were alone. You would say something incredibly foolish, and he would have to correct you; sometimes, Seungcheol would start the spark, spin the cauldron of your rage, and he would have to clamp down on his smile as you would scream at him. You, however, were always the one to finish an argument, lowering yourself to personal verbal abuse, and then he would be angered, demanding vengeance for your vicious tongue.
But when the two of you would storm up to each other—you ready to smash the canvas on his face—you and him would look at each other for a beat too long. Gazes would fall to mouths, and suddenly you were stumbling back into the walls, him plying your lips open—the next thing laying on the steps as he made your legs shake with his hands, his tongue.
Your reactions—the soft whimpers, the shaking exhales as they tumbled out of you—he never thought that such simple voices would bring him such delight. Never in his wildest dreams did he believe you of all women to be under him, but he welcomed the surprise.
The most frightening notion, though, out of everything that occurred between the two of you, was after the ministrations.
Usually, realising what you had done, you would run out of the studio—he had always been shocked at the events, and tried to rationalise them, but recently, he grabbed onto you as you tried to make flight.
Recently, he had asked you to stay.
“If you try to escape every time I kiss you, _____, then why do you go along with it?” he had asked you one day.
He asked you more. Questions you could not answer him. “Do you regret it every time?”
You wanted to lie—throw the yes at him.
Because if the Lord demanded truth on the day of Judgement, questioned your feelings concerning the man society called your husband, and you called your sworn enemy, then you would not be able to answer Him.
Because you did not like your answer.
So you never gave him a response, and hoped he would not cease the confusing, heated relationship that had grown out of mutual animosity.
The two of you continued in this fashion, painting progressing smoothly.
It was surprising that you were not bothered by the artists who usually worked in the studio. You were aware that your two friends had travelled to Florence a couple of weeks back to attend an artists’ convention. Word had spread in Venice that Florence’s duke had prepared a lavish ceremony for painters around the Italian peninsula, and many art lovers flocked to the cosmopolitan city.
The two returned a couple of days ago, and you paused the portrait for the day as they came to see you in the Palace. They regaled you of their tales—the paintings they had created, the chaos they caused in the ducal manors, and you laughed at their storytelling, never ending in your inquiries for more.
As they drank up your father’s alcohol, remembering more of their trip, they dropped some news that had your eyebrows raising.
“The duke of Florence…asking about me?!”
Soonyoung hummed in confirmation, swirling his wine. “He heard of the Victor’s wife creating his portrait, and was very intrigued. Since you are our dearest friend, we gushed about your skills.”
“He only mentioned you once in that entire trip,” Minghao corrected him, raising a brow. “He was too busy fucking the Florentine ladies to even bother painting.”
You tutted at the elder of the three. “What else was he to do when he had run out of Venetian escorts?”
“That is enough torment from the both of you!” Soonyoung yelled, raising his free hand. “You truly are the worst, _____! I was going to offer an invite on our next voyage to Florence, but you have officially lost the privilege.”
You offered him an incredulous look. “Whatever do you mean?”
Minghao sipped the red wine. “We were supposed to stay in the convention for the rest of the summer, but we actually received a specific request from the Duke to bring you with us. It is why we have come back early.”
You almost dropped your glass.
“This could be an amazing opportunity!” Soonyoung started, a pondering hand on his chin. “Imagine. Learning from the Florentine masters, exchanging resources, gaining commissions from the Duke and Duchess of Italian art’s capital…you would become the most renowned painter of the land.”
“I would not go that far…” you trailed off, but now you were imagining what it would be like travelling to the far-away state. What would it be like, to hone your skills, meeting like-minded artists? It had always been your dream, a fantasy you had tucked away in the crevices of your mind. To travel beyond the borders of your domain, witness artistic change with your own eyes, contribute to it with your own hands…nothing could have made you happier.
It was why it remained a fantasy.
“Do not be ridiculous,” you said to your friends, locking your hands on your folded knee. “It is bad enough that Papa does not know where I paint Seungcheol’s portrait.”
“We would have agreed with you before, _____, but things have changed.” Minghao smiled knowingly. “You now have a powerful general who supports your ventures.”
“A husband who would die to further your success,” Soonyoung chipped in.
“There is no need for exaggeration,” you murmured.
“How are we exaggerating? This man has demanded his wife for his state portrait! Venice has not seen such an act of marital affection in generations!” He slapped his drink down on the table in front of him. “If you explained the Duke’s requests, the general would happily accompany you to the convention.”
“And if he cannot, we can easily take you under our protection,” the younger offered. “You should speak to Seungcheol. Truly.”
“I…I am not so sure,” you only said, looking at your glass.
“Not so sure of what?”
Your stomach turned.
Whirled your head to the door to find the very man you three spoke of.
“Ah, the Victor!” Soonyoung declared, ushering Seungcheol over. The general obliged his boisterous attitude, walking over to the group. After eyeing the empty space beside you, he filled it with his seated presence, settling an ankle over his knee.
“Afternoon, carissima,” he greeted you, and you could only nod at him in response to settle the nerves. He then focused on your friends, smiling. “What brings you here? I thought you both were wreaking havoc in Florence.”
“We are going back very soon, not to worry!” Minghao set his drink on the table. “We actually returned home momentarily because we forgot to take everything with us.”
“Oh? And what did you forget?”
Your two companions looked at you, Minghao about to answer the dreaded question.
You instantly jumped in.
“They forgot to bring their oil-on-wooden canvases!” you tried your best with your over-inflated exasperation. “Could you believe it? Travelling to an art convention and forgetting half of your art!”
“Ah…” Seungcheol studied the two nobles. “And could you both not have…requested the art brought to you?”
Your eyes begged for assistance from the younger men in the room. Soonyoung chuckled hesitantly as he said, “Ah, yes…well, I just thought…such precious work, you know? Servants cannot be trusted these days!”
“Hmm…” From his tone, you could tell your husband was not satisfied with such a weak explanation. “You could have asked me. I would have provided soldiers to reassure safe passage.”
Minghao followed Soonyoung’s awkward laughter. “No, no! We could never accept such help.”
“Why not? Any dear friend of _____’s is a dear friend of mine.”
The comment would have been heartwarming if you three were not maintaining a measly lie. “You ask too many questions, Seungcheol,” you remarked. “Do you not have meetings to attend to?”
“I do not, in fact, but…” he sighed, mocking agitation. “I will leave if I am not wanted.”
He waited for you to object, but you stayed silent, raising a brow. After a moment, he truly expressed agitation. “God, you really are cruel!”
“I just need to speak to my friends, that is all.” you gestured your hand to the door. “I heard Papa calling for you.”
Exhaling hard, he got up from the couch, dusting at his maroon attire. “Fine. I will believe your obvious fib, and speak with you later.” He nodded at the two. “Gentlemen.”
They bid their farewells, and you all watched the general as he exited the sitting room.
The moment his presence was gone, the two glared you down. “What on earth was that?” Minghao seethed. “Why did you not ask him?”
A part of you wished you could tell him.
After working on the state portrait, you had found yourself hoping more than a woman should expect when regarding her future. You were fortunate enough to paint Venice’s great commander, but you knew this was as much the universe could offer. You did not want to tempt fate.
You did not want to push the boundaries of Seungcheol’s benevolence.
You blinked back at the revelation.
You did not want to bother Seungcheol.
That was quite a horrifying thought.
Perhaps you would have escaped to Florence on a whim before—really cause a scandal on your husband’s name, even your father’s. Before, that would have brought you great satisfaction.
This time, you were hesitant—you already received the opportunity for the general’s painting, and you could not ruin it when you still had to finish it. You could not kill the flower of your artistic growth when it had just begun to bloom.
So you only nodded at your friends, assuring them of your answer once you spoke to Seungcheol.
Faux reassurances, for you knew that the opportunity of your journey to Florence died within this conversation.
YOU CONSIDERED THE FLORENCE SITUATION BEHIND YOU.
Minghao and Soonyoung were staying only a couple more days before journeying to Florence again, and you made them swear never to speak on the situation in the future.
Up until this point, you had begun colouring Seungcheol’s figure—the seated general, all poise and power with his longsword, the midnight armour impossible to perfect without ripping your hair out from the roots. At least the subject was more obedient this time, staying deathly still as you mixed your oils, trying to find the perfect hue for his dark attire.
Although frustrating, the process was rewarding, because the first layer was done quickly—the details were needed, but you resorted to positive thinking in the workshop. At least with his encouragement, you could keep painting without feeling as if you have failed.
Soon, though, the general had to leave many of the sessions. Your father, this time, was taking up more of his time, and you assumed it was for more political advice than a sudden wish to bother his son-in-law.
Seungcheol had given general details of the meetings, but you did not care much when your painting preoccupied your thoughts much more than the Venetian political scene. He told you of growing Ottoman sentiments of making peace, and he was in accord, not wishing to shed more bloodshed. A small part of you was impressed—it was quite insane, how a single man was behind the downfall of imperial expansion.
With today’s absence, though, you decided to take the day for yourself, closing the workshop as you headed back to the Palace. You were greeted by a few servants, who ushered you into the Doge’s headquarters, informing you of your father’s summons for you.
A good thing you chose to return at that time then.
You walked into the grand room of the senate; the Doge was, as usual, sitting at the end of the room as the empty chairs on each of his sides were lined up, two of them occupied. Seungcheol and Councillor Choi settled opposite each other—the former on the left of the Doge, and the latter on the right.
Once you entered, your father smiled, gesturing for you to sit. “Ah, cara, it is good you are here.”
Seungcheol turned around in his seat—you caught his eye, and you kept it locked as you greeted the elders, finding your way to the chair next to him.
He looked as if he was going to say something, but your father beat him to it. “How is the portrait coming along?”
“Splendidly,” you answered. “It should be finished in the next few weeks.”
“Good. The Senate has been demanding progress on the artwork, so I will send this news over.” He waved a hand over to his old friend, who watched you and his nephew intently. “The reason I brought you here today is to give you some news.”
“Oh?”
The elderly gazes rested on the general.
The general’s gaze rested on you.
You watched him hesitate a little before speaking. “I am leaving for Corfu in a few days.”
“Corfu?” Your confusion grew. “Whatever for?”
“Remembering the Ottomans wishing for peace? Corfu is a perfect middle spot between Venice and Constantinople, and the sultan specifically asked for me.”
There was a slight air of pomposity in Councillor Choi’s voice as he chimed in. “I think the sultan wishes to see what kind of man defeated an empire.”
Your mind tried to take in the information as they explained the situation further. Corfu. The island was about two weeks’ ship-ride from Venice, and undoubtedly Seungcheol’s factions would have to stay for a while to negotiate such an important treaty. This meant that this entire affair would last at least three months.
You did not know why that dampened your spirits. “Oh…I see.”
The Doge noticed your change of tone. “Well, do not be aggrieved already! Councillor and I have decided that you should join him in his peace efforts.”
That was even more shocking. “What?” you asked, not quite believing the situation at hand. “Me? Corfu?”
“It is customary to accompany your husband wherever you go,” the uncle explained, locking his hands. “The Doge’s daughter at the negotiation sends a message of power. Solidarity.”
Murmuring a response, you looked down at your shoes, thinking of your prospects.
What about the portrait? You knew it was too good to be true. It had to be a scheme from the Senate to delay its finishing. Anything to stop a noblewoman from doing anything useful for the State.
You could not go to Corfu. God, Seungcheol could not go to Corfu, not for that long.
You blinked.
Why in Hell did that bother you so much?
“Your Excellency, Uncle…I have already decided.”
You did not bother turning to see his face.
“_____ will not be joining me.”
Nevermind—you did bother, glancing at him.
The Doge was now the confused one. “Whyever not?”
Councillor Choi shrugged. “Well, I suppose a negotiation scene must be too much for a lady—”
“No. Nothing of the sort. You see, _____ will be engaged in something else.”
You watched a determined glint spark up in the general’s eyes.
“While I am Corfu, my wife will be in Florence.”
Silence.
Ever so slowly, you straightened in your seat. Three pairs of eyes, widened like full moons, gawked at him as if he just admitted a sin worthy of confession. His face, however, remained as cool as the lagoon overlooking the Palace.
It was a while before anyone spoke.
His uncle first broke the uncomfortable silence.
“What…what on earth are you talking about?”
“Let me explain.” A clearing of his throat, hand going inside his maroon, buttoned shirt. “About a month back, I received a letter from the Duke of Florence. He had heard of my decision to have _____ paint my portrait, and apparently it has spread like wildfire.” He fished out a wheat-coloured, folded paper, royal seal broken. “You see, he was very intrigued to see a lady attain such a high honour, and was hoping we could go to Florence and be hosted by him.”
He continued, ignoring the growing shock of his audience. “Now I know I have obligations, so of course I could not accept his invitation. However, _____ would be perfect for the event. Not only is she the Doge’s daughter, but she is the reason the Duke wrote to me in the first place. She can wow the Florentine public with her artistic flair, and act as our ambassador from Venice.”
He looked at you, and a ghost of a smile appeared at your blatant surprise. “I might be right in saying that she is aware of the art convention occurring in Florence. Minghao and Soonyoung will be returning there in a couple of days’ time, so they can accompany her to the city.”
His gaze fixated on the Doge. “_____ would be infinitely more useful in Florence.”
He held out the letter to you. “Most importantly, she would adore it there.”
You gawked at the letter. Bidding your hand to work, you took it, unfolding the paper. Sure enough, it was the Duke of Florence, asking about you and how you had achieved such a position of becoming portraitist to the Victor of Venice. He mentioned his wife obsessing over the ‘woman who had captured the attentions of Choi Seungcheol’, urging you and him to join them in their palace as special royal guests. It felt unreal, reading something so positive about yourself when you had never met the people who gave such praise.
Looking up from the letter, you saw the beginnings of anger in the elders’ faces. Your father still retained his shock.
“Seungcheol…” he began, quite at a loss for words. “This is…I mean…I do not even know where to…?”
The councillor decided to express his opinions for him. “This is unacceptable!”
You could only watch the chaos unfold, starting from the vigorous pointing of his uncle’s finger. “Who are you to make such a decision?
“I am her husband,” Seungcheol answered smoothly. “Was it not you who emphasised my apparent superiority in marriage? I do not remember other relatives having a say in what my wife does.”
Oh, Lord. Using their own words against them—this was not going to end well.
But then he offered them both a smile—a smile you had grown too accustomed to not know its hidden, darker implications. “You know what, though? Perhaps you both are right. I should not be making decisions for my wife when she is perfectly capable of choosing herself.”
He turned to you, and it took great effort not to look away from him. “Tell me, _____. Would you like to go to Florence?”
You could only gape at him.
“Don’t be silent now, when you have never been quiet with me,” he insisted. “I know how much you want to go. Is that true?”
You looked at him—the determined, almost desperate glimmer in his eyes had you unable to respond to him. Your eyes darted to the two elders, who were on the edges of their chairs.
You had to stop this. Your mind screamed at you to shut him down, tell him to hold his tongue and leave for Corfu immediately, let you rot here forevermore. Florence was a dream—it should remain so.
But seeing him with such belief, such hope in you…it was daunting.
It had you believing too.
It had you foolishly believing of more—believing beyond the portrait, beyond the borders of Venice. It had you accepting that maybe, just maybe, you could be as free as you had dreamed.
So you took a deep breath, chest rising.
And nodded.
Watching relief wash over your husband’s face, you faced your father, uncle-in-law, and spoke your truth.
“It is true. I do want to go to Florence.”
If you thought they were shocked enough from Seungcheol’s declaration, then your words had their mouths parting.
Your father did not lose speech when you were concerned.
“How dare you say such a thing?!”
You tried not to flinch. “I have dismissed many of your tantrums before, _____, but this has gone too far!” His accusatory finger pointed at you. “Have I taught you nothing about speaking when necessary?”
Councillor Choi matched his friend’s grave temper. “You should know better, child, then to involve yourself in foreign affairs. It is no place for a woman.”
“Careful,” Seungcheol countered, narrowing his eyes. “This woman is the wife of your strongest commander.”
The Doge sucked in a sharp breath. “Seungcheol, I thought you were better than this,” he muttered.
“The scandal this would cause if _____ would travel alone to another state alone,” the councillor snarled, hand tightening on the arms of his chair. “We would all be ruined! Venice would be a laughing stock!”
“I cannot have neighbouring provinces sneering at the State when they are already questioning the choice of artist for your portrait.” Your father glared at you. “I cannot risk embarrassment, even if it may be for my daughter’s sake.”
He then directed his grim countenance at his general. “_____ will not be going to Florence. I refuse it.”
You were going to throw up.
You needed to leave, needed to escape because you were going to hurl your guts up in the sacred hall, and you would rather die than create a scene.
Your hands were ready to push you up when you felt a stronger hand hold your arm. He kept you seated, wrapping his fingers around your sleeve.
When you peered at the man who stopped you, you gulped.
“Fine.”
The Victor of Venice was enraged.
“If _____ does not go to Florence, then I will not go to Corfu.”
Oh, God.
To Hell with throwing up—you were going straight to an early death.
The most powerful politicians in the State were silenced.
They could not understand it. Why on God’s good earth was Choi Seungcheol defending your passion of painting over the Republic’s foreign relations? Should Corfu be a success, Venice would expand its lands, grow in revenue, become engulfed in riches. What will your expedition to Florence achieve? A few pieces of oiled artwork? A portrait of a few prostitutes? A wife’s happiness?
The elders could have spit on the idea—especially the uncle, who was seething with rage.
“You would not dare,” he hissed.
The general quirked his signature brow.
“Watch me.”
The quietness of the hall was too much; the tension was thick enough to set it on fire, the stares of the politicians enough to send your heart derailing.
You swallowed a lump in your throat.
You could not take this anymore.
Instantly, you shot up from your seat.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” you mumbled, waving off your husband’s hand. You did not look back as you hurried out of the grand doors.
Shaking, you stopped right next to the exit, your legs about to give up on you. Thankfully, you were hidden from sight, or else you would die from the sheer embarrassment of them watching you. Your heartbeat thumped loud, drumming in your ears, your throat, refusing to calm down. Closing your eyes, you tried to breathe slowly. In, and out. In. Out.
In. And out.
After a few minutes, you finally showed signs of tranquillity, hand on your chest to sense your heart beating slower than the previous frenzy. Now, with a calmer mind, you could hear what occurred between the three men. You heard footsteps fade from the other entrance, and from the swishing of heavy robes you guessed your father had left, the thump in his step indicating his prevalent rage.
Another minute passed, and you were about to leave yourself when you heard Councillor Choi’s voice. It was hushed down—harsh still, but quietened.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
A pause. Then, the general’s smooth baritone filled the room. “Something I should have done a long time ago.”
“Have I not told you countless times? God, it is as if years of training have completely vanished the moment you married that foolish woman!”
“Careful.”
A scoff. “Have you forgotten our conversations before your union?”
There was a moment of quiet, and you could feel the tense atmosphere, permeating even at the entrance you hid behind.
“I remember them perfectly.”
Councillor Choi’s voice raised a little. “I did not marry you to the Doge’s heir just for you to follow her every whim. Remember why you are in her life in the first place.”
You furrowed your brows. What was he talking about?
“I think you also remember, Uncle, how I did not want to be in her life. You forced me into this marriage, as much as she was forced by her father.”
“And you are aware of the reasons, boy! The Chois need a place in the Senate, and I will be damned if I let you destroy that!” A thud! resonated in the room, most likely a hand stamping on the chair. “I have not raised you all my life to then be useless to me when you are grown!”
You could hear the venom in Seungcheol’s reply. “I am…very aware of that.”
“Good…excellent. Now, you must go to the Doge at once and apologise. God, for a second, I saw the Choi family be scandalised for life!” A huff of laughter escaped him. “It is good you know your duty, Cheol. For a moment, I thought you were going to forego everything I worked for over a woman.”
There was momentary silence, you certain that the councillor was satisfied with this conversation. Your heart sank a little. You did not understand why disappointment tugged at your veins.
But then the general’s voice interrupted his uncle’s temporary joy. Perhaps forever.
“You know, Uncle…I used to hate it when you called me Cheol.”
You did not hear the councillor’s reply. Maybe he said nothing, waiting for Seungcheol to continue. “I truly detested it, because that name was born out of love…from my parents. Remember? How did they used to call me Cheol before they died?”
He halted. “When you started saying it, I felt the love leave the meaning of the name. Funny, is it not? How words begin to have other meanings, until people steal it, change it for themselves?”
The councillor sneered, “Where is this heading?”
You heard the commander laugh, albeit with no humour. “You see, Uncle, I hated being known by that name until I heard _____ call me Cheol one day.”
Your breath hitched.
“I cannot specifically remember which Cheol it was, because she has said it with great agitation too…but…” Another scoff.
This time, though, it was softer. “For some reason, I did not seem to hate my name so much anymore. So strange, that my wife called me by my name on a random evening, and suddenly, I felt it…I felt some love grow back into it.”
Your eyes widened.
Perhaps the councillor had a similar reaction. “What the hell is this supposed to mean?”
Another momentary silence. God, these silences were going to kill you—
“It means that something so personal to me…something once cherished, then hated…was being cherished again. The name that defines me, something of myself that I despised…because of _____, I began to love it again.”
Councillor Choi grew a little frantic—he knew where this was heading. “Nephew—”
“No, let me speak. Yes, I did not want her, even after I married her, but now…in this moment of time, _____ had shown me something I thought I was incapable of doing. She has changed me, Uncle, when I thought I was forever undone…she has stormed into the chambers of my heart, swords unsheathed, and I cannot help but surrender. I want to surrender to her, because I cannot imagine living my life without her now. My wife, who I thought was so full of hatred, has instead shown me what love is.”
When Seungcheol said the next words, you could have sworn his voice almost trembled.
“You see, I am in love with my wife, but she does not love me back.”
You parted your mouth.
Everything froze. Your senses stilled, everything mute save for the baritone that followed you now—now, and all these years.
“And it is…fine that she does not love me back, because she was forced more into this marriage than I was. But what I cannot accept is having her suffer at my hands.”
A harsh sigh. “Her marrying me is punishment enough for her. The least I can do for her is let her explore her passions.”
A chair creaked—he was getting up. “I do not care if the Choi family is sent into ruin. I do not give a fuck if the Ottomans come marching with their armies.” His promise was like steel. “My wife will go to Florence and paint to her heart’s desire, or I will damn my military leadership.”
Councillor Choi must have been rocked to his very core. His usual snarling was reduced to pleading. “Wait, child, you cannot do that!” he exclaimed, his chair sliding back. “What about your decade of training, everything you have worked for? Everything we have worked for, Cheol—”
He stopped midway—possibly by the venom in his nephew’s glare.
“Don’t you dare call me Cheol,” he guttered. “That is reserved for the people I love.”
The politician’s gulp could be heard from where you hid.
“Right.” A sharp sigh escaped your husband. “I must make arrangements for _____’s travel. If you wish, I can deal with His Excellency for you, but do not try to change his mind. Or mine.”
With that, he exited from the same door as the Doge, his swift footsteps leaving your ears.
His words, however, remained.
She has changed me, when I thought I was forever undone.
Your breathing quickened.
My wife, who I thought was so full of hatred, has instead shown me what love is.
Your heartbeat sprinted.
I am in love with my wife, and she does not love me back.
Your eyes closed.
I am in love with my wife.
YOU WERE SCHEDULED TO LEAVE THE VERY NEXT DAY.
The Doge had not said a single word to counter your journey, so you had guessed that Seungcheol’s decision remained final. The thought of his word over the ruler of Venice struck a strange chord over you. You never realised how much power he waged over the State.
Preparations for your travels were done in haste, but Minghao and Soonyoung reassured you that everything will be arranged once you arrive in Florence. Usually, you would have prepared twice as hard, considering how unreliable your friends were. Once you found out about your husband’s vigilant eye over the entire process, you did not question it any further.
When the day of departure arrived, you were taken to the edges of Venice, into the mainland where horses could be used freely without threat of falling in the lagoon. Carriages upon carriages were filled with your belongings—mostly your art supplies, and clothes to impress the Duke and Duchess—one other carriage was free, waiting to be occupied by the travellers.
Minghao was crossing off items on his list, Soonyoung fixing his hair at the carriage window when you observed the scene, hands locked behind your back. “Right. Is this everything?”
“I think…” one last line across the Tuscan Wine on the paper, and he put his charcoal in his pocket. “This is it! We are all done.”
“Good.”
You looked around, to the city that was so full of life. One step forward and you would be sucked back in. No. You needed to move on—to better opportunities. To freedom.
Freedom.
You could almost feel it. One more step inside the carriage, and off you went to a new world.
But you did not go inside.
“_____,” Soonyoung called, fingers sliding on the carriage handle as he watched you look on, your back to him. “We need to leave.”
“Yes…” you trailed off, waiting.
You could not leave—not just yet.
Your list consisted of one unfinished business. That particular business needed to come, or else the entire journey, your entire struggle would be for nothing.
“_____.” It was Minghao then. “It is time.”
“Hmm…”
Something inside you constricted.
Perhaps it was meant to be.
There are always letters.
Slowly, you turned, holding tufts of your gown to walk easier up to the carriage, Minghao holding out his hand to help you inside. Soonyoung opened the door.
“Wait!”
Your breath hitched.
Your head whirled back, lighting up at the scene.
As if your prayers were answered—prayers which you did not realise you were carrying out—the galloping of a racing horse greeted your ears before the general appeared in your vision, slowing down his black mare once his gaze latched onto you. You drank him in, the majestic image of his burgundy-clad figure, curls bouncing with every trot of his horse. Pulling on the reins, he stopped a few metres from you, patting the mane in encouragement.
He wasted no time swinging his leg over, getting off the black mare.
You found yourself pacing forward, ignoring your friends’ hands.
The general’s boots quickened with each step you took, until you were only a few feet away from him. He stopped too once you paused—his hands were ready to reach out, but he then fisted his fingers, instantly willing them to his sides.
“I, I… I must apologise for the delay,” he started, looking back at the rush of the city. “It was hectic back at the Senate, you know, with your preparations, and…yes, they would not let me leave.”
You nodded, opening your mouth to speak but then clamped down when he continued. “I made sure you have everything for the journey. Do not fret, I have prepared Minghao and Soonyoung for what will happen in Florence.” His eyes darted upward, as if finding more words to say. “And…oh, yes, do not worry about what will happen here. I have handled—will handle everything.”
He was talking and talking, but the more you watched him, taking in his words, the more you remembered what he exposed.
I am in love with my wife, and she does not love me back.
You tried not to let your stomach flutter out of your skin.
He was going to say much more until you interrupted him.
“Cheol.”
He halted.
You took a step forward.
“Thank you for coming.”
His fisted-hands loosened.
But you had not finished. “Thank you for…everything.”
The general’s eyebrows quirked upwards.
You would have drowned yourself in the lagoon before ever saying such a thing to him. It was insanity, how, not so long ago, the words that tumbled out of your mouth would have never been in your vocabulary—especially when it concerned him.
He said so himself. “I never thought I would hear you say the words.”
“You should cherish them night and day, then.”
A soft chuckle escaped him, his irises dancing. “Are you saying I should think of you ‘night and day’ while you are gone?”
Despite the strange, twisting sensations in your heart, you masked a mocking expression. “Do you not already?”
You were ready for another sly quip.
His dazed silence had you remembering all over again.
I want to surrender to her, because I cannot imagine living my life without her now.
Was this the surrender he talked of?
His lack of response, of course, was a response in itself.
You smiled at him.
He made a comment of it. “Oh, no…I know that look. You are going to do something, no?”
As you watched him, though, his stare searching for your answer, ever the military leader in finding out your next move, you decided to throw him off.
You stepped forward, hands reaching out to hold onto his face. Rising on the tips of your toes, you pressed your lips against his.
You felt such painstaking relief wash over him as he instantly held you, hands snaking your waist. He kissed you back with the same fervour you offered—he could not help expose his initial surprise, considering you were both still in public, and displays of affection were very much frowned upon. You knew this, of course, but at the time, you cared not a bit.
All your kisses with him had been harsh—filled with fire, consumed in rage. This one, however, was slow; soft, as if testing the waters, hesitant to move to the next stage. You smiled a little against him, cherishing his shy movements. He pulled you closer, snuffing out any distance, and you melted onto him, holding his face like a precious painting.
You were going to miss him.
The scarred lips, slowly opening your mouth for more. You were going to miss the curls of his hair, stroking against the ends of your fingers, inviting you to touch. You already yearned for his granite figure against yours, his presence, always so near to you. You were going to miss him.
You were going to miss all of him.
The general would have forever stayed in this moment, but you had to break away, breathing unevenly as you held onto him. His hands lingered on your waist, dreading the moment they had to let go.
When you looked at him, clamping your lips, you had trouble avoiding his gaze.
His brows furrowed a little, frowning sadly at you.
“You better write to me,” he murmured. “That is an order.”
He tried to jest. You tried too.
“You are never hearing from me again.”
A phantom smile appeared on his face.
The noise of the horses behind you signalled it was time.
He still held on.
“I must…” Your hands strayed down his arms, to his hands upon you. “I must go.”
Absent-mindedly, he nodded. “Yes.”
His hands stayed.
You were really going to miss him.
“Cheol,” you pleaded.
Holding his hands with your own, you squeezed the fingers that latched onto you.
With great strength, the general let go of you, aching at the emptiness that embraced his palms.
You stepped away, lest he reached out again. If he did, you did not think you would be able to stop him.
Looking at him one last time, you wished you could confess your true feelings to him.
But you contained yourself.
That moment, you chose to be a coward.
“Farewell, Cheol.”
You turned on your heel, beginning to walk back.
“Farewell, _____.”
A pause.
A shuddered breath escaped.
But you kept moving, refusing to look back.
Walking up to the carriage, you opened its doors, refusing to acknowledge the stunned expressions of your friends as you settled inside.
As Soonyoung closed the carriage door, Minghao asked, “Are you all right?”
You closed your eyes, hands fidgeting on your lap.
“Just start the carriage.”
The two men exchanged a concerning glance. Minghao signalled for the driver to begin, and with the snap of the whip, the horses neighed, exiting out of the city.
And as you felt the jolt of your journey beginning, you finally allowed yourself to look back at the figure, growing smaller and smaller the further you rode on.
He was there until you completely disappeared out of sight.
FLORENCE WAS AS EVERY BIT AS MAGICAL AS YOUR FRIENDS PROMISED.
The city was bustling with life—a welcomed chaos, with horse-and-carts rushing on cobblestone streets, Florentine traders bragging of their produce in the markets, women of all classes roaming and bargaining on the streets. Churches, manors and estates, even grander than those back home, peppered every square, patricians in and out of the special cathedrals that were bathed in gold. Music tuned on every road, merry voices of tipsy men resonating all around your carriage.
Your meeting with the Duke and Duchess was even more extraordinary. The Pitti Palace was sparked to life, especially during the art convention, where noblemen from all around Europe were being hosted, as well as the famous artists from neighbouring countries. When you and your friends entered the grand halls, so unlike the fortress-like exterior, the ruler left his seat, hands raised and all smiles as he approached you. His courtiers and other noble subjects had watched the procession, stunned to see a noblewoman without her husband.
“Ah, the famous female artist!” he had greeted you, taking your hand and pressing a kiss upon the back. “Now I can prove to my subjects that you are not a myth Venice created.”
You only smiled politely, and he welcomed Minghao and Soonyoung back, reassuring them of their chambers being set up before he focused his attentions on you.
Insisting he give you a tour of the Palace, he showed you of the growing artworks, scattered in every hallway, ballroom, private chambers, meeting rooms. You could not take your eyes off every sculpture, every painting, engraving—you were proud of your Venetian artists, but the Florentine masters had thrived decades prior. The collections of Da Vinci, Botticelli, Raphael, Donatello—numerous more—were on display. The Duke even promised to introduce you to old Michaelangelo, who was granted special quarters to work on his marble sculptures during the season. That alone had you nearly collapsing in the palace, but you made to compose yourself. You were not going to embarrass yourself.
The Duke explained his reasons for starting the art conventions, citing his great love of art since his childhood. He was also part of the incredibly wealthy Medici family, who were famous for being patrons of great artists from across the Italian states. You listened to him talk of his collection, and how he hoped to expand it as more artists joined him every year.
“Honestly, my lady, I was expecting you to refuse the invitation,” he confided, once finished with the tour. “I do not mean to offend, but Venetians have a reputation of keeping their ladies out of sight.”
Although he was spot on in his observations, you chose not to say anything. “Imagine my surprise,” he continued, “When I received word from Venice’s Victor that he would be honoured to bring you here.”
The term had your ears perking. “Did you hear about me from Seungcheol?”
The Duke nodded. “He was the first to tell me about you, actually. I had heard rumours of you painting his official portrait, but I could not believe them till the general sent me the first letter.” He scoffed, a hand on his hip. “Extraordinary, is it not? A Venetian husband…sending his wife to another state entirely. He must be infatuated.”
Your cheeks warmed at the comment. “Where am I to stay?”
“Ah, yes! Let me show you to you chambers.”
Your baggage was unpacked by the countless servants, and instantly you were taken to the dozen workshops attached to the Palace, your companions already assigned to their previous stations. All the painters, sculptors, engravers flocked to where you stood, listening to the Duke’s introduction about you. None of them needed it, though, when everyone knew who you were by simply being a woman in a workshop.
The Venetian noblewoman turned artist.
You were expecting sneers from these established men, but you received more fascination than any negative judgement. You guessed that it was what came with breaking away from tradition—art was, essentially, a form of rebellion.
You brought your old works with you from Venice; Seungcheol’s portrait was one of them, which elicited more awed responses from the artists. That then turned into comments on how to improve, questions on when you were going to finish it, how you were going to finish it, whether you would let them work on it for you.
You did not hear them much, though, when all you could see was him.
The faded face you had constructed, the first layer of his features. You had only just captured the hues of his skin, the beginnings of his sharp eyebrows, the mess of paint that was supposed to highlight his curls. Everything else was more detailed, such as his armour, the background, but the face…you had saved the best for last.
Within the next day, artworks flowed from the workshops like the streams in Heaven—if the afterlife offered rivers of milk, wine and honey, then your artistic colleagues offered oil on canvas, oil on woodwork, engravings, sculpture from marble, rock, every hard resource which could be worked on. It was a powerhouse of creativity, models streaming in and out for reference, some staying overnight for the painters’ pleasures. It was so fascinating, seeing such talent in the birthplace of high art. You never thought you would be able to witness genius—you, who had to wear the Lord’s robes to hide your drawing, were now in the epicentre of art, learning from the best.
It was all so enticing that you never noticed the one great absence until night would fall, and after the last of observing your friends, you would retire to your chambers, collapsing in the huge, four-poster bed, and let the thoughts of that day sink into you.
It was in those lone moments, recalling what you had done, that you would turn to your side and realise that you had no one to share those details with.
On those particular nights, your spirits would sink, like a broken ship in the ocean bed.
You wondered what he was doing.
He was in Corfu by this time, undoubtedly engaged with the peace treaty with the Ottomans. He had sent you the first letter when you had finished your first portrait in Florence, asking you about your life here, and informing you of his exploits there.
It was so strange how you had smiled unconsciously in receiving his words, finding yourself instantly penning your response. You sent it away for delivery, but when you heard that he would receive it in a fortnight’s time, that had you scowling at the poor messenger.
Two weeks in sending. Two weeks in receiving.
More evidence of his painful absence.
The longer the waiting became, the more your sadness grew. You were thankful for so many resources around you for distraction, because if you were a mere ambassador, hiding in your rooms, you would have lost your mind.
Your first creations were landscapes—studies of the Florentine churches, the palaces opposite in the square, studies on perspective, light and shadow. You were hoping you could paint them more professionally, but every time you picked up the paintbrush to fill them with life, your thoughts would distract you. With great frustration, you set your tools to the side.
You knew what was keeping you from painting.
And the more you waited, the more your agitation grew.
Gone were the faceless subjects. Away the landscapes went in effort to distract you, when you picked up an empty canvas, mixed as much oils as you could muster and began to paint.
It was ferocious. Quick were your brushstrokes, messy was your composition. The artists beside you were definitely not impressed, seeing as Florence thrived on detail, but your mind was in disarray. The clothing, the backgrounds, the mindless imagery did not matter to you at that point in time.
Despite their complaints, what they could not fault you for was how you created the subject’s face.
His face—his every feature haunted your dreams, when you were alone, when you were accompanied by people more popular than him. Every expression was different in every painting that broke away from your soul. In some paintings, it was the eyes—dark, mysterious, calculating—that accompanied pursed lips, a haunting countenance, which you painted with darker colours. In most paintings the mischievous glint appeared, and suddenly you could see him smirking at you from your canvas, challenging you. You could almost hear the taunts from the parted lips, scar just added from your smaller, detailed brush. Every painting, there was a different version of him, different perceptions of him, memories of his teasing, his cold anger, his laughter, tumbling out of the canvas.
You did not know how many portraits you had drawn in the space of those three months in your stay in Florence. It was crazy, when it took the masters years to complete one painting, but your frenzy had birthed dozens. Night and day, you stayed in your studio, eating and sleeping in there if you could had your friends not dragged you to your chambers at some points.
It was in this trance that, once you finished another painting, you saw your unfinished portrait, commissioned by the Senate.
Grabbing hold of the canvas, you propped it on your easel, eyes drifting to the tools on Minghao’s desk. Reaching out, you grabbed hold of the knife.
With one last look at the painting, you raised the knife and slashed it across the canvas.
Twice over, you tore the parchment apart, the great detail of the painting in smithereens, bits of the canvas drooping down. Gripping onto the weapon, you took a deep breath, gaze set.
Gone was the previous, hesitant portrait.
There will be a new beginning.
THE MOMENT YOU HEARD NEWS OF SEUNGCHEOL’S RETURN, YOU FELT A LITTLE LIFE SPARK BACK INTO YOU.
Many convinced you to stay longer, at least till the end of the celebrations. Minghao and Soonyoung begged for another week, your newfound Florentine friends pleaded for your presence—even the Duke and Duchess were upset to hear of your departure, but you were certain of your decision.
You had to leave for Venice for once.
“Look at her,” Soonyoung teased you, watching you regulate all the new paintings, wrapped perfectly in order to avoid any damage. “One little rumour of the general’s return and she is losing it.”
“God, I despise happy couples,” Minghao muttered, drinking a cup of wine. “I thought you hated the poor man.”
“I guess marriage does that to a person,” the eldest crowed, crossing his arms. “Who would have thought…_____…the first fallen soldier.”
“You both are saying too much,” you remarked, bidding adieu to the first of the dozen carriages on their journey back. “Can I not simply be excited to be back in Venice?”
“As if we are not aware of your feelings on Venice,” Minghao countered. “Just admit that you love your husband.”
You turned to your friend.
“Love?”
“Oh, Jesus help us,” Soonyoung got out. “Please do not say that you still despise the man! We will not believe you!”
You paused.
Love.
You blinked. Twice.
Did you love him?
Your eyes dazed over, hands fidgeting around your skirts.
You knew Seungcheol loved you. You remembered perfectly, really—even after it had been months since the secret confession, his words had not left your soul.
I am in love with my wife.
And she does not love me back.
Hurriedly, you shook your head.
That was a question you could not answer—would not answer.
“You both overlook the carriages,” you said, hoping they will take the hint. “I will meet the Duke and Duchess.”
Heading inside the Palace, you found the artists you had worked alongside standing in the great halls, with the rulers of Florence at the front. They all grinned at your presence, the Duke stepping forward to receive you.
“Surely we can convince you to stay,” he said. “Another week with us will bring no harm.”
“Alas, I cannot,” you rejected politely, a hand on your chest. “Seungcheol has come back.”
“But he would not mind you here!”
“No, he would not, actually. He would want me to stay.”
But I need to go.
It was almost as if he understood, bringing out his hand for you. “Your husband is a lucky man.”
As you put your hand in his, he pressed a chaste kiss, letting go. He stepped back, giving a backward glance to the artists. “You will be missed by us all, Lady _____.”
You could not help smiling at them, the crowd that waved goodbye. “Farewell, Your Grace.” Looking beyond, you returned the gesture, lips curling further. “Farewell, dear friends!”
They sent you off in unison, you quickly exiting from the giant palace as the city’s afternoon sun greeted you once again. Your two Venetian companions were there, one last carriage left for the three.
“Is the lady finished tending to her devotees?” Soonyoung drawled, earning a roll of eyes from you.
“Just open the door,” you ordered. Minghao chuckled at you both, taking your hand as he led you inside the carriage. The two swiftly followed, shutting the doors and signalling the driver to begin the journey back.
Back to Venice.
Travelling back home took just over a week; stops had to be made for the horses, for yourself and your friends, since staying cooped up in a tight carriage never did any good to one’s legs. You were restless, though—knee bouncing underneath your gown whenever you rode, eyes refusing to close during the night, thoughts never resting of a certain man that awaited you. It did not help that Minghao and Soonyoung kept talking about the mundane life of your city, and how they had nothing else to look forward to for the rest of the year. You wanted to agree with them, insult the city on water, but you had nothing to say at that time.
Not when you did have something to anticipate—someone.
Soon, you had entered the State lands, and you could almost smell the lagoon from miles away, welcoming you back after such a long time. The closer you came to the packed city, the more your nerves took over, buzzing with excitement.
Minghao clicked his tongue. “You better contain yourself, _____, or we are throwing you out of this carriage.”
“Go on, then,” you jeered, looking out of the window. Sure enough, the first signs of St Mark’s square could be seen from far away. “I will set Cheol’s soldiers on you both.”
“Using your dear general against us?” Soonyoung smacked a hand over his chest, mimicking betrayal. “After all the shit-talking we tolerated of him! It is always your dearest friends who turn against you.”
Ignoring him completely, your nose sensed the smell of damp wood and spices. Your ears picked up conversations from multiple languages, and you could taste the salt water of the lagoon, permeating the air.
This was Venice.
You had arrived.
“We’re here!” you exclaimed, making the two men hiss from the volume. You did not care, though, when you were here, here in the city, both of you were in the same place. “Quick, you oafs, we need to get out!”
“Is this the Lord punishing us for our sins?” Minghao asked the elder, opening the door. You did not wait for a helping hand as you stepped out, holding onto your skirts. “My God, _____, wait!”
“No time, my dears!” you called back, looking to the bustling roads—the Doge’s Palace was a speck in your vision.
Your feet worked on their own accord.
Like Jupiter’s lightning, you shot across the cramped cobblestone streets, people stumbling from your sheer force. People would have collapsed with shock to see the Doge’s daughter mingling with the public, but you did not care, did not give them such importance, when you were closing in. The turns you hurried into, the alleyways you short-cutted to reduce the distance, it was all paying off—what would have taken you almost an hour to reach the centre took only fifteen minutes, legs never giving up on you.
Once you reached the Palace, you burst through the main entrance, the guards taken aback by your sudden appearance. Instantly, they dipped their heads, informing you of your belongings successfully unpacked in your chambers, but you were not listening. Hurriedly, you asked for the whereabouts of a special person, demanding his location, but the poor guards had no idea, apologising profusely.
Groaning, you stepped past them, hurried in your steps as you made the intricate journey to your chambers. Never had the journey been so far, so long.
Finally, with bated breaths, you found yourself in front of your chambers.
The door was slightly ajar.
A smile caught onto your lips.
Reaching out your hand, you pushed open the door.
There he was.
Choi Seungcheol looked back at you, and you swore you could have collapsed to the floor.
It had been just under three months since you had last seen him, but it was like yesterday, courtesy to your dreams; he turned to face you fully, and you noticed that Corfu had goldened his skin. He glowed against his dark, ruby-coloured robes, over-lined with black fur. His beloved curls had been raked through, arms crossed, tightly over his chest.
His face had you halting all words.
Your own face fell.
Something was wrong. There was turmoil, twisting his features into a grave expression.
You opened your mouth only for him to interrupt you.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Those were not the first words you were expecting from him.
Stunned, you tried to find a response. Maybe it was good he did not care for one, for you had nothing to offer him.
“You are supposed to be in Florence,” he remarked. “You are not due back for another month.”
“I…I know—”
“So why have you come back?”
You gaped at him.
What was wrong with him? Why was he so aggravated?
Furrowing your brows, you decided to question this. “Can I not return home whenever I want?”
“Of course you can, but why would you? You were in Florence!” He gestured to the window, the city beyond. “Did you not enjoy it there?!”
“I did, but—”
“I got a letter from the Duke,” he cut you off. “He told me you hastened your departure from his Palace. Why did you do that?”
“Because…!” you began, trying to cite your reason, but your tongue decided to malfunction at the worst possible times. You could only watch him helplessly. Agitation gnawed at your skin, your bones at your lack of determination.
His questions did not cease. “Did they do something to you?”
“No, never—!”
His hand rested on his neck—then, matching your agitation, he ran the hand through his mess of curls. “Is Florence not what you wanted? Was I wrong in assuming you wanted to go?”
“Cheol,” you started, “No, you were not wrong, but—”
“Then why are you here?!”
A small gasp left you.
“Why are you here?!” he exclaimed again. “You said you could not do anything here, you said you wanted to become an artist, so why have you come back? Florence was your way out, _____!” He began to pace about—he looked as if he was losing his mind. “Florence was your escape!”
By God, he was making you mad.
He did not catch on. “You could have painted whatever you wanted there, but you come rushing back, and it will be back to that portrait you oh-so despise! How foolish can you be, _____?!”
This was the last straw.
He marched up to you, a frenzy on legs.
“What do you have in Venice that had you running back?!”
“YOU!”
Seungcheol paused.
You were too enraged to notice.
“Venice had you, you bastard! I came back to see you!”
You tried to calm down, but the Pandora’s Box of your soul had been wrenched open, and all you could spill out were curses, confessions. “I tried, you know?! I tried to beat it, struggle through the constant thoughts. Florence was the best thing that happened to me, yet still you found a way to be there, watching in my head, my heart!”
The general did not say a word.
You would not have let him. “You want to know what the hell I was doing for the past three months?”
Marching to the closest of the covered easels, you grabbed hold of the cloth. Yanking it off, you revealed the first painting that you had done in the art capital.
His eyes widened.
But you did not let him take in the portrait, not when you despised this painting, its earlier forms. You thundered on, taking on each easel and uncovering the contents. “This!” One by one, a painting of the general was unveiled aggressively, each canvas revealing a different version of him. “Painting you, drawing you, etching you into stone!”
Seungcheol could only gawk at each piece, gaze darting a mile a minute, drinking in the details, following after your wrathful march. Huge pieces of cloth dropped to the floor with each reveal, and he turned around slowly, catching up to you. A portrait of his smiles, a portrait of his glowers—a piece of his military prowess, a sliver of his domestic warmth.
He could not believe how differently you had captured him on every canvas. It was as if you had seen him his entire life, silently watching—appreciating his every feeling.
Once everything had been uncovered, you watched the fallen fabrics. Manically, you almost wanted to laugh.
It seemed like a lifetime before your husband spoke.
“You…” he felt as if he forgot how to talk. “You…painted me? Only me?”
“Have you not guessed already?!” you exclaimed, facing him. “I painted only you! No one else!”
Slowly—ever so slowly—his breathing turned uneven. “Why?”
“God…do you not understand?!”
You groaned, looking at him with all the rage and anger and desire and longing.
“My thoughts of you never ended!”
He stilled.
“They never end, Cheol! I thought it was me dying of some foreign plague, but it has been months, and I cannot bear it! I thought I was going insane, but then I heard you speak to your uncle, and then you said the words that made me lose all sense.”
A little reality kicked into him. “Wh…what words?”
You mustered strength. “You said you loved me, and I did not love you back.”
That had him losing all feeling in his limbs. “Wait, _____—”
“No, let me finish! God, please, let me finish!”
You shuddered out a breath.
“It was supposed to be true.”
Supposed to be.
“Lord help me, I wish it was true, because I would be at peace, and live my life tolerating you!” You rambled on, unable to contain yourself. “But it is not true at all, not in the slightest!”
Seungcheol did not understand what he was hearing.
“______, please—”
“Oh, just shut the fuck up, Cheol!” You screamed.
You stormed over to where he stood, rooted to the floor. Reaching out, you grabbed onto him, holding his face like a lifeline, because you refused to let him slip away.
You were never letting him go.
“Just let me admit that I love you!”
Seungcheol’s heart stopped.
Stopped completely in its rhythm, killing him on the spot.
Your gaze was pure fire. “I love you!”
The second declaration brought him back to life.
It was like the blood, dormant all his life, now began to pump in his veins—bubbling underneath his skin, more on the places your fingers touched, because you were in love with him, you were in love with him when he rendered it impossible.
You. In love with him.
“I hate it! I hate it so much, but nothing can be done! I wanted to despise you forever, but how could I?” You gripped onto his face tighter. “How could I, when you offered me a hand of peace when I wanted war? When you offered me opportunities, when I gave you nothing but misfortune?”
It was so strange, how you were still aggravated, despite your rambling. “How could I when you, you stupid, selfless bastard, had gone against all of Venice, risked your leadership for me?”
When you saw a smile appearing on his stunned, beautiful features, you could have slapped it off him.
“That is why I came back, you stupid man! You are the reason, you prick, you insufferable—”
The glowing general did not let you say another word.
Not when he pounced on you, his lips colliding against yours.
Your abuses hoped to escape even as he captured your mouth, but his touch made you forget every atom of anger that resided in you. Curses morphed into whining mumbles, opening up to him completely because you missed his scarred lips, missed his hands gripping your waist, pulling you closer to him, eradicating the distance that developed for too long.
Damn distance, space, absence between you two—distance made you realise your yearning, distance made it agonising to live your days in normalcy. Absence had you losing the very essence of yourself, but the moment he kissed you, your spirit blazed to life. You could taste the months-stretched longing upon him, more so when he delved deeper, his panting slipping from his mouth.
You could have lived forever in this moment—tongue slipping past the seam of your lips, your hands on either side of his head, slipping into his hair. You could have begged God to pause this point in time, drinking in his pleasure, but then his hands wandered upwards, catching hold of the tightened bows of your dress. Untying the bows as he relished the inner workings of your mouth, he unravelled the lace, fingers stumbling, losing patience with each lace that struggled to fall free from your dress’ eyelet.
Your skin burned when he groaned upon your mouth, sensing his frustration. He broke away from you, pressing a hastened kiss on the corner of your lips before swivelling you around, making you gasp at the sudden action. “Do you even know,” he whispered, fingers finding the tightly-wound strings of your dress, “How long I have wanted this—”
You felt his harsh tugging quicker, wild gaze clearer as, one by one, your dress loosened around your shoulders, your waist. When yanking out the last lace, he planted open-mouthed kisses on the crook of your neck as he peeled your dress off your body, the heavy garment falling to your feet.
Seeing your corset, even more intricately tied than your dress, over your ankle-long chemise had him groaning even louder.
“What the fuck is it with you and your difficult dresses?” he seethed into your ear.
Although his voice made it difficult for you to breathe, you managed to get out, “No way you are defeated…by a corset…”
The heated sarcasm in your voice had him teething love-bites onto your skin, perfect distraction as he took out his dagger from its sheath. His lips pulled away from you, a frantic gaze on your back as he brought the blade to the bottom of the corset.
With one, hard swipe up he tore all the lace, unlocking the bodice’s hold.
You yelped a little at the sound of the knife, then the thud! of the corset as it fell to the floor. You whirled around, features twisting in outrage. “What on earth was that?!” you shrieked, mind still reeling from the slight pain on your neck.
“I got it off, did I not?” he only said, gaze travelling down you as he sheathed his dagger.
You did not notice his face changing as you remarked, “You could have killed me, you fool!”
But then you heard no response from him, and when you finally realised the shift of his demeanour, you instantly quietened.
Seungcheol’s stare could have set you on fire.
Scouring over your newfound state, his hands went limp as he regarded the awfully thin chemise, the last layer before everything was uncovered. The delicate gown left little to the imagination, and as his gaze rested on your breasts, nipples peaking beneath the fabric, you could have shrunk in on yourself.
“Stop looking at me like that,” you said to him, as if you did not wish the exact opposite.
He could not help it.
His hand reached out, the back of his fingers stroking your cheeks. You closed your eyes, breathing stumbling as you felt him travel down, sparking goosebumps on your neck, the skin of your collarbone. He stopped upon the hem of the chemise, twisting the bow at the front.
It was not a lie—he had been waiting far too long for this.
He could not forget how difficult it had become to live in your absence. It was not as if he had never done it before—a decade of military campaigns hardened his feelings for anyone. The torment he experienced in Corfu, though, struck him like a spear to the chest.
After confessing the truth that haunted him for weeks, it became much too real the moment his words saw the light of day. He should have given himself time to truly understand the intensity of this truth, but then you were leaving the very next day, and he witnessed his cowardice by never telling you. He was punished severely for that mistake; Corfu had been horrendous.
For Venice, he had achieved the best outcomes, came back bearing riches never seen in the Senate. But these rewards were meaningless to him. He did not want riches—he did not want what was best for his country.
He wanted you.
He wanted you in moonlit corners of his chamber, in the great halls of the peace party. He ached for you when he was surrounded by hundreds of nobles, he craved for you when he had no one but himself. It was aggravating, how you had cut your way inside of his heart, because of course you would make it difficult for him to be. He wanted nothing more than to reach out to you, even if you were thousands of miles away from him.
And now, you were not a mere inch from him, and he would not be able to control himself.
“_____,” he whispered, his other hand snaking around your waist. “I want this off.”
You could have died in his arms. “You first,” you said, feeling the velvet of his robes. Tugging on the golden buttons, you unfastened each one in the middle, going down. Seungcheol watched you unbutton a little hurriedly with each one undone, and when you stumbled, he could not help scoffing, unbuttoning the last at the top with one hand.
With almost shaking hands you took it off him, unveiling the off-white undershirt, slightly untucked within his black trousers. Instantly your hands reached for the untucked hem, making to pull the garment off when the general took over, taking off the shirt and discarding it on the floor.
Your widening stare had him unable to hide his smirk, despite his blood singing. Your eyes raked over his granite-hard body, scars peppered across his skin, the badges of bravery in every battle he had won. Your fingers traced the muscles that rippled down his abdomen, trailing down—
“Careful,” he mused, stopping your hand with his own. “You charter territory you have not explored.”
When your hands felt the harder surface of his crotch, your breath hitched. “Then let me explore it,” you ground out.
Seungcheol could have come in his pants right then and there.
He was not selfish, though. He could never give into himself when you did not even know what he had in store for you.
In his mind, he prayed for forgiveness. He knew, though, that it would not be accepted.
No amount of prayers could have saved him from Hellfire—not after what he wished to do to you.
So he only brought your hands to his shoulders, tugging you back. “I cannot, carrissima,” he said gently, pushing you further into the room, where your bed was settled. “Not until I am done with you.”
Your legs hit the edge of the bed, and you were engulfed with the general’s lips before he sat you down, he falling to his knees. “God, I—” he could not get the words out, spreading your legs before him. “Do you even know how much I wanted to do this again?”
Bunching the gown at your waist, the sight of your dripping cunt was enough to abandon religion altogether. With your layers all gone but one, you could see clearly the lust that radiated off his features. “Why make me wait so long then?”
His hands gripped your legs. “You’ll enjoy it all the more.” Pressing a chaste peck of his lips against your inner thigh, he continued, “Perhaps this time you’ll be louder since you missed me so much.”
Cheeks heating, you griped, “You will not get a word out of me now.”
His arrogant stare held great promise. “We will see about that.”
You would have said something more, but his tongue flattening against your folds robbed you of speech.
What was once slow and tender had transformed into something carnal. Seungcheol’s tongue teased you, taunted you along the edges of your cunt, lapping up evidence of your desire, savouring the taste as if it were Tuscan wine. He was so familiar with this surrounding, but he could never become used to the feeling of your walls pulsating around his tongue, the tongue which thrashed inside of you.
Like a defeated, greedy fool you moaned at his ministrations, dying and reviving with his every calculated movement, the well-known tightness at the small of your back. Like a drum beginning to play, a faint beating thrummed rhythmically, informing you of your imminent downfall should your husband continue. It was so embarrassing how quickly you had become a stuttering mess before him, but he was too good at what he did.
As if his tongue was not enough, he opened you up further, his fingers finding your clit and circling the bud, amplifying your pleasure twice over. You held onto his hair as you thrashed against him, sure to have flown off the bed had his hand not held you in place.
He fastened his pace, and the beating at your core grew louder, body tightening at what was to come. It seemed as though Seungcheol would have spent eternity with his face stuffed between your thighs, but you wanted release, needed freedom before you started cursing him through second nature.
But then he swirled his tongue inside you, and you jumped ship from insults.
For the first time, you resorted to begging.
“Please, Cheol,” you whimpered to him, gripping his locks tighter. “Please go faster, I need you to—!”
Your pleading was like the trumpet of victory tuning in his ears. He obliged you, the beautiful bastard obliged you so well that when he sped up you could not even mewl out a mere thanks. You knew that you would curse yourself for resorting to begging him, but when he tongue-fucked you to perfection, you could not hold onto your pride. You were acutely aware of the effect your pleases had on the man toiling inside you.
Breathing uneven, heart lodged in your throat, and mouth hanging open, you thought that you would die before you reached the final high.
The general’s fingers worked their magic on the bundle of nerves.
You could not have taken it any longer.
With a shattered gasp you climaxed onto his mouth, thighs jolting as release came crashing. You floated among the clouds as you tried to recover, the man slowing his tongue, fingers ceasing their labour.
Even as he respired heavily, watching you recover had his cock restraining in his trousers. So undone by his actions, when he had just scratched the surface of your pleasure.
He said so himself, raising his head to watch you breathing sharply, eyes hooded. “Don’t tell me…you are already done for the night.”
Straightening on his knees, he was almost at eye-level with you. His mouth was slick with your release, curls twisting in a frizzling mess. “What…” How had you forgotten how to speak? “What…what do you mean?”
His fingers drummed upon your legs. “I haven’t even fucked you yet.”
The hairs on the back of your neck erected. Your silence had the prick laughing. “God, I haven’t ever seen you this stunned!” Shuffling closer, he savoured the growing passion that still stained your face. “I fear the loss of your voice if my cock goes inside of you.”
You blinked back at the mention. His confidence was one thing, but his pomposity was something else entirely.
You could not let him say such things—even if it set a bonfire alight in your stomach. “Arrogance is a terrible look on you,” you muttered, but the comment came out weaker than expected—that may have had to do with your too-recent climax.
His hands began to lift your chemise even further, skimming past your sides. “And silence,” he countered, tugging at your arms so you raised them, swiping the flimsy shift off your body, “Is an amazing look…” he trailed off, seeing you without a single layer left. “Ah, an amazing look on you.”
Cheeks heating hotter than the sun, you ranted, “You talk too much.” You wrapped your arms around him. “Just kiss me.”
He fought to contain his smile. “And what do you say after such a request?”
“Now.”
“Wrong! The answer was please, Cheol, please! Ruler of my heart, half of my soul, please kiss me!”
You would have screamed at him were you not aching for him so ardently. “Bastard,” you only muttered before you pounced on his mouth. The general delighted at your enthusiasm, the impatience rolling of your tongue as he swirled it with yours. His hands pushed you back onto the bed, sending you further into the sheets as your pillows welcomed you. He was prowling atop you, his lips latching onto your neck as he unbuttoned his trousers, peeling them off along with his boots.
You clawed at his underwear, pulling it off him. The sight of his cock had your mind going blank.
There was a very valid concern that if he was truly putting something that big inside of you, you were going to die.
Perhaps he sensed your slight shift, for he looked down at you, his locks tickling your forehead. “Careful, _____,” he whispered, “Or you will never hear the end of my conceit.”
“Cheol…” you could not take your eyes off him in all his glory. “I was joking when I said you wished to kill me.”
“Kill you?” His harsh chuckling fanned your face. “No, no, carrissima, not when I…” he planted kisses upon your cheeks, your chin. “Not when I have something to do to you first.”
Gripping onto his cock, he tugged your legs apart, levelling against your entrance. The mere touch of his tip between your folds had your mouth slacking, ceasing breath. “Stop teasing,” you exhaled out, arms locked around his neck as you glanced below. “Just put it in already.”
“Patience, my love,” he purred, pausing his torment, “You know I want to take my time.”
You gritted your teeth, about to thrust upwards to get him inside you when his hand on your hip pushed you down. “My God…so needy for me, aren’t you? Cannot even control yourself?”
Your body sang at his words, despite your own seething, “I really fucking hate you.”
The phantom smile he offered could have undid you there and then.
“Oh, I know,” he said, pressing his forehead against yours. “But you will adore me when I am done fucking you.”
Then, with a shuddering breath, he began his descent.
Slowly, painstakingly slow, he slid inside of you, careful not to overwhelm you. Your entire soul stood at a standstill as you felt your walls pulsate around his cock, singing at how it felt around you when he was not even finished. You pulled him closer to you, noses brushing as he filled you with the last of his inches.
You did not want to move—Lord, he was so fucking big, you were half-frightened you would snap with any sudden movements. If you were not patient, Seungcheol was, watching you adjust with shivered exhales. Despite his claims, he, too, only wanted comfort for you, waiting for your signal to continue.
Nodding hurriedly against him, you gave him your approval.
He sent a quick kiss upon your mouth before he slowly began to pull out.
Clamping your lips together did not help, inhaling sharply through your nose as you started crumbling over so simple an action. It was as if time turned stagnant in the room you both lay, connected beyond your physical bodies. The world watched over you both, hidden away from everyone else, but completely exposed to each other. The slight discomfort that first came was morphing into something else—something infinitely more pleasurable.
You did not understand how Seungcheol made it so easy to make you whimper with the mere sliding-out of his cock, but you held onto him for dear life as his tip only remained between your folds. Foolishly you thought this would be the end of it, but then he plunged into you again, and the slight change of pace had you gripping him tighter, nails digging into his shoulders.
“F-fuck,” you rasped out, the familiar feeling returning, filling you to the brim. “Cheol, I…fuck—”
“Tell me,” he murmured, bottoming inside you once more, savouring your flaccid expression, lips parted. “Tell me how you feel.”
You could not say anything intelligent, forgetting all speech. How could anyone remember something so frivolous as language when your husband pressed open-mouthed kisses upon your neck, offering sweet nothings to you. He created this delicious, hypnotic rhythm of moving in and out within you, and you bucked your hips against him, unable to help yourself.
His hands stopped you though, pinning your hips to the sheets. Never stopping his rhythm, he whispered against your mouth, “Easy now…not until you tell me what you want.”
But he was quickening his pace a little, and you could not suppress the moan that escaped you, brimming with need. “Cheol, I—” you gasped, catching onto the dull ache that thrummed at your core.
“Faster,” you could only say after a time, fingers journeying up into his hair, raking through his curls.
He scoffed, unable to contain his delight at your change. “Faster what, dear wife?” he asked, panting as he reached the edge of your cunt again.
Maybe in another lifetime, you would have kept him waiting. To Hell with such a pretentious, cocky bastard, making you beg even when you could barely get a word out.
However, you were in this lifetime, being fucked by the greatest living general Venice had ever seen. You did not have the patience anymore—nor the self-respect to upkeep the act of hatred.
So you beseeched him.
“Faster, please,” you ground out, trying to break free from his hold on your hip. “Please, just go…fuck, faster!”
Seungcheol wished there was a way to store your blubbering and engulf it in his soul.
You cursing out—cursing which was not directed at him—had his body ready to burst into flames. The way you whimpered with every powerful thrust of his hips, eyes widening with his every heated kiss on your skin—he wanted to relish every little moment, your every movement his motivation to make this night unforgettable.
This time, he decided to be relentless.
He obliged you in the best possible manner, quickening his rhythms as he crashed his lips against yours, your elated panting the perfect encouragement. You traced his beloved scar with your tongue, bringing your hands to hold his face, pulling him closer, needing to taste him, engulf him, devour him before you shattered.
You knew your end was near when the same thrum—the one you felt before your husband undid you for the first time—welcomed you back, dull but imminent, warning you early on. You would have warned him too, but the way you clenched around him was implication enough. It was good enough that Seungcheol was not a stupid man.
He was a cruel man, though, when he knew just how to make you crumble under him. His cock thrust inside once more, hitting a certain spot within you that had you crying out, branding your hands into his face. You squeezed your eyes shut, unable to take it much longer.
His unearthly growl had you opening them in an instant. “Look at me when I’m fucking you.”
Your gaze would have rooted to him, but the ache was growing, spreading to the small of your back, down to your legs. He was pounding into you now, sharp as an arrow hitting its target, as focused as if he was in battle—this conflict between you two was special, more treasured than anything in his military prospects. Your broken moans, your stuttering prayers were a greater medal of valour than anything he had achieved in his entire life.
“Look at you,” he grated out, each breath shallow, in tune with his rapid movements. “Never…fuck, never did I think, in my wildest fucking dreams…” His hand on your hips travelled down. “Ah, you under me, begging me…taking my cock so—”
He could not even finish, his excitement taking over as he brought his fingers into the equation, thumb prodding at your bundle of nerves. You cursed the heavens this time, long-winded and dirty because you were going to die, you were going to explode with your husband balls-deep inside of you, and the patricians will find your body in pieces.
“C-close now, Cheol—” you began, but were interrupted with his lips upon yours because he understood. The pace was unmatched, your clit was incited, and the cloud of lust that passed over your mind had taken away every rational thought. Yes, the patricians would find your dead body in the Palace, and you would be remembered as the woman who died from her husband’s cock.
The worst part was that you stopped caring—you did not give a single care in the world, because Choi Seungcheol was the catalyst to your ruination, had always been, but this was ruination you welcomed with open arms. This was destruction at its finest, taking the forms of sloppy kisses speckled on your throat, frantic hands playing with your breasts, wandering fingers circling your bud.
So you decided to let the Victor of Venice take over.
His one last thrust into you was your absolute undoing.
You cried into his mouth as your release crashed down on you like cannonfire, body writhing, legs in disarray, cunt pulsating around the cause of such pleasure. Your entire soul went limp, sinking into your bed as you closed your eyes, heartbeat pumping as loud as sirens in your ears.
It seemed your completion was too much for the general, for he slipped out his cock, groaning just in time to spill onto the sheets, some of it spilling on your legs. He collapsed beside you, the great expanse of his bare chest rising up and down.
The two of you lay there, shoulders touching, breathing the world’s air as your minds reeled from what just happened.
Hand on your chest, your heartbeat refused to calm down.
You and Seungcheol had crossed the final boundary.
After months of this marriage, you both had consummated it.
Your cheeks heated from the thought.
That was possibly the best you had ever felt in your life.
And Choi fucking Seungcheol gave you that feeling.
It was almost comical how, despite your undeniable love for him, that thought made you twist your features.
“Do not tell me you hated it.”
Perking up, you turned your face to catch the very man that inhabited your thoughts. He, too, reflected your action, focusing his tired eyes upon you. “What was that expression for?”
You thought about torturing him for a second, but seeing the genuine concern in his gaze had you sighing. “I was thinking that…well, I have never felt this good in my life.”
The concern completely vanished. The grin that greeted you was insufferable. “I hope you know that you are never living this down.”
“I know,” you muttered, wrapping your arms around yourself. “So savour it. I am never saying it again.”
He breathed out a soft laugh, running his hand through his matted curls. “Trust me, I will.”
Smiling a little, you looked up at the ceiling, levelling your breathing. Now, it seemed as if your body was feeling more at ease, as if it had stepped down from the clouds, and settled on earth. The two of you were quiet for a bit longer when the general spoke up.
“_____?”
Turning on his side completely, he propped up an elbow, holding his head in his hand as he regarded you. “Why did you not tell me you heard me that day? You know, all those months ago…”
You recognised the memory he was talking about. “Honestly…”
Your eyes stayed rooted to the chandeliers on your ceiling. “I did not know how to tell you.” Your hands around you tightened. “I mean, it was the first time I heard you say it. I could not understand it either at the time, but…”
Thinking further, you then glanced at him. “Why did you not tell me, Cheol?”
The general bit the scarred flesh of his bottom lip.
“I was terrified of your reaction.”
That had you blinking back.
He could tell you found that hard to believe. “Truly….” His other hand settled in front of him, inches from your shoulder. “You see, we were thrown together without our consents, forced to be in each other’s lives. I admit I hated the idea of you with me forever, but you…well, we are both aware of the extent of your hatred.”
You nodded slowly, waiting for him to continue. “Unfortunately for me, my hatred vanished quicker than yours.” He scoffed a little, stroking your arm with his pointer. “And the more I fell for you, the harder it became to tell you because your feelings had not changed.”
“The great military commander of our nation,” you chanted, “Scared to confess to a woman?”
His frown had you chuckling. “You are not just any woman to me,” he muttered, locking you in his stare. “You are my wife.”
It was difficult, fighting back a smile at that. “Still,” you insisted, “You should have told me sooner.”
“Well, I have made up for that mistake, no?”
The glimmer in his irises had your stomach fluttering. “I suppose so.”
“Suppose so?” he parrotted. “What happened to I never felt this good in my life?”
“I was lying through my teeth.”
The beady look in his eyes did not go unnoticed. “You keep convincing yourself of that.”
Your smile remained, though, tossing and turning from the corners as you kept thinking. The man was ready to lay down again when you spoke.
“I did hate you for this marriage,” you began, arms loosening. “And you are right about it taking longer for me to get to this point…I remember when I heard you say that marrying you was punishment enough for me.”
The man almost shivered thinking about that memory. “Hmm.”
“I did believe it for the longest time.”
You turned to him fully though, looking up at his forlorn expression. “I thought it was punishment, like you said…”
Your fingers reached out, holding his hand that caressed your skin. “But somehow, within these months, it has become a blessing.”
His fierce stare nearly rendered you breathless. Despite that, you carried on. “I meant every word I said, Cheol, even if it was in a rage.”
Your thumb stroked the back of his hand. “I love you.”
Seungcheol could have shattered.
Knitting his brows, he leaned in, enveloping his lips with yours in a tender kiss. You hummed onto his mouth as his fingers held your face, enraptured by how perfect his lips were on you, moving as if you both had all the time in the world.
When he pulled away, he did not stop caressing your cheeks. Strange, how he could not stop touching you—as if you would drift away should he stop.
“I love you, _____,” he declared to you. “For a long time I have kept it a painful secret, but no longer.”
Nothing could have taken away the joy that spread all over you.
And since your happiness was so utterly beautiful to the general, he had to have a taste, kissing you again, infected by your elation.
As the two of you stayed in each other’s arms, unable to part from one another, your thoughts began to wander.
You had wasted so much of your life despising the man before you.
Yes, you both had hated each other, but you wondered if, had you noticed the change in his demeanour, you might not have reflected on your actions, and seen past the lens of your hatred.
You supposed it did not matter much now.
Not when he was beside you this very moment.
A great, hopeful feeling blossomed that he was not leaving any time soon.
THE WEEKS AFTER THAT FATED EVENING WAS SO PEACEFUL YOU COULD NOT HELP BECOMING SUSPICIOUS.
Seungcheol was unable to stop smiling that entire time. You finally admitting to your true feelings was the catalyst to his happiness.
Of course, now that both of you were aware of the depths of your adoration, you and him could not keep your hands away from each other. That evening was not the end. You should have known from the start, but the general’s strength in undoing you numerous times in one night—over several nights—was a blessing you never thought you would acquire.
Sometimes, you would think you were dreaming.
The general shared the same sentiment.
Never did he think he would arrive at this point in his life. He had almost accepted to stay in a one-sided marriage, forever watching you from a distance, refusing to come closer should you step away. He was aware that maybe you did not hate him as much as before, but love…that was a miracle he thought he did not deserve.
In those moments, when he thought it would all slip away, he would turn on his side of the bed. There, he would observe your slumbering figure, so at peace next to his own, and he would have to fight the urge to reach out, trail his shaking fingers along the corners of your mouth. Never before had he slept so peacefully until you were beside him.
Everyone noticed your closeness with your husband after that evening. Because you had finished your portrait, the two of you were seeing each other outside of the workshop. With that, different patrician families saw the unadulterated fondness between you two, and wished for it to forever prosper. Minghao and Soonyoung teased you relentlessly for ‘giving in to the enemy’, but they would immediately shut their mouths when you threatened Seungcheol’s cannons to blast down their lodgings.
Of course, you did continue your painting, but, to Seungcheol’s great disappointment, you had begun to explore different subjects rather than resort to frenzy-painting him.
“Perhaps I should go back to being a stone-cold arsehold,” he mused one day in the studio, rolling his eyes at your still-life. “Then you can go insane and paint another twenty portraits of me.”
A click of your tongue. “Just for that, I am tearing those portraits down.”
“Okay, fine, do not paint me again.” He stepped over to you, feigning his most charming, innocent expression. “But at least give me one peak of the official portrait!”
You deigned him a passive glance. “You know what my answer is.”
“Please?”
Back to the canvas you focused. “Refer to my previous response.”
“Oh, come on!” He jutted out his lower lip, irritation rising. “Why not?”
Adding a few black spots on the fruit, you said, “Because I want it to be a surprise.”
“But I do not like surprises!”
“And I do not like you, but we cannot have everything we wish for.”
Seungcheol snorted. “Has anyone ever told you about your tendency to shamefully lie?”
“Has anyone ever told you about your tendency to be a pain in my backside?”
Now the strongest military general in Europe began to sulk.
You could not help sighing, ignoring him completely as you finished your still-life.
It was not as if you enjoyed tormenting Seungcheol—okay, this was a shameful lie—but you had to keep the portrait a secret from him. Ever since you told him of your complete changeover for the artwork, curiosity was getting the better of him, begging you to see the changes. Had you not cared for him, you would have tossed the canvas to him.
This time, you actually cared about his opinion.
So, although it was tiresome to deal with the general’s constant complaints, you managed to hold him off till the day of the uncovering.
It was planned to be the grandest affair. After Seungcheol returned victorious from Corfu, the Doge could not help but throw a celebration worthy of his general’s rank. Three months’ separation had helped with the elder’s temperament; because your own expedition was a success concerning Florentine relations, your father had to move on from the past.
Every patrician family was invited to the Doge’s Palace on this special day. Everyone dressed in their finest attire, the afternoon spent in gathering the guests in the grand halls, where the easel stood in the middle, cloak covering the military portrait.
You watched the people enter the halls, rubbing your palms against your skirts to wipe off the sweat. Granted, not very lady-like, but you were getting nervous. You knew you were going to present the painting to a panel, but you were not aware of the couple hundred nobles as an audience.
Maybe it was not too late. You could always escape—you had done it before, you could do it again. It would be quite easy, if you really planned it out thoroughly.
“You are not thinking of running away, are you?”
You flinched around, about to scream at the person who caught you.
The general’s presence had you quietening immediately.
“Jesus!” you cursed, hand on your chest. “Do not sneak up on me like that.”
“Blasphemy is a sin, darling,” he said. Then, he raked his eyes over your red gown, pearls scattered waist up, the golden jewellery, and he hummed in approval. “So is looking this exquisite.”
“You do not look so terrible yourself,” you muttered, gazing back at the mingling crowd beyond the doorway.
“Honestly, you think you make an effort,” he murmured, crossing his arms over his armoured chest. “Carrissima, why are you so nervous?”
“I do not know,” you answered truthfully. “I just…there are so many people.”
“So?” He shrugged. “That has never bothered you before.”
“Yes, but this is important,” you insisted. “This is my entire identity being set up for judgement. If the Senate does not like the portrait, then I am done for.”
“_____, everyone will adore the portrait,” he reassured you, stepping closer to you. “If you impressed the Florentine masters, then us common Venetians will be wowed without effort!”
You made a face at him. “Yes, but I took many risks with this painting. What if they work against me?”
“Hey…” He took your hand—his gloves caught the sweat from your palms. “Being anxious is normal. Taking risks has its disadvantages, I understand that…” He searched for the right words. “Sometimes, when I am in battle, everything I do is a risk to my life. In Corfu, my every word had to be planned with caution…”
He smiled a little. “The one thing I did not risk was my confession to you. And that is something I regret.”
You watched him stroking the back of your hand. “I was so scared to tell you of my feelings that…well, you had to hear it while I told my uncle. I wish that I had told you before you went to Florence, but what is done is done.”
His fingers paused. “What I cannot have, though, is you wanting to abandon a dream over its risks.” Then he brought his other hand on yours, covering it fully. “You are too talented for that.”
You bit the inside of your cheek, staring up at him. “I am still thankful I heard you that day.”
“Yes, but I wish I had confessed it to you.” He sighed. “So do not run away. Do not be like me.”
Nodding, you smirked a little. “So the commander of Venice’s armies is not as fearless as everyone thinks.”
The general shook his head. “Do not make me wish the Senate rejects you, dear wife.”
Chuckling at his threat, you slid out your hand from his hold, dusting at your skirts. “Right. I think I am ready.”
A midnight-armoured arm was held out for you. “Shall we?”
Sliding your hand in the space, you answered, “Let us go.”
With your spirits lightened and your heart determined, you and your husband entered the great hall together.
Everyone erupted into cheer at the sight of you both.
Congratulations were sung throughout the crowd, most for your portrait and Seungcheol’s successful Corfu campaign. It filled you with excitement, seeing so many people genuinely celebrate your achievement. That did not mean that your portrait had been accepted, but it was encouraging to see the support.
The Doge walked over to you and Seungcheol. Clamping your lips together, you dipped your head in respect, locking and unlocking your hands.
“_____.”
“Papa,” you replied, trying to be earnest. “Thank you for coming.”
He tilted his head, ducal cap shifting. “Of course, cara. Whatever happened before…let us put it behind us.” He offered a small smile. “I hope the Senate admits the portrait into the Palace.”
You returned his cordial affection. “Thank you again. Truly.”
Your gaze went beyond your father, at Councillor Choi, who was looking straight at your husband. With a sideward glance at him, it seemed he was returning the cold gaze with a smile, which was more a flash of teeth.
It seemed as if their relationship would take longer to heal.
“I must speak with some councillors,” the Doge said, a hand on your shoulder. “Enjoy the festivities.”
Nodding, you watched him walk to a group of patricians, asking for their welfare. You tugged on Seungcheol’s arm, catching his attention. “All right?”
Glancing at you, he said, “Oh? Yes, I am fine. I have yet to have a civil conversation with my uncle.” He went back to glaring daggers at his elder, who was now beside the Doge. “As if his reputation was damaged at all since we returned.”
“Forget about him, Cheol.” Your fingers squeezed his arm. “Today is about you. Do not let him ruin that for you.”
A smile. “Today is about you more.”
“Well, yes, it is mostly about me. You can have a fraction of my attention.”
“Is it too late to sabotage your painting, I wonder?”
You were about to curse out his entire family line when your friends interrupted you. The two idiots sauntered over to you, looking more extravagant than you in their blue and green attire.
“Ah, the man and woman of the hour!” Soonyoung exclaimed. “We were wondering where you both had run off to.”
Minghao set his mocking stare upon you. “I bet you fifty gold liras that she was running away and the general here was stopping her.”
“My God!” Your husband’s amusement had you scowling. “You should be a fortune-teller.”
The youngest sighed over-dramatically. “My talents are wasted on these people.”
You remarked, “You cannot waste what you do not have, Hao.”
“Seungcheol, when are you shipping her off to Florence again?”
The general laughed, patting your hand on his arm. “After running back from there to see me, I fear she is too obsessed with me to stay too far.”
You gave him an incredulous look. “Says the one who cried to his uncle about his undying affection for me.”
“There were no tears!”
“The way you were whining there might as well have been!”
Seungcheol’s scoff was harsh. “I would die before shedding tears over you.”
Soonyoung’s voice had you both pausing. “Do you both wish for some privacy, or…?”
“When you are finished bickering,” Minghao began, “You need to head to where the easel is. It is time for the uncovering.”
That had all humour vanishing. “Oh.”
It was time.
The general dipped his head to the dear companions in thanks. “We will see you later.”
“Good luck!” The two noblemen called as you and your husband set on the path of the portrait, covered by the red cloak.
It was a small walk, everyone quieting when they realised what you were about to do. The Doge was there, along with a few patricians representing the State beside the easel. The nerves were building up the closer you crept to the officials, fingers tapping a beat against his arm. Your stomach was somersaulting, threatening to spill out from your mouth. You were infinitely grateful for Seungcheol at your side, or you would have crumbled under everyone’s scrutiny.
Once you both stood next to the easel, one of the Senate members spoke. “General,” he said, “Since this is your portrait, you may do the honours.”
The said-man took a deep breath.
You, on the other hand, held yours.
Turning to the cloth, his hand reached out, pulling at the fabric.
The cloth fell to the floor.
Everyone in the great hall gasped.
The Victor of Venice froze in his stead.
The portrait had been changed completely.
He had to take a step back, absorbing the details: the subject looked straight at the viewer, right hand resting against the arms of his throne, the other gripping his chin—observing constantly. Gone was the Venetian military armour that you had insisted on; what was his midnight armour had turned into the golden chestplate of the ancient Romans, accompanied with golden gauntlets on his arm and a crimson cloak tied at his shoulder. The red tunic stopped just above his thighs, and his sandals feet rested on the pedestal of his throne. His right hand held the infamous spear, wrapped in laurel, and the helmet settled in his lap, glowing from your brushstrokes. The head, instead of the helmet, bore a wreath of roses, red as the blood he shed. His features were focused, gaze sharp, but behind his pondering fingers was a ghost of a scarred smile.
Seungcheol parted his mouth.
You had painted him as Mars. The God of War.
Everyone who was fortunate enough to catch a peek at the portrait let out noises of approval, whispers spreading through the crowds of your creation. The skill, the colours, the perfect resemblance to their general—every quality was praised in hushed tones.
The councillors, along with the Doge, murmured amongst themselves, undoubtedly impressed. You did not see them, though. Not your friends, the people who sung your praises.
Your gaze was rooted to the man who you painted—your muse.
You could not breathe seeing him so stunned.
The verdict came through, bright and clear as the sun that shone on the city.
“Lady _____’s portrait has been accepted by order of the Republic!”
The hall erupted into a deafening cheer.
Every single person in the Palace roared, screamed in delight over your acceptance. Minghao and Soonyoung broke through the walls of patricians, grabbing onto your hands, jumping up and down at the declaration because you did it, you did it, you did it! You glanced at them momentarily, your hands joining in their rhythm, but you could not stray from the statue-still man, staring and staring at his oil reflection.
“There must be dancing at once!” the Doge exclaimed, and immediately everyone scrambled into place, choosing their partners. Your friends promised to see you soon, finding their own dancers. Soon, with the musicians commencing their instruments, the aristocrats created a long circle. You and the general were in the centre, alone with the portrait. The people were so focused on each other, the celebrations, that they did not notice the silence in the inner circle.
Stepping beside him, you, too, faced the painting. You dared not look at him again, staring instead at his painted face. By God, he truly was beautiful.
Realising he was not going to, you decided to speak.
“I…I understand that this is very different from how I was painting the last one…I promise, I have an explanation.”
You picked at the stray threads of your gown. “You remember, do you not, the way I used to insult your military career? I never respected it, tormented you for it, long before we were adults…well, when you stood up for me that day, it made me stop, because…you were the opposite. You gave my art respect.”
You felt him perk up at that. “Now I know you have poked fun at my art before, but that day…when I truly thought my dreams were slipping away, you helped make them a reality. You believed in me when no one else did.”
Finally, with all the strength you could muster, you deigned him a glance.
“That is why I painted you as Mars. It is my way of saying that I am here for you, as you have been here for me.”
With that, you looked back at the canvas, heart hammering in your chest.
The people danced and danced around you, the lyres in full swing, tuning music around the grand hall. The entire world was occupied, save the two of you, who were alone despite the chaos around them.
The general broke his silence.
“What about the roses?”
You looked at him.
He was staring at the crown of roses atop his head, nestled in his curls.
A smile caught onto your lips. “It is the symbol of Venus.”
His eyes widened.
Venus. Goddess of Love.
“You already know the relationship between her and Mars…it is a gift for him. An offering of support.” Your gaze did not stray from him as you continued, “Venus, too, believed in Mars more than any other god.”
He knew exactly what you meant.
I believe in you, Cheol, as much as you believe in me.
Seungcheol let out a shuddering breath.
Catching on, you glanced at him.
“Oh my God, are you crying?”
Sure enough, the Victor’s eyes were glistening, soft tears forming in the corners.
On instinct, your hands reached out. “Hey,” you murmured, holding his arms and making him face you. Instantly he blinked back, pursing his mouth as he looked away from you.
You could not help saying, “What happened to never shedding a tear over me?”
“Shut up,” he guttered, voice a little hoarse. “Maybe if you just stuck with the original…”
“Come on now!” you teased, clutching his hands. “How was I supposed to be know you were going to start weeping—”
“God, you are cruel!” he got out, trying to wave off your hold, but you only laughed, wrapping your fingers further in.
“Okay, okay,” you said, unable to stop smiling. “Tell me. Do you like it?”
He still did not meet your gaze. “I hate it. I will have it burned the second this dance is over.”
You could not control your laughter. “Why then? I say light a torch this second and throw it at the canvas!”
“_____!”
“Seungcheol!” you countered, beaming as you let go of his hands.
With great care, you held his face, fingers cherishing the warm skin, the embarrassed blush that coloured his cheeks.
“Cheol,” you said again—softer, tender. Your voice had his hands finding solace around your waist. “Do you like it?”
Eyes glistening still, he leaned into your hold, tilting his head.
“I love it.”
His gaze could have reduced you to tears.
“I love you.”
Your smile was out of your command, lighting up your face.
“I love you too, Cheol.”
The general damned the audience as he leaned in, enveloping his lips with yours.
As you kissed him back, your soul singing at his touch, you knew that you were wrong.
Long ago, you made a promise that one day, you would kill the Victor of Venice—despite your lack of power, influence, resources.
However, you had to break your vow.
You simply had to, when that very man had given you all of those things—your art, which will extend beyond the city of water, your influence, your power—you had gained with his help.
And of course, you cannot kill the man you love. You cannot eradicate a soul so conjoined with yours.
As you broke away from him, you watched his eyes dancing. “Say, I have a question for you, carrissima.”
“God help me.”
His smirk was positively evil. “Would you ever make a portrait of me naked?”
“Hmm…” you mocked a ponder. “Never!”
“What? Whyever not?”
“Because nobody deserves to see something as heinous as you naked.”
The scoff that escaped the general’s mouth had you raising your eyebrows. “You say that, but we both know your reaction to seeing my cock out.”
Hurriedly you looked around to find nobody listening. “God!” you let out, earning a vicious laugh. “It was a face of horror, you fool!”
If that was not enough, he then leaned closer, cooing, “Please, Cheol! Please go faster, I need you to—!”
“Jesus!” you shrieked, instantly covering his mouth with your hand. “We are in public!”
His gaze was pure mischief—God, he was such an arsehole.
Hesitantly, you uncovered his lips, which were exposing a shit-eating grin. “So when shall I come to the studio?” he asked, fingers drumming against your sides. “Suppose I shall have to get priests’ robes to match your nun ones.”
As you watched him, unable to maintain a scowl at his elated expression, you only threw him another snide comment which made him laugh all the more freely.
No, you could not do it.
Even if he remained the most insufferable person in the peninsula, you could not wipe out your sworn enemy.
Once your sworn enemy.
Now, your dearest, greatest love.
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#seventeen imagines#seventeen smut#seungcheol imagines#seungcheol smut#choi seungcheol imagines#choi seungcheol smut#seventeen fluff#seungcheol fluff#choi seungcheol fluff#seventeen x reader#seungcheol x reader#choi seungcheol x reader#scoups imagines#scoups smut#scoups x reader#scoups fluff#svt imagines#svt smut#svt fluff#svt x reader#seventeen scenarios#seungcheol scenarios#seventeen#choi seungcheol#scoups#seventeen angst#seungcheol angst#choi seungcheol angst#scoups angst#tags pls work <3
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How to cook in a medieval setting
Alright. As some of the people, who follow me for a longer while know... I do have opinions about cooking in historical settings. For everyone else a bit of backstory: When I was still LARPing, I would usually come to LARP as a camp cook, making somewhat historically accurate food and selling it for ingame coin. As such I know a bit about how to cook with a historical set up. And given I am getting so much into DnD and DnD stories right now, let me share a bit for those who might be interested (for example for stories and such).
🍲Cooking at Home
First things first: For the longest time in history most people did not have actual kitchens. Because actual kitchens were rather rare. Most people cooked their food over their one fireplace at home, which looked something like what you see above. There was something made of metal hanging over the fireplace. At times this was on hinges and movable, at times it was set in place. You could hang pots and kettles over it. When it came to pans, people either had a mount they would put over the fire or some kind of grid they could easily put into place there with some sourts of mounts (like the two metal thingies you can see above).
If you have a modern kitchen, you are obviously used to cook on several cooktops (for most people it is probably four of them), while in this historical you obviously only had one fire. Of course, as you can also see in the picture above, you could often put two smaller pots over the flames or put in a pan onto the fire additionally. But yes, the way we cook in modern times is very different.
Because of this a lot of people often ate stews and soups of sort. You could make those in just one pot - and often could eat from the same stew for days. In a lot of taverns the people had an "everything stew" going, which worked on the idea that everyone just brought their food leftovers, which were all put into one pot everyone would eat from.
Now, some alert readers might have also noticed something: What about bread and pastries? If you only have one fireplace and no oven, how did people make bread?
Well, there were usually three different methods for this. The most common one was communal ovens. Often people had one communal oven in a neighborhood. Especially in a village there might just be a communal oven everyone would just put their bread in to bake. (Though often this oven would only be fired up once or twice a week.)
The second version to deal with this some people used was a sort of what we today call a dutch oven. A pot made either of metal or clay with a lit you would put into the hot coals and then put bread or pastries into that, baking it like that.
There was also a version where people just baked bread in pans on the fire, rotating the bread during the baking process. At least some written accounts we have seem to imply. (Never tried this method, though. I have no idea how this might work. My camp bread was mostly done in dutch ovens or as stickbread.)
Keep in mind that the fireplace at home was very important for the people in historical times. Because it was their one source of warmth in the house.
🏕️ Cooking at Camp
Technically speaking cooking at camp is not that different - with the exception of course that you have to drag all your supplies along. And while in Baldur's Gate 3 and most other videogames you can carry around several sets of full-plate armor and several pounds of ingredients so that dear Gale can whip something up... In real life as an adventurer running around you need to make decisions on what to take along.
If you have read Lord of the Rings, you might remember how many people have criticized Sam for actually dragging all his cooking supplies along and how sad he was for not being able to cook for most of the time, because they were very limited in taking ingredients along.
So, yes, if you are an adventurer who is camping out in the open, you will probably need to do a lot of hunting and gathering to eat during your travels. You can take food for a couple of days along, but not for a lot.
A special challenge is of course, that while you can cook food for several days when you are at homes, you do not want to drag along a prepared stew for several days. So usually you will cook in smaller batches.
A lot of people who were journeying would often just take along one or two pots along.
So, what would you eat as an adventurer travelling around while trying to save the world from some evil forces? Well, it would depend on the time of the year of course. You would probably hunt yourself some food. For example hares, birds or squirrels. Mostly small things you can eat within one or two days. You do not want to drag along half a dead deer. In the warm months you might also forrage for all sorts of greens. You also can cook with many sorts of roots. Of course you can also always look into berries and other fruits you might find.
Things you might bring with you might be salt and some spices. A good thing to bring along would be herbs for tea, too, because I can tell you from experience that water you might have gotten from a river does not always taste very well - and springs with fresh water are often not accessible.
Now, other than what you can access the basic ideas of camping fires and cooking with them has not changed in the last few thousand years. While modern people camping usually have a car nearby and hence will have access to a lot of ingredients. But the general ideas of how to build a fire and put a pot over it... has not really changed.
So, yeah.
Just keep in mind that for the most part in historical settings until fairly recently, there was not much terms of proper kitchens. People cooked over an open fire and hence had to get at times ingenius about it.
#dungeons & dragons#baldurs gate 3#lord of the rings#medieval europe#medieval#cooking#medieval cooking#food history#historical settings#history#european history#writing#fantasy#writing resources
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The main thought ringing in my head at the three-quarter mark of Jenny Nicholson's Star Wars Hotel video is how badly Disney missed the mark on not targeting the demographic of LARPers, cosplayers, and RenFest nerds as opposed to... whoever the hell they were actually targeting, with that combination of experience and price point.
Like. Not to further out myself as a massive goddamn dork, but there was a span of nearly ten years where I was going to the Ohio RenFest at least once a season, every season. And even there, the years where I went in some form of costume and played along with the actors as opposed to wearing jeans and a t-shirt, my experience was so much richer. There was such a different level of banter and playfulness and entertainment when I actively leaned into the immersion. I had so much fun interacting with the shopkeeps and cast members as an elf or random Fantasy Medieval Maiden, because they saw the costume and on some level went, "You! You are One Of Us!" and matched that energy, and thus gave me the chance to match it in return.
(One year, early on, when my "costume" was a frilly blouse, leggings, boots, elf ears, and a hastily sewn cloak, I had a random older gentleman run up to our group, press a gold coin into my palms, kiss the back of my hand in a very respectful and courtly manner, and disappear into the crowd. No context, no further story or plot or interaction, but almost fifteen years later I still have that gold coin on a shelf of tchotchkes.)
Watching every time Jenny tried so desperately to lean into the Galactic StarCruiser/overall Star Wars experience, to actively engage with the story and the characters, only to be lowkey ignored or actively rebuffed or scorned, legitimately broke my heart a little. (The bit in the experience finale where she was like "it felt like we were supposed to respond somehow, but I didn't because it was embarrassing, which is its own form of Force torture" was simultaneously hilarious and extremely relatable and incredibly sad.) Setting aside the issues with the app and tech, let alone the refusal to address legitimate complaints until she took to Twitter, not even getting a hint of reciprocal interaction from the actors when your choices supposedly matter in your overall experience would be so incredibly disheartening.
Ohio RenFest tickets were about $20 when I started going in high school, plus whatever food and merchandise you wanted to buy. Nowadays, even with inflation, they're still only $35 for adult tickets, which gets you access to everything, and you can absolutely get a full day's experience out of that with only the additional cost for food and beverages. I cannot fathom spending six thousand fecking dollars for two days ("two dollars per person per minute" will live rent free in my head for a while) on what is supposedly an immersive experience, marketed as living out your Star Wars story, only to get the absolute bare minimum in return. It really feels like such an indicator of how modern-day Disney is willing to cut corners as much as possible while leaning on brand recognition, and especially on nostalgia, in order to milk every last red cent out of their customers, until they run out of both money and goodwill. And that is so, so incredibly sad.
#life with ladytemeraire#Star Wars#RenFest#Ren Faire#my maunderings#Jenny Nicholson#I have no idea how to tag this#I loved this essay but it made me both sad and furious#literally every suggestion she made as a form of improvement would have been better than the actual thing#Disney
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Helping you with homework. (NSFW)
Moon system x reader. (+18) Headcanons.
SFW version here!
Steven.
God bless Steven Grant's heart.
Although you didn't enjoy asking for help with things like this, you knew your boyfriend was the right person for your history assignment.
Unfortunately, remembering dates was your kryptonite.
"I'll explain it to you, okay?" He put on his glasses, and you sighed.
How were you supposed to concentrate when he looked like that?
You watched him go to his room and return with at least six different books in his arms.
And you pushed your chair so close that your shoulders touched.
It started well; you were understanding the timeline from prehistory to the Middle Ages.
However, you didn't take into account that once Steven started talking about his hyperfixations, he didn't stop.
By the second hour, you weren't sure if you were still retaining anything, so you did what your instinct dictated.
You slid down your chair and Steven didn't even notice.
Until after a few seconds when the words caught in his throat when he felt your hand on his baggy jeans.
"Love?" It came out strangled almost.
You were on your knees on the floor in front of him.
"Keep reading."
He obediently lifted his hips to let you lower his pants.
You collected a glob of saliva in your mouth before licking along his erection, he still had his underwear on.
The sudden chill from the damp cloth made him shiver.
"Th-Then, let's get into the topic of feudalism."
By the time you pulled his boxers down, Steven was so hard his cock snapped against his abdomen.
Poor baby Steven, he was so sensitive that the brush of the fabric of his sweater made him moan.
It gave him some relief.
“It was a set of…” a sigh. “Legal and military costumes in mediev-ah, fuck.”
You liked when he cursed.
Your tongue licked the length of him again, and Steven gave you more room by spreading his legs a little more.
“Medieval Europe.” He managed to say. “You remember we talked about i-it, huh, love? The beginning of…”
His head was already inside your mouth and Steven swore he could hear the force with which you were sucking.
“Of the medieval era.” You said after you pulled him out with a little 'pop' from your lips.
His fingers wrapped around yours, forcing you to hold him more firmly.
Steven almost sobbed when without warning you leaned forward.
You could feel it in your throat, but you didn't give him a break, instead you tapped his thigh twice inviting him to continue.
"Yes! Y-Yeah, yes, ahh-. T-The medieval era.” You couldn't see him but he already had his eyes closed. “It was between… Mhmm.”
Who was he trying to fool? He couldn't resist you.
And when he gave up, you made your move.
Bobbing your head up and down for him.
Slow, until his hand was placed on your head, pulling you down hard.
Your nose was brushing against his lower tummy.
And the gagging caused the muscles of your throat to squeeze harder for periods of seconds.
He didn't give you rest even when he came.
“J-Just like that, love.” His voice broke as his whole body shivered. “Swallow it. A-Ah-t-take it, it's all for you."
Steven wasn't that talkative in sex but… He always lost control when it came to you sucking him off.
And you obeyed, swallowing every last drop of his warm, delicious cum.
He remained with his back against the back of the chair with his eyes closed, his hand still in your hair.
She was breathing hard, her curls falling over her forehead.
And his cock was still twitching slightly.
The mere image was obscene.
"Love?" It cost him more than he would like to recover.
"Yes, Steven?"
"Why don't you take a nap while I finish this?"
Marc.
"I beg you." "No."
"Marc?" "No."
"Please?" "I said no."
You had been following him around the house for about 5 hours. Usually, you had no trouble completing your responsibilities from start to finish, but on days like today, you didn't even have the energy to turn on your laptop.
And Marc, of course, had already decided that there was no way he would help you with something like this.
In his school days, he didn't even do his own homework.
"Please, please, please." "I said no."
After begging for the 46th time, you finally gave up. The rest of the day passed just as boringly until dinner when you took the last sip of coffee from your cup.
"I'm not going to do it." After a week of constant sleep deprivation, you decided that you could afford to sleep for 8 hours just this once.
Marc looked at you in silence for a few seconds before nodding his head.
"Let's go to sleep then."
You obeyed, and you both went hand in hand to bed. Like every night, you felt him press you against his body with both arms.
The exhaustion in your body made you give in in less than 10 minutes.
But Marc couldn't sleep.
At 12:27 in the morning, he quietly got out of bed.
And at 01:53, you woke up. The fear of not feeling your daily companion almost made you cry like a little kid.
You got up to look for him, and it wasn't difficult at all. The light from your laptop illuminated the entire dining room.
And the sound of the keys echoed through the house.
"Marc?" "No," he replied again. Admitting such gestures was not his strong suit.
Still, he pushed the chair back to give you space, and you dragged your feet to sit on his lap.
You sat in front of the laptop and he continued typing with his arms at the sides of your body.
The least you could do was accompany him while he worked for you.
That and make sure he didn't make any mistakes.
You settled in a little jump on his lap.
And he had to take a breath.
Foolish of him not to assume you had noticed.
Another movement of your hips.
"Why don't you go sleep while I finish this?" His hoarse voice gave you a chill.
"I do not want to be alone." And it was not a lie.
With the tips of your feet you used the ground to have more control and you slowly moved again on top of him.
He growled, though you didn't know if it annoyed him to be distracted or because he liked it.
maybe both.
One hand gripped your hip, his fingers making sure you weren't able to move.
Sometimes you forgot the strength your boyfriend possessed.
"Stay." He ordered, his chin resting on your shoulder so he could see the screen.
And you, of course, with a PhD in testing Marc Spector's patience, did not comply.
You pushed yourself down, your ass pressing against his half-hardened cock.
“Shit, sweetheart.” He breathed heavily in your ear and you leaned your back against his chest.
Before you could know it, you were at his mercy.
He left the keyboard of the laptop and his two hands were placed on your hips. You knew his fingers would leave a mark, they always did.
But you didn't stop him when he began to guide your movements on top of his still clothed cock.
"You can't wait a few minutes, huh?" When your legs were on top of his, he separated them without having to use his hands.
His free hand positioned between your legs.
Every move you made on him resulted in more friction for you.
“Marc, Marc, Marc.” Your breathy voice filled the room.
He was pushing up like he was thrusting into you.
The rubbing of your clothes together began to emit heat because of the speed with which you pretended to ride him.
You both looked like teenagers with little time.
“You are going to make me cum on my fucking pants.” He growled against your neck as he nibbled at it to his liking.
Was he complaining or was it a compliment to you?
Anyway, you knew it was over when both of his hands forced you down as he emptied every last drop onto his clothes.
Your breaths echoed, unrhythmic and agitated.
"Go to sleep." He forced you to stand up. And you turned to enjoy the view. Post-orgasm Marc was always something worth admiring.
His glossy lips and red cheeks made you smile. And without meaning to, he smiled back, running a hand through his hair to push the curls away from his face.
"I'll go to bed when this is over."
Jake.
Spanish was never your strong suit.
And you knew very well that Jake was the one who could help you, but once you asked him, you knew he wouldn't stop bothering you.
He, on the other hand, was an expert in both things: speaking fluent Spanish and teasing you.
"Jake?" "Yes, honey?" "Can I ask you something?"
And as you suspected, he didn't leave you alone all day.
He started with innocent things, pointing to his fork and asking you. "What's this called, love?"
He even sounded like the host of a kid's show at some moments.
But when you lost your temper, Jake did too.
You stopped responding to him and playing along.
Bad idea. If your boyfriend was sure of one thing, it's that a day later you'd be crying in his arms for failing the exam, so he did what any responsible boyfriend would do.
"M-More." You said with a broken voice.
His cock was thrusting deeply into you.
His right hand smacked against your cheek.
It burned deliciously. And it was probably the fifth you received.
"¡Más!" You complained as you corrected yourself while your fingers clung to the bed.
You would have time later to scold him because the mattress was creaking as if he wanted to give up.
"Buena chica." (Good girl.) You wanted to beat the mocking smile out of him.
Even more so when he went back to the slow pace after a few seconds.
Turns out Jake had been in this game for about 40 minutes where he was fucking you to the limit and then suddenly stopping.
You wanted to burst into tears of frustration, but were you going to lie and say you weren't enjoying it?
"Más duro." (Harder.)
His own game played against him when you whispered between moans with your eyes locked on his.
For a moment you thought you had earned another slap, but instead, his hand went around your neck. You knew when he moved faster than you too you were pushing him to the limit.
Even under his body, with his hand forcing you to stay against the mattress, you managed to take control of things away from Jake just by batting your eyelashes for him.
"Más d-duro." You repeated with a broken voice.
And he obeyed.
You were so close
So close.
"Jake, please." Another slap. "¡Por favor! ¡Por favor!"
Your pleas were the straw that broke the camel's back.
"¿D-Dónde lo quieres, huh, a-ah, mierda-, princesa?" (Where do you want it, huh, princesa?) "M-mhm, dentro." (Inside.) And he was so lost in your body expressing the pleasure you felt in so many different ways that he didn't even notice the mistake in your response.
He filled you up.
And then pushed his spend deeper with some more thrusts.
You expected him to come out right away, you both deserved a break.
Instead, he slowly moved his hip again, making you whimper.
“We still have a lot to practice.” It didn't take long for your breathing to change, you weren't even sure you could walk to school tomorrow.
Needless to say, you received an amazing grade for the cheap price of spending those two hours with your cheeks flushing red every time you read certain words.
#moon knight#moon knight x you#moon knight x y/n#moon knight x reader#moon boys#moon boys x y/n#moon boys x you#moon boys x reader#moon system#moon system x y/n#moon system x you#moon system x reader#steven grant#steven grant x y/n#steven grant x you#steven grant x reader#marc spector#marc spector x y/n#marc spector x you#marc spector x reader#jake lockley#jake lockley x reader#jake lockley x you#jake lockley x y/n#oscar isaac#oscar isaac x reader#oscar isaac x you#oscar isaac x y/n
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🫧My experience being friends with the Moon signs 🫧
-Please remember that this is not a reflection of everyone with said placement. The behaviors of a single asshole aren't that of the many (sometimes). Also, I don't/didn't have friends with all Moons. Some would have one person or no specific person, and rather so, I'll be giving general observations.
🫧Taurus Moon🫧
Friend #1: Kind, loving, generous, thoughtful, quiet, slow, and internalizes everything. She is one of my closest friends ever. She is practically the father figure of the group, helping everyone out, protecting them, advocating, giving advice, and making sure that they're set and good. Picky with her friends, many of them are people she has known since childhood, and most are her cousins with very few that aren't related to her. Tech and cyber expert. A big animal and nature lover. She loves her space and peace, she is slow to return texts, hates calls, and has the social battery of a sloth. Good singing voice. Loves video games, and is OBSESSED with whatever she has an interest in. Overall, her emotions are well-regulated, however, as an Earth Moon she rationalizes herself and stays pretty chill, even when she needs to pipe up.
Friend #2: Obsessive, jealous, sensual, persistent, indulgent yet very frugal, and stubborn af. A big-time foodie, he does have quite the appetite. Good singing voice too. Always at the clearance section of 'Bath and Body Works'. Thrifty. Got to have three of the same body spray. Candle queen. Trust issues with a very paranoid outlook on things. A bit greedy. Always asking people to buy them things. Very sexual. Cares for his younger sisters and loves his family and friends.
Friend #3: Big-time nerd. Memes are his only talking reference. Great singing voice and can imitate voices very well. Shy extrovert. Loves animations and even studied to be an animator and designer. Hugger. Big animal lover (he legit has what seems like a zoo of pets at home).
Friend #4: Obsessed with history (especially medieval history). All about death and our relationship with mortality. A literal cat. Isn't afraid to get her hands dirty. Goes all in on a subject of interest. Has the same appearance and sense of style as always.
I find Taurus Moons to be very comforting and a joy to be around. They defiantly bring a sense of stability to the relationship, mainly because they're predictable. Not in the "boring" sense but rather that they're people of clear and simple emotions no matter how grand they're in expression, it's pretty clear what they feel, how they feel, and why; Basically, there's no catch or an underbelly to their emotions. Other qualities I have found was that they're pretty aloof, they hate to be intimate with people they barely know, and they actually like fast-paced relationships (only if they really like you), they love to dress simply but chic, and they do have a well known "thing". They always got that "thing" you associate with them and they have it for comfort, like a kid with a blanket or a toy. They also love animals, pastels, the color brown, and karaoke. Hates confrontation and always second guesses their gut feeling. They're also very stubborn and in general, find it much harder to break out of habitual cycles of disconnecting and detachment when shit gets real.
🫧Gemini Moon🫧
Friend #1: Very smart. Great writer and lyricist. Talented musician and singer. Loves people. A bit timid about being in the spotlight. Loves to connect with others over interests, especially art and social issues. Great dresser. Romantic. Bends too fast. Dislikes confrontation but would stand up for a loved one. Bad judge of character (always attracts cheaters and assholes).
Friend #2: Certified L.A.B (lying ass bitch). Says shit for the sake of saying shit. Fake trauma bonding. Leeches off of people. Toxic. Abusive. Always with abusers. Manipulative and hateful. Been around the block. Would do anything for validation. Makes up stories about others to play the role of the victim. (Very likely she has a cluster B personality disorder and no Gemini Moon would claim her.)
I think I have experienced two extremes of this moon, with one being highly and continuously evolving and the other being consistently trash. I am fond of the energy that Gemini has on the moon. There's this innocence that they possess at the core, and it could be the purest and most genuine thing or the biggest fabrication in history. Nonetheless, I do love to be around them and the energy they bring to a relationship. It is always lively, fresh, and new, they'll always come up with something to do with you, and always find a way to spend time and be close to you. They definitely give mixed signals since they tend to be a bit playful, especially in their platonic relationships, and they are very touchy. They're bold and outspoken generally about how they feel. They're less guarded and more likely to share and talk about their problems and their opinions. In contrast, they would rather die than open up about their deep true emotions.
🫧Cancer Moon🫧
Talking about their ex was their favorite pastime. Never misses an important function. Celebrations and social events were considered important. The person that would want to go somewhere but then gets upset because things did not go how they imagined they would. Ruminates on past events and feelings. Vents a lot but also gives you the space to do so. Strong stan on temporary emotions and circumstances. Feels how she feels and doesn't care how others perceive her for it, or what they think about it. Low key ferocious (I live for it though). The only person I know that isn't afraid to publicly voice their boundaries when crossed.
I don't think I met another Cancer Moon besides this person, and we became friends only because we were together in similar classes at uni. Overall, I would say from what I have observed, her relationships with her friends were always great and seemed pretty solid. Romantically though, sis was very challenged, and I don't think it was totally her date's fault. She is an acquired taste and she knows what she wants. Seems very hung up on the idea of meeting expectations and fighting an imaginary clock to get THE perfect life. Good luck with that.
🫧Leo Moon🫧
Creative. Self-motivated. A visionary. The definition of an untamable person. Careful of who they keep company. Lives for an adventure. All about self-expressing, being authentic, and breaking the system. Great philosophical talker. Has true parental instincts. Very comfortable with themselves. Sexual. Great body-mind attunement. Good at mirroring others.
I have heard/read a lot of shit spewing about this placement, but I have to say that I do love to meet them. They're a breath of fresh air. Although I get how they can give an impression of a know it all "I am better than you" life dula, I never detect malice in their approach and usually they're more than respectful if you talk to them about it. They carry the weight of life with such ease, and I envy their perseverance. They definitely love to live life to the fullest. They have their select few friends that they have for a lifetime and like to keep it that way.
🫧Virgo Moon🫧
Never been friends with a Virgo Moon, although not for lack of trying but they themselves are quite apprehensive of bonds with people. They're close to their family and the friends they have they got to know them through school, work, or because they had no other option than to be around you. A molded chaos, and an organized mess. Life runs much faster for them and there's never enough time to finish anything. Despite their tendency to give everything a sense of debilitating urgency, they aren't hypochondriacs. Being strong and well functioning is important to them, as such they take good care of their bodies and surroundings. Oddly spiritual with a devolution to routine rituals. Their emotions are well hidden, they have the hardest exterior to crack. However, they're avid about mental health and wellness. I have also noticed that they tend to lash out, uncharacteristic of them, when they're overwhelmed or feel cornered.
🫧Libra Moon🫧
Friend #1: Very sweet. Bad Bitch™. Always looks good. Best dancer I know. Craves love and relationships. Attracts drama. They are very close to their family. Heavily underestimated. "Legally Blond" but Elle is a Latina that studies medicine. Loves astrology. Takes care of their friendships. Always on the go. Meeting new people all the time.
Friend #2: Pushover. Non-confrontational yet very aggressive. Easily frustrated. Closed minded to different interests. A bit extreme and abrasive. HATES astrology. LOVES the show 'Friends'. Self-critical. Insecure.
A placement that perfectly embodies Libra. Heavenly body and presence. Indecisive as hell. Always stuck in bad relationships. Head is always in the clouds. Romanticizing everything. Walking like they're being filmed. I would say there is an emphasis on companionship and finding "the one" throughout their lives, plus drama is second nature. They might be used to drama so much so that they lose sense of their boundaries and self, in turn making them vulnerable to manipulation and abuse. Their "all about me" era is like no other and is a true turning point in their lives. They seem to thrive when are surrounded by masculinity and masculine people, or overall very competitive and cut-throat environment. They use being underestimated to their advantage.
🫧Scorpio Moon🫧
"Me, myself and I". Paranoid as hell. Big spender. Artistic. Good at portrait sketching. Dresses well. Loves drama. Is the drama. Tone deaf. Low-key ungrateful. An immense sense of self-importance. Passive aggressive. PETTY. Mature exterior with very childish interests. Hypercritical of everything, including themselves.
"Jesus take the wheel" was made as a phrase for dealing with a Scorpio Moon. I get the fragility and being highly emotional and sensitive, that I read about. However, I mostly find them to be disagreeable and pensive. You never know what is the truth, so I assume everything is a lie, and if it's the truth then there must be a catch. They would wake up and the day already sucks. They love to surround themselves with expensive things. It's uncomfortable to be around a placement that seems to believe their own projections and preconceived notions of others rather than getting to know people, or maybe just mind their own business. I would say though that having a Scorpio Moon is probably unpleasant, but I have seen worse happen to other placements with "favorable" moons. And of course, I am talking about the ones that I have met and not every single Scorpio Moon out there.
🫧Sagittarius Moon🫧
Friend #1: Life of the party (actually the life of life). Loves to laugh. Comfortable with everyone. Always hype. Smokes like a chimney. Either brave or stupid. Hype. Frequent dealings with older guys. No chills. Loves to play with friends. Car hangouts over going into places. Funny on the outside, sad on the inside.
Friend #2: Very smart. Tarot mogul. Always a good time. Great convorsaitonlist. A softie. Very sensitive. Expressive.
Friend #3: Would cut a bitch. A true ride or die. A person you want to be on her good side. An unofficial dominatrix. Sweet but feisty. Loves her cat. Always lit. Would do anything for her friends. A good bullshit detector.
A favorite of mine, it is very hard not to like a Sag moon. They're so caring of others and are always making sure that you're good and having a good time. They're the type of person to trust if you're in a bar or a club. I would say that there is a very sad side to them under all that happiness. They're always anxious, which is probably why they don't sleep or eat very well. They also get a lot of migraines. If they open up then they really really really trust you (which is important to them since they can vibe and hang out with anyone but barely trust). They usually have a much calmer Earth sun best friend. I would say that they act much older than their when young but then seem to stay stuck on childish cycles of defensiveness and escapism as they get older.
🫧Capricorn Moon🫧
Friend #1: Artistic and crafty. Resilient. Capable of being very sweet and stern. Good with money, planning, and organizing. Maticolus. Conscious and realistic about their growth and development. Loves animals. Loves to be active in nature. A strong believer in karma.
Friend #2: A true powerhouse. Wonderwoman. My mentor and only real-life role model. An established businesswoman. Rags to riches. Despite having a physical disability she can drive, open pickle jars, do lifts and push up, plus she is a fashion designer that can sew. All of that with one arm. A fighter through and through.
Never had the privilege of being friends with many Capricorn Moons but I have known quite a few and some are very close friends of my family. A rough start in life. They really do take time to peak, however, the glow-up is real. Least spiritual Moon sign. Not egotistical or cold as I read so often. Quite warm and welcoming actually. They might be borderline Darwinists when it comes to the importance of human life and mortality. Believers of hard work and initiative. Lovers and fighters. Silent passion. When young, their relationship with their mother can be described as codependent, and their relationship with their father is strained with a sense of animosity. However, with time the roles seem to slowly reverse. Regardless, their family defenatliy takes precedence throughout their lives. They value respect more than anything else.
🫧Aquarius Moon🫧
Friend #1: Devoted to volunteer work and other people. The "fixer" type. Wants to be needed. Self-help books are all they read. Their interests and style are influenced by the people they're hanging out with. Accidentally (or maybe not) trauma bond with others. Desires to be a leader. Emotions focused. Worries about their reputation a lot. No luck with love. And also in friendship. Many friends, very few that are close, and only one has been consistent so far. Loves to have hangouts with large groups.
Friend #2: Music is their soul. Hippie. Loves acting. "center of attention". Dress based on aesthetics. TikTok addict. Interested in astrology and spirituality. Cold. Performative.
Friend #3: Know-it-all. Bad at expressing themself. No filter. Self-centered. Radical thinking. "Everyone is stupid". Loves to stand out. Learned how to finish a Rubix cube just to show it off. Having low grades is a "red flag" to him. Has a strong desire to be loved, yet none to give it back.
Friend #4: All about the drama and lights. Emotionally explosive at times. Hiding behind a facade. Loves to meet different people. Business savvy. Guarded but would give you their heart once they let it down. Displays emotions as anger when in reality they're scared. Superficial connections to others are more prevalent.
Generally, these people are dynamic and quite sociable. They're people focused in the best and worst ways possible. There is a constant desire to change surroundings (and at times help others change and grow) but they themselves tend to be relatively rigid at the core. Impressionistic (even though they would probably deny it). Self-image is usually not the reality (this could manifest in being overconfident or self-critical). They love to work with their hands a lot and do much better when working with others in comparison to working alone. They are altruistic but aren't attentive to others' desires; as a result, they believe they know better about everything and "what is best" depending on the situation. Imitates emotions rather than naturally expressing them.
🫧Pisces Moon🫧
Another very close friend of mine. Hard to read. Intelligent. People smart. Their friends are family. Uncomfortable with expressing their emotions, yet a good listener. Extroverted introvert. Loves to go out and meet people. Likes to club, going to parties, playing video games, and trying out new things. Loyal. Tough shell, soft heart. Doesn't give a flying fuck about what strangers think of them. Trophy hunter. A very realistic and pragmatic view of the world. Melancholic. They are perceived as troubled when they're just quiet. Low-key altruistic.
This Moon sign is not as bubbly as I have heard about it. They're hard to pinpoint as they usually come off as either Aquarius or Scorpio Moons. They tend to go through much more emotional turmoil, especially as children. They have a floaty feel to them. They feel a lot but nothing at once. They are usually witnesses to harm done to others and suffer losses related to other people rather be it themselves directly, which contributes to a sense of isolation from their peers. They do definitely grow into brave people that face life despite all the baggage they seem to drag around. By far the moon sign that takes the longest to open up honestly and completely, although they do experience spats of anxiety from time to time. Also FOOOOODDDD. They love food and everything that brings them comfort. Vices.
🫧Aries Moon🫧
Very emotional yet not expressive. Dedicated and strong-willed (she is a pediatrician). Hung up on "the one that got away". A true badass. So pretty yet so sad. Her dogs are her babies. Always choosing violence. Femme fatal that drives a Jeep Wrangler.
Emotions that cut deeper than a sword. They seem to compensate for emotional and inner needs with material things and career achievements. Very intimidating when you meet them at first, as they appear put together and quite the expert in their field. They spiral downwards if life doesn't go their way. Personally, I think this moon sign is the most emotionally rigid. Not for their lack of desire to change but rather that they get stuck on what their heart desire and can't seem to see or want anything other than that thing or person that they can't get. They also seem hellbent on trying to control what we can't control, such as the past, other people, and unforeseen misfortune. Highly upkeep on their exterior. Needs some form of vice to process emotions, usually it's smoking and drinking. They tend to be their parents favorite.
#astrology#astro observations#astro notes#astrology notes#astrology observations#aquarius#aries#cancer#capricorn#gemini#taurus#virgo#libra#pisces#scorpio#leo#sagittarius#moon signs#aries moon#taurus moon#gemini moon#cancer moon#leo moon#virgo moon#libra moon#scorpio moon#capricorn moon#aquarius moon#pisces moon
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❝ a flower that resembles you ❞ author: @perexcri
link: archiveofourown.org/works/43066272
personal blog || submit a story || support me on ko-fi 🎂
#📚#byler#byler fanfiction#byler fic rec#will byers#mike wheeler#stranger things#r // teen#r // chaptered#r // finished#r // 100k+#t // fantasy#t // au#t // magic#t // medieval setting#t // falling in love#t // domestic#t // miscommunication#t // reunion#t // friends to lovers#t // fluff#t // angst#t // slow burn#w // blood#(light)
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my knight-monk agenda strikes again, but this was less of a 'I read something that made me experience several emotions and a strike of inspiration at once,' and more of a 'wouldn't it be fucked up if the bejeweled skeleton saints came to life and and started. eating people. or something. in revenge. medieval catholic horror, or an older horror of not being buried right. zombies, even. a complete bastardization of holy visuals. zombies.'
it's a far away idea, but I still wanted to play around with font layouts. like, if I DID make it into a full comic: these would be visual vibes, perhaps.
it's also a little bit about the kind of intimacy that these kinds of spaces provide, or in the case of this monk: the heavy trauma of war and the death of your brother, the escape to a secluded monastery, spiritual brotherhood to make up for your dead brother, but your role as a physician keeps pulling you back to this violence you want to escape. physician, heal thyself, only you have a holy calling to serve those in need, so instead: physician, open up your wounds again. saint jude, patron saint of lost causes, give us a fucking hand here, man. amen.
Homosexuality in the Renaissance: Behavior, Identity, and Artistic Expression, James M. Saslow
and this one is about earlier history than the medieval period that this comic is set in, but the monk character is sort of an exploration of earlier themes. a little bit. I like overlapping eras with each other, I've done it before and I'll do it again. this character is an exploration of some other stuff too, but mostly this book was interesting to read
From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity, Andrew T Crislip
bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost
#i almost made him a benedictine monk but then we would've been reaching territory i do not feel like suffering through#generic medieval tag#i had more tags but i started talking politics and honestly if im going to talk politics i think its better to just make a post about it#i dont actually talk politics on tumblr even tho a lot of my work is extremely political in its subtext/text#because i think that tumblr is very annoying for that. its so anglo-american-western centric in its political theory#and i am WELL beyond that. i use twitter for politics because i love suffering lmao but also its like. still better for getting stuff done#komiks tag
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🌱 Deeco's ZoSan Fic Rec List 🐥
Hello hello! This is going to be a slight rework for my zosan fic rec list, because I wanted to re-organize it and add some new fics while I'm at it, so this is going to be longer than the first. Feel free to check it out!
Latest update: November 2023
Because I started making this list long before August 2023, I won't add any fics that specifically take place in live-action setting because I haven't read much of them yet. I might consider updating this list to add fics with live-action setting in the future.
—GEN/T FICS
Sketches of Life (and Love) by Fledgling (Teen, 2.9k)
An exploration of a headcanon where Sanji likes to draw in his free time. This fic always leaves me with a warm feeling every time I read it because how endearingly sweet it is. It’s basically a domestic fluff story about both ZoSan and the Strawhats crew in general.
green with envy blues by adietxt (Gen, 1.5k)
A cute fic about Zoro being jealous. Jealous!Zoro has been one of those tropes that make me screech like a feral animal every time I come across it and this fic does exactly that. It’s pretty short and simple but it captures the characters very well. It’s set during pre-timeskip which makes it even better to me because pre-TS Zoro possesses that boyish quality that post-TS Zoro doesn’t necessarily have anymore. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: Fuck, Marry, Kill (or, how Usopp becomes the best matchmaker of the sea without really trying) (Teen, 4.8k) — Usopp introduces the Strawhats to a game that ends up causing Sanji to overthink things - a lot of things.
Old Men Blues by postmoderne (Gen, 2k)
Quoting directly from the fic’s summary, “Sanji and Zoro: two ancient fucks (in love).” because this is exactly that, a story about old men ZoSan. Old Zoro and old Sanji are both still as stubborn as ever and it’s endearing. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: Something Golden (Teen, 1.6k) — Canon reimagining where Zoro met Sanji at the Baratie pre-series.
Meet me under the orange tree by candelina (Gen, 3.9k)
A canon divergence AU where Zoro and Sanji met as kids, as Zeff opened up Baratie in Zoro’s hometown. It’s an adorable and heartwarming story of little Zoro and little Sanji’s friendship. There’s also a part two which is also worth reading. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: The whole world will know (2.3k) — Old men ZoSan fic, this one involves Zoro deliberately showing himself to the Marines for god knows what. It’s sweet, it’s beautiful, and it shows that Zoro is as reckless and idiotic as he is a loving, devoted husband.
Zoro’s Boyfriend, Who Lives In Canada by donutsandcoffee (Gen, 2.6k)
Modern AU, where Zoro’s friends try to stop him from believing that his imaginary, totally made-up boyfriend actually exists. Of course Zoro’s boyfriend doesn’t actually exist, because with the way Zoro describes him he’s way too perfect to exist and how can anyone so perfect actually exist? A hilarious story of misunderstandings. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: Prison Blues (Teen, 2.8k) and it’s a long way forward (Teen, 5k) — serve as both a ZoSan story and a great Sanji character study.
The Three of Swords by 8ball (Teen, 30k, multi-chapters & completed)
A medieval AU with knight Zoro and prince Sanji, a concept that starts to really grow on me after I begin to read this fic. In this story, Zoro is a cursed knight appointed to serve Sanji, a kind-hearted prince whom Zoro eventually pines over. It’s a beautiful take of prince and knight AU; devoted knight Zoro is something that I didn’t know I need. It also has a sequel. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: The Ocean's Child series — a canon-divergence mermaid!Sanji AU
(I Want) Someone to Love Me by three_days_late (Teen, 7.9k)
Sanji is about to turn 17, so he hopes that he can get his first kiss before that. A cute high school AU that involves everyone wanting to kiss Sanji (honestly, who doesn’t) but only one person gets to actually do it. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: Blood Red (Teen, 400 words) — this might be a little biased because this fic is inspired by my comic, but it’s also a perfectly good reason why I must add it here; this fic is able to capture the spirit of the comic perfectly. If you want to read a short exposition of Zoro showing his darker, yet protective side, then this fic is worth the read. Warning for blood & hints of violence. The Christmas Swap (Teen, 37k, multi-chapters & completed) — a modern AU in which Sanji and Reiju switch partners during Christmas so they can attend their family gathering without having to come out as queer. It’s a wonderful story about family, relationships, and the struggles of maintaining those things as a queer person. The Only Way Out (Is Through) (Teen, 4.8k) — a beautiful Prince Sanji and Knight Zoro story, where circumstances forced them to separate & unable to be together. It also has a side Nami/Vivi. I Have Loved You for 1000 Years (I'll Love You for 1000 More) (Teen, 8.9k) — Another Prince Sanji & Knight Zoro AU involving time travel & the sacrifices you go through for the ones you love.
Curly Angel by APTX & translated to English by NMTD (Teen, 9.4k, two chapters & completed)
In this alternative canon universe, everyone has a guardian angel, and Zoro’s just happened to be Sanji. Hilarity ensues.
Let me be your Inspiration by TheWanderers (Teen, 19.8k)
College AU where Sanji is an artist/painter - another fic that explores Sanji as someone with an artistic streak, but also so much more. It’s a beautiful story that starts out with Zoro having to model for Sanji’s painting but ends up falling in love with him. I love the way the author adapts the characters’ canon backstory into this universe.
Retrogade by Hazel_Athena (Teen, 21.9k, two-chapters & completed)
Sanji got badly injured after a fight, and ends up losing a big chunk of memories - it doesn’t bother him too much until he notices how weird Zoro starts to act around him. A really good temporary amnesia fic with some really delicious pining!Zoro material. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: Medieval ZoSan series — a medieval arranged marriage AU. Renegade Queen (Teen, 76k, multi-chapters & completed) — a canon divergent AU where Sora lives and takes all her children with her - it's more of a Vinsmoke family story with ZoSan on the side.
Nothing Happened (Gen, 16k, multi-chapters & completed)
An angsty survival story where the Strawhats get stranded in a middle of the seas with no means to escape and rapidly declining food stock. This fic does a really good job at keeping you in suspense, and the way it handles Zoro and Sanji's relationship destroyed me emotionally. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: Each A Love Song (Gen, 8.6k) — Sanji is frustrated because Zoro’s surprisingly popular with women when he doesn’t even like them back. A story of a confused Sanji trying to find love and being the World’s Most Oblivious Man. Three Blades (Gen, 5k) — a Western AU where Sanji is a saloon owner and Zoro is a bounty hunter.
The Melody of Missing You by BleuReivers (Teen, 11k)
Zoro is forced to confront his feelings in the aftermath of Sanji's departure during the Whole Cake Island arc. I love the way this story examines Zoro's softer, more vulnerable side in a painfully beautiful way, and the whole fic has this hazy, dream-like vibe that really fits with the plot.
Sick Day by Styx_in_the_mud (Teen, 1.3k)
Zoro gets sick, and Sanji takes care of him. A short sick!fic with a simple premise but very cute nonetheless.
—MATURE/EXPLICIT FICS
Deep by CharlieNozaki (Mature, 171k, multi-chapters & completed)
This is There Are Many Benefits to Being A Marine Biologist: The Fic. Okay jokes aside, this is a modern fantasy AU fic where merpeople exist and it mainly tells about marine biologist Sanji and merman Zoro. It has an interesting premise and deals with some heavy subjects in later chapters, hence the Mature tag. It has a sequel, though it's currently ongoing. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: The Game — a Modern AU with slight fantasy-ish element, where Zoro and Sanji are young orphans who find a mysterious game that might be able to change their lives.
Delphinium by toastie_bread (Mature, 39k, multi-chapters & completed)
Set in modern AU, stylist Sanji meets with police detective Zoro after his beauty salon got robbed; a cute rom-com story. There's also a side LawLu.
Steady, As She Goes by auspizien (Explicit, 155k, multi-chapters & completed)
I’ve always loved auspizien’s fics and this is the one fic that made me fall in love with their writing. This is a modern AU story where Zoro is an ex-agent with PTSD who meets and befriends Sanji, a paramedic. It’s a multi-chapter fic filled with humor, angst, pining, action, and good ol’ slow-burn. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: The Android Acquaintance (Explicit, 10k) — dystopian cyberpunk AU with android Sanji and bounty hunter Zoro. This fic partly inspires me to make the Blade Runner 2049 ZoSan art!
The Tribulations of Temptation by SweetyGreeny (Explicit, 18.5k)
Zoro accidentally sees Ace and Sanji doing… the do, and then spends days after that feeling shocked, confused, angry, and disappointed. A delicious story of pining and jealous Zoro. There’s a slight AceSan in the beginning but the endgame is still ZoSan. OTHER FICS FROM THIS AUTHOR: A Siren’s Sinking Song (Teen, 12k) — a canon-divergent AU where Sanji is a siren who one day meets a peculiar swordsman from a wandering ship; this story is beautiful and I love the idea of siren!Sanji, but please note the major character death TW. The Burden of Blondes (Explicit, 11k) — Sanji finds out that Zoro has a thing for blondes, and for some reason he feels uneasy. A fun story with some good smut, and inspired me to make an art loosely based on it.
Thy Fearful Symmetry by Harubo (Explicit, 14.3k)
A modern AU where Sanji is a tourist visiting a tiger reserve during a family vacation and Zoro is a detective investigating a poaching ring. All of Harubo’s fics are godsend but I particularly love this one because the setting reads like a perfect rom-com drama movie about a stressed, overworked chef meeting a handsome detective. There’s also a nice tidbit where the Vinsmoke siblings are trying to get along with each other.
Done Dirt Cheap by Balderdashfromafool (Explicit, 99.7k, multi-chapters & completed)
A Western ZoSan AU, where Zoro is an outlaw and Sanji is a small town chef. This one is fun and lovely, and as someone who doesn’t read a lot of Western-themed stories, I love the way the author describes the Western setting in this fic.
The Fox's Heart by Shadowcatxx (Explicit, 32k, multi-chapters & completed)
Historical/mythological AU where fox spirit Sanji falls in love with human samurai Zoro. A pretty heavy story about forbidden romance but ends with a happy ending. The fic deals with some period-typical issues like homophobia, misogyny, sexism, and transphobia, as well as some depictions of violence and (slight) animal abuse, so please be aware of that.
Mine by burnwaywardbird (Explicit, 4k)
A pure PWP fic of Zoro “punishing” Sanji for flirting with strangers. Super kinky and involves slight dom/sub undertones. Also, while this is mostly pure PWP, this fic is technically part of a series and while can be read as a standalone, I highly recommend to read the other parts as well (especially the ones preceding this fic).
pretty sanji series (Pretty & Surprise) by kickingsanji (12.6k in total)
A series of fics exploring Sanji's femininity and Zoro discovering that he has a thing for Sanji being pretty & wearing pretty things. As a Pretty Sanji truther, I love these fics to bits, not only because it handles Sanji dealing with his insecurities when it comes to his gender expression in a gentle, respectful way, but also because the smut is very good.
All Will be Well by thecrownofclowns (Explicit, 17k)
An incredibly sad but sweet zombie apocalypse AU about Sanji trying to survive the zombie outbreak all by himself, before eventually meeting Zoro. One of my favorite hurt/comfort fics.
—OMEGAVERSE (ALPHA/BETA/OMEGA) FICS
Onigiri by himaaneko (Teen, 2.3k)
Very cute domestic family fic of Zoro, Sanji, and their son. For those who prefers a softer omegaverse with family/love-children fluff on the side, this fic is for you.
Bite Me by Shadowcatxxx (Mature, 15k, two-chapters & completed)
Sanji got attacked while he was alone on the ship, causing him to go into heat. Zoro tries to help, but not without consequences. An exposition on how Zoro and Sanji handle their dynamics, and their feelings towards each other. Please mind the tags with this one.
fever by adietxt (Explicit, 6.4k, multi-chapters & completed)
I'm pretty sure that this is the first omegaverse ZoSan story that I have ever read, and one of the best ones I've ever read for a good reason. It involves Sanji, who suddenly got into his heat, and Zoro, the first one to discover Sanji in heat and learns for the first time he's an omega. I won't spoil anything, but I can say that the ending is great, the porn is delicious, and Zoro being possessive is exquisite.
Steps of Calidity by auspizien (Explicit, 42k, multi-chapters & completed)
I'm gonna preface this by saying that the smut here is ungodly good and very, very hot - and to be perfectly honest, one of the main reasons why I like this fic so much. But the plot is just as good and has an interesting take of how omegaverse dynamics might work in a modern world. Don't forget to mind the tags as well.
Sweet by ElAlmaDelMar (Explicit, 1.8k)
Sanji starts lactating during his pregnancy; Zoro finds it very hot. This one is just straight up kinky. It's a sequel to another story but can be read as a standalone.
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soulmate trope | midoriya izuku, part one
Midoriya's route of soulmate trope. Part two here. “this doesn’t match the manga’s canonical ending!” correct. and isn’t that sexy? please read this route last, as it contains spoilers for all other routes. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to 411ish. angst. sexual content. moderate injury (not reader). indulgently meta on behalf of the author. a note: some meta elements in this route may lead you to think it’s the true route for this fic. not necessarily. the true route is whichever one is your favourite :) ~57k overall. ~39.5k for part one.
“Aizawa-sensei, you’re good at sleeping.”
Aizawa rubbed his good eye with the heel of his palm, propping his forearm on his doorframe to support his weight. “It’s certainly what I’d like to get back to doing,” he said through a yawn.
“No, please, I—may I come in? This is kind of important.” You glanced over your shoulder towards Eri’s and Tenko’s dorms down the hall, both without light emanating from underneath the doorways.
“Kind of?” The sleeve of his dark t-shirt strained as his bicep tensed and relaxed when he let his arm fall to his side again. “You woke me up for kind of important?”
Sucking in through your teeth, you said, “I lied. It’s really important. Possibly the most important thing to happen to me since the war. And you’re the one most likely to be able to help.”
Aizawa glared at you, narrowing his good eye and shifting his jaw. But he stepped aside to let you pass, gesturing towards his kitchen table. “Why am I not surprised?”
***
You jolted awake, and you were wet.
Damp, really. Dew-heavy strands of grass crawled up to brush your sides, catching the morning chill, and hey, why were you sleeping outside?
Rubbing sleep out of your eyes, you pushed yourself upright and took in some sort of clearing with little vegetation besides yellowed weeds and shrubs stretching out to a dense treeline. The sun hadn’t appeared to have been in the sky long, but you’ve been here for a while based on how soaked through your clothes were these weren’t your clothes.
What were you wearing? Had someone bothered to dress you on top of dragging you out of reach of civilisation? Moreover, were they—you held your breath, taking in the weird half-gloves that had an intricate, painted floral pattern—some stranger LARPer?
Gracious, they’d put you in a corset, and you’d slept in it. Well—you felt along your spine for the ties—at least they’d loosened it for you? Huh. Layered with some kimono-style top that actually looked like it could’ve belonged to you, but the trousers and boots were unrecognisable.
But everything fit you, and fit you well. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment heist; this had been thought out, definitely by some deranged role-player. Even down to the props inside a battered pack nearby (starting with knitted socks, two other kimono tops, and a traditional tea set), this had been planned.
Shoving the socks back inside the pack, you scanned the clearing again in hopes of catching a camera lens, but all you could make out was the morning breeze’s light rustling of leaves and grass.
You nearly jumped out of your skin at shuffling and a quiet grunt: a taller sweep of dying grass had blocked you from discerning another person sleeping near you. With caution, you—
A groan came from their direction as they flipped over to stretch, along with the bitter murmuring of “That didn’t feel like more than three hours.”
Pushing the taller grass out of the way, you grinned in relief, scrambling over to Shinsou as his bleary, dark-circled eyes blinked up at you. “Hey, Shinsou,” you said, “Do you know what’s going on?”
He folded his arm behind his head, his mouth crooking up in a weary smile. He had on some strange, LARPer get-up, too: archer’s gloves, a faded armguard running up the inside of his forearm, some fucking medieval whore outfit that accentuated his waist (but your LARPer kidnapper, at least, gave Shinsou the courtesy of making it somewhat resemble his hero costume). “Still disoriented? Yeah, I think we shouldn’t’ve rushed the Gauntlet yesterday. I don’t think any of us even got out our bedrolls. Still, we don’t have to do it again.”
Huh?
“Are you asking where Touya and Monoma are?” Shinsou pushed up enough to lean back on his elbows, and he tilted his head back, eyes fluttering shut. “You were the one who assigned them breakfast, remember? They’re probably scoping out that brook fifteen minutes back.”
A deep-set dread sank into you like an anchor into too-shallow swamp water. Shinsou was acting like this was normal, like there was a routine, and you were the one out of the loop. Where were you? What were you doing here? Were you—and the thought made your throat run dry—the only one out of place?
You may not know what’s going on, but the thing to do now is collect information. For that, you have to act like everything’s fine. “Yeah, you’re right,” you said, examining the flock of birds in flight embroidered onto your kimono top, “I’m a bit out of it, I suppose, from not sleeping long enough. You said three hours? Feels like we were asleep twenty minutes.”
(Shinsou had used minute as a unit of time, so you could use it. Good to know something was the same as back home.)
“Too bad we’ve got to get going after breakfast,” said Shinsou, sighing as he sat up fully and running a hand back through his hair, which sprung back upright despite his flattening it, “We should start a fire before the others get back, just to speed up the process.”
You fumbled your way through starting a fire, but the two of you got one going. Shinsou rooted around in one of the rucksacks you hadn’t noticed earlier, next to a pair of crunched silhouettes in the grass, untouched by morning dew, to retrieve Monoma’s cast iron rotisserie spit, fish-shaped trammel hook, and tin percolator, along with two of the mismatched enamel mugs bought back in Renfield…
Your eyes glazed over as Shinsou dug the two ends of the iron spit on either side of the fire. How do you know that? Why is your brain supplying words for things you don’t recognise? But you had this information, regardless, and something in your gut told you that it was accurate.
You could picture the Renfield shopkeeper who sold the mugs to you.
“Will you wipe those down, please?” Shinsou set the mugs into your lap and opened his own pack for the coffee, which you’d known he’d stored there, in that outermost pocket, because he was encouraging it to get crushed.
With a cloth stored with your tea set, you cleaned both mugs slowly, wiping the black insides before the blue and cream-coloured outsides.
The brewing coffee smelled just like Shinsou’s flat back home.
“Pass me a cup?” Shinsou asked, eyes on the flame while he held out his hand.
The cream-coloured one was yours. Your gut said so. You placed the blue mug into Shinsou’s palm. He hardly glanced at it, but he shot you some sort of look you couldn’t understand.
You were drinking your unsatisfying, campfire coffee when Monoma and Touya showed up, laden with four, silver fish and a duck, for some reason, under Touya’s arm like a football. And oh, Monoma was Monoma, clear as day by his loud, barking yet melodic voice, but you hadn’t expected this Touya to be fucking Dabi.
(Sure, you tried to calm yourself down, taking another large gulp of coffee as they both settled down around the fire next to you, overly familiar and making too much noise this early in the morning.
Back home, Todoroki Touya had been living with his family, heavily reformed [?] and in therapies, both for his brain and his body. Beyond a curt introduction at a formal event, you hadn’t personally interacted with Touya outside of the battlefield, years ago. So, why is he with you now?
Moreover, why are you with this particular combination of people in the first place?)
“Hold him,” said Touya, plopping the duck into your lap, where it loafed like a cat, and he unhooked the first fish from the line to toss it to Shinsou, who was ready with a clean knife.
You averted your gaze from the gutting, knowing in your heart of hearts that you’ll have to eat that without looking disgusted. Sighing, you patted the duck on its head and stared down at it, reaching for its name through whatever memories you somehow had, and it settled its neck into the crook of your folded leg, making a contented noise that was not quite a quack.
Don’t tell me, you thought, lifting your hand from its back, This duck is someone I know, transformed into a duck.
***
“Enough about the duck,” said Aizawa, clanging his Put Your Hands Up Radio mug onto his kitchen table.
“The duck is important,” you said, holding your excellent, non-campfire coffee close enough that the steam billowed into your face, “I love the duck. His name is Granddaddy Slapkins.”
Aizawa clapped his hand to his forehead. “Is he anyone we know?”
“No, he’s just a duck. But he’s as much a part of the party as anyone else,” you said, as Aizawa’s cat, Konpeito, leapt onto the table and rubbed the upper curve of her tail on your face. “Oh, I love you, too, baby,” you said to her, free hand sinking into her thick fur, “I know you’re real.”
Aizawa dragged his hand down his face. “So, to confirm, you don’t believe the events you just described are real.”
“That’s the thing: I don’t know. At first, I thought it was just a silly, fantasy-themed dream with some people I know in real life. But it got stranger,” you said, scratching just before the base of Konpeito’s tail, arching her back in a stretch, “It wasn’t a one-off dream. I kept going back, to the exact spot where I left off. No inconsistencies or plot-holes, like dreams usually do. I go to sleep here, and I wake up in this fantasyland. I go to sleep there, and I wake up here.”
Aizawa squinted to ascertain how much time was left on the oven for the muffins. “Are you getting any rest from this, if your consciousness is active throughout it all?”
“I am,” you said, considering the fact for the first time, “Should I not be? Now that you say it, it seems obvious that I should be exhausted all of the time.”
“If you were exhausted, I’d be more inclined to think that these weren’t just dreams.” Aizawa tapped his fingers on the table, trying to attract Konpeito. “The fact that you aren’t grounds you in this reality. It rules out something as far-fetched as—as living in different universes or timelines.”
You laughed through your nose. “Come off of it, Aizawa-sensei. Not very logical of you to entertain ideas that impossible.”
Rising as the oven timer beeped, Aizawa blinked slowly at you, mouth curving into an oddly soft smile. “I tend to consider the impossible, when it comes to you.”
“I’m glad you have such faith in my total incompetence,” you said, holding your mug at arm’s length to prevent Konpeito from lapping at your coffee, (though she was trying to climb onto your arm to get it), “So! The second time it happened, I was weirded out but chalked it up to coincidence. The third time, I tried to figure out if anyone were from here and now, like me.”
***
“Shinsou,” you said, hanging back on the winding, mountain path while Monoma and Touya trudged ahead, “I’ve been thinking. Do you think we could source some milk at the next town? I’ve been craving a cappuccino.”
Shinsou tightened a rucksack strap over his shoulder, hiking it farther up his back. “A what?”
“Oh, a cappuccino? Cappuccinos? I thought we talked about them before. Just for, y’know, adding some variety to our routine.” You tripped over an exposed root but caught yourself. “If that isn’t a good option, we could skip milk and just try to brew espresso instead. If that’s okay.”
Shinsou pointedly stepped over the root. “Forgive me for not remembering. Remind me what exactly those are?”
“Oh, uh.” How anachronistic would it be if you explained what they really were? “Energising. Spells. Energy spells that require milk, y’know, as an organic component.”
“Ah. That would be why we haven’t used them yet,” said Shinsou, nodding, “since milk doesn’t keep long when we’re on the road. Perhaps when we have a consistent source, we can try them out.”
***
Aizawa swallowed his bite of muffin. “Well. It’s not the Shinsou we know, for certain.”
“Yeah. It makes me feel like I’m in the twilight zone, that I can look at my best friend and know things we’ve done together that he has no recollection of,” you said, steering Konpeito away from a loose chocolate chip, “And Monoma didn’t recognise the plot of Lord of the Rings when I started to tell it over the campfire one night, and Touya didn’t say anything when I Naruto-ran—”
“Those aren’t foolproof.”
“But the Shinsou one is.”
“Hm,” said Aizawa, mouth full, and he fiddled with the band on his night eyepatch. “And they’re the only people you’d seen.”
“Up to that point. We’d been travelling to this town, Alderside—beautiful place, really, nestled along this ghastly mountain range with bad roads, fabulous spring festival—”
“Why did Shinsou accept that a cappuccino was a spell? Is he an idiot?”
“Oh, uh. That would be because there’s magic there. Spells are normal,” you said, biting into your muffin.
Aizawa shook his head, glaring into his coffee. “If you ever tell anyone else this story—which I advise that you don’t—give that information earlier. It sets the tone for how ridiculous this is.”
“Yeah, I—sorry about that,” you said, scratching the underside of your chin, “Forgot. Magic has become so normal to me, in that context, that I forgot that it’s not implied.”
“Do you do magic?” Aizawa sat back in his chair. “Are there quirks?”
“Yes and no, and then to an extent.” You moved your muffin out of Konpeito’s way. “To the best of my knowledge, no one has a quirk exactly like we have here, but I’ve found that people’s magic usually mirrors their real quirks somehow. Monoma’s an illusionist—uses magic to make copies of himself or whomever we’re fighting, and if he’s made that particular copy a lot, then that copy can use their magic. Touya’s magic is this sort of freezing fire; I don’t really get how it works, but it means we can’t rely on him to cook by himself.”
“All right. Is the magic something you’re born with, then, similar to a quirk?”
“It’s hard to say, Aizawa-sensei; sometimes I think I have it figured out, but life’ll throw me a wrench. You can study different types of magic, sure—for example, Shinsou’s studying necromancy right now. But I think everyone has a natural talent for a certain type of magic, and you have to try a lot of different kinds to figure it out. So, effectively, there are quirkless-slash-magicless people, because it’s a hassle to find out what you’re skilled at out of thousands of types of incredibly specific magic.”
“I’m assuming what magic you’ve learnt is highly specific and useless?”
“Oh, rude! That is rude, and mean, and accurate! Shut up,” you said, grumbling into your muffin before taking an angry bite out of it and rushing to swallow with a dry throat. “But the main thing is that I didn’t learn this stuff. I already knew it when I got there. I have a whole different life I’ve apparently lived.”
***
Over a week’s worth of living in this unfamiliar world while you slept had you feeling uneasy and isolated. Moreover, you missed being able to fully trust your best friend. While washing your filthy socks by a riverbank, you made up your mind to confess to this Shinsou that you lived in a place called Japan and were at a loss for why you were here now.
You returned to camp, wrenching the water out of everyone’s socks before hooking them to a shitty clothesline near the fire. Monoma, half-asleep, was turning the spit over the fire, while Touya was distracting Granddaddy Slapkins with oats while he tried to repair a hole in his boot (Touya was trying to repair a hole in his own, human-sized boot, not that he was trying to fix a duck-sized boot—obviously). Shinsou was scanning necromantic glyphs from a handwritten book, but his eyes kept drifting closed too often to be absorbing information.
“Hey, Shinsou,” you said, gathering everyone’s sweat-stained undershirts, “Come with me to the river? I know it’s my turn to do laundry, so you don’t have to do anything, but I think I just may fall in if I don’t have anyone to talk to.”
Taking a few moments to register your words, Shinsou blinked blearily up at you, and, snapping himself out of it, he slammed his book shut. “Yes,” he said in a stilted voice, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah, let me come with you.”
Weaving through the trees behind you, Shinsou carried his shirt and Monoma’s down to the river, claiming that he should have to deal with his own sweat, and if you did all four by yourself, you wouldn’t get back to camp before the Night Wyrms started wandering (the what? You pulled your cloak closer).
You knelt on the rocks, set the soap and scraping knives between you, and started wetting your undershirt’s sleeve (yours was a slightly thicker fabric than Touya’s, so yours would take longer to dry. Better do it first—and again, this routine already was imprinted in your brain, like it was instinctual).
“Hi,” you said eventually.
“Hello,” said Shinsou, hunched closer to the ground than you were so that he could squint through the water while he rubbed at a bloodstain on Monoma’s shirt. “Come here often?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Historically, yes, but if it’s funny, I’m afraid I’ll have to tell everyone. What’s on your mind?”
You opened your mouth, closed it, and bit the inside of your cheek, grimacing. How do you say this? Since this world has magic, it’d be easier to take, but—
He flicked water off of his fingers. “Does this have anything to do with how bizarre you’ve been for the past two weeks?”
“Wha—whoa, what? Shinsou, what do you mean?”
“That,” he said, nodding, “First of all, you haven’t called me Shinsou this consistently since we were ten. Call me Hitoshi right now.”
“Wha—? Hitoshi,” you said, thrown off.
“Good. You’ve been scaring me.” Shinsou finally scraped a tough splotch of blood away, and it flecked and disappeared into the water. “Now, what’s wrong? Did running the Gauntlet that quickly make you develop amnesia? Do you have a conditional curse on you that you can’t tell everyone?”
“Wow. You are the same in every universe.” Grabbing the soap, you scrubbed at the sweat stain on a kimono sleeve. “Overattentive to the point where it’s helpful. How irritating.”
“Hm,” he said, rubbing his knife underwater, “So. You’re not the woman I grew up with.”
“Not exactly.”
“What’s going on? She still in there?”
“Yes. I’m also her, but not,” you said, glowering at the flaky soap, “Everything you experienced with her is still here. I know all of that. I've lived all of that. It’s as if I have overlapping lives right now, because I have those memories and memories of what I consider my real life—and I know a version of you there.”
“Is he as pretty as me? Bet not,” said Shinsou.
“Well, he has access to mousse, so his hair’s a bit better, but I think you’re winning in terms of ruggedness. Living outside, and all.” You pursed your lips. “But no, I’ve started coming here when I go to sleep there. To me, this is a dream.”
Shinsou paused. “I’m glad you like it here?”
“Okay, you daft dimbo, you know what I meant. A sleep-dream, ongoing, and when I go to sleep here, I wake up back in reality. My reality, I guess.”
“No wonder you haven’t had a lot of stamina lately. You know we’ve had to slow our pace down, right?”
“I don’t go hiking; Bakugou took me once and yelled at me, so I don’t wanna do that anymore.” You tilted your head. “Do you know Bakugou?”
“Another friend from your reality?”
“Yes. I wonder if he’s somewhere here, too? I know Monoma and Touya, too. What was I—” You cut yourself off and sighed. “I know everything that’s happened to me in this life is in my brain, but it’s slow-surfacing. Usually, something has to jog my memory a bit before I remember something fully. So, we did grow up together?”
Shinsou nodded. “Same castle town. Both in families serving the king.”
“Really?” Cute. Memories of running together around cobblestone streets and murky hallways surfaced. “Same job, or?”
“I happen to come from a long line of—” He coughed. “—torturers and executioners, and you were the first in your family to pursue poetry.”
Your fist curled around the soap. “I’m sorry; I must have hallucinated. What?”
“You didn’t want to be a jester, like the rest of your family, so you studied to be a bard—”
“Please tell me you are lying to me,” you said, grabbing Shinsou by his kinky, medieval collar and yanking him towards you, “Please say that you are getting back at me for spilling coffee on your bedroll.”
Shinsou blinked, once, twice, and then a wide, toothy grin stretched across his face.
Releasing him with a groan, you pouted and scrubbed at a stain while the memories came flooding back. You had been studying to get out of foolery, and being a bard had been the most enjoyable way out. “We were friends, and we had life plans. I happen to notice that I don’t carry an instrument with me. Am I not a bard?”
“You quit once we figured out what type of magic you’re skilled in. Around the same time King Todoroki banished you from the castle for unsavoury verse.”
Swallowing that salami slice of crazy information, you asked the question that was easiest to talk about, now that memories were coming back: “Todoroki Enji? The king?”
“Correct. But don’t feel bad about being banished; you get bad luck just by being near the man. His own marriage is in name only, and one of his kids is missing—”
“Only one?”
“Technically two, but we know where Touya is. Prince Shouto’s whereabouts are unknown. But more pressing is that you don’t appear to remember your magic?” Shinsou scratched the back of his neck. “We’re gonna hit Alderside soon, and the reason they summoned us is your technique.”
“Explain it to me,” you said, spreading your wet undershirt across a dry rock, deciding it was clean enough, and you checked the sky. “Do we have time before night falls?”
You’d apparently studied and become very skilled at two types of magic (which was a low number of magic disciplines; most people studied around three to five types but never become great at them). The first type explained some of your luggage: it was a support technique involving a shortened tea ceremony. While the rest were in a physical battle, you trapped everyone within a certain area, the breadth of which depended on what type of tealeaves you used. From glyphs painted from the dregs of the last ceremony, tea sprigs would sprout out of your forearms. You’d harvest and process them, with magic speeding the process all the way to serving and drinking. Everyone within the boundary was compelled to physically stay within it until the end of the tea ceremony, and occasionally, though you had no control over whom this affected, a fighter would be compelled to sit and complete the ceremony with you. Their drinking the tea would weaken them, usually in endurance, but not by much. Your previous memories informed you that you had been working on brewing teas that had greater magical effects.
“You really only need your whisk; you’ve just been carrying around that teaware for misdirection, and everything else is conjured from the glyphs on your arms,” Shinsou was telling you on the way back, burdened with wet-wrung shirts, “So, you’re not directly fighting, but you’re valuable support.”
“So, why does a whole town need a tea ceremony?”
“Oh, they don’t want you for that one.” Shinsou held back a branch for you to pass into camp. “They want you because you’re a soulwalker.”
The rest of the journey to the town of Alderside, Shinsou didn’t explain. Said you’ve never talked about how it works because you didn’t know. Soulwalking was rare. Soul magic was one of the extremely few types of magic that couldn’t be studied: you could either do it, or you couldn’t, and almost everyone couldn’t. You’d never met anyone else who could.
It’s why the group of you get jobs across the country: something will go awry in the mirroring spirit realm, and you’d leave your body behind for your party to protect, while you—your soul—wandered through the spirit realm.
Monoma showed you the letter that you’d gotten by hawk from the mayor: Alderside periodically was engulfed by a purple fog. Every night and occasionally during the day, it acted as a totally blinding smokescreen that could teleport someone around town and the surrounding cliffs. They wanted you to come investigate so that they could travel at night again, before someone could be teleported off the mountain entirely to fall to their death.
Something that Shinsou had neglected to tell you was that you had a reputation. When your party rounded the last bend of the mountain before Alderside, you were greeted with a loud, excited clamour from a gathering of five, the leader of which embraced you on sight and exclaimed into your ear that she was pleased as punch that the Dango Lady was finally here.
Otherwise trapped in the hug, your head whipped towards Shinsou, who, after a moment, gathered himself and nodded. “Thank you,” you said into her pastel pink hair, stiffly raising your arms to return the hug and wondering why you’d been content with calling your professional persona the Dango Lady, “I hope we can meet your expectations and solve your problem.”
She pulled back, hands sliding down to grip your forearms (Were all citizens in this town this touchy, or was it just her? Based on the similar way your friends were being greeted, perhaps physical touch was integral to this area’s culture). “Hi,” she said, her cloud-fluff earrings bobbing as she spoke, “I’m the one who summoned you; I’m Fuwa Mawata, the mayor of Alderside. You’ve come just in time to salvage our spring festival in two days. If this smokescreen persists, we may not be able to have it, and this festival hasn’t been cancelled in over two hundred years now.”
Giving your wrists a squeeze, Fuwa dropped your arms with a gentle smile, and she glanced over the rest of your group, taking a step towards Monoma. “I’m afraid I don’t have any more details other than what I’ve said in the letter,” she said towards you, standing on her tiptoes to rest her chin on Monoma’s shoulder while she hugged him, “But I can guarantee that you’ll have a safe spot to perform your ritual, and we’ve set aside the best rooms in our inn for you.” She released Monoma (looking rather alarmed) and moved onto Touya, unable to push her away because of his tight grip on Granddaddy Slapkins’s carrier. “Whatever supplies you need, we will do our best to provide. Perhaps you’d like to drop off your belongings at the inn and then visit our magic shops?”
“That sounds faaaaaaaantastic,” said Monoma, tightening the straps on his pack for the third time that day (it was his turn to carry most of the cast-iron cookware again), “Thanks for your hospitality. Dare I—may I ask what the bathing situation is at your inn?”
“You may,” Fuwa replied, and there’s something in the way that Shinsou’s entire body froze when Fuwa wrapped her arms around his neck (she’d kept them around the torso for the rest of you), how his eyebrows shot up towards his hairline above wide, panicked eyes, and how he didn’t even try to return the embrace, arms rigid and hesitant—something that made you realise you’ve seen her before, but you didn’t know where.
(Later, when you were awake, you’d find her instagram. She’d been in the year above you at U.A., and, thinking back, she’d had a crush on Shinsou. When she’d graduated, she’d even asked him for his second button, and when he’d evaded by pointing out he wasn’t wearing the school cardigan that day, she gave Shinsou her button.)
Fuwa and the rest of the committee escorted your party through Alderside. Your first impression of it was that it was bright. Half of the town’s buildings were carved directly into the mountain, the natural rockface reflecting the sun with a harsh glare, and the rest were neatly whitewashed and embedded with shining stones that formed a mosaic, each one depicting a different scene from the town’s history, broken up only by stained glass windows, glinting and glittering with any shred of sunlight they could grasp, and stained-glass windchimes dangled from roofs and archways, clinking in the crisp, morning breeze. Your boots even clinked a bit on the streets, since they, too, were crafted with reflective stones in a mosaic, this one meant to resemble a river.
“I apologise about the level of noise,” said Fuwa, holding open the door to the inn herself, “We’re still preparing for the spring festival regardless, so we’re more hectic than usual.”
“Noise is good,” Touya said, “It’s when it’s quiet that you’ve got to be on guard. My friend won’t be a problem, right?” He shifted Granddaddy Slapkins underneath his arm.
You’ve never been more grateful to have a separate room from Touya. Shinsou conked out on his bed in your shared room the minute you’d set your bags down, and Touya, despite trying to nurse a mug of apple cider, was drifting off in his chair.
Monoma folded his cards on the table when Touya’s forehead finally rested on it. “Well, I don’t think I’m going to win this hand,” Monoma said, gathering his cards and Touya’s, “Now that we’ve eaten, I am more than aware of how disgusting we are. Fuwa had better not have been lying about their hot water.”
“Tell you what,” you said, sliding your cards over to him, “Why don’t we both bathe and head out to their market? We can resupply while these two are sleeping. Plus, we can garner what the general public’s thoughts on this smokescreen are.”
Forty-five minutes later (Monoma took long showers), you were going from shop to stall, weaving your way through the townspeople preparing the festival, having to duck out of their way when they turned corner bearing what you thought was an excessive amount of firewood, all carved with colour-coded runes, along with planks for temporary game stalls and what looked like a maypole but a person carrying it was quick to tell you was called a spring-stick.
Since you were going to soulwalk that night, you went ahead to the magic shops while Monoma fossicked around for the usual travelling supplies to cut the outing in half. After going over the list with him again (“Socks, especially, Monoma. Everyone in our group always goes through so many socks.” “One of these days, we should all learn how to knit.”), you headed downtown and he uptown.
Alderside’s four magic shops were all carved into the mountainside together; the only reason they weren’t one, big store was because the owners wanted to have clear boundaries between inventory type. You opened the door, bell clanging, to the enchantment quarter.
(Enchantments were the most powerful category of magic, more potent than other disciplines like sorcery, witchcraft, and warlockry. Soul magic was a type of enchantment, and so was your tea ceremony, though that was balanced with one of the lowest types of magic, herblore.)
You felt a little pretentious walking into the enchantment quarter, where magic users who clearly knew what they were doing were sifting through the racks—although there was ostentatiously just a magician in here; shouldn’t he be where the sound-based merchandise is—because you still felt like you were just some normal person, from a world of quirks and heroes instead of magic.
When Monoma eventually came meandering in, chewing on some locally made, closest-thing-to-gummy, peach candy, you could’ve sworn he was the Monoma you knew awake. He didn’t even manage to get across the shop floor to you before he stopped to riffle through a ribbon-bound book and frowning at the first illustration. He bent his head to the side to get a better look, jaw chomping down, before shaking his head and heading towards you.
Monoma made a big show of sliding up next to you at the botanical display, and he popped the collar of his shirt, not noticing how it immediately folded again. “Golly gee, miss,” he said, affecting some accent that was definitely not local and exacerbated further by the peach gummy in his cheek, “I reckon I’ve never seen you around these parts. I’d be delighted to show you around this here festival, if you let a varmint like me even grovel to be in your presence.” Monoma lifted the tiny bag of peach candy from his coat pocket to offer you some.
“Thanks, Monoma,” you said, taking one and popping it into your mouth, “How’d your end of the trip go?”
“Very well. No obstacles,” he said, dropping the silly voice and onto his elbows as he leant against the display table, propping his chin on both of his fists, “Got the non-perishables easily, and of course I was able to haggle the price down for the supplies we buy in bulk. I was able to get two extra pairs of socks thrown in, but we’ll have to fight for who gets them.”
You traced the brittle branch of a potted, staked vine, labelled as Cat’s Clover, but as it bore no leaves, you couldn’t discern why. “Fine by me.”
“I was also barraged by a curator at their local museum who didn’t care that I had better things to do. Have you heard that this spring festival is supposed to be a final splurge on the winter store before the spring planting? Two days from now, it’ll be eight hours of partying, and then they’ll climb to the top of the mountain to plant the first crops of the year.”
“Is that why I’ve been seeing onions and leeks everywhere?” you asked, giving a featherlight tap to the single bud on the vine.
“Yeah, it’s the festival’s symbols. Same with why there’s so much green and white.” Monoma flicked the tiny leaf of a potted shrub as if it’d personally offended him. “By the way, if someone gives you a packet with a single seed in it, don’t do anything to it yet. If you crack open the shell too early, the spell won’t work. You’re supposed to open it the dawn of the planting, and whatever flower grows from it—it bursts fully grown from the shell—is supposed to tell what your year is gonna be like. Looks like they have flower symbolism guides,” said Monoma, jerking his head towards the checkout, “We should pick one up on our way out.”
“Got it. If it’s that significant to the festival, we’ll probably be getting ours from Fuwa,” you said, peering into a bell-shaped bloom, “Hopefully there won’t be any sort of ceremony about it. I’d like to get in and get out without being seen by many people.”
“Oh! Speaking of not being seen. I saw a liripipe hood you’ll like. I didn’t get it, because I think you should see it first, but,” Monoma said, pausing, a sneaky little grin growing when you caught his eye, “it’s got buttons, so you could attach it to your surcoat, if you wanted, and it’s embroidered. Got that type of floral motif that you like so much.”
You raised an eyebrow. You hadn’t mentioned to anyone that you’d decided you needed another hood, but if it’s a liripipe hood—you’d probably be able to fit all of your hair into it, keeping it cleaner for longer in this filthy place without your normal conditioner—and he must have noticed how you’ve been acting since your last hood was destroyed, absent-mindedly reaching for it and adjusting without it.
“I’ll bite,” you said, already thirsting for it in the back of your mind, “I want to see it, at least, but since someone spent months embroidering it, it’s probably way out of our budget. But I would like to see. I would like to perceive.”
“Right. But,” said Monoma, jabbing a finger in your direction, “what if you requested it as part of your payment? For getting rid of the smokescreen?”
“Oh, Monoma, that’s—” You wet your bottom lip. “—that’s a little evil.”
His grin turned extremely smug, and he hummed. “I know. Isn’t that why you keep me around? Besides my love and blissful companionship?” Pushing himself up from his slouch, he pulled this strange move in which he nuzzled your shoulder like a dog, but he wasn’t acting like it was weird, so he must have done it before.
“Yeah, yeah,” you said, patting him roughly on the head, “I’ll think about it, but that assumes that I’ll be able to fix whatever’s going on in the spirit realm.”
Monoma finally stood upright, stretching and cricking his back. “Of course you will. What are you talking about?” Grunting, he rolled his shoulders backwards and then forwards. “You always solve it somehow, even if you’re panicking the whole way. I have complete faith in you. Everyone does. May we go look at that wand display in the corner?”
“Is your wand broken?”
“No, I just like to look,” Monoma said, and he tugged on your arm, beaming as he guided you away from the plants and back to a revolving display of sorcery-and-above level wands, all secured by chains so that they wouldn’t escape. He honed in on one he liked right away, coaxing it out of its attempt to burrow out of the shop’s walls. “Have you managed to find everything you need for tonight? I can charm someone if these people are hiding things from you.”
“Thanks, but they had the main ingredients I needed, already dried and bottled. So, yes, it’s the most expensive Red Lace and Cottoncrown I’ve ever bought, but I don’t have to prep it myself.”
“Red Lace?” Monoma cocked his head, his index finger scratching the head of the sourwood wand as he would a cat, “Isn’t that for the tea ceremony? Don’t you need some Gold Comb?”
“Oh, you’re right,” you said, names of herbs straightening themselves out in your head now that someone’s talked about them with you, “I usually have to ask about that one, though.”
Monoma gave the wand a firm pat. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, I’ve got it. Stay with your new friend,” you said, nodding towards the sourwood wand and then the magnolia and sycamore wands that were edging closer to Monoma’s palm, “You’ll know if I need you.”
“Don’t you always?” he called, smug voice carrying across the shop while you waved him off.
You had to wait in line, since the shopworker had to explain in embarrassingly excruciating detail to the magician in front of you that magician-level magic did not and could not use any of the heart-shaped quartz he was trying to purchase. When you plopped your bottles of pre-made potion bases and ground herbs on the counter, your arms cried out in relief.
Blowing her blunt, blue-black bangs out of her face, the shopworker wrote down the serial number for your first ingredient without thinking, but she paused when she read the label for your second. Staring you down, she moved to write down its number, more slowly this time, but when she read what your third bottle was, she clonked it on the counter. “I think I have to arrest you,” she said, more pissed that this was going against routine rather than at whatever law you’d just broken, “You can’t buy all these together. You’re going to create a poisonous miasma, and if you add this—” She picked up another of your bottles. “—then it has a chance of developing consciousness. If you use this as the base—” Another. “—then it’ll cause hallucinations and nausea to those who only even get a whiff of it. What are you up to? You planning a terrorist attack during the festival?”
“What? Of course not. I didn’t know these could do that,” you said, hands raised in defence, “I’m—I’m not even aiming to make a miasma. I won’t be burning anything at all. I’m making—liquid. This is staying in liquid form.”
“Is that so?” The shopworker’s shoulders slackened, and she glanced over your ingredients again. “I usually don’t see these go into liquids. If you’re telling the truth, I think we legally have to watch you make your potion so that we can ensure you’re not crafting a miasma. Give me a moment to call my supervisor.”
“No, no, wait. I don’t—I have permission,” you said, hating that you were pulling this card but desperate to get out of this interaction, “Mayor Fuwa summoned me for a safety procedure involving this potion. I have the letter from her requesting I do this job, but we can go find her, if you’d like—”
“Hold on, are you the Dango?” Her eyes lit up. “The Dango Lady who’s going to remove the purple smokescreen from Alderside?”
You needed to leave before anyone else heard. “Yes. I was trying to work undercover.”
“I’m certain I can speak for everybody in this town when I say that we’re so, so relieved that you’re here,” she was saying, body language relaxed and familiar (so that her large, imposing presence became non-threatening in an instant), conjuring a quill to compose a note to her supervisor while she bagged your ingredients, “No one’s been able to leave their houses at night for the past two months, and it’s been miserable trying to communicate with anyone past this new curfew; I haven’t talked to my girlfriend in a week, and if there’s an emergency while the smokescreen is up, no one can do anything about it. We’ve had to allow people to suffer while we waited for the smokescreen to dissipate. I swear on all the ratsbane on the mountain that if that Jackrabbit scoundrel ever returns to Alderside, I’m going to curse his bloodline on sight. And then I’ll take him by his ears and plunge tiny bits of soapstone glyphs into them so that they damage his ear canals—”
You snapped out of your examination of her neck, which appeared to have a scar from beheading. “I’m sorry,” you said, swallowing thickly and rubbing your fingers over your own neck, “A jackrabbit?”
“No,” she said, miming spitting off to the side, “The Jackrabbit. The soulwalker we’ve hired in the past.” She shoved your last bottle into a paper sack, clinking against the others. “You’d better not betray us like he did.”
There’s…another soulwalker?
“I’ll do my best not to,” you said, glaring over your shoulder to beg Monoma for help, but he was being lovingly swarmed by wands, snuggling against him like a herd of cats. “I was unaware another soulwalker had come through Alderside. Was he unable to get rid of the smokescreen?”
The shopworker floundered, her jaw dropping in incredulity. “Get rid of—he caused it. He was hired to consult a recently deceased judge for help on a murder trial, but he did something in the spirit realm to attach a dark presence to Alderside that causes this smokescreen.”
The shop owner came over before she could explain anything else, and the owner was equally thrilled to have a new soulwalker in town. They looked over the letter for Fuwa’s magical signature on it, and they did insist you make the potion in front of them to prove your project would stay liquidous. Monoma had disentangled himself from his wand fan club by then and helped you measure herbs, including the Gold Comb kept behind the counter.
“Right, so it can settle for now. I’ll have to bring it to a boil at the ritual site and stir counter-clockwise for eight minutes before giving it a clockwise stir, and it’ll have to cool before I use it, obviously.”
The shopworker traced the scar on her neck. “What does it do? Does it take you to the spirit realm? Does it stabilise it?”
“Neither,” you said as Monoma handed over the payment, “but it helps me get started.”
The shopping had exhausted you, so you headed back towards the inn, allowing for a detour to pick up dinner from a restaurant Monoma had been bugging you about all day, to rest until the soulwalking ritual that night.
Before long, you headed out to the ritual site. A spot staked out before you’d even entered Alderside, the limestone overhang boxed in a tiny clearing, able to be guarded by your friends while you were out of your body. The process wouldn’t take as long as it normally did due to your pre-mixing the potion at the shop, so all that had to be done was kindling a fire and laying your bedroll.
As the potion heated over the fire in Monoma’s kettle, memories of its effects came back to you. You could soulwalk without any supplements, but this recipe you’d crafted helped you start and stop the process more easily. When soulwalking, your soul had to slip out of your body as close to a sleep state as possible without actually sleeping, because relaxed muscles were easier for your soul to slip out of. The current edition for this recipe was leagues more effective than Shinsou’s sirenic magic had been when you first started out: it helped you grow drowsy, but the Gold Comb kept you just aware enough to notice when you were about to fall asleep—and therefore most easily able to leave your body. Another recently added ingredient, Cottoncrown, was an herb that promoted lucid dreaming, so it helped you have more control in the first few minutes orienting yourself as an unbound soul. Everything else was designed to keep you unconscious while you were conducting business in the spirit realm.
Unfortunately, as your potion began to boil, you realised why people have been calling you the Dango: if you take your true form when soulwalking, then your soul can get trapped in the spirit realm. If a soul matches a nearby body, then the realm registers your soul as dead and tries to shuttle it to the afterlife. Therefore, all soulwalkers had to have a transformation unlike their natural appearances, and you…
After the half hour of Shinsou softly telling you a story while Touya played his mouthharp, your soul crawled out of your body with the tiny, cat paws of your real-life cat. How on earth did this version of you become Dango when she’s never seen her? You tried to examine your toe beans, but you found that you didn’t have good control over your elbows; you had to lie on the ground to study them.
You were your cat. A chocolate-point fluffball, prone to bouts of extreme violence.
No one’s making you stay in the spirit realm. You don’t even look human.
The spirit realm mirrored the flesh: you were still lying on your bedroll in camp—both physical you and cat you. With a touch of alarm, you noticed you were lying on your own chest, so you gambolled off. Shinsou, Monoma, and Touya had vanished, because they were bound by flesh to the world of the living. The shadow of your body was here as your portal out.
The spirit realm always smelled pleasant, if not in a subtle, hazy way, as if you weren’t supposed to notice it. Around Alderside, it smelled of freshly mown grass, which was an oddity in itself; no vegetation grew in the spirit realm. Painted in shades of greys, the realm betrayed its anomalies in stark colours.
So, looking for any flash of colour, you jumped onto limestone rock, out of the clearing, and towards Alderside. Not a long walk, but it took longer on your little legs, and wow, you were getting so much grit between your toe beans, and would you really have to lick to clean them?
Cold in the overcast weather, you stalked towards the town entrance, grumbling about tangles in your fur, when your ears twitched, detecting the sound of running water. Slinking into town, you followed a babbling brook along the same, mosaiced streets designed to look like a river, its stained glass dull, grey, and glossy underneath the current.
The fog became dense purple around midtown, near the raised spring-stick. Clearly unnatural, since it’s got a colour. You trotted along the brook’s bed, keeping an eye near the roofline, where the smoke clung the thickest, and you darted behind a crate at the sight of another soul in the middle of the square.
It’s human, current rushing around his thin ankles. Barefoot, but wrapped in bandages. So were his arms, but his compact body was obscured by an oversized, scarlet jacket, with a wide collar buttoned over his mouth. He ignored how the smoke emanated from him.
A human soul. You hadn’t expected to meet someone here. To the best of your knowledge, you tended not to. You leapt atop a stack of crates and spoke to him (never mind that your vocal cords were not physically able to speak; it’s magic. Don’t think about it too hard). “Hello.”
He didn’t look away from the water.
“Hi! Over here. By the storefront.”
Shifting his weight, he blinked, shifting his gaze from the brook to the overcast, night sky.
“Nice to meet you,” you said, frowning, “I’m here to help you. Are you lost? Stuck? Do you need to go on to the afterlife?”
He took a deep breath in, closed his eyes, and then exhaled.
“Okay,” you said, jumping down from the crates and skulking towards him. Maybe this guy couldn’t hear you, so the next step would be to go rub against him like a friendly cat to get his attention, and then, perhaps, pantomiming ways of helping him. It pained you to wade through the brook, water almost wetting the fur on your stomach, but you head-bumped his leg when you reached him, making a point to purr loudly.
He finally looked down and picked you up. Tensing, you mrowped in distress before he secured you to hold you like a baby, your stomach exposed and facing upwards so that he could look at you.
“What do you want?” he asked, quiet, reserved. He’d already turned back to the sky, despite five of your six ends’ sharpness.
You sighed the best a tiny cat could sigh. “The smoke is coming from you, correct? Is it your—” Out of habit, you’d almost asked if it were his quirk.
“Yes,” he said, too quickly for you to think of another term.
“I represent this town. What would it take for you to stop using your smokescreen?”
For some reason, at your question, the man snapped his gaze to you, visibly taken aback despite his mouth’s concealment. He must not have seen anything further in your expression, because he continued, albeit cautiously. “I cannot accept a bribe, for I cannot control the smokescreen here. It leaks out of me against my will.” He shifted you to one arm so that he could hold up a hand, purple smoke seeping from his pores. “It is behaving most unusually. Not like itself at all.”
“It’s harming the town.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then please leave?”
“I’ve been stationed here by my master,” said the soul, covering his leaking hand with his sleeve, “I cannot leave this place.”
A soul with a master? This other soulwalker must also be a necromancer. “All right. I can help you break from his service.”
“No,” he said, wading through the water towards the spring-stick, “I serve him willingly. I’m honoured to aid him when I can.” He neared the barrels and crates, still unpacked, near the spring-stick site, and he lowered his arms to let you crawl onto them.
You nestled into the sacks of dried petals, settling into a catloaf. “Can I help you fulfil your task, then?”
His narrow eyes flickered towards you as he leant against a barrel and crossed his arms, the thick fabric of his coat puckering. “Nothing you can do. I’m to stay in Alderside until the next new moon, and then I will move on.”
You shifted, pulling your little legs farther underneath you. “Listen, I’m not actually a cat. I am more than capable of helping you. I have magic, you know.”
“I’m aware,” he said again, “You must be the other soulwalker my master is avoiding.”
“Avoiding? Say more about that,” you said, growing more distressed by the minute at the unequal levels of information between the two of you.
“No.”
“Fine,” you said, trying to spit but failing, “Will you tell me why you’re stationed here?”
He tugged his collar farther over his mouth and nose. “No.”
“Forget it, then.” You unsheathed your claws to tap them on the crate, your dewclaw sticking in the wood. “Let’s re-route back to your smokescreen. Is there a way to stop its leaking?”
He held up his hand again, flexing it. “I’m not certain.”
Unhelpful. “If you can’t stop the leak, can you control where the smoke flows?”
He paused to think, and he shook his head.
***
“My back is starting to hurt,” said Aizawa, slumping in his kitchen chair, “Do you mind if we move this conversation to my room so that I can lie down?”
“Not at all,” you said, standing and taking both of your coffee mugs to the sink, “I apologise for taking so long to get to the point, but there’s so much context, I think, that’s necessary to understand it.”
“I don’t mind,” said Aizawa, stretching, back popping in two places, shirt riding up as he did so. He rolled his shoulder backwards and started towards his bedroom. “How did you manage the smokescreen?”
“Well,” you said with a grunt, bending to scoop up Konpeito and rushing to follow Aizawa, “You know what a bag of holding is? It’s a bag that can hold an infinite amount of anything, but it only takes up the space and weight of the bag itself.” Once in his bedroom, you released Konpeito onto her worn cat tower, tag jingling, and she retreated to the topmost tier to gaze down at you in disdain. “I went back to the magic shop and got the staff involved to cast the spell to make bags of holding on an airtight jar, and I took it back to the spirit realm. We couldn’t stop his leaking smokescreen, but it stopped harming Alderside if it all funnelled into the jar.”
Aizawa shot you an incredulous smirk before collapsing on his bed, bouncing his sleeping bag off of it and covering his eyes with his arm. “You’re insane.”
“I like to think so,” you said, kneeling on the other side of the bed before fully sitting on it. “Alderside’s problem was fixed, even though that guy wasn’t leaving. We stuck around for the spring festival—fantastic, beautiful, perfect—fruit preserves on everything. I think Monoma ate his weight in baked brie with pear preserves on top. Dancing. Games. Tag where you hit people with fake leeks. Flowers conjured by magic everywhere. I got one of those fortune-telling seeds.” You scooted backwards towards the headboard and accepted the throw blanket Aizawa offered.
“I’m not falling asleep, by the way,” he said, peeking out from underneath his arm, “Just resting my eyes. Dry eye, you know.” He nestled his nose back into the crook of his elbow and rested his other hand on his chest. “And your fortune?”
“My knowledge of flowers is not expansive,” you said, kicking underneath the throw blanket to cover your lower body, “We couldn’t discern what our flowers were from the guides, so we had to ask around. I got a lotus. It’s silly, but Alderside’s flower symbolism doesn’t match up with reality’s, which is for enlightenment, self-regeneration, and rebirth; I looked it up later. For Alderside, a lotus means indifference and grief. Which is rude of it.”
“It’s just a fortune. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know. There seemed to be more negative fortunes than positive in those seeds; Shinsou got the worst of it; his flower has negative connotations in both worlds. Snowdrops mean consolation and hope here and vigilance and loneliness there. But nothing matters,” you said with a curt laugh.
Aizawa ran his tongue over his lower lip. “How was it being a cat?”
“Surprisingly okay. It was interesting to compare how unlimber I am in my own body. I also think it’s unfair humans don’t have a comfortable way of lying on their stomachs and looking around at the same time.” You smiled down at Aizawa, though he couldn’t see it. “It’s just like you to hone in on the cat stuff.”
“Isn’t it about time you brought Dango over to play with Konpeito again?”
“I’ll bring her next time I need to consult you about a crisis.”
Aizawa sat up to reach for his prosthetic leg. “Speaking of. When does this story become a crisis?” He detached the prosthetic with a quiet hiss from the pressure release, and he propped it against his bedside table.
“It already has. I actually did know that guy in the spirit realm.” You scratched the back of your neck, averting your gaze as he turned back towards you. “After Alderside, we kept getting summons to help out towns with similar problems, all stemming from souls being stationed there by the Jackrabbit. I, uh. Didn’t realise until Shimura Nana that they were all vestiges.”
Aizawa groaned your name in frustrated disappointment. “You didn’t. You didn’t.” He lay back down, hair splaying across his pillow while staring at you with a constipated expression. “I see we’ve arrived at this morning. I had to stop class so that my students could get it out of their systems.”
“Sorry about that. What I wouldn’t give for everyone not to have that information. I’d only just learnt it myself,” you said, grumbling and tucking yourself under the blanket as you, too, lay down, teeming with bitterness, “But no. Not quite this morning yet. We’re getting there. Like I said, it took me until Shimura Nana to figure it out, and it didn’t even matter that I was able to piece it together. He was still there when I arrived.”
***
Fury radiating from every pore, you stormed away from Shimura Nana on little cat feet, racing towards the cove she’d said her master’s body was, and on the shore outside of the coastal village, he sat next to All Might’s wispy vestige, trouser legs rolled up to dip his feet in the greyscale water, heels digging into the sand—very human-looking heels. How come he still looked like his human self?
You bounded down the beach, sand sticking between your toe beans and in your fur, and you pounced onto his back, sinking your claws into his stupid cape.
“How dare you,” you said, your cat weight making him hunch forward as he scrambled to catch you, “You’re causing a mess of trouble for me, you rat. I’ve been summoned across the country to fix your mistakes; how come all of your vestiges have something wrong with their—” It’d only been a split second in which you’d almost said quirks. “—magic. I’m going to rip you to tiny, edible shreds,” you said, fuming, claws catching onto his rabbit-earred hood as he dragged you over his shoulder.
You yanked at his hood, desperate to see that stupid, freckled face so that you could scratch it, but it wouldn’t budge. Violence tapering off, you sheathed your claws once it hit you that he was disguising his soul by making his mask part of his body.
Midoriya blinked slowly, eyes large and uncanny underneath the mask. Monstrous. Teeth look sharper, too. His silence unnerved you; you’ve never known him to shut up. But that was All Might next to him, swaying and diffusing in the nightly sea breeze, so this was Midoriya. Jackrabbit. You should’ve realised it sooner.
“You’re the other soulwalker,” he finally said, loosing his grip on your scruff as you calmed down, letting your weight rest in his lap.
“Are there only two of us? I know it’s a rare discipline, but only two makes us look like an endangered species.”
“If there are others, I don’t know of them.” He petted the back of your neck, as if reminding you he could still strangle you to death.
Of course the only other soulwalker, the only rival in an extremely rare, difficult magical discipline, the one whose chaos you’ve had to ameliorate, would be the number-one hero. You didn’t stand a chance in surpassing him. At the same time, it made you feel the tiniest bit special that hey, the number-one hero is the only one to rival you here, wow. Especially since your magic—unfairly—doesn’t resemble your quirk at all. Turns out with his vestiges, the soulwalking must be somewhat familiar to him. You’ve had to wing it from scratch, and he’s—well.
“I want to talk to you when I’m not a cat,” you said, nodding towards him and at All Might out of politeness, “My party is nearby with my body. Want to have dinner with us tonight? I’ll ensure your safety.”
The ears on Midoriya’s hood twitched. “You’re so sure you can trust me. I could destroy you right now, and I would be the only soulwalker in the realm.”
“I don’t care. I trust you,” you said, because people here tended to mirror their selves from reality, and Midoriya was just a little baby boy. Just a little guy. He’d even be a great addition to your party, especially for strategizing, and you wouldn’t have to follow his trail of disaster anymore. “Look, do you want me to come get you in my real body first? I’ll be unarmed. Or we could meet up in town, if you’re worried about meeting in private.”
Midoriya glanced towards All Might. “All right,” he said slowly, “Dinner. There was a beachside restaurant, wasn’t there?”
“We can meet you there. There’s four of us,” you said, answering his question before he asked it. He closed his mouth. “We’ll buy, if that’s any incentive. We’ve gotten paid pretty well for fixing the problems you’ve left behind.”
He nodded again, eerie in his stiffness, and he stood, keeping you out of the water. “How will I recognise you?”
You laughed through your nose as he gingerly set you down on dry sand. “I’ll be the devastatingly beautiful one with something deeply wrong with her.”
When you led your party into Suoh’s Seaside Café, you meandered through a packed front of house celebrating a birthday, and out to its deck, where Midoriya sat alone, scribbling into a notebook at the umbrella-covered table closest to the ocean.
It’s strange, seeing him out of his hero costume, labelled t-shirts, or hero merch, and it’s odder still seeing him out of anything green. Everyone else appeared to share their real counterpart’s preferences for clothing, so it was weird that Midoriya instead was keeping it monochrome with some pirate-ass, billowing long-sleeve, the tightest black trousers you’ve seen this side of consciousness, a double-breasted vest from a vampire’s wet dream, and—okay, never mind—now that you’ve gotten a good look at it, his cloak’s not fully black; the inside was dyed deep green. Made it feel more like Midoriya.
But it occurred to you, as Touya elbowed you to approach, that you haven’t really seen Midoriya in a while, in real life. He might dress like this now. You wouldn’t know. Midoriya tended to run around with the Iida-Todoroki-Uraraka-Asui-Tokoyami crowd, always scraping his nose to the grindstone, always in high demand, never having much free time. Everything you knew about Midoriya was filtered through headlines or through Uraraka in the breakroom at work, like how he’d gotten her flowers yesterday or how he forgot to get dish soap last time he was out.
You haven’t properly hung out with Midoriya in about three years, and even then, it’d only been because you’d been the only two U.A. graduates at a fundraising event. Latching onto each other for the night had seemed safer than going through the hordes of strangers alone. And that night had been the first time you’d spent time with him since graduation, and before that, he had—all that other stuff to deal with.
When you tapped on the table to get his attention, the way he dropped everything to beam up at you made you want to pursue his friendship again.
“Hello!” Midoriya shut his handbound notebook, and you swore his boyish smile took up over half his face; it’s almost too blinding to look at. “I assume you’re the cat I met?”
“Meow,” you said with a flash of your eyebrows, pulling out the chair next to him, chair legs screeching on the wooden deck.
“It’s good to meet you officially. I’ve heard a lot about you, as a soulwalker. I’m Midoriya Izuku,” he said, reaching out to shake your hand.
After ordering and introductions, the notebook was opened to a clean page when Monoma started talking about his copy-illusions, and Midoriya began asking questions. You slurped at your iced tea, feeling more comfortable now that this Midoriya was acting like the Midoriya you knew—asking about magic/quirks felt much, much more familiar than the uncannily stiff, stoic man you met in the spirit realm. He got to rambling underneath Touya’s reluctant explanation of his freezing fire and Shinsou’s necromancy and sirenic call, but when he got to you, it tapered off.
He'd bent over to write more quickly, nose practically touching the paper. “And you soulwalk, same as me—we should talk about it later; I don’t want to bore everyone else at the table—is there any other magic you can do?”
“Yeah,” you said, unable to make out what he was scrawling diagonally, “I have this boundary-binding tea ceremony.”
Midoriya’s hand halted for the first time in ten minutes. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Yeah,” you said, lifting a scallop from your soup (Shinsou, at least, could share in your raving about how fabulous the soup was, but Monoma ate his popcorn shrimp with pride while Touya’d ordered chicken at a seafood place), “It’s a bit of an obscure technique, like soulwalking. I’d classify it as a type of conjuring, if you want a broad category.”
Midoriya scratched out the previous two sentences and began to copy what you’d said. “Fascinating. I’d love to hear more about it.”
His awkward, abrupt pause had been the only social hiccup all evening. Otherwise, he’d been lovely—eager to share information and to listen, apologetic for the trouble he’d caused, boyishly charming to the point where even Touya got a little flustered, easy to laugh and to make others laugh. You could see why he’s the number-one hero back home. It’s easy to feel like you’ve known him forever, like he belongs at your side.
When Touya wanted to test how Granddaddy Slapkins felt about Midoriya, you knew what was coming. The instant Granddaddy Slapkins settled into Midoriya’s lap, quacking softly as he fed him a stir-fried snow pea, Monoma propped his chin on steepled fingers, shooting looks that were not subtle around the table before opening his mouth.
“Midoriya, you seem a decent fellow. Would you like to join our party?”
Taken aback (or perhaps just startled at the nip Granddaddy Slapkins gave him), Midoriya considered. “Are you sure?” Midoriya clutched the duck to his chest, petting gently, and looked at you. “You wouldn’t have to follow me to fix my problems,” he said, tilting his head very slightly, brow pinched in thought, “I wouldn’t have to—you could help me, most likely. In what I’m searching for. It might be better to have more than one person investigate it.”
Grinning, Shinsou crossed his arms on the table to lean on them, hand gripping his opposite elbow. “Tell us more.”
“I—” Shaking himself out of it, he broke from you to look at Shinsou. “Yes, actually. I’m on a mission myself, and since your missi—quest to solve what problems I’ve caused is coming to an end, I might be able to offer a new one,” said Midoriya, stowing his notebook away at last and pulling a threadbare, velvet box out of his satchel. He popped it open like a ring box, and on its cushion sat a clear, perfectly spherical crystal with the barest suggestion of topaz yellow glinting off it.
“Do you want us to fence it?” Touya was asking as he lifted Granddaddy Slapkins out of Midoriya’s lap and circling back to his seat on the bench, “We passed through a gem market when before we entered the Gauntlet—”
Monoma cut him off. “The only way we are going back through that abominable place is if we can conjure a carpet to fly over it.”
“I’m not trying to sell it,” said Midoriya, shutting the box again, “I’m trying to restore it. It’s a soul crystal, one that belonged to my master, Yagi Toshinori.” All Might’s real name. Tracks, with Midoriya. “My master’s body has gotten frail in his old age,” said Midoriya, worriedly rotating the box from hand to hand, “After sustaining a stomach injury, he used up all of his magic in preserving his physical form, which has gone into hibernation. His magic is gone, but it’s not yet his time to die. I’m trying to take his soul crystal to the soul altar to restore his magic. He’ll be able to resume living in his body if I can do that.”
“All right,” said Shinsou, nodded while he took an enormous slurp of his coffee, “Where’s this soul altar? We can help you get to it.”
Midoriya laughed nervously, scratching his cheek. “I don’t know exactly. I’ve been given the parameters. It’s why you’ve been following my vestiges, actually,” he said, nodding towards you again, “Entrances to the soul altar move around in the spirit realm. It has consistent places it spawns, but I don’t have enough vestiges to watch every spawning point. What I was doing was stationing them at the most common ones, but they don’t—something’s been going wrong with all of their magic; none of them have been working right. I—”
“So, are you saying we’d be travelling around for these entrance points?” Touya asked thickly, mouth full of fried chicken. “What about just going to where the altar actually is?” At Midoriya’s perplexed stare, he swallowed and continued. “If its entrances keep changing locations, then they’re probably not actually in those places, taking up space. It means that there’s a solid location for the altar, and the entrances are the only things that jump around. How stupid are you to forget that loose magic, the stuff that’s not bound to anyone or anything, doesn’t last very long? You’re saying that these entrances have been bouncing around for a while, so they’ve got to be bound to something. So. There’s probably a physical place where the soul altar is bound.”
You stifled your smile at Midoriya’s silence by tilting your bowl to get at the last of your soup.
“To—ya,” said Midoriya slowly, eyes glazed over, “You may be onto something.” Mechanically, he returned the box to his satchel, and he bowed his head. “Please let me join your party.”
And that was that. Midoriya left the restaurant with all of you, spitballing theories about the soul altar, all the way up until it was time to set up camp again that night, and after that, he lay on his bedroll next to yours, laughing until while you told him about soulwalking as a cat with his vestiges, until the both of you fell asleep.
***
“Aizawa-sensei?” You prodded the arm covering his eyes. “Are you awake?”
“You’ve got to stop calling me that,” said Aizawa, shifting underneath the covers with a groan, “Someone your age calling me sensei makes me feel like I’m on a rollercoaster into my own grave.”
“Aren’t we all,” you said, sitting up, the blanket pooling around your waist, “Were you even listening?”
“Midoriya joined your party, and he’s been travelling with you for a few weeks now,” he said, finally lifting his arm from his face to sweep hair off of it, “Just stop calling me sensei. I haven’t taught you for almost a decade now.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” you said, rolling your eyes, “What do you want me to call you? It’s not going to feel natural, whatever it is.”
Aizawa ran his fingers through his hair and scowled at a tangle. “Shouta is fine. We’ve been friends for a while now, wouldn’t you say?”
“I guess,” you said, “but it’s not easy to make the mental shift from thinking of someone as distinctly an adult to a peer. I’ll try. But back to you, teaching. We’re up to this morning. We are up to what your students wouldn’t shut up about.”
He pulled at the knot in his hair, wincing. “Should I be taking notes?”
***
Six hours ago, you’d gone to brunch with friends, most of whom you hadn’t seen in a long while because of work. Yes, you saw most of the women because of the all-female hero agency that you’d founded, but seeing everyone together was like stepping back into the past, the way people relaxed into familiar patterns of interacting with each other, even though it’d been months or years since you’d spoken to each other.
It usually took a couple of weeks out to reserve a table at this brunch restaurant, but they’d been more than enthusiastic about renting their whole place out to, essentially, the former Class A. Kind of guilty seeing all the vacant tables, but comforting to know no one was eavesdropping on you.
You sidled up on the end seat next to Shinsou and Monoma at the tables they’ve pushed together for your group. You scanned the menu once you’d set your purse down; in your dream world, your party had had breakfast for dinner last night and left you craving it for real (Shinsou was already sipping at the largest frappe on the menu, and your heart ached for dream Shinsou, who’d never have one [last night’s dream Shinsou had stubbornly held back tears drinking black coffee after Midoriya and Monoma used the last of the sugar for their strawberry toast]).
“Where is Uraraka?” Monoma scrolled through his phone, pouting. “Shouldn’t the one who organised the event be here on time? I have some design proposals for the formalwear collab we’re doing to promote her miniseries. I simply have no patience for all of those bubble dresses she keeps sending me.”
“She’ll be here,” you said once the waitress took your order and menu, “I wouldn’t worry about—”
“They don’t have a classic silhouette, so they’re not a lasting style—”
A bell chimed when the restaurant’s door swung open, with Uraraka waving to everyone, the tips of her fingers lightly pink. “Hey, guys! So sorry we’re late,” she said, weaving between tables towards ones pushed together, “We got caught up at Sakura Grove and then that home improvement store again; they just have so many interesting lamps.” She sat in the seat across from Shinsou, and—oh, you didn’t even see him trailing behind her—Midoriya sat in the last available seat, across from you. Uraraka slung her purse off her shoulder, rooting through it for her phone before draping its strap over the back of the bench. “What have I missed?”
Mina reiterated her cute anecdote about being paired with Kirishima for an undercover mission, not even because they were soulmates but because the situation called for their specific quirks. Tokoyami and Jiro shared that they wanted to release an acoustic album together, and if Bakugou would play percussion in it, hey, then no one would have to suffer through Aoyama’s maracas. By the way, Sero, did you know that Present Mic was asking after…
You stayed quiet. With your mind running a mile a minute both asleep and awake, you felt like you spent a lot of time talking nowadays. Instead, you considered Midoriya, who, bags under his eyes, remaining quite silent himself, kept his mug of oolong tea, double-sweet, to his lips, answering and laughing when prompted by Uraraka and not much otherwise. He’s sitting on the edge of a shared bench, right on the edge so that his ass doesn’t entirely fit—but he seems like he’s consciously trying to downplay his large presence right now, not taking up a lot of space, despite having the broad shoulders and muscled thighs expected of a number-one hero. Midoriya’s wearing a t-shirt labelled Nice Button-Down, the fabric that sort of transparent-thin that comes from being well-worn, thrown on hastily enough that the sleeves were still twisted and straining around his biceps, stretching the fabric even thinner (you could make out some of his darker freckles on his shoulders from across the table) and jeans that were crumpled enough to have come out of the dirty clothes hamper, his hair wildly dishevelled so that most of it still obscured his eyes—you’d think they’d just overslept and lied about it. But Uraraka’s even got those little rhinestones glued to the corners of her eyes, so maybe Midoriya was content with wandering around looking like—well. The number-one hero must be exhausted all of the time, you supposed. Your eyes fell to the veins on the back of the hand encircling his mug, and after a few moments of staring, they pulsed visibly. At least he’s drinking enough liquids.
If the real Midoriya had become this quiet, then perhaps the dream Midoriya’s behaviour in the spirit realm wasn’t so out of character. And if he’s anything like himself in your dreams, then you wanted to rekindle your friendship.
While Shinsou and Uraraka were critiquing Monoma’s design for a dress inspired by the elves leaving Middle Earth in The Fellowship of the Ring, you waved your fingers at Midoriya. “Hi.”
Midoriya blinked slowly, as if it took him a moment to realise you were talking to him, and he set his tea down on the lace tablecloth. “Hi,” he said back, with a rasp to his voice, “I don’t think we’ve seen each other in a while. When was the last time we…?”
“Around three years ago,” you said, taking a bite of your waffle, “That idiotic fundraising event full of old people who wanted to feel your biceps.”
“Has it been that long?” He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck, and something about this felt wrong felt off felt like that action, inflection, and dialogue was planned and fake and—
You ignored it. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m—” He wavered his free hand from side to side. “—busy.” Midoriya smiled again, cupping both of his hands around his mug, fingers overlapping and making the mug look much smaller than it was. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss what I’m currently doing, because I’ve signed an NDA, but non-mission-wise, I’ve been up to my nose with this advertising deal for protein shakes, and I’ve been working with Hatsume about redesigning my boots now that my kicks are reaching around 1200 psi on average, and—” He broke his gaze from his tea, glancing around the table as if he just remembered it. “—and Uraraka and I are working on pre-production for her miniseries, and—oh, thank you so much,” he said to the waiter who set his strawberry French toast in front of him.
Midoriya turned back to you. He blinked blearily.
You stared back at him. “No one’s asked you how you are in a while, haven’t they?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Midoriya, unravelling his silverware from his napkin, which he spread across his lap, “Uraraka knows everything going on with me, and I’m not often allowed the free time to speak with people who’ve—friends, I mean.”
“Well,” you said, cutting into your waffle while he did the same with his toast, “I’ve actually been thinking about you lately, and it’s a shame we don’t hang out very much. I was actually thinking about that fundraising event and how good it was to be with you then, and—yeah. If you’re cool with it, I’d like to talk to you more.”
Midoriya faltered, fork lowering from his mouth as he gave you a toothy grin with something unreadable glinting in his eyes. “I’d—that’d be good. I’d like that, too,” he said, and he took his first bite of strawberry-stained French toast and let out what could technically be labelled as a moan. “Ffffuck, that’s good. That’s good. I haven’t had strawberry toast in forever. My nutritionist won’t—”
“I didn’t know forever was only a few hours. You just had some last night, moron,” you said thickly through your own waffle, shaking your head at how he’d deprived dream Shinsou of sugar for his coffee, and you stopped mid-chew.
Midoriya did, too.
The silence between the two of you lasted a lifetime, though your friends continued chattering on a single topic, chairs scraping and echoing around you.
You couldn’t taste your waffle when you swallowed it. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll show you where they are,” said Midoriya, standing in a rush, “I’ve been here before.”
Hastening away from the table, you pulled Midoriya into the hallway where the bathrooms were, but he shook his head and steered you the opposite direction. “The sound carries in here,” he said, pushing open the doorway to the restaurant’s covered porch.
He’s already pacing, muttering to himself, and frantically pulling at his hair when you collapsed into one of the flimsy deck chairs. Empty, like your insides have been scooped out, you watched him pace back and forth before he spun around to point at you. “Right. How long have you been going there?”
“Don’t be vague,” you said, a stone of dread splashing into your stomach, “We’re talking about that fantasy world when we fall asleep, right?It’s actually you I’ve been travelling with?”
“Yes,” Midoriya said, swallowing, Adam’s apple bobbing, “I haven’t found anyone else who travels from this reality to that one. My vestiges know, of course, because they come over with me. Actually, is anyone else in our party—”
“No. They’ve all lived there their whole lives. Dream Shinsou knows I come from this reality, though, and that I have overlapping memories of two lives.”
“This is it, then. It ends here,” said Midoriya, running his hands down his face, reminding you of Aizawa, and he slapped his cheeks. “I have to end my relationship with Uraraka.”
You jolted in your seat. “What’s wrong with—Deku,” you said, holding your hands up in concern, “What are you talking about? Just because we’ve been meeting in dreams doesn’t mean—”
“I’ve been expecting something like this.” Closing his eyes, Midoriya took a careful breath in, and his shoulders heaved as he exhaled. His eyes snapped open. “Uraraka and I aren’t soulmates. You and I are.”
Throat drying, you narrowed your eyes. “No, we’re not. I don’t have a soulmate, and I would know. Ito hasn’t said anything about my having a soulmate at work, and she’d know—”
“No, please—please let me explain.” Midoriya pulled out the chair opposite you, and he shifted it over to your side of the table. “Uraraka and I were never soulmates. We were wrong when we thought we were bound.” He took both of your hands in his, and, startled, you looked around the vacant deck for help. “Do you remember what our bond was? Sharing the same song in our heads. But we were stupid,” he was saying, shaking his head, “and we already had feelings for each other. So, when we seemed to share a song, we didn’t take into account that we have the same music taste and were always recommending music to each other, always blaring music whenever we were around each other, as if enforcing it—and when it was clear that we weren’t actually bound, we stayed together, anyway. We were in the public eye by then, and things were messy. And now—” Midoriya winced, sucking in through his teeth. “—she and I are extremely popular as a unit, as if people can’t think of one of us without the other, and we do work exceedingly well together, and—”
Midoriya cut himself off, head bowed so low that his bangs grazed your fingers and that you could see where his undercut began on the back of his neck. “I couldn’t mar Uraraka’s reputation. Women are always villainised in breakups, and she especially would be, since, by all accounts, it looks like she’s cheating on me.”
You opened your mouth, but your voice wouldn’t come out.
Midoriya raised his head, eyes watering. “She’s already found her real soulmate. Almost a year ago now. We’ve stayed together for public image, because I haven’t minded, and we’re both too tired to deal with the fallout. Now that you’re in the picture—”
You cleared your throat until you could speak. “Why would I matter? We haven’t exactly been friends. I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”
“I could,” said Midoriya, squeezing your hands tightly, “I could love you.” Holding eye contact must have been difficult while crying, but he did it, raising your hand to his mouth to press a kiss to your knuckle.
“What the fuck,” you said, ripping it away.
***
Grimacing, Aizawa laughed through his nose. “Wow,” he said, rubbing his good eye, “That’s unfortunate. It’d be hard to ignore at this point, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” you said with a jerk of your head to the side, “I left after that, but you saw the—did you see the video? It was some reporter whose quirk allows him to turn into a beetle, so he was sitting on the railing—wanted to overhear anything from heroes during brunch, and he ended up finding out horrible news at the same time we did.”
“I never saw the video, but my students described it to me in great detail.”
You clicked your tongue. “Fabulous. Then you heard how Deku brought Uraraka out to the same spot, so Beetle was able to get everything about how excited Uraraka was that they could break up. What’s ironic is that they were discussing a plan about how to end their relationship with delicacy so that the public wouldn’t villainise anyone, but now that this video is out, there’s no need for a plan or delicacy. I’ve turned my phone off ever since Uraraka texted me that she had to protect her soulmate, since she’s just a civilian who’s been doxed. I did some stress-wandering-about, and then I came to you.”
Aizawa pushed himself up, bending his knees to rest his arms on them. “You finally have a soulmate.” He tapped his fingers on his leg. “Thought you were one of us.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” you said, giving him a dismissive wave (but aware he was trying to make you feel better about it), “I should’ve considered everyone in our soulmate-less club before getting assigned. How careless of me.”
(Out of everyone in ground gamma when Tainted Love’s team invaded, only a handful of you weren’t assigned soulmates [Bakugou, Monoma, Todoroki, Aizawa, Shinsou, and you], so whenever there’d been a soulmate-based event, you’d instead hung out with some or all of the soulmate-less group, eager to grumble about your lot in life and engage in non-romantic conversation.
There’d been in-group jokes about how its members should all just get together. Looking back, you wished you had, so that you’d have more of an excuse to get out of this Midoriya stuff. But you couldn’t pin down which of your friends you’d go for, like something deep inside you wouldn’t let you—and you supposed that was the soulmate bond, at which you seethed.)
“So. We’ve caught up.” Aizawa covered his yawn. “How can I help? I’d break the bond if I could, since it upsets you, but I believe that’s beyond the scope of my quirk.”
“I knew that coming in,” you said, “I’d like your advice on how to have dreamless sleep. I don’t wanna face Deku right now; I can’t handle it.”
“Hm. It’ll be hard, considering you’ve been dreaming every night for half a year now.” Aizawa pinched his lower lip, brow furrowed. “You can’t run away from a soulmate bond.”
“Yes, but I would like to.”
Sighing like the weight of the world curled on his chest, Aizawa reached for the knob of his bedside table’s drawer. “Fine. Let me give you what I give Yamada when he’s fresh off of his radio show.”
***
When you lurched awake in your bedroll by a smouldering firepit, you scratched Aizawa’s advice off your list. Maybe it’d prolonged the time until you woke, because these thunderous river rapids should have woken you earlier, but you couldn’t count on it.
Joints aching, you pushed yourself upright. Funny, you hadn’t been in your bedroll but on it—probably due to the layer of filth coating you. Last dream had had your party in an unexpected scuffle with earth mages, and they’d pounded you into the ground. Camp had been set up near this waterfall so that you could wash yourselves when you woke up, because everyone was too exhausted to do anything after that fight other than sleep. Looks like Touya didn’t even both setting up his bedroll and slept directly on the riverbank.
Camp was vacant, save for you, but the eternal coal was still hot, buried under the ashes of the hastily dug firepit. Wasn’t there a village nearby? Could that be where—yes, the results of Monoma’s scouting included that the nearby village tended to not even talk to women who passed through, due to insane objectification, and everyone else had probably gone there to restock.
Well, you’re taking the good soap, and you’re going to bathe in the waterfall, because it’s the closest thing to a modern shower’s water pressure that you’re going to get. Unlacing your corset as you walked, you trailed along the river and climbed onto the jagged rocks by the waterfall, and through it took you a minute to find secure footing on the slippery stone, you made it onto the stone ledge that would let you slip behind the waterfall for some privacy.
Yanking your loosened corset over your head, you did the same for your shirt as you dropped your clean clothes to the ground, sighing loudly against the ambience of the deafening waterfall and its softer, coursing showers flowing through rock interstices. You’d plopped your shirt onto a dry section of rock, about to pull off your undershirt, when you spotted Midoriya across the inner plunge pool. Hidden behind a sheet of water and submerged almost to mid-chest, his bulky silhouette washed its hair, rinsing out soap and shaking the water out like a dog.
You lowered the hem of your undershirt.
Crouching to gather your clean clothes, you winced at your knees cracking but kept vigilant, eyes darting between the exit and his shadow, holding your breath despite—
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
Your blood turned cold. You spun back towards the pool, keeping your distance from the waves sloshing against the rim and your gaze towards your feet, listening in horror to the swishing of water as he swam towards you. “What do you want, Deku?”
“What do you mean by that? I want to talk to you.”
In your periphery, Midoriya swam to the edge of the pool, water lapping around his infuriatingly narrow waist, and he rested his forearms on the rock’s edge to lean towards you, collarbone poking out and shoulders hunching in the effort to stay above the surface. “If it’s all right with you,” he said, with the air of defusing a bomb, “I’d like to pursue a relationship with you, as my true soulmate.”
You hunkered back towards the only section of dry stone, clutching your knees to your chest. “Well, I don’t.”
Midoriya gave a breathy exhale, eyes softening but still pinning you to your spot against the rock wall. “I could be so good for you,” he said, shaking his head, “I know I could love you.”
You bit your lip. “Aren’t you in love with Uraraka?”
His hair dripped into his face at the same moment his expressed sharpened again, just barely. “I was.”
“I don’t want a relationship right now,” you said, gaze flicking towards the exit, “I’m content with how I am by myself.”
Midoriya hummed, narrowing his eyes, and he hitched up his elbow placement on the stone’s edge, his abs flinching when they grazed the side of the pool. “I don’t think that’s your reason. Tell me.”
(Who is this man? What happened in the past few years?
You kept a vivid memory of the fundraising event from three years ago close to your chest, guiltily hoarding it from sunlight, because you weren’t supposed to—
Midoriya and you had ducked out to the venue’s third-storey balcony, him in his stupid pinstriped suit and you in some silky dress that vaguely resembled a jellyfish, both sweaty from the packed crowd and bright lights inside. You’d made a joke at the punchbowl that’d made Midoriya splurt champagne out of his nose, so you’d slinked outside to avoid glares while you laughed—charity was serious business, and you were only figurehead heroes representing your agencies, anyway.
The two of you had hidden on the spiralling staircase outside while you finished your champagne and talked about your agencies. Both of you had been the sole members of your U.A. class to start an agency, and your processes had evidently been tremendously different. You’d found yourself disagreeing with your classmates, as you’d gazed up at Midoriya, sitting two steps higher than you were, champagne flute at his side, because his rambling—constant analysis, making strange jumps in logic with synthesis you didn’t expect, riddled with moments of admiration for those who’d gone before him—had made your heart sing.
You hadn’t understood most of what he was saying, and you could’ve listened to him forever.
Midoriya had unlocked a desperation to understand like nothing ever had, and he was interesting, full of wonder and curiosity, kind more than anything, a bit too generous, and, moreover, actually listening to you, instead of just waiting his turn to talk or interrupting.
And when you’d expressed worry about how to keep moving forward, he’d said the most beautiful words anyone’s ever said to you: “Let me help you.”
[After, you’d had to shove all these feelings down, because he’s dating your friend. You’ve allowed yourself to—think of him like that only in the context of that night. Otherwise, your attraction towards Midoriya can’t exist.])
“Shut up,” you said, curling in on yourself, resting your chin on your knees, “You’re clever. You can figure it out.”
Midoriya spoke with a touch too much enunciation, the tendons in the back of his hand flexing as he gripped his bar of soap, wrapped in his washcloth. “I want to be sure. Tell me.”
You couldn’t look at him. “You’ve recently ended a long-term relationship with one of my best friends. I can’t date you. That’s violating girl code.”
“Uraraka was eager for the breakup,” he said evenly, “She’s ecstatic that she can finally go on public outings with Spike, her real soulmate, even if it comes after a media fallout. Uraraka holds no power over me. All I am is yours.” A droplet dripped from his bangs onto his lower lip, and his tongue darted out to lick it off. “Come here. Sit next to me. Put your legs in the water.”
You baulked. “I’m sorry?”
“You came here to bathe. I can help, if you’d like.”
“Wha—I,” you said, fumbling, spluttering, “I don’t—huh?”
“It’s okay,” said Midoriya, holding his hand out to you, “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
“No, I am not—”
“It’s okay. I’m aware you have feelings for me, so you don’t have to worry about—”
“Hold on—what, what on earth are you talking about?” Scrambling to get more than five feet away from him, you backed farther into the rock wall, jagged edges pressing into your back. “I don’t—do you seriously believe that I like you? That I’ll throw myself at you immediately once my friend’s out of the way? I can’t—I’m not gonna work like that. I don’t. I,” you said, jaw slack, “Why would you think that I’m automatically into you just because I’ve been told to be?”
“Hm,” he said lightly, somehow cockily, with a lift to his eyebrows, “I wouldn’t know.” The fucker pushed on his hands to heave his body out of the pool, water cascading down his stupidly defined chest and trim waist, and—you held up your hand to shield yourself from his dick, because you’re not giving him the satisfaction of seeming interested—but apparently, his cock’s not the focus, because he twisted himself around to sit on the edge of the water, legs dangling into it and broad back facing you, droplets trailing down between his shoulder blades and the swell of his ass.
You’re cursed with noticing things: his ass was even more aggravatingly round/firm than it was in the New Year’s shoot with Rumi even with the lower part smushed against stone, and it’s got freckles on it. Freckles only on the top part of his asscheeks, actually, as if he’s walked around naked in sunlight a good bit. Either way. You were frothing with abhorrence and frustration, brain needing to be scrubbed with a wire sponge. If you had known about this back in school, before soulmates were invoked, no one could’ve stopped you.
But since Uraraka’s been gushing about this man for almost a decade now, it made your stomach turn, quashing initial interest. You can’t just summon romantic impulses, with or without guilty feelings about wanting your friend’s boyfriend.
Steeling yourself, you said, “I don’t care that other people find you attractive. I’m not attracted to you.”
“Fascinating,” said Midoriya, and he tilted his head backwards to look at you, hair falling back from his face, “Showing my v-line usually worked on Uraraka.”
“I’m not Uraraka. You can’t expect me to fall for the same stuff as she—oh,” you said, and you slumped against the rock. “You really don’t know me. And I don’t know you.” You pressed your forehead against the wall, spreading wet grime on your skin. “I could—I could fall in love with any of my friends if the soulmate bond would let me, because I know them as individuals. Shinsou—Shinsou’s favourite character growing up was Sailor Mercury; he pets every cat he can and is horrible at making onigiri, but that doesn’t stop him from making it; he bikes and plays bass and can tie an excellent knot. Monoma’s the biggest theatre nerd I’ve ever met; he’s got an improv group that does performances at Nekozawa’s every month, and his love for Franco-Belgian comics and The Lord of the Rings is only surpassed by his obsession with gummy candy. Bakugou, that moron, plays the drums because his parents forced him into lessons, and he mountain climbs for fun; he goes to bed at 8:30 and can’t sleep with heavy blankets because he overheats in his sleep, and he’s the one who stole Kirishima’s crocs before prom and knows more about eyeliner than anyone else I know. You, though. Deku. Outside of hero work, outside of hero training, outside of what you’ve said about your heroic journey to the public, I know nothing about you. You let people know your thoughts about what you do, but you don’t let anyone know who you are. All we’ve got outside of hero work and hero admiration is that you like katsudon. I bet you don’t keep up with me, eith—”
“That’s enough.” Back towards you, Midoriya held up his hand, and after he cut you off, he used it to scratch his shoulder. Chest rising and falling, he leant back on his palms to gaze up at the waterfall surging downwards from the rockface.
His shoulders were shaking.
He’s laughing.
When Midoriya turned, he’d the same, hard glint in his eyes as when he’s in battle, when his body’s lit up in OFA lightning, sparking with every odd edge he touched, looking so, so alive. You haven’t thought he could look this way outside of a fight. Horribly entrancing, the way his eyes betray his anger while he’s still grinning to himself, shaking his head, and—and crawling the five feet towards you, dripping water, and you were pinned under his sharp glare, because otherwise—can you scoot back more? He’s so close that you might—
“I wouldn’t worry. We’ll know each other in time.” Trailing his last two fingers along your jawline, Midoriya turned your head to ensure you focused on him instead of the exit. He almost withdrew his wet-warm fingertips from the underside of your chin but thought better of it, instead lightly, barely, rubbing a water droplet into your lower lip. “Hm,” he said, running his tongue over his own, “My plans for you can wait. For now, I’ll do whatever it takes to win you over.”
Your heartrate had already spiked because of his shared body heat and that battle-ready look in his eyes, but the moment Midoriya leaned in, eyes half-lidded, your heart stopped.
(You can’t kiss him you can’t kiss him that’s your friend’s boyfriend you can’t you can’t—)
But his lips never touched yours—Midoriya diverted his lips at the last minute, and strangely, absurdly, dragged his mouth and face along your own, feeling his slight morning stubble scuff against you until he stopped by your ear, cheek pressed against yours (his fingers on your mouth dug into your lip, holding you still, despite your twitching to get away).
“Grant me permission. Please. I can be so, so good for you,” he said, hot breath striking your ear with each consonant, still pressed closely enough to feel his grin (its contrast with the fury in his voice made you lightheaded), “I can give you exactly what you need, and I give it so freely. So. Please. We may not know each other well, but I do know this: you alone own me. You alone hold me by the throat.” He nosed down the tense column of your neck, huffing through his nose when he pressed against your pulse point, and he fucking licked all the way up to your earlobe (the cold air swashing over his saliva). “If you’ll say the word,” he said, licking his bottom lip again, so close that you felt his tongue’s movement, “If you’ll let me, I’ll rip you apart. In any way you want.”
His little finger edged into your mouth and pressed down on the tip of a canine.
Shaken, you could only tug at his wrist to extract his hand, and once he’d let you remove it, you asked, “What the fuck kind of relationship did you have with Uraraka?”
Midoriya laughed again—but it’s a short, high-pitched burst, like the laughter you would’ve identified as his before. He shifted backwards to sit on his knees (don’t look at his lap; don’t look at his lap) and tilted his head with an easy smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Because I—this—” How is he the one with total confidence when he’s the one naked? “—this sort of—idea. The way you talk. This doesn’t—this doesn’t come from nowhere. I,” you said, covering your eyes with your hand, “Will you—will you allow me a moment to collect my thoughts?”
“Of course,” said Midoriya, and he—he backed away. Scooted back to the pool’s edge. Wrung out his washcloth. Gathered his things. Returned his legs to the water.
Didn’t put on any clothes.
“Okay,” you said after a minute, “I think I can—”
“Come sit by the water with me?”
“Uh,” you said, transfixed as the tendons in the back of his hands rippled as he flexed each of his fingers, “No. I’m fine where I am.”
He half-shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“Right,” you said, swallowing with effort, “I, uh. In general, not just for our situation, but generally, you have to work for a relationship. You have to put in effort. I—it sounds like you’re trying to slip into one with me while acting the same as you did with Uraraka. That’s messed up. I’m not the same as Uraraka or anyone else you could’ve dated. You can’t replace one woman in your life with another. It may just be out of habit, since you dated her for so long, but, um. Yeah. You need to treat me like—like me.”
Midoriya hummed and brought his fist to his mouth, which moved silently for a few seconds as he formed the words, but eventually, he glanced over his shoulder to speak. “Then I’ll work for it. I’ll study you until I work my way under your skin, until I’m exactly what you want.”
It’s the arrogance in his words and the safety in the distance between you that made you roll your eyes, finally tearing them from your determined gaze at his face and settling on his dick, prettily resting half-hard on his thighs, but you refused to look at it for more than a few seconds: it’s a dick one of your best friends fucked for years.
(It’s also unnerving how he’s kept saying want instead of love.)
You held up your hand to block your view of him. “I want nothing to do with you.”
***
Perched on your hip, Dango yelled and kneaded with her claws out until you woke. Bleary, you automatically raised your hand to pet her.
You’d slept in. No field work today, just a meeting later about performance evaluations for your interns. You got to have a slow morning.
Now that you were awake and gradually becoming caffeinated, the stupider the situation grew. How audacious of Midoriya to assume you’ll like the same sort of things Uraraka likes—and sure, there’s overlap, but he’s assuming instead of figuring it out with you. You’re an individual. You can’t take anyone’s place, and no one can replace you. Honestly, it should be obvious to the number-one hero that you’re the only you out there. What an idiot.
The doorbell startled Dango from your lap. Setting your tea aside, you trudged over to see who’s crazy enough to visit at 8:36 in the morning.
You opened the door on some…kid, dressed in a worn suit, holding a tablet, and asking for your hero name, and after confirming you were you, he continued. “Hello. My name is Kazama Tetsuya, and I’m a representative of Mera Yokumiru, longest-running president of the Hero Public Safety Commission. I’m here in regards to the incident concerning pro-hero Deku at 07:41 hours this morning. Your cooperation is required. Sign here, please.”
Frowning, you took the offered tablet and stylus and slouched against your door frame. “What am I signing? How come there’s no text here?”
“Hm. They said they wanted this done as quickly as possible,” said Kazama, striding past you into your flat, and, with his hands on his hips, he took a cursory look around. “Twenty sounds like it should work.”
Tiny spheres of flesh popped off of him like gravel sliding off a shovel, and each one grew to an identical clone of himself, all of them rushing around your apartment.
“What’s going on?” you asked, shoving the tablet back towards whom you hoped was the original.
The Kazama tilted his head at you, keeping his hands flat against the tablet so that you would have to keep gripping it. “Have you not heard? Deku is in the hospital. Critical condition.”
“Okay, whatever,” you said, pushing it into his chest, slipping the corner of it under his suit lapel so that it’d stay, “What does that have to do with me? What’re all of these yous doing in my apartment?”
Kazama’s eyes flickered down to the tablet, which you were supporting with a single finger, but he made no move to grab it. “We’re packing your belongings. Due to your extreme and explicit rejection of your soulmate, Deku was unable to complete a mission. It took both Dynamight and Shouto to pin him down; his thrashing and convulsing inadvertently caused immense property damage. He was unable to be communicated with. The only reason he’s in a hospital at all is because Tainted Love was summoned to sedate him.”
You glared at the Kazamas wrapping your dishware in newspaper. “So why are you packing my stuff? Stop it.”
Kazama shook his head. “Afraid we can’t. The ultimate decision of the HPSC is that you cohabitate with Deku so that he will not experience debilitating pain again. This decision is under the stipulation of Tainted Love’s quirk that dictates that soulmate bond pain will desist if the soulmates show some form of acceptance to each other. By living in the same space, you are accepting that Deku is safe to be around in a physical capacity.”
You dropped the stylus and tablet to the floor, screen cracking. “What kind of—”
“His pain will be exacerbated if you don’t,” said Kazama, bending to pick up the tablet, “He wouldn’t be able to perform his hero work. You wouldn’t deprive Japan of its number-one hero, would you?” Kazama tucked the stylus into an inner suit pocket, and he held the broken tablet lazily at his side.
They were already unmounting your art from the walls.
Swallowing, you crossed your arms. “What about me? Am I not valued as a hero? Don’t I get a choice?”
From your bedroom, you heard Dango meowing mournfully.
***
Dressed in wrinkled civvies seized before Kazamas could pack them into a box, you stormed into your hero agency, grinding your teeth, ignoring co-workers calling out to you, and mashing the elevator button to go to the ninth floor over and over again.
You bounced on the balls of your feet in the empty elevator. When was the last time you passed out? You just might, at how worked up you’ve gotten. You placed two fingers over your wrist to take your pulse.
But the lift doors opened on a wonderfully busy ninth floor—wonderful because the woman you needed was in her office. Frazzled, you shoved open the door, palm flat on the glass, and managed to say, “Are you particularly busy right now?”
Ito set her package of cheese crackers on her desk. “Not for you. I was gonna call you when I knew you were awake,” she was saying as you shut the door behind you and approached her vacant armchair, “to let you have a bit more time, but it looks like you’ve heard.”
You plopped into the armchair across from her, tapping your fingers on the chintz. “What happened?”
“I could ask you the same question,” she said, closing her laptop, “Strongest instance of soulmate rejection I’ve ever seen.”
“Another time, Ito. What’s your involvement with this? The HPSC is packing up my apartment to move in with Deku as we speak.”
Ito winced. “Ooh, that quick? It hasn’t been three hours.”
You inhaled sharply. “That quick?Don’t tell me—”
“They called me in to subdue him, and the only way I could do that was by making him breathe in my quirk again.”
Groaning, you clonked your forehead on her desk. “I don’t want an increase in romantic clichés with Deku.”
“Sorry about that,” she said, holding out her cheese crackers to you, “Nothing else was working. He even instantly burst through Shouto’s ice veil.”
Shifting your jaw, you took a cracker. “Is three hours abnormally fast for the clichés to set in?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Damn,” you said, chewing, “I’ve gotten so used to my life alone. I like it. I’m have control over my life. I love my friends; I love my work. I’ve gotten used to not needing romance to be happy, and now it’s—I don’t want it.”
‘With Deku or at all?”
“I don’t know. Probably both.”
“Well. Hate to remind you, but you can’t blame girl code entirely for not wanting him. You know how my quirk works: there had to have been a moment of genuine attraction between the two of—”
“I know; I can even pinpoint it back to the night I felt it,” you said, holding out your hand for another cracker, “I don’t know. I don’t know! They didn’t ask me before they started packing my shit up, claiming Deku’s pain was more important than my feelings. Don’t I matter, too? Why am I fodder in this quest to alleviate Deku’s pain? Am I not important?”
Ito handed the entire packet to you. “Not as important as the number one, evidently.”
“I don’t blame you, of course; we didn’t know each other back then,” you said, peeling back the plastic to expose the next cracker and accidentally letting all of them fall to the desktop, “But it’s stupid. I feel like I’m being forced into it from so many angles. The bond won’t letting me feel anything for anyone else. It’s dumb. I’m dumb. I’m tired.”
Ito frowned and steepled her fingers. “I need you to explain some of that. Soulmate bonds let you have feelings for other people. You don’t have to be in a romantic relationship with your soulmate, so long as you’re still in their life as a positive force—it’s just that pretty much every pair has ended up romantic, anyway. I’ve known of situations with soulmate pairs within a polycule, and stuff, so—interesting. This may be an aspect of your bond specifically. Have you tried really hard to like someone else?”
“I don’t even have the motivation to.”
“That could just be you, not the bond. You said you’re used to not having romance in your life.”
“I hope it’s me, then. Makes part of it of my own volition.” You scratched the back of your head, wishing you were still in bed and ignorant of the situation. “I haven’t seen you since the news dropped yesterday, so I’d like for you to assess what I know about the bond. Deku and I share dreams.”
“Common enough,” said Ito, nodding as she opened her desk’s top drawer, “Affects three percent of people affected by my quirk.”
“But I’ve read your reports. Most of them go to a single location, like an endless beach or the same cottage in a forest, with no one else around.” You tongued a cracker part to your cheek to enunciate more clearly. “Deku and I have been sharing an entire, fantastical world, populated with mirrors of people we know in real life.”
Ito paused as she gripped a new cracker packet. “That’s…new. New to me, anyway.”
Not a good sign. “Is there any way to stop having these dreams? I’m pissed my brain has to be turned on all of the time, and I don’t wanna see Deku every night.”
Ito fiddled with the plastic. Squinted at the ingredient list. “Not sure there’s a way to stop it on this end, but I’ll look into it. Why don’t you find the dream version of me to consult her?”
“Ito, you’re brilliant,” you said, pushing on her desk to stand, “I have a nap to take.”
You’d gotten to the door before she called your name. “Just so you know. The more you hate him, the worse his pain will get. I’m not telling you to love him. I never would. But.” Her expression glazed over; some of her thick, white hair fell into her face, and she made no move to brush it away. “It was terrifying. To see the number-one hero like that. My quirk was killing him. I like hearing men scream, but not like that. I don’t—I don’t want to hear that sound ever again.”
***
When you woke up in your fantasyland, the first thing you did was pelt Midoriya with your pillow.
“You are ruining my life at the moment,” you hissed between bites of breakfast.
In the waiting room of a diviner who was using All Might’s soul crystal to locate the altar, you shoulder-checked him. “Are we gonna be forced to combine agencies, too? Or am I gonna have to leave mine to join yours?”
Midoriya rubbed his shoulder, glancing over it at the others, discussing the map. “Legally, no, but I assume we’ll collaborate more.”
“Good. That’s my agency; I built it from scratch. I don’t want any other big decisions being made for me.”
During a water break out of the Valley of Haze, you knocked over his bag, furious with an abrupt realisation. “You were writing down my quirk.”
Midoriya hesitated before he took a drink from his canteen. “I’m sorry. When?”
“At the café when we first met here. You were writing down everyone’s quirks and how their types of magic matched up with them, and I threw you off because my magic isn’t like my quirk at all.”
Midoriya puffed out his cheeks, exhaling. “That’s true. You caught me.”
At Belldrop Pass, you gasped at the same time Shinsou paid the toll. “You idiot,” you said, thumping Midoriya’s chest, “You’ve been obvious that you weren’t thinking of Uraraka romantically. You’ve been calling her Uraraka instead of Ochaco.” You dug the heels of your palms into your eyes. “I should’ve known.”
When you stopped for a late supper outside of Mellowroom, you tried to be civil (Shinsou was watching). “Deku,” you said thickly, through a dinner roll, “I think we should find Ito here. She may be able to help with—our situation.”
Midoriya laughed nervously. “Hah, really? I guess it would be worth tracking her down again.”
You choked on your bread. “Again?”
Midoriya handed your glass to you and slumped in his seat to make the conversation private from the rest of the table. “She’s the one who told me about the soul altar. She’s not a soulwalker, but she’s the only other person I know of who has soul magic. I didn’t ask after soulmates that time because I didn’t think this was a soulmate situation.”
“I am going to crazy axe murder you.”
“Go ahead.”
You refused to talk to him all the way to the final strip of coastline where you set up camp. The group had travelled for so long that it took real effort to even unlace their boots, but you couldn’t sleep despite your exhaustion. Sleeping would mean waking up in reality.
You sat on the shore, antsy as you stared out at the sea, the thin crescent moon reflecting on the water. An island only visible in the spirit realm was supposed to be out there, and on that island, the soul altar.
You were getting too fidgety and jittery; you might work yourself up into a panic attack. Brushing the sand off your trousers, you stood, but when you turned, you bumped into Midoriya.
He shot you a curt wave. “Can’t sleep?”
You bit your lip. “Don’t want to.”
“Then you don’t have to,” he said, holding out his hand, “Let’s go to the spirit realm together. We can stake out what’s on the island before we go there officially tomorrow.”
You might as well give yourself something to do instead of overthinking. Ignoring his hand, you trudged back through the dunes towards the rest of your party, all passed out in a half-hearted attempt at setting up camp. While you intended to immediately take advantage of the homing spell the diviner placed on All Might’s soul crystal, Midoriya whispered across a sleeping Touya that you at least needed to unfurl your bedroll so that your soulless body would be secure enough to leave without a guard. Midoriya upset camp structure by dragging his own bedroll next to yours, and he set the crystal’s box on it so that it’d be there for you in the spirit realm, while you rummaged about for the dregs of the last time you made your lucidity potion. You took most of the last mouthful before passing the phial to Midoriya, and yet he was waiting for you in the spirit realm by the time you crawled out of your body.
You curled your tail around your little cat legs, and Midoriya followed the movement. “You know,” he said slowly, expression unreadable behind his mask, “You don’t have to be a cat. You can just apply a couple of cat traits to your human form, or you could do something so minor as changing your eye colour.”
“I’m not gonna be a fucking catgirl,” you said, leaping from your bedroll to his to avoid dirt on your paws.
“It’ll be faster to move around if you were bipedal.”
“Open the box,” you said, swatting at it with your paw.
“Hm. Do you think we’re within the radius for the homing spell to activate? We may have to return to the shoreline. Hey, don’t try to claw it open. That’s All Might you’re handling.” Midoriya popped open the box and moved to set it between you, but you had your grabby little paw on it before it was on the ground. Midoriya hissed and rushed to touch the crystal before you evaporated.
Less than a minute later, you materialised face-down in dirt. You curled your fingers into it, rubbing grit between them until you were tactile enough to stand, and you brushed the dirt from your dress, glancing over the half-kilometre of ocean between this island and the shoreline. If you squinted, you think you could make out your camp among the dunes.
“Thank you for cooperating,” came Midoriya’s voice from behind you, crunching dead leaves as he approached, “It’ll be easier this way.”
“I didn’t choose to look human,” you said, frowning over your exposed knees in some intangibly wispy dress, patting where your pockets had been, “You look different, too.”
Midoriya allowed you a better look at how both of your outfits clung to you in wisps, like they were curls of fog that could be swept away with a single breath. His mask was torn in half—mouth still concealed, hair still covered by rabbit-ears hood, but every movement of his eyes could now be detected—and, eerily, they were fixated on you.
He plucked a leaf from his vest to flick it away. “I didn’t choose to, either. Looks like the soul altar has some opinions on us.” His hood’s rabbit ears flickered a glowing green for a fraction of a second, both of them twitching. Midoriya didn’t notice.
Instead, he stretched his arms over his head, arching his back and looking over the curvature of an enormous tree’s limbs that shielded most of the island from moonlight. “Suppose we’d better head towards that tree, yes?” he asked, coming off of a groan.
“Seems to be the centre, anyway,” you said, striding past him towards a narrowly cut path, and behind you, Midoriya laughed. You spun on your heel and crossed your arms. “What’s so funny, Deku?”
He sobered, but his eyes still glinted. “I wasn’t going to say anything, since you didn’t seem to notice the glowing blue whiskers,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face, “but you’ve really been assigned catgirl by the spirit realm, it seems. You’ve got a tail.”
“What?” You twisted to see it, but you couldn’t discern anything at all.
“Nine of them, actually,” Midoriya was saying, smile creeping into his voice again, as you stomped towards him, “I considered you might be a kitsune at first, but then I remembered that cats are supposed to have nine lives—”
You seized his infuriatingly slim waist and forced him to spin around.
“Feel free to manhandle me more, sweet—”
“There,” you said, jabbing two fingers into his back above the swell of his ass, “You’ve been assigned bunny-boy. You’ve got a tail, too.” It’d twitched when you’d poked him. “Can you not feel it?”
“Not at all,” said Midoriya, hands raised, waiting for you to manoeuvre his body more (when you noticed, you shoved him away). “So, you can’t, either? Funny.”
“I’ll kill you,” you said, turning back to the path, “I’ll really do it this time.”
“Do you think that if we die here, we’ll die in real life?” he asked as he jogged to catch up with you. “Since it is really us who come here, if in spirit or soul rather than body, then do you think we’d…”
Midoriya babbled the entire walk to the soul altar, sucking out all the fun of threatening to murder him. At the centre of an overgrown, stone dais, the trunk of the grand tree was hollowed out by erosion, worn through by a spring running through it and pooling at its base, the clearest water you’ve ever seen burbling quietly underneath a smattering of lily pads. Glowing wildflowers crept onto the platform, and the tree’s branches grew downward, creating a cramped dome around the space.
Midoriya ran his hand over the domed branches, failing to push them from their structure. “I wouldn’t know if this is the altar. I’m assuming, since the stone dais indicates that someone built this, but—call me naïve, but I was picturing an altar.”
“No, I think it is,” you said, crouching near the water, “There’s a stone lily pad. At the centre of the spring. Is it just me, or does the way the flower’s formed look like it would hold a soul crystal?”
Midoriya knelt next to you on the rim. “It’s not just you.”
You stood and edged closer to the stone lily pad. “Do you think either of us could reach it?”
Brow furrowed, Midoriya said, “I don’t think we should touch—”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Midoriya brushed a curl out of his face at the same time his rabbit ears trembled. “It’s too far out for either of us to reach securely, but I could help—”
“Give me the soul crystal.” You braced your knees on the pool’s edge, and you stretched over the water, straining your arm until you were just a few inches short of the lily pad. You wriggled your fingers in an attempt to graze it. You waited for his admonishment, but it never came. Baffled, you glanced over your shoulder.
Midoriya stared into his lap, thumbs intertwining. “I don’t think so,” he said, shifting his jaw, “You’re tired and desperate for answers. You shouldn’t let All Might be the expendable part of this. We should go back to camp and try this for real in the morning.” His wide, hard eyes locked with yours, and for some reason, it was too much, the way the spirit realm made them glow with life more than they ever did in reality. “You need to listen to—”
Losing your balance by jerking away from his glare, you fumbled for support on the stone lily pad, but you closed your fist around nothing but water and slipped. For three, aching seconds, freezing water pierced through to your soul, but Midoriya snatched you from the water before your brain could register you’d fallen in.
“You’re okay; you’re okay. Relax,” Midoriya was saying, clutching you to his chest to share his body heat, while you shivered and writhed despite his hands on your waist and your forehead (probably to keep from banging your head on the dais), “Really, sweetheart, when I tell you not to do something, it’s for your own good.”
“Don’t sta—start that with me,” you said, sputtering, “I’ll kill—”
“Wait, shh, shh, shh.” Midoriya clamped a hand over your mouth, and you were about to rip it away, but with a minute move of his hand, he directed your line of sight to what he was talking about.
The stone lily pad sank into the pool, furiously bubbling from the spot, spreading to cover the pool’s surface, the sound of rippling water growing each second.
Gasping, your hand flew to a suddenly hot spot on your lower back, and—even through your closed eyelids, you could make out the intensely blue glow, surging brighter and brighter. Midoriya pushed down on your back, keeping you between his legs but with enough space for—you could see them, this time—for your tails to splinter off and dive into the pool, heat leaving with them.
As you struggled to sit back up (Midoriya helped you up by wrapping an arm around your shoulders), wide swaths of angrily frothing bubbles surged from each tail’s entry point, each glowing in turn as you tried to catch a glimpse of the surfacing images—
***
“No, c’mon—sit all the way down,” Katsuki was saying, and you flinched when you looked down to see that he was gripping your thighs, forcing them apart, with the lower half of his face glistening in the lamplight. “There’s no way the bond won’t extend this far; it applied to your gag reflex. You won’t hurt me—and besides, I can handle you any day of the week with my hands tied behind my back.”
***
You flinched at the pop of a cork, planted in a crowd of your friends at a formal celebration and gripping an empty glass, and at your side, Neito let the champagne foam gush onto the floor, laughing as your friends applauded. You could see the moment the idea crossed his mind: he swopped the bottle to his clean hand, and, with a smug grin, he held his champagne-soaked fingers to your mouth, in front of everybody.
***
Shouto seized you from the party and onto a battlefield covered in smoke, his whole hand encircling your forearm, and after he gave you a once-over, he slid his hand down to yours, his wedding band hot from his flames.
“Don’t worry,” Shouto said, clasping your hand and easing his own to a comfortable warmth, gesturing with the other towards the bleeding scratches on his face and neck, “I can’t feel a thing.”
***
“I wish Eri and Tenko had come to the farmers’ market with us,” you found yourself saying, putting an apple back in its stall, “Then I’d have a better idea of what they might want over the holiday.”
“I wish you’d think more about what you want.” Shouta’s voice grumbled in your ear, body heat blending with yours as his hand came to rest on your waist. “I’m glad they didn’t come. Between them, our friends, and our students, I need all the time with you I can get.”
When he brought your hand to his mouth, Shouta left a glittering, pink mark behind.
***
You were still staring at the back of your hand when you were slammed into a darkened room, sinking into a mattress with tears running down your cheeks.
“I—I love you; I’ve loved you for so long,” came Hitoshi’s voice, his own tears dropping onto your neck as he kissed your pulse point, the barest edge of his fingers brushing over your bare skin, pressing lightly into the underside of your breast, “I was terrified that I’d never be allowed to look your way.” His hips shifted between your legs, one of his large hands dragging upwards along the inside of your thigh. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
***
“To get what you want, Touya,” you heard yourself saying into your phone, feeling yourself physically sitting on a kitchen stool but seeing things through Touya’s eyes, seeing his hands run down his bare chest, thumbs pricking at his boxers, “You have to tell me how pretty you look right now.”
Touya’s hands faltered, clenching into fists. “Hey, fuck you. Why don’t you come back home, then, instead of leaving me by myself? I get so worked up when you’re not—”
“Say it, baby.”
Touya slid his hand past elastic to squeeze himself, cutting off his groan with a breathy inhale, the tiny hole in his cheek whistling. “I guess I’m—”
***
You’re blinded by falling cherry blossoms. You had to blink to adjust. Tenko was at your side, dressed in a mirror of your own pink yukata, and he was yanking you off the sakura-viewing path, out of the way of the scavenger hunters rushing to find the next clue. Tenko pushed you against a tree out of sight, smile toothy and endearing in the moment before he kissed you, quiet but all-consuming and fervent.
***
Your soul thumped back into your body with enough force to knock Midoriya backwards with you, and once again, you were soaked and shivering and miserable, instead of feeling all of that warmth. It took a few moments for its dregs to drain from your chest, and then the cavity it left was simply hollow.
Midoriya had his arms around your torso and legs clenched around yours, bracing you from falling back farther on the dais, and his voice came quietly. “Is that it? Aren’t there any more?”
You tried to inhale. Your nose was stopped up. “Aren’t those enough?”
Midoriya’s grip loosened, arms falling to your waist—enough room to leave, if you had the strength. Once he pulled his mask down to rest around his neck, his voice was less muffled. “You—you still have two more left.”
Grimacing, you wiped your nose on your wispy sleeve. “What?”
From behind you came another bright blue glow, but it didn’t plunge into the water on impulse like the others had. Instead, the cattail detached itself and wove itself around your wrist playfully, nudging what might be its head at your palm. For barely a full second, you felt that warmth again, and again you felt its loss when the tail unravelled itself from your forearm and wafted towards the stone lily pad, in which it curled into a gossamer sphere and vanished.
You held your wrist to your mouth in a vain hope to trace that warmth. “I think that may have been a life in which I don’t have a soulmate. Or perhaps all of them.”
Midoriya nodded against the crown of your head, and he reached around to grasp your forearm, drawing it away from your face to examine it himself. “One of them is sticking around. I supposed we can assume what that one is.”
“Deku,” you said, as he twisted your forearm to get a better look, while you were baffled why the pool was growing blurry, “All of those people I was soulmates with, in different lifetimes—I.” You cut yourself off, plucking your wet dress away from your skin. “They were the only people we know who weren’t affected by Ito’s quirk. What if—what if I’m the reason they don’t have a soulmate? What if I’m supposed to be their soulmate, but we can’t be paired off in this timeline because of you and me, and so their lives are colourless—”
Midoriya kissed your wrist, in the same spot you had.
Ah. The pool was blurry because you’re crying. You’re so wet that you hadn’t noticed.
You turned around in his hold, fingers curling into the damp spot on his shirt. “I’ve fucked our friends over, Deku. I’ve ruined their lives. They’re gonna have to watch everyone else they know, including you and me, dawdle in this sappy fucking soulmate shit forever, and they’re always gonna feel—” You slapped a fist to your chest. “They’re gonna feel this hollowness for the rest of their lives—I just had a taste of what that soulmate warmth feels like, and even in those flashes, it made its home in my gut, and I don’t know how I’m gonna live without that now that it’s touched me.” You grabbed his shirt again, a bit too roughly, forcing his ass down a stair on the dais. “I’d chase that feeling until the end of time if I knew it was snatched from me.”
Eyes darting between your face and hands, Midoriya closed his hand around your fist and pried it away from his shirt. “You can have that warmth again with me.”
“I don’t fucking care about you right now,” you said, beating his chest and pushing him down another step, “I care about my friends, whom I love. And apparently people I didn’t even know were important to me. They’re gonna wander the earth alone, and no one should have to do that. Fuck.” You shoved him away, crawled a few steps up the dais, stooped on the edge of the water, and buried your face in your hands. “How can I fix this?”
“You don’t have to,” Midoriya was saying, splayed out as you’d left him at the bottom of the stairs (hands held up cautiously, as if he’s taming a wild animal—and you resented that). “It’s not your responsibility. It’s just another aspect of the soulmate trope quirk. No part of this is your fault.”
“Why is there only one of me,” you asked flatly, dragging your clammy palms down your cheeks.
Midoriya hissed through his teeth, the wisps of his shirt collar dissipating and reforming with the movement. “You don’t know that they’re suffering. You know they’d complain—”
“You don’t let anyone know when there’s shit going on with you.”
He paused, brow furrowing. “That’s different.”
“Please. Promoting all this bullshit about supporting each other when you keep everyone locked out—in those brief flashes, I felt closer to each and every one of them than I ever have to you.” A full-body shiver wracked through you. You toyed with the hem of your dress, but you can’t take it off; he’s right there. “Hell, I barely had ten seconds with each of them, but I know that I’d take any of them over being here with you.”
“You haven’t given me a chance.”
“Why would I, when you’ve been scarily opportunistic? I—fuck,” you said, tugging at your hair and standing to pace, “I could’ve had anything. Could’ve had everything. Could’ve been content and happy and warm, but instead I have to be here. With you, instead of any of those men who know how to love me, and I them. I’ve fucked them over.”
Midoriya took a moment. Wetted his lips. Moved to a crouch. “Please listen to me. Not one iota of this is your fault. It’s just a pattern that’s been made clear to us because of this fantastical situation we’ve found ourselves in. In our reality, when we’re awake, you have one soulmate. You have no bonds with the others. You’re not their soulmate. You’re mine. And I’m yo—���
“Oh, get over yourself,” you said, clomping down the dais and shunting your foot against his chest, pinning him to the ground (the back of your head said that he was letting you do that, since he could rip you to shreds at any shut the fuck up). “This isn’t about romance, shithead. This is about losing a primary relationship that helps them grow as human people. What if I’m the catalyst for a bunch of character development, and they don’t get that now? Use your fucking brain, Deku. I want my friends to be the best versions of themselves that they can…they…”
Your mouth clamped shut. He’d gotten that determined gleam in his eyes again, staring up at you, practically sparking slivers of that OFA lightning, and he’d snaked his hand around your ankle.
Your brain emptied when his thumb rubbed over the bone on the inside of your ankle.
“I don’t think that’s quite true.” He was suppressing it. He was. But he couldn’t entirely hide the upwards quirking of his mouth when he spoke. “How much of this petulance is because it’s me?”
Intending to huff, your stopped-up nose made you hrnk stupidly instead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said, lifting your foot’s pressure from his chest.
But Midoriya tightened his grip around your ankle, trapping it against him, no matter how hard you struggled. “You don’t want to inconvenience anyone. You think that living in another timeline wouldn’t’ve upset the status quo here. Here, you appear to inconvenience many people—Uraraka and me, the people who have certain perceptions of us. The ones who aren’t your soulmate. You think you’ll even upset the balance of your friend group, because no one has dated another friend’s ex before. You don’t want this, because there’s no easy way out. It’s too much trouble.”
His hood’s rabbit ears sparked green and shuddered before fading, reminding you of all the trouble Midoriya’s been for you for the past few months. You tried to jerk your foot away, not caring if your shoe came off, but he caught the back of your knee with his other hand and yanked you down towards him. You hated how he’d perfectly set up your fall, straddling his chest without hurting either of you. Securing you to him by your knee, he’d relinquished his hold on your ankle to intertwine his fingers with yours—if he hadn’t, you’d be choking him by now.
“You don’t want to rock the boat, because it’ll be hard. Well, let me tell you something,” he said, curls splayed around his head, flat on the earth, concentrating all of that resolve and brainpower on you (as if you were someone worth watching), “Life is hard, my dear. But isn’t it worthwhile to try?”
“I can’t take this.” You blundered behind you for the velvet box clipped to his belt, and the instant you touched the soul crystal, you beamed back to your body at camp.
Gasping, you bolted upright, throat very dry, eyes adjusting to the physical realm’s moonlight—startling Shinsou, quietly puttering about to heat up some coffee while the others still slept. Over his shoulder, out over the ocean, the island was gone, and Shinsou was tilting his head, opening to mouth to ask what had happened, when Midoriya returned to his body as well.
Face red with fury and still soaked to the bone, Midoriya spat, “You can’t just run from all of—”
You scrambled away when he grabbed for you, throwing yourself over your bags and Shinsou’s as a barrier, and at the fire, you clutched Shinsou’s arm.
Midoriya remained in his hunch from when he’d tried to catch you, fist digging into the dirt. The heaviness of his shoulders rising and falling would have been more intimidating if his nose hadn’t been whistling, but you didn’t like it, the way he was looking at you, because that was the look he only ever gave villai—well. You could work with that.
Jumbled and scared and angry, you grabbed Shinsou by his kinky, medieval collar and kissed him, because if Midoriya’s going to look at you like a villain, you’d like to deserve it, especially since he doesn’t seem to want to blame you for any of this, not even that your soul’s evidently compatible with other people (and wouldn’t he want you all to himself?), and Shinsou made some sort of squeak that turned into a quiet grunt at the back of his throat before opening his mouth; you needed to push Midoriya away, because even if you let yourself like him, what if you screw up this soulmate in addition to all the others, and then what percentage of your friends will you have fucked up? Shinsou’s actually really good at this, wow, but shouldn’t Midoriya be jealous about that why is he letting this go on for so long.
Stones sinking into your gut, you broke from Shinsou, pressing your forehead to his, mouthing thank you, and giving his hair a final ruffle before pulling away entirely. Shinsou remained frozen in his campseat, but Midoriya had crossed his arms, looking out over the ocean and quite bored.
Your heartbeat thundered in your ears, on your tongue, and on the roof of your mouth. He’d been so vehement, so intense, and this quiet stoicism made your breath hitch in your throat. Isn’t he—isn’t he going to say anything? Rebuke you?
When Shinsou asked something along those lines, all Midoriya did was wipe some of the dirt off of his jawline and rub it between his fingers. “She knows what she’s doing wrong.”
***
You woke up for the first time in Midoriya’s apartment, sick to your stomach, and seeing all of your worldly possessions in boxes against the wall of his guest room, creating claustrophobia, did not help. Even the sheets that fell to your waist when you sat up weren’t yours; the only stuff you’d unpacked last night was Dango’s bare requirements. Where is she, anyway? You needed to press your face into her belly fluff.
Hoping Dango damaged some of Midoriya’s tchotchkes in the night, you stumbled to the bathroom and knelt by the toilet, waiting for the nausea to pass. God, you really did kiss Shinsou to piss off Midoriya, didn’t you? Your stomach flipped at the thought of using your best friend for something like that, especially since—you winced, resting your forehead against the bathtub rim—since Shinsou might like you romantically.
Fuck, all of them might.
You doubted it, because you normally don’t have that sort of luck, but regardless, you hoped to God they didn’t. You couldn’t stand the thought of their feeling that hollowness.
Would dream Shinsou be mad at you for using him? You didn’t want him to be mad. He’s Shinsou. Checking in with the real Shinsou about it would get you out of this apartment. It’s still incredible early in the morning; you weren’t even sure the sun had risen yet, but you needed to escape. Eyeing the new toothbrush Midoriya had given you last night, you pushed yourself up, still a bit wobbly, and got ready as quietly as you could.
All your sneaking didn’t matter, though, because a shirtless Midoriya was in the kitchen when you passed through it, popping above the maximum dose of ibuprofen into his mouth, slumping over the counter, and mumbling under his breath to the sound of his electric kettle boiling. Maybe you could just slip behind him, and he wouldn’t say anyth—
“It’s good to see you up,” said Midoriya, keeping his back to you and removing his kettle from the heat (you winced, shoulders slackening now that you’ve been caught), “I figured you would stay in bed today. You went through a lot last night.”
“I have work,” you said, trying to look anywhere but his tensing biceps as he poured water over a teabag in an Ingenium mug, “I—I don’t wanna sit around and have time to think.”
“You and I could call out of work. Could unpack your things,” he said, facing you and fiddling with the string on his teabag, “Would you like some tea? I have more than just oolong.”
You started edging towards the door. “No, I’m. I’m going to work.”
Midoriya blinked. Glanced at the clock on the wall. “All right. Wear your raincoat; it’s supposed to storm around sunrise.”
Was it? “I don’t know where Kazama packed my raincoat.”
“Take mine, then. In the closet by the door.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” you said, spinning on your heel towards the closet, anyway. You couldn’t get to most of your packed-away clothes, so it made sense to protect the few articles of clothing you had access to.
Midoriya followed a few paces behind, bobbing the teabag in his mug. “Don’t get angry with me for looking out for you,” he said, blinking slowly, leaning against the wall while you rooted through his hanging jackets, “Would you prefer I let you suffer? Oh, you passed it. It’s the green one.”
“How is your suffering, incidentally?” You pulled his raincoat off the hanger and shoved your arms into the sleeves. “Need another trip to the hospital?”
“Would it betray my otherwise calm exterior if I revealed that I’m barely holding it together?” He grasped your shoulder and turned you towards himself in what should have been akin to manhandling but was actually gentle. “I’ll be okay. It’s better now that you’re here,” said Midoriya, zipping up the jacket for you, holding eye contact once the zipper stopped at your throat.
What. The fuck. Is he going to keep pulling these mundane (but weirdly doing it for you) moves? “Then allow me to leave,” you said, reaching for the doorknob.
***
“Hitoshi,” you said, deeming it deep enough in your visit to mention it, “I have a hypothetical question for you.”
Shinsou unlaced his boot to make a tighter attempt. “Try me.”
“Hypothetically. Hypothetically. If—if you and I knew each other in a different universe, if we’re still the same people adapted for a different world—hypothetically. Would—” You swallowed thickly, and you took a sip from your takeaway cup, full of the bleak-in-taste but high-in-caffeine coffee perpetually available in the break room at Might Tower. “Hypothetically, if I—fuck. Okay. If I kissed you, to prove a point, to piss someone else off, to make someone else jealous—hypothetically, would that version of you be mad at me? Start to hate me?”
With a wry smile, Shinsou paused in his cleaning the inside of his mask, dabbing the interstices with an alcohol wipe. “If he’s truly anything like me,” he said, reaching over to ruffle your hair, “he’s grateful for anything you’ll give him. For any reason.”
You didn’t bother to bat away his hand like usual, and without your protestations, he returned to his mask. “You’re breaking my heart, Hitoshi.”
“That makes two of us.”
***
The train ride to Bakugou’s agency had you vibrating out of your skin. You didn’t even flash your ID at the front desk of Genius Offices; the elevator couldn’t rise fast enough to the floor with Bakugou’s office—you had to see him to test if a-fucking-nother of your friends had feelings for you, if your fears of ruining their lives were well-founded. Employees let your through because of your hero status but also because of the intensely manic energy you emitted, and the path to Bakugou’s office cleared the first step you took out of the elevator.
When you slammed open his door, the knob struck the wall, flecking off paint, and your heart stopped: yes, Bakugou was taking up as much space as he could in his swivel chair, wrists draped over the chair’s arms, legs splayed, one of them kicked up on his desk, but Midoriya stood across from him, in civvies still wet from the rain, halted mid-pace, lips still parted. You couldn’t let his presence change anything; you had to—well, you’ll have to expediate the conversation since he’s here.
Supressing panic, you strode towards Bakugou, determinedly ignored Midoriya, and straddled Bakugou’s thigh to cup his face to kiss him. Damn, Bakugou—he immediately opened his mouth, hot and consuming and a little dizzying in the way his tongue pushed into your mouth, pressing against yours—that’s enough.
You broke from Bakugou, panting. “Katsuki,” you said softly, feeling Midoriya’s gaze bore into the back of your head, “Do you have feelings for me?”
“Hahh.” Bakugou’s grip slid from your waist along the curve of your hip, fingers digging into your skin for three seconds—his eyes darting over your shoulder and back to your lips. “I, uh. Never planned on discussing them in front of Izuku. Wasn’t gonna bring them up at all, with the news two days ago that you two are soulma—”
“Oh, God.” You stumbled off of Bakugou’s lap and onto the floor, hitting your head on his desk as you threw up on his fancy carpet.
You were vaguely aware of being shuffled to the in-house infirmary and getting treated for a concussion, with employees trafficking in and out of the infirmary, and your first coherent thought, however much time later, was that it was making you nauseous how gently Midoriya cradled your hand in his when he could snap every bone in it without trying. He was talking to the doctor and Bakugou in turn in that low, firm voice, but words escaped you, only absorbing Bakugou’s subdued frustration and Midoriya’s quiet decisiveness.
You snapped back into it when Todoroki walked in—did he feel the same as Shinsou and Bakugou?—and you seized up, clutching Midoriya’s hand to your chest, teeth digging into the inside of your cheek. “I’ve ruined their lives,” you said under your breath to Midoriya, flinching when his free hand came up to stroke your back, but the gesture grounded you.
“You haven’t,” he whispered back, angling your body towards his so that your voice wouldn’t carry (in your periphery, Bakugou had the decency to thump Todoroki’s arm to pull his attention from your conversation).
“I checked with Shinsou,” you said in a rush, “and now we know Bakugou does, too. I’m so fucking scared to ask anyone else—”
“Don’t do it,” said Midoriya, squeezing your hand, “Knowing won’t make you feel any better. It’s gonna be fine. You had no control over this. No one will blame you for anything.”
“I’m scared.”
“You’ll be okay. I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you. Though, you’ve already hurt yourself a fair amount on Bakugou’s desk—you don’t have a concussion; don’t worry too much.” His middle and ring fingers traced down your spine. “But since you’ve thrown up, why don’t we go home?”
“If we go home, I’ll fall asleep,” you said, tasting blood from how much you’ve bitten your cheek, “and I can’t handle that right now. I need to just stop; I don’t wanna be here or there.”
“All right.” Midoriya nodded, tapping his thumb on the back of your palm with a squeeze to your interlaced fingers. “We’ll see what we can do. Even if you do fall asleep, I’ll make sure none of our party bothers you, if you want.”
“Yeah.” You mirrored his nod, frazzled and jumpy and not quite there, but his hand on your back kept you from dissolving into nothing.
“Listen. I’ll pick up takeaway from somewhere and meet you at home. You have a preferred place? Type of food?”
Your tongue took up too much space in your mouth. But your body needed food, even if you didn’t feel like eating. “Would it be too much trouble to stop by Saizeriya?”
“None at all. Text me your order. You go home and find Dango; pet her until I get back. She was under my bed last time I saw her.” After a moment of wavering, Midoriya pressed his lips to your hairline.
***
You did not return to Midoriya’s flat. Tucking his raincoat closer around you, you topped off your rental car’s gas tank on your way out of town, standing as far away from the dripline of the overhang but getting splashed along your jeans, anyway.
You had no goal. Just wanted distance. Driving in the rain was grounding today, for some reason, and something as horribly modern as driving and traffic laws only existed in this universe, therefore very far from your dreamland.
But you had to sleep eventually, and though dread flooded you, you pulled into a roadside station outside of Kikugawa, got a drink from a vending machine, and kept your phone off, despite the urge to doomscroll. The missed calls and text notifications would corrode your gut, and who knows what sort of tracking services Midoriya might be able to enact?
You watched raindrops race each other down the windshield until your eyes couldn’t stay open, and then you tugged the raincoat’s hood over your eyes to block out the lightning.
***
You could hear Monoma and Touya talking in the distant dunes when you woke. No sign of Shinsou or Midoriya in camp, but you could never be too careful.
You slipped into the spirit realm without anyone realising you’d been awake, and you flipped over to face the soul crystal’s box peeking out of Midoriya’s rucksack. Sitting up out of your body, you pinched your nose, reluctantly humanoid but conceding to its convenience, and took what felt like your first breath all day. Your hand passed through the soul crystal’s box at first—normal for handling a physical object in the spirit realm, so you concentrated on focusing your energy into your fingers.
You had to get to the altar. You weren’t sure how you were going to do it, but you were going to fix this. It had to be this you, not any of the others who neither knew about everyone else nor accessed soul magic. At the soul altar, you would somehow split yourself for everyone to have you—and that may destroy you in this timeline; you didn’t know—but you had to try something—fuck, only the edges of your thumbs were physically manifesting—but something very, very solid closed around your wrist and knocked away the velvet box: Midoriya’s hand.
He caught both of your hands with such speed that he was on top of you before you could register the touch of his thumb and ring finger.
(But—and this was fucking weird—Midoriya wasn’t using his body to dominate you sexually like you’d expect, through a typical move like pinning your arms down and straddling you, a knee between your legs, but instead he’s—he’s completely flattened himself to hold you down, like a weighted blanket. He brought one of your hands between your chests, over his heart, and he propped himself up very slightly by his other elbow, still restraining your hand, and you loathed how it was because he was being considerate, angling his head away from your neck so that his breath wouldn’t wash down it. The chill of the spirit realm made you almost wish he would. But he’s clever, annoyingly clever, and still so kind—he’s got you pinned without room for movement, but nothing hurt. Of course your enemy had to be the most observant and adept piece of shit you’ve ever met.)
Midoriya remained silent for two, long minutes while you stared up past green wisps of hair into the colourless, overcast sky.
“Please don’t do anything drastic to yourself.” He was close enough to hear his swallow. “You don’t need to fix anything. They chose to have romantic feelings for you. You didn’t make them do anything. This happened to you outside of your control. However they deal with their feelings is on them. Other versions of us have all managed. We’re just not at that stage of our lives yet.
“And I think you may be afraid that being with me may narrow your happiness and the happiness of others, and I—I think I’ve made that worse by allowing you glimpses of how I was with Uraraka, but we were fine; she encouraged me to let her give up that control, but you’re right. She and I talked about that. You and I haven’t, and I fall back into comfortable behaviour because it’s the only love I’ve ever known. But if you wanted something romantic between us, it would in no way consume your other relationships. If you like, we could work to foster whatever you want with—with people who are your soulmates elsewhere. No romance is worth cutting yourself off from everyone else. Whatever you want, I’ll do. I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”
You writhed underneath him, saliva building on your tongue. You didn’t have exact words for your feelings, but you should start somewhere. “I wouldn’t expect you to be anything other than yourself. Don’t change yourself for me.”
Out of your periphery, you caught his incredulous expression. “I know I will in thousands of small ways, in how much tea I brew, in how loudly I play my music, in how often I leave the lights on. It’s natural to change, and I’ll gladly do it. I’ll still be me, at the end of it. And, if I may—” He wetted his lips. “—I would venture that the same’s already happened to you. There’s a reason why this you, over any of the others, is here, right now, with me. The choices you’ve made, all the changes and tweaks to yourself that have led to your current personality, have made you perfect to be here, instead of any of the other timelines. This version of you may be too introverted to be with Bakugou or too indirect for Todoroki—I don’t know. But our souls are made for each other, for the right here and right now, and I’d like to know why. The only way I can learn is with you. If you don’t want to, that’s fine, too. But I think—I think we could be good for each other.”
You scoffed, with Midoriya lifting his head to search your face. “Come off of it, Midoriya. I’ve been nothing but hostile towards you. You can’t actually believe that.”
“I do.” He lifted himself enough to look you in the eye, taking some of his weight off of your chest (and your boobs finally weren’t smushed). “I’ve known you tangentially for years, and I’ve known you directly for almost two months now.”
“I didn’t know you were real—”
“But I was, and I was being myself the whole time. Were you?”
Where’s he going with this? “Yes.”
“The you I’ve been getting to know is funny and determined and amiable. She’s quick on her feet and eager to solve problems and cares so, so deeply for other people. And, moreover,” Midoriya said, green eyelashes dark against his skin, “she seems very protective of her heart. I understand your caution; I used to—oh, gracious.”
He released the hand at your side to rub his eye, and he removed himself from your entirely to kneel at your side. You were cold without him.
Midoriya gripped his knees, changed his mind, and went back to rubbing his eye. “Lately, I’ve been really into soft cheeses.”
Sitting up, you crossed your arms, your wispy clothes doing nothing to obstruct the chill. “I’m sorry?”
“I can hardly expect you to let me into your heart when I’ve been absent from mine. You’re right, of course, that I don’t tell people about myself,” said Midoriya, shrugging and slumping afterwards, “My whole life for so long was becoming a hero, so I admit I didn’t have many interests outside of that obsession. Now, being a gregarious but blank slate encourages people to project whatever they need to onto me so that they’ll let me help them. The detail of liking katsudon is minor enough to ground me in reality, reminds the public I’m human. I…”
Grimacing, Midoriya ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face. “I’ve grown. I’m more than minutiae; I’m more than my actions. I’m still figuring it out myself. But learning, us, together—starts with details from both of us. So, lately, I’ve been into soft cheeses, but my favourite brie and mozzarella are only offered at this farmers’ market just outside of town that only pops up once a month. I don’t always have the date right, so I’ve made the journey only to show up to an empty market more than once. And I don’t know if you’ve been to the kitchen yet, but I usually keep a puzzle going. Right now, I’m doing this 1500-piece puzzle of a red-eyed tree frog on a leaf, and all of the green is making it particularly difficult. I’d love for you to join, and—and I’ve tried to make myself like coffee, but it’s never meshed for me. I always take my tea with sugar instead of milk, which makes me feel like I take it wrong. Don’t most people take it with milk, no sugar?”
You smiled. It’s good to hear the familiar rambling. “I can’t say I’ve thought about it much. I…” You brought your knees to your chest, hugging them and shivering. If he could try to open up, you could, too. “Something a bit similar is going on at work right now. Before all of our soulmate stuff, the biggest drama had to do with the break room coffee creamer. We ran out, and Mina asked Yaoyorozu to make some. She did, but suddenly, there was a debate about whether or not it was creepy to drink something from Yao’s body.”
Midoriya dropped his hand into his lap and managed a small smile. “I don’t think I’d drink that.”
“Yeah, and there were a lot of weird takes, comparing it to breast milk, and stuff. Ultimately, Mina didn’t have coffee at all that morning.”
“Probably for the best,” said Midoriya, glancing off towards the ocean, where the island waited in the distant fog, “I put your Saizeriya’s in the refrigerator. Have you eaten, wherever you are?”
Fidgeting, you moved to bite the inside of your cheek but stopped yourself; the skin smarted on this side of reality, too. “I’m fine. I got something from a vending machine.”
Midoriya frowned. “That’s not a meal. Where are you?”
“I’m…at a rest stop outside of Kikugawa.”
His head snapped towards you. “Kikugawa? What are you—” He winced, ducking his head. “You’re scared of me.”
“I feel better now that we’ve talked,” you said, “I—it’s complicated. My main road block is knowing that I’m tied up with some of our friends in other universes—but I think you’re right; there’s nothing I can do about it. So, I’ll get over that, eventually, hopefully, but I know it’s going to haunt me for a long time. I’ll be fine about that in time. The other road block is, uh.” You couldn’t finish. It was almost too childish to voice.
Midoriya sighed. “Do you want to arrange a meeting with Uraraka in which she gives you her blessing?”
“She already has,” you said, resting your chin on your knee, “Through text, though. Might be better if we talked face-to-face.”
“Right. It will also be beneficial for you to meet her real soulmate, Spike. The difference between how she behaved with me compared to Spike is immense. What else is in the way?”
You sucked in through your teeth. “You know how the Class A girls have a group text?”
“The one left over from Girls and Todoroki Nights?”
“Eh, no. This is a separate one without Todoroki or Shinsou; it’s only women. Okay, so, uh. Uraraka,” you said, hesitant on how to phrase it, “never directly said anything about the, uh, nature of your relationship—never said anything about whatever imbalanced power dynamic you had going on. But she would talk about, like.” God, you can’t look at him. You squared your jaw and said hastily, “She would tell us about your dick and how well you fucked her and sometimes when you would do hot or cute things in bed; like we all found out about how you came in your pants the first time you fingered her, and how your cock is really leaky and you have special fabric underwear to absorb it, and how you eat pussy like you’re making out with it, and—”
(And again, Midoriya surprised you, because instead of turning bright red and sputtering something about not needing to hear any more, he pinched his lower lip, tongue tapping the point of a canine, and said—)
“Do you believe any of it?”
You halted mid-sentence, mouth still shaped like your next word. You closed it before it could dry out. “I do, now.”
“I see. I should’ve expected she’d share details about our sex life; she’s into exhibitionism, and sharing details in a group text is nowhere nearly as exhibitionist as the punishments she wanted me to enact,” he said, as if he weren’t dragging both himself and your friend under, “I’m sorry for my earlier behaviour, especially at the waterfall. You’re right that I was letting myself continue a habit. I should’ve asked what you wanted. Do you…” He pressed his fist to his mouth and looked away, jaw clamped shut to prevent talking aloud.
If you said it out loud, you made it real. You’ve already done your best to squash it down, but—you guessed—Midoriya deserved fair play. “Some of what you did was attractive, but since we hadn’t talked about it, I was scared. I still am, because—well, we’re going to work out the other lives stuff together—but I’m still feeling scared and guilty because you’re my friend’s ex. I know this is only an issue because I’m too trapped in my own head, and I am by no means slut-shaming, or anything, but—I don’t know. I’m scared that every time I touch you that I’ll be comparing myself to Uraraka and if she—did it better, or something. It’s a worry because I know her extremely well, not because there’s been someone with you before me. I know this is ridiculous—”
“All the more reason for you to leave your own mark on me,” Midoriya said, and he removed his cape to wrap it around your trembling shoulders, fixing the clasp around your neck. “Noticed you were cold,” he said with a quick smile, “But if, in any way, it unnerves you that someone you know has touched me, shouldn’t you replace them with your own? How much time should I set aside?”
“What?” You pulled the cape more closely around you, twisting its surprisingly heavy fabric to cover your lap. “Are you—what happened to the Midoriya I knew in school?”
“I’m still him. Every bit.” He toyed with the corner edge of the cape, rubbing it between his fingers. “Listen. If you detach you and me from the situation, from the relationships with our friends, from any context whatsoever, what would you want? Would you want anything from me? Would you want me?”
When he flipped the cape’s corner into your lap and removed his hand, you were tempted to grab hold of it. “I could,” you said, fingers instead curling into the fabric, “It’ll take a while to walk out of my conflicted headspace, but I could.”
Midoriya heaved an enormous sigh, tension visibly leaving his body. “Thank goodness. I fear I’m already too into you to back away. I would if you wanted me to, of course, but—”
(You missed part of the rambling for the huh? What the hell was the number-one hero doing, pining after you? What had you ever done to get his attention?
Two months wasn’t a long time. Possible, of course, but unlikely. Was…was he attracted to you before the soulmate situation occurred?)
“—only hope that you’ll forgive me for my bad behaviour; I should’ve talked to you from the start. I guess I was scared, too,” Midoriya was saying when you snapped back into it, “May I—may I assume we’ll spend more time together? Get to know each other?”
“You may,” you said, and all of the past months of dreaming and running around and avoiding vulnerability weighed down on your back, pressing down to flatten and crush—so, you rolled your shoulders back. Sat up straight. Bit your lip as you looked him directly in the eye and said, “Midoriya, you have permission to seduce me.”
Midoriya opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again, brow furrowed. “Are you sure about that?”
“So long as you’re clever about it,” you said, moving to sit on your knees, mirroring him, “So long as you seduce me on an intellectual and moral level before you—you can’t rely solely on your enormous hands and big, ol’ wet eyes. I challenge you to ease me into a romantic relationship from friendship. I want you to make me feel soooooo comfortable. I want you to surprise me.”
You heard the OFA static, rather than saw it. A quiet crackle that faded as he clenched his jaw.
“But otherwise, I want you to do it in ways that you like. Not necessarily what you’re used to.” You were grinning, fascinated by the heady way he was staring at you, unable to tear his eyes away from yours. “I wanna see what you like. I’ll tell you if I’m not into something.”
A few seconds passed before Midoriya answered. “I’m into a lot of things,” he said slowly.
“Yeah? I wanna see what you can give me.”
Twin bolts of lightning snapped and popped around his body, bright and blinding as if they were in the sky, and they sizzled out in an instant when he opened his mouth. “You seem to like to argue. To push back a little. Am I wrong?”
You shook your head, watching the tiny ripples of static electricity weave like snakes around his arms and down to his fingers, tips of your own hair starting to frizz.
“Right. What’s our safeword?”
You cast your thoughts around, and they settled on your seedling fortune from Alderside’s festival. Well. While no one can control your fortune, you’ll make it your own. “Lotus. As in the flower.”
With a slow blink that shot heat to your lower stomach, Midoriya swallowed, his Adam’s apple dipping. “Right,” he said, voice rasping, “I’ll get on it.”
“I look forward to it,” you said, smiling, feeling excited about the soulmate situation for the first time since you breathed in that dust, “In the meantime, why don’t you tell me more about your soft cheeses?”
***
Midoriya was gone by the time you got back to the apartment, and since you didn’t go on patrol until evening, you spent the time unpacking your things. Since yesterday, he’s stuck post-it notes on drawers and cabinets to label their contents, easing the process.
Infuriatingly, you found Dango sleeping on his bed, as if it had been her space her entire life. You crawled onto the bed next to her, holding out your hand for her to sniff.
While she walked in circles before curling in a ball next to you, you glanced over his jam-packed bookshelves and bulletin boards (plural, with a few pieces of yarn connecting tacks across boards) and settled on his bedside table, where, in front of a framed, blood-splattered, All Might trading card sat an empty mug, still smelling of sweetened oolong tea. Cute. You got out your phone to snap a quick picture of Dango and then opened your texts.
YOU
hey midoriya
YOU
i know another thing we can work on
MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱
I remember. We’ll work out a way to be completely unconscious instead of visiting our dreamland
YOU
not that one. adding another task
YOU
learn how to make frappes. and then how to make them in fantasy setting
YOU
all versions of shinsou deserve a big fuck-off drink
MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱
Most likely unnecessary to re-create the process exactly. Don’t you think we could adapt part of your tea ceremony magic for coffee?
YOU
y’know. i hadn’t considered.
***
When your eyes finally focused, Midoriya’s face had the closest thing to fear you’ve ever seen on him, tapping your cheeks to get you to stay conscious, and when you violently shuddered and coughed up seawater, relief passed over him.
It’s cold. It’s so fucking cold; with no explanation, an ice storm swept over the coastline as your party was packing up camp, and with the chilling winds and grey overcast came the fiery fury of a dragon forced to fly south. Tucking away his knitting needles, Monoma had been in the middle of proposing the storm might be a spell to drive the dragon out of a settlement when the writhing, fervent thing had spotted your camp and had dived towards you.
The dragon’s wings beat the frigid winds down on you, your clothes still damp from your trips into the spirit realm, shocking you so hard that you only caught flashes of its wreckage: you didn’t know how Monoma, Touya, and Shinsou vanished one by one into thin air with each swipe of its tail, but its front claws closed around you as it leapt into the sky again, flying out over the ocean, where it dropped you into slushing water almost half a kilometre out.
And Midoriya—he must have swum out to retrieve you, dripping and panting over you on the shore as he turned back towards the remnants of camp, and you, tired and freezing enough to let him move you into a water-eroded cave farther down the beach as the wind picked up, could hardly feel guilty for not helping him build a fire for how hard your head spun.
“If we’re separated from the group, unknown how to recover them, then—if we continue the plan to return to the Gauntlet, we might run into them eventually,” he was muttering as he threw logs on the fire, “Town’s three kilometres away, but I don’t think we’re in any condition to travel. Once she warms up—” Midoriya scrambled towards you, curled up and shivering on a thrown-together pallet on the other side of the fire, and he patted your cheek again. “Hey, hey, please, don’t fall asleep yet. I know you’re tired. It’s gonna be fine. But stay with me for a few more minutes, please?”
“I’m fi—fine,” you said, tongue numb enough to trip up your words.
Midoriya grimaced. “No, you’re not. Forgive me,” he said, prodding you to sit up and slipping your soaked shirt over your head, and he rested your forehead on his shoulder before setting to work unlacing your corset.
“What, f—fuck,” you said, unable to do much else besides continue to shiver, “This mah—must by a spe—special kind of cold.”
“Considering it’s most likely magic-induced, I wouldn’t doubt it,” said Midoriya, deft fingers already halfway done with the ties, “This is the third night in a row you’ve gotten cold and wet, so I’m afraid this may be the final straw to your getting hypothermia.”
“Hah—how come you’re not too affected by it?”
“I used to be. When I first started dreaming, I woke up in the northern lands. This body has since gotten used to this level of cold. I spent a full month helping one of the towns with a burrowing dragon. Tends to be a problem up there.”
“Resourcefu—ful bitch,” you said, taking deeper, sloppier breaths now that he removed your corset, the chill spreading across your chest. You wrapped an arm over your boobs once he lay you down (your undershirt still covered them, but it was nearly transparent with dampness), yelping at his first tug to take off your trousers.
“Relax. I’m not trying anything. The quickest way we’ll get you warm is if we share skin-to-skin contact,” said Midoriya, and he sat back on his heels. “Why don’t you take off your pants yourself, then? I’ll hang them by the fire.”
Nodding, you fumbled with numb fingers to unfasten your pants, and it was only after a few minutes of struggling to get the wet-clingy things off that you realised he’d stripped down to his smallclothes, too concentrated on hanging drenched clothes above the fire to be abashed at his nakedness. You tossed your pants towards him and ducked under a blanket, where your undershirt kept you icy, regardless.
“I’m thinking that after we check you into an inn in town, I’ll come back to comb over the beach to see if I can scavenge anything related to the dragon itself or to the rest of our party. If I find something, we could take it to the same diviner who tracked the soul altar through All Might’s crystal, and we’d be able to reunite through—ah.” Midoriya was cut off by another piece of wet clothing slung at him, and he peeled it away from his face, scrunching when he noted how you tucked the blanket more closely around you. “But I suppose that’s a conversation for later,” he said, nervously chuckling (dimples and creases in his cheeks highlighted in the flickering light) and draping your undershirt over the flames.
Though hazy, you appreciated how Midoriya tried to delay it, how he busied himself with securing the cavemouth, scooting your pallet closer to face the fire, and hooking Monoma’s banged-up kettle nearby, before lifting your blankets (you hissed at the swash of cold air down your bare back) and crawling in behind you.
Immediately, he’s got his mouth against the crown of your head, each hard plane and muscle ridge down his fire-touched chest pressed against your skin. He’s being so respectful in how his hips cradled your own, sharing the warmth without touching, so when one of his large hands grazed your waist, you took it, sliding your hand down to his to guide his arm fully around you and closing them in a fist underneath your boobs.
“Be—better,” you said, firelight still bright through closed eyelids, “Thank you.”
Midoriya huffed into your hair. “You’re surprisingly accepting of this.”
You hunched in towards the fire slightly (you swore your tits were going to freeze off). “We both took the sa—same safety courses. I know this is the logical course of action.”
“You sound like Aizawa-sensei,” said Midoriya, humming.
“Remember wh—when he taught gave that lecture? Brought in Kayama-sen—sensei to discuss human anatomy. Said that we’d probably never run into something like this.”
“Mm, I suspect it’s a contributing factor that I breathed in a second dose of Tainted Love’s quirk.” Midoriya nudged the back of your head for you to lift it, and he slid his folded arm underneath you to use as a pillow. “Wouldn’t you say the cliches extend to the dreams, based on this?”
“Fantastic,” you said, a full-bodied shiver sweeping through you, prompting a cough.
“No, no, you’re okay; you’re fine,” said Midoriya, rubbing over the goosebumps on your upper arm, “Once you’re warm enough, we’ll head into town. Wasn’t there a restaurant Monoma wanted to try? Do you want to go there?”
“I just wanna bathe and get in a real bed,” you said with a whimper, tugging the blankets up to your chin, “I don’t want to be siiiiiiick. We won’t be able to start tracking the others until I’m well.”
“We’ve been travelling with purpose for a while. It might be good to have a break, and you needn’t worry,” said Midoriya, replacing his arm around your waist, this time laying his hand flat on your stomach, right atop your diaphragm, keeping track of how hard you breathed, “I’ll take care of you.”
You sniffled, licking your dry lips. “Oh, fuck off.”
You flinched as the fire crackled, and Midoriya shushed you again and curled himself around you, edging a careful knee between your legs and drawing you close enough for your hips to touch. Scoffing, you realised there’d been a reason he’d kept a distance.
“Sorry! Sorry,” he said hastily, backing his hips a little, “I was—I just got to thinking about your back, and how soft it is, and then you mentioned wanting a bath, and you said it with the most glorious little whine to your voice—”
“You’re the reason they make dress codes so strict,” you said, shooting a glare over your shoulder.
“I think the tea’s boiling,” said Midoriya, and when he crawled out of the blankets, you made a pathetic noise at the back of your throat (the corner of his mouth twitched). But he was behind you again in a couple of minutes, arm curving over you to set your cream-coloured enamel mug in front of you on the pallet.
Once you’d drunk most of it, not tasting it but enjoying its heat, eyes growing heavier by the second, Midoriya spoke. “All right. I feel a lot better knowing your insides are warming up, too. You don’t have to try to stay awake anymore.”
You paused, waiting for a sneeze to come, but it died before you could. “But barely half of the night has passed. I’ll wake up back home and not be able to go back to sleep, because I’m woozy here.”
“Then stay awake. Feel free to rummage about the apartment, unpack, or anything. Watch a movie. We’ll get to work on finding a way to sleep dreamlessly soon.”
You set your mug aside, sapped of the strength to hold it up. “Should I wake you?”
“I don’t think so,” said Midoriya, rubbing your arm again before wrapping his over you, shifting his knee between your legs, “I need to take care of you here. Do you mind if—hm. It’d be difficult to move you and the supplies the three kilometres into town. I really think we should get you to town as soon as possible, though. Would you object to my moving you in your sleep, or would you prefer we stay here until tomorrow?”
“I don’t—don’t fucking care,” you said through a yawn, “I was just thinking. This dream shit seems more aligned with our real lives’ circadian rhythms, and stuff. Do you think if I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night here that I’d, like, faint in real life? It might happen, since we’re going to sleep during the day.”
“I’ve considered that,” said Midoriya, setting his cup next to yours with a clink on the stone floor, “and I don’t have any answers. S’pose we’ll find out.”
***
The next few months of your life were spent learning how to live under the soulmate bond. You’d unpacked completely, your belongings mixing with his and finding their homes in his flat. Gotten used to routines and grocery preferences. Still struggling to remember where he kept his measuring cups.
Midoriya claimed the soulmate pain had gone away, but sometimes, you caught him just standing there, clutching his shirt over his heart, expression strained but focused on nothing at all. He’d always brighten when he noticed you watching.
(One night, you’d stayed up later than Midoriya because you’d had a bit of a fight; he’d had Mirio, Nejire, and Amajiki over without telling you first, and you’d needed the quiet and space to work on a complicated collab proposal—and it kept you up during most of the night. He’d gone to bed angry, and you’d fumed over your laptop, when some sort of tinny whine broke the silence of the apartment. You’d taken off your headphones to check, and the sound kept coming.
You’d cracked open the door to Midoriya’s bedroom, where he’d been restlessly tossed in his sleep, bedsheets twisted around his waist and falling onto the floor, muscles strained even then, face screwed up, creases between his eyebrows—whining, wincing, clenching teeth together. It’s a sound you didn’t want to hear again. You’d gotten closer, wincing yourself as you watched sweat beading down his cheek, only to slide off onto his wet pillowcase. His shirt was soaked through, and he’d gone all pale.
You’d almost wished he were having a sex dream, because then you wouldn’t have to feel sorry for him. But no, God, this was happening because you were mad at him, because you’d fought, rejecting him somehow, and for such a tiny, little thing.
You’d pressed the back of your hand to his forehead to check his temperature, and Midoriya immediately stilled, breathing returning to normal.
If he’d noticed, he hadn’t said anything the following morning.
[And you? You weren’t experiencing any soulmate pain at all.])
Dango had grown to like Midoriya immensely, which baffled you until you’d discovered how much scrambled egg he gave her every morning as her cat tax—she took it out of his hand with such delicacy.
Right now, she lay on your lap while you scrolled through your phone on the couch. You’d made yourself a lurker account to follow people thirsting after Midoriya to see how other people were attracted to him—what made him appealing to them and how they talked about it. With his involvement with Uraraka’s miniseries picking up, on top of his already exhaustive schedule, you were seeing less and less of him in reality and had to rely on your dreams to spend time with him, so you visited these people’s accounts also as a way to check in on his public self.
[image description: a dishevelled Pro-Hero Deku, covered in soot from an explosion from fellow Pro-Hero Dynamight, lands a kick into the jaw of an 80-meter snake controlled by villain Viper. His boot sinks into its flesh in the moment before the force of the kick makes the snake burst. His hero costume is torn so that he has neither sleeves nor his hood. One of his gloves is missing, and his hair is wilder and curlier than usual.]
chargenut: uuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh hi!!!!!
sakuraraka: i wanna play with his hair i wanna tackle him to the ground
momo-closet: *fumbles for inhaler* very normal abt this. need him carnally need every man who can stomp something to death with a single move. Also please look at his ASS and how ROUND it is. desperately need to smack it but my hand would bounce off into the stratosphere
alienkawa: my womb ouch
dickuprint: god his curls are SO fuckgn sexy here. his current undercut and styled hair must be a strategic move by his PR team to nerf his perfect fucking looks bc otherwise he’d be too pretty for anyone to get anything done. undercut also sexy tho
nonbinarysalmon: he………………………
Neither you nor he had found a way to sleep without dreams yet. Well—actually, you’ve both discovered that if you get hit hard enough that you pass out, then you won’t dream, but you can’t rely on giving yourself a concussion every once in a while.
You’ve consulted Ito about it, purely for the soulmate basis. She’s never known dream-sharing soulmates to not share their dreams or go to the same place. After Ito, you moved onto sleep specialists and a few medications, but nothing worked—though you got managed to procure some fancy sleep aids for Aizawa out of it.
You and Midoriya would have to figure out this one yourselves, if it were even possible.
[image description: a gifset of Pro-Hero Deku on Pro-Hero Uwabami’s talk show. In the first gif, Deku blinks in mild shock at Uwabami’s insult towards Pro-Hero Shouto. In the second gif, Deku starts to laugh softly, tongue running over his lower lip, as anger visibly shines in his eyes.]
purprevbabey: incredible how fast my legs spread when he gets mad like that
dickuprint: okay but like. you can SEE how much control he has. how he’s got the power in the situation. and he knows he could rip her to shreds for that comment but he’s reigning it in. godddddddddddddddddd men who laugh when they’re pissed pls get mad at meeeee
oldfashionedkitten: You just know he can Detroit Smash on my Full Cowl until I Shoot Style.
sakuraraka: oh what a piece of work is man 👅
midori-world: SLUT
dailydeku: what crime must I commit to get him to look at me like that??? can you IMAGINE being on the receiving end of that look and not being completely drenched. considering arson. perhaps public nudity. his bedroom is public right
You and Midoriya had spent ages tracking the dragon, and you’d found it burrowing underneath yet another village trying to attack it. After halting the townspeople’s weapons, you and Midoriya had crept into its burrow, inelegant in the haste it was dug, and discovered the dragon thrashing and rolling around in the dirt.
You’d started your tea ceremony to bind the dragon to the space, and the dragon had stopped convulsing to stare at the floating teaware and conjured table. It’d seemed to understand what Midoriya said to it, and when it shuddered, you’d noted, it was all in effort to get something off its tail: a slightly luminescent, red band that, now that you were close enough, was clearly not part of the dragon’s amber scales. It had been tagged.
You’d offered to remove it, and the dragon had shifted its attention to you entirely, thumping its tail in front of your tea table. It had gotten frustrated while you and Midoriya discussed the tag’s perfect, unbroken seal, and to your horror, the dragon seethed and erupt into flames, out of whose ashes crawled a very naked Bakugou. You’d already been overwhelmed by his tits and scarred muscles to the sounds of Midoriya’s babbling on shapeshifters when Bakugou climbed onto your tea table and thrust his ass towards your face—you’d scrambled backwards out of shock. But he’d settled into a kneel, hissing over his shoulder at you, while you’d noted the tag had been sealed as a patch on the small of his back, which, so long as you wore down the holding spell, could be removed.
Bakugou had been incapable of human speech himself but nodded and grunted as you and Midoriya chipped away at the tag’s seal, and once you’d peeled it off, the underside of the patch revealed its owner: Todoroki Natsuo, who had enchanted the tag to teleport any significant source of magic back to the Todoroki castle. Midoriya had fortified this, saying that northern dragons were often used to collect kneilanth root and butter knappe, which grew too deeply underground for humans to safely dig for them.
And so, Bakugou had come with you all the way to rescue your friends from Todoroki castle, from which you’d been banned all those years ago for bad poetry.
(Bakugou had been doing quite well as a human, actually. Language was still an issue, mostly because his human mouth had to adjust to vocalising the sounds, and he tended to dislike the feeling of fabric against his skin. But he liked watching your magic and eating meat with the bones removed, and he enjoyed listening to stories. This Bakugou was charmingly, openly affectionate in his own gruff way, hovering near your side when outsiders crossed your path, taking tea towels for his nest/bedroll, and plopping your hand in his hair once camp was set up in the evening.
You tried not to think about what it could mean for your reality’s Bakugou.)
Foiled in your infiltration to Todoroki castle, you’d been captured and separated, and you and Midoriya were eating breakfast in his apartment to discuss your next move.
“I’m on the east side of the castle’s dungeon, in one of the cells on the first floor underground,” you said, setting your drawing of the castle layout (to the best of your memory) aside to sort through the puzzle’s edge pieces, “My other life’s memories tell me that I visited briefly before, because Shinsou’s family works in and out of there. I haven’t seen any of the Shinsous, though. I’ve only been handled by strangers. Where are you?”
“I must not be in a dungeon, then. There’s a window letting in sunlight, so I must not be underground.” Midoriya pinched his lower lip and frowned at two, similarly coloured puzzle pieces. “But they’ve tied me up. You’ll have to find something to cut the rope with, if you break out first.”
“Interesting,” you said, and you reached for your mug, “They didn’t bother to restrain me. They must not think I’m a threat, but you must look it.”
“Do you need a refill? I was about to get more,” said Midoriya, standing, his hand outstretched as he leant over the table, tossing his own empty mug to himself.
You squinted into your mug, the dregs of yet another failed, homemade frappe at the bottom. “I think I’m coffee-ed out for the day. Just water, please?”
“Right. If you’ll allow me a moment,” said Midoriya, holding both mugs in one hand (your brain short-circuited for a moment. Large. Large hands) as he crossed to the refrigerator. “But it’s the Todorokis’ castle. We know at least Endeavor and Natsuo are there because of Bakugou’s tag, and even if they are present, I don’t know Fuyumi or their mother well enough to rely on them. And Shouto isn’t there to help us.”
“I doubt the crown prince would help out his former jester,” you said, latching two pieces together, “and I doubt we could find Shouto if the whole kingdom hasn’t found him after searching for a year.”
“Is that a challenge?” His smile was audible over the gentle slosh of liquid. “Then that should be our next quest after we find the rest of our party.”
“Done. We’ll find Shouto next.” You accepted your mug once Midoriya tapped the back of your shoulder with it, and he plopped into his seat across from you with a heavy sigh. Your eyes glazed over a little when a frustrated Midoriya pulled reading glasses out of his breast pocket and slid them on. “Oh,” you said, taken aback.
He shot you a grin before bending back over the puzzle, hair flopping onto his forehead. “Don’t let it slip that the number-one hero needs peepers, all right?”
“Peepers,” you said, clasping a hand over your heart, “Who are you?”
Midoriya clicked his tongue and tried to fit another piece.
Shaking your head, you continued. “I think the move here is to appeal to the guards who’ve handled me so far, to try to see if I can talk to any of Shinsou’s family to get out. If not,” you said, taking a deep breath, “I can try soulwalking. The dungeons are charmed to stop magic, but I don’t know if they’d account for soul magic, since it’s so rare. I can try getting a key that way.”
“Key,” said Midoriya, holding up a finger and then a second, “And knife.”
“Yeah. You’re tied up. You’re tied…up,” you said, propping your chin on your fist, “Gracious. Has anyone ever managed to tie you up before?”
His eyes flickered over to you, glinting. “Not in any way I didn’t intend.”
“I—hm,” you said, having to look away and plucking at your shirt to cool yourself down, “I meant. I meant if you’d ever been—captured. For work. But I guess that sort of thing doesn’t happen to you, does it?” But if he wanted to take it that direction, you’ll play. “Tied up how? You uncomfortable?”
Midoriya smiled more with his eyes than his mouth, though he kept them on the puzzle. “It’s not my first time on my knees,” he said, fitting another piece together, “but I’ll admit the stone is making them ache.”
Fuck, how is anyone supposed to maintain a conversation with this man? “I hope they gagged you with how clever that mouth is,” you said on impulse, smoothing down the front of your shirt and frowning once you’d realised what you’d said.
“With a bit,” he said, drawing a line across his lips, “They confiscated my shirt when they checked my skin for runes and bound my arms behind my back, looping the ropes here—” Midoriya pulled up his sleeve to trace his finger on his upper arm over the rising swell of his bicep. “Here—” He did the same below the muscle, flexing it as he kept his gaze on the puzzle. “And here.” He straightened his posture to drag his finger diagonally over his collarbone, all the way up to where his neck met his shoulder.
You’re going to kill him. You’re going to pluck out each of his tendons to weave them into a basket. You’re going to bite down as hard as you can into that bicep until you can spit it out.
“Yeah, sure, man,” you said eventually, rubbing your eyes with the heels of your palms, “Don’t expect me to walk into your dungeon, pussy out, or anything, even if you’re already kneeling. If you could concentrate, please. We need to come up with something before tonight.”
Nodding, Midoriya covered his yawn and stood, stretching his arms above his head with a quiet groan (and you…noted the sliver of hard stomach when his shirt rose). “I’ll take my chances,” he said, rolling his broad shoulders back, taking a moment to hold his elbow for the extra strain. “I know you’ll be able to pull it off, whatever we decide, and I’ll do more thinking during work today. I need to head out. I’m behind on the last performance evaluations for this round of interns, and I’m supposed to be taking them all out for interim evals today.”
“Good fucking luck.” You corralled the loose puzzle pieces into one corner of the kitchen table as Midoriya put mugs in the dishwasher.
“Thanks.” He tossed in a soap pod. “What time will you be home today?”
“Uh, give me a sec,” you said, thinking and moving to put things back in the refrigerator, “I…oof, late. Late. I stay super late today, because I’m covering for Jirou. She has a gig tonight. Yeah, I have my lunch break around fucking 3:30, and then I work until two in the morning.”
Midoriya winced, nose wrinkling. “Let me meet you for lunch, then. I’ll see if I can swing by after that, too, to bring you something then.”
“Oh. You don’t have to do that.”
“I know. I want to,” said Midoriya, and for barely a full second, he shot you the most devastatingly sincere smile you’ve ever seen in your life: boyish and endearing and a bit like distilled sunshine, all of his earnest devotion concentrated and aimed at you before simply switching it off as he looked away and removed his glasses, seemingly unaware of how very frantically your heart was banging about in your chest.
Once he was out the door, you grabbed your phone to scroll through the Midoriya thirst accounts, desperate for validation that someone else was thinking of him in that way.
[video description: a Deku fancam set to MARINA’s “Primadonna.” Clips from interviews, paparazzi, photo shoots, and social media flash in time to the beat, mostly focusing on the way a smiling Deku often rubs his lower lip with his index and middle fingers while he thinks.]
blueberrybakugou: fist me. who said that
chargenut: I just want. If I could just. Like for five minutes. Just.
igneousbastard: Every Deku picture is mind-bogglingly vogue. He’s the ultimate do I wanna be him or fuck him. Keep it coming king 👑 👑 👑
sakuraraka: he just looks like he’d be so nice to hold hands with. well that and to **** **** * *** ******** *** **** ** ******* ********* but i digress
kirishimashairdye: bites him bites him bites him bites him grabs his beautiful face and kisses it all over tweaks his nipples unzips his pants and pulls out his c—* GUNSHOTS *
kurapikas-ballandchain: whatever u say babygirl 💖
mmmmmidoriya: god i am so jealous of his soulmate. gets to shove her head between his thighs every day
dickuprint: @mmmmmidoriya you’ve seen who it is, right??? i am manifesting they make out in public so that we can see what deku does with his tongue then 👀 guess i’ll have to live vicariously through her for the rest of my LIFE.
mmmmmidoriya: @dickuprint i wish i had been hit by that quirk bc having a soulmate would fix me and every problem that ever existed
You lay back on the couch, holding your phone above your head and feeling unbearably fond of these unhinged people you’ve never met. Almost a shame that no one in your life could talk to you about Midoriya that way—except, perhaps, Uraraka, and she’s moved on. Still. Somehow it was comforting that all of these people, even though they’d never been the direct victim of a Midoriya smile, could feel so strongly for him. Their vehemence was infectious, and for the first time in three years, an invitation to adore Midoriya bloomed in your chest. So, you allowed yourself to open up your old feelings for him and made your first post.
assortedsoftcheeses: have we considered how sexy midoriya would be in reading glasses???? willing to commission fanart btw.
***
Silhouetted by the hallway light, Midoriya rapped his knuckles on your doorframe. “May I come in?”
“God, fuck,” you said, wiping at your nose, “Sure.”
House slippers scuffing on carpet, Midoriya approached cautiously while you smeared your tears over your face with your blanket, and he knelt by your bedside, looking up at you. He didn’t ask what was wrong. Simply waited. Put his hand next to yours, should you want it.
“I’m so fucked up about Shinsou in particular. He’s my best fucking friend and has always, always been there for me. Always a source of comfort.” You sat up in bed, adjusting the straps of your tank top. “I feel guilty for not being able to love him like he deserves. I do love him, y’know? But I can’t—I don’t have any impulse to love him romantically. He’s just—very important to me. I don’t want him out of my life because of our soulmate bond.”
Midoriya’s pinkie nudged yours. “He doesn’t have to be. So, let’s make time for you to spend with him.”
You balked, taken aback. “You’d be okay with that? You wouldn’t get jealous?”
Midoriya smiled gently, creases in his face lit by lamplight. “Sweetheart, I can’t get jealous of Shinsou; he’s your best friend. And, moreover, he’s probably still closer to you than I. You’re allowed to have space away from me, y’know?” He inched his hand underneath yours, his fingers curling upwards into yours, and he traced circles into your palm with a light graze of his middle finger—and that light touch shot a spark through you, more sensitive to his calloused skin than your weighted blanket or your too-soft pillow or Dango’s heat coming through the comforter from where she loafed on your feet. “In fact,” he continued, as if he hadn’t casually skyrocketed you from this plane of reality and back, “I’ve been considering a a project that Shinsou and you may fit perfectly into.”
And so Midoriya, Shinsou, and you coordinated your schedules to all head over to U.A., to the Aizawa hall, down to room 310, all the way at the end. Midoriya raised his hand to knock as you shot a nervous glance at Shinsou.
(Shinsou and you had a very specific dynamic when you hung out together, but adding Midoriya enhanced it in a way you couldn’t articulate. Nothing Shinsou normally did was sacrificed, but there was just something in how now there was someone to stand so closely to you that you felt his body heat, to explain in gratuitous detail his bulky camera equipment for the later birdwatching, to tease you to repeat your compliments towards him because he wanted you to admit it—it was different, yes, than just hanging out with Shinsou, whom you never had to try to impress, but something made you incredibly aware of Midoriya’s stupid, unstyled hair that was curlier than usual and his gesturing with an old, bulky, silver watch that he claimed was his father’s—something that added a safe sliver of excitement.)
“It’s unlocked,” called a voice that only had traces of his old rasp, and in you stepped to Shimura Tenko’s living space: summer-warm and cluttered in a purposeful way, with the wide windows propped open so that the white curtains wafted with the breeze, a mirror with fan mail from hero work taped to its glass, a skateboard mounted to the wall, a strategically planned gaming desk, and his red shoes next to Touya’s boots and Eri’s sandals by the door.
Midoriya absentmindedly helped you take off your jacket to hang it on the coatrack while you toed off your shoes, and you were smiling: Tenko and Eri sat across from each other on the couch, both sketching an angle of a still life scene (of a reflective water bottle, an overflowing bowl of shining stones, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figure, and a morning glory picked from the dorm flower bed) on a tiny table dragged to the middle of the rug. Todoroki Touya was sprawled out on Tenko’s bed, head dangling off the side and squinting as he read volume seven of something called GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK.
“Hey, Izuku,” said Tenko, glancing one final time at the still life and his drawing before closing his sketchbook to stand. “You’re late.”
(God. It still shook you, whenever you thought about it, that the man who had been Shigaraki Tomura was doing well now, getting to act his age, getting to do hero work, getting to settle into comfort. Midoriya apparently visited him at least once a week and had gotten to know him well, and Shinsou had spent brief spurts of time with him when they both needed to be with Aizawa. Good for Tenko, of course, but you didn’t know how to talk to him. How do you talk to someone who changed the trajectory of the entire world?
But Midoriya brought you out of your head, because he was showing the same level of comfort with Tenko as he had outside with you and Shinsou, in how he warmly greeted these people and felt at home in this space. That brought down your nervousness to the same level as when you meet a friend’s friend for the first time.
[And a voice in the back of your head said that you didn’t need to try to get them to like you, because of course Tenko and Touya would like you. You’re their soulmate in another timeline.])
“Traffic was bad. It’s good to see you,” Midoriya replied, hand sliding to the small of your back, grounding you, even though the touch was unfamiliar. “Tenko, Touya—you know Shinsou, but I don’t believe you’ve met my soulmate yet?” Masterful how he’s calming you down and showing that he’s got everything under control in the same gesture. Competent bastard.
Midoriya nudged you towards Tenko as you exchanged names—unnecessary, really, since both of you knew who the other was—and waves of sorrow, pity, and affection washed over you as you looked him over: tired, with better posture, his hair swept out of his face—just some guy—and you fought the urge to hug him. And bolstered by Midoriya’s calming touch on your lower back, you instead did something Tenko might appreciate more: you held out your hand.
Something strange visibly passed through Tenko, his red eyes lighting the fuck up, and he clasped your hand, shaking it. “You’re bold.” You could’ve sworn he was suppressing a smile as he glanced from you to Midoriya. “Hope you stick around.”
“Deku,” said Eri from the couch, titling her head backwards over its arm to speak towards you, “Tell Tenko he should come to my watercolour class with me.”
“He can do what he wants,” said Midoriya, as Shinsou stepped aside to enquire Touya after the manga he was reading. “What’s so special about this class?”
“Oh, come on, Deku. It’d only be one time,” Eri said as Midoriya ruffled her hair, careful of her long, curving horn, “Tenko’s been saying how hard it is to draw reflective surfaces, and there’s gonna be a whole class session on them!”
Tenko shook his head. “I can’t paint.”
“You did that great painting with coffee of a boat that one time,” said Eri, tapping her pencil against her sketchbook.
“I couldn’t drink the coffee; I had to do something with it,” said Tenko, “I wasn’t trying to paint for real.” He sighed, shoulders heaving, and he turned back to you. “You want tea, or something? A snack?”
A few minutes later, the five of you sat together on the rug (Eri went downstairs), clutching mugs of decaf orange tea with a plate of grocery-store-bakery shortbread in the middle, and you began to plan what sort of Dungeons and Dragons game you all wanted to play.
“I may have some ideas for adventures in a fantasy setting,” said Midoriya with a completely straight face. You scoffed and rolled your eyes, and you were about to thump his chest when his arm came to rest behind you on the couch cushions; you found yourself swallowing at the acute awareness of the heat his defined bicep transferred to the back of your head.
(Weird. Usually, Shinsou was the person in a group hangout that you’d pay attention to the most, because you’d catch each other’s eye to make jokes, but somehow—somehow—you hated that you had to keep depending on that word—somehow, you wanted to pay the most attention to Midoriya, because you didn’t know what he’ll do next.)
Throughout all of the ideas for a homebrew campaign, the goosebumps on the back of your neck never settled. Midoriya doesn’t even have his undivided attention on you; he’s just talking to friends with enthusiasm and those expressive hands, silver watch clinking, and it’s exciting just to watch him. When he’s not looking at you, it’s like you can see him better—how he’s a good leader, a good friend, and a good, good man.
(And then, that tiny, evil voice in your mind whispered that it’s because when Midoriya looks at you, he looks with so much want that it’s blinding. That when he looks at you, his light blocks out everything else.)
***
You’ve had enough of the ocean. Enough of the heat. Sweating, you pulled the wide brim of your sunhat down over your face and once again moved your folding chair farther into the shade, its chair legs scuffing the deck. No one is going to persuade you to do any heavy lifting today; you’d melt.
Monoma felt the same, after getting a terrible sunburn, so he kept to whatever shadows the ship could offer, and he was likely below deck, reading his little detective novels—hopefully in silence, since Shinsou had announced he’d be taking a nap about an hour ago. You’d join them, but for some reason, seeing the water itself distracted you from the frequency at which the boat rocked and kept your stomach from turning.
So, you kept to the main deck, which allowed you to watch all of Endeavor’s—sorry, King Todoroki’s crewmen as they kept the ship running. Always strange, but you supposed that whom you knew as pro hero Burnin’ made for a fine ship captain. You respected how she didn’t defer to any of your party, especially Touya, even though she and the crew were yours to use for the mission to find Shouto.
Funny how only a month ago you’d been an enemy of the king, and now he’s sent some of his most trusted personnel with you with his blessing. Your attempt to break out of the dungeons had failed—well, you had successfully escaped, but once you’d located Midoriya, you’d run into a few problems: he’d been tied up in an infuriatingly sexy way, just as he’d described, and they’d since removed his trousers as well as his shirt. Cutting him free had taken time, since you’d only been able to commandeer a dull blade, and to slice the knots on either side of his neck, you’d had to press your boobs near Midoriya’s face. He’d wasted so much time apologising for his subsequent erection that the guards had caught up with you.
It had gone down, at least, by the time they’d dragged you to Touya’s childhood sitting room, still as luxurious and well-kept as when he’d first left, where the rest of your friends had been at a tea party, arguing over what little cheesecake was the best. A cup of tea had been shoved into your hands, and across the table, you’d caught Touya’s mocking gesture of putting his pinkie up while he’d sipped at his own tea.
The Todorokis had been pleased to see Touya again and had welcomed him and the rest of your party into the castle eagerly (you say the Todorokis: you mean Rei, Fuyumi, and Natsuo who opened the castle to you. Enji, it’d turned out, had more or less become a king in name only during an illness that confined him to his bedroom, leaving the actual governing of the kingdom to Rei. Apparently, Enji had seemed glad when he’d heard Touya had returned, but he'd merely turned over in bed to continue to read after nodding at the news). You and Midoriya had been issued a pardon once Touya had informed his family that you were his friends, and for almost a month, you’d camped out in the castle and explored the town. Thrilling, really, to rest in a place with clean beds and keen to provide multiple changes of clothes. Everyone had gotten to request what was for dinner a couple of times, which was lovely—adorable, really, the way Touya sighed happily into a bowl of soba made the same way as when he’d been eight years old.
But Touya had claimed he couldn’t take the familial doting forever—though you figured it might be pressure to take the crown soon—and he’d took your idea for an easy way out of the castle: why doesn’t your party go search for Shouto?
And thus the ship from Endeavor’s navy, staffed with his combat personnel who hadn’t had much to do in peacetime. You were off towards a partially mapped archipelago from which rumours of a mage who could wield both fire and ice came.
Heavy footsteps clonking down the stairs to the quarterdeck shattered your concentration on the deep, azure waves, and you’d hardly turned to look before Bakugou plopped directly onto the deck next to you, crossing his legs and leaning against your chair.
Bakugou reached for your hand and dropped it onto his head. “Scratch.”
You laughed through your nose. “Fine,” you said, curling your fingers into his hair for the first time that day—oof, his spikes were more pliant because he’d been sweating so hard. “What’s got you so worked up?”
Pouting, Bakugou huffed, and you offered a drink from your canteen to encourage him to speak. “Couldn’t beat Izuku and Touya to the crow’s nest,” he said after taking a swig, raising his head towards your touch, “Bein’ up that high when I’m not in dragon form—I don’t like it. Makes my head hurt.”
Now that you tilted the brim of your hat backwards, you could make out two figures skibbling around the rigging towards the top of the tallest of the ship’s three masts. You can’t discern who’s who, but one of them swipes at the other, who barks a laugh, and it’s good to see the both of them playing. They deserve it.
“I’m sorry that’s happening to you, Bakugou,” you said, swearing that he let out a sort of purr when you scratched near the base of his neck, “Would it help to be a dragon again? Fly behind us for a while? I can ask the captain.”
Bakugou shook his head, and then he strained his neck to rest his chin on your thigh. “I shouldn’t shift into a dragon until we’re near land. Shifting back into human form would leave us with the fiery, dragon carcass, and I don’t wanna burn down the ship with it.”
“That would put a damper on our journey,” you said, “I haven’t considered: do all shapeshifters physically leave their magical bodies behind when they turn back into a human? What do you normally do with your…”
You narrowed your eyes at the crow’s nest at someone’s shout. It’s too bright out today, under this perfectly clear, blue sky, and you’re blinded when you look their way. You held up a hand to shield your gaze from the sun as a cacophony of voices resounded across deck, able to make out before you did that one of them was falling from the nest, caught in a snapped section of rigging. In the moment Bakugou leapt to his feet and helped you up, a strident, clean crack made your stomach drop.
Both of you raced over to the small crowd of crewmen already lowering a grimacing Midoriya to the deck, hanging by the ankle caught in the rigging, and he winced, inhaling sharply, at the first touch from the medic.
“I’m fine,” said Midoriya, maintaining a shaky smile and holding up a hand to you, which you grasped once you dropped to your knees.
“No, you’re—you’re bleeding out, you asshole,” you said, gripping his hand harder than you needed to, “Drop the All Might grin.”
“I’m har—hardly bleeding out,” he said, but he relaxed into a closed-mouth smile as the medic cleaned the deep cut with her water magic, with Bakugou hounding her with questions on her method the entire time.
“What happened?” You scooted out of the way of the crewman who’d fetched a medical kit. “I thought you and Touya were—”
“We were being reckless. I misstepped and sliced my leg on an errant nail, and I fell due to surprise and got caught in the rigging. It’s not Touya’s fault,” said Midoriya, raising his voice just as Touya reached the bottom of the mast, looking less agitated once he heard.
Touya stepped out of the way of the pooling blood, and after the medic confirmed with him what’d happened, she said, “Midoriya, your ankle is broken. Looks like it was snapped by the ropes. The cut doesn’t reach the bone, but it’s deep. It’s gonna need to be wrapped as tightly as possible over this splint so that this flap of skin doesn’t fall off and stop the bleeding. I can do a temp one, but we’re gonna have to dock somewhere to get some—”
“I think I can do that,” you said, realising it as you spoke, “With my binding ceremony, I should be able to bind his injury as tightly as it needs to be. Monoma could transfigure the bandages into something more permanent.”
The medic only took a second to hesitate before enlisting Bakugou to help carry Midoriya below deck. You ran ahead to grab your tea whisk, and you were already kneeling on the floor of Midoriya’s bunk when they brought him inside. Bakugou’s mouth twitched at all of the blood seeping out of the gauze on Midoriya’s leg, but the medic yanked him by the elbow back above deck to sterilise the area.
Midoriya panted from the blood loss, eyes fluttering as you began your ceremony. “I don’t know how long I can stay upright. I—hahh, is it hot in here to you?”
Miniature tea plants pushed through the top layers of skin on your forearm, growing to maturity at a rapid pace. “A little,” you said, glancing at his steadily moistening forehead, the first bead of sweat dripping down the curve of his cheekbone.
His breathing grew heavier as your magic sun-dried tealeaves and steamed them. Grimacing, Midoriya said, “Forgive me for this,” and started unlacing the front of his shirt.
Oh, his shirt is coming off? You tried to seem very interested in magically kneading, oxidising, and drying tealeaves, but Midoriya noticed how distracted you were, raised a brow, and, with an incredulous smirk, lifted his shirt to flash you his fucking nipple, perked up from the fabric rubbing against it.
“Oh, you like that, don’tcha?” Midoriya asked, not that he needed to: your teakettle boiled over so quickly because it matched the heat rising to your face. Grinning to himself, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it near his bag.
You channelled the centre of your binding magic into the bandages, taking in how much blood was seeping through the previous ones, how it might affect Midoriya for months if this doesn’t work out.
I hope this helps.
Commanding your magic to bind tightly around Midoriya’s wound, you redirected residuals automatically trickling into the teakettle back to the bandages. Midoriya must put a lot of trust in you, considering you’ve never used your magic in this exact way, but since it’s still a binding ceremony, the credits might just transfer.
“No need to be so nervous,” Midoriya was saying, slumping into the bed now that his shirt’s off, as if his tits weren’t just out there, “You’re still on guard with me. I’m waiting for you to be comfortable.”
“Y’know, the best way to stop residuals going into the tea is to have no tea to go into,” you said, ignoring him and pouring him a cup, which you shoved his way, “Drink up.”
While you prepared your own tea, Midoriya swallowed his like it was a shot, and he even screwed up his face and thumped his chest like it’d been alcohol. “Gracious,” he said, peeling his eyes open, “That does not go gently into the night.”
“Excuse me?” you asked, magic faltering slightly before renewing the channel binding his wounds. You took a sip from your teacup, but it was the same tea as always, so you were taken aback when he returned his empty teacup, smelling like bitter, medicinal residuals.
“Pour another cup for me,” said Midoriya, and both of you followed the arc of liquid into Midoriya’s teacup, resembling standard green tea. When he lifted it to his lips, he shook his head. “It’s the same medicine as before, but how?” His eyes lightened, corners of his mouth twitching upwards. “You poured yourself a normal cup of tea in between.”
“I think,” you said, in a small voice, staring into your own teacup and wondering at what more your magic was capable of, “I don’t know. I didn’t do anything differently. Aside from the bandages, but, y’know.”
“Hm,” said Midoriya, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, fingers curling into his wet bangs, “Would you mind getting my notebook out of my bag for me?”
“I shouldn’t move until the ceremony’s over,” you said, nodding towards the slowly-twining bandages, almost to his ankle.
“Right,” said Midoriya, tongue flicking over his lower lip, eyes shining, “I can wait. But the liquid in the teakettle physically changed materials, if in taste, rather than appearance, temperature, and texture, and it changed back for when you needed to drink it. Do you think there’s a subconscious element to your magic that adjusts itself for the person receiving the magic? Because it wasn’t even purposeful, because you’re trying to put all of your magic on my wound, but if it still manifested in the tea—”
(And as your gaze drifts upwards to Bakugou’s bunk, blankets draped over the side into Midoriya’s space, it hits you, the overall, cultural, social reason why it hasn’t been easy trying to love Midoriya, affecting not just you but nearly everyone who meets him: loving Midoriya is like loving the sun.
Because no one needs to think about loving the sun. It’s obvious how it’s the most important star in the sky, how it’s built into our everyday lives.
And so you don’t notice it until it’s paired with something else, that highlights, by contrast, the beauty of the sun. Put it with the moon in eclipse or the tilt of the Earth, and it’s suddenly an interesting thing to talk about, like how some people only discuss Midoriya in conjunction with Todoroki, or how his personality balances Bakugou’s, or how he expresses romance and sexuality in how he treats Uraraka. Talking about Midoriya by himself isn’t very interesting to a lot of people, because he seems to be the default good, and for some people, good is boring. Bringing in someone different downplays his apparent blandness.
You’re guilty of it. You’ve been musing over how he adds to the hangouts with Shinsou, how he works the room during DND sessions, how he’s part of a romantic unit only with Uraraka. How he fits into hero society. You haven’t been fair to Midoriya. You’ve never looked at him as just Izuku.)
“—then it comes down to desire, I figure, that changes it,” Midoriya was saying, and after taking a breath, he gestured towards his ankle. “Looks like the binding’s done.”
Breaking you from your thoughts, the strain of magic came to a halt as the final bandage looped closely around Midoriya’s ankle, sealing it. “Yeah,” you said, moving from your kneeling position to examine your work, “What was that about desire?”
“You wanted to heal me, yes? That desire probably drove elements in your ceremony to change, I’m guessing.”
His bandages were perfectly set, perfectly holding pressure. “I did wish really hard.” I hope this helps rattled in your head. “Feel any pain?”
“None at all. You did well. We can add this to your arsenal, I suppose—and you don’t have to get me my notebook,” said Midoriya, beaming up at you as you stood, the tea ceremony equipment evaporating. He caught your hand before you could leave, his touch delicate as he guided the palm of your hand to his lips. “I’ll remember,” he said, bright eyes holding you in place, “since it’s you.”
That settled it. You were going to chase the sun.
***
When the ship reached the archipelago, it didn’t take long to realise that it was protected by an invisible dome. As a dragon, Bakugou found a crevice near the top that he could slink through, so so long as Bakugou could carry it on his back, it could get to the islands.
In your first flight, Midoriya held you closely from behind, and he covered your eyes with his hand when you grew too nervous, claiming that your flustered expression was bad for his heart.
You found Shouto on the east side of the island, long-haired and tanned while net-fishing among stone columns that held up houses before a hurricane destroyed them.
“Hm,” Shouto was saying, coaxed into sitting around a freezing fire lit by Touya, using Monoma’s cast-iron spit to stab through his fish, “If I’m using my fire and ice magic enough for my father to track me, then perhaps I should learn another discipline.”
“God, no,” said Touya, giving a dismissive wave, “We were just told to find you, not bring you back. And we didn’t promise to say where you were, either.”
“You’re allowed to use your magic, regardless,” Midoriya said, “It’s your magic, not his.”
“Good,” said Shouto, nodding, “My companions do not wish to participate in society. I would prefer to stay with them.”
“How many of them are there?” Midoriya set his crutch against the rock he was sitting on and instead leaned more against you. “Your friends, I mean.”
You met them soon enough at dinner: Aizawa Shouta, who had crafted the dome around the archipelago (his magic could create the perfect conditions to sleep, including the cancellation of others’ obnoxious magic), and Shimura Tenko, who had to be pried away from the dragon body Bakugou had crawled out of (Tenko’s magic allowed him to talk to animals and know what is in their heart of hearts. He emphasised that this was vital, since cats lie to you).
You couldn’t force anything into your stomach for how sick you felt, and eventually you set your fork down to tap the back of Midoriya’s free hand, which he flipped over for you to hold, lacing your fingers together. At your morose silence, Midoriya made an excuse to the group about needing his leg rebound, and, leaning on both you and his crutch, he led you away from the fire on the shore and towards Shouto’s hut.
Shutting the bamboo door behind you, you helped ease Midoriya into a chair before pinching the bridge of your nose and speaking in an unsteady voice. “That’s everyone. All of my soulmates in one place. I don’t fucking get why they’ve kept popping up. Presumably we have everyone we know mirrored here, so why do they have to be the ones we spend time with?” you asked, beginning to pace in the tiny room.
Midoriya leant his crutch against the table, settling into his seat with stiffness, bamboo creaking under his weight. “Do you want to leave? Separate from the group?”
“No, I—” You sucked in through your teeth. “I hate that I have a sort of fucked-up harem. It doesn’t serve any purpose other than to fill me with guilt. I don’t know how to handle it, and I don’t want to handle it. I know that leaving everybody would also fill me with a different kind of guilt, so I know leaving isn’t the solution, but I still don’t know. I don’t know where to go or what to do or if I should tell them at all. These versions of our friends, anyway,” you said, running both hands backwards through your hair, “God, it’s too complicated. It’s too much to focus on that there’s no focus. I—” You spun on your heel to face him and had to cut yourself off: Midoriya was taking great pains to slide out of his chair, to kneel at the end of your path.
“No, what’re you—? Let me help you back up,” you said, rushing back towards him, but he refused your help.
Midoriya offered his hand upwards to you. “Isn’t it a relief, then,” he said, watching your fingertips graze his before sliding down into his palm, “that you know where you come home to?” His fingers curled into yours. “I can’t speak for everyone, of course, and I wouldn’t want to, so allow me to be selfish: I’m here. I plan to stay,” said Midoriya, so softly it was hard to hear him over the night wind, “I want you. No one coming into our lives is going to change that. You say there’s no focus, but you’ve been my sole focus for almost a year now. I can’t imagine I was satisfied with anything else. And I will admit, my dear, that it makes me burn with jealousy that you spend so much time looking away from me, even in well-intentioned worry. I want all of you.”
Squeezing your hand in his, Midoriya brought the fabric of your skirt to his mouth to kiss it, keeping eye contact. “Please. Please. All I am is yours. My heart is yours; these hands are yours; this cock is yours. All of me is yours. All you have to do is ask for it, and if you’re always looking away from me, you won’t. Please look at me. Please let me help you.” He dropped your skirt, his fingers grazing your hip as he shifted his weight off of his injured leg, and he held your hip to steady himself, never tearing his gaze away from you.
The number-one hero’s bulky figure was on his knees in front of you despite his bad leg, squeezing your hand like he’ll never let you go and pressing his face to the front of your dress.
“Tell me you’ll let me in. Tell me I’m the only one,” said Midoriya, nuzzling the spot where your thigh met your hip, “Tell me that only I’m allowed to keep you warm.”
The sun was once thought to be the centre of the universe. It’s time he became the centre of yours.
“Tell me that I’m not alone in this. That you can’t wait any longer,” he said, bright eyes watering without overflowing, and you looked directly into the sun.
soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare @eunchaeluvr
#bnha#midoriya izuku#midoriya x reader#midoriya/reader#midoriya imagine#midoriya fic#mha#midoriya headcanons#midoriya fanfiction#midoriya fanfic#soulmate au#soulmates#soulmate#dash it all
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Let Your Knights Weep
One of the big things I've had to train myself out of when writing medieval historical fiction?
The stiff upper lip.
This used to really bewilder my editor, who for some time attempted to nudge me away from having my grown men weep and wail and blubber, but for me it's an essential part of the setting. Whether in grief or fear, medieval people did not hold things back.
Here are some of my favourite quotes to explain.
First, a couple from two great 20th century medievalists:
CS Lewis in his Letters put it this way:
“By the way, don't 'weep inwardly' and get a sore throat. If you must weep, weep: a good honest howl! I suspect we - and especially, my sex - don't cry enough now-a-days. Aeneas and Hector and Beowulf, Roland and Lancelot blubbered like schoolgirls, so why shouldn't we?”
Dorothy Sayers, in her fabulous Introduction to her translation of THE SONG OF ROLAND, speaking of Charlemagne discovering Roland's body on the battlefield:
Here too, I think we must not reckon it weakness in him that he is overcome by grief for Roland’s death, that he faints upon the body and has to be raised up by the barons and supported by them while he utters his lament. There are fashions in sensibility as in everything else. The idea that a strong man should react to great personal and national calamities by a slight compression of the lips and by silently throwing his cigarette into the fireplace is of very recent origin. By the standards of feudal epic, Charlemagne’s behaviour is perfectly correct. Fainting, weeping, and lamenting is what the situation calls for. The assembled knights and barons all decorously follow his example. They punctuate his lament with appropriate responses:
By hundred thousand the French for sorrow sigh; There’s none of them but utters grievous cries.
At the end of the next laisse:
He tears his beard that is so white of hue, Tears from his head his white hair by the roots; And of the French an hundred thousand swoon.
We may take this response as being ritual and poetic; grief, like everything else in the Epic, is displayed on the heroic scale. Though men of the eleventh century did, in fact, display their emotions much more openly than we do, there is no reason to suppose that they made a practice of fainting away in chorus. But the gesture had their approval; that was how they liked to think of people behaving. In every age, art holds up to us the standard pattern of exemplary conduct, and real life does its best to conform. From Charlemagne’s weeping and fainting we can draw no conclusions about his character except that the poet has represented him as a perfect model of the “man of feeling” in the taste of the period.
OK, now let's dig into some quotes that I found just in Christopher Tyerman's Chronicles of the First Crusade and Joinville's Life of St Louis:
Truly you would have grieved and sobbed in pity when the Turks killed any of our men....
As for the knights, they stood about in a great state of gloom, wringing their hands because they were so frightened and miserable, not knowing what to do with themselves and their armour, and offering to sell their shields, valuable breastplates and helmets for threepence or fivepence or any price they could get....
When Guy, who was a very honourable knight, had heard these lies, he and all the others began to weep and to make loud lamentation....
They stayed in the houses cowering, some some for hunger and some for fear of the Turks....
Now at vigils, the time of trust in God’s compassion, many gave up hope and hurriedly lowered themselves with ropes from the wall-tops; and in the city soldiers, returning from the encounter, circulated widely a rumour that mass decapitation of the defenders was in store. To add weight to the terror, they too fled…
In the course of that day’s battle there had been many people, and of fine appearance too, who had come very shamefully flying over the little bridge you know of and had fled away so panic-stricken that all our attempts to make them stay with us had been in vain. I could tell you some of their names, but shall refrain from doing so, because they are now dead.
I could go on looking for quotes in all the other medieval literature I've read, but that would be beyond the scope of this Tumblr post.
In the meantime, this leads me to make some comments on how trauma was perceived.
In Jonathan Riley-Smith's The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, the author discusses the mental breakdowns suffered by the first crusaders during the second siege of Antioch, which caused many of them to flee at the moment of direst need:
In these stressful circumstances it is not surprising that the crusaders were often very frightened. At times, indeed, they seem to have been almost paralysed by a terror that they themselves could hardly comprehend. … When the crusade was bottled up in Antioch by Kerbogha's relief force it was gripped by such blind panic that there was the prospect of a mass break-out and on the night of 10 or 11 Juney 1098 Bohemond and Adhemar had the gates of the city closed. It is worth noting that many of those whom later chroniclers, writing after the events in comparative comfort in Europe, vilified for cowardice and desertion seem to have been treated more charitably by their fellow-crusaders, who must have understood what pressures they had been under.
--
In conclusion: the way we feel about things today in the English-speaking isn't necessarily the way people felt about things in the past (and this goes for other cultures, real or imagined, too). I'm continually catching myself writing people with stiff upper lips and emotional reservations, and having to remind myself that the culture was different back them. If a grown man wanted to weep, he could. That's a good thing. (Oh, and my medieval historical fantasy? Check out the Watchers of Outremer series on Amazon or wherever books are sold!)
#history#writing#historical fiction#medieval history#medieval#middle ages#historical#masculinity#history of masculinity#toxic masculinity
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the great war | (teaser)
❝Because the greatest war Seungcheol had ever waged was against your heart.❞
historical! au | enemies to lovers! au | smut, fluff | approx. 30k words
s u m m a r y : there was only one thing you hated more than your restricted life, and that was choi seungcheol—the greatest venetian general who has ever lived. when a marriage is arranged between the two of you, you were sure it would end in bloodshed. however, as you and seungcheol are forced to attend balls and share a few hard truths, you realise you have more in common with the mysterious general than you thought.
c o n t e n t : military commander! seungcheol, noblewoman! artist! mc, artist! minghao, artist! soonyoung who are both annoying (affectionate), cheol and mc absolutely hate each other because i need to see proper e2l, cheol is the hottest man who ever lived, he also has a scar on his lip (yes this needs a separate warning), this is set in renaissance venice so there will be artist references, the doge = basically ruler of venice, themes of sexism, constant arguing between mc and cheol, there is fluff, also angst ofc mature warnings -> tons of sexual tension, making out fuelled by hatred, fingering, oral sex (f. receiving), unprotected sex (only because medieval contraception is vile), cheol says some very vile things during the deed, very slight corruption kink
p l a y l i s t : dangerous woman by ariana grande || war of the hearts by sade || love is stronger than pride by sade || i don’t understand but i luv u by seventeen
t a g l i s t : @hyuckworld @just-hear-to-read-01 @cherrycheolcoups @jeonwonwooscutie @i-dont-give-a-fok @mystikha @xcynthiaaa @ckline35 @enthralled-bandit @urfavtallgirl222 @swimmingkpopblog @areumyang @geniejunn @itsveronicaxxx @yoongischeeksluv @sojohns @capsiclesworld @hanniehoneyy @belladaises @listxn @cheolsbitch @atinycarat26 @moniece @foxdaisy @seventeensfave @yoozuku @hanicore @ishireads @kkooongie @huiiline @coralderae @deekayownsme @louvyves @writingsbybirdie @myjaeyunn @twogyuu @goldenhoney-cas @jonginstance @lurniere @vanishingboots @jub-jub @jjjzzzz @bee-beyond @ikeostormy @rubywonu @ncteez-replies @appt2235 @claireleem @ningwebs @gyuturn @sikebishes @antiv3nus @tyongff-ff @lxgus @forcoups @woozarts @smoooore @iwuzhere @asteriaskingdom @p-dwiddle @youre-on-your-ownkid @fragmentof-indifference @lilsafsafbooyah @9songbird19 @hibernatinghamster @norassimpingzone @parkchaeyoungsbish @foxinnie8 @idubutily @imatfrontrow @ellr07 @havetaeminforbreakfast @tacolombe @nomnom2001 @highkey-fangirling @nap-of-a-starr @pineartease @hwashiningstar @hybeboy @haoraecane @yestenano
(send an ask to be tagged <33)
a u t h o r ’ s n o t e : hello everyone i died on this account but i am back and better than ever especially since cheol has the nerve to be the finest man alive. just a warning, this fic is going to be so horrendously self-indulgent </3
SEUNGCHEOL ENTERED THE ROOM, AND YOU STILLED.
He was also wearing his wedding attire, but his cravat had been loosened, revealing a sliver of his neck. His curls were wild, as if he had been raking his hands through them. Even as a groom his sword was strapped at his side, the weapon absent at the actual ritual. You could have laughed at him if you were not so nervous—even on an apparent intimate night, he had only thoughts of murdering you.
His expression, on the other hand, revealed no humour.
You heard him sigh sharply, locking the door. That instantly had your nerves heightening. “Unlock the door,” you commanded, getting up from the bed. “I need to run away if you try to do something.”
“I shall have no drunk cousin or lecherous relative spying on us,” he refuted, stepping closer into the room.
“Spying?” your senses perked up. “Seungcheol, we are not doing anything worth spying on, do you understand?”
“What the hell do you mean?” he demanded, propping his gloved hands on his hips. He made to step closer to you but you raised your hand to stop him.
“I know a man has expectations,” you started, backing away from him, “Everyone expects us to seal the marriage, and I know that is the tradition, but I do not care…” you paused, and even the thought of such an action frightened you.
“If you try to touch me, Seungcheol, I will not hesitate to take your sword and stab myself with it.”
He parted his mouth to sneer, but he caught the look in your gaze. He had never seen such a promise ready to be fulfilled should your worst fears occur.
The man could not help but step back.
“Did you really think I would do that, _____?”
You smiled, albeit without any humour. “Well, first you declare that you would rather die by the hands of a Turk before marrying me, and here you stand as my husband.” You shook your head. “I cannot trust you.”
The accusation on his honour stung. “I stand by what I said. I did not want—do not want to marry you.”
“Then why did you say yes?!” you screamed.
He stood silent for a time, gritting his teeth.
It was the truth. Choi Seungcheol was the last man on earth who wished for your hand.
He, too, wanted to escape as the ceremony progressed. Even as you came into the church, dolled up in the height of fashion, he wished nothing more than to run out of God’s holy building, jump upon a gondola and row away from the city.
Despite his prowess, his popularity, his apparent undeniable power, he was unable to escape this marriage. There were exterior forces, beyond his control.
He said it to you truthfully.
“I was given no choice. I had to say yes.”
You did not believe him. “King of the Venetian military, the Republic’s favourite man and you could not control your choice of wife?” You almost wanted to laugh at him.
He could tell. “You would not understand,” he muttered, turning away from you. “All you have ever done is be a spoiled Doge’s daughter.”
That really ticked you off. “You have no idea what I have done for myself. You will never know of the burdens I carry for being a woman alone.” You crossed your arms, daring him to face you like a man. “All you have done is go to some foreign land and kill a few poor souls.”
Now that really ticked him off. “You speak of burdens as if I have none.” His voice dropping an octave had you blinking back. “You are not the only person who has struggled.”
You watched him as he finally deigned you a glance. There was something incredibly bleak in his usual stormy eyes. Not that you had never not seen him in a sour countenance, but this was possibly the first time you had seen him so hopeless.
“You are not the only person who has felt alone.”
A great part inside of you wished to cackle the ceiling down.
He should feel alone! You raged inside your mind, looking down at the ends of your wedding gown. He should feel something akin to loneliness so he could understand a fraction of your despair. The man was constantly surrounded by his men, his followers, hundreds of thousands of admirers from all over Europe.
You, on the other hand, had only yourself and your paint.
Even with that bitterness, no laughter spluttered from your lips.
You could only match his cruel stare, and hope he took you seriously.
A few more minutes passed before he sighed, taking off his loosened cravat from his neck, putting his sheathed sword on the set of drawers behind him. “We should sleep,” he said, stepping before the opposite side of the bed.
Watching his every move, you then shifted your gaze to the bed. “Yes…we should…”
His famous brow quirked inquisitively. “What are you thinking now?” he asked, clearly exasperated. He then continued dryly, “If you are still hesitant about the whole consummation, then I can assure you that I, too, would slice my head off if you suggested it.”
“Well, I am not suggesting it,” you muttered. “I am more puzzled about why you are getting into bed.”
His tiredness did not stop his stare turning sharp with sarcasm. “Because that is what a person does if they wish to sleep.”
“I am aware of that, thank you.” You put a hand to your chest. “But I wish to sleep as well, and I will be damned before I let you sleep in the same bed as me.”
Now his gaze turned mocking. “My God, you have some nerve saying such a thing.” He set the cravat down on the bedside table. “If you have a problem with me sleeping here, you can sleep somewhere else.”
“Excuse me!” you exclaimed, reaching out to clutch the bedsheets. “This is my bedroom. I have slept here my entire life!” You huffed, sitting on the plush mattress. “Besides, are you soldiers not accustomed to sleeping anywhere? I am sure my bedroom floor is a lavish upgrade from whatever hellsite you rested abroad.”
“Oh, you—” he brought his knee upon the bed, hands further placed as he leaned closer to you. “I care very little whether you have been sleeping here all your life. Your father brought me here, so I have a right to this space.”
You matched his vigour instantly, leaning just as close, sparking a fire in your expression. “And I care none if Papa brought you here—hell, if the Pope carried you to this very room.” His growing rage had no effect on your own. “Sleep. On. The. Floor.”
Mere inches away from each other, the general stared you down. Had the receiver of such a cruel eye been his soldiers, they would have run for the lakes, abandoned the army altogether. Seungcheol’s cold, calculating glares have had enemies shiver in their masses.
It irked him so ardently that his infamous tactics ceased to work on you.
He looked over your features: the manic, determined glint in your pupils, the flared nose, the pursed lips. No one, a woman, no less, had stood up to him like this.
Of course, he should not have been surprised. You had always been a sharp pain in his backside.
God, I cannot let her win, his voice rang, over and over in his head. She cannot have this over me.
But then he saw a glint in your usual mischievous gaze, and he knew you were about to commit a crime.
He was not wrong.
Because you did have an idea, and you smirked, fingers rising to the thin bow on the top of your dress.
Slowly, you began to untie the lace.
Seungcheol watched with no small amount of horror as your rigid wedding gown began to loosen at the top, its flared arms drooping around your shoulders.
You made to untie the second lace when he raised his hands, twisting his lips into a scowl. “What the hell are you doing?!” he demanded, getting off the bed.
“What does it look like?” You untied the string, dress falling further down till you needed your hands to hold it steady.
A single drop, and everything would be revealed.
The greatest general in the peninsula nearly squirmed at the thought.
Your fingers toyed with the last lace.
His eyes darted to your movements. Then, to your face, and you noticed the change of expression—it was as if he was thinking of a military strategy, a last-minute decision on the battlefield.
Once again, you pulled at the string.
But before the knot was fully untied you heard a savage growl escape his mouth.
“Oh, for God’s sake!”
Before you even let the dress fall, he swerved around, grabbing hold of his sword from the drawers. “Fine! Have your room!” The muscles on his back flexed as he raked a hand in his hair. “You are truly ridiculous!”
You could only laugh at the scene of him thundering to the door, vigorously unlocking it and storming out.
The laughter did not stop as you changed into your nightgown, shaking your head.
You did not care if Choi Seungcheol had become your husband.
You were not going to let anything of your life change.
#seventeen imagines#seventeen smut#seventeen fluff#seungcheol imagines#seungcheol smut#seungcheol x reader#seungcheol fluff#seventeen x reader#seungcheol scenarios#seventeen scenarios#seventeen oneshot#seungcheol oneshot#scoups imagines#scoups smut#svt imagines#svt smut#svt oneshot#svt scenarios#seungcheol angst#scoups fluff#seventeen angst
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This is kind of random, but would it have been a struggle for a big busted women to wear fashionable silhouettes in the medieval era? I’ve heard some costume historians discuss that there were forms of bust support, but most of what I’ve seen pre-1500s seems like it would have been a nightmare for any ancestor with a similar bodytype to wear. Am I just from a line of women doomed to horrible back pain? (On the flip side of the situation, I’ve found corsets and stays to be rather comfortable, so that’s not a problem)
As a fellow big boob haver, I have good news for you! There were pretty good Medieval bust supporting garments and I have tested one of them.
With sturdy fabric, tailoring and lacing you can create pretty good bust support. Lacing was popularized first in 12th century in form of bliaut, and in 14th century tailoring became standard for everyday garments. I don't know how well bliaut supported the bust, but since it doesn't fit super snugly, I assume it doesn't distribute the weight of the boobs as well as tailored supporting garments and therefore isn't as supportive. I'm also not actually sure if there was proper bust supporting garments before that, I haven't looked into it. I know Romans bound their breasts with cloth wrapped around the chest, so maybe that technique continued (at least for those who especially needed it) till lacing and tailoring became a thing. For more about how supporting garments developed in Europe through history, I have a post about development of lacing, which coincides pretty well with that history from 12th century forward.
Personally I have experience with Medieval Bathhouse dress, which was used in the Germanic Central-European area roughly in 14th to 16th century. It's called the Bathhouse dress because most depictions of it are from bathhouse settings, but there's depiction also in bed chambers and other contexts, so I think it's pretty safe to assume it was used more generally as an undergarment. It often had separate cups for the boobs (see the only extant garment left of it, the so called "Lengberg Castle Bra"), but not always. Unlike most other undergarments at the time, it was sort of a shift (the lowest layer) and a supporting garment combined into one.
I sewed my own recreation of it (with some alterations because I made it for my everyday use, not as a historical recreation) and did a post about my results, where I go deeper into the history of the garment too. I didn't construct it very well and I did an error in the design of the back, which cause the strain of the shoulder straps to focus too much on very specific spots in the back panel, which eventually made the fabric there break too many times. (There were some other smaller design flaws too, like the waistline is lower than my natural waist so it rose and wrinkled annoyingly.) I did use it daily (except when I washed it) for a fairly long time though and it was super comfortable and helped a lot with back pain (and shoulder pain caused by use of modern bras). I hate that I've had to go back to modern bras because I haven't had the time to remake it yet. (I'll probably make a follow up post once I get around to it, where I go through the issues of the first version and how I addressed them in the next attempt.) Well fitted and shaped bodice which is then laced does surprisingly much even without any additional reinforcements.
I haven't made a Medieval kirtle (though I will some day), but it was the more widely used Medieval supporting garment, which eventually replaced Bathhouse dress in the area where that was used. Kirtle is worn over a shift, but it broadly works similarly. Kirtles could be front, side or back laced depending on the time period and how the Kirtle was constructed. Multiple layers of kirtles could be used and looser overgarments (like houppelande) were often used on top of it. Kirtle was used by everyone, including men, but for those who didn't need bust support, it's purpose was mainly to create the fashionable silhouette. Here's three depictions of kirtles from 15th century. First unlaced, but has lacing on the front, second close up of the side lacing and third shows nicely how both front and side/backlacing shaped the bust.
Morgan Donner is a costumer, who focuses a lot on Medieval costuming and has a big bust, so while I haven't personally tested the supportiveness of kirtle, she certainly has. The kirtle bodice part needs to be patterned to accommodate the breasts by giving it round shapes and the kirtle needs to be a little too small so there's room to lace it to fit well. Lining also helps to reinforce the fabric and make it more firm and supportive. Here's Morgan's pattern from the tutorial in her website and how the kirtle eventually fits for her. (Also look at the handsome boy in his handsome matching outfit.)
She also has a video relating to the same kirtle project, where she explains her method to pattern a kirtle specifically so it's supportive for big bust.
In 16th century more stiffness was added to kirtles, first with very stiff lining and then with boning, but that doesn't necessarily add to the bust support, rather it just allows the kirtle to shape the bust and the body in general more and better support a heavy skirt. Firm fabric secured snugly with lacing is already very good at distributing the weight of the boobs to the whole torso.
In conclusion, at least since 14th century people with our body type were not doomed to eternal back pain and even before that some ways to help with it were probably used.
#historical fashion#fashion history#dress history#history#historical costuming#historical sewing#sewing#crafts#costuming#fashion#medieval fashion
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